Kitabı oku: «Some Eminent Women of Our Times», sayfa 10

Almost the only angry words that appear in Lady Sale’s journal are caused by attempts of the officers to negotiate a ransom for themselves and the rest of the party, without consulting the ladies as to the terms to be agreed upon. Women’s suffrage had not been much talked of in 1842, but Lady Sale appeared to hold that taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand; for she says, “A council of officers was held at the General’s regarding this same ransom business, which they refer to Macgregor. I protest against being implicated in any proceedings in which I have no vote.” In the end the Indian Government paid the sum that it was agreed to give to Saleh Mahomed for effecting the deliverance of the prisoners. Another source of irritation to Lady Sale was the dread lest the military authorities should hesitate to proceed vigorously against the Afghans at the right moment because it might endanger the lives of the hostages. “Now is the time,” she wrote on the 10th May, “to strike the blow, but I much dread dilly-dallying just because a handful of us are in Akbar’s power. What are our lives compared with the honour of our country? Not that I am at all inclined to have my throat cut; on the contrary, I hope I shall live to see the British flag once more triumphant in Afghanistan.”

Allusion has already been made to Lady Sale’s power of extracting grim fun out of the discomforts of the situation. The Afghans are great thieves, and one of the minor troubles of the captives lay in the fact that their captors calmly appropriated articles sent to the prisoners. They took possession of a case in which Lady Sale had left some small bottles. “I hope,” she writes, “the Afghans will try their contents as medicine, and find them efficacious: one bottle contained nitric acid, another a strong solution of lunar caustic.” Twice she was incapacitated by severe attacks of fever, which had proved fatal to several of the party; but her courage never deserted her; and she shook off fever and all other ills when she heard her husband was near. Saleh Mahomed had already agreed, for a sum of money, to remove them from Akbar’s power, and they had left the place in which they had been confined; but Akbar would probably have recaptured them had not Sir R. Sale and Sir R. Shakespear with their brigades joined them just at the nick of time.

Who can tell what the meeting must have been between the gallant husband and wife? The narrative can best be given in Lady Sale’s own words: “Had we not received assistance, our recapture was certain… It is impossible to express our feelings on Sale’s approach. To my daughter and myself happiness, so long delayed as to be almost unexpected, was actually painful, and accompanied by a choking sensation which could not obtain the relief of tears. When we arrived where the infantry were posted, they cheered all the captives as they passed, them, and the men of the 13th” (her husband’s regiment) “pressed forward to welcome us individually. Most of the men had a little word of hearty congratulation to offer each in his own style on the restoration of his colonel’s wife and daughter; and then my highly-wrought feelings found the desired relief; I could scarcely speak to thank the soldiers for their sympathy, whilst the long-withheld tears now found their course.”

XIV
ELIZABETH GILBERT

Elizabeth Gilbert, daughter of the Bishop of Chichester, was one of the blind who help the blind. It is true, physically, that the blind cannot lead the blind; but, perhaps, none are so well fitted as the blind, who are gifted with courage, sympathy, and hope, to show the way to careers of happy and active usefulness to those who are suffering from a similar calamity with themselves.

The Bishop’s little daughter, born at Oxford in 1826, was not blind from her birth. She is described in the first years of infancy as possessing dark flashing eyes, that, no doubt, were as eager to see and know as other baby eyes. Her sight was taken from her by an attack of scarlet fever when she was two years and eight months old. Her mother had lately been confined, and, consequently, was entirely isolated from the little invalid. The care of the child devolved upon her father, who nursed her most tenderly, and, by his ceaseless watchfulness and care, probably saved her life. But when the danger to life was passed, it was found that the poor little girl had lost her sight. Everything was done that could be done; the most skilful oculists and physicians of the day were consulted, but could do nothing except confirm the fears of her parents that their little girl was blind for life.

With this one great exception of blindness, Elizabeth Gilbert’s childhood was peculiarly happy and fortunate. Her parents wisely determined to educate her, as much as possible, with their other children, and to avoid everything which could bring into prominence that she was not as the others were. There was a large family of the Gilbert children, and Bessie, as she was always called, like the others, was required to dress herself and wait on herself in many little ways that bring out a child’s independence and helpfulness. She used to sit always by her father’s side at dessert, and pour him out a glass of wine, which she did very cleverly without spilling a drop. When asked how she could do this, she replied it was quite easy – she judged by the weight when the glass was full. She learnt French, German, Italian, and music, with her sisters, and joined them in their games, both indoors and out. When she required special watching and care, they were given silently, without letting her find out that she was being singled out for protection. When she was old enough, the direction of the household and other domestic duties were entrusted to her in her parents’ absence, in turn with her other sisters. Thus her ardour, self-reliance, and courage were undamped, and she was prepared for the life’s work to which she afterwards devoted herself – the industrial training of the adult blind. In 1842 an event happened which doubtless had a good effect in developing Miss Gilbert’s natural independence of character, which had been so carefully preserved by her parents’ training. Her godmother died and left her a considerable sum of money, of which she was to enjoy the income as soon as she came of age. It was, therefore, in her power to carry out the scheme which she formed in after years for the benefit of the blind, without being obliged to rely at the outset on others for pecuniary support. She never could have done what she did if she had been obliged to ask her parents for the money the development of her plans necessarily required. They were most kindly and wisely generous to her, but it would have been impossible to one of her honourable and sensitive nature to spend freely and liberally as she did money which was not her own. The saddest and most desponding period of her life was that which came after she had ceased to be a child, and before she had taken up the life’s work to which reference has just been made. She was one of a bevy of eight sisters; and they naturally, as they passed from childhood to womanhood, entered more and more into a world which was closed to their blind sister. At that time, even more than now, marriage was the one career for which all young women were consciously or unconsciously preparing. It was hard for a young girl to live in a social circle in which marriage was looked upon as the one honourable goal of female ambition, and to feel at the same time that it was one from which she was herself debarred. Those who saw her at this time, say she would often sit silent and apart in the drawing-room of her father’s house in Queen Anne Street, with the tears streaming down her face, and that she would spend hours together on her knees weeping. “To the righteous there ariseth a light in darkness.” The light-bringers to the sad heart of Bessie Gilbert were manifold; and as is usual in such cases, the light of her own life was found in working for the welfare of others. The most healing and cheering of words to those who are sick at heart are, “Come and work in My vineyard.”

Small things often help great ones; and a clever mechanical invention by a Frenchman named Foucault, for enabling blind people to write, was not an unimportant link in the chain that drew Miss Gilbert out of her despondency. By means of this writing frame, she entered into correspondence with a young blind man, named William Hanks Levy, who had lately married the matron of the St. John’s Wood School for the Blind. Levy entered with great zeal, enthusiasm, and originality into all the schemes Miss Gilbert began to form for the welfare of the blind. Her thoughts were further turned in the direction of working for the blind poor, by a book called Meliora, written by Lord Ingestre, the aim of which was to show how the gulf between rich and poor could be bridged over. But most important of all, perhaps, of the influences that were making a new outlook for her life, was her friendship with Miss Bathurst, daughter of Sir James Bathurst. This lady was deeply interested in all efforts to raise up and improve the lot of women, and especially devoted herself to opening the means of higher education to them. She was one of those who hoped all things and believed all things, and, consequently, she rebelled against the impious notion that if a woman were not married there was no use or place for her in the world. It was her clear strong faith in women’s work and in women’s worth, that helped more than anything else to give dignity, purpose, and happiness to Bessie Gilbert’s life. The life of the blind girl became ennobled by the purpose to work for the good of others, and to help both women and men who were afflicted similarly with herself to make the best use of their lives that circumstances permitted.

Very little, comparatively, at that time had been done for the blind. The excellent college at Norwood did not exist. The poor blind very frequently became beggars, and the well-to-do blind, with few exceptions, were regarded as doomed to a life of uselessness; in some instances, as in Miss Gilbert’s own, kindly and intelligent men thought it neither wrong nor unnatural to express a hope that “the Almighty would take the child who was afflicted with blindness.” What was specially needed at the time Miss Gilbert’s attention was directed to the subject was the means of industrial training, to enable those who had lost their sight in manhood or womanhood to earn their own living. The proficiency of the blind in music is well known, but to attain a high degree of excellence in this requires a training from early childhood. To those who become blind in infancy a musical education affords the best chance of future independence; but thousands become blind in later life, when they are too old to acquire professional skill as musicians; and, besides these, there are those who are too completely without the taste for music to render it possible for them to become either performers or teachers of it. It was especially for the poor adult blind that Miss Gilbert laboured. She studied earnestly to discover the various kinds of manual labour in which the blind stood at the least disadvantage in comparison with sighted persons. Her efforts had a humble beginning, for the first shop she opened was in a cellar in Holborn, which she rented at 1s. 6d. a week. She was ably seconded by Levy, and by a blind carpenter named Farrar; the cellar was used as a store for the mats, baskets, and brushes made by blind people in their own homes. A move was, however, soon made to a small house near Brunswick Square, but the work soon outgrew these premises also, and a house was taken, with a shop and workrooms, in what is now the Euston Road. Miss Gilbert exerted herself assiduously to promote the sale of the articles made by her clients. The goods were sold at the usual retail price, and their quality was in many respects superior to that of similar goods offered in ordinary shops; in this way a regular circle of customers was in time obtained, who were willing to buy of the blind what the blind were able to produce. It must not be supposed, however, that this process, which sounds so easy and simple in words, was really easy and simple in practice. The blind men and women had to be taught their trades; in the case of many of them, their health was below the average, and, in the case of a few, they were not quite clear that working had any advantages over begging, for a living. Miss Gilbert and her foreman, W. Levy, had industrial, physical, and moral difficulties to contend with that would have daunted any who were less firmly grounded in the belief in the permanent usefulness of what they had undertaken. Miss Gilbert found that many of the blind people she employed could not, with the best will in the world, earn enough to support themselves. The deficiency was for years made up from her own private means. W. Levy had what appears a mistaken enthusiasm for employing none but blind persons in the various industries carried on in the workshop. There are some industrial processes for performing which blindness is an absolute bar, some in which it is a great disadvantage, others in which it is a slight disadvantage, and a few in which it is no disadvantage at all. The aim of those who wish to benefit the blind should be, in my judgment, to promote co-operation of labour between the blind and the seeing, so that to the blind may be left those processes in which the loss of sight places them at the least disadvantage. The blind Milton composed Paradise Lost, and other noble poems, which will live as long as the English language lasts. He never could have done this if the mechanical labour of writing down his compositions had not been given over to those who had the use of their eyes. This is an extreme instance, but it may be taken as an example of the way in which the blind and the seeing should work together, each doing the best their natural faculties and limitations fit them for. Levy had an intense pride in having everything in Miss Gilbert’s institution done only by the blind. So far did he carry this prejudice that it was only with difficulty that he was induced to have a seeing assistant for keeping the accounts. Previous to this, as was natural and inevitable, they were in the most hopeless confusion. Levy was, however, in many ways an invaluable leader and fellow-worker. His courage and energy were boundless. On one occasion he undertook successfully a journey to France in order to discover the place where some pretty baskets were made. He and his wife landed at Calais almost entirely ignorant of the French language, and knowing nothing except that certain baskets, for which there was then a good demand in England, were being manufactured in one of the eighty-nine departments of France. After many wanderings, both accidental and inevitable, he discovered the place. He was received with great kindness by the people who made the baskets, and, having learnt how to make them himself, he returned to England to communicate his knowledge to his and Miss Gilbert’s company of blind workpeople. A letter of Levy’s to Miss Gilbert, describing a fire that had broken out close to the institution, and had for some time placed it in great danger, is a wonderful instance of a blind man’s energy and power of acting promptly and courageously in the face of danger.

Little by little the work Miss Gilbert had begun grew and prospered. A regular society was formed, of which the Queen became the patron, and of which Miss Gilbert was the most active and devoted member. This association received the name of the Society for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind. Its present habitation is in Berners Street, London. Its founder, for several years before her death, was obliged, through ill-health, to withdraw from all active participation in its business; but so well and firmly had she laid the foundations, that others were able to carry on what she had begun. The Society is one of the most useful in London for the poor adult blind, because it provides them with industrial training, according to their individual capacities, and secures them, as far as possible, a constant and regular market for the goods they are able to produce. The wages earned are in some cases supplemented by small grants, and pensions are, in several instances, given to those blind men and women who have survived their power of work. The result of Miss Gilbert’s life has been to ameliorate very much the lot of the blind poor by substituting the means of self-supporting industry for the doles and alms which at one time were looked upon as the only means of showing kindness and pity to the blind. Miss Gilbert herself was keenly sensible of the value and life-giving power of work. Surrounded as she had been from childhood with every care and kindness which loving and generous parents could suggest, she yet found that when she began to work, the change was like a passing from death to life. The book from which all the facts and details in this sketch are taken³ tells that soon after she began her work one of her friends “hoped she was not working herself to death.” She replied, with a happy laugh, “Work myself to death? I am working myself to life.” It is just this possibility of “working to life” that she has placed within the reach of so many blind men and women.

Miss Gilbert’s health was always very fragile. After 1872 she became by degrees a confirmed invalid, and after much suffering, borne with exquisite patience and cheerfulness, she died early in the year 1885.

XV
JANE AUSTEN

There is very little story to tell in the life of Jane Austen. She was one of the greatest writers of English fiction; but her own life, like the life she describes with such extraordinary and minute accuracy in her tales, had no startling incidents, no catastrophes. The solid ground never shook beneath her feet; neither she, nor the relations and neighbours with whom her tranquil life was passed, were ever swept away by the whirlwind of wild passions, nor overwhelmed by tragic destiny. The ordinary, everyday joys and sorrows that form a part of the lives of all of us, were hers; but nothing befell her more sensational or wondrous than what falls to the lot of most of us. This even tenor of her own way she reproduces with marvellous skill in the pages of her novels. It has been well said that “every village could furnish matter for a novel to Miss Austen.” The material which she used is within the reach of every one; but she stands alone, hitherto quite unequalled, for the power of investing with charm and interest these incidents in the everyday life of everyday people which are the whole subject-matter of her six finished novels. A silly elopement on the part of one of the five Miss Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, and the fall which stuns Louisa Musgrove in Persuasion, when she insists on jumping off the cob at Lyme, are almost the only incidents in her books that can even be called unusual. Her novels remind us of pictures we sometimes see which contain no one object of supreme or extraordinary loveliness, but which charm by showing us the beauty and interest in that which lies around us on every side. There is a picture by Frederick Walker, called “A Rainy Day,” which is a very good instance of this; it is nothing but a village street just by a curve in the road; the houses are such as may be seen in half the villages in England: a dog goes along looking as dejected as dogs always do in the rain, the light is reflected in the puddles of the wet road, one foot-passenger only has ventured out. There is nothing in the picture but what we may all of us have seen hundreds and thousands of times, and yet one could look and look at it for hours and never weary of the charm of quiet, truthful beauty it contains. This is one of the things which true artists, whether their art is painting pictures or writing books, can do for those who are not artists – that is, help them to see and feel the beauty and interest of the ordinary surroundings of everyday life. Robert Browning makes a great Italian painter say —

 
We’re made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better painted – better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,
Your cullion’s hanging face? A bit of chalk,
And trust me, but you should, though! How much more
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior’s pulpit place,
Interpret God to all of you.
 

Jane Austen⁴ was a clergyman’s daughter, born in 1775 at the Vicarage of Steventon, about seven miles from Basingstoke, in Hampshire. Here she lived, for the first twenty-five years of her life, the quiet family life of most young ladies of similar circumstances; two of her brothers were in the Navy, one was a country gentleman, having inherited an estate from a cousin, another was a clergyman. The most dearly loved by Jane of all her family was her sister Cassandra, older than herself by three years. The sisters were so inseparable that when Cassandra went to school, Jane, though too young to profit much by the instruction given, was sent also, because it would have been cruel to separate the sisters; her mother said, “If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.” The devotion between the sisters was lifelong. Their characters were not much alike; Cassandra was colder, calmer, and more reserved than her sister, whose sweet temper and affectionate disposition specially endeared her to all her family; but Jane throughout her life relied upon Cassandra as one who was wiser and stronger than herself. The quiet family life at Steventon was diversified by one or two visits to Bath, then a very fashionable resort; a short visit to Lyme is spoken of later on; and in the early days in the vicarage the Austen children not infrequently amused themselves with private theatricals. Readers of Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park will find these mild amusements woven into the web of the story; for, as Jane Austen says herself, she was like a bird who uses the odd bits of wool or moss in the hedgerows near to weave into the tiny fabric of its nest. The plays which the Austens acted were frequently written by themselves. This may probably have given to Jane her early impulse to authorship. It is not improbable that it also smoothed the way of her career as a writer in another sense; for at that time very great prejudice still existed in many people’s minds against women who were writers. Lord Granville, speaking in December 1887, at the unveiling of the statue of the Queen at Holloway College, cited a great French writer who had laid it down as an axiom that a woman could commit no greater fault than to be learned; the same writer had said – of course partly in joke – that it is enough knowledge for any woman if she is acquainted with the fact that Pekin is not in Europe, or that Alexander the Great was not the son-in-law of Louis the XIV. Referring to events within his own knowledge and memory, Lord Granville added, “One of the most eminent English statesmen of the century, a brilliant man of letters himself, after reading with admiration a beautiful piece of poetry written by his daughter, appealed to her affection for him to prevent her ever writing again, his fear was so great lest she should be thought a literary woman.”

If a similar prejudice were in any degree felt by the Austen family, it is not unlikely that it was gradually dissolved by the early habit of the children of writing plays for home acting. We read, indeed, that Jane did nearly all her writing in the general sitting-room of the family, and that she was careful to keep her occupation secret from all but her own immediate relations. For this purpose she wrote on small pieces of paper, which could easily be put away, or covered by a piece of blotting-paper or needlework. The little mahogany desk at which she wrote is still preserved in the family. She never put her name on a title-page, but there is no evidence that her family would have disapproved of her doing so. They seem to have delighted in all she did, and to have helped her by every means in their power. She was a great favourite with her brothers and sister, and with all the tribe of nephews and nieces that grew up about her. She had no trace of any assumption of superiority, and gave herself no airs of any kind. She had too much humour and sense of fun for there to be any danger of this in her case. She was thoroughly womanly in her habits, manners, and occupations. Like Miss Martineau, her early training preserved her from being a literary lady who could not sew. Her needlework was remarkably fine and dainty, and specimens of it are still preserved which show that her fingers had the same deftness and skill as the mind which created Emma Woodhouse and her father, Mrs. Norris and Elizabeth Bennet. She had taken to authorship as a duck takes to water, and had written some of her most remarkable books before she was twenty; and she had done this so simply and naturally that she seems to have produced in her family the impression that writing first-rate novels was one of the easiest things in the world. We find, for instance, that she writes in 1814 many letters of advice to a novel-writing niece; and she advises another little niece to cease writing till she is sixteen years old, the child being at that time only ten or twelve. In 1816 she addresses a very interesting letter to a nephew who is writing a novel, and has had the misfortune to lose two chapters and a half! She makes kindly fun of the young gentleman, and suggests that if she finds his lost treasure she shall engraft his chapters into her own novel; but she adds: “I do not think, however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour?”

Early in 1801 the home at Steventon was broken up. Mr. Austen resigned his living in consequence of failing health, and the family removed to Bath. Mr. Austen died in 1805, and Mrs. Austen and her daughters lived for a time at Southampton. They had no really homelike home, however, between leaving Steventon in 1801 and settling at Chawton, in Hampshire, in 1809; and it is very characteristic of Jane Austen’s home-loving nature that this homeless period was also a period of literary inactivity. She wrote Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice before she left Steventon, though none of them were published till after she came to live at Chawton. Here in her second home she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. In consequence of having three novels finished before one was printed, when she once began to publish, her works appeared in rapid succession. Sense and Sensibility was the first to appear, in 1811, and the others followed quickly after one another, for her work was at once appreciated by the public, and the great leaders of the literary world, such as Sir Walter Scott, Southey, and Coleridge, welcomed her with cordial and generous praise. One curious little adventure should be mentioned. In 1803, during her residence at Bath, she had sold the manuscript of Northanger Abbey to a Bath publisher for £10. This good man, on reconsideration, evidently thought he had made a bad bargain, and resolved to lose his ten pounds rather than risk a larger sum in printing and publishing the book. The manuscript therefore lay on his shelves for many years quite forgotten. But the time came when Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park had placed their author in the first rank of English writers, and it occurred to Miss Austen and her family that it might be well to rescue Northanger Abbey from its unappreciative possessor. One of her brothers called on the Bath publisher and negotiated with him the re-purchase of the manuscript, giving for it the same sum which had been paid to the author about ten years earlier. The publisher was delighted to get back his £10, which he had never expected to see again, and Jane Austen’s brother was delighted to get back the manuscript. Both parties to the bargain were fully satisfied; but the poor publisher’s feelings would have been very different if he had known that the neglected manuscript, with which he had so joyfully parted, was by the author of the most successful novels of the day.

There is a quiet vein of fun and humorous observation running through all Miss Austen’s writings. It is as visible in her private letters to her friends as in her works intended for publication. The little turns of expression are not reproduced, but the humour of the one is very similar to that of the other. Thus, for instance, in one of her letters she describes a visit to a young lady at school in London. Jane Austen had left her a raw schoolgirl, and found her, on this visit, developed into a fashionable young lady. “Her hair,” writes Jane to Cassandra, “is done up with an elegance to do credit to any education.” Who can read this without thinking of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and the inevitable contempt she inspired in her fashionable cousins because she did not know French and had but one sash?

Reference has already been made to the high appreciation of Miss Austen’s genius which has been expressed by the highest literary authorities in her own time and in ours. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his journal: “I have read again, and for the third time, Miss Austen’s very finely-written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the descriptive and the sentiment is denied to me.” Lord Macaulay, the great historian, wrote in his diary: “Read Dickens’s Hard Times, and another book of Pliny’s Letters. Read Northanger Abbey, worth all Dickens and Pliny put together. Yet it was the work of a girl. She was certainly not more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature!” Guizot, the French historian, was a great novel reader, and he delighted in English novels, especially those written by women. Referring to the women writers of the beginning of this century, of whom Miss Austen was the chief, he said that their works “form a school which, in the excellence and profusion of its productions, resembles the cloud of dramatic authors of the great Athenian age.” The late Mr. G. H. Lewes said he would rather have written Pride and Prejudice than any of the Waverley novels. George Eliot calls Jane Austen the greatest artist that has ever written, “using the term ‘artist’ to signify the most perfect master over the means to her end.” It is perhaps only fair to state that some good judges do not entertain so high an opinion of her work. Madame de Staël pronounced against her, using the singularly inappropriate word “vulgar,” in condemnation of her work. If there is a writer in the world free from vulgarity in its ordinary sense, it is Jane Austen; it must be supposed that Madame de Staël used the word in its French sense, i. e. “commonplace” or “ordinary,” such a meaning of the word as is retained in our English expression “the vulgar tongue.” Charlotte Brontë felt in Miss Austen a deficiency in poetic imagination, in the high tone of sentiment which elevates the prose of everyday life into poetry. She found her “shrewd and observant rather than sagacious and profound.” Miss Austen’s writings were so essentially different from the highly imaginative work of her sister author, that it is not surprising that the younger failed somewhat in appreciation of the elder writer.