BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLVI. OCTOBER, 1853. VOL. LXXIV.

CONTENTS.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, 393

RIGHT DIVINE, 424

LADY LEE’S WIDOWHOOD.--PART X., 426

NEW READINGS IN SHAKESPEARE.--NO. III., 451

RAIL AND SADDLE IN SPAIN, 475

THE WANDERER, 488

THACKERAY’S LECTURES--SWIFT, 494

NOTE TO THE ARTICLE ON THE NEW READINGS IN SHAKESPEARE, 518

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=BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.=

No. CCCCLVI. OCTOBER, 1853. VOL. LXXIV.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.[1]

Let us imagine one of our critical successors of a century hence--that is, in the month of October 1953--sitting musingly before a copy of a work called UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, which a few days previously he had taken down by chance from one of the least-used shelves of his library. May one also amuse one’s imagination by a picture of the possible state of things then existing on the other side of the Atlantic, by the light of which our shadowy friend of 1953 has read the work which his substantial one of 1853 has just laid down?

--The present United States of America, after having been, perhaps, more than once split asunder and soldered together again--or the whole, or a large portion voluntarily reannexed to the mother country, and by and by again detached--after these and other, possibly more or less sudden, violent, and bloody vicissitudes--have become a great Empire, under the stern, but salutary, one-willed sway of the Emperor of America: his majesty a jet black, who had shown consummate and unexpected high qualities for acquiring and retaining the fear and submission of millions of the stormiest tempers of mankind; but his lovely empress a white. He has an immense army devoted to his person and will, composed of men of every complexion--from black, through copper-middle tints, down to white; and correspondingly diversified are his banners, but black, of course, the predominant: a quadroon being commander-in-chief. As for his majesty’s civil service, he has a coal-black chancellor, equally at home in the profoundest mysteries of white and black letter; a mulatto minister of instruction, and a white secretary of state; black and white clergy, and a similarly constituted bar--here a big black face frowning out of a white wig, and there a little white face, grinning out of a black wig, with black and white bands, and gowns varied ad libitum. And the laws which they are concerned in administering, accord with these harmonious diversities--it being, for instance, enacted, under heavy penalties, that no black shall, by gesture, speech, or otherwise, presume to ridicule a white because of his colour, nor, vice versâ, shall a white affect to disparage a black because of his complexion; that the emperor and empress shall always be of different colours, and that the succession to the throne shall alternate between black and white, or mulatto, members of the imperial family. By this and other provisions have been secured a complete fusion between North and South, between black and white, glitteringly typified by intermingled gems in the imperial crown; the central one being the identical black diamond that figured in the famous Exhibition in Great Britain in 1851, and presented to the emperor by one of the descendants of her Majesty Queen Victoria, then on the British throne! “To this complexion” shall it be that matters have “come at last?”

Or will our sturdy cousins of 1953 be still republican, a united republic, but with offices, honours, rights, and privileges, equally distributed, as in our fancied empire, among those of every shade of colour? Or, after a fearful succession of struggles between black and white, ... the ... is predominant; ... slavery, after a ... sang-- ... or a noble spontaneous....[2]

From a preliminary dissertation prefixed to the book, our critic of 1953 learns that it excited, almost immediately on its appearance, a prodigious sensation among all classes, both in Europe and America; that both sexes, high and low, young and old, literate and illiterate, vulgar and refined, phlegmatic and excitable, shed tears over it, and wrote and talked about it everywhere; that, within a few months’ time, impressions of it were multiplied by millions, and in most languages of the civilised world. That its writer, an American woman, immediately came over to England, and made her appearance in public assemblies, called in honour of her; and she was also “lionised” [a word explained, in a long note, as indicating a custom prevalent in that day, among weak persons, of running after any notorious person weak enough to appear pleased with it] among the fashionables and philanthropists of the day, but preserved, nevertheless, amidst it all, true modesty of demeanour, and silence amidst extravagant eulogy. Inflamed with curiosity, our shadowy successor sits down to peruse a work--then possibly little, if ever, mentioned--anxious to see what could have produced such a marvellous effect, in the middle of the intelligent nineteenth century, on all classes of readers; and whether it produced permanent results, or passed away as a nine days’ wonder. Having at length closed the pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and judged it according to the critical canons of 1953, will he deem it adequate to have produced such effects? What estimate will he form of our intellectual calibre?

We cannot tell, and shall not attempt to conjecture. Dismissing, therefore, but for a while only, the imaginary occupant of our critical chair a century hence, let us say for ourselves, that though our silence, and that of one or two quarterly contemporaries, may have excited notice, both in America and this country, we have been by no means indifferent spectators of the reception which this singularly-successful book has met with; regarding it as one of those sudden phenomena in literature, demanding, even, a deliberate consideration of cause and effect. We apprehend no one will doubt that, to excite such attention and emotion among all classes of readers, in both hemispheres, as this work has excited, it must possess something remarkable; and what that is, it will be our endeavour to determine. We ourselves never read this work till within the last month, and then as a matter of mere critical curiosity, uninfluenced by the past excitement of others, and the favourable and unfavourable opinions which we heard expressed as to the merits of the work. If we could have been biassed at all, it would have been rather against, than in favour of, a writer who had been over persuaded by her friends to come to this country, for the purpose of making a sort of public appearance, at the moment that admiration of her work was at fever height. Nothing could palliate such an indiscretion on the part of this lady’s advisers, in the eyes of a fastidious Englishman, but the belief that she was a simple-minded enthusiastic crusader against American slavery, considering that the totally unexpected celebrity of her work had afforded her an opportunity of accelerating a European movement, in a holy cause, by her personal presence. Criticism, however, ought not to be influenced by petty disturbing forces like these, nor will ours. We shall judge Uncle Tom’s Cabin by its own intrinsic merits or demerits--occasionally looking for the light which she has thought proper to reflect upon it from its companion volume, “THE KEY.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a remarkable book unquestionably; and, upon the whole, we are not surprised at its prodigious success, even as a mere literary performance; but whether, after all, it will have any direct effect upon the dreadful INSTITUTION at which it is aimed, may be regarded as problematical. Of one thing we are persuaded--that its author, as she has displayed in this work undoubted genius, in some respects of a higher order than any American predecessor or contemporary, is also a woman of unaffected and profound piety, and an ardent friend of the unhappy black. Every word in her pages issues glistening and warm from the mint of woman’s love and sympathy, refined and purified by Christianity. We never saw in any other work, so many and such sudden irresistible appeals to the reader’s heart--appeals which, moreover, only a wife and a mother could make. One’s heart throbs, and one’s eyes are suffused with tears without a moment’s notice, and without anything like effort or preparation on the writer’s part. We are, on the contrary, soothed in our spontaneous emotion by a conviction of the writer’s utter artlessness; and when once a gifted woman has satisfied her most captious reader that such is the case, she thenceforth leads him on, with an air of loving and tender triumph, a willing captive to the last. There are, indeed, scenes and touches in this book which no living writer, that we know of, can surpass, and perhaps none even equal.

No English man or woman, again, could have written it--no one, but an actual spectator of the scenes described, or one whose life is spent with those moving among them; scenes scarce appreciable by FREE English readers--fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. We can hardly realise to ourselves human nature tried so tremendously as, it seems, is only adumbrated in these pages. An Englishman’s soul swells at the bare idea of such submission to the tyrannous will of man over his fellow-man, as the reader of this volume becomes grievously familiar with; and yet we are assured by Mrs Stowe that she has given us only occasional glimpses of the indescribable horrors of slavery. To this part of the subject, however, we shall return. Let us speak first, and in only general terms, of the literary characteristics of the author, as displayed in her work.

Mrs Stowe is unquestionably a woman of GENIUS; and that is a word which we always use charily: regarding genius as a thing per se--different from talent, in its highest development, altogether, and in kind. Quickness, shrewdness, energy, intensity, may, and frequently do accompany, but do not constitute genius. Its divine spark is the direct and special gift of God: we cannot completely analyse it, though we may detect its presence, and the nature of many of its attributes, by its action; and the skill of high criticism is requisite, in order to distinguish between the feats of genius and the operations of talent. Now, we imagine that no person of genius can read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and not feel in glowing contact with genius--generally gentle and tender, but capable of rising, with its theme, into very high regions of dramatic power. This Mrs Stowe has done several times in the work before us--exhibiting a passion, an intensity, a subtle delicacy of perception, a melting tenderness, which are as far out of the reach of mere talent, however well trained and experienced, as the prismatic colours are out of the reach of the born blind. But the genius of Mrs Stowe is of that kind which instinctively addresses itself to the Affections; and though most at home with the gentler, it can be yet fearlessly familiar with the fiercest passions which can agitate and rend the human breast. With the one she can exhibit an exquisite tenderness and sympathy; watching the other, however, with stern but calm scrutiny, and delineating both with a truth and simplicity, in the one case touching, in the other really terrible.

“Free men of the North, and Christians,” says she, in her own vigorous and earnest way, “cannot know what slavery is.... From this arose a desire,” on the author’s part, “to exhibit it in a living dramatic reality. She has endeavoured to show it fairly in its best and its worst phases. In its best aspect, she has perhaps been successful; but oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that valley and shadow of death that lies on the other side?... The writer has only given a faint shadow--a dim picture--of the anguish and despair that are at this very moment riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair.”

Without going further, the beautiful, accomplished, but ruined and heart-broken slave Cassy--the bought, abhorring, and ultimately discarded mistress of the miscreant Legree, and whose heart is full of despair and murder towards him--affords many instances of both kinds, the tender and the terrible. Her successor in the affections! of the monster, is the lovely young slave Emmeline, of but fifteen summers! and Cassy obtains a great ascendancy over her, winning her love by the story of her own indignities and bereavements.

‘“What use will freedom be to me?” says Cassy, when they are whispering together in their place of concealment, where they lie like a couple of hunted hares, momentarily hidden from the hounds--“Can it give me back my children, or make me what I used to be?”

There was a terrible earnestness in her face and voice as she spoke. Emmeline, in her childlike simplicity, was half afraid of the dark words of Cassy. She looked perplexed, but made no answer. She only took her hand with a gentle caressing movement.

“Don’t!” said Cassy, trying to draw it away,--(observe, she only tries!)--“you’ll get me to loving you! and I swore never to love anything again!”

“Poor Cassy!... I’ll be like a daughter to you!... I shall love you whether you love me or not!”

The gentle childlike spirit conquered. Cassy sate down by her, put her arm round her neck, stroked her soft brown hair; and Emmeline then wondered at the beauty of her magnificent eyes, now soft with tears. “O Emmeline!” said Cassy, “I’ve hungered for my children, and thirsted for them, and my eyes fail with longing for them! Here! here,” she exclaimed, striking her breast, “it’s all desolate! all empty!”’

Of the terrible we have a thrilling, indeed a sickening instance, in Cassy’s frenzied determination to murder the fiend Legree, whose brandy she has drugged for the purpose--but we anticipate.

Occasionally, also, Mrs Stowe displays a fine perception of external nature--irradiating her inanimate scenes with the rich hues of imagination. At these, however, she generally looks through a sort of solemn religious medium. Here, for instance, is a startlingly suggestive picture. It is poor Uncle Tom, sitting at midnight, exhausted and heart-broken, during a moment’s respite from the wasting and cruel inflictions of slavery, and reading his Bible by moonlight.

‘... Tom sate alone by the smouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.

The silver fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and looked down, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery and oppression--looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sate, with his arms folded, and his Bible on his knee. “Is God here?” inquires he. ‘Ah,’ (proceeds the author,) ‘how is it possible for the untaught heart to keep its faith unswerving, in the face of dire misrule, and palpable unrebuked injustice? In that simple heart waged a fierce conflict: the crushing sense of wrong, the foreshadowing of a whole life of future misery, the wreck of all past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul’s sight, like dead corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave, and surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner? Ah, was it easy here to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian faith, that God IS, and is the REWARDER of them that diligently seek him?’

Here, again, is the lovely smile of early morning flung over the monster Legree (poor Tom’s brutal master), as he wakes from a foul debauch:--

‘Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealing into the room. The morning star stood, with its solemn holy eye of light, looking down on the man of sin, from out the brightening sky. Oh, with what freshness, with what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born! as if to say to insensate man, “Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!” There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but this bold bad man heard it not. He awoke with an oath and a curse. What to him were the gold and the purple, the daily miracle of morning? What to him the sanctity of that star which the Son of God has hallowed as his own emblem? Brute-like, he saw without perceiving; and, stumbling forward, poured out a tumbler of brandy, and drank half of it. “I’ve had a h--ll of a night!” he said.’

’Twas somewhat different, that same morning, with his poor slave Tom, waking bruised, wearied, and well-nigh spirit-broken.

‘The solemn light of dawn, the angelic glory of the morning star, had looked in through the rude window of the shed where Tom was lying; and, as if descending on that star-beam, came the solemn words, I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.... Without shuddering or trembling, he heard the voice of his persecutor as he drew near. “Well, my boy,” said Legree, with a contemptuous kick, “how do you find yourself? Didn’t I tell yer I could larn yer a thing or two? How do yer like it, eh? How did yer whaling”--he had been fearfully flogged over-night--“agree with yer, Tom? An’t quite so crank as yer was last night? Ye couldn’t treat a poor sinner now to a bit of a sermon, could yer, eh?”

Tom answered nothing.

“Get up, ye beast!” said Legree, kicking him again. This was a difficult matter for one so bruised and faint; and, as Tom made efforts to do so, Legree laughed.’

These passages, taken at random, are highly characteristic of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in more ways than one, as will by and by be shown.

Up and down the book are to be found strewn, as it were, carelessly, striking and grand reflections, evincing the deeply thoughtful moralist, and profoundly convinced believer.

‘True--there was another life--a life which, once believed in, stands as a solemn significant figure before the otherwise unmeaning ciphers of time, changing them to orders of mysterious unknown value.’

We have not met with this idea before; and it is very striking. Again--

‘The gift to appreciate, and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life shows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often speak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment, than another man whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds, disregard of religion is a more fearful treason--a more deadly sin.’

Again--

‘Oh! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of sleep!--that land whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the mystic scene of retribution!...

Legree felt a secret dislike to Tom--the native antipathy of good to bad. He saw plainly that when (as was often the case) his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice of it; for so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make itself FELT without words; and the opinion, even of a slave, may annoy a master....

What a sublime conception is that of a last judgment!... A righting of all the wrongs of ages!--a solving of all moral problems, by an unanswerable wisdom.’

One of these problems--perhaps the greatest at present insoluble by man--torments poor Tom.

‘It was strange that the religious peace and trust which had upborne him hitherto should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness. The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his eyes: souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent! It was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow.’

Which of us cannot here sympathise with the poor, bruised, and bleeding black?

Yet once more.

‘Is not this truly feeling after God, and finding him? And may we not hope that the yearning, troubled, helpless heart of man, pressed by the insufferable anguish of this short life, or wearied by its utter vanity, never extends its ignorant pleading to God in vain? Is not the veil which divides us from an almighty and most merciful Father, much thinner than we, in the pride of our philosophy, are apt to imagine? And is it not the most worthy conception of Him, to suppose that the more utterly helpless and ignorant the human being is that seeks His aid, the more tender and condescending will be His communication with that soul?’

Character is often drawn by our author with delicate discrimination; and, at the same time, she almost as often exhibits a poverty and crudeness in dealing with such subjects, which would be surprising, but that it is evidently referrible to haste and inattention. Her mind, too, is so intent upon the great, noble, and holy purpose of her book, that she often does not give herself time to develop or mature her own happiest conceptions. The momentary exigencies of her story require the introduction of an additional figure; on which, having paused for a moment to call up the image of one before her mind’s eye, she forthwith gives a few strokes, possibly intending, at a future time, to complete and retouch them; but that future time never comes, for she has got into new scenes, and moves on, crowded with new characters and associations. In this respect her book may be compared to the studio of a great painter, where the visitor sees some pictures in all the splendour of their completeness, and others in various stages of incompleteness--some exhibiting the master’s hand, and others that of a hasty and unskilled workman; all which may, perhaps, be visibly accounted for by the painter’s being absorbed by some masterpiece, itself, however, only approaching completeness. We feel bound, nevertheless, to express our opinion that an additional solution of the matter is to be found in her probably limited range of observation of actual life, at all events of such life as Europeans can appreciate. In delineating the character of slaves and the “slave-trader, kidnapper, negro-catcher, negro-whipper,” as she herself groups them, she handles her pencil with the confident ease of a master. “The writer,” says she herself, at the close of her work, “has lived for many years on the frontier line of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who formerly were slaves.” To her sadly-familiar eye “there are some things about these slaves which cannot lie: those deep lines of patient sorrow upon the face--that attitude of crouching and humble subjection--that sad habitual expression of hope deferred in the eye--would tell their story, if the slave never spoke.” We shall, however, presently have ample opportunities of showing Mrs Stowe’s profound appreciation of the negro character; one of a far more composite construction than any but a philosopher might suppose, and also of great interest to those who are contemplating the future of the negro race, as a large, though many may unhappily deem it an unsightly element, in ascertaining the fates of the human family. “This is an age of the world, truly,” says our author, “when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world as with an earthquake. And,” she asks, “is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed Injustice, has in it the elements of this great convulsion.”

While the pathos of Mrs Stowe is deep and pure, her humour and satire are genuine and racy, but quiet. Gloomy as is the prevalent tone of her work, her reader’s feelings are discreetly relieved by many little touches of quaint dry drollery. Master Shelby, for instance, is a sharp youth of thirteen, the eldest son of Uncle Tom’s first and kind-hearted master; and he has taken it in hand to teach Tom (old enough to be almost his grandfather) his letters. Chloe is Uncle Tom’s wife, and the cook of Mr Shelby; and it seems that she is a capital cook, to boot, as Master Shelby has found out. He often visits Uncle Tom’s cabin, to teach old Tom his letters--and also partake of certain good things which Aunt Chloe used to prepare for her favourite; who displays no little art in inflaming her ambition by faintly undervaluing the culinary skill of one of her rivals, a cook at a neighbouring plantation. The whole scene is admirably sketched, and forms one of the earliest in the work. Excited to the utmost, she prepares a delicious supper for Master George, who, it will be seen, does it full justice.

‘By this time Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a boy can come (under uncommon circumstances)--i. e., when he could not eat another morsel; and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the pile of woolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their operations hungrily from the opposite corner. [Who does not see the turgid youngster?--But one does not dislike him; for] “Here!--you, Mose! Peto!” [said he, addressing the young sables--the children of Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe]--breaking off liberal bits, and throwing them at them--“You want some, don’t you?”’

One Black Sam, a friendly fellow-slave of Uncle Tom’s, is unconsciously caught in the attitude of deeply considering the interests of number One, as soon as he hears of the departure of poor Uncle Tom, who has been suddenly sold to another master, leaving a vacancy in his somewhat confidential office, which some one must supply. “One touch of” selfishness “makes the whole world kin”--and here is how it strikes our black brother.

‘Never did fall of any prime minister at court occasion wider surges of sensation than the report of Tom’s fate among his compeers on the place. It was the topic in every mouth, everywhere; and nothing was done in the house or in the field, but to discuss its probable results.

Black Sam, as he was called, from his being about three shades blacker than any other son of ebony on the place, was revolving the matter profoundly in all its phases and bearings, with a comprehensiveness of vision, and a strict look-out to his own personal well-being, that would have done credit (says good, sly Mrs Stowe) to any white patriot at Washington.

“It’s an ill wind dat blows nowhar--dat ar a fact,” said Sam, sententiously, giving an additional hoist to his pantaloons, and adroitly substituting a long nail in place of a missing suspender-button. “Yes, it’s an ill wind blows nowhar,” he repeated. “Now, dar, Tom’s down--wal, ’course der’s room for some nigger to be up; and why not dis nigger?--dat’s de idee! Tom, a-ridin’ round de country--boots blacked--pass in his pocket--all grand as Cuffee; who but he? Now, why shouldn’t Sam?--dat’s what I want to know!”’

There are, however, many indications throughout the work of the writer’s humorous powers being checked and restrained, either purposely or unconsciously, as if from a severe sense of the purpose with which she writes--as though before her mind’s eye was ever the bleeding heart of the negro. We have an indistinct recollection of more than one disposition, or rather juxta-position, of persons and incidents most suggestive of fun: but they are suddenly discarded, the reader breathlessly following the grave and ardent writer, over whose pale countenance the smile had but furtively flickered for an instant, like a glance of moonlight on a gloomy sea. Here is one of the passages to which we allude. Mr St Clare and his heartless lackadaisical wife are conversing about his newly-acquired slave, Uncle Tom, for whom he feels no little regard; but she is speaking of him in a disparaging, contemptuous tone.

‘“Tom isn’t a bad hand, now, at explaining Scripture, I’ll dare swear,” said St Clare. “He has a natural genius for religion. I wanted the horses out early this morning, and stole up to Tom’s _cubiculum_[3] there, over the stables, and there I heard him holding a meeting by himself; and, in fact, I haven’t heard anything quite so savoury as Tom’s prayer this some time. He put in for me with a zeal that was quite apostolic.”

“Perhaps he guessed you were listening! I’ve heard of that trick before!”

“If he did he wasn’t very polite; for he gave the Lord his opinion of me pretty freely! Tom seemed to think there was decidedly room for improvement in me, and seemed very earnest that I should be converted.”

“I hope you’ll lay it to heart,” said Miss Ophelia, (who is the pious, simple-minded, conscientious, elderly spinster, and cousin of Mr St Clare.)’

How much of the pious disinterested character of the poor slave, the heartless distrust of his mistress, the humorous, good-natured levity of his master, and the earnest goodness of Ophelia, does this quiet touch reveal to us!

On another occasion, Mrs St Clare, who has no more intellect or feeling than her thimble, or thread paper, is conversing with her lovely little daughter, Eva, who is pleading with her mamma on behalf of the poor little negress, Topsy (of whom more anon), and meekly suggesting the possibility of Topsy’s being human! and consequently capable of improvement.

‘“Mamma, I think Topsy is different from what she used to be; she’s trying to be a good girl.”

“She’ll have to try a good while before she gets to be good,” said Mrs St Clare, with a careless laugh.

“Well, you know, mamma, poor Topsy! everything has always been against her!”

“Not since she’s been here, I’m sure. If she hasn’t been talked to”--(not by the silly speaker, let our readers understand, but by good Miss Ophelia aforesaid, for whom poor Topsy has been bought! good-humouredly by Mr St Clare, simply to try whether moral and religious training can make anything of the little sooty gnome)[4]--“and preached to, and every earthly thing done that anybody could do; and she’s just so ugly, and always will be, you can’t make anything of the creature!”

“But, mamma, it’s so different to be brought up as I’ve been, with so many friends--so many things to make me good and happy; and to be brought up as she has been, all the time, till she came here!”

“Most likely,” said Mrs St Clare, yawning. “Dear me! how hot it is!”

“Mamma, you believe, don’t you, that Topsy could become an angel, as well as any of us, if she were a Christian?”

“Topsy! what a ridiculous idea! Nobody but you would ever think of it! I suppose she could, though!”

“But, mamma, isn’t God her father, as much as ours? Isn’t Jesus her Saviour?”

“Well, that may be. I suppose God made everybody.--Where’s my smelling-bottle?”’

This is very masterly. It has a sort of rich stillness of satire, and, at the same time, a truthfulness and suggestiveness which make the reader first admire the writer’s acute perception of character and power of felicitous dialogue, and then pause and ponder the state of mind and feeling revealed--that of frivolous, ignorant, indifferent acquiescence!

The above extract incidentally indicates another excellence of Mrs Stowe. Her dialogue is almost always admirable; brief, lively, pointed, and characteristic--that is, when she does not, so to speak, crowd too much sail upon it, in her intense anxiety to be didactic and hortatory on the great subject on which her eyes are ever fixed. When she yields to the promptings of her own power over character and expression, she exhibits high dramatic capabilities. She perceives a fine situation with the unerring intuition of genius, and inspires her characters with fitting sentiments, conferring upon them appropriate eloquence. Akin to this is the easy strength of her narrative. She hurries her reader along with her, breathless. The flight and pursuit of poor Eliza and her child--the incidents selected to heighten the interest in their fate--the introduction of Marks and Tom Loker, and their interview with Haley--their encounter at the rocky pass with George and his wife and child, are, in parts, worthy of the pencil of Sir Walter Scott: but, it must be added, that that consummate master of his art would never have drawn up suddenly in his exciting course, to interpolate drivelling allusions to Austria and the Hungarians, Poland, Ireland, and England--or tame and even irritating moralisings at the very crisis of the adventure, as is but too often the case with Mrs Stowe. But this very fault, and a serious one to a reader of fiction it is, must be referred to a cause infinitely and eternally honourable to the author--her pure and noble purpose in writing the book. With our eye fixed on that purpose, we will forgive her five times as many faults of style and arrangement as she is fairly chargeable with.

“In every work regard the writer’s end.”

And in the application of this obviously just critical canon, we are disposed to look, in the present case, with peculiar benignity on miscarriages as to means. One or two of them, however, we must lightly indicate (for we are in our critical chair) in addition to those at which we have already glanced.

We shall begin with a small matter. It is evident that the writings of one English author at least of the present day have made a deep impression on Mrs Stowe. This is Mr Dickens, with whom, indeed, she has much in common; but he must not attribute it to mere gallantry, if we express our opinion that there are parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which he never can surpass, which he never has surpassed. She probes human nature every whit as tenderly and truly as he; her sympathies are as keen and subtle, her spirit is as generous, as his; her perception of the humorous as quick and vivid as his own. She shows also his--so to speak--structural faults; which, in a general way, we may indicate by saying, that condensation and directness of course would greatly improve the compositions of both. A lively reader hates to be detained on his way, in order to have traced out for him the source and operation of the motives by which characters are actuated. He likes to be given credit for a capacity to do that for himself. It occurs to us, that had Mr Dickens passed his life among the same scenes as Mrs Stowe, making allowance for certain special circumstances affecting the latter, he would have produced a work very similar, in both its faults and excellencies, to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That she is a reader, and doubtless an admirer of his, is abundantly evident; for she has closely copied his manner, and that not in its most favourable manifestations, but rather the more obvious mannerisms. Mr Dickens might have written this passage for her.

‘Carriage sticks fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as Senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights itself with a bounce, two front wheels go down into another abyss, and Senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the front seat; Senator’s hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished; child cries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up with another bounce--down go the hind wheels--Senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the “slough” is passed, and the horses stop, panting; the Senator finds his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet, and hushes her child, and they brace themselves firmly for what is yet to come.’

Here again--

‘If any want to get up an inspiration, under this head, “the beauty of old women,” we refer them to our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little rocking chair. It had a turn for quaking and squeaking--that chair had--either from having taken cold in early life, or from some asthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement. But as she gently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of “creechy-crawchy” that would have been intolerable in any other chair. But old Simon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to him, and the children all avowed that they wouldn’t miss of hearing mother’s chair for anything in the world.’

Another little mannerism acquired from the same quarter is the use, in grave composition, of the colloquial, “can’t,” “won’t,” “didn’t,” “couldn’t,” &c. &c. These are little bits of vulgar slip-slop which are sad eyesores to readers of taste; and we cannot for the life of us see what end is gained by introducing them into black and white, except, perhaps, in fitting dialogue.

We have already intimated a considerable want of tact in Mrs Stowe, in twitching aside, as it were, her reader, when in full course of following her breathless, to listen to some very self-obvious and commonplace moralising. Here is one most provoking instance. Poor beautiful Eliza Harris, supported by almost supernatural energy, is flying from misery and infamy--her little son close-clasped in her arms--with but a little time to improve her precarious chances of escape to Canada; knowing that her little one is sold, and that the blood-hounds may almost then, even, be snuffing on her track! ’Tis early--very early--in a frosty February morning; the sparkling stars are looking down, as it were, out of the cold silent heavens with pitying looks on the poor fugitive. She hastily hushes her child into silence, as “with vague terror he clings round her neck.” He could have walked;--but let good Mrs Stowe’s own fleet pencil tell of her heroine’s feathery movements:--

‘Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and in an indifferent case she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder; and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp as she went rapidly forward. The frosty ground creaked beneath her feet, and she trembled at the sound; every quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward to her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself at the strength that seemed to be come upon her--for she felt the weight of her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed to increase the supernatural power that bore her on; while from her pale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend above--“Lord, help! Lord, save me!”’

While the reader--perhaps herself a palpitating mother, almost blinded with her tears--is flying along with the dear fugitive and her child, bah! she is arrested, to listen to twaddle--we must say it--as follows:--

‘If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willy, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader to-morrow morning--if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape--how fast could you walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief hours, with the darling at your bosom--the little sleepy head on your shoulder--the small soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck?’

Forgive us, dear Mrs Stowe, if we gently reproach you for thus marring your own beautiful narrative, and also giving English mothers credit for being so obtuse and phlegmatic as to be unable to realise all these thoughts and feelings as they are hasting along with you!

And there are very many such instances of defective workmanship. A considerable portion of these consists of preaching--always, doubtless, perfectly orthodox and evangelical, but smacking too strongly--will she forgive us?--of the conventicle twang. After all, however, Mrs Stowe must be tried by the canon already cited--“regard the writer’s end;” and doubtless she knows that portion of the American public for which she chiefly writes, and what kind and amount of hard-hitting, so to speak, is necessary to make an impression on sensibilities enclosed in rhinoceros hide. We do not say that it is so; but we suppose that Mrs Stowe has classes of hard people in view, and knew the rough force requisite to hit home.

All these, however, and other similar little matters which might be mentioned, are mere motes in sunbeams, when regarded by the eye of a just and generous criticism; which only regrets, every now and then, that the gifted authoress had not had the advantage of submitting her MS., or her printed sheets, to the eye of some competent censor, capable of seizing the scope of her noble purpose, and solicitous to remove every obstacle in the way of her attaining it. But she evidently did not write for us in England--in Europe; nor did this pious daughter of genius dream of the world-wide fame which she was destined to acquire. She has assured us, in print, that, “when writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” she was “entirely unaware and unexpectant of the importance which would be attached to its statements and opinions.” We implicitly believe her; and our heart gives her its entire confidence, as to a simple-minded and gifted Christian woman, writing out of the fulness of her heart, in order to open before the eyes of free shuddering Christendom a hideous and blood-smeared page of living humanity. She has repeatedly and solemnly asseverated that she has taken the greatest possible pains not to mis-state or exaggerate the case against slavery; that she speaks from long personal observation; and, in short, “that this work, more than any other work of fiction that ever was written, has been a collection and arrangement of real incidents, of actions really performed, of words and expressions really uttered, grouped together with reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture. His is a mosaic of gems--this is a mosaic of facts.... The book had a purpose entirely transcending artistic purpose, and accordingly encounters, at the hands of the public, demands not usually made on fictitious works. It is treated as a reality--sifted, tried, and tested as a reality; and, therefore, as a reality it may be proper that it should be defended.... It is a very inadequate representation of slavery, and necessarily so, for this reason--that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purpose of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is, would be a work which could not be read.” “The writer,” she adds, in the preface to her Key, “has aimed, as far as was possible, to say what is true.... She has used the most honest and earnest endeavours to learn the truth.” ... “And the book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all Christians throughout the world.” These are grave statements, especially when falling from the pen of one who had already secured a world-wide hearing; and by the light of such statements Uncle Tom’s Cabin ought to be read, unless Mrs Stowe’s means of knowledge, or her truthfulness, can be seriously impeached. Looked at in this light, the writer is regarded as actuated by a magnificent spirit: one which cannot stoop to regard petty carping and cavilling, and need concern itself with nothing but grave and temperate objections based upon facts. It will not do for her American critics to aver, that, “without being actuated by wrong motives in the preparation of this work, she has done a wrong which no ignorance can excuse, and no penance can expiate”[5]--unless such an allegation can be sustained by unequivocal evidence of exaggeration, misrepresentation, and falsehood. All we shall say at present is, that if Mrs Stowe is to be believed by her reader, he will lay down her book, on having deliberately read it, with feelings and thoughts too painful and deep for utterance, and which ought to lead to action.

The title of Mrs Stowe’s book--“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”--is far from commensurate with the scope of the fiction, or rather series of “pictures,” of which it consists. The cabin is not the scene of any events of importance to the story. It is not impossible that her intention originally was to confine her pencil to the delineation of Tom, his residence, family, relations, and the incidents which befell item personally through the operation of slavery. Uncle Tom and his fortunes might have constituted a work by itself, and those of George and Eliza Harris, a second. The former might have been called Uncle Tom, and the latter George and Eliza; or The Cabin, and The Flight; for there are two classes of adventures quite separate from each other--the experiences of the submissive, and the adventures of the recalcitrant, slave. It is true that the authoress seeks to link them together, at starting, by making Uncle Tom and Eliza Harris fellow-slaves of the same master and mistress, and Uncle Tom and Eliza’s child, Harry, the subjects of a joint sale to the slave-trader; but beyond this slight connection there is none other. Eliza, with her sold child, pays only one hasty affrighted midnight visit to the cabin of Uncle Tom; but her husband is never shown near it. At the very end of the story, however, Mrs Stowe seems to have had suggested to her the propriety of coupling the fates of her characters together in some way or other--so that, in a manner which may provoke the smile of a veteran novelist, she contrives to make a female slave, Cassy, whom Tom encounters at the close of his career, prove to be the mother of Eliza Harris; and a lady passenger, who happens, by the merest accident on earth, to be in the steamboat in which the aforesaid slave is escaping, turns out to be the sister of George Harris! Rather a fortunate coincidence this, it must be owned. Thus it is, that, under the title “Uncle Tom’s Cabin--a Picture of Slave Life in America,” there are two distinct threads of story, only nominally and arbitrarily connected together; while on each is strung a series of interesting, affecting, and even horrifying incidents, developing character, and the working of institutions upon it.

Let us now give some account of the style in which she has executed her work.

The tale opens with a very skilfully contrived scene, the object being to arrest attention, without plunging into horrors which might at first shock a reader, and render him incredulous; and yet it is very startling to a European not familiar with slavery. It is a tête-à-tête between a respectable Kentuckian planter, involved by over-speculation, and the slave-dealer Haley, an impudent, swaggering, hard-hearted, gaudily-dressed brute, who bargains over his brandy-and-water for flesh and blood, just as he would do in respect of a bale of cotton. Mrs Stowe opens the wretch’s character, as it were an oyster, with a firm and practised hand. It is quickly seen that the subject of chaffering is the sale of poor Tom, with whom Mr Shelby is reluctantly compelled to part, as some of his heaviest “paper” had found its way into the hands of Mr Haley. In this introductory dialogue we meet with new and fearful phraseology, as applied to human beings. Mrs Stowe, with much tact, contrives, by a word or two, to excite the reader’s interest in Tom long before he comes on the scene. In enumerating his good qualities, Mr Shelby speaks of poor Tom’s religious character as a guarantee of his fidelity. This is how it strikes the slave-dealer. “Some folks don’t believe there’s pious niggers, Shelby; but I do. I had a feller, now, in this yer last lot I took to Orleans--’twas as good as a meetin’ now, really, to hear that critter pray!... He fetched me a good sum, too; for I bought him cheap of a man that was ’bliged to sell out” (a tasteful allusion to the exact quandary of his companion!) “so I realised six hundred on him. Yes.--I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake!” By and by, in bursts little Harry, romping about the room, trotted out by Mr Shelby, to amuse his hateful companion by his quaint antics; who had first asked, as the child entered--while the two gentlemen! were haggling about the price of Tom--“Well; haven’t you a boy or a gal that you could throw in with Tom?”... After a while, Mr Haley adds--“I’ve got a friend that’s going into this yer branch of the business--and wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market--fancy articles entirely!” Mr Shelby having hinted his reluctance to separate the child from his beautiful mother, who had just withdrawn him from the room, Mr Haley favours his companion with the result of his experiences in such matters; deprecating doing anything rashly (“though these critters arn’t like white folks, you know”), lest--lest--it should injure the mother’s health, and lower her price in the market! And he mentions a grievous blunder made by a friend of his, who too suddenly sold away a mother’s baby, on which she “jist went ravin’ mad, and died in a week--clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, jist for want of management--there’s where’t is. It’s always best to do the humane thing, sir; that’s been my experience.” (By this time, our gentleman reader is disposed to fling friend Haley through the window; and our lady reader--but, oh! as for her, we have much more serious matter in store). Mr Shelby, it is intimated, was desirous to help Mr Haley down stairs with a kick, but he was Mr Shelby’s creditor! On the former’s return, his debtor’s scruples have been overcome; and poor good old Tom, and little Harry, have become the property of Mr Haley, who is to take them away the next morning! The whole of this introductory scene is highly creditable to Mrs Stowe’s powers: it is graphic and dramatic, character and incident being hit off with a quiet strength, auguring well for the rest of her performance. She has not overdrawn Haley. She has given us quite enough to startle and disgust us with--the system, more than the individual, and has at the same time relieved the reader’s mind by a just perceptible strain of drollery and piquant satire. But how distinctly you see, all the while, the dismayed and ungratefully-treated patriarch, old Tom, and the beautiful mother, with bleeding heart soon to come before us--the one, his big heart heaving with grief and astonishment; the mother’s, bleeding and broken! The first few chapters of this work will satisfy the most fastidious reader that he is sitting down before the production of a great artist. The scene enacting in Uncle Tom’s cabin, during the time that his master is selling him to Haley, and consigning him to those of unknown suffering and death, is first-rate, and peculiarly racy to European readers; who, though strangers to such scenes, feel that this must be painted to the very life. From the first to the end of the eighth chapter, including also the tenth, we are conducted, indeed, “from gay to grave, from lively to severe;” the lights and shadows of negro life are brought before us with equal vividness and distinctness, by scenes most happily contrived, without a tinge of exaggeration, or a disfiguring touch of coarseness. Mr and Mrs Shelby are just what they ought to be, without any marked characteristics; the reader’s attention being thus fixed undisturbedly on the new figures of Haley, Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, George and Eliza Harris, Marks, and Tom Loker, as well as the skittish, frolicsome, mischievous, and selfish negro servants. The story, too, is advancing; Tom is on his journey, manacled and fettered, in the slave-waggon with Haley, whose pursuit after Eliza and her child has been hitherto in vain, in spite of his grim auxiliaries; and George also has started safe on the desperate race for freedom: the little we have seen of him induces us heartily to say--God speed you! brave soul, you are worthy of the prize--may you win it!

The ninth chapter introduces us to quite a different scene--Senator Bird, and his bustling little soft-hearted wife, who became the host and hostess of fugitive Eliza--the pallid, the breathless--with tottering knees and bleeding feet--who has been led by the Kentuckian, who had helped her up the bank of the river, to the house of the senator and his wife, just as they are discussing--the abolition question. They, their children, and their quiet home-scene, are beautifully sketched--as are the means by which Eliza and her child are conducted to a place of temporary succour and safety.

The eleventh chapter introduces us to a different time and locality--an evening in a remote Kentucky hotel. The wild Kentuckian guests squat about and straddle their legs, and chew, and spit, before us. What a gathering of hats of all shapes and sizes--“quite a Shakspearian study!”--is before us! We see them all, and can conjecture the stranger aspect of those who wear them! It is here that our disguised friend George turns up, in the way we have mentioned. ’Tis here that he says, with erect form and flashing eye, to his former kind master, Mr Wilson, “I’ve said Mas’r for the last time to any man! I’m free!”

“Take care. You may be taken,” replies good Mr Wilson, apprehensively.

“All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that, Mr Wilson,” says lion-hearted George, who is armed to the teeth.... “Good-by, sir; if you hear that I’m taken, you may know that I’m dead!” He stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a prince. Well done, Mrs Stowe! And how tenderly she presently smites the rock of his resolution, till the pent-up waters of a husband and a father gush forth! So do those of Mr Wilson, as he accepts poor George’s little commission, to give to his wife the pin which she had formerly given to him as a Christmas present, and beseech her to get to Canada if ever she have the means, “and,” he adds, “tell her to bring up our boy A FREE MAN!”

Chapter XII. gives us a hateful glimpse of an auction sale of slaves; after which we accompany friend Haley, with poor Tom and some other human cattle, in La Belle Rivière, a boat on the Ohio, “floating gaily down the stream,” stuffed full of slaves, “under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering overhead!” Who can read without a shudder of the young mother, whose infant has been deceitfully sold from her--who is suddenly told of her bereavement: “she did not scream, the shot had passed too straight and direct through her heart for cry or tear. Dizzily she sate down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and the hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to the bewildered ear; and the poor dumb-stricken heart had neither cry nor tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.” In vain, during the bright starlight solitude and silence, had poor Tom, forgetting his own griefs--his forlorn wife and children--crawled for a moment to her side, and tried to whisper a word of comfort from the New Testament. Her heart was palsied; and some time afterwards the good old slave was startled from his doze. “Something black passed by him quickly, ... he heard a splash in the water.... No one else had seen or heard anything. He got up and searched--the woman’s place was vacant--the poor bleeding heart was still at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above that heart!”--“Where alive is that gal?” said her new master, perplexedly, in the morning, searching every corner of the boat in vain; and then trying to make up his mind to the loss of so many dollars’ worth, with what philosophy he might.