to take note of the fact that George Eliot possessed a vein of humour,
of which it is little to say that it is incomparably superior, in
depth if not in delicacy, to that of any feminine writer. It is the
humour of a calm contemplative mind, familiar with wide fields of
knowledge and capable of observing the little dramas of rustic life
from a higher standing-point. It is not—in these earlier books at any
rate—that she obtrudes her acquirements upon us; for if here and there
we find some of those scientific illusions which afterwards became
a kind of mannerism, they are introduced without any appearance of
forcing. It is simply that she is awake to those quaint aspects of
the little world before her which only show their quaintness to the
cultivated intellect. We feel that there must be a silent guest in
the chimney-corner of the 'Rainbow,' so thoroughly at home with the
natives as to put no stress upon their behaviour, and yet one who has
travelled out of sight of the village spire and known the thoughts
and feelings which are stirring in the great world outside. The guest
can at once sympathise and silently criticise; or rather, in the
process of observation, carries on the two processes simultaneously
by recognising at once the little oddities of the microcosm, and
yet seeing them as merely one embodiment of the same thoughts and
passions which present themselves on a larger scale elsewhere. It is
in this happy combination of two characteristics often disjoined that
we have one secret of George Eliot's power. There is the breadth
of touch, the large-minded equable spirit of loving contemplative
thought, which is fully conscious of the narrow limitations of the
actor's thoughts and habits, but does not cease on that account to
sympathise with his joys and sorrows. We are on a petty stage, but
not in a stifling atmosphere, and we are not called upon to accept
the prejudices of the actors or to be angry with them, but simply to
understand and be tolerant. We have neither the country idyll of the
sentimentalist which charms us in some of George Sand's stories of
French life, but in which our enjoyment is checked by the inevitable
sense of unreality, nor the caricature of the satirist who is anxious
to proclaim the truth that base passions and grovelling instincts are
as common in country towns as in court and city. Everything is quietly
set before us with a fine sense of its wider relations, and yet with a
loving touch, significant of a pathetic yearning for the past, which
makes the whole picture artistically charming. We are reminded in Mr.
Gilfil's love-story how, whilst poor little Tina was fretting over
her wrongs, the 'stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and
broadening around.' 'What were our little Tina and her trouble in this
mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter
than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water drop—hidden
and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest
bird that has fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food,
and has found the nest torn and empty.' It is this constant reference,
tacit or express, suggested by pathetic touches, and by humorous
exhibition of the incongruities and contrasts of the little drama of
village life to the outer world beyond, and to the wider universe in
which it too is an atom, that distinctly raises George Eliot above
the level of many merely picturesque descriptions of similar scenes.
We feel that the artist is at an intellectual elevation high enough to
be beyond the illusions of the city fashion; but the singular charm
springs out of the tender affection which reproduces the little world
left so far behind and hallowed by the romance of early association.
George Eliot's own view of the matter is given in more than one of
these objectionable 'asides' of which we have had to speak. She
entreats us to try to see the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and
the comedy, to be found in the experience of poor dingy Amos Barton.
She rarely looks, she says, at 'a bent old man or a wizened old woman'
without seeing 'the past of which they are the shrunken remnant; and
the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes
of feeble interest and significance compared with that drama of hope
and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor
soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden scenes
and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight.' To reflect
that we ought to see wizened old men and women with such eyes is of
course easy enough; to have such eyes—really to see what we know
that we ought to see—is to possess true genius. George Eliot is not
laying down a philosophical maxim to be proved and illustrated, but is
attempting to express the animating principle of a labour of love. Mr.
Gilfil, the person who suggests this remark, is the embodiment of the
abstract principle, and makes us feel that it is no empty profession.
Everybody has noticed how admirably George Eliot has portrayed certain
phases of religious feeling with which, in one sense, she had long
ceased to sympathise. Amongst subsidiary actors in her stories,
none are more tenderly and lovingly touched than the old-fashioned
parsons and Dissenting preachers—Barton and Gilfil and Tryan, and
Irwin and Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede,' and Mr. Lyon in 'Felix Holt.'
I do not know that they or their successors would have much call to
be grateful. For, in truth, it is plain enough that the interest is
in the kindly old-fashioned parson, considered as a valuable factor
in the social system, and that his creed is not taken to be the
source of his strength; whilst the few Methodists and the brethren in
Lantern Yard are regarded as attaining a very imperfect and stammering
version of truths capable of being very completely dissevered from
their dogmatic teaching. In any case, her breach with the creed of her
youth involved no breach of the ties formed by early reverence for its
representatives. The change involved none of the bitterness which is
sometimes generated by a spiritual revolt. Dickens—who is sometimes
supposed to represent the version of modern Christianity—could
apparently see nothing in a Dissenting preacher but an unctuous and
sensual hypocrite—a vulgarised Tartufe such as Stiggins and Chadband.
If George Eliot had been the mere didactic preacher of mere critics,
she might have set before us mere portraits of spiritual pride or
clerical charlatanism. But whatever her creed, she was too deep a
humourist, too thoughtful and too tender, to fall into such an error.
She never sinned against the 'natural piety' which should bind our
days together. The tender regard which she had retained for all the
surroundings of her youth did not fail towards those whose teaching
had once roused her reverence, and which could never become the
objects of indiscriminate antipathy.
In this one may perhaps say George Eliot was a true woman. Women,
indeed, can be fully as bitter in their resentment as the harsher
sex; but their bitterness seems to be generated in the attempt to
outdo their masculine rivals, and to imply perverted rather than
deficient sensibility. They seldom exhibit pachydermatous indifference
to their neighbour's emotions. The so-called masculine quality in
George Eliot—her wide and calm intelligence—was certainly combined
with a thoroughly feminine nature; and the more one reads her books
and notes her real triumphs, the more strongly this comes out.
The poetry and pathos which she seeks to reveal under commonplace
surroundings is found chiefly in feminine hearts. Each of the early
books is the record of an ordeal endured by some suffering woman. In
the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' the interest really centres in the women
whose fate is bound up with the acts of the clerical heroes; it is
Janet and Molly Barton in whom we are really interested; and if poor
little Tina is too weak to be a heroine, her vigorous struggle against
the destinies is the pivot of the story. That George Eliot succeeded
remarkably in some male portraits, and notably in Tom Tulliver, is
undeniable. Yet the men were often simply women in disguise. The
piquancy, for example, of the famous character of Tito is greatly
due to the fact that he is the voluptuous, selfish, but sensitive
character, not unfamiliar in the fiction which deals with social
intrigues, but generally presented to us in feminine costume. We are
told of Daniel Deronda, upon whose character an extraordinary amount
of analysis is expended, that he combined a feminine affectionateness
with masculine inflexibility. To our perceptions, the feminine vein
becomes decidedly the most prominent; and this is equally true of
such characters as Philip Wakem and Mr. Lyon. Adam Bede, indeed, to
mention no one else, is a thorough man. He represents, it would seem,
that ideal of masculine strength which Miss Brontë tried with curious
want of success to depict in Louis Moore—the firm arm, the offer of
which (as we are told _à propos_ of Maggie Tulliver and the offensive
Stephen Guest) has in it 'something strangely winning to most women.'
Yet if Adam Bede had shown less Christian forbearance to young Squire
Donnithorne, we should have been more convinced that he was of
masculine fibre throughout.
Here we approach more disputable matters. George Eliot's early books
owe their charm to the exquisite painting of the old country-life—an
achievement made possible by a tender imagination brooding over a
vanishing past—but, if we may make the distinction, they owe their
greatness to the insight into passions not confined to one race or
period. Janet Dempster would lose much of her charm if she were
transplanted from Milby to London; but she would still be profoundly
interesting as representing a marked type of feminine character.
Balzac—or somebody else—said, or is said to have said, that there
were only seven possible plots in fiction. Without pledging oneself
to the particular number, one may admit that the number of radically
different motives is remarkably small. It may be added that even great
writers rarely show their highest capacity in more than one of these
typical situations. It is not hard to say which is George Eliot's
favourite theme. We may call it—speaking with proper reserve—the woman
in need of a confessor. We may have the comparatively shallow nature,
the poor wilful little Tina, or Hetty or Tessa—the mere plaything
of fate, whom we pity because in her childish ignorance she is apt,
like little Red Ridinghood, to mistake the wolf for a friend, though
not exactly to take him for a grandmother. Or we have the woman with
noble aspirations—Janet, or Dinah, or Maggie, or Romola, or Dorothea,
or—may we add?—Daniel Deronda, who recognises more clearly her own
need of guidance, and even in failure has the lofty air of martyrdom.
It is in the setting such characters before us that George Eliot has
achieved her highest triumphs, and made some of her most unmistakable
failures. It is here that we meet the complaint that she is too
analytic; that she takes the point of view of the confessor rather
than the artist; and is more anxious to probe the condition of her
heroines' souls, to give us an accurate diagnosis of their spiritual
complaints, and an account of their moral evolution, than to show us
the character in action. If I must give my own view, I must venture
a distinction. To say that George Eliot's stories are interesting as
studies of human nature, is really to say little more than that they
deserve serious attention. There are stories—and very excellent and
amusing stories—which have comparatively little to do with character;
histories of wondrous and moving events, where you are fascinated by
the vivacity of the narrator without caring much for the passions of
the actors—such stories, in fact, as compose the Arabian Nights, or
the voluminous works of the admirable Alexandre Dumas. We do not care
to understand Aladdin's sentiments, or to say how far he differed from
Sinbad and Camaralzaman. The famous Musketeers have different parts
to play, and so far different characters; but one does not care very
much for their psychology. Still, every serious writer must derive his
power from his insight into men and women. A Cervantes or Shakespeare,
a Scott, a Fielding, a Richardson or Thackeray, command our attention
by forcible presentation of certain types of character; and, so far,
George Eliot's does not differ from her predecessors'. Nor, again,
would any truly imaginative writer give us mere abstract analyses of
character, instead of showing us the concrete person in action. If
George Eliot has a tendency to this error, it does not appear in her
early period. We can see any of her best characters as distinctly, we
know them by direct vision as intimately, as we know any personage in
real or fictitious history. We are not put off with the formulæ of
their conduct, but persons are themselves revealed to us. Yet it is,
I think, true that her stories are pre-eminently studies of character
in this sense, that her main and conscious purpose is to set before
us the living beings in what may be called, with due apology, their
statical relations—to show them, that is, in their quiet and normal
state, not under the stress of exceptional events. When we once know
Adam Bede or Dinah Morris, we care comparatively little for the
development of the plot. Compare, for example, 'Adam Bede' with the
'Heart of Midlothian,' the first half of which seems to me to be one
of the very noblest of all fictions, though the latter part suffers
from the conventional mad woman and the bit of commonplace intrigue
which Scott fancied himself bound to introduce. Jeannie Deans is, to
my mind, a more powerfully drawn and altogether a more substantial
and satisfactory young woman than Dinah Morris, who, with all her
merits, seems to me, I will confess, to be a bit of a prig. The
contrast, however, to which I refer is in the method rather than in
the characters or the situation. Scott wishes to interest us in the
magnificent trial scene, for which all the preceding narrative is a
preparation; he is content to set the Deans family before us with a
few amazingly vigorous touches, so that we may thoroughly enter into
the spirit of the tremendous ordeal through which poor Jeannie Deans
is to pass in the conflict between affection and duty. We first learn
to know her thoroughly by her behaviour under that overpowering
strain. But in 'Adam Bede' we learn first to know the main actors by
their conduct in a number of little scenes, most admirably devised
and drawn, and serving to bring out, if not a more powerful, a more
elaborate and minute manifestation of their inmost feelings. When we
come to the critical parts in the story, and the final catastrophe,
they are less interesting and vivid than the preliminary detail of
apparently insignificant events. The trial and the arrival of the
reprieve are probably the weakest and most commonplace passages; and
what we really remember and enjoy are the little scenes on the village
green, in Mrs. Poyser's dairy, and Adam Bede's workshop. We have there
learnt to know the people themselves, and we scarcely care for what
happens to them. The method is natural to a feminine observer who has
learnt to interpret character by watching its manifestations in little
everyday incidents, and feels comparatively at a loss when having
to deal with the more exciting struggles and calamities which make a
noise in the world. And therefore, as I think, George Eliot is always
more admirable in careful exposition—in setting her personages before
us—than in dealing with her catastrophes, where, to say the truth, she
sometimes seems to become weak just when we expect her full powers to
be exerted.
This is true, for example, of 'Silas Marner,' where the inimitable
opening is very superior to the sequel. It is still more conspicuously
true of the 'Mill on the Floss.' The first part of that novel
appears to me to mark the culmination of her genius. So far, it is
one of the rare books which it is difficult to praise in adequate
language. We may naturally suspect that part of the singular
vividness is due to some admixture of an autobiographical element.
The sonnets called 'Brother and Sister'—perhaps her most successful
poetical effort—suggest that the adventures of Tom and Maggie had
some counterpart in personal experience. In any case, the whole
account of Maggie's childhood, the admirable pathos of the childish
yearnings, and the quaint chorus of uncles and aunts, the adventure
with the gipsies, the wanderings by the Floss, the visit to Tom in
his school, have a freshness and brilliance of colouring showing
that the workmanship is as perfect as the sentiment is tender. But
when Maggie ceases to be the most fascinating child in fiction, and
becomes the heroine of a novel, the falling off is grievous. The
unlucky affair with Stephen Guest is simply indefensible. It may,
indeed, be urged—and urged with plausibility—that it is true to
nature; it is true, that is, that women of genius—and, indeed, other
women—do not always show that taste in the selection of lovers which
commends itself to the masculine mind. There is nothing contrary to
experience in the supposition that the imagination of an impulsive
girl may transfigure a very second-rate young tradesman into a lover
worthy of her; but this does not excuse the author for sharing the
illusion. It is painfully true that some women, otherwise excellent,
may be tempted, like Janet Dempster, to take to stimulants. But we
should not have been satisfied if her weakness had been represented
as a creditable or venial peculiarity, or without a sense of the
degradation. So it would, in any case, be hardly pleasant to make our
charming Maggie the means of illustrating the doctrine that a woman of
high qualities may throw herself away upon a low creature; when she
is made to act in this way, and the weakness is not duly emphasised,
we are forced to suppose that George Eliot did not see what a poor
creature she has really drawn. Perhaps this is characteristic of a
certain feminine incapacity for drawing really masculine heroes, which
is exemplified, not quite so disagreeably, in the case of Dorothea
and Ladislaw. But it is a misfortune, and all the more so because
the error seems to be gratuitous. If it was necessary to introduce a
new lover, he should have been endowed with some qualities likely to
attract Maggie's higher nature, instead of betraying his second-rate
dandyism in every feature. But the engagement to Philip Wakem, who
is, at least, a lovable character, might surely have supplied enough
tragical motive for a catastrophe which would not degrade poor Maggie
to common clay. As it is, what promises to be the most perfect story
of its kind ends most pathetically indeed, but yet with a strain which
jars most painfully upon the general harmony.
The line so sharply drawn in the 'Mill on the Floss' is also the
boundary between two provinces of the whole region. With Maggie's
visit to St. Ogg's, we take leave of that part of George Eliot's
work which can be praised without important qualification—of work so
admirable in its kind that we have a sense of complete achievement. In
the later stories we come upon debatable ground; we have to recognise
distinct failure in hitting the mark, and to strike a balance
between the good and bad qualities, instead of simply recognising
the thorough harmony of a finished whole. What is the nature of the
change? The shortcomings are, as I have said, obvious enough. We have,
for example, the growing tendency to substitute elaborate analysis
for direct presentation; there are such passages, as one to which I
have referred, where we are told that it is necessary to understand
Deronda's character at five-and-twenty in order to appreciate the
effect of after-events; and where we have an elaborate discussion
which would be perfectly admissible in the discussion of some
historical character, but which, in a writer who has the privilege
of creating history, strikes us as an evasion of a difficulty. When
we are limited to certain facts, we are forced to theorise as to the
qualities which they indicate. Real people do not always get into
situations which speak for themselves. But when we can make such
facts as will reveal character, we have no right to give the abstract
theory for the concrete embodiment. We perceive when this is done
that the reflective faculties have been growing at the expense of the
imagination, and that, instead of simply enriching and extending the
field of interest, they are coming into the foreground and usurping
functions for which they are unfitted. The fault is palpable in
'Romola.' The remarkable power not only of many passages but of the
general conception of the book is unable to blind us to the fact
that, after all, it is a magnificent piece of cram. The masses of
information have not been fused by a glowing imagination. The fuel
has put out the fire. If we fail to perceive this in the more serious
passages, it is painfully evident in those which are meant to be
humorous or playful. People often impose upon themselves when they are
listening to some rhetoric, perhaps because, when we have got into a
reverential frame of mind, our critical instincts are in abeyance.
But it is not so easy to simulate amusement. And if anybody, with the
mimicry of Mrs. Poyser or Bob Jakin in his mind, can get through the
chapter called 'A Florentine Joke' without coming to the conclusion
that the jokes of that period were oppressive and wearisome ghosts
of the facetious, he must be one of those people who take in jokes
by the same faculty as scientific theorems. If we are indulgent, it
must be on the ground that the historical novel proper is after
all an elaborate blunder. It is really analogous to, and shows the
weakness of, the various attempts at the revival of extinct phases
of art with which we have been overpowered in these days. It almost
inevitably falls into Scylla or Charybdis; it is either a heavy mass
of information striving to be lively, or it is really lively at the
price of being thoroughly shallow, and giving us the merely pretty and
picturesque in place of the really impressive. If anyone has succeeded
in avoiding the horns of this dilemma, it is certainly not George
Eliot. She had certainly very imposing authorities on her side; but I
imagine that 'Romola' gives unqualified satisfaction only to people
who hold that academical correctness of design can supply the place of
vivid directness of intuitive vision.
Yet the situation was not so much the cause as the symptom of a
change. When George Eliot returned to her proper ground, she did not
regain the old magic. 'Middlemarch' is undoubtedly a powerful book,
but to many readers it is a rather painful book, and it can hardly be
called a charming book to anyone. The light of common day has most
unmistakably superseded the indescribable glow which illuminated the
earlier writings.