SILAS MARNER.
The 'Mill on the Floss,' which appeared in 1860, fully established
George Eliot's popularity with the public. In the same year she
published anonymously, in _Blackwood's Magazine_, a short story called
the 'Lifted Veil.' This tale is curious as differing considerably from
her general style, having a certain mystical turn, which perhaps
recommended it more especially to the admiration of Bulwer Lytton; but,
indeed, it attracted general attention. In the meanwhile, the relations
between author and publisher became more and more friendly; the latter's
critical acumen and sound judgment being highly esteemed by George
Eliot. "He judged well of writing," she remarked, "because he had
learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of
observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the
right place."
This was the most productive period of George Eliot's life. In three
successive years she published 'Adam Bede,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' and
'Silas Marner,' the last story appearing in 1861. When the amount of
thought, observation, and wisdom concentrated in these novels is taken
into consideration, it must be admitted that her mental energy was
truly astonishing. But it was the accumulated experience of her whole
past, the first abundant math borne by the springtide of life which was
garnered up in these three remarkable works. Afterwards, when she came
to write her next book,'Romola,' she turned to entirely fresh fields of
inspiration; indeed, already at this date her mind was occupied with the
idea of an Italian novel of the time of Savonarola.
In the meanwhile she produced her most perfect work. She wrote 'Silas
Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe.' I call 'Silas Marner' her most perfect
work, not only because of the symmetry with which each part is adjusted
in relation to the whole, nor because of the absence of those partly
satirical, partly moral reflections with which George Eliot usually
accompanies the action of her stories, but chiefly on account of the
simple pathos of the central motive into which all the different
incidents and characters naturally converge. How homely are the elements
from which this work of art is constructed, and how matchless the
result!
Nothing but the story of a humble weaver belonging to a small dissenting
community which assembled in Lantern Yard, somewhere in the back streets
of a manufacturing town; of a faithless love and a false friend, and the
loss of trust in all things human or divine. Nothing but the story of a
lone, bewildered man, shut out from his kind, concentrating every
baulked passion into one--the all-engrossing passion for gold. And then
the sudden disappearance of the hoard from its accustomed hiding-place,
and in its stead the startling apparition of a golden-haired little
child, found one snowy winter's night sleeping on the floor in front of
the glimmering hearth. And the gradual reawakening of love in the heart
of the solitary man, a love "drawing his hope and joy continually onward
beyond the money," and once more bringing him into sympathetic relations
with his fellow-men.
"In old days," says the story, "there were angels who came and took men
by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no
white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening
destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently
towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and
the hand may be a little child's."
Curiously enough, I came quite recently upon a story which in its
leading features very closely resembles this tale of the 'Weaver of
Raveloe.' It is called 'Jermola the Potter,' and is considered the
masterpiece of J. I. Kraszewski, the Polish novelist, author of at least
one hundred and fifty works in different branches of literature.
'Jermola,' the most popular of them all, has been translated into
French, Dutch, and German. It gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of
peasant life in a remote Polish village, and not only of peasant life,
but of the manners and habits of the landed proprietor, the Jew, the
artisan, and the yeoman, in a community whose modes of life have
undergone but little modification since the Middle Ages. These pictures,
though not elaborated with anything like the minute care of George
Eliot's descriptions of English country life, yet from their extreme
simplicity produce a most powerful impression on the reader.
The story, in brief, is that of Jermola, the body servant of a Polish
nobleman in Volhynia, whom he has served with rare devotion during the
greater part of his life. Left almost a beggar at his master's death,
without a single human tie, all he can get for years of faithful service
is a tumble-down, forsaken old inn, where he manages to keep body and
soul together in a dismantled room that but partly shelters him from the
inclemency of the weather. Hopeless, aimless, loveless, he grows old
before his time, and the passing of the days affects him hardly more
than it does a stone. But one evening, as he is sitting in front of a
scanty fire repeating the Lord's Prayer, the cry as of a little child
startles him from his devotion. Going to look what can be the meaning of
such unusual sounds, he soon discovers an infant in linen
swaddling-clothes wailing under an old oak tree. He takes the foundling
home, and from that moment a new life enters the old man's breast. He is
rejuvenated by twenty years. He is kept in a constant flutter of hope,
fear, and activity. A kind-hearted woman, called the Kozaczicha, tenders
him her services, but he is so jealous of any one but himself doing
aught for the child, that he checks her advances, and by hook or by
crook obtains a goat from an extortionate Jew, by the help of which he
rears the boy satisfactorily. Then, wishing to make a livelihood for the
child's sake, he inclines at first to the craft of the weaver, but
finally turns potter in his old age. Love sharpening his wits, he plies
quite a thriving trade in time, and the beautiful boy brings him into
more friendly relations with his neighbours. But one day, when Radionek,
who has learned Jermola's trade, is about twelve years old, the real
parents appear and claim him as their own. They had never dared to
acknowledge their marriage till the father, who had threatened to
disinherit his son in such an event, had departed this life. Now, having
nothing more to fear, they want to have their child back, and to bring
him up as befits their station in life. Jermola suffers a deadly anguish
at this separation; the boy, too, is in despair, for he clings fondly to
the old man who has reared him with more than a father's love. But the
parents insisting on their legal rights, Radionek is at last carried off
to their house in town, to be turned into a gentleman, being only
grudgingly allowed to see Jermola from time to time. The boy pines,
however, for the dear familiar presence of his foster-father, and the
free outdoor life, and at last, after some years of misery, he appears
one day suddenly in Jermola's hut, who has given up his pottery in order
to be secretly near the child he is afraid to go and see. The piteous
entreaties of Radionek, and the sight of his now sickly countenance,
induce the old man to flee into the pathless forests, where the two may
escape unseen, and reach some distant part of the country to take up
their old pleasant life once more. But the hardships and fatigues of the
journey are too much for the boy's enfeebled health, and just as they
come within sight of human dwellings, he is seized with a fever which
cuts his young life short, leaving Jermola nearly crazy with anguish.
Long afterwards a little decrepit old man was to be seen by churchgoers
sitting near a grave, whom the children mocked by calling the "bony
little man," because he seemed to consist of nothing but bones.
Such is the bare outline of a story whose main idea, that of the
redemption of a human soul from cold, petrifying isolation, by means of
a little child, is unquestionably the same as in 'Silas Marner.' Other
incidents, such as that of the peasant woman who initiates Jermola into
the mysteries of baby management, and the disclosure of the real parents
after a lapse of years, wanting to have their child back suggest
parallel passages in the English book. But coincidences of this kind
are, after all, natural enough, considering that the circle of human
feeling and action is limited, and that in all ages and countries like
conditions must give rise to much the same sequence of events. It is
therefore most likely that George Eliot never saw, and possibly never
even heard of, 'Jermola the Potter.'
The monotonous tone in the narrative of this Polish novel is in strong
contrast, it may be observed, to George Eliot's vivid and varied
treatment of her subject. This monotony, however, suits the local
colouring of 'Jermola,' by suggesting the idea of the league-long
expanse of ancient forests whose sombre solitudes encompass with a
mysterious awe the little temporary dwellings of men. But if the foreign
story surpasses 'Silas Marner' in tragic pathos, the latter far excels
it in the masterly handling of character and dialogue, in the underlying
breadth of thought, and, above all, in the precious salt of its humour.
Indeed, for humour, for sheer force, for intense realism, George Eliot,
in the immortal scene at the "Rainbow," may be said to rival
Shakespeare. Her farriers, her butchers, her wheelwrights, her tailors,
have the same startling vitality, the same unmistakable accents of
nature, the same distinctive yet unforced individuality, free from
either exaggeration or caricature. How delicious is the description of
the party assembled in the kitchen of that inn, whose landlord--a strong
advocate for compromising whatever differences of opinion may arise
between his customers, as beings "all alike in need of liquor"--clinches
all arguments by his favourite phrase--"You're both right and you're
both wrong, as I say." How admirably comic are these villagers,
invariably beginning their nightly sittings by a solemn silence, in
which one and all puff away at their pipes, staring at the fire "as if a
bet were depending on the first man who winked." And when they begin at
last, how rich is the flavour of that talk, given with an unerring
precision that forthwith makes one acquainted with the crass ignorance
and shrewdness, the mother-wit and superstition, so oddly jumbled
together in the villager's mind. What sublime absence of all knowledge
of his native land is shown by the veteran parish clerk, Mr. Macey, in
speaking of a person from another county which apparently could not be
so very different "from this country, for he brought a fine breed o'
sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and everything
reasonable." Yet the same man can put down youthful presumption pretty
sharply, as when he remarks: "There's allays two 'pinions; there's the
'pinion a man has o' himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on
him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could
hear itself."
Dolly Winthrop, the wife of the jolly wheelwright who makes one of the
company at the "Rainbow," is no less admirable. She is not cut after any
particular pattern or type of human nature, but has a distinctive
individuality, and is full of a freshness and unexpectedness which sets
foregone conclusions at defiance. A notable woman, with a boundless
appetite for work, so that, rising at half-past four, she has "a bit o'
time to spare most days, for when one gets up betimes i' the morning
the clock seems to stan' still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go about
the victual." Yet with all this energy she is not shrewish, but a calm,
grave woman, in much request in sick rooms or wherever there is trouble.
She is good-looking, too, and of a comfortable temper, being patiently
tolerant of her husband's jokes, "considering that 'men would be so,'
and viewing the stronger sex' in the light of animals whom it pleased
Heaven to make troublesome like bulls or turkey cocks.'"
Her vague idea, shared indeed by Silas, that he has quite another faith
from herself, as coming from another part of the country, gives a vivid
idea of remote rural life, as well as her own dim, semi-pagan but
thoroughly reverential religious feelings, prompting her always to speak
of the Divinity in the plural, as when she says to Marner: "I've looked
for help in the right quarter, and give myself up to Them as we must all
give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to
be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we are, and come
short o' Theirn."
The humour shown in these scenes and characters, or, more properly
speaking, George Eliot's humour in general, belongs to the highest
order, the same as Shakespeare's. It is based on the essential elements
of human nature itself, on the pathetic incongruities of which that
"quintessence of dust," man, is made up, instead of finding the comic in
the purely accidental or external circumstances of life, as is the case
with such humourists as Rabelais and Dickens. These latter might find a
good subject for their comic vein in seeing the Venus of Milo's broken
nose, which a mischievous urchin had again stuck on the wrong side
upwards--a sight to send the ordinary spectator into fits of laughter.
But the genuine humourist sees something in that feature itself, as
nature shaped it, to excite his facetiousness. In 'A Minor Prophet' some
lines occur in which a somewhat similar view of the genuine source of
humour is pithily put:
"My yearnings fail
To reach that high apocalyptic mount
Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world,
Or enter warmly into other joys
Than those of faulty, struggling human kind.
That strain upon my soul's too feeble wing
Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall
Into short-sighted pity for the men
Who, living in those perfect future times,
Will not know half the dear imperfect things
That move my smiles and tears--will never know
The fine old incongruities that raise
My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits
That like a needless eyeglass or black patch
Give those who wear them harmless happiness;
The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware,
That touch me to more conscious fellowship
(I am not myself the finest Parian)
With my coevals."
Again, in her essay on 'Heinrich Heine,' George Eliot thus defines the
difference between humour and wit: "Humour is of earlier growth than
wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more
affinity with the poetic tendencies, while wit is more nearly allied to
the ratiocinative intellect. Humour draws its materials from situations
and characteristics; wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations....
It is only the ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift
some witticisms from reasoning into wit; they are reasoning raised to
its highest power. On the other hand, humour, in its higher forms and in
proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emotions,
continually passes into poetry; nearly all great modern humorists may be
called prose poets."
The quality which distinguishes George Eliot's humour may be said to
characterise her treatment of human nature generally. In her
delineations of life she carefully eschews the anomalous or exceptional,
pointing out repeatedly that she would not, if she could, be the writer,
however brilliant, who dwells by preference on the moral or intellectual
attributes which mark off his hero from the crowd instead of on those
which he has in common with average humanity. Nowhere perhaps in her
works do we find this tendency so strikingly illustrated as in the one
now under consideration; for here we have the study of a human being
who, by stress of circumstances, developes into a most abnormal specimen
of mankind, yet who is brought back to normal conditions and to
wholesome relations with his fellow-men by such a natural process as the
re-awakening of benumbed sympathies through his love for the little
foundling child. The scene where he finds that child has only been
touched on in a passing allusion, yet there is no more powerfully-drawn
situation in any of her novels than that where Silas, with the child in
his arms, goes out into the dark night, and, guided by the little
footprints in the virgin snow, discovers the dead mother, Godfrey Cass's
opium-eating wife, lying with "her head sunk low in the furze and half
covered with the shaken snow." There is a picture of this subject by the
young and singularly gifted artist, the late Oliver Madox Brown, more
generally known as a novelist, which is one of the few pictorial
interpretations that seem to completely project on the canvas a visible
embodiment of the spirit of the original. The pale, emaciated weaver,
staring with big, short-sighted eyes at the body of the unconscious
young woman stretched on the ground, clutching the lusty, struggling
child with one arm, while with the other he holds a lantern which throws
a feeble gleam on the snow--is realised with exceptional intensity.
The exquisite picture of Eppie's childhood, the dance she leads her
soft-hearted foster-father, are things to read, not to describe, unless
one could quote whole pages of this delightful idyl, which for gracious
charm and limpid purity of description recalls those pearls among
prose-poems, George Sand's 'Francois le Champi' and 'La Mare au Diable.'