FICTION.
WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY.* THE few character-studies of hard-working and poor English- women which make up this short book are of such remarkable quality that we find ourselves thinking of them as something quite by themselves in recent English fiction. We must not exaggerate, and shall not compare the work of Mrs. Muirhesd Bone with that of Mrs. Gaskell and George Eliot; these great writers gave us long and humorous stories, and Mrs. Bone has given us a brief study in which no attempt has been made to show the effects of character working through a complicated thread of human action. Her people touch and fly asunder again like flies on a summer's day. But if the profound ability which she has briefly displayed could be brought into relation with the gifts of the story-teller her achieve- ment would be a high one indeed; she would have to be named with the great English writers of fiction—with the author of Mary Barton, we think, more than with any other. Mrs. Bone's mental habit is essentially a woman's; she concerns herself with woman's duties, woman's afflictions, and woman's powers of consolation, always from a woman's point of view. Her vision is superlatively simple, exact, and sincere, and her style has a finish, taste, and sonority which are free from all affectation.
The opening chapter describes the scene of the author's childhood, which is one of those flat sandy bays (like More- cambe Bay or the estuary of the Dee) on the North-West Coast of England, where the tide comes in with the speed of a horse. Mrs. Gaskell wrote one of the best short stories in the language recounting a tragedy in a Lancashire bay. That is only a superficial resemblance, of course. A deeper resem- blance is to Mrs. Gaskell's appreciation of simple souls working humbly and passively at the task immediately before them, and finding time for sympathy with their fellows, yet without a thought of being, as such people truly are, inadequately rewarded in the world's lottery. Other people may call them the victims of injustice or the sport of chance, and blame their very quietness. They do not do this for themselves. A comparison with George Eliot enables one only to say that Mrs. Bone can fix her cottagers " in their movements as they appear " with as unerring a touch as George Eliot applied to the society of a midland town or to the pride of housewives in their work, as in The Mill on the Floss. She has not the humour of George Eliot—not a hint of a Mrs. Poyser appears in her pages—nor for the matter of that has she the less startling but delightful and gracious humour of Cranford. It seems ungrateful to say what Mrs. Bone's book is not, for it has given us intense pleasure, and the fact is that it is almost perfect within its compass. Like Jane Austen in a very different sphere, Mrs. Bone knows what she wants to do and does it.
As good an example as we could quote of the distinction of Mrs. Bone's style conies at the end of her first chapter, in
• Women of the Country. By Gertrude Bone, With Frontispiece by Muirhead Bone. London ; Duckworth and Co. Ps. 6d. net.] • which she has described a tragedy on the sands wherein a blind man, a child, and a horse were swallowed up:— " To a child the fact of death is not very terrible, because the fact of life is not yet understood; but I never see in imagination the level and sad-coloured country of my childhood, stretching out of sight to the sea across an expanse of sand, a country whose pomp was in the heavens, whose hills were the clouds, without seeing also, journeying across it, an old blind man, a child, and a dumb creature, to disappear for ever under the wide sky, beneath the sun, within that great waste of waters. The life of the poor, coloured outwardly with the same passivity and acceptance of their lot as the rest of visible nature, disciplined by the same forces which break the floods and the earth, remains for most of us querulous, ignoble, disappointing. What can be said sug- gestive or profound of the life that is born, that labours its full day with its face to the ground, from which it looks for its sustenance, and at last is carried, spent, to the square ground which holds the memory and remains of the dead? Yet one day the sun which has risen, stirring the only emotion in the land- scape, will rise upon a tragic, significant, or patient human group, for whom sun and seasons and the wide heavens are small, whose emotion is yet contained within the room of a mean dwelling and whose destiny is accomplished within a tilled field. Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor work for their living,' bowed always a little towards tragedy yet understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety."
The principal character, Anne Hilton, is a woman whom her neighbours regard as "peculiar," because they find no standard from their own experience with which to measure her actions. Her motives are subtle and incalculable to them, yet profoundly simple to herself. A small meanness in others depresses her as much as though she had done it herself. She can blaze with anger, yet be more tolerant to blackguards than to saints. Young women, and men with wives to guide them, think her absurd, but young men seldom do so. When a young woman of her acquaintance goes to live with a married man Anne Hilton is characteristically the only person who feels that the shame is partly laid upon herself—she should have foreseen, warned, advised. How the visit of kindly rebuke which she undertakes to the young woman ends in nothing ; bow the young woman is deserted, and dies in the workhouse, where hei child is born ; and how Anne Hilton adopts the child—these are only the bare facts which Mrs. Bone ornaments with her revealing studies of character.
Mrs. Bone's literary apparatus is so simple and is apparently handled with such native ease that one is continually being surprised by the vividness and truth of the results. Here is a farmer's wife, for instance, delivering her opinions on the bringing up of children
I was talking to Mrs. Hankworth the other day—she's done better than me, she's had twelve—' I never was one for much whipping,' she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give 'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work. It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go, said Mrs. Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression, betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant tears. You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut the door at night and know they're all inside with you ; but there's a day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home that if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
Among other pictures which remain with us is a description of the women's ward in the workhouse—a scene repellent in the peevish jealousy of bankrupt character, but relieved by the buoyant and kindly common sense of the matron—and an evangelical sermon which for searching and simple force recalls the sermon preached by Dinah Morris on the village green.
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