If you should be wandering meditatively along the banks of some tiny
brook, so narrow that you can leap across it without effort, so quiet
in its singing its loudest tinkle cannot be heard in the next field,
carrying upon its bosom no craft that would draw more water than the
curving leaf of a wild-rose floating down stream, too small in volume
to dream of a mill-wheel and turning nothing more practical than maybe
a piece of violet petal in a little eddy off somewhere,--if, I say,
you should be strolling alongside such a brook and should see it
suddenly expand, without the least intermediate stage, into a mighty
river, turning a thousand great wheels for man's profit as it swept on
to the sea, and offering broad highway and favorable currents to a
thousand craft freighted with the most precious cargoes of human
aspirations; you would behold the aptest physical semblance of that
spiritual phenomenon which we witnessed at our last meeting, when in
tracing the quiet and mentally wayward course of demure Marian Evans
among the suave pastorals of her native Warwickshire, we came suddenly
upon the year 1857 when her first venture in fiction--_The Scenes from
Clerical Life_ appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and magically
enlarged the stream of her influence from the diameter of a small
circle of literary people in London to the width of all England.
At this point it seems interesting now to pause a moment, to look
about and see exactly what network English fiction had done since its
beginning, only about a century before; to note more particularly
what were the precise gains to humanity which Thackeray and Dickens
had poured in just at this time of 1857; and thus to differentiate a
clear view of the actual contribution which George Eliot was now
beginning to make to English life and thought.
It is not a pleasant task, however instructive, to leave off looking
at a rose and cast one's contemplation down to the unsavory muck in
which its roots are imbedded. This, however, is what one must do when
one passes from the many-petalled rose of George Eliot's fiction to
the beginning of the English novel.
This beginning was as curious as it was unlooked for by the people
engaged in it.
In the year 1740, a book in two volumes called _Pamela: or The Reward
of Virtue_, was printed, in which Samuel Richardson took what seems to
have been the first revolutionary departure from the wild and complex
romances--such for example, as Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_--which
had formed the nearest approach to the modern novel until then. At
this time Richardson was fifty years old, and probably the last man in
England who would have been selected as likely to write an
epoch-making book of any description.
He had worked most of his life as a printer, but by the time referred
to had gotten so far towards the literary life as to be employed by
booksellers to arrange indexes and to write prefaces and dedications.
It so happened that on a certain occasion he was asked by two
booksellers to write a volume of letters on different subjects which
might serve as models to uneducated persons--a sort of Every Man His
Own Letter Writer, or the like.
The letters, in order to be more useful, were to be upon such subjects
as the rustic world might likely desire to correspond about.
Richardson thinks it over; and presently writes to inquire, "Will it
be any harm, in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should
instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well
as indite?" This seemed a capital idea and in the course of time,
after some experiments, and after recalling an actual story he had
once heard which gave him a sort of basis, he takes for his heroine a
simple servant-girl, daughter of Goodman Andrews, a humbly born
English farmer, rather sardonically names her Pamela after the Lady
Pamela in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, carries her pure through a
series of incredibly villainous plots against her by the master of the
house where she is at service, and who takes advantage of the recent
death of his wife, Pamela's mistress, to carry these on, and finally
makes the master marry her in a fit of highly spasmodic goodness,
after a long course of the most infamous but unsuccessful villainy,
calls the book _Pamela or Virtue Rewarded_, prints it, and in a very
short time wins a great host of admiring readers, insomuch that since
the first two volumes ended with the marriage, he adds two more
showing the married life of Pamela and her squire.
The whole novel, like all of Richardson's, is written in the form of
letters passing between the characters. It is related, apropos of his
genius in letter-writing, that in his boyhood he was the
love-letter-writer-in-chief for three of the young ladies of his town,
and that he maintained this embarrassing position for a long time
without suspicion from either of the three. Richardson himself
announces the moral purpose of his book, saying that he thinks it
might "introduce a new species of writing that might possibly turn
young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and
parade of romance-writing, and ... promote the cause of religion and
virtue;" and in the preface to the continuation before-mentioned, he
remarks as follows: "The two former volumes of _Pamela_ met with a
success greatly exceeding the most sanguine expectations; and the
editor hopes" (Richardson calls himself the editor of the letters),
"that the letters which compose these will be found equally written to
nature, avoiding all romantic flights, improbable surprises, and
irrational machinery; and that the passions are touched where
requisite; and rules equally new and practicable inculcated throughout
the whole for the general conduct of life." I have given these
somewhat tedious quotations from Richardson's own words, to show first
that the English novel starts out with a perfectly clear and conscious
moral mission, and secondly, to contrast this pleasing moral
announcement of Richardson's with what I can only call the silly and
hideous realization of it which meets us when we come actually to read
this wonderful first English novel--_Pamela_.
I have already given the substance of the first two volumes in which
the rich squire, Mr. B. (as he is called throughout the novel),
finally marries and takes home the girl who had been the servant of
his wife and against whom, ever since that lady's death, he had been
plotting with an elaborate baseness which has never before been, and I
sincerely hope will never hereafter be described. By this action Mr.
B. has, in the opinion of Richardson, of his wife, the servant girl,
and of the whole contemporary world, saturated himself with such a
flame of saintliness as to have burnt out every particle of any little
misdemeanors he may have been guilty of in his previous existence; and
I need only read you an occasional line from the first four letters of
the third volume in order to show the marvellous sentimentality, the
untruth towards nature, and the purely commercial view of virtue and
of religion which make up this intolerable book. At the opening of
Volume III. we find that Goodman Andrews, the father of the bride, and
his wife have been provided with a comfortable farm on the estate of
Mr. B., and the second letter is from Andrews to his daughter, the
happy bride, Pamela. After rhapsodizing for several pages, Andrews
reaches this climax--and it is worth while observing that though only
a rude farmer of the eighteenth century whose daughter was a servant
maid, he writes in the most approved epistolary style of the period:
"When here in this happy dwelling and this well-stocked farm, in
these rich meadows and well-cropped acres, we look around us and
whichever way we turn our heads see blessings upon blessings and
plenty upon plenty; see barns well stored, poultry increasing,
the kine lowing and crowding about us, and all fruitful; and are
bid to call all these our own. And then think that all is the
reward of our child's virtue! O, my dear daughter, who can bear
these things! Excuse me! I must break off a little! For my eyes
are as full as my heart; and I will retire to bless God and your
honored husband."
Here there is a break in the page, by which the honest farmer is
supposed to represent the period of time occupied by him in retiring,
and, as one hopes, dividing his blessing impartially between the
Creator and Pamela's honored husband--and the farmer resumes his
writing:
"So, my dear child, I now again take up my pen. But reading what
I had written, in order to carry on the thread, I can hardly
forbear again being in like sort affected."
And here we have a full stop and a dash, during which it is only fair
to suppose that the honest Andrews manages to weep and bless up to
something like a state of repose.
Presently Pamela:
"My dear father and mother; I have shown your letter to my
beloved.... 'Dear good soul,' said he, 'how does everything they
say and everything they write manifest the worthiness of their
hearts! Tell them ... let them find out another couple as worthy
as themselves, and I will do as much for them. Indeed I would not
place them,' continued the dear obliger, 'in the same county,
because I would wish two counties to be blessed for their
sakes.'... I could only fly to his generous bosom ... and with my
eyes swimming in tears of grateful joy ... bless God and bless
him with my whole heart; for speak I could not! but almost choked
with joy, sobbed to him my grateful acknowledgements.... ''Tis
too much, too much,' said I, in broken accents. 'O, sir, bless me
more gradually and more cautiously--for I cannot bear it!' And,
indeed, my heart went flutter, flutter, flutter, at his dear
breast, as if it wanted to break its too narrow prison to mingle
still more intimately with his own."
And a few lines further on we have this purely commercial view of
religion:
"And if our prayers shall be heard," continues Pamela, "and we
shall have the pleasure to think that his" (her husband's)
"advances in piety are owing not a little to them ... then indeed
may we take the pride to think we have repaid his goodness to us
and that we have satisfied the debt which nothing less can
discharge."
Or, again, in the same letter, she exclaims anew:
"See, O see, my excellent parents, how we are crowned with
blessings upon blessings, until we are the talk of all who know
us; you for your honesty, I for my humility and virtue;" so that
now I have "nothing to do but to reap all the rewards which this
life can afford; and if I walk humbly and improve my blessed
opportunities, will heighten and perfect all, in a still more
joyful futurity."
Perhaps a more downright creed, not only of worldliness, but of
"other-worldliness," was never more explicitly avowed.
Now, to put the whole moral effect of this book into a
nutshell--Richardson had gravely announced it as a warning to young
servant-girls, but why might he not as well have announced it as an
encouragement to old villains? The virtue of Pamela, it is true, is
duly rewarded: but Mr. B., with all his villainy, certainly fares
better than Pamela: for he not only receives to himself a paragon of a
wife, but the sole operation of his previous villainy towards her is
to make his neighbors extol him to the skies as a saint, when he turns
from it; so that, considering the enormous surplus of Mr. B.'s rewards
as against Pamela's, instead of the title _Pamela; or, The Reward of
Virtue_, ought not the book to have been called _Mr. B.; or, The
Reward of Villainy_?
It was expressly to ridicule some points of Richardson's Pamela that
the second English novel was written. This was Henry Fielding's
_Joseph Andrews_, which appeared in 1742. It may be that the high
birth of Fielding--his father was great-grandson of the Earl of
Denbigh, and a lieutenant-general in the army--had something to do
with his opposition to Richardson, who was the son of a joiner; at any
rate, he puts forth a set of exactly opposite characters to those in
Pamela, takes a footman for his virtuous hero, and the footman's
mistress for his villainous heroine, names the footman Joseph Andrews,
explaining that he was the brother of Richardson's Pamela, who, you
remember, was the daughter of Goodman Andrews, makes principal figures
of two parsons, Parson Adams and Parson Trulliber, the former of whom
is set up as a model of clerical behavior, and the latter the reverse;
and with these main materials, together with an important peddler, he
gives us the book still called by many the greatest English novel,
originally entitled: _The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend
Abraham Adams_.
I will not, because I cannot, here cite any of the vital portions of
_Joseph Andrews_ which produce the real moral effect of the book upon
a reader. I can only say, that it is not different in essence from the
moral effect of Richardson's book just described, though the tone is
more clownish. But for particular purposes of comparison with Dickens
and George Eliot hereafter, let me recall to you in the briefest way
two of the comic scenes. That these are fair samples of the humorous
atmosphere of the book I may mention that they are both among the
number which were selected by Thackeray, who was a keen lover of
Fielding generally, and of his Joseph Andrews particularly, for his
own illustrations upon his own copy of this book.
In the first scene Joseph Andrews is riding along the road upon a very
untrustworthy horse who has already given him a lame leg by a fall,
attended by his friend Parson Adams. They arrive at an inn, dismount,
and ask for lodging: the landlord is surly, and presently behaves
uncivilly to Joseph Andrews; whereupon Parson Adams, in defence of his
lame friend, knocks the landlord sprawling upon the floor of his own
inn; the landlord, however, quickly receives reinforcements, and his
wife, seizing a pan of hog's blood which stood on the dresser,
discharged it with powerful effect into the good parson's face. While
the parson is in this condition, enters Mrs. Slipshod--a veritable
Grendel's mother--
"Terrible termagant, mindful of mischief,"
and attacks the landlady, with fearsome results of uprooted hair and
defaced feature. In scene second, Parson Adams being in need of a
trifling loan, goes to see his counter parson Trulliber, who was
noted, among other things, for his fat hogs. Unfortunately Parson
Adams meets Mrs. Trulliber first, and is mistakenly introduced by her
to her husband as "a man come for some of his hogs." Trulliber
immediately begins to brag of the fatness of his swine, and drags
Parson Adams to his stye, insisting upon examination in proof of his
praise. Parson Adams complies; they reach the stye, and by way of
beginning his examination, Parson Adams lays hold of the tail of a
very high-fed, capricious hog; the beast suddenly springs forward, and
throws Parson Adams headlong into the deep mire. Trulliber bursts into
laughter, and contemptuously cries: "Why, dost not know how to handle
a hog?"
It is impossible for lack of space to linger over further
characteristics of these writers. It has been very fairly said, that
Fielding tells us what o'clock it is, while Richardson shows us how
the watch is made; and this, as characterizing the highly analytic
faculty of Richardson in contrast to the more synthetic talent of
Fielding, is good as far as it goes.
In 1748 appears Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_ in eight volumes,
which, from your present lecturer's point of view, is quite
sufficiently described as a patient analysis of the most intolerable
crime in all history or fiction, watered with an amount of tears and
sensibility as much greater than that in Pamela as the cube of eight
volumes is greater than the cube of four volumes.
In 1753 Richardson's third and last novel, _Sir Charles Grandison_,
appeared; a work differing in motive, but not in moral tone, from the
other two, though certainly less hideous than _Clarissa Harlowe_.
Returning to bring up Fielding's novels, in 1743 appeared his _History
of the Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great_, in which the
hero Jonathan Wild was a taker of thieves, or detective, who ended his
own career by being hung; the book being written professedly as "an
exposition of the motives that actuate the unprincipled great, in
every walk and sphere of life, and which are common alike to the thief
or murderer on the small scale and to the mighty villain and reckless
conqueror who invades the rights or destroys the liberties of
nations." In 1749 Fielding prints his _Tom Jones_, which some consider
his greatest book. The glory of _Tom Jones_ is Squire Allworthy, whom
we are invited to regard as the most miraculous product of the divine
creation so far in the shape of man; but to your present lecturer's
way of thinking, the kind of virtue represented by Squire Allworthy is
completely summed in the following sentence of the work introducing
him in the midst of nature: it is a May morning, and Squire Allworthy
is pacing the terrace in front of his mansion before sunrise; "when,"
says Fielding, "in the full blaze of his majesty up rose the sun, than
which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious,
and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented--a human being replete with
benevolence meditating in what manner he might render himself most
acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures;" that
is, in plain commercial terms, how he might obtain the largest
possible amount upon the letter of credit which he found himself
forced to buy against the inevitable journey into the foreign parts
lying beyond the waters of death.
Out of Fielding's numerous other writings, dramatic and periodical, it
is perhaps necessary to mention farther only his _Amelia_, belonging
to the year 1751, in which he praised his first wife and satirized the
jails of his time.
We must now hastily pass to the third so-called classic writer in
English fiction, Tobias Smollett, who, after being educated as a
surgeon, and having experiences of life as surgeon's mate on a ship
of the line in the expedition to Carthagena, spent some time in the
West Indies, returned to London, wrote some satire, an opera, &c., and
presently when he was still only twenty-seven years old captivated
England with his first novel, _Roderick Random_, which appeared, in
1748, the same year with _Clarissa Harlowe_. In 1751 came Smollett's
_Peregrine Pickle_, famous for its bright fun and the caricature it
contains of Akenside--_Pleasures of Imagination._ Akenside, who is
represented as the host in a very absurd entertainment after the
ancient fashion. In 1752 Smollett's _Adventures of Ferdinand Count
Fathom_ gave the world a new and very complete study in human
depravity. In 1769, appeared his _Adventures of an Atom_; a theme
which one might suppose it difficult to make indecorous; and which was
really a political satire; but the unfortunate liberty of locating his
atom as an organic particle in various parts of various successive
human bodies gave Smollett a field for indecency which he cultivated
to its utmost yield. A few months before his death in 1771 appeared
his _Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_, certainly his best novel. It is
worth while noticing that in Humphrey Clinker the veritable British
woman, poorly-educated and poor-spelling, begins to express herself in
the actual dialect of the species; and in the letters of Mrs. Winifred
Jenkins to her fellow-maid-servant Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall,
during a journey made by the family to the North we have some very
worthy and strongly-marked originals not only of Mrs. Malaprop and
Mrs. Partington, but of the immortal Sairey Gamp and of scores of
other descendants in Thackeray and Dickens, here and there.
I can quote but a few lines from the last letter of Mrs. Winifred
Jenkins concluding the _Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_, which by the
way is told entirely through letters from one character to another,
like Richardson's.
"To Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall,