the other sex in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought
to have contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her, were
her trouble any other than it is.
"She is what she is, and she remains in her abject, pitiless,
unutterable misery, because this sentence of the world has placed
her beyond the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said,
no doubt, that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection
to female virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from
vice. But this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception
of those who have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand.
Instead of the punishment, there is seen a false glitter of gaudy
life,--a glitter which is damnably false,--and which, alas I has
been more often portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of
young girls, than have those horrors which ought to deter, with
the dark shadowings which belong to them.
"To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex,
as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life
is, happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice
and misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be
handled with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless,
may be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened."
Those were my ideas when I conceived the story, and with that
feeling I described the characters of Carry Brattle and of her
family. I have not introduced her lover on the scene, nor have I
presented her to the reader in the temporary enjoyment of any of
those fallacious luxuries, the longing for which is sometimes more
seductive to evil than love itself. She is introduced as a poor
abased creature, who hardly knows how false were her dreams, with
very little of the Magdalene about her--because though there may
be Magdalenes they are not often found--but with an intense horror
of the sufferings of her position. Such being her condition, will
they who naturally are her friends protect her? The vicar who has
taken her by the hand endeavours to excite them to charity; but
father, and brother, and sister are alike hard-hearted. It had
been my purpose at first that the hand of every Brattle should be
against her; but my own heart was too soft to enable me to make
the mother cruel,--or the unmarried sister who had been the early
companion of the forlorn one.
As regards all the Brattles, the story is, I think, well told.
The characters are true, and the scenes at the mill are in keeping
with human nature. For the rest of the book I have little to say.
It is not very bad, and it certainly is not very good. As I have
myself forgotten what the heroine does and says--except that she
tumbles into a ditch--I cannot expect that any one else should
remember her. But I have forgotten nothing that was done or said
by any of the Brattles.
The question brought in argument is one of fearful importance. As
to the view to be taken first, there can, I think, be no doubt. In
regard to a sin common to the two sexes, almost all the punishment
and all the disgrace is heaped upon the one who in nine cases out
of ten has been the least sinful. And the punishment inflicted is
of such a nature that it hardly allows room for repentance. How is
the woman to return to decency to whom no decent door is opened?
Then comes the answer: It is to the severity of the punishment alone
that we can trust to keep women from falling. Such is the argument
used in favour of the existing practice, and such the excuse
given for their severity by women who will relax nothing of their
harshness. But in truth the severity of the punishment is not known
beforehand; it is not in the least understood by women in general,
except by those who suffer it. The gaudy dirt, the squalid plenty,
the contumely of familiarity, the absence of all good words and all
good things, the banishment from honest labour, the being compassed
round with lies, the flaunting glare of fictitious revelry, the
weary pavement, the horrid slavery to some horrid tyrant,--and then
the quick depreciation of that one ware of beauty, the substituted
paint, garments bright without but foul within like painted sepulchres,
hunger, thirst, and strong drink, life without a hope, without the
certainty even of a morrow's breakfast, utterly friendless, disease,
starvation, and a quivering fear of that coming hell which still
can hardly be worse than all that is suffered here! This is the
life to which we doom our erring daughters, when because of their
error we close our door upon them! But for our erring sons we find
pardon easily enough.
Of course there are houses of refuge, from which it has been
thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only
repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily
be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope
to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at
all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached
the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe.
To me the mistake which we too often make seems to be this,--that
the girl who has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if
possible, at any rate out of speech, as though she had never existed,
and that this ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, put
in part also from a dread of the taint which the sin brings with
it. Very low as is the degradation to which a girl is brought when
she falls through love or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for
luxurious ease, still much lower is that to which she must descend
perforce when, through the hardness of the world around her,
she converts that sin into a trade. Mothers and sisters, when the
misfortune comes upon them of a fallen female from among their
number, should remember this, and not fear contamination so strongly
as did Carry Brattle's married sister and sister-in-law.
In 1870 I brought out three books,--or rather of the latter of
the three I must say that it was brought out by others, for I had
nothing to do with it except to write it. These were Sir Harry
Hotspur of Humblethwaite, An Editor's Tales, and a little volume
on Julius Caesar. Sir Harry Hotspur was written on the same plan as
Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, and had for its object the telling
of some pathetic incident in life rather than the portraiture of a
number of human beings. Nina and Linda Tressel and The Golden Lion
had been placed in foreign countries, and this was an English story.
In other respects it is of the same nature, and was not, I think,
by any means a failure. There is much of pathos in the love of
the girl, and of paternal dignity and affection in the father.
It was published first in Macmillan's Magazine, by the intelligent
proprietor of which I have since been told that it did not make
either his fortune or that of his magazine. I am sorry that it
should have
been so; but I fear that the same thing may be said of
a good many of my novels. When it had passed through the magazine,
the subsequent use of it was sold to other publishers by Mr.
Macmillan, and then I learned that it was to be brought out by them
as a novel in two volumes. Now it had been sold by me as a novel
in one volume, and hence there arose a correspondence.
I found it very hard to make the purchasers understand that I had
reasonable ground for objection to the process. What was it to me?
How could it injure me if they stretched my pages by means of lead
and margin into double the number I had intended. I have heard the
same argument on other occasions. When I have pointed out that in
this way the public would have to suffer, seeing that they would
have to pay Mudie for the use of two volumes in reading that which
ought to have been given to them in one, I have been assured that
the public are pleased with literary short measure, that it is
the object of novel-readers to get through novels as fast as they
can, and that the shorter each volume is the better! Even this,
however, did not overcome me, and I stood to my guns. Sir Harry
was published in one volume, containing something over the normal
300 pages, with an average of 220 words to a page,--which I
had settled with my conscience to be the proper length of a novel
volume. I may here mention that on one occasion, and one occasion
only, a publisher got the better of me in a matter of volumes. He
had a two-volume novel of mine running through a certain magazine,
and had it printed complete in three volumes before I knew where I
was,--before I had seen a sheet of the letterpress. I stormed for
a while, but I had not the heart to make him break up the type.
The Editor's Tales was a volume republished from the St. Paul's
Magazine, and professed to give an editor's experience of his
dealings with contributors. I do not think that there is a single
incident in the book which could bring back to any one concerned
the memory of a past event. And yet there is not an incident in it
the outline of which was not presented to my mind by the remembrance
of some fact:--how an ingenious gentleman got into conversation
with me, I not knowing that he knew me to be an editor, and pressed
his little article on my notice; how I was addressed by a lady with
a becoming pseudonym and with much equally becoming audacity; how
I was appealed to by the dearest of little women whom here I have
called Mary Gresley; how in my own early days there was a struggle
over an abortive periodical which was intended to be the best
thing ever done; how terrible was the tragedy of a poor drunkard,
who with infinite learning at his command made one sad final effort
to reclaim himself, and perished while he was making it; and lastly
how a poor weak editor was driven nearly to madness by threatened
litigation from a rejected contributor. Of these stories, The Spotted
Dog, with the struggles of the drunkard scholar, is the best. I
know now, however, that when the things were good they came out
too quick one upon another to gain much attention;--and so also,
luckily, when they were bad.
The Caesar was a thing of itself. My friend John Blackwood had set
on foot a series of small volumes called Ancient Classics for English
Readers, and had placed the editing of them, and the compiling of
many of them, in the hands of William Lucas Collins, a clergyman
who, from my connection with the series, became a most intimate
friend. The Iliad and the Odyssey had already come out when I was
at Edinburgh with John Blackwood, and, on my expressing my very strong
admiration for those two little volumes,--which I here recommend
to all young ladies as the most charming tales they can read,--he
asked me whether I would not undertake one myself. Herodotus was
in the press, but, if I could get it ready, mine should be next.
Whereupon I offered to say what might be said to the readers of
English on The Commentaries of Julius Caesar.
I at once went to work, and in three months from that day the little
book had been written. I began by reading through the Commentaries
twice, which I did without any assistance either by translation
or English notes. Latin was not so familiar to me then as it has
since become,--for from that date I have almost daily spent an
hour with some Latin author, and on many days many hours. After
the reading what my author had left behind him, I fell into the
reading of what others had written about him, in Latin, in English,
and even in French,--for I went through much of that most futile
book by the late Emperor of the French. I do not know that for a
short period I ever worked harder. The amount I had to write was
nothing. Three weeks would have done it easily. But I was most
anxious, in this soaring out of my own peculiar line, not to disgrace
myself. I do not think that I did disgrace myself. Perhaps I was
anxious for something more. If so, I was disappointed.
The book I think to be a good little book. It is readable by all, old
and young, and it gives, I believe accurately, both an account of
Caesar's Commentaries,--which of course was the primary intention,--and
the chief circumstances of the great Roman's life. A well-educated
girl who had read it and remembered it would perhaps know as much
of thinking as I do about it, I got very little gratification from
the work. Nobody praised it. One very old and very learned friend
to whom I sent it thanked me for my "comic Caesar," but said no
more. I do not suppose that he intended to run a dagger into me.
Of any suffering from such wounds, I think, while living, I never
showed a sign; but still I have suffered occasionally. There
was, however, probably present to my friend's mind, and to that
of others, a feeling that a man who had spent his life in writing
English novels could not be fit to write about Caesar. It was as
when an amateur gets a picture hung on the walls of the Academy.
What business had I there? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. In the press it
was most faintly damned by most faint praise. Nevertheless, having
read the book again within the last month or two, I make bold to say
that it is a good book. The series, I believe, has done very well.
I am sure that it ought to do well in years to come, for, putting
aside Caesar, the work has been done with infinite scholarship, and
very generally with a light hand. With the leave of my sententious
and sonorous friend, who had not endured that subjects which had
been grave to him should be treated irreverently, I will say that
such a work, unless it be light, cannot answer the purpose for which
it is intended. It was not exactly a schoolbook that was wanted,
but something that would carry the purposes of the schoolroom even
into the leisure hours of adult pupils. Nothing was ever better
suited for such a purpose than the Iliad and the Odyssey, as done
by Mr. Collins. The Virgil, also done by him, is very good; and so
is the Aristophanes by the same hand.
CHAPTER XIX "RALPH THE HEIR"--"THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS"--"LADY ANNA"--"AUSTRALIA"
In the spring of 1871 we,--I and my wife,--had decided that we
would go to Australia to visit our shepherd son. Of course before
doing so I made a contract with a publisher for a book about the
Colonies. For such a work as this I had always been aware that
I could not fairly demand more than half the price that would be
given for the same amount of fiction; and as such books have an
indomitable tendency to stretch themselves, so that more is given
than what is sold, and as the cost of travelling is heavy, the
writing of them is not remunerative. This tendency to stretch comes
not, I think, generally from the ambition of the writer, but from
his inability to comprise the different parts in their allotted
spaces. If you have to deal with a country, a colony, a city, a
trade, or a political opinion, it is so much easier to deal with
it in twenty than in twelve pages! I also made an engagement with
the editor of a London daily paper to supply him with a series of
articles,--which were duly written, duly published, and duly paid
for. But with all this, travelling with the object of writing is
not a good trade. If the travelling author can pay his bills, he
must be a good manager on the road.
Before starting there came upon us the terrible necessity of coming
to some resolution about our house at Waltham. It had been first
hired, and then bought, primarily because it suited my Post Office
avocations. To this reason had been added other attractions,--in the
shape of hunting, gardening, and suburban hospitalities. Altogether
the house had been a success, and the scene of much happiness. But
there arose questions as to expense. Would not a house in London
be cheaper? There could be no doubt that my income would decrease,
and was decreasing. I had thrown the Post Office, as it were,
away, and the writing of novels could not go on for ever. Some of
my friends told me already that at fifty-five I ought to give up
the fabrication of love-stories. The hunting, I thought, must soon
go, and I would not therefore allow that to keep me in the country.
And then, why should I live at Waltham Cross now, seeing that