A Simple Story | Page 3

powers are weak and fluctuating.
She has no firm grasp of the masculine elements in character: she
wishes to draw a rough man, Sandford, and she draws a rude one; she
tries her hand at a hero, Rushbrook, and she turns out a prig. Her
humour is not faulty, but it is exceedingly slight. What an immortal
figure the dim Mrs. Horton would have become in the hands of Jane
Austen! In Nature and Art, her attempts at social satire are superficial
and overstrained. But weaknesses of this kind--and it would be easy to
prolong the list--are what every reader of the following pages will
notice without difficulty, and what no wise one will regard. "Il ne faut
point juger des hommes par ce qu'ils ignorent, mais par ce qu'ils
savent;" and Mrs. Inchbald's knowledge was as profound as it was
limited. Her Miss Milner is an original and brilliant creation, compact
of charm and life. She is a flirt, and a flirt not only adorable, but worthy
of adoration. Did Mrs. Inchbald take the suggestion of a heroine with
imperfections from the little masterpiece which, on more sides than one,
closely touches her's--Manon Lescaut? Perhaps; and yet, if this was so,
the borrowing was of the slightest, for it is only in the fact that she is
imperfect that Miss Milner bears to Manon any resemblance at all. In
every other respect, the English heroine is the precise contrary of the

French one: she is a creature of fiery will, of high bearing, of noble
disposition; and her shortcomings are born, not of weakness, but of
excess of strength. Mrs. Inchbald has taken this character, she has
thrown it under the influence of a violent and absorbing passion, and,
upon that theme, she has written her delicate, sympathetic, and artificial
book.
As one reads it, one cannot but feel that it is, if not directly and
circumstantially, at least in essence, autobiographical. One finds
oneself speculating over the author, wondering what was her history,
and how much of it was Miss Milner's. Unfortunately the greater part
of what we should most like to know of Mrs. Inchbald's life has
vanished beyond recovery. She wrote her Memoirs, and she burnt them;
and who can tell whether even there we should have found a
self-revelation? Confessions are sometimes curiously discreet, and, in
the case of Mrs. Inchbald, we may be sure that it is only what was
indiscreet that would really be worth the hearing. Yet her life is not
devoid of interest. A brief sketch of it may be welcome to her readers.
Elizabeth Inchbald was born on the 15th of October, 1753, at
Standingfield, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk;[1] one of the
numerous offspring of John and Mary Simpson. The Simpsons, who
were Roman Catholics, held a moderate farm in Standingfield, and
ranked among the gentry of the neighbourhood. In Elizabeth's eighth
year, her father died; but the family continued at the farm, the elder
daughters marrying and settling in London, while Elizabeth grew up
into a beautiful and charming girl. One misfortune, however, interfered
with her happiness--a defect of utterance which during her early years
rendered her speech so indistinct as to be unintelligible to strangers.
She devoted herself to reading and to dreams of the great world. At
thirteen, she declared she would rather die than live longer without
seeing the world; she longed to go to London; she longed to go upon
the stage. When, in 1770, one of her brothers became an actor at
Norwich, she wrote secretly to his manager, Mr. Griffith, begging for
an engagement. Mr. Griffith was encouraging, and, though no definite
steps were taken, she was sufficiently charmed with him to write out
his name at length in her diary, with the inscription "Each dear letter of

thy name is harmony." Was Mr. Griffith the hero of the company as
well as its manager? That, at any rate, was clearly Miss Simpson's
opinion; but she soon had other distractions. In the following year she
paid a visit to her married sisters in London, where she met another
actor, Mr. Inchbald, who seems immediately to have fallen in love with
her, and to have proposed. She remained cool. "In spite of your
eloquent pen," she wrote to him, with a touch of that sharp and almost
bitter sense that was always hers, "matrimony still appears to me with
less charms than terrors: the bliss arising from it, I doubt not, is
superior to any other--but best not to be ventured for (in my opinion),
till some little time have proved the emptiness of all other; which it
seldom fails to do." Nevertheless, the correspondence continued, and,
early in 1772, some entries in her diary give a glimpse of her state of
mind:--
Jan.