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Certain novels are the touchstones of feeling and intellect with certain ladies. Unluckily I was not well read in these; and in the questions put to me from these sentimental statute-books, I gave strange judgments, often for the husband or parents against the heroine.
As our heroine prudently wished to avoid a meeting with her lover, she left the house earlier than she otherwise would have done, and returned home to prepare her mind for the trial which awaited her.
They write to him their unsolicited advice and strictures. This is the parson's letter: 'MY DEAR DICK, 'I like your last book much better than the rest of them; but I don't like your heroine. Thanks for your kind remembrance of us at Christmas: the oysters were excellent. We were sorry to see that ill-natured little notice in the Scourge. 'Yours affectionately, Jack the lawyer writes: 'DEAR DICK,
Our heroine was provoked by the sight of this insolent tranquillity, and was determined that it should not long continue. The reader came to the promise which Gualtherus exacts from his bride:
'That's a little Irish blarney to propitiate me, laughed Mr. Kendal, who certainly was in unusual spirits after his execution and rescue by proxy, but you wont escape prison fare. 'There's no doubt who was the heroine of the day, added Sophy. 'How one envies her! 'What! your little governess friend? said Ulick. 'Yes; she did show superior wit, when the rest of the world stood gaping round.
She laid her arm upon the window-sill, and her face down upon it, feeling sick sick that I should have to write it! with anger and envy. She was Edith Darrell, the poor relation, still and Trix was to be Lady Catheron. "A pretty heroine!" cries some, "gentle reader," looking angrily up; "a nasty, envious, selfish creature. Not the sort, of a heroine we're used to." Ah!
Weak minds are subject to this apprehension of control from secret causes utterly inadequate to their supposed effects; and thus they put their destiny into the hands of persons who could not otherwise obtain influence over their fate. The time at length arrived when our heroine was to be confirmed in her expectations, or wakened from her state of self-delusion.
Here is a passage from one: "In 1904 I did so well that I lived in luxury, and, I fear, somewhat extravagantly, and my performance as heroine in was so highly praised that I had no doubt my future was well assured. Last year I earned £40, and I have to live on what I earn, and if I look dowdy when I go seeking an engagement I have little chance of getting it.
"Don't be rash, Harley," I said; for it seemed to me that Miss Andrews, having consented at my solicitation to be a docile heroine for just so long as Harley did not insist upon her marrying the man she did not love, it was no time for him to break away from the principles he had so steadfastly adhered to hitherto and become a martinet.
A novelist may conceive his heroine freely as being tall or short, frail or firmly built; but if a dramatist is making a play for an actress like Maude Adams, an airy, slight physique is imposed upon his heroine in advance.
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