A MODERN LADY-NOVELIST
In the olden days, when fighting was the principal business of men, and the womenfolk had nought to do but stay at home and wait for the return of their lords, all feminine imagination, stimulated by the songs of minstrels, found vent in the weaving of storied tapestries or silken scarves for the warriors. But in these later days of peace and commerce and culture, when wives are individuals, and not merely rated among their husband’s personal effects, and the measured roll of the printing press is the voice of the civilised world, the imaginative woman wields the pen, and leaves the needle and the bodkin to her humbler-minded sisters. So we have the lady-novelist, who is really the most important and productive type of literary woman. But, when all is said and done, the ordinary lady-novelist, who turns out her three volumes in accordance with the stereotyped taste of the novel-reading clientèle of the circulating libraries, is scarcely much more interesting as a personality than the fashionable modiste who composes her costumes to suit the taste of her customers.
Mrs. Talespinner, however, is not of the ordinary type. She has a distinct personality of her own, and is altogether a remarkable woman. In every respect she stands apart from the brood of lady-novelists of the day; indeed, one might more aptly describe her as the lady-novelist of the day after to-morrow, so rapidly does she stride in advance of current feminine fiction. She belongs to the so-called realistic school and this has not yet been really invaded by women-writers, who are always more prone to conventionality than men, and as a rule, observe the sentimental association of facts rather than the facts themselves. Therefore, the appearance of a woman in the ranks of the “realists” attracted immediate attention, and the singularity of the position lent her works a cachet which their intrinsic force and cleverness confirmed. Mrs. Talespinner is a woman of quite conspicuous ability and extraordinary application, but she is a curious compound of weakness and strength.
Her mental vigour and intellectual strength are remarkable, especially in a woman, but these elements of power are qualified by the ease with which outside influences, often weak in themselves, can switch her opinions from one line of thought to another. She will, on this account, never be a literary force, like George Eliot, for instance, or the Brontës. She has the audacity of her opinions rather than the courage, for courage implies strength, and in opinion she is weak; while even her prejudices, of which she has accumulated a plentiful store, are always wavering. But this sensibility to influence is a useful quality in the “realistic” novelist, though it may be damaging to the literary artist. Now, Mrs. Talespinner is usually true in observation and vivid in description, but this frailty in the matter of opinion makes her uncertain in the selection of her material. She is so afraid of being conventional that she will treat subjects and include details which perhaps delicacy—not mere prudery—would suppress, which, however scientifically interesting, may be contrary to the first principle of art, namely, the producing of an impression of beauty. Yet Mrs. Talespinner is a woman of personal refinement, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of art and nature. As a novelist, however, her metier has so far been the startling of sensitive temperaments by wonderfully vivid descriptions of unpleasant characters amid unpleasant surroundings, without the omission of a single repulsive or disagreeable detail which could help to realise the story and its moral. For this reason there is a constant demand for Mrs. Talespinner’s books. The newspaper critics may abuse them, but the publishers keep a commercial eye upon them, and everybody reads them. Therefore Mrs. Talespinner may regard herself as a success.
So far I have told you about my friend in her literary, or, I may say, her public capacity only. But to really appreciate Mrs. Talespinner, one must know her in her home, one must have enjoyed her frequent companionship. Outsiders, who judge her only from the virile vigour of her writings, and the audacity of her subjects and their treatment, or those even who know her only through the daring frankness of her conversation, can have no idea of the essential womanliness of her nature. No woman, perhaps, ever so thoroughly got mentally on the outside of herself, and lived intellectually apart from her own womanhood. Thus she is a kind of female version of “Hyde and Jekyll,” the Hyde being her literary personality, the Jekyll her sentimental self. It is, therefore, very difficult to know her as she actually is. She will, for instance, catch at some view of a subject which is in direct opposition to that held by those with whom she is conversing, and will obstinately argue it out, merely for the intellectual pleasure she derives from the independence of the position she has assumed. She may really be in exact accord with her hearers, but the delight to her of saying startling things, and of warring with words, is similar to that experienced by the skilful boxer in a bout with the gloves. But she is not a good stayer, and she is frequently beaten by an argumentative blow that is straight and strong, while she is honest enough to own her defeat afterwards, though perhaps not immediately.
She always relies on her strength, but yet knows her weakness; for she will frankly avow that she is easily influenced. In the course of conversation, however, she will sometimes be carried away by fine-sounding phrases which, analysed, are mere verbiage. She will make statements which may be quite foreign to her real nature, and, to those who do not know her, she will convey an entirely false impression of her mental tone, though her mind will have flashed its vitality before them like a heliograph. The essential qualities of her mind, in fact, are catholicity of interest, active audacity, and the quickness and vividness with which she receives an idea, or perceives a fact, and passes it out again through the crucible of her own sentiency and experience. It is the same whether she be conversing on any topic of the day or writing one of her stories. The idyls and the epics of life, the romantic love-story, the heroism of noble souls, interest her without impelling her pen to activity; but her literary and conversational enthusiasm is aroused by those sordid realities which the daily journals bring to light, by those stories of life in which the morality is crook-backed and twisted and the humanity limps with a cloven hoof.
Yet Mrs. Talespinner herself has none of these moral twistings, though it is through no fault of her own if opinions to the contrary get abroad; for she has that perverse spirit which always prompts the excursionist to walk in those places where he reads that “trespassers will be prosecuted.” True, this very spirit dates from Eve herself, but it is the key-note of the modern “realistic” novelist. Conventionality writes up the warning, and the literary realist defiantly trespasses, and takes the consequences, which are invariably notoriety and its attendant commercial success.
Mrs. Talespinner is, as a matter of fact, morally quite conventional, though she indulges in conversational and literary unconventionalities. But, fortunately, she has a husband who understands her as woman while he admires her as writer, being able to distinguish between her intellectual self and her sentimental. Thus he can sympathise with her literary ambitions without necessarily approving the results, and thus he finds happiness in his home, where a less discriminating and less generous man might find only domestic unrest. For with Mrs. Talespinner her literary work is the dominating interest of her life, though she will tell you, and convince herself, that all her ambition is centred in her little sons, whom she purposes educating with a view to their one day being Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, as these, to quote her own words are “the only professions which are not overcrowded.” This is the extent of Mrs. Talespinner’s practical interest in her nursery—the future careers of her baby sons. She does not spend much time with them during the day, not that she is not very fond of them, but children fidget her and interrupt her writing. When, however, she does admit them to her presence, she does not attempt to play with them, but talks to them seriously and grandly of her pride in their progress towards high estates, and makes them promise, poor little mites! to be Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, and instructs them prematurely in their duties. As to seeing to the details of their nursery existence—well, they have an excellent and trustworthy nurse, and their father enjoys that kind of thing. Hers is the pride and privilege to care for them intellectually. She has made up her mind that they shall be great men, that their greatness may reflect upon her as their mother, and she candidly tells you that she only wishes to write brilliantly and successfully enough for people in after years to say, “No wonder they are such talented men—they had a clever mother.”
Mrs. Talespinner’s husband, by his perpetual patience, good-humour, and large-mindedness, prevents his wife’s literary engrossment becoming domestically aggressive. Like all women, when they undertake any professional occupation, she is what one may call “shoppy.” She talks continually about her works in process of composition, and regards everything from the point of view of “copy.” Whenever she makes any new acquaintance who perhaps is not conversant with her literary fame, she soon insidiously alludes to her writings, and introduces quotations from them; and then her husband, who is something of a wag in his way, will seriously remark, “You may perhaps have gathered that my wife writes a little,” and then there will be a general laugh, and Mrs. Talespinner’s literary exuberance and self-advertisement will pass as humorous, and become a source of interest instead of boredom to her new acquaintances. And one special virtue of Mrs. Talespinner’s is that she is quite as open to good-humoured chaff as to criticism, and is as ready to laugh at herself as at any one else. She has the fin-de-siècle lack of reverence, and will hold nothing sacred from a joke or a humorous analysis—not even the family dinner. Though she can order as good a dinner as any one of my acquaintance, and has the worldly wisdom to cultivate the constancy of an excellent cook by allowing her to be the autocrat of the kitchen, she sometimes takes it into her head to direct the tradesmen not to call for orders, as the ringing of bells disturbs her flow of thought. Then she quite forgets to send her directions until her husband comes home from the City and hungrily suggests dinner, which is consequently two or three hours late. But he, good-natured man, is quite satisfied to wait, so long as his wife has been content with her day’s work.
Then her casual way of housekeeping occurs to them both as humorous, and perhaps while they are still at dinner the printer’s proof of some serial story she is writing for a newspaper will arrive, and the rest of the meal will have to take care of itself. Surely her husband can help himself to the pudding; besides some day his amiability and devotion will furnish her with “copy,” and how can she, when she comes to draw him as a character, describe his qualities with her customary graphic power unless she tests them under all circumstances? And her husband falling in with her literary humour, accepts all these things with equanimity. For he knows her, not only in her moods of literary enthusiasm or “shoppiness,” or when she is playing with paradoxes and making sensational statements merely for bravado. He knows her when she is wooed to gentler moods by the soft persuasive influence of the twilight, when the evening star “washes the dusk with silver,” and the realities of life lose themselves in the mystic poetry of the hour, and every feeling sings in tune the divine melody of love, when the realistic lady-novelist, as well as the woman of humble toil, mutely realises that it is a good thing to be loved by a good husband and sweet children. He knows her then, and both are content for always.