FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH.
In 'Felix Holt,' which was published in 1866, George Eliot returned once
more to her own peculiar field, where she stands supreme and
unrivalled--the novel of English provincial life. This work, which,
however, is not equal to her earlier or later fictions, yet possesses a
double interest for us. It is the only one of her writings from which
its author's political views may be inferred, if we exclude a paper
published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in January 1868, which, indeed,
seems to be part of the novel, seeing that it is entitled, "Address to
Working Men, by Felix Holt." The paper contains, in a more direct and
concise form, precisely the same general views as regards the principles
of government which were previously enunciated through Felix the
Radical. It was an appeal to the operative classes who had been only
recently enfranchised by the Reform Bill. Its advice is mainly to the
effect that genuine political and social improvements, to be durable,
must be the result of inward change rather than of outward legislation.
The writer insists on the futility of the belief that beneficial
political changes can be effected by revolutionary measures. She points
out the necessity of a just discrimination between what is curable in
the body politic and what has to be endured. She dwells once again,
with solemn insistence, on the "aged sorrow," the inheritance of evil
transmitted from generation to generation, an evil too intimately
entwined with the complex conditions of society to be violently
uprooted, but only to be gradually eradicated by the persistent
cultivation of knowledge, industry, judgment, sobriety, and patience.
"This is only one example," she says, "of the law by which human lives
are linked together; another example of what we complain of when we
point to our pauperism, to the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our
fellow-countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us by blamable
wars, to the wasteful channels made for the public money, to the expense
and trouble of getting justice, and call these the effects of bad rule.
This is the law that we all bear the yoke of; the law of no man's
making, and which no man can undo. Everybody now sees an example of it
in the case of Ireland. We who are living now are sufferers by the
wrong-doing of those who lived before us; we are sufferers by each
other's wrong-doing; and the children who come after us will be
sufferers from the same causes."
To remedy this long-standing wrong-doing and suffering, so argues Felix
Holt, is not in the power of any one measure, class, or period. It would
be childish folly to expect any Reform Bill to possess the magical
property whereby a sudden social transformation could be accomplished.
On the contrary, abrupt transitions should be shunned as dangerous to
order and law, which alone are certain to insure a steady collective
progress; the only means to this end consisting in the general spread of
education, to secure which, at least for his children, the working man
should spare no pains. Without knowledge, the writer continues, no
political measures will be of any benefit, ignorance with or without
vote always of necessity engendering vice and misery. But, guided by a
fuller knowledge, the working classes would be able to discern what sort
of men they should choose for their representatives, and instead of
electing "platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing but the ocean to
make our broth with," they would confide the chief power to the hands of
the truly wise, those who know how to regulate life "according to the
truest principles mankind is in possession of."
The "Felix Holt" of the story is described by George Eliot as shaping
his actions much according to the ideas which are here theoretically
expressed. His knowledge and aptitude would enable him to choose what is
considered a higher calling. But he scorns the vulgar ambition called
"getting on in the world;" his sense of fellowship prompting him to
remain a simple artisan that he may exert an elevating influence on the
class to which he belongs. Class differences, so argues this
Radical-Conservative, being inherent in the constitution of society, it
becomes something of a desertion to withdraw what abilities one may have
from the medium where they are urgently needed, in order to join, for
the sake of selfish aims, some other body of men where they may be
superfluous.
The other distinctive feature of 'Felix Holt' consists in its elaborate
construction, ranking it, so to speak, amongst sensation novels. As a
rule, George Eliot's stories have little or no plot, the incidents
seeming not so much invented by the writer for the sake of producing an
effective work, as to be the natural result of the friction between
character and circumstance. This simplicity of narrative belongs, no
doubt, to the highest class of novel, the class to which 'The Vicar of
Wakefield,' 'Waverley,' and 'Vanity Fair' belong. In 'Felix Holt,'
however, the intricate network of incident in which the characters seem
to be enmeshed, is not unlike the modern French art of story-telling,
with its fertility of invention, as is also the strangely repellent
intrigue which forms the nucleus of the whole. All the elements which go
to make up a thrilling narrative--such as a dubious inheritance, the
disappearance of the rightful claimant, a wife's guilty secret, the
involvements of the most desperate human fates in a perplexing coil
through sin and error--are interwoven in this story of 'Felix Holt the
Radical.'
Though ingeniously invented, the different incidents seem not so much
naturally to have grown the one from the other as to be constructed with
too conscious a seeking for effect. There is something forced, uneasy,
and inadequate in the laborious contrivance of fitting one set of events
on to another, and the machinery of the disputed Transome claim is so
involved that the reader never masters the "ins" and "outs" of that
baffling mystery. Still, the groundwork of the story is deeply
impressive: its interest is, notwithstanding the complex ramification of
events, concentrated with much power upon a small group of personages,
such as Mrs. Transome, her son Harold, the little dissenting minister,
Rufus Lyon, Esther, and Felix Holt. Here, as elsewhere, the novelist
reveals the potent qualities of her genius. Not only does this story
contain such genuine humorous portraiture as the lachrymose Mrs. Holt,
and the delightfully quaint Job Tudge, but it is also enriched by some
descriptions of rural scenery and of homely existence in remote country
districts as admirable as any to be found in her writings. Rufus Lyon is
a worthy addition to that long gallery of clerical portraits which are
among the triumphs of George Eliot's art. This "singular-looking apostle
of the meeting in Skipper's Lane"--with his rare purity of heart, his
unworldliness, his zeal in the cause of dissent, his restless
argumentative spirit, and the moving memories of romance and passion
hidden beneath the odd, quaint _physique_ of the little minister encased
in rusty black--is among the most loving and lovable of characters, and
recalls more particularly that passage in the poem entitled 'A Minor
Prophet,' which I cannot but think one of the author's finest, the
passage beginning--
"The pathos exquisite of lovely minds
Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them
Like fire divine within a common bush
Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest,
So that men put their shoes off; but encaged
Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell,
Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars,
But having shown a little dimpled hand,
Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts
Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls."
Esther, on the other hand, is one of those fortunate beings whose lovely
mind is lodged in a form of corresponding loveliness. This charming
Esther, though not originally without her feminine vanities and worldly
desires, is one of those characters dear to George Eliot's heart, who
renounce the allurements of an easy pleasurable existence for the higher
satisfactions of a noble love or a nobler ideal. It is curious to notice
that Eppie, Esther, Fedalma, and Daniel Deronda are all children that
have been reared in ignorance of their real parentage, and that to all
of them there comes a day when a more or less difficult decision has to
be made, when for good or evil they have to choose, once for all,
between two conflicting claims. Like Eppie, Esther rejects the
advantages of birth and fortune, and elects to share the hard but
dignified life of the high-minded Felix. But this decision in her case
shows even higher moral worth, because by nature she is so keenly
susceptible to the delicate refinements and graceful elegancies which
are the natural accompaniment of rank and wealth.
The most curious feature of this book consists, perhaps, in its original
treatment of illicit passion. Novelists, as a rule, when handling this
subject, depict its fascinations in brilliant contrast to the sufferings
and terrors which follow in its train. But George Eliot contents herself
with showing us the reverse side of the medal. Youth has faded, joy is
dead, love has turned to loathing, yet memory, like a relentless fury,
pursues the grey-haired Mrs. Transome, who hides within her breast such
a heavy load of shame and dread. The power and intensity with which this
character of the haughty, stern, yet inwardly quailing woman is drawn
are unsurpassed in their way, and there is tragic horror in the recoil
of her finest sensibilities from the vulgar, mean, self-complacent
lawyer, too thick-skinned ever to know that in his own person he is a
daily judgment on her whose life has been made hideous for his sake.
Never more impressively than here does the novelist enforce her teaching
that the deed follows the doer, being imbued with an incalculable
vitality of its own, shaping all after life, and subduing to its guise
the nature that is in bondage to it. Like those fabled dragon's teeth
planted by Cadmus, which spring up again as armed men, spreading discord
and ruin, so a man's evil actions seem endowed with independent
volition, and their consequences extend far beyond the individual life
where they originated.
If 'Felix Holt' is the most intricately constructed of George Eliot's
novels, 'Middlemarch,' which appeared five years afterwards, is, on the
other hand, a story without a plot. In fact, it seems hardly appropriate
to call it a novel. Like Hogarth's serial pictures representing the
successive stages in their progress through life of certain typical
characters, so in this book there is unrolled before us, not so much the
history of any particular individual, as a whole phase of society
portrayed with as daring and uncompromising a fidelity to Nature as that
of Hogarth himself. In 'Middlemarch,' English provincial life in the
first half of the nineteenth century is indelibly fixed in words
"holding a universe impalpable" for the apprehension and delight of the
furthest generations of English-speaking nations. Here, as in some kind
of panorama, sections of a community and groups of character pass before
the mind's eye. To dwell on the separate, strongly-individualised
figures which constitute this great crowd would be impossible within the
present limits. But from the county people such as the Brookes and
Chettams, to respectable middle-class families of the Vincy and Garth
type, down to the low, avaricious, harpy-tribes of the Waules and
Featherstones, every unit of this complex social agglomeration is
described with a life-like vividness truly amazing, when the number and
variety of the characters especially are considered. I know not where
else in literature to look for a work which leaves such a strong
impression on the reader's mind of the intertexture of human lives. Seen
thus in perspective, each separate individuality, with its specialised
consciousness, is yet as indissolubly connected with the collective life
as that of the indistinguishable zoophyte which is but a sentient speck
necessarily moved by the same vital agency which stirs the entire
organism.
Among the figures which stand out most prominently from the crowded
background are Dorothea, Lydgate, Casaubon, Rosamond Vincy, Ladislaw,
Bulstrode, Caleb, and Mary Garth. Dorothea belongs to that stately type
of womanhood, such as Romola and Fedalma, a type which seems to be
specifically George Eliot's own, and which has perhaps more in common
with such Greek ideals as Antigone and Iphigenia, than with more modern
heroines. But Dorothea, however lofty her aspirations, has not the
Christian heroism of Romola, or the antique devotion of Fedalma. She is
one of those problematic natures already spoken of; ill-adjusted to her
circumstances, and never quite adjusting circumstances to herself. It is
true that her high aims and glorious possibilities are partially stifled
by a social medium where there seems no demand for them: still the
resolute soul usually finds some way in which to work out its destiny.
"Many 'Theresas'" says George Eliot, "have been born who found for
themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of
far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a
certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity;
perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet, and sank unwept
into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to
shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but, after all, to
common eyes, their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness;
for these later-born 'Theresas' were helped by no coherent social faith
and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently
willing soul.
"Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient
indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of
women; if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the
ability to count three and no more, the social lot of woman might be
treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains,
and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would
imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure, and the favourite love
stories in prose and verse."
Such a life of mistakes is that of the beautiful Dorothea, the
ill-starred wife of Casaubon. In his way the character of Casaubon is as
great a triumph as that of Tito himself. The novelist seems to have
crept into the inmost recesses of that uneasy consciousness, to have
probed the most sensitive spots of that diseased vanity, and to lay bare
before our eyes the dull labour of a brain whose ideas are stillborn. In
an article by Mr. Myers it is stated, however incredible it may sound,
that an undiscriminating friend once condoled with George Eliot on the
melancholy experience which, from her knowledge of Lewes, had taught her
to depict the gloomy character of Casaubon; whereas, in fact, there
could not be a more striking contrast than that between the pedant
groping amid dim fragments of knowledge, and the vivacious litterateur
and thinker with his singular mental energy and grasp of thought. On the
novelist's laughingly assuring him that such was by no means the case,
"From whom, then," persisted he, "did you draw 'Casaubon'?" With a
humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, she pointed to her own
heart. She confessed, on the other hand, having found the character of
Rosamond Vincy difficult to sustain, such complacency of egoism, as has
been pointed out, being alien to her own habit of mind. But she laid no
claim to any such natural magnanimity as could avert Casaubon's
temptations of jealous vanity, and bitter resentment.
If there is any character in whom one may possibly trace some
suggestions of Lewes, it is in the versatile, brilliant, talented
Ladislaw, who held, that while genius must have the utmost play for its
spontaneity, it may await with confidence "those messages from the
universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an
attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances." But however
charming, the impression Ladislaw produces is that of a somewhat
shallow, frothy character, so that he seems almost as ill-fitted for
Dorothea as the dreary Casaubon himself. Indeed the heroine's second
marriage seems almost as much a failure as the stultifying union of
Lydgate with Rosamond Vincy, and has altogether a more saddening effect
than the tragic death of Maggie, which is how much less pitiful than
that death in life of the fashionable doctor, whose best aims and vital
purposes have been killed by his wife.
Much might be said of Bulstrode, the sanctimonious hypocrite, who is yet
not altogether a hypocrite, but has a vein of something resembling
goodness running through his crafty character; of Farebrother, the lax,
amiable, genuinely honourable vicar of St. Botolph's; of Mrs.
Cadwallader, the glib-tongued, witty, meddling rector's wife, a kind of
Mrs. Poyser of high life; of Caleb Garth, whose devotion to work is a
religion, and whose likeness to Mr. Robert Evans has already been
pointed out; of the wholehearted, sensible Mary, and of many other
supremely vivid characters, whom to do justice to would carry us too
far.
'Middlemarch' is the only work of George Eliot's, I believe, in which
there is a distinct indication of her attitude towards the aspirations
and clearly formulated demands of the women of the nineteenth century.
Her many sarcastic allusions to the stereotyped theory about woman's
sphere show on which side her sympathies were enlisted. On the whole,
she was more partial to the educational movement than to that other
agitation which aims at securing the political enfranchisement of women.
How sincerely she had the first at heart is shown by the donation of
50l. "From the author of 'Romola,'" when Girton College was first
started. And in a letter to a young lady who studied there, and in whose
career she was much interested, she says, "the prosperity of Girton is
very satisfactory." Among her most intimate friends, too, were some of
the ladies who had initiated and organised the Women's Suffrage
movement. Likewise writing to Miss Phelps, she alludes to the Woman's
Lectureship in Boston, and remarks concerning the new University: "An
office that may make a new precedent in social advance, and which is at
the very least an experiment that ought to be tried. America is the
seed-ground and nursery of new ideals, where they can grow in a larger,
freer air than ours."
In 1871, the year when 'Middlemarch' was appearing in parts, George
Eliot spent part of the spring and summer months at Shottermill, a
quaint Hampshire village situated amid a landscape that unites beauties
of the most varied kind. Here we may imagine her and Mr. Lewes, after
their day's work was done, either seeking the vast stretch of heath and
common only bounded by the horizon, or strolling through the deep-sunk
lanes, or finding a soothing repose in "places of nestling green for
poets made." They had rented Brookbank, an old-fashioned cottage with
tiled roof and lattice-paned windows, belonging to Mrs. Gilchrist, the
widow of the distinguished biographer of William Blake.
The description of Mrs. Meyrick's house in 'Daniel Deronda' "where the
narrow spaces of wall held a world-history in scenes and heads," may
have been suggested by her present abode, rich in original drawings by
Blake, and valuable prints, and George Eliot writes: "If I ever steal
anything in my life, I think it will be the two little Sir Joshuas over
the drawing-room mantelpiece." At this time she and Mr. Lewes also found
intense interest in reading the 'Life of Blake.' Some correspondence,
kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. Gilchrist, passed between this
lady and the Leweses in connection with the letting of the house,
giving interesting glimpses into the domesticities of the latter. Their
habits here, as in London, were of clockwork regularity, household
arrangements being expected to run on wheels. "Everything," writes
George Eliot, "goes on slowly at Shottermill, and the mode of narration
is that typified in 'This is the house that Jack built.' But there is an
exquisite stillness in the sunshine and a sense of distance from London
hurry, which encourages the growth of patience.
"Mrs. G----'s" (their one servant) "pace is proportionate to the other
slownesses, but she impresses me as a worthy person, and her
cooking--indeed, all her attendance on us--is of satisfactory quality.
But we find the awkwardness of having only one person in the house, as
well as the advantage (this latter being quietude). The butcher does not
bring the meat, everybody grudges selling new milk, eggs are scarce, and
an expedition we made yesterday in search of fowls, showed us nothing
more hopeful than some chickens six weeks old, which the good woman
observed were sometimes 'eaten by the gentry with asparagus.' Those
eccentric people, the gentry!
"But have we not been reading about the siege of Paris all the winter,
and shall we complain while we get excellent bread and butter and many
etceteras?... Mrs. S---- kindly sent us a dish of asparagus, which we
ate (without the skinny chicken) and had a feast.
"You will imagine that we are as fond of eating as Friar Tuck--I am
enlarging so on our commissariat. But you will also infer that we have
no great evils to complain of, since I make so much of the small."
George Eliot rarely went out in the day-time during her stay at
Shottermill, but in the course of her rambles she would sometimes visit
such cottagers in remote places as were not likely to know who she was.
She used also to go and see a farmer's wife living at a short distance
from Brookbank, with whom she would freely chat about the growth of
fruits and vegetables and the quality of butter, much to the
astonishment of the simple farm people. Speaking of her recollection of
the great novelist to an American lady by whom these facts are recorded,
the old countrywoman remarked: "It were wonderful, just wonderful, the
sight o' green peas that I sent down to that gentleman and lady every
week."
After the lapse of a few months spent in this sweet rural retreat,
George Eliot again writes to Mrs. Gilchrist: "I did not imagine that I
should ever be so fond of the place as I am now. The departure of the
bitter winds, some improvement in my health, and the gradual revelation
of fresh and fresh beauties in the scenery, especially under a hopeful
sky such as we have sometimes had--all these conditions have made me
love our little world here, and wish not to quit it until we can settle
in our London home. I have the regret of thinking that it was my
original indifference about it (I hardly ever like things until they are
familiar) that hindered us from securing the cottage until the end of
September."
George Eliot's conscientiousness and precision in the small affairs of
life are exemplified in her last note to Mrs. Gilchrist: "After Mr.
Lewes had written to you, I was made aware that a small dessert or
bread-and-butter dish had been broken. That arch-sinner, the cat, was
credited with the guilt. I am assured by Mrs. G---- that nothing else
has been injured during her reign, and Mrs. L---- confirmed the
statement to me yesterday. I wish I could replace the unfortunate
dish.... This note, of course, needs no answer, and it is intended
simply to make me a clean breast about the crockery."
About this time George Eliot was very much out of health: indeed, both
she and Lewes repeatedly speak of themselves as "two nervous, dyspeptic
creatures, two ailing, susceptible bodies," to whom slight
inconveniences are injurious and upsetting. Although it was hot summer
weather, Mrs. Lewes suffered much from cold, sitting always with
artificial heat to her feet. One broiling day in August, after she had
left Brookbank, and taken another place in the neighbourhood, an
acquaintance happening to call on her, found her sitting in the garden
writing, as was her wont, her head merely shaded by a deodara, on the
lawn. Being expostulated with by her visitor for her imprudence in
exposing herself to the full blaze of the midday sun, she replied, "Oh,
I like it! To-day is the first time I have felt warm this summer."
They led a most secluded life, George Eliot being at this time engaged
with the continuation of 'Middlemarch;' and Lewes, alluding to their
solitary habits, writes at this date: "Work goes on smoothly away from
all friendly interruptions. Lord Houghton says that it is
incomprehensible how we can live in such Simeon Stylites fashion, as we
often do, all alone--but the fact is we never _are_ alone when alone.
And I sometimes marvel how it is I have contrived to get through so much
work living in London. It's true I'm a London child." Occasionally,
however, they would go and see Tennyson, whose house is only three
miles from Shottermill, but the road being all uphill made the ride a
little tedious and uncomfortable, especially to George Eliot who had not
got over her old nervousness. The man who used to drive them on these
occasions was so much struck by this that he told the lady who has
recorded these details in the _Century Magazine_: "Withal her being such
a mighty clever body, she were very nervous in a carriage--allays wanted
to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared of being thrown out."
On one of these occasional meetings with Tennyson, the poet got involved
in a conversation with the novelist concerning evolution and such
weighty questions. They had been walking together in close argument, and
as the Poet-Laureate bade George Eliot farewell, he called to her,
already making her way down the hill, "Well, good-by, you and your
molecules!" And she, looking back, said in her deep low voice (which
always got lower when she was at all roused), "I am quite content with
my molecules."
The country all around Shottermill with its breezy uplands, its
pine-clad hills, its undulating tracts of land purpled with heath in the
autumn, became more and more endeared to George Eliot, who, indeed,
liked it better than any scenery in England. Here she could enjoy to the
full that "sense of standing on a round world," which, she writes to
Mrs. Gilchrist who had used the phrase, "was precisely what she most
cared for amongst out-of-door delights." Some years afterwards we find
her and Mr. Lewes permanently taking a house not far off, at Witley in
Surrey, which has the same kind of beautiful open scenery. Writing from
her town residence about it to her old friend Mrs. Bray, George Eliot
says: "We, too, are thinking of a new settling down, for we have bought
a house in Surrey about four miles from Godalming on a gravelly hill
among the pine-trees, but with neighbours to give us a sense of
security. Our present idea is that we shall part with this house and
give up London except for occasional visits. We shall be on the same
line of railway with some good friends at Weybridge and Guildford."