TITO JOURNAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY.* kr the first
night of a certain play, a man in the front row of the stalls behaved very badly. He stood up, waved his arms, told • The Journal of a Lady of Quality, 1174 to 1770. Edited by Evangeline Walker Andrews and Clarks Mclean Andaews. tale ;University rams; agnaphrey 211Mord. Lisa. neta nu.mberless stories of the private lives of the actors, interrupted, end generally made himself a nuisance.
"'Sit down,. sir 1' cried the people behind filit down I ' Gentlemen ! ' protested. the °Rm.. der, 'I am the Author l ' 'Never mind, sir 'replica the audience : Sit down " This is a fable.
But supposing the interrupter had not even been the author,. but was only the annotator, would not the audience have been, justified in throwing an orange at him ? The present writer, in throwing this orange at Miss. Andrews, does not intend any ingratitude to her for having published a most interesting document ; he only wishes to protest against her seventeen,„ pages of unnecessary introduction, her numerous footnotes, her seventy-six pages. of. appendicese the numerous and unnecessary illustrations (which. include a full-page map of Edinburgh, although the scene of the journal is never once laid them). She has fallen into the prevailing fault of American editors : of serving up raw to the public all the information which their researches have exhumed, however irrelevant, instead, of selecting from it the few facts necessary for an occasional illustration. Moreover, in the present case these researches themsel'v'es, which included the visitation, of many of the places visited by the diarist, were chiefly superfluous, one cannot help feeling that the Colonial Dames of North Carolina (who contribute to the publication) have been put to a great deal of unnecessary expense,. the 'editors to unnecessary trouble.
The appendices and footnotes consist almost entirely of full Mot:emplaced. accounts. of people of no historical importance, and of whom mention in the text is often of the barest kind;, but one footnote, concerning emendation. of the text itself, Sterna even more inexplicable ; the quotation is from page 131; the context, monkeys "As I am no enemy to, the Pythagorean: system; I do suppose these lively and troublesome companions [are the successors of] the former inhabitants.of this Island, who you know were French, and truly the difference is so little between one Monkey and another,. that the transmigration must have' been very easy... Footnote :---Mies &thaw evidently had in mind that part, of thb Pythagorean system which: concerns metempsychosis. . something is wanting.in the text here."
But why should anything be wanting ? Surely the words iuserted only do wilful damage to the sense, which was perfect without them. Incidentally, there is another note on. this passage, giving a history of the Leeward Islands. from 1623 to 1713.
But the throwing of oranges at each other is no proper pursuit for an audience : the play's the thing, and a very pleasant costume-piece it is. Miss Schaw is certainly not "an. artist. . . who uses her masses of material with reserve and discrimination,, securing her backgrounds and atmosphere with, delicacy and precision, and drawing her figures with swift, sure strokes,of her pen " e but a woman of her character and intelligence, writing in the classic age of letter-writing, and having such exciting material as voyages to Antigua, Carolina, and Lisbon then afforded, could hardly fail to be interesting. She is an amateur writer ; that is to say, she does not follow writing as an end in itself, but simply as the best means by which she, being a woman of sensibility, can keep in touch with her dearfriends in Scotland ; but such amateur writing has often a pleasing naiveté of its own, achieves effects by its very ignorance of technique. Miss Schaw had a singularly sensitive and receptive mind, herein lies her success ; her experiences were vivid, and she reacted to them vividly. There is practically no oharaeteredrawing e everyone is either very black or very white;. and their colour is largely determined by their politics. The Antiguans she cannot praise too highly. Indeed, the only fault she finds with them is a certain promiscuity with negressese The Americans she dislikes and despises so bitterly that one cannot help wandering whether the Dames of North Carolina have read the book they are financing. The picture she presents of their revolutionary ancestors is disgusting in the extreme ; and though the present, trend of fashion is to decry the. American Colonise, it is only fair here teeny that Miss Sehaw's fear of being tarred and feathered by. the rebels bawled her at heist to paint her opponents as black as she cam But probably the part of most delight to the general reader, who may possibly be a little surfeited by the luxuries of the West Indies; a little wearied by the boorishness of America, and yet find, the sojourn in Lisbon something of an anti-climax to them both, is the description of the voyage out itself, under conditions to which the present accommodation, even of steerage passengers, is luxurious ; the ship's rascally owner, her rascally captain, mate, and supercargo; the ladies' own rascally maid, and, above all, the storm, when "in a moment the great sea-chests, the boys' bed, my brother's' cot% Miss Rutherford's Harpsichord, with tables, chairs, joint. stools, pewter plates, etc., etc., together with Fanny, Jack,, and myself, were tumbling heels over head to the side the vessel had laid down on . . . The candle was immediately extinguishea, and all this going on in the dark . . . while we were floated' by a perfect deluge • and that nothing might be wanting te- terrify us, a favourite cat of Billie's lent her assistance. For, happening to be busily engaged with a cheese, just behind me, she stuck fast by it . . . and mewed in so wild a manner . . . that we would certainly have thought it was Davy Jones, the terror of all sailors."
Such scenes go far to justify the eulogies of the introduction' and and it is fair to say that there is not one boring passage from beginning to end of the text. Of Miss Janet Sehaw herself (though Miss Andrews has a footnote to tell us that her paternal grandmother's first name was Anne) we know little in the way of particulars ; but her character emerges, both clearly and attractively from this unconscious autobiography. It is inter- esting to trace in her the germs of the Early Victorian young woman. Indeed, in spite of her Georgian broadmindeclnees and personal" courage and sense, they are already more developed than one would have expected. But one's confidence that she was no anachronism is largely restored when one reads :— "Our cabins and staterooms are large and commodious, our provisions, excellent, and our liquor tolerable • but I king for a drink of Scotek twopenny, and shall salute the first pint-stoup I meet."
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