Felix Holt

by George Eliot

  2 (p. 158). the bottomless perjury of an et cetera: Eliot read Daniel Neal’s four-volume History of the Puritans (1837) in preparation for writing Felix Holt. ‘The bottomless perjury of an et cetera’ appears in the Quarry for the novel, and is a direct citation from Neal’s account of the opening of the Long Parliament of 1640, in which the royalist Lord George Digby rebukes the bishops who had attempted to impose an oath of allegiance on the government, discipline, and doctrine of the Church of England. The clergy’s oath stressed ‘the plain and common sense and understanding of the same words’, but Digby begged to differ, arguing in particular about ‘the bottomless perjury of an et cetera’ included in the oath and which, he contended, made it open to ambiguity. The argument was continued in the subsequent parliamentary discussion: ‘The ambiguity is further increased by that remarkable et cetera, inserted in the body of the oath; for whereas oaths ought to be explicit, and the sense of the words as clear and determined as possible, we are here made to swear to we know not what, to something that is not expressed; by which means we are left to the arbitrary interpretation of the judge, and may be involved in the guilt of perjury before we are aware.’ It is the looseness of the promise made by Philip Debarry in the final paragraph of his letter to Mr Lyon which prompts his uncle’s warning.

  3 (p. 163). But Bycliffe was a gentleman: the first explicit mention of the name of Esther’s father, and a further stage in the gradual revelation of the legal plot. It was at this point, at the very end of the first volume, that Eliot first consulted the lawyer Frederick Harrison, setting out the essentials of the legal nuances of inheritance which she required in Felix Holt and asking his advice. See editor’s Introduction, pp. viii–ix and Appendix A.

  CHAPTER XV

  1 (pp. 167–8). Once in his life … service instead of ease: Rufus Lyon’s one occasion when he too goes ‘astray after his own desires’, and his subsequent penitence and renunciation, is phrased with characteristic care in the language of duty versus desire, and difficulty versus ease. Providing an implicit contrast with Mrs Transome in her own relations with the past and the temptations it had held (as in her savage laments in Chapter L: ‘The memory of those years came back to her now with a protest against the cruelty that had all fallen on her. She started up with a new restlessness from this spirit of resistance. She was not penitent. She had borne too hard a punishment. Always the edge of calamity had fallen on her’), it offers another exploration of Eliot’s ideal of submission of self to the life which is better, an ideal which informs both Esther’s eventual choices in the novel, as well as Felix’s stated aims in Chapter XXXII in his own intended ‘renunciation’ of Esther: ‘he had longed for her to know fully that his will to be always apart from her was renunciation, not an easy preference’.

  2 (p. 169). Mr Ainsworth … Amsterdam: Henry Ainsworth (1571–1622) was the leader of the Puritan separatist congregation in Amsterdam and, like Rufus Lyon, he too asked for a religious debate as reward for the finding of an item of value. The Quarry for Felix Holt contains the following extract from the first volume of Neal’s History of the Puritans, describing the circumstances of Ainsworth’s request (as well as their unfortunate consequences):

  Mr Ainsworth’s death (a Brownist minister) was sudden, and not without suspicion of violence; for it is reported that having found a diamond of very great value in the streets of Amsterdam, he advertised it in print, and when the owner, who was a Jew, came to demand it, he offered him any acknowledgement he would desire; but Ainsworth, though poor, would accept of nothing but a conference with some of his rabbies [sic] upon the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messias, which the other promised but not having interest enough to obtain it, and Ainsworth being very resolute, it is thought he was poisoned.

  This would clearly seem to provide the basis for Rufus Lyon’s own request.

  CHAPTER XVI

  1 (p. 174). broad stiffeners: a band of material worn around the neck to keep a neckcloth in place.

  2 (p. 176). in the Market-Place: another instance of Eliot’s careful research for Felix Holt, the Quarry recording her note from The Times (20 October 1832) about ‘Candidates addressing Electors on Market-day; temporary hustings in the market-place’.

  3 (p. 176). The group … apply them: a sentence added on the verso of p. 297 in the manuscript, succinctly exploring the differences between Harold and Rufus Lyon (and, by extension, Felix as well).

  4 (p. 177). plumpers: see Chapter XI, note 4.

  5 (p. 179). bloated pluralists: another citation from The Times (11 January 1833) which Eliot entered into her notebook as part of her research for the novel. As she wrote to the publisher John Blackwood on 27 April 1866: ‘I went through the Times at the British Museum, to be sure of as many details as I could. It is amazing what strong language was used in those days, especially about the Church. The Times is full of turgid denunciation; “bloated pluralists”, “stall-fed dignitaries” etc. are the sort of phrases conspicuous in the leaders.’

  6 (p. 179). in one place, at least, there had been a ‘dry election’: another entry in the Quarry, taken from the Reports from Select Committee on Bribery at Elections (1835): ‘Witness from Bristol says that the Election just before the passing of the Reform Bill was a very “dry” election – i.e., there was no drinking. The people were “Reform mad”, and did not want bribing in order to vote.’

  7 (p. 180). the ballot-box: voting after, as well as before, the Reform Act of 1832 was public and ‘open’ rather than secret, a fact which made tenant farmers particularly vulnerable were they not to vote for the candidates whose land they rented and from whom they might be subject to eviction. Though the ballot had been an early target of parliamentary reform, Sir Francis Burdett issuing demands for its introduction in 1818, it was not in fact introduced until the Ballot Act of 1872, first being employed in the national election of 1874. Omitted from the first Reform Act in spite of popular pressure for its inclusion, as Eliot wrote Felix Holt it was still being debated on the political agenda of 1866 amid the proposals for the second Reform Bill of 1867. Eliot herself was notably wary of the claims made for its introduction, and she wrote to Charles Bray on 19 December 1868 commending his recent arguments against it, and asserting her own view that ‘It has been a source of amazement to me that men acquainted with practical life, can believe in the suppression of Bribery by the Ballot, as if Bribery in all its Protean forms could ever disappear by means of a single external arrangement.’

  8 (p. 182). rotten boroughs: rotten boroughs were a prominent target for parliamentary reform in the early 1830s. Usually having very few inhabitants (and occasionally none at all), boroughs of this kind were one of the main examples of abuse in the electoral system, often returning two members to Parliament. The classic example is Old Sarum, the property of the Earl of Caledon, which each year returned two members even though occupied only by a single thornbush; it was disenfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832.

  9 (p. 183). David’s cause against Saul … were righteous men: Saul, inflamed by ‘an evil spirit from God’, was jealous of David without cause and thus he plotted to kill him on a number of occasions. David was forced to flee, and arriving at Adullam, to the south-west of Bethlehem, he assembled a retinue of malcontents of various kinds, as 1 Samuel 22:2 expounds: ‘And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented, gathered themselves with him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.’

  10 (p. 183). Burke and Hare … benefactors of their species: a reference to the so-called ‘resurrectionist’ murders discovered in Edinburgh in November 1828. William Burke and his accomplice, William Hare, were convicted of murdering at least fifteen people by suffocation and then selling their bodies for medical dissection. Burke was executed in 1829, and his activities gave rise to a new verb in the language: ‘to burke’ or ‘to murder in the same manner or for the same purpose as Burke did’.

  CHAPTER
XVII

  1 (p. 187). in rerum natura: ‘in the nature of things’.

  2 (p. 188). haud consimili ingenio: ‘not of the same ability’. The words used by Jermyn in fact come from Plautus, Bacchides, III, iii, 50, where the full text is as follows: baud consimili ingenio atque ille est qui in lupanari accubat (‘And a young man, so different from the one lolling in that dreadful house!’).

  3 (p. 188). the Areopagus: the Areopagus or ‘the hill of Mars or Ares’ lies to the west of the Acropolis. Its name was later applied to the aristocratic council (‘the Court of Areopagus’) which met there in order to judge cases of arson, murder, malicious wounding, and poisoning.

  4 (p. 191). nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit: ‘none among mortals is wise at all times’, Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, VII, xl, 131.

  CHAPTER XIX

  1 (p. 198). blue cockades: knots of ribbon or rosettes, cockades were worn (usually on the hat) as a marker of party allegiance or office, the blue here signifying the Liberal Party.

  CHAPTER XX

  1 (p. 206). good old King George: George III (1738–1820) came to the throne in 1760, his reign witnessing both American Independence and the Napoleonic Wars. He was to suffer recurrent bouts of insanity, probably as a result of a metabolic defect. George IV became Regent in 1811.

  2 (p. 206). Princess Charlotte ought not to have died: Princess Charlotte was the only child of the Prince Regent (later George IV) and Caroline of Brunswick, and was heir to the English throne. The formal separation of her parents was settled when she was only a few months old and, as a result of worries over the health of both George III and the Prince Regent, she was inevitably to excite political attention. Married in May 1816 to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, she died in November 1817, a few hours after having given birth to a still-born son.

  3 (p. 206). when Peel and the Duke turned round about the Catholics in ’29: see Introduction, note 13.

  4 (pp. 206–7). King George … Catholic Emancipation: George III was a strong opponent of this issue, fiercely rejecting Pitt’s own proposals for its introduction in 1801 and prompting Pitt’s resignation (in March 1801) as a result.

  5 (p. 207). delegates from the trades-unions: further Radical proposals for a more representative form of government lay in demands for the development of what was termed a ‘Trades Parliament’, or a national trades union, leading eventually to the inauguration of the Grand Consolidated Trades Union in 1834.

  6 (p. 208). Pitt: Pitt (1759–1806) was (Tory) Prime Minister during the years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

  7 (p. 210). Mr Fox was a great orator: Charles James Fox (1749–1806) was Pitt’s great political opponent in Parliament, and was famed for his oratory, a reputation established at Eton and maintained throughout his parliamentary career.

  8 (p. 210). mad old Tommy Trounsem: the first reference to Tommy Trounsem, the only remaining descendant of the original Transome line whose rights of inheritance had been sold to the Durfeys by Thomas Transome in the eighteenth century. His life, however, continues to maintain intact the Durfeys’ claim on the estate (see Appendix A); with his death, the subsidiary right to the estate (the ‘remainder in fee’) reverts to the Bycliffes, should any heir (or indeed heiress) be found to exist. This is the crux of Eliot’s complex legal plot in Felix Holt.

  9 (p. 212). the verbum sapientibus: ‘the word to the wise’.

  10 (p. 212). the Revising Barrister: revising barristers were instituted after the Reform Act of 1832 in order to aid in establishing an official and accurate list of voters. The parish overseers or town clerks of individual boroughs and counties drew up the initial list of voters and, appointed by the judges of assize, the revising barristers then conducted special ‘revising courts’, dealing with applications for the addition of further names or the deletion of others from the list.

  CHAPTER XXI

  1 (p. 213). soft sawder: flattery, blarney.

  2 (p. 216). Hanoverian: this does not appear in the manuscript, where the reading is ‘Prussian’. Together with a number of other alterations in this chapter, the change appears to have been made by Eliot in the proofs of the novel. This section, detailing Mr Christian’s involvement with the early history of Maurice Christian Bycliffe, was one about which Eliot sought to verify a number of details with Frederick Harrison, especially on the imprisonment of civilians. The emendation presumably follows his letter of 2 May 1866. See Chapter VI, note 9.

  3 (p. 219). base fee: a ‘fee’ constituting a heritable estate of land in England, a ‘base fee’ denotes the curious kind of inheritance whereby the rights of inheritance are sold, here by the legal inheritor Thomas Transome, while not as yet being in possession of the estate and without the consent of the person (here Thomas Transome’s father) who is currently in possession. Thomas Transome, in effect, sold his own inheritance before he had come into it, creating instead the claim on Transome Court by the Durfeys who subsequently (see Introduction, note 21) assumed the name of Transome. The Durfeys’ claim remained valid as long as a male heir of the original Transome line remained alive, hence the importance of Tommy Trounsem to the plot. Should that line fail, another right lay ‘in remainder’, that of the Bycliffes.

  CHAPTER XXII

  1 (p. 221). the home-made bread … ‘sad’ as Lyddy herself: a pun drawing on the conventional sense of sadness evident in Lyddy’s habitually lugubrious demeanour, and the dialectal sense of ‘sad’, meaning ‘heavy’ and ‘unrisen’, current throughout the Midlands.

  2 (p. 222). creechy: poorly, sickly, feeble (referring to people).

  3 (p. 223). Ciceronian antiphrasis: a rhetorical figure of speech in which words are used in a sense which is antithetical to the meaning otherwise understood, here denoting Mrs Holt’s statement that she has ‘left off speaking’, a fact manifestly contradicted by her continuing prolixity, especially in this context.

  4 (p. 228). a dissolving view … new forms and new colours: a dissolving view was a popular Victorian visual entertainment in which pictures are projected on to a screen by a magic lantern, one picture gradually dissolving into the next.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  1 (p. 233). Zwingli: Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) was a theologian with a strong evangelical interpretation of the Bible; he became the central figure in the Swiss Reformation.

  2 (p. 233). Baptism by Aspersion: aspersion is the mode of baptism in which the baptismal water is merely sprinkled on the candidate for baptism, and is to be contrasted with baptism by affusion in which the water is instead poured on the candidate.

  3 (p. 234). Jewel, Hall, Hooker, Whitgift: all four are major figures in the history of the Anglican church in the sixteenth century and the Reformation. John Jewel (1522–71) was Bishop of Salisbury, and was at the forefront of the Reforming party. Joseph Hall (1574–1656) was Bishop of Norwich, a moderate in theological terms who, accused of being too favourable to the Puritans, was sent to the Tower in 1641. Later released, his income was nevertheless impounded and he lived in poverty until his death. Richard Hooker (c. 1554–1600) was a celebrated Anglican theologian, resolute in his opposition to Puritanism and in his defence of episcopacy. John Whitgift (1530–1604) was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Like Hooker, he was a strong supporter of Anglicanism, his ‘Six Articles’ of 1583 presenting a vision of a firm and cohesive Church of England. His opposition to Puritanism was equally clear and he continually strove to aid in its repression, summoning many suspects for interrogation on oath before the Ecclesiastical Commission.

  4 (p. 234). Ussher: James Ussher (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh and a tolerant and scholarly theologian who sought to reconcile both Dissenters and the Church of England.

  5 (p. 234). Burke on the Dissenters: Edmund Burke was a strong Anglican, and although originally sympathetic to Dissent, as in his Speech for the Second Reading of a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters in 1773, he was later equally resolute in his opposition. His 1790 treatise on the
French Revolution contains an important section on the significance of the established church in the continuance of the established order of English society, and it embodies a deep hostility to the claims of Dissent.

  6 (p. 234). Phillpotts: Henry Phillpotts (1778–1869) was Bishop of Exeter, and a firm Tory, solid in his opposition to both the Reform Bill and Catholic Emancipation. He became a prominent writer on public questions, publishing a variety of pamphlets on the issues of the day. It was by such means that he acquired the ‘polemical fame’ which Eliot refers to here.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  1 (p. 243). the ‘Patriot’: a radical and Dissenting journal established in February 1832.

  2 (p. 243). an apropos: an opportune or pertinent occurrence.

  3 (p. 244). a motto from St Chrysostom: Chrysostom (c. 347–407) was Bishop of Constantinople. Ordained by Bishop Flavian in 386, he was instructed to devote special care to the art of preaching and he subsequently became one of the greatest Christian expositors, his renowned powers of oratory gaining him the epithet ‘golden-mouthed’. Eliot’s irony is evident in this particular attribution for the motto in the published version of Mr Sherlock’s own (evaded) oratorical opportunity.

  CHAPTER XXV

  1 (p. 246). He had not forgotten … the punch-ladle: one of a number of minor inconsistencies in Felix Holt. In Chapter VII, when this event first occurs, the item dropped into the punch is in fact a lemon.