X.
While it is true that the publication of _Adam Bede_ enables us--asstated in the last lecture--to fix George Eliot as already at the headof English novel writers in 1859, I should add that the effect of thebook was not so well defined upon the public of that day. The work wasnot an immediate popular success; and even some of the authoritativecritics, instead of recognizing its greatness with generosity, wentpottering about to find what existing authors this new one had mostlikely drawn her inspiration from.
But _The Mill on the Floss_, which appeared in April, 1860, togetherwith some strong and generous reviews of _Adam Bede_, which hadmeantime appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and in the _London Times_,quickly carried away the last vestige of this suspense, and _The Millon the Floss_ presently won for itself a popular audience and lovingappreciation which appear to have been very gratifying to George Eliotherself. This circumstance alone would make the book an interestingone for our present special study; but the interest is greatlyheightened by the fact--a fact which I find most positively stated bythose who most intimately knew her--that the picture of girlhood whichoccupies so large a portion of the first part of the book, is, in manyparticulars, autobiographic. The title originally chosen for this workby George Eliot was _Sister Maggie_, from which we may judge theprominence she intended to give to the character of Maggie Tulliver.After the book was finished, however, this title was felt to be, forseveral reasons, insufficient. It was a happy thought of Mr.Blackwood's to call the book _The Mill on the Floss_; and George Eliotimmediately adopted his suggestion to that effect. There is, too, athird reason why this particular work offers some peculiarcontributions to the main lines of thought upon which these lectureshave been built. As I go on to read a page here and there merely byway of recalling the book and the actual style to you, you willpresently find that the interest of the whole has for the timeconcentrated itself upon the single figure of a little wayward Englishgirl some nine years old, perhaps alone in a garret in some fit ofchildish passion, accusing the Divine order of things as to itsjustice or mercy, crudely and inarticulately enough yet quite askeenly after all as our _Prometheus_, either according to Aeschylus orShelley. As I pass along rapidly bringing back to you these picturesof Maggie's girlish despairs, I beg you to recall the first sceneswhich were set before you from the _Prometheus_, to bear those in mindalong with these, to note how Aeschylus--whom we have agreed toconsider as a literary prototype, occupying much the same relation tohis age as George Eliot does to ours--in stretching _Prometheus_ uponthe bare Caucasian rock and lacerating him with the just lightnings ofoutraged Fate, is at bottom only studying with a ruder apparatus thesame phenomena which George Eliot is here unfolding before us in themicroscopic struggles of the little English girl; and I ask youparticularly to observe how, here, as we have so many times foundbefore, the enormous advance from _Prometheus_ to MaggieTulliver--from Aeschylus to George Eliot--is summed up in the fact thatwhile personality in Aeschylus' time had got no further than theconception of a universe in which justice is the organic idea, inGeorge Eliot's time it has arrived at the conception of a universe inwhich love is the organic idea; and that it is precisely upon thestimulus of this new growth of individualism that George Eliot'sreaders crowd up with interest to share the tiny woes of insignificantMaggie Tulliver, while Aeschylus, in order to assemble an interestedaudience, must have his Jove, his Titans, his earthquakes, hismysticism, 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 withheavy-laden ships, sweeps down to the sea by the red-roofed town ofSt. Ogg's. Remembering how we found that the first personalitydescribed in _Adam Bede_ was that of a shepherd-dog, here, too, wefind that the first prominent figures in our landscape are those ofanimals. The author is indulging in a sort of dreamy prelude ofreminiscences, 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 themodern novel, acquainting us with such parts of the action as couldnot be naturally or conveniently brought upon the stage, might beprofitably regarded as a development of certain well-known functionsof the chorus in the Greek drama--we have here a quite palpableinstance of the necessity for such development; how otherwise, couldwe be let into the inner emotions of farm-horses so genially as inthis charming passage?
In Chapter II. we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver talking bythe fire in the left-hand corner of their cosy English home, and Imust read a page or two of their conversation before bringing Maggieon the stage, if only to show the intense individuality of the latterby making the reader wonder how such an individualism could ever havebeen evolved from any such precedent conditions as those of Mr. andMrs 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 he
art!" 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 ofbrandy-and-water, is discussing with Riley the momentous question of aschool 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 buriedin a large book that is open on her lap, but betraying her interest inthe conversation by occasionally shaking back her heavy hair andlooking up with gleaming eyes when Tom's name is mentioned. PresentlyMaggie, in an agitated outburst on Tom's behalf, drops the book shehas been reading. Mr. Riley picks it up, and here we have a glimpse atthe kind of food which nourishes Maggie's infant mind. Mr. Riley callsout, "Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are somepictures--I want to know what they mean."
Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley'selbow, and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, andtossing 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 findclues 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 c
areer 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 forher; she dances down stairs, and after a wild whirl in the sunshinewith Yap the terrier goes up into the mill for a talk with Luke themiller.
"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, Tomarrives, Maggie has an hour of rapturous happiness over him and a newfishing-line which he has brought her, to be hers all by herself; andthen comes tragedy. Tom learns from Maggie the death of certainrabbits which he had left in her charge and which, as might have beenexpected, she had forgotten to feed. Here follows a harrowing scene ofreproaches from Tom, of pleadings for forgiveness from Maggie, untilfinally Tom appears to close the door of mercy. He sternly insists:"Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge box, and theholidays before you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I set youto watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite all fornothing." "But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it." "Yesyou could," said Tom, "if you'd minded what you were doing.... And youshan't go fishing with me to-morrow." With this terrible conclusionTom runs off to the mill, while the heart broken Maggie creeps up toher attic, lays her head against the worm-eaten shelf and abandonsherself 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 tohuman hearts as now constituted, and the inexorable necessity of lovefor such satisfaction appear quite as plainly as if the canvas were ofPromethean 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, andmounts 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 alienat
ion, 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 characterwhich appear to offer instructive comparisons with this picture of thehealthy English boy and girl. Take for example this portrait of themodern American boy given us by Mr. Henry James, Jr., in his _DaisyMiller_, which was, I believe, the work that first brought him intofame. The scene is in Europe. A gentleman is seated in the garden of ahotel 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 garretand with her flaming ways, with Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh." AuroraLeigh, too, has her garret, and doubtless her intensity too, blossomsin that congenial dark and lonesomeness. I read a few lines from Book1st 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 tragicmoment of her existence; and it is fine to see how in describingsituations so alike, the purely elemental differences between thenatures of Mrs. Browning and George Eliot project themselves upon eachother.
The scene in George Eliot concerning Maggie and Thomas a Kempis is toolong to repeat here, but everyone will recall the sober, analytic, yetaltogether vital and thrilling picture of the trembling Maggie, as sheabsorbs wisdom from the sweet old mediaeval soul. But, on the otherhand, 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 andscientific, but from a curiously different point of view, thatpeculiar function of George Eliot which I pointed out as appearing inthe very first of her stories, namely, the function of elevating theplane of all commonplace life into the plane of the heroic by keepingevery man well in mind of the awful _ego_ within him which includesall the possibilities of heroic action. Now this is what George Eliotdoes, in putting before us these humble forms of Tom and Maggie, andthe like: she _says_ these common "yes" and "no" in terms of Tom andMaggie; and yet says them so that this particular Tom and Maggie burnyou through with a special revelation--though one has known a hundredMaggies and Toms before. Thus we find the delight and triumph of thepoetic and analytic novelist, George Eliot, precisely parallel to thisdelight and triumph of the more exclusively poetic Mrs. Browning, whosays a man's mere "yes," a woman's common "no," so that it shakes thehearts of all the men and women in the world, etc. Aurora Leighcontinues:
"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, inregions where perhaps Mrs. Browning never penetrated, let me recallSister Glegg and Sister Pullet, as types of women contrasting withMaggie and Aurora Leigh. You will remember how Mrs. Tulliver hasbidden 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 inTom'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 w
ords. 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 havesome further affecting details of that sensitive lady weeping at homeinstead 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 thetypes of Maggie Tulliver and Aurora Leigh, a number of other femalefigures which belong to the same period of life and literature. Iplease myself with calling these the Victorian women. They wouldinclude 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 realto us as the other; and I have lost all sense of difference betweenactual and literary existence), Mrs. Browning, Dinah Morris, MillyBarton, Janet Dempster, Florence Nightingale and Sister Dora, Romola,Dorothea Brooke, Myra, Charlotte Cushman, Mary Somerville and someothers. If we are grateful to our sweet master Tennyson for his _Dreamof Fair Women_, how grateful should we be to an age which has given usthis realization of ideal women, of women who are so strong and sobeautiful, that they have subtly brought about--that I can find noadjective so satisfactory for them as--"womanly" women. They haveredeemed the whole time. When I hear certain mournful people cryingout that this is a gross and material age, I reply that gross andmaterial are words that have no meaning as of the epoch of theVictorian women. When the pessimists accuse the time of small aims andover-selfishness, I plead the Victorian women. When thepre-Raphaelites clamor that railroad and telegraph have fatallyscarred the whole face of the picturesque and the ideal among us, Ireply that on the other hand the Victorian women are more beautifulthan any product of times that they call picturesque and ideal.
And it is curiously fine that in some particulars the best expressionof the corresponding attitude which man has assumed toward theVictorian women in the growth of the times has been poeticallyformulated by a woman. In Mrs. Browning's _Drama of Exile_, duringthose first insane moments when Eve is begging Adam to banish her forher 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!"
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development Page 10