|
The Wife and the Lover. A Novel, by Miss Holcroft. In Three Volumes. London: Colburn, 1813. 12mo. Pr. 18s. Clarke, Printer.
The title of this work is well calculated to attract the curiosity of its readers, and the story takes its rise and progress from the conduct of a most interesting season of human life. Sir Edward Harcourt, a young baronet, who has just emerged from a state of minority into the age of legal manhood, and the uncontrolled direction of his affluent fortunes, is on the point of marriage with Miss Cecilia Fitzallard, a young lady of respectable birth, though of moderate fortune, whose experience had not yet extended beyond seventeen summers. Her beauty, understanding, virtues, and accomplishments, are such as we generally expect in the heroine of a novel; but her character is blemished with an unfortunate sensibility to offence, and a propensity to aggravate any cause of resentment, that she conceived to have been intentionally offered. The Earl of Fanshaw, Sir Edward's late guardian, is united to a lady who possesses the reputation of a confirmed wit; and the worthy qualities of this couple deservedly retain the friendship of Sir Edward, when his interests no longer required the protection of his guardian's authority. Cecilia makes a few luckless attempts to emulate the wit and manner of Lady Fanshaw; and that lady therefore indulges in some well-meant strictures on this foible, in a company where Miss Fitzallard was not present. The tale is conveyed to Cecilia with circumstances of exaggeration; and the young lady, kindling into anger at the report, denies the gift of her hand, unless Sir Edward will previously forgo all connexion with a family, whose virtues he could not but esteem. Lady Fanshaw addresses a letter of conciliation to her young friend, who remains implacable; and stubbornly resists both the overtures of Lady Fanshaw, and the urgent expostulations [629] of her own lover. As he persists in his resolution, though not without emotion at the threatened sacrifice, his mistress, encouraged and even incited by a weak and too indulgent aunt, at length breaks off the engagement. The sentiments of Cecilia towards her lover are described as not exciting a stronger interest in her bosom than that of friendship and esteem; but the passion of Sir Edward Harcourt is too fervent and too deeply fixed to be susceptible of change or decline. Although under very different circumstances, his character is drawn with features that are allied to Richardson's delineation of Sir Charles Grandison; but it has not that air of romantic stateliness, which invests the theoretical perfection of the archetype, and which suspends the opening faculties of the juvenile reader between the impression of awe and the feeling of attachment. Grandison is the finished gentleman of a period when the character embraced a greater variety of requisites than the free and chequered assemblies of modern times exact from the aspirant to that distinction; but the lineaments of the Christian and the philanthropist prevail in the portrait of Sir Edward Harcourt. Sir Edward adopts the resolution of passing some years abroad, in the hope of mitigating his anguish, if he could not entirely remove it. Cecilia now inclines to the vows of Count Falkenstein, a hero with every endowment to deserve the affection he had won, and the favorite of a German prince, from whom he had obtained leave to travel. Soon after their marriage she loses her aunt, and, after her arrival in Germany, her husband falls in a duel with a false friend, who had supplanted him during his absence in the favor of his prince. Sir Edward, who is journeying on the Continent, finds the opportunity of rendering some offices of kindness and courtesy to the widow of the Count, but she is prevented by motives of delicacy, from accepting the renewal of his addresses. Sir Edward pursues his course, and Cecilia, finding herself friendless and in reduced circumstances, returns to England. Whatever asylum she chooses, the virtues and fame of Sir Edward Harcourt make their way into her retreat; and after numerous mortifications she concludes on retiring to a monastery near Paris. In her way thither, accident leads Sir Edward to the same hotel; and a casual rencounter gives occasion for the approval of his unaltered constancy, which is rewarded by the acknowleged love of one who was now fully sensible of her own indiscretion and her lover's merit, and who again embraces the duties of a wife, under happier auspices. This brief abstract has not allowed us to point out the varied instances wherein the generosity, the self-devotement, the primitive, and almost apostolic, benevolence of Sir Edward Harcourt, are illustrated in these volumes; nor can we explore the channels through which the minor characters are mingled with the stream of the narrative. But we should in justice observe, that they leave an ample range of curiosity, beyond the precincts of that partial analysis to which we are unavoidably restricted, by the nature of our office and the number of our claimants.
[complete] Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, September 1999.
|
