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Walsingham; or, the Pupil of Nature. A Domestic Story. By Mary Robinson. 4 Vols. 12mo. 16s. sewed. Longman. 1797.
It cannot be expected that we should enter into a minute detail of the various incidents of this novel; (for what reader would be gratified with an analysis of four volumes?) but we will exhibit the prominent features of the story.
Sir Edward Aubrey, who is killed by a fall from his horse during the pregnancy of lady Aubrey, leaves the greater part of his fortune to the child, if it should be a son, but, if a daughter, a smaller proportion of it. In either case, provision was to be made for his nephew Walsingham, the hero of the piece. The offspring proved to be a female; and lady Aubrey, at the instigation of an old servant of the family (who was interested in the affair), conceals the will, and educates the child in the disguise of a boy, under the name of Sidney. After a variety of adventures, she discloses the whole of her former conduct; and Walsingham is married to his cousin Sidney. To this sketch we will subjoin [554] some extracts, which will give our readers no unfavourable idea of the work.
The following quotation unfolds, in some degree, the character of Walsingham.
I am the child of sorrow, the victim of deception. I have been culpable, but not vicious; resentful, but not vindictive. Mine have been the errors of a too vivid imagination; the miseries of sensibility, acute, but not indiscriminate. It is not from the multitude that I derive my anguish; the senseless throng, and the gaudy ephemera of prosperous days, never had power to sting me - for they were not my associates! Cold and cheerless sorrow has been my companion; and the shaft which pierced my bosom was winged by a resistless hand - the hand of nature.
Since my residence on the continent, I have endeavoured to mingle with society; I am forlorn, but not misanthropic; dejected, but not splenetic: there is an infinite difference between the uncomplaining sadness of despondency and the peevish inquietude of a capricious imagination. What are the sensations I excite? Curiosity and pity. Pity! that miserable boon which humanity bestows in silence, but which ostentation delights in displaying; while all the proud indignant throbbings of the wounded heart unite to repulse the arrogant intruder. If there be a pang more terrible than death, a poison more subtle than the destructive aconite, a humiliation more poignant than contempt, or a torture more acute than the sting of ingratitude, it is the agonising taunt which mocks philanthropy, the pity of the cold and ostentatious bosom.
If I sometimes steal from the social scenes of life, it is owing to my dread of diffusing a gloom over the aspect of surrounding objects: the pale and sickly hue of melancholy must be obtrusive where all else is vivid, animated, glowing! I feel, yes, I feel that I am fit only for myself. Vol. i, p. 7.
Walsingham, ill treated by lady Aubrey, and jealous of the regard of Isabella (a young lady whom he loves) for Sidney, conceives the idea of entering into the army, at the suggestion of colonel Aubrey; but he is dissuaded form his purpose.
Colonel Aubrey, notwithstanding my readiness to accede to his proposal, would not suffer me to decide rashly on an event which might form the main spring of every future action. He was sensible that my expectations were few, and my prospects clouded; he knew that all my hopes depended on the caprice of a proud, vindictive woman, whose mind was contaminated by avarice, and at the same time devoted to ostentation. He considered my ardent desire to enter a profession which is always dazzling to a young mind, as the offspring of pique rather than the result of dispassionate reflection. Mr Hanbury united in dissuading me from my purpose: he had ever wished me to study divinity; he felt a philanthropic repugnance to the pursuit of sanguinary warfare, and never heard the exultations of a victory, without heaving a sigh for the miseries of the vanquished. I had for several days absented myself from the manor-house, when I again urged him to sanction [555] colonel Aubrey's proposal; he shuddered - while I pleaded the ambition of a warm and youthful bosom, where every vein panted for independence. Isabella was present during our conversation; she seemed tenderly interested in my fate, and eagerly expressed her hopes that I would relinquish my project. 'Consider, Walsingham,' said she, with a tone at once earnest and impressive, 'your charming cousin has offered you a home, a sweet asylum, here at Glenowen. - You were once found of this mountain solitude; the deepest shade, the most barren precipice, had charms for your contemplative imagination; why are you changed? In what respect have they lost their wonted attractions?'
'Isabella, is it you who ask this barbarous question?' said I, while the beating of my heart scarcely allowed my tongue the power of utterance. 'Can I ever be the associate, the friend of sir Sidney Aubrey?'
'What should prevent you?' cried Isabella smiling; 'with such a companion you cannot fail to be happy; for wherever he goes, felicity must follow.'
'Are these your sentiments, Isabella?' said I, with emotion which I could no longer stifle 'is it the wretched, the distracted Walsingham whom you would humble by making him dependent on the object of your affections? Spare me, I conjure you, spare me the pang of conscious degradation; let not the pupil of your brother stoop to the baseness of dishonour.'
'Compose your mind, my dear Walsingham,' interrupted Mr. Hanbury, 'and divest it of that sombre prejudice which early events have but too deeply rooted; sir Sidney Aubrey deserves that you should think kindly of him; his virtues, the generosity of his nature, should interest you by congeniality, and place you beyond the reach of obligation; you must remain with us; you must be the friend, the associate of this noble, this accomplished kinsman.'
'Perish the thought!' exclaimed I. 'Under all the horrors of approaching events, this spot would be a scene of torture, which my fortitude would shrink at.'
'Every spot which sir Sidney inhabits must be a terrestrial paradise!' cried Isabella.
I was almost frantic - I could but faintly articulate 'I will depart.' Vol. i. p. 315.
The character of Dr. Pimpernel, the director of a madhouse, is curious. He
had travelled much, and had tried all professions, in all climates. The conclusions which he drew from experimental knowledge were these - That two-thirds of the breathing race were mad; and that he who could get possession of a patient's mind, was more than half assured of dominion, whether in a state of convalescence or of confirmed insanity. For this reason he set up a mind-mill, where he ground the shattered particles of intellect, to his own purpose; and when the produce of his labour promised either reputation or profit, he never failed to promote the one, or to embrace the other. A husband who wanted to have a troublesome wife taken care of - a libertine who wished to provide for a [556] mistress, when the edge of passion became blunted by satiety - or a man of refined taste, who sought to secure unguarded innocence, found infinite advantages in the subduing atmosphere of the all-potent mind-mill.
To this scene of variegated misery, Miss Woodford was conveyed, bathed with her mother's tears, and unconscious of her dreary destination; the doctor promised to attend her daily, absolutely forbidding all intercourse with her family or connections.
Mrs Woodford's confidence in doctor Pimpernel's professional skill was boundless; she did not recollect that he was also skilled in professions; and that sincerity was not one of those qualities which characterised his mind, in his intercourse with society. That friend whom he 'grappled to his heart with hooks of steel' one day - the next he would 'cast like a loathsome weed away.' With the little he was the greatest of men; with the great he shrunk to the least! He talked higher and bowed lower than any courtly hater of courts within the atmosphere of political warfare. Like the vanes of a steeple, he soared above every other object, and was perpetually turning to all points without fixing to any. Born in one country, educated in another, a traveller in a third, and a citizen of a fourth, he had acquired a smattering of every language - a gusto for every folly, a degree of notoriety in all, but a portion of reputation in none. He had written books that nobody read, and related wonders which nobody credited. His mind was a sort of salmagundi of Hibernian assurance, Scottish erudition, Italian shrewdness, Iberian pride, Gallic philosophy, and English apathy - the one perpetually struggling with the other, without either, for a moment, obtaining the ascendancy. Born in Ireland, educated in Scotland, polished in Italy, and bronzed in Britain - he was originally intended for the church; but the circumscribed limits of his theological researches excluded him from the interior of the holy sanctuary, and confined the specimens of his art to the sadly solemn precincts of the church-yard, where innumerable monuments will remain to the end of time, of his industry, skill, popularity, and experience. Vol. iii. p. 313.
At the conclusion of the work, Walsingham thus speaks:
Now, Rosanna, retired from the busy varying scenes of noise and folly, I leave those trifling vicious reptiles whom you have met with during the progress of my disastrous story, to the infamy that will mark their names, till fate consigns them to oblivion. I have held them up as beacons, to warn the unwary: I have pourtrayed them, as they are; neither with a flattering nor a distorting pencil. If they continue to triumph over the children of worth and genius, it will only prove that, in this undefinable sphere, where the best and wisest cannot hope for happiness, the demons of art are permitted to oppress with wrongs, while they lift the empty brow of arrogance and pride above the illustrious pupils of genius, truth, and nature! Vol. iv. p. 400.
The language is easy, and not inelegant; but it does not possess that energy which brings to our recollection the idea [557] of 'thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.' The incidents are, for the most part, new and interesting. Walsingham, however, ranks not so high in our opinion as some other works of Mrs. Robinson. The general plan is without any moral tendency. The principal hinge on which the story turns, - the education of a young lady in masculine habits, - cannot, we think, be either instructive or amusing. The reader is almost inclined to execrate lady Aubrey, though her faults proceed in part from a mistaken fondness for her child. She, however, makes reparation to those who have suffered in consequence of her misconduct; and the principal characters become ultimately happy.
Of the poetry, the following specimen will suffice.
Ah! cold Neglect! more chilling far
Than Zembla's blast or Scythia's snow!
Sure, born beneath a luckless star
Is he, who, after ev'ry pain
Has wrung his bosom's central vein,
To fill his bitter cup of woe,
is destin'd thee to know!
The smiles of fame, the pride of truth,
All that can lift the glowing mind,
The noblest energies of youth,
Wit, valour, genius, science, taste!
A form by all that's lovely grac'd,
A soul where virtue dwells enshrin'd,
A prey to thee we find!
The spring of life looks fresh and gay,
The flow'rs of fancy bud around!
We think that ev'ry morn is May;
While hope and rapture fill the breast,
We hope reflection's lore a jest,
Nor own that sorrow's shaft can wound,
Till cold Neglect is found.
Ah! then, how sad the world appears,
How false, how idle are the gay!
Morn only breaks to witness tears,
And ev'ning closes, but to shew
That darkness mimics human woe,
And life's best scene a summer day,
That shines and fades away!
Some dread disease, and others woe,
Some visionary torments see;
Some shrink unpitied love to know,
Some writhe beneath oppression's fangs,
And some with jealous hopeless pangs;
But whatsoe'er my fate may be,
Oh, keep Neglect from me!
[558]
E'en, after death, let mem'ry's hand,
Directed by the moon-light ray,
Weave o'er my grave a cypress band,
And bind the sod with curious care,
And scatter flow'rets fresh and fair,
And oft the sacred tribute pay,
To keep Neglect away! Vol. ii. p. 290.
The reader will here recognise the harmony, sweetness, and delicacy of expression, of this popular writer. Though these characteristics of female versification may sometimes, for want of the vis poëtica, degenerate into insipidity and affectation, yet, upon the whole, in these volumes the poetry is pleasing and elegant.
[complete] Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, August 1999.
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