Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L. E. L./Objectionable Passages in Prose Works
Objectionable Passages in Prose Works.
In each of these admirable works there are some exceptions against the generally correct taste and sound judgment of the author.
In "Romance and Reality," the ridiculous capture of Lady Mandeville and Emily, by Signor Guilio, their ci-devant hair-dresser, is an incident too ludicrous for admission into aught beside broad comedy. It jars upon our feelings as a dereliction from the principles of true taste.
In "Francesca Carrara," the confusion of Francis, with Robert Evelyn, in consequence of their striking resemblance, is another error of judgment; especially of woman's judgment. If all the world beside had been deceived, Francesca ought not to have mistaken her lover. All the thousand minute peculiarities of character, known only by those who are to each other as their own soul, ought to have been sufficient evidence against the fancied identity. It is not a valid excuse for this solecism to urge that Francesca was conscious of a great change in her lover, and of a corresponding change in her own feelings; on no ground can we admit the possibility of a woman ever making such a mistake. The plea, that, had this error been expunged, the whole texture of the work must have been altered, was, perhaps, considered by the author as a sufficient reason for its sufferance; we wish, however, it had been otherwise.
In "Ethel Churchill," the fault proceeds from a yet deeper error of judgment, and occurs in the history of Lady Marchmont. That fearful history, the moral delinquency of whose close, the writer could only shadow forth by the striking supposition,— "that if ever an evil spirit be allowed to enter our frail tenement, such spirit would have seemed to enter into Henrietta Marchmont." Well might this tragedy be prefaced with the solemn and prayer filled lines,—
""God in thy mercy keep us with thy hand
Dark are the thoughts that strive within the heart,
When evil passions rise like sudden storms,
Fearful and fierce! Let us not act those thoughts!
Leave not our course to our unguided will,—
Left to ourselves all crime is possible;
And those who seemed the most removed from guilt
Have sunk the deepest!"
Leaving this terrible page of human misery and guilt to make its own rightful impression, we have to do critically with Lady Marchmont's long-previous preparation of poison, and that, too, by a chemical process, requiring care and time, as though she were determined to be armed against some foreseen emergency. Now, neither Lady Marchmont's character nor circumstances were at the time such as to justify the introduction of such a strange procedure as her midnight task in her uncle's laboratory. True, in losing that uncle, she had lost the only friend who could sympathize with her feelings; granted, that she was not happy in her marriage, owing to her husband's equal deficiency of head and heart; but then her own character was a genial one, her spirits were buoyant, and she found ample amusement in general society; her evils were rather negative than positive; we consider her rather as not happy, than as absolutely miserable. Her strongest feelings yet slumbered in the depths of her heart, yet unawakened by her after guilty attachment to Sir George Kingston, and by the unrelenting injustice of her husband after her expressed repentance.
Setting the moral question aside, then, and considering the circumstance only in relation to the general principles of human nature and action, there was not sufficient motive to induce Lady Marchmont to undertake such a deadly task. It was when her strongest feelings had been aroused,—when her heart's only treasure of love had been wrecked by treachery and deception,—when hate and scorn took the place of that love,—when her timely repentance and true humiliation were harshly rejected by her husband,—when the fearful elements of crime were thus evoked, and gathered themselves into passion's blackness of darkness,—it was then, and not till then, when the wild tempest of conflicting emotions overwhelmed the soul with agony, that we can fancy a demon of darkness to have seized the helm of reason, and driven with terrible yet momentary impulse the scarcely-conscious spirit to some deed of desperation. We may be wrong, but we think the annals of murder will afford few precedents of deliberate resolve, of thoughtfully conceived and skilfully executed plans, except the agencies in the instigation of the crime have been the cunning of insanity, the diabolical spirit of revenge, or some long-cherished purpose of guilt, originating with characters totally different from that of Lady Marchmont. Her conduct, indeed, in this particular, is so utterly out of keeping, not only with philosophy, but with probability, that it is a matter of wonder the strange anomaly should have been overlooked by the gifted writer, who knew so well the mechanism of human nature, and had observed with so much acumen the varied revealings of its inner impulses and outward actions.
There is yet a deeper fault visible on some of L. E. L.'s pages, which it were a crime against our conscience to pass over in silence. We allude to her occasional introduction of fate, or inevitable necessity, to whose irresistible decrees and uncontrollable influence she often erroneously ascribes the conduct of her characters, and the consequences of that conduct. True, it might be that her mind, enamoured of the poetical and shadowy agency that pervades the poetry, philosophy and mythology of the ancients, borrowed the idea only to give a classical colouring to her works. It must be lamented, however, that any talented author should aid in perpetuating, in a yet more tangible form, a creed of so dangerous a tendency as fatalism. In the dark ages of paganism, men, vainly seeking by their own reason to discover the efficient Cause of things, both in the material and moral world, imagined for themselves superhuman agents in these different departments, and invested them with the attribute of uncontrollable power; to the one they gave the name of Nature, to the other that of Fate; in both cases, with the blindness of unassisted reason, did they mistake the effect for the cause, so that when they traced even the footsteps of God in His visible manifestations, "yet they glorified Him not as God." But shall the more privileged minds of later days, before whose eye the light of revelation has dispersed the darkness of conjecture, still dare to turn reason back to where dimly hovers a blind and imaginary fate, instead of bidding faith look upward, whence shines forth, in all the proceedings and events of this world, a Divine Providence, interfering not with the free will of His creatures, but overruling all things with infinite wisdom and gracious mercy, and even—
"From seeming evil still educing good?"
While sincerity has thus compelled us to notice with regret that one sentiment of error should leave the slightest shadow on one page of so interesting a writer, yet we do rejoice to find ample testimony throughout her works, especially her latest ones, that the light of truth was predominant in L. E. L.'s own mind, and thence almost invariably reflected on her productions.