salutary reminder of the just bounds of gentlemen throughout Mr. Wilson's criticism. twenty-seven years' management appears to have received any complaint. Indeed, apart from the misdeeds of one dirty cook (whom he dismissed), and of one cross governess, Miss Brontë herself had nothing to allege; and it was admitted by all witnesses that, in an uphill work of charity, Mr. Wilson's management was both generous and watchful. The intensity of Charlotte Brontë's bitterness it is quite easy to understand; her sister Maria died at the school, and to watch a dying sister sickening over unpalatable food or subjected to the nagging of a governess, is a cruel experience for a child of eight or nine. The recollection of it bit into her intensely personal and brooding imagination; and nearly thropic clergyman was punished for For I am not here to apologize for this reviewer. His offence has stirred the bile of the urbane Mr. Birrell, and may justly be left to the torment of Mr. Swinburne's alliterative damnation. Nor indeed am I so rash as to hold a brief for the reviewer in general, whose case is of course past pleading. Yet if the story of Hugh Brontë illustrates vividly the risks of the reviewer, “Jane Eyre" illustrates, on the other hand, the license of the novelist. If it comes to a question of hurting folks' feelings, Charlotte Brontë had herself a great deal to answer for. No reader of "Jane Eyre" is likely to forget the Lowood Institution; well, no sooner did the novel reach Yorkshire than Lowood a quarter of a century later the philan was identified with the Cowan Bridge School for the children of the clergy, and its founder, the Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst, with the real founder of the real school, the Rev. William Carus Wilson. And very pleasant reading the novel made for this philanthropic clergyman in his old age and years of declining health. The school for the children of the clergy had been the darling scheme of his life. He had sympathized | sary, in a work of fiction, to state every deeply with the extreme difficulty experienced by clergymen, with their limited incomes, in providing for the education of their children; and had devised this scheme of a school to be supported partly by subscriptions, where girls might receive a sound education for £14 a year. For more than a quarter of a century he worked for it and watched over it with unremitting zeal and self-denial, to find in the end himself and his school represented in a romance, read from one end of the country to the other, as something akin to Squeers and his Dotheboys' Hall. That Mr. Wilson was guilty of any fault of omission or commission in the management of the school, there is, so far as I can make out, no evidence to prove and a good deal to contradict. Mr. Wilson, though taking upon him the chief management, was only one of twelve trustees, and none of these particular with the impartiality that might be required in a court of justice, nor to seek out motives and make allowances for human failings, as she might have done if dispassionately analyzing the conduct of those who had the superintendence of the institution. Here precisely lies the danger of this license of the novelist. It is this absolute irresponsibility of the romancer, this privilege of selecting the facts and imputing the motives, which, added to the artistic gift for deepening the shadows and heightening the effect, makes the novel so far-reaching and so irresistible a libel. One would perhaps attach more weight to Miss Brontë's expression of regret for the wrong done to Mr. Wil son if she had shown herself more scrupulous in her handling of living people in her subsequent novels. But what is one to say of the treatment of the curates in "Shirley," or of Ma- pilloried the failings of private persons, dame Héger in "Villette"? Curates, which were not public property at all, like many other amiable and useful and had exposed them to the derision servants of the community, have long of their friends and the world. When dwelt in the cold shadow of romance; one remembers Mrs. Ritchie's half and when, as in this case, the romancer ludicrous, half pathetic account of was doubled with the rector's daughter, Miss Brontë's own behavior as a lionthese unfortunate young men naturally ess at Thackeray's party, one is stood scant chance of humane treat- tempted, quite apart from considerament. Yet when Miss Brontë was not tions of good taste and good feeling, to sharpening her pen for a biting por- question her right to be satirical in the trait, she had eyes for merits out-matter of manners even at the expense weighing manners even in a curate of of her father's curates. She was quite Haworth. The militant Puseyism of aware how badly she had treated them. these curates had provoked, you may "Even the curates, poor fellows," she remember, a quarrel in the parish over wrote, "show no resentment; each Church rates. The undaunted Pusey- characteristically finds solace for his ites defied the schismatics to come to church to hear them preach. The challenge, oddly enough, was accepted; the chapels were closed, and "a keener, cleverer, bolder, and more heart-stirring harangue" than that which one of these Anglican champions delivered insensibility. Because "Mr. Donne" from Haworth pulpit that Sunday evening, Miss Brontë had never heard. "He did not rant," she wrote to a friend, "he did not cant, he did not whine, he did not sniggle; he just got up and spoke with the boldness of a Does not after all the impersonal and man impressed with the truth of what responsible reviewer compare favorably he was saying, who has no fear of his with the personal and irresponsible enemies and no dread of conse- novelist? The writer in the Quarterly quences." Nevertheless their heroism Review did not know the anonymous in the pulpit availed the curates noth-author of "Jane Eyre" from the man ing when their characters were required by the novelist for " copy." own wounds in crowing over his brethren." Not a hint of remorse or repentance, I am afraid; on the contrary, when these good fellows took it laughing instead of crying, she is in her superior way quite scornful of their forgave her, she wrote: "Some people's natures are veritable enigmas; I quite expected to have had one good scene at least with him; but as yet nothing of the sort has occurred." in the moon. If Lockhart interpolated. the offending observations, he did so at A review of "Shirley" appeared in least merely in mistaken loyalty to the the Times when Miss Brontë was stay- traditions of the review and from an ing in London with her publishers. It honest dislike of revolutionary sentiwas severe, and the paper was hidden ment in the relations of the sexes. lest it should spoil the day's enjoy- After all, apart from one unwarrantable ment. Miss Brontë guessed the truth personal insinuation, he only said puband persisted in her request to be licly and curtly what Harriet Martineau shown the criticism. She tried to hide said privately and with management her face between the large sheets, but when Charlotte Brontë adjured her her companion could not help becom- as a friend to speak frankly. ing aware of tears stealing down the now know that Charlotte Brontë was face and dropping on the lap. I sup- the most old-maidenly of Revolting pose nobody who has read the incident Women; yet strange as it may seem to would like to have been the reviewer; a generation privileged to peruse the yet the reviewer at least was severe productions of the Pioneer Club, our only on what had deliberately chal- parents and grandparents did actually lenged a public judgment. The novel- consider Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe ist, on the other hand, had deliberately indelicate. We Of course a certain usage of their impulse was to retort with a tu quoque ; friends by novelists is legitimate in but his purpose was overruled by fiction and indeed inevitable. Sir Wal- Charles Dickens, whose advice he ter Scott borrowed from his father for asked and followed. old Fairford, and for the young one If indeed Dickens had consented to from William Clerk, and he made use be accessory to Yates's retort, it cer of Laidlaw more than once; but Scott tainly would have been curious, consid was a great gentleman as well as a ering his own license in this particular great writer; his unerring tact and line. Probably the most famous case kindly heart kept him always on the in the record is the case of Harold safe side and void of all offence. Char- Skimpole and Leigh Hunt. Nor was lotte Brontë drew her heroine Shirley that by any means Dickens's first of from her sister Emily whom she idol-fence. I pass over the unfortunate ized. So long, indeed as the painter Yorkshire schoolmasters who were but adds an aureole, nobody is aggrieved; the trouble begins when the portrait is unamiable as well as recognizable. The aunt of George Eliot, who was the original of Dinah Morris, had no ground of complaint, and Caleb Garth might be accepted by the novelist's father with tolerable equanimity; but it will be agreed on the other hand, that however disagreeable a young gentleman Master Isaac Evans may have been, his sister was more than even with him when she presented him to the world as Tom Tulliver. Where novels are autobiographical (and probably half the novels written are more or less autobiographical) there is necessarily with the self-portraiture some portraiture of relations and friends. In "David Copperfield," which is frankly autobiographical, we have it on the authority of the minute German critic, that even "die Schwester von Mealy Potatoes, who did imps in the pantomime, ist ebenfalls historisch." To the self-portraiture in "Pendennis," Thackeray pleaded guilty by sketching his own features in an illus- Let the police magistrate have been tration of his not too heroic hero. It what you will, I call that rather an was Thackeray's usage of his friends, ugly letter. Nor is it reassuring to be as subjects for both pen and pencil, told that after the magistrate had been which led Edmund Yates to consider "brought up" before the novelist, the himself justified in making Thackeray home secretary found it an easy and himself the subject of an early essay "popular" step to remove Mr. Laing in personal journalism. The story is from the bench. If there is a public familiar, and has so recently been re- evil, it should be the business of some called to the public recollection, that it more responsible authority to look to it is unnecessary to repeat it here, perti- than the popular novelist. The novelnent as it is to the matter in hand. ist is under too great temptations to When Thackeray resented Yates's make his characters dramatic and tell"pen-and-ink portrait," the latter's ing. Dickens confessed the tempta ruined or made wretched by Dickens's delineations of Squeers and Dotheboys' Hall, because no doubt where a guilty class has to be exposed the innocent must sometimes suffer. But take the ease of Fang in "Oliver Twist," and read this letter which the novelist wrote to a Mr. Haines who at that time superintended the police reports for the press: "In my next number of Oliver Twist,'" wrote Dickens, “I must have a magistrate; and casting about for a magistrate whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be shown up, I have, as a necessary consequence, stumbled upon Mr. Laing of Hatton Garden celebrity. I know the man's character perfectly well; but as it would be necessary to describe his personal appearance also, I ought to have seen him, which (fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be), I have never done. In this dilemma it occurred to me that perhaps I might under your auspices be smuggled into the Hatton Garden office for a few moments some morning.” What Dickens said, Charlotte Brontë said likewise. "You are not to suppose any of the characters in "Shirley" intended as literal portraits. It would not suit the rules of art nor of my own feelings to write in that style. We only suffer reality to suggest, never to dictate." And as it was back to the days of Fielding, so we are told is it down to the days of "Dodo." Even the misguided manufacturer of romans à clef trims and twists. M. Daudet assured Gambetta that had he really meant Numa Roumestan for him, he would have made him so like that there should have been no possibility of mistake. The mischief is that genius has a knack of making the borrowed traits twice as natural as life, till the average man recognizes the likeness a mile off. And then the differences which the author emphasizes in order to prove that the picture is no portrait serve only to aggravate the libel. It is easy enough for criticism to discriminate how much in Skimpole is Leigh Hunt, and how much not; but unfortunately the general public is not critical, and the result has been that Dickens did his friend a more lasting injury than did all his enemies from the "fat Adonis of forty" downwards. Seeing that Micawber was drawn from Dickens's own father, and Mrs. Nickleby from his mother, it is little wonder that the novelist could not restrain himself to spare his friends. tion, when he had no excuse of public | have done; and the testimony of the zeal to offer. After the twenty-second great novelists is unanimous, that chapter of "David Copperfield" had genius never merely copies from life, appeared in the serial form, Dickens but always idealizes and combines. received by post a pileous protest from the poor little Miss Mowcher of real life. The novelist had to confess he had enjoyed the fun of copying closely peculiarities of figure and face amounting to physical deformity of a grotesque little oddity among his acquaintance. He did not stop to consider that it was cruel fun for the victim. When her cry reached him he was shocked, and made some amends for the pain he had inflicted. But the most notorious case, as I have said, was Skimpole. Leigh Hunt was cruelly hurt by the caricature. Dickens knew perfectly well he was doing wrong, and confessed that again he had succumbed to the novelist's temptation. He said that he often grieved afterwards to think he had yielded to the inducement of making the character speak like an old friend, for the pleasure it afforded him to find a delightful manner reproducing itself under his hand. Leigh Hunt himself did not at first recognize the portrait, and very much enjoyed the picture; but when good-natured friends explained things, as good-natured friends do, he suffered keenly. Dickens was his good friend, who had done this thing. In vain Dickens tried to comfort him : 66 Separate," ," he said to him, "in your own mind, what you see of yourself in Skimpole, from what other people tell you they see." Cold comfort this! Hunt's grievance was that the public did, and posterity would, take Skimpole's character for his own, These libels of genius are doubly emtrait for trait. "Every one in writ- barrassing to the victim. The author ing," Dickens went on to plead, "must vexes him from a high sense of literary speak from points of his experience, obligation; and the victim is in no and so I of mine with you; but when position to complain, for a complaint I felt it was going too close, I stopped serves only to publish his shame, and myself, and the most blotted parts of is taken for an admission that the dramy manuscript are those in which I matic villain or picturesque fool of the have been striving hard to make the author's imagination is a recognizable impression I was writing from unlike portrait. If the real Parson Adams you." Here surely is even more con- had been so foolish as to take Fieldfession than defence. Of course what ing's portrait in bad part, a charitable Dickens says is perfectly true. He world would certainly have assumed was but doing what all the novelists that there was much discreditable truth behind that queer story of his being spicuous Englishman alive on the found in Mrs. Slipslop's bedroom. I globe? Another novel that I read pass over the flagrant case of Disraeli, soon after this one was about a famous for indeed the calendar of the novel- African traveller and explorer who ist's offences in this kind is inex- got into trouble about his treatment of haustible, and I have quoted enough the blacks, married a lady well known examples for my purpose. I have cited for her independent spirit and her familiar examples, just because they sketches of street Arabs, and on his are familiar, and because if I attacked marriage abandoned travel for politics. later and lesser cases (of which there It would not be easy to indicate a wellis assuredly no lack) these precedents known couple more closely. Any tolwould be quoted against me. Besides, erably wide reader of current novels familiar as these cases are, we have for could lengthen the list at will. the most part heard the stories from one side only. Only the novelist's advocate has his say, and the jury is packed with delighted and grateful readers. The reader is tempted to think it expedient that one little cripple should wince and smart in order that the world may crack its sides in laughter over Dickens's caricature. Well, we have been admonished not to blend our pleasure or our pride with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels; and even the obscurest victim of the most brilliant novelist deserves some sympathetic consideration. Not all the brilliant things in "Bleak House" atone for the wrong done to Leigh Hunt; and the world, to speak frankly, could have got along a good deal better without "Jane Eyre" and "Shirley" than without the self-denying work of such humble persons as were food for Miss Brontë's genius. The examples are old, but the moral is not. Unless I am mistaken there is a notable tendency to personality in the fiction of the day. A smart young writer gave us the other day a smart young novel about a South African politician who emerged into the ken of the British public, offering in one closed hand a new empire, and asking with the other hand opened for three millions sterling for his South African Company. When other details are added, such as personal negotiations with German statesmen and a fixed choice of celibate lieutenants, is it the fault of a guileless public if it imagines that in the story of Mrs. Dennison it is reading the secret of the obstinate bachelorhood of perhaps the most con For the present prevalence of the fashion there can be no doubt that the success of Mr. Benson's "Dodo" is largely responsible. We all know that Dodo was not the lady that she was supposed to be; but we all know also that everybody said that she was, and that this rumor had a great deal to do with the success of the book. To some extent again the fashion is part of a general drift, and of a growth of personal curiosity and a relaxation of the sense of respect due to privacy, which is possibly a concession to the democratic sentiment," "Tis right," as Tennyson sang with angry irony, "the many-headed beast should know." In fiction another influence has been the not overwise talk about "documents " and "naturalism " mimicked from our neighbors across the Channel. Was it the solemn talk about "documents" among the literary set that met at the Magny dinners, or was it indulgence in native malice which degraded M. Daudet's originally pretty talent to the level of the license of his long list of romans à clef? "L'Immortel" certainly seems to point to original sin. M. Zola himself has taken to writing what may be called contemporary historical novels, which seem to me to have all the disadvantages of the old historical romance and none of its advantages. It is impossible not to feel commiseration for the real personages who have figured in them. Professed historians may make mistakes; indeed, one need feel no superstitious belief in the absolute accuracy of any of them, even those of the latest and most approved scientific brand. But at least 1 |