Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

into the sanctum sanctorum of bureaucracy and introduce us to the deliberations of a Cabinet council. We have never held office ourself, either as Minister or messenger with an ear at the keyhole; but Trollope's report, with the accompanying distribution of seats, could not have read more plausibly had he been hovering over a roofless Whitehall in. charge of an Asmodeus. Phineas Finn is his chief political hero, and we are bound to say that the broad conception of Finn's brilliant career is somewhat romantically extravagant. But his details are not only highly dramatic, but inimitably true to the life, and every day we are meeting at our clubs the men with whom Phineas came familiarly in contact. There was more of Hibernian devil-may-carelessness than of Saxon foresight and common-sense in the fashion in which the bogtrotting son of the Irish country doctor, with a precarious allowance of £100 or £150 per annum, went for the big stakes in the great political game. We hear nothing of the brogue that must have clung, and the way in which Phineas casts the slough of the Tipperary bogs is simply miraculous. But it must be remembered that he is represented as a god-like young Apollo, with silver speech and most fascinating manners; that it became the fashion among fair aristocrats to take him into favour; and that having climbed by luck as much as genius, he secured his tottering fortunes by marriage. Phineas, like Lever's Con Cregan, is a brilliant Irish adventurer, put on the stage in order to introduce us to a great variety of good company and a succession of exciting episodes. Trollope fell in love with him, and latterly Trollope, like

Balzac, had learned to live in the personalities of his characters, in writing the successive chapters of an English 'Comédie Humaine.' Mildmay and Daubeney, Monk and Turnbull, are all excellent. Though undoubtedly drawn from the life, the features are so ingeniously confounded, that there is no possibility of absolutely identifying them. But Plantagenet Palliser is a pure creation, wrought out through some half-dozen of novels, from apparently unpromising material, till he approaches artistic perfection. His creator never achieved anything more clever. When we meet him first, incidentally, in one of the Barsetshire social stories, he strikes us as simply a prig and a bore. Though Englishmen are naturally inclined to reverence his great position and prospects, all the world is disposed to sneer at the laborious heir of a ducal millionaire, whose monomania is some small rectification of the currency. He is stiff and ill at ease in society; he is dull and tedious as a speaker. He flies in the face of a beneficent Providence, by refusing to enjoy the gifts the gods have showered upon him. But the man has a heart and a conscience, chivalrous susceptibilities, steadfast resolution, and ambitions more noble than he suspects himself. Above all, he is an English gentleman, the soul of honour, and of inflexible integrity. It is not he who will tamper with convictions for place, or sacrifice conscientious scruples to opposition. In fact, power is more than indifferent to him, and responsibility in lofty isolation becomes an almost intolerable burden. There is something pathetic in the lonely Premier turning for consolation rather than advice to his trusted friend the old Duke of St Bungay.

No man is perfect, and morbid susceptibility is his weakness. Heartily as he may despise a Quintus Slide or a Lopez, nevertheless they have it in their power to sting him, and the stings will fester and smart. He would gladly renounce all he has gained in a career that has surpassed his wildest expectations, but his duty to his colleagues and his country comes before all. If he does not wear his heart on his sleeve, it is impossible to conceal the anxieties that torment him. Yet he carries himself through all with such commanding and self-respecting dignity, that no man dare venture on a personal liberty with him. It is a very long way from the painstaking member for Silverbridge in 'Dr Thorne,' to the Duke of The Prime Minister' and 'The Duke's Children.' Yet we must recognise the same man,

purified and ennobled, in a character artistically and consistently developed; and any one who may have tried his hand at writing the sequel to an earlier novel, must see that Trollope has triumphantly achieved one of the most difficult of literary feats. We have said that he virtually created Mr Palliser; but if there was any English statesman from whom he may have taken a hint, it was undoubtedly Lord Althorpe, who was in many ways akin to his Grace of Omnium in his stainless integrity and political straightforwardness, as well as in his political and constitutional objects. Since Trollope ceased to write, the political novel seems to have been going out of fashion; and though there are books like those of George Meredith, eminently worthy of notice, we prefer to draw the line at the dead.

A LEARNED LADY: ELIZABETH CARTER.

"The things of which he most afraid is,
Are tradesmen's bills, and learned ladies:
He deems the first a grievous bore,
But loathes the latter even more."-Essays in Rhyme.

So many of the notable names of the last century have been lately rescued from semi-oblivion, that it seems strange to those who recollect what a power in her day and generation was Elizabeth Carter of learned memory, to note that while perpetual tributes are being paid to Mrs Opie, Mrs Barbauld, Hannah More, and other women famous for their wit and wisdom, Elizabeth Carter, the scholar and linguist, remains comparatively unnoticed.

To be sure, we have to look a little further back for the period at which this fair savante flourished, than we have for that which gave birth to those above mentioned, and their contemporaries. A bluestocking of blue-stockings, Mistress Carter lived, indeed, to behold the blue-stocking era, and to become an intimate friend of its foundress, Mrs Montagu; but her day was far spent ere "Percy" drew crowded houses, and "Evelina" was the talk of the town.

When Johnson was patting his little Hannah on the head, and bidding his "Fannikin" be a good girl, he was respectfully asserting of some celebrated scholar that he understood Greek better than any one he (Johnson) had ever known, "except Elizabeth Carter."

Born in a time of considerable literary stagnation, at what was then a remote seaport in Kent; born also of parents only moderately rich; possessed of but few aspirations, and no connection with intellectual life of any kind, —the mastery obtained by a young

discouraged girl over both ancient and modern languages, and the use to which she put this acquirement, at once evinced the inborn genius.

[ocr errors]

Elizabeth's father was her instructor. Was that an advantage? Apparently not. The teacher was wearied out with the pupil's slowness, - parents are not the best of pedagogues, of pedagogues, and the Rev. Nicholas repeatedly urged and entreated his youthful daughter to give up the desire on which her heart was set. She yearned to become a scholar? But she would never be a scholar; she was not quick enough-not bright enough; she forgot what he had taught her; the task was more than she could accomplish. Elizabeth smiled to herself, and took no heed of the pessimist. The result was that in the course of her life she became a proficient in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages! Even into the remoter realms of Arabic she occasionally wandered. We wonder whether, in after-years, the worthy Nicholas Carter recalled his early prognostications, or whether, as is the way of prognosticators, the perpetual curate of Deal forgot them at his convenience.

Having been left motherless at the age of ten, the persevering little student found herself presently under the sway of a stepmother; but, from a literary point of view, this does not appear to have been any hardship, as it was in the case of Fanny Burney and divers other aspirants to fame.

The second Mrs Carter was either too much engaged with her own young family to interfere with her scholarly stepdaughter, or else she sympathised with her pursuits. At any rate, it is plain that Eliza beth was left to pursue her chosen routine unmolested; and when we find her, while still under the paternal roof, rising, walking, visiting, and retiring to rest exactly when she chose, with apparently no claims being made upon her time, and no calls upon her attention, we cannot but feel she enjoyed considerable privileges, even before her rapidly acquired fame procured for her distinction and consideration as a personage of note.

It is one thing to be celebrated abroad, it is another to be appreciated at home. Apparently Elizabeth Carter was both.

She must have been a curious creature, this calm-spirited, longheaded, independent-minded young mortal. Not in the least like the by-way-of-being-clever-and-original miss of the present day.

Elizabeth had no sort of desire to flee the home of her childhood and take up for herself some special line, which should be indicated by her dress, her associates, the very quarter wherein she pitched her tent. Miss Carter simply lived on at home; but she lived her own life, and made that life famous.

She rose, we are told, between the hours of four and five (this was early rising, but not extravagantly early, in those days); then, before breakfast, she writes to a friend, "I read two chapters of the Bible, and a sermon; then some Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; " after which she went for a walk. Breakfast over, the indefatigable linguist read some part of every language with which she was acquainted, in order never to allow

herself to forget what had once been acquired.

No wonder that poor "Punch " was daunted by the presence of such a living encyclopedia. This is what happened to "Punch": Miss Carter having been taken by some friends in Deal to see the old, old puppet-show (we must remember that "Punch" was in full swing a hundred and fifty years ago!)—the entertainment, which was usually more jocose than delicate, was actually and unmistakably dull.

"Why, Punch,” says the showman, "what makes you so stupid to-day?"

"I can't talk my own talk," Punch makes answer back; "the famous Miss Carter is here."

But though Elizabeth rose early with a view to a riot among dead languages before the morning meal was spread, she could not be equally ascetic about going to bed, and indeed must have had rather a long day of it ere she retired at midnight, whilst she had even to be admonished by her amiable and accommodating parent to adhere to that hour. Why she should have required to bind a wet towel about her temples, and chew green tea and coffee-nay, take snuff, shocking as it is to tell the tale!in order to keep herself awake when Nature was crying aloud for sweet repose, one cannot conjecture. She had all the day to study in-the whole long, quiet, undisturbed day; it does indeed seem a perversity that she should have presumed to thwart her drooping eyelids as the midnight hours approached.

In respect to the taking of snuff, we are told that Mr Carter disapproved of the practice, but that on seeing how much his daughter suffered beneath the deprivation, he withdrew his objection. By this

time he had possibly come to perceive that genius has occasional whims and necessities to which the progenitor of genius does well to give way. Doubtless a stimulant of some kind was needed by the translator of 'Epictetus,' and after all, everybody took snuff more or less about the middle of the last century jewelled snuff-boxes belonging to dames who had no excuse of severe mental strain, are to be met with in plenty among the heirlooms of to-day; wherefore who would grudge Elizabeth the pinch which produced the philosophic page?

The translation of 'Epictetus' was Miss Carter's great work. It was published by subscription, and realised for its translator the then extraordinary sum of a thousand pounds, besides greatly extending her fame. Indeed the circumstance of so difficult an author being rendered into English by a woman made a noise all over Europe; and even in Russia, "where," as she observed, "they are just learning to walk upon their hind legs," an account of her appeared.

The book came out at a guinea, half of which was paid in advance and half on delivery of the volume. The price kept up so long that an amusing anecdote is told regarding it. Dr Secker, the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, on one occasion sought Miss Carter, a bookseller's catalogue in his hands. "Here, madam," exclaimed the courtly divine, with affected indignation; see how ill I am used by the world! Here are my sermons selling at half-price, while your 'Epictetus' is not to be had under eighteen shillings!"

[ocr errors]

Epictetus' having opened to Elizabeth Carter the doors of society, the same work enabled her also to benefit by such admission. The sum she had received for her

labours was a large one-a thousand pounds in 1758 meant more than double the money at the present time and as she continued to write, and to obtain excellent terms for all she did, she was doubtless justified in setting up for herself a cosy little establishment in a fashionable quarter of the metropolis. Clarges Street, Piccadilly, was the spot decided upon; and in that historic nook the famous blue-stocking took up her abode regularly every season,winter was the "then,until the end of her life.

[ocr errors]

season

[ocr errors]

As far as household expenses went, it would not appear that those of Elizabeth Carter could have been very ruinous, since we are informed that "she kept no table in London, nor ever dined at home; but when she was so ill as to be unable to go out, the chairs or carriages of her friends always brought her to dinner, and carried her back at ten o'clock at latest; so that it is plain the accomplished spinster loved society and was by it beloved in return, even to an extent almost incomprehensible to modern ideas. We can hardly conceive of a person being so ill as to be unable to stir abroad, who is yet ready and willing to undergo the fatigue of dining in company; being expected, moreover— Carter would doubtless be in her capacity of lioness-to entertain and delight the assembled guests. The probability is that Elizabeth was a brilliant conversationalist, and that this being the case, she would have been less than a woman could she have endured to hold her tongue, even though it wagged

with an effort.

-as Miss

But London was not to usurp the learned lady altogether. She purchased a house in her native town of Deal; and her stepmother being dead, and the junior mem

« AnteriorContinuar »