GEORGE ELIOT
In this essay it is not intended to go into the vexed question of GeorgeEliot's private life and character. Death has resolved her individualityinto nothingness, and the discrepancy between her lofty thoughts anddoubtful action no longer troubles us. But her work still remains ascommon property for all men to appraise at its true value--to admire forits beauty, to reverence for its teaching, to honour for its grandeur,yet at the same time to determine its weaknesses and to confess where itfalls short of the absolute perfection claimed for it in her lifetime.
For that matter indeed, no one has suffered from unmeasured adulationmore than has George Eliot. As a philosopher, once bracketed with Platoand Kant; as a novelist, ranked the highest the world has seen; as awoman, set above the law and, while living in open and admiredadultery, visited by bishops and judges as well as by the best of thelaity; her faults of style and method praised as genius--since her deathshe has been treated with some of that reactionary neglect which alwaysfollows on extravagant esteem. The mud-born ephemeridae of literaturehave dispossessed her. For her profound learning, which ran like agolden thread through all she wrote till it became tarnished bypedantry, we have the ignorance which misquotes Lempriere and thinksitself classic. For her outspoken language and forcible diction,wherein, however, she always preserved so much modesty, and for herrealism which described things and feelings as they are, but withoutgoing into revolting details, we have those lusciously suggestiveepithets and those unveiled presentations of the sexual instinct whichseem to make the world one large lupanar. For her accurate science andprofound philosophy, we have those claptrap phrases which have passedinto common speech and are glibly reproduced by facile parrots who donot understand and never could have created; and for her scholarlydiction we have the tawdriness of a verbal ragbag where grammar is asdefective as taste. Yet our modern tinselled dunces have taken the placeof the one who, in her lifetime, was made almost oppressivelygreat--almost too colossal in her supremacy.
But when all this rubbish has been thrown into the abyss of oblivion,George Eliot's works will remain solid and alive, together withThackeray's, Scott's and Fielding's. Our Immortals will include in theircompany, as one of the "choir invisible" whose voice will never bestilled for man, the author of "Adam Bede" and "Romola," of the "Mill onthe Floss" and "Middlemarch."
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Her first essays in fiction, her "Scenes of Clerical Life," show thegerms of her future greatness as well as the persistency of her aim. In"Janet's Repentance," which to our mind is the best of the three, thosegerms are already shaped to beauty. Nothing can be more delicatelytouched than the nascent love between Janet and Mr. Tryon. No moresubtle sign of Janet's besetting sin could be given than by thatcandlestick held "aslant;" while her character, compounded of pride,timidity, affectionateness, spiritual aspiration and moral degradation,is as true to life as it was difficult to portray. It would beimpossible to note all the gems in these three stories. We can indicateonly one or two. That splendid paragraph in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,"beginning: "While this poor heart was being bruised"--the sharp summingup of Mr. Amos Barton's "middling" character--Lady Cheverel's silentcriticisms contrasted with her husband's iridescent optimism--the almostShakesperean humour of the men, the author's keen appraisement of thecommonplace women; such aphorisms as Mrs. Linnet's "It's right enough tobe speritial--I'm no enemy to that--but I like my potatoesmeally;"--these and a thousand more, eloquent, tender, witty, deep, makethese three stories masterpieces in their way, despite the improbabilityof the Czerlaski episode in "Amos Barton" and the inherent weakness ofthe Gilfil plot. We, who can remember the enthusiasm they excited whenthey first appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_, on re-reading them incooler blood can understand that enthusiasm, though we no longer shareits pristine intensity. It was emphatically a new departure inliterature, and the noble note of that religious feeling which isindependent of creed and which touches all hearts alike, woke an echothat even to this day reverberates though in but a poor, feeble andattenuated manner.
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"Adam Bede," the first novel proper of the long series, shows GeorgeEliot at her best in her three most noteworthy qualities--loftyprinciples, lifelike delineation of character, and fine humour, bothbroad and subtle. The faults of the story are the all-pervadinganachronism of thought and circumstance; the dragging of the plot in theearlier half of the book; and the occasional ugliness of style, where,as in that futile opening sentence the author as I directly addressesthe reader as You. The scene is laid in the year 1799--before the TradesUnions had fixed a man's hours of work so accurately as to make himleave off with a screw half driven in, so soon as the clock begins tostrike--before too the hour of leaving off was fixed at six. We olderpeople can remember when workmen wrought up to eight and were never tooexact even then. Precision of the kind practised at the present day wasnot known then; and why were there no apprentices in Adam's shop?Apprentices were a salient feature in all the working community, and noshop could have existed without them. Nor would the seduction by theyoung squire of a farmer's niece or daughter have been the heinous crimeGeorge Eliot has made it. If women of the lower class held a somewhatbetter position than they did in King Arthur's time, when, to be themother of a knight's bastard, raised a churl's wife or daughter farabove her compeers and was assumed to honour not degrade her, they stillretained some of the old sense of inferiority. Does any one rememberthat famous answer in the Yelverton trial not much more than ageneration ago? In 1799 Hetty's mishap would have been condoned by allconcerned, save perhaps by Adam himself; and Arthur Donnithorne wouldhave suffered no more for his escapade than did our well-known Tom Jonesfor his little diversions. And--were there any night schools forilliterate men in 1799? And how was that reprieve got so quickly at atime when there were neither railroads nor telegraphs?--indeed, would ithave been got at all in days when concealment of birth alone was felonyand felony was death? Also, would Hetty have been alone in her cell? In1799 all prisoners were herded together, young and old, untried andcondemned; and the separate system was not in existence. Save forHetty's weary journey on foot and in chance carts, the story might havebeen made as of present time with more _vraisemblance_ andharmoniousness.
These objections apart, how supreme the whole book is! The charactersstand out fresh, firm and living. As in some paintings you feel as ifyou could put your hand round the body, so in George Eliot's writingsyou feel that you have met those people in the flesh, and talked tothem, holding them by the hand and looking into their eyes. There is nota line of loose drawing anywhere. From the four Bedes, with thatinverted kind of heredity which Zola has so powerfully shown, to thestately egoism of Mrs. Irwine--from the marvellous portraiture of HettySorrel with her soft, caressing, lusciously-loving outside, and herheart "as hard as a cherry-stone" according to Mrs. Poyser--from theweak-willed yet not conscienceless Arthur Donnithorne to the exquisitepurity of Dinah, the character-drawing is simply perfect. Many werepeople personally known to George Eliot, and those who were at allbehind the scenes recognised the portraits. Down at Wirksworth they knewthe Bedes, Dinah, the Poysers, and some others. In London, among theintimates of George Lewes, Hetty needed no label. Mrs. Poyser's goodthings were common property in the neighbourhood long before GeorgeEliot crystallised them for all time, and embellished them by hermatchless setting; and Dinah's sermon was not all imaginary. But thoughin some sense her work was portraiture, it was portraiture passedthrough the alembic of her brilliant genius, from commonplace materialdistilled into the finest essence.
It is impossible here again to give adequate extracts of the wise,witty, tender and high-minded things scattered broadcast over thisbook--as, indeed, over all that George Eliot ever wrote. That paragraphbeginning--"Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it"; thedescription of Hetty's flower-like beauty, which fascinated even hersharp-tongued aunt; phrases like "John considered a young master as thenatural enemy of an old serva
nt," and "young people in general as a poorcontrivance for carrying on the world"; that sharp little bit of moraland intellectual antithesis, with the learned man "meekly rocking thetwins in the cradle with his left hand, while with his right heinflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who had betrayed abrutal ignorance of Hebrew"--forgiving human weaknesses and moral errorsas is a Christian's bounden duty, but treating as "the enemy of hisrace, the man who takes the wrong side on the momentous subject of theHebrew points"; how masterly, how fine are these and a dozen otherunnoted passages!
Hetty in her bedroom, parading in her concealed finery, reminds one tooclosely of Gretchen with her fatal jewels to be quite favourable to theEnglish version; and we question the truth of Adam Bede's hypotheticalcontent with such a Dorothy Doolittle as his wife. Writers of lovestories among the working classes in bygone days forget that notablenesswas then part of a woman's virtue--part of her claims to love andconsideration--and that mere flower-like kittenish prettiness did notcount to her honour any more than graceful movements and aesthetic tastewould count to the honour of a Tommy in the trenches who could neitherhandle a spade nor load a rifle. Blackmore made the same mistake in his"Lorna Doone," and George Eliot has repeated it in Adam's love for Hettysolely for her beauty and without "faculty" as her dower. In his own wayBartle Massey, misogynist, is as smart as Mrs. Poyser herself, asamusing and as trenchant; but the coming-of-age dance is fifty yearsand more too modern, and the long dissertation at the beginning of thesecond book is a blot, because it is a clog and an interruption. Not sothat glorious description of nature in August when "the sun was hiddenfor a moment and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy;"--northat deep and tender bit of introspection, setting forth the spiritualgood got from sorrow as well as its indestructible impress.
Yet for all the beauty of these philosophic passages there are too manyof them in this as in all George Eliot's works. They hamper the actionand lend an air of pedantry and preaching with which a novel proper hasnothing to do. It is bad style as well as bad art, and irritating to acritical, while depressing to a sympathetic reader. But summing up allthe faults together, and giving full weight to each, we gladly own themasterly residuum that is left. The dawning love between Adam and Dinahalone is enough to claim for "Adam Bede" one of the highest places inliterature, had not that place been already taken by the marvelloustruth, diversity and power of the character-drawing. Mrs. Poyser'sepigrams, too, generally made when she was "knitting with fiercerapidity, as if her movements were a necessary function like thetwittering of a crab's antennae," both too numerous and too well knownto quote, would have redeemed the flimsiest framework and the silliestpadding extant.
The light that seemed to flash on the world when this glorious book waspublished will never be forgotten by those who were old enough at thetime to read and appreciate. By the way, is that would-be famous Ligginsstill alive? When he sums it all up, how much did he get out of his boldattempt to don the giant's robe?
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If "Adam Bede" was partly reminiscent, "The Mill on the Floss" waspartly autobiographical. There is no question that in the sensitive,turbulent, loving nature of Maggie Tulliver Marian Evans paintedherself. Those who knew her when she first came to London knew her as apronounced insurgent. Never noisy and never coarse, always quiet inmanner, sensitive, diffident and shrinking from unpleasantness, she yethad not put on that "made" and artificial pose which was herdistinguishing characteristic in later years. She was still MaggieTulliver, with a conscience and temperament at war together, and with aspiritual ideal in no way attained by her practical realisation. Forindeed, the union between Marian Evans and George Lewes was far moreincongruous in some of its details than was Maggie's love for Philip orher passion for Stephen. Philip appealed to her affection of old time,her pity and her love of art--Stephen to her hot blood and her sensuouslove of beauty. But George Lewes's total want of all religiousness offeeling, his brilliancy of wit, which was now coarse now mere_persiflage_, his cleverness, which was more quickness of assimilationthan the originality of genius, were all traits of character unlike thedeeper, truer and more ponderous qualities of the woman who braved theworld for his sake when first she linked her fate with his--the womanwho did not, like Maggie, turn back when she came to the brink but whoboldly crossed the Rubicon--and who, in her after efforts to cover upthe conditions, showed that she smarted from the consequences.
Read in youth by the light of sympathy with insurgency, Maggie isadorable, and her brother Tom is but a better-looking Jonas Chuzzlewit.Read in age by the light of respect for conformity and self-control,much of Maggie's charm vanishes, while most of Tom's hardness becomesboth respectable and inevitable. Maggie was truly a thorn in the side ofa proud country family, not accustomed to its little daughters runningoff to join the gipsies, nor to its grown girls eloping with theircousin's lover. Tom was right when he said no reliance could be placedon her; for where there is this unlucky divergence between principle andtemperament, the will can never be firm nor the walk steady. Sweetlittle Lucy had more of the true heroism of a woman in her patientacceptance of sorrow and her generous forgiveness of the cause thereof,than could be found in all Maggie's struggles between passion andprinciple. The great duties of life lying at our feet and about our pathcannot be done away with by the romantic picturesqueness of onecharacter contrasted with the more prosaic because conventionallimitations of the other; nor is it right to give all our sympathy tothe one who spoilt so many lives and brought so much disgrace on herfamily name, merely because she did not mean, and did not wish, and hadbitter remorse after terrible conflicts, which never ended in realself-control or steadfast pursuance of the right.
There is something in "The Mill on the Floss" akin to the gloomyfatalism of a Greek tragedy. In "Adam Bede" is more spontaneity ofaction, more liberty of choice; but, given the natures by which eventswere worked out to their final issues in "The Mill on the Floss," itseems as if everything must have happened precisely as it did. Anobstinate, litigious and irascible man like Mr. Tulliver was bound tocome to grief in the end. Fighting against long odds as he did, he couldnot win. Blind anger and as blind precipitancy, against cool tenacityand clear perceptions, must go under; and Mr. Tulliver was no matchagainst the laws of life as interpreted by Mr. Wakem and the decisionsof the law courts. His choice of a fool for his wife--was not Mrs.Tulliver well known at Coventry?--was another step in the terrible Marchof Fate. She was of no help to him as a wife--with woman's wit to assisthis masculine decisions--nor as a mother was she capable of ruling herdaughter or influencing her son. She was as a passive instrument in thehands of the gods--one of those unnoted and unsuspected agents by whoseunconscious action such tremendous results are produced. George Eliotnever did anything more remarkable than in the union she makes in thisbook between the most commonplace characters and the most majesticconception of tragic fate. There is not a stage hero among them all--nota pair of buskins for the whole company; but the conception isAEschylean, though the stage is no bigger than a doll's house.
The humour in "The Mill on the Floss" is almost as rich as that of "AdamBede," though the special qualities of the four sisters are perhapsunduly exaggerated. Sister Pullet's eternal tears become wearisome, andlose their effect by causeless and ceaseless repetition; and surelysister Grigg could not have been always such an unmitigated Gorgon! Mrs.Tulliver's helpless foolishness and tactless interference, moving withher soft white hands the lever which set the whole crushing machineryin motion, are after George Eliot's best manner; and the whole comedycircling round sister Pullet's wonderful bonnet and the linen and thechaney--comedy at last linked on to tragedy--is of inimitable richness.The girlish bond of sympathy between sister Pullet and sister Tulliver,in that they both liked spots for their patterned linen, while sisterGrigg--allays contrairy to Sophy Pullet, would have striped things--isrepeated in that serio-comic scene of the ruin, when the Tullivers aresold up and the stalwart cause of their disaster is in bed
, paralysed.By the way, would he have recovered so quickly and so thoroughly as hedid from such a severe attack? Setting that aside, for novelists are notexpected to be very accurate pathologists, the humour of this part ofthe book is all the more striking for the pathos mingled with it.
"The head miller, a tall broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed andblack-haired, subdued by a general mealiness like an auricula":--"They're nash things, them lop-eared rabbits--they'd happen ha' died ifthey'd been fed. Things out o' natur never thrive. God Almighty doesn'tlike 'em. He made the rabbit's ears to lie back, and it's nothing butcontrariness to make 'em lie down like a mastiff dog's":--"Maggie'stears began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bita piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they atetogether and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses together,while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendlyponies":--Is there anything better than these in Mrs. Poyser'srepertory?
Of acute psychological vision is that fine bit on "plotting contrivanceand deliberate covetousness"; and the summing up of the religious andmoral life of the Dodsons and Tullivers, beginning "Certainly thereligious and moral ideas of the Dodsons and Tullivers," is as good asanything in our language. No one theoretically knew human nature betterthan George Eliot. Practically, she was too thin-skinned to bear theslightest abrasion, such as necessarily comes to us from extendedintercourse or the give and take of equality. But theoretically shesounded the depths and shallows, and knew where the bitter springs roseand where the healing waters flowed; and when she translated what sheknew into the conduct and analysis of her fictitious characters, shegave them a life and substance peculiarly her own.
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Hitherto George Eliot has dealt with her own experiences, herreminiscences of old friends and well-known places, of familiaracquaintances, and, in Maggie Tulliver, of her own childish frowardnessand affectionateness--her girlish desire to do right and facile slippinginto wrong. In "Silas Marner" she ventures into a more completelycreative region; and, for all the exquisite beauty and poetry of thecentral idea, she has failed her former excellence. The story is one ofthe not quite impossible but highly improbable kind, with a _Deus exmachina_ as the ultimate setter-to-rights of all things wrong. As with"Adam Bede," the date is thrown back a generation or two, without thesmallest savour of the time indicated, save in the fashion of thedresses of the sisters Lammeter--a joseph substituted for a cloak, andriding on a pillion for a drive in a fly. Else there is not the leastattempt to synchronise time, circumstances and sentiment, while thestory is artificial in its plot and unlikely in its treatment. Yet it isboth pretty and pathetic; and the little introduction of fairyland inthe golden-haired child asleep by the fire, as the substitute for thestolen hoard, is as lovely as fairy stories generally are. But wealtogether question the probability of a marriage between the youngsquire and his drunken wife. Such a woman would not have been toorigorous, and was not; and such a man as Godfrey Cass would not havemarried a low-born mistress from "a movement of compunction." As wesaid before, in the story of Hetty and Arthur, young squires a centuryago were not so tender-hearted towards the honour of a peasant girl. Itwas a pity, of course, when things went wrong; but then young men willbe young men, and it behoved the lasses to keep themselves tothemselves! If the young squire did the handsome thing in money, thatwas all that could be expected of him. The girl would be none the worsethought of for her slip; and the money got by her fault would help inher plenishing with some honest fellow who understood things. This isthe sentiment still to be found in villages, where the love-children ofthe daughters out in service are to be found comfortably housed in thegrandmother's cottage, and where no one thinks any the worse of theunmarried mother; and certainly, a century ago, it was the universalrule of moral measurement. George Eliot undoubtedly made a chronologicalmistake in both stories by the amount of conscientious remorse felt byher young men, and the depth of social degradation implied in this slipof her young women.
The beginning of "Silas Marner" is much finer than that of either of herformer books. It strikes the true note of a harmonious introduction, andis free from the irritating trivialities of the former openings. Inthose early days of which "Silas Marner" treats, a man from the nextparish was held as a "stranger"; and even now a Scotch, Irish or Welshman would be considered as much a foreigner as a "Frenchy" himself, werehe to take up his abode in any of the more remote hamlets of the northor west. The state of isolation in which Silas Marner lived was true onall these counts--his being a "foreigner" to the autochthonous shepherdsand farmers of Ravaloe--his half mazed, half broken-hearted state owingto the false accusation brought against him and the criminal neglect ofProvidence to show his innocence--and his strange and uncongenial trade.Yet, for this last, were not the women of that time familiar with theweaving industry?--else what could they have done with the thread whichthey themselves had spun? If it were disposed of to a travelling agentfor the hand-loom weavers, why not have indicated the fact? It wouldhave been one touch more to the good of local colour and conditionalaccuracy. To be sure, the paints are laid on rather thickly throughout;but eccentricities and folks with bees in their bonnets were always tobe found in remote places before the broom of steam and electricity cameto sweep them into a more common conformity; and that line betweenoddity and insanity, always narrow, was then almost invisible.
The loss of the hoarded treasure and the poor dazed weaver's terrifiedflight to the Rainbow introduces us to one of George Eliot's mostmasterly of her many scenes of rustic humour.
"The more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest thefire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first manwho winked; while the beer drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets andsmock-frocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands acrosstheir mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attendedwith embarrassing sadness"--these, as well as Mr. Snell, the landlord,"a man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from humandifferences, as those of beings who were all alike in need ofliquor"--do their fooling admirably. From the cautious discussion on thered Durham with a star on her forehead, to the authoritative dictum ofMr. Macey, tailor and parish clerk (were men of his social stamp called_Mr._ in those days?) when he asserts that "there's allays two 'pinions;there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion otherfolks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if thebell could hear itself"--from the gossip about the Lammeter land to theghos'es in the Lammeter stables, it is all excellent--rich, racy and tothe manner born. And the sudden appearance of poor, scared, weazen-facedSilas in the midst of the discussion on ghos'es, gives occasion foranother fytte of humour quite as good as what has gone before.
Worthy of Mrs. Poyser, too, was sweet and patient Dolly Winthrop'sestimate of men. "It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved hisquart-pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took herhusband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else,considering that 'men _would_ be so' and viewing the stronger sex in thelight of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturallytroublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks." Good, too, when speaking ofhis wife, is Mr. Macey's version of the "mum" and "budget" of thefairies' dance. "Before I said 'sniff' I took care to know as she'd say'snaff,' and pretty quick too. I wasn't a-going to open _my_ mouth likea dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi' nothing to swaller."
But in spite of all this literary value of "Silas Marner" we come backto our first opinion of its being unreal and almost impossible in plot.The marriage of Godfrey to an opium-eating(?) drab, and the robbery ofSilas Marner's hoard by the squire's son were pretty hard nuts to crackin the way of probability; but the timely death of the wife just at theright moment and in the right place--the adoption of a little girl oftwo by an old man as nearly "nesh" as was consistent with his power ofliving free from the restraint of care--the discovery of Dunsay's bodyand the restoration to the weaver of his long-lost g
old--the _impasse_of Eppie, the squire's lawfully born daughter and his only legalinheritor, married to a peasant and living as a peasant at her father'sgates: all these things make "Silas Marner" a beautiful unreality,taking it out of the ranks of human history and placing it in those offairy tale and romance.
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In "Felix Holt" we come back to a more actual kind of life, such as itwas in the early thirties when the "democratic wave," which has sweptaway so much of the old parcelling out of things social and political,was first beginning to make itself felt. But here again George Eliotgives us the sense of anachronism in dealing too familiarly with thosenew conditions of the Reform Bill which gave Treby Magna for the firsttime a member, and which also for the first time created the RevisingBarrister--while Trades Unions were still unrecognised by the law, anddid their work mainly by rattening and violence. Any one who was anintelligent and wide-awake child at that time, and who can remember thetalk of the excited elders, must remember things somewhat differentlyfrom what George Eliot has set down. Radical was in those days a term ofreproach, carrying with it moral obloquy and condemnation. The Toriesmight call the Whigs Radicals when they wanted to overwhelm them withshame, as we might now say Anarchists and Dynamiters. But the mostadvanced Gentleman would never have stood for Parliament as a Radical.Felix Holt himself, and the upper fringe of the working class, as alsothe lower sediment, might be Radicals, but scarcely such a man as HaroldTransome, who would have been a Whig of a broad pattern. And as for theRevising Barrister, he was looked on as something akin to Frankenstein'sMonster. No one knew where his power began nor where it ended; and oneach side alike he was dreaded as an unknown piece of machinery which,once set a-going, no one could say what it would do or where it wouldstop.
In its construction "Felix Holt" is perhaps the most unsatisfactory ofall George Eliot's books. The ins and outs of Transome and Durfey andScaddon and Bycliffe were all too intricate in the weaving and tooconfused in the telling to be either intelligible or interesting. Intrying on the garment of Miss Braddon the author of "Felix Holt" showedboth want of perception and a deplorable misfit. Also she repeats thesituation of Eppie and her adopted father Silas in that of Esther andRufus Lyon. But where it was natural enough for the contentedly rusticEppie to refuse to leave her beloved old father for one new andunknown--her old habits of cottage simplicity, including a suitablelover, for the unwelcome luxuries of an unfamiliar state--natural in herthough eminently unnatural in the drama of life--it was altogetherinharmonious with Esther's character and tastes to prefer poverty toluxury, Felix to Harold, Malhouse Yard to Transome Court. George Eliot'susually firm grip on character wavers into strange self-contradiction inher delineations of Esther Lyon. Even the situation of which she is sofond--the evolution of a soul from spiritual deadness to keen spiritualintensity, and the conversion of a mind from folly to seriousness--evenin this we miss the masterly drawing of her better manner. The humourtoo is thinner. Mrs. Holt is a bad Mrs. Nickleby; and the comic chorusof rustic clowns, which George Eliot always introduces where she can, iscomparatively poor. She is guilty of one distinct coarseness, in her owncharacter as the author, when she speaks of the cook at Treby Manor--"amuch grander person than her ladyship"--"as wearing gold and jewelry toa vast amount of suet."
When Esther has been taken up by the Transomes, George Eliot misses whatwould have been absolutely certain--these fine little points ofdifference between the high-bred lady of Transome Court and thehalf-bred Esther of Malhouse Yard; and yet, quite unintentionally, shemakes Esther as vulgar as a barmaid in her conversations and flirtatiouscoquetries with Harold Transome. Nor, we venture to think, as going toofar on the other side, would a girl of Esther's upbringing andsurroundings have used such a delightfully literary phrase as"importunate scents." On the whole we do not think it can be deniedthat, so far as she had gone in her literary career when she wrote"Felix Holt," it is undeniably her least successful work.
And yet, how many and how beautiful are the good things in it! If Homernods at times, when he is awake who can come near him? The opening ofthe book is beyond measure fine, and abounds in felicitous phrases. "Hissheep-dog following with heedless unofficial air as of a beadle inundress:"--"The higher pains of a dim political consciousness:"--"Theyounger farmers who had almost a sense of dissipation in talking to aman of his questionable station and unknown experience:"--"Her lifewould be exalted into something quite new--into a sort of difficultblessedness such as one may imagine in beings who are conscious ofpainfully growing into the possession of higher powers" (true for GeorgeEliot herself but not for such a girl as Esther Lyon):--These areinstances of literary supremacy taken at random, with many more behind.
Then how exquisite is that first love-scene between Felix and Esther! Itis in these grave and tender indications of love that George Eliot is ather best. Gentle as "sleeping flowers"--delicately wrought, like themost perfect cameos--graceful and suggestive, subtle and yetstrong--they are always the very gems of her work. And in "Felix Holt"especially they stand out with more perfectness because of the inferiorquality of so much that surrounds them.
Felix himself is one of George Eliot's masterpieces in the way ofnobleness of ideal and firmness of drawing. Whether he would have wonsuch a girl as Esther, or have allowed himself to be won by her, may bedoubtful; but for all the rugged and disagreeable honesty of hisnature--for all his high ideals of life and hideous taste incostume--for all his intrinsic tendency and external bearishness, he issupreme. And with one of George Eliot's best aphorisms, made in hisintention, we close the book with that kind of mingled disappointmentand delight which must needs be produced by the inferior work of a greatmaster. "Blows are sarcasms turned stupid; wit is a form of force thatleaves the limbs at rest."
The last three books of the series are the most ponderous. Stillbeautiful and ever noble, they are like over-cultivated fruits andflowers of which the girth is inconvenient; and in one, at least,certain defects already discernible in the earlier issues attain aprominence fatal to perfect work.
Never spontaneous, as time went on George Eliot became painfullylaboured. Her scholarship degenerated into pedantry, and what had beenstately and dignified accuracy in her terms grew to be harsh andinartistic technicality. The artificial pose she had adopted in her lifeand bearing reacted on her work; and the contradiction between hersocial circumstances and literary position coloured more than hermanners. All her teaching went to the side of self-sacrifice for thegeneral good, of conformity with established moral standards, while herlife was in direct opposition to her words; for though she did no otherwoman personal injustice, she did set an example of disobedience to thepublic law which wrought more mischief than was counteracted by even thenoblest of her exhortations to submit to the restraints ofrighteousness, however irksome they might be. And it was this endeavourto co-ordinate insurgency and conformity, self-will and self-sacrifice,that made the discord of which every candid student of her work, whoknew her history, was conscious from the beginning. Nowhere do we findthis contradiction more markedly shown than in "Romola," the first ofthe ponderous last three.
Her noblest work, "Romola" is yet one of George Eliot's most defectivein what we may call the scaffolding of the building. The loftiness ofsentiment, the masterly delineation of character, the grand grasp of thepolitical and religious movement of the time, the evidences of deepstudy and conscientious painstaking visible on every page, are combinedwith what seems to us to be the most extraordinary indifference to--forit cannot be ignorance of--the social and domestic conditions of thetime. The whole story is surely impossible in view of the long arm ofthe Church--the personal restraints necessarily imposed on women duringthe turbulent unrest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--the proudexclusiveness of the well-born citizens of any state.
Take the last first. Grant all the honour paid by Cosmo and Lorenzo tothe learned men of all nations, especially to Greek scholars who, in thefirst fervour of the Renaissance, were as sons of
the gods to thosethirsting for the waters of the divine spring. Grant, too, the exampleset by Bartolommeo Scala, who had given his beautiful daughterAlessandra in marriage to the "soldier-poet" Marullo; was it likely thateven an eccentric old scholar like the blind Bardo de' Bardi shouldhave so unreservedly adopted a nameless Greek adventurer, flung up likea second Ulysses from the waves, unvouched for by any sponsor andunidentified by any document? We allow that Bardo might have taken Titoas his scribe and secretary, seeing that the Cennini had alreadyemployed him, waif and stray as he was; but that he should haveconsented to his daughter's marriage with this stranger, and that hermore conservative and more suspicious godfather, Bernado del Nero,should have consented, even if reluctantly, was just about as likely asthat an English country gentleman should allow his daughter to marry ahandsome gipsy.
If we think for a moment of what citizenship meant in olden times, theimprobability of the whole of Tito's career becomes still more striking.As, in Athens, the Sojourner never stood on the same plane with theautochthon, so in Rome the Peregrinus was ineligible for public officeor the higher kind of marriage; and though the stricter part of the lawwas subsequently relaxed in favour of a wider civic hospitality, thesentiment of exclusiveness remained, and indeed does yet remain inItaly. It seems more than improbable that Tito, a Greek adventurer,should have been employed in any political service, save perhaps as abase kind of scout and unhonoured spy. That he should ever have takenthe position of an accredited public orator was so contrary to all theold traditions and habits of thought as to be of the same substance as afairy tale.
The character of Bardo, too, is non-Italian; and his modes of life andthought were as impossible as are some other things to be hereafterspoken of. The Church had a long arm, as we said, and a firm grip; andwhile it blinked indulgently enough at certain aberrations, it demandedthe show of conformity in essentials. Lorenzo was a pagan, but he diedreceiving the Sacraments. The Borgias were criminals, but theirprofessions of faith were loud-voiced and in true earnest. Men mightinveigh against the evil lives of the clergy and the excesses of monksand nuns, but they had to confess God and the Church; and theirdiatribes had to be carefully worded--as witness Rabelais--or a pleawould certainly be found for the fire and faggot--as with Fra Dolcinoand Savonarola. So with conformity to the usages of life which, then andnow, are considered integral to morality. It could not have beenpossible for Bardo to bring up his daughter "aloof from the debasinginfluence" of her own sex, and in a household with only one old man fora servant. The times did not allow it; no more than we should allow itnow in this freer day. This womanless home for an Italian girl at anytime, more especially in the Middle Ages, when even young wives werebound to have their companions and duennas, is a serious blot inworkmanship. So, indeed, is the whole of Romola's life, beinganachronism and simply nineteenth-century English from start to finish.
The things which both she and Tessa did, and were allowed to do, are ona par with "Gulliver's Travels" and "Peter Wilkins." It was asimpossible for Tessa, a pretty young unmarried girl, contadina as shewas, to come into Florence alone, as for a peasant child of three yearsold to be sent with a message on business into the City of London alone.To this day well-conducted women of any class do not wander about thestreets of Italian cities unaccompanied; and maidenhood is, as it alwayswas, sacredly and jealously guarded. Nor could Romola have gone out andcome in at her desire, as she is allowed by the author. With streetsfilled by the turbulent factions of the Bianchi and Neri, always readyfor a fight or for a love-adventure, what would have happened to, andbeen thought of, a beautiful young woman slipping about within the cityand outside the gates at all hours of the day and night? She is said tobe either quite alone (!), as when she goes to Tessa's house, or merelyaccompanied by Monna Brigida, as when she goes to the convent to seeher dying brother--which also, by the way, was impossible--or attended,at a distance, by old Maso when she attempts her flight as a solitarynun. She would have lost name and state had she committed theseeccentricities; and had she persisted in them, she would have been sentto a convent--that refuge for sorrow, that shelter from danger, thatprison for contumacy--and her godfather would have been the first toconsign her to what was then the only safe asylum for women. The sceneshe has with Tito before Nello's shop is ludicrously impossible--as istheir English-like return home together, without retinue or lights, justlike a man and wife of to-day when she has been to fetch him from thepublic-house, or, if she be of the better class, from his club. English,too, is Romola's sitting up for her husband in her queer womanlessestablishment, and opening the door to him when he comes home late atnight. For the matter of that, indeed, Tito's solitary rambles are asmuch out of line with the time, and the circumstances of that time, asis Romola's strange daring. No man of any note whatever appeared alonein the streets when out on a midnight expedition, either to commitmurder or break the seventh commandment. He took some one with him,friend or servant, armed; and to this day you will not find Italianswillingly walk alone at night. The whole of this kind of life, ifnecessary for the story, is dead against truth and probability. So isRomola's flight, disguised as a nun. Splendid as is the scene betweenher and Savonarola, the _vraisemblance_ is spoilt by this impossibilityof condition. Nor could any woman of that time, brought up in a city,have felt a sense of freedom when fairly outside the walls by herself ona strange road, going to meet an unknown fate and bound to an unknownbourne. She would have felt as a purdah woman of India suddenly turnedloose in the streets and environs of Delhi--as felt all those womenwhose evidence we read of in matters of crime and murder, when they cameface to face with the desolation of unprotectedness. Modern women callit freedom, but in the Middle Ages such a feeling did not exist. Allthese things are anachronisms; as much so as if a novelist of thetwentieth century, writing of English life in the eighteenth, shouldclothe his women in knickerbockers, mount them on bicycles, and turnthem into the football field and cricket-ground.
These exceptions taken to the scaffolding of the book, we are free toadmire its glorious nobility of sentiment, its lofty purpose, itsperfection of character-drawing, and the dramatic power of its variousscenes. Nothing can excel the power with which Tito's character is shownin its gradual slipping from simple selfishness to positivecriminality. The whole action may be summed up in George Eliot's ownwords.
"When, the next morning, Tito put this determination into act, he hadchosen his colour in the game, and had given an inevitable bent to hiswishes. He had made it impossible that he should not from henceforthdesire it to be the truth that his father was dead; impossible that heshould not be tempted to baseness rather than that the precise facts ofhis conduct should not remain for ever concealed. Under every guiltysecret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesomeinfecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect ofdeeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequentadjustment of our desires--the enlistment of our self-interest on theside of falsity; as, on the other hand, the purifying influence ofpublic confession springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies isfor ever swept away, and the soul recovers its noble attitude ofsincerity."
But, giving every weight to the natural weakness, sweetness andaffectionateness, as well as to the latent falsity of Tito's character,we cannot accept the Tessa episode as true to life in general, while itis eminently untrue to Italian life, especially of those times. Tessaherself, too, is wearisome with her tears and her kisses, her blue eyesand baby face, so incessantly repeated and harped on. She is asnauseating as she is impossible; and the whole story from first to lastis an ugly blot on the book.
In Romola and in Savonarola we touch the heights. The "tall lily" is anexquisite conception and is supreme in human loveliness. Her twointerviews with Savonarola are superbly done, and the gradual crushingdown of her proud self-will under the passionate fervour of the priestis beyond praise both for style and psychology. So, too, are the changesin the great preacher himself--the first, when his simple earnestness ofbelief in his
mission degenerates into self-consciousness and personalassumption, as is the way with all reformers--the second, when heabandons his later attitude, and the dross is burnt away as the hour oftrial comes on him, and the World no longer stands between God and hissoul. The final scenes of the Frate's public life are powerfullywrought, with all George Eliot's mastery and eloquence and deepreligious fervour; but it is in scenes and circumstances of this kindthat she is ever at her best. In humour and psychologic insight she isgreater than any English woman writer we have had; in aphorisms she isunrivalled; but in playfulness she is clumsy, and in catching the moral,intellectual and social tone of the times of which she writes, she isnowhere.
Contrast Romola's character and manner of life--above all those twothoroughly English letters of hers--with all that we know of VittoriaColonna, the purest and noblest woman of her day--which wasRomola's--and at once we see the difference between them--the differencewrought by four centuries--Vittoria being essentially a woman of thetime, though a head and shoulders above the ruck; while Romola is asessentially a product of the nineteenth century. In spite of the localcolour--which, after all, is only a wash--given by the descriptions ofpageants and processions, and by the history of which George Eliot soably mastered the details, the whole book is nineteenth century, fromMonna Brigida's characteristically English speech about Tessa's place inthe house and the children's sweets, to Romola's as characteristicallyEnglish attitude and hygienic objections--from a little maiden, withouta caretaker, carrying eggs to Piero, to Romola's solitary visit to thestudio and night perambulations about the city.
All these shortcomings notwithstanding, "Romola" will ever remain one ofthe noblest works of our noblest author; and, after all, did notShakspere make Hector quote Aristotle, and show all his Greeks andRomans and outlandish nondescripts from countries unknown to himself, asnothing but sturdy Englishmen, such as lived and loved in the times ofthe great Eliza? Where we have so much to admire--nay, to venerate--wemay let the smaller mistakes pass. Yet they must be spoken of by thosewho would be candid and not fulsome--just and not flattering. By theway, did George Eliot know that "Baldassare" is the name of one of thedevils invoked to this day by Sicilian witches?
* * * * *
The longest of all the novels, "Middlemarch," is the most interesting inits characters, its isolated scenes, its moral meaning and philosophicextension; but it is also the most inartistic and the most encumberedwith subordinate interests and personages. The canvas is as crowded asone of George Cruikshank's etchings; and the work would have gained bywhat George Eliot would have called fission--a division into two. Thestories of Dorothea and Casaubon and of Rosamond and Lydgate areessentially separate entities; and though they are brought together atthe last by an intermingled interest, the result is no more trueunification than the Siamese twins or the Double-headed Nightingalerepresented one true human being. The contrast between the two beautifulyoung wives is well preserved, and the nicer shades of difference are asclearly marked as are the more essential; for George Eliot was far toogood a workman to scamp in any direction, and the backs of her storiesare as well wrought as the fronts. But if one-third of the book had beencut out--failing that fission, which would have been still better--thework would have gained in proportion to its compression.
The character of Dorothea marks the last stage in the development of thepersonality which begins with Maggie Tulliver, and is in reality MarianEvans's own self. Maggie, Romola and Dorothea are the same person inprogressive stages of moral evolution. All are at cross corners withlife and fate--all are rebellious against things as they find them.Maggie's state of insurgency is the crudest and simplest; Romola's isthe most passionate in its moral reprobation of accepted unworthiness;Dorothea's is the widest in its mental horizon, and the most womanly inthe whole-hearted indifference to aught but love, which ends the storyand gives the conclusive echo. In its own way, her action in taking WillLadislaw is like Esther's in marrying Felix Holt; but it has not theunlikelihood of Esther's choice. It is all for love, if one will, but itruns more harmoniously with the broad lines of her character, and givesus no sense of that dislocation which we get from Esther's decision. Andin its own way it is at once a parallel and an apology.
The most masterly bits of work in "Middlemarch" are the characters ofRosamond and Casaubon. Rosamond's unconscious selfishness, her moralthinness, and the superficial quality of her love are all portrayedwithout a flaw in the drawing; while Casaubon's dryness, his literaryindecision following on his indefatigable research, and his totalinability to adjust himself to his new conditions, together with hisscrupulous formality of politeness combined with real cruelty of temper,make a picture of supreme psychologic merit. They who think thatCasaubon was meant for the late Rector of Lincoln know nothing aboutGeorge Eliot's early life. They who do know some of those obscurerdetails, are well aware of the origin whence she drew her masterlyportrait, as they know who was Mrs. Poyser, who Tom Tulliver, and whoHetty Sorrel. Hetty, indeed, is somewhat repeated in that amazinglyidiotic Tessa, who is neither English nor Italian, nor, indeed, quitehuman in her molluscous silliness; but there are lines of relation whichshow themselves to experts, and the absence of the "cherry stone" doesnot count for more than the dissimilarity always to be found between twocopies.
No finer bit of work was ever done than the deep and subtle but true andmost pathetic tragedy of Lydgate's married life. The character ofRosamond was a difficult one to paint, and one false touch could havebeen fatal. To show her intense selfishness and shallowness and yet notto make her revolting, was what only such a consummate psychologist asGeorge Eliot could have done. And to show how Lydgate, strong man as hewas and full of noble ambition and splendid aims, was necessarilysubdued, mastered and ruined by the tenacious weakness and moralunworthiness of such a wife, yet not to make him contemptible, was alsoa task beyond the power of any but the few Masters of our literature.All the scenes between this ill-assorted pair are in George Eliot's bestmanner and up to her highest mark; and the gradual declination ofRosamond's love, together with Lydgate's gradual awakening to the truthof things as they were, are portrayed with a touch as firm as it istender.
That scene on the receipt of Sir Godwin's letter is as tragic in its ownway as Othello or a Greek drama. It has in it the same sense of humanhelplessness in the presence of an overmastering fate. Rosamond wasLydgate's Fate. Her weakness, tenacity and duplicity--his strongermanhood, which could not crush the weaker woman--his love, which couldnot coerce, nor punish, nor yet control the thing he loved--all made thethreads of that terrible net in which he was entangled, and by which thewhole worth of his life was destroyed. It is a story that goes home tothe consciousness of many men, who know, as Lydgate knew, that they havebeen mastered by the one who to them is "as an animal of another andfeebler species"--who know, as Lydgate knew, that their energies havebeen stunted, their ambition has been frustrated, and their horizonnarrowed and darkened because of that tyranny which the weaker woman sowell knows how to exercise over the stronger man.
Casaubon is as masterly in drawing as is Rosamond or Lydgate. We confessto a sadly imperfect sympathy with Dorothea in her queer enthusiasm forthis dry stick of a man. Learned or not, he was scarcely one to whom ayoung woman, full of life's strong and sweet emotions, would care togive herself as a wife. One can understand the more impersonal impulsewhich threw Marian Evans into an attitude of adoration before theoriginal of her dry stick; but when it comes to the question ofmarriage, the thing is simply revolting as done by the girl, not only ofher own free-will but against the advice and prayers of her friends. Tomwas to be excused for his harshness and irritation against Maggie; andCelia's commonplaces of wisdom for the benefit of that self-willed andrecalcitrant Dodo, if not very profound nor very stimulating, nor yetsympathetic, were worth more in the daily life and ordering of sane folkthan Dorothea's blind and obstinate determination. Beautiful andhigh-minded as she is, she is also one of those irritating saints whosevirtues one cannot b
ut revere, whose personal charms one loves andacknowledges, and whose wrongheadedness makes one long to punishthem--or at least restrain them by main force from social suicide. Andto think that to her first mistake she adds that second of marrying WillLadislaw--the utter snob that he is! Where were George Eliot'sperceptions? Or was it that in Ladislaw she had a model near at hand,whom she saw through coloured glasses, which also shed their rosy lighton her reproduction, so that her copy was to her as idealised as theoriginal, and she was ignorant of the effect produced on theclear-sighted? Yet over all the mistakes made by her through defectivetaste and obstinate unwisdom, the beauty of Dorothea's character standsout as did Romola's--like a "white lily" in the garden. She is a superbcreature in her own way, and her disillusionment is of the nature of atragedy. But what could any woman expect from a man who could write sucha love-letter as that of Mr. Casaubon's?
The canvas of "Middlemarch" is overcrowded, as we said; yet how goodsome of the characters are! The sturdy uprightness, tempered with suchloving sweetness, of Cabel Garth; the commonplace negation of all greatand all unworthy qualities of the Vincys--Celia and Sir James--Mr.Farebrother and Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader--all are supreme. We confess wedo not care much for the portraiture of Mr. Bulstrode and his spitefuldelator Raffles--George Eliot is not good at melodrama; also the wholeepisode of Mr. Featherstone's illness, with his watching family and MaryGarth, too vividly recalls old Anthony Chuzzlewit and all that tookplace round his death-bed and about his will, to give a sense of truthor novelty. George Eliot's power did not lie in the same direction asthat of Charles Dickens, and the contrast is not to her advantage. Greathumorists as both were, their humour was essentially different, and willnot bear comparison.
No book that George Eliot ever wrote is without its wise and pithyaphorisms, its brilliant flashes of wit, its innumerable good things.Space will not permit our quoting one-tenth part of the good thingsscattered about these fascinating pages. Celia's feeling, which shestifled in the depths of her heart, that "her sister was too religiousfor family comfort. Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, makingone afraid of treading or sitting down, or even eating:"--(But, fartheron, what an unnecessary bit of pedantry!--"In short, woman was a problemwhich, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardlyless complicated than the _revolutions of an irregular solid_.")--Mrs.Cadwallader's sense of birth, so that a "De Bracy reduced to take hisdinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worthexaggerating; and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrifiedher. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religioushatred:"--"Indeed, she (Mrs. Waule) herself was accustomed to think thatentire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included inthe Almighty's intentions about families:"--"Strangers, whether wreckedand clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied byportmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for thevirgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself invain:"--"Ladislaw, a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley:"--"But itis one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like itsconsequences"--an observation wrung out of her own disturbed andinharmonious experience:--"That controlled self-consciousness of mannerwhich is the expensive substitute for simplicity:"--These are a fewpicked out at random, but the wealth that remains behind is butinadequately represented by stray nuggets.
Before we close the volume we would like to note the one redeeminglittle flash of human tenderness in Mr. Casaubon when he had receivedhis death-warrant from Lydgate, and Dorothea waits for him to come up tobed. It is the only tender and spontaneous moment in his life as GeorgeEliot has painted it, and its strangeness makes its pathos as well asits truth.
* * * * *
The last of the lengthy three, and the last novel she wrote, "DanielDeronda" is the most wearisome, the least artistic, and the mostunnatural of all George Eliot's books. Of course it has the masterlytouch, and, for all its comparative inferiority, has also its supremeexcellence. But in plot, treatment and character it is far below itspredecessors. Some of the characters are strangely unnatural.Grandcourt, for instance, is more like the French caricature of anEnglish milord than like a possible English gentleman depicted by acompatriot. Deronda himself is a prig of the first water; whileGwendolen is self-contradictory all through--like a tangled skein ofwhich you cannot find the end, and therefore cannot bring it into orderand intelligibility. Begun on apparently clear lines of self-will,pride, worldly ambition and personal self-indulgence--without eitherconscience or deep affections--self-contained and self-controlled--shewavers off into a condition of moral weakness, of vagrant impulses andhumiliating self-abandonment for which nothing that went before hasprepared us.
That she should ever have loved, or even fancied she loved, such afrozen fish as Grandcourt was impossible to a girl so full of energy asGwendolen is shown to be. Clear in her desires of what she wanted, shewould have accepted him, as she did, to escape from the hateful life towhich else she would have been condemned. But she would have acceptedhim without even that amount of self-deception which is portrayed in thedecisive interview. She knew his cruel secret, and she deliberatelychose to ignore it. So far good. It is what she would have done. Butwhere is the logic of making her "carry on" as she did when she receivedthe diamonds on her wedding-day? It was a painful thing, sure enough,and the mad letter that came with them was disagreeable enough; but itcould not have been the shock it is described, nor could it have madeGwendolen turn against her husband in such sudden hatred, seeing thatshe already knew the whole shameful story. These are faults inpsychology; and the conduct of the plot is also imperfect. GeorgeEliot's plots are always bad when she attempts intricacy, attaininginstead confusion and unintelligibility; but surely nothing can be muchsillier than the whole story of Deronda's birth and upbringing, nor cananything be more unnatural than the character and conduct of hismother. What English gentleman would have brought up a legitimately-bornJewish child under conditions which made the whole world believe him tobe his own illegitimate son? And what young man, brought up in thebelief that he was an English gentleman by birth--leaving out on whichside of the blanket--would have rejoiced to find himself a Jew instead?The whole story is improbable and far-fetched; as also is Deronda'srescue of Mirah and her unquestioning adoption by the Meyricks. It isall distortion, and in no wise like real life; and some of thecharacters are as much twisted out of shape as is the story. Sir HugoMallinger and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne are the most natural of the wholegallery--the defect of exaggeration or caricature spoiling most of theothers.
Of these others, Gwendolen herself is far and away the mostunsatisfactory. Her sudden hatred of her husband is strained; so is herlove for Deronda; so is her repentance for her constructive act ofmurder. That she should have failed to throw the rope to Grandcourt,drowning in the sea, was perhaps natural enough. That she should havefelt such abject remorse and have betrayed herself in such humiliatingunreserve to Deronda was not. All through the story her action withregard to Deronda is dead against the base lines of her character, andis compatible only with such an overwhelming amount of physical passionas does sometimes make women mad. We have no hint of this. On thecontrary, all that Gwendolen says is founded on spiritual longing forspiritual improvement--spiritual direction with no hint of sexualimpulse. Yet she acts as one overpowered by that impulse--throwing tothe winds pride, reserve, womanly dignity and common sense. Esther wasnot harmonious with herself in her choice of Felix Holt over HaroldTransome, but Esther was naturalness incarnate compared with Gwendolenas towards Daniel Deronda. And the evolution of Esther's soul, and theglimpse given of Rosamond's tardy sense of some kind of morality,difficult to be believed as each was, were easy sums in moral arithmeticcontrasted with the birth and sudden growth of what had been Gwendolen'svery rudimentary soul--springing into maturity in a moment, like afully-armed Athene, without the need of the more gradual process. Add toall these defects, an amount of disquisition and mental dissection whichimpedes the story till it
drags on as slowly as a heavily ladenwain--add the fatal blunder of making long scenes which do not help onthe action nor elucidate the plot, and the yet more fatal blunder ofcauseless pedantry, and we have to confess that our great master's lastnovel is also her worst. But then the one immediately preceding wasincomparably her best.
We come now to the beauties of the work--to the inimitable force of somephrases--to the noble aim and meaning of the story--to the lofty spiritinforming all those interrupting disquisitions, which are reallyinterpolated moral essays, and must not be confounded with padding. Takethis little shaft aimed at that _Graeculus esuriens_ Lush, that"half-caste among gentlemen" and the _ame damnee_ of Grandcourt. "Lush'slove of ease was well satisfied at present, and if his puddings wererolled towards him in the dust he took the inside bits and found themrelishing." Again: "We sit up at night to read about Cakya-Mouni, SaintFrancis and Oliver Cromwell, but whether we should be glad for any oneat all like them to call on us the next morning, still more to revealhimself as a new relation, is quite another matter:"--"A man of refinedpride shrinks from making a lover's approaches to a woman whose wealthor rank might make them appear presumptuous or low-motived; but Derondawas finding a more delicate difficulty in a position which,superficially taken, was the reverse of that--though, to an ardentreverential love, the loved woman has always a kind of wealth whichmakes a man keenly susceptible about the aspect of his addresses." (Weextract this sentence as an instance of George Eliot's fine feeling anddelicate perception expressed in her worst and clumsiest manner.) "Ablush is no language, only a dubious flag-signal, which may mean eitherof two contradictions."
"Grandcourt held that the Jamaican negro was a beastly sort of baptistCaliban; Deronda said he had always felt a little with Caliban, whonaturally had his own point of view and could sing a good song;" "Mrs.Davilow observed that her father had an estate in Barbadoes, but thatshe herself had never been in the West Indies; Mrs. Torrington was sureshe should never sleep in her bed if she lived among blacks; her husbandcorrected her by saying that the blacks would be manageable enough if itwere not for the half-breeds; and Deronda remarked that the whites hadto thank themselves for the half-breeds."
It is in such "polite pea-shooting" as this that George Eliot shows herinimitable humour--the quick give-and-take of her conversations beingalways in harmony with her characters. But, indeed, unsatisfactory as anovel though "Daniel Deronda" is, it is full of beauties of all kinds,from verbal wit to the grandly colossal sublimity of Mordecai, andDeronda's outburst of passionate desire to weld the scattered Jews intoone nation of which he should be the heart and brain.
* * * * *
Whatever George Eliot did bears this impress of massive sincerity--ofdeep and earnest feeling--of lofty purpose and noble teaching. She wasnot a fine artist, and she spoilt her later work by pedantry andoverlay, but she stands out as the finest woman writer we have had orprobably shall have--stands a head and shoulders above the best of therest. She touched the darker parts of life and passion, but she touchedthem with clean hands and a pure mind, and with that spirit ofphilosophic truth which can touch pitch and not be defiled. Yet prolificas she was, and the creator of more than one living character, she wasnot a flexible writer and her range was limited. She repeated situationsand motives with a curious narrowness of scope, and in almost all herheroines, save Dinah and Dorothea, who are evoluted from the beginning,paints the gradual evolution of a soul by the ennobling influence of ahigher mind and a religious love.
We come now to a curious little crop of errors. Though so profound ascholar--being indeed too learned for perfect artistry--she makesstrange mistakes for a master of the language such as she was. Shespells "insistence" with an "a," and she gives a superfluous "c" to"Machiavelli." She sometimes permits herself to slip into the literarymisdemeanour of no nominative to her sentence, and into the graver sinof making a singular verb govern the plural noun of a series. She says"frightened at" and "under circumstances"; "by the sly" and "down upon";and she follows "neither" with "or," as also "never" and "not." She is"averse to"; she has even been known to split her infinitive, and to say"and which" without remorse. Once she condescends to the iniquity of"proceeding to take," than which "commencing" is only one stage lower inliterary vulgarity; and many of her sentences are as clumsy as a clown'sdancing-steps. As no one can accuse her of either ignorance orindifference, still less of haste and slap-dash, these small flaws inthe great jewel of her genius are instructive instances of the clingingeffect of our carelessness in daily speech; so that grammaticalinaccuracy becomes as a second nature to us, and has to be unlearned byall who write.
Nevertheless, with all her faults fully acknowledged and honestly shown,we ever return as to an inexhaustible fountain, to her greatness ofthought, her supreme power, her nobility of aim, her matchless humour,her magnificent drawing, her wise philosophy, her accurate learning--asprofound as it was accurate. Though we do not bracket her with Plato andKant, as did one of her panegyrists, nor hold her equal to Fielding fornaturalness, nor to Scott for picturesqueness, nor as able as wasThackeray to project herself into the conditions of thought and societyof times other than her own, we do hold her as the sceptred queen of ourEnglish Victorian authoresses--superior even to Charlotte Bronte, toMrs. Gaskell, to Harriet Martineau--formidable rivals as these are toall others, living or dead.
If she had not crossed that Rubicon, or, having crossed it, had beencontent with more complete insurgency than she was, she would have beena happier woman and a yet more finished novelist. As things were, herlife and principles were at cross-corners; and when her literary successhad roused up her social ambition, and fame had lifted her far above theplace where her birth had set her, she realised the mistake she hadmade. Then the sense of inharmoniousness between what she was and whatshe would have been did, to some degree, react on her work, to theextent at least of killing in it all passion and spontaneity. Her wholelife and being were moulded to an artificial pose, and the "made" womancould not possibly be the spontaneous artist. Her yet more fatal blunderof marrying an obscure individual many years younger than herself, andso destroying the poetry of her first union by destroying its sense ofcontinuity and constancy, would have still more disastrously reacted onher work had she lived. She died in time, for anything below"Theophrastus Such" would have seriously endangered her fame andlessened her greatness--culminating as this did in "Middlemarch," thebest and grandest of her novels, from the zenith of which "DanielDeronda," her last, is a sensible decline.
[Signature: E. Lynn Linton.]
MRS. GASKELL
_By_ EDNA LYALL
Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations Page 3
