EDITH SICHEL..
Tres notice is more suitablyheaded with a name than with a title. Edith Sichel was greater than anything she wrote ; and the main interest of -the book before us is the character which it reveals. Among Miss Sichel's many activities was that of reviewing, and Mr. Bradley tells us that " her first object was to let the reader know what kind of matter he might expect to find in the book, and, if necessary, from what point of view it is treated there." Following this excellent example, let ue say that in New and Old the reader will find an appreciative but not quite adequate " Introduction " ; some extracts from letters; some " thoughts" or aphorisms ; some poems; and thirty-two miscellaneous pieces of varying interest and merit. This is what we " find in the book," and the " point of view " is developed as we read.
To say that the Introduction is not quite adequate is no aspersion on Mr. Bradley. Ho tolls us that he only knew Miss Sichel " towards the obese of her life" (she was born in 1802 and died in 1914), and in her ease pre-eminently the child was mother of the woman. Ear blood was purely Jewish, and the Jewish characteriedie of ;precocity was conspicuous in her from the first. At ten she had the intellectual alertness of sixteen ; and at aixteen she eould have held her own with ordinary people of thirty. To converse With her seven casually always reminded one of Matthew Arnold'a
/tow Own Pa ray •ndith War. Wilt en introductioa L. C. Jicsdley. laadoo. not:utak and 'At. i1etaati.1
exclamation " What women these Jewesses are-! With a force which seems to triple that of the women of our Western and Northern races."
From the days of early womanhood to the cud, Edith Siohol led a double life, though in a sense very different from that in which this ambiguous phrase is generally employed. " She was known to the reading public as a writer of books, and of papers in magazines.. . Her principal books were warmly praised by judges competent to estimate their value as contributions to French biography and history " ; and her various writings, belonging to very different orders and ranging over -a wide variety of topics. were always marked by vigour and originality. Her versatility was marvellous ; and, "'though she had not in youth the severs training that makes for perfect accuracy," she had by nature the instinct which avoids the commonplace, and which touches even hackneyed themes with light and fire. Her humour was exuberant. unforced, untrammelled ; it played freely round every object which met her mental gaze—sometimes too freely when she was dealing with things traditionally held sacred. But her flippancy wee of speech rather than of thought, for her fundamental view of life was serious. Life, in her view, brings much that is pure and unsought joy, more perhape that needs transforming effort. little or nothing that cannot be made to contribute to an inward and abiding happiness."
Some more detailed account of her literary work may be given later on ; at this point we must turn to the other side of her double life. She was only twenty-two when she began her career of practical benevolence among the poor girls of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and Shadwell. She established in the country Homes for the girl-children of an East End workhouse, and maintained them till she died. For twenty-two years she was treasurer of a Boys' Homo. She was a manager of Elementary Scheele in London. She held a class for female prisoners at Holloway. She was deeply impressed by the importance of starting young people in suitable employment, and threw all her energies into the work, " in case of need, supplying the money required for apprenticeship." ' In this and in all her other enterprises she was generous to a fault, always being ready to give away half her income—and yet not " to a fault," for her strong administrative and finanoiM instinct restrained her from foolish or mischievous expenditure. All this work, of body and mind, was done in spite of fragile health and frequent suffering ; yet she never seemed overburdened, or fussed. or flurried ; and those who enjoyed her graceful hospitality in Onslow Gardens would never have suspected either that her daybed been spent in what she called " the picturesque mire of Wapping," or that she had been sitting up late at night, immersed in Human Documents from the Four Centuries Preceding the Reformation.
NVe have spoken of her humour. Those who would see a sample of it are referred to her description of. the Eisteddfod on p. 22 ; and this piece of pungent fun may be profitably read in contrast with her grim story of Oladyo Leonora Pratt. In that story some 'of the writer's saddest experiences in the East End are told with an mehrinIsIng fidelity, which yet hae nothing mawkish or prurient in it. Edith Sichel was too good an artist to be needlessly dis- gusting. " It might," she said, " be well for the modern realist to remember that literalness is not the same as truth, nor ouriosity as courage."
She was best known as a writer of books about the French Renaissance, on which she became an acknowledged authority. She was less well known, but not less effective, as a reviewer—no one ever dissected Charlotte Yonge so justly—and she excelled in personal description. Her accounts of her friends Miss Emily Lawless, Miss Mary Coleridge, and Joseph Joachim are master- pieces of characterization. AU her literary work was based on a wide and strong foundation of generous culture. German was to her a second mother-tongue, and she lectured delight- fully on Faust. Though she spoke of herself as talking "fluent and incomprehensible bad French." she was steeped in French scholarship. She had read Plato and Sophooles under the stimulating -guidance of William Cory, and her love of Italy had taught her a great deal of Italian. The authors whom she enjoyed and quoted were a motley crowd—Danteand Rabelais. Pascal and Montaigne, George Sand and Sainte-Beuve, Tolstoi and George Borrow, "Mark Rutherford" and Samuel Butler, Fimelon and Renan and Anatole France. Her vein of poetic feeling was strong and genuine. In addressing some young girls she said; " We all think a great deal of the importance of opening our windows and airingour rooms. I wish we thought as much of airing our imagination.. To me Poetry is quite like that. It is like opening the window daily, and looking out, and letting in the air'and the sunlight into an otherwise stuffy little roam ; and if I cannot, load some poetry in the day I feel more uncomfortable than I can tell you." She might ltave put the ease more strongly ; for poetry, and music, and painting, and indeed all Art at its highest level, made a great part of her religion. Her family had long ago conformed to theChurch of England, in which she was brought tip; but she never shook off her essential Judaism. -She lead no sympathy with rites or ordinancesoneeds or theatheatand.Abt‘tdoso outward conformity to the faith of her fontdathers would have been impossible to her ; bet she looked with reverent pride on the tombs in, the Jewish cemetery at Prague. " It gave me a strange feeling to stand at the tombstone of our tribe-900 A.D. The oldest scholar's grave is 800 A.D., and Heaven knows how many great old Rabbis lie there, memorable and forgotten. The wind and the rain were sobbing all round the place, and all the melancholy of my race seemed toriseup and answer them." Though abe was a Churchwoman by practice, her own religion wan a kind of undefined Unitarianism. " The Immanence of Cod and the life of Christ are my treasures." " I am a heretic, you know, and it seams to me that all who call Christ Master with adoration of that life are of the some band." Her favourite theologians were James Martineau, Alfred A finger (whoese Life she wrote admirably), and Samuel Barnett, whom she elevated into a Mystic and a Prophet. The ways of the Church of England did not please her. She had nothing but seem for " a joyleea curate prating of Easter- Joy with limped lips," or for " the Athanasian Creed sung in the highest of °pieta in a prosperous. church " filled with "sealskin- jacketed mamas and blowsy old gentlemen." But the conclusion of the whole matter was more comfortable—" Alt the clergymen in the world cannot make one disbelieve in God."
Previous page
