Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L. E. L./Remarks on Romance and Reality
Remarks on "Romance and Reality."
"Romance and Reality" is a work which displays in its varied beauties great power. There is no character possessing a strong individual interest; nor is the tale itself a highly-wrought fiction. The chief merit consists in the beautiful detached passages, remarkable for their philosophical truth, poetical imagery, and sparkling wit, in the graphic sketches of English society, and in some admirable portraits of a few literary characters.
The tale itself is fraught with an important moral lesson. Emily Arundel, the child of prosperity and luxury, goes into society with imagination, and feelings equally susceptible. An attachment springs up in her heart which is not returned by its object. Yielding to her morbid fancy, life thenceforth seems to her to have no future, and she retires into a convent. There she meets with a young Spanish girl, whose whole life has been one of actual exertion and self-sacrifice,—of heroic daring and womanly fortitude and endurance for others, under circumstances alike trying to the courage and feelings. She is now awaiting in the convent the arrival of her father, a Spanish noble, and of her English lover. It was with a bitter feeling that Emily found, in her new friend, her unconscious rival. "Vain regrets ended in a feeling that could live only in the heart of a woman, young, affectionate and unworldly; Lorraine then loved the young Spaniard, and I thought Emily may love her too. A patriot might take his best lesson of disinterestedness from feminine affection."
The character and conversation of Beatrice wrought most beneficially on Emily, and led her to see her self-indulgence in its true light. But mental suffering and excitement have destroyed her health, and she returns with Beatrice to England, only to die.
The comparison, most skilfully drawn, between the characters of Emily and Beatrice, is in itself a practical illustration of some of the highest principles of mental and ethical philosophy.
"With Emily, early solitude had increased the power of imagination, early indulgence had weakened her moral as much as delicate health had relaxed her physical energy."****"The keen feeling, the high-toned romance of her character, had she been more accustomed to the harsh realities of life, or been placed in circumstances where exertion was a necessity, would have been kindly guards against the selfishness contracted in the world; but, left to be that character's sole ' materiel ', there was no strength to meet sorrow, no reality to ballast romance. A chain of small events had brought her into continual contact with Lorraine; daily intercourse first gave attachment all the force of habit; loneliness next gave all the exaggeration of unemployed fancy; and love had become to Emily an imaginary world, where thoughts, hopes, feelings, were all gathered and confided. The wreck was total; as total as that ever is which trusts its all to one argosy."
"Beatrice, on the other hand, had been forced into a wholesome course of active exertion. Obliged to think and act for herself, to have others dependent on her efforts, to know that each day brought its employment, her mind strengthened with its discipline. The duties that excited, also invigorated. The keen feeling, the delicate taste, were accustomed to subjection, and romance refined without weakening"
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"Both had strong feelings, poetical imaginations, and both had lived much in solitude; but Emily's feelings had been left to her imagination, and her solitude had been that of reverie and idleness. Beatrice's feelings, on the contrary, had been early taught the necessity of restraint; her imagination, curbed by action, had only been allowed to colour, not create circumstances; and her solitude had been one of constant and useful employment. Both had much mental cultivation; but Emily's was accomplishment, Beatrice's was information. The one dreamed, the other thought; the one, only accustomed to feel, acted from impulse; the other, forced to reflect, soon formed for herself a standard of principle. Emily was governed by others, Beatrice relied on herself. Emily loved Lorraine as the first idol which her feelings had set up, an almost ideal object; Beatrice loved him from a high sense of appreciation. The English girl would have died beneath the first danger that threatened her lover; the Spaniard would have stood the very worst by his side."
Again, Beatrice is represented with another source of strength; her spirit, firm as it was, yet was early broken by sorrow: what then supported her mind? when, her father in prison, she was left amid circumstances of privation and danger to watch over her mother, whom misery had rendered hopelessly insane, her consolation was derived from a little English Bible, which had become the chief companion and solace of her lonely hours.
"There are some works of God, which most especially seem the work of His hands; and some ills of humanity, which seem most of all to ask aid from above. The mighty gathering of the storms on her native mountains, the thunder that shook the earth, and the lightning that in an hour laid bare the depths of the forest, which had stood still and shadowy for years; the starry silence of the summer nights; the mystery of their large bright planets filled the young heart, that was lifted up by their beauty, with deep and solemn thoughts. Again, her desolate situation; the dangers beyond her ability to foresee or to avoid, made her at once to feel her nothingness and her need of protection. The holy page, read at first for its beauty, was soon resorted to for its power. Beatrice dwelt on the gentle promises made to the afflicted, and the words of encouragement spoken to the simple, till hope rose strong within her, and grew to be that clear and steady light which hideth not its face in the time of trouble. Beatrice was a genuine Christian, if entire trust, deep humility and earnest conviction could make one.
"It was to Beatrice that Emily was indebted for her knowledge of true religion. Hitherto she had never considered the rash step she had taken in entering the convent in a religious point of view. Like too many others, religion had been with her matter of general acknowledgment and general observance. She repeated her prayers because she had been accustomed so to do; she went to church because others did; but she had never looked to her God for support,—to her Bible for a rule of action. There are more, practical infidels from indifference than from disbelief. Beatrice was at first astonished to find how little interest the English girl, who had been brought up in a faith so pure, took in subjects that were of vital importance.
"We ask for miracles; is not our own blindness a perpetual miracle? We live amid the blessings that Christianity has diffused through the smallest occurrences of our daily life; we feel hourly within us that pining for some higher state whose promise is in the Gospel; our weakness daily forces us to look around for support; we admit the perfection of the Saviour's moral code; we see that the mighty voice of prophecy, which spoke of old upon the mountains, is awaking year by year its wondrous fulfilments;— and yet we believe not, or, if we believe, we delay acting upon that belief.
"Out of evil cometh good. The attention that might have been diverted, the conviction that might have been darkened in the world, were both given entire to the faith that dawned on the subdued and enlightened mind of Emily Arundel. The Bible of Beatrice was their only religious book; but it was read with that simple and earnest belief by which the dark is soonest made light, and the crooked path made straight."
But we must not linger;—the moral of the whole history may be conclusively summed up in the quotation of a few lines from Emily’s dying letter to her early friend, Lady Mandeville:—
"Death sends Truth before it as its messenger. In the loneliness of my sleepless midnight, in the feverish restlessness of days which lacked strength for pleasant and useful employment, how have I been forced on self-examination, and how have my thoughts witnessed against me! Life, the sacred and the beautiful, how utterly have I wasted! for how much discontent and ingratitude am I responsible! I have been self-indulged from my childhood upwards; I have fretted with imaginary sorrows, and desired imaginary happiness"
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"I was ill. Beatrice read to me from the little Bible, which she said had ever been, in her trying and lonely life, a friend and a support, Alas! my heart died within me to think what account I should render of the talents committed to my charge. But God tempers justice with mercy: a new life rose up within me. I said, ‘Surely the Saviour of the world will be mine also!’ I repented me of my worldly delusions, and strove to fix my thoughts above. Had I earlier made religion the guide of my way, I might now be fulfilling the duties I have neglected, and looking forward in patience of faith. But it is too late. I am perishing as a leaf to which spring has denied her life.***I am one-and-twenty to morrow. Would, Oh God! my years had been so spent as to be a worthier offering! But Thy fear is the beginning of wisdom; and in that fear is my trust, that a broken and contrite spirit Thou wilt not despise!"
It seems almost an injustice to L. E. L. to attempt, by detached extracts, necessarily few and brief, to give an idea of the rich variety of her talents as displayed in her prose works. From each, however, as we proceed, after a general analysis, we will give a passage or two, by way of commending the volumes themselves to the attention of those who may be yet unacquainted with some of the most thoughtful and beautiful works in our language.
Extracts from "Romance and Reality."
"Truly the history of most lives may be soon comprehended under three heads,—our follies, our faults and our misfortunes."
"Nothing appears to me so absurd as placing our happiness in the opinion others entertain of our enjoyments, not in our own sense of them. The fear of being thought vulgar is the moral hydrophobia of the day; our weaknesses cost us a thousand times more regret and shame than our faults."
"I believe genius to be acute feeling, gifted with the power of expression, and with that keen observation which early leads to reflection; and few can feel much of or think much on the various lessons of life, and not say, in the sorrowful language of the Psalmist, 'My soul is heavy within me.'"
"Amid the many signs of that immortality of which our nature is so conscious, none has the certainty, the conviction, of affection; we feel that love, which is stronger and better than life, was made to outlast it. In the memory that survives the lost and the dear, we have minute evidence of a power over the grave; and religion, while it holds forth the assurance of a blessed re-union, is acknowledged and answered from our own heart. We stand beside the tomb, but we look beyond it, and sorrow is as the angel that sits at the gate of heaven."
"Wordsworth is the most poetical of philosophers. Strange that a man can be so great a poet, and yet deficient in what are poetry's two grand requisites,— imagination and passion! He describes what he has seen, and beautifully, because he is impressed with the beauty before his eyes. He creates nothing. I cannot recal one fine simile. He has often expressions of touching feeling; he is often melancholy, often tender, but with more of sympathy than energy. He never fills the atmosphere with music, lapping us in Elysium, like Moore; he never makes his readers fairly forget their very identity, like Scott; he never startles us with the depths of our secret thoughts; he never brings to our remembrance all that our own existence has had of poetry or passion, the earnestness of early hope, the bitterness of after-disappointment, like Byron; but he sits by the fireside, or wanders through the fields, and calls from their daily affections and sympathies foundations whereon to erect a scheme of the widest benevolence. He looks forth on the beautiful scenery amid which he has dwelt, and links with it a thousand ties of the human loveliness of thought. I would say his excellence is the moral sublime."
"Strange it is, that people, unless in the way of ostentation, never value the blessings they possess!** The love which is born in childhood—an instinct deepening into a principle—retains to the end something of the freshness belonging to the hour of its birth; the amusement partaken, the trifling quarrel made up, the sorrows shared together, the punishment in which all were involved, the plans for the future, so fairy-tale like and so false, in which all indulged. What love makes allowances like household love? What takes an interest in small sorrows and small successes like household love? God forgive those who turn the household altar to a place of strife! Domestic dissension is the sacrilege of the heart."
"How little do even our most intimate friends know of us! There is an excitement about intense misery which is its support; light sufferings spring to the lips in words, and to the eyes in tears, but there is a pride in deep passion which guards its feelings even from the shadow of a surmise. It is somewhat that speaks of mental command, to think how little the careless and the curious deem of the agony which like a conqueror is reigning in misery and desolation within!"
"The difference between past grief and past joy is this,—that if the grief recurred again to-day, we should feel it as bitterly as ever; but if the joy returned, we should no longer have the same delight in it."
"Which is it most difficult to judge for,—others or ourselves? The judgment given in ignorance, or that biassed by passion,—which is best? Alas for human sagacity, and that which is to depend on it,—human conduct! Look back on all the past occurrences of our lives; who are there that on reflection would not act diametrically opposite to what they formerly acted on impulse? Experience teaches, it is true, but she never teaches in time. Each event brings its lesson, and the lesson is remembered; but the same event never occurs again."
"The attention of the dying Emily was observing the hands move round the dial-plate of her watch. God of heaven! to think what every segment of that small space involves! how much of human happiness or misery,—of breath entering into our frail tenement of mortality, and making life—or departing from it, and making death—are in such brief portions of eternity! How much is there in one minute, when we reflect that that one minute extends over the world!"