Three Famous Old Maids by Agnes Repplier

It is a curious fact that three of the most successful and eminent literary women in England-Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Mitford-should have been typical old maids; not merely unmarried through stress of intervening circumstances-ill health, early disappointment, or a self-sacrificing devotion to other cares-but women whose lives were rounded and completed without that element which we are taught to believe is the main-spring and prime motor of existence. To understand how thoroughly this was the case, we have but to turn to a later and very different writer, Charlotte Brontë, who married when she was thirty-eight, and died one year afterward, and whose whole literary life was accordingly passed in spinsterhood. Yet if that very grave and respectable gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Nicholls, had never appeared upon the scene at all, it would have been impossible to call Miss Brontë a typical old maid. She had the outward signs of one, indeed, the prim demeanor, the methodical habits, the sarcastic attitude toward the male sex; but burning in every fibre of her being, and evident in every page of her writings, is that fierce unrest, that inarticulate, distressful longing of a woman who craves love. We can easily imagine Elizabeth Bennet, and the very sensible Elinor Dashwood, and even Emma Woodhouse, dearest and brightest of girls, slipping from their lovers' grasp and growing into old maids as charming as was Miss Austen herself; but poor plain Jane Eyre, and that reticent little school-teacher, Lucy Snowe, are shaken and consumed with the passion of their own desires. Such women cannot walk from the cradle to the grave, handling their lives with delicate satisfaction and content; they must find what they need or die.

It is amusing to note how the various critics and biographers of Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Mitford have debated and fretted over the painful lack of romance in their careers. Feminine critics, especially, find it difficult to believe that there is no hidden tale to tell, no secret and justifiable cause for this otherwise inexplicable behavior; and much time and patience have been exhausted in dragging shadowy memories to light. In the case of Miss Mitford, indeed, it seems quite hopeless to search for even the ghost of a love-story, and, although she certainly did devote her life with touching unselfishness to the comfort and support of a very exacting father, it cannot for a moment be urged that, in so doing, she relinquished any distinct desire or prospect of matrimony. Perhaps the exasperating qualities of her parent inclined her unconsciously to remain single; for, with all her unsparing devotion, she must, in the course of sorely tried years, have grown to regard men very much as Dolly Winthrop regarded them,-"in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome. " Mr. Mitford, a most genial and handsome old gentleman of the Turveydrop pattern, managed to keep his daughter's hands full of work, and her heart full of love, and left her little chance or disposition for any wandering fancies. All the exuberant affection of her girlhood, all the mature attachment of later years, were concentrated upon him alone. Her youth waned, her freshness faded, her indomitable courage and cheerfulness quailed a little before the ever-increasing burdens of her life; but through it all, in joy and sorrow, no shadow of a suitor stands beckoning by her side.

Her serene old age was haunted by no dim voices crying out of the past for the joy which had slipped from her grasp. She wrote love-stories by the score, always approaching the subject from the outside, and treating it with the easy conventionality, the generous yet imperfect sympathy of a warm-hearted woman not prone to analyze motives. They are very pleasant stories for the most part, sensible, healthy, and happy; but they are not convincing. The reader feels that if Polly did not marry Joe she would be just as well satisfied with William, and that if Edwin failed to win Angelina he would soon content himself with Dorothy. This is a comfortable state of affairs, and doubtless true to life; but it is not precisely the element which makes a successful love-tale. The fact is, Miss Mitford described things pretty much as she found them, not seeking to dive below the surface, and always adding a little sunshine of her own. She was a happy woman, save for some sad years of overwork, and her life was full of pleasant detail, of cherished duties, and of felicitous labor; but, from first to last, love had no part in it, and, fancy free, she never reckoned of her loss.