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MISS FERRIER

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, the great mistress of the novel of manners in Scotland, was born in Edinburgh on the 7th September 1782, and was the youngest of her parents' ten children. Her father, James Ferrier, was a younger son of John Ferrier, laird of Kirklands, in Renfrewshire, and her mother – whose maiden name was Helen Coutts – was the daughter of a farmer near Montrose. James Ferrier was by profession a Writer to the Signet, having been admitted a member of the Society in the year 1770. He had been trained to his vocation in the office of a distant relative, who had the management of the Argyll estates, and to this gentleman's business he ultimately succeeded. He was thus on terms of intimacy with the Duke of Argyll, through whose instrumentality he was appointed a Principal Clerk of Session. In this office he had Sir Walter Scott as a colleague, and he was also so fortunate as to enjoy the friendship of Henry Mackenzie, author of the admirable Man of Feeling, of Dr Blair, and last, not least, of Burns. Thus, from her earliest years onward, his young daughter must have been accustomed to see and to hear of the literary lights of the Scotland of that day.

After their marriage, Mr and Mrs Ferrier occupied a flat in Lady Stair's Close in the Old Town. Their large family was made up of six sons and four daughters. When Susan was fifteen she lost her mother, and soon afterwards she was taken by her father to visit at Inverary Castle, the seat of his patron the Duke. Here a new world was opened to the plainly brought up Edinburgh girl. Here for the first time she saw fashion and the 'high life,' and here – either on this or some subsequent occasion – she formed several acquaintances which were destined to influence her career. Under John, fifth Duke of Argyll, society at the Castle had at that period a somewhat literary and artistic tone. Among its visitors was the accomplished Lady Charlotte Campbell – afterwards Lady Charlotte Bury – a name which, if unknown to the present generation, was once of some repute in the world of letters. Lady Charlotte was the Duke's younger daughter, and had inherited much of the beauty of her mother, the celebrated Elizabeth Gunning. She was just seven years older than Susan Ferrier, was distinguished by a passion for the belles-lettres, and was accustomed to do the honours of Scotland to the literary celebrities of the time. During the year of Miss Ferrier's first visit to the Castle, she published anonymously a first literary venture, which bore the conventional title of 'Poems upon Several Occasions,' by 'A Lady.'

It may readily be guessed that this fascinating and high-born personage – distinguished as she was by the honours and the romance of authorship – produced her due impression on the imagination of the young visitor. Susan's literary instincts must certainly have been quickened by the intimacy – for a friendship which lasted till death sprung up between herself and Lady Charlotte. But, if she was a gainer in one direction from the acquaintance, I am inclined to believe that she was a loser in another. Years after, when she herself became an authoress, her earliest work was disfigured by direct and unsparing portraiture of living persons among her acquaintance. Now no doubt this kind of writing may be productive of extreme mirth to persons qualified to read between the lines, and it must be acknowledged that Miss Ferrier's talent has made the mirth outlast its immediate occasion. Still, judged as art, this kind of thing is neither great nor gracious, and to her credit be it said that the authoress of Marriage lived to see that this was so, and to amend her style accordingly. It may be noted, however, that the works attributed to her friend Lady Charlotte include conspicuous instances of a similar error in taste. Amid the vicissitudes of many years, her ladyship lived to produce a number of works of fiction, of the contents of which such titles as Flirtation, The Journal of the Heart, A Marriage in High Life, may afford some indication. But the single work with which in the present day her name is associated – and if she never acknowledged the authorship, it must be remembered that she resisted all provocations to deny it – is the notorious Diary in which a lady-in-waiting of Caroline of Brunswick has chronicled the follies and indiscretions of that unhappy princess, and the unpleasantnesses of daily life in her Court. Bearing this in mind, one can scarcely regard the brilliant Lady Charlotte as the best of friends for a young woman, her inferior in years and station, though greatly her superior in talent.

Among other visitors met by Susan at Inverary, two may be particularised as having afterwards contributed by their oddities to enliven the pages of her first book. These were the eccentric Mrs Seymour Damer, the amateur sculptor and friend of Horace Walpole, and Lady Ferrers, widow of the peer who was hanged for the murder of his steward. With a Miss Clavering, a grand-daughter of the Duke, who was a child of eight at the time of her first visit to the Castle, she struck up an eager friendship. An animated correspondence was started between them, some of the letters in which have been preserved. These are for the most part undated, but have reference to a work of fiction which the young ladies proposed to undertake in partnership, and it is thus that the germ of Marriage is first brought to light.

'I do not recollect,' says Miss Ferrier, writing in high spirits; 'I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable solitary highland dwelling among tall red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don't you think this would make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us try our hands on it.' And, later on, after submitting a portion of her work, she writes again: – 'I am boiling to hear from you, but I've taken a remorse of conscience about Lady Maclaughlan and her friends: if I was ever to be detected, or even suspected, I would have nothing for it but to drown myself. I mean, therefore, to let her alone till I hear from you, as I think we might compound some other kind of character for her that might do as well and not be so dangerous. As to the misses, if ever it was to be published they must be altered or I must fly my native land.'

In this passage, even after allowing for girlish facetiousness of expression, Susan Ferrier appears in the character of an accomplished 'quiz,' sailing dangerously close to the wind. Of course her correspondent is delighted with the specimen of work submitted to her, and will not hear of anything being altered. What school-girl would? She essays to allay her friend's fear of discovery, and offers to take the responsibility of the personalities upon herself. In a subsequent letter, dated December 1810, she describes reading the manuscript to Lady Charlotte during a drive. Her ladyship laughed as she had never been seen to laugh before, and pronounced the fragment 'without the least exception the cleverest thing that ever was written' – a verdict which after more detailed examination she endorsed in writing, declaring it to be 'capital, with a dash under it.' Not otherwise do the thoughtless and light-hearted egg each other on to mischief.

But Miss Ferrier was by this time eight-and-twenty years of age. Her native strong good sense asserted itself, and for a long time she resolutely declined to publish her work. (I ought ere this to have explained that the intended collaboration with Miss Clavering had fallen through, the sole passage contributed by the younger lady being the brief and not particularly interesting History of Mrs Douglas). In course of time, however, the merits of the book became known to persons having more authority to judge them than Lady Charlotte Bury or her niece. Mr Blackwood, the publisher, read the manuscript, and strongly urged the authoress to prepare it for publication; whilst no less a personage than Sir Walter Scott, in the conclusion to his Tales of My Landlord– then seemingly in proof – referred flatteringly to a 'very lively work entitled Marriage,' and singled out its author for mention among writers of fiction capable of gathering in the rich harvest afforded by Scottish character. At length, in 1818 – after undergoing several changes in the interval – the book was given to the world. It was published anonymously, and the authoress, speaking at a later date, professes to have believed that her name 'never would be guessed at, or the work heard of beyond a very limited sphere.' But from such obscurity the gallery of portraits which it contained must alone have sufficed to save it. For, in addition to the two ladies already mentioned – whose oddities appear to have contributed jointly to the inimitable figure of Lady Maclaughlan – the three spinster aunts were drawn from certain Misses Edmonstone, whilst Mrs Fox represented Mary, Lady Clerk, a well-known Edinburgh character of the time. It must not, however, be supposed that the vogue of the book depended upon adventitious circumstances alone; for Marriage soon became popular far beyond the limits of any local set. In London it was attributed to the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and it is even stated to have been very successful in a French translation.

Its success at home can surprise no one, for never before had the idiosyncrasies of Scottish society been so vigorously pourtrayed. As has already been seen, the means adopted for showing them off are ingeniously contrived. At the commencement of the story we are introduced to the beautiful but shallow and artificial Juliana, the Earl of Courtland's only daughter – a young lady who has been trained solely with a view to social success and the formation of a brilliant alliance, the more solid parts of education having in her case been systematically neglected. She is betrothed to the elderly Duke of L – , but at the last moment throws him over and elopes to Scotland. The companion of her flight is Douglas, a handsome young officer in the army, the child of Scotch parents, but brought up in England by a wealthy adoptive father. The honeymoon is scarce over when the young people find themselves, not only partially disabused of their illusions, but in actual pecuniary straits. Juliana's elopement has hopelessly alienated the Earl; whilst Douglas, absent from his regiment without leave, is superseded in the Gazette. In these circumstances the only course open to them is to take up their quarters with the bridegroom's father, at his castle of Glenfern in the Highlands. Their proposal to do so is most cordially received, and now the irony of circumstance begins to declare itself. Lady Juliana has repeatedly protested that with the man of her choice she could be happy in a desert. But then her idea of a desert, as she avows when 'tis too late, is a beautiful place full of roses and myrtles, which, though very retired, would not be absolutely out of the world; where one could occasionally see one's friends and give déjeuners and fêtes champêtres. A very different kind of place is Glenfern Castle. After a long journey in a drizzling rain through dreary scenery, their destination is reached, and Juliana makes her entrée, attended by her footman and lady's-maid, surrounded by her lap-dogs, squirrel, and mackaw, and encumbered by all the paraphernalia of an artificial elegance. Never was there a meeting between more opposed extremes.

'At the entrance of the strangers, a flock of females rushed forward to meet them. Douglas good-humouredly submitted to be hugged by three long-chinned spinsters whom he recognised as his aunts, and warmly saluted five awkward purple girls he guessed to be his sisters: while Lady Juliana stood the image of despair, and, scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new relations.'

The three elderly spinsters are the Laird's sisters – Miss Jacky, who is esteemed the most sensible woman as well as the greatest orator in the parish, Miss Grizzy the platitudinous, and Miss Nicky, who is not wanting in sense either; and these representatives of a bygone social order are the most celebrated characters in the book.

Appalled by the sight of the surroundings amid which her life is to be spent, and distressed by the insolence of a pampered lady's-maid who instantly throws up her place, Juliana presently succumbs to hysterics.

'Douglas now attempted to account for the behaviour of his noble spouse by ascribing it to the fatigue she had lately undergone, joined to distress of mind at her father's unrelenting severity towards her.

'"O the amiable creature!" interrupted the unsuspecting spinsters, almost stifling her with their caresses as they spoke. "Welcome, a thousand times welcome, to Glenfern Castle!" said Miss Jacky. "Nothing shall be wanting, dearest Lady Juliana, to compensate for a parent's rigour, and make you happy and comfortable. Consider this as your future home. My sisters and myself will be as mothers to you: and see these charming young creatures," dragging forward two tall frightened girls, with sandy hair and great purple arms; "thank Providence for having blest you with such sisters!"

'"Don't speak too much, Jacky, to our dear niece at present," said Miss Grizzy; "I think one of Lady Maclaughlan's composing draughts would be the best thing for her – there can be no doubt about that."

'"Composing draughts at this time of day!" cried Miss Nicky; "I should think a little good broth a much wiser thing. There are some excellent family broth making below, and I'll desire Tibby to bring a few."

'"Will you take a little soup, love?" asked Douglas. His lady assented; and Miss Nicky vanished, but quickly re-entered, followed by Tibby, carrying a huge bowl of coarse Scotch broth, swimming with leeks, greens, and grease. Lady Juliana attempted to taste it, but her delicate palate revolted at the homely fare; and she gave up the attempt, in spite of Miss Nicky's earnest entreaties to take a few more of these excellent family broth.

'"I should think," said Henry, as he vainly attempted to stir it round, "that a little wine would be more to the purpose than this stuff."

'The aunts looked at each other; and, withdrawing to a corner, a whispering consultation took place, in which "Lady Maclaughlan's opinion, birch, balm, currant, heating, cooling, running risks," &c. &c. transpired. At length the question was carried; and some tolerable sherry, and a piece of very substantial short-bread, were produced.

'It was now voted by Miss Jacky, and carried nem. con., that her ladyship ought to take a little repose till the hour of dinner.'

So bad begins, but worse remains behind; for these are but the occurrences of a few hours, whilst the visit is to be of long duration. However enough has been said to indicate the lines along which the story now develops. The feather-pate Juliana is not of those to whom Time brings wisdom, and a further acquaintance with her surroundings only serves to bring to light fresh disgusts. The gaunt apparitions of the first evening grow no less tiresome as she knows them better, no less hopelessly remote from every habit, tradition or association of her life. But her poison is the reader's meat. In the course of the next few pages we are introduced to Miss Grizzy's friend, Lady Maclaughlan, a distinguished amateur of medicine and an object of awed admiration to the sisters. As this lady steps upon the scene – fearfully and wonderfully attired, and bearing in her hand her gold-headed cane – with her deep-toned voice, her mercilessly blunt remarks, and her uncompromising 'humph!' – her ineffectually recalcitrant little husband borne behind her much as if he were a parcel – she is certainly one of the most memorable figures in all fiction. And among the most laughable scenes in all fiction must certainly be counted those in which in high dudgeon she cuts short her visit to Glenfern Castle, and – still better, and indeed unsurpassable – in which the ill-starred spinsters, mistaking the day, arrive to visit her when they are not expected.

Nor must it for a moment be supposed that such creations as this and the Aunts are mere masterpieces of the caricaturist. In Miss Ferrier's best characters it may almost be said to be a rule that caricature enters only into the details, and is never allowed to interfere with the main outline. An accusation far more justly to be brought against the authoress of this book is that of hard-heartedness, or a defect of sympathy and even of toleration for her own creations. Susan Ferrier was an uncompromisingly candid woman, as her interesting account of the visits paid by her to Sir Walter Scott are enough to show. That her heart was a kind one we know; but when she took pen in hand it was not her way to extenuate anything. Neither was she given to view persons or occurrences through any softening light of imagination or feeling. 'What a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!' wrote another Scottish author. But she, having devised a farcically cruel situation, squares her shoulders and regards its development with a ruthlessness more proper perhaps to science than to art. Not a touch of compunction has she for her heroine – who, intolerably selfish and heartless as she is, is yet but a child and the victim of the harshest circumstance; not a touch of pity for the pathos and repression of such lives as those of the Aunts. In a word, tolerance is not her strong point. And, admirable as it is, her art yet suffers by the limitation of her sympathies. For one pines for the hundred little humanising touches by virtue of which the same characters – living though they be – might have lived with a fuller and more gracious life. It is stated that Miss Ferrier's favourite author was La Bruyère, and in such studies as those of Lady Placid and Mrs Wiseacre he is obviously the model followed. And, though her best creations surpass those of her master as a living character will always surpass an abstract type, yet in this, her earliest effort, she still retains a good deal too much of the frigid intellectual method of the Frenchman.

What will, perhaps, more generally be considered a legitimate ground for the unpleasant task of fault-finding is, however, the extremely inartistic construction of the book. As we approach the middle, we are surprised to find the interest shifted to an almost entirely new set of characters, who belong to a new generation. Thus at a time when Lady Juliana cannot be much more than eighteen years of age, she ceases to be prominent in the story, and after the briefest interval we are called on to follow the fortunes of her twin daughters, who are now nearing that age. The bridegroom, Douglas, and two of the Aunts disappear altogether from the book; and this is the more to be regretted because there are few readers but will infinitely prefer the racy humours of the elder generation to the insipid long-drawn-out love-affairs of the contrasted sisters, even when these are more or less successfully enlivened by the sallies of the shrewd Lady Emily, by the caricature figure of Dr Redgill the gourmand, and by the absurdities of the literary précieuses of Bath.

The success of Marriage, justified by its painting of Scottish manners and by the figures of Lady Maclaughlan and the spinster aunts, had the right effect upon the sterling Scottish character of the authoress. It led her to try how much better still she could do. Six years elapsed before the appearance of her next book, which was published in 1824 – like its predecessor, anonymously. Indeed secrecy as to her literary undertakings appears to have been one of the novelist's strongest desires; and, writing much of The Inheritance at Morningside House, near Edinburgh – where her father spent the summers – she complains of the smallness of the house as making concealment very difficult.

In the endeavour to improve upon her first achievement, Miss Ferrier was triumphantly successful. 'The new book,' wrote one of Mr Blackwood's correspondents at the time of its publication, 'is a hundred miles above Marriage.' Nor does this assertion overshoot the mark; for if the one is at most a bit of brilliant promise, the other is a superb performance. Foremost among its advantages must be counted, in place of the slip-slop of Marriage, an interesting and admirably-compacted plot, and a vigorous literary style – the latter marked indeed, yet not marred, by a mannerism of literary quotation. What was shapeless and redundant in Marriage is here moulded and restrained by exigencies of the story, with the result that characters well-defined, and skilfully contrasted and relieved, confront the reader standing boldly and firmly on their feet.

Several features of The Inheritance seem to have been suggested by the celebrated Douglas Cause. The Honourable Thomas St Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, has forfeited the countenance of his family by marrying out of his own rank in life. He settles with his wife in France, and here in the course of years a succession of deaths places him in the position of heir-presumptive to the earldom. He announces at head-quarters the important tidings that Mrs St Clair is expecting to be confined, and having done so, with the Earl's concurrence he and his wife prepare to return to Scotland. But the confinement takes place, prematurely, on the journey. A female child is born, after which event the projected return is indefinitely postponed. So much by way of proem. The opening of the story shows us Mrs St Clair, now a widow, and her daughter, Gertrude, a beautiful and blooming maiden, taking up their abode with the elderly and unmarried Lord Rossville, who recognises the young lady as heiress to his title and estates. Under his roof, attention is drawn to a likeness existing between Gertrude and the portrait of one Lizzie Lundie, a low-born beauty of a bygone day, who had sat as model for a painting in the Castle. This resemblance is noticed by more than one person, and on more than one occasion, and reference to it is generally accompanied by marks of agitation in Mrs St Clair. Meantime the youthful heiress has won the admiration of two young men, cousins of her own, who frequent the Castle – the handsome and elegant Colonel Delmour, a man of fashion and of the world, and the less showy but far deeper-natured Edward Lyndsay. A singular meeting now takes place between Mrs St Clair and a stranger named Lewiston, and soon afterwards it becomes apparent that the latter exercises a great, though unexplained, power over the lady. The stranger's identity is presently revealed as that of the husband – long supposed to be dead – of a nurse of Gertrude's, to whom she had been tenderly attached. At a nocturnal meeting with Lewiston, at which Mrs St Clair has by entreaty, and by throwing out vague threats, compelled her daughter to be present, Lyndsay arrives upon the scene in time to save Gertrude from molestation, and thus earns her gratitude. However Delmour now declares his passion, which Gertrude returns – with the result that an understanding is come to between them. But the Earl has other intentions regarding the disposal of the hand of his heir, which for family and political reasons he designs to confer upon the Colonel's elder brother, a colourless man-of-affairs. By asserting her independence in this matter, Gertrude provokes Lord Rossville's displeasure; but the unforeseen effect of his lordship's purblind and blundering intervention is merely to bring to light the fact that Lyndsay also is in love with his beautiful cousin. The Earl, who has power to dispose of his possessions as he pleases, is meditating to disinherit Gertrude on account of her disobedience, when his sudden death leaves her free to follow her own wishes. In the meantime, Delmour's conduct has supplied ground for doubting the purity of his motives; whilst Lyndsay, who has again come to her rescue in a trying interview with Lewiston, has shown himself throughout a staunch friend to her best interests. But Gertrude is now Countess of Rossville in her own right; her lover returns to her side, and she is herself too noble-minded to question his disinterestedness. Under his influence she launches out into a variety of extravagant schemes, and going to London, where she becomes the admired of all admirers, devotes herself wholly to the pleasures of society, which for a time have rather an injurious effect upon her character. Lyndsay makes an appeal to her better self, but amid the excitement of her surroundings his remonstrance passes unheeded. Jaded by the excesses of fashionable life, at the end of the season she returns to Rossville, where the intrusive Lewiston, who has been thought drowned, now again appears upon the scene, and provoked by her disdainful treatment divulges the secret that she is the daughter, not of Mrs St Clair, but of her nurse, and that consequently she has no title to her present position. Overwhelmed by this intelligence, which Mrs St Clair's confession confirms, Gertrude loses no time in informing her lover of the true state of matters, and in so doing reveals the miserable shallowness of his nature. Delmour's love for the beautiful and high-spirited girl is genuine; but nameless and without fortune as she now is, he hesitates to fulfil his engagement towards her. Her love for him has been of such a different nature that she is well-nigh broken-hearted by the discovery. But the faithful Lyndsay stands her friend in need, and the book closes with her reinstatement, long afterwards, as his wife, in the brilliant position which she has already wrongly, though innocently, occupied.

The plot of The Inheritance, of which the above is a sketch, is a model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the narrative is perfect. Indeed the form of the story could not be improved – a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction; and though the book is a long one, it contains not a superfluous page. Among the numerous authors quoted in the course of it are Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists, and perhaps, without stretching probability too far, we may assume that the authoress had studied the latter as well as the former. In any case The Inheritance in its own degree unites principal characteristics of the Greek and the Shakespearian drama, for the web of circumstance inexorably woven about the innocent and unconscious heroine is entirely in the manner of the first, whilst the indifferent, life-like alternation of tragic and ludicrous incident in the narrative is of a piece with Shakespeare's irony. No finer example of the latter could be cited than the impressive scene in which Lord Rossville, looking blankly from his window one snowy afternoon, is amazed to see a hearse approaching the Castle. Out of the vehicle, when it has reached the door, steps his lordship's pet aversion and the reader's delight – the undaunted and ubiquitous Miss Pratt. The voluble lady has a long story to tell of the circumstances which have compelled her to resort to this unconventional mode of conveyance, whilst the pompous Earl is scandalised at the general impropriety of the proceedings, and especially at thought of the hearse of Mr McVitae, the Radical distiller, putting up for the night at the Castle. However there is no help for it; nor as it turns out is the visit so ill-timed as had seemed, for the next morning Lord Rossville is discovered dead upon his bed.

But if the book is remarkable for its admirable story, certainly not less remarkable is it for the extraordinary wealth of character which it portrays. Probably few 'novels of plot' are so rich in character, few 'novels of character' so strong in plot. It may be that some carping critic of the ungentle sex will be found to object to Lyndsay and to Delmour, the contrasted lovers of the heroine, as to 'a woman's men' – to urge that their demeanour is too consistently emotional, too demonstrative, to be founded upon any very solid base of character or of disposition. But supposing (which I am far from granting) that there were some truth in this, here at any rate all ground even for hypercriticism must end. And where in fiction is there a heroine more charming and more lovable than Gertrude St Clair – gentle yet high-spirited as she is, natural, and the soul of truth? Her pretended mother – ambitious and worldly-minded, violent, embittered by the slights and mortifications of her youth and bent vindictively upon retaliation – rises to the dignity of tragedy. Then we have the inimitable rattle and busybody, Miss Pratt, at home everywhere except in her own house, and incessantly referring to the sayings and doings of an invisible 'Anthony Whyte' – a very masterpiece of humorous delineation; and old Adam Ramsay, the cross-grained, misanthropic, Indian uncle, who yet compels our sympathy by his sentimental attachment to the home of his boyhood, and his constancy to the memory of his ill-starred love. Miss Bell Black, afterwards Mrs Major Waddell, is delightful in her perfect inanity and fatuity; and though her creator may not yet have learned to suffer fools gladly, she certainly has by this time mastered the art of portraying 'as though she loved' them. The Earl of Rossville, puffed up by a sense of his own importance, long-winded, sesquepedalian and null; Miss Lilly, the poetess, her Cockney lover and her brothers; gentle Anne Black; Miss Becky Duguid, the accommodating poor relation; Mrs Fairbairn, the materfamilias; and the peasant-woman whose misguided foresight leads her to prepare betimes her ailing husband's dead-clothes, – all of them are admirable, and all bear evidence of being freshly observed from the life. But the writer has learnt the lesson of substituting poetic for local truth; and if any portraits appear in this gallery – and it is stated that Adam Ramsay to some extent represents the authoress's father – they are such as can no longer rightly give offence to anyone. Miss Ferrier had reached middle life when she wrote The Inheritance, and perhaps the laughter which it provokes is less boisterous than that aroused by the first essays of her youth. But for a scene of high comedy – to select one from many – the first conversation of Miss Pratt and Uncle Adam would certainly be difficult to surpass. Finally, we have abundant evidence that in all that she wrote our authoress was actuated by a genuine desire for the moral and religious welfare of her reader; but in comparison to that of Marriage, her tone in this book is as is the influence of a well-guided life to a sententious homily delivered from a pulpit. In one word, there is no single point in her art in which she has not risen from what is crude and tentative to what is finished and masterly.