Scenes and Characters
Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 1823-1901
English
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Below is a summary of Scenes and Characters
Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
SCENES AND CHARACTERS, OR, EIGHTEEN MONTHS AT BEECHCROFT
PREFACE
Of those who are invited to pay a visit to Beechcroft, there are some
who, honestly acknowledging that amusement is their object, will be
content to feel with Lilias, conjecture with Jane, and get into
scrapes with Phyllis, without troubling themselves to extract any
moral from their proceedings; and to these the Mohun family would
only apologise for having led a very humdrum life during the eighteen
months spent in their company.
There may, however, be more unreasonable visitors, who, professing
only to come as parents and guardians, expect entertainment for
themselves, as well as instruction for those who had rather it was
out of sight,--look for antiques in carved cherry-stones,--and
require plot, incident, and catastrophe in a chronicle of small beer.
To these the Mohuns beg respectfully to observe, that they hope their
examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and
lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or
principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the
delineation of the different Scenes and Characters is, that feeling,
unguided and unrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the
simple endeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to
the highest acts of self-devotion.
NEW COURT, BEECHCROFT,
18th January.
PREFACE (1886)
Perhaps this book is an instance to be adduced in support of the
advice I have often given to young authors--not to print before they
themselves are old enough to do justice to their freshest ideas.
Not that I can lay claim to its being a production of tender and
interesting youth. It was my second actual publication, and I
believe I was of age before it appeared--but I see now the failures
that more experience might have enabled me to avoid; and I would not
again have given it to the world if the same characters recurring in
another story had not excited a certain desire to see their first
start.
In fact they have been more or less my life-long companions. An
almost solitary child, with periodical visits to the Elysium of a
large family, it was natural to dream of other children and their
ways and sports till they became almost realities. They took shape
when my French master set me to write letters for him. The letters
gradually became conversation and narrative, and the adventures of
the family sweetened the toils of French composition. In the
exigencies of village school building in those days gone by, before
in every place
"It there behoved him to set up the standard of her Grace,"
the tale was actually printed for private sale, as a link between
translations of short stories.
This process only stifled the family in my imagination for a time.
They awoke once more with new names, but substantially the same, and
were my companions in many a solitary walk, the results of which were
scribbled down in leisure moments to be poured into my mother's ever
patient and sympathetic ears.
And then came the impulse to literature for young people given by the
example of that memorable book the Fairy Bower, and followed up by
Amy Herbert. It was felt that elder children needed something of a
deeper tone than the Edgeworthian style, yet less directly religious
than the Sherwood class of books; and on that wave of opinion, my
little craft floated out into the great sea of the public.
Friends, whose kindness astonished me, and fills me with gratitude
when I look back on it, gave me seasonable criticism and pruning, and
finally launched me. My heroes and heroines had arranged themselves
so as to work out a definite principle, and this was enough for us
all.
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