While it is true that the publication of _Adam Bede_ enables us--as
stated in the last lecture--to fix George Eliot as already at the head
of English novel writers in 1859, I should add that the effect of the
book was not so well defined upon the public of that day. The work was
not an immediate popular success; and even some of the authoritative
critics, instead of recognizing its greatness with generosity, went
pottering about to find what existing authors this new one had most
likely drawn her inspiration from.
But _The Mill on the Floss_, which appeared in April, 1860, together
with some strong and generous reviews of _Adam Bede_, which had
meantime appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and in the _London Times_,
quickly carried away the last vestige of this suspense, and _The Mill
on the Floss_ presently won for itself a popular audience and loving
appreciation which appear to have been very gratifying to George Eliot
herself. This circumstance alone would make the book an interesting
one for our present special study; but the interest is greatly
heightened by the fact--a fact which I find most positively stated by
those who most intimately knew her--that the picture of girlhood which
occupies so large a portion of the first part of the book, is, in many
particulars, autobiographic. The title originally chosen for this work
by George Eliot was _Sister Maggie_, from which we may judge the
prominence she intended to give to the character of Maggie Tulliver.
After the book was finished, however, this title was felt to be, for
several reasons, insufficient. It was a happy thought of Mr.
Blackwood's to call the book _The Mill on the Floss_; and George Eliot
immediately adopted his suggestion to that effect. There is, too, a
third reason why this particular work offers some peculiar
contributions to the main lines of thought upon which these lectures
have been built. As I go on to read a page here and there merely by
way of recalling the book and the actual style to you, you will
presently find that the interest of the whole has for the time
concentrated itself upon the single figure of a little wayward English
girl some nine years old, perhaps alone in a garret in some fit of
childish passion, accusing the Divine order of things as to its
justice or mercy, crudely and inarticulately enough yet quite as
keenly after all as our _Prometheus_, either according to Aeschylus or
Shelley. As I pass along rapidly bringing back to you these pictures
of Maggie's girlish despairs, I beg you to recall the first scenes
which were set before you from the _Prometheus_, to bear those in mind
along with these, to note how Aeschylus--whom we have agreed to
consider as a literary prototype, occupying much the same relation to
his age as George Eliot does to ours--in stretching _Prometheus_ upon
the bare Caucasian rock and lacerating him with the just lightnings of
outraged Fate, is at bottom only studying with a ruder apparatus the
same phenomena which George Eliot is here unfolding before us in the
microscopic struggles of the little English girl; and I ask you
particularly to observe how, here, as we have so many times found
before, the enormous advance from _Prometheus_ to Maggie
Tulliver--from Aeschylus to George Eliot--is summed up in the fact that
while personality in Aeschylus' time had got no further than the
conception of a universe in which justice is the organic idea, in
George Eliot's time it has arrived at the conception of a universe in
which love is the organic idea; and that it is precisely upon the
stimulus of this new growth of individualism that George Eliot's
readers crowd up with interest to share the tiny woes of insignificant
Maggie Tulliver, while Aeschylus, in order to assemble an interested
audience, must have his Jove, his Titans, his earthquakes, his
mysticism, and the blackness of inconclusive Fate withal.
Everyone remembers a sense of mightiness in this opening chapter of
_The Mill on the Floss_, where the great river Floss, thick with
heavy-laden ships, sweeps down to the sea by the red-roofed town of
St. Ogg's. Remembering how we found that the first personality
described in _Adam Bede_ was that of a shepherd-dog, here, too, we
find that the first prominent figures in our landscape are those of
animals. The author is indulging in a sort of dreamy prelude of
reminiscences, and in describing Dorlcote Mill, Maggie's home, says:
"The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy
deafness which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene.
They are like a great curtain of sounds shutting one out from the
world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered
wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is
thinking of his dinner getting sadly dry in the oven at this late
hour; but he will not touch it until he has fed his horses--the
strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking
mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should
crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if they needed
that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope to
the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near
home. Look at their grand, shaggy feet, that seem to grasp the
firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks bowed under
the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling
haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their
hardly-earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks
freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the
muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at
a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at a
turning behind the trees."
Remembering how we have agreed that the author's comments in the
modern novel, acquainting us with such parts of the action as could
not be naturally or conveniently brought upon the stage, might be
profitably regarded as a development of certain well-known functions
of the chorus in the Greek drama--we have here a quite palpable
instance of the necessity for such development; how otherwise, could
we be let into the inner emotions of farm-horses so genially as in
this charming passage?
In Chapter II. we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver talking by
the fire in the left-hand corner of their cosy English home, and I
must read a page or two of their conversation before bringing Maggie
on the stage, if only to show the intense individuality of the latter
by making the reader wonder how such an individualism could ever have
been evolved from any such precedent conditions as those of Mr. and
Mrs Tulliver. "What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver,--
"What I want is to give Tom a good eddication--an eddication
as'll be bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I
gave notice for him to leave th' academy at Ladyday. I mean to
put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at
th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to make a
miller and farmer of him, for he's had a fine sight more
schoolin' nor _I_ ever got: all the learnin' _my_ father ever
paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and the alphabet at th'
other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a schollard, so as he
might be up to the tricks o' these fellows a stalk fine and write
with a flourish. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and
arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o'
the lad--I should be sorry for him to be a raskell--but a sort o'
engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like
Riley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and
no out-lay, only for a big watch-chain, and a high stool. They're
putty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even wi' the
law, _I_ believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the face as
hard as one cat looks another. _He's_ none frightened at him."
Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde comely woman, in
a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it was since
fan-shaped caps were worn--they must be so near coming in again.
At that time, when Mrs. Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new
at St. Ogg's, and considered sweet things).
"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best; _I've_ no objections. But
hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl and have th' aunts and
uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg
and sister Pullet have got to say about it? There's a couple o'
fowl _wants_ killing!"
"You may kill every fowl i' the yard, if you like, Bessy; but I
shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad,"
said Mr. Tulliver, defiantly.
"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, shocked at this sanguinary
rhetoric, "how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? But it's your way
to speak disrespectful o' my family; and sister Glegg throws all
the blame upo' me, though I'm sure I'm as innocent as the babe
unborn. For nobody's ever heard _me_ say as it wasn't lucky for
my children to have aunts and uncles as can live independent.
However, if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go
where I can wash him and mend him; else he might as well have
calico as linen, for they'd be one as yaller as th' other before
they'd been washed half a dozen times. And then, when the box is
goin' backards and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a
pork-pie or an apple; for he can do with an extra bit, bless him,
whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can eat as
much victuals as most, thank God."
Mr. Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands
into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion
there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said
"I know what I'll do. I'll talk it over wi' Riley: he's coming
to-morrow t' arbitrate about the dam."
"Well, Mr. Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for the best bed,
and Kezia's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best
sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he
who he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent
buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to
die to-morrow, Mr. Tulliver, they're mangled beautiful, an' all
ready, 'an smell o' lavender, as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay them
out; an' they lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oaken chest,
at the back--not as I should trust any body to look 'em out but
myself."
In the next chapter, Mr. Tulliver at night, over a cosy glass of
brandy-and-water, is discussing with Riley the momentous question of a
school for Tom. Mrs. Tulliver is out of the room upon household cares,
and Maggie is off on a low stool close by the fire, apparently buried
in a large book that is open on her lap, but betraying her interest in
the conversation by occasionally shaking back her heavy hair and
looking up with gleaming eyes when Tom's name is mentioned. Presently
Maggie, in an agitated outburst on Tom's behalf, drops the book she
has been reading. Mr. Riley picks it up, and here we have a glimpse at
the kind of food which nourishes Maggie's infant mind. Mr. Riley calls
out, "Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some
pictures--I want to know what they mean."
Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley's
elbow, and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and
tossing back her mane, while she said:
"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture,
isn't it? But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the
water's a witch--they've put her in to find out whether she's a
witch or no, and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's
drowned--and killed, you know--she's innocent, and not a witch,
but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her
then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go
to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful
blacksmith, with his arms akimbo, laughing--oh, isn't he ugly?
I'll tell you what he is. He's the devil, _really_," (here
Maggie's voice became louder and more emphatic), "and not a right
blacksmith; for the devil takes the shape of wicked men, and
walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's oftener
in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if
people saw he was the devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run
away, and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."
Mr. Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie's with
petrifying wonder.
"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?" he burst out,
at last.
"_The History of the Devil_, by Daniel Defoe; not quite the right
book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. "How came it among your
books, Tulliver?"
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said, "Why,
it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all
bound alike--it's a good binding, you see--and I thought they'd
be all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and
Dying_ among 'em; I read in it often of a Sunday," (Mr. Tulliver
felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer because his
name was Jeremy), "and there's a lot more of 'em, sermons mostly,
I think; but they've all got the same covers, and I thought they
were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn't
judge by th' outside. This is a puzzling world."
"Well," said Mr. Riley, in an admonitory patronizing tone, as he
patted Maggie on the head, "I advise you to put by the _History
of the Devil_, and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier
books?"
"Oh, yes," said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to
vindicate the variety of her reading; "I know the reading in this
book isn't pretty, but I like to look at the pictures, and I make
stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've
got _Aesop's Fables_, and a book about kangaroos and things, and
the _Pilgrim's Progress_."...
"Ah! a beautiful book," said Mr. Riley: "you can't read a
better."
"Well, but there's a great deal about the devil in that," said
Maggie, triumphantly, "and I'll show you the picture of him in
his true shape, as he fought with Christian."
Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a
chair, and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy
of Bunyan, which opened at once, without the least trouble of
search, at the picture she wanted.
"Here he is," she said, running back to Mr. Riley, "and Tom
colored him for me with his paints when he was at home last
holidays--the body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like
fire, because he's all fire inside, and it shines out at his
eyes."
"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel
rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal
appearance of a being powerful enough to create lawyers; "shut up
the book, and let's hear no more o' such talk. It is as I
thought--the child 'ull learn more mischief nor good wi' the
books. Go--go and see after your mother."
And here are further various hints of Maggie's ways in which we find
clues to many outbursts of her later life.
"It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed
to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home
from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Tulliver
said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took
the opposite view very strongly; and it was a direct consequence
of this difference of opinion that, when her mother was in the
act of brushing out the reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly
rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of
water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there
should be no more chance of curls that day.
"Maggie, Maggie," exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and
helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you
if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt
Pullet when they come next week, and they'll never love you any
more. Oh dear, oh dear, look at your clean pinafore, wet from top
to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got
such a child--they'll think I've done summat wicked."
Before this remonstrance was finished Maggie was already out of
hearing, making her way toward the great attic that ran under
the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black
locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This
attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the
weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her
ill-humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the
worm eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs;
and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her
misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which
once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of
cheeks, but was now entirely defaced by a long career of
vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head
commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly
struggle, that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her
by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The
last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual,
for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg."
But a ray of sunshine on the window of the garret proves too much for
her; she dances down stairs, and after a wild whirl in the sunshine
with Yap the terrier goes up into the mill for a talk with Luke the
miller.
"Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and
often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness
that made her dark eyes flash out with a new fire. The resolute
din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim
delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force--the
meal forever pouring, pouring--the fine white powder softening
all surfaces, and making the very spider-nets look like a fancy
lace-work--the sweet, pure scent of the meal--all helped to make
Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her
outside, everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of
speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relations
outside the mill, for in that case there must be a painful
difficulty in their family intercourse--a flat and floury spider,
accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a
little at a cousin's table where the fly was _au naturel_; and
the lady-spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's
appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was the
topmost story--the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps
of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She
was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with
Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think
well of her understanding, as her father did. Perhaps she felt it
necessary to recover her position with him on the present
occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which
he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was
requisite in mill society,
'I think you never read any book but the Bible--did you Luke?'
'Nay, miss--an' not much o' that,' said Luke, with great
frankness. 'I'm no reader, I ain't.'
'But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I've not got any _very_
pretty books that would be easy for you to read, but there's
_Pug's Tour of Europe_--that would tell you all about the
different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't
understand the reading, the pictures would help you--they show
the looks and the ways of the people, and what they do. There are
the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know--and one sitting on
a barrel.'
'Nay, miss, I've no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i'
knowin' about _them_.'
'But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke--we ought to know about
our fellow-creatures.'
'Not much o' fellow-creatures, I think, miss; all I know--my old
master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I
sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that
war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door.
Nay, nay, I arn't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's
fools enoo--an' rogues enoo--wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em.'
'Oh, well,' said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's unexpectedly
decided views about Dutchmen, 'perhaps you would like _Animated
Nature_ better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants, and
kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting
on its tail--I forget its name. There are countries full of those
creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you
like to know about them, Luke?'
'Nay, miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn--I can't
do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings
folks to the gallows--knowin' every thing but what they'n got to
get their bread by--An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's
printed i' the books; them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men
cry i' the streets.'
But these are idyllic hours; presently the afternoon comes, Tom
arrives, Maggie has an hour of rapturous happiness over him and a new
fishing-line which he has brought her, to be hers all by herself; and
then comes tragedy. Tom learns from Maggie the death of certain
rabbits which he had left in her charge and which, as might have been
expected, she had forgotten to feed. Here follows a harrowing scene of
reproaches from Tom, of pleadings for forgiveness from Maggie, until
finally Tom appears to close the door of mercy. He sternly insists:
"Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge box, and the
holidays before you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I set you
to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite all for
nothing." "But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it." "Yes
you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded what you were doing.... And you
shan't go fishing with me to-morrow." With this terrible conclusion
Tom runs off to the mill, while the heart broken Maggie creeps up to
her attic, lays her head against the worm-eaten shelf and abandons
herself to misery.
In the scene which I now read, howbeit planned upon so small a scale,
the absolute insufficiency of justice to give final satisfaction to
human hearts as now constituted, and the inexorable necessity of love
for such satisfaction appear quite as plainly as if the canvas were of
Promethean dimensions.
"Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must
be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking
of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve
herself--hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night;
and then they would all be frightened, and Tom would be sorry.
Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept
behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea
that they didn't mind her being there. If she went down again to
Tom now, would he forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there,
and he would take her part. But, then she wanted Tom to forgive
her because he loved her, and not because his father told him.
No, she would never go down if Tom didn't come to fetch her. This
resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind
the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in
poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon
threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the
long attic, but just then she heard a quick footstep on the
stairs."
In point of fact Tom has been sent from the tea-table for her, and
mounts the attic munching a great piece of plum-cake.
... "He went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of
plum-cake, and not intending to retrieve Maggie's punishment,
which was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and
had no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them
for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly
clear and positive on one point, namely, that he would punish
every body who deserved it; why, he wouldn't have minded being
punished himself, if he deserved; but then he never _did_ deserve
it.
It was Tom's step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs when her
need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down
with her swollen eyes and disheveled hair to beg for pity. At
least her father would stroke her head and say, 'Never mind, my
wench.' It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love--this hunger
of the heart--as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature
forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the
world.
But she knew Tom's step, and her heart began to beat violently
with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of
the stairs and said, 'Maggie, you're to come down.' But she
rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, 'Oh, Tom, please
forgive me--I can't bear it--I will always be good--always
remember things--do love me--please, dear Tom?'
We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart
when we have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases,
and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much
firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We
no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness
of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like
members of a highly civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still
very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek
against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way; and there
were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to
Maggie's fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite
inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she
deserved; he actually began to kiss her in return, and say,
'Don't cry, then, Maggie--here, eat a bit o' cake.' Maggie's sobs
began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit
a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company; and they ate
together, and rubbed each other's cheeks, and brows, and noses
together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two
friendly ponies.
'Come along, Maggie, and have tea,' said Tom at last, when there
was no more cake except what was down stairs."
Various points of contrast lead me to cite some types of character
which appear to offer instructive comparisons with this picture of the
healthy English boy and girl. Take for example this portrait of the
modern American boy given us by Mr. Henry James, Jr., in his _Daisy
Miller_, which was, I believe, the work that first brought him into
fame. The scene is in Europe. A gentleman is seated in the garden of a
hotel at Geneva, smoking his cigarette after breakfast.
"Presently a small boy came walking along the path--an urchin of
nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an
aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp
little features. He was dressed in Knickerbockers, with red
stockings, which displayed his poor little spindleshanks; he also
wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long
alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything
that he approached--the flower-beds, the garden benches, the
trains of the ladies' dresses. In front of Winterbourne he
paused, looking at him with a pair of bright penetrating little
eyes.
'Will you give me a lump of sugar?' he asked in a sharp, hard
little voice--a voice immature, and yet, somehow, not young.
Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him on which his
coffee-service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar
remained. 'Yes, you may take one,' he answered, 'but I don't
think sugar is good for little boys.'
This little boy slipped forward and carefully selected three of
the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of
his Knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another
place. He poked his alpenstock lance-fashion into Winterbourne's
bench, and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth.
'Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!' he exclaimed, pronouncing the
adjective in a peculiar manner.
Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the
honor of claiming him as a fellow-countryman. 'Take care you
don't hurt your teeth,' he said paternally.
'I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have
only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, and one
came out right afterwards. She said she'd slap me if any more
came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe. It's the climate
that makes them come out. In America they didn't come out. It's
these hotels.'
Winterbourne was much amused. 'If you eat three lumps of sugar,
your mother will certainly slap you,' he said.
'She's got to give me some candy, then,' rejoined his young
interlocutor. 'I can't git any candy here--any American candy.
American candy's the best candy.'
'And are American boys the best little boys?' asked Winterbourne.
'I don't know. I'm an American boy,' said the child.
'I see you are one of the best!' laughed Winterbourne.
'Are you an American man?' pursued this vivacious infant. And
then on Winterbourne's affirmative reply,--'American men are the
best,' he declared."
On the other hand compare this intense, dark-eyed Maggie in her garret
and with her flaming ways, with Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh." Aurora
Leigh, too, has her garret, and doubtless her intensity too, blossoms
in that congenial dark and lonesomeness. I read a few lines from Book
1st by way of reminder.
"Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my father's name
... Where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here or there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books! At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets."
And here, every reader of _The Mill on the Floss_ will remember how,
at a later period, Maggie chanced upon Thomas a Kempis at a tragic
moment of her existence; and it is fine to see how in describing
situations so alike, the purely elemental differences between the
natures of Mrs. Browning and George Eliot project themselves upon each
other.
The scene in George Eliot concerning Maggie and Thomas a Kempis is too
long to repeat here, but everyone will recall the sober, analytic, yet
altogether vital and thrilling picture of the trembling Maggie, as she
absorbs wisdom from the sweet old mediaeval soul. But, on the other
hand, Mrs. Browning sings it out, after this riotous melody:
"As the earth
Plunges in fury when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart,
And throwing flat
The marts and temples--the triumphal gates
And towers of observation--clears herself
To elemental freedom--thus, my soul,
At poetry's divine first finger-touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.
But the sun was high
When first I felt my pulses set themselves
For concord; when the rhythmic turbulence
Of blood and brain swept outward upon words,
As wind upon the alders, blanching them
By turning up their under-natures till
They trembled in dilation. O delight
And triumph of the poet who would say
A man's mere 'yes,' a woman's common 'no,'
A little human hope of that or this,
And says the word so that it burns you through
With special revelation, shakes the heart
Of all the men and women in the world
As if one came back from the dead and spoke,
With eyes too happy, a familiar thing
Become divine i' the utterance!"
I have taken special pleasure in the last sentence of this outburst,
because it restates with a precise felicity at once poetic and
scientific, but from a curiously different point of view, that
peculiar function of George Eliot which I pointed out as appearing in
the very first of her stories, namely, the function of elevating the
plane of all commonplace life into the plane of the heroic by keeping
every man well in mind of the awful _ego_ within him which includes
all the possibilities of heroic action. Now this is what George Eliot
does, in putting before us these humble forms of Tom and Maggie, and
the like: she _says_ these common "yes" and "no" in terms of Tom and
Maggie; and yet says them so that this particular Tom and Maggie burn
you through with a special revelation--though one has known a hundred
Maggies and Toms before. Thus we find the delight and triumph of the
poetic and analytic novelist, George Eliot, precisely parallel to this
delight and triumph of the more exclusively poetic Mrs. Browning, who
says a man's mere "yes," a woman's common "no," so that it shakes the
hearts of all the men and women in the world, etc. Aurora Leigh
continues:
"In those days, though, I never analysed,
Not even myself, Analysis comes late.
You catch a sight of nature, earliest;
In full front sun-face, and your eye-lids wink
And drop before the wonder of 't; you miss
The form, through seeing the light. I lived those days,
And wrote because I lived--unlicensed else;
My heart beat in my brain. Life's violent flood
Abolished bounds--and, which my neighbor's field,
Which mine, what mattered? It is thus in youth!
We play at leap-frog over the god Time;
The love within us and the love without
Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love
We scarce distinguish....
In that first outrush of life's chariot wheels
We know not if the forests move, or we."
And now as showing the extreme range of George Eliot's genius, in
regions where perhaps Mrs. Browning never penetrated, let me recall
Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet, as types of women contrasting with
Maggie and Aurora Leigh. You will remember how Mrs. Tulliver has
bidden her three sisters, Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Pullet, and Mrs. Deane,
with their respective husbands, to a great and typical Dodson dinner,
in order to eat and drink upon the momentous changes impending in
Tom's educational existence:
"The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was
not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs.
Tulliver's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied,
for a woman of fifty, she had a very comely face and figure,
though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg as the type of
ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume; for
though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it
was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones.
Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread lace in
every wash, but when Mrs. Glegg did it would be found that she
had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her
wardrobe, in the Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs. Wool of St.
Ogg's had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wool wore her lace
before it was paid for. So of her curled fronts. Mrs. Glegg had
doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers,
as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look
out on the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front
would be to introduce a most dream-like and unpleasant confusion
between the sacred and the secular.
So, if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than
usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed
and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blonde curls,
separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each
side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times
at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly
curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them
naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her
bonnet in the house to-day--untied and tilted slightly, of
course--a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and
happened to be in a severe humor; she didn't know what draughts
there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a
small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was
very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her
long neck was protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of miscellaneous
frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those
times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's
slate-colored silk gown must have been; but, from certain
constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor
about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that
it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come
recently into wear.
"Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand, with the
many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs.
Tulliver, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that
whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was
gone half-past twelve by hers.
'I don't know what ails sister Pullet,' she continued. 'It used
to be the way in our family for one to be as early as
another--I'm sure it was so in my poor father's time--and not for
one sister to sit half an hour before the others came. But if the
ways o' the family are altered, it shan't be _my_ fault; I'll
never be the one to come into a house when all the rest are going
away. I wonder at sister Deane--she used to be more like me. But
if you'll take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner forward a
bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as ought to
ha' known better.'
The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an
interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to
receive sister Pullet--it must be sister Pullet, because the
sound was that of a four-wheel.
Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth
at the thought of the "four-wheel." She had a strong opinion on
that subject.
Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped
before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that
she should shed a few more before getting out; for, though her
husband and Mrs. Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat
still and shook her head sadly as she looked through her tears at
the vague distance.
'Why, whatever is the matter, sister?' said Mrs. Tulliver. She
was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the
large toilet-glass in sister Pullet's best bedroom was possibly
broken for the second time.
There was no reply but a further shake of the head as Mrs. Pullet
slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a
glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome
silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a high
nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking
suit of black, and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied
very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal
ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking
wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, and large
be-feathered and be-ribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack
bears to a brig with all its sails spread.
Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety about the
latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly
ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and
a half across the shoulders), and having done that, sent the
muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into
the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated.
'Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?' said Mrs. Glegg,
rather sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind
before she answered.
'She's gone,' unconsciously using an impressive figure of
rhetoric.
'It isn't the glass this time, then,' thought Mrs. Tulliver.
'Died the day before yesterday,' continued Mrs. Pullet; 'an' her
legs was as thick as my body,' she added with deep sadness, after
a pause. 'They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they
say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked.'
'Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoiver she may be,'
said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind
naturally clear and decided; 'but I can't think who you're
talking of, for my part.'
'But _I_ know,' said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head;
'and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as
it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands.'
'Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance, as I've ever
heard of,' said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was
proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other
occasions.
'She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they were
like bladders.... And an old lady as had doubled her money over
and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the
last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow
constant. There isn't many old _parish's_ like her, I doubt.'
'And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon,'
observed Mr. Pullet.
'Ah!' sighed Mrs. Pullet, 'she'd another complaint ever so many
years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make
out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last
Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if iver you have the dropsy,
you'll think o' me.' 'She _did_ say so,' added Mrs. Pullet,
beginning to cry bitterly again; 'those were her very words. And
she's to be buried o' Saturday, and Pullet's bid to the funeral.'
'Sophy,' said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit
of rational remonstrance, 'Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and
injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your
poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any
o' the family, as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than
this if we'd heard as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without
making his will.'
Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much.
It was not every body who could afford to cry so much about their
neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Pullet had married
a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying
and every thing else to the highest pitch of respectability.
'Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though,' said
Mr. Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to
sanction his wife's tears; 'ours is a rich parish, but they say
there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs.
Sutton. And she's left no leggicies, to speak on--left it all in
lump to her husband's nevvy.'
'There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then,' said Mrs. Glegg,
'if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's poor
work when that's all you're got to pinch yourself for--not as I'm
one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at
interest than other folks had reckoned. But it's a poor tale when
it must go out o' your own family.'
'I'm sure, sister,' said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered
sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, 'it's a
nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's
troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight
o'clock. He told me about it himself--as free as could be--one
Sunday when he came to our church. He wears a hareskin on his
chest, and has a trembling in his talk--quite a gentlemanly sort
o' man. I told him there wasn't many months in the year as I
wan't under the doctor's hands. And he said, 'Mrs. Pullet, I can
feel for you.' That was what he said--the very words. 'Ah!'
sighed Mrs. Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were
but few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink
mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and
weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and
draughts at eighteen pence. 'Sister, I may as well go and take my
bonnet off now. Did you see as the capbox was put out?' she
added, turning to her husband.
Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten
it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the
omission."
Next day Mrs. Tulliver and the children visit Aunt Pallet: and we have
some further affecting details of that sensitive lady weeping at home
instead of abroad.
"Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her
sister was within hearing, said, 'Stop the children, for God's
sake, Bessy; don't let 'em come up the doorsteps; Sally's
bringing the old mat and the duster to rub their shoes.'
Mrs. Pullet's front door mats were by no means intended to wipe
shoes on: the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom
rebelled particularly against this shoe-wiping, which he always
considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as
the beginning of the disagreeable incident to a visit at aunt
Pullet's where he had once been compelled to sit with towels
wrapped around his boots--a fact which may serve to correct the
too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a
great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals--fond, that is,
of throwing stones at them.
The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it
was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very
handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so
that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served, in
barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which none but the
most spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken limbs.
Sophy's weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject
of bitter remonstrance on Mrs. Glegg's part; but Mrs. Tulliver
ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy
when she and the children were safe on the landing.
'Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,' said Mrs. Pullet,
in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted her cap.
'Has she, sister?' said Mrs. Tulliver with an air of much
interest. 'And how do you like it?'
'It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and putting
'em in again,' said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her
pocket and looking at them earnestly, 'but it' ud be a pity for
you to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing what may
happen.'
Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious
consideration, which determined her to single out a particular
key.
'I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,'
said Mrs. Tulliver, 'but I _should_ like to see what sort of a
crown she's made you.'
Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a
very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she
would find the new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could
only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with the
habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet was
seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of
linen--it was a door key.
'You must come with me into the best room,' said Mrs. Pullet.
'May the children too, sister?' inquired Mrs. Tulliver, who saw
that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.
'Well,' said aunt Pullet, reflectively, 'it'll perhaps be safer
for 'em to come--they'll be touching something if we leave 'em
behind.'
So they went in procession along the bright and slippery
corridor, dimly lighted by the semilunar top of the window which
rose above the closed shutter: it was really quite solemn. Aunt
Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still
more solemn than the passage--a darkened room, in which the outer
light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of
furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded
stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie's frock, and
Maggie's heart beat rapidly.
Aunt Pullet half opened the shutter, and then unlocked the
wardrobe with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in
keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious
scent of rose leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the
process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite
pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was
an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more
preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to
Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some
moments, and then said emphatically, 'Well, sister, I'll never
speak against the full crowns again!'
It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it; she felt
something was due to it.
'You'd like to see it on, sister?' she said, sadly. 'I'll open
the shutter a bit farther.'
'Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister,' said Mrs.
Tulliver.
Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp
with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the mature
and judicious women of those times, and, placing the bonnet on
her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, that
Mrs. Tulliver might miss no point of view.
'I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on this
left side, sister; what do you think?' said Mrs. Pullet.
Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned
her head on one side. 'Well, I think it's best as it is; if you
meddled with it, sister, you might repent.'
'That's true,' said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and
looking at it contemplatively.
'How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?' said
Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility
of getting a humble imitation of this _chef-d-oeuvre_ made from
a piece of silk she had at home.
Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then
whispered, 'Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best
bonnet at Garum church, let the next best be whose it would.'
She began slowly to adjust the trimmings in preparation for
returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts
seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.
'Ah!' she said at last, 'I may never wear it twice, sister: who
knows?'
'Don't talk o' that, sister,' answered Mrs. Tulliver. 'I hope
you'll have your health this summer.'
'Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon
after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we
can't think o' wearing crape less than half a year for him.'
'That _would_ be unlucky,' said Mrs. Tulliver, entering
thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease.
'There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second
year, especially when the crowns are so chancy--never two summers
alike.'
'Ah! it's the way i' this world,' said Mrs. Pullet, returning the
bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a
silence characterized by head-shaking until they had all issued
from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then,
beginning to cry, she said: 'Sister, if you should never see that
bonnet again till I'm dead and gone, you'll remember I showed it
you this day.'
I sincerely wish it were in my power to develop, alongside of the
types of Maggie Tulliver and Aurora Leigh, a number of other female
figures which belong to the same period of life and literature. I
please myself with calling these the Victorian women. They would
include the name-giving queen, herself, the Eve in Mrs. Browning's
_Drama of Exile_, Princess Ida in Tennyson's _Princess_, Jane Eyre,
Charlotte Bronte, (one of these figures, you observe, is just as real
to us as the other; and I have lost all sense of difference between
actual and literary existence), Mrs. Browning, Dinah Morris, Milly
Barton, Janet Dempster, Florence Nightingale and Sister Dora, Romola,
Dorothea Brooke, Myra, Charlotte Cushman, Mary Somerville and some
others. If we are grateful to our sweet master Tennyson for his _Dream
of Fair Women_, how grateful should we be to an age which has given us
this realization of ideal women, of women who are so strong and so
beautiful, that they have subtly brought about--that I can find no
adjective so satisfactory for them as--"womanly" women. They have
redeemed the whole time. When I hear certain mournful people crying
out that this is a gross and material age, I reply that gross and
material are words that have no meaning as of the epoch of the
Victorian women. When the pessimists accuse the time of small aims and
over-selfishness, I plead the Victorian women. When the
pre-Raphaelites clamor that railroad and telegraph have fatally
scarred the whole face of the picturesque and the ideal among us, I
reply that on the other hand the Victorian women are more beautiful
than any product of times that they call picturesque and ideal.
And it is curiously fine that in some particulars the best expression
of the corresponding attitude which man has assumed toward the
Victorian women in the growth of the times has been poetically
formulated by a woman. In Mrs. Browning's _Drama of Exile_, during
those first insane moments when Eve is begging Adam to banish her for
her transgression, or to do some act of retributive justice upon her,
Adam continually comforts her and finally speaks these words:
... I am deepest in the guilt,
If last in the transgression.... If God
Who gave the right and joyance of the world
Both unto thee and me--gave thee to me,
The best gift last, the last sin was the worst,
Which sinned against more complement of gifts
And grace of giving. God! I render back
Strong benediction and perpetual praise
From mortal feeble lips (as incense smoke
Out of a little censer, may fill heaven),
That Thou, in striking my benumbed hands
And forcing them to drop all other boons
Of beauty and dominion and delight,--
Hast left this well-beloved Eve, this life
Within life, this best gift, between their palms,
In gracious compensation.
O my God!
I, standing here between the glory and dark,--
The glory of thy wrath projected forth
From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress
Which settles a step off in that drear world,--
Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen
Only creation's sceptre,--thanking Thee
That rather Thou hast cast me out with _her_
Than left me lorn of her in Paradise,
With angel looks and angel songs around
To show the absence of her eyes and voice,
And make society full desertness
Without her use in comfort!
Because with _her_, I stand
Upright, as far as can be in this fall,
And look away from earth which doth convict,
Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow
Out of her love, and put the thought of her
Around me, for an Eden full of birds,
And with my lips upon her lips,--thus, thus,--
Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath
Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides
But overtops this grief!"