SOME WELL-KNOWN LADY WRITERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 517

SOME WELL-KNOWN LADY WRITERS.

MISS JESSIE FOTHERGILL. S this talented young authoress has recently died, a few reminiscences of a visit paid to her—taken from a London journal—may be of interest to the readers of the New Zealand Graphic. Miss Fothergill’s bestknown works are ‘The First Violin,’ qSMffiVTBMBrL • and * Kith And Kin.’ The lady’s home _ wwMy is in a quiet street lying off OxfordCAR®-"' 7 street, one of the main thoroughfares * of Manchester ; and the house, one of a modest little row, is small and ordinary. The rooms are larger than might have been expected from its exterior, notably Miss Fothergill’s own ‘ den,’ as fhe calls the place where she spends nearly all her time. It is upstairs, and has two windows facing south, between them stands a large writing table, front which the authoress rises to welcome you. It is literally covered with papers and manuscripts. 'You think it looks extremely untidy,’she says, with a bright smile, after the first greetings are over. • It is not untidy for me because I can put my hand on everything that 1 want. I am much cramped for space, too, in which to arrange my books as I would have them. I have a great many more than these, and they are scattered about in different other rooms in the house, which is only my temporary home, and everything is in disorder now, as I am on the eve of departure for sunnier climes. ’ The furniture is arranged with the greatest simplicity, but it is all very comfortable ; there are several easy chairs, a good resting couch, and plenty of tables, heaped up with the books, papers, and magazines of her daily reading. Over the fireplace is a large and very good autotype of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘ Monna Lisa,’ with her mysterious smile and exquisite hands. There are likewise many photographs of Rome, and the art treasures of Rome. On another wall are two of Melozzo da Forti’s angels, after those in the Sagrestia dei Canonici at St. Peter’s, Rome, and a drawing of Watts’ ‘ Love and Death ’ made by a friend. ‘lt is all extremely simple and rather shabby,’ Miss Fothergill remarks placidly, * but it suits me. I rarely enter the downstairs rooms, except at the stated hour for meals, and, though I detest the dirt and gloom of Manchester, and am always ill in this climate, yet for luxury I do not care. Sumptuous rooms, gorgeous furniture, and an accumulation of “ the pride of life ” and “the lust of the eye ” would simply oppress me, and make me feel very uncomfortable.’ It is only fair to remark that on this occasion Manchester has put on a bright and smiling appearance. Though the fogs and rain can be as persistent as they are in London, the latter indeed much more frequent, the sun to-day shines brilliantly over the great city, and ‘ dirt and gloom ’ are conspicuous by their absence. In person the authoress is moderately tall and slight in figure. She is pale and delicate-looking, with dark brown curly hair brushed back from her forehead, and fine grey eyes, which have a sparkle of mirth in them, and indicate a keen sense of humour. * I have a keen sense of fun,’ she replies in answer to your remark, * and see the ridiculous side of things, if they have one. It is a blessed assistance in wending one’s way through life. My mother and all her family possessed it, and we inherit it from her.’ She wears a soft black dress, trimmed with lace and jet embroidery, and she is so youthful in her appearance as to look like a mere girl. Jessie Fothergill was born at Cheetham Hall, Manchester and is of mixed Lancashire and Yorkshire descent. Her father came of an old Yorkshire yeoman and Quaker family, whose original home —still standing—was a lonely house called Tarn House, in a lonely dale—Ravenstonedale, Westmoreland. From there, in i. 668, the family, having joined the Society of Friends, removed to a farmhouse, which some member of it built for himself in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, a district which until lately has been quite remote and little known, but which is now beginning to be sadly spoiled by the number of visitors from afar, who have found it out and who are corrupting the primitive simplicity of the inhabitants of the dale. This old-world farmstead was called Carr End. It is still in existence, but has passed out of the possession of its former owners. ‘My father spent bis childhood there,’ says Miss Fothergill, * and used to keep us entranced, as children, living in a stiff Manchester suburb, with accounts of the things to be seen and done there—ot the wild moors, the running waterfalls, the little lake of Semirwater hard by filled with fish, haunted by birds to us unknown, and bordered by grass and flowers, pleasant woods and rough boulders, i never

saw it till I was a grown woman, and, standing in the old fashioned garden with the remembrance of my dead father in my heart, I formed the intention of making it the scene of a story, and did so.’ But ere she has finished speaking you recognise the whole description in the volume of ‘ Kith and Kin ’ which you had been reading in the train. Miss Fothergill’s father spent his early manhood in Rochdale, learning the ins and outs of the cotton trade, the great Lancashire industry, settling with a friend as his partner in business at Manchester. He was a Quaker, and on marrying her mother, who was a member of the Church of England, he was turned out of the Society of Friends for choosing a wife outside the pale of that body. His Nonconformist blood is strong in all his children, and not one of them now belongs to the Established Church. Mrs Fothergill was the daughter of a medical man at Burnley, in NorthEast Lancashire, another busy, grimy manufacturing town. * I, however,’ says our young hostess, * knew very little of these northern towns, or the characteristics of their people, the love of which afterwards became part of my life, for, though my father’s business was in Manchester, our home was at Bowdon, a popular suburb some eight or ten miles on the Cheshire side of the great city, and as utterly different from its northern outskirts and surroundings as if it belonged to another world. ’ Misfortune soon brought the young girl in contact with other scenes. When she was a mere child at school, and all her brothers and sisters very young, her father died. Much reduced in circumstances, the family went to live (because it appeared best, most suitable, and convenient) at an out-of-the-way house appertaining to a cotton mill, in an out-of-the-way part of Lancashire, in which her father and his partner had had a business interest. * There must have been something of the artist,’ continues Jessie Fothergill, * and something also of the vagabond in me, for I quite well remember going home to this place for the first Christmas holidays after my father’s death, and being enchanted and delighted — despite the sorrow that overshadowed us—with the rough roads, the wild sweeping moors and fells, the dark stone walls, the strange, uncouth people, the out of-the-worldness of it all. And the better I knew it the more I loved it, in its winter bleakness and its tempered but delightful summer warmth. I loved its gloom, its grey skies and green fields, the energy and the desperate earnestness of the people, who lived and worked there. I photographed this place minutely under the name of Homerton in a novel called “ Healey.” Here I passed a good many years after that turning point in a “young lady’s” career—leaving school. Alas! there was little of the “young lady ” about me. I hated company, except exactly that in which I felt myself at home. I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for “ poring over those books ” instead of qualifying myself as a useful member of society. Almost better, I loved my wild rambles over the moors, along the rough roads, into every nook and corner of what would have been a beautiful vale—the Tadmorden Valley—if man had but left it as God had made it. But I liked the life that was around me too, the routine of the great cotton and flannel mills, the odd habits, the queer sayings and doings of the work-people. It was only when compassionate friends or relations, wishing to be kind and to introduce me to the world, insisted upon appearing in carriages, presenting me with ball-dresses, and taking me to entertainments that I was unhappy. I wove romances, wrote them down, in an attic at the top of the house ; u reamed dreams, and lived, I can conscientiously say, far more intensely in the lives and loves of my imaginary characters, than even in the ambition of some day having name and fame.’ Both of Jessie Fothergill’s two first books ‘ Healey ’ and ‘ Aldytb,’ according to her own account, ‘ fell flat and dead to the ground.’ Nothing daunted, however, by their failure, she paused for a while before writing anything more. Soon after their publication, she paid two visits to the Continent as the guest of friends, delighting much in all the new and wonderful things she saw. But the real enjoyment of foreign life came on a subsequent journey, when, with a sister and two young friends, she found herself established in a German boarding house at Dusseldorf, on the Rhine, utterly without any of the luxurious hotels, drives, dinners, or any correct sight-seeing which she had enjoyed on her former visits, but with a thousand interests brought by the opening of a new life, the wonderful discovery of German music, the actual hearing of all the delightful things she bad previously only heard of, which naturally inspired her imagination and fancy. At Dusseldorf she began to write ‘ The First Violin,’ weaving into the scenes which passed every day before her eyes a series of imaginary adventures of imaginary beings. It was written ‘in spasms,’she says—often altered, again completely changed in plot and incident several times, and it was not actually finished for a very long time after it was begun. During the fifteen months spent at Dusseldorf she took every opportunity of studying the German language and life, and at the expiration of that time she went back to England— ‘ to the house at the end of the world,’ she says, smiling ; ‘ and soon after my return I took a secretaryship, my heart in my books, making several efforts to get some enterprising publisher to take “ The First Violin.” I went to the firm who had brought out my two first unlucky efforts, but they kindly and parentally advised me, for the sake of whatever literary reputation I might have obtained, not to publish the novel I submitted to them. Much nettled at this, I replied, somewhat petulantly, that I acknowledged their right to refuse it, but not to advise me in the matter, and I would publish it. Next I took it to another firm who made it a rule never to bring out any novels except those of some promise. If it were possible to grant the premises of my story, the action itself was consistent enough, but it was up in the clouds and (though so

elevated) was below their mark. Finally Mr Bentley took pity on it, and brought it out in three-volume form, first running it through the pages of Temple Rar. Since that time I have not experienced any difficulty in disposing of my wares, though continuous and severe ill-health has been a constant restraint on the rapid production, and has also kept me quiet and obliged me to seek rest and avoid excitement at the expense of many an acquaintance and many a pleasure I should have been glad to enjoy.’ On looking back, Jessie Fothergill cannot remember anything which caused her to write beyond the desire to do it. Her first attempts began when she was a mere child. Passionately fond of fairy tales, or any other, good, bail, or indifferent, she read them all, literally living in them when doing so. Then at school she used to instigate the other girls to write stories, because she wished to do so herself. She would tell them marvellous romances, which she had either read or invented. Her talent for writing fiction can not be called hereditary, since the only family literary productions of which she is aware are a volume or two of sermons preached by some Fothergill who was a Friend, a missionary, and a man of note in his time. * Then, long ago,’ says the authoress, ‘ there was a celebrated Dr. John Fothergill in London. I came across his name in one (of the volumes of Horace Walpole’s letters. He not only made a fortune, but wrote books—purely professional ones, I imagine. My father’s people were brought up narrowly as regards literature and accomplishments, as was the fashion in his sect in that day, but he himself was an insatiable devourer of novels and poetry, and introduced me to the works of Dickens and Walter Scott, exacting a promise that I should not read more than three chapters of any given book in one day, a promise which was faithfully kept, but with great agony of mind.’ Jessie Fothergill forms her plots as follows : She imagines some given situation, and works round it, as it were till she gets the story, all the characters except the two or three principal ones coming gradually. Next she writes them out first in a rough draft, the end of which often contradicts the beginning, but she knows what she means by that time. Then it is all copied out and arranged as she has settled it clearly in her mind. She is quick in composing, but slow in deciding which course the story shall take, as all the people are very real to her, and sometimes unkindly refuse to be disposed of according to her original intentions. ‘ I write much more slowly,’ says Miss Fothergill, ‘ and much less frequently now that my health is so indifferent. As a child I learnt very quickly, and sometimes forgot equally quickly, but never anything that really interested me. I remember winning one prize only at a very early age, and choosing the most brightly bound of the books from which I had to select. It has always been my great regret that I did not receive a classical education. If I had, I would have turned it to some purpose, but when I was a child, music, for which 1 had absolutely no gift, was drummed into me, and a little French, German, and Italian I have learnt for myself since.’ ‘The Lasses of Leverhouse ’ (Messrs Tillotson, of Bolton) was her third book, but ‘ The First Violin ’ (Messrs Bentley) scored her first success. It went through several editions, and was followed by ‘ Probation,’ • Kith and Kin,’ ‘ The Well-fields,’ ‘ Borderland,’ ‘ Peril,’ and ‘ From Moor Isles.’ Most of these passed first through Temple Bar before being issued in book form, and each has been warmly welcomed and favourably reviewed. Some have appeared in Indian and Australian, journals, and most of her works are to be found in the Tauchnitz edition. ‘ A March in the Ranks ’ is the authoress’s latest book. Besides these, she has written numerous short stories, among them, ‘Made or Marred,’ ‘ One of Three,’and a great many articles and essays for newspapers and magazines. Full of interest and incident, carefully and conscientiously worked out, there is one prevailing characteristic running through all Miss Fothergill’s novels. She is thoroughly straightforward and honest. Hating shams of all kinds, she pictures what seem to be things that happen, with due licence tor arranging the circumstances and catastrophes artistically and dramatically. ‘l’he First Violin’ is a book for all time ; ‘ Piobation,’ ‘ Kith and Kin,’ ‘ Peril,’ and ‘ The Well-fields,’ are decidedly nineteenth century stories, as many of the interesting questions of the day appear in them, and it is evident that the said questions occupied the gifted wiiter’s mind not a little. ‘ 1 have absolutely no sympathy,’she says, ‘with what is often called realism now, the apotheosis of all that is ugly in man’s life, feelings, and career, told in a minute, laborious way, and put forth as if it were a discovery. Life is as full of romance as Italy is full of roses. It is as full of prose as Lancashire is full of factory chimneys. I have always tried to be impartial in my wiitings, and to let the pendulum swing from good to bad, from bad to good ; that has been my aim when I could detach myself enough from my characters.’ Here Miss Fothergill draws off a seal ring which she long ago had engraved with the motto she chose to guide her through life. ‘Good fight, good rest,’ she says. ‘ It embodies all I have of religious creed. It means a good deal when you come to think of it.’ Miss Fothergill is a great reader. She delights especially in Ruskin, Dai win, Georges Sand, and George Eliot’s works, which she says have solaced many an hour of pain and ill ness. In lighter literature she prefers some of Anthony Trollope’s novels, and considers Mrs Gaskell’s ‘Sylvia’s Lovers ’ one of the masterpieces of English fiction, and ‘ Wuthering Heights’as absolutely unique and unapproachable. Herbert Spencer and Freeman are great favourites, whilst in poetry, Browning stands first of all in her affections, and next to him, Morris, Goethe, and bits of Walt Whitman. Of her own works she says modestly, ‘ It seems to me that I have not much to say of them. What little I have done has been done entirely by my own efforts, unassisted by friends at Court, or favour of any kind. It has been a regret that owing to my having never lived in London I have not mixed more with scientific or literary people, and that I only know them through their books.’ The authoiess lias so thoioughly studied her own native city, and is so conversant with its doings, past and present, that she has much interesting information to impart about its ancient history, the sources of its wealth, and the origin of the place, which is so remarkable for the importance of its manufactures and the great extent of its trade. Mandies ter may be traced back to a very remote period of antiquity. It was once distinguished as a principal station of the Druid priests, ami was tor four centuries occupied by the Romans, being amply provided with everything requisite for the subsistence and accommodation of the garrison established in it. It was as long ago as 1352 that the manufacture of * Man Chester cottons’ was introduced, and the material was in

reality a kind of woollen cloth made from the fleece in an unprepared state. At that period b lemish artisans settled in the town, where, finding so many natural advantages, they laid the foundations of the trade and brought the woollen manufacture to a great degree of perfection. Noris the industrious city without later historical reminiscences. In 1744 Prince Charles Edward visited Manchester, where he was hospitably entertained for several weeks at Ancoat’s Hall, the house of Sir Edward Moseley, Bart., returning the following year at the head of an army of ■6OOO men, when he took up his quarters at the house of Mr Dickenson in Market-place. In 1768 Christian, King of Denmark, lodged with his suite at the ancient Bull Inn. Early in the present century the Archdukes John and Lewis of Austria, accompanied by a retinue of scientific men, spent some time in the place, and in 1817 the late Emperor of Russia, then the Grand Duke Nicholas, visited Manchester to inspect the aqueducts and excavations at Worsley, and was escorteil all over the principal factories. But the shades of evening draw on ; you have to get back to London to-night, and having likewise been * hospitably entertained,’ you bid Jessie Fothergill good-bj’e, with an earnest hope that under southern skies, and in warmer latitudes, she may soon regain her lost health and strength — a hope, alas I not destined to be realized.