Emmeline - first edition 1819
Emmeline was Mary Brunton's third but, alas, unfinished novel. It takes up just 100 pages of a volume brought out by her widower, Rev. Alexander Brunton, in 1819, under the title Emmeline, with some other pieces by Mary Brunton...to which is prefixed a Memoir of her Life... Mary had died, after giving birth to a still-born son, I purchased the book on 23rd March 2020, for £45.
Mary had written to her brother, in October 1815, that a lofty moral is necessary to my style of thinking and writing; and really it is not easy to make such a one the ground-work of any story which novel readers will endure. She aimed to write a collection of short stories under the title of Domestic Tales, with a focus on her memories of Orkney. However, the Muse proved too faded about her native land, so she began the story of Emmeline. The plan was to show how little chance there is of happiness when a divorced wife marries her seducer. (It is interesting that she wrote to Joanna Baillie about the character of Hargrave in Self-Control that she wanted to bear testimony against the maxim as immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake makes the best husband). The novel starts with a description of Emmeline's wedding to Sir Sidney de Clifford: a soldier of high fame..., a lover who adored her with all the energies of a powerful mind. She had youth and beauty and he was the husband of her choice whom she loved...yet the sigh which swelled her bosom was not the sigh of rapture - it was wrung from her by bitter recollections: for Emmeline had, before, been a bride.
As the story evolves, one finds out that she has left not only a living husband but young children; that her ex-husband generously sends her money; that her family have shunned her; that her new husband's mother and sister have moved out of the family home, unwilling to share it with her.
In the Spring of 1818, Mary found out she was pregnant. Far from being excited about the future, it appears that she readied for a probable death, even choosing the clothes she wished to be buried in. Emmeline was stopped, after only five chapters had been written. Her husband persuaded Manners and Miller, Constable and John Murray (in London) to publish it. Luckily - if that is the right word - Mary had sketched out an Outline of the entire novel. It was to continue in the same depressing way: Emmeline longs for her children; Sir Sidney wants his mother and sister; respectable people continue to keep their distance from the couple; she tries to see her children and actually meets her first husband; Sir Sidney gets angry and goes to rejoin the army, avowing his resolution never to return. I doubt whether such a miserable tale could extend to a three-decker novel. Both Self Control and Discipline could have been shortened, but they both had their humour and an array of characters and scenes.
The dream of the lawns of Eden at the very beginning of the novel will turn into a nightmare. Boredom is the mainspring of the couple's existence. Even the good natured characters - Mrs Villiers and the old curate - humiliate Emmeline by their actions or thoughts, e.g. the latter's compassion God help thee! poor thing - so young and yet so wicked! God help thee! The former's compassion is in a similar vein: Lovely, miserable thing! must thou, so formed to adorn virtue, charm only to disguise the deformity of vice! A weakness is that, in those five chapters at least, we find ourselves starting to sympathise with both Emmeline and Sir Sydney - the last thing we should be feeling towards sinful characters! Can we view the tale as a tragedy rather than a moral one?
Mary Brunton
1 November 1778 - 7 December 1818
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