The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-17
The Old Nurse in Fiction.


 The old family nurse has been fla vorite character in fiction from the time of Shakespeare, with his admira- ble portrait of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet" down to modern days; and there are sufficient reasons why she should hold an important place. Knowing all the ins and outs of the history of the family into which she has been absorbed, and the characters, with all their faults and foibles, of her charges from their earliest days, hav- ing been accustomed to speak her mind to them from their infancy, she is just in the position, like the jester of old, to make her comments on their concerns; | which, if she be shrewd woman, is often done in pointed and racy terms | Her very lack of education is an ad- | vantage, as it leaves her freer scope for originality. When we are put between | the shafts and run along the same edu- cational course, we soon get into regu- lar grooves of thought, whereas the old nurses fly off the beaten track with de- lightful independence.
 . The nurse in the play of Romeo and Juliet" must be regarded as the proto- type of all subsequent nurses in fiction, sketched as she is with the vigorous strokes of ShaNespeare's master-brush, and standing out clear in her individu- ality, with all the virtues and the faults l of her class. Her tenderness and devo- l ton to Juliet; her affectionate though garrulous "reminiscences of her infancy, cut short by her impatient mistress; her | spirited rebuke to her master when he |rails on his child, are balanced by the less pleasing tratts so often to be found in nurses. We should expect to find | the commences, not to say coarseness, of fibre in her character more plainly depicted in the outspoken age in which Shakespeare wrote than in our own; but our nineteenth-century experience shows us how true to nature the pie ture is, and we recognize in a milder form the same grim pleasure in hor- TOTS; the reiterated lnsistence on and | description of aches and pains; the lack of refinement in thought and speech the pride and self-importance in pro- claiming painful news; the unre- trained lamentations in grief, in our modern specimens of the genus, as are portrayed in the Well-known character in Romeo and Juliet"
 Let us try to put our minds for few minutes in the position of that of the old family nurse, so as to understand her mental attitude towards her sur roundings and see how truly this atti- tude has been illustrated by some of the noyelists of the day, the interpre- Iters of modern life. However individu- als may differ, there are common traits of character belonging to the class These traits often seem, strangely 1 enough at first sight, to be in direct op position to one another in the same person; but the contradiction is ex planed by the contrast between tht birth and education of the nurse and her <. later surroundings. She springs from one soil and is transplanted int another. If we notice common strant running through her character, as il
 Juliet's nurse, a strand due to her ori
 gin, she acquires in time from her nev
 surroundings a degree of refinement il word and tone. This is the case witt all servants, but especially with her
 for having the same center of interes
 in the children, mistress and maid ar'
 drawn together by a common bond
 and the nurse takes the tone of her em ployer. The rougher fibre does no
 wholly disappear, but runs side by sid
 with the finer. But if in the matter O
 refinement the nurse in some degre, copies her superiors, she keeps her in
 dependent attitude as to their charac ter and behavior,and if she be woman
 of mental vigor and imagination, vii express her opinion with considerable force and point. Sse is in the position of the spectator who sees most of tht game. She is so completely in the in
 ner circle of the family as to know al
 the twists and turns of the domesti'
 politics; and yet. coming of a differen stock, she is free from the hereditar! bias which often warps their view
 Thus she is a. most useful character t, the novelist. who can employ her t
 take the part of the Greek chorus, ant make her sharp comment on people ant l things.-London Spectator.