THE FAIR OF MAY FAIR
Is the work of a lady, who has established herself as " painter to the nobility." It is useless to disguise the fact, whether in title- page or critique, that Mrs. GORE is a woman of genius, and that she has a numerous progeny. What Lady MORGAN was to Irish life, Mrs. GORE is to the world of May Fair—the artificial cosmo- gony; the creation of centuries of privilege, wealth, and luxury. It has never happened to us to be more certain of any thing, than that the fluent, nay overflowing and most pregnant wit of this au- thoress, is doomed to survive as the evidence of modern manners. And it is worse than affectation to disguise, under various ano- nyme.s, the identity of a writer that in any form must be accept- able—we should say indispensable, if it were not of a luxury. But is not the whole subject a luxury ? is not the whole world she de- scribes a refined superfluity ?—Not quite so: the subjects are men and women; and the experiment is how they will live and have their being in the medicated atmosphere of the fashionable world. Of this world Mrs. GORE is the kaleidoscopist : she exhibits it ac- curately in bright detail, and, rejecting the dulness and the tedium, the residue is tossed into her magical tube, and turned round and round, for the benefit of the lovers of brilliant variety.
Instead of the exhibitor of fashionable wonders as they are or may be, it is possible that Mrs. GORE may aim at being the satirist of the life she describes. It is in vain—the satirist never satirizes himself, or sees that there is any thing absurd in his most ridiculous conditions. He may portray, but it is in vain that lie would apply the lever of satire : he is like Archimedes, he wants a fulcrum. The satirist must be, in feeling at least, out of the world he satirizes, however much in it by daily experience. Indignation, the spirit of satire, cannot be felt against that with which we hare been familiar from ourinflincy, and where, in fact, we have placed our hopes of glory and success. No; the satirist must come up fresh, and from some purer state of existence, to witness deeds and suffer wrongs which spur him into revengeful infliction. He may be constrained to mix with the impurities he denounces, but it is with concealed loathing. Every true satirist that ever yet lived, felt glowing with indignation against that which he was daily accustomed to witness, but with a burning cheek and a clammy brow. Women of genius, like Mrs. GORE, who find themselves in the midst of a world they well know and would gladly shine in, must content themselves with the praise of witty writers, shrewd observers, and ingenious painters of manners.
Who will say that'SnnuinA.N, in his School for Scandal, was a satirist? If he were, how small a one ! The paltry backbiting of Bath he had suffered from, and he painted it with gall ; but every true and dangerous and poisonous vice of society, he passed over rather with the gentleness of a connoisseur than the destruc- tive wrath of the scourger. The fact is, he wanted the moral van- tage-ground derived from viewing one mode of life from the emi- nence of another and a supposed superior height. If SHERIDAN was not a satirist, but a happy " hitter off " of the peculiarities of life, so has Mrs. GORE even less of the true bilious indignation, creative of satiric verse. In return, however, she has even more of his happiness in sketching the phases of character, and the strange turnings and windings it assumes as it dribbles through the porous structure of modern society. This is Mrs. GORE'S pe- culiar excellence. In this department, she is unrivalled : in this, she is not presumptuous in comparing herself with Miss AUSTIN, —she is not less happy in conceiving the varieties assumed by the human disposition and character in her particular walk, though she may have less patience and feeling in working out the details by which it is exhibited. There is something too stimulative in London life, to produce the counterpart of Miss AUSTIN, or a fashionable Pride and Prejudice. The authoress is too near the judgment-seat : the voice of praise and popularity comes upon her with a distracting effect. The publisher dwells within a shilling fare of disturbing all the process of concoction : he would shake the barrel to ascertain whether the wine were clear. How far was Miss AUSTIN removed from such annoyance ! No hackney-coach deposit disarranged her knocker: no weekly critic disturbed the beauty of her genius in repose: the trumpet of Fame even did not reach her in life,—it must be heard, if ever, mingling its milder notes with that far shriller clarion which is to awaken her from he sleep of ages, and again recal to her memory the world she both bettered and beautified.
The Fair of May Fair consists of some four or five tales—all stories more or less relating to the condition of women in the present state of society. The incidents are such as occur in all similar works,—wooing and marrying, flirting in town and coun- try, husband-catching in all its forms, and every other species of diversion from a dance to a divorce. This game, with the Exclusive sauce, has been served up so frequently—the dandy and the de- butante have been so often and so over done—that we have ceased to take pleasure in it, if we ever did; but we shall never cease to delight in a witty woman's clever exhibitions of character, or her smart and often very happy hits against prevailing vanities. Cha- meter, however, is this lady's forte : there she is rich, copiouS, and never-failing. Mrs. GORR has lived all her life; and no friend ever admitted her to death, wedding, or chapeau-choosing, that she did not take notes: ay ! and the men too have been put down in her little ivory tablets of the mind, when they were least thinking of' it. Yes, in town or country, in Mayfair or May fields, in island or continent, in the ball-room or at the races, by the cozy fireside or amidst the midnight blaze of candelabra, no woman that has yet lived has had a shrewder notion of what we all are, from high to low ; and this quality amounts to genius,—which, however she or her publisher may mask her name, will and must ultimately make it celebrated. We have read all her books, under different designations; we have seen and said something about her come- dies; and it is our deliberate opinion that the world has as yet scarcely done justice to Mrs. GORE'S genius—nay, that she herself has scarcely given it fair play. We do not advise her to write less or less hurriedly : it would be in vain—genius will have its way— it grows out of its situation, and must obey the stimulus that is applicable to it. Mrs. GORE may, possibly, never do any thing better ; but we shall always be delighted to receive, and ready to express our admiration of; such stories as " The Divorcee," " The Separate Maintenance;" " The Flirt of Ten Seasons."
We have said that character is Mrs. Grazes tower of strength ; but in the powerful and afflicting story of " The Divorcée," there is more than character—there is passion, of the tenderest and deepest kind. No writer has created a fiction out of the materials - of life which does the author more honour. Mrs. Allenby herself is a most touching picture of weakness, frailty, and suffering: but it is to the noble but eccentric character of the pigtailed-, . Mr. Allenby, the member for Westmoreland, and of his humble ad- herent Jane Esthope, the faithful and the lowly-minded, that we shall often recur in turning over the stores of memory. In this tale, among many striking situations, is a scene of a bitter and heart-rending experience of such gnawing misery that only a wo- man could have felt—none but a woman of genius could have set before us with such truth and feeling. Not less characteristic, though far lower in the nature of the effect produced on the mind, are the three Carmychaels—the Eumenides of Allenby-, who pur- sue the poor mistress of the domain to her ruin and shame. Lady Carmychael, the " well-bred automaton, wound up to go through the evolutions of human life without pause or deviation ;" Miss Priscilla Carmychael—old Prissy—the "very superior woman":--- "on the strength of which designation she had been talking unin- telligibly and rendering herself disagreeable for thirty tedious years ;" and the other Gorgon, the rigidly righteous, the corre- spondent of controversial magazines, and the speaker at missionary meetings—in short, the modern Saint, deficient only in faith, hope, and charity; this trinity of diabolism are depicted to the life---4o more than life—to a kind of strong, striking, staring, galvanic convulsion of death-in-life, and thus more closely defining the malignant nature of these abominable furies. This tale is full of beautiful contrast ; for against these horrors is to be set the simple but misled and betrayed Mrs. Allenby, and the pious, de- formed, but cheerful and intellectual Jane Esthope, with "her spaniel-like eyes,"—she of the little farm-house of Moorcroft, piled up in the very kitchen of the ruinous Allenby Abbey, with her fowls going to roost on tomb-statues, and her bees roving about the old herbary where the luxurious monks used to force their early vege- tables : besides whom, there are the diabolical seducer, the hardened gamester, and cold-hearted, brutal deserter; and many persons of minor note. In this tale, be it also observed, all the miserable consequences are traced out of an original defect in education, and the mistakes of a well-intentioned mother, driven to an extreme by a peculiar experience. This process is so clearly and ably de- veloped, that the story, in addition to its claims on the feelings, appeals to the judgment—it is didactic as well as pathetic. In "The Flirt of Ten Seasons," there is more various character ; but the disappointment of a vain woman, though it be for life, is trifling compared with the profound ruin of a sweet and amiable creature—for death. In mere character, perhaps, the Flirt is the richest of all : the charming old baronet, with his white corduroy breeches and broad-brimmed-hat—his pedantic son, the sleek, middle-aged bachelor of the Albany, the pedantic, travelled, con- noisseurish clubbist—Adela, the Flirt, and her mother, the cold- hearted woman of the world, with a daughter to dispose of—are all admirable portraits; not to mention the Marquis of Stoneham, the very lady-like young gentleman, and a crowd of others. " The Special Licence" is worthy of Miss EDGEWORTH : it only wants the rich brogue of an Irishman, and some parts of a more quiet repose. The widow of "poor Parkyns " is inimitable, and only to be equalled by her son " Puppy Parkyns," in another style. "Tile Separate Maintenance" is a story only not so impressive as "The Divorcée," because the consequences of imprudence and bad education are not so serious when they do not end in crime. The history of Lady Wellwood is an admirable lesson for wayward wives and spoiled young ladies. Tile change worked in her cha- racter, after the separation from her husband, is one of the most beautiful things in fiction. Miss Letitia Broadsden is a toady of a thousand : the play of intrigue, the tracasserie between her and Mrs. Etherington, is a proof that Mrs.GORE sees through her own sex at least—what woman does not in small? but few have that large knowledge of the female half of the world which our au- thoress has acquired. In "The Special Licence " • we have omitted to notice one trait we think creditable—the merchant-family has honour done it. 'The millionaire is not a purse-proud, ignorant fool, greedy after distinctions not to be attained, perhaps not worth attaining : old Maxworth, with his . half a million, and his prejudices against noble alliances, but still composed of honour, candour, and gene- rosity, is as fine a fellow as ever stocd on 'Change, where so many real noblemen have stood, the very models of mercantile faith and truth. In "The Flirt of Ten Seasons," is another character out of the common way,—so much so as again to call forth the praise of keeping a large and vigilant look-out on society : we mean Rupert Orme, the old Indian nabob—the compound of generosity and niggardliness, of intellect and narrow views. In the same tale, is Rubric, the curate—a fine sketch, and in admirable con- . trast to the dunny vicar, Dr. Docket, who, after starving his curate for thirty years, dies and leaves his money to build a Docket Wing to the College of which he had long been a Fellow. The trio of clergymen is completed by the Reverend Nicodemus Fagg, the bear-leader and connoisseur. However, Mrs. GORE redeems her enmity to the Church, by the scene at poor Rubric's, the night be expects to be turned out of the curacy, and indeed by this ex- cellent man's entire character.
Before we close our review by an extract, we wish to record one more topic of praise. Mrs. GORE'S productions are essentially of the day ; they are composed neither of reading nor dreaming, but of seeing and hearing. We could, if other documents were want- ing, collect from them the spirit of the times, as far as it is shown in a certain rank of society ; down from the ideas entertained of a marriage-contract to what she calls Bayleyisms—that is, the po- pular sentimental songs.
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