Fiction at this time lacked delicacy and refinement. The characters lived largely in the streets or taverns, and were too much engrossed in the pleasures of active life to give any heed to thoughts or emotions. Though love was the constant theme of these books, as yet no true love story had been written. The fires of home had not been lighted. The refinements, the pure affections, the high ideals which cluster around the domestic hearth had as yet no place in the novel. It needed the feminine element, which, while no broader than that which had previously made the novel, by its own addition gave something new to it and made it truer to life.
While no woman of marked genius had appeared, the number and influence of women novelists continued to increase throughout the eighteenth century. Tim Cropdale in the novel Humphry Clinker, who "had made shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume," complains that "that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality." Schlosser in his History of the Eighteenth Century pays this tribute to the moral influence of the women novelists: "With the increase of the number of writers in England in the course of the eighteenth century, women began to appear as authors instead of educating their children, and their influence upon morals and modes of thinking increased, as that of the clergy diminished."
CHAPTER III
Fanny Burney
A noteworthy transformation took place in the English novel during the late years of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth. This change cannot be explained by the great difference in manners only. The mode of life described by the early novelists was in existence sixty years after they wrote scenes typical of the customs and manners of their day, just as the quiet home life described by Miss Austen was to be found in England a hundred years before it graced the pages of a book. This new era in the English novel was due not to a change of environment, but to the new ideals of those who wrote.
In 1778, English fiction was represented by the work of Miss Burney, and for thirty-six years, until 1814, when Waverley appeared, this rare plant was preserved and kept alive by a group of women, who trimmed and pruned off many of its rough branches and gave to the wild native fruit a delicacy and fragrance unknown to it before. English women writers did at that time for the English novel what French women had done in the preceding century for the French novel; they made it so pure in thought and expression that Bishop Huet was able to say of the French romances of the seventeenth century, "You'll scarce find an expression or word which may shock chaste ears, or one single action which may give offence to modesty."
This great change in the English novel was inaugurated by a young woman ignorant of the world, whose power lay in her innocent and lively imagination. At his home in Queen Square and later in St. Martin's Street, Charles Burney, the father of Frances, entertained the most illustrious men of his day. Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, and Colman were frequent guests, while members of the nobility thronged his parlours to listen to the famous Italian singers who gladly sang for the author of the History of Music. Here Fanny, a bashful but observant child, saw life in the drawing-room. But as Dr. Burney gave little heed to the comings and goings of his daughters, they played with the children of a wigmaker next door, where, perhaps, Fanny became acquainted with the vulgar side of London life, which is so humorously depicted in Evelina. She received but little education, nor was she more than a casual reader, but she was familiar with Pamela, Betsey Thoughtless, Rasselas, and the Vicar of Wakefield. Such was her preparation for becoming a writer of novels.
From her earliest years, she had delighted in writing stories and dramas, although she received little encouragement in this occupation. In her fifteenth year her stepmother proved to her so conclusively the folly of girls' scribbling that Fanny burned all her manuscripts, including The History of Caroline Evelyn. She could not, however, banish from her mind the fate of Caroline's infant daughter, born of high rank, but related through her grandmother to the vulgar people of the East End of London. The many embarrassing situations in which she might be placed haunted the imagination of the youthful writer, but it was not until her twenty-sixth year that these situations were described, when Evelina or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World was published.
The success of the book was instantaneous. The name of the author, which had been withheld even from the publishers, was eagerly demanded. All agreed that only a man conversant with the world could have written such accurate descriptions of life both high and low. The wonder was increased when it was learned that the author was a young woman who had drawn her scenes, not from a knowledge of the world, but from her own intuition and imagination. Miss Burney became at once an honoured member of the literary circle which Mrs. Thrale had gathered at Streatham, and a favourite of Dr. Johnson, who declared that Evelina was superior to anything that Fielding had written, and that some passages were worthy of the pen of Richardson. The book was accorded a place among English classics, which it has retained for over a century. "It was not hard fagging that produced such a work as Evelina," wrote Mr. Crisp to the youthful author. "It was the ebullition of true sterling genius—you wrote it because you could not help it—it came—and so you put it down on paper."
The novel, following the form so common in the eighteenth century, is written in the form of letters. The plot is somewhat time-honoured; there is the nurse's daughter substituted for the real heiress, and a mystery surrounding some of the characters; it is unfolded slowly with a slight strain upon the readers' credulity at the last, but it ends to the satisfaction of all concerned. In many incidents and in some of the characters the story suggests Betsey Thoughtless, but Miss Burney had greater powers of description than Mrs. Haywood.
The plot of the novel is forgotten, however, in the lively, witty manner in which the characters are drawn and the ludicrous situations in which they are placed. So long had these men and women held the mind of the author that they are intensely real as they are presented to us at assemblies, balls, theatres, and operas, where we watch their oddities with amusement.
Indeed no woman has given so many graphic, droll, and minute descriptions of life as Miss Burney. Her genius in this respect is different from that of other women novelists. She has made a series of snap-shots of people in the most absurd situations and ridicules them while she is taking the picture. Few women writers can resist the temptation of peeping into the hearts of their men and women, and the knowledge thus gained gives them sympathy, while it often detracts from the strong lines of the external picture; a writer will not paint a villain quite so black if he believes he still preserves some remnants of a noble nature. But Miss Burney has no interest in the inner life of her men and women. She saw their peculiarities and was amused by them, and has