LADY GEORGIANA ULLERTON.*

IT is difficult to review in connection this characteristic work by the author of Le Molt d'une Saner, and the volume which is so very " free " a rendering of it. We do not desire to dwell on the faults of the English version, though it is im- possible not to be struck by such grave misconceptions of Mrs. Craven's meaning as those which occur in pp. 51 and 52. Some errors of the press should not have been allowed to pass, though, on the whole, the book is creditable to the religious _ladies of the community, founded by Lady Georgiana, who undertook to print it. As a translation the work is unsatis- factory; as the unfettered adaptation it professes to be it suffers from comparison at every page with the graceful and harmonious portrait presented to us by one whose genius is chiefly shown in portraiture.

It might have been better had Father Coleridge not attempted translation. His literary skill is beyond question, and had he chosen his own line he probably would not have followed Mrs. Craven into her special domain of social reminiscences and of exquisite sentiment. He might not then have confounded the " Blues " with the Grenadier Guards, as a friendly critic has remarked ; nor would he have lingered so long in what he calls the " high society " of Lady Georgiaria's youth, or men- tioned the Almack's balls as " Almackses." No doubt Father Coleridge has a serious advantage over any French writer in being able to use the English letters of Lady Georgiana as they were written, though her habitual use of French, both in thought and in pen-work, lessens this advantage. On the whole, he has been undoubtedly hampered by following Mrs. Craven's arrangement of materials, her emphasis of certain features, and the general colour of her delightful portrait. We prefer, therefore, to take the French text,

• (1.) Lady Georgiana Fullerton: sa Vie et sea &twos. Par Madame A. Craven. nixie Perrin et the.—(2.) _Life of Lady G. Fullerton. From the French of

Mrs. A. Craven. By H. T. Coleridge, B.J. London : Bentley and Bon.

which is already in a second edition, as the truer pre- sentment of Lady G. Fullerton's character and work. It might, indeed, be said, that but for the artistic value of the portrait, her life scarcely earned by its general interest an elaborate notice. The peculiar quality of her goodness, which Father Coleridge seems half airaid to publish, as he consigns to an appendix some notes of it which Mrs. Craven has " writ large," gives its special value to the memoir. Lady Georgiana Fullerton's was a name that was in many mouths some forty- three years ago, when Ellen Middleton, her first work, if we except some verses published in Bentley's Miscellany, was given to the world. That she was Lord Granville the Ambassador's daughter, Lord Granville the Minister's sister, and of the innermost circle of fashion, no doubt had something to do with the success of her very powerful novel; for fashion and Ministers then had a power now forgotten. That Charles Greville and Lord Brougham had seen it in manuscript, and were its enthusiastic sponsors, secured for it immediate notice in the press. It is said that Mr. Gladstone sat up half a night to finish it, and devoted the other half to reviewing it in the English Review. With his opinion of Robert Elsmere fresh in our recollection, it is not uninteresting to quote his enthu- siastic words of praise :—

" That of all the religious works which we have ever seen, it [Ellen Middleton] has, with the most pointed religious aim, the least of direct religious teaching, it has the least effort and the greatest force ; it is the least didactic and the most instructive. She [Lady G. Fullerton] has assailed that which constitutes, as we are persuaded, the master delusion of our own time and country, and in the way of parable and by awful example, has shown us how they that would avoid the deterioration of the moral life within them, must strangle their infant sins by the painful acts and accessories of repentance, and how, if we fall short of this by dallying with them, we nurse them into giants for our own misery and destruction."

Concluding another passage of lofty encomium, Mr. Gladstone wrote :- " It is unnecessary, perhaps, to add the meaner praise of fidelity in the picture of social life, and its varied, we might rather say variegated, movements. And yet this too was obviously requisite in order to produce the general effect. But it is a rare pleasure to find the mastery of all human gifts of authorship so happily combined with a clear and full apprehension of that undying faith in its Catholic integrity by which the human race must ultimately stand or fall."

It perhaps needs testimony such as this from one yet carrying weight as a critic to persuade our generation of the

extraordinary enthusiasm created by Ellen Middleton, and still more by Lady G. Fullerton's next novel, Grantley Manor. Both

works gave eloquent expression to the religious mood of those years of the Oxford movement when some of its strongest men left the Anglican for the Roman Church, and England was aghast as if a constellation had fallen from the heavens. Lady G. Fullerton gave utterance, with the earnest passion of her genius, to the longings of many for a life wider and saintlier in its sympathies than what was called the religious world of that day could suggest.

The very intensity of her style makes it seem to us occa- sionally inflated ; the changed conditions of life in the class of whom she wrote give to her social sketches an air of pretension in our democratised eyes ; but her novels remain monuments of that crisis of feeling and appeal to religions conscience which shook Anglicanism to its foundations in 1844-1851, a crisis which found her with a singularly sensitive conscience, craving for authority, and, since she bad been old enough to repeat the General Confession of the English Liturgy, craving

for absolution. Notwithstanding their vogue—far greater, for instance, than the vogue of Robert Elsmere—the genesis of

Lady Georgiana's literary works hardly deserved a memoir, except as it throws light on her very marked and interesting personality, and illustrates a phase of the profoundly emotional English temper in religious matters. Her equal skill in French as in English composition is remarkable ; but it would have been better not to have given specimens of her French verse as Father Coleridge has done. The autobiographical notes of her childhood prepare us for her earnest, self-con-

tained, and proud maturity. Her training from the first was austere and repressive ; she declares that " she never re- members a correction which did her any good, or an occa- sion on which she submitted without resistance." Church- going was a weariness, and her love of reading was confined within the limits of " Miss Edgeworth's works, Evenings at Home,"—which we may remind Father Coleridge is not by that delightful writer, the author of Sandford and

Merton,—" and some French story-books." At ten years old Chateaubriand's Genie du Christi anisme opened a new world to her. At fourteen the very Protestant story of Father Clement taught her to admire the Catholic practices it decried. Never allowed a fire in her room, she suffered greatly from cold, but "was ashamed to complain." The school-room food was of " a very austere description," and the young people had not very much of it : at breakfast, milk-and-water and dry bread ; the same for supper. "As to sugar-plums, I never tasted any, except, alas I sometimes by stealth, or a small bit of sugar-candy my father gave us sometimes." Even when a young lady of the world, and under the kindly roof of her uncle, the Duke of Devonshire, Lady Georgians. writes :— " My mother made us breakfast in our own rooms, in order not to begin the day at once in society. We were expected to study in the morning, and did not appear until luncheon, and our breakfast still consisted of tea and rolls without butter." We will not linger on letters in which she tells of her marriage, her travels, and in which, indeed, there is but little sign of the transformation which her religious faith was undergoing, or of

those passionate aspirations which found utterance in Ellen Middleton. It is quite possible that her strong and reserved

nature would never have revealed itself if she had not wanted more pocket-money for charitable purposes. The day she heard from Bentley that poetry was less paying than prose, she began her great novel. It seems -to have more or less revealed herself to herself ; and within two years from its publication she was received into the Roman Church. Of her, when he heard that Mrs. Craven had consented to write this Life, Cardinal Newman says

Since I have been a Catholic I have looked upon her with reverence and admiration for her saintly life. A character and mental history such as hers make her a fit representative of those ladies of rank and position in society who, during the last half- century, have thought it little to become Catholics by halves, and who have devoted their lives and all they were to their Lord's service. May I, without taking a liberty, express my feeling that the treatment of a life so full of interest seems naturally to belong to you P "

We hear so much of new ways to be and do good without the trammels of revealed dogma, that it is opportune to see what is the well-trodden path of one who indeed was altogether Christian,—the sweetness that rewarded the severe discipline of her life, and the excellence of her well-ordered, incessant, and universal charity. Directing her vehemence of love to the highest levels, mastering her masterful independence, till humility and love were habitual to her, the kindest of friends and kinswomen, Lady Georgian's figure in Mrs. Craven's por- trait is one of the noblest that we know. Such records of life are never superfluous. There are but too many of another sort that, whether in biography or fiction, depress us by their tales of dis- tracted faith, failure of hopes and efforts, wild endeavours to redeem humanity by new methods and eccentricities of private life. The incidents of Lady Georgiana's career are not of special interest. She lost her only and well-loved son ; the track of her life was by wearily beaten ways, and she had seldom an opportunity of pleasing her taste, whether by travel or by residence in London. Some who knew her well felt dis- appointment that such a vigorous personality as hers fell into what seemed a narrow groove. Their regrets might almost appear well-founded, were it not for the further outlook, the sense of fulfilment, which is suggested so skilfully by Mrs.

Craven, probably her closest friend at the beautiful sunset of her life. Every touch is valuable which shows the spirit and in- tention of her daily actions, and we commend the courage which revealed the secret springs of what might otherwise appear arid in her rule. Lady Georgian was a notable figure of " society," though in her later years not " in " it. Her black dress, simpler than a servant's, her firm face and serious smile, her cordial, if rare laugh, were well known in May- fair, better still in the slums of Westminster and White- chapel. Loved everywhere, at Weimer Castle as at Roe- hampton Convent, not literary power or social humour gained for her the influence she possessed, and which this

volume will enhance. Not even her large and untiring goodness to the sick, the sorrowful, and the sinful, separates her from a crowd of others. It was the conduct of her inner self, the mastery acquired over her powers, so that they became God's servants rather than her own, which gives its special value. to this biography. Her fruitful, not egotistic, self-analysis,

the training of her conscience, the austerities by which she prepared herself to win the " prize of her high calling," may be cavilled at ; but her life was a splendid success, and her charitable foundations have remarkable vitality. No one who reads the last chapters of Mrs. Craven's book can doubt that Lady G. Fullerton's was that highest triumph of attained peace and joy in spite of extreme physical suffering ; nor can we doubt but that the record of this achieved career will be a beacon-light for many a well-meaning but drifting soul, though few are gifted with her capacity for saintly life.