George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy Part 17

For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with the architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion, thus antic.i.p.ating through the prompting of his individual taste that general re-action from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic personal exertion, to something of the fervor of genius.

In this story an incident in the life of Sir Roger Newdigate may have been made use of by George Eliot. He was childless, and adopted a cottager's child he and his wife heard singing at its father's door one day. They educated the child, who proved to have a fine voice and a pa.s.sionate love of music.

_Janet's Repentance_ also has its scenes from actual life. Dr. Dempster was thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school, when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_.

In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a volume of gossip about pa.s.sages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., ent.i.tled "Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach, she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house.

Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother, though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or 1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account: "At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was enabled to bear a public testimony that G.o.d in mercy had pardoned all her sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.'

And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long time. I felt if G.o.d would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this burning love of G.o.d, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived

"'The life of heaven above, All the life of glorious love.'

"I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to heaven, and all I tasted was G.o.d. I could pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my G.o.d; and many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient length of time."

The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of _Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris.

HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850.

Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.]

As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the gla.s.s_. In her account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital.

Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she was a common coa.r.s.e girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of _Adam Bede_.

I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot tears as they surged up in my own mind!

As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk about old times.

As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance const.i.tutes a portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with _mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to the truth.

Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you.

Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving

MARIAN.

When, in 1876, a book was published to show the ident.i.ty of Dinah Morris and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to them has been added the a.s.sertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_ the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August, 1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs.

Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter, 'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought to be regarded as substantially an original creation.

That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs.

Poyser and Bartle Ma.s.sey were the names of actual persons, the latter being the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring, Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate a.s.sociate of Robert Evans in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'"

In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs.

Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston, four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home of Elizabeth Evans.

The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and culture. She regrets that--

Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.]

In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time before there was so much advancement and culture.

Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the ca.n.a.l, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amus.e.m.e.nt; p.r.o.ne to excursion trains, art museums, periodical literature and exciting novels; p.r.o.ne even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or _Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.]

Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a _chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people.

She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize, as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and rusticity of the life presented.

George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, c.o.xy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using dialect.

It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in _Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to respect the lazy obtuseness or sn.o.bbish ignorance of people who do not care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the drawing-room and the newspaper.

It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Bronte, in whose novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and fulness. In large measure Charlotte Bronte borrowed her materials from the life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In _Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending, as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Bronte borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an almost purely fict.i.tious garb.

There is less of distinct teaching in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ than in George Eliot's later novels. Yet even in these earlier stories there is to be found many a clear indication of her thought. In "Amos Barton" she has especially set forth her sympathy with humble life. This fundamental canon of her art is presented more distinctly in this story, and dwelt upon more fully, than in any of her subsequent novels. It would be difficult to discover any special teaching in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" and this is perhaps the only production of George Eliot's pen which has not some distinct object beyond the telling of the story itself. The religious motif is strong in _Janet's Repentance_, and not to be mistaken by any attentive reader who now for the first time takes up the story. The value of religion as a reforming force is plainly inculcated, as well as that the main and only value of that force is altruistic. It presents a fine picture of the Evangelical movement and its work, though mainly on its humanitarian side.

Its deeper spirit of devotion, its loftier religious ideal, its craving after a more intimate realization of the divine presence, is not portrayed.

The real purport of the story is contained in its closing words, where the reader is told that the true memorial left behind him by Edgar Tryan is to be found in a life saved to all n.o.ble thing's by his efforts.

It is Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with divine hopes, and now looking back on years of purity and helpful labor. The man who has left such a memorial behind him must have been one whose heart beat with true compa.s.sion, and whose lips were moved by fervent faith.

These _Scenes of Clerical Life_ surpa.s.s all George Eliot's later novels in one respect--their pathos. _Adam Bede_ comes nearer them in this particular than any of the later works, but even that novel does not equal them in their power to lay hold of feeling and sympathy and in moving the reader to tears. They differ greatly in this respect from another short story, written only a few years later, ent.i.tled "Brother Jacob." This story has more of light banter in it than any other novel of George Eliot's, and less of tenderness and pathos. It is but another lesson on her great theme of _retribution_. The author says in the last sentence of the story that "we see in it an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great Nemesis hides herself." The central thought of the story is, that even in the lives of the most ordinary persons, and in the case of even the smallest departures from the right, there is a power of retribution at work bringing us an unfailing punishment for the evil we do.

The literary excellences of the _Scenes from Clerical Life_ are many. They are simple, charming stories, full of life, and delightful in tone. Their humor is rare and effective, never coa.r.s.e, but racy and touching. Their tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. There is a pure idyllic loveliness and homelikeness about these stories that is exquisite.

They all evidently grew out of the tender memories and a.s.sociations of George Eliot's girlhood.

In _Adam Bede_ the author's purpose is concentrated on character and the moral unfoldment of the lives she describes, while the thorough dramatic unity is lacking which such a work demands. It is a delightful picture of country life, and for idyllic loveliness is scarcely equalled, never surpa.s.sed, in English literature. The charm of the narrative is only rivalled by the deep human interest the characters have for us. This exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes.

The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a charm and n.o.bility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity.

_Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam, and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny.

This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling and pathos most tender and pa.s.sionate. This novel is full of an eager desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of Adam Bede that--

He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward suffering.

This compa.s.sion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold.

What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has stood, perhaps, by the cl.u.s.tering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it; no wonder he needs a Suffering G.o.d.

The remedy for this sorrow, even in the pages of _Adam Bede_, is not the atoning love of Christ or the blessedness of a divine forgiveness, but the altruistic compa.s.sion of man for man. There is, however, a, deeper recognition in this novel of Christian belief than in any other by George Eliot. The prayer and sermon of Dinah Morris have a truly Christian tone and thought. This is not the case with the teachings of Savonarola, who is always much more an altruist than a Christian, and into whose mouth Christian phrases are put, while it is very evident the Christian spirit in its wholeness was not put into his heart. Sorrow and suffering are regarded in _Adam Bede_ as the means of baptism into a larger life of sympathy, as the means of purification from selfishness and individual aims. Along with this teaching goes the cognate one, that feeling is the true test of the religious life. A feeling that draws us close to others in helpfulness is worth more than knowledge, culture and refinement of taste.

The doctrine of retribution is presented as distinctly and positively in _Adam Bede_ as in any subsequent book George Eliot wrote. It is given the form of distinct statement, and it is developed fully in the working out of the plot. Parson Irwine speaks the thought of the author in these words:

"There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it."

The tendency of selfishness and wrong to develop misery is fully unfolded.

The terrible law of moral cause and effect is made apparent throughout the whole work. The folly of Arthur and the vanity of Hetty work them terrible consequences of evil and bitterness. Many others are made to suffer with them. The fatal Nemesis is unmasked in these revelations of human nature.

If the critics are right in p.r.o.nouncing _Adam Bede_ artistically defective, it is not difficult to see that there is still less of unity in _The Mill on the Floss_. Unconnected and unnecessary scenes and persons abound, while the Tulliver and Dodson families, and their stupidities, are described at a tedious length. Yet the picture of child-life given here compensates for all we might complain of in other directions. Maggie is an immortal child, wonderfully drawn, out of the very heart of nature herself. Her joy in life, her doubts and fears, her conflicts with self, are delineated with a master's hand, and justify--such is their faithfulness to child-life--the supposition that this is George Eliot's own childhood, so delicate and penetrating is the insight of this description, Swinburne has justly said that "no man or woman, outside the order of poets, has ever written of children with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother of Totty, Eppie and of Lillo." Nor have the poets surpa.s.sed her in truthfulness to child-life and intuitive insight into child-nature. The child Maggie is unsurpa.s.sed, not as an ideal being, but as a living child that plays in the dirt, tears her frocks, and clips her hair in an hour of childish anger.

In this novel we first come distinctly upon another element in the writings of George Eliot, and this is a yearning after a fuller, larger life. It does not appear as distinctly developed in _Adam Bede_, where there is more of poise and repose. Maggie represents the restless spirit of the nineteenth century, intense dissatisfaction with self, and a profoundly human pa.s.sion for something higher and diviner. A pa.s.sionate restlessness and a profound spiritual hunger are united in this novel to an eager desire for a deeper and fuller life, and for a satisfactory answer to the soul's spiritual thirst. The spiritual repose of Dinah, who has found all the religious cravings of her nature satisfied in Methodism, is abandoned for the inward yearning of Maggie, whose pa.s.sionate search for spiritual truth ends in disaster.