THE GAYWORTHYS.*
PLPIASANTNESS is the prominent characteristic of the Gayworthys. A kindly, motherly old lady, with her spirit unimpaired by old age, her shrewdness greatly increased by experience, and her charity developed by intercourse with many and very varied characters, might, if she were also very religious and very ready with her tongue, tell the story of a village group very much as the authoress of The Gayworthys has told hers. There are no par- ticular incidents in it. Nobody murders her husband, or poisons her enemy, or steals diamonds, or makes assignations, or does anything of any outré kind throughout the entire narrative. The criminal heroine is guilty of nothing worse than neglecting to mention a codicil of which she is aware, and declining to read to another a letter addressed to herself ; the saintly heroine does nothing better than conceal her love for a clergyman who does not want her ; the love-making heroine is ordinary, timid, wilful, and full of strong affections and impulsive views of duty ; the hero a man who • 2712 Gapcorilays Ily the Author of Faith Oaring' s QMoaL leaden: Baropeen Low.
goes to sea when his step-grandfather wants him to stay at home and be a doctor ; the subordinate characters are farmers and far- mers' wives, whose lives are entirely uneventful, yet we venture to say no one who begins the book will leave it unfinished, or will deny that great additions have been made to his circle of acquaint- ance. He has been introduced to a New England village, and made acquainted with most of the leading villagers in a way which leaves the impression on him thenceforward that he knows them personally, that their fortunes, and failures, and achievements, and misunderstandings are matters of interest to him, that he would like to know how Gerehom Verse got on in his farm, and if Joanna Gair's marriage turned out happily, and if " Say " Gair was as interesting as a farmer's wife as she had been as a little child.
The authoress is in fact a realist of the very best kind, a transatlantic Miss Mitford, with a touch of satire in her which Miss Mitford never had, one who describes from within as well as without, who not only lets her actors assume natural attitudes, but lets you see the motive which has provoked them to assume them. She is real even in style, letting her personages talk just as they would talk, whether she herself likes the sentiment or not, never softening an idea because it may be opposed to one she herself entertains. She is, for instance, we imagine, one of those who believe in "election," and instantaneous conversion, and many other dogmas of the New England theology, yet she puts into the mouth of a sailor this terrible argument against her trusted creed. "'You heard it,'" says the sailor of the sermon, "'you heard it. That man stood up and explained the Almighty's secret plans. He don't mean to save everybody. Now, I'm only a poor devil of a sailor, and of course I don't know ; but if I came with a life- boat to a wreck I'd make no such half job of it. I'd save every soul on board, or Pd go down trying." She believes clearly in special providences and a "consistent walk," and praises her saintly heroine for taking the puffs out of her hair, yet one of her best characters, being inconsistent, pours out this little vial of vinegar upon both—vinegar which is almost as wholesome as good wine.
"'Wherever there are Christians, there should be Christian love and sympathy, shouldn't there ? It's no use to talk in the potential mood. The present indicative contradicts it flatly ; at least, among the Hilbuiy Christians. Take Mrs. Prouty. That woman aggravates me so with her perfections. Why, the rest of the world, you'd think, was only made to be an offset to her righteousness. She's so faithful among the faith- less, and always in such a small way! She darns her stockings,— Wednesday nights,—on the right side ; and it isn't evangelical to darn them on the wrong. And not to get the clothes dried on Monday, when her wash is over, is nothing less than Antichrist. It's mint, anise, and cummin,—gnats and needles' eyes. There isn't any room for Christian sympathy. And then look at Mrs. Fairbrother, with her whining ways and beautiful submission to her troubles and chastenings.' Other people are chastened too, I suppose. But she believes Providence keeps a special rod in pickle for her, and doesn't do much else of importance but discipline and pity her. I'm tired of going about among such people.'" It is the same girl who touches off the grand foible of Calvinis- tic Christians in the pungent sarcasm, "I don't know what some saints would do if there wasn't a world round them lying in wickedness." The book is crowded with epigrams as incisive as this, yet incisive without malice or bitterness, cutting not so much from the sharpness of the thought as from its weight. There is deep kindliness in the following passage, as well as deep insight. Wealthy, a "real," strong, clever woman, has persisted in marry- ing Jaazaniah bogs, a farmer whom his friends pronounce a lazy, purposeless lout, and her cousins ask how she could take such a man who, even to his wife, won't "talk back.".
"'Maybe, I like that best, when I get ageing,' replied Wealthy, with a touch of quiet humour. 'Besides, there's more in folks than what gets said There's all sorts of hindrance. Things don't always seem to correspond. It's just as it is with children. They want to say great, grown-up words sometimes, but they don't dare. When I was four years old, I told my mother once, that I wished I was fifteen, so's't I could gay 'probable.' If Jaazaniah ever does come out more than ordinary, it's on a Sunday, when he's dressed and shaved, and gets the rough off a little. I don't doubt, if he wore a black snit every day, and kept his hands clean, and his chin smooth, like a minister, he might talk like one. He's got a soul, and thoughts. It cornea out in his whistlin'. He couldn't make such music as he does out of nothin'. You never hesrd it, nor nobody else, as I have. Why, when we're sittin' here, some- times, as we were just now, before you came along, he'll go on so, that I hold my breath for fear of stoppin' him. It's like all the Psalms and Revelations to listen to it. There's something between us then that's more than talk. No, I don't care what folks think about It; nor I don't care whether it ever comes out any plainer, as long as we both live ; but I knozo I was no fool in taking Jaazaniah. The rough come off some- titne,—'cross Jordan, if it don't here,—and then, all I'm afraid is, whether or no I shall make out to keep up with him."
Every character is described from this point of view, realistic, yet with a tendency to apology, as when the authoress says of Prudence Verse,-.-.
"The world, as I have intimated, had been hard work for Prudence Vorse. Things had not fallen in comfortably or fortunately for her, as they do for some. She had had ten years of trying at life which was not life. If she wanted anything, every nerve was to be strained to get it. The people about her, instead of being helps to her wishes, were so manyobstacles for her to overcome. She had always been headingstrzught against a stone wall ; the more, because it had never been in her nature to take any circuitous way. Her face had got a hard directness and determination in it so. Her voice had laid aside its softer modulations, and taken a short, strong, uncompromising tone. Her look, her move- ment, her whole bearing, had a searohingness, a promptness, a decision, almost aggressive in them."
The majority of the more popular American novels show this tendency conspicuously, suggesting to us a coming change in the New England creed, the growth of a Puritan Broad Church re- taining the old implicit faith, but widened and softened by a larger charity. It is not fair, we .suppose, to quote Mr. Holmes, who, though his sympathies are so thoroughly Yankee, yet avows himself an Universalist, but Mrs. Beecher Stowe is orthodox, and in the Minister's Wooing, as in Hannah rhurston, and many another New England novel, there are signs of a coming reaction against the old reign of dogma—of a future Church which shall be as energetic as that founded at Plymouth, but with a wider base and a loftier aim, which shall, for example, preach salvation for man,
and not salvation only for New Englanders.
We are not about to relate the story of the Gayworthys, for in
truth there is no story, the incident of the concealment of the codicil being merely the pivot round which the characters revolve. The interest of the book is not in that, but in its sketches, and hints of sketches, of character, Jane Gair, the well-nurtured woman, who could not tell a lie or commit a crime, yet is always false, and always doing acts which have the effect of crimes, yet which she excuses to herself as merely letting things take their course with- out her interference ; her daughter "Say," who wants to be real, and is so hampered by the struggle around her for promotion in society ; Prudence Vorse, already described, the woman who is hard not by nature, but by long-continued pressure from without; "Stacy," the girl who thinks herself really converted out of the intensity of her wish to catch the minister; Huldah, the active, eoquettish good help, who doubts if the stars can be peopled, because if they are the "Lord's got his hands fall ;" Ned Blackmere, who disbelieves in God because he has been all over the world, and thinks if there were one He would put things a bit straight ; and Wealthy bogs, the woman who does her husband's work and her own, cheered only by the belief that the "rough" will work off him some time, and is never- theless original and keen. Each one of these personages is distinct, and each does and says things which, slight in themselves, interest us keenly, because they visibly help to work out the little household drama enacting before our eyes. Then the seenery is so clear, the daily life of the village among the New England hills, with its professionals who are also farmers, and farmers who are strictly yeomen, and labourers who all look to be yeomen, and ministers who hardly know if they teach their flocks or are taught by them, and young women independent and satirical, but tied in bonds of decorums and respectabilities as strong as those which prevail in cities, and a sort of atmosphere of religious feeling enveloping the whole. Nothing gives us so high an idea of the authoress's literary power as the way in which she -contrives to make this last peculiarity visible to us. It is a diffi- eult thing to paint atmosphere, yet she makes us feel that in villages of this sort there is a oircumambient air, a something which exists, though it is not definable, amid which her person- ages move, and out of which they can never escape. There is nothing of " goodiness " about her people, yet they all discuss religious things, all look to the Church as the common link, all think within certain half-perceived limits of religious formalism. The girls affirm dogmas, the men doubt them, the talk turns often on the Christianity of a neighbour, if a villager is hard the hard- ness developes itself in an excessive "strictness "of sentiment, if gentle in a catholic but conscious charity of thought towards Christians who are not communicants. One sees that the lives of these people are regulated by their creed, even by the shades of their creed, and this without any lecturing. The author never once dwells on the fact, simply accepts it as a fact, like the undu- lating character of the country or the coldness of its soil. She must have lived among it, have felt in her the true influence of a life such as she is depicting, the country life of her native land, or she could never revel in bits of description suth as these, which are scattered thickly through the book :— " The pleasant smith wind was blotring through the great maples that stood in a row between the road and the chipyard ; the scent of early roses came up from the low flower garden, to which a white gate and a few rough .stone steps led in and down straight opposite the door. Farther on, beside the drive that wound with sudden slope around the garden, to the right, toward the great barns, stood the long trough, hewn from a tree-trunk, and holding clear cold water that flowed in- cessantly into it through a wooden duct, of halved and hollowed sap- lings, leading from a spring in the hillside, away up behind the house. Here a yoke of tired cattle were drinking,—the ploughboy standing patiently beside; close by the great creatures' heads, upon the trough- rim, perched fearless chickens, dipping their yellow bills ; and under- neath and around, in the merry, unfailing puddles, splashed and quackled the ducks. The bright June sun, genial, not scorching, hung in the afternoon sky. There were birds in the maple trees, and the very grass about the door stone was full of happy life."
The tone of the story, the carious sense of peace and kindliness; which it produces, comes out well in that extract, and the reader quits it feeling as he would have felt had he been gazing half an hour on that scene—with more confidence alike in nature and humanity, less care for the noisy rush of city life, and yet withal lees fear of it. It is a pleasant book, one which perhaps will not live, any more than pleasant talk lives, yet one which, like that plea- sant talk, will procure for its producer friends. If she will but cut away ruthlessly from her next book a few pages of almost mystical sentimentality, evidently written with a strain, and there- fore marring the otherwise perfect naturalness of her book, and devise a machinery for delaying her plot a little less hackneyed than lovers' misunderstandings, we think we can promise her a wel- come in this country warmer than she has in her preface ventured to hope. Absinthe will not feed a hungry man, and absinthe is all we are getting in the way of food for the reader of novels.
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