Scenes and Characters

Charlotte Mary Yonge
Scenes and Characters

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Title: Scenes and Characters
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4944] [Yes, we are more than
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SCENES
AND CHARACTERS ***

Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

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
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