CORRESPONDENCE.
A COMMENTARY IN AN EASY-CHAIR:
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH-OLD LADIES IN FICTION-THE FRENCH OLD LADY AND THE DOT.
A FEW words, not of any great importance in themselves, or very wise or witty, will sometimes set one thinking, and thus attain all the effect of an original observation without really being so. Of such was a little article, one of those which treat of nothing in particular, and which would seem the favourite reading of that portion of the community which buys the evening papers. The article in question was something about a railway waiting-room, and was not calculated to set the Thames on fire. But the writer, among many other remarks upon the individuals she saw coming and going, paused with naive surprise upon an old lady over sixty whom she found reading a novel. (I forget whether the writer acknowledges her sex, or if I take it for granted.) What, asked this author, could an old lady over sixty want with a love-story ; how could it interest her ? The question has a keen drollery and irony in it when we remember from whose hands the love-stories come that supply the greater portion of the population with reading. It is a fact, really pregnant with meaning and full of influence upon many matters of even greater importance than itself, that there are a number of old ladies of sixty among the class of romancers, and that their productions are spread all over the country, to be found upon every railway bookstall, and many drawing-room tables. I do not remember what book it was which the young critic named, and which she smiled and wondered to see her old lady reading ; but as likely as not it was the production of another old woman. George Eliot was fifty-seven when she wrote "Daniel Deronda," which, though perhaps the worst of her works, is not deficient in power, and contains a good deal about love. And, to go to the other end of the intellectual scale, there is Mrs. Henry Wood, a good lady who probably had attained that level of age for most of her prolific career, to judge by the matronly tone of her productions. Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. George Eliot is a great writer, and is justly famous and popular ; but Mrs. Henry Wood's works sell by the million, the public evi- dently finding in her gentle optimism and amiable slip-slop something more attractive even than genius. Both these writers were old ladies whom it would have filled the soul of the young critic of the Palace Journal with amaze and amuse- ment to see, not writing, but even reading a love-tale,--and not without reason either. For, to be sure, an old lady of sixty should have other things in her mind than love-tales. She ought to be "making her sowl ;" she ought to be thinking of the bourn to which she is fast travelling ; or at least, if she will be worldly, of her grandchildren's interests, and how much she can leave them to make them comfortable, and give them everything they can desire.
A curious question is opened up by the innocent youthful
arrogance of this suggestion, which has no doubt its true side. For romance, as a branch of literature, must be seriously affected by the fact that it is written, in a number of cases, by old ladies. It is amusing to reflect that this does not generally produce the first effect one would expect, and eliminate the element of love. In the ease of the old men who have written fiction, it has this effect to a considerable extent. Anthony Trollope, though he has perhaps given to the young men of England more examples of the way of putting n proposal than any other writer that ever existed, yet falls greatly into politics and the philosophy of character in his latest pro- ductions; and that old man eloquent, Victor Hugo (may I be pardoned for naming the greater last !), dispenses with this element altogether in his last great work, and has no heroine, if it be not little Georgette, eighteen months old. But the ladies do not abstain in the same way. I will not be so indiscreet as to assert that any living novelist of that sex has attained such a venerable age ; but to mention only those whose age is historical, and to return to our former examples, George Eliot has gone out of her way and spoiled the very powerful sketch of her Gwendolen, by making that forcible young woman fall in love, in a way quite contrary to her character, with the feeble perfection of Deronda ; while Mrs. Henry Wood (oh, strange pair ! but it is for the. sake of the argument) would as soon have thought of making a pudding without eggs, as of compounding a novel without a love-story. Love, however, as it comes out of the hands of such chroniclers, must be a different affair altogether from the love that comes hot and hot from the alembic of M. Guy de Maupassant and M. Paul Bourget, for example. We consider French taste and absence of morals, and desire for the illicit, as the causes of that dif- ference; whereas in all probability it is not so far to seek, but lies first of all in the fact that these gentlemen are men, and young; whereas many of their competitors on this side are women, and old. I do not remember that the ladies and gentlemen who discussed this subject some time ago, and advocated locked bookcases for persons of mature age, &c., ever thought of this distinction. And yet there is a great deal in it. The young gentlemen are at the height of the love- making period, and ought to know all about it, whereas the ladies can only have the teaching of recollection : and even in love fashion tells for something ; the loves of forty years ago, say, are not as the loves of this time. Even Mr. Trollope's straightforward young men are probably a little old-fashioned : the youth of culture and sentiment no doubt proposes in quite a different way; and as for the fashionable brother, he pro- bably beckons with his little finger to the object of his choice, as I am credibly informed he sometimes does when he asks her to dance.
All the difference between French and English sentiment is not, however, to be got rid of in this way. There has just been, I hear, a marriage in Paris which has much moved the most cultured circles. It is that of a well-known young literary man of the class that I have just indicated, a writer whose subjects have not been those of virtuous marriage by any means. An artist more great and distinguished in the history of petites maisons, and the accomplished pairs who organise these elegant retreats, could not be; but he has not been great at the menage, the legitimate home of more justly united couples. He has himself, however, married—which is strange enough : but there is more behind,—he has married a young lady without any dot. Now, we are all very apt to discuss our friends' marriages, as everybody knows, and to wonder what he can see, or what she can see, in the partner chosen. But our French friends are not occupied in this way. They are astounded, scandalised, awe-stricken at the fact that there is no dot. Figure to yourself such a thing ! A young man in society, elegant, luxurious, spending a great deal of money,—and he has married a girl without a penny ! Paris, I am told, has been moved to its foundations by this question. The best circles do not know how to account for such a phenomenon ; a sentimental looker-on has been seen to weep with theoretical approval; but the general attitude of society is consternation. How is such an extraordinary fact to be explained ? He fell in love with her, we should say, and the incident would require no more comment; but it is not so with our friends across the Channel. Yet it is they who have throned that curious image which has had not even a head of gold to make the feet of clay acceptable, but is clay altogether, with a fictitious crown to mask its baseness, and called it Love,— the strangest misnomer surely that ever was. Why should the writers and readers who think this the only subject worth treating, and whose Notre Occur and Cceur de Femme, and so forth, narrow the world entirely into a theatre for illegitimate amours, find themselves thus incapable of comprehending once in a way a love-marriage ? It does not even seem to be charitably allowed that the passion which justifies to their- thinking the rending asunder of every bond, and breaking of every vow, may also justify a lawful though imprudent union Thereis sympathy and understanding for the one case, but theie is only consternation and ridicule for the other.; The- man is but little less esteemed, if at all—perhaps, indeed, is felt to be rather more interesting—and all his temptations- are feelingly taken into account, when, he ruins himself for a. worthless woman : but Society is startled almost into hysterics,. and finds no extenuating circumstances, when he takes to- himself an innocent though penniless wife. There could not well be a more extraordinary difference of sentiment between. two sections of the human race than this.
Perhaps—who can tell ?—it might do the Frenchman good in this particular if he were a little under the influence of our- regime of elderly romance. We cannot, however, offer him the aid of our old ladies, for these are articles that must be grown for home use, and cannot be transplanted : and alas ! I fear he is not at all likely to be improved by his own. For pro- bably it is partly owing to the very influence which among us. conduces so much to the practice of all the virtues that affairs are as I have described them. The reign of the old lady .is. nowhere so great as hi France in practical matters : in litera- ture, that personage does not much differ from other people_ There is George Sand, who came in time to be an old woman, as is the fate of most, however dazzlingly young they may once have been, if they live long enough ; but she never took up, except by moments now and then, the legitimate side. And it must be allowed that it is the old lady who is most enragee on the subject of the dot, and that her economical principles, and stern determination that her family shall be enriched, or at least not impoverished, is more or less at the bottom of that severity about marriage which seems to involve a natural revulsion of relaxed prin.-- ciple and feeling on the other side. Thus, if the old ladies help to keep the world composed and virtuous on one hand,. they push it over the precipice on the other. Pernicious old ladies ! Perhaps a little more study of the idyllic love-tale- which it amused our young critic to see in an old woman's hands, would be good for Mesdames of the Faubourg St. Germain. But they would find it sadly insipid and wanting in flavour, I fear.
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