20 April: Boreham on Dinah Mulock

A Girl's Adventure
It was on the twentieth of April that a girl was born who, whilst still a girl, did a particularly daring thing. Dinah Mulock, better known as Mrs. Craik, made up her mind, almost as soon as she became conscious of having a mind to make up, that she had come into the world to write novels. Born on April 20, 1826 she left her home in Staffordshire in 1846 and went up to London to try her hand at literature. Such a proceeding would, even in 1946, be regarded as extremely risky; in 1846 it was the sheerest audacity. The woman novelist was still looked upon as a dangerous experiment, an undesirable innovation. At that very moment, all unknown to Dinah, two young women—Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell—were meeting with the most persistent and heartbreaking rebuffs in their attempts to induce some publisher to glance tolerantly at manuscripts that were destined to become classical. Women, it was agreed, do not understand men; are, indeed, constitutionally and temperamentally incapable of understanding men. Why, then, should they write? Or, if they obstinately persisted in writing, why should they be read? With womanly sagacity, Miss Mulock saw that the only way of replying to such criticism was to live it down. She answered the taunt by penning the most subtle and most satisfying analysis of a masculine mind that is to be found in any literature.

Mrs. Craik's record is singular in one respect. She wrote many books. None of the earlier ones and none of the later ones, though good, are sufficiently distinguished to secure the permanence of her fame. Many an author has written a first book that has covered him with glory, and then, although they have laboriously penned volume after volume, they has lamentably failed to "recapture their first fine careless rapture." And, contrariwise, many an author has begun with a raw and crude attempt; has gradually learned wisdom in the school of experience; and has ultimately produced a masterpiece. But Miss Mulock wrote "John Halifax, Gentleman" in mid-career. She had already produced three moderately successful novels! Then, in 1857, she gave "John Halifax" to the world. Returning to her desk, she produced in quick succession a chain of literary mediocrities.

The High Art of Creating Lovable Characters
The situation mystified her. She could never understand it. She was not in the slightest degree conscious, as she bent over that particular manuscript, that the story that she was evolving differed, either in kind or quality, from the other products of her pen. When the public was raving over "John Halifax," she was utterly at a loss to explain why that book had been so much more successful than its predecessors; and when, after her triumph, she resumed her work, she was puzzled at her inability to produce another novel of the same calibre. Blackmore had exactly the same experience. He could never understand why "Lorna Doone" outshone all his earlier and later works. He even felt unkindly towards it for throwing the others into the shade. Yet it often happens. The phenomenon has never been satisfactorily explained: it is probably incapable of explanation.

It is difficult to account, in so many words, for the amazing success of "John Halifax." It cannot be said that it appeared at a moment at which the English public had nothing else to read. In the year of its publication Dickens gave "Little Dorrit" to the world; Thackeray issued "The Virginians," and George Eliot sent forth "Scenes from Clerical Life." Yet "John Halifax" captured the popular fancy at once. In no novel written in the English language do three characters leave the realm of fiction and take their places among our most loved and honoured intimates to the extent to which the robust and chivalrous John Halifax, the frail but faithful Phineas Fletcher, and the beautiful and queenly, Ursula March contrive to do. These three seem to be flesh-and-blood companions, whose charming society we have actually enjoyed: we find it difficult to think of them as the mere shadows of a noble book.

A Captivating Idyll of Ideal Wedded Life
The authoress herself cuts an attractive figure in our literary annals. In the days in which she wrote her masterpiece she was, Mrs. Oliphant tells us, a tall young woman with a slim pliant figure and eyes that had a way of fixing the eyes of her interlocutor in a manner that was a trifle embarrassing. "Yet," Mrs. Oliphant hastens to add, "she was always kind, enthusiastic, and much looked up to by the little band of young women who revelled in her friendship." It is pleasant to reflect that she lived a happy life, luxuriating to the full in the splendour of her triumph. Ensconcing herself in a beautiful home, she married her publisher, George Lillie Craik, of the house of Macmillans, and died, at the age of 61, the sudden death that she had idealised in the cases of John Halifax and Ursula March. Among her many claims upon our admiration is the claim of having written a book with a perfect ending; and the perfect ending of her book was but an emblem of her own.

Singularly enough, she and her husband are separately memorialised in two of the most attractive shrines in England. In Charles Kingsley's old church at Eversley there is a coloured window near the organ, placed there as a monument to Mr. Craik. The face of the kneeling shepherd in the picture is said to be his actual likeness. And in Tewkesbury Abbey, in the centre of the scenes described in her book, Mrs. Craik herself sleeps. The memorial in one of the transepts, placed there by a national committee, represents her as an elderly lady of evident graciousness and benevolence. She deserves to be remembered. She has given us a book which brides and bridegrooms, to sweeten their new home, should read aloud to each other during the first year of their wedded life; and, for this reason, it is difficult to think of a more suitable wedding present than a really beautiful copy of "John Halifax."

F W Boreham

Image: Dinah Mulock