The Female Portrait Gallery

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The Female Portrait Gallery By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Taken from Blanchard’s Life and Literary Remains 1841

Note:

Flora Mac Ivor

THE FEMALE PORTRAIT GALLERY.

WAVERLEY.

No.1.—FLORA MAC IVOR.

The time immediately preceding that of Sir Walter Scott may be likened to the thirty years' drought in Cyprus, during which, as an old historian says, the earth had neither green nor bloom, and the heavens seemed made of brass. The brilliant age of Pope, the wittiest in our language, had left only a cold reflection—poetry was no more, and with it had perished the animating influence it exercises over prose. The fictions put forth were of the lowest order. A castle, a ghost, an improbable villain, an impossible hero, a heroine and a harp, were the joint-stock of romances; while novels of manners were, if they could be so, still less like real life. Nothing could be more insipid than the rakes reformed in the third volume, unless it were the ladies, all loveliness and ill-luck. Inventions lacked the vivifying principle—truth; and the inevitable consequence was, the copied and the common-place. "Waverley" was the avater of a new era; and established, as it now is, among our English classics, justice cannot be done to its merits without reference to its contemporaries—"the dwindled race of little men"—the hewers of wood, and the drawers of water, where their great forefathers had planted the forest, and sank the "pure well of English undefiled."

"Waverley" was at once a novel of character, like those of Fielding and Richardson; and one of adventure, like those of Defoe; but it had that peculiar stamp of its own which genius alone can give. Founded, like the old ballads, on tradition, it entered the province of poetry, while the time in which it was written gave enlightenment, and the writer's mind its own shrewdness, sharpened by that dry humour which is essentially of Scottish growth. Scott is the founder of a new school—the picturesque, which now, more or less, influences all our writers. "Waverley" was a succession of pictures—both landscape and portrait—indeed all his characters give the idea of portraits rather than of inventions.

Flora Mac Ivor belongs to poetry—poetry which takes the highest order of qualities, to fashion into beauty, and quicken into life. It was the first attempt to give the ideal to female character in prose, if we except the "Clementina" and "Clarissa" of Richardson. But, despite of his great merits, Richardson had one fault, fatal to the lasting popularity of an author—he was too conventional. The excellent and the beautiful had no wide grasp—to-day was too much with him; he dwelt on "nice observances," and made goodness so dependent on forms and ceremonies, that the spirit was lost while attending to the shape; yet some of his conceptions are singularly fine. I know nothing in all our old drama so fertile in striking situations, so utterly desolate, as Clarissa in her wretched lodging, seated calmly at work on her shroud. She is young, but the grave yawns at her feet; she is beautiful, but the pride of loveliness is gone by for ever: delicately nurtured, she lacks the common necessaries of life, and made to be cherished and beloved, she is deserted by relative and friend. It was a great moral truth that made Richardson feel that it was impossible for such a story to end happily—it would have been to make evil work out its own reward. Clarissa could not marry Lovelace: to marry him had been to swear love and respect; the pure and noble nature must have been perverted before she could have felt either: all Clarissa could do was to forgive, and that only on her death-bed, and in the presence of her God.

But Scott possessed what Richardson lacked, the general, and the picturesque. "Flora Mac Ivor" has those qualities which we all like to believe belong to human nature; the ideal is but the realization, in a palpable form, of our noblest emotions, of our highest aspirations. Generous and high-spirited as she is, Flora never goes beyond what we wish, and what we feel, a woman might be. Generally speaking, the female character is developed through the medium of affection—till she loves, she has rarely felt, consequently rarely thought much—for thoughts are but the representatives of past feelings—it is the heart that awakens the mind in woman. But Flora Mac Ivor is among the exceptions to this rule. I believe that the imaginative, and the highly-gifted, are the least susceptible; when they do love, it is with the depth and the energy to which themselves give strength; but the imagination rarely at first seeks an object where it must depend; it likes to feel its freedom, and its earliest pursuit is usually unselfish and abstract.

Flora's imagination has an object in its loyalty—and her affection in her brother. If there be one tie on earth, dear even as love, it is that which unites an only brother and sister, left together orphans in their childhood. If "heaven lies around us in our infancy," there is something sacred in the love—an instinct with that earliest time. It grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength; it has the confidence of marriage without its care; and, cemented by those mutual associations, whose want is so often and so severely felt in married life, it has the tenderness with none of the jealous anxiety of love. The very faults of Fergus, perhaps, did but draw the tie closer between himself and his sister. It is pleasant to excuse, when hope brings the promises of the future to palliate the errors of the past. We can imagine the youthful Highlanders returning to a country, dearer for absence; and under actual disappointment, looking forward as only youth can look. In after life the heart sinks back upon itself—we have not courage to hope.

Nothing, to use the word so peculiarly his own, can be more picturesque than the first introduction of Fergus and his sister; and while the chieftain's animation in his cause carries us along, we cannot but feel that it is Flora who infuses into their loyalty its nobler elements. It is to the credit of our nature that the generous impulse, the unselfish devotion, are never without their influence; but it is a fearful thing to influence others; every thought we have suggested, every action we have stimulated, rise, if their issue be unsuccessful, in terrible array against us. Our own fate we might have borne, but regret becomes remorse when we have urged on that of another. Clarissa might sew the garment of death calmly—it was for herself; but Flora sits sewing the shroud of her brother—the young, the gifted, the high-spirited Fergus, the last of their ancient line—the prematurely doomed chief of Glennaquoich. I never could read without tears his sister's bitter self-reproaches, that she had been the one to urge him on, and—to the scaffold! It is the cry of the heart-broken, when she so passionately exclaims, "Oh! that I could but remember to have said to him, he that strikes by the sword, shall die by the sword." It is a relief to think of Flora in the silence and the solitude of the cloister. The gates of life are as much closed upon her as if she had passed through those of death. The cause lost on which she had perilled what was dearer than existence, and the house of Stuart again in hopeless exile; her beloved brother in his early and ignominious grave—what remained for Flora but to ask her own tomb from that Heaven, the only light through the black veil of the order of St. Dominick.

Rose Bradwardine

No. 2.— ROSE BRADWARDINE.

There is one felicity of style which is peculiarly Scott's own; the very happy names which he gives his dramatis personæ. Whether of grace or of humour, they are singularly characteristic. Literary godfathers and godmothers, like those in real

life, have much to answer for, on the score of the inappropriate. This complaint cannot be urged against the natural and charming heiress of Tully Vedarose, by name, and rose by nature; neither lover nor poet could have imagined a more fitting emblem for the lovely girl, whose youth and bloom are in exquisite contrast to the various venerable objects by which she is surrounded—from the ancient tower, where she "makes a sunshine in a shady place,"to the ancient baillie Mac Wheeble, whose heart, crusted as it is with native and professional selfishness, has yet one warm and soft touch of affection for the child he has seen grow to all but womanhood beneath his eyes. Scott indicates, to use an expressive Irishism, "what a darling she is," by the attachment she inspires in all around. No one makes the heart of a little home circle entirely their own, without some very sweet gifts of nature—we must love to be beloved. That Waverley did not in the first instance yield his heart—"rescue or no rescue"—militates nothing against Rose's attraction. Lord Byron says, "In youth we like something older than ourselves, in age something younger." This is most especially true in a youth of imaginative temperament. He looks for a goddess, and it is rarely till more than one cloud has melted into bodiless air, that he begins to think that the claims of a young and pretty woman are at least equal to his own. What at first he asked from love, were excitement and romance; as he goes on he discovers, that the real pearl of price is affection. Rose Bradwardine is a simple, unaccomplished, but not uneducated girl. The old baron, in spite of his oddities, is a thorough-bred gentleman. Gentle breeding is Rose's by heritage. Every thing about her indicates native refinement. All her tastes have a delicate touch of poetry—from her little chamber in the turret, overlooking the loveliest point of landscape, down to the flower beds, which the old domestic forgets his dignity so far as to dig with his own hands for the sake of Miss Rose.

It is the most natural thing in the world that she should love Edward Waverley. He is the first young and accomplished cavalier that she has seen. He treats her with kindness, and immediately she is in a situation to render him service, the most attaching position possible to the generosity of a woman's nature; to succour is with her almost to love. Secluded and simple-minded, the young and warm-hearted Rose could not be without romance; romance born of the purest poetry, and the keenest sensibility. The unconscious awakening of love in such a heart, is one of the loveliest objects in nature. It is the first ruffling of the dove's plumage in the dewy light of morning, warm with the quick pulse that beats beneath the rainbow colours, varying the expanding yet timid wings. Flora Mac Ivor, with her affectionate care for one who is to her like a sweet younger sister, was right in deeming Rose the fitting bride for the representative of the Waverleys. She would have found her mental superiority very much in the way of domestic felicity. To look up is the natural feminine position. While Rose would have been lost in delighted admiration when her husband showed her a design for a temple to end some newly-cut vista in the woods of Waverley Honour, or read to her his latest translation of a sonnet from "Petrarch," Flora would fain have urged to those more active, if more dangerous pursuits, which gain man place among his fellows. While the one would have exclaimed—

Shame to the coward thought that ere betray'd, The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade;"

the other would only have felt the happiness of being at his side. Flora was fit to be compeer and companion to one who allowed her superiority because he knew his own. She would have been "worthy to be the bride of Pericles;" while Rose was just suited to the quiet, unpretending gentleman, who looked to his landed property for his ambition, and to his hearth for his enjoyments. Rose was right in her answer, when Flora spoke of Edward Waverley wandering along his park by moonlight, with his beautiful wife hanging on his arm—"and she will be a very happy woman." The prophecy brought its own fulfilment.

Julia Mannering

GUY MANNERING.

No. 3.—JULIA MANNERING.

There is one point of view in which the Waverley novels may be considered peculiarly suited to our age, which piques itself on its utilitarism, viz. the capital which they have been the means of circulating; in paper, printing, bookbinding, and conveyance of the volumes, which amount to an immense sum; and there is no country civilized enough for literature where they are not to be found. But one benefit they have conferred has been expressly for Scotland, and the head of Walter Scott would be the fittest sign for every inn in the land of cakes. He originated the taste for travelling there, now so universal. Sixty years ago a tour through the Highlands was much about what a tour through Crim Tartary would be considered at present. Now, how few there are among those who travel at all, but have sailed on—

"Lovely Loch Achray. Where shall they find in foreign land, So lone a lake—so sweet a strand."

Few but have passed the Trossachs; and though I plead guilty to the weakness of feeling it a shock to hear of a steam-boat on Loch Katrine, yet, considering that a steam-boat makes that a pleasure for the many, which would otherwise be confined to the few, the dark chimney may smoke through

"Every vale, Rent from the Saxon and the Gael."

In nothing more than in travelling are the picturesque and the useful blended together, and Scotland is now, thanks to the author of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," classic ground; it is filled with associations—it is peopled with the past.

It is no paradox to say, that the country is never so much enjoyed as by the dwellers in cities. How many are there who live eleven months on the hope of the twelfth given to some brief but delightful wandering. Even in the dull and mindless routine of a watering-place, where shrimps and rabbles are the Alpha and Omega of the day, there is refreshment and relief; and how much are these increased, when the perceptions, as well as the sensations, are called into play? How much poetical feeling, how much enthusiasm, has the perusal of some favourite work excited in the minds of those about to visit the scenes depicted. How much was the actual enjoyment heightened by the various remembrances called up; what a store of pleasant reminiscences must be carried home to the fire-side, and what a new pleasure to open some page of glowing description, now familiar to the eye as well as to the fancy. It is impossible for even the most common-place mind not to gain something of the refined and the ideal in such a process; and in the mutual intercourse thus established between two countries, separated by old hostilities, number less prejudices, and some unkindness must have been swept away in a manner unusually conciliating to both parties. "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," are international links.

"Guy Mannering" is a novel of modern manners, or rather of modern date; for with one or two exceptions, the district is so remote, that the customs are of the olden time. In the admirably drawn character of Colonel Mannering, ample reason is found for its locale—he is the very man to whom the seclusion of a wild country would be its chief attraction. The habits of a man accustomed to command—especially on a foreign station, would necessarily be reserved and secluded. Not only accustomed to implicit obedience, but aware of its imperative necessity under the circumstances in which they have been placed, such are apt to expect it from all. Now, what is but the necessary authority in official life, and with man over man, seems harshness when extended to woman. How often, perhaps, must Colonel Mannering's decision have seemed sternness, his reserve coldness, his ab indifference, and his authority tyranny, to a young, spoilt, and pretty woman. Her attachment would not be diminished, for his high qualities ensured that respect needful for the duration of affection; but he had also those which keep the imagination alive, and of that, feminine love is "all compact." We can also believe that Colonel Mannering was very fond of his wife, though shy of showing it, even to herself; above all, his pride would revolt from any of that display before others in which she would take an excusable vanity. Pride on the one hand—petulance on the other, would soon lead to misunderstanding, the weaker party would soon be forced to yield, and the yielding would be less palatable from the consciousness of having been wrong. Colonel Mannering is a strictly just man, but not one to make allowances; a weakness would irritate him as much as a fault. Deceit is the offspring of fear, especially with woman; and the sophistry of—

"It is such a trifle it cannot matter,"

is too easy not to be tempting in practice. We have dwelt on Colonel Mannering's character—for the whole story grows out of it; and, moreover, it formed both that of his wife and daughter. But while Julia's habits and opinions were from her mother, she inherited some of the qualities of her father—the high spirit, the quick feeling, and the intelligence, are of paternal origin—she would understand and justify any confidence that might be placed in her. There is something singularly natural in her letters: gay, ignorant of reality, yet with a native quick perception, they are just what a clever, spoilt, self-witted girl, quite unacquainted with the world, would write. The inherent good feeling and sense of propriety soon show themselves, and it is a relief that the clandestine correspondence in which we find her engaged has so many extenuating circumstances; for in spite of moonlight, rope-ladders, and a chaise-and-four, the love affair, carried on in opposition and secrecy, will mostly end ill. Deception is always an evil, but in youth—youth, whose very faults should be open-hearted and impetuous, it lays the foundation of the worst possible faults of character. More over, unromantic as it may sound, the objections of the elder party are often more wisely founded than their juniors are tempted to admit, and life has no wretchedness equal to an ill-assorted marriage—it is the sepulchre of the heart, haunted by the ghosts of past affections, and hopes gone by for ever.

Lucy Bertram

No.4.—LUCY BERTRAM.

Lucy Bertram's story is that of many others where nature and fortune are at variance—the one as slavish as the other is niggard. Nature gave Lucy Bertram the lovely face and the sweet disposition, but fortune surrounded her with difficulties and sorrows. From her cradle, whose companion was the coffin of her mother, her young life must have been one of anxiety and of struggle. Her natural good sense would soon show the embarrassments which were daily thickening around her ruined father, while she must see the fruitlessness of her own efforts to retrieve or assist. From the time that she could think at all her thoughts must have been sad and careful ones ; and what strength, yet sweetness of character, they gradually developed! A quick perception of propriety is the chief characteristic of her mind, while warm, but timid affection, is that of her heart. I know no circumstances so melancholy as those of a decayed family: the very fact of having known better days only aggravates the privations of the present—and pride inflicts—

"Tortures the poor alone can know, The proud alone can feel."

Scott has skilfully surrounded the falling house of Ellangowan with every possible circumstance that could excite interest in its fortunes. There is the long descent, coupled with stirring traditions of love and war; and call it prejudice or fantasy, the pride of birth has a hold on our respect, linked half by habit, half by that subtle influence which the past has over the mind. Truly, as Schiller beautifully says—

"Time consecrates; And what is grey with age, becomes religion."

Then there is the pity for the kind-hearted master turned from his homestead in his old age—a man, too, who has been "nobody's enemy but his own," though certainly he had better have been an enemy to some one else. Next our justice is enlisted on his behalf—his own imprudence is merged in generous indignation against the ungrateful dependant who has thus requited confidence. Last, is the interest felt for youth and loveliness left alone in this bleak and bitter world. "Guy Mannering" is, like its companions, filled with pictures. What a picture is that of the old man, seated for the last time in his arm-chair, removed from its accustomed place by the fireside, to the sunny bank, waiting to leave the home of his forefathers, though all see that "a darker departure is near," while his child, his patient, affectionate child, watches at his side. Almost every appearance, too, of Meg Merrilies is a stage effect, as dramatic in situation as it is in language. There are some exquisite touches of poetry. In her well-known denunciation, what can be finer than the—"This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths—see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the brighter for that:"—or, again, what can be more pathetic than her lament over the Cairn of Dernclough.

"Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling? there my kettle boiled for forty years—there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters—where are they now?—where are the leaves that were on that auld ash tree at Martinmas? the west wind has laid it bare, and I am stripped too. . . . It will ne'er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye'll no forget her, and ye'll gar build up the old wa's for her sake!!". . . Mixed with the romantic and the pathetic, how much too there is in "Guy Mannering" of the amusing and the humorous. Pleydell is a comedy in himself, and now a relic of the olden time. Strange how manners change, and how to-morrow alters all it can of yesterday; but an acute and kind-hearted lawyer with peculiarities which, like a touch of sharp sauce, give flavour to the viand, might and will be longer found than the sturdy and honest farmer of Charlie's Hope. When civilization comes to a certain point, the changes in the higher classes are little more than those of fancies and of fashions; but those operating on the classes below are changes of character.

Never did book end more satisfactorily than "Guy Mannering." We are glad of Julia's marriage, but we have even a kindlier interest in that of the sweet and timid Lucy. The work has only one sin of omission. Mr. Pleydell declares that Mrs. Allan's sauce to the wild duck, of lemon, claret, and cayenne, was beyond all praise. Truly, for the benefit of future generations, Mrs. Allan's receipt ought to have been given.

Miss Wardour

THE ANTIQUARY.

No. 5.— MISS WARDOUR.

The history of credulity would be the most singular page in the great history of mankind. From those vast beliefs which have founded religions and empires, down to the inventions that garnish the last new murder, there has always been a tendency in the human mind to believe with as little expense of the reasoning faculty as possible. A few useful doubters have certainly existed, and we cannot but agree with a late periodical writer, who says, "a doubt is a benefit to the truth;" generally speaking, however, doubt requires to be sharpened by vanity or by interest before it becomes an effective agent—the original leaning is the other way. When I left England the wondrous effects of animal magnetism usually came in to be discussed with the fish and soup; and if Sir Walter could have heard the miracles recorded, and the miracles credited and accredited by "the most respectable witnesses," he might not have thought it necessary to apologize for making his German charlatan an instrument in his plot. It is a curious fact, that the true has always been more opposed at the outset than the false; the circulation of the blood and vaccination nearly lost their discoverers credit and practice, while some vender of quack medicines makes a rapid fortune. This may perhaps be accounted for, simply, that the impostor addresses the multitude, while the scientific discoverer appeals to his brethren in knowledge, all of whom are inclined to deny, what, if admitted, must show, that a great part of their own research and acquirement has been in vain; still he who trades on human credulity will have a good stock on hand, especially when the lure held forth is that of gain.

Sir Arthur Wardour, involved in embarrassments from which he lacked skill, resolution, and means to extricate himself, was the very man to hope improbabilities—and from the improbable to the impossible is but a step. It is very remarkable the skill with which Sir Walter works out his second-rate characters—we should ascribe this to their being taken from real life—his dramatis personæ are remembrances rather than inventions, he required straw for his bricks, and his imagination did not begin to work till his memory had garnered up material: hence his Scottish novels are unquestionably the best, for there his impressions are the most vivid. He needed a clue to the labyrinth of human nature—and that clue was observation. He rarely creates a character; he is not given to subtle analysis, and we never come upon those remarks which seem like a window suddenly thrown open, that we had never seen unclosed before; but he is the great master of the outward and the actual. Every observation that he makes is rational and rightminded, but they never come like new discoveries; the reader applauds them as the echo of what he has already known to be right, but they never startle him into thinking. All Scott's qualities were opposed to the metaphysical; he and his cotemporary, Goëthe, were the antipodes of each other. The German looked within, the Scotchman looked without: to the one was assigned the province of thought—to the other that of action. The genius of the one stands as much alone as the genius of the other.

As a story teller, Scott is unrivalled; he would have made the fortune of a cafe at Damascus. The common conversation of every day may show how rare such a talent is; one person will give you a little narrative of some recent event, and politeness alone will compel attention; while, perhaps, one in a hundred will keep you amused while recounting a seemingly trivial accident. In the present novel there is a situation—a great favourite with our author, it is that of a father and daughter left dependant on each other's mutual affection. Rose Bradwardine, Julia Mannering, Lucy Ber , Isabel Wardour, and Diana Vernon, are all the only daughters of a widowed father. It would be difficult, though interesting, to trace in what this predilection of Scott's originated. Such a tie is one of nature's most sacred and most touching. How deep must be the feeling of the bereaved parent who cannot look on the fair face of his child without recalling a face, once the fairest and the dearest in the world: the shadow of the grave hangs around the infant playfulness of the orphan, and even the hopes of the present must come tinged with something of sadness from the past. How soon too, with the quick feelings of her sex, would the orphan-girl learn that consolation needed to be mixed with her affection; a vague pity would mingle with her caresses, and each party would think there required so much allowance to be made for the other—and allowances are the golden links of domestic happiness. The memory of the departed would be a perpetual bond of union—the father would think how sad for his child was the loss of a mother's care; while the daughter would feel a more anxious tenderness from knowing that it was hers to supply a tenderness even more anxious than her own. The affection of his daughter throws a respectability around Sir Arthur; she loves him, she humours his little foibles, and, for her sake, others also bear with him.

Isabella Wardour's kindness of heart is indicated in all those slight things which throw such sweetness on the common air of life. The old beggar, the inimitable Edie Ochiltre, at the risk of his life, meets them on the beach, because "he could na bide to think o' the dainty young lady's peril, that has aye been kind to ilka forlorn heart that cam' near her." Even the Antiquary, with all his contempt for his "womankind," has an involuntary respect for her. If any further proof of her attraction be needed, she is the object of a romantic and devoted attachment, which if eye and manner requite less kindly than the conscious heart—it is for her father's sake. However, neither she nor Lovel need regret her earlier discouragement; for what man ever valued an object whose pursuit was unattended by trouble? Difficulty is as needful to appreciation as labour is to existence.

Mary Mac Intyre

No.6.—MARY MAC INTYRE.

The preface of this work mentions, that it was less favourably received on its first appearance than its predecessors, though in the long run it has quite equalled their success. This may be reckoned among Scott's triumphs. The character of the Antiquary was less familiar to the generality of readers than it is now, when his own writings have originated a taste for the study of antiquities among the many; he has himself shown to what such a study might lead, when it has not been made a mania for collecting "toys and trifles," whose chief value was their age. He set no undue value on relics, perhaps as valid as "the two tears of Queen Niobe kept in a glass bottle" of the Xavre. But the spirit in which Scott collected was that of the historian, and of the poet. The spur, the drinking-cup, the inscription on the mouldering stone, and the black-lettered manuscript, served to illustrate those daily manners, without whose knowledge any attempt to depict national character must be incomplete. The information thus gathered was the material of the historian, and the inspiration of the poet. The sword might be broken, the spur rusted, and the marble grey and defaced, yet not the less would the days hover round them, when the sword was that of some noble baron, and the graven letters told of honour cut short in some brief and bright career, or of loveliness laid low, even in the hour of summer.