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much out of her writings as some of her contemporaries-as Anthony Trollope, for example, or Miss Muloch. "Yet I have done very well," she admits, "for a woman, and a friendless woman with no one to make the best of me, and quite unable to do that for myself I never could fight for a higher price, or do anything but trust to the honour of those I had to deal with." After a winter in Fettes Row, she moved to Ealing, which was her headquarters until she went to Windsor for the education of her boys.

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Now let the reader mentally place himself or herself in the situation in which Mrs Oliphant stood after her husband's death, always postulating, of course, a certain faculty for writing, and a certain established position in the world of letters. What course would he pursue? We imagine that a prudent person, on arriving in England from abroad, would seek out some low rented house in country-town where education was cheap, or even in some altogether rural district; would cut down expenses as far as possible and live with the strictest economy; would direct his or her efforts to paying off outstanding debts and thereafter to laying something by, as the phrase runs, "for a rainy day." Not so Not so Mrs Oliphant. Deliberately and with open eyes she adopted a policy which necessarily involved her being always behindhand with the world. Her avowals as to this "plan of campaign" are astoundingly outspoken. Nothing but

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the best of everything was good enough for her. She hated small economies. To travel expensively was "her way." She never would travel secondclass. "I never liked secondclass journeys nor discomforts of that kind." Rather than face a twelve hours' passage across the Channel she drove from St Malo to Boulogne. She had none of what she calls "the faculty of economics" in her. She stayed at the very best and most expensive hotels; she dressed in the richest of silks and satins; she insisted on producing champagne for her guests at dinner. To most people in her circumstances a "main - door" in Fettes Row and the boys going to the neighbouring Edinburgh Academy would have represented the summit of ambition. Row is uninviting enough in all conscience. But the Academy had revived classical learning in the Scottish secondary schools; it had introduced athletics into Scottish school-life; and it holds its own to-day in the face of severe competition. Yet the Academy, which was good enough for most Scottish parents fiveand thirty years ago, not good enough for Mrs Oliphant. It must be either Eton or Harrow, and Eton it turned out to be.

Fettes

was

But that was not all. Shortly after her removal to Windsor in order that her boy Cyril might go to Eton, her brother was ruined, and without an instant's hesitation she took upon herself the charge of his family. It meant the addition to her household of four people.

No doubt, friends remonstrated that resolution; but now I with her for undertaking this think that if I had taken the enormous additional responsi- other way, which seemed the bility. Mr John Blackwood, at less noble, it might have been all events, indulged a few years better for all of us." It was afterwards in a kindly warning, really easier to her, she says, which elicited from her the fol- "to keep on with a flowing lowing candid statement of her sail [the inappropriate adjective position:is characteristic], to keep my household and a number of people comfortable, at the cost of incessant work, and an occasional great crisis of anxiety, than to live the self-restrained life which the greater artist imposes upon himself." Time after time she repeats this view in the autobiography. The

"My money is almost always spent before I get it, or received only just in time for pressing necessities, so that the pleasant sensation of feeling even three months clear before me is one which very rarely occurs to me. I have four people, an entire family, three of them requiring education, absolutely on my hands to provide for. My only chance of ever escaping from this burden is to train and push on my nephew into a position in which he can take this weight upon himself. This process of course involves a great additional expense, and I cannot let my own boys suffer for what I am obliged to do for him. For the next three years, during which I shall have all three at work, I can look forward to nothing but a fight à outrance for money. Now perhaps it would be wiser, with this tremendous struggle before me, to retire from my pretty house and pleasant surroundings and go to some cheap village where I could live at less expense. I hold myself ready to do this should the necessity absolutely arise; but you will easily understand that while still in the full tide of middle life I shrink from such a sacrifice, and would rather work to the utmost of my powers than withdraw from all that makes existence agreeable. I never can save money, but if I can rear three men who may be good for something in the world, I shall not have lived for nothing."

That this course involved the sacrifice of the ambition to do the very best work, Mrs Oliphant was well aware. At the time, she tells us, with extraordinary frankness, "it seemed rather a fine thing to make

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easy swing of life" was what she loved. "I had enough to carry me on easily, almost luxuriously, but not enough to save." A little extra expense could always be made up for by a little extra exertion.

What wonder that life for her was "always at hard, if not at high, pressure"? Well, indeed, might she liken herself to Prometheus, "the man chained to the rock, with the vultures swooping down upon him!" Think of it: always forestalling money earned, so that the price of a book was generally eaten

up

before it was printed; always owing somebody, "though never owing anybody to any unreasonable amount;" and with awful moments when some dreadful impassable,

corner seemed
which somehow was always
rounded! Was it tempting
Providence or trusting God?
she herself asks. Who shall

say? It is assuredly not for us
to decide.
to decide. We may note, at all
events, that in one respect her
calculations were justified; the

power of work lasted practically as long as life. Never was her skill more conspicuous than in the interval between Cecco's death and her own. Her sons, for whom she thus slaved, were taken from her. They no longer required a provision. If the line she followed was mistaken, surely she suffered a more than adequate penalty in the exquisitely bitter reflection that to some extent their failure to find a footing in life was due to her solicitude and indulgence.

There is, however, one consideration which rises irresistibly to the mind in reviewing the course which Mrs Oliphant mapped out for herself and consistently followed. If she was able to ride in first-class carriages, to stay at the best hotels, to educate her sons at Eton, to travel all over the Continent, to make a pilgrimage even to Jerusalem, whence came the money to meet the inevitable expense? The answer is very simple, from her publishers. They acted as her bankers: they advanced money to her on the security of her health of body and vigour of mind. It may very well be that if Mrs Oliphant had been beforehand with the world, she might have commanded better prices. You cannot expect a capitalist to let you have the use of his capital for absolutely nothing. Dickens has explained this aspect of

a much-debated question with great force and clearness.1 But it is certain that, as matters actually stood, Mrs Oliphant would have had to forgo most of the luxuries and comforts by which she set as much store as anybody else, had it not been for the ready aid of those who "financed" her. In what other calling would she have been so fortunate? Perhaps, if she had been a painter, a picture-dealer might have advanced her a few guineas. But we know of no "profession" other than letters in which remuneration can be anticipated to the same amount' and on the same terms. Solicitors do not finance barristers to the tune of several thousands. A struggling surgeon will probably fail to raise a five-pound note on the strength of a promise to cut off the lender's leg if called upon to do so.

When the countless iniquities of "the trade" are rehearsed by prosperous and well-fed authors, let not the recording angel fail to note that publishers have long done, and still continue to do, what is asked and expected of no man in any other kind of business.

From the point of view of literature, it would be affectation to pretend not to regret that Mrs Oliphant drove herself so hard. She resented compliments to her industry; but she sometimes ran a serious risk

"He was equally intolerant of every magnificent proposal that should render the literary man independent of the bookseller. 'What does it come to?'

he remarked. 'You and I know very well that in nine cases out of ten the author is at a disadvantage with the publisher, because the publisher has capital and the author has not. We know perfectly well that in nine cases out of ten money is advanced by the publisher before the book is producible—often long before.""-Forster's Life of Dickens, iii. 451.

of leaving nothing but her a species of instinct for disindustry for people to com- covering the salient points of pliment her upon. How rea book at a mere glance and markable it was, the present on the first turning over of volume, with its full and ex- the leaves. The knack of what cellent bibliography, gives ample is called "journalism" she posindication. She had always an sessed in an unusual degree. article on hand for 'Maga' in Her "copy," particularly in the midst of her heaviest work. the case of her more imNo other contributor, except portant articles, was often deAytoun, approached her ver- layed till the last possible satility and diligence, and the moment, but never longer. She term of his connection with the was extraordinarily apt and Magazine was considerably ready at taking up a hint, and shorter than hers. With the at working into her articles exception of purely political sub- any new line of thought or jects, there was almost no topic argument suggested to her, on which she was not prepared provided always that it did to write. Old-fashioned in her not conflict with her own preideas, she preferred the system judices or convictions. In of anonymous to that of signed that case she was tenacious articles; but she held out vigor- to the point of obstinacy; nor ously for her own views when did she face the task of rethey were not in harmony with casting a completed work with the Editor's, as the correspon- any more equanimity than her dence sufficiently testifies. She neighbours. Yet, when the was extremely plain-spoken in first shock of annoyance was her comments on the Magazine past, she was often wise enough upon occasion, and in writing to to profit by distasteful advice the Editor did not hesitate to and 'The Beleaguered City stigmatise any article as "dread- is a striking instance of judiful nonsense "if she thought it cious, though at the time, perso. As a critic she was fair and haps, reluctant, deference to open-minded: not averse from the counsels of another. She "a little slashing" when that wrote currente calamo. It was operation seemed necessary, and impossible to foretell what well able to apply the rod to length her articles would "run serious delinquents. Her opin- to": she herself had probably ions were strongly held, and little notion when she took sometimes, perhaps, prevented up her pen. Hence a slight her from catching the true readjustment of balance or prodrift of ideas with which portion might sometimes have she was unfamiliar. Yet she effected a perceptible improvehad no "fads" or eccentricities, ment. But these shortcomings no logs to roll, no axes to were trivial indeed in comgrind; and in the great ma- parison with her abounding jority of cases her views were merits. both sensible and sound. Long practice had endowed her with

;

No periodical was ever better or more loyally served by a contributor: not the

'Quarterly' by Croker, not the 'Saturday Review' by Venables, scarce even 'Maga' herself by John Wilson or Professor Aytoun.

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Mrs Oliphant's attitude to her "art was eminently sane and healthy. "I have written because it gave me pleasure," she says, "because it came natural to me, because it was like talking or breathing, besides the big fact that it was necessary for me to work for my children." She never knew that freedom from human ties which she notes as one of the most singular traits in Laurence Oliphant and his wife. "I have always had to think of other people, and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them." She had none of the airs and graces of those who take themselves seriously.

"You make me nervous," she writes to Mr John Blackwood about 'Miss Marjoribanks' one of her very finest novels-"when you talk about the first rank of novelists,

&c. nobody in the world cares whether I am in the first or sixth. I mean I have no one left who cares, and the world can do absolutely nothing for me except giving me a little more money, which, Heaven knows, I spend easily enough as it is. But all the same, I will do my best, only please recognise the difference a little between a man who can take the good of his reputation, if he has any, and a poor soul who is concerned about nothing except the most domestic and limited concerns."

Yet it would probably have been rash to take her at her word; and a homologation, express or implied, of that view by another would in all likeli

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hood, as she herself owns, have discovered the artist's pride in the work of her hands. Unfavourable criticism she could endure, without in the least professing to be unscathed by its arrows. "What is the reputation of a circulating library to me ? she asks. Eulogy did not turn her head, a fact which she attributed to her strong Scotch sense of the absurdity of a chorus of praise." If such a sense were truly Scottish once, it has now, we fear, become expatriated. Laudari a laudatis gave her unalloyed pleasure. The applause of men like Mr Hutton or Mr Kinglake-men whom she respected and whose work she admired-was indeed worth earning. What she could not tolerate was the "patronising approbation so often bestowed upon her by the press, and sometimes by thoughtless persons in private life-the "contemptuous compliments," as she describes them, which it was customary to pay to her "indefatigable industry," and the like. One may sympathise thoroughly with this feeling, while refusing to acknowledge that such a strain of praise was either unnatural or necessarily ill-natured.

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In glancing at Mrs Oliphant's career, we have confined our attention, as far as possible, to those aspects of it which are more directly of public interest, or which are closely associated with this Magazine and those responsible for its conduct. Upon its more private side, as disclosed in the pages before us, we confess that we have not the heart to enter, though in a sense it

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