Heart-picking in A Simple Story

Heart-picking in A Simple Story Dianne Osland When Coleridge wrote to Godwin complaining that he could not understand how Godwin could possibly like Mrs Inchbald, what he seemed to find particularly intimidating was her "heart-picking look": "Mrs Inchbald I do not like at all—every time, I recollect her, I like her less. That segment ofa look at the corner ofher eye—O God in heaven! it is so cold & cunning—! thro' worlds ofwildernesses I would run away from that look, diat heart-pickinglook. 'Tis marvellous to me, that you can like that Woman."1 "Heart-picking" is an odd phrase, perhaps signifying no more than the impertinence of a piercing gaze, though, given that Coleridge is prepared to run "thro' worlds ofwildernesses" to escape such a look, it might also imply, on analogy with pocket-picking or lock-picking, a sly delving into someone else's business, in this case into the secrets of the heart.2 Elizabeth Inchbald certainly had a reputation among her contemporaries for her ability to penetrate into "the labyrinth of the passions" 1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge toWilliam Godwin, 21 May 1800, Tlie Collected Utters ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 1:587. 2 The Chadwyck-Healey Literary Database reveals a number ofexamples that suggest "heartpicking " is akin to pocket-picking or lock-picking, for example "a Picklock to her Heart" in CharlesJohnson, TlieFemaleFortune-Teller (1726) and to "pickJohn Bull's heart by a skeleton key" inJames Smith, Milk and Honey, Or tlie Ijind ofPromise (1840). EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 1, October 2003 80 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION in the characters ofher own making.3 Butit is a curious kind of"heartpicking " that goes on in her work, particularly in A Simple Story, "cold & cunning," perhaps, in its shrewdly unsentimental probing of the springs ofaction, though also unusually sensitive to the inconsistencies and dislocations of motive and desire. When Inchbald's characterization has been discussed, both in contemporary reviews and in more recent criticism, it is usually its "dramatic" quality that has been identified as its most impressive and distinctive feature: her "theatrical control" ofthe action, enabling die "detailed psychological interaction" ofher characters;4 her technique of allowing her characters to "unfold themselves" in dialogue, using their "notions, looks, and attitudes" to reveal their "inward temper";5 her use of "intelligible but simple signs" to measure the force of repressed feelings;6 her translation of "the new naturalistic style of acting ... into the techniques offiction."7 For one eighteenth-century reviewer, Inchbald's achievement was hardly surprising: he could "recollect no instance ofa successful theatrical writer having failed in the less difficult composition ofnovels"—and he then declared, in a rather back-handed compliment to die playwright-turned-novelist, diat "eitiier we are mistaken, or Mrs. Inchbald has discovered the true path which she ought to pursue."8 Most critics are more circumspect. Despite James Boaden's (somewhat defensive) testimony in his Memoirs ofMrs. Inchbald (1833) that there "are still living men ofstrong minds, who speak sincerely when they affirm her 'Simple Story' to be yet unequalled,"9 Inchbald's first, and by general agreement her better, novel has generally been judged only a partial success, primarily, it seems, because ofa certain awkwardness ofstyle and technique that might also be attributed to her theatrical background. Her talent, apparendy, is for the stage3 Review ofA Simple Story in European Magazine, and London Review 19 (March 1791), 197. 4 Roger Manvell, EUzabeth Inclibald, England's Principal Woman Dramatist andIndependent Woman ofLetters inEigjiteenlli Century London: A BiographicalStudy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), p. 79. 5 Review of A Simple Story in Monthly Review; or LiteraryJournal4 (April 1791), 437. 6 Maria Edgeworth to Elizabeth Inchbald, 14January 1810, cited inJames Boaden, Memoirs ofMrs Inchbald, 2 vols (London: Richard Bendey, 1833), 2:153. 7 Gary Kelly, TlieEnglishJacobin Novel 1 780-1805 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 79. 8 Review of? SimpleStory in Critical Review (Series 2) 1 (1791),207. 9 Boaden, 1:274. HEART-PICKING IN A SIMPLE STORY 81 managed scene but notfor the more discursive demands ofnarrative,10 for dramatically realized "strokes of nature" but not for...