Felix Holt

by George Eliot

  9 (p. 39). Lord Grey: Lord Grey (1764–1845) took office as Prime Minister in November 1830 after the Duke of Wellington had been forced to resign following his speech declaring that parliamentary reform was unnecessary (see Chapter V, note 6). Public reaction to Wellington’s speech made it clear that an anti-reform position was no longer tenable, and Grey, heading a Whig government, was necessarily to be committed both to the cause of reform, and to the task of forcing it through the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

  10 (p. 40). I may not have another for seven years: seven years was the maximum duration of a parliament until the Parliament Act of 1911, after which it was reduced to five years.

  11 (p. 41). liberal in that wider sense which commands majorities: an early reference to the use of bribery and ‘treating’ which accompanied elections after the Reform Act as well as before, as candidates attempted to influence the voting patterns of electors by the strategic use of generosity. This is one of the aspects of political principle and practice over which Harold Transome and Felix diverge with reference to the treating of the miners at Sproxton (see Chapters XI and XVI), and which is eventually to be one of the causes behind the riot at Treby in December 1832 on election day itself.

  12 (p. 44). one of the new Conservatives: the specifically political use of the term ‘Conservative’ as a designation of party first came into use in the years immediately before the Reform Act, the first recorded instance occurring in an article by J. Wilson Croker published on 1 January 1830 in the Quarterly Review (‘Attached to what is called the Tory, and which might with more propriety be called the Conservative, party’).

  13 (p. 44). ‘Quod turpe bonis decebat Crispinum’: Juvenal, Satires, IV, 13–14: Nam quod turpe bonis Titio Seioque decebat Crispinum, ‘For excesses which would have disgraced honest Titus or Seius sat well on Crispinus’.

  CHAPTER III

  1 (p. 46). Treby Churchman: Eliot originally made a large addition to the manuscript at this point on the verso of the relevant page:

  These old-fashioned Trebians certainly enjoyed life, and were far from being vicious: there was little cheating and falsehood among them, for they were constantly under each other’s inspection; they drank freely but not disreputably and would have held it shame to neglect domestic ties; the wives were orderly, industrious and social, the daughters looked forward to marriage as a state of higher duty as well as dignity, for which they must prepare themselves with a good stock of linen and a manuscript receipt book; the members of families generally felt that they belonged to each other, and being little disturbed by the wanderings of the imagination accepted their stations quietly and learned the business allotted them.

  It was subsequently crossed out in the course of a number of revisions made to this chapter.

  2 (p. 47). contented ignorance: the manuscript contains another large section at this point which Eliot chose to delete:

  Its castle, for example, was among the most remarkable of English ruins: it had had every traditional honour that could belong to an English castle. Plantagenets had held wassail in it; the houses of York and Lancaster had contended for it, and only the dullest mind could remain unthrilled by the probable conjecture that the cruel tyrant Richard the Third had slept in it (doubtless with bad dreams) shortly before the battle of Bosworth Field; Mary Queen of Scots (exhaustless theme of poets!) had been imprisoned there; it had held out against the Parliamentary forces, and had finally been battered down by Cromwell. The straw-yard was abolished, the fragmentary wall of the keep was fenced up and an arched entrance was furnished with a door whereon it was announced that within, on the payment of sixpence to the guardian, might be seen that portion of the castle inhabited by the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots, with the remains of a mantel-piece in what was probably her private apartment. Several articles in rusty iron, dug up in the vicinity, were deposited in a small pavilion near the pump-room, and with a larger number of mugs, baskets and pin cushions inscribed as ‘Presents from Treby’ formed a Museum which any one was at liberty to enter at the small price of sixpence. In short, every inducement was offered to patients who combined gout with a passion for antiquarian hypothesis, a debility with a taste for the biography of queens, or a general decay of the vital processes with a tendency to purchase superfluous small wares and make inexpensive presents.

  3 (p. 48). the farmers fat sorrow had become lean … cessation of one-pound notes: the reference here is to the strongly deflationary measures taken by the government in the early decades of the nineteenth century, leading to a marked decrease in agricultural profits with tenant farmers in particular being less able to meet the high rents characteristic of wartime England. This was followed in 1825 by the crash of the economy, with a number of banks closing their doors. In the aftermath of this economic crisis it was widely argued that a contributory cause had been the fact that banks had over-issued paper currency, and that this in turn had been caused by a high demand for £1 notes. By an Act of 1826, note issue was restricted to those of £5 or greater, a decision which led to further depression of the rural economy, since notes of £5 were of too great a value for use in most transactions, not least for paying agricultural wages, and there was a shortage of other circulating media, notably coins.

  4 (p. 48). Dissenters, Deists, Socinians, Papists, and Radicals … in league to destroy the Constitution: an (ironic) catalogue of religious and political prejudices from the viewpoint of those with unquestioning belief in the continued alliance of the established Church and state and its current constitution. Deists are believers in one Supreme Being, and especially in the principle of natural religion by which belief in God is to be obtained from human reason alone and not by revelation. Socinians are followers of two sixteenth-century Italian theologians, Lelius and Faustus Socinus, whose religious questioning led to the denial of the divinity of Christ.

  5 (p. 49). the ‘Rights of Man’: Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man was published in two parts in 1791 and 1792. Written in response to Edmund Burke’s anti-radical Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), it became one of the most popular radical documents of the 1790s, selling 200,000 copies by 1793. His stress on the rights of all men to equal representation and to a due share in the affairs of government led to his popular acclaim among the masses, while the government banned the sale of his work by virtue of its status as ‘seditious literature’, as well as outlawing Paine himself. Paine fled to France, and The Rights of Man, though officially suppressed, continued to be printed and distributed by the working-class and radical press.

  6 (p. 49). Mr Cobbett’s ‘Weekly Register’: William Cobbett’s Political Register began as a weekly publication in 1802, rapidly establishing itself as a staple of radical reading. Its major development came in 1816 when Cobbett managed to obviate the cost of stamp duty (which had previously led to a price of 1s.½d.) by declaring that the Political Register was not a newspaper since it contained no news and hence was no longer liable for the imposition of stamp duty. Selling at 2d. a copy, it thus came to consist entirely of Cobbett’s own ‘Addresses to the Journeymen and Labourers’, its low cost enabling it to reach its target audience in abundance; it sold 50,000 copies a week and its main political impetus was the cause of reform. His ‘eccentric views about potatoes’ refers to his often expressed conviction that they are food fit for animals, not humans, and are certainly not adapted to form the main element in the working-class diet.

  7 (p. 50). the Zadkiel: ‘Zadkiel’ was the pseudonym under which the inventor and astrologer Richard James Morrison (1795–1874) published his Herald of Astrology in 1831, a work which afterwards continued as Zadkiel’s Almanack. A sixpenny pamphlet, it achieved wide circulation with up to 200,000 copies of each edition being sold.

  8 (p. 51). a quack medicine: quack doctors and medicines were highly topical issues in the early 1830s, one of the most renowned practitioners, St John Long, having been involved in two court cases for manslaughter after prescription of his aptly name
d ‘Corrosive Mixture’. ‘Morrison’s Pill’ was another celebrated remedy which had also made a prominent appearance on account of the number of patients who had died after its consumption. Given the widespread awareness of these issues, Felix’s rejection of this part of his inheritance is thus entirely understandable, especially in the light of his own medical training. Significantly, quackery of this kind, with explicit mention of both St John Long and of ‘Morrison’s Pill’, is used as a major symbol of both pervasive spiritual falsehood and the ills of England by Carlyle in his Past and Present (1843): ‘This is sad news to a disconsolate discerning Public, hoping to have got off by some Morrison’s Pill, some Saint-John’s corrosive mixture and perhaps a little blistery friction on the back.’ Also referred to by Mill in his 1831 article ‘The Spirit of the Age’, Felix’s integrity in this respect can be seen to take on added resonance. A further section describing Felix is (perhaps wisely) deleted in the manuscript at this point: ‘he was a raw-looking student with clumsy boots and large hands innocent of gloves; he had never handled a silver fork in his life, or ridden anything better than a butcher’s hack, or drunk anything more exquisite than beer or whiskey’.

  CHAPTER IV

  1 (p. 52). Mr Lyon: Rufus Lyon is often assumed to be based on Eliot’s recollections of Mr Francis Franklin, Baptist minister and father of the Miss Franklins whose school George Eliot attended in Coventry from 1832 to 1835. See Cross, George Eliot’s Life, Volume I, p. 12, which cites an article in Our Times, June 1881, by a woman whose mother had attended the school at the same time as Eliot herself:

  They were daughters of a Baptist minister, who had preached for many years in Coventry, and who inhabited during his pastorate a church in the Chapel-yard almost exactly resembling that of Rufus Lyon in ‘Felix Holt’. For this venerable gentleman Miss Evans as a schoolgirl had a great admiration, and I, who can remember him well, can trace in Rufus Lyon many slight resemblances, such as the ‘little legs’, and the habit of walking up and down when composing.

  2 (p. 53). And all the people said, Amen: 1 Chronicles 16–36: ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for ever and ever. And all the people said, Amen, and praised the Lord.’

  3 (p. 53). rallentando: a term in music denoting a direction that the time is gradually to be made slower.

  4 (p. 54). Matthew Henrys Commentary: Matthew Henry (1662–1714) was a Nonconformist theologian whose Exposition of the Old and New Testament, begun in 1704, was published in five volumes in 1708–10. Covering the whole of the Old Testament, the Gospels, and Acts, his commentary still remains a standard reference work.

  5 (p. 54). light-brown front: a band of false hair or a set of false curls which was worn by women across the forehead.

  6 (p. 55). receipt: recipe.

  7 (p. 57). a journeyman: a worker in between an apprentice and a master who, having served his apprenticeship to a handicraft or trade, is fully qualified but works for someone else rather than being of independent employment. The latter constitutes an additional stigma for Mrs Holt with respect to Felix’s chosen mode of occupation.

  8 (p. 58). Sara, the chosen mother of God’s people, showed a spirit of unbelief: Sara, wife of the patriarch Abraham, was chosen by God to be the mother of Isaac when aged ninety and ‘old and well stricken with age’ (Genesis 18:11). It is this fact which gives rise to her ‘spirit of unbelief’ and she laughs when she hears of her approaching motherhood.

  9 (p. 58). ‘doing honour to the wife or woman, as unto the weaker vessel’: 1 Peter 3:7: ‘Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.’ The full text of Peter at this point, however, also reveals how wives whose speech is pure can bring strength to their husbands.

  CHAPTER V

  1 (p. 59). Dr Doddridge: Philip Doddridge (1702–51) was a Nonconformist theologian, educationalist, and hymn-writer who published widely on religious and spiritual matters. One of his best-known works is The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul which, first published in 1745, was frequently reprinted. His portrait was painted several times and a number of engravings of it have also been made.

  2 (p. 61). Mr Wesley … Arminian doctrine. Arminianism is based on the doctrines of Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), a Dutch Reformed theologian who reacted against the central Calvinist tenet of predestination, stressing instead the concept that Divine sovereignty did not exclude free will in man, and that Jesus Christ died for all mankind and not just for the elect. The Methodism of John Wesley shared something of the same bias, and most Methodist churches are ‘Arminian’ in the main theological doctrines they espouse, not least in the emphasis placed on the belief that grace is universal and not confined to the elect.

  3 (p. 63) wear straps: ‘straps’ in this context are short bands attached to the bottom of each leg on a pair of trousers, crossing from side to side under the waist or shank of a boot. Part of the dress of a ‘gentleman’, their disregard is entirely in keeping with Felix’s similar rejection of cravats and shirt-pins as symbols of a status to which he wishes to have no claim.

  4 (p. 65). Paley’s fat pigeon: William Paley (1743–1805), Fellow of Christ Church in Cambridge from 1766, and Rector of Musgrove in Westmorland from 1776, later becoming Archdeacon of Carlisle in 1782, was the author of The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) among a number of other works. The image of the ‘fat pigeon’ to which Felix refers occurs in Book III of the Principles in Paley’s chapter on ‘Property’; in it, he compares the economic system (and specifically the property-owner) to a flock of pigeons collecting the whole of a crop in order to increase the size of the one pigeon which is most worthless among them, while they keep nothing for themselves:

  If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where, and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; taking nothing for themselves, but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps worst pigeon of the flock … you would see nothing more, than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men, you see the ninety-and-nine, toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one; getting nothing for themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision, which their own labour produces. (pp. 91–2)

  5 (p. 65). Brougham: Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868), was a leading Whig politician and pro-reformer, becoming Lord Chancellor in the Whig government headed by Lord Grey in 1830. An early advocate of the introduction of a national system of rate-aided education, he was a major force in the introduction of the first government grant for education in 1833.

  6 (p. 65). Wellington: chosen by George IV to head the Tory government in 1828, Wellington was a strong anti-reformer (in terms of both religion and politics). His speech to the House of Lords in November 1830 declaring that reform was unnecessary (‘the legislature and the system of representation possessed the full and entire confidence of the country … He was not only not prepared to bring forward any measure [of Reform]; but … as long as he held any station in the government of the country he should always feel it his duty to resist such measures when proposed by others’) led to popular, and widespread, indignation. The government was defeated less than two weeks afterwards, Wellington resigning on 16 November and Lord Grey taking office as a Whig Prime Minister. See also Chapter II, note 9.

  7 (p. 65). Rabshakeh: a messenger and king’s official, Rabshakeh was sent by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, to the Israelite King Hezekiah of Judah in order to reproach the living God. See 2 Kings 18 and Isaiah 36.

  8 (p. 65). Balaam: Balaam, a Moabite prophet, was asked by Balak, king of the Moabites, to curse the Israelites after their exodus from Egypt. He fails in this mission, being converted to the true faith by God during his journey. See Numbers 22–24.

  9 (p. 66)
. Elihu: Elihu was the son of Barachel the Buzzite who, in spite of his youth, speaks true wisdom to Job, advising him to abandon his previous stance of self-righteousness, and to be humble in the trials which God had imposed upon him. Elihu’s advice is that righteousness must instead be ascribed to God in all that He does. See Job 32–37.

  10 (p. 66). the aged Eli was taught … the boy Samuel: the voice of the Lord speaks to Samuel through Eli, calling him to come. Each time, the boy Samuel runs to the sleeping Eli believing that it was Eli who had called, and each time Eli denies that he had summoned the child, sending him away again. On the third occasion Eli realizes that it was the voice of God who had summoned Samuel. See 1 Samuel 3.

  11 (p. 67). Dorcas meetings: meetings of the Dorcas Society, the name being taken from the woman Dorcas in Acts 9:39 who made ‘coats and garments’ for widows. The Dorcas Society likewise devoted its charitable attentions to making and providing clothes for the poor.

  12 (p. 67). phrenologist: a popular pseudo-science in the nineteenth century, phrenology was based on the reading of the external contours of the cranium as a guide to character and to the degree of development of the different faculties. Eliot herself was taken to London by Charles Bray, a firm believer in phrenology, to have a cast of her head made, the results of this being that ‘in her brain-development the Intellect greatly predominates; it is very large … in the Feelings, the Animal and Moral regions are about equal’. See G. Haight, George Eliot, A Biography (1968), p. 51.

  13 (p. 69). Byron’s Poems … The Dream: another significant reference to reading, and an important index in Esther’s development. The escapism and self-indulgence of Byron’s works is naturally countered and criticized by Felix though at this stage Esther is still immersed in their illusory charms; it is only later that she becomes a sharper critic of texts (and their heroes) and what they may signify. Eliot’s own dislike of Byron’s works was well known, as in her letter to Mrs Charles Bray in August 1869: ‘Byron and his poetry have become more and more repugnant to me of late years’, and she described him as ‘the most vulgar-minded genius that ever produced a great effect in literature’ (letter to Sara Hennell, 21 September 1869). Eliot’s realistic aesthetic rejected the romantic self-absorption of the typical Byronic hero, the denial of social responsibility which such habitual introspection involves providing a more than adequate foil for Felix as hero in his own active engagement with the issues of the day. Esther’s moral progression in the novel includes, in part, a literary education of this kind. References to Byron recur throughout the text, though they come to generate significantly different responses. ‘The Dream’ itself, appropriately concealed beneath the blue satin frills of Esther’s work-basket in another signifier of her impracticable ‘fine-ladyism’ and its pretensions, was written in 1816. It describes Byron’s love for his cousin Mary Chaworth and his disastrous marriage with Annabella Milbanke.