MRS. OLIPHANT'S " PATTY."*
IT is probable that, even among the people who pride them- selves upon judging fiction by purely literary and artistic canons, the attractiveness of a novel depends very largely upon the characters to whom it introduces them. If this be so, it is hardly likely that The Cuckoo in the Nest, with all its ability, will be a special favourite with Mrs. Oliphant's numerous admirers, for, with the exception of one or two, people who hang about the background of the story and make comparatively little impression upon ns, the dramatis person:' are not merely negatively unattractive, but positively re- pellent. Most repellent of all—as she is, of course, intended to be—is the village adventuress, Patty Hewitt, the cuckoo who makes her way into the nest of the Pierceys, and by a series of skilful movements manages to eject the weaker birds, whose legitimate home it is ; but though Patty, con- sidered as a woman, is altogether hateful, she is, as a work Of creative art, one of the most finely finished and admirably realised portraits which Mrs. Oliphant has ever ,painted. It is she, and she alone, who makes the book.
Patty's people, the Hewitts, have in their day been sub- stantial yeomen ; but they have somewhat come down in the world, and though the 'Seven Thorns' is a rather imposing place for a country inn, an inn it is, and Patty serves out beer to clod-hopping rustics, as well as to the better-class customers who are more occasional visitors. Prominent among the latter is Gervase Piercey—known to the village as " the Softy "—the lank, loutish, half-imbecile son of Sir Giles Piercey, of Greyshott Manor, who has just that minimum of wit which enables him to appreciate Patty's rather coarse beauty, and still more, perhaps, her sprightly masterful ways. Patty is not in love with Gervase, though she has a certain fondness for him as a possible article of personal property in the future ; but she is much in love with the Manor and the title of "my lady," and though she sees difficulties ahead, she will not allow them to vanquish her without a struggle. She knows that the present holder of the coveted honour—a violent, shrewish, keen-sighted old lady—is not without her suspicions ; but Patty feels that she would be a match for Lady Piercey if Gervase himself were a more efficient ally. This, however, it seems as if he never would be. In Patty's presence he is abjectly obedient, and eager to carry out her explicit directions for the plan of campaign ; but, in the presence of his terma- gant mother, his courage and his scanty wits both evaporate. Still, Gervase is not wanting in the animal cunning which is the sole weapon of his tribe, and he succeeds in making his way to London, where the bold campaigner meets him, marries him, and brings him home in triumph. Here the true action of the comedy commences, grimly enough, for the happy pair return on the day of the funeral of Lady Piercey, who has succumbed to a paralytic stroke ; and Patty has an oppor- tunity of asserting her position in a pleasant publicity, of which she had never dreamed. And yet it is not wholly pleasant : there is one drop of bitter in the cup which is otherwise so lusciously sweet ; and Mrs. Oliphant has never been more successful in exhibiting the vanity and malignity of a cold, shallow nature, than in the passage devoted to Patty's reception of the news of her enemy's death. She and her Softy have come to the 'Seven Thorns,' and Patty is talking things over with her father.
• The Cuckoo in the Nest. By Mrs. Oliphant. 3 vole. London Hutchinson and Co. ' Patty,' said the old innkeeper again, I've something to tell you that you ain't a thinking of About 'Er,' he said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder.'—' What about her ? I know she's my enemy, but you needn't be frightened, father. I've seen to everything, and there's nothing she can do.'—' It ain't that as I want you to think of. It's more dreadful than that. It's in the midst of life as we are in death,' said Hewitt. That sort of thing, and they've been a 'unting for 'im far and wide.'—' Lord, father, what do you mean ? '—Patty caught at a confused idea of Sir Giles's death, and her heart began to thump against her breast. Hewitt pointed with his thumb, jerking it again and again over his shoulder. She's—she's—dead,' he said.—' Dead ! ' said Patty, with a shriek, ` who's dead ?'—Hewitt, less aware than she of Gervase's wandering and unimpressionable mind, shook his head at her, jerking his thumb at the young man lolling out of the window. 'Usht, can't ye ? Why,'er 'is mother,' he said, under his breath. A quick reflection passed through Patty's mind. Then I'm her,' she said to herself, but then re- membered that this was not the case ; that Sir Giles' death alone could make her Lady Piercey. As this flashed into her thoughts, a bitter regret came into Patty's mind—regret keen as if she had loved her—that Lady Piercey was dead, that she had been allowed to die. Oh, if she had but known ! Hew quickly would she have brought Gervase to see his mother ? Her triumph, when it should come, would be shorn of one of its most poignant pleasures. Lady Piercey would not be there to see it! She never could now be made to come down from her place, made to give up her privileges to the girl she despised. Patty felt so genuine a pang of disap- pointment that it brought the tears to her eyes. • I must tell him,' she said, quickly,—the tears were not without their use, too, and it was not always easy to call them up at will."
This is very fine and veracious analysis. In the following pages, where, at the funeral, Patty elbows herself and the Softy through the astonished guests to the place behind the wheeled chair of the chief mourner, and at the house boldly asserts her position as mistress, the dramatic treatment is not less successful. When the time comes for some critic to attempt an estimate of Mrs. Oliphant's multifarious endow- ments, he will fulfil his task very inadequately if he fails to do justice to her performances in satirical portraiture.
Quantitatively, they do not count for much in the mass of her work ; but their quality is such as to make them significant and important. Sometimes the satire is genial, playing with a light, pleasant humour round some not unamiable weak- ness ; at other times, as in this portrait of Patty, it has the quiet relentlessness of vivisection which is to be found in Thackeray's portraits of Becky Sharp and Barnes Newcome. There is the same lightness of touch, the same unimpassioned precision, the same freedom from that exaggeration which transforms pure satire into caricature, the same sure feeling for the one act, the one word, the one expression which is illuminatingly characteristic. The details of Patty's triumphant progress to supremacy at Greyshott Manor are masterly. The servants, even the all-important Dunning, are subdued by a bold domestic coup d'kat ; Colonel Piercey and Mrs. Osborne are speedily routed and exiled,—for the one is too contemptuous, the other too gentle, both too proud to enter the lists against such an adversary; and poor, bewildered Sir Giles, finding himself not unpleasantly taken possession of, yields absolute submission. The skirmishes which precede the final victory have plenty of the excitement of variety, for the campaigner knows how to choose her weapons and her mode of attack ; she feels, by a quick insight into the neces- sities of each situation, when it will be well to play the un- familiar part of Mrs. Gervase, the lady of the Manor, and when she may, without risk, relapse into Patty Hewitt of the • Seven Thorns.' Then the grande dame impersonation is neces- sarily lacking in finish, especially in the earlier performances, and there is a little confusion between the parts ; but Patty im- proves rapidly, and when she achieves her victory over that not very hopeful subject, Lord Hartmore, she has become a very fair performer.
Mrs. Oliphant shows her skill in making Patty endure her solitary defeat from the one person over whom her victory seems already assured. Her most formidable enemy has been removed by death, Sir Giles has been made an ally, and the others have been crushed ; all seems to be well, when the Softy's rebellion comes as a veritable bolt from the blue. A Softy is indeed a somewhat difficult person to deal with ; but though it is well known that, as a general rule, a fool is much
more formidable than a knave, every one imagines that hisior her fool will prove an exception, and Patty never thinks of Gervase as a source of danger. When. however, familiarity has somewhat diminished Gervase's awe of his wife, and the attractions of the Seven Thorns' begin to reassert themselves, Patty finds herself sitting up at night to open the door for
the man she has married that she may prevent his brutish nightly intoxication from becoming a public scandal. Just as one feels a momentary pity for Becky Sharp when she receives Sir Pitt's proposal just after her marriage to Rawdon, so one feels a passing thrill of the same emotion when Patty, after vanquishing so many foemen worthy of her steel, is foiled by an imbecile sot. It is in these hours of waiting that her knowledge of the difficulties of life is increased in an unexpected and terrible manner :-
" She found that there were things that were harder upon a lady (such as she flattered herself she had become) than on a village woman. She coaxed and soothed him to bed, like a nurse with a child, that nobody should suspect what had happened ; and she vowed vengeance upon her father who had d tred to take tee Softy in and treat him like this. And then there tiros. before Patty a prospe .t which appalled even her brisk and courageous spirit. What if she should not be able to put this down sum- marily, and with a strong ham t ? Then what would become f her hopes of winning a place in the county, and being aeknow- ledged by all the great people as worthy to make h r e.,trau,•e among them ? After the first unexp •eted triumph of being mistress of a great house and a number of servants, Ler ambition had risen to higher flights,—and this was what over-vaultine• am- bition arrived at. But what would become of that hope. or of many others, if the Softy, startled out of himself for a moment by his marriage, should fall back into the beerhouse society, which suited him best P She had begun already to forget that it was to Gervase she owed her advancement, and to feel the bard, n of keeping him amused and employed. Now she felt that the Softy had it in his power to mar that advancement still She felt in the bitterness of her heart that it might be better to be s ill Patty Hewitt, with all the world before her, than to be Mrs. Piercey, of Greyshott, with that Softy to drag her down."
The story of Patty's experiences, subsequent to her dis- covery of this threatened trouble, must be read in Mrs. Oliphant's own pages. Though Sir Giles and Lady Piercey, the Softy and his rival, Patty's stupid father and her malig- nant aunt, are thoroughly distinct and life-like, The Cuckoo in the Nest may be described as a one-character novel ; but that one character is presented with such searching truthfulness and such fine dramatic realism, that the book is worthy of a place beside the most brilliant of its predecessors.
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