Female Portrait Gallery, from Sir Walter Scott/Flora M'Ivor and Rose Bradwardine
FEMALE PORTRAIT GALLERY, FROM SIR WALTER SCOTT.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE IMPROVISATRICE."
No. I.—Flora M'Ivor and Rose Bradwardine.
Sir Walter Scott was the Luther of literature. He reformed and he regenerated. To say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth; for there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been universal. Indeed, there is no such thing as a school in literature; each great writer is his own original, and "none but himself can be his parallel." We hear of the school of Dryden and of Pope, but where and what are their imitators? Parnassus is the very reverse of Mont Blanc. There the summit is gained by treading closely in the steps of the guides; but in the first, the height is only to be reached by a pathway of our own. The influence of a genius like Scott's is shown by the fresh and new spirit he pours into literature.
No merely literary man ever before exercised the power over his age exercised by Scott. It is curious to note the wealth circulated through his means, and the industry and intelligence to which he gave the impetus. The innkeepers of Scotland ought to have no sign but his head. When Waverley appeared, a tour through Scotland was an achievement: now, how few there are but have passed an autumn at least amid its now classic scenery. I own it gave my picturesque fancies at first a shock, to hear of a steam-boat on Loch Katrine; but I was wrong. Nothing could be a more decisive proof of the increased communication between England and Scotland—and communication is the regal road to improvement of every kind. How many prejudices have floated away on the tremulous line of vapour following the steam-vessel; and what a store of poetical enjoyment must the voyagers have carried home! More than one touch of that sly humour, which seems to me peculiarly and solely marking the Scotch, has been bestowed on the cockney invaders of the "land of brown heath and shaggy wood." May I, a Londoner bred, say a word in defence of the feeling which takes such to the shore of
"Lovely Loch Achray!
Where shall they find on foreign land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"
But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another. It were an unphilosophical creation, that of a human being—
"Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes."
That virtue would have been a sweet lure to better companions. Schiller is nearer truth when he says—
"Never, believe me, appear the immortals—
Never alone."
Scott has a peculiar faculty of awakening this love of the country, and of idealising it into a love of the picturesque. Who can wonder then, that when such descriptions came accompanied with all the associations of romance—all the interest of stirring narrative—that a visit to "Caledonia, stern and wild," became the day-dream of all who looked to their summer excursion as the delight and reward of the year. I have never visited Scotland—in all human probability I never shall; but were a fairy, that pleasant remover of all ordinary difficulties, to give me the choice of what country I wished to see, my answer would be—Scotland; and that solely to realise the pictures, which reading Scott has made part of my memory.
Another noticeable fact is, the number of books which have grown out of the Waverley novels. How many local and antiquarian tomes have brought forth a world of curious and attractive information, in which no one before took an interest! And here I may be allowed to allude to the prejudice, for such it is, that the historical novel is likely to be taken for, and to interfere with history. Not such novels as Scott wrote, certainly. In the first place, his picture of the time is as exact as it is striking: the reader must inevitably add to his stock of knowledge, as well as of amusement: he must acquire a general notion of the time; its good and its evil are brought in a popular shape before him; while the estimate of individual character is as true as it is forcible. Secondly, there must be something inherently vacant and unproductive in the mind which his pages stimulate to no further inquiry.
In such hands it would be of little consequence whether a fictitious or an actual chronicle were placed—either would lead to no result. Scott's works have done more towards awakening a rational curiosity, than a whole world of catechisms and abridgements would ever have accomplished. History has been read owing to his stimulus.
Prose fiction was at its lowest ebb when Waverley appeared. Scott gives in his preface a most amusing picture of the supply then in the market: a castle was no castle without a ghost, or at least what seemed one till the last chapter, and the heroine was a less actual creation than the harp which ever accompanied her. These heroines were always faultless: the heroes were divided into two classes; either as perfect as their impossible mistresses, or else rakes who were reformed in the desperate extremity of a third volume. Waverley must have taken the populace of novel readers quite by surprise: there is in its pages the germ of every excellence, afterwards so fully developed—the description, like a painting; the skill in giving the quaint and peculiar in character; the dramatic narrative; and above all, that tone of romance before unknown to English prose literature. Flora M'lvor is the first conception of female character in which the highly imaginative is the element.
Perhaps we must except the Clementina of Richardson—a poetical creation, which only genius could have conceived amid the formal and narrow-motived circle which surrounded her. Clarissa is more domestic and pathetic; though in the whole range of our dramatic poetry, so fertile in touching situation, there is nothing more heart-rending than the visit of her cousin to her in the last volume. He finds the happy and blooming girl whom he left the idol of her home circle, accustomed to affection and attention, surrounded by cheerful pleasures and graceful duties—he finds her in a miserable lodging, among strangers, faded, heart broken, and for daily employ making her shroud. A French critic says: "Even Richardson himself did not dare hazard making Clarissa in love with his hero." Richardson had far too fine a perception of character to do any such thing. What was there in Lovelace that Clarissa should love him? He is witty; but wit is the last quality to excite passion, or to secure affection. Liberty is the element of love; and from the first he surrounds her with restraint, and inspires her with distrust. Moreover, he makes no appeal to the generosity of her nature; and to interest those generous feelings, so active in the feminine temperament, is the first step in gaining the citadel of her heart. To have loved, would not have detracted one touch from the delicate colouring of Clarissa's character; to have loved a man like Lovelace would. In nothing, more than in attachment is "the nature subdued to what it works in." But Lovelace is now an historical picture; it represents a class long since passed away, and originally of foreign importation. It belonged to the French regime, when the young men of birth and fortune had no sphere of activity but the camp; all more honourable and useful occupation shut, and when, as regarded his country, he was a civil cipher. The Lovelace or the Lauzun could never have been more than an exception in our stirring country, where pursuits and responsibility are in the lot of all. They may, however, be noted as proofs that where the political standard is low, the moral standard will be still lower.
Excepting, therefore, the impassioned Italian of Sir Charles Grandison, Flora M'lvor is the first female character of our novels in which poetry is the basis of the composition. She has all Clementine wants; picturescue accessories, and the strong moral purpose. Generally speaking, the mind of a woman is developed by the heart; the being is incomplete till love brings out either its strength or its weakness. This is not the case with the beautiful Highlander; and Scott is the first who has drawn a heroine, and put the usual master-passion aside. We believe few women go down to the grave without at some time or other feeling the full force of the affections. Flora, had not her career been cut short in the very fulness of its flower, would have loved, loved with all the force of a character formed before it loved. Scott's picture is, at the time when she is introduced, as full of truth as of beauty. The strong mind has less immediate need of an object than the weak one. Rose Bradwardine falls in love at once, compelled by "the sweet necessity of loving." Flora M'lvor feels no such necessity; her imagination is occupied; her on-lookings to the future, excited by the fortunes of the ill-fated House to which her best sympathies and most earnest hopes are given. The House of Stuart has at once her sense of justice and of generosity on its side; it is connected with the legends of her earliest years; she is impelled towards it with true female adherence to the unfortunate. Moreover, her affections have already an object in her brother. There is no attachment stronger, more unselfish, than the love between brother and sister, thrown on the world orphans at an early age, with none to love them save each other. They feel how much they stand alone, and this draws them more together. Constant intercourse has given that perfect understanding which only familiarity can do; hopes, interests, sorrows, are alike in common. Each is to either a source of pride; it is the tenderness of love without its fears, and the confidence of marriage, without its graver and more anxious character. The fresh impulses of youth are all warm about the heart.
It would have been an impossibility for Flora to have attached herself to Edward Waverley. A woman must look up to love: she may deceive herself, but she must devoutly believe in the superiority of her lover. With one so constituted as Flora—proud, high-minded, with that tendency to idealise inseparable from the imagination, Flora must have admired before she could have loved. The object of her attachment must have had something to mark him out from "the undistinguishable many." Now, Edward Waverley is just like nine-tenths of our acquaintance, or at least what they seem to us—pleasant, amiable, and gentlemanlike, but without one atom of the picturesque or the poetical about them. Flora is rather the idol of his imagination than of his heart, and it might well be made a question whether he be most in love with the rocky torrent, the Highland harp, the Gaelic ballad, or the lovely singer. They would have been unhappy had they married. Flora's decision of temper would have deepened into harshness, when placed in the unnatural position of exercising it for a husband; while Edward would have had too much quickness of perception not to know the influence to which he submitted—he would have been mortified even while too indolent to resist. Respect and reserve would have become their household deities; and where these alone reign, the hearth is but cold.
Rose Bradwardine is just the ideal of a girl—simple, affectionate, ready to please and to be pleased—likely to be formed by her associates, ill-fitted to be placed in difficult situations; but whose sweet and kindly nature is brought out by happiness and sunshine. She would be content to gaze on the plans her husband drew for "ornamental grottoes and temples," and, content that they were his, ask not if his talents did not need a more useful range and a higher purpose. Rose would have kept her husband for ever at Waverley Honour—Flora would have held
"Shame to the coward thought that ere betrayed
The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade.
But, alas! to such—the decided and the daring—Fate deals a terrible measure of retribution. I know nothing in the whole range of fiction—that fiction whose truth is life—so deeply affecting as "Flora in a large gloomy apartment, seated by a latticed window, sewing what seemed to be a garment of white flannel." It is the shroud of her brother—the last of his ancient line—the brave—the generous—the dearly-loved Fergus! How bitter is her anguish when she exclaims, "The strength of mind on which Flora prided herself has murdered her brother! Volatile and ardent, he would have divided his energies amid a thousand objects. It was I who taught him to concentrate them. Oh! that I could recollect that I had but once said to him, 'He that striketh with the sword shall die by the sword !'"
It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence: let our own conduct bring its own consequences—we may well meet the worst; not so when we have led another to pursue any given line of action: if they suffer, how tenfold is that suffering visited on ourselves! For Flora life could offer nothing but the black veil of the Benedictine convent. There are no associations so precious as those of our earlier years. It is upon them that the heart turns back amid after-cares and sorrows:—the nursery, the old garden, the green field, remain the latest things that memory cherishes. They keep alive something of their own freshness and purity; and the affections belonging to those uncalculating hours have a faith and warmth unknown to after-life. To this ordinary but most sweet love Flora had added the ideal and the picturesque—and love, to reach its highest order, must be worked up by the imagination. She saw in her brother the chieftain of their line—the last descendant of Ivor. He was the support of the cause whose loyalty to its ill-fated adherents was as religion—their lofty enthusiasm was as much in common as their daily habits; they looked back and they looked forward together. When the last Vich Ian Vohr had perished on the scaffold, there remained for his lonely and devoted sister but the convent—a brief resting-place before the grave.
L. E. L.