Felix Holt

by George Eliot

  14 (p. 69). Alps and Manfreds: a poetic drama, Manfred was published by Byron in 1817, its hero an outcast figure who lives alone in a remote castle in the Alps, inwardly tormented by ‘some half-maddening sin’ (later revealed to be his incestuous love for his sister). Incorporating an attempted suicide, the revelation of the eponymous hero’s sin, a journey to the underworld, and the incapacity on the hero’s part to repent his errors, Manfred provides a strong contrast to Eliot’s own work with its stress, as in Felix Holt, on the real as opposed to the false, and on the necessary (and redemptive) extension of human sympathy and understanding.

  15 (p. 70). the giant Cormoran: the Cornish giant who is killed by Jack the giant-killer. In the nursery story, Cormoran falls into a pit dug by Jack, who in reward receives a belt from King Arthur, inscribed with the couplet: ‘This is the valiant Cornishman/That slew the giant Cormoran’.

  16 (p. 70). euphuisms: ‘euphuism’ properly refers to a certain ornate type of diction and style originating in Lyly’s Euphues and its stylistic imitation. By extension, it has come to denote any kind of affectation in language, often being used to indicate any high-flown or affectedly periphrastic style. However, a number of writers seem to understand the sense (erroneously) as signifying ‘fine talking’ in the sense of ‘euphemism’. This is clearly the sense intended here, and Eliot’s usage is cited as an example of this ‘erroneous’ meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary.

  17 (p. 71). Childe Harold: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published by Byron between 1812 and 1818, the first two cantos appearing in 1812, the third in 1816, and the fourth two years later. The hero is a melancholy and defiant outcast who wanders in exile through Europe.

  18 (p. 72). Miss Medora: Miss Medora is the lover of Conrad, the pirate hero of Byron’s poem The Corsair (1814).

  19 (p. 72). George Whitfield: George Whitfield (1714–70), a close follower of Wesley, made a number of evangelical missionary journeys throughout Britain preaching the tenets of Methodism. Renowned for his eloquence, Whitfield’s own doctrines and preaching came to be Calvinist rather than strictly Wesleyan (or Arminian) in their theology, and his firm belief was in the salvation of the elect. His well-known squint, which Esther conceals on his bust by means of a veil, was the result of measles in childhood.

  20 (p. 73). putting a riddle … Samson did to his companions: Samson, in Judges 14, poses a riddle to thirty Philistines at his marriage feast to a Philistine woman: ‘Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness’. To be solved within seven days of the feast, the answer lay in Samson’s earlier killing a lion, the carcass of which was afterwards filled with honey by a swarm of bees.

  CHAPTER VI

  1 (p. 76). tithe-pig or his modus: this refers to the ancient practice by which tenant farmers paid a tenth (or ‘tithe’) of their produce to the Church, whether in the form of a pig or other produce. Paid as ‘God’s portion’ and constituting a sizeable part of the parson’s income, this practice was often a source of strain in parish relations. A modus vivendi or a money payment in lieu of the payment of a tithe was, as a result, sometimes instituted in its place.

  2 (p. 77). ‘Evangelical Magazine’: established during the evangelical revival in 1790, this was one of the many popular religious periodicals of the 1830s, and it continued throughout the nineteenth century.

  3 (p. 78). There will be queens in spite of Salic: instituted by the Salic Franks, the Salic Law was essentially a penal code of which several Latin texts are still extant. Lex Salica LIX is the chapter detailing the exclusion of daughters from inheriting land, and its principles have (erroneously) often been linked to the right of succession to the French throne, as in the popular though unfounded belief that the ‘Salic Law’ was invoked in order to secure the exclusion of Louis X’s daughter from the throne in 1316.

  4 (p. 78). Queen Esther: the Book of Esther in the Bible narrates the history of Esther, a fostered child who, like Esther, finds favour with a powerful man. The biblical Esther becomes the consort of Xerxes I, and by her intercession saves the lives of the Jewish people, due to be put to death on a certain day.

  5 (p. 78). Esther … her father: a line which is subject to considerable revision in the manuscript as Eliot evidently sought a means by which to convey the precise nature of Esther’s feeling for her father. ‘Esther was not without affection for her father’ is Eliot’s first draft; ‘was not without’ was subsequently deleted and ‘had a real’ substituted, to give ‘Esther had a real affection for her father’. Eliot then deleted ‘a real’.

  6 (p. 78). life of the eminent Mr Richard Baxter: Richard Baxter (1615–91) was a famous Puritan minister at Kidderminster during the Civil War and the Restoration. He was the author of The Saint’s Everlasting Rest (1650) as well as the Christian Directory of 1673 (among a number of other works); the latter came to be a favourite text among the early Methodists and was often reprinted in the early decades of the nineteenth century. After his death, a large number of Baxter’s autobiographical writings were left to his friend, the Reverend Matthew Sylvester, and in 1696 Sylvester published the Reliquiae Baxteriae; Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times. A new edition of Baxter’s works and Life was published by W. Orme in 1830.

  7 (p. 80). apostle … Ephesus: Ephesus was the place of the important missionary labours of St Paul, and the scene of his third missionary journey (Acts 19). Remaining there for two years, he completed the conversion of those who had earlier received only the baptism of John the Baptist.

  8 (p. 82). a prettier marmot: (Fr.) signifying in this context ‘a small child’.

  9 (p. 83). Her husband … Hanoverian army: a change made at the proof stage of the novel. The manuscript reads: ‘Her husband had served in the Prussian army’, but following receipt of a letter from Frederick Harrison on 2 May 1866 (‘I think you are quite safe in assuming that an English civilian might have been kept a prisoner in 1810. I think Prussia was not at war with France from 1806–1813. Would Hanover answer?’), the change was duly made.

  10 (p. 84). locket containing her husband’s hair … his bore the name Annette: the lockets described here are to be crucial in establishing part of the inheritance plot and in proving Esther to be the legitimate heiress of Transome Court. Esther’s mother, Annette Ledru, had married Maurice Christian Bycliffe (though the name is not revealed at this point); it was the Bycliffes who formed the legal ‘tail’ to the estate with the rights, in the event of the original Transome line failing, of inheriting the estate itself. See Appendix A, and also Chapter XIII for the discovery of the second locket. On the evidence of the manuscript pagination, the whole of Chapter VI in fact seems to be a slightly later addition, designed to introduce this element of the plot and to recount this particular aspect of Mr Lyon’s history: the pagination of Chapter VII originally ran from p. 115 to p. 139 but was later corrected to read p. 135 to p. 160, whereas Chapter VI has uncorrected pagination running to p. 134. The manuscript evidence is further supported by the entry in George Eliot’s Journal for 16 November 1865: ‘Writing Mr Lyon’s story, which I have determined to insert as a narrative.’

  CHAPTER VII

  1 (p. 91). drab: a dull light-brown or yellowish brown.

  2 (p. 96). its a squib: a satirical composition (often of a scurrilous kind) upon an individual; a hoax.

  3 (p. 98). Mr Bulwer’s ‘Eugene Aram’: Eugene Aram was published by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1832. One of his ‘Newgate’ novels, it dealt with a repentant murderer and was based on the true story of Aram, a schoolmaster in Yorkshire who murdered his wife’s lover, and who was afterwards executed for his crime. This somewhat sensationalist tale concluded, Miss Debarry and Miss Selina are forced instead to ‘the last great prose work of Mr Southey’ which is presumably his Essays, Moral and Political, also published in 1832, although it could refer to his History of the Peninsular War (1832–3). This is, perhaps inevitably, ‘dull’ in contrast.

 
; 4 (p. 103). to the hulks: hulks were old warships which, used as prison ships, were moored at various places off the English coast from the late eighteenth century. The American colonies no longer being willing to accept criminals, those prisoners sentenced to be transported were sent to the hulks instead, many of them serving their entire term on board. The practice of using hulks ended in 1853 when transportation was replaced as a sentence by penal servitude.

  CHAPTER VIII

  1 (p. 107). Harold … by-and-by: a later addition in the manuscript, written on the verso of the relevant page. It aptly illustrates Harold’s dismissive attitude to Jermyn, as well as suggesting other aspects of Jermyn’s power.

  2 (p. 108). fifty-pound voters: these were the voters to whom the franchise had been extended by means of the amendment to the Reform Bill proposed by the Marquis of Chandos (against the government) in 1832; it was carried by 232 votes to 148. Known as the ‘Chandos clause’, it gave the vote to tenant farmers occupying holdings worth at least £50 in rent a year. Though its implementation did increase the electorate, it did not do so without bias. Strengthening the interest of both landowners and landlords, it also increased their potential influence since many of the new fifty-pound voters were dependent for their continued tenancy upon the landlords who owned the land. Tenant farmers were therefore likely to be receptive to influence on the way they voted, on pain of possible eviction. This section (‘However … head’) is another later addition by Eliot to this chapter.

  CHAPTER IX

  1 (p. 113). An important chapter in which many of the images already used in Felix Holt recur, not least of which are the references to the continued suppression of the past and the silence enforced on Mrs Transome who, as in the ‘parable’ at the end of the Introduction, bears ‘pain that is quite noiseless’. Her ‘unuttered cries’ and resolve not to speak provide a telling picture of habitual verbal repression alongside internal suffering. The first time we see Mrs Transome alone with Jermyn, the scene provides a parallel to that which will later occur between Esther and Harold. Esther, however, will perceive Harold’s moral failings and make her choice accordingly, escaping Mrs Transome’s fate of ‘the pitiable woman who has once made herself secretly dependent on a man who is beneath her in feeling’ (p. 115). That ‘humiliation’ is to be avoided in Esther’s case. See Chapter XLIII, and editor’s Introduction pp. xxi–xxiii.

  CHAPTER X

  1 (p. 119). freehold … share in a county election: following the 1832 Reform Bill, the main electoral qualifications in the counties were the tenure of a forty-shilling freehold, a £10 copyhold, a £10 leasehold (where the lease was at least sixty years), a £50 leasehold (where the lease was not less than twenty years), and those with tenancy of land or tenements who paid at least £50 a year in rent. Copyhold refers to a tenure of medieval origin: ‘by copy of the court roll according to the custom of the manor’, and by 1830 this was more or less identical to freehold. Felix, and Rufus Lyon, possessing none of these qualifications, are therefore merely to be spectators in the preparations for the elections in December 1832.

  2 (p. 120). Calypso … Télémaque: Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque was published in 1699, and was based on the voyage of Telemachus in his quest in search of his father, narrated in the Odyssey. A didactic romance, it describes how, on his return journey, Telemachus lands on the island of Ogygia where Ulysses had been kept captive for eight years by the nymph, Calypso (‘she who conceals’) after refusing her offer of immortality in exchange for remaining on Ogygia for ever as her husband.

  3 (p. 120). Réné: first included in Chateaubriand’s Le Génie du Christianisme of 1802, Réné was published as a separate work in 1805. A further example of Esther’s taste for the romantic and escapist, it tells the story of the eponymous hero who, overwhelmed by secret grief and sorrow (the discovery of his sister’s passion for him on the day she enters self-imposed seclusion in a convent), flees to America. Filled with vague and unsatisfied longings, he in many ways embodies the type of the dreaming, melancholy hero who figures prominently in the early years of le romanticisme. Felix (p.122) predictably condemns it as ‘mawkish stuff.

  4 (p. 122). Howe’s ‘Living Temple’: John Howe (1630–1705) was a Puritan theologian and writer who served as Domestic Chaplain to Cromwell from 1656 and, after Cromwell’s death, remained as Chaplain to Richard Cromwell. The Living Temple: or, a designed improvement of the idea, that a good man is the temple of God, the first part of which was published in 1675, is his best-known work; it was followed by A Second Part of the Living Temple of God in 1702. A new edition was published in 1830.

  5 (p. 126). the ‘Life of Dr Doddridge’: Job Orton published his Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of the Late Reverend Philip Doddridge in 1776. A revised edition edited by D. Russell appeared in 1825 and an abridged edition of Orton’s earlier work was published in 1832 under the title Life of the Reverend Philip Doddridge. It is probably the latter which is referred to here.

  CHAPTER XI

  1 (p. 127). the grand trunk: engineered by James Brindley, the Grand Trunk Canal links Hull and Liverpool, and the Mersey to the Trent; it was completed in 1777. A direct link between the Grand Trunk and the Thames was opened in 1790.

  2 (p. 128). none of your stock Bonifaces: Boniface was the name of the cheerful innkeeper in George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707). By extension, this was popularly applied as a generic proper name for innkeepers, the sense in which it is used here.

  3 (p. 131). megrims: whims, fancies, fads.

  4 (p. 132). I’ll plump or I’ll split … handsomest: in a two-member constituency, each elector was able to vote for two candidates. If, on the other hand, he chose or ‘plumped’ for one alone, deciding not to use his second vote rather than splitting his choice, this was to give a ‘plumper’, a decision which conferred obvious advantages on the chosen candidate. Mr Chubb’s principles of selection, based on the extent of ‘treating’ by the respective candidates, exemplify the self-interest often manifest in political decisions of this order, and to which Felix himself is diametrically opposed (as he is to the use of treating in itself). The connection between the ‘’lections and the drink’ is, however, well established in the minds of the Sproxton miners – see p. 134.

  5 (p. 132). scutchins: escutcheons: shields or shield-shaped surfaces on which a coat of arms is depicted.

  6 (p. 135). treat the company: treating of this order was not done out of simple generosity, having, as might be expected, a political motive behind it even when such liberality was directed at those, such as the Sproxton miners, who were without the vote and hence without a direct means of influencing the outcome of an election. As further events in the chapter reveal (see pp. 139–41), the motive is to trade munificence in these terms for a little harassment of those who would vote for Harold’s political opponents at the poll. The underlying causes of the riot in which Felix becomes so disastrously involved are thus set in motion.

  7 (p. 141). the ‘butties’: in mining, a ‘butty’ is a middleman between the workmen and the proprietors of the mine who is contracted to work the mine and extract the coal or ore at a negotiated cost per ton.

  8 (p. 141). the tickets: refreshment tickets, issued here to non-electors though they were regularly given to electors too, were often distributed by an electioneering agent at the beginning of an election campaign. Entitling the holders to go to public houses and eat and drink free of charge (up to a specified amount) with the cost being borne by the candidate, this forms another example of the bribery and manipulation of influence which was common in elections after as well as before the passing of the Reform Bill. As this additionally illustrates, it was a practice equally prevalent among the new Radical candidates. Eliot’s notebook kept preparatory to and during the writing of Felix Holt includes a note on ‘Tickets for drink to induce men to go the Nominations’, taken from her reading of the Reports from Select Committee on Bribery at Elections (London, 1835).

  CHA
PTER XIII

  1 (p. 151). largo: a term deriving from music, indicating the rendition of a passage in slow time with a broad and dignified treatment.

  CHAPTER XIV

  1 (p. 156). ‘Woodstock’… Holdenough: Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock; or, The Cavalier. A Tale of the Year 1651 was published in 1826. One of his historical novels, it was set in the period of the Civil War and the attendant religious divide between Puritans or Nonconformists and the Church of England. It focuses on the escape of Charles II after the battle of Worcester, and his stay and adventures at the royal lodge and park of Woodstock, near Oxford. The ‘Cavalier’ of the title is Sir Henry Lee, ranger of the park, who gave his help to the king in this time of need. Holdenough, the Presbyterian minister of Woodstock, is another character in the novel.