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THE GREAT TRADITION

By

the sat

<e.

Author

REVAI J/ tlON

EDUCATION AND

NEW

TIJE UNIVERSITY BEARINGS IN ENGLISH POETRY

THE
GREAT TRADITION
GEORGE ELIOT

HENRY JAMES

JOSEPH CONRAD

F.

R.

Leavis

Fellow of Downing College

Cambridge

GTS
GEORGE

W.

STEWART, PUBLISHER INC.

New

York

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

SECOND IMPRESSION

1950

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Contents

THE GREAT TRADITION

GEORGE ELIOT
i

page

II

The Early Phase

Romola to Middlemarch
Daniel Deronda and The Portrait of a Lady

28

ii

47
79

iii

III

HENRY JAMES
i

To The Portrait
The

of a Lady

126 154

ii

Later James

IV

JOSEPH
i

CONRAD
173

Minor Works and No^romo

Victory,

ii

The

Secret Agent,

Under Western
201

Eyes,

and Chance
'
:

'

HARD

TIME'S

An

Analytic Note

227

APPENDIX
Daniel Deronda
:

Conversation

249

Acknowledgments
The
greater part of this

book appeared
matter
I

first

in Scrutiny,

and for permission to >use

Editors.

this

am

indebted to the

part of the critique of Henry James appeared in the issue for March, 1937. That of Conrad appeared in June and October, 1941, and that of George Eliot
in 1945

The second

and 1946.

have

also

to

thank Messrs. John

estate,

Farquharson, acting on behalf of the Henry James'

for kind permission to reprint Daniel Deronda:
versation, aj

Con-

an Appendix to this volume. My sense of my immeasurable indebtedness, in every page of this book, to my wife cannot be adequately expressed, and I cannot express it at all without an accompanying
consciousness of shortcomings
part in

them

that
all

makes me

insist at

no one but myself has any the same time on

F.

my

claim to

the responsibility.

R.

L.

know how hard

it is.

One

needs something to
little

make ones mood

that
It

deep and sincere.

There are so many

frets

prevent our

coming at the real naked essence of our

doesnt it?

vision.

sounds boshy,
one.

I often think one ought

it

to be able to

pray, before

works

and then leave

to the Lord.

Isnt

it

hard, hard work

to

come

to real

grips with one's imagination

throw everything over-

board.

I always feel as if I stood naked for thejire of Almighty

through

God to go
to be so

me

and

it's

rather

an awful feeling.

One

has

I often think of my dear " Saint Lawrence on his gridiron, when he said, Turn me over,
terribly religious,
to be

an

artist.

brothers,

am

91

9
.

done enough on

this side

To

ERNEST COLLINGS.

FEB. 24, 1913

THE LETTERS OF

D. H.

LAWRENCE

THE GREAT TRADITION

'
.
.
.

not dogmatically but deliberately

JOHNSON
:

.'

Preface

to

Shakespeare

Henry James

novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, great English Conrad to stop for the moment at and

Joseph

that comparatively safe point in history. Since Jane Austen, for needs to be studied at considerable length, I confine special reasons, have found me narrow, myself in this book to the last three. Critics
I have no doubt that opening proposition, whatever may will be adduced in reinforcement of and to it, justify explain say their strictures. It passes as fact (in s^ite of the printed evidence) that I pronounce Milton negligible, dismiss 'the Romantics', and

and

my

hold

that, since

Donne, there is no poet we need bother about except

Hopkins and
attributed to

Eliot.

The view,

me

that,

suppose, will be as confidently Austen, George Eliot, James and except Jane
I

Conrad, there are no novelists in English worth reading. The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgment that makes an impact that is, never to say anything. I still, however, think that the best way to prodiscvss'on is ',o be as clear as possible with oneself mote
profitable

and judges, to try and establish the essential to state them as the discriminations in given field of interest, and it seems to if necessary). And clearly as one can (for disagreement, are discriminations some me that in the field of fiction challenging
about what one
sees

and offers such insidious of confusions judgment and to critical temptations to complacent indolence. It is of the field of fiction belonging to Literature that I am thinking, and I am thinking in particular of the present vogue of Wilkie the Victorian Trollope, Charlotte Yonge, Mrs. Gaskell,
veiy

much

called for

the field

is

so large

age.

Collins, diaries

Shorthouse

Reade, Charles and Henry Kingsley, Marryat, one after another the minor novelists of that period

1 The novelist who has not been revived is Disn^tf. Yet, though he is no t one of the great novelists, he is so alive and intelligent as to deserve permanent and Tancredi his currency, at any rate in the trilogy Coningsfy, Sybil

THE GREAT TRADITION

to our attention, written up, and publicized and there is a marked by broadcast, tendency to suggest that they not only have various kinds of interest to offer but that they are living classics. (Are not they all in the literary histories ?) There
are being

commended

are Jane Austen, Mrs.

classical novelists.
It is

Gaskell, Scott,

'the Brontes', 1 Dickens,

all,

Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope and so on,

necessary to
insist,

one gathers,

to be

made, and that

far

then, that there are important distinctions from all of the names in the literary his-

tories really

ment.

And

as a recall to a

belong to the realm of significant creative achievedue sense of differences it is well to start

the major novelists who way major poets, in the sense that they not of the the art for practitioners and readers, only change possibilities but that they are significant u terms of the human awareness they

by

distinguishing the

few

really great

count in the same

as the

promote; awareness of the

interests as expressed in these

possibilities

of life. 2

books

politician who has a sociologist's ment in his time are so mature.

1
2

the interests of a supremely intelligent understanding of civilization and its move-

See note 'The Brontes', page 27 below. Characteristic of the confusion I am contending against is the fashion (for which the responsibility seems to go back to Virginia Woolf and Mr. E. M. Forster) of talking of Moll Flanders as a 'great novel*. Defoe was a remarkable writer, but all that need be said about him as a novelist was said by Leslie Stephen in Hours in a Library (First Series). He made no pretension to practising the novelist's art, and matters little is an influence. In fact, the only influence that need be noted is that represented by the use made of him in the nineteen-twenties by the practitioners of the fantastic conte (or pseudo-moral fable) with its empty pretence of significance. Associated with this use of Defoe is the use that was made in much the same milieu of Sterne, in whose irresponsible (and nasty) trifling, regarded as in

some way extraordinarily significant and mature, was found a sanction for attributing value to other trifling. The use of Bunyan by T. F. Powys is quite another matter. It is a mark of the genuine nature of Mr. Powys's creative gift (his work seems to me not
to have had due recognition) that he has been able to achieve a kind of traditional relation to

Bunyan
is little

Otherwise there
influence.

to have been for two centuries one of the such a way that he counts immeasurably in the English-speaking consciousness. It is, perhaps, worth saying that his influence would tend strongly to reinforce the un-Flaubertian quality of the

And

yet

we know him
classics,

especially, of course, in Mr. Westons Good Wine. that can be said with confidence about Bunyan as a/i

most frequented of all

and

in

line

see p. 8

(Bunyan, Lord David Cecil might point out a Purican), as well as to co-operate with the Jonsonian traction of morally significant typicality in characters.
classical fiction

of English

below

was

THE GREAT TRADITION

To
insist

on

the pre-eminent
;

few in
it is

ent to tradition

on

the contrary,

ing what tradition is. 'Tradition', and often very little at all. forces

way is not to be indifferway towards understandof course, is a term with many

this

tlu

There

is

a habit

nowadays of

suggesting that there is a tradition of 'the English Novel', and that all that can be said of the tradition (that being its peculiarity) is that 'the English Novel' can be anything you like. To distinguish the

major novelists in the spirit proposed is to form a more useful idea of tradition (and to recognize that the conventionally established view of the past of English fiction needs to be drastically revised). It is in terms of the major novelists, those significant in the way
suggested, that tradition, in any serious sense, has its significance. To be important historically is not, of course, to be necessarily one of the significant few. Fielding deserves the place of importance

given

him

distinction

in the literary histories, but he hasn't the kind of classical we are also invited to credit him with. He is important

but because he leads to J. B. Priestley is to feel that life isn't distinction whose to Jane Austen, appreciate much time to Fielding or of one's to giving permit long enough

not because he leads to Mr.

any to Mr.

Priestley.

Fielding made Jane Austen possible by opening the central tradition of English fiction. In fact, to say that the English novel began

with him
pleted the

is

as reasonable as

such propositions ever are.

Tatler

He compages

work begi'n by Th^

se^ the

and The

Spectator, in the

that this development should occur by way ofjournalism being in the natural course of things. To the art of presenting character and mceurs learnt in that school (he himself, before he became a novelist, was both he joined a narrative habit the playwright and periodical essayist) indicated is of which nature by his own phrase, 'comic sufficiently

of which we

drama turning into

the novel

epic in prose'.
lively

That the eighteenth century, which hadn't much reading to choose from, but had much leisure, should have
;

found Tom Jones exhilarating is not surprising nor is it that Scott, and Coleridge, should have been able to give that work superlative are formed in comparison, and what opportunipraise. Standards ties had they for that ? But the conventional talk about the perfect
'

construction' of

Tom]ones

hear triumphantly and you may

(the late Hugh^Walpole brought it out it in almost any course of lectrres

3

THE GREAT TRADITION

on 'the English Novel') is absurd. There can't be subtlety of organization .without richer matver to organize, and subtler interests, than Fielding has to offer. He is credited with range and variety and it is true that some episodes take place in the country and some in
in the churchyard and some in the inn, some on the and some in the bed-chamber, and so on. But we haven't high-road to read a very large proportion of Tom Jones in order to discover the limits of the essential interests it has to offer us. Fielding's attitudes, and his concern with human nature, are simple, and not such as to produce an effect of anything but monotony (on a mind, that is,

Town, some

demanding more than external action) when exhibited at the length of an 'epic in prose'. What he can do appears to best advantage in Joseph Andrews. Jonathan Wild, with its famous irony, seems to me mere hobbledehoydom (much as one applauds the determination to explode the gangster-hero), and by Amelia Fielding has gone soft.

We all know that if we want a more inward interest it is to Richardson we must go. And there is more to be said for Johnson's preference, and his emphatic way of expressing it at Fielding's exis

pense, than

generally recognized.

Richardson's strength in the

analysis of emotional and moral states is in any case a matter of common acceptance and Clarissa is a really impressive work. But it's no use pretending that Richardson can ever be made a current
;

classic again.
its

The

substance of interest that he too has to offer

is

in

own way extremely limited in ran^e and \ anety, and the demand

he makes on the reader's time is in proportion and absolutely so immense as to be found, in general, prohibitive (though I don't

know

that

wouldn't sooner read through again Clarissa than

A la

recherche du temps perdu). But can understand well his reputation and influence should have been so

we

enough why
is

great throughbut

Europe; and his immediately relevant historical importance he too is a major fact in the background of Jane Austen. plain
:
:

The social gap between them was too wide, however, for his work to be usable by her directly the more he tries to deal with ladies and gentlemen, the more immitigably vulgar he is. It was Fanny Burney who, by transposing him into educated life, made it possible for Jane Austen to absorb what he had to teach her.
Here

we

have one of the important

lines

of English
It is

literary history

Pdchardson-Fanny Burney-Jane Austen.

4

important because

THE GREAT TRADITION

Jane Austen
in the
is

one of the truly great writers, and herself a major fact background of other great writers. Not that Fanny Burney
is

there

the only other novelist who counts in her formation ; she read all was to read, and took all that was useful to her which wasn't
lessons.
1

In fact, Jane Austen, in her indebtedness to others, an provides exceptionally illuminating study of the nature of originand she ality, exemplifies beautifully the relations of 'the individual

only

talent' to tradition.

If the influences bearing

on her hadn't com-

prised something fairly to be called tradition she couldn't have found herself and her true direction ; but her relation to tradition is a
creative one. She not only makes tradition for those coming after, but her achievement has for us a retroactive effect as we look back
:

beyond her

we

see in

what goes

potentialities and significances us, she creates the tradition we

like the

and see because of her, 6ut in such a way that, for brought see leading down to her. Her work,
before,

work of all great creative writers, gives a meaning to the past. Having, in examinatiou-papers and undergraduate essays, come
too often on the proposition that 'George Eliot is the first novelist', I finally tracked it down to Lord David Cecil's

much

modern

Early Victorian Novelists. In so far as it is possible to extract anything clear and coherent from the variety of things that Lord David Cecil that George Eliot, says by way of explaining the phrase, u is this
:

being concerned, not to offer 'primarily an entertainment', but to

explore a significant theme a theme significant in its bearing on the 'serious problems and preoccupations of mature life' (p. 291) breaks with 'those fundamental conventions both of form and

matter within which the English novel up

structed' (p. 288).

till

then had been con-

to assume of Jane to be that the most one appears commonly held Clearly, she creates delightful characters ('Compare Jane Austen's characterization with Scott's' 2 a recurrent examination-question) and lets

What

account, then, are

we

Austen

For the relation of Jane Austen to other writers see the essay by Q. D. Critical Theory ofJane Austen s Writings, in Scrutiny Vol. X, No. I. Leavis, 2 Scott was primarily a kind of inspired folk-lorist, qualified to have done in fiction something analogous to the ballad-opera:, the only live part of

',

Redgauntlet now is Wandering Willie's Tale', ahd 'The Two Drovers' remains in esteem while the heroics of the historical novels can no longer command respect. He was a great and very intelligent man; but, not having the creative writer's interest in literature, he made1 no serious attempt to work
*

THE GREAT TRADITION

us forget our cares and
civilized life.

noral tensions in the

comedy of

pre-

eminently 1 to be closely related to that expounded by Mr. Clive Bell. Lord David Cecil actually oofhpares George Eliot with Jane Austen. The passage is worth quoting because the inadequate ideas

The

idea of 'civilization' invoked appears

of form ('composition') and moral interest it implies ideas of the relation between 'art* and 'life' as it concerns the novelist are very what has been said about (Its consistency with representative. George Eliot earlier in the same e^say isn't obvious, but that doesn't disturb the reader by the time he has got here.)
'It is also easy to see why her form doesn't satisfy us as Jane Austen's does. Life is chaotic, art is orderly. The novelist's problem is to evoke an orderly composition which is also a con-

vincing picture of
solves this
life

life.

t is

Jane Austen's triumph that she

problem perfectly, fully satisfies tne rival claims of Now George Eliot does not. She sacrifices life to urt. Her plots are too neat and symmetrical to be true. We do not feel them to have grown naturally from their situation like a flower, but to have been put together deliberately and calcuand
art.

latedly like a building.'

(p. 322.)

own form and break away from the bad tradition of the eighteenthcentury romance. Of his books, TLe Heart of Midlothian comes the nearest to being a great novel, but hardly Is that too many allowances and deductions have to be made. Out of Scott a bad tradition ^ame. It spoiled Fenimore Cooper, who had new and first-hand interests and the makings of a distinguished novelist. And with Stevenson it took on literary* sophistication and
out his
:
*

fine writing.

uses.

for the revolt against Nature", he continued, "that, too, has its conduces to the cult of the stylized, the conventionalized, the artificial, just for their own sakes, it also, more broadly, makes for civilization."
If
it

*"As

"'Civilization?'* I asked. "At what point between barbarism and decadence does civilization reign ? If a civilized community be defined as one where you find aesthetic preoccupations, subtle thought, and polished intercourse, is civilization necessarily desirable? Aesthetic preoccupations are not inconsistent with a wholly inadequate conception of the range and power of art;

thought may be subtle and yet trivial; and polished intercourse may be L. H, Myers, The Root and the Flower, p. 418. singularly uninteresting**.* Myers hasn't the great novelist's technical interest in method and presentment; he slips very easily into using the novel as a vehicle. That is, we feel that he is not primarily a novelist. Yet he is sufficiently one to have made of

The Root and the Flowef a very remarkable novel. Anyone seriously interested in literature is likely to have found the first reading a memorable expericrke and to have found also that repeated re-readings have not exhausted the
interest.

THE GREAT TRADITION

Jane Austen's plots, and her novels iirgeneral, were put together 1 very 'deliberately and calculatedly (if not 'like a building'). But
'

her interest in 'composition' is not something to be put over against her interest in life ; nor does she 3ffer an 'aesthetic* value that is
separable from moral significance. The principle of organization, and the principle of development, in her work is an intense moral
interest

of her own in life that is in the first place a preoccupation with certain problems tnat life compels on her as personal ones. 2 She is intelligent and serious enough to be able to impersonate her moral tensions as she strives, in her art, to become more fully conto

scious

of them, and to learn what, in the interests of life, she ought do with them. Without her intense moral preoccupation she

wouldn't have been a great novelist. This account of her would, if I had rared to use the formula, have been my case for calling Jane Austen, and not anyone later, 'the first

George Eliot, Lord David Cecil form of George Eliot's says: novels are the same laws that condition those of Henry James and Wells and Conrad and Arnold Bennett.' I don't know what Wells is doing in that sentence there is an elementary distinction to be made between the discussion of problems and ideas, and what we find in the great novelists. And, tbi all the generous sense of comIn applying
it

modern novelist'.

to

'In fact, the laws ^conditioning the

mon humanity

to be found in his best

work, Bennett seems to

'

me

never to have been disturbed enough by life to come anywhere near greatness. But it would certainly be reasonable to say that the laws
conditioning the form ofJane Austen's novels are the same laws that condition those of George Eliot and Henry James and Conrad*. Jane Austen, in fact, is the inaugurator of the great tradition of the English novel and by 'great tradition' I mean the tradition to

which what

The
with

great in English fiction belongs. in that tradition are all very much concerned novelists great 'form' ; they are all very original technically, having turned
is

their genius to the

and procedures.
1

working out of their own appropriate methods But the peculiar quality of their preoccupation
3
9

See 'Lady Susan* into 'Mansfield Park

2.

Vol. X, No.
2

by 1

"'Q.

D. Leavis

in Scrutiny,

D.

W.

Harding deals illuminatingly with

this

matter in Regulated

Hatred:

An Aspect of the Work ofJane Austen (sie Scrutiny, Vol. VIII, No. 4).

THE GREAT TRADITION

with 'form'
Flaubert.
*

may

be brcright out by a contrasting reference to

D. H. Reviewing Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Vene&ig, of the 'will the world the to as Lawrence adduces Flaubert figuring he stuff the lord over writer to be greater than and undisputed of indicative is writes'. This attitude in art, as Lawrence points out, 'stood he comments, an attitude in life or towards life. Flaubert,
For the later Aesthetic writers, life as from a leprosy'. in general, represent in a weak kind of way the attitude that Flaubert maintained with a perverse heroism, 'form' and 'style' are

away from

who,

ends to be sought for themselves, and the chief preoccupation is with elaborating a beautiful style to apply to the chosen subject.

There

is

George Moore,
is still

distance),

held to be

who in the best circles, I gather (from a among the very greatest masters of prose,
experience for what
'

though

give

my own lirrited

it is

worth

will lay his it is very hard to find an admirer who, being pressed, novels beautiful' of the one read has he hand on his heart and swear an olve is to e\ 'The novelist's problem orderly composi-

through.
tion

which is also a convincing picture of life' this is the way an admirer of George Moore sees it. Lord David Cecil, attributing this way to Jane Austen, and crediting her with a superiority over of life and art', explains George Eliot in 'satisfying the rival claims this superiority, we gather, L / a freedom from moral preoccupations a her to enjoy. that he (George Eliot, he tells us, was
supposes
Puritan,
2 and earnestly bent on instruction. ) As a matter of fact, when we examine the formal perfection of Emma, we find that it can be appreciated only in terms of the moral

the novelist's peculiar interest in preoccupations that characterize

life.

Those

who

suppose

'composition' that is can give no adequate reason for the view that Emma and no intelligent account of its perfection of form.

beauty of to life', 'truth with combined, miraculously,

it

to be

an

'aesthetic matter', a

is

It is

a great novel, in the same

way

true

their art gives

Moore
1

of the other great English novelists that their interest in them the opposite of an affinity with Pater and George it is, brought to an intense focus, an unusually developed

Phoenix^ p. 308.

2
'

She

is

a moralist and a highbrow, the

instructive.'

Ht humour is less affected by her intellectual approach.

8

need not be

together. Jokes, thank heaven, E^rly Victorian Novelists, p. 299.

two handicaps going

THE GREAT TRADITION

interest in

from having anything of Flaubert's disgust or disdain or boredom, they are all distinguished by a vital capacity a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked for
life.

For, far

experience,

moral
It

intensity.

ofJane Austen and might be commented that what I have said of unqualified novelist of her successors is only what can be said any the is this But there is and is true. point an greatness. That fiction classics of English belong to English tradition, and these great a tradition that, in the talk about 'creating characters' and
it;

and the appreciation of Trollope and Mrs. Gaskell and Thackeray and Meredith and Hardy and Virginia Woolf, It is not merely that we have no appears to go unrecognized. Flaubert (and I hope I haven't seemed to suggest that a Flaubert is no more worth having than a George Moore). Positively, there is a continuity from Jane Austen. It is not for nothing that George and wrote one of the earliest Eliot admired her work
'creating worlds',

profoundly,

The writer whose intellectual some critics as her* handicap weight and moral more than an ideal contemcertainly saw in Jane Austen something
appreciations of
it

to be published. earnestness strike

1 porary of Lytton Strachey.

What one

from another, whose genius and

different,
is

artist learns great original are necessarily very problems

the hardest kind of 'influence' to define, even

see

it

manifestation of influence

to have been of the profoundest importance. is to be seen in this kind of passage

daily

when we The obvious

:

'A

little

embroidery had
;

been a constant element in Mrs.

Transome's

life

to produce what the resource of many a well-born

that soothing occupation of taking stitches neither she nor any one else wanted, was then

and unhappy woman.'

'In short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after was
all,

could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted.
a

ready

man

It is
all

perhaps worth insisting that Peacock

in the

is

more than

that too.

He

is

not at Went.
is

same

class as the

Norman Douglas of South Windw& They

reading

In his ironical treatment of contemporary jfociety and civilization he which are obviously seriously applying serious standards, so that hjs books, not novels in the same sense as Jane Austen's, have a permanent life as light for minds with mature interests. indefinitely re-readable

THE GREAT TRADITION

Why not

? A man's mind what there is of it has always the advantage of being masculine, as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition,'
;

The kind of irony here

it is

is

characteristic

enough of George Eliot

plainly akin to Jane Austen's though what she found was ;

readily assimilated to her own needs. irony has a serious background, and is
tion'.

In Jane Austen herself the

George

display of civilizaEliot wouldn't have been interested in it if she hadn't

significance
its

no mere

'

perceived

its full

relation to the essential

moral
to the

interest offered

by

Jane Austen's

art.

And
is

here

we come

profoundest kind of influence, that which

ness.
is

not manifested in like-

dtbts one great writer can owe another the realization of unlikeness (there is, of course, no significant

One of the supreme

unlikeness without the

ness

common concern and the common seriousessential

of concern

with

the difference between

human issues). One way of putting George Eliot and the Trollopes whom we
is

are invited to consider along with her

to say that she

was capable

of understanding Jane Austen's greatness and capable of learning from her. And except for Jane Austen there was no novelist to learn from none whose work had any bearing on her own essential

problems

as a novelist.

Henry James
case too there

also
is

admirer of Jane Austen, 1 and in his that obvious aspect of influence which can be

was

a great

brought out by quotation. And there is for him George Eliot as well, coming between. In seeing him in an English tradition I am not slighting the fact of his American origin ; an origin that doesn't

make him

less

of an English novelist, of the great tradition, than

Conrad later. That he was an American is a fact of the first importance for the critic, as Mr. Yvor Winters brings out admirably in his 2 Mr. Winters discusses him as a product of the book, Maules Curse. 1 He can't have failed to note with interest that Emma fulfils, by anticipation, a prescription of his own everything is presented through Emma's
:

dramatized consciousness, and the essential effects depend on that. 2 New Directions, Norfolk, Conn. (1938). To insist that James is in the English tradition is not to deny that he is in an American tradition too. He
is

in the tradition that includes Hawthorne and Melville. He is related to Hawthorne even more closely than Mr. Winters suggests. A study of the very
t

10

THE GREAT TRADITION

New England ethos in its last phase, when a habit of moral strenuousness remained after dogmatic Puritanism had evaporated and the vestigial moral code was evaporating too. This throws a good deal

of light on the elusiveness that Attends James's peculiar ethical sensiWe have, characteristically, in reading him, a sense that bility. important choices are in question and that our finest discrimination is being challenged, while at the same time we can't easily produce for discussion any issuer that have moral substance to correspond. It seems relevant also to note that James was actually a New Yorker. In any case, he belonged by birth and upbringing to that refined civilization of the old European America which we have learnt from Mrs. Wharton to associate with New York. His bent

was to find a field for his ethical sensibility in the appreciative study of such a civilization the civilizatior in question being a matter of personal relations between members of a mature and sophisticated Society. It is doubtful whether at any time in any place he could have found what would have satisfied his implicit demand: the actual fine art of civilized social intercourse that would have justified the flattering intensity of expectation he brought to it in the form of his curiously transposed and subtilized ethical sensibility. History, it is plain, was already leaving him Aeradnt in his own country, so that it is absurd to censure him, as some American critics have done, for pulling up his roots. He could hardly become deeply rooted elsevhere, but the congenial soil and climate were in Europe rather than in the country of his birth. There is still some l idealizing charm about his English country-house in The Portrait
'

'

early

work shows Hawthorne

influence
is

as a

major influence

as the

major influence.

The

apparent there in James's use of symbolism; and this use develops into something that characterizes his later work as a whole. 1 Though it has in justice to be remembered that the inhabitants of the house in The Portrait of a Lady, the Touchetts, are Americans, and that there

significance in the difference between the atmosphere of intellectual aliveness they establish and the quite other English atmosphere of the Warburton home. Moreover, Isabel rejects the admirable Lord Warburton for
is critical

reasons much like those for which the heroine of An International Episode rejects the nice English lord, who, by Touchett standards (shall we say ?), is not good enough. And in story after story James, with the exasperation of an intellectual writer, expresses his disdainful sense of the utter unintellectuality of the country-house class. He always knew th^tlie hadn't really found the ideal civilization he looked for; so that there is something like a tragic significance in the two juxtaposed notes of this passage from an early letter: 'But don't envy me too much; for the, British country-house has at

II

THE GREAT TRADITION

of a Lady, but that

book
It is

is

one of the

classics

of the language, and

we

can't -simply regret the conditions that

and the greatness of Henry James as intellectual civilization* comes out in a way that, even poet-novelist for the most innocently deferential reader, should dispose of Meredith's pretensions for ever. James's wit is real and always natural, his poetry intelligent as well as truly rich, and there is nothing bogus, cheap or vulgar about his idealizations certain human potentialities
l

so finely imagined. pare the two books,

what The

Egoist

is

produced something supposed to be. Com-

of 'high

are nobly celebrated. That he is a novelist

is

who

has closely studied his fellow-craftsmen

plain and got from them more than lessons in the craft. It is plain, for instance, in The Portrait of a Lady that he sees England

through

literature.

We

krow

that

he turned an attentive pro-

on the French masters. He has (in his early mature an work) easy and well-bred technical sophistication, a freedom from any marks of provinciality, and a quiet air of knowing his way about the world that distinguish him from among his contemporaries in the language. If from the English point of view he is
fessional eye

unmistakably an American, he is also very much a European. But there could be no question of his becoming a French master
in English, and the help he could get from the Continent towards 2 It was solving his peculiar problem was obviously limited. James

moments, for a cosmopolitanized American, an insuperable natness. On the other hand, to do it justice, there is no doubt of its being one of the ripest
fruits

of time ... of the highest results of civilization.'To Miss Alice James, ijth Dec. 1877: The Letters of Henry James^ Vol. I, p. 64. 1 See p. 128 below.
2
*

Your remarks on my French

be heeded.
But
it's

tricks in

my letters are doubtless most just,

an odd thing that such tricks should grow at a time when my last layers of resistance to a long-encroaching weariness and satiety with die French mind and its utterance has fallen from me like a garment. I have done with 'em, forever, and am turning English all over. I desire only to feed on English life and the contact of English minds I wish greatly I knew some. Easy and smooth-flowing as life is in Paris, I would throw it over to-morrow for an even very small chance to plant myself for a while in England. I have got nothing important out of Paris nor am likely to. ... I know the Theatre Francais by heart " Daniel Deronda (Dan'i himself) is indeed a dead, thougn amiable, failure. But the book is a large affair: I shall write an article of some sort about it. To All desire is dead within me to produce something on George Sand.' William James, 29th July 1876 : The Letters, Vol. I, p. 5 1.
shall
!

and

12

THE GREAT TRADITION

who put his finger on the weakness in Madame Bovary
:

the discrep-

ancy between the technical (' aesthetic'} intensity, with the implied attribution of interest to the subject, and the actual moral and human paucity of this subject on any mature valuation. His own problem was to justify in terms of an intense interest in sophisticated civiliza'

tion* his

New England ethical sensibility. The author who offered

would have
to be very different

a congenial study
It

from

Flaubert.

was, as a matter of fart, a very English novelist, the living representative of the great tradition a writer as unlike Flaubert as

George Eliot. George Eliot's reputation being what

it is, this

recommend

itself to

everyone immediately.
create

suggestion won't 'Like most writers,

from the world of her personal exand low^r-class rural England of the perience 1 she was confined by a Midlands.' Moreover, nineteenth-century Puritanism such as James (apart from the fact that he wasn't lower'the enmiddle-class) had left a generation or two behind him his of dislike of must Puritanism forget lightened person to-day when he reads George Eliot'. Weighty, provincial, and pledged to the 'school-teacher's virtues', she was not qualified by nature or breeding to appreciate high civilization, even if she had been privileged to make its acquaintance. These seem to be accepted commonplaces which shows how little even those who write about her have read her work. Actually, though 'Puritan' is a word used with many intentions, 2 it is misleading to call her a Puritan at all, and utterly false to say
George Eliot could only
in her case middle:

All the quotations in this paragraph are from Lord David Cecil Unless you specify that, of the definitions Lord David Cecil gives us to choose from, the one you have in mind is that given here: *But the moral code founded on that Puritan theology had soaked itself too deeply into the fibre of her thought and feeling for her to give it up as well. She might not believe in heaven and hell and miracles, but she believed in right and wrong, and man's paramount obligation to follow right, as strictly as if she were Bunyan himself. And her standards of right and wrong were the Puritan
2

She admired truthfulness and chastity and industry and selfdisapproved of loose living and recklessness and deceit and selfindulgence.' I had better confess that I differ (apparently) from Lord David Cecil in sharing these beliefs, admirations and disapprovals, so that the reader knows my bias at once. And they seem to me favourable to the production of great literature. I will add (exposing myself completely) that the enlightenment or aestheticism or sophistication that feels an amused superiority to them
standards.
restraint, she

13

THE GREAT TRADITION

that her 'imagination had to scrape what nourishment it could from the bare bones of Puritan ethics'. There was nothing restrictive or

what she brought from her Evana radically reverent attitude towards life, a was gelical background of any real profound seriousness of the kind that is a first condition a great her made that nature in human interest intelligence, and an to Puritana relation such with psychologist. Such a psychologist, ism, was, of all the novelists open to his study, the one peculiarly relevant to James's interests and problems. That, atany rate, becomes an irresistible proposition when it is added that, in her most mature
timid about her ethical habit
;

work, she
her) deals

deals

and

(in spite

of the accepted commonplaces about

consummately, with just that 'civilization' which was field. To say this is to have the confident wisdom chosen James's of hindsight, for it can be shown, with a conclusiveness rarely
that possible in these matters,
Eliot.
1

James did actually go

to school to

George That is a fair way of putting the significance of the relation between The Portrait of a Lady and Daniel Deronda that I discuss in my examination of the latter book. That relation demonstrated, nodithe general relation I posit ing more is needed in order to establish
James's distinctive bent proclaims itself the uncompromisingly in what he does with Daniel Deronda (on

between the two

novelists.

view, to triviality and boredom, and that out of triviality comes leads, in ot and the Flower, and evil (as L. H. Myers notes in the preface to The illustrates in the novel itself, especially in the sections dealing with the

my

'Camp').
1 So the footnote on p. 12 above takes on a marked significance a significance confirmed very strikingly by Percy Lubbock's summary of letters written at about the same time: 'In Paris he settled therefore, in the autumn of 1875, taking rooms at 29 Rue du Luxembourg. He began to write The to American, to contribute Parisian Letters to the New York Tribune, and He made the valued acquaintfrequent the society of a few of his compatriots. ance of Ivan Turgenev, and through him of the group which surrounded Gustave Flaubert Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de MauBut the letters which follow will show the kind of passant, Zola and others. doubts that began to arise after a winter in Paris doubts of the possibility of Paris as a place where an American imagination could really take root and flourish. He found the circle of literature tightly closed to outside influences ; it seemed to exclude all culture but its own after a fashion that aroused his of having watched opposition; he speaks sarcastically on one occasion while he reflected and Flaubert Daudet's/<zc, seriously discussing Turgenev to read, Daniel thalt none of the three had read, or knew English enough Deronda! The Letters of Henry James, Vol. I, p. 41.

14

THE GREAT TRADITION

The Portrait of a part of whicii I call it Gwendolen Harleth to that). a variation for the fact I out amounts ; plain point Lady The moral substance of George Eliot's theme is subtilized into some-

good

is

thing going with the value James sets study of conscience has disappeared.
*

on 'high

civilization'

her

charming and

girl,

determined to

live

finely', confidently exercises

intelligent her 'free

ethical sensibility' (Mr. Winters' phrase) and discovers that she is capable of disastrous misvaluation (which is not surprising, seeing

not only
she

how

inexperienced she

is,

but

how much
is

explicitnesses, overtones

and

fine shades

the

an affair of inworld of discourse

moves in). It is a tragedy in which, for her, neither remorse is involved, nor, in the ordinary sense, the painful growth of conscience, * though no doubt her ethical sensibility' matures.
Along the line revealed by the contrast between the two novels James develops an art so unlike George Eliot's that, but for the fact
(which seems to have escaped notice) of the relation of The Portrait of a Lady to Daniel Deronda, it would, argument being necessary, have been difficult to argue at all convincingly that there was the
significant relation between the novelists. And I that I not concerned to establish indebtedness.

had

better insist
I

am

What

have in

the fact of the great tradition and the apartness of the two great novelists above the ruck of Gaskells and Trollopes and Merediths. Of the earlier novelists it was George Eliot alone (if we
is

mind

except the minor relevance of Jane Austen) whose

direct

work had

It had this significant bearing on his own problem. she a and because was in her because maturest novelist, bearing great

and

she handled with unprecedented subtlety and refinement the * personal relations of sophisticated characters exhibiting the civilization'
'best society', and used, in so doing, an original notation psychological corresponding to the fineness of her psycho-

work

of the

logical
far

and moral insight. Her moral seriousness was for James very from a disqualification it qualified her for a kind of influence
;

that neither Flaubert nor the

admired Turgenev could have.

Circumstances discussed above made James peculiarly dependent on literature ; the contact with George Eliot's distinctive kind of
greatness was correspondingly important for him. It is significant that Madame de Mauves (1874), the early story in which he uses something like the theme of The Portrait of a Lady, has a

wo*.dy

15

THE GREAT TRADITION

can't help feeling) of the cobwebbiness quality premonitory (one can't doubt that George his lace in that afflicted him phase. in the Eliot counts for something incomparably superior concrete-

We

of The Portrait of a Lady. In that book, and in its successor, The Bostonians, his art is at its most concrete, and least subject to the weakness attendant on his subtlety. It is not derivativeness that is in
ness

'We relation between two original geniuses. question, but the cannot attempt to trace/ says Mr. Van Wyck Brooks in The Pilgrimof a creative Henry James, 'the astonishing development the simple transcended a dozen of course the in years, faculty which, art of The American, the factitious local-colourism of
age of

It is more than a guess mature perfection of Washington Square. some part. had Eliot that, in that development, George

plot-maker's Roderick Hudson, and rendered itself capable of the serene beauty of The Portrait of a Lady, the masterly assurance of The Bostonians, the 9

The reader is likely to comment, I suppose, on the degree in which my treatment ofJames is taken up with discussing his limitations

will

and the regrettable aspects of his later development. Since it also be noted that, of my three novelists, he, in terms of space,

relait might be concluded that a corresponding gets least attention, tive valuation is implied. I had, then, perhaps better say that there

between valuation and length of treathowever, deny that, of the three, James seems to me to give decidedly most cause for dissatisfaction and qualification. He is, all the same, one of the great. His registration of sophisticated
is

no such
I

relation intended

ment.

will not,

human

consciousness

is

one of the

classical creative

achievements

And when he is at his best it added something as only genius can. human that something is seen to be of great significance. He creates
humanity capable of communicating a nuance may by the finest shades of inflection and implication and the perceptive reengage a whole complex moral economy Even The of a major valuation or choice. index the be sponse in which the extremely developed subtlety of treatAwkward
an ideal
civilized sensibility
;

as one would wish from the hypertrophy that overcame him, seems to me a classic in no other work can finally in so astonishing a measure like that astonishing we find

ment

is

Age, not as remote

anything

successful

use of sophisticated 'society* dialogue.

fact, it is

In considering James's due status, in 16

not easy to say just

THE GREAT f RAt>ITIOtf

where the
interest

of the
it

classical artist turns into the interest

of the

becomes in some places boring to the point of unreadableness. Yet there is a tacit conspiracy to admire some of the works that fall, partly, at any rate (whoHy, one must conclude, for the admirers who risk explanatory comment on them), under this description. And here is sufficient reason why an attempt to promote a due appreciation of James's genius should give a good deal of discriminatory attenclassical 'case*.

But

seems to

me obvious

that the 'case*

tion to the tendencies that, as they develop, turn vital subtlety into

something

else.

When we come to
indeed significantly

Conrad we

can't,

by way of insisting
in

that he

is

and of it, neatly and conhim to one relate novelist. Rather, we have English clusively any to stress his foreignness that he was a Pole, whose first other lan1 I remember guage was French. remarking to Andre Chevrillon how surprising a choice it was on Conrad's part to write in English, especially seeing he was so clearly a student of the French masters.
'in' the tradition

And I remember

ing, since Conrad's

the reply, to the effect that it wasn't at all surpriswork couldn't have been written in French.

M. Chevrillon, with the authority of a perfect bilingual, went on to explain in terms of the characteristics of the two languages why it had to be English. Conrad's themes and interests demanded the
the dramatic energy of English. We might go further and say that Conrad chose to write his novels in

concreteness and action

English for the reasons that led Mariner.

I

him

to

become a

British Master

am not, in making this point,

*

concurring in the emphasis gener-

1 The politeness of Conrad to James and of James to Conrad were of the most impressive kind. Even if they had been addressing each other from the tribunal of the Academic Fran9aise their phrases could not have been more elaborate or delivered more ore rotundo. James always addressed Conrad as "Mon cher confrere**, Conrad almost bleated with the peculiar tone that the Marseillais get into their compliments "Mon cher maitre*' Every thirty '* seconds. When James spoke of me to Conrad he always said : Votre ami, le jeune homme modeste**. They always spoke French together, James using
. .

in Paris in the 'seventies.

an admirably pronounced, correct and rather stilted idiom such as prevailed Conrad spoke with extraordinary speed, fluency and incomprehensibility, a meridional French wiJi as strong a Southern accent as that of garlic in alolL Speaking English he had so strong a French accent that few who did not know him well could understand h'm at first.' Ford Madox Fordj Return to Yesterday, pp. 23-4.
. . .

17

THE GREAT TRADITION

ally laid

on

the Prose Laureate of the

is

Merchant

Service.

What

needs to be stressed

if the great the But it with deal only incidentally. they deal with the sea at all, Merchant Service is for him both a spiritual fact and a spiritual and the interests that made it so for him control and animate

novelist.

Conrad's great novels,

symbol,
his art

have a master of the English everywhere. Here, then, we for its distinctive qualities and because of the language, who chose it moral tradition associated with it, and whose concern with art he
Eliot and Henry James an being like Jane Austen and George innovator in 'form' and method is the servant of a profoundly serious interest in life. To justify our speaking of such a novelist as those three, we are not called on in the tradition, that

represented by to establish particular relations with any one of them. Like James, a great deal from outside, but it was of the utmost imhe

brought

and that there were, in English, great novelists to study. He drew from English literature what he needed, and learnt in that peculiar And for us, way of genius which is so different from imitation.

a serious art of fiction there in English, portance to him that he found

who

have him

as well as the others, there

he

is,

unquestionably a

constitutive part

belonging in the full sense. he may be supposed to have technically sophisticated found fortifying stimulus in James, whom he is quite unlike (though

of the

tradition,

As being

to take a connoisseur's interest in James, in his old age, was able Chance and appreciate with a professional eye the sophistication of 1 the one influence at ail obvious is that But the
*

doing').

actually,

of a writer at the other end of the scale from sophistication, Dickens. As I point out in my discussion of him, Conrad is in certain respects
so like Dickens that
'

it is difficult

to say for just

how much influence

1 Here is the testimony of Conrad's collaborator, Ford Madox Ford: Conrad had the most unbounded, the most generous and the most underbut he did not much like James standing admiration for the Master's work at bottom because was that I James was a New Englander imagine personally. on the other hand pur sang, though he was actually born in New York. James liked neither Conrad nor his work very much. James on the other hand never made fun of Conrad in private. Conrad was never for him "poor dear old" as were Flaubert, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Meredith, Hardy or Sir Edmund Gosse. He once expressed to me as regards Conrad something like an immense respect for his character and achievements. I cannot remember his exact words, but they were something to the effect that Conrad's works imfault or awkprersed him very disagreeably, but he could find no technical wardness about them/ Return to Yesterday, p. 24.
.

18

THE GREAT TRADITION

Dickens counts.
Secret Agent,

He

is

though

undoubtedly there in the London of The except for the unfortunate macabre of the

cab-journey, and one or two local mannerisms he has been transmuted into Conrad. This co-p resence of obvious influence with
assimilation suggests that Dickens may have counted for more in Conrad's mature art (we don't find much to suggest Dickens in the
it early adjectival phase) than seems at first probable suggests that art of in the Conrad's Dickens may have encouraged development
:

of vision and registration in which they say that Dickens exaggerates', says Mr. Santayana, 'it seems to me that they can have no eyes and no ears. They probably have only notions of what things and people are
that extraordinary energy

arc akin.

('When people

they accept them conventionally,

closely related

at their

diplomatic value.')

We

may reasonably, too, in the same way see ^ome Dickensian influence,
and of the same order, in Conrad's use of melodrama,
;

or what would have been melodrama in Dickens

the end
is

for in

Conrad

is

a total significance of a profoundly serious kind. The reason for not including Dickens in the line of great novelists implicit in this last phrase. The kind of greatness in question has
sufficiently defined.

been

permanently among of a great entertainer,

the classics

That Dickens was a great genius and is is certain. But the genius was that and he had for the most part no profounder

responsibility as a creative artist than this description suggests. 1 Praising him magnificently in a very fine critique, Mf. Santayana,
in concluding, says
:

'In every English-speaking

home,

in the four

quarters of the globe, parents and rhildren would do well to read Dickens aloud of a' winter's evening.' This note is right and significant. The adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge

and sustained seriousness. I can think of only one of books in which his distinctive creative genius is controlled throughout to a unifying and organizing significance, and that is Hard Times, which seems, because of its unusualness and comparato an unusual
his

tively small scale, to

is.

Conrad's views on it, supposing it would have been interesting he was

;

have escaped recognition for the great tiling it to have caught his attention, qualified to have written an

apt appreciation. It has a kind of perfection as a

1

work of art that we

Englard.

don't associate

See

Soliloquies in

19

THE GREAT TRADITION

a perfection that is one with the sustained and comfor which among his productions it is unique. seriousness plete in it makes a Though length good-sized modern novel, it is on a small

with Dickens

Dickens it leaves no room for the usual repetitive overand loose inclusiveness. It is plain that he feJt no temptation doing the themes to these, he was too urgently possessed by his themes were too rich, too tightly knit in their variety and too commanding., Certain key characteristics of Victorian civilization had clearly come home to him with overwhelming force, embodied in concrete manifestations that suggested to him connexions and significances he had never realized so fully before. The fable is perfect the symbolic and representative values are inevitable, and, sufficiently plain
scale for
:

at once, yield fresh subtleties as the action develops naturally in its

convincing historical way.

In Gradgrind and Boundcrby we have, in significant relation, two aspects of Victorian Utilitarianism. In Gradgrind it is a serious
creed, devoutly held,

and

so, if repellent (as the

wholly unrespectable ; but we are shown intimate and uncritical terms with Josiah Bounderby, in
have the grossest and
crassest, the

conveys), not Gradgrind as on the most

name

whom we

most utterly unspiritual egotism, and the most blatant thrusting and bullying, to which a period of
'rugged individualism* gave scope. Gradgrind, in fact, marries his daughter to Bounderby. Yet he is represented as a kind of James

an intellectual who gives his children, 0.1 theory, an education ; that reminds us in a very significant way of the Autobiography of the younger Mill. And it is hardly possible to question the justice of
Mill
this vision

blind in

its

of the tendency ofJames Mill's kind of Utilitarianism, so onesidedness, so unaware of its bent and its blindness.
uncalculating spontaneity, the

The generous
hostile, is

warm

flow of

life,

towards which Gradgrindery, practical and

intellectual,

must be

symbolized by Sleary's Horse-riding. richness in symbolic significance of Hard Times is far from adequately suggested by this account. The prose is that of one of

The

the greatest masters of English, and the dialogue very much a test in such an undertaking is consummate ; beautifully natural in its
stylization.
ctuvre.

But

thexe

is

only one Hard Times in the Dickensian

Though

the greatness of

Hard Times passed unnoticed, Dickens

20

THE GREAT TRADITION

couldn't
fail

to have a

wide

influence.

We

have remarked

his

presence in The Secret Agent. It is there again, in a minor way, in George Eliot, in some of her less felicitous characterization ; and it

Henry James, most patently, perhaps, in The Princess 1 It is there Casamassima, but most importantly in Roderick Hudson. once more, and even more interestingly, in D. H. Lawrence, in The Lost Girl. The ironic humour, and the presentation in general, in the first part of that book bear a clear relation to the Dickensian, but are incomparably more mature, and belong to a total serious
is

there in

significance.
I

that,

take the opportunity, at this point, to remark parenthetically, whereas Dickens's greatness has been confirmed by time, it is

quite otherwise with his rival. 'It is usual', says Mr. Santayana, ' to compare Dickens with Thackeray, v hich is like comparing the

grape with the gooseberry there are obvious points of resemblance, and the gooseberry has some superior qualities of its own but you can't make red wine of it.' It seems to me that Thackeray's plrce
;
;

is

fairly

defined,

enough indicated, even if his peculiar quality isn't precisely by inverting a phra:e I found the other day on an exam:

ination-paper

'Trollope
;

greater Trollope nothing to offer the reader whose demand goes beyond the 'creation of characters' and so on. His attitudes, and the essential substance of
is,

that

is a lesser Thackeray'. Thackeray is a he has (apart from some social history)

limi^d that (though, of course, he provides incident it is merely a matter of going on and on close to justify the space taken done the has been by nothing except, of course, that time has been killed (which seems to be all that even some academic critics demand of a novel). It will be fair
interest, are so

and

plot) for the reader

enough to Thackeray if Vanity Fair is kept current as, in a minor way, a classic the conventional estimate that puts him among the great won't stand the touch of criticism. The kind of thing that Thackeray is credited with is done at a mature level by James's friend, Howard Sturgis, in Belchamber, a novel about Edwardian
:

with an appropriateness not always observed in that series, included in The World's Classics). To come back to Conrad and his major quality he is one of those
society
(it is,
:

creative geniuses

whose
1

manifested in their beinq; See pp. 130-140 below 21

distinction
is

THE GREAT TRADITION

peculiarly
alive in their
:

me

peculiarly alive to it;

not

'in the

and Wells and Aldous Huxley, vanguard* in the manner of Shaw of the but sensitive to the stresses changing spiritual climate as they
conscious. begin to be registered by the most

His interest in the

tradition of the Merchant Service as a constructive triumph of the is correlative with his intense consciousness of the dehuman
spirit

distinctive humanities at all levels, but of pendence, not only of the of a normal outer world, on an analogous sanity itself and our sense creative collaboration. His Robinson Crusoe cannot bear a few

are a long blows out his brains. days alone on his island, and the problem was not to rescue the for whom from Austen, Jane way from his isolation, but much the conhighly conscious individual a deradnt, which no doubt counts for was of course, Conrad,
trary.

We

renders his favourite good deal in the intensity with which he of a state then But theme of isolation. something like deracination
a
is

common

to-day

among
is

those to

whom

gtjat novelists are the way genius is,

journalist-critics

likely to matter.
is

Conrad
is

the question of who the is representative in

which

not the

way of those
(It

writers in

whom

acclaim the Zeitgeist.

relevant to note here

that in the early hey-day of Wells and Shaw Conrad wrote Nostromo a great creative masterpiece which, among other things, is essentially

very
is

an implicit comment on their preoccupations, made from a much profounder level of preoccupation than theirs. And it

also relevant to venture that in

at

Mr. Arthur

Koestler's very dis-

tinguished novel, Darkness

also,

we

note, not

born to

Noon, we have the work of a writer the language who knows and admires

Conrad, especially the Conrad of Nostromo and Under Western Eyes. Conrad is incomparably closer to us to-day than Hardy and Meredith are. So, for that matter, is George Eliot. I specify Hardy and Meredith because they are both offered to us among the great novelists, and they are both supposed to be philosophically profound
about
life.

It

will have been gathered that

think neither can sup-

port his reputation.

Eliot)

Hardy (who owes enormously to George the appropriately sympathetic note is struck by Henry James
:

On

'The good

little

Thomas Hardy has scored

which
is

a great success

with Tess

ofthed'Urbervilles, has a singular charm/ This concedes

chock-full of faults and

falsity,

and yet
which,

by implication

all

that properly

can be conceded

unless

we claim more (orjude the Obscure,

22

THE GREAT TRADITION

of all Hardy's works of a major philosophic-tragic ambition, comes nearer to sustaining it, and, in its clumsy way which hasn't the novelists show their profound sureTightness with which the great 1 It is all the same a is ness of their essential purpose impressive. in the early nineteentaken have been little comic th?t Hardy should
twenties
the

Chekhov period

as

pre-eminently the representative

of the 'modern consciousness' or the modern 'sense of the human situation'. As for Meredith, I needn't add anything to what is said
about him by Mr. E.
original milieu in

who, having belonged to the which Meredith was erected into a great master,
Forster,

M.

demolition-work. enjoys peculiar advantages for the necessary Is there no name later than Conrad's to be included in the great
tradition?

There

is,

am

convinced, one:

D. H. Lawrence.

Lawrence, in the English language, wa? the great genius of our time mean the age, cr climatic phase, following Conrad's). It would (I be difficult to separate the novelist off for consideration, but it was in the novel that he committed himself to the hardest and most sustained creative labour,

and he was,

as a novelist, the representative

of

vital

and

significant

development.

He

might, he has

shown

on writing novels with the kind of 'charconclusively, have gone acter creation' and psychology that the conventional cultivated
Arthur Mizener's essay, "Jude the Obscure as a Tragedy*, in the Thomas Issue of The Southern Review (Summer 1940), puts interof the book. estingly the case for a jnous estimate 2 See Aspects oj the Novel. And here is James on Lord Ormont and his Aminta 'Moreover, I have vowed not to open Lourdes till I shall have closed with a furious final bang the unspeakable Lord Ormont, which I have been ten insufferable and unprofitable reading at the maximum rate of ten pages a day. It fills me with a critical rage, an artistic fury, utterly blighting pages in me the indispensable principle of respect. I have finished, at this rate, but whereof I am moved to declare that I doubt if any equal the first volume and attitudes, of verbiage, of airs and graces, of phrases
1

Hardy Centennial

s,

of obscurities and alembications, ever started less their subject, ever contributed less of a statement told the reader less of what the reader needs to know. All the elaborate predicates of exposition without the ghost of a nominative to hook themselves to; and not a difficulty met, not a figure not a dim shadow condensing once either presented, not a scene constituted into audible or into visible reality making you hear for an instant the tap of its feet on the earth. Of course there are pretty things, but for what they are they come so much too dear, and so many of thi profundities and tortuosof the very ities prove when threshed out to be only pretentious statements To Edmund Gosse: The Letters of Henry Jares,
Vol.
simplest propositions/ I, p. 224.

quantity

extravagant

23

THE GREAT TRADITION

reader immediately appreciates
familiar effort

novels that
if his

demanded no un-

genius had let him. In nothing is the genius more manifest than in the way in which, after the great success and succes d'estime of Sons and Lovers he

of approach.

He might

up that mode and devotes himself to the exhausting toil of working out the new tilings, the developments, that as the highly conscious and intelligent servant of life he saw to be necessary. Writing to Edward Garnett of the work that was to become Women in Love he says 'It is very different from Sons and Lovers written
gives
:

in another language almost. I shall be sorry if you don't like it, but prepared. I shan't write in the same manner as Sons and Lovers

am

again,

think
1

in that hard, violent style full

of sensation and

presentation/

Describing at length wha" he

is

trying to do he says

in my novel for the old stable ego of the another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognizable, and passes through, as it were, allotropic states which it needs a deeper sense than any we've been used to exercise, to discover are states of the same single
character.

'You mustn't look

There
is

radically

unchanged element. (Like as diamond and coal are the same pure simple element of carbon. The ordinary novel would trace the history of the diamond but I say, "Diamond,

what
soot,
is

This

is

carbon".
is

And my diamond might

and

my
it is

theme But

shaky

carbon.) not perfect, because

it is

vou
I

must not say

am

be coal or my novel
I I

not expert in what

like.

want
I

to do.

the real tiling, say

what you

And

my reception, if not now, then before long. Again don't look for the development of the novel to follow the say, lines of certain characters the characters fall into the form of
shall get
:

some other rhythmic form,

as

v.hen one draws a fiddle-bow

across a fine tray delicately sanded, the sand takes lines un-

known/ 2
method, techand nique. experiments are dictated by the most serious and urgent kind of interest in life. This is the spirit of it:
is

He

most daring and

radical innovator in 'form',

And

his innovations

'Do you know Casrandra in Aeschylus and Homer

1

She

is

The Letters ofD. H. Lawrence,

p. 172.

Letters, p. 198.

24

THE GREAT TRADITION

one of the world's great

Agamemnon
to her since

did to her

is

figures, and what the Greeks and symbolic of what mankind has done

raped and despoiled her, to their own ruin. It is not your brain that you must trust to, nor your will but to that fundamental pathetic faculty for receiving the hidden
that come from the depths of life, and for transferring them to the unreceptive world. It is something which happens below the consciousness, and below the range of the will it is something which is unrecognizable and frustrated and de-

waves

stroyed/
a spirit that, for all the unlikeness, relates Lawrence closely to 2 3 George Eliot. He writes, again, to Edward Garnett
It is
:

you tell me I am half a Frenchman and one-eighth But that isn't it. I have /ery often the vulgarity and disagreeableness of the common people, as you say Cockney, and I may be a Frenchman. But primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the
'You see
a Cockney.

depth of my religious experience. That I must keep to, because I can only work like that. And my Cockneyism and commonness are only when the deep feeling doesn't find its way out, and
a sort of jeer comes instead, and sentimentality and purplism. But you should see the religious, earnest, suffering man in me Mrs. first, and then the flippant or common things after. Garnett says I have no true nobility with all my cleverness and charm. Bn f that is not true. It is there, in spite of all the littlenesses and commonnesses.'
virtue of which he can truly say that what he spirit, by must be written from the depth of his religious experience, that makes him, in my opinion, so much more significant in relation to the past and future, so much more truly creative as a technical inventor, an innovator, a master of language, than James Joyce. I know that Mr. T. S. Eliot has found in Joyce's work something that recommends Joyce to him as positively religious in tendency (see But it seems plain to me that there is no organic After Strange Gods) principle determining, informing, and controlling into a vital whole, the elaborate analogical structure, the extraordinary variety of
It is this

writes

Letters, p. 232.
3

Lawrence too has been

called a Puritan.

Letters, p. 190.

25

THE GREAT TRADITION

technical devices, the attempts at an exhaustive rendering
is

of conit
is

remarkable, and which got sciousness, for which Ulysses It start. by a cosmopolitan literary world as a new
accepted
I

rather, a

think, a dead end, or

at least a pointer to disintegration

view strengthened by Joyce's own development (for I think it that Work in Progress Finnegans Wake, significant and appropriate should have engaged the interest of the inventor of as it became
Basic English). It is true that
writers to

we

which there

can point to the influence of Joyce in a line of from Lawrence. But I is no parallel issuing

find here further confirmation of my view.

writers, in

For

think that in these

a regrettable (if minor) strain of Mr. Eliot's into join with that of Joyce, we have, in so far as me to seems fluence

whom

expressed

kind of reaction against anything significant, the wrong 1 in whom Mr. Eliot has writers in mind have I liberal idealism. terms Djuna Barnes of favourable an interest in strongly

we have

Nightwood,

Henry
at

Miller, Lawrence Durrell of The Black Book.

rate in the last

In

these writers

any

two (and

the

first

seems to

me

the spirit of what we are offered affects me as being insignificant) in Laurentian phrase, to 'do dirt* on life. It a desire, essentially
in all modesty, bear one's important that one should, 'One must speak for life and growth, 2 This is amid all this mass of destruction and disintegration/ of the It is the liis work. all of the it is and Lawrence, spirit spirit

seems to

me

witness in these matters.

his novels their disconcerting quality, originality that gives

and

of works of genius. gives them the significance I am not contending that he isn't, as a novelist, open to a great deal of criticism, or that his achievement is as a whole satisfactory books far being what it was). He wrote his later
(the potentiality

too hurriedly. But I know from experience that it is far too easy to conclude that his very aim and intention condemned him to artistic
unsatisfactoriness.
I

am

thinking in particular of

two books
;

at

which he worked very hard, and in which he developed his d sand approaches The Rainbow and concertingly original interests Love. in Re-read, they seem to me astonishing works of Women
genius,
1

and very much more largely

successful than they did

when

See D. H. Lawrence's Fantasia of the Unconscious y especially Chapter XI. The Letters ofD. H. Lawrence, p. 256,

26

THE GREAT TRADITION

I

read

them

(say) fifteen years ago.

I still

think that The Rainbow

up sufficiently into a whole. But I shouldn't be quick to offer criticism of Women in Love, being pretty sure that I should in any case have once more to convict myself of stupidity
doesn't build

my

and habit-blindness on

And after these novels later re-reading. there comes, written, perhaps, with an ease earned by this hard work done, a large body of short stories and nouvelles that are as indubitably successful works of genius as any the world has to show. I have, then, given my hostages. What I think and judge I have

stated as responsibly
Eliot,

and

clearly as

can.

Jane Austen, George

:

Henry James, Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence

is

the great tradi-

tion of the English novel

there.

NOTE: 'THE BRONTES'

It is tempting to retort that there is only one Bronte. Actually, Charlotte, though claiming no part in the great line of English fiction (it is significant that she couldn't see why any value should

be attached to Jane Austen), has a permanent interest of a minor kind. She had a remarkable talent that enabled her to do something firsthand and

new

in the rendering

of personal experience,

above

all

in Villette.

The

genius, or course,

was Emily.

have said nothing about

Wuthering Heights because that astonishing work seems to me a kind of sport. It may, all the same, very well have had some influence of
she broke completely, and in the most challenging way, both with the Scott tradition that imposed on the novelist a romantic resolution of his themes, and with the tradition coming down from the eighteenth century that demanded a plane-mirror reflection of the surface of 'real' life. Out of her a minor tradition comes, to which belongs, most notably, The House

an essentially undetectable kind

with the Green Shutters.

II

GEORGE ELIOT
(i)

The Early Phase

is general agreement that an appraisal of George Eliot must be a good deal preoccupied with major discriminations that the body of her work exhibits within itself striking differences not merely of kind, but between the more and the less satisfactory, and exhibits them in such a way that the history of her art has to be seen as something less happy in its main lines than just an unfolding of her genius, a prosperous development of her distinctive powers, with growing maturity. L is generally assumed that this aspect of her performance is significantly related to the fac.. of her having displayed impressive intellectual gifts outside her art, so that she was a distinguished figure in the world of Herbert Spencer and the Westminster Review before she became a novelist. And there is something like a unanimity to the effect that it ic distinctive of her, among great novelists, to be peculiarly addicted to moral preoccupations. The force of this last what it amounts to or intends, and the and it seems well to significance it has for criticism is elusive start with a preliminary glance at what, from his hours with the critics, the reader is likely to recall as a large e^blished blur across the field of vision. Henry James seems to me to have shown finer intelligence than anyone else in writing about George Eliot, and he, in his review of the Cross Life of her, tells us that, for her, the novel 'was not primarily a picture of life, capable of deriving a high value from its form, but a moralized fable, the last word of a philosophy

*T""<HEBJE

1 The blur is seen here in that endeavouring to teach by example'. misleading antithesis, which, illusory as it is, James's commentary * * ' insists on. What, we ask, is the form from which a picture of life
'

As we should expect, the term 'aesthetic', with its value ? of confusion, turns up in the neighbourhood (it is a term the literary critic would do well to abjure). James notes, as characterizing 'that side of Geurge Eliot's nature which was weakest', the 'absence of free aesthetic life', and he says that her 'figures and
derives
its trail
1

Partial Portraits, p. 50.

28

THE EARLY PHASE

situations' are 'not seen in the irresponsible plastic way*. But, we ask, in what great, in what interesting, novel are the figures and situations seen in an 'irresponsible plastic way* (a useful determina-

tion of one of the intentions of 'aesthetic') ? Is there any great novelist whose preoccupation witn 'form' is not a matter of his
responsibility towards a rich interests, profoundly realized

human
?

interest,

or complexity of

a responsibility involving,

of

its

very nature, imaginative sympathy, moral discrimination and judgment of relative human value ?

The art distinguished by the corresponding irresponsibility might be supposed to be represented by the dreary brilliance of Salammbo and La Tentation. But we know that this is so far from James's
intention that he finds even

Madame Bovary, much as he admires it, an instance of a preoccupation with 'form' that is insufficiently a 1 In fact, his preoccupation with human value and moral interest.
different order

verdict

on Madame Bovary may fairly be taken to be of ho very from that implied when George Eliot finds Le Pere

Goriot 'a hateful book' the phrase that, curiously enough, provides the occasion for James's remarks about her lack of 'free aesthetic
life'.

2
I

That the antithesis and doesn't promote

quote from Henry James

is

is

unsatisfactory

clear thinking

no doubt obvious enough.

:

And
Yet

the reader

may

note that James's essay dates sixty years back.

his

know
ally

handling of t*ie matter seems to me representative I don't of anything written about George Eliot that, touching on this
helpful towards defining the distinctive quality of her art. is a critic one reads with close attention, and, coming

matter of her distinctive moral preoccupation, does anything essenti-

more

James, then,
1

See his essay on Flaubert in Notes on Novelists. had better say that my judgment of Le Pere Goriot clearly differs from Henry James's. The impressiveness of the famous passions Balzac presents seems to me to be too much of the order of Shelley's
2

My God

BEATRICE (wildly) Can it be possible

1

O
. . .

etc.

me an essentially rhetorical art in a pejorative sense of the adjective : romantic rhetoric is the life and spirit of the sublimities and degradations he exhibits. They depend for the r effect, that is, not on any profound realization of human emotions, but on excited emphasis, top-lf :el
Balzac's art here seems to
;

assertion

and

explicit insistence.

29

GEORGE ELIOT
on
her difference, it can hardly be of certainly have of the kind such an antithetical way putting things suggests. Though have their colourable grounds, there must, such formulations

provoked George Eliot must

so challenging a formulation in so intelligent a context, one is to comment that, while, among the great novelists,

may

be something more important to say about the moral otherwise she would hardly seriousness of George Eliot's novels be the great novelist one knows her to be. There are certain conditions of art from which she cannot be exempt while remaining an

one

reflects,

artist.

A
in

tentative

comparison or two
critic

which the appraising

may help to define the direction should turn his inquiries. Consider

her against, not Flaubert, but two novelists concerning whose greatIn her own ness one has no uneasy sense of a need to hedge. of whom, both and Austen with Conrsd, ranks she Jane language
in their different ways, present sharp contrasts with her. To take it can more fitly be said Conrad first : there is no novelist of

whom

and James would have testified that his figures and 1 to his intense and triumphant preoccupation with 'form'. He went to school to the French masters, and is in the tradition of Flaubert.
situations are seen,

But he

is

range and
that

a greater novelist than Flaubert because of the greater and the greater intensity depth of his interest in humanity
:

of his moral preoccupation

he

is

not open to the kind of criticism

is

tJostromo James brings against Madame tiovary. senses of the term congenial to the discussion of in 'form* of piece Conrad's 'form' is to take stock of a Flaubert's art, but to

a master-

appreciate conducted by him in the face of life : process of relative valuation what do men live by? what can men live by? these are the

His organization is devoted to his theme. questions that animate of radical attitudes, so a concrete representative set exhibiting in the in relation to a total of each the out ordered as to
bring
significance

sense of

human

life.

The dramatic imagination

at

work

is

an in-

the vividness of which is inalienably a tensely moral imagination, has each 'figure' and judging and a valuing. With such economy 'situation* its significance in a taut inclusive scheme that Nostromo

might more reasonably than any of George

* Actually James salutes Chance in The 1914 (see Notes on Novelists).

Eliot's fictions except

New

Novel, an article written in

30

THE EARLY PHASE

Silas

in

Marner (which has something of the fairy-tale about any case a minor work) be called a moralized fable'.
*

it,

and

is

interests

What, then, in this matter of the relation between their moral and their art, is the difference between Conrad and George
?

(Their sensibilities, of course, differ, but that is not the I had better here give the whole of the sentence of question.)
Eliot

James's, of which above

'Still,

quoted a part

what even a jotting may not have said after a first perof Le Pere Goriot is eloquent; it illuminates the author's general attitude with regard to the novel, which, for her, was not primarily a picture of life, capable of deriving a high value from its form, but a moralized fable, the last word of a philousal

sophy endeavouring to teach by example.'

To find the difference in didactism doesn't take us very far not much to the point is said about a work of art in calling it didactic
;

unless one

is

meaning

to

judge

it

adversely.
hasn't, that

In that case one

is

judging

that the intention to

communicate an attitude hasn't become

;

as justified itself and enacts its art in die realized concreteness that speaks for itself moral significance. But whatever criticism die weaker parts of

sufficiently

more than an

intention

is,

George Eliot may lie open to no one an inclusive judgment of that kind. concerned with.
*

is

going to characterize her by

it is

And

her greatness

we

are

James speaks of a philosophy endeavouring to teach by example' perhaps, it may be suggested, the clue we want is to be found in the philosophy ? And the context shows that James does,
: '

'

George powers of intellectual labour and her stamina in the realm of abstract thought he speaks elsewhere of her 'exemption from cerebral lassitude '. But actually it is not easy to see how, in so far as her intellectual distinction appears in the strength of her art, it constitutes an essential difference between her and Conrad. She has no more of a philosophy than he has, and he, on the other hand, is, in his work, clearly a man of great intelligence and confirmed intellectual habit, whose 'picture of life' embodies much reflective analysis and sustained thought about fundamentals. What can, nevertheless, be said, with obvious truth, is that Conrad
Eliot's robust

in attempting to define her peculiar quality, intend to stress

31

GEORGE ELIOT
is

more completely an

artist.

It is

not that he had no intellectual

career outside his art

he did nothing comparable to translating and Feuerbach, and editing The Westminster Strauss, Spinoza more completely into the created transmutes Review. It is that he doubt the two facts are related No work the interests he brings in. and not novelist and highseaman the fact that he was novelist and level intellectual middleman has a bearing on the fact that he
that
:

achieved a wholeness in art

(it

will be observed that the change

is

of

but the shift phrase involves a certain change offeree,

I

legitimate,

Eliot. But it must not be conthink) not characteristic of George cluded that the point about her is that her novels contain unabsorbed of tough or drily abstract thinkintellectual elements patches, say,

ing undigested by her

art. The relevant characteristic, rather, is apt to strike the reader as something quite other than toughness or that strikes dryness ; we note it as an emotional quality, something sometimes as the direct us embarrassing) presence of the (and author's own personal need. Conrad, we know, had been in his time hard-pressed ; the evidence is everywhere in his work, but, in imany one of the great novels, it comes *x> us out of the complex

of course, be no question of saying personalized whole. There can, she is a great simply that the opposite is true of George Eliot
:

novelist,

and has achieved her triumphs of creative art. Nor is it between what is strong in quite simply a matter of distinguishing her work and what is weak. At her best sne has the impersonality of genius, but there is characteristic work of hers that is rightly
admired where the quality of the
sensibility

can often be

felt to

have

intimate relations with her weakness.

That is, the

tion.
I

critic

appraising her

is

faced with a task of discriminato this effect.

began by reporting general agreement

The

comparison is to suggest that the discriminating actually point of lines from those generally needing to be done will be on different

my

assumed.
a comparative equally the conclusion prompted by fashionable cult tends to suggest glance at Jane Austen. Though the otherwise, she doesn't differ from George Eliot by not being her art is a matter of a preoccupaearnestly moral. Tiu, vitality of that is subtle and intense because of the tion with moral
that
is

And

problems

pressure of personal need.

As

for the essential difference (leaving

32

THE EARLY PHASE

aside the differences in the nature
is it

of the need and in range of

interests), something that can be related to the fact that Jane while Austen, unmistakably very intelligent, can lay no claim to a

massive intellect like George

specialized intellectual life
?

Eliot's,

Perhaps ; an emotional quality, one to which there is no equivalent in Jane Austen. And it is not merely a matter of a difference of theme and interest of George Eliot's dealing with
the intellectual writer
is

capable of maintaining a but what again strikes us in

(say) the

doesn't.

agonized conscience and with religious need as Jane Austen There could be this difference without what is as a matter
:

of fact associated with it in George Eliot's work a tendency towards that kind of direct presence of the author which has to be
stigmatized as weakness.

But

this

is

to anticipate.

The
Eliot
is

large discrimination generally made in respect of George a simple one. Henry James's account is subtler than any

1 know, but isn't worked out to consistency. He says (though the generalization is implicitly criticized by the context, being in-

other

adequate to his perception)

'We feel in her, always, that she proceeds from the abstract to the concrete ; that her figures and situations are evolved, as
the phrase is, from her moral consciousness, and are only indirectly the products of observation.'
this gives us is, according to the accepted view, one half of the unsatisfactory half. The great George Eliot, according to this view, is the novelist of reminiscence ; the George Eliot who

What

her

writes out of her memories of childhood and youth, renders the poignancy and charm of personal experience, and gives us, in a mellow light, the England of her young days, and of the days then
still

Adam

alive in family tradition. Her classics are Scenes of Clerical Life, Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. With these

books she exhausted her material, and in order to continue a novelist had to bring the other half of herself into play to hand over, in fact, to the intellectual. Romola is the product of an exhausting and
1

Partial Portraits, p. 51.

33

GEORGE ELIOT
misguided labour of excogitation and historical reconstruction (a judgment no one is likely to dispute). Felix Holt and Daniel
Deronda also represent the distinguished intellectual rather than the great novelist ; in them she 'proceeds from the abstract to the concrete', 'her figures

and
'are

situations are

evolved from her moral con-

sciousness', they deeply studied and massively supported, .' but Henry James's phrases fairly convey the accepted view.
. .

is not to be identified with it (he discriminates firmly, for instance, in respect of Daniel Deronda). Still, he expresses for us admirably what has for long been the

It

should be said at once that he

current idea of her development, and he does in such passages as this endorse the view that, in the later novels, the intellectual gets the

upper hand

'The truth

is,

perception and reflection at the outset divided

George Eliot's great talent between them ; buc as time went on circumstances led the latter to develop itself at the expense of
the former

one of these circumstances being apparently the

influence of George

Henry Lewes.'
is

And we

don't feel that he

inclined to dissociate himself to

any

1 significant extent when, in the Conversation about Daniel Deronda, he makes Constantius say
:

She strikes me as a person who certainly has naturally a taste for general considerations, but wLo has Lltan upon an age and a circle which have compelled her to give them an exaggerated
attention.

'

She does not

strike

me

as naturally a critic, less

still

as naturally a sceptic ; her spontaneous part is to observe life and to feel it to feel it with admirable depth. Contemplation,

sympathy and faith something have been her natural scale/

like that,

should say, would

At any rate, that gives what appears to be still the established notion of George Eliot. It will have been noted above that I left out Middlemarch. And it will have been commented that Middlemarch, which, with Felix Holt between, comes in order of production after Romola and doesn't at all represent a reversion to the phase of 'spontaneity', has for at least two decades been pretty generally acclaimed as one of
1

See Appendix, p. 249 below.

34

THE EARLY PHASE

the great masterpieces of English fiction. That is true. Virginia Woolf, a good index of cultivated acceptance in that period, writes (in The Common Reader, first series)
:

'It is

not that her power diminishes,

all its

at its highest in the

which, with

for, to our thinking, it is mature Middlemarch, the magnificent book imperfections, is one of the few English

novels written for grown-up people.'

This judgment, in a characteristic and not very satisfactory essay on George Eliot, must be set to Mrs. Woolf 's credit as a critic ; there is

no doubt

that

it

has had a

good

deal to

do with the

established

recognition of Middlemarch. But Mrs. Woolf makes no serious attempt at the work of general revision such a judgment implies, and die appreciation of George
Eliot's ceuvre has

not been put on a

critical basis

and reduced to conof the e^rly

sistency.

For

consistent,

you you must be more

if

think so highly of Middlemarch^ then, to be

qualified in

your

praise

things than persisting convention recognizes. Isn't there, in fact, a The key word in that sentence certain devaluing to be done ?

quoted from Mrs. Woolf is 'mature'. Her distinguished father (whose book on George Eliot in The English Men of Letters has his characteristic virtues) supplies, where their popularity is concerned,

word for the earlier works when he speaks of a 'loss of charm' involved in her development after The Mill on the Floss. At the risk of appearing priggish one may suggest that there is a tendthe key

ency to overrate charm.

preferred to maturity. Going back in one's

Certainty

charm

is

overrated

when

it is

mind over

the earlier works,

?

what can one

indeed only

note as their attractions and their claims

Life,

There
read.

is

Scenes of Clerical

which

is

to-day, perhaps, not

much

And

with an

effort

can one appreciate

why

these stories should have

made such an impact when they came out. One of them, Mr. Gi7/if$
Live-Story, is charming in a rather slight way. Without the charm the pathos would hardly be very memorable, and the charm is charit is the acteristic of the earlier George Eliot atmospheric richness of the past seen through home tradition and the associations of childhood. Of the other two, The Sad Fortune* of the Rev. Amos Barton and. Janet's Repentance, one feels that they might have appeared in
:

35

GEORGE ELIOT
This is unfair, no doubt; the earnest and sympathy that finds a moving morally imaginative we have of ordinariness in the theme undistinguished lives there not have would writer the the essential George Eliot ; magazine is rome there and and had that touch in pathos humour, justice in a of Leslie Stephen's finding an 'indication profoundly reflective intellect' in 'the constant, though not obtrusive, suggestion of the But Scenes of Clerical Life depths below the surface of trivial life'. would not have been remembered if nothing had followed. of the George Eliot did no more prentice-work (the greater part Adam Bede is unmistakably qualiScenes may fairly be called that)

any Victorian family magazine.

fied to

be a popular ckssic which, in so far as there are such to-day, There is no need here to offer an appreciation of its it still is. as they are genuine, and they have had are as attractions ;
they
plain
full critical justice

done them. Criticism, it seeias to me, is faced much as Adam Bede the with ungrateful office of asking whether, classical of the a classic as deserves its currency English novels (and
has been

justice.
is

it read), the implicit valuation than more doesn't represent something enjoys in general acceptance be made by suggesting that the book can The
it

among
point

the

most widely

perhaps

too

much

the

sum of its

specifiable

attractions to

be among the

too resolvable into the separate interests that great novels that it is we can see the author to have started with. Of these, a main one,
clearly,
is

rustic life (as

Mrs. Poyser's
it

mellow presentation of given in Mrs. Poyser and that it from her childhood) for which recalled Eliot George kitchen is the centre. This deserves all the admiration

has received.

And

this is the

moment

to say that juxtaposition

'

fitly

with George Eliot is a test that disposes finally of the Shakespearean' Hardy if the adjective is to be used at all, it applies much more to the rich creativeness of the art that seems truly to draw its
:

sap

from

life

and

is

free

from

all

suspicion of Shakespeareanizing.

George Eliot's rustic life is convincingly real even when most of it charming (and she doesn't always mellow her presentation with ckarm). We have another of the main interests with which George Eliot started in Dinah, that idealized recollection of the Methodist aunt. D nah, a delicate undertaking, is sufficiently successful, but one has, in appraising her in relatiDn to the total significance of the book, to
:

36

THE EARLY PHASE

on the limiting implications of the word, that the success is conditioned by the 'charm* that invests her as it does the world she moves in and belongs to. She is idealized as Adam is idealized ; they are in keeping. Adam, we know, is a tribute to her
observe, with a
stress

father

but h^

is

also the Ideal Craftsman,

is r&tssi,

of Labour.

He

too

embodying the Dignity with George Eliot's him but compare

other tribute to her father, Caleb Garth of Middlentarch,

who

is

in

and the suggestion that the idealizing keeping with his context, clement in the book named after Adam involves limiting judgments for the critic gets, I think, an obvious force.
Mrs. Poyser, Dinah and
that

Adam

these three represent interests

To make a novel out George of them she had to provide something else. The Dinah theme entails the scene in prison, and so there had to be a love-story and a seduction. George Eliot works them into her given material with with convincing skill ; the entanglement of Arthur Donnithorne
Eliot

wanted to use

in a novel.

Hetty Sorrel

the

first

ing to temptation,

casual self-indulgence, the progressive yieldthe inexorable Nemesis involves a favourite

handles it in a personal moral-psychological theme of hers, and she that large part of the way. And yet does one want ever to read

book again ? does it gain by re-reading ? doesn't this only confirm one's feeling that, while as Victorian fiction a means of passing the time the love-story must be granted its distinction, yet, judged by
the expectations
wii.li

which one approaches a

it
?

nothing proportionate to the time

amount of general
unity
is

reflection)

great novelist, it takes (even if we cut the large level as the Satisfactory at its own
is

offers

that the author has induced in her materials, there

not at

work in the whole any pressure from her profounder experience to we don't feel moved to compel an inevitable development so that not she was right to take discuss with any warmth whether or Lewes's suggestion, and whether or not Dinah would really have
;

become Mrs. Adam Bede.

to give

We are not engaged in such a way as

to

any force to the question whether the marriage is convincing or otherwise ; there is no sense of inevitability to outrage. These

comments of Henry James's seem

4

me just

In Silas Marner, in Adam Bede, the quality seems gilded bv a sort of autumn haze, an afternoon light, of meditation, whick

37

GEORGE ELIOT
r mitigates the sharpness o the portraiture. I doubt very much whether the author herself had a clear vision, for instance, of
the marriage of Dinah Morris to Adam, or of the rescue of Hetty from the scaffold at the eleventh hour. The reason of
this

nature

may be, indeed, that her perception was a perception of much more than of art, and that these particular inci-

sense at least) dents do not belong to nature (to I do not mean that they belong to a very happy art.

my

by which
them,

I cite

on

the contrary, as an evidence of artistic weakness ; they are a very good example of the view in which a story must have

marriages and rescues in the nick of time, as a matter of course.'

James

indicates here the relation

calls the 'art'.

They

are not identical, of course

as

called 'charm'

and described

between the charm and what he but what I have an idealizing element means an
;

abeyance of the profounder responsibility, so that, without being shocked, we can have together in the same book the 'art* to which
Jarres refers

the vaguely realized that draws

its

confidence from

and such genuinely moving things as the story of Hetty Sorrel's wanderings. And here I will anticipate and make the point that it is because the notorious scandal of Stephen Guest in The Mill on the Floss has nothing to do with 'art', but is a different kind of thing altogether, that it is interesting and significant.
convention
a related point that if 'charm' prevails in Adam Bede (and, as Henry James indicates, in Silas Marner), there should be another
It is

word for what we find in The Mill on the Floss. The fresh directness
of a
is

child's vision that

we

something very

different

have there, in the autobiographical part, from the 'afternoon light' of reminis-

cence.

with rich

This recaptured early vision, in its combination of clarity 'significance', is for us, no doubt, enchanting; but it doesn't idealize, or soften with a haze of sentiment (and it can't
'art').

consort with
the uncles

and

Instead of Mrs. Poyser and her setting we have aunts. The bearing of the change is plain if we ask

whether there could have been a Dinah in this company. Could there have been an Adam ? They both belong to a different world. In fact, the Gleggs and the Pullets and the Dodson clan associate, not with the frequenters of Mrs. Poyser's kitchen, but with the tribe
that forgathers at Stone

The

intensity

Court waiting for Peter Featherstone to die. of Maggie's naive vision is rendered with the con38

THE EARLY PHASE

vincmg truth of genius ; but the render! ig brings in the intelligence that goes with the genius and is of it, and the force of the whole effect is the product of understanding. This is an obvious enough point. I make it because I want to observe that, although the supremely
mature mind of Middlemarch
Floss, the creative
is

not yet manifested in The Mill on

here

the

powers

at

work

owe

their successes as

much

to a very fine intelligence as to powers of feeling and remembering a fact that, even if it is an obvious one, the customary stress nevertheless leaves unattended to, though it is one that must get its full value if George Eliot's development is to be understood. I will underline it by saying that the presentment of the Dodson clan is of

marked

sociological interest

not accidentally, but because of the

intellectual qualifications

of tHe novelist.

But of course the most striking qualit/ of The Mill on the Floss is that which goes wi Ji the strong autobiographical element. It strikes us as an emotional tone. feel an urgency, a resonance, a per-

We

sonal vibration, adverting us of the poignantly immediate presence of the author. Since the vividness, the penetration and the irresistible truth of the best of the book are clearly bound up with this
quality, to suggest that it also entails limitations that the critic cannot ignore, since they in turn are inseparable from disastrous weaknesses in George Eliot's handling of her themes, is perhaps a delicate business.

case is so: the emotional quality represents someor a need thing, hunger in George Eliot, that shows itself to be insidious company for her intelligence apt to supplant it and take

But the

command. The acknowledged weaknesses and faults of The Mill on the Floss, in fact, are of a more interesting kind than the accepted
view recognizes. That Maggie Tulliver is essentially identical with the young Mary Ann Evans we all know. She has the intellectual potentiality for which the environment into which she is born doesn't provide much encouragement she has the desperate need for affection and inand above all she has the need for an timate personal relations
;

emotional exaltation, a religious enthusiasm, that shall transfigure the ordinariness of daily life and sweep her up in an inspired devotion of self to some ideal purpose. There is, however, a difference between Maggie Tulliver and Mary Ann Evans Maggie is bea *She is triumphantly beautiful, after having been the ugly tiful.
: 1

39

GEORGE ELIOT
duckling.

The
to

experience of a sensitive child in this latter role

:

is evoked with great poignancy George remember. The glow that comes with imagining it can be felt in the duckling turned swan hardly needs analysing and it is innocent Bin it is relevant enough. intimately every page,

among

insensitive adults

Eliot

had only

related to things in the book that common consent finds deplorable, and it is necessary to realize this in order to realize their nature and
significance
really are.

and

see

what

the weaknesses of

The Mill on

the Floss

There
lapse

is

Stephen Guest,

on George
:

Eliot's part.

who is universally recognized to be a sad He is a more significant lapse, I think,

allows.

than criticism
Eliot, p. 104)

commonly

Here

is

Leslie

Stephen (George

'George Eliot did not herself understand what a mere hairblock she was describing in Mr. Stephen Guest. He is another instance of her incapacity for portraying the opposite sex. No man could have introduced such a character without perceiving what an impression must be made upon his readers. We cannot help regretting Maggie's fate ; she is touching and attractive to the last ; but I, at least, cannot help wishing that the third volume could have been suppressed. I am inclined to sympathize with the readers of Clarissa Harlowe when they entreated Richardson to save Lovelace's soul. Do, I mentally
dresser's

exclaim, save this charming Maggie from damning herself by this irrelevant and discordant degradation.'

That the presentment of Stephen Guest

is

unmistakably feminine

no one

will be disposed to deny, but not only is the assumption of a general incapacity refuted by a whole gallery of triumphs, Stephen himself is sufficiently 'there* to give the drama a convincing force.

against him for his success with Maggie and exasperation with George Eliot for allowing it shouldn't lead us to dispute that

Animus

plain fact

To

call

him

they don't really amount to a judgment of his unreality. a 'mere hairdresser's block' is to express a valuation a

valuation extremely different from George Eliot's. And if we ourselves differ from her in the same way (who doesn't ?), we must be
careful about the implication

of the adjective when

40

we

agree that

her valuation

is

surprising.

For Leslie Stephen Maggie's entangle-

THE EARLY PHASE

tion*.

ment with Stephen Guest is an 'irrelevant and discordant degradaIrrelevant to what and discordant with what
?

'The whole theme of the book

the "beautiful soul" and the

is

surely the contrast

between

commonplace surroundings. It is the awakening of the spiritual and imaginative nature and the need of finding some room for the play of the higher faculties,
whether in the direction of
affection.'

religious mysticism or

of human

distinguished not only by beauty but by intelligence should be made to fall for a provincial dandy the scandal or incredibility (runs the argument) becomes even worse when we add that she is addicted to Thomas i Kempis
It is

bad enough that the

girl

who

is

and has an exalted spiritual nature. Renunciation is a main theme in her history and m her daily meditations ; but when temptation It is incredible, or insuffertakes the form of Mr. Stephen Guest able in so far we have to accept it, for temptation at this level can have nothing to do with the theme of renunciation as we have
!

familiar with it in Maggie's spiritual life it is 'irrelevant and discordant*. This is the position. Actually, the soulful side of Maggie, her hunger for ideal exaltations, as it is given us in the earlier part of the book, is just what should make us say, on reflection, that her weakness for Stephen

become

Guest

is

soulful side

not so surprising after all. It is commonly accepted, this of Maggie, with what seems to me a remarkable absence
It is

of criticism.
is

offered

the

main point

by George Eliot herself and this of course with a remarkable absence of criticism. There is,
:

somewhere, a discordance, a discrepancy, a failure to reduce things to a due relevance it is a characteristic and significant failure in Eliot. It is a discordance, not between her ability to present George Maggie's yearnings and her ability to present Stephen Guest as an irresistible temptation, but between her presentment of those yearnings on the one hand and her own distinction of intelligence on the
other.

is

That part of Maggie's make-up is done convincingly enough it done from the inside. One's criticism is that it is done too purely
;

from

the inside.

Maggie's emotional and

her spiritual stresses,

all

ex-

altations

and renunciations,

exhibit, naturally,

the

marks of

GEORGE ELIOT
immaturity
;

they invor* c confusions and immature valuations

they belong to a stage of development at which the capacity to make some essential distinctions has not yet been arrived at at which
the poised impersonality that is one of the conditions of being able to make them can't be achieved. There is nothing against George

immaturity with tender sympathy but we and ask, ought to ask, of a great novelist something more. 'Sympathy and understanding' is the common formula of praise, but understanding, in any strict sense, is just what she doesn't show. To understand immaturity would be to place it, with however subtle an implication, by relating it to mature experience. But when George Eliot touches on these given intensities of Maggie's inner life the vibration comes directly and simply from the novelist, prea the of maturer intelligence than Maggie's own. cluding presence
Eliot's presenting this
; '
'

It is

critical intent

in these places that we are most likely to make with conscious the comment that in George Eliot's presentment of

Maggie
sharpens

there
itself

is

an element of

self-idealization.

The

criticism

when we say that with the self-idealization there

self-pity.

goes

George Eliot's attitude to her own immaturity as represented by Maggie is the reverse of a mature one. Maggie Tulliver, in fact, represents an immaturity that George Eliot never leaves safely behind her. We have it wherever we have this note, and where it prevails her intelligence and mature judgment are out of action
an element of
:

'Maggie in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her
centre of her world, longings for all that
;

father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the was a creature full of eager, passionate

was

beautiful

and glad
;

thirsty for all

knowledge with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come nearer to her with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that

would

wonderful impressions of this mysterious a sense of home in it.' l

life,

link together the and give her soul

This 'blind, unconscious yearning' never, for

contacts
it

all

the intellectual
it

makes
The

as

M?ggie grows up and from which

tfe Floss,

acquires a

Mil on

Book
42

III,

Chapter V, the end.

THE EARLY PHASE

sense of consciousness, learns to understand itself:

Maggie remains

quite naive about its nature. into the varied potentialities

She
it

is

associates.

quite incapable of analysing it In the earlier part of the

book, from which the passage juct quoted comes, the religious and idealistic aspect of the yearning is not complicated by any disconcerting insurgence from out of the depths beneath its vagueness,
J3ut with that passage
'In

compare

this

just come a third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of tasks these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her imagination in a way that

poor Maggie's highly-strung, hungry nature

away from

was mysterious to herself. It was not that she thought distinctly of Mr. Stephen Guest, or dwelt on the indications that he looked at her with admiration it was rather that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries/ l
;

The juxtaposition of the two passages makes us revert to a sentence quoted above from Leslie Stephen, and see in it a hint that he,
pretty plainly, missed
:

'It is the awakening of the spiritual and imaginative nature and the need of finding some room for the play of the higher faculties, whether in the direction of religious mysticism or of

human affection/
For the second alternative
mysticism* a phrase

more

Leslie Stephen's. And we of the higher faculties' that

to couple with 'religious of emotional intensity than suggestive then can't help asking whether the 'play
is

we need

as intimately associated

with a passion

two last-quoted paragraphs together bring purely concerned with the 'higher' as Maggie and George Eliot believe (unchallenged, it seems, by Leslie Stephen). Obviously there is a large lack of self-knowledge in Maggie a
for Stephen Guest as the

out can be

as

very natural one, but shared, more remarkably, by George Eliot. Maggie, it is true, has the most painful throes of conscience and they
ultimately prevail. But she has no sense that Stephen Guest (apart, of course, from the insufficient strength of moral fibre betrayed
1

Book VI, Chapter

III, third

paragraph.

43

GEORGE ELIOT
of temp ation and it is to Maggie he succumbs) is not worthy of her spiritual and idealistic nature. There is no hint that, if Fate had allowed them to come together innocently, she
under the
strain

wouldn't have found him a pretty satisfactory soul-mate

Eliot, lies
:

there, for

the tragedy it is conscience opposes. George ordinary nature of the fascination is made quite plain

Yet the

'And then, to have the footstool placed carefully by a too self-confident personage not any self-confident personage, but
one in particular,
lingers,

who suddenly looks humble and anxious, and

bending still, to ask if there is not some draught in that position between the window and the fireplace, and if he may not be allowed to move the work-table for her these things will summon a little of the too-ready, traitorous tenderness into a woman's eyes, compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn
her life-lessons in very
VII.)
trivial language.'

(Book VI, Chapter

full the sense
it

And

it is

quite plain that

George Eliot shares to the

the vibration establishes

of Stephen's doubt
:

irresistibleness

beyond a

'For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Stephen waiting for the single word that would bring him to her. She did not read the letter she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old And yet that promise ofjoy in the place of strange power. sadness did not make the dire force of the temptation to Maggie. It was Stephen's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and
: .

write

"Come".'

There is no suggestion of any antipathy between this fascination and Maggie's 'higher faculties', apart from the moral veto that
imposes renunciation. The positive counterpart of renunciation in the 'higher* realm to which this last is supposed to belong is the
exaltation, transcending all conflicts and quotidian stalenesses, that goes with an irresistibly ideal self-devotion. It is significant that the

passages describing such an exaltation, whether as longed for or as attained and there are many in George Eliot's works have a close

44

THE EARLY PHASE

affinity in

tone and feeling with

tide)
:

this (fron: the

chapter significantly

headed, Borne along by the

'And they went. Maggie

felt that

she

was being

led

down

the garden among the roses, being helped with firm tender care into the boat, having the cushion and cloak arranged for her feet, and her parasol opened for her (which she had forgotten)
all this by the stronger presence that seemed to bear her along without any act of her own will, like the added self which comes with the sudden exalting influence of a strong tonic and she felt nothing else/ (BooL VI, Chapter Xffl.)

The satisfaction got by George Eliot from imaginative participation in exalted enthusiasms and self-devotions would, if she could
suddenly have gained the power of analysis that in these regions she lacked, have surprised her by the association of elements it represented.

passage just quoted gives the start of the expedition with Stephen in which chance, the stream and the tide are allowed, temporarily, to decide Maggie's inner conflict. It has been remarked

The

George Eliot has a fondness for using boats, water and chance way. But there are distinctions to be made. The way in which Maggie, exhausted by the struggle, surrenders to the chance that leaves her to embark alone with Stephen, and then, with inert will, lets the boat carry her down-stream until it is too late, so that the choice seems takeu from her and the decision compelled all this is admirable. This is insight and understanding, and comes trom the psychologist who is to analyse for us Gwendolen Harleth's acceptance of Grandcourt. But the end of The Mill on the Floss belongs to another kind of art. Some might place it under the art*
that

in this

referred to

by Henry James. And

of a kind congenial
the critic

it is certainly a dramatic* close to the Victorian novel-reader. But it has for

significance than this suggests : George Eliot is, * emotionally, fully engaged in it. The qualifying emotionally' is necessary because of the criticism that has to be urged : something

more

so like a kind of daydream indulgence we are all familiar with could not have imposed itself on the novelist as the right ending if her

mature intelligence had been

knowledge.
value.
It is

The flooded

fully engaged, giving her fiill selfriver has no symbolic or metaphorical

only the dreamed-of perfect accident that gives us the

45

GEORGE ELIOT
opportunity for the drcamed-of heroic act
the act that shall

vindicate us against a harshly misjudging world, bring emotional fulfilment and (in others) changes of heart, and provide a gloriously Not that the sentimental in it is embarrassingly tragic curtain.
gross, but the finality
is

not that of great

art,

and the

significance

is

what I have suggested a revealed immaturity. The success of Silas Marner, that charming minor
:

masterpiece,

is

conditioned by the absence of personal immediacy ; it is a success of reminiscent and enchanted re-creation Silas Marner has in it, in its
solid

way, something of the fairy-tale. That 'solid' presents itself because of the way in which the moral fable is realized in terms of a
is

But this, though re-seen through adult of childhood and youth the world as world experience, and is known what then, directly hardly distinguishable from that, the world as known through family reminiscence, conveyed in anecdote and fireside history. The mood of enchanted adult reminiscence blends with the re-captured traditional aura to give the world of Silas Marner its atmosphere. And it is this atmosphere that conditions the success of the moral intention. We take this intention quite seriously, or, rather, we are duly affected by a realized moral significance ; the whole history has been conceived in a profoundly and essentially moral imagination. But the atmosphere precludes too direct a reference to our working standards of probability that so that there is an is, to our everyday sense of how doings happen answer to Leslie Stephen when he comments on Silas Marner in its quality of moral fable
substantial real world.

die

'The supposed event the moral recovery of a nature reduced by injustice and isolation to the borders of sanity strikes one perhaps as more pretty than probable. At least, if one had to dispose of a deserted child, the experiment of dropping it by the cottage of a solitary in the hope that he would bring it up to its advantage and to his own regeneration would hardly be tried by a judicious philanthropist/
Leslie Stephen,

judgment,

that

of course, is really concerned to make which is made in effect when he says

:

a limiting

'But in truth the whole story

is

conceived in a

way which

makes

a pleasant conclusion natural

and harmonious/

46

THE EARLY PHASE

There
nothing that strikes us as false aSout the story its charm depends upon our being convinced of its moral truth. But in our description of the satisfaction got from it, charm* remains the
is
;
*

significant

word.

force of the limiting implication may be brought out by a comparative reference to another masterpiece of fiction that it is
jiatural to bring

The

under the head of moral

reality

fable*

Dickens's Hard

of that great book (which combines a perfection of 'art* in the Flaubertian sense with an un-Flaubertian moral strength and human richness) has in it nothing of the fairyTimes.
tale,

The heightened

and

is

faction given depends

relations

such as to preclude pleasantness altogether the satison a moral significance that can have no
;
:

But the comparison is, of course, unfair and complex theme, involving its author's large to profoundest response contemporary civilization, while Silas Marner is modestly conscious of its minor quality.
with charm.

Hard Times has a

The

unfairness
*

may be compensated by taking up Leslie

Stephen's

suggestion that Silas Marner is ... scarcely equalled in English literature, unless by Mr. Hprdy's rustics in Far from the Madding

Crowd and other

George
to
Eliot's

early works'.

advantage (enormously

Actually, the comparison is to so), and to Hardy's detri-

ment, in ways already suggested.

George

Eliot for the talk at the

The praises that have been given Rainbow are deserved. It is

woman should have been able to present so convincingly an exclusively masculine milieu. It is the more remarkable when we recall the deplorable Bob Jakin of The Mill on
indeed remarkable thr t a
the Floss>
Silas

who is so obviously and embarrassingly a feminine product.

first

Marner closes the

that, if she
is

phase of George Eliot's creative

a novelist,
it

life.

She finds

to

go on being

must be one of a

Romola, her first attempt to achieve the necessary inventiveness, might well have justified the conviction that her creative life was over.

very different kind.

And

(ii)

'Romola*

'

to

Middlemarch'

If

we

hesitated to

from

the abstract to the concrete'

to

judge that in Romola George Eliot 'proceeds it would be because 'proceed*

'attain*.

might seem

imply

Of this monument of excogitation

47

GEORGE ELIOT
and reconstruction Henry James himself says 'More than any of her novels it was evolved from her moral consciousness a moral
:

consciousness encircled by a prodigious amount of literary research*. The 'figures and situations' are indeed 'deeply studied and massively

supported', and they represent characteristic preoccupations of the novelist, but they fail to emerge from the state of generalized
interest
:

they are not brought to any sharp edge of realization. Tito

a

Melema, developing
ness into a positive

mere mild insufficiency of positive unselfishand lethal viciousness, illustrates a favourite

illustration,

theme, moral and psychological, but he remains an

thought thought out, and painstakingly specified ; coming anything like a prior reality that embodies the
of,

never be-

presents

it

as life.
is

Savonarola

fairly

The analogous and worse failure suggested by such passages of laborious

Eliot,

theme and in respect of

analytic

prose as Leslie Stephen quotes (George

p.

134),

with the

comment

'this almost Germanic concatenation of clauses not only puts such obvious truths languidly, but keeps Savonarola himself at a distance. are not listening to a Hamlet, but to a judicious critic analysing the state of mind which prompts "to be or not

We

to be".'

There

is

no

Romola

presence, that is ; the analysis serves instead. herself Leslie Stephen judges more favourably indeed,

very favourably. And it is true that she represents something other than the failure of a powerful mind to warm analysis into creation
;

a palpably emotional presence idealized George Eliot less real than

she

is

idealized.
also

While

patrician

Romola, Maggie TulUver and more and commandingly beautiful, she has
:

in fact,

is

another

George Eliot's combination of intellectual power, emancipation, inherent piety, and hunger for exaltations.
'The pressing problem for Romola just then was ... to alive that flame of unselfish emotion by which a life of sadness might still be a life of active love.'

keep

With 'Maggie'
if is

substituted for

'Romola', that might have come

Floss.

as a patently autobiographical

note from The Mill on the

And

the immediate presence of the yearning translator of Strauss that we feel in such situations as this
:

48

ROAfOL^l

TO MIDDLEMARCH

'Romola, kneeling with buried fact on the altar step, was enduring one of those sickening moments when die enthusiasm which had come to her as the only energy strong enough to make life worthy, seemed to be inevitably bound up with vain dreams and wilful eye-shutting/

And when we
its

read that 'tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has

danger too, rmd is apt to be timid and sceptical towards the larger aims without which life cr,nnot rise into religion* we know that we are in direct contact with the 'pressing problem' of the nineteenthcentury intellectual, contemporary of Mill, Matthew Arnold and Comte. So that we can hardly help being pryingly personal in our
conjectures
'

No

when, going on, we read one who has ever known what
:

it is

thus to lose faith in

a fellow

he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought and all the finer impulses of the soul
:

man whom

are dulled/

Dr. John Chapman ? we ask. The answer, of course, doesn't matter The point we have to make is that this closeness of relation between heroine and author
is

in fact, has

no more here than elsewhere in George Eliot a strength. Romola, none of the reality associated with Maggie Tulliver, but

she brings in the weakness, associated with Maggie, that embarrasses us in The Mill on the Floss.

The

lying down in an open

passage just quoted opens the episode in which Romola, boat, abandons herself to the winds and tides

'To be freed from

bruised, to

commit
else

burden of choice when all motive was herself, sleeping, to destiny which would either
the

bring death or
her*.

new

necessities that
lies in

might rouse a new

?

life

in

'Had

she', she asks, as she

anything

like the

dream of her girlhood

die gliding boat, 'found No.' But she is to find

now,

dream.

in alleged actuality, something embarrassingly like a girlhood She drifts ashore at the plague-stricken village, and, a

ministering

Madonna
is

'the

Mother with
49

the

tending the sick'

a miracle for the villajers.

glory about her It is a miracle for

GEORGE ELIOT
her too, rescuing her from her 'pressing problem* with a 'flame of unselfish emotion', provided by a heaven-sent chance out of the
void.

Few

will

want

to read

Romola a cecond time, and few can ever

have got through it once without some groans It is indubitably the work of a very gifted mind, but of a mind misusing itself; and it is the one novel answering to the kind of account of George Eliot that

became current during the swing of the pendulum against her

her death.

after

Yet Romola has habitually been included in the lists of cheap reand probably a good many more readers have tackled it than prints, have ever taken up Felix Holt. In writing Felix Holt, which brings us back to England, George Eliot did look up The Times for 1830 or but there was no tremendous and exhausting labour thereabouts of historical reconstruction. What called for the most uncongenial hard work on her part was the elaboration of the plot work (it
;

strikes us to-day)

about

directed as that

which went

of Savonarola. The

not as desiccatingly, misto evoking life at Florence in the time Victorian complications of the thorough-paced
as perversely, if

advice having plot depend, with painful correctness (professional been taken of the Positivist friend, Frederic Harrison), on some
esoteric subtleties

of the law of entail, and they demand of the reader a strenuousness of attention that, if he is an admirer of George Eliot, he is unwilling to devote. It is in the theme represented by the title of the book that the
'reflective'

from the

'abstract*

perception,

preponderance of the 'moral consciousness', working without being able to turn it into convincing itself. Felix Holt is the ideal working manifests notably

1 is who! y loyal to his class (to the extent and in of remaining shaggy manners), and dedicates his appearance life to its betterment ; but, while proposing to take an active part

man. Though educated, he

in politics, he refuses to countenance any of the compromises of the Radical agent for organized political action. He denounces

Rational appeal to unfighting the constituency in the usual way. the time-honoured be can alone that ; permitted alloyed principle
s-"xess, debase

methods of party warfare, defended as practical necessities for party and betray the people's cause, and there must be no truck with them. Felix is as noble and courageous in act as in ideal,
50

ROMOLA TO MIDDLEMARCH
wholly endorsed by his rreator. That in presenting these George Eliot gives proof of a keen interest in political, social and economic history, and in the total complex movement of civilization, and exhibits an impressive command of the facts, would
is

and

unrealities

relation

seem to confirm the deprecatory view commonly taken of the between intellectual and novelist. Here is the way Felix
calks
:

Holt, Radical,

'"Oh, yes, your ringed and scented men of the people! I won't be one of them. Let a throttle himself with a satin stock, and he'll get new wants and new motives. Metamorphosis will have begun at his neck-joint, and it will go on till it has changed his likings first and then his reasoning, which will follow his likings as the feet of a hungry dog follow his nose. I'll have none of your clerkly gentility. I might end by collecting greasy pence from poor men to buy myself a fine coat and a glutton's dinner, on pretence of serving the poor men. I'd sooner be Paley's fat pigeon than a demagogue all tongue and

mm

stomach, though" here Felix changed his voice a little "I should like well enough to be another sort of demagogue, if I could." '"Then you have a strong interest in the great political " movements of these times ? said Mr. Lyon, with a perceptible
flashing

of the

eyes.
or,

'"I should think so.

having

it,

I despise every man who has not doesn't try to rouse it in other men".'

Here he

is

addressing a

young lady
I

at their first

meeting

'"Oh, your

niceties

know what

they are," said Felix, in

his usual fortissimo. "They all go on your system of make* ' believe. Rottenness may suggest what is unpleasant, so you'd

better say 'sugar-plums', or something else such a long way off the fact that nobody is obliged to think of it. Those are your

roundabout euphuisms that dress up swindling till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled pease instead of bullets.
I

hate your gentlemanly speakers".'

The consequences of general

1
still

intention

combined with inexperi-

Compare this later address of his to Esther: '"I wonder", he went on, looking at her, "whether the subtle measuring ot forces will ever come to measuring the force there would be in one beauaful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life".'
51

GEORGE ELIOT
cnce are disastrously plain.
in

Adam Bede when we compare him with

The idealizing bent se^n to be so marked Caleb Garth of Middle-

march is not really a strength ; but George Eliot knew the country artisan at first hand and intimately. In offering to present the

Dignity of Labour in the ideal town working-man she is relying on her 'moral consciousness* unqualified by first-hand knowledge.
Felix Holt's very unideal mother, though not the same kind of disaster (she's only a minor figure, of course), is not much more convincing ; she seems to be done out of Dickens rather than from life.

The Reverend Rufus Lyon,

ally quaint

the Congregationalist minister, heroic-

reminder of the heroic age of Puritanism (and inspired, one guesses, by Scott), is incredible and a bore to say which is a
severe criticism, since his talk occupies a large proportion of the Esther, the beautiful and elegant young lady passing as his daughter, is interesting only in relation to other feminine studies

book.

of the
charm.

author's,

and to her treatment in general of feminine

as yet untouched on. It is the where represented by this, dialogue is so different in quality from that in which Felix Holt figures, and the analysis of so different an order (and in so different a prose) from that characteristic of Romola

But

there

is

an element in the novel

'"Harold is remarkably acute Lnd clevei", he began at last, " If he gets into Parliament, Mrs.Transome did not speak. I have no doubt he will distinguish himself. He has a quick eye for business of all kinds." "'That is no comfort to me", said Mrs. Transome. To-day she was more conscious than usual of that bitterness which was always in her mind in Jermyn's presence, but which was carefully suppressed because she could not endure that the degradasince

tion she inwardly felt should ever become visible or audible in should ever be reflected in any word acts or words of her own

For years there had been a deep silence about the on her side, because she remembered them between past on his, because he more and more forgot. '"I trust he is aot unkind to you in any way. I know his
or look of his.
: ;

opinions pain you ; but I trust disposed to be a good son."

you

find

him in everything else

Oh, to be sure

good as men are disposed to be to women,

52

ROMOLA TO MIDDLEMARCH
carriages, and recommending them and then expecting them to be contented under contempt and neglect. I have no power over him

giving

them cushions and

to enjoy themselves,

none." to look in Mrs. Transome's face it was long turned 'Jermyn since he had heard her speak to him as if she were losing her self-command. '"Has he shown any unpleasant feeling about your management of the affairs ?" * " My management of the affairs Mrs. Transome said, with concentrated rage, flashing a fierce look at Jermyn. She checked herself: she felt as if she were lighting a torch to flare on her own past folly and misery. It was a resolve which had become a habit, that she would never quarrel with this man never tell him what she saw him tj be. She had kept her woman's pride and sensibility intact through all her life there had vibrated the maiden need to have her hand kissed and be the object of chivalry. And so she sank into silence again,
that
:

remember

' '

trembling.

'Jermyn felt annoyed

his

nothing more. There was nothing in

to the intricate meshes

mind corresponding

of sensitiveness

in Mrs. Transome's.

always blundered mous he constantly sought to soothe o diers by praising himself. Moral vulgarity cleaved to him like an hereditary odour. He blundered now. '"My dear Mrs. Transome", he said, in a tone of bland kindness, "you are agitated you appear angry with me. Yet I think, if you consider, you will see that you have nothing to
;

He was anything but stupid; yet he when he wanted to be delicate or magnani-

complain of in me, unless you will complain of the inevitable course of man's life. I have always met your wishes both in happy circumstances and in unhappy ones. I should be ready to do so now, if it were possible. 'Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her bared arm. Some men's kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more humiliating than others' derision, but the pitiable woman who has once made herself secretly depend'

ent on a man who is beneath her in feelirg must bear that humiliation for fear of worse. Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger ; and in all private quarrels the duller nature Mrs. Transome knew is triumphant by reason of its dulness.
53

GEORGE ELIOT
in.

her inmost soul that those relations which had sealed her

lips

on Jermyn's conduct
ground

in business matters, had been with him a for presuming that he should have impunity in any lax

dealing into which circumstances had led him. She knew that she herself had endured all fhe more privation because of his dishonest selfishness. And now, Harold's long-deferred heirship,

and

his return

with

startlingly

acitivity, and assertion of mastery, had placed full presence of a difficulty which had been

unexpected penetration, them both in the

prepared by the

years
It

of vague uncertainty

as to issues/

is

should be plain from the quality of this that the theme it handles profoundly felt and sharply realized. This theme concerns Mrs.

Transome, her son Harold, and the family lawyer, Matthew Jermyn. It is utterly different in kind from anything else in Felix Holt and from anything earlier of George EHot's, and when we

come
and

to

it

we

see finally that

Henry James's
For
if

antithesis, 'perceptive*

'reflective', will

not do.

we

ask

how

this art is

so

and maturer than anything George Eliot had done before, the answer is in terms of a perception that is so much more clear and profound because the perceiving focuses the profound experience of years experience worked over by reflective thought, and so made capable of focusing. What we perceive and George Eliot depends on what we bring to the perceiving
astonishingly finer
;

brought a magnificent intelligence, functioning here as mature understanding. Intelligence in her was not always worsted
emotional needs
;

by

the relation

between the

artist

and the

intellectual

in her (with the formidable 'exemption from cerebral lassitude') was not always a matter of her intellect being enlisted in the service

of her immaturity.

The
in the

beneficent relation between artist and intellectual

is

to be seen
is

new

impersonality of the Transome theme.

The theme

with an intensity certainly not inferior to that of the most poignant autobiographical places in George Eliot, but the directly personal vibration the directly personal engagement of the novelist
realized

that

we

feel in

valid

is

absent here.

which

pletely separate creates' :

Maggie Tulliver's intensities even at their most 'The more perfect the artist, the more comin him will be the man who suffers and the mind
it is

in the part of Felix Holt dealing with Mrs.

54

ROMOLA TO MIDDLEMARCH
Transome
artists.

that George Eliot becomes one of the great creative She has not here, it will be noted, a heroine with whom

and

she can be tempted to identify herself. Mrs. Transome is County, how unlike she is to the novelist appears sufficiently in this
:

account of he*-

'She had that high-born imperious air which would have marked her as an object of hatred and reviling by a revolutionary rhob. Her person was too typical of social distinctions to be passed by with indifference by anyone it would have
:

fitted

an empress in her

own right, who had had to rule in spite

of faction, to dare the violation of treaties and dread retributive invasions, to grasp after new territories, to be defiant in desperate circumstances, and to feel a woman's hunger of the heart for .When she was young she had been thought ever unsatisfied. wonderfully clever and accomplished, and had been rather ambitious of intellectual superiority had secretly picked out for private reading the lighter parts of dangerous French authors and in company had been able to talk of Mr. Burke's had laughed at the style, or of Chateaubriand's eloquence admired Mr. Ballads and Thalaba. She Southey's Lyrical always thought that the dangerous French authors were wicked and that her reading of them was a sin but many sinful things were highly agreeable to her, and many things which she did not doubt to be good and true were dull and meaningless. She found ridicule of Biblical characters very amusing, and she was but she believed all the interested in stories of illicit passion while that truth and safety lay in due attendance on prayers and sermons, in the admirable doctrines and ritual of the Church of England, equally remote from Puritanism and Popery in fact, in such a view of this world and the next as would preserve the existing arrangements of English society quite unshaken, keeping down the obtrusiveriess of the vulgar and the discontent of
. .

the poor.'

The treatment of Mrs. Transome is not, as this description may suggest, ironical. The irony, a tragic irony, resides in her situation, which is presented with complete objectivity though with
poignant sympathy, unlike
novelist's
as

her strains arid distresses are to the

there
is
is

own.

In this

sympathy
55

not a trace of

self-pi *y

or self-indulgence.

Mrs. Transome

a study in Nemesis.

And,

GEORGE ELIOT
although her case is conceited in an imagination that is profoundly moral, die presentment of it is a matter of psychological observation
psychological observation so utterly convincing in its significance that the price paid by Mrs. Transome for her sin in inevitable consequences doesn't need a moralist's insistence, and there is none ;
to speak of George Eliot here as a moralist would, one feels, be to misplace a stress. She is simply a great artist a great novelist,

with a great novelist's psychological insight and fineness of human valuation. Here is one aspect of Mrs. Transome's tragedy :

an absorbing delight, blunting an expansion of the animal existence it but in after enlarges the imagined range for self to move in years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love that L, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another. Mrs. Transome had darkly felt the pressure of that unchangeable fact. Yet she had clung to the belief that somehow the possession of this son
is

'The mother's love

other sensibilities
;

at first

all

it is

was the

best thing she lived for

have made her

memory

to believe otherwise would too ghastly a companion.'

;

is not capable of recognizing the of she which 'unchangeable 'darkly feels the pressure'. She cannot alter herself, and for her the worth and meaning of life lie in command, and the imposition of her will. This is shown to us, not with any incitement to censure, but as making her, in its inevitable

Mrs. Transome, of course,

fact'

consequences, tragically pitiable. For her feeble-minded husband she can feel little but contempt". That the unsatisfactory elder son who took after him is dead is matter for rejoicing Harold, the
:

second and quite other son, now becomes the heir, and, returning home from the Levant where Iv* has made a fortune, will be able
to put the encumbered family estate on a new footing, so that, belatedly, the lady of Transome Court will assume real dominion, and take her due place in the County. That dream, for many starved years the reason for living, dies as soon as they meet, and

indeed her son, 1 and that for him too

will are the
1
'

the despairing bitterness that engulfs her as she realizes that he is command and the exercise of

meaning of life,

is

evoked (notably in the exchanges with

Under the shock of discovering her son's Radicalism Mrs. Transome had no impulse to say one thirg rather than another; as in a, man who has just
56

RCMOLA TO MIDDLEMARCH
Denner, her maid) with an astringently moving power unsurpassed
in literature.

To the tormenting frustration and hopelessness is soon added fear.

It is

not only that Harold, with

his poised kindness that

hopes by home, supersedes her authority, her raison d'etre ; he terrifies her by proposing to follow up his suspicions concerning Matthew Jermyn's custodianship of the family interests. The mine waiting to be detonated will blast them all three. For Harold is also
Radical, and, at

unaware of her,

frustrates her social

so utterly proclaiming himself a

is

Jermyn's son. It is remarkable

art

it is characteristic of George Eliot's mature of Mrs. Transome's early lapse should have in it nothing of the Victorian moralist. In the world of this art the atmosphere of the taboo is unknown Hiere is none of the excited

and

that the treatment

hush, the skirting round, the thrill of shocked reprobation, or any of the forms of sentimentality typical of Victorian fiction when

such themes are handled.

fact directness
:

There

is

this is

human nature, this is

instead an intently matter-ofthe fact and these are the

inexorable consequences.

Mrs. Transome
follows on the

sees

first

A.part from the fear, the worst face, as of regret for the past is what we have here (it long quotation made above from Felix Holt)
it,
:

'In this position, with a great dread hanging over her, which Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had caused her,

him with indignation, to scorch him with the words that were just the fit names for his doings inclined all the more when he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was truly in her heart. But no sooner did the words "You have brought it on me" rise within her than she heard within also the retort, "You brought it on yourself". Not for all the world beside could she bear to hear that retort
she was inclined tu lash
uttered

from without.
all

What

did she do?

With

strange
silence

sequence to

that rapid tumult, after a

few moments'

she said, in a gentle and almost tremulous voice '"Let me take your arm".
. .
.

'As she took away her hand, Jermyn

let his

arm

fall,

put

been branded on the forehead all wonted motives would be uprooted. Harold, on his side, had no wish opposed to filial kindness, but his busy thoughts were imperiously determined by habits which had no reference to ary

woman's

feelings.

.'

57

GEORGE ELIOT
both his hands in his pockets, and shrugging his shoulders said, "I shall use him as he uses me". 'jermyn had turned round his savage side, and the blandness was out of sight. It was this that had always frightened Mrs. Transome there was a possibility of fierce insolence in this man who was to pass with those nearest to her as her indebted servant, but whose brand she secretly bore. She was as powerless with him as she was with her son. This woman, who loved rule, dared not speak another word of attempted persuasion/
:

'

Mrs. Transome
moralist
'

has,

and can have, no impulse towards what the

:

means by repentance

She had no ultimate analysis of things that went beyond blood and family th^ Herons of Fenshore or the Badgers of Hillbury. She had never seen behind the canvas with which
her
life

was hung.

In the

dim background
of the law
;

there

was the
her,

burning mount and

there

the tables

in the

foreground

was Lady Debarry privately gossiping about

finally deciding

and

Lady Wyvern
dinner/

not to send her invitations to

She
shall

is

herself here in her reaction to Jermyn's suggestion that he

telling

be saved by her

Harold

'"But
ruined
If
I

have asked me, I will never tell him Be do something mure dastardly to save yourself. sinned, my judgment went beforehand that I should sin
!

now you
like
is

no

for a

man

you"/
of the essence of her tragedy
;

This limitation

it

goes, as

Eliot presents her, with her being an impressive

George and sympathy-

commanding
helplessness

Here we have her enduring the agonized figure. of a moment of tension

:

the long drawingshe relieve her where restlessness room, might by walking up and down, and catch the sound of Jermyn's entrance into Harold's room, which was close by. Here she moved to and fro amongst the rose-coloured satin of chairs and curtains the great story of this world reduced for her to the little tale of her own existence dull obscurity everywhere, except where the keen light fell on the narrow track of her own lot, wide only

'When Harold left the table she went into

58

ROMOLA TO MIDDLEMARCH
woman's anguish. At last she heard the expected ring and footstep, and the opening and closing door. Unable to walk
for a

about any longer, she sank into a large cushioned chair, helpless prayerless. She was not thinking of God's anger or mercy but of her son's. She was thinking of what might be brought, not by death, but by life.'

and

There

is

no touch of the homiletic about

this

it is

dramatic con-

statation,

which

is

poignant and utterly convincing, and the implied moral, a matter of the enacted inevitability, is that perceived by
realist.

the strain develops for her, our sympainfully engaged, so that when we come to the critical point (Chapter XLII) at which Jermyn says, 'It is not to be Harold would go against me ... if he knew the whole that supposed

a psychological

As

pathetic interest

is

truth',

we

feel the full atrocity the

prop

>sition has for her. Further,

take the full force and finality of the disaster represented by her now breaking her life-long resolve never to quarrel 'with this man

we

never

tell

The man

him what she knew him to be'. is perfectly done. For him Nemesis

has a face corre-

sponding to his moral quality ; it is something he contemplates 'in anger, in exasperation, that Harold, precisely Harold Transome, should have turned out to be the probable instrument of a visitation
that

would be bad

luck, not justice

for
?

is

ninety-nine men out of a hundred escape

there any justice when He found himself begin-

ning to hate Harold between father and son

.

.'.

by

delicate touches the resemblance

us,

is

conveyed to

and the discrimination

made between

their respective egoisms.

If we agree that the

sense that detracts sense that

is

two men are 'women's men', it is not in any from their convincingness it is rather in the the penetrating and 'placing' analysis of their masculinity
;

is

something, we feel, that it took a woman to do. Jermyn's case Tito Melema's ; this time not thought out in an effort to work from the abstract to the concrete, but presented in the life, with
;

compelling reality he is unquestionably 'there* in the full concrete, and unquestionably (as Tito, in so far as he exists, is not) a man one of 'those who are led on through the years by the gradual demands of a selfishness which has spread its fibres far and wide through the intricate vanities and sordid cares of an everydav
existence'.

59

GEORGE ELIOT
As for Harold, he has 'the energetic will, the quick perception, and the narrow imagination which make what is called the "practical mind".' He is a 'clever, frank, good-natured egoist*.
His very good-nature was unsympathetic it never came from any thorough understanding or deep respect for what was in the mind of the person he obliged or indulged it was like his kindness to his mother an arrangement of his for the of if others, which, happiness they were sensible, ought to
:

'

succeed/

He

Nemesis in

cannot, of course, help his parentage his disaster is given here : l

the ironic element of

think

'"Confound the fellow with we are on a footing for me

his

to

know

Mrs. Jermyn! Does he anything about his

wife?"'
It is characteristic

of George Eliot that she can make such a

man

the focus of a profoundly moving tragedy : for Harold unquestionably becomes that for us at the point when, turning violently on

Jermyn, who has been driven to come out with, 'I am your father ', he catches sight, in the ensuing scuffle, of the two faces side by side
!

and sees 'the hated fatherhood reasserted'. This may sound melodramatic as recapitulated here that it should come with so final a rightness in the actual text shows with what triumphant success George Eliot has justified iierhigh ragic conception of her theme. It is characteristic of her to be able to make a tragedy out of 'moral mediocrity'. The phrase is used to convey the redeemed
in a mirror,
;

Esther Lyon's sense of life at Transome Court, and Esther has been
represented earlier as reflecting:

but Mrs. Transome

Eliot's vision

'

'Mr. Transome had his beetles, There is nothing sentimental about George

them matters
tions

for compassion,

of human mediocrity and 'platitude', but she sees in and her dealings with them are asser-

of human dignity.
is

To

be able to assert

human
is

dignity in this

way
1

greatness

the contrast with Flaubert

worth pondering.
.

'"Why do you wish to shield such a fellow, mother?" . . Mrs. Transome's rising temper was turned into a horrible sensation, as painful as a sudden concussion trom something hard and immovable when we have struck out with our fist, intending to hit something warm, soft and breathing like ourselves. Poor Mrs. Transome's strokes were sent jarring back on her by a hard unendurable pas*.'
60

MIDDLEMARCH
Felix Holt
is

not one of the novels that cultivated persons are

supposed to have read, and, if read at all, it is hardly ever mentioned, so that there is reason for saying that one of the finest things in fiction is virtually unknown. It is exasperating that George
in a mass though Felix Holt is not, like Romola, 'unreadable', and the superlative quality of the live part ought to have compelled recognition. It is exasperating and it is, again, characteristic of her. Only one book can, as a whole (though not without qualification), be said to represent her mature genius. That, of course, is Middlemarch.

Eliot should have

that
is

embedded some of her maturest work

so

much

other

necessary part of great intellectual powers in such a success as is obvious. The sub-title of the book is Study of Provincial Life, and it is no idle pretension. The sheer informedness

The

Middlemarch

mechanism, the ways in which people of different classes live and (if they have to) earn their livelihoods, impresses us with its range, and it is real knowledge that is, it is knowledge alive with understanding. George Eliot had said in Felix Holt by way of apology for the space she devoted to 'social changes' and
about society,
its
;

which has not been deterimplicit in this remark is hi achieved and it is achieved Middlemarch, magnificently by a novelist whose genius manifests itself in a profound analysis of the
'public matters'
:

'

there

is

no

private

life

mined by

wider public

life'.

The aim

individual.

herself to

can see that here indeed Beatrice Potter, training become a 'sociological investigator', might have looked
failed to find in the text-

We

without disappointment for what che

books. 1

The intellectual, again, is apparent in the conception of certain of the most strikingly successful themes. Only a novelist who had known from the inside the exhaustions and discouragements of
long-range intellectual enterprises could have conveyed the pathos of Dr. Casaubon's predicament. Not that Casaubon is supposed
to have a remarkable intellect
;

he

is

an

intellectual

manqut

'Nay, are there

many

situations

the struggle of the soul with the

*

more sublimely tragic than demand to renounce a work

1 For any detailed description of the complexity of human nature ... I had to turn to novelists and poets .' B. Webb, My Apprenticeship, p. 138.
. .

6l

GEORGE ELIOT
the significance of its life a significance which has been as the waters which come and go where no vanish to is which others has need of them ? But there was nothing to strike
all

man

as

sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,

who had some

amusement

contempt at hand for He was at present too ill acquainted mingling with his pity the pathos of a lot where^ every thing into enter to with disaster the passionate egoism of is below the level of tragedy except
the sufferer/
that Actually, the pathos
is

futile scholarship, felt a litUp

Casaubon enacts 'below the

tragic level'

not quite what

this

passage

by
it

itself

a part

more

like that

which

The

essential

predicament
all
;

plays in both cases involves the insulation

might suggest ; egoism plays in Mrs. Transome's tragedy.

of

the egoism

from

scholarship futile

Not only is Casaubon s he himself inwardly knows it to be so, and is

heroic ends. large or

more preoccupied with saving himself from having to recognize movthe fact than with anything else. To have communicated in that remarkable more the is situation a of such the
ingly

pathos
is

Lydgate's amused contempt

thing that
critical

is

strongly

felt

at the potentialities

of comedy in Casaubon, and of a comedy more

This, for instance,
is

by

clearly not altogether the novelist : she does more than hint

unlike some-

than sympathetic.

something of the early

satiric felicities

of Mr.

extraordinarily like E. M. Forster

:

of 'Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent' a great deal which hindrance his time at the Grange in these weeks, and the to the progress of his great work the courtship occasioned made him look forward the Key to all Mythologies naturally of courtship But he termination to the

more

had

the hindrance, having made up his deliberately incurred mind that it was now time for him to adorn his life with the to irradiate the gloom which graces of female companionship, over the intervals of studious labour fatigue was apt to hang with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminof female tendance for his declining years. ating age, the solace Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling,

eagerly

happy

and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions baptism by immersion could only be performed symbolically, so Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling *vas the utmost approach to a plunge
62

MIDDLEMARCH
which his stream would afford him and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion. Nevertheless, he observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke showed an ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil
;

most agreeable previsions of mamage. crossed his mind that possibly there was
his

It

had once or twice

Dorothea to account for the but he was unable to discern the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him better so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the exaggerations of human tradition.'
;

some deficiency in moderation of his abandonment;

Compare that with the account of Mr. Pembroke's proposal in The Longest Journey, and it is difficult not to suspect that this is in a different class from the general resemblances that relate Mr. Forster by way of George Eliot and Jane Austen back to Fielding, and that we have a direct relation of reminiscence here. However that may be, the point to be made regards the critical quality of George Eliot's irony. Here we have the note again
:

'He had done nothing exceptional in marrying nothing but what society sanctions and considers an occasion for wreaths and bouquets. It had occurred to him that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he had reflected
that in taking a wife, a man of good position should expect and the younger the carefully choose a blooming young lady of a rank equal better, because more educable, and submissive

to his

good handsome

religious principles, virtuous disposition, and such a young lady he would make understanding.

own, of

On

settlements, and he would neglect no arrangement for her happiness in return, he should receive family pleasures
:

and leave behind him that copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of a man to the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since then, and no sonneteer had moreinsisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself over he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his mythobut he had always intended to acquit himself by logical key marriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him, that the world was getting dimmer and that he felt lonely, was a reason to him for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights before they too were left behind by the years.
;

63

GEORGE ELIOT
'And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than he demanded she might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr. Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. Society never
:

made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his in his own posterity When Dorothea him with that effusion, person! accepted
!

/as

ness

only natural ; and Mr. Casaubon believed that was going to begin.'
the torture has
all

his

happi-

By now
such by

begun

for

Mr. Casaubon, and

is felt

as

us. For the tone that has just been sampled, we feel his torment of isolation, self-distrust having, with terrible irony, been

turned by his marriage into a peculiarly torturing form of solitary confinement

:

'We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions how much more by hearing in hard distinct
from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness And this cruel outward accuser was there in the shape of a wife nay, of a young bride, who, instead of observing his abundant pen-scratches and
syllables
!

amplitude of paper with the uncritical awe of an elegantminded canary-bird, seemed to present herself as a spy watching
everything with a malign power of inference. Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had a sensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an equal quickness to imagine more than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation her capacity for< worshipping the right object he now
;

64

MIDDLEMARCH
foresaw with sudden terror that this capacity might be re-placed by presumption, this worship by the most exasperating of all that which sees vaguely a great many fine ends, and criticism has not the least notion what it costs to reach them.'
It is

not only an

intellectual, it

is

a spirit profoundly noble, one

to be aimed at by men, believing profoundly in a possible nobility that can make us, with her, realize such a situation fully as one for

compassion.
she says
:

Close upon the longer ironic passage quoted above

an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering selfnever to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious
'It is
:

and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted/

and the prompt recognition is a wise insurance when paying tribute to George Eliot's nobility that her The reminder is effected is not altogether a simple subject.

Such

a passage

reminds us

nobility

by something in the mode of expression something adverting that Dorothea isn't far away. George Eliot tends to identify herself with Dorothea, though Dorothea is far from being the whole of
;

us

George

Eliot.

When
it is

probable George in her. I want at the moment to insist (post(or Maggie Tulliver) of Dorothea, who doesn't represent her consideration poning the author's strength) that what we have in the treatment of Casaubon
is

Eliot

in connection with 'nobility' is mentioned that mos*- people think of the Dorothea

wholly strong.

The other
life

character of

whom pre-eminently it can be said that he

who knew
the intellectual
success.

could have been done only by someone

from the

inside

is

Lydgate.
life

He
'.
.

is
.

done with complete

'Only

those', his creator tells us,

life
it

the intellectual

and purpose

in

that serene activity

the supremacy of of ennobling thought can understand the grief of one who falls from into the absorbing soul- casting struggle with
the

who know
a seed

which has

'

worldly annoyances
E

Lydgate's concern

w th

'

ennobling thought

65

GEORGE ELIOT
and purpose* is very different from Dorothea's. means, and his aim is specific. It is remarkable

He knows what he how George Eliot

makes

novelists tell us that a character

us feel his intellectual passion as something concrete. iz a thinker (or an artist) we have

When

in usually only their word for it, but Lydgate's 'triumphant delight Eliot his studies' is a concrete presence: it is plain that George

knows

intimately what it is like, and knows what his studies are. But intensely as she admires his intellectual idealism, 1 and horrify-

ingly as she evokes the paralysing torpedo-touch of Rosamond, she doesn't make him a noble martyr to the femininity she is clearly
the femininity that is incapable of inor of idealism of any kind. He is a gentleman in a sense that immediately recommends him to Rosamond he is 'no so very far

from admiring

tellectual interests,

radical in relation to anything

but medical reform and the prosecu-

tion of discovery'. That is, the 'distinction' P.osamond admires is inseparable from a 'personal pride and unreflecting egoism' that George Eliot calls 'commonness'. In particular, his attitude to-

wards

women
*
:

is

such as to give a quality of poetic justice to his

misalliance

mind

he held it one of the prettiest attributes of the feminine to adore a man's pre-eminence without too precise a know-

ledge of what it consisted in'. This insulation of his interest in the other sex from his serious interests is emphasized by our being given
the history of his earlier affair with the French actress, Laure. lover he is Rosamond Vincy's complement.

As

The element of poetic justice

(they are

in the relationship

is

apparent here

now

married)

'He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman. He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests she had seen clearly Lydgate's pre-eminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other
:

The medical

profession, he believes, offers 'the

most

direct alliance

between

intellectual

conquest and social good '.

66

MIDDLEMARCH
relation to these desirable effects than if they

had been the

fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil. And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her

own opinion more than she did in his.

Lydgate was astounded

to find in niimberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her

compliant/

The fact that there

that
ness*

is

nothing
(as
it

else in

which corresponds

Rosamond beside her egoism responded) to Lydgate's 'common-

She

is

gives her a tremendous advantage, and makes her invincible. simple ego, and the concentrated subtlety at her command is

unembarrassed by any inner complexity. She always knows what she wants, and knows that it \s her due. Other people usually turn
out to be 'disagreeable people, who only think of themselves, and do not mind how annoying they are to her'. For herself, she is always convinced that no woman could behave more irreproachably than she is behaving'. No moral appeal can engage on her
'

she

is

as well
is

as she

defended by nature against that sort of embarrassment against logic. It is of no use accusing her of mendacity, or
:

insincerity, or

any kind of failure in reciprocity 'Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.'
:

If one judges that there is less of rympathy in George Eliot's presentment of Rosamond than in her presentment of any other of her

major characters (except Grandcourt

in Daniel Deronda),

one goes

gives sympathy lodgenough to George Eliot to say that the destructive and demoralizing power of Rosamond's triviality wouldn't have seemed so appalling to us if there had been any animus in the presentment. We are, from time to time, made to feel from within the circumference of Rosamond's egoism though we can't, of course, at any time be confined to it, and, there being no potential

on immediately
ment.

to note that

Rosamond

little

It is tribute

nobility here,

it is implicitly judged that this case can hardly, by of any triumph compassion, be fel' as tragic. To say that there is no animus in the presentment of Rosamond,

67

GEORGE ELIOT
one doesn't add that the reader certainly to time, wanting to break that graceful of as the turns neck, which, George Eliot evokes them, convey both a and sinister hint of the snake. But Rosamond infuriating obstinacy she figures in some of the best ministers too to our amusement
is

perhaps misleading

if

catches himself,

from time

exchanges in a book rich in masterly dialogue. There is that between her and Mary Garth in Book I, Chapter XII, where she tests her characteristic suspicion that Mary is incerested in Lydgate. The

honours go
is

easily to

Mary, who, her

;

antithesis,

may be said to offset

;

her in the representation of her sex

for

equally a woman's creation too, femininity in her is wholly admirable

Mary is equally real. She and equally feminine but that her in something gives

any company a wholly admirable advantage. Her good sense, quick intelligence and fine strength of character appear as the poised liveliness, shrewd good-humoured sharpness and direct honesty of her speech. If it were not a part of her strength to lack an aptitude for
errotional exaltations, she might be said to represent George Eliot's ideal of femininity she certainly represents a great deal of George
Eliot's

own

characteristic strength.

Rosamond, so decidedly at a disadvantage (for once) with Mary Garth, is more evenly matched with Mrs. Bulstrode, who calls in

Book

III,

Chapter
or
is

XXX,

to find out

whether the

flirtation

with

Lydgate

is,

not, anything

more than

a flirtation.

Their en-

counter, in

which unspoken inter-appreciation cf attire accompanies the verbal fence, occurs in the same chapter as that between Mrs.
*

Bulstrode and Mrs. Plymdale, well-meaning women both, knowing very little of their motives'. These encounters between women
give us

some of George Eliot's finest comedy

only a

woman could

have done them.

tragic undertone

And
is

comedy can be of the kind in which the what tells most on us, as we see in Book VIII,
the

Chapter LXXIV, where Mrs.

friends in

an attempt to find out what

Bulstrode goes the round of her is the matter with her

husband
'In

the

town held

Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that a bad opinion of her husband. No feminine

intimate might carry her friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact known or believed

about her husband

but

when
68

woman

with her thoughts

MIDDLEMARCH
much
at leisure got

them suddenly employed on something

grievously disadvantageous ^o her neighbours, various moral impulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance. Candour was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch

phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their cap-

and a robust candour acity, their conduct, or their position never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again, there was the love of truth. Stronger than all, there was the regard
;
.

for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom,

uttered with the

furniture
tell

accompaniment of pensive staring at the and a manner implying that the speaker would not what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her

hearer/
is a triumph in which the of a in the novelist's art is manifested part magnificent intelligence in some of the finest analysis any novel can show. The peculiar religious world to which Bulstrode belongs, its ethos and idiom,

The treatment of Bulstrode himself

George Eliot knows from the inside we remember the Evangelicalism of her youth. The analysis is a creative process it is a penetrat;

ing imagination, masterly and vivid in understanding, bringing the concrete before us in all its reality. Bulstrode is not an attractive
figure
:

'His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way a man gathers a domain in his neighbours' hope and fear as well as gratitude and power, when once it has got into
;

that subtle region, propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its external means. It was a principle with Mr.

Bulstrode to gain as
it

for the glory of

much power as possible, that he might use God. He went through a great deal of

spiritual conflict

and inward argument in order to adjust his and make clear to himself what God's glory required.' motives,
satire.

This looks like a promise of

satiric art;

But George

Eliot's

is

no

the perceptions that make the satirist are there right but she sees too much, and has too much the humility of the enough, supremely intelligent whose intelligence involves self-knowledge,

69

GEORGE ELIOT
more than incidentally ironical. Unengaging as Bulstrode is, are not allowed to forget that he is a highly developed member of the species to which we ourselves belong, and so capable of acute
to be

we

suffering ; and that his case is not as remote from what might be ours as the particulars of it encourage our complacency to assume. 1 his Nemesis closes in on him we feel his agonized twists and

When

turns too

much from
:

within

that

is

the effect of George Eliot's

kind of analysis

not to regard him with more compassion than

contempt
'

who

Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man had longed for years to be better than he was who had

selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had walked with them as a devout quire, till now that a terror had risen among them, and they could chant

taken his

no

longer, but threw out their

Eliot's analysis
is

common

cries ^or safety/

of the 'merciless' kind that only an intelligence lighted by compassion can attain

George

he had already been long dressed, and had prayer, pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken what was not true before God. For Bulstrode shrank from the direct lie with an intensity disproportionate to the numbers of his more indirect mLdeeds. Hut many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though they bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.' 'At
six o'clock

spent some of his wretchedness in

*His doubts did not arise from the possible relations of the event to Joshua Rigg's destiny, which belonged to the unmapped regions not taken under the providential government, except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose from reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement for himself, as Mr. Farebrother's induction to the living clearly

was. *This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of deceiving him; it was what he said to himself it was as genuinely his mode of explaining events as any theory of yours may be, if you happen to disagree with him. For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather the more our egoism is satisfied the more robust is our
belief.'

70

MIDDLEMARCH
Here he is, struggling with hope and temptation, by the bedside of his helpless tormentor
:

'Bulstrode's native imperiousness

and strength of deter-

This delicate-looking man, himself nervously perturbed, found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through that difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated corpse returned to movement without warmth, holding the mastery by its chill impassibility, his

mination served him well.

to guard against

mind was intensely at work thinking of what he had and what wou 4 win him security. Whatever
1

prayers he might

lift up, whatever statements he might inwardly make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to wish for evil to another through all this effort to condense words into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible vividness the images of the events he desired. And in the train of those images came their apology. He could not but see the death of Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance. What was the removal of this wretched creature ? He was impenitent but were not public criminals impenitent yet the law decided on their fate. Should Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating death as the desirable issue if he kept his hands from hastening it if he scrupulously did what was prescribed. E^en here fhere might be a mistake human prescriptions were fallible things Lydgate had said that treatment had hastened death why not his own method of treatment ? But, of course, intention was everything in the question of right and wrong.
?
:
:

'And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his desire. He inwardly declared that he intended to obey
orders.

Why should he have got into any argument about the

validity of these orders ? which avails itself desire

It was only the common trick of of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in all uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks like the absence of law. Still, he did obey

the orders/
is the commentary on his move to square Lydgate 'The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause of uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely the easier. He did

Here

71

GEORGE ELIOT
not measure the quantity of diseased motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's goodwill, but the quantity was none the less actively there, like an irritating agent in his blood. A man vows, and yet will not cast away the means of breaking his vow. Not at all but the Is it that he distinctly means to break it ?
;

desires

which tend to break

it

are at

work

in

him dimly, and

their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow. Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the free use of his odious powers how could Bulstrode wish

make

'

for that
It is

mark of

Bulstrode that

we

the quality of George Eliot's presentment of should feel that the essential aspect of Nemesis for
in the guise

him is what confronts him here,

for the death he has ensured

of salvation,

as

he waits

ensured by disobeying, with an intention that works through dark indirections and tormented inner
Lydgate's
strict 'doctor's

casuistries,

orders'

which had once been subservient to his own which he had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on as he would. It was his gladness then which impelled him now to be an end. glad that the life was at 'And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened ? Who knew what would have saved him ?
'

'In that way the moments passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was marked enoagh to draw his attention of the departing life, wholly to the bed, and forced him to think

Raffles himself is Dickensian,

and so

is

Mr. Borthrop Trumbull,

the auctioneer, to say which is to suggest that, while adequate to their functions, they don't exhibit that peculiar quality of life which
distinguishes

George

Eliot's

own

creativeness.
;

There
it

is

abundance

book mother and daughter, the Vincy family, Mr., Farebrother, the Cadwalladers, and also in the grotesquerie of Peter Featherstone and his kin, which is so decidedly George Eliot and not Dickens.
of
this quality in the

as a whole

we have

in the Garths,

father,

The weakness of the book,

with
its

as already intimated, is in

Dorothea.

We have the danger-signal in the very outset, in the brief Prelude,

reference to St. Theresa,

whose 'flame
satisfaction,

... fed

soared after

some

illimitable

some

from within, object which

72

MIDDLEMARCH
which would reconcile self-despair justify weakness, with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self*. 'Many Theresas', we are told, 'have been born who found for themselves life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant no

would never

epic

of a 'coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently
action.
. .

.'

In the absence

spiritual
'

to realize their aspiration : 'Their ardour willing soul' they failed alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood . .' Their failure, we gather, was a case of 'a certain ill-matched with the meanness of opportun.

grandeur

ity a far

It is

from

when we

a dangerous theme for George Eliot, and we recognize our misgivings are not quieted reassuring accent. And so marked a reminder of the of close in the Prelude, find,
as this
:

Maggie Tulliver

'Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the duckand never finds the living stream in lings in the brown pond, Here and there ir its own oary-footed kind. with fellowship born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are
dispersed

among hindrances,
two

instead

of centring

in

some long-

recognisable deed/
All the same, the
first

the poise is so sure and Dorothea Brooke that 'her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might fairly include the parish of Tipton, and her own rule of conduct there*, we of Tipton' its full weight. The provinciality of that
'parish give the provincial scene that George Eliot presents is not a mere foil for a heroine ; we see it in Dorothea herself as a callowness confirmed

chapters make us forget these alarms, the tone so right. When we are told of

by
at

and her sister had 'both been educated ... on plans once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and
culture
:

she

This is an education .' afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne. that makes little difference to Maggie Tulliver who is now, we
.

feel,

seen

by

the novelist

from the outside as well as felt from within.

Dorothea, that is to say, is not exempted from the irony that informs our vision of the other characters in these opening chapters Celia, Mr. Brooke, Sir James Chetham and Mr. Casaubon. It looks as if
73

GEORGE ELIOT
George Eliot had succeeded in bringing within her achieved maturity this most resistant and incorrigible self. Unhappily, we can't go on in that belief for long. Already in
the third chapter we find reasons for recalling the Prelude. In the description of the 'soul-hungei' that leads Dorothea to see Casauso fantastically as a 'winged messenger* we miss the poise had characterized the presentment of her at her introduction

bon

that

ness

'For a long while she had been oppressed by the indefinitewhich hung in her mind, like a thick summer haze, over all her desire to make her life greatly effective. What could she
do,

to do ? ... The intensity of her religious the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one disposition, a of nature aspect altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually

what ought she

and with such a nature struggling in the bands of narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency.'
consequent
a
:

Aren't

we

here,
?

we wonder,

in sight

of an unqualified

self-

some tiling dangerous in the way the be seems to reserved for the provincial background and cirirony heroine immune the ? The doubt has very soon cumstances, leaving become more than a doubt. WLen (in Chapter VII) Dorothea,
identification
Isn't there

by way of illustrating

the kind of music she enjoys, says that the great organ at Freiberg, which she heard on her way home from Lausanne, made her sob, we can't help noting that it is the fatuous

Mr. Brooke, a figure consistently presented for our ironic contemplation, who comments: 'That kind of thing is not healthy, my
dear*.

By

the time

we

see her

by

the 'reclining Ariadne' in the

Vatican, as Will Ladislaw sees her

'a breathing, blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish grey drapery her long cloak,
;

fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from the arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing

somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her fr.ce around the simply braided dark-brown
'

hair

74

MIDDLEMARCH
are in a position to say that seeing her here through Will's for us no adjustment of vision : this is how \#e have involves eyes been seeing her or been aware that we are meant to see her. And

we

in general, in so far as we respond to the novelist's intention, our vision goes on being Will's. The idealization is overt at the moment, finding its licence in the

surrounding statuary and in Will's role of

artist

(he

is

with

his

But Will's idealizing faculty clearly doesn't form even here, and when, thirty or so pages further on, talking with her and Casaubon, he reflects, 'She was an angel beguiled', we arc clearly not meant to dissociate ourselves or the novelist. In fact, he has no independent status of his
confine itself to her outward
said to exist he merely represents, not a dramaticof view, but certain of George Eliot's intentions intentions she has failed to realize creatively. The most important of these is to impose on the reader her own vision and valuation of
;

German artist friend).

own

he can't be

ally real point

Dorothea.
Will, of course,
is

also intended

to be, in contrast to

it is not really a separate matter a for Dorothea. soul-mate Casaubon, fitting

He is not substantially

(everyone agrees) 'there', but we can see well

attractions are intended,

enough what kind of qualities and

can see equally well that

and

we

are expected to share a valuation of them extravagantly higher than any we can for a moment countenance. George Eliot's valuation of Will Ladislaw, in short, is

we

Dorothea's, just as Will's of Dorothea

to put
it

hunger' midst of so

is George Eliot's. Dorothea, another way, is a product of George Eliot's own 'soulanother day-dream ideal self. This persistence, in the

much

that

is

so other,

of an unreduced enclave of the

old immaturity is disconcerting in the extreme. have an alternation between the poised impersonal insight of a finely tempered wisdom and something like the emotional confusions and self-

We

importances of adolescence.
It is

given

us,

of course,
is

at the outset, as

of the essence of Doro'was

in her mind, like a
life

thea's case, that she

vague
all

in her exaltations, that she

oppressed by
thick

the indefiniteness
haze, over
the

which hung

summer
lapses
;

her desire to

make her

greatly

effective*.

But

show of presenting
75

this liaze

soon

George Eliot

herself, so far as

from the outside Dorothea is concerned,

GEORGE ELIOT
in the presentment is peculiarly apparent of those impossibly high-falutin" tete-a-tete or soul to soul exwithout irony is changes between Dorothea and Will, which utterly is and tone Their or criticism. given fairly enough in this quality at the end of Chapter LXXXII) occurs retrospective summary (it 'all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been in a world
is

clearly in

it

too.

That

where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered*. It is Will who is supposed to be here as everywhere in his attitude reflecting to this effect, but Will towards Dorothea is unmistakably not to be distinguished from 1 the novelist (as we have noted, he hardly exists). There is, as a matter of fact, one place where for a moment
apart,

George Eliot
'For the

dissociates herself

from him (Chapter

XXXIX)

moment Will's admiration was accompanied with

man is seldom ashamed of feelchilling sense of remoteness. a woman so well when he sees a certain love he cannot that ing intended greatness for men.' greatness in her ; nature having
What she
tion
;

dissociates herself from,

it

will

be noted,

is

not the valua-

the contrary, the irony is not directed against that, but, out that George Eliot identifies implicitly endorses it. To point
herself with Will's sense of Dorothea's 'subduing power, the sweet
dignity, of her noble unsuspicious inexperience', doesn't, perhaps, seem a very damaging criticism. But wlicn it becomes plain that
in this self-identification such significant matters involved the criticism takes on a different look.

on

of valuation are

'Men and women make such

taking their

sad mistakes about their

own

vague uneasy longings, sometimes for symptoms, still for a mighty for sometimes religion, and oftener genius,
love.'

The genius of George Eliot is not questioned, but what she observes here in respect of Rosamond Vincy has obvious bearings
on her own immature

company
maturity.
1

the self persisting so extraordinarily in with the genius that is self-knowledge and a rare order of
self,

it is he alone who is adequate to treating Rosasignificantly, with appropriate ruthlessnesa see the episode (Chapter LXXVIII) * in which he tells her straight' what his author feels about her.

Though,

mond

76

MIDDLEMARCH
Dorothea, with her 'genius for feeling nobly', that 'current* in her mind 'into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later
to flow

the reaching forward of the

the fullest truth, the least partial

ability to turn that law, gives us Maggie's case again,

with her

whole consciousness towards good' (end of Chapter XX), and current into a passion for Will Ladisand Maggie's significance
:

again

we have the confusions represented by the exalted vagueness of we have the unacceptable valuations and Maggie's 'soul-hunger' the day-dream self-indulgence. The aspect of self-indulgence is most embarrassingly apparent in we are invited to see them) with Lydgate, Dorothea's relations
;

(as

who, unlike Ladislaw,

is

real

and a man.

Lydgate's reality makes

the unreality of the great scene intended by George Eliot (or by the Dorothea in her) the more disconceiting : the scene in which to Lydgate, misunderstood, isolated, ostracized, there appears, an

unhoped-for angelic
irresistibly
'

visitation,

Dorothea, all-comprehending and

:

good (Chapter LXXVI)

it is
is

"

Oh,

hard
in

"
!

said Dorothea.

"I understand the

diffi-

your vindicating yourself. And that all this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out better ways I cannot bear
culty there

remember what you

to rest in this as unchangeable. said to me

I I know you meant that. when you first spoke to me

about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that to love what is great, and try to reach it, and
yet to fail."
for the full

'"Yes", said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room meaning of his grief. we '"Suppose", said Dorothea meditatively. "Suppose and the to on the you plan, present hospital according kept the friendship and support of the stayed here though only with few, the evil feeling towards you would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you, be. . .

still

you speak
with a

cause they would see that your purposes were pure. You may win a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have heard of, and we shall all be proud of you", she ended,
smile.'

We

are given a

good

deal in the

same vein of winning sim-

77

GEORGE ELIOT
Such a failure in touch, in so intelligent a novelist, is more plicity. than a surface matter ; it betrays a radical disorder. For Lydgate, earnestness with which Dorowe are told, the 'childlike
grave-eyed
thea said
all this

was

irresistible

blent into an adorable

*

whole with

her ready understanding of higli experience have appreciated her to the full, we are told that
.

And lest we shouldn't

'As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing of her own future, and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she wanted nothing for herself but a
chair to
sit

in

from which

eyes at the

poor mortals

I never saw in men a n.an can make a friend of her towards ship

what

she can look down with those clear who pray to her. She seems to have of friendany woman before a fountain
.

What we have here is unmistakably something of the same

as

order

Romola's epiphany
rate,

in the plague-stricken village

but worse
it is

or at any

more

painfully significant.

Offered as

in a con;

it text of George Eliot's maturest art, it not only matters more forces us to recognize how intimately her weakness attends upon

her strength. Stressing the intended significance of the scene she of it : says, in the course

'The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us we begin to see and to believe that things again in their larger, quieter masses, we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our char:

acter/

This

is

a characteristic utterance, and, but for the illustration

we

the are being offered, we should say it came from her strength her presentment of Casaubon, Rosamond, strength exhibited in It is certainly her strength as a novelist to and Bulstrode. Lydgate have a noble and ardent nature it is a condition of that maturity which makes her so much greater an artist than Flaubert. What she says of Dorothea might have been said of herself
:

Permanent

rebellion, the disorder

of a

life

without some

loving reverent resolve,

was not

possible to her.'

But

that she says

it

of Dorothea must make us aware

78

how

far

DANIEL DERONDA
from
a simple trait
it is

we

are considering,
this

and
:

how

readily the

proposition can

slide into

such another as

'No
not

life

filled

would have been possible for Dorothea that was with emotion/

Strength, and complacent readiness to yield to temptation they are not at all the same thing ; but we see how insidiously, in George
Eliot, they are related. ative sympathy, quick

Intensely alive with intelligence and imaginand vivid in her realization of the 'equivalent

centre of self in others

even in

Casaubon or

Rosamond,

she

is

incapable of morose indifference or the normal routine obtuseness, and it may be said in a wholly laudatory sense, by way of characterizing her at her highest level, that no life for her that was not filled with emotion

would have been

her sensibility
is

possible directed

outward, and she responds from deep within.

tion*
is

At

this level,

by object, distinguishable from the play of the intelligence and self-knowledge that give it impersonality. But the emotional 'fulness* represented

a disinterested response defined

its

'emoand hardly

by Dorothea depends
intelligence

and of 'objective correlative* have the day-dream relation to experience they are generated by a need to soar above the indocile facts and conditions of the real world. They don't, indeed, strike us as real in any sense they have no objectivity, no vigour of illusion. In this kind of indulgence, complaisantly as she abandons herself to the
;

exalting potency on an abeyance of self-knowledge, and the situations offered by way

for
its

current that

is

loosed,

George

Eliot's creative vitality has

no

part.

(iii)

'Daniel Deronda* and 'The Portrait of a Lady'

is

In

no other of her works

weakness so remarkable or so unfortunate

is

the association of the strength with the as in Daniel Deronda. It

strength

so peculiarly unfortunate, not because the weakness spoils the the two stand apart, on a large scale, in fairly neatly separable masses but because the mass of fervid and wordy unreality

ever had, and to be so shows, I think,

seems to have absorbed most of the attention the book has all that is remembered of it. That this should be

how

little

George
79

Eliot's acceptance has rested

upon

a critical recognition of her real strength

and

distinction,

and

GEORGE ELIOT
how
unfair to her, in effect,
is

the conventional overvaluing of her

real strength had been appreciachievement as the good half an so ated for what magnificent failed to compel an admiration have not could of Daniel Deronda

early work. For

if the nature

of her

it is,

that ness

would have
of the bad

established

it,

not the

less

for the astonishing bad-

the great things in fiction. This can It will be best to get the bad half out of the way first. be quickly done, since the weakness doesn't require any sustained of a kind that has already been thoroughly disattention,
half,

among

being

cussed.

It is

represented

by Deronda

himself,

and by what may be

called in general the Zionist inspiration. And this is the point at which to mention a work of George Eliot's that preceded Middle-

The Spanish Gypsy. It is a drama in verse, the action of march which is placed in mediae /al Spain. The heroine, when on the eve of marriage to her lover, a Spanish noble, is plmiged into a conflict between love and duty by the appearance of a gypsy who (to quote
Leslie Stephen's

summary)
is

her father
nation
;

that he

loss of time that he is 'explains without or Mahomet of a gypsy Moses about to be the

and orders her to give up her country, her

religion,

and her

lover to join him in this hopeful enterprise'. The conflict is resolved it as an exalted by her embracing this duty with ardour, and feeling

and exalting passion or Cause

Father,

At

my soul is not too base to *ing touch of your great thoughts; nay, in my blood There streams the sense unspeakable of kind,
... I will wed

'As leopard feels at ea e e with leopard.

The

curse that blights

my people.

'Why place the heroine among conditions so hard to imagine?' He gives no answer, but the analysis we have asks Leslie Stephen. arrived at of her weakness points us to one and a more interesting
one than that which
his smile at a great novelist's bluestocking

caprice seems to suggest.

to offer herself the George Eliot was too intelligent to be able in race and interest the Victorian or of promptings of Comtism,
exaltations she craved too inheredity, as providing the religious that is, to offer them directly as such. But imaginative art telligent,

80

DANIEL DERONDA
provided her with opportunities for confusion
;

she found herself

licensed to play witn daydream unrealities so strenuously as not to recognize them for such. Author-martyr of Romola, she pretends, with painful and scholarly earnestness, that they are historical and
real

but the essential function of the quasi-historical setting is one with that of the verse form it is to evade any serious test for reality
;
:

(poetry, we know, idealizes and seeks a higher truth). see how incomparably better were the opportunities offered

We

her by Zionism.
its

She didn't need to reconstruct Anti-Semitism or

fact,

Jews were thert in the contemporary world of and represented real, active and poignant issues. All her generous moral fervour was quite naturally and spontaneously engaged on their behalf, and, on the other hand, her religious bent and her piety, as well as her intellectual energies and interests, found a
opposite
:

the

congenial field in Jewish culture, history and tradition. Advantages which, once felt, were irresistible temptations. Henry James in his Conversation' on Daniel Deronda speaks (through Constantius) of

between the strong and the weak in George Eliot as one between what she is by inspiration and what she is because it is expected of her'. But it is the reverse of a sense of the author writing under a sort of external pressure' (Constantius) that I myself have in reading the bad part of Daniel Deronda. Here, if anywhere,
the difference
'
*

we
all

self swept

have the marks of 'inspiration' George Eliot clearly feels heralong on a warm emotional flow. If there is anything at to be said for the proposition (via Constantius again) that 'all the
:

Jewish part

is

?t

bottom

cold',

it

must be

that

it

can be

made

to

point to a certain quality in that part which relates it to the novel in which D. H. Lawrence tries, in imaginative creation, to believe that
the pre-Christian Serpent, the one

The

insincerity,
lies,

Mexican religion might be revived The Plumed book in which Lawrence falls into insincerity. of the kind he was so good at diagnosing and
'tries'
is

defining,

of course, in the quality that leads one to say

conscious of.

though
is

it is

flow rather than effort one

And

there

certainly something of that quality in Daniel Deronda

something

provoke the judgment that so intelligent a writer couldn't, at that level, have been so self-convinced of inspiration without some inner connivance or complicity there is an elem< nt of the tacitly v oulu.
to
:

But
F

this is

not to say that George

81

Eliot's intellect here prevails

GEORGE ELIOT
over the spontaneities, or that there
isn't a

determining drive from

within, a triumphant pressure of emotion ; thcie is, and that is the trouble. The Victorian intellectual certainly has a large part in her

emotional

Zionist inspirations, but that doesn't make these the less fervidly the part is one of happy subordinate rlliance with her ;

have already seen that this alliance comes very naturally (for the relation between the Victorian intellectual and the very feminine woman in her is not the simple antithesis her critics
immaturity.

We

seem commonly

to suppose) ; it comes very naturally and insidiously, establishing the condition: in which her mature intelligence lapses and ceases to inhibit her flights flights not deriving their

impulsion from any external pressure. A distinguished mind and a noble nature are unquestionably present in the bad part of Daniel
Deronda, but it is bad; ",nd the nobility, generosity, and moral idealism are at the same time modes of self-indulgence.
finds in imagining her hero, Deronda he can said be be to (if imagined), doesn't need analysis. He, de-

The kind of satisfaction she

is

cidedly,

woman's

creation

1
:

'Persons attracted
his

him ... in proportion to the possibility of defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with
sort

some

clination to

of redeeming influence and he had to resist an inwithdraw coldly from the fortunate.' (Chapter
;

XXVIII.)
But this about his experience at Cambridge is characteristic of the innumerable things by the way that even in George Eliot's weaker places remind us we are dealing with an extremely vigorous and distinguished mind, and one in no respect disabled by being a woman's
:

"He found the inward bent towards comprehension and thoroughness diverging more and more from the track marked out by the standards
of examination: he felt a heightening discontent with the wearing and enfeebling strain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity without any insight into the principles which form the vital connections of knowledge.'
futility

This goes well with her note on Lydgate's education 'A liberal education had of course left him free to read the indecent passages in the school classics, but beyond a general sense of secrecy and obscenity in connection with his internal structure, had left his imagination quite unbiassed, so that for anything he knew his brains lay in small bags at his temples, and he had no more thought of representing to himself how his blood circulated than how paper served instead of gold.'
:

82

DANIEL DERONDA
He
the personal advantages imagined by Mordecai, the consumptive prophet, for the fulfiller of his dream, the new Moses :

has

all

all this

'he must be a Jew, intellectually cultured, morally fervid in a nature ready to be plenished from Mordecai's ; but his

and frame must be beautiful and strong, he must have been all the refinements of social life, his life must flow with a full and easy current, his circumstances must be free from sordid need he must glorify the possibilities of the Jew. .'
face

used to

(Chapter XXXVIII.)

We

feel,

in fact, that

Deronda was conceived

Eliot's relation to

in terms of general

specifications,

George

shown
is

here as Mordecai's,

him being pretty much that whose own show of dramatic existence

exaltations

merely a licence for the author to abound copiously in such and fervours as the Dorothea in her craves.

Her own misgivings about the degree of concrete presence she has succeeded in bestowing upon Deronda is betrayed, as Henry
James points out,
in the way she reminds us again and again of the otherwise non-significant trick she attributes to him the trick of holding the lapels of his coat as he talks. And when he talks, this
is

his style

'"Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you.
Fixed meditation longing or dread.
tion,

may do

We are not always in a state of strong emowe

can use our memories and we do our tastes. Take

a ^reat deal towards defining

our

and when we are calm

a safeguard.

gradually change the bias of our fear, as

your fear as

make consequences
vision".

hold of your ' (Chapter

It is like quickness of hearing. It may passionately present to you. Try to take sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like

XXXVI.)

It is true that he is here speaking as lay-confessor to Gwendolen Harleth ('her feeling had turned this man into a priest'), but that,

in

George
1

Eliot's conception,

is

for

him

the

most natural and

selfis

1 expressive of roles.

And

the style of talk sorts happily (if that

Here he is in ordinary drawing-room conversation: "'For my part,** Deronda, "people who do anything finely always inspirit me to try. I don't mean that they make me believe I can do it as well. But they make the thing, whatever it may be, seem worthy to be done. I can bear to think my
said

83

GEORGE ELIOT
word) with the style in general of the weak half of the book though one would hardly guess from this specimen of Deronda's speech alone how diffusely ponderous and abstract George Eliot can be, and for pages on end (pages among her most embarrassingly A fervid, for the wordiness and the emotionality go together). and the worst juxtaposition of specimens of the worst dialogue prose with specimens of the best (of which there is gieat abundance in the book) would offer some astonishing contrasts. But it would take up more room than can be spared, and an interested reader will
the

very easily choose representative specimens for himself. The kind of satisfaction George Eliot finds in Deronda's Zionism

The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the the higher, religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something ' more than our own appetites and vanities". But since poor Gwenis

'

"

plain.

dolen is not in a position to discover herself a Jewess, and so to find her salvation in Deronda's way, she might in time when Deronda

ha c gone off to Palestine with Mirah come to the depth and general validity of his wisdom.

reflect critically

upon

We,

at

any

rate, are

obliged to be critical of the George Eliot who can so unreservedly endorse the account of the 'higher, the religious life' represented by

Deronda.
he
feels

interestedness,

paragon of virtue, generosity, intelligence and dishe has no troubles' he needs a refuge from what
*

he needs, and what he yearns after, is an 'enthusiasm' an enthusiasm which shall be at the same time a 'duty'. Whether or not such a desire is necessarily one to have it both ways needn't be
discussed;
braces

my duty with my hereditary people'" combines moral enthusiasm and the feeling of emotional intensity with
it is

but it is quite '"I considered it

. .

plain, that

the 'duty' that Deronda emthe impulse of my feeling

to identify myself.

essential relaxation in

such a

way

that, for

any 'higher

life'

pro-

moted,
alcohol.

we may

fairly find

an analogy in the exalting

is

effects

of

The element of self-indulgence

There
is

confusions.

even

if there

were

patent. And so are the no equivalent of Zionism for Gwendolen, and the religion of heredity or race is not, as a
:

own music not good for much, but the world would be more dismal if I thought music itself not ijood for much. Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world".' (Chapter
XXXVI.)
84

DANIEL DERONDA
generalizable solution of the problem, one that

George Eliot herself,

directly challenged, could have stood by. In these inspirations her But she is intelligence and real moral insight are not engaged.

otherwise wholly engaged

how

wholly and

how

significantly

being brought airther home to UL when we note that Deronda' s racial mission finds itself identified with his love for Mirah, so that

he

eventually justified in the 'sweet irresistible hopefulness that the best of human possibilities might befall him the blending of a
is

complete personal love in one current with a larger duty.

All in the

.'

book

that issues

from

this inspiration is

unreal and

impotently wordy in the way discussed earlier in connexion with Dorothea though Middlemarch can show nothing to match the wastes of biblicality and fervid idealism ('Revelations') devoted to Mordecai, or the copious and drearily comic impossibility of the

working-men's club (Chapter CXLII), or the utterly routing Shakespearean sprightliness of Hans Meyrick's letter in Chapter LII. The Meyricks who, while not being direct products of the prophetic
afflatus, are

subordinate ministers to

it,

are

among

those elements in

seem to come from Dickens rather than from life, George and so is the pawnbroker's family the humour and tenderness are painfully trying, with that quality they have, that obviousness of intention, which relates them so intimately to the presiding solemEliot that
:

nity they subserve.

No

more need be

Deronda.

By way

said about the weak and bad side of Daniel of laying due stress upon the astonishingly con-

and fineness of the large remainder, the way in which George Eliot transcends in it not only her weakness, but what
trasting strength

are

to be her limitations, I will make an asserand a critical comparison Henry James wouldn't have written The Portrait of a Lady if he hadn't read Gwendolen Harleth of Daniel Deronda), and, of the pair of (as I shall call the good part

commonly thought

tion of fact

closely comparable works, George Eliot's has not only the distinction of having come first ; it is decidedly the greater. The fact, once
asserted,

versation'

can hardly be questioned. Henry James wrote his 'Conon Daniel Deronda in 1876, and he began The Portrait of a

No one who considers both the inshows in Gw 'ndolen Harleth and the extraordinary resemblance of his own thene to George Eliot's (so
Lady
'in the spring

of 1879'.

tense appreciative interest he

85

GEORGE ELIOT
that

The

Portrait

of a Lady might fairly be called a variation)

is

is

likely

to suggest that this resemblance Isabel Archer is Gwendolen

parallel, in

accidental and non-significant. and Osmond is Grandcourt the

very close and very obvious. As Osmond is Grandcourt is a proless to evoke position likely protest than the other. And there are certainly more important differences between Isabel and Gwendolen
scheme, at any
rate, is

for the individual characters, that

than between
the

Osmond and Grandcourt

the protagonist

a concession that, since

and the centre of interest, may seem to be a very favourably significant one in respect of James's originThe differences, however, as I see them are fairly suggested ality. by saying that Isabel Archer is Gwendolen Harleth seen by a man. And it has to be added that, in presenting such a type, George Eliot
is

woman

has a

woman's advantage.
;

say that, in the comparison, James's presentment is seen to be sentimental won't, perhaps, quite do but it is, I think, seen to be in both of the senses word controlled, that is, by a vision partial
that
is

To

George

both incomplete and indulgent so that we have to grant Eliot's presentment an advantage in reality. Here it may
;

another

be protested that James is not presenting Gwendolen Harleth, but girl, and that he is perfectly within his rights in choosing a

type that is more wholly sympathetic. That, no doubt, is what James intended to do in so far as he had Gwendolen Harleth in mind.

himself as attempting a variation

he thought of theme, seems to me very unlikely. The inspiration, or challenge, he was conscious of was some girl encountered in actual life
at all consciously, so that

But that he had her in mind

on George
:

Eliot's

'a perfect picture

of youthfulness

its

eagerness,

its

presump-

tion,

its

preoccupation with

icself, its

vanity and

silliness, its

sense

of us

own absoluteness. But she is

and

clever,

and therefore tragedy can have

is

extremely intelligent a hold on her.'

This, as a matter of fact,

'

James's description of

Gwendolen

(given through Theodora, the most sympathetic of the three as the style itself shows personae of the Conversation', who is here

endorsed by the judicially central Constantius)

need to
is

there seems

no

insist

further th

it

there

is

point in saying that Isabel

or that

Archer
Isabel

Gwendolen Harleth seen by

man
86

Gwendolen

is

DANIEL DERONDA
seen

by

woman. For
if

clearly, in the girl so described there

must

have been (even

we

think of her as Isabel Archer

'
*

in

whom

James doesn't see vanity or silliness) expressions of her preoccupation with self and her sense of her own absoluteness' justifying observations and responses more cricical and unsympathetic than any offered by James. It isn't that George Eliot shows any animus towards Gwendolen simply, as a very intelligent woman she is able, unlimited by masculine partiality of vision, and only the more
;

perceptive because a woman, to achieve a much completer presentment of her subject than James of his. This strength which manifests itself in

sum

as

completeness

affects us locally as a greater

specificity, an advantage which, when considered, turns out to be also an advantage over James in consistency. And, as a matter of fact, a notable specificity marks the strength of her mature art in

general.

This strength appears in her rendering of country-house and 'county' society compared with James's. Here we have something
that
is

commonly supposed to
'

lie

outside her scope.

Her

earlier life

having been what it was, and her life as a practising novelist having been spent with G. H. Lewes, cut off from the world' (' the loss for

was serious', says Mrs. Woolf), what can she have known best society where no one makes an invidious display of anything in particular, and the advantages of the world are taken
a novelist

of the

'

with that high-bred depreciation which follows from being accusThe answer is that, however tomed to them' (her own words) she came by Ler knowledge, she can, on the showing of Daniel
?

Deronda, present that world with such fulness and reality as to suggest that she knows it as completely and inwardly as she knows

her strength.
in

Middlemarch. James himself was much impressed by this aspect of Of the early part of George Eliot's book he says
(through Constantius)

which

The

deep, rich English tone, notes seemed melted together/ stress should fall on the 'many notes' rather than on the
:

'I

delighted in

its

so

many

what James is responding to is the specificity and comof the rendering, whereas 'melted' suggests an assimilating pleteness mellowness, charming and conciliating the perceptions ; a suffusing
'melted', for
richness, bland

and emollient.

George
8?

Eliot's richness

is

not of that

kind

she has too full and strong a sense of the reality, she sees too

GEORGE ELIOT
clearly

and understandingly,

sees

with a judging vision that

relates

everything to her profoundest moral experience : her full living sense of value is engaged, and sensitively responsive. It isn't that she
renders
doesn't appreciate the qualities that so appeal to Henry James : she them at least as well as Le renders them better, in the sense

that she 'places' them (a point very intimately related to the other, that her range of 'notes' is much wider than his). It is true that, as

Virginia

Woolf says, She is no satirist* But the reason given, The movement of her mind was too slow and cumbersome to lend itself to comedy', shows that Mrs. Woolf hadn't read Daniel Deronda
.

'

'

and can't have read other things at all perceptively. If George Eliot no satirist it is not because she hasn't the quickness, the delicacy of touch and the precision. And it certainly is not that she hasn't the perceptions and responses that go to make satire. Consider, for instance, the interview between Gwendolen and her uncle, the Reverend Mr. Gascoigne ('man of the world turned clergyman'),
is

in Chapter XIII

'This match with Grandcourt presented itself to him as a sort of public affair perhaps there were ways in which it might even strengthen the Establishment. To the Rector, whose father (nobody would have suspected it, and nobody was told) had risen to be a provincial corn-dealer, aristocratic heirship resembled regal heirship in excepting its possessor from the ordinary standard of moral judgments, Grandcourt, the almost certain baronet, the probable peer, was to be ranged with public personages, and was a match to be accepted on broad general But if Grandcourt had grounds national and ecclesiastical.
;
.

really

folly

made any deeper or more unfortunate experiments in than were common in young men of high prospects, he

was of an age to have finished them. All accounts can be suitably wound up when a man has not ruined himself, and the
expense may be taken as an insurance against future error. This was the view of practical wisdom with reference to
;

higher views, repentance had a supreme moral and religious value. There was every reason to believe that a woman of well-regulated mind would be happy with Grandcourt.'

*
personally ?"

'"Is he disagreeable to

you

'"No."
88

DANIEL DERONDA
"'Have you heard anything of him which has affected you " The Rector thought it impossible that Gwendisagreeably ? dolen could have heard the gossip he had heard, but in any case he must endeavour to put all things in the right light for her.
'"I have heard nothing about

him

except that he

is

match,"
affects

said

Gwendolen, with some sauciness;

"and

a great that

me very agreeably." '"Then, my dear Gwendolen, I have nothing further to say than this you hold your fortune in your own hands a fortune such as rarely happens to a girl in your circumstances a fortune in fact which almost takes the question out of the range of mere personal feeling, and makes your acceptance of it a duty. If Providence offers you power and position especially
:

conditions that are repugnant to you one of responsibility, Into which caprice must not enter. A man does not like to have his attachment trifled with he may not be at once repelled these things are matters of individual disposition. But the trifling may be carried too And I must point out to you that in case Mr. GrandcouU far. were repelled without your having refused him without your having intended ultimately to refuse him, your situation would be a humiliating and painful one. I, for my part, should regard you with severe disapprobation, as the victim of nothing else than your own coquetry and folly."

when unclogged by any

your course
:

is

Gwendolen became pallid as she listened to this admonitory had the force of sensations. Her speech. The ideas it raised resistant courage would not help her here, because her uncle was not urgmg her against her own resolve he was pressing upon her the motives of dread which she already felt he was making her more conscious of the risks that lay within herself. She was silent, and the Rector observed that he had produced some strong effect. " His tone had softened. I mean this in kindness, my dear."
; ;
'

aware of that, uncle," said Gwendolen, rising and head back, as if to rouse herself out of painful her shaking "I am not foolish. I know that I must be married passivity. some time before it is too late. And I don't see how I could do better than marry Mr. Grandcourt. I mern to accept him, if possible." She felt as if she were reinforcing herself by speaking with this decisiveness to her uncle. 'But the Rector was a little startled ty so bare a version of
"'I

am

89

GEORGE ELIOT
his

own meaning from those young lips. He wished that in her

his advice

mind

proper to a girl,

and such

should be taken in an infusion of sentiments as are presupposed in die advice of a

consider them always approclergyman, although he may not his niece prrks, carriages, He wished forward. be to put priate a title everything that would make this world a pleasant abode but he wished her not to be cynical to be, on the and have warm domestic affeccontrary, religiously dutiful,
;

tions.

'"My

dear Gwendolen", he said, rising also, and speaking

with benignant gravity. "I trust that you will find in marriage a new fountain of duty and affection. Marriage is the only true and satisfactory sphere of a woman, and if your marriage with Mr. Grandcourt should be happily decided upon, you will have both of rank and wealth, which probably an increasing power, benefit of others. These considerations for the used be may are something higher than romance. You are fitted by natural for a position which, considering your birth and early gifts could hardly be looked forward to as in the ordinary prospects, course of things and I trust that you will grace it not only by those personal gifts, but by a good and consistent life." '"I hope mamma will be the happier", said Gwendolen, in a more cheerful way, lifting her hands backward to her neck, and moving towards the door. She wanted to waive those
;

higher considerations/

Samuel Butler's matter, and taken by itself, not, in effect, from Samuel Butler's mode. The presentment altogether remote at any rate, it might very is here Rector of the directly satirical But even within the passage novel. a satirical from come well have
This
is

in the short narrative passage dequoted there are signs (notably of state mind) adverting us that the author scribing Gwendolen's
isn't

satirist.

And we know from

her total attitude towards Mr.

satirical
;

his appearances elsewhere that Gascoigne is very far from being

and, on the whole, admirable figure: 'cheerful, successful worldliness', she tells us, 'has a false air of being more selfish than the acrid, unsuccessful kind, " whose secret history is summed up in the terrible words, Sold, but
she shows

him as an impressive

not paid for".' And Mr. Gascoigne not only has strong family sense of duty, but shows himself in adversity feeling and a generous

90

DANIEL DERONDA
not only admirably
Eliot sees too
practical,

but admirably unselfish,

George

too her

much

has too sarong a sense of the real (as well as self-knowledge and too adequate and constant a sense of
satirist.

much and

own

humanity) to be a

The kind of complexity and completeness, the and response, represented by her Mr. Gascoigne
James's presentment of what
is

fulness

of vision

characterizes her

rendering in general of the world to which he belongs.

essentially the

Henry

His

the comparison, to have entailed is a subtle art, and he has his irony

same world is seen, in much excluding and simplifying.

;

inclusiveness

but the irony doesn't mean an adequacy to the complexities of the real in its

concrete fulness ; it doesn't mark a complex valuing process that has for upshot a total attitude in which all the elements of a full response are brought together. His art (in presenting this world in The

mean) seems to leave out all such perceptions as evoke the tones and facial expressions with which we register the astringent and the unpalatable. The irony is part of the subtlety of
Portrait of a Lady, I

by which, while being so warmly concrete in effect, he can, without challenge, be so limited and selective, and, what is an essential condition of his selectiveness, so lacking in specificity comthe art

pared with George Eliot. His world of 'best society* and countryhouse is, for all its life and charm, immeasurably less real (the word has a plain enough force here, and will bear pondering) than George
Eliot's.

He idealizes, ~nd his idealizing is a matter of not seeing, and

not knowing (or not taking into account), a great deal of the reality. And it seems to me that we have essentially this kind of idealizing in his Isabel Archer she stands to Gwendolen Harleth as James's
;

'best society' does to

George Eliot's. of this, course, I am insisting on the point of comparing Gwendolen with Isabel. The point is to bring out the force of
In saying

James's
acteristic

own
:

tribute

strength

(paid through Constantius) to the charof George Eliot's art as exhibited in her

protagonist
'

And

see

how the

girl

is

known,
It is

inside out,

how

thoroughly

she

is felt

and understood.

the

most

inteVAgent thing in all

George Eliot's writing; and that is saying much. It is so deep, so true, so complete, it holds such i wealth of psychological detail,
it is

more than masterly/

91

GEORGE ELIOT
It
is

would hardly be
complete
;

said

it is

characteristic

of Isabel Archer that the presentment of her of James's art to have made her an
for his purpose without anything ap-

effective

enough presence

proaching a 'wealth of psychological detail'. Her peculiar kind of impressiveness, in fact, is condir'oned by her not being known inside
out,

and

we
:

have to confess
she

George Eliot
is fair

knows

could not have been achieved by too much about that kind of girl. For it
it

had met a Gwendolen Harleth (at any rate, an American one) he would have seen Isabel Archer he immensely admired George Eliot's inwardness and completeness of rendering, but when he met the type in actual life and was prompted to the
to say that ifJames
;

conception of The Portrait of a Lady, he saw her with the eyes of an American gentleman. One must add an essential point that he saw her as American. It is, of course, possible to imagine a beautiful, clever and vital girl, with that sense of superior claims which made a large part of her
'

consciousness' (George Eliot's phrase for Gwendolen, but it applies equally to Isabel), whose egoism yet shouldn't be as much open to
the criticism of an intelligent woman as Gwendolen's. But it is hard to believe that, in life, she could be as free from qualities inviting a critical response as the Isabel Archer seen by James. Asking of Gwendolen, why, though a mere girl, she should be everywhere

George Eliot says (Chapter IV) in her beauty, quite on the surface a certain unusualness about her, a decision of will which made itself felt in her graceful movements and clear unhesitating tones, so that if she came into the room on a rainy day when everybody else was flaccid and the use of things in general was not apparent to them, there seemed to be a sudden reason for keeping up the forms of life.' James might very well have been glad to have found these phrases for his heroine. But George Eliot isn't satisfied with the answer she not only goes on, as James would hardly have done, to talk about the girl's 'inborn energy of egoistic desire', she is very specific and concrete in exhibiting the play of that energy the ways in which it imposes her claims on the people around her. And it is not enough to reply that James doesn't need to be specific to this effect
:

a centre of deferential attention,

'The answer

may seem

to

lie

even granting,
different girls
:

as

we

it is

nay, that the two authors are dealing with so plain that George Eliot knows more about

92

DANIEL DERONDA
hers than he about his, and that this accounts for an important part of the ostensible difterence.

And in so far as the ostensible difference

it

does,

does, as we have to grant back to an actual difference in the go object of the novelist's

interest,

then

we must recognize,

think, that

George

Eliot's choice

one determined by the nature of her interests and the quality of her interestedness of a Gwendolen rather than an Isabel is that of

someone who knows and sees more and has a completer grasp of the real and that it is one that enables the novelist to explore more thoroughly and profoundly the distinctive field of human nature, to be representative of which is the essential interest offered by both girls though the one offers a fuller and richer development than
;

the other. Difference of actual type chosen for presentment, difference of specificity and depth in presenting it isn't possible, as a matter of fact, to distinguish with any decision and say which
Isabel, a beautiful and impressive of girl, receiving deferential masculine attention she would certainly be very extraordinary if she were not in the habit of expecting something in the nature of homage.

mainly

we
;

have to do with.
is

American

in the habit

Here

is

George Eliot on Gwendolen (Chapter XI)

dining-room it was evident that Gwendolen with her own sex there were no beginnings of intimacy between her and the other girls, and in conversation they rather noted what she said than spoke to her in free exchange. Perhaps it was that she was not much interested in them, and when left alone in their company had a sense of empty benches. Mrs. Vulcany once remarked that Miss Harleth was too fond of the gentlemen but we know that she was not in the least fond of them she was only fond of their homage and women did not give her homage.'
'In the ladies'

was not

a general favourite

James

tells

us nothing like this about Isabel

in fact, he shows us her

receiving homage from women as well. But we can't help remembering that James himself is a gentleman and remembering also as

of course, imputing silliness to James) George description of Herr Klesmer being introduced, by Mrs. his alarming cleverness Arrowpoint, to Gwendolen (Chapter V) was made less formidable just then by a certain softening air of
relevant (without,
Eliot's
:

93

GEORGE ELIOT
silliness

which

will

sometimes

befall

even Genius in the desire of

being agreeable to

Beauty/

Eliot's genius appears in the specificity with which she kind of conscious the exhibits accompaniments in Gwendolen of the

George

enjoying. There is the conversaadvantage she resembles Isabel comes just before Herr Klesmer that tion with Mrs. Arrowpoint that has the opportunity to produce 'softening air of silliness', a selfconversation that illustrates one of the disabilities of egoism
*
:

an imaginary duhiess in others ; apt to address itself to as people who are well off speak In a cajoling tone to the poor, and those who are in the prime of life raise their voice and speak artito seniors, hastily conceiving them to be deaf and rather ficially have hardly here a writer the movement of whose imbecile*.
confidence
is

We

and cumbersome for comedy' and whose 'hold When she is at her best, as she is on so large upon dialogue a scale in Gwendolen Harleth, there is no writer of whom these

mind

is

'too slow
is

slack'.

criticisms are less true.

Nowhere

is

her genius more apparent than

;

a hold which, in tne sensitive precision of her 'hold on dialogue* with create can she it, is illustrated with the variety of living tension and her Gwendolen between below (see page 100) in the scene

mother that follows on the arrival of Grandcourt' s self-committing note, and (see page 103) n the decisive tete-a-tete with Grandcourt.
;

It is essentially

of whom reckless in braving danger, both moral and physical' hard to say whether she is more fitly described as tending to act 'whose lively venturesomeness of herself or her ideal of herself talk has the effect of wit' ('it was never her aspiration to express

presence

Gwendolen is made a concrete Gwendolen, whose 'ideal it was tw be daring in speech

in her speech that
;

and
it is

herself virtuously so

much as cleverly

a point to be

remembered in

extenuation of her words, which were usually worse than she was'). Here she is with her mother before the anticipated first meeting

with Grandcourt

'Mrs. Davilow

felt

her ears tingle

when Gwendolen,

sud-

denly throwing herself into the attitude said with a look of comic enjoyment

of drawing her bow,

"'How
a chance."

pity

all

thinking of Mr. Gran icourt

the other girls at the Archery Meeting all And they have not a shadow of
!

94

DANIEL DERONDA
'Mrs. Davilow had not presence of mind to answer immediand Gwendolen turned quickly round towards her, say" ing, wickedly, Now you know they have not, mamma. You and my uncle and aunt you all intend him to fall in love
ately,

with me."
'Mrs. Davilow, piqued into a little stratagem, said, "Oh, my dear, that is not so certain. Miss Arrowpoint has charms which you have not." / '"I know; but they demand thought. arrow will pierce him before he has time for thought. He will declare himself my slave I shall send aim round the world to bring

My

me back the wedding-ring of a happy woman in the meantime all the men who are between him and the title will die of he will come back Lord Grandcourt but different diseases without the ring and fall at my feet. I shall laugh at him he will rise in resentment I shall laugh more he will call for his steed and ride to Quctcham, where he will find Miss Arrowpoint just married to a needy musician, Mrs. Arrowpoint tearing her cap off, and Mr. Arrowpoint standing by. Exit LoH.
Grandcourt,
de tinge." '

who

returns to Diplow, and, like

M. Jabot,

change

Was ever any young witch like this ? You thought of hiding things from her sat upon the secret and looked innocent, and all the while she knew by the corner of your eye that As well it was exactly five pounds ten you were sitting on turn the key to keep out the damp It was probable that by dint of divination she already knew more than any one else did of Mr. Grandcourt. That idea in Mrs. Davilow' s mind
! !

sort of question which often comes without any other apparent reason than the faculty of speech and the not

prompted the

knowing what to do with it. '"Why, what kind of man do you imagine him Gwendolen ?"

to be,

'"Let me see !" said the witch, putting her forefinger to her lips with a little frown, and then stretching out the finger with decision. "Short just above my shoulder trying to make himself tall by turning up his mustache and keeping his beard long a glass in his right eye to give him an air of distinction a strong opinion about his waistcoat, but uncertain and trimming about the weather, on which he will try to draw me out.

He

will stare at

me

all

the while, and the glass in his eye will

95

GEORGE ELIOT
cause

him

to

make

horrible faces, especially

when he

smiles in

a flattering way. I shall cast down in consequence, eye., and he will perceive that I am not indifferent to his attentions. I shall dream at night that I am looking at the extraordinary

my

face

me
of

the offer of his

of a magnified insect and the next morning he will make hand the sequel as before"/
;

With such
lively,

sureness of touch does

lightness

Venturesome'

it

George Eliot render the kind is something more than a

second nature in Gwendolen to

affect that one's

mind

reverts again

and again to the peculiar reputation enjoyed by Congreve. That kind of praise applies more reasonably to the perfection achieved by George Eliot ; to the unfailing Tightness with which she gets, in all its turns and moods, her protagonist's airy self-dramatizing sophistication in which there is a great deal more point than in the alleged 'perfection of style' Congreve gives to Millamant, since Gwendolen's talk is really dramatic, correspondingly significant, and duly 'placed'. We are not offered wit and phrasing for our admiration and the delight of our palates. It is in the scene between Gwendolen and Grandcourt that George Eliot's mastery of dialogue is most strikingly exhibited. We have it in the brush that follows, in Chapter XI, on their being introduced to each other. It is shown in the rendering of high dramatic
tension in Chapter XIII,
in the face

where Gwendolen

takes evasive action

I

of Grandcourt's
for

clear intent to propose.

will save

(reference will be in place later) in which she finds that she has placed herself in a position in which she can't not accept, and

quotation
it

the

marvellously economical passage

to

acceptance seems

to

determine

itself

without an act of

will.

There

is

good example of light exchange between them in the

following Chapter (XXVIII).

At the moment, what has to be noted is that, though James's Pulcheria of the 'Conversation' says 'they are very much alike' ('it proves how common a type the worldly, pinde, selfish young

woman

seemed to
:

her'),

Gwendolen
is

is

decidedly not another

;

enough to establish that as Theodora she is It is with Mrs. Transome that she says, intelligent. belongs, being qualified in the s,.me kind of way as Mrs. Transome had been in youth to enact the role of daringly brilliant beauty 'she had
her talk
:

Rosamond Vincy

96

DANIEL DERONDA
never dissociated happiness from personal pre-eminence and She is intelligent in Mrs. Transome's way :
'In the
falat.'

schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that cf unexplained rules and disconnected facts which starch strong saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness ; and what
remained of
sufficiently acquainted

About

things knowable, she was conscious of being with through novels, plays and poems. her French and music, the two justifying accomplishall

ments of a young lady, she

felt

no ground

for uneasiness

and

when

these qualifications, negative and positive, we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy persons are born
to
all

with

with, so that any subject they turn attention to impresses them their own power of forming a correct judgment on it,

who

can wonder if Gwendolen

(Chapter IV.)

felt

ready to manage her

own

destiny/
It is

(like

only when compared with George Eliot herself that she is Mrs. Transome) to be classed with Rosamond Vincy none
:

of these three personae is at all like Dorothea, or represents any As James's possibility of the Dorothea relation to the novelist. Theodora says, she is intelligent, 'and therefore tragedy can have a hold on her'. She is a young Mrs. Transome, in whom disaster forces a development of conscience for, in George Eliot's phrase,
;

'she has a root of consaence in her'.

It is

there

from

the beginning

in her dread of 'the unpleasant sense of compunction towards her mother, which was the nearest approach to self-condemnation and

had known'. We are told also 'Hers was one of which exultation invariably carries an infusion of dread ready to curdle and declare itself.' This, which is dramatically exemplified in the episode of the suddenly revealed picture of the dead face during the charades (in Chapter VI), may seem a merely
self-distrust she
:

die natures in

arbitrary Aonnie.

punction and

Actually, in a youthful egoist, dreading comintelligent enough to dread also the unknown within

the anarchic

movement of impulse with

its

irrevocable conse-

quences, it can be seen to be part of the essential case ; especially when the trait is associated with an uneasy sense of the precarious

Church was not markedly distinguished in her mind from the other .' forms of self-presentation. (Chapter XL VIII.)
.

97

GEORGE ELIOT
status

of egoistic 'exultation' and

egoistic claims

a sense natural to

an imaginative young egoist in the painful impressionableness of immaturity. 'Solitude in any wide scene', we are told, 'impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting imagined with truth and subtlety, and admirably analysed. So that when we are told, 'Whatever was accepted as consistent with being a lady she had no scruple about but from the dim region of what was called disgraceful, wrong,
herself/
It all

seems to

me

guilty, she

shrank with mingled pride and terror', then a whole

is

concrete
in

case

focussed in the
a

summary.
is

The

potentiality

Gwendolen of
Here, of course, remorse
:

seismic

remorse

concretely established

for us.

we have
it

a difference

between her and

Isabel

Archer

young woman to make a wrong

doesn't belong to James's conception of his that she shall have any need for that. She is merely
choice, the

wrongness of which

is

a matter

of an

error in judgment involving no guilt on her part, though it involves tragic consequences for her. As Mr. Yvor Winters sees it in his
essay on him in Maules Curse, James is roncerned, characteristically, to present the choice as free 'The to present it as pure choice.

moral issue, then, since it is primarily an American affair, is freed in most of the Jamesian novels, and in all of the greatest, from the compulsion of a code of manners.' This ceicainly has a bearing on the difference between Gwendolen and Isabel between the English young lady in her proper setting of mid-Victorian English 'best society', one who in her 'vcnturesomeness' 'cannot conceive her;

self as

anything
the

else

than a lady', 1 and the 'free' American

girl,

who

Old World stage as an indefinitely licensed and privileged interloper. But there is a more obviously important difference 'The moral issue is also freed from economic necessity
moves on
: .
. .

benevolently provided with funds after her story opens, with the express purpose that her action shall thereafter be
Isabel
is

Archer

unhampered/
feel herself exceptional; but her horizon was that of a romance where the heroine's soul poured out in her journal is full of vague power, originality and general rebellion, while her life moves strictly in the sphere of fashion ; and if she wanders into a swamp, the pathos lies partly, so to speak, in her naving on satin shoes.' (Chapter VI.)
1

'She rejoiced tc

genteel

DANIEL DERONDA
by George Eliot's preoccupation is extreme* works to the evoking of a system of pressures power so intolerable to Gwendolen, and so enclosing, that her final acceptance of Grandcourt seems to issue, not from her will, but from them if she acts, it is certainly not in freedom, and she hasn't even the sense of exercising choice. Economic necessity plays a detercontrast offered

The

All her creative

mining part. In the earlier phase of the history she has, as much as Isabel Archer in respect of Lord Warburton and Gilbert Osmond, a free choice in front of her does she, or does she not, want to marry Grandcourt ? But after the meeting with Mrs. Glasher and Grandcourt's children she recoils in disgust and horror from the idea of marriage with him she recoils from the wrong to others, and
:

from the

insult (she feels) offered herself disaster, engulfing her family. The effect

Then comes the financial on Gwendolen, with her

indocile egoism and her spoilt child's ignorance of practical realities, and the consequences for her these are evoked with vivid particularity.

There

is,

pressed
is

her uncle, as a duty that

fail

on her by the kind and efficient Rector, at the same time a gift of fortune she can't

to accept with grateful gladness, the situation of governess with Mrs. Mompert, the Bishop's wife who, as a woman of 'strict principle' such as precludes her from having a French person in the house', will want to inspect even the Rector's nominee before
*

appointing her:

the sheer impossibility of such a 'situation' for

something we are made to feel from the inside. The complementary kind of impossibility, the impossibility of her own

Gwendolen

is

plan of exploiting with tclat her talents and advantages and becoming a great actress or singer, is brought home to her with crushing and
humiliating finality by Herr Klcsmer (Chapter XXIII). It is immediately after this interview, which leaves her with no hope of

an alternative to Mrs. Mompert and the 'episcopal penitentiary', that Grandcourt's note arrives, asking if he may call. No better
Eliot's peculiar genius as a novelist a kind of genius so different from that she is commonly credited with can be found for quoting than the presentment of Gwendolen's reillustration

of George

actions.

Here we have the most

subtle

and convincing

analysis

rendered, with extraordinary vividness and economy, in the concrete; the shifting tensions in Gwendolen are registered in her

speech and outward movements, and the whole

is

(in

an

essentially

99

GEORGE ELIOT
novelistic

way)

so dramatic that

we

don't distinguish the elements

:

of description and commentary

'

as

such

'Gwendolen let it fall on the floor, and turned away. "It must be answered, darling," said Mrs. Davilow, timidly.

<rri1
'

The man waits. Gwendolen sank on the settee, clasped her hands, and looked

straight before her, not at her mother. She had the expression of one who had been startled by a sound and was listening to
it. The sudden change of the was bewildering. A few minutes before she was looking along an inescapable path of repulsive monotony, with hopeless inward rebellion against the imperious lot which left her no choice and lo, now, a moment of choice was come. Yet was it triumph sh~ felt most or terror Impossible for

know what would come of

situation

Gwendolen not
at a

to feel

time
:

when

she

some triumph in a tribute to her power was first tasting the bitterness of insignifi-

cance

own

again she seemed to be getting a sort of empire over her life. But how to use it ? Here came the terror. Quick,
vividly,

quick, like pictures in a

came back

book beaten open with a sense of hurry, yet in fragments, all that she had gone
the allurements, the vacillathe incisive ;

through in relation to Grandcourt

face

tions, the resolve to accede, the final repulsion

that dark-eyed lady with the lovely boy ; her own pledge (was it a pledge not to marry him ?) the new disbelief in the worth of men and things for which that scene of dis-

of

closure

made

a vision at

had become a symbol. which in the

That unalterable experience

first

agitated

moment, before

tempering reflections could suggest themselves, her native

terror shrank.

'Where was
she wish
?

the

good of choice coming again

different
?

What

did

and yet in the dark seedAnything of consciousness a new wish was forming itself "I growths " wish I had never known it Something, any tiling she wished for that would have saved her from the dread to let Grandcourt come. 'It was no long while yet it seemed long to Mrs. Davilow,
!
!

No

before she thought it well to say, gently ' " It will be necessary for you to write, dear.

an answer for you

which you will dictate ? '"No, mamma," said Gwendolen, drawing a deep "But please lay me out the pen and paper."
100

"

Or shall I write
breath.

DANIEL DERONDA
'That was gaining time.
visit

Was

she to decline Grandcourt's

even look out on what would happen ? though with the assurance that she should remain just where she was ? The young activity within her made a warm current through her terror and stirred towards something that would be an event towards an opportunity in which she could look and speak with the former effectiveness. The interest of the morrow was no longer at a deadlock. '"There is really no reason on earth why you should be so alarmed at the man's waiting for a few minutes, mamma/' said Gwendolen, remonstrantly, as Mrs. Davilow, having prepared the writing materials, looked towards her expectantly. "Servants expect nothing else than to wait. It is not to be
close the shutters
no*,
I must write on the instant." No, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, in die tone of one corrected, turning to sit down and take up a bit of work that lay at hand "he can wait another quarter of an hour, if you like." 'It was a very simple speech and action on her part, but it was what might have been subtly calculated. Gwendolen felt a contradictory desire to be hastened hurry would save her from deliberate choice. *"I did not mean him to wait long enough for that needlework to be finished," she said, lifting her hands to stroke the backward curves of her hair, while she rose from her seat and

that supposed "

'

stood

still.

"'But

if you don't feel able to decide ?" said

Mrs. Davilow,

sympathizingly. '"I must decide," said Gwendolen, walking to the writingtable and seating herself. All the while there was a busy undercurrent in her, like the thought of a man who keeps up a dialogue while he is considering how he can slip away. should she not let him come ? It bound her to nothing. He had been to Leubronn after her of course he meant a direct unmistakable renewal of the suit which before had been only was she to implied. What then ? She could reject him. of this she would herself the which like freedom doing deny to do? "If Mr. Grandcourt has only just returned from Leubronn," said Mrs. Davilow, observing that Gwendolen leaned back in her chair after taking the pen in her hand "I wonder whether he has heard of our misfortunes."

Why

Why

'

101

GEORGE ELIOT
'"That could make no difference to a
said

man

in his position,"

Gwendolen, rather contemptuously. '"It would, to some men," said Mrs. Davilow. "They would not like to take a wife from a family in a state of beggary almost, as we are. Htre we are at Offehdene, with a great shell over us as usual. But just imagine his finding us at Sawyer's Cottage. Most men are afraid of being bored or taxed by a wife's family. If Mr. Grandcourt did know, I think it a strong proof of his attachment to you." 'Mrs. Davilow spoke with unusual emphasis: it was the first time she had ventured to say anything about Grandcourt which would necessarily seem intended as an argument in favour of him, her habitual impression being that such arguments would certainly be useless and might be worse. The effect of her words now was stronger than she could imagine they raised a new set of possibilities in Gwendolen's mind a vision of what Grandcourt might do for her mother if she, Gwendolen, did what she was not going to do. She was so moved by a new rush of ideas, that like one conscious of being urgently called away, she felt that the immediate task must be hastened the letter must be written, else it might be endlessly deferred. After all, she acted in a hurry as she had wished to do. To act in a hurry was to have a reason for keeping away from an absolute decision, and to leave open as many issues as
:

possible.

'She wrote: "Miss Harleth presents hei compliments to Mr. Grandcourt. She will be at home after two o'clock to-morrow".'

Reading this, it is hard to remember that George Eliot was contemporary with Trollope. What later novelist has rendered the inner movement of impulse, the play of motive that issues in speech and act and underlies formed thought and conscious will, with more penetrating subtlety than she ? It is partly done through speech and action. But there is also, co-operating with these, a kind of psychological notation that is well represented in the passage quoted above, ' is exemplified in Quick, quick, like pictures in a book beaten .', and 'yet in the dark seed-growths open with a sense oi hurry

and

of consciousness a new wish was forming itself. .' and 'The young /, activity within her mado a warn: current through her terror and 'All the while there was a busy under-current in her, like the
.
.

102

DANIEL DERONDA
how
thought of a man who keeps up a dialogue while he is considering he can slip away* and so much else. This notation is one of

the distinctive characteristics of her mature style, 1 doing its work always with an inevitable Tightness and Daniel Deronda (with Middlemarch) was written in the ea~lier 'seventies. But remarkable
as it
is,

and impressive

as

would be
it, it is

could be quickly brought together,

it is

the assemblage of instances that better not to stress it without

adding

that, as she uses

'psychology' in speech and action.

genius as exhibited in these

inseparable from her rendering of It doesn't seem to me that her

like

ways has been anything

duly re-

cognized.

The passage last quoted is not the work of a 'slow and cumbersome mind'. As for the 'hold on dialogue', here is the proposal scene (Chapter XXVII again quotation must be at length)
:

self-possession.

Gwendolen recovered some of her She spoke with dignity and looked straight at Grandcourt, whose long, narrow, impenetrable eyes met hers,
'In eluding a direct appeal
:

and mysteriously arrested them mysteriously for the subtlyvaried drama between man and woman is often such as can hardly be rendered in words put together like dominoes, ac;

The

The thought of his dying would not subsist : it turned as instances, e.g. : with a dream-change into *he terror that she should die with his throttling fingers on her neck avenging that thought. Fantasies moved within her like
ghosts, making no break in her more acknowledged consciousness and finding no obstruction in it: dark rays doing their work invisibly in the broad light/ (Chapter XL VIII.) And here is Grandcourt (Chapter XXVIII): 'Grandcourt's thoughts this evening were like the circlets one sees in a dark pool continually dying out

record of Gwendolen's later days of desperation *

is

rich in quotable

and continually started again by some impulses from below the surface. The deeper central impulse came from the image of Gwendolen. . .' Or take this from Middlemarch (Vol. I, Chapter XXI the end) : 'We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to
.

feed our supreme selves:

Dorothea had early begun to emerge from that stupidity, but yet it had been easier to her to imagine how she would devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise and strong in his strength and

wisdom, than
but feeling of objects

to conceive with that distinctness which is no longer reflection an idea wrought back to the directness of sense, like the solidity that he had an equivalent centre of self, whence the lights and shadows must always fall with a certain difference.' The reader will have noted a phrase for which Ivlr. T. S. Eliot might have been grateful in the days when he was calling attention to the 'felt thought*

in seventeenth-century poetry.

103

GEORGE ELIOT
The word of all work, Love, no more express the myrial modes of mutual attraction, than the word Thought can inform you what is passing through your neighbour's mind. It would be hard to tell on which side the influence was more Gwendolen's or Grandcourt's mixed. At that moment his strongest wish was to be comcording to obvious fixed marks.
will
pletely master

of

this creature

this

piquant combination of

maidenliness and mischief: that she knew things which had made her start away from him, spurred him to triumph over

And

that repugnance ; and he was believing that he should triumph. she ah she piteous equality in the need to dominate !
!

like the thirsty one who is drawn towards the in the desert, overcome by the suffused sense water seeming that here in this man's homage to her lay the rescue from helpless subjection to an oppressive lot. and Grand'All the while they were looking at each other court said, slowly and languidly, as if it were of no importance, other things having been settled '"You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs. Davilow's loss of fortune will not trouble you further. You will trust me to

was overcome

prevent it from weighing upon her. claim to provide against that."

*

You

will give

me

the

The little pauses and refined drawlings with which this speech was uttered, gave time for Gwendolen to go through the dream of a life. As the words penetrated her, they had the effect of a draught of wine, which suddenly makes all things easier, desirable things not so wrong, and people in general less disagreeable. She had a momentary phantasmal love for this man who chose his words so well, and who was a mere incarnation of delicate homage. Repugnance, dread, scruples these were dim as remembered pains, while she was already tasting relief under the immediate pain of hopelessness. She imagined herself already springing to her mother, and being playful again. Yet when Grandcourt had ceased to speak, there was an instant in which she was conscious of being at the turning of
the ways.

"'You are very generous," she said, not moving her and speaking wi Ji a gentle intonation.

eyes,

'"You accept what will make such things a matter of " course ? said Grandcourt, without any new eagerness. "You consent to become m/ wife ?"
104

DANIEL DERONDA
'This time

made her
little

rise

distance.

Gwendolen remained quite pale. Something from her seat in spite of herself and walk to a Then she turned and with her hands folded

before her stood in silence.

'Grandcouit immediately rose too, resting his hat on the

The evident hesitation of chair, but still keeping hold of it. this destitute girl to take his splendid offer stung him into a
keenness of interest such as he had not known for years. None the less because he attributed her hesitation entirely to her knowledge about Mrs. Glasher. In that attitude of preparation,

he said

'"Do you command me to go ?" No familiar spirit could have suggested to him more effective words. '"No," said Gwendolen. She could not let him go that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, but drifting only drifted towards the tremendous decision depends on something besides the currents, when the sails have been set beforehand.
: :

hat

'"You accept my devotion ?" said Grandcourt, holding his by his side and looking straight into her eyes, without other
;

movement. Their eyes meeting in that way seemed to allow any length of pause but wait as long as she would, how could she contradict herself? What had she detained him for ? He had shut out any explanation. "Yes/* came as gravely from Gwendolen's lips as if she had been answering to ner name in a court ofjustice. He received it gravely, and they still looked at each other in the same
'

attitude.

Was

there ever before such a

?

way of accepting

the

Grandcourt liked better to be at that bliss-giving "Yes" distance from her, and to feel under a ceremony imposed by an indefinable prohibition that breathed from Gwendolen's
bearing.

'But he did at length lay down his hat and advance to take her hand, just pressing his lips upon it and letting it go again. She thought his behaviour perfect, and gained a sense of freedom which made her almost ready to be mischievous. Her
at this moment, that there was nothing of her gloomy prospects her vision was filled by her own release from the Momperts, and her mother's release from Sawyer's Cottage. With a happy curl of the lips,

"Yes"

entailed so

little

to screen the reversal

she said
105

GEORGE ELIOT
'

"Will you not see mamma ? I will fetch her." '"Let us wait a little," said Grandcourt, in his favourite
having his left forefinger and thumb in his waistcoatand with his right caressing his whisker, while he stood pocket, near Gwendolen and looked at her not unlike a gentleman who has a felicitous introduction at an evening party.
attitude,

'"Have you anything

playfully.

else to say to

me ?"

said

Gwendolen,

'"Yes

know

having things said to you

is

a great bore,"

said Grandcourt, rather sympathetically. '"Not when they are things I like to hear."

'"Will it bother you to be asked married?"

'"I think
it

how

soon

we

can be

will, to-day," said

Gwendolen, putting up her

chin saucily.

'"Not to-day, then, but to-morrow. Think of it before I come to-morrow. In a fortnight or three weeks as soon as
possible."

'"Ah, you think you will be tired of my company," said Gwendolen. "I notice when people are married the husband is not so much with his wife as when they are engaged. But
perhaps
'

shall like that better too."

She laughed charmingly. '"You shall have whatever you like," said Grandcourt. '"And nothing that I don't like ? please say that, because
I

think

said
all
It

I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like," Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman's paradise where is

her nonsense
will be noted

adorable.'

how beautifully

the status of Gwendolen's spon-

taneously acted self is defined by her relieved and easy assumption of it once the phase of tense negativity has issued in 'Yes'. And it

nor does it pronounced the 'Yes' self. Eliot's way of profound integrated George it is "Yes" came as from Gwendolen's putting significant gravely lips as if she had been answering to her name in a court of justice.' This is a response that issues out of something like an abeyance of
clearly

was

not
a

this self that

come from

'

will it is determired for her. No acquiescence could look less like an expression of free choice. Yet we don't feel that Gwendolen is therefore not to be judged as a moral agent. The 'Yes' is a true that the play of tensions should expression of her moral economy
; ;

106

DANIEL DERONDA
have
as its

upshot

this

response has been established

'

valuation and
be, after
all,

by

essential choices lived.

by habits of She seemed to herself to

:

only drifted towards the tremendous decision

'

but

drifting depends on something besides the currents, when the sails have been set beforehand. Even before what she saw as a moral arose to confront her, she had had no sense of herself as objection able to settle her relations with Grandcourt by a clear and free act of choice:

'Even in Gwendolen's mind that result was one of two likelihoods that presented themselves alternately, one of two decisions towards which she was being precipitated, as if they were two sides of a boundary-line, and she did not know on which
This subjection to a possible self, a self not to fall. be absolutely predicted about, caused hjr some astonishment and terror her favourite key of life doing as she liked seemed to fail her, and she could not foresee what at a given moment she might like to do.' (Chapter XIII.)
she should
:

But we

aren't inclined to think

of her

as

being then any the

les^

note rather, as entering into the subject for moral evaluation. account, that she gets a thrill out of the surrender to tense uncertainty,

We

and

that

it is

not for nothing that at her

first

introduction

to us, in the opening, she figures as the gambler, lost in the intoxication of hazard. The situation, in respect of Gwendolen's status as

a moral agent, isn't essentially altered by the reinforcement, in conflicting senses, of the pulls and pressures bearing on the act of choice :

the supervention of a powerful force, represented by Mrs. Glasher, carrying Gwendolen in recoil from Grandcourt, which is countered

by
1

new
by

able

pressure towards acceptance the economic one (translatGwendolen into terms of duty towards her mother). 1

five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen turned it towards her mother, with the letter. '"How very kind and delicate!" said Mrs. Davilow, with much feeling. "But I really should like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. I and the girls could get along very well." '"Mamma, if you say that again, I will not marry him," said Gwendolen,

*The cheque was for

angrily.
I trust you are not going to marry only for my sake,'* Davilow deprecatingly. Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away from her mother, and let the ring lie. She was irritated at this atten.pt to take away a motive.' (Chapter XXVIII.)

'"My
'

dear child,

said Mrs.

107

GEORGE ELIOT

We note, with regard to Gwendolen's attitude towards what she

moral ground for refusing Grandcourt, that 'in the dark seed-growths of consciousness a new wish was forming itself*'! wish I had never known it".' There is much concrete notation to this effect, deriving from the insight of a
sees as the strong

psychological

great novelist

that

it

has a moral significance, a relation to that

'

Yes ', is plain. But it is possible ostensibly mechanical and unwilled to overstress Gwendolen's guilt in the matter of Mrs. Glasher, a
conscious. George Eliot's appreciation of the guilt that is so very moral issues doesn't coincide wi Ji that of her protagonist or of the conventional Victorian moralist. For George Eliot the essential
significance
lies in the egoism expressed here on kst that follows quoted, in which she immediately (the passage 'could not foresee what at a given moment she might like to do')

of Gwendolen's case

'The prospect of marrying Grandcourt really seemed more had believed beforehand that any the power of the be could dignities, the luxuries, marriage now come had which liked she of what deal a to, doing great close to her, and within her power to secure or to lose, took hold of her nature as if it had been the strong odour of what she had himonly imagined and longed for before. And Grandcourt self? He seemed as little of a flaw in his fortunes as a lover and husband could possibly be. Gwendolen wished to mount the chariot and drive the plunging liorses herself, with a spouse by her side who would fold his arms and give her his countenance without looking ridiculous.'
attractive to her than she
:

Nemesis. What first again a case of Hubris with its appropriate a quality of intenGrandcourt' on 'this Mr. piqued her into turning
It is

no other man had exacted from her was that 'he seemed to feel a sort of unreasonablehis own importance more than he did hers ness few of us can tolerate'. She had a similar attraction for him. When, too late, she knows to the full the mistakenness of her her own game, the great hold assumptions and finds herself beaten at Grandcourt has over her lies in her moral similarity to him 'For
tion
:

she too, with her melancholy distaste for things, preferred that her distaste should include admirers'. And the best she can do is 'to

bear

great gambling loss with perfect self-possession'. 'True, she still saw tliat she "would manage differently from
this
last

108

DANIEL DERONDA
mamma" but her management now only meant that she would an air of perfect self-possession, and let none carry her troubles with what she takes to be her guilt, pride in her for suspect them/ As she most cares about is that Grandcourt what overrides remorse
;

not know that she knew of Mrs. Glasher before accepting him all along, known, and his knowledge (though, ironically, he has, had added to Gwendolen's attractiveness for him). The conseof Mrs. Transome s Nemesis : quent torment reminds us closely 'now that she was a wife, the sense that Grandcourt was gone to Gadsmere [his home for Mrs. Glasher and his children] was like red
shall

heat near a burn.

own
lest

She had brought on herself this indignity in her of being doomed to a terrified silence humiliation eyes her husband should discover with what sort of consciousness she
this
;

had married him

1

on'

.'

And

'in spite

and as she had said to Deronda^ she "must go of remorse, it still seemed the worse result of

her marriage that she should in any way make a spectacle of herself ; and her humiliation was lightened by her thinking that only Mrs. Glasher was aware of the fact that caused it.'

So much pride and courage and sensitiveness and intelligence fixed in a destructive deadlock through false valuation and self-ignorance
this is

what makes Gwendolen

a tragic figure.

And

as

George

Eliot establishes for our contemplation the complexities of inner constitution and outer conditions that make Gwendolen look so

from babel Archer, she is exhibiting what we recognize from our own most intimate experience to be as much the behaviour of a responsible moral agent, and so as much amenable to as any human behaviour can be. Not, of course, moral
different

judgment,

that our attitude

is

that
is it

dock
It is,

but neither

that

of the judge towards the prisoner in the of tout comprendre, cest tout pardonner.

or should be (with George Eliot's help), George Eliot's

own,

which is that of a great novelist, concerned with human and moral valuation in a way proper to her art it is a way that doesn't let
us forget that what
is

being

lit

up

for us

lies

within.

we may ask whether, turning once more to Isabel Archer, in this matter of choice, she is as different from Gwendolen as Mr. Winters' account suggests : isn't her appearance of being so
And
much more
illusion
e

free to choose with her 'ethical sensibility' largely She herself must look back on her treasured freedom of

109

GEORGE ELIOT
choice with some irony when, after her marriage, she has learnt of the relations between her husband and Madame Merle, and of the Merle in her 'choosing' to marry Osmond. part played by Madame But for us it is the wider significance of the revelation that needs that so young a girl, and one so dwelling on. It is not surprising new to this social climate, should have been unable to value at their
true

worth
case,

either

Madame Merle

or

Osmond

and

how
so

could, in

anyone so little experienced in life, knowing in concrete terms the herself, and (inevitably) so vague about what how could 'fineness' she means to achieve m life might amount to exercise a choice that should be essentially more than such a

any

little

about

girl

Gwendolen's a

free expression

of ethical

sensibility

And isn't this

James's point
?

(comes the

comment on Mr. Winters' account) just Yet we are, by that account, made to reflect on a
of James's

a quality that makes it possible art the to for an intelligent critic irony and see the book as Mr. slight in Winters does. Isn't there, fact, something evasive about James's
distinctive quality

and the something equivocal about his indirectness of aim which he pursues his excluding subtlety of implication with all but the 'essential' ? What, we ask, thinking by contrast of the
inexplicitness
;

fulness

with which
?

we have Gwendolen,

is

the substance of Isabel's

In spite of such things as the fine passage in Chapter XLII of The Portrait of a Lady that evokes her finding 'the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark alley with a dead wall at the end', we see that James's marvellous art is devoted to contenting us of inward realization of Isabel, and to little in the with
interest for us

way very in a kind of psychological detective keeping us interested, instead, work keeping us intently wondering from the outside, and conof evidence, what is going on inside. structing, on a strict economy
And,
if

we consider, we find that die

a

constructions to

which we

are

led are

of such

kind

as

any very searching of what he leaves out. James and George Eliot is largely a matter The leaving out, of course, is a very positive art that oilers the comis not the less fair to say that what James does with pensation. But it throws a strong light on the characteristic workHarleth Gwendolen Mr. Winters discusses in relaing of that peculiar moral sense which tion to the New England background a light in which its limiting

test in

not to challenge, or to bear with comfort, terms of life. The difference between

no

DANIEL DERONDA
tendency appears as drastic indeed. The Portrait of a Lady belongs to the sappiest phase ofJames's art, when the hypertrophy of technique hadn't yet set in ; but, in the light of the patent relation to Gwendolen
Harleth,

we

can see already a certain disproportion between an intirre

tensity of art that has at the same

an effect of moral intensity and

the actual substance of human interest provided. That James should have done this with what he found in George Eliot, and done it
that registers our reaction. with such strenuously refined art Actually, we can see that the trouble is that he derives so much
!

more from George

Eliot than he suspects

he largely mistakes the

nature of his inspiration, which is not so much from life as he He has been profoundly impressed by the irony of supposes. Gwendolen's married situation, and is really moved by a desire to

produce a similar irony. But he fails to produce the fable that gives inevitability and moral significance. He can remain unaware of his failure because he is so largely occupied (a point that can be illustrated in detail) in transposing George Eliot, whose power is due to the profound psychological truth of her conception, and the consistency with which she develops it. Isabel Archer, for all James's concern (if Mr. Winters is right) to isolate in her the problem of ethical choice, has neither a more

intense nor a richer

moral significance than Gwendolen Harleth

but very much the reverse. If this way of stating James's interest in her seems obtuse, and we are to appreciate a fully ironical intention

we

in his presentment of the irony of her case, and are to say (as surely of her illusion, the are) that he intends an ironical 'placing'

adverse criticism of James still holds. Winters' excuse for stating things in his

For

we

can

still

see

Mr.

way

beyond any question

is

we

are invited to share a valuation of Isabel that

really critical irony.

incompatible

with a

We can't even say that James makes an

implicit critical comment on the background of American idealism that fostered her romantic confidence in life and in her ability to

choose

he admires her so much, and demands for her such ad-

miration and homage, that he can't be credited with 'placing* the conditions that, as an admirable American girl, she represents.
James's lack of specificity favours an evasiveness, and the evasiveness,
if at all closely questioned, yields inconsistency

of a kind that partly

empties the theme of The

Portrait of a

Lady of moral substance.

in

GEORGE ELIOT
He exempts Isabel from the conditions that engage our sympathy for Gwendolen of whom we arc nevertheless not expected to be
uncritical
:

economic
is

pressure,
it is

court's suit

in question,

and the pressure (for, where Grandmore than mere approval that Mr.

e to bear on her by her Gascoigne enacts) brought qua i-paternally uncle, die representative of the approving expectation of the society that constitutes her world. For the 'free' Isabel it can't even be

bad advice or a tacit general conon the contrary, all Merle's designs spiracy that favours Madame those whose judgment Isabel has most reason to respect Ralph Touchett, Mrs. Touchett, Lord Warburton argue cogently against Osmond by their valuation of him. That she shouldn't be led by their unanimity to question her own valuation convicts her of a notable lack of sense, not to say extremely unintelligent obstinacy at least, one would think (which nothing we are shown mitigates) he shares this "view. After that let us but James doesn't so suppose
urged that she
is

the victim of

the marriage she is shown to us enjoying, in her proudly dissimulated desolation, the admiring pity due to a noble victim who is

above criticism. These inconsistencies, these moral incoherences, which become

apparent

when we ponder

the story, pass undetected at

first

because

of the

with which James, choosing his scenes h faire, works in terms of dramatic presentation. His dramatic triumphs often turn out to have been prompted (without, one judges, his
brilliant art

recognizing the fact)

Eliot
;

but

his art

is

by felicities of dramatic presentation in George All the same, when we make the his own.
is

comparison,
istic

we

find that her art

not

less

remarkable than his for

command of the
superiority.

dramatic

With

that she enjoys here, in fact, a characterher advantage in specificity, she is certainly
;

not inferior in vividness and immediate power

and when we reflect critically and relate the scene to what goes before and what comes after we discover more and more reason for admiring her moral and psychological insight, and the completeness with which
she has grasped and realized her theme. In what James does with Gwendolen Harleth there
is something later work we find ourselves his in and again premonitory. Again ? what, definable in terms of asking What is the moral substance and strenuous suggesthis sustained human interest, is there to justify
:

112

DANIEL DERONDA
tion that important issues are involved, important choices are to be made ? His kind of preoccupation with eliminating the
inessential clearly tends to
is

become

the pursuit

of an
is

essential that

illusory. If any doubt should linger as to

whether one

justified in talking
9
,

about 'what James does with Gwendolen Harleth it should be settled finally by a consideration of Osmond in relation to Grandis Grandcourt, hardly disguised, that the general derivative relation of James's novel to George Eliot's be:

court

Osmond so plainly

comes quite unquestionable. It is true that Grandcourt is no but Osmond's interest in articles of virtb amounts to nothing more than a notation of a kind of cherished fastidiousness of conscious, but empty, superiority that is precisely Grandcourt's 'From the first she had noticed that he had nothing of the fool in his composition but that by some subtle means he communicated to her the impression that all the folly lay with other people, who did what he did not care to do.' That might very well be an account of the effect of Osmond on Isabel, but it comes from George Eliot. Grandcourt, as an English aristocrat whose status licenses any amount of languid disdain, doesn't need a symbolic
aesthetic connoisseur,
:

dilettantism

'He himself knew what personal repulsion was nobody his mind was much furnished with a sense of what brutes his fellow-creatures were, both masculine and feminine what odious familiarities they had, what smirks, what modes of flourishing their handkerchiefs, what costumes, what lavenderwater, what bulging eyes, and what foolish notions of making themselves agreeable by remarks which were not wanted. In this critical view of mankind there was affinity between him and Gwendolen before their marriage, and we know that she had been attractingly wrought upon by the refined negations
better
:

he presented to

her.'

(Chapter LIV.)
it

This equally describes

said that 'he
is

Osmond, of whom

might equally well be

man whose grace of bearing has long been moulded

that 'he has

on an experience of boredom', and

healthy interest in things'.
that he feels superior
;

worn out
is

all his

All either cares about

to be assured

and the contemptible paradox of a superiority

113

GEORGE ELIOT
nothing unless assured of itself affects to despise is neatly 'placed' by
that
is

by those whose judgment George Eliot here

:

it

'It is

true that Grandcourt

went about with

the sense that he

;

objectnamely, for if you are fond of looking stonily at smiling persons, the must smile a rudimentary persons must be there and they who complain of manthose truth which is surely forgotten by kind as generally contemptible, since any other aspect of the race must disappoint the voracity of their contempt.'
In Grandcourt, of course,

did not care a languid curse for any one's admiration but this state of not-caring, just as much as desire, required its related a world of admiring or envying spectators
:

we have

as

elsewhere her strength, her

advantage, of specificity.
his languidly remorseless

Our

sense of the

numbing

spell in

which

depend upon suggestive

domination holds Gwendolen doesn't sinister overtones and inexplicitnesses,

had become a blank unglimpses from a distance. 'Grandcourt he would do just what that but in her to this, everything certainty and formidable than sinister less as him feel don't we he willed'
:

Osmond
effect

because

(of

we see him deliberately working to produce this which we understand perfectly the conditions) in a
scenes that have
all

number of dramatic
and
fulness

George

Eliot's explicitness

of

actuality.

Such

scenes are that in

which he

lets

her

know
that in

that he understands perfectly

titious call

why she had made the surrepon Miss Lapidoth from which he catches her returning which he tells her that she is to learn about his will from the
;
;

hated Lush

and that, very short, but with an extraordinary power which he surprises her with Deronda the scene that to the announced yachting cruise which she reference with ends, 'No, you sees as blessedly releasing her to her mother's company XL in are these me.' will go with VIII.) Chapter (All In these scenes the sharpness of significant particularity with
to disturb, in
:

which the outward action

is

registered

is

very striking.

'She was frightened at her own agitation, and began to unbutton her gloves that she might button them again, and bite her lips over the pretended difficulty/

The whole is seen, and the postures and movements are given with vivid precision. James's Constantius, contrasting George Eliot with
114

DANIEL DERONDA
'One cares Turgenev he the 'poet', she the philosopher* says for the aspect of things and the other cares for the reason of things'.
:
*

Nowhere
It is

is

this characterization

more
*

patently wide of the

is

mark

than in those places intelligence she cares for the reason' of things that she can precisely because render the aspect so vividly her intelligence informs her perception
;

where her supreme

most apparent.

and her

visual imagination.

The

vividness of the rendering

is

significance.

in example of this power of hers is to be found to tell in order rt visits Gadsmere Chapter XXX, where Grandcoi Mrs. Glasher of the coming marriage and to get from her the diamonds for Gwendolen. Not only is Mrs. Glasher afraid of him, he is afraid of her, for 'however he might assert his independence of he had made a past for himself which was a Mrs, Glasher's

As

fine a sustained

past,

he could impose. stronger yoke than any

He must
The

ask for the

inner

diamonds which he had promised Gwendolen'.

drama

in each as they act upon each other is so vividly present to us in outer movement that we seem to be watching a play ; till *x\mid

such caressing signs of mutual fear they parted'. The diamonds, it may be noted at this point, exemplify George
Eliot's characteristic subtle

and

inevitable use

of symbolism.

They

are his mother's diamonds, 'long ago' given Lydia to wear. His of announcing demanding them back for Gwendolen is his means
are marital, virtually to Lydia that the relations they symbolize to cease. But he can't force her to give them up when she refuses ;

were given to her as his wife, and Her person but legal form and social recognition. suited diamonds, and made them look as if they were worth some
her strength
is

that they

she has

'

been

that, in all

of the money given for them'

is

suggested there.

They come

to

the natural validity of the relation Gwendolen on the night of her

them to poison wedding-day with the enclosed message that turns 'I am the grave in which your chance of happi(Chapter XXXI) Gwendolen has a hysterical fit the diamonds .' ness is buried. are for her the consciousness of that past of Grandcourt's with Lydia which any possibility of good married relations between
: . .

precludes
herself.

him and

you like to stand before your husband with these diamonds' on you, and these words of mine in his thoughts and
'Shall

GEORGE ELIOT
Will he think you have any right to complain when he yours has made you miserable ? You took him with your eyes open. The willing wrong you have done me will be your curse.
?

The first glimpse we have of Gwendolen in public after her marriage,

wearing the diamonds. We are told that her belief in her And again and again, with power of dominating had utterly gone
*

she

is

'

inevitable naturalness, they play their pregnantly symbolic part. They come to represent Nemesis: they are what Gwendolen

married Grandcourt

for,

and her punishment

is

is

having to wear

them.
James's use of symbols, famous as he
for
it,

looks

weak

in

com-

parison with George Eliot's. They are thought out independently have an instance in the of the action and then introduced.

We

valuable coffee-cup,
that

Osmond,

in

precious' to Madame the show-down scene

Merle but 'attenuated', with Madame Merle

(Chapter XLIX), picks up and observes, 'dryly', to be cracked. It symbolizes very obviously, in its ad hoc way, the relations between
the two, the crack being the resentment Osmond feels against Madame Merle for the 'service' she had done him in marrying him
to Isabel.

And

here,

the celebrated Golden

after
it, is

used for so
enjoys,
effect
is

worth noting, we have the first form of Bowl symbol, which, in the novel called many purposes, but which, for all the modish
it is

esteem

it

with an

of

strain.

always applied elaborately from the outside, The introduction of George Eliot's

diamonds arises naturally natural part in the action.

Gwendolen's
relations

from the

social

drama, and they play a

The turquoise necklace that represents with Deronda is a symbol of the same order.

Lydia Glasher (to revert to her) is one of the admirably done subordinate characters in the book, which, when we have cut away
the bad half,
is

not

left thinly

populated.

Gascoigne family, Gwendolen's bete noire compassion or good-will, he had just as

Mrs. Davilow, the Mr. Lush ('with no active

little

active malevolence,

being chiefly occupied in liking his particular pleasure'), Mrs. Arrowpoint, Miss Arrowpoint (near kin to Mary Garth) these are
all there
life

that

with a perfect Tightness of presence, and with a quality of makes them George Eliot characters and no one else's.
:

for us, a major significance.

And then there is Herr Klesmer, who, though a minor actor, has, Pointing to him, we can say here we
116

DANIEL DERONDA
have something that gives George Eliot an advantage, not only over Jane Austen (against whom we feel no challenge to press the point), but also over Henry James in The Portrait of a Lady. The point is so important that a generous measure of illustration seems in place.
Here, then,
is

Herr Klesmer's incongruous presence

at the

Archery

Meeting

'We English are a miscellaneous people, and any chance fifty of us will present many varieties of animal architecture or facial ornament but it must be adnr tted that our prevailing expression is not that of a lively, impassioned race, preoccupied with the ideal and carrying the real as a mere make-weight. The strong point of the English gentleman pure is the easy style of he objects to marked ins and outs in his figure and clothing his costume, and he also objects to looking inspired. Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the well-bred Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer his mane of hair floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot hat, which had the look of on for a joke above his pronounced but wellhaving been put modelled features and powerful clean-shaven mouth and chin his tall, thin figure clad in a way which, not being strictly English, was all the worse for its apparent emphasis of intention. Draped in a loose garment with a Florentine berretta on his head, he would have been fit to stand by the side of Leonardo da Vinci but how when he presented himself in trousers which were not what English feeling demanded about the knees ? and when the fire that showed itself in his glances and the movements of his head, as he looked round him with curiosity, was turned into comedy by a hat which ruled that mankind should have well-cropped hair and a staid demeanour, such, for example, as Mr. Arrowpoint's, whose nullity of face and perfect tailoring might pass everywhere without ridicule ? One sees why it is often better for greatness to be dead, and to have got rid of the outward man. Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him but they had only seen him on candle-light occasions when he appeared simply as a musician, and he had not yet that supreme, worldwide celebrity which makes an artist great to the most ordinary people by their knowledge of his great expensiveness. It was literally a new light for them to see him in presented un;
; * ;
;

'

117

GEORGE ELIOT
in an exclusive society some expectedly on this July afternoon were inclined to laugh, others felt a little disgust at the want of judgment shown by the Arrowpoints in this use of the
:

introductory card.

'"What extreme guys

said

those artistic fellows usually are!"

young Clintock to Gwendolen/

and sporting functions, intrinsicforeigner at English social of his ignorance of what's done because or, rather, ludicrous ally worn has isn't what and isn't what isn't what said, done, always

The

been a familiar figure in Punch. George Eliot doesn't miss the comic element in Klesmer's appearance, but she uses him to 'place' the x Philistinism of English society, and the complacent unintelligence of its devotion to Good Form. James, in The Portrait of a Lady, can
exhibit

no such

freely critical attitude

towards the country-house

the

and

its

civilization.

George

Eliot's use
is

of Herr Klesmer

is

more

effective because

so complete and balanced : she sees what is genuinely Teutonic Intellectual and licensed and conscious in the laughable Artist

her attitude

'
.

Gwendolen had accepted Kleomer

as a partner

and

that wide-glancing personage, who saw everything and nothing by turns, said to her when they were walking, "Mr. Grand-

court

is

man of taste. He

likes to see

you dancing."

his taste," said "'Perhaps he likes to look at what is against Gwendolen, with a light laugh she was quite courageous with Klesmer now. "He may be so tired of admiring that he
:

liked disgust for a variety." "'Those words are not suitable to

as if to banish the discordant sounds.

your lips," said Klesmer, of his one grand frowns, while he shook his hand quickly, with

"'Are you
1

as critical

of words

as

of music ?"
the

We can guess where, in relation to Philistinism on the one hand and

on
the other, she
:

'social* values

would have placed the complacent confidence

and radical provinciality of this 'Moreover, like all Victorian rationalists, she She pays lip-service to art, but like Dorothea Brooke conis a Philistine. fronted with the Statres of the Vatican, she does not really see why people set such a value on it.' (Lord David Cecil, Early Victorian Novelists, p. 322.) We have to confess that she doesn't know the kind of thing the best people other hand, reading what is written about to-day say about 'art'. But on the
her (and other novelists) by the
critic

for

whom

this

makes her a

Philistine,

we can't help asking why he should suppose he puts a high value on literature.
118

DANIEL DERONDA
'"Certainly

your
'

face

I am. I should require your words to be what and form are always among the meanings of a noble

music."

"That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am obliged But do you know I am bold enough to wish to correct you, and require you to understand a joke ?"
for both.

understand jokes without liking them," said the Klesmer. "I have had opera books sent me full of jokes it was just because I understood them that I did not like them. The comic people are ready to challenge a man because he looks grave. 'You don't set the witticism, sir ?' 'No, sir, but I see what you meant/ Then I am what we call ticketed as a fellow without esprit. But, in fact," said Klesmer, suddenly
terrible
;

One may

dropping from his quick narrative to a reflective tone, with an impressive frown, I am very sensible to wit and humour." "'I am glad you tell me that," said Gwendolen, not without some wickedness of intention. But Klesmer's thoughts had flown offon the wings of his own statement, as their habit was, and she had the wickedness all to herself. "Pray, who is trrt " standing near the card-room door ? she went on, seeing there the same stranger with whom Klesmer had been in animated " He is a friend of yours, I think." talk on the archery-ground. '"No, no an amateur I have seen in town Lush, a Mr. Lush too fond of Meyerbeer and Scribe too fond of the mechanical-dramatic/ "Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face and form required that his words should be among the meanings of a noble music ?" Klesmer was conquered, and flashed
'

'

'

at her a delightful smile

she begged to be deposited

which made them quite friendly by the side of her mamma.'

got in that 'But, in

until

The Teutonic
which
is

trait is beautifully

fact, I

am

very sensible to wit

Klesmer.

and humour'. Yet the balance of this exchange, managed with so flexible a sureness, hardly lies against

But perhaps, in the light of our present interest, the richest episode in which he figures is that with Mr. Bult (perfect name how good George Eliot's names are)
:

party

'Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr. Bult, an esteemed man who, rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the districts of the Niger, was much at
119

GEORGE ELIOT
spoke with decision of affairs in the was studious of h*s parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and had the general solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he was an undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but that he was thoroughly tiresome to her. Mr. Bult was amiably confident, and had no idea that his insensibility to counterpoint could ever be reckoned against him. Klesmcr he hardly realso in the Brazils,
Seas,

home

South

garded in the light of a serious human being who ought to have and he did not mind Miss Arrowpoint's addiction to a vote music any more than her probable expenses in antique lace. He was consequently a little amazed at an after-dinner outburst of Klesmer's on the lack of idealism in English politics, which left all mutuality between distant races to be determined simply by the need of a market the crusades, to his mind, had at least this excuse, that they had a banner of sentiment round which generous feelings could rally of course, the scoundrels rallied f>o, but what then ? they rally in equal force round your ad;
:

vertisement van of "Buy cheap, sell dear". On this theme Klesmer's eloquence, gesticulatory and other, went on for a little while like stray fireworks accidentally ignited, and then sank into immovable silence. Mr. Bult was not surprised that Klesmer's opinions should be flighty, but was astonished at his

command of English idiom and his ability to .put a point hi a way that would have told at a constituents dinner to be
accounted for probably by his being a Pole, or a Czech, or something of that fermenting sort, in a state of political refugeeism which had obliged him to make a profession of his music and that evening in the drawing-room he for the first time went up to Klesmer at the piano, Miss Arrowpoint being near,
;

and

said

'"I had

no

idea before that

you were

a political

man."

'Klesmer's only answer was to fold his arms, put out his nether lip, and stare at Mr. Bult.
c

"You must have

well,
said
;

uncommonly
you

been used to public speaking. You speak though I don't agree with you. From what
I

about sentiment,

fancy you are a Panslavist."

I

No my name is Elijah.

am the Wandering Jew," said

Klesmer, flashing a smile at Miss Arrowpoint, and suddenly making a mysterious wind-like rush backwards and forwards 120

DANIEL DERONDA
on
to

the piano.
Polish, but

Mr. Bult

and

felt this buffoonery rather offensive Miss Arrowpoint being there did not like

move away. '"Herr Klesmer has cosmopolitan ideas," said Miss Arrowpoint, trying to make the best of the situation. "He looks forward to a fusion of races." '"With all my heart," said Mr. Bult, willing to be "I was sure he had too much talent to be a gracious. mere musician." '"Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there," said Klesmer, "No man has too much talent to be a musician. firing up. Most men have too little. A creative artist is no more a mere
musician than a great statesman is a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. help to rule the nations and make the age as much as any other puolic count ourselves on level benches with legislators. men. And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled

We

We

to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence." 'With the last word Klesmer wheeled from the piano and

walked away. 'Miss Arrowpoint coloured, and Mr. Bult observed with his
usual phlegmatic solidity, beer of himself."

"Your

pianist does

not think small

'"Herr Klesmer
fullest sense

is

something more than a pianist," said Miss

Arrowpoint, apologetically. "He is a great musician, in the of the word. He will rank with Schubert and Mendelssohn." '"Ah, you ladies understand these things," said Mr. Bult, none the less convinced that these things were frivolous because Klesmer had shown himself a coxcomb/ (Chapter XXII.)

see here is not a novelist harmed, or disabled, by the of The Westminster Review. The knowledge and interest shown, the awareness of the political world, is that of the associate of Spencer and Mill. But the attitude is not theirs. Bult is a far more effective 'placing' of a prevailing Victorian ethos than Podintellectual

What we

snap George Eliot really understands what she is dealing with understands as well as the professional student of politics and the man of the public world and more, understands as these cannot.
:

In short,

it is

her greatness that she retains

121

ail

the provincial strength

GEORGE ELIOT
and virtue while escaping, as no other Victorian novelist does, the limitations of provinciality. As for the bad part of Daniel Deronda, there is nothing to do but cut it away in spite of what James, as Constantius, finds to say
for
it
:

'The universe forcing itself with a slow, inexorable pressure into a narrow, complacent, and yet after all extremely sensitive mind that is Gwendolen's story. And it becomes completely
supreme perception of the fact that world is whirling past her is in the disappointment not of a base but of an exalted passion. The very chance to embrace " what the author is so fond of calling a larger life" seems refused to her. Sh^s punished for being "narrow", and she is not allowed a chalice to expand. Her finding Deronda preengaged to go to the East and stir up the race-feeling of the Jews strikes me as wonderfully happy invention. The irony of the situation, for poor Gwendolen, is almost grotesque, and it mikes one wonder whether the whole heavy structure of the Jewish question in the story was not built up by the author for the express purpose of giving its proper force to this particular
characteristic in that her

the

stroke/

was (which we certainly can't accept as a complete account it) up by the author for this purpose, then it is too disnull to have any of the intended force to give. If, having astrously entertained such a purpose, George Eliot had justified it, Daniel Deronda would have been a very great novel indeed. As things are,
If it

of

built

there

is,

lost

under that damning

title,

an actual great novel to be

extricated.

Harleth
it.

And to extricate it for separate publication as Gwendolen seems to me the most likely way of getting recognition for

be a
to

Gwendolen Harleth would have some rough edges, but it would self-sufficient and very substantial whole (it would by modern
.

Deronda would be confined what was necessary for his role of lay-confessor to Gwendolen, and die final cut would come after the death by drowning, leaving us with a vision of Gwendolen as she painfully emerges from her hallucinated worst conviction of guilt and confronts the daylight
standards be a decidedly long novel)
fact
It

about Deronda's intentions.

has seemed necessary to carry this examination so

much

into

122

DANIEL DERONDA
Eliot's greatness

detail in order to give due force to the contention that George is of a different kind from that she has been gener-

ally credited with.

And by way

of concluding on

this

emphasis

will adduce once again her

most

intelligently appreciative critic,

Henry James
*

She does not strike

me as naturally a critic, less still as natur-

ally a sceptic ; her spontaneous part is to observe life and to feel it, to feel it with admirable depth. Contemplation, sym-

pathy and faith something like that, I should say, would have been her natural scale. If she had fallen upon an age of enthusiastic assent to old articles of faith, it seems to me possible that she would have had a more perfect, a more consistent and graceful development than she actually had/

There

is,

think, a complete misconception here.

George

Eliot's

development may not have been 'perfect' or 'graceful', and 'consistent' is not precisely the adjective one would choose for it ; yet
she
the

went on developing to the end, as few writers do, and achieved most remarkable expression of her distinctive genius in her last
:

work

her art in Gwendolen Harleth

is

at its maturest.

And

her

profound insight into the moral nature of man is essentially that of one whose critical intelligence has been turned intensively on her
faiths.

A sceptic by nature or culture

indeed no

but that

is

not

because her intelligence, a very powerful one, doesn't freely illuminate all her interests and convictions. That she should be thought
depressing
prises
itself,

(as,

me.

for instance, Leslie Stephen thinks her) always surShe exhibits a traditional moral sensibility expressing
articles

not within a frame of 'old

of faith'

(as James

obviously

intends die phrase), but nevertheless with perfect sureness, in judgments that involve confident positive standards, and yet affect us as

simply the report of luminous intelligence. She deals in the weakness and ordinariness of human nature, but doesn't find it contemptible,

or

show either animus or self-deceiving indulgence towards it

and, distinguished and noble as she is, we have in reading her the feeling that she is in and of the humanity she presents with so clear

and
is

disinterested a vision.

a peculiarly fortifying one : she might well be

For us in these days, it seems to me, she and wholesome author, and a suggestive pondered by those who tend to prescribe
123

GEORGE ELIOT
simple recourses
to offer
to suppose, say, that

what Charlotte Yonge has

may be helpfufly relevant in face or the demoralizations and discouragements of an age that isn't one of 'enthusiastic assent to old articles of faith*.
As
for her rank

among

novelists, I take the challenge

:

from a

of currency, Oliver Elton what he says representative purveyor we may confidently assume that thousands of the cultivated think it reasonable to say, and thousands of students in 'Arts' courses are of him, or in the lecture-room. learning to say, either in direct study 1 He says, then, in discussing the 'check to George Eliot's reputation' 'into fuller view' of 'two other masters of the
given by
fiction'

coming

Meredith and Hardy: 'Each of these novelists saw the world of mem and women more freely than George Eliot had done and they brought into relief one of her greatest deficiencies, namely, that while exhaustively describing life, she is apt to miss the spirit of
;

life itself/

can only say that this, for anyone whose critical education has begun, should be breath-taking in its absurdity, and affirm
I

and the comparia shallow exhibias Meredith son shouldn't be necessary appears and laboured a tionist (his famous 'intelligence' vulgar brilliance)

m>

conviction that,

by

the side of George Eliot

and Hardy, decent as he is, as a provincial manufacturer of gauche and heavy fictions that sometimes have corresponding virtues. For a positive indication of her place and quality I think of a Russian
;

not Turg&nev, but a far greater, Tolstoy who, we all know, is of life itself. George Eliot, of pre-eminent in getting 'the spirit course, is not as transcendently great as Tolstoy, but she is great, and

same way. The extraordinary reality of Anna Karenina comes of an intense moral interest I (his supreme masterpiece, think) in human nature that provides the light and courage for a profound
great in the

psychological analysis.
1
'

This analysis

is

rendered in art (and Anna

This very representative of Elton who is very representative of the academically esteemed authority*. It contains a convenient and unintentionally amusing conspectus of the ideas about George Eliot I have been combating. He exemplifies the gentleman's attitude towards Gwendolen: 'The authoress drops on her a load of brickthat Gwendolen deserved bats, and seems to wish to leave the impression them. She is young, and rather too hard, sprighdy and rather domineering.' (He says of Middlemarch; *This r almost one of the great novels of the
chapter,

A Survey ofEnglish Literature, 1830-1880, Vol. II, Chapter XXIII.

George Eliot and Anthony Trollope ',
is
*

language/)

124

DANIEL DERONDA
Karenina, pace Matthew Arnold, is wonderfully closely worked) by means that are like those used by George Eliot in Gwendolen Harleth
a proposition that will bear a great deal of considering in the her presence of the text. Of George Eliot it can in turn be said that
best

work

has a Tolstoyan depth and reality.

125

Ill

HENRY JAMES
(i)

To 'The

Portrait

of a Lady'

HAVE said enough about the part played in James's development

I by George Eliot, and what I have said has not, I'm afraid, tended
convey that The Portrait of a Lady is an original masterpiece. That, however, is what I take it to be it is one of the great novels in the to do in the earlier part of the space language. And what I propose
to
;

devote to James
to
I

is,

him

make of

a variation

in effect, to discuss the conditions that enabled on Gwendolen Harleth a description I

think

have justified
I

work, and so

something so different, positively, from that from different anything George Eliot could have done.

By

conditions

they are

mean the inner conditions largely determined as by outer. I mean the essential interests and attitudes that

characterize his outlook

This seems to

me

treatment of James. achievement. I am very conscious of the danger that, for various reasons, the stress shouldn't be laid sufficiently there. James was so
a period, and offers so many incredibly productive over so long of a book on him, and a book short that nothing aspects for study, to could of formidable length, adequacy. I have also in pretend

world and his response to life. to set in embarking on a brief course good It ensures that a major stress shall be laid on

on

the

cult of James of the last quarter of a to judge by what has been written on them, century (a cult that, intensive cultivation of the works involved doesn't seem to have

mind

the

way

in

which the

admired) makes him pre-eminently the author of the later works. and The Ambasare asked to admire The Ambassadors (1903) his of one not not sadors seems to me to be great books, but to only of be a bad one. If, as I was on the point saying, it exhibits senility, turn of the century in at the in then senility was more than setting

We

The Sacred Fount.

than
senility.
is

It is as

a matter of fact a

more

interesting disease

not to deny that there are achieved works in distinctively 'late' styles. Critical admirers of The Awkward Age (1899), that (about which they will have reserves on astonishing work of
This
genius

some

points),

and of What Maisie Knew (which

126

is

perfect), will

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

know of many
fine short stories

and

be largely occupied, where

this later work

rejecting, qualifying and deploring : ably with James's 'case' with the question of what went wrong in his later development ; for something certainly did go wrong. The

But they will also concerned, with sifting, that is, they are faced inescapnouvelles.
is

phase

functioned with freest and fullest vitality is The Portrait represented by of a Lady (1881), together with The Bostonians (1885). That is my position, and that seems to me the
his genius

when

interests that
trait

And in discussing the right emphasis for a brief appreciation. meet to condition supreme achievement in The Porfor
all

of a Lady, I aim at finding my illustrations in other works that, the lack of recognition, are classical in quality. One can in

to suggest the nature of James's achievement in while general, frankly avowing inadequacy of treatment and a
this

way hope

drastic selectiveness

of attention.

the kinds of profound concern having the of urgency personal problems, and felt as moral problems, more than personal in significance that lie beneath Jane Austen's art, and enable her to assimilate varied influences and heterogeneous material

By

'interests' I

mean

and make great novels out of them. It is not for nothing that, like George Eliot, he admired Her immensely, and that from him too passages can be found that show her clear influence. For he goes back to her, not only through George Eliot, but directly. Having two novelists of that kind of moral preoccupation in his own language to study, he quickly discovered how much, and how little, the French masters had to teach him, and to what tradition he belonged. Hence the early and decisive determination a surprising one (if they knew of it) for the modish Gallophils of our time
against Paris.

of course, are very different from Jane Austen's, being determined by a contrasting situation. His problem was not to balance the claims of an exceptional and very sensitive individual against the claims of a mature and stable society, strong in its unquestioned standards, sanctions and forms. The elements of his
His
interests,

situation are well

known.

He was born

New

Yorker

at a

time

when New York society preserved a mature and refined European tradition, and when at the same time any New Yorker of literary
and
intellectual

bent must, in the formath e years, have been very

127

HENRY JAMES
and very different culture of New an interplay likely to promote a have we Here already England. adherence and an critical attitude, emancipation from any complete of the was there Then ethos. to one code or early experience not is It that, in surprising England. Europe and the final settling in the mind of a genius, the outcome should be a bent for comof the nature of civilparison, and a constant profound pondering ized society and of the possibility of imagining a finer civilization

much aware of the

distinctive

than any he knew.

It

the profundity of the pondering that I had in mind when I his 'interests' were not of the referred to him as a 'poet-novelist' from the written about. Here is an kind that are

was

merely

apt passage

Preface to The Golden

'.
.

Bowl

whole growth of one's taste ": a blessed compreThe hensive name for many of the things deepest in us. "taste" of the poet is, at bottom and so far as the poet in him in accordhis active sense of life prevails over everything else, hold the to is it on hand ance with which truth to keep one's l consciousness/ his of silver clue to the whole labyrinth
.

"

the

James's use of the

it

word 'poet* to cover the novelist, and his associatindicates the this in explanatory way with the term 'taste', ing answer to the not uncommon suggestion that his work exhibits taste trying to usurp the function of a moral sense. In calling him was intending to convey that the deter'poet-novelist' I myself in his art engage what is 'deepest interests mining and controlling of in him' (he being a man exceptional capacity for experience), to what is deepest in us. and
appeal This characteristic of his art manifests
-see,

itself in his

remarkable use
in the

of symbolism
1

for instance, The Jolly Corner, The Figure

is quoted by Mr. passage (which I had marked years before) for Review in The Autumn, 1946, in an Anderson Kenyan essay Quentin * which arrived as I was correcting my typescript. In this essay, Henry that James and the New Jerusalem/ Mr. Anderson argues, very persuasively, and father's his (the influenced symbolism was system by deeply James nature of which may be indicated by saying that Swedenborg counts for to recognize sufficisomething in it). What Mr. Anderson doesn't appear

The

ently

identifiable

that a preoccupation with such interests wouldn't necessarily be But I look with the novelist's true creative preoccupation. forward to Mr. AndersonV promised book. (Essays also in Scrutiny, XIV, 4,
is

and

XV,

i.)

128

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

Place (I specify these as obvious instances Carpet and The Great Good and obviously successful). But to stress the symbolism too much would tend to misunderstanding the qualities of his art that derive from the profound seriousness of his interest in life it is these in a poet, and they are to be general that one stresses in calling him tnat the reference to his use of and in forms found places
:

widely

When symbolism doesn't immediately bring up for attention. the to save ridiculous these qualities are duly recognized it becomes word 'poet' for the author of The Waves and The Years works that offer something like the equivalent of Georgian poetizing.
her (Even To the Lighthouse, which may be distinguished among books as substantially justifying her so obviously 'poetical' method,

'Hawthorne', says a decidedly minor affair it is minor art.) for the English Men of Letters he wrote in the early study James
is

for images which shall place themperpetually looking with the spiritual facts with in selves picturesque correspondence search is of the very essence the of course and which he is concerned,
series, 'is

logue,

of poetry '. James's own constant and profound concern with spLitual facts expresses itself not only in what obviously demands to be called symbolism, but in the handling of character, episode and diaand in the totality of the plot, so that when he seems to offer a
' '

novel of manners he gives us more than that, and the poetry is major. And here, by James, we have to recognize a great debt
to
his

prompted Hawthorne, that original genius

achievement, he
is

(for,

whatever the limitations of

to relate to

that)

whom

it is difficult

any

With James Bunyan and Melville he constitutes a distinctively American tradition. The more we consider James's early work (and his early work in relation
earlier novelist

unless

we

are to count

one.

more important does Hawthorne's influence appear. With none of James's sophistication or social experience, and no interest in manners, Hawthorne devotes himself to exploring proto the later), the

poetic foundly moral and psychological It is an art at the other extreme from Jane Austen's, for whom moral Hawthorne's interests are intimately bound up with manners.

interests in a

art

of fiction.

and his psychology, a striking approach to morals is psychological, achievement of intuition, anticipates (compare Tolstoy and LawHis influence on rence) what are supposed to be modern findings. and must have had much countered have seen to be hers, can James I 129

HENRY JAMES
do with James's emancipation from the English tradition we may Eliot's in represent by Thackeray. It clearly counts wich George his renunciation of France (see pp. 12 and 14 above). I think it well to start with this emphasis on James's greatness because of the almost inevitable way in which any brief survey of his work that is focussed on what is most significant in it tends to be, in effect, unjust. As I have said, the very bulk of the ceuvre (he had
to

in a very remarkable degree the productivity of genius) leads to a centring of attention upon development, rather than upon the

achieved thing as such.

career as a novelist.

Let

me *nsist,

then, at once,

on

the striking
his

measure of achievement that marks even the opening phase of

In
spite
fact, his 'first

attempt at a novel', Roderick Hudson (1874), in

is

of

its

reputation,

permanent currency
classics.
It is

much more

a very distinguished book that deserves so than many novels passing as

the

work of a writer with mature interests, who shows

himself capable of handling them in fiction. The interests are those of a very intelligent and serious student of contemporary civiliza-

Suppose, James asks himself, there were an American genius born in a small town of pristine New England what would be the
tion.
:

effect

of Europe on him
?

Rome

There is
:

Europe, the culture of the ages, tradition, a weakness in the book that James, retrospectively,

on the artist's decay the break-up in dissipation at Baden-Baden and the end in suicide is accomplished too rapidly. But Roderick Hudson is essentially a dramatic study, evaluative and exploratory, in the interplay of contrasted cultural traditions (a glimpsed ideal being at the centre ofJames's preoccupation), and the sustained maturity of theme and treatment qualifies the book as a whole to be read at the adult level of demand in a way that no novel of Thackeray's will bear. As might have been guessed from what I said above about the use of symbolism and from James's relevant remark about Hawthorne though the instances I gave were from a much later period the influence of Hawthorne is very apparent in some of James's earliest stories. But the influence we note in Roderick Hudson is not that of Hawthorne. Here is a passage from Chapter X
puts a finger
:

'Mr. Leaven worth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully-brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, wellISO

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

favoured face, which seemed somehow to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth white forehead) it oore a certain resemblance to a large parlour with a very florid carpet, but without mural decoration. He held his head high, talked impressively, and told Roderick within five mirutes that he was a widower travelling to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the proprietorship of large mines of borax in the Middle West. Roderick supposed at first that under the influence of his bereavement he had come to order a tombstone ; but observing the extreme benevolence of his address to Miss Blanchard he credited him with a judicious prevision that on the day the tombstone should be completed a monument of his inconsolability might appear mistimed. Mr. Leavenworth, however, was disposed to give an Order to give it with a
capital letter.

he

"'You'll find "

said.

me eager to patronize our indigenous talent," You may be sure that I've employed a native archi;

tect for the large residential structure that I'm erecting on the banks of the Ohio. I've sustained a considerable loss but are we not told that the office of art is second only to that of religion e That's why I have come to you, sir. In the retreat that I'm preparing, surrounded by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to recover a certain degree of tone. They're doing what they can in Paris for the fine effect of some of its but the effect I have myself most at heart will be that features of my library, filled with well-selected and beautifully-bound
;

statuary.

authors in groups, relieved from point to point by high-class I should like to entrust you, can we arrange it, with the execution of one of these appropriate subjects. What do you say to a representation, in pure white marble, of the idea of Intellectual Refinement ?" '. . . the young master good-naturedly promised to do his "His conception be best to rise to his client's conception. hanged !" Roderick exclaimed none the less after Mr. Leaven-

"His conception is sitting on an indiarubber cushion with a pen in her ear and the lists of the stockexhange in her hand. It's a case for doing, cf course, exactly

worth had departed.

as

one

likes

yet

how can one like, by any possibility,

humbug
as that possibly
I

that such a blatant

as

one can do to

like his

awful money.

anything can ? It's as much don't think/' our

HENRY JAMES
young man added, "that I ever swallowed anything that wanted so little to go down, and I'm doubtless on my way now to any
grovelling

you please"/

The influence of Dickens is plain here. It is the Dickens, not, as in The Princess Casamassima, of Little Dorrit, but of Martin Chuzzlewit.

This passage of Roderick Hudson, of course, couldn't possibly

:

have been written by Dickens something has been done to give the Dickensian manner a much more formidable intellectual edge.

We feel a finer and fuller

innocent
a
first

consciousness behind die ironic

interests

humour,

which engages mature standards and

of.
It is

such as Dickens was

novel.

quite personal, a remarkably achieved manner for Roderick Hudson, in fact, is a much more distinguished,
at the

lively

and interesting work than,

is

prompting of the retro-

spective James,

generally supposed.

What I offer this passage as illustrating is not merely James, in the way I have suggested earlier in this book, seeing life through literature and English literature. More importantly, what we have here is a good instance of the way in which a great original artist
learns from another. Incomparably more mature in respect of standards as James was than Dickens, his debt to Dickens involves more than a mere manner ; he was helped by him to see from the

outside,

and

critically place, the life

full force

around him.

point I will jump forward a dozen years and quote, for comparison, a passage from one of James's acknowledged masterpieces, The Bostonians
this
:

To

bring out the

of

'Towards nine o'clock the

light

of her hissing burners smote

the majestic person of Mrs. Farrinder, who might have contributed to answer that question * of Miss Chancellor's in the
negative.

She was a copious, handsome woman, in whom had been corrected by the air of success she had a angularity dress was evident what she thought about taste), rustling (it abundant hair of a glossy blackness, a pair of folded arms, the expression of which seemed to say that rest, in such a career as
;

'. . . in a career in which she was constantly exposing herself to laceration her most poignant suffering came from the injury of her taste. She had tried to kill that nerve, to persuade herself that taste was only frivolity in the guise of knowledge; but her susceptibility was constantly blooming afresh and making her wonder whethc~ an absence of nice arrangements were a necessary part of the enthusiasm of humanity/

132

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

it was brief, and a terrible regularity of her fine that because to mask placid adjective apply she seemed to face you with a question of which the answer

hers,

was

as

swpet as

feature.

was preordained, to ask you how a countenance could fail to be noble of which the measurements were so correct. You could contest neither the measurements nor the nobleness, and had to feel that Mrs. Farrinder imposed herself. There was a lithographic smoothness about her, and a mixture of the American matron and the public character. There was something public in her eye, which was large, cold, and quiet it had acquired a sort of exposed icticence from the habit of looking down from a lecture-desk, over a sea of heads, while its distinguished owner was eulogized by a leading citizen. Mrs. Farrinder, at almost any time, had the air of being introduced by a few remarks. She talked with great slowness and distinctshe proness, and evidently a high sense of responsibility nounced every syllable of every word and insisted on being explicit. If, in conversation with her, you attempted to take
; ;

anything for granted, or to jump two or three steps at a time, she paused, looking at you with a cold patience as if she knew that trick, and then went on at her own measured pace. She

on temperance and the rights of women the ends she laboured for were to give the ballot to every woman in the country and to take the flowing bowl from every man. She was held to have a very fine manner, and to embody the domestic virtues and the graces of the drawing-room to be a shining proof, in short, that the forum, for ladies, is not neceshis name sarily hostile to the fireside. She had a husband, and was Amariah.'
lectured
; ;

This, in

itself,

would perhaps not have suggested

a relation to

Dickens, but when it is approached by way of the passage from Roderick Hudson the relation is plain. What we have now, though, is pure James. And, as we find it in the description of Miss Birdseye,
the un-Dickensian subtlety the penetrating analysis and the imis plicit reference to mature standards and interests pretty effectually disassociating
*
:

old lady, with an enormous head that was noticed the vast, fair, protuberant, candid, ungarnished brow, surmounting a pair of weak, kind, tired-looking eyes, and ineffectually balanced in the rear by a
little
;

She was a
first

the

thing

Ransom

133

HENRY JAMES
cap which had the air of falling backward, and which Miss Birdseye suddenly felt for while she talked, with unsuccessful
irrelevant

movements.

She had a

sad, soft, pale face,

which

(and it was the effect of her whole head) looked as if it had been soaked, blurred, and made vague by exposure to some slow
accent to her features

of philanthropy had not given had rubbed out their transitions, their The waves of sympathy, of enthusiasm, had meanings. wrought upon them in the same way in which the waves of time finally modify the surface of old marble busts, gradually
dissolvent.

The long

practice
it

washing away their sharpness, their details. In her large countenance her dim little smile scarcely showed. It was a mere sketch of a smile, a kind of instalment, of payment on account it seemed to say that she would smile more if she had time, but that you could see, without this, that she was gentle
;

and easy to 'beguile/

We are a long way from Dickens here.

absent.
it

And the subtlety is never

Nevertheless, say that, in his rendering of the portentous efflorescences of American civilization, as represented by the publicists, the charlatans, the
cranks, the new-religionists, the feminists, and the newspaper-men, he gives us Martin Chuzzlewit redone by an enormously more The comedy is rich and intelligent and better educated mind.

remains obviously right in suggestion to

robust as well as subtle.

But when we come to Olive Chancellor, New England spinster and representative of the earnest refinement of Boston culture, we have something that bears no relation to anything Dickens could
have done, though
it

bears an essential relation to this

comedy.

James understands the finer civilization of New England, and is the more effective as an ironic critic of it because he is not merely an
ironic critic.

He

understands

it

because he both

knows

it

from

inside sees it from outside with the eye of a professional student of civilization who has had much experience of non-Puritan cultures

and

Here, in the opening of the book, are the reflections of Basil Ransom

'What her sister had imparted to him about her mania for "reform" had left in his mouth a kind of unpleasant after-taste he felt, at any rate, that if she had the religion of humanity Basil Ransom had read Comte, he had read everything she
;

134

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

would never understand him. He,
of reform, but the
reformers.'
first

too,
it

principle of

had a private vision was to reform the

The easy reference to has a right to the ease.

Comte is significant James, we are sure, Not that v e suppose him to have made a
; r

close study of Comte or to have needed to. But he brings to the business of the novelist a wide intellectual culture, as well as, in an

exceptionally high degree, the kind of knowledge of individual humans and concrete societies that we expect of a great novelist

knowledge
but

that doesn't favour enthusiasm for such constructions as

.

the religion of humanity

We are not to identify him with Ransom,

for that religion, and it is made very plain that he shares Ransom's ironical vision of the 'reformers'.

we

don't suspect

him of enthusiasm

In fact, The Boston <ans has a distinct political interest. James deals with the feminist movement with such dispassionate lightness and sureness, with an insight so utterly unaccompanied by animus, if not

by irony, that Miss Rebecca West couldn't forgive him (in her book on James she can find nothing to say in favour of The Bostonians). The political interest, it is tiue, is incidental but to that it owes its
;

provocative strength James's preoccupation is centred in the presentment of Miss Chancellor and of her relations with the red-haired
:

and very Americanly vital and charming girl, Verena Tarrant, whom she is intent on saving from the common fate of woman love and marriage and dedicating to the Cause. And James's genius conies out in a very remarkable piece of psychological analysis, done in the concrete (and done, it is worth noting, decades before the impact of Freud had initiated a general knowingness about the unconscious and the subconscious). The relation of Miss Chancellor to Verena is at bottom, and essentially, a very painful matter, but it provides some very fine
psychological comedy. Here, for instance, is Miss Chancellor dealing with one of her most difficult problems
:

'A day or two after this, Mr. Henry Burrage left a card at Miss Chancellor's door, with a note in which he expressed the hope that she would take tea with him on a certain day on which he expected the company of his mother. Olive re135

HENRY JAMES
understanding that Verena should urge her to take such a step when she was first, that she free to go without her, and it proved two things and Mr. in second, that interested was much Henry Burrage, her nature was extraordinarily beautiful. Could anything, in to what she effect, be less underhand than such an indifference
:

in conjunction with Verena ; but in spondee! to this invitation, fcr her, of not quite in the she was so position, singular doing what she was aoout. It seemed to her strange

carrying supposed to be the best opportunities ? Verena wanted to know the truth, and it was clear that the by this time she believed Olh e Chancellor to have it, for most part, in her keeping. Her insistence, therefore, proved, above all, that she cared more for her friend's opinion of Henry of the reBurrage than for her own a reminder, certainly, in undertaking to form this incurred had Olive that sponsibility
tion

for

on

a flirta-

generous young mind, and of the exalted place to liave been satisfacoccupied in it. Such revelations ought it was only on account be to failed if completely so, they tory of the elder girl's regret that the subject as to which her judgment was wanted should be a young man destitute of the worst vices. Burrage had contributed to throw Miss Chan;

that she

now

Henry

cellor into a "state", as these young ladies called it, the night she met him at Mrs. Tarrant's ; but it had none the less been the voices of the air that he was a gentleto Olive

conveyed

by

a good fellow. 'This was painfully obvious when the visit to his rooms took he was so good-humoured, so amusing, so friendly and place considerate, so attentive to Miss Chancellor, he did the honours of his bachelor-nest with so easy a grace, that Olive, part of the time, sat dumbly shaking her conscience, like a watch that wouldn't go, to make it tell her some better reason why she shouldn't like him. She saw that there would be no difficulty but that, unfortunately, would not his mother in
;

man and

disliking

serve her purpose nearly so well.'

And
as

after the

charming tea-party
to

"'It

would be very
are,

they

and not

nice to do that always just to take have to think about their badness *

men
. .

so

that one could sit there . . . and listen And sohn. They didn't care anything about female suffrage ' Verena ? did at a of vote want all, I didn't feel the you to-day
!

to Schubert and Mendels-

136

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

inquired, ending, as she always ended in these speculations, with an appeal to Olive.

answer.
it

'This young lady thought it necessary to give her a very firm " I always feel it everywhere night and day. I feel 99 here ; and Olive laid her hand solemnly on her heart. "I

feel it as a deep, unforgettable stain that is on one's honour/*

wrong

I feel it

as

one

feels a

'Verena gave a clear laugh, and after that a soft sigh, and then said, "Do you know, Olive, I sometimes wonder whether, if it wasn't for you, I should feel it so very much !" own friend," Olive replied, "you have never yet said '"My
anything to me which expressed so clearly the closeness and sanctity of our union/ '"You do keep me up," Verena went on. "You are my
5

conscience".'

On
good

the relation of the feminism to the conscience

the

James

is

very

New England conscience,

of course,

is

for

him

a central

theme.

In Olive Chancellor he relates the conscience, the feminism,

the culture and the refinement.

'Olive almost panted'

when

she

proposed to herself as the ideal happiness 'winter evenings under the lamp with falling snow outside, and tea on a little table, and successful renderings,
sollst

with a chosen companion, of Goethe' (Entsagen being the text immediately in question), 'almost the only foreign author she cared about ; for she hated the
du,
sollst

entsagenl

writings of the French in spite of the importance they have given to ' women'. As for vulgarity Olive Chancellor despised vulgarity
:

and had a scent for it which she followed up in her own family. There were times, indeed, when every one seemed to have it; every one but Miss Birdseye (who had nothing to do with it she was an antique) and the poorest, humblest people* 'Miss Chancellor would have been much happier if the movements she was interested in could have been carried on only by the people she liked, and if revolutions, somehow, didn't always have to begin with one's self with internal convulsions, sacrifices, executions/ It is her representative plight, of course, that she has to take the in of its most fantastically gross forms. She has, impact vulgarity for instance, to receive a visit, being unable to keep him out, from Mr. Matthias Pardon (Chapter XVII), whom Verena's parents
.
.

137

HENRY JAMES
favour as a parti. 'For this ingenuous son of his age all distinction between the person and the artist had ceased to exist ; the writer was personal, the person food for newsboys, and everything and every one were every one's business/ The unsnubbable, invulnerable, and hardly conscious impudence of the American newspaperman, servant of a 'vigilant public opinion', is rendered with a force so much surpassing Dickens's (we remember the theme in Martin Chuzzlewit) because of the so much greater subtlety of James's art and the significance drawn from the whole context. The cold, forbidding distinction of the w^ll-born Boston spinster goes for She thought Mr. Pardon's visit a liberty but if she nothing here.
'

expected to convey this idea to him by withholding any suggestion that he should sit down, she was greatly mistaken, inasmuch as he
cut the ground from under her feet

by himself offering her

a chair.
. ,

His manner represented hospitality enough for both of them. .' I I well have this scene (as might equally specified a specify

number of others)

for its typical value. This play of contrasts thin refinement against confident vulgarity, fastidiousness against expansive publicity, restrictive scruple against charlatanism in tropical

luxuriance
aspect of
rich,

New England American civilization. 1 The Bostonians is a wonderfully intelligent and brilliant book. I said that it is an acknowledged
runs all through James's rendering of the
I

it has anything like the could been have written reputation only by James, and it has an overt richness of life such as is not commonly associated
it

masterpiece, but

don't in fact think that

It

deserves.

It is incomparably witty and completely serious, and it makes the imputed classical status of all but a few of the admired works of Victorian fiction look silly. It is one of James's achieved major classics, and among the works that he devoted to American

with him.

life it is

supreme. wrote, of course, other 'American' classics. Not to speak of short-stories and things of less than novel-length, there is Washing-

He

ton Square (1880).

It is

on

a smaller scale than

The

Bostonians,

and

very different in kind.

It is

not in the same sense a 'study' of

1 The clash represented by the impact of the American newspaper-man, invulnerable in his nationally sanctioned office of unrestricted and unscrufind it notably in The pulous publicity, is a recu. rent then,e in James. Reverberator^ a nouvelle of 1888.

We

138

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

York setting gives James an but the of a record the of a past age as he alone for such mceurs opportunity could have done. Washington Square is a 'tale of silent suffering'
American
civilization,

New

that very obviously recalls Eugenie Grandet to say which doesn't that it isn't a very original and very characteristic creation, fine in a way that is beyond Balzac. Its unlikeness in excellence to

mean

The Bostonians evinces strikingly the

flexibility

and range

as

well as

the maturity that James commanded in the early eighteen-eighties. This summary dismissal of so fine a work as Washington Square

of beir g fair to James in any directed and limited survey. I have, as anyone must have in dealing with an author so voluminous, so complex and of so interesting a development, a given exploratory line in view. I must accordingly hark back at once from The Bostonians to an earlier book that comes between it and Roderick Hudson: The Europeans (1878). In this
illustrates the impossibility

book,

as the title suggests, the 'international situation' appears. But the Europeans, the visiting cousins, are there mainly to provide a foil for the American family, a study of the England etnos

New

being
the

James's essential purpose.

'The sudden irruption into the well-ordered consciousness of Wentwbrths of an element not allowed for in its scheme of usual obligations, required a readjustment of that sense of responsibility which constituted its principal furniture. To consider an event, crudely and baldly, in the light of the pleasure it might bring them, was an intellectual exercise with which Felix Young's American cousins were almost wholly unacquainted, and which they scarcely supposed to be largely pursued in any section of human society. The arrival of Felix and his sister was a satisfaction, but it was an extension of duty, of the exercise of the more recondite virtues. /
.

Of Felix we
'

are told

It is

the best conscience

beside the matter to say he had a good conscience ; for is a sort of self-reproach, and this young

man's
hitting

brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective

good

intentions

which were ignorant of any their mark/

is

test save exactness in

The

'irruption'

beneficent.

Felix confirms Gertrude, the

realization that she
is

younger

daughter, in her

dawning

no

Puritan,

139

HENRY JAMES
and
life

ways,. by

doesn't belong here (he carries her off), and helps in various his warm and electric presence, to vindicate the claims of

of the braced conscience. against the constrictions

Nevertheless

far James's irony is mires in the ethos he

from being unkind

criticizes to

he

sees
it.

too

much he

ad-

condemn
:

The

reaction he

attributes here (not,

of course,

as a

permanent one) to the worldly

Baroness

is

made more than

plausible

'There were

tears in her eyes.

The luminous

interior, the

the simple, serious life the sense of gentle, tranquil people, these things pressed upon her with an overmastering force, and she felt herself yielding to one of the most genuine emotions she had ever known. "I should like to stay here," she said.

"Pray take

me in".'
on
the side of the Europeans here
:

And
1

the advantage isn't wholly

'Mr. Wentworth also observed his young daughter. "I don't know what her manner of life may have been," he " but she certainly never can have enjoyed a more refined said ;

and salubrious home."

'Gertrude stood there looking at them
all.

"

She

is

the wife

of a Prince," she
'"

said.

are all princes here," said Mr. Wentworth ; "and I ' don't know of any palace in this neighbourhood that is to let".

We

This compares interestingly with the passages quoted above

Roderick Hudson and
to Dickens.

from

from The Bostonianszs illustrating the relation remark the distinctively American note both of Mr. Wentworth's observation and of his retort but we notice also that the attitude towards him, which might appear to be simply

We

Dickensian,

shifts as

we pass from the one

to the other,

and

in shift-

ing makes one ofJames's

essential discriminations.

When a wooden

house, 'eighty years old', is thus exalted we can't doubt the intention ; we know that we are to feel an ironical amusement at a
characteristic

and

register,

American complacency characteristically expressed, that the nicely chosen adjectives/ refined' and 'salubrious', critical irony induced by certain elements on part, a
James's

But if we have been giving the attendemanded (and deserved), we perceive, when we come to the retort, that Mr. Wentworth at this point has his creator's backing, and, opposed as he is here to the Baroness, stands for an American
of the
tion

New Engknd ethos.

140

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

democracy
superiority.

that

James

offers,

with conviction,

as

an American

The Baroness and her

in value to

brother,

we
;

shall

have noted, are them-

one another as representative Europeans, selves opposed in their difference, another they are complementary, and establish,
essential discrimination for James.

In fact,

all

the figures in the

book

of discriminating attitudes play their parts in this business

and values,
;

which
total
art.

or James is not condemning or endorsing either New England what he dislikes, Europe separating in both what he prizes from he is defining an imagined satisfying positive. The Europeans (as the It has a moral fable. very names of the characters suggest) is suffered the same fate as Hard Times for, we have to conclude, the
;

and economy the performed with remarkable precision effect being an affirmation, made with the force of inspired
is

same reasons

if 'critical' is the

the critical tradition regarding 'the English novel' word deals in the 'creation of real characters',

measures vitality by external abundance, and expects a loosely but is innocent of any generous provision of incident and scene, can give us Thackart. in adult criterion of point and relevance (It concentrated offered is it signieray as a major novelist.) So when
ficance
close

and

insistent relevance to a serious

:

and truly

rich

theme, it sees merely insignificance and The Europeans is dismissed as

written so early in James's career, is He had already, in respect of the 'international situation' (for it is to this that we must now turn), taken a positively American line.

Hard Times passes unnoticed, Yet this small book, 1 a masterpiece of major quality.
'slight'.

The American (1875) is the novel that follows on Roderick Hudson, and it inaugurates the long series of works in which James may be
said to offer his native country its revenge for Martin Chuzzlewit. he chooses, in this book, as the representative of

Unfortunately

tually

American decency and genuineness, a type of which he knows virand offers us a quite incredible nothing the business-man

1 It may be suggested that a comparison with The Europeans helps us to define the unsatisfactoriness of The Spoils of Poynton (1896), a novel that contains so much that is strikingly good. In this later book James has not been closely enough controlled by his scheme of essential significance, but has allowed himself to over-develop partial interests, and to go in for some
*

free

that

is,

loose

representation'.

(Hard Tines

is

analysed, pp. 227

ff,

below).

141

HENRY JAMES
idealization.

Christopher

Newman, having

started

from nothing,

emerges from making

his pile in the

post-Civil-War decade crude

(in the sense of being socially innocent) but unworldly, and finely sensitive to moral values ; and because of this is at a disadvantage in

him.

dealing with the corrupt and subtle French aristocrats It is romantic, unreal and ridiculous.

who victimize

a romantic conception is not enough. As his name suggests, he represents a very positive and His Christian name recalls significant intention on James's part.
say,

To

however, that

Newman

is

Christopher Columbus, and

is,

intends

him

to
:

to the question

'Newman* explains itself: James, that have a peculiar symbolic value. He is the answer What, separating off and putting aside that which

comes from Europe die heritage brought across can we offer as the distinctively American contribution ? That James should so transfigure the type he first presented, in Roderick Hudson, as Mr. Leavenworth shows both the urgency with which he felt the question, and the difficulty of finding a satisfactory answer. The 'new man',
beLig without the refinements of European culture, is to be also without its corruptions he is to represent energy, uncompromising
;

and straightforward will. We meet him again as Caspar Goodwood in The Portrait of a Lady we find him in the extremely sophisticated later art, and he culminates in Adam Verver of The Golden Bowl In The Ivory Tower we have him in the significantly named Frank Betterman. The American is in many ways an interesting book, but it is not one ofJames's successes. He deals more impressively with the international theme in a story a nouvelle, not a novel dated a year earlier, Madame deMauves (1874). The heroine, an American heiress, having idealized into real human distinction the 'high' descent of a fortune-hunting French aristocrat, and married him, shows in the resulting disillusionment her own invincible superiority of spirit. Madame de Mauves' situation clearly foreshadows Isabel Archer's, and there is a further likeness represented by the young American
moral
vitality
;

whom, worthily devoted as he is, her own self-idealization forbids her

to accept as a lover.
ties,

though

it

The story deserves to be read for its fine qualihas obvious weaknesses and the reader may feel in the
ambiguity in James's
142
total attitude
;

close a possible

for

Madame de

Mauves remains unyielding, not only towards the young American,

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

but,

we

feel, is

when her husband repents and is 'converted* (incredibly this, romantic), towards him too, the consequence being that

he blows his brains out. There is no ambiguity about Daisy Miller (1878). It offers a the superiority of the variant of a favourite theme of James's American girl to all the world. Tae story is a master's work, and we can see why it enjoyed an immediate success. But it has to be classed with The American as giving us a James who takes an American stand on insufficient ground. Daisy Miller's freedom in the face of European social conventions is of a kind that would make her insufferable in any civilized society. She belongs with the
:

of the American scene that are ironically presented The Bostonians. She is utterly uneducated, and no inby James man could stand her for long since there could be no telligent
characteristics

in

possible exchange of speech with her she has nothing to recommend her but looks, money, confidence and clothes (James must have
:

been told that only the American girl knows how to dress). And, whatever there may be in my suggestion about Isabel Archer (a very different case), it is plain that the sympathetic vision of Daisy
Miller presented

by James depends on her being

eyes of an American gentleman committed to personal or social relations with her.

seen through the at not so close a range that he is

Daisy Miller, in significance,

Newman. Her incomparably

size the

closely related to Christopher greater reality only serves to emphais

poverty of the answer she represents

answer to the same

question that produced Newman. James offers us something more interesting in the Pandora Day of Pandora (1884), which, though

not

among

the best

known,

is

one of his finer

nouvelles.
;

Pandora,
she has

from

the Middle-Western Utica, hasn't even beauty

nothing but her American vitality, initiative, 'freedom* and confidence, and in her person American democracy is very effectively vindicated (for she preserves an unashamed loyalty to her early
connexions) as against what
matist

Count

distinctively

is represented by the German diploBut the attempt to isolate and exalt the and uniquely American is on the showing of the

Vogelstein.

consequences in James's art

driving at

misconceived.

He

had, for creative

impulse something over and above mere representation, a more valid ideal positive before him. The 'Americanism* results
143

HENRY JAMES
in a feebleness and in a ultimately (to consider now James's women) we of valuation may figure by Milly Theale of The Wings perversity

merely because she is an Ameriand such a Princess as, just for being one, is to be conceived as a supreme moral value that is what it amounts
of the Dove. can heiress,
is

An American heiress,
a Princess,

And, in bearing this significance, Milly Theale has, in the Jamesian ceuvre, a sufficient company of other examples.
to.

Madame
velopment,

a distinction of manners.

de Mauves has a real moral superiority, combined with And what, with an eye on James's de-

we

'civilization' in

find interesting i his evident glimpse of a possible which the manners belonging to a ripe art of social
seriousness that shall entail a maturity of defines itself further in an

intercourse shall be the index of a moral refinement of the best

American kind and a

humane

culture.

The preoccupation
is

admirable story that

International Episode.
sister*

to be found in the Daisy Miller volume An This story shows us Bessy Alden, the 'Boston

York 'society hostess', finding herself attracted b) of a the /isiting Lord Lambeth. She is intelligent, sophisticated socially and serious as well (*at concerts Bessy always listened') :
'She was perfectly conscious, mo r eover, that she liked to think of his more adventitious merits that her imagination

New

was excited and

gratified

by

the sight of a

handsome young

man endowed with such large opportunities opportunities she hardly knew for what, but, as she supposed, for doing great
for setting an example, for exerting an influence, for conferring happiness, for encouraging the arts. She had a kind of ideal of conduct for a young man who should find himself

things

in this magnificent position,

and she

tried to adapt

it

to

Lord

Lambeth's deportment, as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a wall. But Bessy Alden's silhouette refused to coincide with his Lordship s image ; and this want of harmony sometimes vexed her more than she thought reasonable/
This
is

again.

when, with her sister, she had come to England and met him Lord Lambeth is nice, and not stupid, but he is utterly
interests
:

without intellectual
*

If Lord

that there

Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol would be no poets and philosophers and in conse;

144

TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

quence for it was almost a strict consequence she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her admiration. '"You seem to be awfully for.d of that sort of people/' said Lord Lambeth one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.
'

"They are
Bessy Alden

the people in

England

am most curious to see,"

so

replied.

'"I suppose that's because

you have read

It is

much,"

said

Lord Lambeth,
4

gallantly.

"I have not read so much.

because

we

think so

much

of^hemathome." *' " observed the young nobleman. "In Boston." Oh, I see '"Not only in Boston; everywhere," said Bessy. "We hold them in great honour; they go to the best dinner!

parties."

*"I daresay

you

are right.

can't say

know many of

them".'

As Bessy Alden
distinguishing

a fact, that the curious

takes in the fact, settling down to it as undeniably and offensive preoccupation with precedence
a

Lord Lambeth's world goes with

complete rnd

complacent Philistinism, we have James's criticism of English society a criticism that he was to go on making throughout his life,
often with a bitterly contemptuous accent. When Lord Lambeth's mother and sister call to exhibit their patrician insolence and warn

her

off,

she has already decided against him.

at once,

She

rejects

him and

leaves
1

England

without regret. 1

(1888), which is in many ways the most interesting of the anti-English stories of cultural comparison (as they may be called), we have a kind of inversion of the theme of An International Episode. Jackson

In

Lady Barlarina

Lemon, an American doctor of keen scientific interests, whose father*s suddenly acquired wealth makes the young man a desirable partly marries Lady Barb (named with a kind of suggestiveness often found in James, but
not always noticed *Barbarina' suggests Arnold's Barbarian* and 'Barb* the equine thoroughbred) because he sees in her 'the beautiful mother of beautiful children in whom the appearance of "race" should be conspicuous*. He insists on taking her back to New York and settling there. She, for whom life has no meaning except in terms of hunting and the English social code, can, in New York society, find nothing to keep interest alive, for though her the social traditions were rich and ancient* she is incapable of conversation poor Doctor had hoped to initiate an American salon. She succeeds in getting him back to England for a visit, their indefinite stay settles into permanence, and his life, which is bound up with his profession and his feeling for his native land, lapses into futility. At the end of the story he is seen scanning his infant daughters face for 'the look of race but apprehensively.
* 1

145

HENRY JAMES
We
observe, then, a

towards the international

inconsistency.

marked complexity in James's attitude theme not to speak of inconstancy and

of tendencies.
In Roderick

He

exhibits a variety

poised 'placing'

Hudson, aided by Dickens, he has already achieved a maturely characteristics of irony in the treatment of certain
life.

can, all the same, offer us in the immediately a masterfollowing novel, The American, his Christopher Newman, American of ful, self-made business-man, as the representative

American

He

and therefore victoriously superiority over a corrupt, materialistic, of exalting the American is He too, capable, self-seeking Europe. can criticize the moral and he Yet Miller. of in the Daisy guise girl intellectual culture of by bringing to bear his know-

New England

ledge of a maturer again

civilization,

and

further, in

The Bostonians, do

he can,

more devastatingly the work of Martin Chuzzlewit. And on the other hand, show us, as characteristically American,

conscience and seriousness joined with a superiority of true inhave further an tellectual culture and a fineness of manners.

We

intimation that, in the depths of his mind, in the interplay between the diverse actualities of his experience, there is forming an imagined
ideal positive that is not to be identified this brings us to The Portrait of a Lady.

with any one of them.

And

way,

But, before going on to consider that book, I will, briefly and by the achievement guard against appearing to slight his remarkable

1 that James 'has put in the rendering of actualities. Pound says a her to America on the map reality such as is attained giving
. .
.

and the writing of masters/ only by 'No one but an American', he says, 'can ever know, really know, how good he is at bottom, how good his America is.' But an Engscenes recorded in the arts

well James renders essential characteristics of English civilization and representative English types (though as, for instance, Lord Warburton these, we sometimes find, are seen
lish

reader can

know how

through the eyes of an outsider). And any reader, or can see that he is, more generally, an incomAmerican, English and qualities the at master differentiating national tones parable indices of radical differences of temper, tradition and moral outlook. After the Americans and the English, of course, he pays most attenis

distinctly

tion to the French,

and there are some French types 1 In Make it New.

146

finely observed

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

and done
as early as The American. He gives us Italians too. Gerare not frequent presences in his books, but they are to be found, and, in their 'doing', exhibit his usual penetration. Within a decade after 1870 he gives us the new Herrenvolk German see

mans

Bundle of Letters (and there

It

is

another

German

type,

a Junker

of Junkers', in the not much

later Pandora).

Lady that the argument had brought me. The greatness of that book, it seems to me, is essentially conditioned by the inclusive harmony (or something approaching it) that it represents the vital poise between the diverse tendencies and impulsions I have noted. In Isabel Archer we have again the
to

was

The

Portrait of a

supremacy of the American girl but in her we can recognize a real superiority, even if, pondering it critically, we judge it to depend on a large measure of idealization. Her freedom in the face of English conventions appears and she is a firmly realized presence for us as a true emancipation of spirit. Unlike Daisy Miller she has her own superior code, in her scruple, her self-respect and her sensitiveness she is educated and highly intelligent. She is n A ore is it true, than Bessy Alden. idealized, Nevertheless, however and have in whatever I may said idealized, comparing her with Gwendolen Harleth, she is convincing and impressive the ideal;

ization stands for a true fineness, worthily

imagined by James.

Lord Warburton, on the other hand, is very much superior to Lord Lambeth of An International Episode. He is far from stupid or impermeable to ideas ('he had a lively grey eye'), and he sees the order to which he belongs as standing for something more than precedence and privilege. In fact, that order is still in some ways idealized ir The Portrait of a Lady, and the presentation of it has a mellow fulness that has much to do with the effect of rich beauty characterizing the book. The opening scene, on the lawn, giving us, with a ripe and subtle art that at once proclaims a great master, the old American banker and his company against the background of country-house, sets the tone. He admires and respects Lord Warburton and Lord Warburton's world, while, at the same time, the quite different standards he himself represent? (he remains an American after thirty successful years in England), and the free play of mind and spirit that, with his son, he introduces into that world, constitutes, as I suggested earlier, an implicit criticism of it. We

H7

HENRY JAMES
have here a
the book, the idealization

way in which, in the total effect of and the criticism are reconciled. The admirableness of Lord Warburton and the impressiveness of
sufficient hint at the

world, as we are made to feel them, are essential to the significance of Isabel's negative choice. That her rejection of them doesn't
his

an act of radically ethical judgment, is a tribute to the reality with which James has invested her (she is not, we must concede, Gwendolen Harleth)
strike us as the least capricious,

but

as

'At the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency must be said that there had been moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage there there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a character she couldn't help being aware of that and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves things is to which the question largely with moral images wpuld be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers, which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked the patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her something that no one What she felt was that a else, as it were, had presumed to do. territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but perit
;
;

suasive, told her to resist

murmured

to her that, virtually, she

had a system and an orbit of her own.'

James goes on immediately to tell us that there was 'a young man come from America who had no system at all'. This, in the of guise Caspar Goodwood from New England, is the American

ktely

business-man. He represents what America has to offer Isabel stark unpliant integrity and self-reliant practical will, as opposed to

148

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

'system* and the civilized graces. 'His jaw was too square and set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of consonance with the deeper rhythms of life.' l But in spite of this promising description he is sentimentalized in so far as he is 'there* at all and he is one of the weaknesses of the book. However, the ineffectualness of the intention he stands for leaves Isabel's rejection of Lord Warburton all its significance.

lapse

This significance is beautifully intimated in such touches as the is not unique) that Lord Warburton is guilty of on the (it
:

occasion of Mrs. Touchett's forbidding Isabel to stay up alone with

the gentlemen (Chapter VII)
.

'"Need
'"It
is

go, dear aunt

I

impossible

I'll come ? up in half an hour." should wait for you/' Mrs. Touchett

answered.

'"Ah, you needn't wait!

Isabel gaily engaged.
;

Ralph

will light

my

candle,"

do let me light your candle, Miss '"I'll light your candle Archer!" Lord Warburton exclaimed. ".Only I beg it shall not be before midnight." 'Mrs. Touchett fixed her bright little eyes upon him a moment and transferred them to her niece.'

Warburton would not have used this tone to an English girl. Perceiving that she has the American freedom where the English
convenances are concerned, he immediately classifies her as 'an American girl', and slips into a manner that would have been in
place with Henrietta Stackpole, the bright young journalist who habitually 'walks in without knocking at the door'. It shocks us,

such

is

the

power of James's

art.

It

shocks us

more than

it

shocks

for that to bring to a concrete point Isabel, for us the rightness of her decision against him. For it reveals to us an obtuse complacency, in assuming which for a moment Lord
less

and it serves none the

Warburton seems
(Chapter

This passage has

to reveal the spirit of the 'system' he belongs to. its retroactive parallel in the later exchange

X) between Ralph Touchett and

Henrietta, in

which he

1 This description represents a kind of subtlety, expressive of a profundity of interest in life such as is not suggested by the phrase novelist of manners ', that is highly characteristic of James's notation. It is a character of 'style* that derives from the same radical bent as his stronger uses of symbolism.
*

149

HENRY JAMES
to think that she is making love to him. pretends, to her confusion, It merely leads us to say that he matter. doesn't 'lapse'

Ralph's

knows how
one.

For Ralph Touchett

the poise or Portrait of a Lady.
:

to treat Henrietta, just as he knows how to treat everyis the centre, the key-figure, of James's

'system'

harmony

he combines the advantages, while being free from the limitations. He can place everyone, and represents the ideal 1 civilization that James found in no country.
is

The both

He

is

neither

have spoken of as characterizing American nor English or he

that

is,

He

understands

why

Isabella likes Henrietta, but,

when

told that

Henrietta carries in her garments 'the strong, sweet, fresh odour* of * she does smell of the Future it her great country, he replies almost knocks one down. !' For her he is just another expatriate,
:

like

in their obviousness, she can place,

Osmond. And when Isabel asks the Parisian Americans, whom, 'You all live this way, but what
it

does
tion

lead to

?',

Mrs. Touchett, placing

herself,

'thought the ques-

worthy of Henrietta Stackpole'.

The
all

discriminations, in fact,

with beautiful precision along the scale. Isabel Osmond in having a resemble herself notices that Ralph seems to
are established
fastidious taste

and that yet there

is

a difference.

Ralph

himself,

in placing Osmond for her (she, of course, doesn't take it in, and that is the tragic irony), explains what it is : 'He has a great dread that's his special line ; he hasn't any other that I know of ;

vulgarity

of.

He

places

Madame Merle

too

again without effect

fiance"

Merle you may go anywhere de con'"Ah, with Madame " She knows none but the best people". said Ralph.
'

This will

suffice to indicate the

kind of essential organization that

makes The
it

critical points I made about of a Lady, for all the Its book. a in discussing George Eliot, greatness derives great

Portrait

from
1

his peculiar genius

and experience, and

positive ideal that

it

embodies an organ-

We have here, in fact, th

am

we

can see to be implied in

Englishman writing ashamed of such an ambiguity I should be countries), and so far from being be highly civilized.* Letters, Vol. I, exceedingly proud of it, f6r it would

England

this passage from a letter of 1888 to his brother : would be impossible to an '. . . I aspire to write in such a way that it at a given moment an American writing about outsider to say whether I about America (dealing as I do with both or an

P- '43-

150

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

ization of his vital interests.
it
:

These

interests

inform everything in

the wit, the dialogue, the plot, the characterization. The creative wealth of the book is all distinctively Jamesian. Madame Merle, for instance, couldn't have been done by George
Eliot.
*

The vision here

is

Isabel's,

who hasn't yet seen

through her

She had become too flexible, too useful, was too ripe and final. She was in a word too perfectly the social animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended to be and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which we may assume to hav^ belonged even to the most
too
;

amiable persons in the ages before country-house life was the fashion. Isabel found it difficult to think of her in any detachment or privacy, she existed only in her relations, direct or
indirect,

commerce

with her fellow-mortals. One might wonder what she could possibly hold with her own spirit. One
;

always ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface this was an illusion doesn't necessarily prove one superficial in which, in one's youth, one had but just escaped being Madame Merle was not superficial not she. nourished. She was deep.

She world
she
is,

represents, that is, a social 'civilization* ('the great round itself) that is not of the kind James himself is after (just as

the American virtues).

with Osmond, the complete expatriate who has none of The contrasting Mrs. Touchett reminds us

of an American type we meet in some of Lawrence's best work for instance). James presents her with his characteristic (St. Mawr, wit which, as I have said, is no mere surface-habit of expression 'The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect'. Henrietta Stackpole is another American type, perfectly done marvellously escaping the effect of caricature, and .remaining for all her portentous repre:

sentativeness, sufficiently sympathetic.

sister,

Then

there

is

Osmond's

the Countess Gemini, 'a lady who had so mismanaged her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all ... and

had become the mere

incommoding

floating fragments social circulation', and

of a wrecked renown,
plunge into a
stick*.

who would
is

lucid conversation 'as a poodle plunges after a The Countess Gemini, though so well done,

thrown

a weakness in the

HENRY JAMES
book,
in the sense that she

machinery.

is too simply there to serve as a piece of She alone can reveal to Isabel the clandestine relations

of

Osmond and Madame

is

daughter, and she

service.

given no

Merle, and the fact that Pansy is their sufficient motives for performing the

the pure protected jeunefille seems curiously drawn. In The Awkward Age he shows the good
little

toward Pansy herself raises the question of James's attitude he a to which 'blank type page'), (die
foil to

Aggie, the
:

something approaching, the implication that, in such a vulgar trollop and we readily accept follows the milieu, naturally out of such 'innocence*. development
In The Ambassadors he seems to confirm this implication

at the level

Nanda, developing after marriage into of Edwardian smart society, a

by giving

the decidedly not innpcent Madame Vionnet another carefully guarded 'blank page* for daughter.

machinery in the relaand Osmond, her presence in the book has, in addition, some point. As a representative figure, 'the white flower of cultivated sweetness', she pairs in contrast with Henrietta Stackof a quite different innocence a robust pole, the embodiment American innocence that thrives on free exposure to the world.

Though Pansy
between

serves obvious functions as

tions

Isabel

She brings us, in fact, to the general observation that almost all the characters can be seen to have, in the same way, their values and The Portrait of a significances in a total scheme. F,pr though is on so much larger a scale than The Europeans, and because
complexity doesn't invite the description of 'moral
largesse
fable',

Lady of its
it
is

similarly organized of irrelevant

it
'

is
'
;

all
its

life

intensely significant. vitality is wholly that of art.

It offers

no
an

This

is

clearly

why it has had nothing like

due recognition

in

age when Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, and the rest are being revived. covers the neglect of the masterpieces And the same
explanation
that keep
it

company.

The

Portrait of a

Lady, The Bostonians, The

not to speak of the shorter things Europeans, Washington Square, how can this magnificent group of classics have missed being
1 What he says abfout Maisie in the Preface to What Maisie Knew he might have said about Pansy; the kind of 'economy he so characteristically and
'

significantly describes here is his constant preoccupation: 'so that we get, for our profit, and get by an economy of process interesting in itself, the thoroughly pictured creature, the striking figured symbol/

152

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

acclaimed

Jane

George and they present no appearance of esotericism, while they have overt attractions that might seem to qualify them for popularity. The answer is that the real pre-eminence neither of Jane Austen nor of have enjoyed, has George Eliot, for all the general acceptance they and in fact succeeded in getting itself really generally recognized. The tradition of the English novel' is such that even critics who are too sophisticated to gubscribe to the view that The Cloister and the Hearth is a great novel have expjctations that prevent them from the signs of serious art. It is a disastrous distinguishing, in fiction,
'

as placing the novelist in established pre-eminence with Eliot ? They are not difficult of approach, Austen and

tradition.
It

and waste of much undoubtedly accounts for the misdirection

It

talent.

his

probably accounts for the powers in his one memorable novel,

fact that Gissing,

who showed

New

Grub

Street, in

the pressure of personal experience served

other,
talent to genius,

him

well,

ones. though he produced many negligible

it

which produced no To pass from

for his art

accounts for the neglect ultimately disastrous suffered by James himself. It accounts for the neglect
life as

that Lawrence, his creative with after Women in Love, had to give up wrestling and his habit, in an intensive prolonged proproblems, as had been

that embittered Conrad's

a writer.

It

meant

cess

of writing and re-writing

genius

slowly shaped major work, and,

instead, dashed off and published novel after novel in quick succesto journalism, and confined his finished art sion, turned his

to short stories.

However, the point to emphasize is that, for all the discouragement he suffered, even in his early phase, James produced in it a
of achieved masterpieces. The Portrait of a Lady is a great novel, and we can't ask for a finer exhibition of James's peculiar there and in The Bostonians (they seem to me die gifts than we get
cluster

two most

brilliant

novels in the language).

The

later

development

of art and poetic triumphs such as brings extraordinary subtleties which in The Lesson of the Master James dramatizes the method

by

the complexities oFhis

own attitude towards his career (about which

he was clearly given to radical self-questioning) but, for all the interest of the development, with its ricji product of masterly tales, we can hardly follow it unregretting.

(ii)

The Later James

THE
I

cue for the low current estimation of Roderick Hudson seems, have remarked, to have been given, in his Preface to it, by

James himself. But the James cf the Prefaces the famous prefaces is so much that he wrote for the 'New York* edition of his works not the James of the early books that he certainly shouldn't be taken
as a critical authority

upon them,

at

any
is

rate

where valuation

is

concerned.

The
any

interest

of the Prefaces

that they
is

come from

the

mind

that conceived the late

work

which

to say that, if they

distinct critical

are not in

sense critically satisfying, they

have

bearings.

In bringing them together in The Art of the Novel Mr. R. P. Blackmur did something worth doing James is so decidedly one of the very great, and such documents ought to be conveniently accessible. (It is very good news that the notebooks are at last going to b: edited by Mr. F. O. Matthiessen.) Yet, if we find Mr. Black:

mur's Introduction disappointing,

Prefaces themselves.

we

through, to recognize that the disappointment goes

have, after reading the book back to the

Criticism has never been more ambitious, nor more useful. There has never been a body of work so eminently suited to criticism as the fiction of Henry James, and there has never been an author who so saw the need and had the ability to criticize specifically and at length his own work. He was avid of his and both proud and modest as to what he did opportunity " These notes*', he wrote in the Preface to Roderick with it.

Hudson, "represent, over a considerable course, the continuity of an artist's endeavour, the growth of his whole operative
consciousness.
If this
tion,
is
. .

/"

high promise, it is a promise answering to our expectato our general sense of Henry James.
in

Mr. Blackmur,

tion, disappoints because,

the succeeding thirty pages of his Introducthough besides classifying the Prefaces and

enumerating James's themes he also summarizes and comments, he conveys no effect of vigorous and lucid argument, of issues clearly
perceived and decisively set forth
:

the Introduction, in fact, seems

154

THE LATER JAMES

laboured and unenlightening. If we at first think this due to excessive modesty or lack of ambition in Mr. Blackmur to his having
confined himself too

much

to listing

and grouping,

we

afterwards

discover that to have done anything more satisfying he would have to have been very much the reverse of modest and unambitious : he

would have
have

to have

finally a criticism to pass against him it to expect what we are not, in fact, given.

done what Henry James has not. And if we is that he encourages us

it)

For such a
tion there
difficult
is

failure (as I judge

to
:

come

a great deal

of excuse
is

to the necessary recognithe Prefaces make not merely

distinction

but unrepaying reading.

The extraordinary

of

apparent in them, and this distinction asserts itself in the very difficulty ; the impressed, modest and tired reader conies away crediting James with achievement that is not
the
really there.

mind they come from

If

Mr. Blackmur,
is

as

we must

grant,

is

an unusually

well-qualified reader, he

preoccupied with

also a specialist, and a formal introducer establishing his author's claims to attention.

Mr. Blackmur has certainly read the Prefaces and knows diem through and through. It is characteristic of the contemporary cult of Henry James (if it can be called that), and evidence of a real need
for re-stating his claims in general to attention, that several of the contributors to the Henry James number of the Hound and Horn

(April-June 1934) in
able to read, the

which Mr. Blackmur's Introduction

as

peared expose themselves

first apnot having read, or having not been

not of the

works they write about. The Portrait of a Lady is period (to which the Prefaces very much one critic but belong), (H. R. Hays, writing on Henry James the
late, difficult
Satirist) tells

us that the situation

it

presents

*is

resolved into a con-

ventional happy ending with a divorce and a rescue by the American business man/ It is difficult to believe that anyone who had actually
read,

however

to the carelessly or incompetently,

it is

end could have

anyone capable of Henry James could pronounce as another contributor, Mr. Stephen Spender, does A third of this book has to do with the story, is taken brush with work which nothing up but much to do with James's determination that he would really
of making anything
at all
*
:

made that of it. But then

difficult to believe that

when Mr. Spender

present Isabel Archer to us/ After that we are hardly surprised tells us that 'there is something
particularly

155

HENRY JAMES
obscene about What Maisie Knew, in which a small
girl
is,

in a rather

promiscuous

sexual lives of her very admiring way, exhibited as prying into the elders' hardly surprised, though the consummately

'done* theme of What Maisie

Knew

is

the incorruptible innocence

of Maisie ; innocence that not merely preserves itself in what might have seemed to be irresistibly corrupting circumstances, but can
even generate decency out of the
relations.

The
:

of adult personal egotistic squalors in the Preface is, in the intention described by James
are so

story, realized

'No themes

human

as those that reflect for us,

out of

the confusion of life, the close connexion of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us for ever that bright hard metal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other some-

body's pain and wrong.

plexity and felicity be the part of my
in
its

To

live

together who
;

terribly bringing people interesting small mortal would be at least more correctly separate ; keep;

with all intensity and permixed little world would thus

would be at least more correctly ing people separate who a to degree, at the cost of many conventogether flourishing, tions and proprieties, even decencies, really keeping the torch of virtue alive in an air tending infinitely to smother it really in short making confusion worse confounded by drawing some ideal across the scent of selfishness, by stray fragrance of an
;

sowing on barren strands, through the mere the seed of the moral life.'
It
trait

fact

of presence,

of What Maisie Knew, as Mr. Spender misses it. point as completely on the other hand, does certainly demand of the reader a close and unrelaxed attention, an actively intelligent collaboration it never
;

would, one would have thought, be possible to read The Pora Lady quite lazily, 'for the story', without missing the whole

it 'as easy to read as a novel'. Nevertheless, that permits us to find on of the theme could, the general nature any perusal, escape recogni-

Yet it is not very especially remarkable in the criticism and appreciation ofJames's later work. For instance, l 'A as respectable a critic as Mr. Van Wyck Brooks can write as "a gentleman, generally sound is who man represented young
tion
still

seems remarkable.

The Pilgrimage of Henry James,

p. 133.

156

THE LATER JAMES

and generally pleasant", straightway appears without any adequate explanation as engaged in the most atrocious of conspiracies (Merton Densher in The Wings of the Dove]' That would appear to amount to nothing better than the reading given us by H. R. Hays in the Hound and Horn 'The villain, Merton Densher, or Kate, in The / Wings of the Dove, Madame Merle in the Portrait. wherever The the it Dove Now, Wings of may fail, is not in the of All the subtleties, Kate and Merton Densher. presentment Croy are devoted, and of art indirections obliquities Henry James's triumphantly, to showing us Densher being drawn, resisting and never acquiescing, into a position in which he cannot but, in spite of himself, be a party to a conspiracy & conspiracy which he has never connived at or countenanced. He is in love with Kate they are 'in love' in the full common sense of the phrase, and the direct strength with which the attraction between the lovers is conveyed (a strength not common, it must be confessed, in James, whose lack of freedom with the physical Mr. Spender finds 'vulgar') makes the
: .
.

presentment of Densher's unwilling complicity the more convincing. And even Kate Croy, whose resolute intention constitutes the
conspiracy, is not presented as a villain if 'villain' denotes a character whose 'wicked' behaviour we simply, without any motions

of sympathy, condemn.

Her

resoluteness, as a matter

of

fact,

appears to us as partly admirable: the pressures driving her her hateful outlawed father, the threatening fate represented by her married sister's overwhelming domestic squalors, the inflexible

ambition of her magnificently vulgar aunt, Mrs. Lowder are conveyed with such force as to make them seem, for a person of such

proud and admirable vitality, irresistible. Henry James's art, that is, has a moral fineness so far beyond the perception of his critics that they can accuse him of the opposite. This fineness, this clairvoyant moral intelligence, is the informing spirit of that technique by the indirections and inexplicitnesses of which these critics are baffled. This fineness it is that, at James's best, the technique serves and expresses. But The Wings of the Dove is nevertheless not a successful work it does not as a whole show James at his Betst. The great, the disabling failure is in the presentment of the Dove, Milly Theale. As he says in the Preface,
;

'the case prescribed for

its

central figure

sick

young woman,

157

HENRY JAMES
at the

ordeal of
to assist/

whole course of whose disintegration and the whole whose consciousness one would have quite honestly
it

But later in the Preface he notes (finding 'striking, charming and curious')
'the author's instinct
his

on

re-perusal

of the book

everywhere for the

indirect

presentation of

main image.
;

way
some

note how, again and again, I go but a little with the direct that is, with the straight exhibition of
I

Milly

it

resorts for relief, this process,

whenever
all as if

kinder,

more merciful indirection

;

it can, to to approach

her circuitously, deal with her at second hand, as an unspotted is ever dealt with the pressure all round her kept easy ifor her, the sounds, the movements, regulated, the forms and
princess

ambiguities

made charming/

James was deceived.

A vivid, particularly realized Milly

;

might for

him

stand in the midst of his indirections, buc what for his reader these skirt round is too much like emptiness she isn't there, and the

fuss the other characters

make about
1

her as the 'Dove' has the effect

of an

irritating sentimentality.

ing,

this aim of presentof leaving presented, the essential thing by working round and behind so that it shapes itself in the space left amidst a context of

This inveterate indirectness of the later James,

hints

and apprehensions, is undoubtedly a vice in the Prefaces ; it accounts for their unsatisfactoriness. It appears there, in criticism, as
inability to state

an

an inability to tackle
finally.

his

theme, or to get any-

thing out clearly and

Not

that the Prefaces don't contain a that

is

good

deal that arrests the reader

and

particularly impressive

but the developed and done is exasper?tingly disproportionate to the laboured doing and the labour of reading. Criticism is not the art of Still, the novels are another matter.
in quotation;

and James's technical preoccupations, the development of and method, are obviously bound up with his essential genius they are expressions of his magnificent intelligence, of his intense and delicate interest in human nature. No direct and perfiction,

his style
;

concerned him most

i

emptory grasp could handle the facts, the data, the material that and the moral situations that seemed to him
;

She was associated for him with his beloved and idealized cousin, Minny Temple, who died young ; out that doesn't give her any more substance for us.

158

THE LATER JAMES

most worth exploring were not such as invited blunt and confident Edmund Wilson, judgments of simple 'good and 'bad*. Mr. of the Hound and Horn what is number for the memorial writing by far the most distinguished contribution, calls his theme The an original and extremely Ambiguity of Henry James. After giving the of Turn Screw, he goes on to argue persuasive account of The that, as the later manner developed, the subtleties of James's techof his methods of presentnique, the inexplicitnesses and indirections
1

ment, tended to subserve a fundamental ambiguity ; one, that is, about which he was not himself clear. For instance, of the central in The Sacred Fount we are left asking: 'Is the obnoxious
figure

week-end guest one of what used

highly civilized sensibility, or
is

to be called the elite, a fastidious he merely morbid and a bore?'

And Mr. Wilson

The explanation
'In
?

suggests that James himself doesn't really

know.

Henry James's mind, there disputed all his life the Eurotheir debate, I pean and the American points of view and
;

to Se closely connected with his inability sometimes clear as to what he thinks of a certain sort of person.'
believe,
is

was towards certainly true that James's development this development we must associate a that with and over-subtlety,
it is

Now

loss

of sureness in his moral touch, an unsatisfactoriness that in some of the more ambitious late works leads us to question his implicit valuations. But this unsatisfactoriness at its worst at any rate at
its

most important seems to be something more decided than the Fount. It is ambiguity that Mr. Wilson illustrates from The Sacred is what we have in The Golden Bowl, for example, which one of the late 'great' novels, and, beyond any question, representatively on the line of his development. There James clearly counts on our

main persons attitudes that we cannot take without forgetting our finer moral sense our finer discriminative feeling for life and personality. Adam Verver, the American plutocrat, and his daughter Maggie 'collect' the Prince in much the same
taking towards his
spirit

as that in
it

which they
:

collect their other 'pieces'.

James

is

explicit about

tion

'Nothing perhaps might strike us queerer than this applicaof the same measure of value to sirch different pieces of
159

HENRY JAMES
property as old Persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions ; all the more, indeed, that the amiable man was not without an inkling that he was, as a taster of life, economically constructed. He put into his own little glass everything he
'

raised to his lips

(Vol.

I,

p. 175.)
' *

He acquires later Charlotte Stant, another fine

as a

piece

wife in order to

settle the uneasiness that

Maggie

feels

acquires her about the

difference made in his life by her own marriage (though actually father and daughter seem to be as constantly and completely together as

before).

Thisishowheseesthemintheconcludingsceneofthenovel

'The two noble persons seated in conversation and at tea fell then into the splendid effect and the general harmony Mrs. Verver and the Prince fairly "placed" themselves, however
:

unwittingly, as high expressions of the kind of human furniture required estheticaUy by such a scene. The fusion of their pres-

ence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable though
;

view more penetrating than the occasion demanded, really they might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase/ (Vol. II, p. 317.)
tc a lingering view, a

And

yet,

explicitness,
ironical.

though James can on occasion come to this point of our attitude towards the Ververs isn't meant to be We are to feel for and with them. We are to watch with

sympathy Maggie's victorious struggle to break the clanbetween her husband and Charlotte, establish the that pretence nothing has occurred, and get Charlotte safely packed
intense destine relation
if our

off under a life-sentence to America, the penal settlement. Actually, sympathies are anywhere they are with Charlotte and (a little)
represent what, against the general moral backof the book, can only strike us as decent passion ; in a stale,

the Prince,

who

ground and oppressive atmosphere they represent life. That in our feelings about the Ververs there would be any element of distaste Henry James, in spite of the passages quoted, seems to have had no
sickly
*

inkling.

his

Mr. Wilson, o course, might find here another illustration for theme of ambiguity. But actually what we have in this aspect of The Golden Bowl vrould sefcm to be, rather than any radical
160

THE LATER JAMES

an inadvertence. It is as ambiguity in James, a partial inattention too much too been had in his material if his interest specialized,
concentrated on certain limited kinds of possible development, and as if in the technical elaboration expressing this specialized interest

he had
1

moral taste slip into abeyto have thought his he seems The Ambassadors too, which ance. an effect of disproportionate 'doing' of greatest success, produces the subtleties and elaborations of which are not sufficia
lost his full sense

of life and

let his

technique

ently controlled

by

a feeling for value

What, we
self to
?

ask,

is this,

symbolized by
his

significance in living. Paris, that Strether feels him-

and

have missed in
Is it

own

life

Has James himself sufficiently

are to take the anything adequately realized ? If we inquired elaboration of the theme in the spirit in which we are meant to take
it,

haven't
it

we

to take the
?

symbol too much

Isn't, that is,

at the

glamorous face-

the energy of the 'doing' for the demanded the reading) disproportionate to the energy (and ? are that issues issues to any concretely held and presented

value

has for Strether

It is characteristic

of Henry James's

fate that,

while

it

should

,be

went wrong with his development, generally agreed that something it should at the same time be almost as generally agreed that the books we ought to know the books he ought to be known by are the three last long novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1905). The Ambassadors since Mr. Percy Lubbock picked on it has in
particular

probably,

in

The Craft of Fiction (Mr. E. M. Forster confirmed him in Aspects those the Novel), been the book most commonly attempted by of
wishing to qualify in Henry James. This
is is

only read through and read with unfeigned enjoyment

The

Portrait of a

Lady much more

rate, as
I

to be deplored, since not to be likely, once started,

;

it is

much more

worth reading.
James's finest

At any

have

said,

it

seems to

me

to be

achievement, and one of the great novels of the

English language.

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) belongs to his early maturity. Just before and after come Washington Square and The Bostonians. The two last named aro wholly American in theme and setting, and all
three have the abundant, full-blooded
1

life

of well-nourished organ-

The kind of interest

the

would have
L

in symbolism discussed by Mr. Quentin Anderson same tendency. l6l

HENRY JAMES
isms.
It is,

of course, in terms of his deracination that Henry James's

theory development is commonly explained. what we find, in its most respectable statement, advanced by Mr. Van Wyck Brooks in The Pilgrimage of Henry James. The less more or less bluntly censure James for not delicate
unsatisfactory

The

is

expositions

become a thoroughly American having stayed in America and novelist. He should have devoted his genius to his own country
and inaugurated modern American
literature.

the

first

truly

American

What, we ask, when the theory becomes explicit to this point, does it mean ? That Henry James ought to have forestalled the work of Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis ? That he ought to have devoted It the way for a much earlier Dos Passos himself to
preparing
?

means that he ought at any rate to have been a totally different kind of writer from what he actually, either by endowment or through was. early life and environment, were inseparable from an interest in interests essential For his
in the refinements of civilized intercourse. highly civilized manners, The social civilization that in America might have yielded him (or seemed to yield) what he needed was, as Mrs. Wharton, in her auto-

biographical book,
his

Backward Glance, points out, vanishing with

to offer

youth. England had. But, says Mr. Van

had certainly more

'

him than America

Wyck Brooks,

England was impenetrable/

sense of life and 'Granting that he had lost the immediate his mind and that he character, that America had faded from

knew

that he could never write

intimacy and freedom which

task necessitated
.

his

of English manners with the conception of the novelist's

But how, remembering (for instance) The Awkward Age (1899) and What Maisie Knew (1897), can we grant this last proposition ? The author of these two masterpieces, which were written after that notorious dividing phase, the sustained and frustrate attempt upon as a matter of fact, he turned out a steady the theatre (during which, succession of stores), hardly suffered from any sense that he was not write of English manners with freedom and intimacy. qualified to Rather he knew English manners too well he had penetrated too
;

thoroughly.

162

THE LATER JAMES

when the diagnosis of his in is that he suffered from queer development question, being too much a professional novelist : being a novelist came to be too large a part of his living ; that is, he did not live enough. His failure in
The obvious
constatation to start from,
is

no doubt, some initial deficiency in him. the Nevertheless, peculiarities in terms of which it demands to be discussed are far from appearing as simple weakness. It is no doubt
this respect suggests,

odd that his interest in manners should have gone with such moral-intellectual intensity. But the manners he was
at first appearances

interested in were to be the outward notation of spiritual and intellectual fineness, or at least to lend themselves to treatment as

such.

Essentially he

ization.
it,

And

was in quest of an ideal society, an ideal civilEnglish society, he had to recognize as he lived into

all offer him any sustaining approximation to his he knew, could America. So we find him developing into something like a paradoxical kind of recluse, a recluse living socially in the midst of society.

could not after

Still less,

ideal.

But a

real recluse, living in

unmetaphorical

we
on

cannot imagine him.

In saying this

we

of his had nothing prophetic about it. It was not of a kind to manifest itself in lonely plumbings of the psyche or passionate questionings of the familiar modes of human experience. It was not, in short, D. H. Lawrence's or anything like it. James had no such immediate sense of human solidarity, no such nourishing intuition of the unity of life, as could make up to him for the deficiencies of civilized intercourse life for him must be humane or it was nothing. There was nowhere in his work that preoccupation with ultimate sanctions which we 1 may call religious. (There comes to my mind here the sigthat morbidly nificant badness of The Altar of the Dead, sentimental and extremely unpleasant tale which it is, of
certain limiting characteristics explorer's or the pioneer's, and it
:

is just what no are, doubt, touching It was not the genius.

retreat,

course, late
liness

also

illustrates
It

poor James's weary,

civilized lone-

of

spirit.)

was

to the artist as such that die discrepancy

1 This statement will have to be reconsidered in the light of Mr. Quentin Anderson's argument, when this is fully accessible (see footnote, p. 128, above). But I suspect that what will turn out to be required will be not so much withdrawal as a less simple formulation.

163

HENRY JAMES
between the desiderated
peculiarly
civilization

and English society was

brought home
artist

'The

Paradise (for art)

may, of course, in wanton moods, dream of some where the direct appeal to the intelligence

as these his might be legalized; for to such extravagances scarce hope ever completely to close itself. can mind yearning The most he can do is to remember they are extravagances/

James has already remarked in

Portrait
'is

this

Preface

(it

is

that to

The

novelist of a Lady) that the

entitled to nothing,

he

is

him, from the reader, as a of reflexion or discrimination/

These
bitter ironies

Lound to admit, that can come to result on the latter's part of any act
in the Prefaces, which,

abound

he wrote to

W.

D. Howells,

'are, in general, a sort of plea for Criticism, for Discrimination, for Appreciation on other than infantile lines as against the o almost universal Anglo-Saxon absence of these tilings ; which tends, in our general trade, it seems to me, to break the

heart.

/
in the Preface to
in

The comments
story called

The Lesson of the Master on the

Carpet are especially significant.
:

The Figure
to

the

author James says Speaking of his great unappreciated

'I

came

Hugh Vereker,
;

in fine,

by this

travelled road

of a

generalization strongly and helplessly,

its

the habit of having noted for

among

us

all,

many years how what we call criticism

is state apt to stand curiosity never emerging from the limp such from of sense intended the off from finely attested things, a bias and a and a a as artist's on the form, matters, spirit

part,

logic,

of his own/
less

He

has already referred with

detachment to

'the

poor man's

attributive dependence, for the sense

of being

understood, on some responsive reach of critical perception that

he

is

destined ne^ver to waylay with success.

And

the force

eloquent reticence

of that attribution comes out unmistakably in the of this

:

'As for the ingenious Figure

in the Carpet, let

me

perhaps a

164

THE LATER JAMES

little

pusillanimously conclude, nothing would induce me to to close quarters with you on the correspondences of this All I can at this point say is that if ever I was anecdote.

come

aware of ground and matter for a of them in that connexion/

significant fable,

was aware

He was

indeed

and

if

he could have foreseen the criticism and

receive in the

appreciation,
tribute, his

starting

with Miss Rebecca West's characteristic

work would

two decades following

his

death he would hardly have been consoled.

The same conditions, then, that drove him back on his art made him profoundly aware that his art wasn't likely to be appreciated
by many
less

besides himself. 1

So he came to

live in it

and not the

so for living strenuously the life of a spiritual recluse ; a recluse in a sense in which not only no novelist but no good artist of any

kind can afford to become one.

unhealthy vitality

of undernourishment and

His technique came to exhibit an etiolation. His tech-

nical preoccupation, to put it another way, lost its balance, and, instead of being the sharp register of his finest perceptions, as informed and related by his fullest sense of life, became something that took
his intelligence

out of

its

true focus

and blunted

his sensitiveness.

That

the mischief of what he discusses in the Prefaces as a possible ' tendency in himself towards overtreatment'. Correlated with this
is

tendency

is

that manifested in tht extraordinarily specialized living

:

of his characters

in a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat together, there was an extraordinary mute between her vision of this vision of his, his vision
at the

'The immensity didn't include them back of his head she had also one
passage

but

if

he had an idea

of her

vision,

and her vision of his vision of her

vision.'

1 Cf. what the author says to his young visitor in The Author of Beltraffio : 'If you're going into this kind of thing there's a fact you should know before-

hand ;
they'll
2

it

may save you some

I

a hatred of literature

mean of
!

swallow by the bucket

disappointment. There's a hatred of art, there's those the genuine kinds. Oh the shams *
'

Cf. 'There were other p. 163 (Pocket Edition). marble terraces, sweeping more purple prospects, on which he would have known what to think, and would have enjoyed thereby at least the small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between z> given appearance and a taken meaning.' The Golden Bowl, I, 318.

What Maisle Knew,

165

HENRY JAMES
This
last aspect

of

his

development

is

the

more
it

significant

sense suggested significant in the

in that he was,

seems, quite
p. 191)
:

unaware of it. Mrs. Wharton records (A Backward Glance,

*

Preoccupied by this, I one day said to

him

"
:

What was your

idea in suspending the four principal characters in The Golden Bowl in the void ? What sort of life did they lead when they

were not watching each other, and fencing with each other ? Why have you stripped them of all the human fringes we

saw at once that the I had not wished and spoken. I had painful, surprise assumed that his system was a deliberate one, carefully thought out, and had been genuinely anxious to hear his reasons. But after a pause of reflection he answered in a disturbed voice " "My dear I didn't know I had and I saw that my question, instead of starting one of our absorbing liteiary discussions, had of which he only turned his startled attention on a peculiarity was
:

life ?" necessarily trail after us through 'He looked at me in surprise, and I

had been completely unconscious/

Of

exhausting
his vision

the peculiarities of his later style, with its complexities and delicacies and its incapacity for directness ('her vision of
'

of her vision' and the small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between a given appearance and a taken meaning 'James himself is the complete Jamesian character), he cannot have been

wholly unconscious. That there really was incapacity, essential loss of a power, that something had gone wrong in his life, Mrs. Wharton brings amusingly home to us. She rektes an episode showing him unable to ask the way so as to be understood. 2 The author of

The

Portrait of a Lady most certainly was not like that. The nature of the change comes out notably in James's imagery

any

Mrs. Wharton goes on: 'This sensitiveness to criticism or comment of sort had nothing to do with vanity ; it was caused by the great artist's deep consciousness of his powers, combined with a bitter, a life-long disat his lack of popular recognition.' appointment 2 ' *' My good man, if you'll be good enough to come here, please ; a little nearer "My friend, to put it to you in so," and as the old man came up two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough ; that is to say,
1
:

to be

way

we have recently passed through Slough on our motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and* the darkaess having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we are now in relation, say, to the
more
strictly accurate,

here, having actually

166

THE LATER JAMES

his metaphors, analogies and so on. There is an extraordinary wealth of these in the earlier style, where they strike us with their poetic immediacy and their Tightness to feeling as well as their wit. They are to be found at any opening of The Portrait of a Lady, and it would be easy to illustrate; but illustration, by taking each natural unobtrusive effect out of the easy flow in which it comes,

a false impression (unless one quoted the sustained 1 in Book II, in which we are for the first time shown Isabel passage realizing the 'dark, narrow alley with a drab wall at the end' into

would convey

which her marriage has trapped her) Things of the same kind be found in the later books, but what
.

may

the developed Jamesian style kind of figure, the kind

is

goes characteristically with a more deliberate and elaborated

its

exemplified at

that opens Book II of caravan later on in the same volume

famous pagoda

most elaborate by the

The Golden Bowl or by the

(p. 209).

We are conscious in

these figures

the

tween any original perception or feeling there may have been and what we are given there has come a process ofjudicial stock-taking the imagery is not immediate and inevitable but synthetic. It is
;

more of analysis, demonstration and comment than of realizing imagination and the play of poetic perception. Be-

diagrammatic rather than poetic. And that makes a show of sensuous vividness, as here
:

is

so even

when

it

with
High

'Just three things in themselves, however, with all the rest, his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine

pink

railway station (which, in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right), where
are

driven past the turn

which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving hand the turn down to the railway station." 'I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: "In short" (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), "in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we
Street,
left

on^the

down
.

have)

to the
."

we now in

relation to

please," I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit another parenthesis, "do ask him where the 4 " King's Rpad is."
1

"'Oh,

through

matter of fact,
the

King

AhT: ? The K-in g' s Road? Just sol Quite Can you, as a right tell us where in relation to our my good man, present position "
s

Road

exactly

is ?

'"Ye're in it," said the aged face at tfc window.' 1 See p. 166 et seq., the Pocket Edition.
'

167

HENRY JAMES
glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling this quantity was to push him harder than any word of his own coald warn him. All that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink

glow/
This hasn't the concrete immediacy of metaphor coloured diagram.
l
;

it is,

rather,

trouble with the late style is that it exacts so intensely and no sufficient bodied response inveterately analytic an attention that

The

up nothing sufficiently approaching the deferred concrete immediacy that has been earned is attainable. Of Henry James himbuilds
:

self we feel that the style involves for

him,

him, registers as prevailing in kind of attention that doesn't favour his realizing his theme,
life. locally, as full-bodied

in the

whole or

The

relation

between

deficiency of this order (a deficiency in spite of the tremendous output of intellectual energy represented by each work in vitality) and the kind of moral unsatisfactoriness that we have observed in

Thk Golden Bowl should be

fairly plain.

James himself suggests

:

it

well enough in the Preface to The Portrait of a Lady

'There
this

is, I

think,

no more

nutritive or suggestive truth in

connexion than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs/

We do not feel in the late style a rich and lively sensibility freely
functioning.
qualifications impose themselves at once. It will not do to suggest that there are not, in the late period, admirable successes,

But

1 As the following, also from The Go!Jen Bowly has : Ah then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim, overflowed at a touch There was his idea, the clearness of which for an instant almost dazzled her. It was a blur
!

of light in the midst of which she saw Charlotte like some object marked by saw her waver in the field of vision, saw her removed, transported, doomed. And he had named Charlotte, named her again, and she had made him which was all she had needed more it was as she had held a blank letter to the fire and the writing had come out still larger than she had hoped.' The anak>gy in the" last sentence brings out by contrast the metaphorical immediacy of what goes before.
contrast in blackness,
:

168

THE LATER JAMES

in which distinctively late and difficult characteristics appear merely or mainly as achieved subtlety and fineness. Of these the most notable are The Awkward Age and What Maisie Knew. Of the latter something has already been said. Though it occupies only of a it with its volume, part might, packed and intensively organized

works

three hundred pages, stand as a novel. The Awkward Age occupies a whole volume and may (though it doesn't occupy two) fairly be
It seems unlikely, considered one of James's major achievements. received at its was as it to such however, gain general acceptance
:

first

wi:h 'complete disrespect', and the appearance, James critics who have written about it seem to have found it not worth
tells us,

the extremely close

critic as

and

alert

reading

it

demands.

So

qualified a

Mr. Edmund Wilson, for instance, opines

that 'James could

known how we should feel about the gibbering disembowelled crew who hover around one another with sordid
never have

shadowy designs in which we are

in

Actually, the various ways to feel about the various characters are delicately
.

The Awkward Age

but surely defined and the whole point of the book depends ujpon our feeling a strong distaste for some of the characters and sharing
;

with James a

critical attitude

towards most of them.

Yet for the

general complete misreading James possibly bears some responsibility responsibility other than that of having merely been difficult

Percy Lubbock in The Craft of Fiction sees the highly sophisticated circle of men and women, who seem so well practised in the art of living that they could never

and

subtle.

When,
'

for

exampK Mr.

be taken by surprise' (p. 191) as an admirable coterie to which one would be proud to belong ('Their intelligence counts for everyhe might reasonably point thing ..." 'It is a charmed world .')
.

to the Preface for his warrant.

the

he might reasonably invoke same authority for his account of James's theme 'The girl Nanda, supposedly a helpless spectator, takes control of the situation and works it out for her elders. She is the intelligent and expert and self-possessed one of them all they have only to leave everything to her light manipulations, ana the awkwardness which is theirs, not hers is surmounted. By the time she has displayed all her art the story is at an end her action has answered tfye question and provided the
:

And

issue.'

169

HENRY JAMES
That is the notion of the theme one gets from the Preface. It is an ironical commentary on the significance and drift of James's
later technical

preoccupation that, discussing ten years after having

him

the triumphant tour deforce that it was for novel dramatized, 'triumphantly scientific', 'the completely (a he should have forgotten to say of finish it stows away'), quantity

written The

Awkward Age

anything about his essential theme

about the intense moral and

tragic interest that here justifies his technique

and

is

justified

by

it.

For The Awkward Age, though

comedy at its most brilliant,

is

exhibits James's genius for social a tragedy ; a tragedy conceived in an

it

imagination that was robustly, delicately and clairvoyantly moral.

The dialogue (and The Awkward Age is nearly all dialogue) is marvellously good, an amazing exhibition of genius. It is in this
from the
of the dialogue that The Awkward Age differs most obviously late 'great', conventionally admired novels, where, while the author's right to stylize, we have to complain that his granting
life
is

characters speak in a stylization that

too often intolerably like the

author's
in
itself,

own
also

late style.

And

this life

means

a subtle, vivid

of the dialogue, fascinating and varied life of character.

Nevertheless, perhaps even The Awkward Age, brilliant success as it is, represents a disproportionate amount of 'doing', a disproportionate interest in technique. Certainly Nanda, the tragic heroine,
is

more
is

rarefied presence than Isabel Archer.

To

say which, of

to invite the reply that James didn't intend either to give us Isabel again or to give us with the same relative fulness anyone. Yet

course,

it still

seems a fair

comment that a James who had as much fulness of

to impart as informs The Portrait of a Lady couldn't have chosen to restrict himself by so 'triumphantly scientific' and so excluding a method of presentment as that of The Awkward Age. Interest in
life

technique

is

usurping here upon the interest that, in the greatest

art,

technique subserves.

'Ah, aren't

we

very

much

That is of the
ness
!'

finer essence

the same simple lovers of life ? of it which appeals to the conscious-

This

phrase, 'the finer essence

by one of the characters in The Awkward Age. The which appeals to the consciousness ', well the nature of suggests very James's own preoccupation. In The
is

said

170

THE LATER JAMES

Portrait

richer

life

of a Lady, we may say, he seeks the essence of a very much than in The Awkward Age. In connexion with the latter

book

on a limiting suggestion: it suggests close to is too what something represented by the witty and sophisticated conversation into which the theme is distilled. And the reading
'consciousness* takes

The Awkward Age exacts is, strcngly sympathetic as are the feelings generated towards Nanda, Mr. Longdon and Mitchy, too intensively and predominantly a matter of the 'wits', in a limiting sense, to permit of the profoundest and most massive imaginative effect. Isabel Archer, who in The Portrait of a Lady, loving life, seeks the finer essence of it that appeals to the consciousness', may be said to symbolize for James that essence at his richest apprehension of it. It is not for nothing that a whole volume is required to present, place and duly charge Isabel before the 'story', in Mr. Stephen
that
*

a rich

Spender's sense, begins or that the process involves the evocation of and varied environment and background. And convincingly
;

'there' as scene

and persons are, and though the imagination that makes them so present to us is ironically perspicacious and supremely
is something of James's ideal civilization about the evokes. he Manners, the arts of social intercourse, do, in England that mellow and spacious world the world of Lord Warburton

intelligent, there

and

his sisters,

Ralph Touchett, and

the old

American banker

his

seem to express something truly and maturely humane, a That element of warm faith, or illusion, disappears from James's work along with the generous fulness of actuality as the 'scientific' elaborateness of 'doing' comes in. It is
father
spiritual fineness.

we cannot believe that the later James the of The Bowl would have dealt so mercilessly, would Golden James not have dealt at least a little complaisantly, with Gilbert Osmond,
significant too that

the aesthetic dilettante to

whom Isabel falls a prey.

This development might suggest critical reflections regarding the essential nature and conditions of James's concern for 'the finer
essence'.

So peculiar an intensity of concern for consciousness might perhaps be seen as in itself an index of some correlated deficiency an index of something, from the beginning, not quite sound, whole and thriving within and below. True, The Bostonians,
with the poised wisdom of its comedy, and
171
its

richness of substance,

derived from the experience and observation of childhood and

HENRY JAMES
reflections. But even of The Portrait youth, doesn't encourage such rich vitality be it a suggested that its effect of perhaps

of Lady

might

isn't quite

and free first-hand living. simply an expression of rich of the Author's in Author The American The young ofBeltraffio says
:

house

was imagination in the carpets and curtains, in the pictures and books, in the garden behind it, where certain old brown walls were muffled in creepers that appeared to me to have been copied from a masterpiece of one of the prestruck me at that Raphaelites. That was the way many things time in England as reproductions of something that had existed It was not the picture, the poem, primarily in art or literature. these things were the fictive page, that seemed to me a copy and of life the originals, and the distinguished people happy was fashioned in their image.'
'there
;

And when,

there. Something of the effect of The Portrait ofa LaJy is suggested as in The Princess Casamassima (which brings so little

comfort to those who would like to justify James by his interest in the class-war), he offers, uncharacteristically, something like an
earthy and sappy vitality,
it

But

this is

not the note to end on.

derives, significantly, from Dickens. It is a measure of our sense

of

the greatness of Henry James's genius that discussion should tend to stress mainly what he failed to do with it. But what achievement
in the art

of fiction

fiction as a

completely serious art addressed to

the adult mind can we point to in English as surpassing his? Besides The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, WashThe Awkward Age and What Maisie Knew, there is an
ington Square,

short stories impressive array of things novels, nouvelles, as classics. stand will permanently
1

that

It is relevant here (and see pp. 162-3 above) to note that, for such an Never allowed upbringing as that of the young Jameses, there was a price. to become rooted in any milieu, one would be remarkable indeed to develop a strong sense of society as a system of functions and responsibilities. H. J.'s interest in 'civilization' betrays, tested by his actual selectiveness in the con-

He didn't know the right people/ crete field before him, a grave deficiency. * fair Q* once said to me, discussing James's criticism of the country-house. point : after all, the admirable types, the public spirit and the fine and serious

culture

we come on when we study, e.g., the milieu of Henry Sidgwick (intense and intelligent admirer of George Eliot) were characteristic products ' does he seem of the England of the besj familiest in James's time. to know nothing about this real and most impressive best ?

Why

172

IV

JOSEPH CONRAD
(i)

Minor Works and 'Nostromo'

in a quarterly, against the the present writer, of an article to be entitled Conrad, the Soul and the Universe. The exasperation registered in this formula explains, perhaps, why the article was never written. For that
.

announcement once appeared

name of

Conrad has done

classical

work is
his

as certain as that his classical status

ceuvre, and the necessary disupon criminations and delimitations, not being altogether simple, clearly oughtn't to be attempted in any but a securely critical frame of

will not rest evenly

whole

English masters

long been generally held to be among the the ; exasperation records a sense that the greatness attributed to him tended to be identified with an imputed pro-

mind.

He has, of course,

and that this 'profundity* was not what it was taken tq be, but quite other, and the reverse of a strength. The final abandonment of the article may have been partly determined by Mr. E. M.
fundity,
Forster's note

on Conrad

tKat appeared in Abinger Harvest

to

'What is so elusive about him is that he is always promising make some general philosophic statement about the universe,

and then refraining with a gruff disclaimer. ... Is there not also a central obscurity, something noble, heroic, beautiful, inspiring
half-a-dozen
essays

do suggest

These but obscure, obscure e great books, that he is misty in the middle as well as at the
.

edges, that the secret casket of his genius contains a vapour rather than a jewel ; and that we needn't try to write him down philosophically, because there is, in this direction, nothing to
write. No creed, in fact. Only opinions, and the right to throw them overboard when facts make them look absurd. Opinions held under the semblance of eternity, girt with the sea, crowned

with

stars,

and therefore

easily

mistaken for a creed/

This might well have gratified the exasperatjon, and

made

its

expression seem unnecessary. Mr. Forster, however, doesn't attempt discriminations or precisions (his note is a reprinted review of Notes on Life and Letters).
173

JOSEPH
And

CONRAD

he doesn't suggest those manifestations of the characteristic he describes in which we have something simply and obviously deplorable something that presents itself, not as an elusively noble
timbre,

prompting us to

but

as,

analysis and consequent limiting judgments, a bluntly, disconcerting weakness or vice. Consider, for

instance,

how

Heart of Darkness

is

marred.

consent, one of Conrad's best is, for the an source tilings appropriate epigraph of The Hollow Men 'Mistah Kurtz, he dead*. That utterance, recalling the particularity of its immediate context, represer ts the strength of Heart ofDarkness

Heart of Darkness

by common

'He

cried in a whisper at

cried out twice, a cry that

some image, at some vision was no more than a breath

he

"The horror! The

'I

horror !"

blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the
manager,

who

lifted his eyes to

give

me

a questioning glance,

which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depth of his meanA continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the ness. lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent face in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt
'"Mistah Kurtz
*

he dead."
I

I remained, and went on was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much. There was a lamp in there and outside it was so beastly, beastly light, don't you know

All the pilgrims rushed out to see.

with

my

dinner.

believe

dark/
This passage, it will be recognized, owes its force to a whole wide context of particularities that gives the elements here the pilgrims,
the manager, the manager's boy, the situation
their specific values.

Borrowing

a phrase

from Mr.

Eliot's critical writings,

its

one might

say that Heart of Darkness achieves

overpowering evocation of

atmosphere by means of Objective correlatives'. The details and circumstances of tli voyage to and up the Congo are present to us
the journey ourselves and l(chosen for record by a controlling imaginative purpose) they carry specificities of emotion and suggestiqn with them. There is the gunboat
as if

we were making

as they are

dropping

shells into

Africa

MINOR WORKS AND MOSTROMO

There wasn't even
bush.
It

a shed there, and she was shelling the

appears Jie French had thereabouts. Her ensign dropped

over the low hull the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns ; a small flame would
all
;

of the long six-inch guns stuck out

one of their wars going on limp like a rag the muzzles

;

and vanish, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives he called them enemies hidden out of sight somewhere. 'We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some* more places *with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy .' atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb.
dart
;
! .
.

There

is

the arrival at the

Company's

station

'I came upon a boiler "wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as

the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decayof ing machinery, a stack of rusty nails. To the left a
trees
I I

made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly.

clump

horn tooted to the right, and blinked, the "path was steep. saw bUck people run. heavy, dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all.

change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way of anything but this objectless blasting was all die work going on. 'A slight clanking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked
;

No

erect and slow, balancing small baskets full, of earth on their heads, and the dink kept time with their footsteps. Bkck rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope ; each had an iron collar

175

JOSEPH

CONRAD

on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose Another bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. of that ship of report from the cliff made me think suddenly war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice but these men could by no stretch of imagina/ tion be called enemies. They were called criminals.
; .
.

There

is the grove of death 'At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment but no sooner within it than it seemed to me that I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly
: ;

become

audible.

trees, leaning half coming out, half against the trunks, clinging to the earth, effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine of the cliff went off,

'Black shapes crouched, lay, sat beneath the

followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work And this was the place where
!

had withdrawn to die. were dying slowly it was very clear. They were not They enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, These moribund lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. as thin. I began to distinguish shapes were free as air and nearly the gleam of the eyes under the trees. There, glancing down, The black bones reclined at full I saw a face near my hand. shoulder one with against the tree, and slowly the eyelength lids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly/

some of the
'

helpers

By means

of this

art

of vivid

essential record, in

seen and incidents experienced

particular contacts

by and exchanges with other human agents, the overwhelming sinister and fantastic 'atmosphere' is engendered. Ordinary greed, stupidity and moral squalor are made to look like the vast and oppressive mysbehaviour in a lunatic asylum against of the rendered potently in terms of sensation, tery surroundings,
176

main agent in

terms of things the narrative, and

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

This

mean

lunacy,
insane,

which we
is

are

made

to feel as at the

same time

normal and

brought out by contrast with the fantastically secure innocence of the young harlequin-costumed Russian ('son of

an arch-priest
into

Government of Tambov'), the introduction

to

whom is by the way of that copy of Tower's

(or Towson's) Inquiry Some Points of Seamanship, symbol of tradition, sanity and the moral idea, found lying, an incongruous mystery, in the dark heart of Africa.

Of course, as the above quotations illustrate, the author's comment cannot be said to be wholly implicit. Nevertheless, it is not separable from the thing rendered, but seems to emerge from the vibration of this as part of the tone. At least, this is Conrad's art at its best. There are, however, places in Heart of Darkness where we become aware of comment as an interposition, and worse, as
at times an exasperating one. Hadn't he, we find ourselves asking, overworked 'inscrutable', 'inconceivable', 'unspeakable' and that kind of word already ? yet still they recur. Is anything added to the oppressive mysteriousness of the Congo ,by

an intrusion,

such sentences
'It

as

was

the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an

?

inscrutable intention'

the same adjectival insistence upon inexpressand incomprehensible mystery, is applied to the evocation of human profundities and spiritual horrors ; to magnifying a thrilled

The same vocabulary,

ible

of the unspeakable potentialities of the human soul. The is not to magnify but rather to muffle. The essential vibration emanates from the interaction of die particular incidents, actions and perceptions that are evoked with such charged consense
actual effect

legitimate kind of comment, that which seems the inevitable immediate resonance of the recorded event, is represented
creteness.

The

here:

'And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped into the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had beon struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect

nearer view, and

its first

of the place. result was to makt

17?

Now I had suddenly a me throw my head

JOSEPH
back
as if before a

CONRAD
I

from post to Those round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing food for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you surprise. know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed a head that eyelids, seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, waa smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless ?nd jocose dream of
blow.

Then

went
;

carefully

post with

my glass, and I saw my mistake.

that eternal slumber.

'I not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager ^aid afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the dis-

am
I

have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly was nothing exactly profitable in those heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could Hot be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself
trict.

to understand that there

can't say.

at the

very

last,

think the knowledge came to him at last only but the wilderness had found him out early, and

had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. ... I put down the glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance/
That the 'admirer of Mr. Kurtz,' the companion of the narrator and innocent young Russian is

here, should be the fantastically sane part of the force of tho passage.

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

By such means as it illustrates we are given a charged sense of the monstrous hothouse efflorescences fostered in Kurtz by solitude and the wilderness. It is a matter of such things as the heads on posts
a direct significant glimpse, the innocent Russian's explanations, the incidents of the progress up the river and the moral and physical

of the charge generated in a specific evocations. The stalking of the moribund Kurtz, a skeleton crawling through the long grass on all fours as he makes his bolt towards the fires and the tom-toms, is a triumphant climax in the suggestion of strange and horrible perversions. But Conrad isn't satisfied with these means he feels that there is, or ought to be, some horror, some significance he has yet to bring out. So we have an adjectival and worse than supererogatory insistence
incongruities registered
;

in short,

variety of highly

rites', 'unspeakable secrets', 'monstrous passions', 'inconceivable mystery', and so on. If it were only, as it largely is in Heart of Darkness, a*matter of an occasional phrase it would still be

on 'unspeakable

regrettable as tending to cheapen the tone. But the actual cheapening is little short of disastrous. Here, for instance, we have MarV>w
at the crisis

of the episode just referred to

'I tried

wilderness

to break the spell the heavy, mute spell of the that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the

awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, towards the gleam of the fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head though I had a very lively sense of that danger too but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low I've been telling you what we
;
.

said

repeating the phrases

good?

we pronounced but what's the were common everyday words the familiar They

vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that ? They had behind them, to my^mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of ph/rases spoken in If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, nightmares. Soul I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had
!

179

JOSEPH

CONRAD
!

looked within itself, and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad. I had for my sins, I suppose to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sinI heard it. I I saw it cerity. He struggled with himself too, saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.'

Conrad must here stand convicted of borrowing the arts of the magazine-writer (who has borrowed his, shall we say, from Kipling and Poe) in order to impose on his readers and on himself, for thrilled on response, a 'significance* that is merely an emotional insistence the presence of what he can't produce. The insistence betrays the absence, the willed 'intensity' the nullity. He is intent on making a virtue out of not knowing what he means. The vague and unrealizable,

he

asserts

with a strained impressiveness,

:

is

the profoundly

and tremendously
'I've

significant

been

telling

you what we

said
?

repeating the phrases

we

They were common pronounced everyday words the familiar vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that ? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares/
but what's the good

What's the good, indeed ? If he cannot through the concrete presentment of incident, setting and image invest the words with the terrific something that, by themselves, they fail to convey, then

no amount of adjectival and

'I

ejaculatory emphasis will

do

it.

saw

the inconceivable mystery

of a

soul,' etc.

is an ambiguous statement. I see that there is a and it remains a mystery for me I can't conceive what it mystery, as a thrilling affair of is ; and if I offer this inability to your wonder I exemplify a common trait of 'seeing an inconceivable mystery', human nature. Actually, Conrad had no need to try and inject 'significance' into his narrative in this way. What he shows him;

That, of course,

self to

have successfully and significantly seen

is

enough

to

make

Heart of Darkness a disturbing presentment of the kind he aimed at. By the attempt at injection he weakens, in his account of Kurtz's
death, the effect of thit culminating cry
i So
:

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

'He
cried in a whisper at

cried out twice, a cry that ' horror! The horror !"

some image, at some vision he was no more than a breath "The

The
had
if

Conrad had

'horror' there has very much less force than strained less.
is

it

might have

This final account of Kurtz

insistent irony that leads us

associated with a sardonic tone,

to another

on

an bad patch, the closing

:

interview in Brussels with Kurtz's 'Intended'

'The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and at me. trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were
*

proud-of that sorrow,

as

now
It is

to

mourn

for

him

as

though sKe would say, he deserves.'

alone

know

not part of Conrad's irony that there should be anything

ironical in this presentment of the woman. The irony lies in the association of her innocent nobility, her purity of idealizing faith,

with the unspeakable corruption of Kurtz and it is developed (if that is the word) with a thrilled insistence that recalls the melodramatic intensities of Edgar Allan Poe
; :

'I felt like

a chill grip
I

on

my

chest.

"Don't,"

said in a

muffled voice.

'"Forgive me.
silence.
.
.
.

have mourned so long in

?

silence

in

loneliness.

You were with him to the last Nobody near to understand him as
Perhaps no one
I I

I I

think of his

would have
his

understood.

to hear. ..."

'"To

the very end,"

said shakily.
fright.

"I heard

very

last

words. ..."
'"I want

stopped in a

'"Repeat them," she murmured in a heart-broken tone. I want something something to live with." 'I was on the of point crying at her "Don't you hear them ?" The dark was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly, like the first whisper of a rising wind. "The horror the horror !" "'His last words to live with," she insisted. "Don't you
!

understand

loved

him

loved him
181

loved him !"

JOSEPH
'I

CONRAD
your name."

pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

last

"'The
'I

word he pronounced was

heard a light sigh and th^n my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of an unspeakable pain. She knew. She was sure/ '"I knew it I was sure !"
.
. .

Conrad's 'inscrutable', it is clear, associates with Woman as it does with the wilderness, and the thrilling mystery of the Intended's innocence is of the same order as the thrilling mystery of Kurtz's It would appear corruption the profundities are complementary. French of the student that the cosmopolitan Pole, masters, who
:

became a British master-mariner, was in some

If anyone should be

respects a simple soul.

moved to

question the propriety of this

way of

putting

it,

of a perhaps the following will be found something

:

justification

'Woman and
:

the sea revealed themselves to

me

together, as

two mistresses of life's values. The illimitable greatit were ness of the one, the unfathomable seduction of the other, working their immemorial
spells
:

from generation

to generation fell

upon

my

heart at

last

common

memory of the sea's formless might

in that

fortune, an unforgettable and of the sovereign charm

woman's form wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity rather than blood/

This comes from a bad novel, one of Conrad's worst things, The Arrow of Gold. It is a sophisticated piece of work, with a sophistication that elaborates and aggravates the deplorable kind of naivety
illustrated in the quotation.

Not

that the author's talent doesn't

the pervasive atmosphere is appear, but the central theme and the of seduction' the 'unfathomable 'enigmatic' Rita a glamorous
;

mystery, the evocation of which (though more prolonged and elaborated) is of the same order as the evocation of sinister significance,
the 'inconceivable* mystery of Kurtz, at the close of Heart of Darkness. If any reader of that tale had felt that the irony permitted a

doubt regarding Conrad's attitude towards the Intended, the presentment of Rita, should settle it.

'Woman' figures in The Rescue,

the

book that

in publication pre-

ceded The Arrow of Gold (both came out just after the 1914 war, though The Rescue belongs essentially to Conrad's early period).

182

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

The glamour
innocent.

of Gold, tion of

it

Woman as represented by Mrs. Travers is less

Conrad demands Tor it
;

here is a simpler affair less sophisticated and more But if The Rescue lacks the positive badness of The Arrow is, on a grand scale, boring in its innocence. The seducinsistently

and

melodramatically 'unfathomable' than in the later book, but cannot

sustain the interest

so to say that

it is,

in the

formal design, adequate to balancing Heroic Action as represented by Lingard King Tom, idealized seaman-adventureris not to say anything very favourable about the whole. The Rescue, in short, is an Academy piece 'sombre, colourful, undeniably a classic* the reviewers may have said, and its Grand of the conflict
Style staging

between Love and Honour (a kingdom at stake) against a sumptuously rendered ddcor of tropical sea, sunset, and jungle is, in its slow and conscientious magnificence, calculated to engender more deference than thrill, and so can't even be recommended as good
boy's

The book, in fact, is not a kind of to have altogether surprising come from a sailor of thing pertinacious literary talent and French literary education. The
reading

though

it

offers little to adults.

reason for bringing

for
all his

it

in just here

is

to enforce the point that Conrad,

sophistication, exhibits a certain simplicity of outlook and attitude. About his attitude towards women there is perceptible, all the way through his literary career, something of the gallant
sailor.

simple

The

sailor in

his strength.

It is

him, of course, is rightly held to be a main part of not for nothing that Heart a
tale, is

dominantly successful
told

told

by

of Darkness, prethe captain of the steamboat

realized point

from

that specific

and concretely

of view

appraisal ofahe success of the tale is bound up with this consideration. But the stress till now has fallen Conrad's

up

upon

weaknesses.

It

time to ask where the strength may be found in its purest form. There will, I think, be general approval of the choice of Typhoon as a good example. But I am not sure that there is as general a recognition of just where the strength of Typhoon lies. The point may be made by saying that it lies not so much in the
is

description

famous of the elemental frenzy as in the of presentment Captain MacWhirr, the chief mate Jukes and the chief engineer Solomon Rout at the of the tale. O( course, it is a
^opening
183

that Conrad's distinctive genius comprises a gift for rendering the

commonplace

JOSEPH
British seaman.
gift

CONRAD

of a

novelist,

caricature

But is it a commonplace that the gift is the specific and (though the subtler artist doesn't run to and the fantastic) relates Conrad to Dickens Consider,
?
:

for instance, this

'He was

rather

below the medium

height, a bit round-

shouldered, and so sturdy of limb that his clothes always looked a shade too tight for his arms and legs. As if unable to grasp

due to the difference of latitudes, he wore a brown complete suit of a brownish hue, and clumsy black boots. These harbour togs gave to his thick figure an air of stiff and uncouth smartness. A thin silver watch-chain looped his waistcoat, and he never left his ship for the shore without clutching in his powerful, hairy fist an elegant umbrella of the very best qualit/, but generally unrolled. Young Jukes,

what

is

bowler

hat, a

the chief mate, attending his commander to the gangway, would sometimes venture to s?y, with the greatest gentleness, "Allow me, sir," and, possessing himself of the umbrella deferentially, would elevate the ferrule, shake the folds, twirl a mat furl in a jiffy, and hand it back going through the performance with a face of such portentous gravity, that Mr. Solomon
:

Rout, the chief engineer, smoking his morning cigar over the skylight, would turn away his head in order to hide a smile. "Oh! aye! The blessed gamp. Thank 'ee, Jukes, thank 'ee," would mutter Captain MacWhirr heartily, without
. .
.

looking up.'

Consider the exchanges between Captain MacWhirr and Jukes over the Siamese flag, deplorably, poor Jukes feels (' Fancy having
a ridiculous Noah's ark elephant in the ensign of one's ship'), substituted for the Red Ensign. Consider the accounts of the home

backgrounds of MacWhirr and the chief engineer. It is to be noted further that these backgrounds in
with the main theme of the
(it is,

their contrast

in fact,

supremely

the scenes at Brussels.

is

satisfactory irony than that, in Heart of Darkness, of At the same time it is to be noted that there
effective)

tale afford a far

more

in
is

Typhoon no sardonic Marlow, commenting on an action that

he

from
is

to project ; whereas, though Heart of Darkness is given the point of view of the captain of the steamboat, that captain Marlow Marlow, for Conrad has more than one kind of

made

whom

use,

and

who

is

both

feiore

and

less

than a character and always

184

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

sometning other than just a master-mariner. For comment in Typhoon we have the letters home of Solomon Rout, the chief engineer, and the letter of Jukes to his chum. In short, nothing in
the story
is

forced or injected

but resides in the presented particulars

the total action
:

the significance is not adjectival, the actors, the incidents and

are given the ?hip, her cargo and her crew of ordinary British seamen, and the impact on them of the storm. The ordinariness is, with a novelist's art, kept present to us the

we

whole time
that.

the particular effect of heroic sublimity depends

on

'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feeble, but with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the black wastes of the gale again he heard a man's voice the frail and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of thought, resolution and purpose, that shall be pronouncing confident words on the last day, when heavens fall, and justice is done again he heard it, and it was crying to
;

him,

as if from very,

"

'

very

far
this,

All right".

Conrad can permit himself

because the voice

is

that

of the

unheroically matter-of-fact Captain MacWhirr, whose solid specific presence, along with that of particularized ordinary sailors and
engineers,

we

are never allowed to forget

had come, a menacing lull of the wind, the holding of a stormy breath and he felt himself pawed all over. It was the boatswain. Jukes recognized these hands, so thick and enormous tha* they seemed to belong to some new species of man. 'The boatswain had arrived on the bridge, crawling on all fours against the wind, and had found the chief mate's legs with the top of his head. Immediately he crouched and began to
lull

'A

explore Jukes'
touches, as

person upwards,
inferior.'

with prudent, apologetic

became an

Or
is

take this
'

The boatswain by his side kept on yelling.

"

What

What

it?" Jukes 'cried distressfully; and the pther repeated, "What would my old woman say if she saw me now ?'

'In the alleyway, where a lot of water had got in and splashed in the dark, the men were stiH as death, till Jukes

185

JOSEPH

CONRAD

stumbled against one of them and cursed him savagely for being in the way. Two or three voices then asked, eager and weak, " "Any chance for us, sir ? " "What's the matter with you fools ? he said brutally. He felt as though he could throw himself down amongst them and never move any more. But they seemed cheered and in the midst of obsequious warning. "Lookout! Mind that manhole The boatswain lid, sir," they lowered him into the bunker. tumbled down after him, and as soon as he had picked himself up he remarked "She would say, 'Serve you right, you old
' ;

going to sea'." 'The boatswain had some means, and made a point of alluding to them frequently. His wife a fat woman and two
fool, for

grown-up daughters kept

of London.'

a greengrocer's shop in the East-end

The seamen

are their ordinary selves, the routine goes

forward in

the engine-room, and the heroic triumphs of the as matters-of-fact out of the ordinariness
:

Nan-Shan emerge

'"Can't have
says Captain

fighting

board ship",'

MacWhirr through

the typhoon,

and down into the

'tween-deck, into the human hurricane of fighting coolies, go Jukes and his men as a routine matter-of-fact course, to restore order and

decency

'"We

have done

it,

sir,"

he gasped.

'"Thought you would," said Captain MacWhirr. '"Did you ?" murmured Jukes to himself.
once," went on the Captain. " "If you think it was an easy job 'But his captain, clinging to the rail, paid no attention. '"According to the books the worst is not over yet".'
fell all at
:

'"Wind

'Jukes burst out

And

the qualities which, in a triumph of discipline

triumph of

the spirit have enabled a handful of ordinary men to impose sanity on a frantic mob are seen unquestionably to be those which took

Captain MacWhirr, in contempt of 'Storm-strategy', into the

centre of the typhoon. Captain stands there the

Without any symbolic portentousness the embodiment of a tradition. The crowning

of a matter-of-fact and practical
186

triumph of the

spirit,

iA the guise

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

sense

of decency,

is

ping with fatigue

the redistribution ship devastated, men dropof the gathered-up and counted dollars among

the assembled Chinese.

In The Shadow Line, also in masterpieces

to Typhoon),
I (it is,

common recognition one of Conrad's

and even
It

think, superior to Heart of Darkness

we have the same art.

has been acclaimed as a kind

beautiful evocation

of prose Ancient Mariner, and it is certainly a supremely sinister and of enchantment in tropic seas. But the art of
the evocation
is

of the kind that has been described

it is

not a

matter of engendering 'atmosphere* adjectivally, by explicitly 'significant' vaguenesses, insistent unutterablenesses, or the thrilled
succession of particulars
ship,

tone of an expository commentator, but of presenting concretely a from the point of view of the master of the

who, though notably

sensitive,

is

not a Marlow, but just a

ship's master ; an actor among the other actors, though burdened with responsibilities towards the crew, owners and ship. The dis-

tinctive art

of a novelist, and the

art

upon which

the success of the

prose Ancient Mariner essentially depends, is apparent in the ren4ering of personality, its reactions and vibrations; the pervasive
presence of the crew, delicately particularized, will turn out on The analysis to account for the major part of the atmosphere.
captain, entering the saloon for the first time the captain's chair, finds he is looking into a mirror :

young

and

sitting in

'Deep within the tarnished ormolu frame, in the hot halfthrough the awning, I saw my own face propped between myjiands. And I stared back at myself with the perfect detachment of distance, rather with curiosity than with any other feeling, except of some sympathy for this latest representative of what for all intents and purposes was a dynasty ; continuous not in blood, indeed, but in its experience, in its training, in its conception of duty, and in the blessed simplicity of its traditional point of view on life. 'Suddenly I perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. His long, red moustache determined the character of his'physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ghastly sort of way.'
light sifted
.

The

disobliging

and disturbing oddity 6f the mate turns out

187

JOSEPH
captain
:

CONRAD
and unseemly end of the
late

to be due to the sinister vagaries

of treason, the betrayal of a tradition which seemd to me as on earth could be. It appeared that imperative as any guide even at sea a man could become the victim of evil spirits. I felt on my face the breath of unknown powers that shape our
act
destinies/

'That man had been in all essentials but his age just such another man as myself. Yet the end of his life was a complete

The

sinister spell that

holds the ship

is

characteristically felt in terms

of contrast with the tradition and

its

these spiritual values,

being

embodied in the crew, a good one, who carry on staunchly against bad luck and disease. The visiting doctor himself is 'good* in the same way. The story ends, it will be noted, on the urexpected the exquisitely rendered seaman parting with the faithful Ransome, with a voice that is 'extremely pleasant to hear* and a weak heart
:

'"But, Ransome,"

I said,

"I hate the idea of parting with

'"I must go/' he broke in. "I have a right !" He gasped and a look of almost savage determination passed over his face. For an instant he was another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness of the man the humble reality of a boon to him this precarious, hard life things. Life was and he was thoroughly alarmed about himself.
'"

you."

Of course

******
I shall

pay you off if you wish

it."

His eyes, not approached him with extended hand. like a man He was a had strained at me, expression. looking
'I

'"Won't you shake hands, Ransome ?" I said gently. He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him in going up the companion stairs cautiously, step by step, our common sudden into mortal fear of starting enemy it anger
was his hard fate
tc\ carry

listening for a

warning

call.

consciously within his faithful breast/

These things are worth many times those descriptions of sunsets, exotic seas and the last plunge of flaming wrecks which offer themselves to the compilers

of prose anthologies.
188

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

This
this
is

at
:

any

rate to

confirm the accepted notion of Conrad to

that his genius was a unique and happy union of seaman and writer. If he hadn't actually been himself a British seaman by vocation he couldn't have done the Merchant Service from the

extent

inside.

The cosmopolitan of French

is

culture

and French

literary

there in the capacity for detachment that makes the intimate knowledge uniquely conscious and articulate. are aware of the artist by vocation, the intellectual who doubles the
initiation

We

seaman, only

when we

stop to take stock of the perfection of the

finish

rendering and the subtle

of jhe

art.

But this fine balance, this identity, isn't always sustained. In Mario w, who (as remarked above) has a variety of uses, the detachment is separated off. As a main participant in events though, by
his specific role as such, a

detached one, he gives his technical function a dramatic status in the action, and the author a freedom of
presence that, as

we have

Mario w is frankly a method of projection or presentation one that we learn to associate with Conrad's characteristic vices and w^aknesses. In Youth, for instance, one of the best-known of the tales, though not one of the best f he goes with the cheap insistence on the glamour, and with that tone which, here and in other places, makes one recall the formula of the early reviewer and reflect that the prose laureate of the British seaman does sometimes degenerate into a 'Kipling of the South Seas'. (And this is the point at which to note that Conrad can write shockingly bad magazine stuff see the
presenting Jim with the seen appropriate externality, always through the question, the doubt, that is the central theme of die book. Means and effect are

seen, constitutes a temptation.

Elsewhere

solemnly dedicated collection called Within In Lord Jim Marlow is the means of

the Tides.)

unobjectionable ; it is a different matter from the use of Marlow elsewhere to pass off a vaguely excited incomprehension as tremendous significance. But Lord Jim doesn't deserve the position of

pre-eminence among Conrad's works often assigned it it is hardly one of the most considerable. There is, in fact, much to be said in support of these reviewers who 'maintained (Conrad tetys
:

us)

starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's control', so that what we have is neither a very considerable novel, in spite of its 420 nor one of Conrad's best short stories.

that the

work

pages,

189

JOSEPH

CONRAD

The presentment of Lord Jim in the first part of the book, the account of the inquiry and of the desertion of the Patna, the talk with the French lieutenant these are good Conrad. But the
romance
that follows,

though plausibly offered

as a

continued

exhibition of Jim's case, has no inevitability as that; nor does it which consequently, eked develop or enrich the central interest,

out to provide the substance of a novel, comes to seem decidedly

thin.

The eking out

An

adjectival

done mainly from the world oAlmayer's Folly, Outcast of the Islands, and Tales of Unrest, those excessively studies in the Malayan exotic of Conrad's earliest vein.
is

Those things, it had better be said here, though they are innocuous, and no doubt deserved for their originality of setting some respectful notice when they came out, will not be urged by judicious admirers

of Conrad among his claims to classical rank. In their stylistic a descent from Chateaubriand, their eloquence, which suggests human interest, they their and 'picturesque' wearying exoticism,
aren't easy to re-read. No, Lord Jim is neither the best of Conrad's novels,

nor among

the best of his short stories. If, on the other hoid, his most considerable work had had due recognition, it would be known as one of the great novels of the language. For Nostromo is most certainly that. And it complicates the account of Conrad's genius in that it

doesn't answer to the formula arrived at above.

laureate

He

is

not here the

of the Merchant Service, the British seaman happily doubled an artist whose 'outsideness' with regard to the artist Merchant Service is to be constated only in the essential degree of detachment involved in an adequately recording art. In Nostromo Conrad is openly and triumphantly the artist by me'tier, conscious of French initiation and of fellowship in craft with Flaubert. The French element so oddly apparent in his diction and idiom throughout his career (he learnt French before English) here reveals its full associated with so serious and severe a conception significance, being
with the

of the

art

of fiction.

novelist's art is severe, but the controlling conception of the novel is luxuriant in its magnificence: it is Conrad's supreme

The

triumph in the evocation of exotic life and colour. Sulaco, standing beneath snow-clad Higuerota, with its population of Indians, mixed190

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

bloods, Hidalgos, Italians and English engineers, is brought before us in irresistible reality, along with the picturesque and murderous

drama of a South American State. This aspect of Conrad's in Nostromo has had full recognition ; indeed it could hardly genius be missed. What doesn't seem to be a commonplace is the way in
public

and subtle but highly organized pattern. Every detail, character and incident has its significant bearing on the themes and motives of this. The magnificence referred to above addresses the senses, or the sensuous imagination the pattern is one of moral significances. Nostromo has a main political, or public, theme, the relation between moral idealism and 'material interests'. We see the Gould
rich
;

which the whole book forms a

desire peace

Concession become the rallying centre for all in Costaguana who and order the constitutionalists, the patriotic idealists,

Robin Hood of the oppressed, the representatives of the financial power of Europe and North America. The ironical end of the book
the

which order and ideals have triumphed, Proand the all-powerful Concession has become the gress forges ahead, focus of hate for workers and the oppressed and a symbol of crushing materialism for idealists and defenders of the spirit. This public theme is presented in terms of a number of personal histories or, it
shows us a Sulaco
in

might be said, private themes, each having a specific representative moral significance. The Gould Concession is in the first place the personal history of its inheritor, Charles Gould and the tragedy of his wife. He, like the other main characters, enacts a particular answer to the question that we feel working in the matter of the novel as a kind of informing and organizing principle what do men find to live for what kinds of motive force or radical attitude can give life meaning, direction, coherence ? Charles Gould finds his answer in the ideal purpose he identifies with the success of the Gould Concession
:

is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security. can declaim about these things, but I pin my faith to Anyone material interests. Only let the material interests once get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on which alone they can continue to exist. That's how your money-making is justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified because the security which it demands

'What

191

JOSEPH

CONRAD
better justice will
*

must be shared with an oppressed people. A come afterwards. That's your ray of hope
Charles Go-ild's faith
financier Holroyd,
is

parodied by his backer, the American

in furthering a 'pure

Christianity' the United States cannot without irony be said to give ideal significance to his love of power. Charles himself is absorbed by the

whose interest and whose rhetorical

form of
of

faith in the manifest destiny

Concession that killed his father, and Emilia Gould, standing for
looks on in personal relations and disinterested human svmpathy, starved loneliness at the redeeming triumph that is an ironical
defeat of the
spirit.

Nostromo, picturesque indispensable to his patrons and popular hero, has no ideal purpose. He lives for reputation, 'to be well spoken of for his reflection in the eyes of others, ?nd when,
tempted by the
silver,

the mainspring of his

life

he condemns himself to clandestine courses goes slack. His return to find the new

lighthouse standing
characteristic

on the lonely rock hard by his secret, and his devious paths in love, are magnificent and into consequent betrayal

triumphs of symbolism. His appropriately melodramatic death is caused by the silver -md occurs during a stealthy
it.

visit to

Martin Decoud,

intellectual

and

dilettante in life',

Nostromo's

companion in that marvellously rendered night of the Gulf (it is one of the most vivid pieces of sensuous evocation in literature), also has no ideal purpose. The voice of sceptical intelligence, with 'no
anything except the truth of his own sensations', he enjoys conscious advantages, and has no difficulty in summing up Nosfaith in

tromo

'Decoud, incorrigible in his sceptisicm, reflected, not cynicman was made ally but with general satisfaction, that this finest that form of egohis enormous vanity, incorruptible by ism which can take on the aspect of every virtue/

He can also place Charles Gould, that 'sentimental Englishman' who

ment.
'cannot exist without idealizing every simple desire or achieveHe could not believe his own motives if he did not
first

make them

a part of some fairy tale/

192

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

Decoud
himself, contemptuously free

from the 'sentimentalism of

the people that will rever do anything for the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of an
ideal',
is

frankly

that alone,

moved by his passion for Antonio Avellanos, and when he initiates the step through which the mine is

saved and the aims of the patriots and idealists achieved. In this respect he provides a criticism of Charles Gould's subtle infidelity
to his wife.
sufficient.

Yet, even apart

from

his passion,

he

is

not quite

self-

moment when we might have expected him to be wholly engrossed in practical considerations we find him, significantly, illustrating an essential human trait
At
a
:

'all
life

trying to react

the objectless and necessary sincerity of one's innermost upon the profound sympathies of another's

existence.'

For
'In the

most sceptical heart

there lurks at such

moments^ when

the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action mry

be seen when personality is gone, gone where no light of inwhich every death takes vestigation can ever reach the truth out of the world. Therefore, instead of looking for something
to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or two of sleep, Decoud was of a large pocket book with a letter to his filling the pages
sister.'

Marooned on
he discovers th^f
'

the Great Isabel

(site
is

of the subsequent lighthouse)

indeed radically qualified
:

his self-sufficiency

from mere outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of irony and takes possession of the mind, and scepticism have no place. It
Solitude
drives forth the thought into the exile of utter unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud
It

of his own individuality. caught himself entertaining a doubt had merged into the world of cloud and water, of natural
. . . '

and forms of nature. He had recognized no other virtue than intelligence and had erected passions into duties. Both his intelligence and his in the great unbroken solitude passion were swallowed up easily faith. without of waiting
forces

...

193

JOSEPH
He
shoots himself.

CONRAD
episode
is

The whole

given in painful im-

mediacy.
the characters the one nearest to self-sufficiency is Dr. Monygham, the, disliked and distrusted, and he, for all his sardonic
all

Of

scepticism about

human

nature, does hold to an ideal.

His sceptic-

based on self-contempt, for his ideal (he is, in fact, a stronger and quite unequivocal Lord Jim) is one he has offended against it is an exacting ideal of conduct. He oilers a major contrast with

ism

is

Nostromo

too, since his success in the desperate venture that saves

and rehabilitates him (in his own eyes he expects death) depends upon his having no reputation except for 'unsoundness' and a shady past, and his being ready to be ill-spoken of and
the situation
ill-thought of. His ideal, of course, isn't merely personal it is of the same order as the moral idea of the Merchant Service (he is 'an officer and a gentleman') : it owes its strength to a traditional and
social sanction
;

and he has an outer

stay in His devotion to Mrs.

Gould.
Perhaps the completest antithesis to Decoud is Giorgio Viola, the serene old Garibaldino, also self-sufficient, or very near it he by reason of his libertarian idealism, the disinterestedness of which is

above

all question. He represents witn monumental massiveness the heroic age of the liberal faith of Songs before Sunrise and the religion of humanity, and so provides a contrasting background for

the representatives of Progress in Costaguana politics (by the end of Nostromo the Marxists are on the scene). He is commandingly real ; but it is part of the irony of the book that the achievements he stands
for should have

produced the South America

we

are

shown.

Captain Mitchell represents the Merchant Service. He is sane and stable to the point of stupidity. His inability to realize that he,

Joe Mitchell

('I

am

a public character,

sir'),

has anything to fear

from

a ridiculously

menacing Dago whose

ruffians

have stolen

his

presentation pocket-chronometer actually cows the all-powerful Dago into restoring both chronometer and freedom
:

'The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable of entertaining for any length of time a fear of his personal safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination the kind
194

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

whose undue development caused intense suffering to Seftor Hirsch that sort of imagination which adds the blind terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly to all the other apprehensions on which the sense of one's existence is based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much penetration of any kind characteristic, illuminating trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him completely. He was too pompously and innocently aware of his own existence to observe that of others. For instance, he could not believe that Sotillo had been really afraid of him, and this simply because it would never have entered into his head to shoot anyone except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he
;
;

reflected quite gravely/

traits, it will be seen, qualify him for an essential function in the presentment of "he action, 1,0 which he is related in a way symbolized by his triumphant sense a sense uninformed by any

These

comprehension of what
things,

is

whence

history

is

going forward of being at the centre of directed, as he sits, an habitue*, in Mrs.

Gould's drawing-room.

On

enlarge

the significance of the other characters there is no need to : Sefior Avellanos, the liberal idealist, who dies of dis*

appointment, and the sheets of whose Fifty Years of Misrule are fired out as wads for trabucos loaded with handfuls of type' during the
'democratic* meute\ the fanatical Father Corbe&n; Hirsch, the embodiment of fear, and so on. Instead, a negative point had better be made by way of stressing the distinctive nature of the impressiveness of Nostromo. The impressiveness is not a matter of any profundity of search into human experience, or any explorative subtlety in the analysis of human behaviour. It is a matter rather of the firm

and vivid concreteness with which the representative attitudes and motives are realized, and the rich economy of the pattern that plays them off against one another. To suggest, as Edward Garnett does
in his introduction to Conrad's Prefaces, that perhaps this or that character wouldn't really have behaved just as he does in the book is

misdirected criticism.

The
as

life-like

convincingness of Conrad's

persons (which

is

complete

we read, and undisturbed by properly

psychologize them as lives
195

critical reflection) doesn't entitle us to

existing outside the book.

JOSEPH CONRAD I am reminded of certain

remaxks of

T.

S. Eliot's

'A "living" character is not necessarily "true to life". It a person whom we can see and hear, whether he be true or false to human nature as we know it. What the creator of
is

character needs
sensibility
;

is

not so

mucn knowledge of motives

as

keen

the dramatist need not understand people, but he

must be exceptionally aware of them/

It is

an Elizabethan dramatist Eliot has in tront of him

and

it

something that recalls the strength of Elizabethan drama about the art ofNostromo something Shakespearean, in fact. The keen sensibility and the exceptional awareness are
strikes

me

that there

is

apparent in the vividness with which we see and hear Conrad's persons, and there is nothing about them that, on reflection, we find
is

seeing and hearing are to us and are plainly adequate understanding they present wh?t they are ; and to try, by way of appreciation or criticism, to go behind that is to misunderstand what the book offers us. There

untrue to

human nature

as

we know it. But the

plainly no room in Nostromo for the kind of illustrated psychology that many critics think they have a right to demand of a novelist
is

(and of Shakespeare). Consider the number of personal centres of moral interest, and the variety of themes. Consider the number of vivid dramatic scenes and episodes. Consider the different strands that go to the totality of the action. There is the private tragedy of the Goulds ; there is Nostromo's history, involving that of the

Viola family ; there is the story of Decoud and Antonia there is that of Dr. Monygham and his self-rehabilitation and all these and
; ;

so

much else are subsumed in the public historical drama

the study,

concretely rendered, of the play of moral and material forces, political and personal motives, in the founding of die Occidental

Republic.
Clearly, Conrad's study of motives, and of the relation between the material and the spiritual, doesn't depend for its impressiveness on any sustained analytic exhibition of the inner complexities of the

individual psyche. The impressiveness lies in the vivid reality of the things we are made to see and hear, and the significance

they

get

from

their relations in a highly organized

and vividly

realized

196

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

whole.
It lies

in such effects as that of the presence

of Decoud and

Nostromo

in the lighter as it drifts with its load of silver and of Fear (personified by the stowaway Hirsch) through the black night

of the Gulf and that of the unexpected nocturnal encounter between Nostromo and Dr. Monygham, two sharply contrasted con;

sciousnesses, in the vast deserted

Custom House, and

their discovery

that the Shapeless high-shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with lowered head' seen on the wall through a doorway, is

characteristically

thrown by the hanging body of the tortured Hirsch. We have it when Charles Gould, going out from his interview (consummate satiric comedy) with Pedrito Montero, would-be Due
de

new Napoleon, runs into the 'constitutionalist* he has refused to support ('The acceptance of accomdeputation facts save plished yet the precious vestiges of parliamentary may

Morny

to the

institutions')
'

Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his foreas if to disperse the mists

head

of an oppressive dream, whose

grotesque extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. In the passages and on the stair-

of the old palace Montero *s troopers lounged about insolsmoking and making way for no one the clanking of and spurs resounded all over the building. Three silent groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main gallery, formal and helpless a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the others, as if in the exercise of a public duty they nad been overcome by a desire to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was overtopped by the big face of Don and soft with white, Juste Lopez, prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes from the Administrador of the San Tom mine as a dignified rebuke of his little faith in that only
cases

ently, sabres

saving principle/

threats

Charles Gould's quiet unyieldingness in the face of Pedrito's and blandishments has already invested him for the moment

197

JOSEPH

CONRAD

with a larger measure of our sympathy than he in general commands. The brush with the deputation confirms this eftect, while at the same
time reinforcing dramatically that pattern of political significance

which has a major part in Nostromo a book that was written, we remind ourselves in some wonder, noting the topicality of its themes, analysis and illustrations, in the reign of Edward VII.
have the symbolic pregnancy of Conrad's dramatic method in such a representative touch as this (the context is the flight of aristocrats and adherents of 'law and order' to the protection of the 'master of the Campo')
Again,
:

we

'The emissary of Hernandez spurred his horse close up. '"Has not the master of the mine any message to send the master of the Campo ?" 'The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his determined purpose he held the mine and the indomitable bandit held the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one's activities from its debasing contacts/
something wholly laudatory sense, about Conrad's art in One might add, by way of insisting further on the Nostromo. Elizabethan in it, that it has a certain robust vigour of melodrama. The melodrama, of course, is completely controlled to the pattern of moral significance. Consider, for instance, how the climax of the
public

There

is

the adjective proposes itself at this point

rhetorical, in a

is it is a thrilling nick-of-time peripeteia, given us given in retrospect through the pompous showmanship and uncomprehending importance of Captain Mitchell ('Fussy Joe').
:

drama

but

it is

The triumphs of
asking
:

the Progress he
(a

hymns

are already assured

and
is

commonplace, and already

few pages on) Dr.

the

Monygham

'"Do you
town
1

think that

now

that?

"

to save their Seftor Administrador

mine would march upon the ? Do you think

He

has just pronounced

"'There
it is

material interests.

no peace and no rest in the development of They have their law, and their justice. But founded on expediency, and it is inhuman it is without
is
;

198

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

rectitude,

without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle"/

This is only one instance of that subtle play of Jie order of presentment against the time-order which the reader finds himself admiring in the book as a whole subtle, yet, once taken stock of,
appreciated as inevitable. It is characteristic of Conrad's method, to take another instance, that we should have seen, in a prospective

glimpse given us at the very opening of the book, the pitiable dlbacle of the Riblerist dictatorship of 'reform' before we are
invited to contemplate the hopes at the inauguration.

and enthusiasms of its supporters

It will probably be expected, after so much insistence on the moral pattern of Nostromo, that something will be said about the total significance. What, as the upshot of this exhibition of hurftan motive and attitude, do we feel Conrad himself to endorse ? What are his positives ? It is easier to say what he rejects or criticizes. About the judgment on Decoud's scepticism we can have no doubt.

And
live

even Decoud concedes that the

illusions 'those

Englishmen*

on 'somehow or other help them

substance'.

To

this

concession
:

we

to get a firm hold of the can relate the observations of

the engineer-in-chief

doctor, things seem to be worth nothing in I are what themselves. they begin to believe that the only by solid thing about them is the spiritual value which everyone " discovers in his own form of activity '"Bah!" interrupted the doctor.'

'"Upon my word,

The engineer

has in

mind Holroyd

the millionaire

and

his pre-

occupation with a 'pure form of Christianity'. But although Dr. Monygham, himself devoted to a moral idea, is as such clearly not

disapproved by the author, he

is

made

to

seem Quixotic, and

it is

difficult to feel that the ironic light in which the 'spiritual values' discovered by the other main characters in their forms of activity are

shown

is less

essentially dissociating

than the irony focussed upon

Holroyd. In fact, though Decoud is so decisively dealt with in the action, he remains at the centre pf the book, in the sense that his consciousness seems to permeate it, .even to dominate it. That
consciousness
is

clearly

very closely related to the author's

199

own

JOSEPH

CONRAD
:

that which becomes representable in quotation in personal timbre, such characteristic sardonic touches as

the 'They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching sound of a word belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to
interfere.

Parrots are very human. '"Viva Costaguana !" he shrieked.

not a question of a 'philosophy* ; Conrad cannot be said to have one. He is not one of those writers who clear up their fundamental attitudes for themselves in such a way that we may use that portentous term. He does reasonably, in talking of them, as a matter of concrete experience, in the kind of believe
It is

intensely,

human achievement represented by the Merchant Service

;

tradition,

but he has also a strong sense, not only ideal discipline and moral to the the of but of the frailty, absurdity or unreality, in relation so a sense of such achievement, surrounding and underlying gulfs, radical to Decoud's close scepticism, strong that it often seems very whHi is, in the account of those last days, rendered with such In fact, Decoud may be said to have had a significant power. considerable part in the writing ofNostromo or one might say that Nostromo was written by a Decoud who wasn't a complacent diletdrawn towards those capable of 'investing tante, but was
;

positively

their activities

with spiritual value' Seflor Avellanos, Charles Gould.

Monygham,

Giorgio Viola,

all the rich variety of the interest and the tightness reverberation ofNostromo has something hollow the of the pattern, about it ; with the colour and life there is a suggestion of a certain

At any rate,

for

emptiness.

And

for explanation
:

it is

perhaps enough to point to

this reflection

of Mrs. Gould's

'It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, contain the care of the past and of the future in every must it of the present. moment passing

That kind of
convey, when
clearly he has

self-sufficient

can day-to-dayness of living Conrad

the

writing from within

Merchant

Service,

where

known

it.

We

are

made aware of

hostile natural

forces threatening his

physical gulfs

seamen with extinction, but not of metaon opening under life and consciousness: reality
200

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO

board ship
is

domestic, assured and substantial.

made life-emptiness which had

his

me

'That feeling of so restless for the last few

months', says the young captain of The Shadow-Line, entering on

new command,
life

'lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence'.

Merchant Service there is no equivalent in Nostromo no intimate sense conveyed of the day-by-day continuities of social living. And though we are given a confidential account of what lies behind Dr. Monygham's sardonic face, yet on the whole
For
in the

we

see the characters

from

the outside,

and only

as

they belong to

the ironic pattern figures in the futilities of a public drama, against a dwarfing background of mountain and gulf.

This kind of vision,

this sense

doubt, to
noticed

something

radical in

Conrad.

of life, corresponds, there can be no All his readers must have

how recurrent and important the theme of isolation is in his work. And they must have noticed too the close relation between
the

Decoud

consciousness and the sympathetic hero of Victory, the

English-speaking Swede, Axel Heyst.

(ii)

'Victory,'

'The Secret Agent/ Under Western Eyes/ and 'Chance*

Heyst, 'uprooted' (his

own word) and

unattached, formed

by a

philosophically disillusioned father,

'in solitude

and silence had been used to think clearly and sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flattering delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deception, of an ever-expected happiness/
spite

Having, in
'that

his unwilling

human
is

of himself, contracted a tie (the novel deals with involvements and their consequences), he finds that so strange, gave him a greater being, so near and still
reality

sense of his
Victory

own

than he had ever

;

known

in all his life*.

at the centre

a study

of Heyst's case
is

the book.

While he

indisputably wholly sympathetic in his scepticism, as

he

is

of

Decoud

not, that scepticism presents itself as specifically condicertain tioned, and, in the upshot of the action, it is renounced.
is

ambiguity does

all

the

same attend

it

Heyst's irony

is

dramatically

201

JOSEPH
:

CONRAD
own
an intimate Delation

rendered, yet it merges into .he author's becomes at times unmistakable

cost. It is not the clear-sighted who process, a reckoning of the Great achievements are accomplished in a rule the world. blessed, warm mental fog, which the pitiless cold blast of the

'The young

man

learned to

reflect,

which

is

a destructive

father's analysis

had blown away from the

son.'

That

is

the author's

Schomberg's

own voice, and the tone is characteristic. Of infatuation we are told, a page later, by a Conrad
is

whose

relation to Heyst's father

plain

for many men, as if in 'Forty-five is the age of recklessness defiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the For every sinister valley at the bottom of the inevitable hill.

age
the

is

fed

on

illusions, lest

men

should renounce

life

early

and

human

race

come

to

an end.'
:

Schomberg
thh tone
is

is

in every

the

what we recognize in an antithesis Decoud-Mitchell or Whirr Heyst-Mac

way unadmirable

antithesis that

is

implicit in the characteristic

Conradian irony.

However, Conrad in Victory doesn't rest at that antithesis. Inin Heyst are represented as very telligence and fine consciousness influence of a perverted, in fact, by the specially conditioned the and father who is a kind of genius of disillusion, 'victory* is a
;

victory over scepticism, a victory of

life.

The

tragic irony that

it

makes
less a

it

come too
;

late

and

identifies
:

it

with death doesn't make

victory

it is

unequivocal

'"Ah, Davidson, woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love and to put its trust in
life".'

relations with process, a progressive self-discovery through is rendered with others, by which Heyst arrives here poignant

The

insight

and convincing subtlety. To avoid the indignities, follies and illusions of involvement in life he has prescribed for himself an
aloof self-sufficiency
:

'Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. was the essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and
It

202

VICTORY
immobility, but by a system of
restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost withouc a single care in the world invulnerable because elusive !'

the wisdom of this scheme turns out to be inadequate, and life convicts Heyst of lack of self-knowledge. With his intelligence and moral fastidiousness goes a sensitive quickness of sympathy

But

'No
That
is

decent feeling was ever scorned

by Heyst/

the author's

way

of putting

it.

But Heyst is precluded from

realizing the significance of this part of his make-up by habit, the persisting influence of his father, which may be represented by this :

'"You

still

believe in something, then," he said in a clear

voice, which had been growing feebler of late. "You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? full and equable contempt would soon do away with that too. But since you have not

attained to

it, I

advise

you to

cultivate that

form of contempt

which

is

called pity".'

Moved by an irresistible sympathetic impulse that is of the essence

of the
self-respect that qualifies

him for contempt', Heyst comes

it is

to

the rescue of the cornered Morrison, and the history

at first a

of his unwilling involvement begins. Morrison, himself and generous man (an admirable piece of Conradian characterization, realized in a physical presence with

comedy

a quixotically sensitive

Conrad's Dickensian vividness 'He was tall and lantern-jawed and clean-shaven, and looked like a barrister who had thrown his wig to the dogs'), is overcome with the thought of his inability to
repay Heyst
:

'Poor Morrison actually laid his head on the cabin table, and remained in that crushed attitude while Heyst talked to him soothingly with the utmost courtesy. The Swede was as much distressed as Morrison, for he understood the other's feelings perfectly. No decent feeling was ever scorned by Heyst. But he was incapable of outward cordiality of manner, and he felt Consummate politeness is not the right acutely his defeat. tonic for an emotional collapse. They must have had, both of them, a fairly painful time of it in the cabin of the brig/
203

JOSEPH

CONRAD

The tragi-comedy of their regions is given as foreshortenec, with admirable economy. When, early in the book, the second stage of find him among the forlorn vestiges Heyst's re-education opens we
of the Tropical Coal Belt Company, the optimistic commercial and inexperienterprise that his combined generosity, indifference, unable to him made have Delations ence of mutuality in personal over of remorse a sense resist being drawn into. He is troubled with Morrison's death, which was the merest matter of ill-chance, and
this sense associates intimately
'

with a hurt feeling of having betrayed

;

nis

own life, which ought to have been a master-piece of aloofness'.

is

In fact, his long-established equilibrium has been permanently upset

his uneasiness

an obscure recognition of radical discrepancies between his 'scheme' and the necessities of his own nature. Having resolved to keep himself out of reach of further involvements, he
discovers with surprise that he

now feels lonely

Not a 'Where could he have gone to after all these years Of this on earth. lived to him soul anywhere belonging single no t such a remote one, after all he had only lately become fp ct
?

aware for it is failure that makes a man enter into himself and reckon up his resources. And though he had made up his mind to retire from the world in hermit fashion, yet he was irrationthis sense of loneliness which had come to him ally moved by in the hour of renunciation. It hurt him. Nothing is more than the shock of contradictions that lacerate our in;

painful

telligence
It is

and our

feelings.'

in this state that Heyst,

making

winding-up

call at

Soura-

once more to a claim on his humanity. baya, finds himself exposed The inevitability of the plunge that he once more take:, this time
before our eyes,

brought poignantly home to us. The whole its circumstances and setting, is rendered in irresistible episode, with immediacy the torrid desolation of the hotel, the malicious asinof the manly bearded Schomberg, hotel-keeper and Officer of
is
:

inity

the Reserve, the limp subjection of his poor charmless rag of a wife, the squalidly sinister Zangiacomos, with their travelling concertisolation of the girl-member who has the party, and die hopeless

touch offSchomberg's inflamedimportunities the present of all this gives us at the same time the contained sensitiveness reality and aloof distinction of Heyst who registers it all, and his action
ill-luck to

204

VICTORY
comes
as the one possible issue of the pressures evoked. He carries die girl off to the island that was to have been his hermitage.

'He had no dominated by

That
is

illusions

about her, but

his sceptical

mind was

his heart/

at the outset.

the account of his relations with her that he gives himself The development of those relations and of his sense

the process of self-discovery. In spite of the limiting of the account just quoted, the tenderness he feels towards suggestion die girl carries with ic, we have seen, 'a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life'. And on this follows a discovery that he is not so self-sufficient morally as he had supposed. To the delicately solicitous Davidson he has said
is
:

of them

'"I took this course of signalling to you, because to preserve appearances might be of the utmost importance. Not to me, of course. I don't care what people may say, and of course no one can hurt me. I suppose I have done a certain amount of

harm, since I allowed myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why the world is evil upon the whole. ' But I have done with it I shall never lift a little finger again".
!

to discover, not only that he has not done with the world and with action, but that he cares so much what the world may say as to limit his capacity for action when the urgent need confronts him.

He is

Unarmed, and menaced by

he deliberates
'
:

the sinister intruders

upon

the island,

"But what about that crowbar ? Suppose I had it Could ambush at the side of the door this door and smash the first protruding head. On suspicion, Could I
!

stand in

without compunction, with a firm and determined purpose ."' No, it is not in me.
. .

Then:

would say 2" Swede after luring my friend and partner to his death from mere greed of money, have murdered those unoffending shipwrecked strangers from mere funk. That would be the story whispered perhaps shouted
the world
that

'"Do you know what

would say
that
I

'"It

205

JOSEPH
certainly spread out,

CONRAD
and
believed,

and believed

Lena!
learnt earlier from Lena, slanderous of account the death of Morrison. girl, Schomberg's he that the ruthless action True, says ('And who knows if it isn't
is

my

Hear

That

the effect

on Heyst or having

the

really

my

duty

?') isn't 'in'

him

but that he should associate his

own scruple and inhibition with what people might say and believe
is

significant

Melodramatic
so seen

of the development he is undergoing. as is the action of the latter nart of the book (and and this is true of the whole book as to invite the cinema-

relations

tographer), the focus of interest rests upon the subtleties of Heyst's with Lena. He finds himself committed to the establishthat
is

ment of a mutuality

alien to the habit

of a life-time

a habit
as if

concretely present in his voice

and speech, which we heir

we

knew him
seasoned

'Heyst's tone
all his

was light, with the flavour of playfulness which speeches and seemed to be of the very essence

of his thought.'
but Heyst is the girl and his of his efforts to a poignant constitute habit, prisoner escape he tells her about Morrison comedy. Attempting intimacy, (this is before her shattering disclosure of Schomberg's account)
;
:

This tone and manner baffle and alarm the

'"You saved
for

man

for fun

is

that

what you mean

Just

fun?"

this tone of suspicion e remonstrated Heyst. "I the sight of this particular distress was disagreeable to suppose me. What you call fun came afterwards, when it dawned on me that I was for him a walking, breathing, incarnate proof of

"

'"Why

I was a little fascinated by it and then, have argued with him ? You don't argue against such evidence, and besides, it would have looked as if I wanted to

the efficacy of prayer.

could

claim the merit. Already his gratitude was simply frightful. Funny position, wasn't it ? The boredom came later, when we
I had, in a moment of lived together on board his ship. to define it preinadvertence, created for myself a tie.

How

cisely

don't know.

One

has done something for.

gets attached in a way to people one But is that friendship ? I not sure

am

206

FICTOHY
what it was.
I

only

know that he w

io

germ of corruption has entered into

his

forms a tie soul"/

is lost.

The

In so far as she understands, this can serve only to heighten Lena's painful sense of insecurity her doubt regarding his side of their

with one another he is a gentleman, he acted from pity on what, then, can she build ? His difficulty is not merely one of that he can talk like this in finding a suitable mode of expression attempting intimacy gives us a measure of his inability to keep her
relations
:

realized as a concrete individual sentience to be

communicated with
*

he

and

the old self-communing if sympathetic Heyst of kindness scorn'

is
:

'"I don't even understand

to distress

what

have done or

left

undone

you

like this."

'He stopped, struck

afresh

by

of the imperfection of their

relations

the physical and moral sense a sense which made him

desire her constant nearness, before his eyes, under his hand, and which, when she was out of his sight, made her so vague,

so illusive

and

illusory, a

promise that could not be embraced

and

held.
!

'"No I don't see clearly what you mean. Is your mind turned towards the future ?", he interpellated her with marked playfulness, because he was ashamed to let such a word pass
his lips.

But

all his

cherished negatives were falling

from him

one by one.'

Upon this situation supervenes,

can break in on us here ', the
represented

as if

sinister

invasion

precipitated by his 'Nothing the visit of the world,

by the languid Jones, his 'secretary' Ricardo and the follower anthropoid
:

"'Here they
are before

are, the

envoys of the outer world.

Here they

arm.

you evil intelligence, instinctive savagery, The brute force is at the back".'

arm

in

If doubts should arise

(it

about the melodramatic boldness of this art

is

deliberately conceived

"'No! Let it come!" Ricardo said viciously [of the thunderstorm that coincides with the dramatic crisis]. "I am "
in the
it

humour

for

it

'),

seems in place to refer back to considerations thrown out above

207

JOSEPH

CONRAD

of Conrad's art in Ncrtromo. regarding the 'Elizabethan' qualities aoesn't which It is true that pretend to the weight and scope Victory,
ofNostromo, has nothing corresponding to its packed and patterned structure of sig.iificances. Heyst is studied at length yet it may be he is offered that case extreme the argued that, convincing as he is, of as being really amounts to a kind Morality representation of the he embodies, so that he is fittingly brought up human
;

potentialities

of counter-potentialities. (Of Ricardo against these embodiments we are told that to Lena 'He was the embodied evil of the world'.)

And

a speech

for Ricardo's love-talk, and they too are convincing (except that aspect of Conrad's art to of ; they belong
Jones's)

which makes us think of Dickens

:

a Dickens qualified

by

a quite

precipitate

un-Dickensian maturity they exist in strict subservience to Conrad's quite un-Dickensian theme and to their function, which is to to an issue in a conclusive action. Heyst's predicament
the worst
it

At

we might say about uie

that

hasn't the finer inevitability

that

resolution thus brought about which is never lacking in

:

the incomparably possible to reflect,

more complex and ambitious Nostromo it is on the one hand, that Heyst had shocking bad
;

luck in the coincidence ofJones and Ricardo with Schomberg and, the other, that the antithesis of lust in Ricardo and womanthe denouement depends has no irresistible loathing in Jones on which

on

main theme. significance in relation to Conrad's But in any case the upshot of the action is to bring that

theme to

a poignant crystallization. Lena, mortally wounded (though unaware of it), but in triumphant possession of the dagger of which she has disarmed Ricardo, dies 'convinced of the reality of her
relation with Heyst, whom she doesn't victory over death*. Her understand and who doesn't understand her, has been enough to nerve her for her dealings with the killer \ 'she was no longer alone now ... she was no longer deprived of moral support.' Heyst, who knows her so little that he can immediately before the end assume

her to have betrayed him, seduced by Ricardo's male fascinations, had nevertheless got from his relation with her that new sense of after her death, makes to Davidson his tragic reality, and now.

pronouncement in favour of trust and himself dying in the flames.

but unequivocally a victory.

in

life,

before firing the

bungalow
life,

It is

an ironical victory for

208

THE SECRET AGENT

Conradian sensibility is that of the creator of of the writer so intimately experienced in the strains Heyst and starvations of the isolated consciousness, and so deeply aware of the sense in which reality is social, something established and
characteristic
;

The

that

sustained in a kind of collaboration

('I

have lived too long within

myself/ says Heyst, 'watching the mere shadows and shades of And complementary to Heyst, we realize, are Morrison and life').

Davidson, upright, sensitive and humane individuals, in whom seems to be present a whole background of routine sanity and

we sailors', the feeling is ; for Conrad is as much and as significantly there as in Heyst. It is this background (which is reinforced, in his own way, by Wang, the Chinaman) which makes the
decency
intention of the 'victory* unequivocal. The voice that winds up the story in a brief account of the tragic end is Davidson's

Davidson's 'placid voice'.

If a

work of so

given what may seem

deridedly a Lsser order than Nostromo has been a disproportionate amount of space, that is

because of the relation of Heyst to Decoud and to the distinctive tone of the great masterpiece, and the consequent advantage afforded the critic for the analysis of Conrad's sensibility. Victory is, at the

same time, among those of Conrad's works which deserve to be and of the current as representing his claim to ckssical standing novels (as distinguished from nouvelks and tales) in that class it is the one that answers most nearly to the stock notion of his genius though even Victory is neither about the Malayan jungle nor
;

about the

sea.

The

Secret Agent, the

it

one

come

to next (not chronologically,

appeared in 1907, and Victory in 1915), is much more a indubitably classic and a masterpiece, and it doesn't answer to the notion at all which is perhaps why it appears to have had nothing

of course

like

due recognition. If we call it an ironic novel, it is with the same intention of the adjective as when Jonathan Wild is called an ironic novel. To note this is to be reminded, with a fresh shock, of the inertia of conventional valuation that makes Jonathan Wild
a masterpiece

and the

truly classical in its

Secret Agent is its genre. Foi? The and the consummateness of attitude maturity
classic

of

of the

art in

which
it

this finds

expression

in the contrast there

us the

is

nothing for

but to see Jonathan Wild

clumsy piece of

209

JOSEPH
artistic ai

CONRAD
*

intellectual, that it is. The irony of hobbledehoy dom, of an insistent and obvious signimatter not a is The Secret Agent formula. The endless or the ficance' of tone, repetition of a simple theme and of the the tone is truly rubtle subtle with subtlety

theme develops itself in a complex organic structure. The effect moral perspectives, and depends upon an interplay of contrasting the rich economy of the pattern they make relates The Secret Agent the two works, for all the great differences between to Nostromo and temper, are triumphs of the same art the aim of them in
the
:

range

of course, confmes the range, and the kind of irony involves a limiting detachment (we don't look for the secrets of Conrad's soul in The Secret Agent).

The

Secret Agent,

The

matter, the 'story',

is

that

of a

thriller

terrorist conclaves,
;

embassy machinations, bomb-outrage, and to make, in treating such matter with all the refinements of his we craft, a sophisticated moral intere. t the controlling principle is,
His irony bears on the egocentric recognize, characteristic Conrad. naiveties of moral conviction, the conventionality of conventional moral attitudes, and the obtuse assurance with which habit and selfinterest assert absolute rights
is

detection, murder, suicide

and wrongs. The pattern of the book

contrived to

make

us feel the different actors or lives as insulated

currents of feeling and purpose insulated, but committed to coexistence and interaction in what they don't question to be a common world, and sometimes disconcerting contacts through

making

the insulation.

The

Verlocs, husband
as to

and wife, take

their

mutual insulation so

for granted

be mainly unconscious of it.

What Mr.
him

Verloc

on. is becomes plain to us very early him the shop, fly-staled and dusty, with
literature

We
its

leaving behind of revolutionary display

see

and pornographic goods, and making his way westward towards the Embassy of a Foreign Power. Conrad's London bears as Henry James's something of the same kind of relation to Dickens does in The Princess Casamassima. The direct influence of Dickens
is

for instance, in the account

unmistakable in certain minor lapses into facetious humour (see, of Verloc's walk, the bit about No. i

the characteristic astringent dryness. There of obvious and unfortunate indebtedinstance a is also, later, major ness to Dickens in the fantastic slow-motion macabre of the cab-

Chesham Square) from

210

THE SECRET AGENT

journey to the almshoase. But The S cret Agent (unlike The Princess its Casamassima) is one of the author's most successful works
;

strength something so utterly outside Dickens's compass as to have enabled Conrad to be influenced by him to pi rely Conradian ends. And the essential relation to Dickens, it should be plain, is
is

not a matter of being influenced for good or ill, but lies in that energy of vision and characterization which, we have seen, is sometimes as apt to

make

us say 'Shakespearean* as 'Dickensian*.

between Verloc and Mr. Vladimir, of the Embassy. The dialogue and this is so throughout the book, for all the uncertainty about points of English usage apparent on practically every page of Conrad to the end is consummate in its blend of inevitable naturalness with strict econit

We have

in the interview

First Secretary

omy

are hardly

of relevance, and the whole is so dramatically realized that we aware of shifts to description, stage directions or reported
:

thought

it all

seems to be enaued before

us.

'In the pause Mr. Vladimir formulated in his mind a series of disparaging remarks concerning Mr. Verloc's face and figure. The fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy and impudently unintelligent. He Iooke4 uncommonly like a master plumber come to present his bill. The first Secretary of the Embassy, from his occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment of fraudulent laziness and incompetency/

Mr. Valdimir himself we

consternation and disgust
'This anger
:

see

with a vision heightened by Verloc's

was complicated by incredulity. And suddenly that all this was an elaborate joke. Mr. Vladimir exhibited his white teeth in a smile, with dimples on his round, full face posed with a complacent inclination above the bristling bow of his neck-tie. The favourite of intelligent society women had assumed his drawing-room attitude accompanying the delivery of delicate witticisms. Sitting well forward, his white hand upraised, he seemed to hold delicately between his thumb and forefinger the subtlety ofhis suggestion.*
it

dawned upon him

What he has enjoined upon Verloc,

a
responsibilities,
is

not

as a joke

but seriously,

as

means of waking up the English police

a bomb-attack

to a sense of their

European

upon Greenwich Observatory.

211

JOSEPH

CONRAD
fc els

Verloc, threatened in Irs ro ,tine comfort and indolence, only helpless anger but a sense of moral outrage too
:

not

money," Mr. Verloc said, by a sort of instinct. '"That cock won't fight," Mr. Vladimir retorted, with an amazingly genuine English accent. "You'll get your screw every month, and no more till something happens. And if nothing happens very soon you won't get even that. What's to your ostensible occupation? What are you supposed
'"It will cost
live

by?"
Mr. Verloc.
!

'"I keep a shop," answered

'"A shop

What sort of shop ?"

'"Stationery, newspapers.

My wife

"

'"Your what?" interrupted Mr. Vladimir in his guttural Central Asian tones. "'My wife," Mr. Verloc raised his husky voice slightly. "I

am

married."

'"That be damned for a yarn," exclaimed the other in unfeigned astonishment. "Married! And you a professed What is this confounded nonsense ? But I anarchist, too Anarchists don't it's merely a matter of speaking. suppose It world be can't. It's well known. apostasy". They marry.
!

'

is most respectably married. It is a triumph of not him as a sympathetic character comsee we only pared with Mr. Vladimir, but find ourselves on the point of saying that he is in all essentials an ordinary respectable citizen, concerned

Actually Verloc

the irony that

like any other to maintain himself and his wife in security and comfort the shop, with its squalid trade and anarchistic frequentation, and the complicated treacheries of his profession, we see with
:

of habit and routine, means to the end. In the final when he tries to make her understand the full of Mr. Vladimir's conduct, he says with righteous exenormity and with all the unction of an asperation outraged moral sense
as matters

him

scene with his wife,

murdering plot for the last eleven years that my finger in at the risk of my life. There's scores of these revolutionaries I've sent off, with their bombs in their blamed pocket:, to get themselves caught on the frontier. The old Baron knew what I was worth to his country. And here an ignorant, overbearing suddenly a swine conies along swine
isn't a
I

'"There

haven't had

212

THE SECRET AGENT

is comes out the perfection of onl; bit by bit book shows itself aotably in the way in which we are put in possession of the necessary knowledge about her at the
it

Wh

Mrs. Verloc

the structure of the

see her serving in the shop with intimidating the frequentations of the revolutionists as a matter aplomb, taking of course, and, placid good wife to i good husband, being tactfully

right time.

We

solicitous

about

his health

and comfort.

His business, she knows,

entails these

and other

associates, late absences

;

from home, and

:

occasional trips to the Continent

further, she doesn't inquire

'Mrs. Verloc wasted no portion of this transient life in seeking for fundamental information. This is a sort of economy

having

all

the appearances

and some of the advantages of

constitutional

prudence.
indolence.'

Obviously
a

it

may be good for one not to know too

much. And such

view accords very well with

Her mother, who

questions either,
that leads the in loneliness

with them, and who isn't given to asking sometimes wonders why Winnie, an attractive girl,
lives
It

married Mr. Verloc.

mother to withdraw the remainder of her

was, as a matter of fact, for the very reason to an almshouse, there to spend life concern for the future of
:

younger brother. One of the touches of irony in the book is when Winnie says
Stevie, the half-witted
:

most poignant

'"That poor boy will miss you something you had thought a little of that, mother".'

cruel.

wish

They had
Stevie.

And Winnie now,

both, as a matter of fact, sacrificed themselves for with concealed anxiety, sets to work to

impress Verloc with Stevie's devotion to him. Verloc is lost in the obsessing dreads and perplexities associated with the face of Mr.

Vladimir
idea.

but, with Stevie's existence thus forced

on

his notice,

he

realizes Stevie's useful potentialities

The

result

is

inspired with a timely the violent disintegration of Stevie when he

is

and

bomb in Greenwich Park, and the immediate of the home responsibility to Verloc by reason of the label, bringing
stumbles with the
discovered
has

among the rags and fragments by

collar

the police, that

Winnie

sewn under the

of Stevie's overcoat in case he should get

213

lost.

JOSEPH
There follows one of the E
fiction, the final scene
this
.ost

CONRAD
astonishing triumphs of geuius in his wife. To put it in

betwe *n Verloc and

way, however, is misleading, since the effect of the scene depends upon what comes before depends upon the cunning organization of the whole book. We have been put in a position in which we can't fail to realize that, by the sudden knowledge of the death into which Verloc had led Stevie (' might be father and son', she had fondly remarked, seeing them go off together), Winnie's 'moral nature had been subjected to a shock of which, in the physical order, the most violent earthquake of history could only

And we appreciate to the full the moral insulation that has kept the Verlocs, in their decent marital domesticity, strangers to each other,
be a faint and languid rendering'.

'"Do be
you had
Here

reasonable, Winnie.

lost

me

"

What would

it

have been

if

'

we have

the assumption

mous
label

restraint (for did she not,

without

on which Verloc, with magnanitelling him, sew in that

his

which has done the mischief?), undertakes to help

wife to

achieve a

more

reasonable attitude towards the misadventure.

'In his affairs

lessly

of the heart Mr. Verloc had always been care-

generous, yet always with no other idea than that of being loved for himself. Upon this matter, his ethical notions being

agreement with his vanity, he was completely incorrigible. That this should be so in the case of his virtuous and legal connection he was perfectly certain. He had grown older, fatter, heavier, in the belief that he lacked no fascinadon for being
in

loved for his

It is

own

sake.'

extraordinary ironic
in murder, but the

comedy
ways
in

the tension

is

deadly and

is

to

end

which Verloc's moral

his

feeling

exhibits the naiveties

of its relation with

egotism are

irresistibly

comic.

He has intense righteous indignation to work off:

Baron who would have had the wicked of getting me to call on him at eleven in the morning. There are two or three in this town that, if they had seen me going in, would have made no bones about knocking me on the head sooner or later. It was a silly, murderous trick to expose for nothing a man like me".'
"'It wasn't the old
folly

214

THE SECRET AGENT

The development
in
its
is

rich, surprising

nd

inevitable,

and disturbing

reality

he was taking that incurious singularity of the event, the force and importance of the personal feelings aroused in the course of this confession, drove Stevie's fate clean out of Mr. Verloc's mind. The boy's stuttering existence of fears and indignations, together with the violence of his end, had passed out of Mr. Verloc's mental sight for a time. For that reason, when he looked uj/ he was startled by the inappropriate character of his wife's stare. It was not a wild stare, and it was not inattentive, but its attention was peculiar and not satisfactory,
'For the
first

time in his

life

woman into

his confidence.

The

inasmuch that it seemed concentrated upon some point beyond Mr. Verloc's person. The impression was so strong that Mr. Verloc planced over his shoulder. There was nothing behind him there was just the whitewashed wall. The excellent husband of Winnie Verloc saw no writing on the wall. He
:

turned to his wife again.

It is

'the note

of wooing' ('"Come here," he

said in a peculiar tone

from

his relaxed posture

for the

by

the

on the sofa') that finally gives the signal plunge of tae knife between his ribs. That knife and its use, way, provide an illustration of the economy of form and

Not only does pattern that gives every detail its significance. Verloc make (from his wife's point of view 'This man took the
is the refrain running through her head) of it when, during the scene, he carves and grossly devours lumps of cold meat he actually refers to the possibility of a 'stab in the back' and so prompts her obsessed mind

boy away

to

murder him'

offensively insensitive use

to the action.

Stevie

is

book Winnie, whose likeness to touched on from time to time, has had to significantly
early in the

And

'take the carving knife away from the boy', who 'can't stand the notion of any cruelty' and has been excited by the atrocity literature

kept for

sale.

Upon

the stabbing follows a gruesomely farcical coda in

which

the gallows rhaunted Winnie, whose turn it now is to suppose herself loved for her own sake, clings round the neck of the gallant Comrade Ossipon, who is quite prepared to succeed to Comrade

Verloc's bank-account, but

possibilities

is

terrified

when he

discovers to

what

of suspicion he has

laid himself open.

215

JOSEPH
The

CONRAD
is

scene between Verloc and his wife

balanced (to simplify

with an inevitable crudeness, or the pattern is richly packed as well as subtle, and there can be no pretence of suggesting it fairly in

between Chief Inspector Heat of the and the Assistant Commissioner. Heat Special Crimes Department is a magnificently done type, the higher-grade policeman, representative par excellence of Law and Order. Why not leave it to Heat?' asks Sir Ethelred, the great Personage, of the Assistant

summary) by

tl

e earlier scene

'

Commissioner.

an old departmental hand They have their line of inquiry would appear to him an morality. awful perversion of duty. For him the plain duty is to fix the anarchists as he can on some guilt upon as many prominent had he indications picked up in the course of his investigaslight whereas I, he would say, am bent upon tions on the spot

'

"Because he

is

own

My

vindicating their innocence".'

Actually the Chief Inspector's morality

thai.

When the discovery of the

:

Greenwich bomb-affair home blem luck having years before put Verloc
this

more interesting than the singed rag brings the to Verloc, Heat is faced with a prois

label

on

in his

way, he has been

valuable source of information privately, and with great using in respect of reputation and promotion. To follow up the profit clue would bring out all kinds of things and certainly destroy the
source.

The incomplete
pleteness that

may

an explicitness of the motives in play be said to take the positive form of a

is

incomkind of
:

resonance of righteous feeling

'

rendered with fine ironic subtlety

He no

longer considered

it

eminently desirable

all

round to

was not certain of the view his department would take. A department is to those it employs a complex personality with ideas and fads of its own. It depends on the loyal devotion of its servants, and the devoted loyalty of trusted servants is associated with a certain amount of affectionate contempt, which keeps it sweet, as it were. By a benevolent provision of Nature no man is a hero to his valet or else the heroes would have to brush their own clothes. Likewise ao department appears
216

establish publicly the identity of the man who had blown himself up that morning with such horrible completeness. But he

THE SECRET AGENT

perfectly wise to the intimacy of i does not know so much as some o
s
*

workers.
its

servants.

department Being a dis-

passionate organism, it can never be perfectly informed. It would not be good for its efficiency to know too much. Chief

Inspector Heat got out of the train in a state of ttioughtfulness entirely untainted with disloyalty, but not quite free of that jealous mistrust which so often springs on the ground of perfect

devotion, whether to

women
with

or to institutions/

During
to

his interview

his chief, the Assistant

Commissioner,

whom he listens 'with outward deference

(which means nothing,

suspicion

being a matter of duty) and inwardly with benevolent toleration', he settles down to the resolution of bringing the trail of

home
group
'

to Michaelis, a ticket-of-leave ex-convict

who

happens to be

the only thoroughly sympathetic

:

member of

the revolutionary

"There will be no difficulty in getting up sufficient evidence against him," he said with virtuous complacency. "You may trust me for that, sir"/

He

can take

this line

with the complete assurance of

his

moral

judgment.

man on the barest suswas legal and expedient on the face of it. His two former chiefs would have seen the point at once whereas this
'It

was

perfectly legal to arrest that

picion.

It

one, without saying either yes or no, sat there, as if lost in a dream. Moreover, besides being legal and expedient, the arrest of Michaelis solved a little personal difficulty which worried

Chief Inspector Heat somewhat. This

his reputation, efficient performance

upon

upon
of his

difficulty had its bearing his comfort, and even upon the

duties.

For

if Michaelis

knew something about

fairly certain that

this outrage, the

no doubt Chief Inspector was

he did not know too much. This was just as the Chief Inspector was positive than certain other individuals he had in his mind, but whose
well.

He knew much less

arrest

seemed to him inexpedient, besides being a more com-

plicated matter, on account of the rules of the game. The rules of the game did not protect so much Michaelis who was an

ex-convict.
facilities.
. .

It

would be

stupid not to take advantage of legal

JOSEPH

CONRAD
disconcerts him with an ondeu it you've got up your sleeve '),
?

When

the Assistant

Commisj ioner

partmental scepticism (' Heat is not only very annoyed (' "You, my boy," he said to himself and your place won't "you, my bey, you don't know your place,
. .
.

Now

/hat

know you very

side, forcing

long

either, I bet'"),

he

is

morally outraged

'He had discovered

in this affair a delicate

and perplexing

upon

the discoverer a certain

amount of insincerity

which, under the names of skill, prudence, discretion, turns up at one point or another in most human affairs. He felt at the

might feel if suddenly, in the the middle of the performance, manager of the Music Hall were and begin to of the out to rush proper managerial seclusion

moment

like a tight-rope artist

shake the rope/

it were, to that of Comrade he hears of the bombwhen deal a with else) great Ossipon (along the 'undei that present circumstances it's explosion, and exclaims

His indignation responds musically, as

nothing short of criminal'.

Heat has a further reason for not following up the clue. He has of the most memorable of the many vivid and pregnant just, in one scenes and episodes in the book, had his chance meeting in the narrow by-street with the Professor, who made the bomb. The Chief Inspector is not in any case in his element where revolutionists
are concerned
4
:

At the beginning of his career Chief Inspector Heat had been concerned with the more energetic forms of thieving. He had
and naturally enough had kept gained his spurs in that sphere, another to for it, after his promotion department, a feeling not affection. from removed Thieving was not a sheer very far
still
;

but

It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, an industry exercised in an industrious world it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries,

absurdity.

fire-damp, lead-poisoning, in its own special phraseology as "Seven years briefly defined hard." Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves alter. They submitted to the severe sanche had been

in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or or gritty dust, but in what may be or

looking

218

UNDER WESTERN EYES

of a morality familiar to CMef Inspector Heat with a They were his ellow-citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education Chief Inspector Heat believed but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Bota recognize the same conventions and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different ways, but with a seriousness essentially the same/
tiors

certain resignation

The

Professor, physically insignificant, but happy in the superiority given him by the bomb he always carries on his person and by his
it

reputation for a reckless readiness to touch

certing and repugnant form

off rather than be

its

arrested, represents revolutionary abnormality in

:

most discon-

tion
as

'After paying this tribute to what is normal in the constituof society (for the idea of thieving appeared to his instinct

of property), Chief Inspector Heat felt with himself for having stopped. very angry 'The encounter did not leave behind with Inspector Heat that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow-

normal

as the idea

creature:
'

is

flattered as

worthily as

it

deserves.

The perfect anarchist was not recognized as a fellow-creature

a

by Chief Inspector Heat. He was impossible

left

mad dog to be

This being the strong feeling of Inspector Heat, it appeared to him just and proper that this affair should be shunted off its obscure and inconvenient track, leading goodness
alone.
.
. .

knows where,
Conrad

into a quiet (and lawful) siding called Michaclis.'

'himself

shows an unmistakable

dislike

of

revolutionists.

In The Secret Agent he explains them mainly in terms of indolence (though the Professor and Michaelis are contrasting and complementary special cases). In Under Western Eyes (1911), which comes

210

JOSEPH
up for notice next,
presentment
'

CONRAD
wh le
;

his revolt tionists are Russians, and,

fl

his

is
:

hardly more

ttering, his general reflections are

on

different lines

"... in a real revolution

not a simple dynastic change or a

.

mere reform of institutions in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the fronf A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I Lave left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims the victims of disgust, of disenchantment often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured that is the definition of revolution;
:

ary successes. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes"/
Tlieuold teacher of languages, the presence in the story of 'western eyes', is here warning Natalia, sister of Haldin the heroic assassin;

and the

revolutionists

we

are

shown

'"Bearers [comments Razumov] of the spark to start an explosion which is meant to change fundamentally the lives of so many millions in order that Peter Ivanovitch should be the

head of a state"
leave

'

no room
'the

for

doubt that he speaks for Conrad.

fugitive',

In Peter

Ivanovitch,
egoist,

heroic

eloquent,

and 'Russian Mazzini', we have, we

woman-exploiting suspect, an actual

historical person.

The space given to The Secret Agent doesn't leave much for Under Western Eyes. But The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's two
supreme masterpieces, one of the two unquestionable classics of the first order that he added to the English novel, and, in its own way, it is like Nostromo in the subtle and triumphant complexity of its art in not had due critical recognition. Under like, too, having Western Eyes cannot be claimed with the same confidence for that order, though it is a most distinguished work, and must be counted among those upon which Conrad's status as one of the great English
220

UNDER WESTERN EYES

The Secret Agent not only by of isolation (for this figures a theme by in deal book Verloc that Winnie great jumps to her death from the as to escape the void in which Channel-steamer at least much night Stevie's death followed by Ossipon's desertion has left her as from fear of the gallows). Under Western Eyes has for theme moral isolation as represented by the case of the Russian student Razumov. Never having known parents, and without connexions, Razumov even at the outset of the history is 'as lonely in the world as a fish swimming in the sea'. He is wholly bent on his career, and we are
masters securely rests. the revolutionists, but
It is

related to

the

told characteristically

'There was nothing strange in the student Razumov's wish A man's real life is that accorded to him in the of other men by reason of respect or natural love/ thoughts
for distinction.

His prospects are destroyed by the uninvited confidence shown in Haldin, a student revolutionist, who, having brought off a political assassination, takes refuge in Razumov's rooms. From the

him by

moment of

finding

him

there

Razumov

is

doomed
:

to endure a

trapped and tormented conscience

in utter loneliness
is

'Who knows what

true loneliness

not the conventional

word, but the naked terror ? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human could bear a view of moral solitude without going being steady mad. Razumov had reached that point of vision/
'

This

is

his state as

lizing his decision to give

he tramps the streets in the winter night, crystalHaldin up.

'Indeed, it could hardly be called a decision. discovered what he had meant to do all along.
the need

He had simply And yet he Felt

of some other mind's sanction/

Giving Haldin up doesn't save Razumov's career. He is involved, and the police have a use for him. He seeks to terminate his interview with Councillor Mikulin, a creepily convincing Russian
22T

JOSEPH
'

CONRAD
done once for
all wi<~h

bureaucrat,

by

asserting his

man', and

'to retire

/ight to be simply to retire'

said

that

'An unhurried voice

'"KiryloSidorovitch."

'Razumov at the door turned his head. '"To retire," he repeated. '"Where to ?" asked Councillor Mikulin

softly.'

Razumov's mental conflicts and stresses during the Part I that ends on this note are rendered from the inside with extraordinary
power.

We are thus put in a position to appreciate the observations

the English teacher of languages a spy among the revolutionists,

from the outside recorded through at Geneva, where Razumov, now

earlier inside

Haldin's sister. The complicates his problem by falling in love with account of his tormented consciousness shows the in-

fluence of Dostoievsky,
stands for.
If

and the

effc

"

is

detachment of Conrad's radical attitude from

to bring out the antipathetic all that Dostoievsky

Conrad knows his Dostoievsky, he sees him through 'western eyes', and sees him, along with 'the lawlessness of auto'moral condicracy and lawlessness of revolution', as among the

tions ruling over a large part of this earth's surface' that the old himself to language teacher, in telling Razumov's story, perceives

be rendering.

Having, by confession to Haldin's sister and to the revolutionists, escaped at last from the worst of his moral isolation, Razumov ends,
a cripple, his ear-drums deliberately burst by the champion revoludeafness. tionary killer, in the less intolerable isolation of stone

again the theme of Chance (1914); which is, different from Under Western again, a very different kind of book Eyes and from the other novels. Flora de Barral, daughter of the

Moral

isolation

is

suffers first, at the great de Barral, grand-style financial adventurer, time of her father's deb&cle, the shock of a fiendish moral assault

from her governess (Flora having no mother having no one but her father) ; then, her father in jail, suffers further bad luck in the form of odious relatives, and has bad luck again even in her good
luck:
poet'.

her rescue by the chivalrous Captain Anthony, 'son of the

have, in fact, a variant of the Heyst-Lena situation
:

We

while

222

CHANCE
each needs, neither knows, the other, and the nature and circumstances of the rescue leave each exquiitely and inhibitingly scrupulous about taking advantage of the o Jier's helplessness or chivalry. The woman is not, this time, the minor focus of interest, but rather
the reverse

Flora

is

the central character of the

thony, on

the other hand, reintroduces the

cook and AnLord Jim theme

;
:

'The inarticulate son had set up a standard for himself with that need for embodying in his conduct the dreams, the passion, the impulses the poet puts into the arrangements of verses, which are dearer to him than his own self and may make his own self sublime in the eyes of other people, and even
appear
in his

own eyes.
his

'Did Anthony wish to appear sublime in

own

eyes

?'

Again
it

'If

would have been

is Anthony's love had been as egoistic as love generally of or of his the than vanity egoism greater

his generosity, if

you

like.'

In any case, 'She beat

him

at his

own

question about h<*r is givep here (the pilgrimage with Anthony in the East End)
:

honourable game'. The is a rendezvous

'She had had an

necessity,

who

ugly pilgrimage, could tell.'

but whether of love or

The

That no doubt

technical distinction of Chance has not lacked recognition. is because Chance invites the description 'technical

James's

do not. triumph* in a way which Nostromo and The Secret Agent One's sense that the 'doing' (see the significant terms of Henry The New Novel, 1914, to be appreciation in the essay called
Novelists)

found in Notes on
perhaps not
as in either
fair

was not

so strictly as in their case a

preoccupation with getting the essential

theme or themes 'done*

is

not

fair,

expressed

so.

The

fact

is

that Conrad's
rich a pattern
title,

essential interest here didn't yield

him anything like so

of those two books, and the theme indicated by the

exploited as it
is

ingeniously

in the

mode
:

of> presentation,

essential relation

with the main theme

that
it

chance' plays

no no notably
has

different part

from

a study of

human

nature,

must play in any story offering a novelist and Conrad (it may be suggested) by
223

JOSEPH

CONRAD

aixd insisting a great deal on the word calling the novel Chance critic 1 point in question : the point regardthe concedes implicitly the difference between Chance and the other two.

ing

One
'

tends to

make
is

with Marlow,

who

the point a little unfairly because of irritation essential to the presentation

'

"But we, my dear Marlow, have the inestimable advantage of understanding what is happening to others'*
but
is

also, in

way touched on earlier,

too easy a convenience

'Marlow emerged out of die shadow of the book-case to get himself a cigar from a box which stood on a little table by my
side.

In the full light of the

room I saw in his eyes

that slightly

his mocking expression with which he habitually covers up the unreasonable and before of mirth pity sympathetic impulses into the simple but complications the idealism of mankind puts on this earth/ of conduct poignant problem

This suggests well enough the kind of direct injection of tone and attitude that Marlow licenses, and the consequent cheapening effect.
Nevertheless, the

view from the

outside, the correlated glimpses

and suspended judgments this treatment, applied by means of Marlow and the complication of witnesses, is, quite plainly, the kind dejnanded by the essential even the undertaking of the book. And it is applied successfully of all, the rendering of the 'tension of the false most difficult

from

different angles, the standing queries

part

situation*
is

off pretty well (though there of sentimentality about the handling of Flora). The genius is amply apparent in Chance. It is most apparent in the force of realization with which the characters are evoked, and

on board the Ferndale, comes

a touch

which has led above

to the

mention of Dickens.
is is

That which

and there suggests Dickens in Chance strongly characteristic Conrad. There

'

a great deal of it ic all the Shipping Office and

old Powell-Socrates, with his tall hat very far at the back of his head
... a full unwrinkled face, and such clear-shining eyes that his grey beard looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise* ; there the comedy of Mario w's intercourse with them is are the Fynes
characteristic
relative, the

and good

cardboard box manufacturer,

the great deBarral himself; Flora's odious who 'had all the civic
;

virtues in their meanest

form'

Franklin the mate

224

CHANCE
The mate who, on account of his peculiar build, could not turn his head quite freely, twisted Hs thick trunk slightly, and
ran his black eyes in the corners to vards the steward.'
'

There

we have an illustration of the

For another, here
is

things are seen.

'

vivid particularity with which the sinister old de Barral

:

as

away with his walk which Mr. Powell described to me being as level and wary as his voice. He walked as if he were carrying a glass full of water on his head/
gliding
little

The solemn

Fyne, irreproachable Civil Servant,

his gravity

is

epitomized
the noses

in the picture

of him escaping with

:

from under

of the dray-horses

'He skipped wildly out of the way and up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision his mind had nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while in the act of sailing gravely tiirough the air, he continued to
;

relieve his

outraged

feelings.'
is

The

distinction
;

of mind

as

apparent in Chance as

this

kind of

vitality

it is
is

The Rover, the latest one finished, with its pathos of retrospect and its old man's sense of the unreality of life, comes plainly from a mind conscious of being it has a remote vividness, but no central at the end of its own days
There
:

certainly a remarkable novel. no other that need be discussed.

unfinished Suspense so little lives up to its title that energy. the published part of it is hard to get through. But Nostromo, The it is an Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, Chance, Victory impressive a and a half) for decade within of tale books (all produced enough

The

any man

to have to his credit.

And

not to the credit of English

it went, the evidence obliges literary culture or English criticism us to conclude, without recognition. True, Conrad enjoyed a

vogue in the early nineteen-twenties, when he was bringing out a and he had been for some time an estabseries of inferior novels lished name. But for all the odd success of Chance he had too good reason to feej that he was regarded as the author of Lord Jim the writer of stories about the sea, the jungle and the islands, who
;

had made some curious ventures outside his beat, but would yet, one hoped, return to it. Perhaps what may be found against his
p

225

JOSEPH
calling the novel

CONRAD
on
the

Chance

an.d insisting a great deal

:

word

implicitly concedes the

critic.- 1

ing the difference between One tends to make the point a

point in question the point regardChance and the other two.

little

unfairly because of irritation

with Marlow,

who

is

essential to the presentation

'"But we, my dear Marknv, have the inestimable advantage of understanding what is happening to others'"
but
is

also, in

way

touched on

earlier,

too easy a convenience

'Marlow emerged
himself a cigar from
side.

out of the shadow of the book-case to get a box which stood on a little table by

my

In the full light of the

room I saw in his

mocking expression with which before the unreasonable sympathetic impulses of mirth and pity but mankind of idealism the puts into the sinaple complications on this earth/ of conduct poignant problem
This suggests well enough the kind of direct injection of tone and attitude that Marlow licenses, and the consequent cheapening effect.
Nevertheless, the

eyes that slightly he habitually covers up his

view from the

outside, the correlated glimpses

and suspended judgments and the complication of Marlow this treatment, applied by means of witnesses, is, quite plainly, the kind demanded by the essential even the undertaking of the book. And it is applied successfully the false of of all, the rendering of the 'tension most difficult

from different angles,

the standing queries

part

off pretty well (though there of sentimentality about the handling of Flora). The genius is amply apparent in Chance. It is most apparent in the force of realization with which the characters are evoked, and
situation*

on board the Ferndale, comes

is

a touch

which has led above to the mention of Dickens. That which and there is a great deal of it k all suggests Dickens in Chance There is the Shipping Office and Conrad. strongly characteristic hat very far at the back of his head tall old Powell-Socrates, with his
'

and such clear-shining eyes that his grey there beard looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise* is them the comedy of Marlow' s intercourse with are the Fynes the great de Barral himself Flora's odious characteristic and good
... a full unwrinkled face,
; ; ;

relative, the cardboard

box manufacturer, who 'had

form'
;

all

the civic

virtues in their meanest

Franklin the mate

224

CHANCE
'The mate who, on account of his peculiar build, could not turn his head quite freely, twisted Hs thick trunk slightly, and
ran his black eyes in the corners to vards the steward/

There

we have an

things are seen.

'

of the vivid particula r ity with which For another, here is the sinister old de Barral
illustration
:

gliding
as

away with his walk being as level and wary

a glass full

whicii Mr. Powell described to

as his voice.

me
he

He walked
head/
is

as if

were carrying

of water on

his

The solemn

little

Fyne, irreproachable Civil Servant,

his gravity

epitomized

in the picture

of him escaping with

:

from under the noses

of the dray-horses

'He skipped wildly out of the way and up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision his mind had nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while in the act of sailing gravely tnrough the air, he continued to relieve his outraged feelings/
;

The

distinction
;

of mind

is

as

apparent in Chance as this kind of

vitality

it is
is

The Rover, the latest one finished, with its pathos of retrospect and its old man's sense of the unreality of life, comes plainly from a mind conscious of being at the end of its own days it has a remote vividness, but no central
:

There

certainly a remarkable novel. no other that need be discussed.

energy.

The

unfinished Suspense so
is

little lives

the published part of it

Secret Agent,
tale

hard to get through.

up to its title that But Nostromo, The

enough any man to have to

of books

Under Western Eyes, Chance, Victory it is an impressive within a decade and a half) for (all produced
his credit.

And

not to the credit of English

it went, the evidence literary culture or English criticism obliges us to conclude, without recognition. True, Conrad enjoyed a

vogue in the early nineteen-twenties, when he was bringing out a series of inferior novels and he had been for some time an established name. But for all the odd success of Chance he had too good reason to feeji that he was regarded as the author of Lord Jim
;

the writer of stories about the sea, the jungle andf the islands, who had made some curious ventures outside his beat, but would yet,

one hoped, return to

p

it.

Perhaps what

may

be found against his

225

JOSEPH
name in the new

CONRAD

Concise Cambridge History of English Literature gives

what is still the prevalent view. But he was not only by fai the greatest of the Edwardians there is more to be said than that. Scott, Thackeray, Meredith and Hardy
;

are
is

the achievement in

commonly accounted great English novelists if the criterion work addressed to the adult mind, and capable
:

of engaging again and again its full critical attention, then Conrad is certainly a greater novelist than the four enumerated. This, which may seem a more striking claim to some critics than to others, is merely a way of insisting on the force of the judgment that Conrad is among the very greatest novelists in the language
as such

or any language.

226

'HARD TIMES'
An
Analytic Note
;

TIMES is not a difficult work its intention and nature JTjL are pretty obvious. If, then, it is the masterpiece I take it for, why has it not had general recognition ? To judge by the critical record, it has had none at all. If there exists anywhere an appreciation, or even an acclaiming reference I have missed it. In the books and essays on Dickens, so far as I kncrv them, it is passed over as a very minor thing too slight and insignificant to distract us for more than a sentence or two from the works worth critical attention. Yet, if I am right, of all Dickens's works it is the one that has all the strength of his genius, together with a strength no other of them can show that of a completely serious work of art. The answer to the questio* asked above seems to me to bear on the traditional approach to 'the English novel'. For all the more of the last decade or two, that apsophisticated critical currency at any rate in the appreciation of the Victorian still prevails, proach novelists. The business of the novelist, you gather, is to create a world', and the mark of tlie master is external abundance he gives you lots of 'life'. The test of life in his characters (he must above
;
'

TTARD

all

create 'living' characters)

book.

is that they go on living outside the Expectations as unexacting as these are not when they en-

insistent

counter significance, grateful for it, and when it meets them in that form where nothing is very engaging as 'life* unless its relevance is fully taken, miss it altogether. This is the only way in

can account for the neglect suffered by Henry James's The Europeans, which may be classed with Hard Times as a moral fable though one might have supposed that James would enjoy the

which

advantage of being approached with expectations of subtlety and Fashion, however, has not recomclosely calculated relevance. mended his earlier work, and this (whatever appreciation may be enjoyed by The Ambassadors) still suffers from the prevailing exof redundant and irrelevant 'life'. pectation I need say no more by way of defining the moral fable than that
in
it

the intention

is

peculiarly insistent, so that, the representative

of everything in the fable character, episode, and so significance on is immediately apparent as we read. Intention might seem to be insistent enough in the opening of Hard Times, in that scene in 227

HARD TIMES
Mr. GradgrincTs school. Bui then, intention is often very insistent in Dickens, without its being taker up in any inclusive significance that informs and organizes a oherent whole ; and, for lack of any
*

expectation of an organized whole, it has no doubt been supposed that in Hard Times the satiric irony of the first two chapters is merely, in the large and genial Dickensian way, thrown together with melodrama, pathos and humoiu and that we are given these ingredients more abundantly and exuberantly elsewhere. Actually, the Dickensian vitality is there, in its varied characteristic modes, which have the more force because they are free of redundance
:

by a profound inspiration. The inspiration is what is given in the title, Hard Times. Ordinand arily Dickens's criticisms of the world he lives in are casual
the creative exuberance
is

controlled

incidental a matter of including among the ingredients of a book some indignant treatment of a particular abuse. But in Hard Times he is for once possessed by a comprehensive vision, one in which

the inhumanities of Victorian

sanctioned

by

civib' Cation are seen as fostered and a hard philosophy, the aggressive formulation of an

inhumane

spirit.

The philosophy

grird, Esquire,

Member of
on

brought up

his children

is represented by Thomas GradParliament for Coketown, who has the lines of the experiment recorded by

John
for
is

Stuart Mill as carried out

on himself. What Gradgrind stands

though repellent, nevertheless respectable ; his Utilitarianism a theory sincerely held and there is intellectual disinterestedness in
is,
*

its

application. But Gradgrind marries his eldest daughter to Josiah Bounderby, banker, merchant, manufacturer', about whom there is no disinterestedness whatever, and nothing to be respected. Bounderby is Victorian 'rugged individualism* in its grossest and most intransigent form. Concerned with nothing but self-assertion and power and material success, he has no interest in ideals or ideas except the idea of being the completely self-made man (since, for all his brag, he is not that in fact). Dickens here makes a just observation about the affinities and practical tendency of Utilitarianism, as, in his presentment of the Gradgrind home and the Gradgrind elementary school, he does about the Utilitarian spirit in

Victorian education.
is obvious enough. But Dickens's art, while remaining of the great popular entertainer, has in Hard Times, as he renders his full critical vision, a stamina, a flexibility combined with consistency, and a depth that he seems to have had little credit for. Take that opening scene in the school-room

All this

that

228

DICKENS
'"Girl
"'

number twenty,"

said

Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing

with his square forefinger, "I don't

Sissy Jupc, sir," explained

know that girl.

Who

is

that girl ?"

number twenty,
Mr. Gradgrind.

blushing, standing up,

and curtsying.
"'Sissy is not a name," said Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia."
'"It's father as call

"Don't

call

yourself
girl in a

me

Sissy, sit,"

returned the

young

trembling voice, and with another curtsy. ' "

Then he has no

business to

do

it," said

Mr. Gradgrind. "Tell him

he mustn't.

Cecilia Jupe.

Let

me see. What is your father ?"

'"He belongs

to the horse-riding, if you please, sir."

'Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand. '"We don't want to know anything about that here. You mustn't
tell

us about that here.

sir,

Your

father breaks horses, don't he ?"

they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir." '"You mustn't tell us about the ring here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare '"If you please,

when

say?"

"Oh,
breaker.

yes, sir!"

'"Very

well, then.

He is

a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horse-

your definition of a horse." this demand.) (Sissy Jupe thrown in:o the greatest alarm by '"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general benefit of all the little pitchers. "Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest
Give
animals
!

me

Some

boy's definition of a horse.

Bitzer, yours."

'"Quadruped.

Graminivorous.

Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four

in the spring ; grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to

be shod with iron.

Age known by marks

in

mouth."

Thus (and

much more)

Bitzer.'

Lawrence himself, protesting against harmful tendencies in education, never made the point more tellingly. Sissy has been brought up among horses, and among people whose livelihood depends upon understanding horses but 'we don't want to know anything about that here'. Such knowledge isn't real knowledge. Bitzer, the model pupil, on the button's being pressed, promptly vomits up the genuine article, 'Quadruped. Graminivorous', etc.
;

229

HARD TIMES
and 'Now,
girl

number twenty, you know what

a horse

is'.

The

irony, pungent enough locally, is richly developed in the subsequent Bitzer 's aptness has *ts evaluative comment in his career. action.
Sissy's incapacity to acquire this

kind of
us,

'fact*

or formula, her un:

on the other hand, as part and parcel of her sovereign and indefeasible humanity it is the virtue that makes it impossible tor her to understand, or acquiesce in, an ethos for which she is 'girl number twenty', or to think of
aptness for education,
is

manifested to

any other human being as a unit for arithmetic. This kind of ironic method might seem to commit the author to very limited kinds of effect. In Hard Times, however, it associates quite congruously, such is the flexibility of Dickens's art, with very different methods it co-operates in a truly dramatic and profoundly poetic whole. Sissy Jupe, who might be taken here for a merely conventional persona, has already, as a matter of fact, been estabshe is part of the poeticallylished in a potently symbolic role Here is a creative operation of Dickens's gei/ *s in Hird Times. passage I omitted from the middle of the excerpt quoted above
;
:

finger, moving Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sun-light which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-

'The square

here and there, lighted suddenly

on

washed room, irradiated Sissy. For the boys and girls sat on the face of an inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun
;

the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the
short ends of lashes which,

when it shone upon her,

by bringing them

into immediate contras*

with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy
freckles

on

his

forehead and face.

deficient in the natural tinge, that he would bleed white.'

he looked

His skin was so unwholesomely as though, if he were cut,

There is no need to insist on the force representative of Dickens's Hard Times with which the moral and spiritual differences are rendered here in terms of sensation, so that the symbolic intention emerges out of metaphor and the vivid evocation of
art in general in

230

DICKENS
What may, perhaps, be emphasized is that Sissy stands for vitality as well as goodness- -they are seen, in fact, as one ; she is generous, impulsive life, finding self-fulfilment in self-forgetall that is the antithesis of fulness calculating self-interest. There
the concrete.
is

an essentially Laurcntian suggestion about the way in which 'the dark-eyed and dark-haired' girl, contrasting with Bitzer, seemed to receive a 'deeper and more luscrous colour from the sun', so
instinctive
life that is lived freely and richly from the deep and emotional springs to the thin-blooded, quasimechanical product of Gradgrindery. Sissy's symbolic significance is Hound up with that of Sleary's Horse-riding, where human kindness is very insistently associated with vitality. Representing human spontaneity, the circus-athletes represent at the same time highly-developed skill and deftness of kinds that bring poise, pride and confident ease they are always

opposing the

buoyant, and, ballet-dancer-like, in training 'There were two o*. three !.cuidsome young women among them, with two or three husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their
:

eight or nine

little

children,

who

The father of one of the

of another of the

families

was

did the fairy business when required. in the habit of balancing the father

families on the top of a great pole ; the father of the third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base ; all the fathers

could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything,

and

stick at nothing.

slack wire
steeds
legs
;
;

All the mothers could (and did) dance upon the and the tight-rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed none o^them were at all particular in respect of showing their
a

and one of them, alone in

to.

Greek
all

chariot,

drove six-in-hand into

every town they came

They

assumed to be mighty rakish and

knowing, they were not very tidy

not
at all

in their private dresses, they were orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor
letter

on any

subject.

Yet there was

a remarkable gentleness

and child-

ishness

about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deservpractice,
tion, as the

ing often of as

much respect, and always of as much generous construcevery-day virtues of any class of people in the world/
have no value for the Utilitarian
calculus,

Their

skills

but they

express vital

human impulse, and they minister to vital human needs.

The Horse-riding, frowned upon as frivolous and wasteful by Grad-

HARD TIMES
grind and malignantly scorned by Bounderby, brings the nwchinehands of Coketown (the spirit-quenching hideousness of which is hauntingly evoked) what the/ are starved of. It brings to them, not merely amusement, but art, and the spectacle of triumphant activity that, seeming to contain its end within itself, is, in its easy mastery, joyously self-justified. In investing a travelling circus with this kind of symbolic value Dickens expresses a profounder reaction to industrialism than might have been expected of him. It is not only pleasure and relaxation the Coketowners stand in need of; he feels the dreadful degradation of life that would remain even if they were to be given a forty-four hour week, comfort, security and fun. recall a characteristic passage from D. H. Lawrence.

We

'The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs, glistening their sharp edges, the

mud black with coal-dust,

and black.

It

was

as if dismalness

the pavements wet had soaked through and through

everything. The utter negation of naiu/al beaaty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely

beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the
intuitive faculty
!

human

was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocers' shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the greengrocers' the awful liats in the milliners all went by ugly, ugly, ugly, followed by the plaster and gilt horror of the cinema with its wet picture anouncements, "A Woman's Love,*' and the new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and big panes of greenish and raspberry glass in the windows. The Wesleyan chapel, higher up, was of blackened brick and stood behind iron railings and blackened shrubs. The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just beyond were the new school buildings, expensive pink brick, and gravelled playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and mixing the suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson, just finishing the la-me-do-la exercises and beginning a "sweet children's song."
Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song, would be impossible a strange bawling yell followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like animals animals mean something when they yell. It was like nothing on earth, and it was called Connie sat and singing. listened with her heart in her boots, as Field was filling petrol. What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living
to imagine
:
:

intuitive faculty

was dead

as nails
?'

and only queer mechanical

yells

and

uncanny will-power remained

DICKENS
Dickens couldn't have put
it

which

his vision

of the Horse-riders

in just those terms, but the way in insistb on their gracious vitality

implies that reaction.

Here an objection may be anticipated as a way of making a like Gradgrind and Bounderby, is real enough point. Coketown, but it can't be contended that the Horse-riding is real in the same sense. There would have been some athletic skill and perhaps some of a Victorian travelling circus, but bodily grace among the people and vulgarity that we must find surely so much squalor, grossness Dickens's symbolism sentimentally false? And 'there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special kind of sharp practice' that, surely, is going inaptitude for any
;

on an emotional effect, or drunk with moral been had enthusiasm, deceiving himself (it couldn't have been of the actuality, he would then indeed nature the about innocently) have been guilty of sentimental falsity, and the adverse criticism would have held. But the Horse-riding presents no such case. The virtues and qualities that Dickens prizes do indeed exist, and it is of Utilitarianism and industrialism, and for necessary for his critique is the same thing) his creative purpose, to evoke them vividly. (what The book can't, :n my judgment, be fairly charged with giving a nature. And it would plainly misleading representation of human not be intelligent critidsm to suggest that anyone could be misThe critical led about the nature of circuses by Hard Times. it was of tact one is well-judged of Dickens merely question which had to be done somehow with a to do that to
:

ludicrously too far ? If Dickens, intent

try

travelling circus ? Or, rather, tae question For the success is complete.

is

by what means

has he succeeded

It is

conditioned partly by

the fact that,

from the opening

effect.

chapters,

we have been tuned for the reception of

Jonsonian below) is a supreme instance.

though it is a tuning that has no narrowly all cogently the means by which this limiting take a good deal of 'practical would is set up responsiveness criticism' analysis analysis that would reveal an extraordinary flexiart of Hard Times. This can be seen very obviously in bility in the the dialogue. Some passages might come from an ordinary novel. Others have the ironic pointedness of the school-room scene in so insistent a form that we might be reading a ^ork as stylized as comedy Gradgrind's final exchange with Bitzer (quoted
a highly conventional art

To

describe at

Others again are

the 'literary', like

HARD TIMES
conversation between Grandgrind and Louisa on her flight

home

for refuge from Mr. James Harthouse's attentions. To the question how the reconciling is done there is much more references to dialogue suggest diversity in Hard Times than these the answer can be given by pointing to the astonishing and irresistIt ible richness of life that characterizes the book everywhere.

meets us everywhere, unstrained and natural, in the prose. such prose a great variety of presentations can arise congenially with It 'real'. goes equal vividness. There they are, unquestionably back to an extraordinary energy of perception and registration in Dickens. 'When people say that Dickens exaggerates', says Mr. have no eyes and no ears. Santayana, 'it seems to me that tney can

Out of

of this truth, we Settling down as we read to an implicit recognition don't readily and confidently apply any criterion we suppose ourselves to hold for distinguishing varieties of relation between what His flexibility is that of a Dickens gives us and a normal 'real write 'poetic prose' ; he richly poetic art of the word. He doesn't force of a writes with evocation, registering with the repoetic of verbal ofa expression what he so sharply aees genius sponsiveness
.

They probably have only notions of what things and people are their diplomatic value'. they accept them conventionally, at

and feels. In fact, by texture, imaginative mode, symbolic method, and the resulting concentration, Hard Times affects us as belonging with formally poetic works. There is, however, more to be said about the success that attends Dickens's symbolic intention in the Horse-riding; there is an essential quality of his genius to be emphasized. There is no Hamlet in him, and he is quite unlike Mr. Eliot.
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping From Kentish Town and Golders Green
there is nothing of that in Dickens's reaction to life. He observes with gusto the humanness of humanity as exhibited in the urb?n 'sees so readily, the (and suburban) scene. When he sees, as he the essential virtues, ana of human common manifestations kindness, of in the midst themselves ugliness, squalor and banality, asserting his warmly sympathetic response has no disgust to overcome. There or of distance-keeping is no suggestion, for instance, of recoil

from the game-eyed, brandy-soaked, flabby-surfaced Mr. Sleary, who is successfully made to figure for us a humane, anti-Utilitarian
positive. This is genius that should

not sentimentality in Dickens, but genius, and a be f6und peculiarly worth attention in an age

234

DICKENS
as D. H. Lawrence (with, as 1 remember, Mr. WyndAam Lewis immediately in view) says, 'My God they stink', tends to be an insuperable and final reaction. Dickens, as everyone knows, is very capable of sentimentality. We have it in Hard Times (though not to any seriously damaging

when,

whose

Stephen Blackpool, the good, victimized working-man, perfect patience under inflation we are expected to find supremely edifying and irresistibly touching as the agonies are piled on for his martyrdom. But Sissy Jupe is another matter. A general description of her part in the fable might suggest the worst, but she shares actually she has nothing in common with Little Nell in the strength of the Horse-riding. She is wholly convincing in the function Dickens assigns to her. The working of her influence in the Utilitarian home is conveyed with a fine tact, and we do really Dickens can even, with complete feel her as a growing potency. success, give her the stage for a victorious tete-a-tete with the wellbred and languid elegant, Mr James Harthouse, in which she tells him that his duty is to leave Coketown and cease troubling Louisa with his attentions
effect) in
: :

She was not afraid of him, or in any

way disconcerted
herself.'

she seemed
visit,

to have her

mind

entirely preoccupied

with the occasion of her

and to have substituted that consideration for

The

quiet victory of disinterested goodness is wholly convincing. At the opening of the book Sissy establishes the essential distinction between Gradgrind and Bounderby. Gradgrind, by taking her home, however ungraciously, shows himself capable of humane We are reminded, in the feeling, however unacknowledged. previous school-room scene, of the Jonsonian affinities of Dickens's art, and Bounderby turns out to be consistently a Jonsonian character in the sense that he is incapable of change. He remains the blustering egotist and braggart, and responds in character to the collapse of his marriage
:

"Til give you

ably
this
is

an incompatibility of the

to understand, in reply to that, that there unquestionfirst magnitude to be summed up in

that your daughter don't properly know her husband's merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George
!

of the honour ot

his alliance.

That's plain speaking,

hope.'"

He

But Gradgrind,

remains Jonsonianly consistent in his last testament and death. in the nature of the fable, Has to experience the con235

HARD TIMJS
futaiion
in admitting that

of his philosophy, and to be capable of the change involved life has proved him wrong. (Dickens's art in

Hard Times differs from Ben Jonson's not in being inconsistent, but in being so very much more flexible and inclusive a point that seemed to be worth making because the relation between Dickens
and Jonson has been
conclusions to be
stressed

of

late,

and

have

known

unfair

drawn from fhe comparison, notably

life is

in respect

of Hard

Times.)

conducted with great Mr. Gradgrind subtlety. he betrays by his initial kindness, ungenial enough, but properly rebuked by Bounderby, to Sissy. 'Mr. Gradgrind', we are told, 'though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered ; it might have been very kind indeed if only he had made some

The confutation of Utilitarianism by

That the conditions for
it

are there in

mistake in the arithmetic that balanced

it

years ago'.

The

in-

adequacy of the calculus is beautifully exposed when he brings it to bear on the problem of marriage in the consummate scene with
his eldest daughter
:

'He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said somethirg. But she said never a word. '"Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage
that has been

made
him

to me.*'

'Again he waited, and again she answered not one word.

far surprised
as to

This so

marriage,

my

dear."
:

induce him gendy to repeat, "A proposal of To which she returned, without any visible

emotion whatever

'"I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you." '"Well !" said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the moment at a loss, "you are even more dispassionate than I expected,
Louisa.
I

have

it

Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the in charge to make ?"
I

announcement

'"I cannot say that, father, until

I

hear

it.

Prepared or unprepared,

wish to hear it

from you. I wish to hear you state it to me, father." to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment 'Strange
all
it

as his

laid

daughter was. He took a paper knife in his hand, turned it over, down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the

blade of it, considering

how

to

go on.
is perfectly reasonable. that in short, that Mr.

'"What you
derby

say,

my
let

dear Louisa,

have

undertaken, then, to

you know

Boun-

236

DICKENS
His embarrassment by his own avowal is caused by the perfect with which she receives his overture. He is still more disconcerted when, with a complete! dispassionate matter-otfactness that does credit to his regime, she gives him the opportunity to state in plain terms precisely what marriage should mean for the
rationality
1

young Houyhnhnm
'

The

The deadly statistical clock very hollow. smoke very black and heavy. '"Father/* said Louisa, "do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?" 'Mr. Gradgrind was extremel/ discomforted by this unexpected
Silence

between them.

distant

question.

"Well,

my

child,"

he icturned, "I

really

cannot take

upon

myself to say."

you

'"Father," pursued Louisa in exacdy the same voice as before, ask me to love Mr Bounderby ?"

"do

'"My dear Louisa, no. I ask nothing." '"Father," she still pursued, "does Mr. Bounderby ask
him?"
'"Really,

me

to love

my"dear,"
my

said

Mr. Gradgrind,

"it

is difficult

to answer

your question
'"Difficult to answer
it,

Yes or No, father ?"

Because"
here was something to demon"because the reply depends so materi-

'"Certainly,
strate,
ally,

dear.

and

it

set

him up

again

Louisa,

on

the sense in

Bounderby does not do

injustice,

which we use the expression. Now, Mr. you the injustice, and does not do himself the
fanciful, fantastic,

of pretending to anything

or

(I

am

using

synonymous terms) sentimental. Mr. Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eye to very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is Jue to your good sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any such ground. Therefore, perhaps, the expression itself
I

merely suggest
'

this to

you,

my dear may be a litde misplaced."

'"What would you

by
this time,

me to use in its stead, father ?" "Why, my dear Louisa," said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recovered
advise

question, as
tion,

"I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider the you have been accustomed to consider every other quessimply as one of tangible Fact. The ignorant and the giddy may

embarrass such subjects with irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no existence, properly viewed but it reallv no existence
is

no compliment* to you
?
;

the Facts of this case

years of age

to say that you know better. Now, what are You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, fifty.
disparity in

There

is

some

your respective
23*1

years,

but

."'

HARD TIMES
And
escape
at this
ijito statistics.

point Mr. Giadgrind seizes the chance for a happy Bat Louisa brings him firmly back
:

'"What do you recommc id, father?" asked Louisa, her reserved composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results, "that I should substitute for the term I used just now ? For the misplaced
expression?" '"Louisa," returned her father, "it appears to
plainer.
state to
is

me that nothing can be Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you
:

yourself

Does Mr. Bounderby ask

sole

me
:

to

marry him

Shall I marry remaining question tben is him ? I think nothing can be plainer than that." '"Shall I marry him ?" repeated Louisa with great deliberation.

Yes, he does.

The

'"Precisely."'

No logical analysis could dispose of It is a triumph of ironic art. the philosophy of fact and calculus with such neat finality. As the issues are reduced to algebraic formuKtion they are patently emptied
of all
real

meaning.
is

The

instinct-free rationality

Houyhnhnm demand that

a void.
is

Louisa proceeds to try and

of the emotionless make him un-

she

a living creature

and therefore no Houyhnhnm,

but in vain ('to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting between
himself and
all

those subtle essences of humanity

which

will elude

the utmost cunning of algebra, until the last trumpet ever to be sounded will blow even algebra to wreck').

'Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the town, that he said at length: "Are you consulting the
chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa ?" '"There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous
smoke.
Yet, when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!" she answered, turning quickly. ' " Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of th-

remark."
'

To do him justice,

he did not

at

all.

She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concenhim again, said, "Father, I have often trating her attention upon
thought that
life is

very short".

This was so distinctly one of his

: subjects that he interposed '"It is short, no doubt,

human

my dear. Still, the average duration of proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which
life is

cannot go wrong, have established the fact."

238

DICKENS
'"I speak of my ' '* Oh, indeed
!

own life,

father."

Still," said

Mr. Gradgrinu, "I need not point out

to

you, Louisa, that

aggregate." '"

it is

governed by the laws which govern

to

lives in the

While
for.

it lasts, I

would wish
it

do the

little I

can,

and the

little I

am fit

What does

matter ?"

'Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words replying, "How, matter ? What matter, my dear ?" '"Mr. Bounderby," she went on in a steady, straight way, without
;

regarding

this,

"asks

me

to

myself is,
told

shall I

marry him
dear."

marry him. The question I have to ask That is so, father, is it not ? You have

me

so, father.

Have you not ?"

'"Certainly,

my

"'Let

it

be so."'

The psychology ot Louisa's development and of her brother Tom's is sound. Having no outlet for her emotional life except in her love for her brother, sh^ ;ves for him, and marries Bounderby under pressure from Tom for Tom's sake ('What does it
1

matter

?').

Thus, by the constrictions and starvations of the Grad,

grind regime arc natural affection and capacity for disinterested devotion turned to ill. As for Tom, the regime has made of him a bored and sullen whelp, and 'he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at work on number He one' the Utilitarian philosophy has done that for him. declares that when he goes to live with Bounderby as having a post 'I mean, I'll in the bank, 'he'll have his revenge'. enjoy myself a I'll little, and go about and see something and hear something. recompense myself for the way in which I've been brought up'. His descent into debt and bank-robbery is natural. And it is natural
that Louisa
affection,

having sacrificed herself for this unrepaying object of should be found not altogether unresponsive when Mr.

James Harthouse, having sized up the situation, pursues his opportunity with well-bred and calculating tact. His apologia for genteel cynicism is a shrewd thrust at the Gradgrind philosophy
:

"'The only

difference

between us and the professors of virtue or

benevolence, or philanthropynever

mind
;

the

know

it is all

meaningless, and say so

while they

nameis, that we know it equally,

It
it

and will never say so." 'Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration ? not so unlike her father's principles, and her early training, that
startle her.'

was

need

259

HARD TIMUS
"When, fleeing from temptation, she arrives back at her father's tells him her plignt, and, crying, 'All I know is, your philhe sees *the osophy and your teaching wiU not save me', collapses, insensible an his of the and heart system lying triumph pride of his his feet'. The fallacy now calamitously demonstrated can at heap be seenfocussed in that 'pride', which brings together in an illusory
house,
that love

oneness the pride of his system and his love for his child. What now knows, and he knows that it matters to is

Gradgrind

the system, which is thus confuted (the educational such being a lesser matter). There is nothing sentimental the demonstration is impressive, because we are convinced h^re of the love, and because Gradgrind has been made to exist for us as

him more than

failure as
;

man who
'He
said

has 'meant to
it

do

right'

earnestly, ind, to
his little

fathomless deeps with the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do limits of hi "hort *ether he had tumbled great things. Within the
about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of than many of the blatant personages whose company lie kept.'

do him justice, he had. In gauging mean excise rod, and in staggering over

purpose

The demonstration still to come,

his system',
is

that

of which the other 'triumph

the centre, is sardonic comedy, imagined of Tom, with great intensity and done with the sure touch of genius. There in the deserted ring is the pregnant scene in which Mr. Gradgrind, of a third-rate circus, has to recognize his son in a comic

travelling and has to recognize that his son owes his escape servant ; negro from Justice to a peculiarly disinterested gratitude to the opporMr. Sleary, grateful for tunity given him by the non-Utilitarian

to Sissy's sake,

assume such a disguise

'In a preposterous coat, like a beadle's, with cuffs and flap: exaggerated to an unspeakable extent ; in an immense waistcoat, knee breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked-hat ; with nothing fitting him, and

and full of holes ; with everything of coarse material, moth-eaten, had started through the heat and fear where seams in his black face,
all over it ; anything so grimly, detestably, greasy composition daubed as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind shameful ridiculously

never could by any other means have believed in, weigh able and measurable fact though it was. And one of his model children had

come
'At

to this
first

the whelp would not draw any nearer but persisted in reif any concession so maining up there by himself. Yielding at length,

240

DICKENS
sullenly
isv.

made can be

called yielding, tc

the entreaties

of

Sissy

for

he disowned altogether he came c'own, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as
possible,

within

its

limits,

from where LJ

father

sat.

'"How was this done?" asked the father. '"How was what done ?" moodil/ answered
1

the son.

'"This robbery," said the father, raising his voice upon the word. "I forced the safe myself overnight, and shut it up ajar before I went

away.
it

that

had had the key that was found made long before. I dropped morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn't
I

take the

money

all at

once.

night, but I didn't.

Now you know

this !"

pretended to put all about

my balance away every

it."

*"If a thunderbolt had fallen

on me,"

said the father, "it

would have
are

shocked

me

less

than

'"I don't see

why," grumbled
;

the son.

"So many people

employed
law.

in situations of trust
I

so

many

be dishonest.

have heard you

?

talk,

people, out of so many, will a hundred times, of its being a

How

can I help laws

ou have comforted others with such

and the son stood in
his dis-

things, father.

Comfort yourself!"
his face in his hands,
:

'The father buried

gra~eful grotesqueness, biting straw

his hands,

with the black partly

worn awa)
was

inside,

fast closing in

Booking Wee the hands of a monkey. The evening and, from time to time, he turned the whites of his

eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon
it

was so

thick.'

Something of the

in this passage. simple formula can take account of the various elements in the vvhole effect, a sardonic-tragic in which satire consorts with pathos. The excerpt in itself suggests the justification for

No

rich complexity

of Dickens's

art

may be

seen

saying that Hard Times is a poetic work. It suggests that the genius of the writer may fairly be described as that of a poetic dramatist,

our preconceptions about 'the novel', we may miss, of fictional prose, possibilities of concentration and in the flexibility interpretation of life such as we associate with drama. Shakespearean The note, as we have it above in Tom's retort, of ironic-satiric discomfiture of th<? Utilitarian philosopher by the rebound of his formulae upon himself is developed, in the ensuing scene with

and

that, in

within the

field

Bitzer, the truly successful pupil, the real He arrives to intercept s flight :

triumph of the system.

Tom

241

HARD TIMES
holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the at his olc patron through the darkness of the tw Jight. '"Bitzer," said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, "have you a near:?" '"The circu^tion, sir," returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the one. No man, sir, acquestion, "couldn't be carried on without
'Bitzer,
still

Ring, blinking

the circulation quainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart."
'"Is
it

accessible," cried

Mr. Grandgrind, "to any compassionate

sir,"

influence?"
'"It
is

accessible to

Reason,
at

returned the excellent

young man.

"And

to nothing else."

'They stood looking

the pursuer's.

each other

Mr. Gradgrind's

face as white as

'"What motive

even what motive in reason

can you have for

preventing the escape of this wretched youth," said Mr. Gradgrind, "and crushing his miserable father ? See his sister here. Pity us !"
'"Sir," returned Bitzer in a very bu^Jiess-iike and logical manner, "since you ask me what motive I have in reason for taking young

Mr.
I

Tom back to Coketown, it

going to take deliver him over to

that
situation.

am

is only reasonable to let you know Tom back to Coketown, in ordei to Mr. young Mr. Bounderby. Si*., I have ro doubc whatever Mr. Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr. Tom's
.
.

And
is

wish to have
good."

his situation,

sir,

for

it

will be a rise to

me, and will do

'"If this

me

solely a question

of self-interest with you

sir,"

"

Mr. Grad-

grind began. '"I beg your pardon for interrupting you,

returned Bitzer,

you know that the whole social system is a question of What you must always appeal to is a person's selfself-interest. I was brought interest. It's your only hold. We are so constituted. as I was when in catechism that sir, you are aware." very young, up '"What sum of money," said Mr. Gradgrind, "will you set agains;
"but
I

am

sure

your expected promotion ?"

'"Thank you,
but
I

sir,"

returned Bitzer, "for hinting at the proposal;

will not set any sum against it. would propose that alternative, I have

Knowing

that

your

clear

head

mind

and

find that to

compound

gone over the calculations in my a felony, even on very Ugh terms

for

indeed, would not be as safe and pects in the Bank."

good

me

as

my improved prosthough

'"Bitzer," said

Mr. Gradgrird,

stretching out his hands as

242

DICKENS
he would have
chance
left to

said,

See

how miserable 1 am

"Bitzer,

have but cne

If,

remembrance
son,

soften you. You were many years at of the pains bestowed upon you there,

my school.

in

you can persuade

yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest and release my I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit of that remem-

brance."
'"I really wonder, sir," rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, "to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for it was a bargain ; and when I came away, the bargain
;

ended."
'It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy, that everything was to be paid for. Nooody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were

Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to w^s to be a bargain across the counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there. '"I don't deny," added Bitzer, "that my schooling was cheap. But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose of myself in the dearest."'
not to be.
death,
is contrived, successfully in every sense, by means to Dickensian belonging high-fantastic comedy. And there follows the solemn moral of tae whole fable, put with the tightness of

Tom's escape

genius into Mr. Sleary 's asthmatic mouth. He, agent of the marvellous tact, acquits himself of it characteristically
:

artist's

'"Thquire, animalth."
'"

you don't need

to be told that dogth ith wonderful

'"Whatever you

Their instinct," said Mr. Gradgrind, "is surprising." call it and I'm bletht if I know what to

call it"

said Sleary, "it ith athtonithing. the di'thtanthe he'll come !"

The way

in

which

a dog'll find

you

'"His scent," said Mr. Gradgrind, "being so fine." '"I'm bletht if I know what to call it," repeated Sleary, shaking ."' head, "but I have had dogth find me, Thquire
.

his

Sleary proceeds to explain that Sissy's truant father is dead because his performing dog, who \vould never have certainly deserted him living, has come back to the Horse-riding
:

And Mi.

'"he wath lame, and pretty well blind.

He went round

to our chil-

243

TIM2S
dr ?n, one after another, ath if he wath a theeking for a child he
.

knowed

and then he come to me, nd thro wed hithelf up behind, and thtcod on his two fore-legth, weak as he wath, and then he wagged hith tail and
died.

Thquire, that dog was Merrylegth."

'

The whole passage has

Chapter
VIII).

to be read as
it

it

stands in the text

(Book III,

Reading

there

we have to stand off and reflect at a

distance to recognize the potentialities that might have been realized elsewhere as Dickensian sentimentality. There is nothing sentimental in the actual effect. The profoundly serious intention is in

control, the touch sure,

uiiassertively

and the structure that ensures the poise complex. Here is :he formal moral
:

"'Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he broke hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him never will be known now, Thquire, till no, not till we know how the dogth fmdth uth out !" '"She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she
;

will believe in his affection to the last

moment of her

life," said

Mr.

Gradgrind.
'"It

theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don't

:

it,

Thquire ?" said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depJis of his brandy-and-water "one, that there ith a love in the world, not
all
it

Thelf-interetht after

all,

but thomething very different

ath hard to give a

t'other, that

hath a

way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomename

to,

how or another ith at leatht

of the dogth ith!"

ath the

wayth
reply.

'Mr. Gradgrind looked out of the window, and

made no

Mr. Sleary emptied

It

his glass

and

recalled the ladies/

popular never wrote anything approaching mis in subtlety of achieved art. Dickens, of course, has a vitality that we don't look for in Flaubert. Shakespeare was a popular entertainer, we reflect not too exof travagantly, we can surely tell ourselves, as we ponder
passages
this characteristic quality in their relation,

the whole passage must be (I repeat, so and read), apparently simple easily right, depends up on a subtle of diverse a elements, interplay multiplicity in unison of timbre and tone. Dickens, we know, was a entertainer, but Flaubet

will be seen that the effect

a closely organized one,

against

to the poetic whole. Criticism, of course, has

It

its

points to

make

Hard Times.

can be said of Stephen Blackpool, not that he is too good and only too for the qualifies consistently martyr's nalo, but that he invites

244

DICKENS
an adaptation of the objection brought, from the negro point of view, against Uncle Tom, which was to the effect that he was a white man's good nigger. And certainly it doesn't need a workingclass bias to produce the commenu that when Dickens comes to the Trade Unions his understanding of the world he oilers to deal with betrays a marked limitation. There were undoubtedly professional agitators, and Trade Union solidarity was undoubtedly often asserted at the expense of the individual's rights, but it is a score

work so insistently typical in intention that it should give the representative role to the agitator, Slackbridge, and make Trade Unionism nothing better than the pardonable error of the m:>
against a

guided and oppressed, and, as such, an agent in the martyrdom of the good working man. (But to be fair we must remember the conversation between Bitzer and Mrs. Sparsit
:

'"It is much to be regretted," said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength

of her

severity, "thai the

^nted masters allow of any such

class

combination."
'"Yes, ma'am," said Bitzer. '"Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against employing any mar. who is united with any other man," said

Mrs.

Sparsit.

'"They have done that, ma'am," returned Bitzer; "but it rather fell through, ma'am." "'I do not pretend t6 understand these things," said Mrs. Sparsit with dignity. "... I only know that those people must be conquered, and that it's high time it was done, once for all.'")
Just as Dickens has no glimpse of the part to be played in bettering the conditions he deplores, so,

Unionism

by Trade though he

many places of worship in Coketown, of various kinds of ugliness, he has no notion of the part played by religion in the life of nineteenth-century industrial England. The kind of self-respecting steadiness and conscientious restraint that he represents in
sees there are

Stephen did certainly exist on a large scale among the workingBut there would classes, and this is an important historical fact. have been no such fact if those chapels described by Dickens had had no more relation to the life of Coketown than he shows them
to have.

Again, his attitude to Trade Unionism is not the only expression of a lack of political understanding. Parliament for him is merely
245

HARD TIMES
entertain the national dust-yard', where the 'national dustmen' one another 'with a great many noisy little fights among them-

and appoint commissions which fill blue-books with dreary of a kind that helps Gradgrind to 'prove facts and futile statistics a bad economist*. was that the Good Samaritan Yet Dickens's understanding of Victorian civilization is adequate the justice and penetration of his criticism are unfor his purpose with a clear affected. And his moral perception works in alliance is Harthouse Mr. social structure. into the James
selves',
;

insight

English

but he too has his representative function, necessary for the plot ; as P prospective parliamentary candiCoketown to come lie has assistance in cutting the 'the for date, Gradgrind party wanted throats of the Graces', and they liked fine gentlemen; they pre' And so the alliance between tended that they did not, but they did the fable. men 'hard' the and the old ruling class figures duly in who for Mrs. is instance, There is This Sparsit,
*
.

economy

typical.

a Powler', a fact she reverts to as often as Bounderby to his mythical birth in a ditch; and the two complementary opposites, when Mr. James Harthouse, who in his languid assurance of classdoesn't need to boast, is added, form a trio that suggests superiority the whole system of British snobbery.

for dbmight seem to be there merely

plot.

But her 'husband was

But the packed richness of Hard Times is almost incredibly varied, and not all the quoting I have indulged ir suggests it adequately. The final stress may fall on Dickens's comnand of word, phrase-, and range there is surely no greater rhythm and image in ease conies back to saying master of Shakespeare. This
:

English except his endless reSource in felicitously that Dickens is a great poet varied expression is an extraordinary responsiveness to life. His senses are charged with emotional energy, and his intelligence plays and flashes in the quickest and sharpest perception. That is, his kind that matters which is not to is of the of
:

hasn't a conscious interest in what can be done with say that he words many of his felicities could plainly not have come if there had not been, in the background, a habit of such interest. Take
;

mastery

'style*

only

this,

for instance

'He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, .' which was neither town nor country, but either spoiled
.

no more a stylist than Shakespeare and his mastery of not his descriptive expression is most fairly suggested by stressing,
But he
is
;

246

DICKENS
evocations (there are
varied dtcor of the action

some magnificent ones in Hard Times- -the is made vividly present, you can feel the

velvety dust trodden by Mrs. Sparsit in her stealth, and feel the imminent storm), but his strictly dramatic felicities. Perhaps, however, 'strictly* is not altogether a good pointer, since Dickens is a

master of his chosen art, and his mastery shows itself in the way in which he moves between less direct forms of the dramatic and the direct rendering of speech. Here is Mrs. Gradgrind dying (a cipher
in the Gradgrind system, the
alive)
'

poor creature has never

on

really

been

if she did, she

She had positively refused to take to her bed would never hear the last of it.
far

the

ground

that,

'Her feeble voice sounded so

away

in her bundle of shawls, and

the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had

been

which had mucii

to

with

it.

m xried
from

being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he had
Louisa
;

'On

name, she had

called

and that pending her choice of an objectionable him J and that she could not at present depart
;

that regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her
often, before she arrived at a clear understanding

who it was.

She then

seemed to come to
'"Well,

it all

at once.

on

dear," said Mrs. Gradgrind, "and I hope you are going satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father's doing. He set his

my

heart

upon it. And he ought to know." want to hear of you, mother not of myself." '"You want to hear of me, my dear That's something new,
"'I
;

am

sure,

when anybody wants

to hear of

me.

Not

at all well, Louisa.

Very faint and giddy." "'Are you in pain dear mother ?" '"I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs. Gradgrind, "but I couldn't positively say that I have got it." 'After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time.

"'But there

is

something

not an Ology

at all

that

your father has

missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don't know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name

247

HARD TIMES
now. But your
a pen/'
father

may.

It

makes

me rcstlrss.
it is.

want

to write to

him, to find out, for God's sake, what

Give

me

a pen, gi/e

me

'Even the power of

restlessness

was gone, except from the poor

head, which could just turn

from

side to side.

'She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the pen she could not Irve held was in her hand. It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of them the light that had always been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took
;

upon her

the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs.'

With this kind of thing before us, we talk not of style but of dramatic creation and imaginative genius.

248

Appendix

DANIEL DERONDA: A
By HENRY
JAMES

Conversation

Theodora, one day early in tLe autumn, sat on her verandah with a piece of embroidery, the design of which she made up as she proceeded, being careful, however, to have a Japanese screen
before her, to keep her inspiration at the proper altitude. Pulcheria, a who was paying her a visit, sat near her with a closed book,

was playing with the pug-dog, paper cover, in her lap. Pulcheria was Theodora rather idly, but stitching, steadily and meditatively. 'I wonder what he accomplished in at said Theodora last,
'Well',

and made him at Jerusalem had Oh' she replied, they sit on the book. tea-parties his tea and stirred midst the in and he sat ladies exclusively of a Mirah then and made high-toned remarks. And sang little, just a little, on account of her voice being so weak. Sit still, Fide', she thelittle dog, 'and keep your nose out of my continued,
the East'.

Pulcheria took the

'

little

dog

into her lap

face.
little

But

it's

addressing a nice little nose,

all

the same', she pursued, 'a nice

wedding!' verandah from within, hat and

dusty.

short snub nose and not a horrid big Jewish nose. Oh, noses there must have been dear, when I think what a collection of At this moment Constantius steps upon the at that
stick in

my

hand and

his shoes a trifle

He

has

some

distance to

where the ladies are

Pulcheria, and he
ness of uhe sea,
;

sitting,

before he reaches the place and this gives Pulcheria time to murmur,
is presented by Theodora to exclaims upon the admirable blue-

come

'Talk of sHub noses!'

sits

Constantius

down and

which lies in a straight band across the green of the comments too upon the pleasure of having one side of little lawn one's verandah in the shade. Soon Fido, the little dog, still restless, and reveals the book, which lies title jumps off Pulcheria's lap
upward.
Deronda*.'

'Oh', says Constantius, 'you have been finishing Daniel Then follows a conversation vhich it will be more
last

convenient to present in another form. THEODORA. Yes, Pulcheria has been reading aloud the
ters to

chap-

me. They

are wonderfully beautiful.

249

APPENDIX
CCNSTANTIUS
beautiful.
I

(after a

am

sure

hesitation). Yes, they are very read well, Pulcheria, to give tLe fine yea

moment's

passages their full value. THEODORA. She reads well

when

she chooses, but

am

sorry to

say that in some of the fine passages of this last book she took quite a false tone. I couldn't have read them aloud myself; I should have

broken down. But Pulcheria would you really believe it ? when she couldn't go on it was not for tears, but for the contrary. CONSTANTIUS. For smiles ? Did you really find it comical ? One of my objections to Daniel Deronda is the absence of those delightfully humorous passages which enlivened the author's former works.
PULCHERIA. Oh, I think there are some places as amusing as anything in Adam Bede or The Mill on the Floss : for instance where, at
the
his.
last,

Deronda wipes Gwendolen's

I

tears

and Gwendolen wipes

I

CONSTANTIUS. Yes,

know what you mean.

can understand
;

that situation presenting a slightly ridiculous image current of the story don't swiftly carry you past.

that

is,

if the

PULCHERIA.

What do you mean by

the current of the story

;

never read a story with less current. It is not a river it is a series of lakes. I once read of a group of little uneven ponds resembling,
floor
a bird's-eye view, a looking-glass which had fallen upon the and broken, and was lying in fragments. That is what Daniel Deronda would look like, on a bird's-eye view. THEODORA. Pulcheria found that comparison in a French novel.

from

She

is always reading French novels. CONSTANTIUS. Ah, there are some very good ones. PULCHERIA (perversely). I don't know; I think these are some

very poor ones. CONSTANTIUS. The comparison is not bad, at any rate. I know what you mean by Daniel Deronda lacking current. It has almost as
little as

Romola.
is

PULCHERIA. Oh, Romola

literary tortoise.

unpardonably slow

it is

a kind of

afraid

CONSTANTIUS. Yes, I know what you mean by you are not friendly to our great novelist.
likes

that,

but

am

THEODORA. She
writers.

Balzac and George Sand and other impure

250

DANIEL DERONDA
CONSTANTIUS. Well,
PULCHERIA.

My

I must say I understand that. favourite novelist is "Tiackeray, and

am

ex-

tremely fond of Miss Austen. CONSTANTIUS. I understand thac too. comes and Pride and Prejudice.
PULCHERIA. No,
I

You

read over The

New-

don't read them over

now

think

them over.

I have been making visits for a long time past to a series of friends, and I have spent the last six months in reading Daniel Deronda aloud.

Fortune would have

as the

it

that I should always arrive

by

the

same
;

train
I
;

new number.

am accounted a frivolous, idle creature

am
so

not a disciple in the

I

new

school of embroidery, like Theodora

was immediately pushed into a chair and the book thrust into my hand, that I might lift up my voice and make peace between all the impatiences that were snatching at it. So I may claim at least that I have read every word of the work. I never skipped. THEODORA. I should hop^ not, indeed CONSTANTIUS. And do you mean that you really didn't enjoy it ? PULCHERIA. I found it protracted, pretentious, pedantic.
!

CONSTANTIUS.
tieth

see

can understand

that.
!

THEODORA. Oh, you understand too much

time you have used that formula.

This

is

the twen-

CONSTANTIUS.
understand
stand
;

What

will
!

you have

You know

must

try to

it's

my *rade

THEODORA. is what

He means
I call

he writes reviews.
!

Trying not to under;

that trade
I

CONSTANTIUS. Say then

has never

take

it

the
I

wrong way

that
;

is

why

it

madt

my

fortune.

But

do

try to understand

it is

my

-my

(He pauses). THEODORA. I know what you want to

say.
?

Your

strong side.

And what is his weak THEODORA. He writes novels.

PULCHERIA.

side

CONSTANTIUS.
It's

have written
the most.
talk as if you
!

one.

You

can't call that a side.

little facet, at

PULCHERIA.
read
it

You

were a diamond.
it

should like to

not aloud

CONSTANTIUS.
dora,

You

can't read

softly

enough.
?

But you, Theo;

you

didn't find our

I

book too
251

THEODORA.

should have liked

it

'protracted' to continue indefinitely

to

APPENDIX
kcef coming out always;
life.

to be

one of the regular things of

!

To think that Daniel PULCHBRIA. Oh, come here, little dog short-nosed darling, little when be Deronda might you, perpetual ten or pine than more can't last at the most years
!

Daniel Deronda becomes part of one's book THEODORA. I don't hesitate to say that I life ; one lives in it, or alongsidt of it. in this one for the last eight months. It is such a have been
like

living

it is so vast, so muchcomplete world George Eliot builds up It has such a firm earta and such an ethereal sky. You embracing can turn into it and lose yourself in it. PULCHBRIA. Oh, easily, and die of cold and starvation THEODORA. I have been very near to poor Gwendolen and very
; ! !

near to that sweet Mirah.

And
I

the dear

little

Meyricks

also

know them
book.

intimately well.

PULCHERIA.

The Meyricks,

in the grant you, a-e the best thing

THEODORA. They are a delicious family; I wish they lived in Boston. I consider Herr Klesmer almost Shakespearean, and his wife is almost as good. I have been near .0 poor, prand Mordecai
PULCHERIA. Oh,
reflect,

my dear

not too near

THEODORA. And as for Deronda consumed with a hopeless passion for him. ible man in the literature of fiction.

himself I

freely confess that I He is the most irresist-

am

PULCHBRIA. He is not a man at all. THEODORA. I remember nothing more beautiful than the dehis childhood, and that picture of his lying on the scription of in the abbey cloister, a beautiful seraph-faced b^y, with a
grass

and asking his Scotch tutor lovely voice, reading history

Popes had so handsome.

why

the

many nephews.

He must

have been delightfully

!

PULCHERIA. Never,
nose,

my dear, with that nose

am sure

he had a

and I hold that the author has shown great pusillanimity in her treatment of it. She has quite shirked it. The picture you speak of but a picture is not a person. And why is he always is very pretty, his coat-collar, as if he wished to hang himself up ? The grasping author had an uncomfortable feeling that she must make him do
something
real,

something

visible

and

sensible,

and she

hit

upon

252

DANIEL DERONDA
that clumsy figure. I don't see what you mean by saying you have been njar those people that is just what r.ne is not. They produce
;

no illusion. They are described and analysed to death, but we don't see them nor hear them nor touch chem. Deronda clutches his coatbut collar, Mirah crosses her feet, Mordecai talks like the Bible that doesn't make real figures of them. They have no existence
;

outside of the author's study. THEODORA. If you mean that they are nobly imaginative I quite agree with you ; and if they say nothing to your own imagination
the fault
is

yours, not theirs.

PULCHBRIA. Pray don't say they are Shakespearean again. Shakespeare went to work another way.

CONSTANTIUS.
distinction to be

think

you

drawn.

are both in a measure right there is a There are in Daniel Deronda the figures
;

based upon observation and the figures based upon invention. This
distinction, I

know,

is r ather

rough one.

There are no figures in

any novel that are pure observation, and none that are pure invention. But either element may preponderate, and in those cases in wlrch invention has preponderated George Eliot seems to me to
have achieved
her so much.
at the best

but so

many

brilliant failures.
?

THEODORA. And
CONSTANTIUS.
discriminate.
I

are you turning severe

thought you admired

Speaking brutally, weakest of her books. It strikes

Middlemarch.
I

defy any one to admire her more, but one must I consider Daniel Deronda the

me as very sensibly inferior to have an immense opinion of Middlemarch. PULCHERIA. r lot having been obliged by circumstances to read
I

Middlemarc^ to other people,

it

didn't read
I

it

at

all.

couldn't read

to myself.
I

I tried,

but

broke down.

appreciated

Rosamond,

^ut

couldn't believe in Dorothea.

THEODORA (very gravely). So much the worse for you, Pulcheria. have enjoyed Daniel Deronda because I had enjoyed Middlemarch. Why should you throw Middlemarch up against her ? It seems to
I

me that if a book is fine from beginning to end.

CONSTANTIUS.
Eliot's

it is

fine.

have enjoyed Deronda deeply,

I assure you, so have I. I can read nothing of without George enjoyment. I even enjoy her poetry, though I don't of it. In whatever she writes I enjoy her intelliapprove

253

APPENDIX
has space and air like a fine landscape. The intellectual genc^ ; of Daniel Dercnda strikes me as very great, in e:.cess of brilliancy the author has done. In the first couple of numbers of the
it

anything

book this ravished me. I delighted in its deep, rich English tone, in which so ma^iy notes seemed melted together. PULCHERIA. The tone is not English, it is German. CONSTANTIUS. 1 understand that if Theodora will allow me to
to say so. Little by little I began notes than for others. I say it under
feel that I

cared
I

less

for certain
feel

my breath

began to
all

an

the Jewish occasional temptation to skip. Roughly speaking, burden of the story tended to weary me ; it is this part that produces the poor illusion which I agree with Pulcheria in finding. Gwendolen and Grandcourt are admirable Gwendolen is a masterpiece.

She

is

known,

felt

and presented, psychologically, altogether

in the

beside her husband a consummate grand manner. Beside her and and distfUed (for Grandcourt is refined of English brutality picture before all things brutal), Deronda, Mordecai and Mirah are hardly

more than shadows. They and

I
it

their fortunes are all improvisation.

dou't say anything against improvisation.

succeed.

When it succeeds i' has

With Geoige Eliot it must a surpassing charm. But one would expect of than less a little seems to me to succeed, but
her
story, story of Deronda's life, finds in George Sand. But one of sort the are tiling quite story, would be in George Sand. they are really not so good as they
talent.

The

his

mother's

Mirah's

hand. George Sand would have carried it off with a lighter THEODORA. Oh, Constantius, how can you compare George Eliot's novels to that woman's ? It is sunlight and moonshine.
PULCHBRIA.
I really

think the

two

writers are very *nuch alike.

They

philosophizing

are both very voluble, both addicted to moralizing a tout bout de champ, both inartistic.
I

and

CONSTANTIUS.

see
is

what you mean.

liquid.

But George

Eliot

is

solid,

and George Sand

liquefies
it is

as in the history

occasionally George Eliot of Deronda's birth, and in that of Mirah

When

not to so

clearness as the author crystalline a

of Consuelo and

Take Mirah's long narrative of her adventures, wnen she them to Mrs. Meyrick. It is arranged, it is artificial, ancien Sand manner. But George Sand would jeu, quite in the George have done it better, lae false tone would have remained, but it
Andrt.

unfolds

254

DANIEL DERONDA
would have been more persuasive. the fit would have been neater.
It

would have been

a fib but

THEODORA. I don't think fibbing neatly a merit, and I don't see what is to be gained by such comparisons. George Eliot is pure and As for the George Sand is impure how can you compare thorn
;

Jewish element in Deronda, I think it a very fine idea it's a noble subject. Wilkie Collins and Miss Lraddon would not have thought
;

of it, but that does not condemn it. It shows a large conception of what one may do in a novel. I heard you say, the other day, that
thit they had no general ideas. Here trivial a general idea, the idea interpreted by Deronda. I have never disliked the Jews as some people do ; I am not like Pulcheria, who
is

most novels were so

sees a Jew in

shrubbery.
I

every bush. I wish there were one I would cultivate have known too many clever and charming Jews
;

have

known none

that

were not

clever.

PULCHERIA. Clever, Hut not charming. CONSTANTIUS. I quite agree with you as to Deronda's going in for the Jews and turning out a Jew himself being a fine subject, and
this quite apart

from

revival be at all a possibility. If it be a possibility, so better so much the better for the subject, I mean. la bonne heure! PULCHERIA.

the fact of whether such a thing as a Je wish much the

CONSTANTIUS.

rather suspect

it is

not a possibility

that the

Jews in general take themselves much less seriously than that. They have other fish to fry. George Eliot takes them as a person outside ofJudaism aesthetically. I don't believe that is the way they take
themselves.

PULCHEP T \. They have the

selves so dirty.

less

excuse then for keeping them-

THEODORA. George Eliot must have known some delightful

Jews.

CONSTANTIUS. Very likely but I shouldn't wonder if the most delightful of them had smiled a trifle, here and there, over her book.
;

But
is

that

a noble one.

worthy

as Herr Klesmer would say. The subject idea of depicting a nature able to feel and to feel the sort of inspiration that takes possession of

makes nothing,

The

Deronda, of depicting it sympathetically, minutely and intimately such an idea has great elevation. Thereas something very fasti255

APPENDIX
Deronda takes upon himself. I don't quite r know what it means, I don't understand more than half o Mordecai's rhapsodies, and I don't perceive exactly what practical steps could be taken. Deronda coulu go about and talk with clever
natir g in the mission that

Jews

not an unpleasant life. PULCHERIA. All that seems to

me

so unreal that

when

at the

end

the author finds herself confronted with the necessity of making him start for the East by the train, and announces that Sir Hugo

and Lady Mallinger have given his wife 'a complete Eastern I descend to the ground with a ludicrous jump.
CONSTANTIUS. Unreal,
it

outfit',

if

you

please

that

is

no objection

to it;

greatly tickles

my

imagination.

Mordecai believing, without ground a young man on whom nature and society have centred all their to him and receive from his hands the precious gifts will come it vessel of his hopes. It is romantic, but it is not vulgar romance
;

I like extremely the idea of of belief, that if he only wait,

is

finely romantic.

own

feeling about

And there is something very fine in the author's Deronda. He is a very liberal creation. He is,
;

I thiiJc,

a failure

a brilliant failure

if he

had been a

success I should

The audio- meant to do tilings very call him a splendid creation. to make a faultless handsomely for him she meant apparently
;

human

being.

PULCHERIA. She

made
15

a dreadful prig.

CONSTANTIUS.
clever a

no blood in his body. His attitude at of a high-priest in a tableau viv int. THEODORA. Pulcheria likes the little gentlemen in fhe French novels who take good care of their attitudes, which are always the
PULCHERIA.
is

woman He

rather priggish, and one as George Eliot shouldn't see it.

He

wonders that so

has

moments

like that

same

attitude, the attitude

their vanity.

Deronda
that.

of 'conquest' of a conquest th?t tickles has a contour that cuts straight through the
of a
stuff that isn't

middle of all

He is made

dreamt of in

their

philosophy. PULCHERIA. Pulcheria likes very much a novel which she read three or four years ago, but which she has not forgotten. It was by

Ivan Turg&iiefF, and it was called On the Eve. Theodora has read and Constantius has it, I know, because she admires Turgenieff,
read
it, I

suppose, because he had read everything.

256

DANIEL DERONDA
I had no reason but that for my reading, it But Turgenieff is my man. PULCHERIA. You were just now praising George Eliot's general ideas. The tale of which I speak contains in the portrait of the hero

CONSTANTIUS. If
small.

would je

vecy much such a general idea as you find in the portrait of Deronda. Don't you remember the young Bulgarian student, Inssaroff, who gives himself the mission of rescuing his country from its subjection to the Turks ? Poor man, if he had foreseen the horrible summer of 1876 His character is the picture of a race-passion, of patriotic
!

hopes and dreams.

But what
is

a:

difference in the vividness

;

of the

two

figures.

Inssarofi

him, hear him, touch him. of hundred pages not eight volumes to do it. THEODORA. I don't remember Inssaroff at all, but I perfectly remembei the heroine, Helena. She is certainly most remarkable
;

man nc stands up on his feet we see And it has taken the author but a couple
;

but remarkable

as she

is,

should never dream of calling her

as

wonderful

as

Gwendolen.

CONSTANTIUS. Turgemcft is a magician, which I don't think I shorld call George Eliot. One is a poet, the other is a philosopher.

One
as it

of things.

cares ibr the aspect of things and the other cares for the reason George Eliot, in embarking with Deronda, took aboard,

were, a far heavier cargo than Turgenieff with his InssarofF.

She proposed, consciously, to strike more notes. PULCHERIA. Oh, consciously, yes
!

CONSTANTIUS. George Eliot wished to show the possible picturcsquencss the romance, as it were of a high moral tone. Deronda a' moralist with a rich is a moralist complexion.

THEODORA.
a

It is

a
a

most beautiful nature.

don't

know anywhere

more complete,

more deeply analysed

portrait of a great nature.

\Ve praLc novelists for wandering and creeping so into the small That is what we praise Balzac for when he corners of the mind all fours to crawl through Le Pere Goriot or Les gets down upon

But I must say 1 think it a finer thing to unlock with as firm a hand as George Eliot some of the greater chambers of human character. Deronda is in a manner ar ideal character, if you There will, but he seems to me triumphantly married to reality. can be finer are some admirable things said about him nothing than those pages of description of his moral temperament in the
Parents Pauvres.
;

257

APPENDIX
fourdi

book

his elevated

way of looking at things,

fear

his impartiality,

of their turning mere irresponsible indifference. I remember some of it verb'He was ceasing to care for knowledge he had no ambition ally for practice unless they could be gathered up into one current
his universal

sympathy, and at the fame time his

into

with

his

emotions/

PULCHERIA. Oh, there is plenty about his emotions. Everything about him is 'emotive*. That bad word occurs on every fifth page. THEODORA. I don't see that it is a bad word.
PULCHERIA.
It

may
I

be good German, but

all
;

it is

poor English.
So,

THEODORA. THEODORA. style was bad

It is

not German at

it is

Latin.

my

dear

PULCHERIA. As

is not English. say, then, it This is the first time I ever heard that

George

Eliot's

CONSTANTIUS.

It is

admirable

it

has the

most

delightful

and the

But it is occasionally intellectually comfortable suggestions a little too long-sleeved, as I may say. It is sometimes too loose a

most

fit

for the thought, a

little

baggy.

THEODORA. And the advice he gives Gwendolen, the thing' he human says to her, they are the very essence of wisdom, of warm

wisdom, knowing
guard,

life

and

feeling

it.

'Keep your

fear as a safe-

What

it may make consequences passionately present to you/ can be better than that ?

PULCHBRIA. Nothing, perhaps. But what can be drearier than a novel in which the function of the hero young, handsome and
brilliant
is

to give didactic advice, in a proverbial form, to the

young, beautiful

and

brilliant
is

heroine

CONSTANTIUS. That

not putting

it

quite fairly.

Tlie function

of Deronda is to make Gwendolen fall in love with him, to say nothing of falling in love himself with Mirah.
PULCHBRIA. Yes, the less said about that the better. All we know about Mirah is that she has delicate rings of hair, sits with her feet
crossed,

and talks like an article in a new magazine. CONSTANTIUS. Deronda's function of adviser to Gwendolen does
strike

not

me

if he

were

lovesick.

with

whom

He is not nearly so ridiculous as a very interesting si tuation that of a man a beautiful woman in trouble falls in love and yet whose
as so ridiculous.
It is

affections are so preoccupied that the

most he can do for her

in

258

DANIEL DERONDA
and sympathetically into her position, pity George Eliot always gives us something that is of human life and what and ironically characteristic strikingly of our fate than the sad crookedness essential of the more savours Poor Gwendolen's fall? these two young people cross-purposes of
return
ai
is

to enter kindly

her

talk to her.

ing in love with Deronda

is

part of her
it

own luckless

history, not

of his.

THEODORA. I do think he takes man had ever so little vanity.

PULCHERIA.
It is

to himself rather too

little.

No

as well as being very inconsistent, therefore, his buying back and sendand ill-mannered, extremely impertinent ing to her her necklace at Leubronn.

CONSTANTIUS. Oh, you must concede that; without it there would have been no story. A man writing of him, however, would him more peccable. As George Eliot lets certainly- have made
herself go, in that quarter, she

becomes

delightfully, almost touch-

It is like her making Romola go to housekeeping ingly, feminine. Melema's death ; like her making Dorothea Tito with Tessa, after Will Ladislaw. If Dorothea had married any one aftor her

m?rry

misadventure with Casaufcon, she would have married a trooper.

THEODORA. Perhaps some day Gwendolen will marry Rex.

PULCHERIA. Pray,

who

is

THEODORA.

Why,
dim

Pulcheria,

Rex how
?

gan you forget

PULCHERIA. Nay,

how

can

remember?
first

But

I recall

such a

name

in the
is

antiquity of the

or second book.

Yes, and

then he

pushed to the front again

at the last, just in

time not to

miss the falling of the curtain.

the audac'*y to

Gwendolen

marry any one we know CONSTANTIUS. I have been wanting to say

artificial

will certainly not have so little about.

that there seems to

me

to be f.vo very distinct elements in George Eliot

a spontaneous

one and an

what she is because it

There is what she is by inspiration and These two heads have been is expected of her.
one.

are much less noticevery perceptible in her recent writings ; they able in her early ones. THEODORA. You mean that she is too scientific ? So long as she remains the great literary genius that she is, how can she be too She is simply permeated with the highest culture of scientific ?

the age.

R*

259

APPENDIX
PU T.CHBRIA. She
people's eyes. sentence in her
a
talks too

much about

the 'dynamic quality'

of

When

book There can't be a worse limitation. of tact. want shows CONST ANTIUS. The 'dynamic quality' of Gwendolen's gknce has

she uses such a phrase as that in tLe first she is not a great literary genius, because she

made

the tour of the world.

It

the world's very low level of culture on all to a term perfectly familiar decently edupart to be agitated by

THEODORA.

shows

cated people. PULCHERIA.

don't pretend to be decently educated

pray

tell

me what it

means.

CONSTANTIUS (promptly). I think Pulcheria has hit it in speaking of a want of tact. In the manner of the book, throughout, there is The epigraphs in verse something that one may call a want of tact.
are a

a trifle more pre; they are sometimes, I think, the than tentious importunity of the moral rereally pregnant

want of tact
is

flections

want of tact theverydiffusenessisawantoftact. But it comes back to what I said just now about one's sense of the author
a
;
;

I began to notice it in writLig under a sort of external pressure. me as a person strikes ohe I don't think I had before, Felix Holt

who who

for general considerations, but certainly has naturally a taste an age and a circle which have compelled her has fallen

to give

upon them an exaggerated

attention.

She does not

strike

me

as

a sceptic ; her spontaneous naturally a critic, less still as naturally to feel it with admirable depth. is to observe life and to feel it part
like that, I should Contemplation, sympathy and faith something If she had fallen upon an scale. natural her have been would say, of faith, it seems to me age of enthusiastic assent to old articles

possible that she

would have had

more

perfect,

more
it

consistent

and graceful development than she has actually had. herself into such a current her genius being e^ual
criticism,
critics
life

If she liad cast

carried her to splendid distances. and to the critics she addresses her

might have But she has chosen to go into

work

I
*

mean
'

the

of the universe. Instead of feeling life

is

itself, it is

views upon
I

that she tries to feel

PULCHBRIA. She
glad!

the victim of a first-class education.

am

so

CONSTANTIUS. Thanks to her admirable

intellect she philoso-

260

DANIEL DERONDA
but meanwhile she has given a chill <x> her phizes very sufficiently ; near has come She spoiling an ?rtist. geniul. PULCHERIA. She has quite spoiled one. Or rather I shouldn't say I maintain that she is not that, because there was no artist to
spoil.
an. artist.

An artist could neverjiave put a story

artistic

together so

monthat

strously ill. She has no sense of form. THEODORA. Pray, what could be more

than the

way

Deronda's paternity

is

concealed

till

almost the end, and the way

his father
?

we
I

are

made

to suppose Sir

Hugo

is

PULCHERIA.

And 'Mirah

his Sister.

How

does that

fit

together

was as little made to suppose h was not a Jew as I cared when I found out he was. And his mother popping up through a trap-door and popping down again, at the last, in that scrambling fashion His mother is very ba*d. CONST^NTIUS. I think Deronda's mother is one of the unvivified she belongs to the cold half of the book. All the Jewish characters
!

part
it

is

at

bottom cold

that

is

my

only objection.

have enjoyed

because

my
It is

fancy often
it is

warms
empty

do^n's history
full

like the

cold things ; but beside Gwenhalf of the lunar disk beside the
it is

one.
it is

but

admirably studied, not embodied. One feels

his

imagined,

it is

understood,

this

between Deronda and

appealed to

mother;

strongly in just those scenes one feels that one has been

Deronda's reversion to

To make interest. more dramatic and profound, the author has given him a mother who on very arbitrary herself from this same faith and grounds, apparently, has separated
on
rather an artificial

ground of

his native faith

who

has been kept waiting in the wing, as it were, for many acts, to conic en and make her speech and say so. This moral situation

of hers
care to

we are invited retrospectively to

do
so.
I

appreciate.

But we hardly

PULCHERIA.
robe.

don t see
?

the princess, in spite of her flame-coloured

Why

should an actress and prima-domia care so

It

much about

religious matters

THEODORA.
PULCHERIA.

was not only

do, but
I

that

it

was the Jewish race she hated,

Jewish manners and looks. You,

I

my
I

am

not

dear, ojight to understand that. a Jewish actress of genius; I

am

not what Rachel was.

about.

If I

were

should have other things to think

261

corsiANTius.
PULCHERIA.
I

APPENDIX Think now a little about

who
got into a
flutter

don't care to think about her.

poor Gwendolen. She was a scjond-

rate English girl

about a lord.

THEODORA. I don't see that she is worse than if she were a first-rate American girl who should get into exactly the same
flutter.

PULCHERIA.

It

wouldn't be the same

flutter at all

it

wouldn't be

any flutter. She wouldn't be afraid of the lord, though she might be amused at him. THEODORA. I am sure I don't perceive whom Gwendolen was afraid of. She was afraid of her misdeed her broken promise after she had committed it, and through that fear she was afraid of
I can imagine nothing mor^ of his absolutely clammy selfishness. get PULCHERIA. She was not afraid of Deronda when, immediately after her marriage and without any but the mnst casual acquaintance

her husband.

Well she might be

vivid than the sense

we

with him, she begins to hover about him at the Mallingers' and to drop little confidences about her conjugal woes. That seems to me
very indelicate ask any woman. CONSTANTIUS. The very purpose of the author is to give us an idea of the sort of confidence that Deronda inspired its irresistible
;

potency. PULCHERIA.

of Gwendolen's depression, of her haunting sense of impending

trouble.

lay father-confessor horrid CONSTANTIUS. And to give us an idea also of the acuteness
(

THEODORA.

It

must be remembered
first,

that

Gwendolen was

in love

with Deronda from the

long before she

it.

knew
It is

it.

She didn't

know

it,

poor

girl,

but that was

PULCHERIA. That makes the matter worse.

to see her hovering to her.

very disagreeable
is

and

rustling about a

man who

indifferent

THEODORA. He was not

her necklace.

indifferent to her, since he sent her

back

PULCHERIA.

Of all the
little

delicate attention to a

charming

girl that I

ever heard of, that

CONSTANTIUS.

You

pecuniary transaction is the most felicitous. must remember that he had been en rapport

with her

at the gaming-table.

She had been playing in defiance of 262

DANIEL DERONDA
: be, continuing to observe her, had been n a measure*responsible for her loss. 'There w;>s a tacit consciousness of You may contest the possibility of tacit conthis .between them.

his observation,

and

sciousness going so far, but that is nbt a serkn;s objection. You may potnt out two or three weak spot* in detail ; the fact remains that

Gwendolen's whole history

is

and understood. known, the most intelligent thing in all George Eliot's writing, and that is saying much. It is so deep, so true, so complete, it holds such a wealth of psychological detail, it is more than masterly. THEODORA. I don't know where the perception of character has
inside out,
is felt

how

vividly tojd. thoroughly she

is

And

see

how

the girl

It is

sailed closer to the

wind.

portrait may be admirable, but it has one little don't care a straw for the original. Gwendolen is not an interesting girl, and when the author tries to invest her with a

^ULCHERIA.
4

The

fault.

You

has

deep tragic interest she loqs-so at the expense of consistency. She made her at the outset too light, too flimsy tragedy has no hold on such a girl.
;

TK2OPORA. You are hard to satisfy. You said this morning that Dorothea was toc\ heavy, nd now you find Gwendolen too light. George Eliot wished to give us the perfect counterpart of Dorothea. Having made one portrait she was worthy to make the other. PULCHERIA. She has committed the fatal error of making Gwendolen vulgarly,
pettily, drily selfish.

She was personally

selfish.

THEODORA.
PULCHERIA.
;

I
I

out an She was odious hope young woman, and one can't care what becomes of her. When her marriage turned out ill she would have become still more hard and positive to make hei soft and appealing is very bad logic. The second Gwenlike that

know nothing more personal than selfishness. am selfish, but I don't go about with my chin
I

at lease

don't.

dolen doesn't belong* to the first. CONSTANTIUS. She is perhaps at the

first

little

childish for the

weight of interest she has to carry, a little too much after the pattern of the unconscientious young ladies of Miss Yonge and Miss Sewell.

THEODORA.
ness, its

Sin,ce

when
is

is

it

forbidden to

make

one's heroine

young ? Gwendolen
presumption,
sense
silliness, its

a perfect picture of youthfulness

its

preoccupation with
absoluteness.*

itself, its
is

eagervanity and

its

of

its

own

But she

extremely

263

APPENDIX
intelligent and clever, and therefore tragedy can have a hold upon her. Her conscience doesn't make the tragedy ; that is an eld story and, I think, a secondary form of suffering. It is the tragedy that

makes her conscience, which

nothing more powerful than
conscience
is

chei. reacts

the

way

in

upon it and I can think of which the growth of her

;

traced,

nothing more touching than the picture of its

is

helpless maturity.

CONSTANTIUS. That

admirably typical very stuff that human life is made discovery by each of us that we are
fifth

Gwendolen's history is perfectly true. are as most things with George Eliot it is the
:

of.

What
sat

is it

made of but

the

at the best

but a rather ridiculous

wheel to the coach,

after

we have

cracking our whip and

think believing that we are at least the coachman in person ? we are the main hoop to the barrel, and we turn out to be but a very
incidental splinter in one of the staves. The universe foicing itself with a slow, inexorable pressure into a narrow, complacent, and yet
after all

We

extremely sensitive mind, and making

that
is

it

ache with the pain

it

becomes comsupreme perception of the fact- that the world is whirring past her is in the disappointment not of a base but of an exalted passion. The very chance to embrace what the author is so fond of calling a 'larger life' seems refused to her. She is punished for being narrow, and she is not allowed a chance to expand. Her finding Deronda pre-engaged to go to the East and stir up the race-feeling of the Jews strikes me as a wonderfully happy The irony of the situation, for poor Gwendolen, is invention. almost grotesque, and it makes one wonder whether the whole heavy structure of the Jewish question in the story was not built up by the author for the express purpose of giving its proper force to
of the process
Gwendolen's
story.

And

pletely characteristic in that her

this particular stroke.

intentions are ^xtremely complex. and each detail is for the mass. PULCHERIA. She is very fond of deaths by drowning. Maggie Tulliver and her brother are drowned, Tito Melema is drowned, Mr. Grandcourt is drowned. It is extremely unlikely thaf Grandcourt should not have known how to swim. CONSTANTIUS. He did, of course, but he had a cramp. It served
Eliot's

THEODORA. George
is

The mass

for each detail

him

right.

can't imagine a

more consummate
264

representation of

DANIEL DERQNDA
the

most

detestable kind

thinks* j**

low

to articulate.

individual are so happily and the individual with prieties

:

of Englishman the Englishman who An<J in Grandcourt the type and the met the type with its sense of the pro-

h* aUsence of all sense. He is the of the a human of expression ot 'the simple idea dryness, apotheosis
perpendicular.

.THEODORA. Mr. Casaubon, in Middlemarch, *vas very dry too and yet what a genius it is that can give us two disagreeable husbands
;

who

are so utterly different

PULCHERIA.

You must countnhe two

;

r Rosamond Vincy and Gwendolen* know the author didn't mean it it proves how common a type the her. They are both worldly, pincte, selfish young woman seemed to
5

disagreeable wives too They are very much alike.

get over that. something in that, perhaps, I think, at the that rate, secondary people here are less delightful than in any Middlemarch ; there is notning so good as Mary Garth and her
disagreeable
;

you cant

CONSTAHTIUS. There

is

father,

in love

little old lady who steals sugar, or the parson who is with Mary, or the country relatives of old Mr. Featherstpne. Rex Gascolghe is not so good as Fred Vincy. THEODORA. Mr. Gascoigne is admirable, and Mrs. Davilow is

or the

must not forget that you think Herr Klesmer Shakespearean'. Wouldn't Wagnerian' be high enough

charming. PULCHERIA.
*

And

y</u

'

praise

CONSTANTIUS. Yes, one must make an exception with regard to the Klesmers ard the Meyriqjcs. They are delightful, and as for Klesmer himself, and Hans Meyrick, Theodora may maintain her
epithet.

are born of the Shakespearean characters are characters that that make the drama seem characters of observation verf>ou: multitudinous, like life. Klesmer comes in with a sort of Shake-

tone, spearean 'value', as a painter would say, and so, mind. a from does Hans Meyrick. They spring much-peopled THEODORA. I think Gwendolen's confrontation with Klesmer one
in a different

of the

finest things in the

It is like

book.
everything in Ge6rge Eliot
;

CONSTANTIUS.
of.

it

will bear

thinking PUtCHERiA. All that is very fine, but you jcannot persuade

me that

265

APPENDIX
is not a very ponHe*ous and ill-made? story. It has nothing that one can call a subject. and a solemn, sapient silly young girl man lie/ That is the djnnte fall love with ! who doesn't in young

Deronda

of eight monthly volumes. exquisite art of Thar <^eray

I call it

*.nd

very fLt. Is that what the Miss Austen and Hawthorne has
there

come

to

would
I

as
is

soon read a German novel outright.

something higher than form
afraid Pulcheria
is
is

THEODORA. The*e
CONSTANTIUS.
PULCHERIA.

spirit.

cm

sadly aesthetic.

She had

better confine herself to

I shall

Merimee.

certainly to-dry read ov^r

dear,

La Double

Mfyrise.

THEODORA. Oh,
there
is

my

y pnsez-vous*
is little

CONSTANTIUS. Yes, I think there

a vast
;

art in Deronda,
art

but

think

amount of life.

In

life

without

you can find your

is

account

but art without

life is

poor

affa ; r.

The book

full

of

the world.

THEODORA.
art

It is full

of beauty and knowledge, and that

is

quite

enough

for

me.

PULCHERIA

(to the little dog).

are not convinced, are

we
a

are silenced, darling, but (The pug begins to bark.) No,

We

we we

are not even silenced.

It's

young woman with two ^a^

!

THEODORA. Oh, it must be our muslins CONSTANTIUS (rising to go). I see what you mean
1876.

266

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