The Female Portrait Gallery/Diana Vernon
ROB ROY.
No. 7.— DIANA VERNON.
Many and opposite are the lots in life, and unequal are the portions which they measure out to the children of earth. We cannot agree with those who contend that the difference after all is but in outward seeming. Such an assertion is often the result of thoughtlessness—sometimes the result of selfishness. It is one of the good points of human nature, that it revolts against human suffering. Few there are who can witness pain, whether of mind or of body, without pity, and the desire to alleviate; but such is our infirmity of purpose, that a little suffices to turn us aside from assistance. Indolence, difficulties, and contrary interests come in the way of sympathy, and then we desire to excuse our apathy to ourselves. It is a comfortable doctrine to suppose that the evil is made up by some mysterious allotment of good; it is an excuse for non-interference, and we let conscience sleep over our own enjoyments, taking it for granted others have them also—though how we know not. It was much this spirit that made the young French queen exclaim, when she heard that the people were perishing for want of bread, "why do they not eat buns!"
But there is a vast difference in the paths of humanity; some have their lines cast in pleasant places, while others are doomed to troubled waters. Of one person, that question might well be asked, which Johnstone, the old Scotch secretary, put to Sir Robert Walpole, "What have you done, sir, to make God Almighty so much your friend?" while another would seem "the very scoff and mockery of fortune." It must, however, be admitted, that the hard circumstances form the strong character, as the cold climes of the north nurture a race of men, whose activity and energies leave those of the south far behind. Hence it is that the characters of women are more uniform than men; they are rarely placed in circumstances to call forth the latent powers of the mind. Diana Vernon's character would never have grown out of a regular education of geography, history, and the use of the globes, to say nothing of extras, such as Poonah work, or oriental tinting. Miss Vernon is the most original of Scott's heroines, especially so, when we consider the period to which she herself belongs, or that at which such a spirited sketch was drawn. The manners of Scott's own earlier days were formal and restrained. An amusing story is told in his life of Lord Napier, which will admirably illustrate the importance attached to minutiæ. His lordship suddenly quitted a friend's house, where he was to have paid a visit, without any cause satisfactory to a host being assigned. But much ingenuity might have been exerted without the right cause being discovered; it was, that his valet had not packed up the set of neckcloths marked the same as the shirts.
Within the last few years what alterations have taken place in "the glass of fashion, and the mould of forms." The Duchess of Gordon brought in a style—bold, dashing, and reckless, like herself. The Duchess of Devonshire took the opposite—soft, languid, and flattering: the exclusives established a stoical school—cold, haughty, and impayable. The reform era has brought a more popular manner. There has been so much canvassing going on, that conciliation has become a habit, and the hustings has remodelled the drawing-room. But Diana Vernon is a creature formed by no conventional rules; she has been educated by her own heart amid hardships and difficulties; and if nature has but given the original good impulse, and the strength of mind to work it out, hardships and difficulties will only serve to form a character of the loftiest order. Again, there is that tender relationship between the widowed father and the only girl, in which Scott so much delights. But, if the cradle be lonely which lacks a mother at its side, still more lonely is the hour when girlhood is on the eve of womanhood.
"On the horizon like a dewy star,
That trembles into lustre."
No man ever enters into the feelings of a woman, let his kindness be what it may; they are too subtle and too delicate for a hand whose grasp is on "life's rougher things." They require that sorrow should find a voice; now the most soothing sympathy is that which guesses the suffering without a question. But Diana Vernon has been brought up by a father, who, whatever might be his affection, has had no time for minute and tender cares. Engaged in dark intrigues, surrounded by dangers, he has been forced to leave his child in situations as dangerous as his own, nay, a thousand times worse—what is an outward to an inward danger? The young and beautiful girl is left to herself—in a wild solitude, like Osbaldistone-hall—with a tutor like Rashleigh.
Take the life of girls in general; how are they cared for from their youth upwards. The nurse, the school, the home circle, environ their early years; they know nothing of real difficulties, or of real cares; and there is an old saying, that a woman's education begins after she is married. Truly, it does, if education be meant to apply to the actual purposes of life. How different is the lot of a girl condemned from childhood upwards to struggle in this wide and weary world! Bitter, indeed, is the fruit of the tree of knowledge to her; at the expense of how many kind and beautiful feelings must that knowledge be obtained; how often will the confidence be betrayed, and the affection misplaced; how often will the aching heart turn on itself for comfort, and in vain; for, under its first eager disappointment, youth wonders why its kindliness and its generous emotions have been given, if falsehood and ingratitude be their requital. How often will the right and the expedient contend together, while the faults of others seem to justify our own, and the low, but distinct voice within us, be half lost, while listening to the sophistry of temptation justifying itself by example; yet how many nobly support the trial, while they have learned of difficulties to use the mental strength which over comes them, and have been taught by errors to rely more decidedly on the instinctive sense of right which at once shrinks from their admission.
What to Diana Vernon was the craft and crime of one like Rashleigh, which her own native purity would at once detect and shun—as the dove feels and flies from the hawk before the shadow of his dark wings be seen on the air? What the desolate loneliness of the old hall, and the doubts and fears around her difficult path—what but so many steps towards forming a character high-minded, steadfast, generous and true; a lovely and lonely flower over which the rough winds have past, leaving behind only the strength taught by resistance, and keeping fresh the fairness—blessing even the rock with its sweet and healthy presence.