THE STORY OF ELIZABETH.*
THE heroine of this tale is almost the only figure we remember to have met with in modern fiction whom we positively grudge to the world of imagination. A very young man reading about Elly might not impossibly be affected as the princes in the "Arabian Nights" are said to have been affected when they saw the picture of the most beautiful princess in the world, and go about ever after comparing the picture with real life, resolved never to take any young lady for their wife unless she were the original thereof. Perhaps the Arabian princes had the excuse that in such a case an actual original is always supposed to exist, while in literary art there is no such guarantee. And it is curious enough how seldom even the most ardent admirers of our great literary artists would care to transfer their figures, or heroines at all events, from amongst the "painted shadows on the wall" to the sphere of actual life. Even the imaginative representation of such a wish sounds unnatural. When Goethe, in his old age, inhumanly makes Faust,—kaust who had loved Gretchen !—help himself by the aid of Mephistopheles to Helen of Troy, who was most likely only a book character of Homer's, we all feel it a vary devilish kind of transaction, even though we have seen an English Chancellor of the Exchequer in the nineteenth century fall visibly in love with her himself. Even of Goethe's own heroines,—and they are his greatest creations,—whicir is there we should care to transplant into the world around us ? Gretchen and Klarchen are the most feminine and fascinating of them, but they belong too entirely to Faust and Egmont to excite any wish for their independent existence ; and the others are generally a little sly, like Ottilie, and 'far from exciting our envy. Then there are Miss Austen's heroines, all delightful on paper, but not on any account could we grudge one of them to the hero. Emma Woodhouse is self-opinionated, Jane Fairfax underhanded, and Catharine, in " Northanger Abbey," a romp; Elizabeth Bennet, in "Pride and Prejudice," not entirely a lady; Anne Elliot, the best and sweetest, tame and middle-aged, and clearly the fair prize of Captain Wentworth. Then Sir Walter Scott's heroines (unless it be Mary Stewart herself, who, in consequence, perhaps, of the trace of guilt in her character just stirring into excitability Scott's personal admiration, shows a blended strength and soft- ness by no means common in his heroines), are all either strong- minded, like Die Vernon and Rebecca, or soft little fools like Minna in the" Pirate," and Rose Bradwardine in " Waverley," or nothing at 'all, like Rowena and Isabella Wardour. A young gentleman would feel sadly aggrieved, we imagine, who should be compelled to choose a wife from amongst them. Then, again, Mr. Trollepe's heroines almost always have a touch of something in them tbat repels us; how, for instance, could any one marry a lady who had boxed the ears of the Rev. Mr. Slope? Mt. Thackeray, too, usually inspires affectionate contempt, if not distrust or dislike for his heroines, contempt for Amelia, distrust for " Beatrii, and dislike for her mother. Where has George Eliot drawn a wornan we grudge to her imaginative world, unless .* The Story of Eliettbeth (reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine). With two Ms- tantiens. smith and Elder.
it be Dinah, who is, after all, a little too good for "human nature's daily food," as Wordsworth cannibalistically remarked ?
Of course Miss Edgeworth's heroines are created to be detestable ; but even with Miss Brontë, how glad we are to read her novels, and how much gladder that the young women delineated cannot, after all, come out of the boards and join our family circle ! Who would grudge Jane Eyre to Mr. Rochester, or Caroline Helstone to Mr. Moore, or Lucy Snow to M. Paul Emmanuel (if be ever really got her) ? Who does not feel some reverence for the disinterested benevolence of these excellent persons in taking
these yowl°,° ladies to their hearts ?
But in Elly we have a heroine whom we cannot help grudging to the world of fiction ; full of engaging beauties, and still more engaging faults ; shining in so fresh and simple a loveliness ; adorning and enjoying her own beauty without vanity ; artless and childlike, and yet not without the lustre of culture ; certainly not a hot-house exotic, not even a many-coloured garden-flower, but still a rich garden-flower, and not a wild ; loveable without any of the duly registered qualities which claim a fatigued admiration; at once trustful and wilful; pitying herself genuinely in her troubles, and yet pitying others more ; with an innocent English mind and heart that are easy to enter into and yet bathed in a deep Italian atmosphere of its own ; imaginative but not dreamy ; with a golden cloud about her that neither dazzles nor overshadows, Elly has, on the whole, no right to belong to a novel, and it is the only thing which grieves us as we close the book.
For the rest, the tale, which is very short, has many incidental beauties, though Elly's is the only finished character, and the centre of the whole. Its power of describing i3 considerable,—of that kind that refers everything you see to the impression it produced in the mood in which you saw it. Here is a picture which might rank beside many of the famous idyllic pictures of Goethe's and take no harm from the comparison. It gives Elizabeth, too, in ber bad humour, which is one of her most charming attitudes of mind:—
" A low, one-storied house standing opposite a hospital, built on a hilly street, with a great white porte-cochire closed and barred, and, then a garden wall : nine or ten windows only a foot from the ground, all blinded and shuttered in a row; a brass plate on the door, with Stephen Tourneur engraved thereon, and grass and chickweed growing between the stones and against the white walls of the house. Passing under the archway, you come into a grass-grown courtyard; through an iron grating you see a little desolate garden with wall-flowers and stocks, and tall yellow weeds all flowering together, and fruit-trees running wild against the wall. On one side there are some empty stables, with 'chickens pecketting in the sun. The house is built in two long low wings ; it has a dreary moated-grange sort of look ; and see, standing at one of the upper windows, is not that Elizabeth looking out ? An old woman in a blue gown and a white coif is pumping water at the pump, some miserable canaries are piping shrilly out of green cages, the old woman clacks away with her sabots echoing over the stones, the canaries cease their piping, and then nobody else comes. There are two or three tall poplar trees growing along the wall, which shiver plain- tively; a few clouds drift by, and a very distant faint sound of military music comes borne on the wind. 'Ah, how dull is it to be here ! Ali, how I hate it, how I hate them all !' Elizabeth is saying to herself ; there is some music, all the Champs Elysees are crowded with people, the soldiers are marching along with glistening bayonets and flags fly- ing. Not one of them thinks that in a dismal house not very far away there is anybody so unhappy as I am. This day year—it breaks my heart to think of it—I was nineteen ; to-day I am twenty, and I feel a hundred. Oh, what a sin and shame it is to condemn me to this hateful life ! Oh, what wicked people these good people are ! Oh, how dull, oh, how stupid, oh, how prosy, oh, how I wish I was dead, and they were dead, and it was all over!'"
There is not one character sketched in the story which is not vividly sketched ; the noble semi-ascetic French Protestant pastor, and bis ungainly, but yet nobler, son; the cheerful, did Retie, clerical Dampier, and the weak, good-natured baronet of that name who was more suited to be made love to than to love ; the French servants and the English aunt—all are real, and yet they are all seen, and only seen, as apparitions passing the window, as it were,
and peeling in upon the interior, of Elly's own mind. Even her mother, Mrs. Gilmour, who is the second character of the tale, and finely imagined, only glimmers in this way upon the edge of the scene; and this unity of centre perhaps it is which gives a great part of the poetic flavour to this short story. We object only to an intruding old maid at the end, who, very unexpectedly, turns out to be its narrator, and makes the tale into a hear-say, though it moves as obviously round the personal centre of Elly's own mind as day and night round the earth. Why this novel and
unexpected "I" is precipitated upon us at the close, and made to lay claim, as it were, to the narration of this delightful story, we cannot say. She is an offence unto us and to art, a false artificial axis for the movement of the narrative, who ought to be banished in a future edition. The English, no less than the substance, of this little tale, indicates real genius. It is not only fresh and bright, but what is not common in combination with a fresh sparkling style, it is rich and mellow, and reminds us of Mr. Tennyson's happy description of the old vintage ;
"But let it not be such as that You set before chance-corners; But that whose father grape grew fat Through Lusitanian summers."
It is rare, indeed, to find a style which is steeped in the colours of many literary generations, and yet so full of vivacity and youth, as this.
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