The Heavenly Twins by Madame Sarah Grand

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"The Vicar of Wakefield" was one of her early favourites. She read it
several times, and makes mention of it twice in her "Commonplace Book."
Her first notice of it is a childish little synopsis, very quaint in its
unconscious irony; but interesting, principally from the fact that she was
struck even then by the point upon which she afterward became so strong.

"The vicar," she says, "was a good man, and very fond of his wife and
family, and they were very fond of him, but his wife was queer, and could
only read a little. _And he never taught her to improve herself,
although_ he had books and was learned. [Footnote: This is the point
alluded to.] He had two daughters, who were spiteful and did not like
other girls to be pretty. They had bad taste, too, and wanted to go to
church overdressed, and thought it finer to ride a plough-horse than walk.
It does not say that they ever read anything, either. If they had they
would have known better. There is a very nasty man in the book called
Squire Thornhill, and a nice one called Sir William Thornhill, who was his
uncle. Sir William marries Sophia, and Squire Thornhill marries Olivia,
although he does not intend to. Olivia was a horrid deceitful girl, and it
served her right to get such a husband. They have a brother called Moses,
who used to talk philosophy with his father at dinner, and once sold a cow
for a gross of green spectacles. A gross is twelve dozen. Of course they
were all annoyed, but the vicar himself was cheated by the same man when
he went to sell the horse. He seemed to think a great deal of knowing
Latin and Greek, but it was not much use to him then. It was funny that he
should be conceited about what he knew himself, and not want his wife to
know anything. He said to her once: 'I never dispute your abilities to
make a goose pie, and I beg you'll leave argument to me'; which she might
have thought rude, but perhaps she was not a lady, as ladies do not make
goose pies. I forgot, though, they had lost all their money. They had
great troubles, and the vicar was put in prison. He was very ill, but
preached to the prisoners, and everybody loved him. I like 'The Vicar of
Wakefield' very much, and if I cannot find another book as nice I shall
read it again. 'Turn, Gentle Hermit' is silly. I suppose _Punch_ took
Edwin and Angelina out of it to laugh at them."

Quite three years must have elapsed before she again mentions "The Vicar
of Wakefield," and in the meantime she had been reading a fair variety of
books, but for the most part under schoolroom supervision, carefully
selected for her. Some, however, she had chosen for herself--during the
holidays when discipline was relaxed; but it was a fault which she had to
confess, and she does so always, honestly. Lewes' "Life of Goethe" was one
of these. She wrote a glowing description of it, at the end of which she
says:

"I found the book on a sofa in the drawing room, and began it without
thinking, and read and read until I had nearly finished it, quite
forgetting to ask leave. But of course I went at once to tell father as
soon as I thought of it. Mother was there too, and inclined to scold, but
father frowned, and said: 'Let her alone. It will do her no harm; she
won't understand it.' I asked if I might finish it, and he said, 'Oh,
yes,' impatiently. I think he wanted to get rid of me, and I am sorry I
interrupted him at an inconvenient time. Mother often does not agree with
father, but she always gives in. Very often she is right, however, and he
is wrong. Last week she did not want us to go out one day because she was
sure it would rain, but he did not think so, and said we had better go It
did rain--poured--and we got wet through and have had colds ever since,
but when we came in mother scolded me for saying, 'You see, you were
right,' She said I should be saying 'I told yon so!' next, in a nasty
jeering way as the boys do, which really means rejoicing because somebody
else is wrong, and is not generous. I hope I shall never come to that; but
I know if I am ever sure of a thing being right which somebody else thinks
is wrong, it won't matter what it is or who it is, I shall not give in. I
don't see how I could."

Her pen seldom ran away with her into personal matters like these, in the
early part of the book; but from the first she was apt to be beguiled
occasionally by the pleasure of perceiving a powerful stimulant under the
influence of which everything is lost sight of but the point perceived.
She had never to fight a daily and exhausting battle for her private
opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever
expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of
resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her
conclusion silently whenever they required it.

When next she mentions "The Vicar of Wakefield," she says expressly:

"I do not remember what I wrote about it the first time I read it, and I
will not look to see until I have written what I think now, because I
should like to know if I still agree with myself as I was then."

And it is interesting to note how very much she does agree with herself as
she "was then"; the feeling, in fact, is the same, but it has passed from
her heart to her head, and been resolved by the process into positive
opinion, held with conscious knowledge, and delivered with greatly
improved power of expression.

"'The Vicar of Wakefield' makes me think a good deal," she continues, "but
there is no order in my thoughts. There is, however, one thing in the book
that strikes me first and foremost and above all others, which is that the
men were educated and the women were ignorant. It is not to be supposed
that the women preferred to be ignorant, and therefore I presume they were
not allowed the educational advantages upon which the men prided
themselves. The men must accordingly have withheld these advantages by
main force, yet they do not scorn to sneer at the consequences of their
injustice. There is a sneer implied in the vicar's remark about his own
wife: 'She could read any English book without much spelling.' That her
ignorance was not the consequence of incapacity is proved by the evidence
which follows of her intelligence in other matters. Had Mrs. Primrose been
educated she might have continued less lovable than the vicar, but she
would probably have been wiser. The vicar must always have been conscious
of her defects, but had never apparently thought of a remedy, nor does he
dream of preventing a repetition of the same defects in his daughters by
providing them with a better education. He takes their unteachableness for
granted, remarking complacently that an hour of recreation 'was taken up
in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical
arguments between my son and me,' as if 'innocent mirth' were as much as
he could reasonably expect from such inferior beings as a wife and
daughters must necessarily be. The average school girl of to-day is a
child of light on the subject of her own sex compared with the gentle
vicar, and incapable, even before her education is half over, of the envy
and meanness which the latter thinks it kindest to take a humourous view
of, and of the disingenuousness at which he also smiles as the inevitable
outcome of feminine inferiority--at least _I_ never met a girl in my
position who would not have admired Miss Wilmot's beauty, nor do I know
one who would not answer her father frankly, however embarrassing the
question might be, if he asked her opinion of a possible lover."

The next entry in the book is on the subject of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain
Lectures," and, like most of the others, it merits attention from the
unexpected view she takes of the position. It does not strike her as being
humourous, but pathetic. She feels the misery of it, and she had already
begun to hold that human misery is either a thing to be remedied or a
sacred subject to be dwelt on in silence; and she considers Mrs. Caudle
entirely with a view to finding a cure for her case.

"The Caudles were petty tradespeople," she says, "respectable in their own
position, but hardly lovable according to our ideas. Mr. Caudle, with meek
persistency, goes out to amuse himself alone when his day's work is done.
Mrs. Caudle's day's work never is done. She has the wearing charge of a
large family, and the anxiety of making both ends meet on a paltry income,
which entails much self denial and sordid parsimony, but is
conscientiously done, if not cheerfully, nevertheless. It is Mr. Caudle,
however, who grumbles, making no allowance for extra pressure of work on
washing days, when she is too busy to hash the cold mutton. The rule of
her life is weariness and worry from morning till night, and for
relaxation in the evening she must sit down and mend the children's
clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of
being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening
odour of bad tobacco and spirits home with him, and naturally her temper
suffers. She knows nothing of love and sympathy; she has no pleasurable
interest in life. Fatigue and worry are succeeded by profound
disheartenment. One can imagine that while she was young, the worn
garments she was wont to mend during those long lonely evenings were often
wet with tears. The dulness must have been deadly, and dulness added to
fatigue time after time ended at last not in tears, but in peevish
irritation, ebullitions of spleen, and ineffectual resistance. The woman
was thoroughly embittered, and the man had to pay the penalty. Whatever
pleasure there might have been in their joint lives he had secured for
himself, leaving her to stagnate for want of a little variety to keep her
feelings flowing wholesomely; and she did stagnate dutifully, but she was
to blame for it. Had she gone out and amused herself with other wives
similarly situated, and had tobacco and beer, if she liked them, every
evening, it would have been better for herself and her husband."

There must have been some system in Evadne's reading, for "The Naggletons"
came immediately after "Mrs. Caudle," and are dismissed curtly enough:

"Vulgar, ill-bred, lower class people," she calls them. "Objectionable to
contemplate from every point of view. But a book which should enlighten
the class whom it describes on the subject of their own bad manners.
_We_ don't nag."

She owed her acquaintance with the next two books she mentions to the
indirect instigation of her father, and she must have read them when she
was about eighteen, and emancipated from schoolroom supervision, but not
yet fairly entered upon the next chapter of her existence; for they are
among the last she notices before she came out.

The date is fixed by an entry which appears on a subsequent page with the
note: "I was presented at court to-day by my mother." After this entry
life becomes more interesting than literature, evidently, for the book
ceases to be a record of reading and thought with an occasional note on
people and circumstances, and becomes just the opposite, viz., a diary of
events interspersed with sketches of character and only a rare allusion to
literature. But, judging by the number and variety and the careful record
kept of the works she read, the six months or so immediately preceding her
presentation must have been a time of the greatest intellectual activity,
her father's influence being, as usual, often apparent as primary
instigator. Once, when they were having coffee out on the lawn after
dinner, he began a discussion in her hearing about books with another
gentleman who was staying in the house, and in the course of it he
happened to praise "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" eloquently. He said
they were superior in their own line to anything which the present day has
produced. "They are true to life in every particular," he maintained, "and
not only to the life of those times, but of all time. In fact, you feel as
you read that it is not fiction, but human nature itself that you are
studying; and there is an education in moral philosophy on every page."

Evadne was much impressed, and being anxious to know what an education in
moral philosophy might be, she got "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" out
of the library, when she went in that evening, and took them to her own
room to study. They were the two books already referred to as being among
the last she read just before she came out. They did not please her, but
she waded through them from beginning to end conscientiously,
nevertheless, and then she made her remarks.

Of "Roderick Random" she wrote:

"The hero is a kind of king-can-do-no-wrong young man; if a thing were not
right in itself he acted as if the pleasure of doing it sanctified it to
his use sufficiently. After a career of vice, in which he revels without
any sense of personal degradation, he marries an amiable girl named
Narcissa, and everyone seems to expect that such a union of vice and
virtue would be productive of the happiest consequences. In point of fact
he should have married Miss Williams, for whom he was in every respect a
suitable mate. If anything, Miss Williams was the better of the two, for
Roderick sinned in weak wantonness, while she only did so of necessity.
They repent together, but she is married to an unsavoury manservant named
Strap as a reward; while Roderick considers himself entitled to the
peerless Narcissa. Miss Williams, moreover, becomes Narcissa's
confidential friend, and the whole disgraceful arrangement is made
possible by Narcissa herself, who calmly accepts these two precious
associates at their own valuation, and admits them to the closest intimacy
without any knowledge of their true characters and early lives. The fine
flavour of real life in the book seems to me to be of the putrid kind
which some palates relish, perhaps; but it cannot be wholesome, and it may
be poisonous. The moral is: Be as vicious as you please, but prate of
virtue."

"Tom Jones" she dismissed with greater contempt, if possible:

"Another young man," she wrote, "steeped in vice, although acquainted with
virtue. He also marries a spotless heroine. Such men marrying are a danger
to the community at large. The two books taken together show well the
self-interest and injustice of men, the fatal ignorance and slavish apathy
of women; and it may be good to know these things, but it is not
agreeable."

The ventilation of free discussion would doubtless have been an advantage
to Evadne at this impressionable period, when she was still, as it were,
more an intellectual than a human being, travelling upon her head rather
than upon her heart--so to speak--and one cannot help speculating about
the probable modification it would have wrought in some of her opinions.
Unfortunately, however, her family was one of those in which the
_cloture_ is rigorously applied when any attempt is made to introduce
ideas which are not already old and accustomed. It was as if her people
were satisfied that by enforcing silence they could prevent thought.

CHAPTER IV.

It is interesting to trace the steps by which Evadne advanced: one item of
knowledge accidentally acquired compelling her to seek another, as in the
case of some disease mentioned in a story-book, the nature of which she
could not comprehend without studying the construction of the organ it
affected. But haphazard seems to have determined her pursuits much more
than design as a rule. Some people in after life, who liked her views,
said they saw the guiding hand of Providence directing her course from the
first; but those who opposed her said it was the devil; and others again,
in idleness or charity, or the calm neutrality of indifference, set it all
down to the Inevitable, a fashionable first cause at this time, which is
both comprehensive, convenient, and inoffensive, since it may mean
anything, and so suits itself to everybody's prejudices.

But she certainly made her first acquaintance with anatomy and physiology
without design of her own. Her mother sent her up to a lumber room one day
to hunt through an old box of books for a story she wanted her to read to
the children, and the box happened to contain some medical works, which
Evadne peeped into during her search. A plate first attracted her
attention, and then she read a little to see what the plate meant, and
then she read a little more because the subject fascinated her, and the
lucid language of a great scientific man, certain of his facts, satisfied
her, and carried her on insensibly. She continued standing until one leg
tired, then she rested on the other; then she sat on the hard edge of the
box, and finally she subsided on to the floor, in the dust, where she was
found hours later, still reading.

"My dear child, where _have_ you been?" her mother exclaimed
irritably, when at last she appeared. "I sent you to get a book to read to
the children."

"There it is, mother--'The Gold Thread'" Evadne answered. "But I cannot
read to the children until after their tea. They were at their lessons
this morning, and we are all going out this afternoon." She had neither
forgotten the children nor the time they wanted their book, which was
eminently characteristic. She never did forget other people's interests,
however much she might be absorbed by the pleasure of her own pursuits.

"And I found three other books, mother, that I should like to have; may
I?" she continued. "They are all about our bones and brains, and the
circulation of the blood, and digestion. It says in one of them that
muriatic acid, the chemical agent by which the stomach dissolves the food,
is probably obtained from muriate of soda, which is common salt contained
in the blood. Isn't that interesting? And it says that pleasure--not
excitement, you know--is the result of the action of living organs, and it
goes on to explain it. Shall I read it to you?"

"My dear child, what nonsense have you got hold of now?" Mrs. Frayling
exclaimed, laughing.

"It is all here, mother," Evadne remonstrated, tapping her books. "Do look
at them."

Mrs. Frayling turned over a few pages with dainty fingers: "Tracing from
without inward, the various coverings of the brain are," she read in one.
"The superior extremity consists of the shoulder, the arm, the forearm,
and the hand," she saw in another. "Dr. Harley also confirms the opinion
of M. Chaveau that the sugar is not destroyed in any appreciable quantity,
during its passage through the tissues," she learned from the third. "Oh,
how nasty!" she ejaculated, alluding to the dust on the cover. "And what a
state you are in yourself! You seem to have a perfect mania for grubbing
up old books. What do you want with them? You cannot possibly understand
them. Why, _I_ can't! It is all vanity, you know. Here, take them
away."

"But, mother, I want to keep them. They can't do me any harm if I don't
understand them."

"You really _are_ tiresome, Evadne," her mother rejoined. "It is
quite bad taste to be so persistent."

"I am sorry, mother; I apologize. But I can read them, I suppose, as you
don't see anything objectionable in them."

"Don't _you_ see, dear child, that I am trying to write a letter? How
do you suppose I can do so while you stand chattering there at my elbow!
You won't understand the books, but you are too obstinate for anything,
and you had better take them and try. I don't expect to hear anything more
about them," she added complacently, as she resumed her letter. Nor did
she, but she felt the effect of them strongly in after years.

When Evadne went out for a ride with three of her sisters that afternoon
her mind was full to overflowing of her morning studies, and she would
liked to have shared such interesting information with them, but they
discouraged her.

"Isn't it curious," she began, "our skulls are not all in one piece when
we're born--"

"I call it simply _nasty_" said Julia. She was the one who screamed
at a mouse.

"You'll be a bore if you don't mind," cried Evelyn, who monopolized the
conversation, as a rule.

Barbara politely requested her to "Shurrup!" a word of the boys which she
permitted herself to borrow in the exuberance of her spirits and the
sanctity of private life whenever Evadne threatened, as on the present
occasion, to be "_too_ kind."

Evadne turned back then and left them, not because they vexed her, but
because she wanted to have her head to the wind and her thick brown hair
blown back out of her eyes, and full leisure to reflect upon her last
acquisition as she cantered home happily.

CHAPTER V.

Evadne was never a great reader in the sense of being omnivorous in her
choice of books, but she became a very good one. She always had a solid
book in hand, and some standard work of fiction also; but she read both
with the utmost deliberation, and with intellect clear and senses
unaffected by anything. After studying anatomy and physiology, she took up
pathology as a matter of course, and naturally went on from thence to
prophylactics and therapeutics, but was quite unharmed, because she made
no personal application of her knowledge as the coarser mind masculine of
the ordinary medical student is apt to do. She read of all the diseases to
which the heart is subject, and thought of them familiarly as "cardiac
affections," without fancying she had one of them; and she obtained an
extraordinary knowledge of the digestive processes and their ailments
without realizing, that her own might ever be affected. She possessed, in
fact, a mind of exceptional purity as well as of exceptional strength, one
to be enlightened by knowledge, not corrupted; but had it been otherwise
she must certainly have suffered in consequence of the effect of the
curiously foolish limitations imposed upon her by those who had charge of
her conventional education. Subjects were surrounded by mystery which
should have been explained. An impossible ignorance was the object aimed
at, and so long as no word was spoken on either side it was supposed to be
attained. The risk of making mysteries for an active intellect to feed
upon was never even considered, nor did anyone perceive the folly of
withholding positive knowledge, which, when properly conveyed, is the true
source of healthy-mindedness, from a child whose intelligent perception
was already sufficiently keen to require it. Principles were dealt out to
her, for one thing, with a generous want of definition which must have
made them fatal to all progress had she been able to take them intact. Her
mother's favourite and most inclusive dictum alone, that "everything is
for the best, and all things work together for good," should have forced
her to a matter of fact acceptance of wickedness as a thing inevitable
which it would be waste of time to oppose, since it was bound to resolve
itself into something satisfactory in the end, like the objectionable
refuse which can be converted by ingenious processes into an excellent
substitute for butter. But she was saved from the stultification of such a
position by finding it impossible to reconcile it practically with the
constant opposition which she found herself at the same time enjoined to
oppose to so many things. If everything is for the best, it appeared to
her, clearly we cannot logically oppose ourselves to anything, and there
must accordingly be two trinities in ethics, good, better, best, and bad,
worse, worst, which it is impossible to condense into one comprehensive
axiom.

But most noticeably prominent, to her credit, through all this period are
the same desirable characteristics, viz., that provisional acceptance
already noticed of what she was taught by those whom she delighted to
honor and obey, and the large-minded absence of prejudice which enabled
her to differ from them, when she saw good cause, without antagonism.
"Drop the subject when you do not agree: there is no need to be bitter
because you know you are right," was the maxim she used in ordinary social
intercourse; but she was at the same time forming principles to be acted
upon in opposition to everybody when occasion called for action. Another
noticeable point, too, was the way in which her mind returned from every
excursion into no matter what abstruse region of research, to the position
of women, her original point of departure. "Withholding education from
women was the original sin of man," she concludes.

Mind as creator appealed to her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and
ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value
which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. The
acquisition of knowledge was her favourite pastime, her principal pleasure
in life, and there were no doubts of her own ability to disturb her so
long as there was no self-consciousness. Unfortunately, however, for her
tranquillity, the self-consciousness had to come. She approached the verge
of womanhood. She was made to do up her hair. She was encouraged to think
of being presented, coming out, and having a home of her own eventually.
Her liberty of action was sensibly curtailed, but all supervision in the
matter of her mental pursuits was withdrawn. She had received the
accustomed education for a girl in her position, which her parents held,
without knowing it themselves, perhaps, to consist for the most part in
being taught to know better than to read anything which they would have
considered objectionable. But the end of the supervision, which should
have been a joy to her, brought the first sudden sense of immensity, and
was chilling. She perceived that the world is large and strong, and that
she was small and weak; that knowledge is infinite, capacity indifferent,
life short--and then came the inevitable moment. She does not say what
caused the first overwhelming sense of self in her own case; but the
change it wrought is evident, and the disheartening doubts with which it
was accompanied are expressed. She picks her