The Duke's Daughter, by Margaret Oliphant

I have read that Margaret Oliphant resented Anthony Trollope's success as an author.  They wrote books set in similar milieus, her Carlingford series and his Barsetshire.  But his brought higher royalties and sold more.  Trollope does not mention Oliphant in his autobiography, in the chapter "On English Novelists of the Present Day."  I've read though that Lady Carbury in The Way We Live Now was based on or inspired by Margaret Oliphant, which might explain a certain frostiness in her attitude toward him.  But it also seems like choosing to title a book The Duke's Daughter might invite comparisons with Trollope, even if it was published eight years after his death, in 1890.  (Angela Thirkell of course used the same title for her 1951 novel, but she was deliberately re-creating Barsetshire. I don't know if she read Margaret Oliphant.)

I think of Margaret Oliphant, with Rhoda Broughton, as among the more subversive women authors of the Victoria period.  This book was published the same year as her astonishing Kirsteen, but it is a more conventional story.  It is only in marriage, we are told more than once, that women find purpose, meaning, and true life.  It decides for most women "whether their lives shall be lonely and in great measure objectless, or busy and full of interest and occupation."  I couldn't help thinking of Kirsteen there, or the unmarried women in Louisa May Alcott's books who (like their author) find life "busy and full of interest and occupation."  (As I have mentioned before, I find my own State of Single Blessedness busy and full of interest and occupation.)

I know from Margaret Oliphant's own autobiography that she read Jane Austen, and to me this book has echoes of Persuasion.  The part of Sir Walter Elliot is played by the Duke of Billingsgate, pickled in the pride of his noble ancestors and stuffed full of the dignity of his own role.  Unfortunately, his means aren't equal to his pride, or to the style of life that he inherited.  He is facing a serious financial crisis - except that he isn't facing it, he's ignoring it.  Like Sir Walter, he is blessed with a sensible wife, and he is lucky enough to still have her.  The Duchess like Lady Elliot has been doing all she can to bring some measure "of method, moderation, and economy" to their lives, with little success.  The Duke has an heir - a son, not a distant cousin - but he is as little pleased with his son's marriage as Sir Walter was with Mr Elliot's.  Lord Hungerford chose a young woman whose father made his fortune in the City.  She is rich and handsome, and she has already produced three sons.  None of that cancels out her impure blood, in the Duke's eyes.  He has pinned all his hopes on his daughter, Lady Jane.  She will make a proper marriage, if only he can find a candidate who meets his strict requirements as to family, rank, and fortune.  Meanwhile, Lady Jane meets someone as ineligible as Captain Wentworth: Reginald Winton, a commoner, though a wealthy one of good family.  Her mother discovers her secret, and sensibly decides her daughter's happiness is the most important thing.  But the Duke sets himself to thwart Duchess, daughter, and the thief who is trying to steal his daughter.

This is a fun story, more light-hearted than Kirsteen, with some elements of both the fairy tale and the Gothic.  At one point a member of the Royal Family steps in to help bring about a happy ending (discretely left unnamed, but I'm guessing the Princess of Wales).  To me, the Duchess is the true heroine of the story.  Like many of Oliphant's women characters, she works tirelessly behind the scenes to care for family members (as Oliphant did herself, for the husband, sons, and adopted children supported by her writing).  The men in her books are so often weaker or less capable than the women, yet they have power and authority that the women don't.  The women realize the weakness of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, that they will have to be the practical and strong ones.

"I hope you will allow that she is my daughter as well," the Duchess said, with the half laugh, half rage natural to a woman long accustomed to deal with an impractical man.  She was obliged to laugh at his serious contempt of her, less she should do worse.

Maybe Margaret Oliphant too was obliged to laugh, lest she do worse.  The anger still leaks through her books in places, even in this more conventional story with its princesses and castles.

A subversive Scottish heroine

Kirsteen, Margaret Oliphant

I have only read a few of Margaret Oliphant's ninety novels, the "Chronicles of Carlingford," for which she's probably best known, and The Curate in Charge. I've enjoyed them, particularly Miss Marjoribanks and The Perpetual Curate, though I found Salem Chapel a bit dreary. None of them prepared me for this story, though, with its independent and really subversive heroine.  It is also the first of her books that I've read to be set in her native Scotland, and it's thick with Highland Scots dialogue.

The subtitle of this book is "The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago."  Published in 1890, it opens in 1814, just as the Napoleonic Wars are ending.  Kirsteen, the title character, a young woman of twenty, is the third of four daughters of the Laird of Drumcarro.  His small estate in Argyllshire is a constant reminder of how far the once-powerful Douglas family has fallen over the years, particularly since Culloden.  Neil Douglas is counting on his seven sons to rebuild the family's fortune, and with it their proper place in Scotland.  Everything he can wring from the estate goes to them.  As the story opens, the fifth, Robbie, is being sent out to India to join his brothers, while the two youngest wait their turns.  The daughters are left to themselves, and to the care of their mother, worn out with constant pregnancies and her martinet of a husband.  Drumcarro considers his daughters just a drag on the family's resources, costing him money that should go to the boys. His eldest daughter Anne escaped this neglect and her father's tyranny by eloping with a young doctor.  Her enraged father has cast her out of the family, forbidding anyone even to mention her name.  Finally his cousin Miss Eelen Douglas convinces him that his daughters must be introduced into society, if they are ever to find husbands who will take them off his hands.

Aunt Eelen, a comfortable spinster, escorts the two oldest girls, Mary and Kirsteen, to a ball in Glasgow. There Kirsteen meets a contemporary of her father's, John Campbell of Glendochart.  He is immediately drawn to the young woman and begins visiting Drumcarro regularly, though Kirsteen has no idea that he is courting her.  Her heart is already given to another, though secretly.  When her father informs her that she will marry Glendochart, threatening her with blows and beatings if she refuses, she is afraid she will be forced to yield.  Her only option is to leave home, to run away, even if it means being cast out in her turn.  She decides to go to London, to seek her fortune.

Her story is quite an adventure, as she walks across the moors to Glasgow, to catch the coach to London.  Arriving dazed and exhausted in the great city, larger than she could ever have imagined, she goes to the sister of the family's devoted housekeeper Marg'ret (whose small savings funded her flight).  Miss Jean is a successful dressmaker, who is at first reluctant to take a lady, one of the great Douglas family, into business.  But Kirsteen talks her way in, and she soon proves to have a gift for design.  As she settles in to her work and her new home, the story shifts back to Drumcarro, where her older sister Mary takes a leaf from Charlotte Collins in Pride and Prejudice.  The third sister, Jeanie, the beauty of the family, will have her own adventures, more along the lines of the Brontës than Jane Austen.

There is so much to enjoy in this book, starting with the heroine.  Kirsteen is young and naive, but also strong and quick to learn.  Like many of Margaret Oliphant's heroines, she has to care for the more feckless members of her family, starting with her afflicted mother.  But in contrast to her mother, she also has staunch role models in her Aunt Eelen, the local dressmaker Miss MacNab, her surrogate mother Marg'ret, and Miss Jean.  All are independent and self-reliant, none of them rich but each content in her own way. I love stories about dress-making businesses, second only to tea-shops.  I was reminded of "The House of Eliott," as well as Susanna's shop in Eva Ibbotson's Madensky Square.  I also enjoyed the Highland setting, though I was sometimes a bit puzzled by the dialogue, and Regency London as well.  I couldn't help imagining one of Georgette Heyer's characters driving up to Miss Jean's door, to order a new gown.  (The author, who was born in 1828, is rather dismissive of the fashions of 1814, though to my eyes they look more comfortable than the layered outfits of the 1890s.)

It is a shame that so few of Margaret Oliphant's books are still in print, though they are available as e-texts.  The introduction to this book mentions several other titles, and I think I'll look for The Ladies Lindores next.  It's about a family who suddenly inherits a fortune. Knowing Margaret Oliphant, I'm sure complications arise.

A country curate and his family

The Curate in Charge, Margaret Oliphant

I knew nothing about Margaret Oliphant, and very little about Victorian women writers in general, when I came across a used copy of Miss Marjoribanks several years ago.  When I sat down to read it, I was instantly enthralled with Miss Marjoribanks herself, with the fictional setting of Carlingford, and with Oliphant's writing.  She reminds me of Anthony Trollope, in the easy accessibility of her stories, the sense of real life that she gives to her characters, and her narrative voice.  I immediately set out to find the other books in the "Chronicles of Carlingford" series, and I was lucky enough to find copies of the recent Virago reprints.  I also found a copy of her autobiography, which I read only last year, a heart-breaking and incredibly moving account of loss and grief.  And I came across a copy of The Curate in Charge, which years later I have finally gotten around to reading.

Again like Trollope, Oliphant writes frequently about clergymen and their families.  The title character of this book is the Rev. Cecil St John, who has been the curate of Brentburn, a country parish in Berkshire, for twenty years.  Brentburn is a college living, and the holder of the living, the Rev. Mr Chester, made his health an excuse to retire to Italy.  (My recent reading of Irene Collins' book Jane Austen and Clergy gave me a better understanding of the circumstances of the living and the curate's position.)  In his twenty years in the village, Mr St John has married and lost two wives, leaving him with two families to support on his curate's salary.  The first family consists of two daughters, Cicely and Mab.  When they leave Brentburn to go to school, their father marries their former governess.  After their stepmother's death, the girls return home to help care for the twin boys she leaves behind.  Just as they are trying to adjust to their new life, word arrives that Mr Chester has died in Italy.  A new rector will now be appointed, their father will lose his home and income, and at age sixty-five, must look for a new place.  After twenty years in a quiet country curacy, Mr St John is completely unprepared to face this upheaval in his life, and to Cicely's despair, he will make no provision nor take any action.  He welcomes the new rector, Mr Mildmay, without even a hint of the family's precarious position.  Cicely must do everything herself, even searching for a new situation for her father, while trying to run the household and care for her brothers.  Her younger sister Mab, a talented artist, is much more likely to pose the children, barefoot and in rags, than to care for them.

Oliphant often found herself in Cicely's position, caring for husband, children, brothers, nieces and nephews, many of whom were just as impractical and passive as Mr St John.  Her writing supported her extended family for decades, with more than 100 books, as well as articles and reviews.   Again like Trollope, she was sometimes criticized for writing too much, or too commercially.  There seems to be general agreement that the quality of her books varies widely, which is understandable given that she wrote at speed and under pressure.  The Carlingford books are considered among the best of her work, and I enjoyed them all, particularly The Perpetual Curate, my favorite of her novels.  I think The Curate in Charge, while a slighter novel, should be ranked with them.