Mary Gresley and An Editor's Tales by Anthony Trollope - HTML preview

MRS. BRUMBY.

WE think that we are justified in asserting that of all the persons with whom we have been brought in contact in the course of our editorial experiences, men or women, boys or girls, Mrs. Brumby was the most hateful and the most hated. We are sure of this,—that for some months she was the most feared, during which period she made life a burden to us, and more than once induced us to calculate whether it would not be well that we should abandon our public duties and retire to some private corner into which it would be impossible that Mrs. Brumby should follow us. Years have rolled on since then, and we believe that Mrs. Brumby has gone before the great Judge and been called upon to account for the injuries she did us. We know that she went from these shores to a distant land when her nefarious projects failed at home. She was then by no means a young woman. We never could find that she left relative or friend behind her, and we know of none now, except those close and dearest friends of our own who supported us in our misery, who remember even that she existed. Whether she be alive or whether she be dead, her story shall be told,—not in a spirit of revenge, but with strict justice.

What there was in her of good shall be set down with honesty; and indeed there was much in her that was good. She was energetic, full of resources, very brave, constant, devoted to the interests of the poor creature whose name she bore, and by no means a fool. She was utterly unscrupulous, dishonest, a liar, cruel, hard as a nether mill-stone to all the world except Lieutenant Brumby,—harder to him than to all the world besides when he made any faintest attempt at rebellion,—and as far as we could judge, absolutely without conscience. Had she been a man and had circumstances favoured her, she might have been a prime minister, or an archbishop, or a chief justice. We intend no silly satire on present or past holders of the great offices indicated; but we think that they have generally been achieved by such a combination of intellect, perseverance, audacity, and readiness as that which Mrs. Brumby certainly possessed. And that freedom from the weakness of scruple,—which in men who have risen in public life we may perhaps call adaptability to compromise,—was in her so strong, that had she been a man, she would have trimmed her bark to any wind that blew, and certainly have sailed into some port. But she was a woman,—and the ports were not open to her.

Those ports were not open to her which had she been a man would have been within her reach; but,—fortunately for us and for the world at large as to the general question, though so very unfortunately as regarded this special case,—the port of literature is open to women. It seems to be the only really desirable harbour to which a female captain can steer her vessel with much hope of success. There are the Fine Arts, no doubt. There seems to be no reason why a woman should not paint as well as Titian. But they don’t. With the pen they hold their own, and certainly run a better race against men on that course than on any other. Mrs. Brumby, who was very desirous of running a race and winning a place, and who had seen all this, put on her cap, and jacket, and boots, chose her colours, and entered her name. Why, oh why, did she select the course upon which we, wretched we, were bound by our duties to regulate the running?

We may as well say at once that though Mrs. Brumby might have made a very good prime minister, she could not write a paper for a magazine, or produce literary work of any description that was worth paper and ink. We feel sure that we may declare without hesitation that no perseverance on her part, no labour however unswerving, no training however long, would have enabled her to do in a fitting manner even a review for the “Literary Curricle.” There was very much in her, but that was not in her. We find it difficult to describe the special deficiency under which she laboured;—but it existed and was past remedy. As a man suffering from a chronic stiff joint cannot run, and cannot hope to run, so was it with her. She could not combine words so as to make sentences, or sentences so as to make paragraphs. She did not know what style meant. We believe that had she ever read, Johnson, Gibbon, Archdeacon Coxe, Mr. Grote, and Macaulay would have been all the same to her. And yet this woman chose literature as her profession, and clung to it for awhile with a persistence which brought her nearer to the rewards of success than many come who are at all points worthy to receive them.

We have said that she was not a young woman when we knew her. We cannot fancy her to have been ever young. We cannot bring our imagination to picture to ourselves the person of Mrs. Brumby surrounded by the advantages of youth. When we knew her she may probably have been forty or forty-five, and she then possessed a rigidity of demeanour and a sternness of presence which we think must have become her better than any softer guise or more tender phase of manner could ever have done in her earlier years. There was no attempt about her to disguise or modify her sex, such as women have made since those days. She talked much about her husband, the lieutenant, and she wore a double roll of very stiff dark brown curls on each side of her face,—or rather over her brows,—which would not have been worn by a woman meaning to throw off as far as possible her femininity. Whether those curls were or were not artificial we never knew. Our male acquaintances who saw her used to swear that they were false, but a lady who once saw her, assured us that they were real. She told us that there is a kind of hair growing on the heads of some women, thick, short, crisp, and shiny, which will maintain its curl unbroken and unruffled for days. She told us, also, that women blessed with such hair are always pachy-dermatous and strong-minded. Such certainly was the character of Mrs. Brumby. She was a tall, thin woman, not very tall or very thin. For aught that we can remember, her figure may have been good;—but we do remember well that she never seemed to us to have any charm of womanhood. There was a certain fire in her dark eyes,—eyes which were, we think, quite black,—but it was the fire of contention and not of love. Her features were well formed, her nose somewhat long, and her lips thin, and her face too narrow, perhaps, for beauty. Her chin was long, and the space from her nose to her upper lip was long. She always carried a well-wearing brown complexion;—a complexion with which no man had a right to find fault, but which, to a pondering, speculative man, produced unconsciously a consideration whether, in a matter of kissing, an ordinary mahogany table did not offer a preferable surface. When we saw her she wore, we think always, a dark stuff dress,—a fur tippet in winter and a most ill-arranged shawl in summer,—and a large commanding bonnet, which grew in our eyes till it assumed all the attributes of a helmet,—inspiring that reverence and creating that fear which Minerva’s headgear is intended to produce. When we add our conviction that Mrs. Brumby trusted nothing to female charms, that she neither suffered nor enjoyed anything from female vanity, and that the lieutenant was perfectly safe, let her roam the world alone, as she might, in search of editors, we shall have said enough to introduce the lady to our readers.

Of her early life, or their early lives, we know nothing; but the unfortunate circumstances which brought us into contact with Mrs. Brumby, made us also acquainted with the lieutenant. The lieutenant, we think, was younger than his wife;—a good deal younger we used to imagine, though his looks may have been deceptive. He was a confirmed invalid, and there are phases of ill-health which give an appearance of youthfulness rather than of age. What was his special ailing we never heard,—though, as we shall mention further on, we had our own idea on that subject; but he was always spoken of in our hearing as one who always had been ill, who always was ill, who always would be ill, and who never ought to think of getting well. He had been in some regiment called the Duke of Sussex’s Own, and his wife used to imagine that her claims upon the public as a woman of literature were enhanced by the royalty of her husband’s corps. We never knew her attempt to make any other use whatever of his services. He was not confined to his bed, and could walk at any rate about the house; but she never asked him, or allowed him to do anything. Whether he ever succeeded in getting his face outside the door we do not know. He wore, when we saw him, an old dressing-gown and slippers. He was a pale, slight, light-haired man, and we fancy that he took a delight in novels.

Their settled income consisted of his half-pay and some very small property which belonged to her. Together they might perhaps have possessed £150 per annum. When we knew them they had lodgings in Harpur Street, near Theobald’s Road, and she had resolved to push her way in London as a woman of literature. She had been told that she would have to deal with hard people, and that she must herself be hard;—that advantage would be taken of her weakness, and that she must therefore struggle vehemently to equal the strength of those with whom she would be brought in contact;—that editors, publishers, and brother authors would suck her brains and give her nothing for them, and that, therefore, she must get what she could out of them, giving them as little as possible in return. It was an evil lesson that she had learned; but she omitted nothing in the performance of the duties which that lesson imposed upon her.

She first came to us with a pressing introduction from an acquaintance of ours who was connected with a weekly publication called the “Literary Curricle.” The “Literary Curricle” was not in our estimation a strong paper, and we will own that we despised it. We did not think very much of the acquaintance by whom the strong introductory letter was written. But Mrs. Brumby forced herself into our presence with the letter in her hand, and before she left us extracted from us a promise that we would read a manuscript which she pulled out of a bag which she carried with her. Of that first interview a short account shall be given, but it must first be explained that the editor of the “Literary Curricle” had received Mrs. Brumby with another letter from another editor, whom she had first taken by storm without any introduction whatever. This first gentleman, whom we had not the pleasure of knowing, had, under what pressure we who knew the lady can imagine, printed three or four short paragraphs from Mrs. Brumby’s pen. Whether they reached publication we never could learn, but we saw the printed slips. He, however, passed her on to the “Literary Curricle,”—which dealt almost exclusively in the reviewing of books,—and our friend at the office of that influential “organ” sent her to us with an intimation that her very peculiar and well-developed talents were adapted rather for the creation of tales, or the composition of original treatises, than for reviewing. The letter was very strong, and we learned afterwards that Mrs. Brumby had consented to abandon her connection with the “Literary Curricle” only on the receipt of a letter in her praise that should be very strong indeed. She rejected the two first offered to her, and herself dictated the epithets with which the third was loaded. On no other terms would she leave the office of the “Literary Curricle.”

We cannot say that the letter, strong as it was, had much effect upon us; but this effect it had perhaps,—that after reading it we could not speak to the lady with that acerbity which we might have used had she come to us without it. As it was we were not very civil, and began our intercourse by assuring her that we could not avail ourselves of her services. Having said so, and observing that she still kept her seat, we rose from our chair, being well aware how potent a spell that movement is wont to exercise upon visitors who are unwilling to go. She kept her seat and argued the matter out with us. A magazine such as that which we then conducted must, she surmised, require depth of erudition, keenness of intellect, grasp of hand, force of expression, and lightness of touch. That she possessed all these gifts she had, she alleged, brought to us convincing evidence. There was the letter from the editor of the “Literary Curricle,” with which she had been long connected, declaring the fact! Did we mean to cast doubt upon the word of our own intimate friend? For the gentleman at the office of the “Literary Curricle” had written to us as “Dear ——,” though as far as we could remember we had never spoken half-a-dozen words to him in our life. Then she repeated the explanation, given by her godfather, of the abrupt termination of the close connection which had long existed between her and the “Curricle.” She could not bring herself to waste her energies in the reviewing of books. At that moment we certainly did believe that she had been long engaged on the “Curricle,” though there was certainly not a word in our correspondent’s letter absolutely stating that to be the fact. He declared to us her capabilities and excellences, but did not say that he had ever used them himself. Indeed, he told us that great as they were, they were hardly suited for his work. She, before she had left us on that occasion, had committed herself to positive falsehoods. She boasted of the income she had earned from two periodicals, whereas up to that moment she had never received a shilling for what she had written.

We find it difficult, even after so many years,—when the shame of the thing has worn off together with the hairs of our head,—to explain how it was that we allowed her to get, in the first instance, any hold upon us. We did not care a brass farthing for the man who had written from the “Literary Curricle.” His letter to us was an impertinence, and we should have stated as much to Mrs. Brumby had we cared to go into such matter with her. And our first feelings with regard to the lady herself were feelings of dislike,—and almost of contempt even, though we did believe that she had been a writer for the press. We disliked her nose, and her lips, and her bonnet, and the colour of her face. We didn’t want her. Though we were very much younger then than we are now, we had already learned to set our backs up against strong-minded female intruders. As we said before, we rose from our chair with the idea of banishing her, not absolutely uncivilly, but altogether unceremoniously. It never occurred to us during that meeting that she could be of any possible service to us, or that we should ever be of any slightest service to her. Nevertheless she had extracted from us a great many words, and had made a great many observations herself before she left us.

When a man speaks a great many words it is impossible that he should remember what they all were. That we told Mrs. Brumby on that occasion that we did not doubt but that we would use the manuscript which she left in our hands, we are quite sure was not true. We never went so near making a promise in our lives,—even when pressed by youth and beauty,—and are quite sure that what we did say to Mrs. Brumby was by no means near akin to this. That we undertook to read the manuscript we think probable, and therein lay our first fault,—the unfortunate slip from which our future troubles sprang, and grew to such terrible dimensions. We cannot now remember how the hated parcel, the abominable roll, came into our hands. We do remember the face and form and figure of the woman as she brought it out of the large reticule which she carried, and we remember also how we put our hands behind us to avoid it, as she presented it to us. We told her flatly that we did not want it, and would not have it;—and yet it came into our hands! We think that it must have been placed close to our elbow, and that, being used to such playthings, we took it up. We know that it was in our hands, and that we did not know how to rid ourselves of it when she began to tell us the story of the lieutenant. We were hard-hearted enough to inform her,—as we have, under perhaps lesser compulsion, informed others since,—that the distress of the man or of the woman should never be accepted as a reason for publishing the works of the writer. She answered us gallantly enough that she had never been weak enough or foolish enough so to think “I base my claim to attention,” she said, “on quite another ground. Do not suppose, Sir, that I am appealing to your pity. I scorn to do so. But I wish you should know my position as a married woman, and that you should understand that my husband, though unfortunately an invalid, has been long attached to a regiment which is peculiarly the Duke of Sussex’s own. You cannot but be aware of the connection which His Royal Highness has long maintained with literature.”

Mrs. Brumby could not write, but she could speak. The words she had just uttered were absolutely devoid of sense. The absurdity of them was ludicrous and gross. But they were not without a certain efficacy. They did not fill us with any respect for her literary capacity because of her connection with the Duke of Sussex, but they did make us feel that she was able to speak up for herself. We are told sometimes that the world accords to a man that treatment which he himself boldly demands; and though the statement seems to be monstrous, there is much truth in it. When Mrs. Brumby spoke of her husband’s regiment being “peculiarly the Duke of Sussex’s own,” she used a tone which compelled from us more courtesy than we had hitherto shown her. We knew that the duke was neither a man of letters nor a warrior, though he had a library, and, as we were now told, a regiment. Had he been both, his being so would have formed no legitimate claim for Mrs. Brumby upon us. But, nevertheless, the royal duke helped her to win her way. It was not his royalty, but her audacity that was prevailing. She sat with us for more than an hour; and when she left us the manuscript was with us, and we had no doubt undertaken to read it. We are perfectly certain that at that time we had not gone beyond this in the way of promising assistance to Mrs. Brumby.

The would-be author, who cannot make his way either by intellect or favour, can hardly do better, perhaps, than establish a grievance. Let there be anything of a case of ill-usage against editor or publisher, and the aspirant, if he be energetic and unscrupulous, will greatly increase his chance of working his way into print. Mrs. Brumby was both energetic and unscrupulous, and she did establish her grievance. As soon as she brought her first visit to a close, the roll, which was still in our hands, was chucked across our table to a corner commodiously supported by the wall, so that occasionally there was accumulated in it a heap of such unwelcome manuscripts. In the doing of this, in the moment of our so chucking the parcel, it was always our conscientious intention to make a clearance of the whole heap, at the very furthest, by the end of the week. We knew that strong hopes were bound up in those various little packets, that eager thoughts were imprisoned there the owners of which believed that they were endowed with wings fit for aërial soaring, that young hearts,—ay, and old hearts, too,—sore with deferred hope, were waiting to know whether their aspirations might now be realised, whether those azure wings might at last be released from bondage and allowed to try their strength in the broad sunlight of public favour. We think, too, that we had a conscience; and, perhaps, the heap was cleared as frequently as are the heaps of other editors. But there it would grow, in the commodious corner of our big table, too often for our own peace of mind. The aspect of each individual little parcel would be known to us, and we would allow ourselves to fancy that by certain external signs we could tell the nature of the interior. Some of them would promise well,—so well as to create even almost an appetite for their perusal. But there would be others from which we would turn with aversion, which we seemed to abhor, which, when we handled the heap, our fingers would refuse to touch, and which, thus lying there neglected and ill-used, would have the dust of many days added to those other marks which inspired disgust. We confess that as soon as Mrs. Brumby’s back was turned her roll was sent in upon this heap with that determined force which a strong feeling of dislike can lend even to a man’s little finger. And there it lay for,—perhaps a fortnight. When during that period we extracted first one packet and then another for judgment, we would still leave Mrs. Brumby’s roll behind in the corner. On such occasions a pang of conscience will touch the heart; some idea of neglected duty will be present to the mind; a silent promise will perhaps be made that it shall be the next; some momentary sudden resolve will be half formed that for the future a rigid order of succession shall be maintained, which no favour shall be allowed to infringe. But, alas! when the hand is again at work selecting, the odious ugly thing is left behind, till at last it becomes infested with strange terrors, with an absolute power of its own, and the guilty conscience will become afraid. All this happened in regard to Mrs. Brumby’s manuscript. “Dear, dear, yes;—Mrs. Brumby!” we would catch ourselves exclaiming with that silent inward voice which occasionally makes itself audible to most of us. And then, quite silently, without even whispered violence, we would devote Mrs. Brumby to the infernal gods. And so the packet remained amidst the heap,—perhaps for a fortnight.

“There’s a lady waiting in your room, Sir!” This was said to us one morning on our reaching our office by the lad whom we used to call our clerk. He is now managing a red-hot Tory newspaper down in Barsetshire, has a long beard, a flaring eye, a round belly, and is upon the whole the most arrogant personage we know. In the days of Mrs. Brumby he was a little wizened fellow about eighteen years old, but looking three years younger, modest, often almost dumb, and in regard to ourselves not only reverential but timid. We turned upon him in great anger. What business had any woman to be in our room in our absence? Were not our orders on this subject exact and very urgent? Was he not kept at an expense of 14s. a week,—we did not actually throw the amount in his teeth, but such was intended to be the effect of our rebuke,—at 14s. a week, paid out of our own pocket,—nominally, indeed, as a clerk, but chiefly for the very purpose of keeping female visitors out of our room? And now, in our absence and in his, there was actually a woman among the manuscripts! We felt from the first moment that it was Mrs. Brumby.

With bated breath and downcast eyes the lad explained to us his inability to exclude her. “She walked straight in, right over me,” he said; “and as for being alone,—she hasn’t been alone. I haven’t left her, not a minute.”

We walked at once into our own room, feeling how fruitless it was to discuss the matter further with the boy in the passage, and there we found Mrs. Brumby seated in the chair opposite to our own. We had gathered ourselves up, if we may so describe an action which was purely mental, with a view to severity. We thought that her intrusion was altogether unwarrantable, and that it behoved us to let her know that such was the case. We entered the room with a clouded brow, and intended that she should read our displeasure in our eyes. But Mrs. Brumby could,—“gather herself up,” quite as well as we could do, and she did so. She also could call clouds to her forehead and could flash anger from her eyes. “Madam,” we exclaimed, as we paused for a moment, and looked at her.

But she cared nothing for our “Madam,” and condescended to no apology. Rising from her chair, she asked us why we had not kept the promise we had made her to use her article in our next number. We don’t know how far our readers will understand all that was included in this accusation. Use her contribution in our next number! It had never occurred to us as probable, or hardly as possible, that we should use it in any number. Our eye glanced at the heap to see whether her fingers had been at work, but we perceived that the heap had not been touched. We have always flattered ourselves that no one can touch our heap without our knowing it. She saw the motion of our eye, and at once understood it. Mrs. Brumby, no doubt, possessed great intelligence, and, moreover, a certain majesty of demeanour. There was always something of the helmet of Minerva in the bonnet which she wore. Her shawl was an old shawl, but she was never ashamed of it; and she could always put herself forward, as though there were nothing behind her to be concealed, the concealing of which was a burden to her. “I cannot suppose,” she said, “that my paper has been altogether neglected!”

We picked out the roll with all the audacity we could assume, and proceeded to explain how very much in error she was in supposing that we had ever even hinted at its publication. We had certainly said that we would read it, mentioning no time. We never did mention any time in making any such promise. “You named a week, Sir,” said Mrs. Brumby, “and now a month has passed by. You assured me that it would be accepted unless returned within seven days. Of course it will be accepted now.” We contradicted her flatly. We explained, we protested, we threatened. We endeavoured to put the manuscript into her hand, and made a faint attempt to stick it into her bag. She was indignant, dignified, and very strong. She said nothing on that occasion about legal proceedings, but stuck manfully to her assertion that we had bound ourselves to decide upon her manuscript within a week. “Do you think, Sir,” said she, “that I would entrust the very essence of my brain to the keeping of a stranger, without some such assurance as that?” We acknowledged that we had undertaken to read the paper, but again disowned the week. “And how long would you be justified in taking?” demanded Mrs. Brumby. “If a month, why not a year? Does it not occur to you, Sir, that when the very best of my intellect, my inmost thoughts, lie there at your disposal,” and she pointed to the heap, “it may be possible that a property has been confided to you too valuable to justify neglect? Had I given you a ring to keep you would have locked it up, but the best jewels of my mind are left to the tender mercies of your charwoman.” What she said was absolutely nonsense,—abominable, villanous trash; but she said it so well that we found ourselves apologising for our own misconduct. There had perhaps been a little undue delay. In our peculiar business such would occasionally occur. When we had got to this, any expression of our wrath at her intrusion was impossible. As we entered the room we had intended almost to fling her manuscript at her head. We now found ourselves handling it almost affectionately while we expressed regret for our want of punctuality. Mrs. Brumby was gracious, and pardoned us, but her forgiveness was not of the kind which denotes the intention of the injured one to forget as well as forgive the trespass. She had suffered from us a great injustice; but she would say no more on that score now, on the condition that we would at once attend to her essay. She thrice repeated the words, “at once,” and she did so without rebuke from us. And then she made us a proposition, the like of which never reached us before or since. Would we fix an hour within the next day or two at which we would call upon her in Harpur Street and arrange as to terms? The lieutenant, she said, would be delighted to make our acquaintance. Call upon her!—upon Mrs. Brumby! Travel to Harpur Street, Theobald’s Road, on the business of a chance bit of scribbling, which was wholly indifferent to us except in so far as it was a trouble to us! And then we were invited to make arrangements as to terms! Terms!! Had the owner of the most illustrious lips in the land offered to make us known in those days to the partner of her greatness, she could not have done so with more assurance that she was conferring on us an honour, than was assumed by Mrs. Brumby when she proposed to introduce us to the lieutenant.

When many wrongs are concentrated in one short speech, and great injuries inflicted by a few cleverly-combined words, it is generally difficult to reply so that some of the wrongs shall not pass unnoticed. We cannot always be so happy as was Mr. John Robinson, when in saying that he hadn’t been “dead at all,” he did really say everything that the occasion required. We were so dismayed by the proposition that we should go to Harpur Street, so hurt in our own personal dignity, that we lost ourselves in endeavouring to make it understood that such a journey on our part was quite out of the question. “Were we to do that, Mrs. Brumby, we should live in cabs and spend our entire days in making visits.” She smiled at us as we endeavoured to express our indignation, and said something as to circumstances being different in different cases;—something also, if we remember right, she hinted as to the intelligence needed for discovering the differences. She left our office quicker than we had expected, saying that as we could not afford to spend our time in cabs she would call again on the day but one following. Her departure was almost abrupt, but she went apparently in good-humour. It never occurred to us at the moment to suspect that she hurried away before we should have had time to repudiate certain suggestions which she had made.

When we found ourselves alone with the roll of paper in our hands, we were very angry with Mrs. Brumby, but almost more angry with ourselves. We were in no way bound to the woman, and yet she had in some degree substantiated a claim upon us. We piqued ourselves specially on never making any promise beyond the vaguest assurance that this or that proposed contribution should receive consideration at some altogether undefined time; but now we were positively pledged to read Mrs. Brumby’s effusion and have our verdict ready by the day after to-morrow. We were wont, too, to keep ourselves much secluded from strangers; and here was Mrs. Brumby, who had already been with us twice, positively entitled to a third audience. We had been scolded, and then forgiven, and then ridiculed by a woman who was old, and ugly, and false! And there was present to us a conviction that though she was old, and ugly, and false, Mrs. Brumby was no ordinary woman. Perhaps it might be that she was really qualified to give us valuable assistance in regard to the magazine, as to which we must own we were sometimes driven to use matter that was not quite so brilliant as, for our readers’ sakes, we would have wished it to be. We feel ourselves compelled to admit that old and ugly women, taken on the average, do better literary work than they who are young and pretty. I did not like Mrs. Brumby, but it might be that in her the age would find another De Staël. So thinking, we cut the little string, and had the manuscript open in our own hands. We cannot remember whether she had already indicated to us the subject of the essay, but it was headed, “Costume in 18—.” There were perhaps thirty closely-filled pages, of which we read perhaps a third. The handwriting was unexceptionable, orderly, clean, and legible; but the matter was undeniable twaddle. It p