CHAPTER V.
ADAM BEDE.
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THE diffidence from which George Eliot suffered
happily took the form of prompting to conscientious
workmanship. As Lewes said, she was "ambitious"
as well as "shy." That she aimed at so high a mark
showed a consciousness of great powers, but not an
equal confidence that they could be brought to bear
upon the task. A genuine success could only be
reached by a strenuous application on a well-considered
scheme. The little discouragement of
Blackwood's inadequate appreciation of Janet's
Repentance only induced her to take a larger canvas,
which would give room for a fuller manifestation of
her genius. She finished Janet's Repentance on 9th
October 1857, and began Adam Bede on 22nd October.
She completed the first volume by the following March;
wrote the second during a following tour in Germany;
and after returning to England at the beginning of
September, completed the third volume on 16th
November. It was published in the beginning of
1858. When recording these dates in her journal
she gives also an interesting account of the genesis
of the book. It was suggested by an anecdote which
she had heard from an aunt, the Methodist preacher,
Mrs. Samuel Evans. Mrs. Evans, she says, was a
"very small, black-eyed woman, who in the days of
her strength could not rest without exhorting and
remonstrating in season and out of season." She had
become much gentler when, at the age of about sixty, she
visited Griff and made the acquaintance of her niece.
She was very "loving and kind"; and the niece, then
under twenty, given to strict reticence about her
"inward life," was encouraged to confide in her aunt.
This, as already quoted, shows the affectionate relationship
which sprang up. They only met twice afterwards,
and Mrs. Evans died in 1849. The anecdote which
Mrs. Evans had told was of a girl who was hanged
for child-murder. Mrs. Evans had passed a night in
prayer with her and induced her to make a confession.
She afterwards accompanied the criminal in the cart
to the place of execution. George Eliot had been
deeply affected by this account, and while writing
her first story spoke of it to Lewes. He observed,
with his keen eye to business, that the prison scene
would make an effective incident in a story. The
novel was accordingly worked out with a view to this
climax. Mrs. Evans was transformed into Dinah
Morris, though materially altered in the process. The
child-murder implies the seducer, Arthur Donnithorne,
and the true lover, Adam Bede. For Adam Bede,
she took her father as in some degree the model,
though again carefully avoiding direct portraiture.
These points established, the general situation is
defined, and the development follows simply and
naturally. Lewes was responsible for two important
points. He was convinced by the first three chapters
that Dinah Morris would be the centre of interest for
readers. She had there been introduced as preaching
and receiving an offer of marriage from Seth Bede.
He inferred that she should be the "principal figure
at the last"; and the remainder of the story was
written with this end "constantly in view." Lewes's
other remark was that Adam Bede was becoming too
passive. He ought to be brought into more direct
collision with Arthur Donnithorne. George Eliot was
impressed by this suggestion; and one night, while
listening to "William Tell" at the Munich Opera, the
fight between the two lovers came upon her as a
"necessity." An account of the way in which a work
of genius has been created is always interesting; and
in this case, I think that it helps to explain some
important characteristics of the story.
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Adam Bede, whatever else may be said of it, placed
the author in the first rank of the "Victorian"
novelists. Some of us can still look back with fondness
to the middle of the last century, and recall the
period which seems--to our old-fashioned tastes at
least--to have been a flowering time of genius. Within
a few years on either side of 1850 many great lights
of literature arose or culminated. By David Copperfield,
which appeared in 1850, Dickens' popular empire,
one may say, was finally established; and if his best
work was done, his admirers steadily increased in
number. Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Pendennis, Esmond,
and The Newcomes came out between 1847 and 1855.
Miss Brontë's short and most brilliant apparition lasted
from 1847 to 1853. The versatile Bulwer was opening
a new and popular vein by The Caxtons and My
Novel in 1850 and 1853, preaching sound domestic
morality and omitting the True and the Beautiful.
All Charles Kingsley's really powerful works of fiction--Alton
Locke, Yeast, Hypatia, and Westward Ho!--appeared
between 1850 and 1855. Mrs. Gaskell had first
made a mark by Mary Barton in 1848, which was
followed by Cranford and North and South, the last in
1855. Trollope, after some failures, was beginning to
set forth the humours of Barsetshire by the Warden in
1855; and Charles Reade became a popular novelist
by Christie Johnstone in 1853, and Never too late to Mend
in 1856. In 1855, I may add, Mr. George Meredith's
Shaving of Shagpat was praised and reviewed by George
Eliot; but the author had long to wait for a general
recognition of his genius. Anyhow, an ample and
attractive feast was provided for those who had the
good fortune to be at the novel-reading age in the
fifties. The future historian of literature may settle
to his own satisfaction what was the permanent value
of the different stars in this constellation, and what
was the relation which George Eliot was to bear to
her competitors. He will no doubt analyse the spirit
of the age and explain how the novelists, more or less
unconsciously, reflected the dominant ideas which were
agitating the social organism. I am content to say
that a retrospect, coloured perhaps by some personal
illusion, seems to suggest a very comfortable state of
things. People, we are told, were absurdly optimistic
in those days; they had not learned that the universe
was out of joint, and were too respectable to look into
the dark and nasty sides of human life. The generation
which had been in its ardent youth during the
Reform of 1832 believed in progress and expected the
millennium rather too confidently. It liked plain
common-sense. Scott's romanticism and Byron's
sentimentalism represented obsolete phases of feeling,
and suggested only burlesque or ridicule. The
novelists were occupied in constructing a most elaborate
panorama of the manners and customs of their
own times with a minuteness and psychological
analysis not known to their predecessors. Their work
is, of course, an implicit "criticism of life." Thackeray's
special bugbear, snobbism, represents the effete aristocratic
prejudices out of which the world was slowly
struggling. Dickens applied fiction to assail the
abuses, which were a legacy from the old order--debtors'
prisons, and workhouses, and Yorkshire schools,
and the "circumlocution office." The "social question"
was being treated by Kingsley and Mrs. Glaskell.
But little was said which had any direct bearing upon
those religious or philosophical problems in which
George Eliot was especially interested. The novelists
when they approach such topics speak with sincere
respect of religious belief, though they obviously hold
also that true Christianity is something very different
from the creeds which are nominally accepted by the
churches. They regard such matters as generally
outside of their sphere, and simply accept the view of
the sensible layman with a prejudice against bigotry
and priestcraft. Here was one special province
for the new writer. George Eliot alone came to
fiction from philosophy. She was, as we have sufficiently
seen, familiar with the speculations of her day,
and had accepted the most advanced rationalist
opinions. But, on the other hand, she had a strong
religious sentiment which asserted itself the more as
she abandoned the dogmatic system. She puts this
emphatically in her letters at the time. She had, as
she tells M. D'Albert in 1859, abandoned the old spirit
of "antagonism" which had possessed her ten years
before. She now sympathises with "any faith in which
human sorrow and human longing for purity have
expressed themselves." She thinks, too, that Christianity
is the highest expression of the religious
sentiment that has yet found its place in the history
of mankind, and has the "profoundest interest in the
inward life of sincere Christians in all ages." She has
ceased, she says a little later, to have any sympathy
with freethinkers as a class, and holds that a "spiritual
blight comes with no faith." It is characteristic that
Buckle, who was startling the world at this time,
inspires her with "personal dislike," as "an irreligious
conceited man." It is therefore intelligible that she
should take a Methodist preacher for her centre of
interest. Methodism, she says, in the opening of
Adam Bede, was a "rudimentary culture" for the
simple peasantry; it "linked their thoughts with the
past," and "suffused their souls with the sense of a
pitying, loving, infinite presence, sweet as summer to
the homeless needy." Methodism, to some of her
readers, may mean "low-pitched gables up dingy
streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical
jargon--elements which are regarded as an
exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable
quarters." Certainly that would be true of readers of
Dickens. Stiggins and Chadband and their like were
wonderful caricatures, but imply a very summary
"analysis." The difference is significant. George
Eliot had gone much further than Dickens in explicit
rejection of the popular religion, considered as a system
of doctrine; but she found her ideal heroine in one
of its typical representatives.
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If, therefore, we accept the author's view, Adam
Bede is to derive its main interest from Dinah Morris.
Her sermon at the opening is to strike the keynote;
and we are to share the impression which it makes
upon Seth Bede, that "she's too good and holy for
any man, let alone me." This view of the book did
not strike everybody. The Saturday Review contained
a "laudatory" but "characteristic criticism."
"Dinah," she exclaims, "is not mentioned!" It is
"characteristic," no doubt, because in those days the
Saturday Review, though it had a most brilliant staff
of writers, was not distinguished by "enthusiasm,"
and would be least of all inclined to expend enthusiasm
upon a Methodist preacher. There is, we know, a
class of beings which has a natural antipathy to holy
water. Perhaps it is due to some such weakness that
I must confess to a certain sympathy with that unlucky
reviewer. Undoubtedly, Dinah Morris is not
only an elaborate, but a most skilful and loving
portrait of a beautiful soul. Reading the book carefully,
one must admit that she performs her part
admirably. She shows unerring delicacy and nobility
of feeling; and her sermons are expositions of that
side of her creed which clearly ought to appeal to
one's better nature. I fully admit, therefore, that I
ought to accept Seth Bede's estimate, and to fall in
love with this undeniable saint, if indeed my reverence
ought not to be too strong to admit of love. My
failure to do my duty in this respect may possibly
be shared by some fellow sinners. It is true, I think,
though perhaps lamentable, that perfect characters in
fiction have a tendency to be insipid. One wants
some little touch of frailty to convince one that they
are really human. It was strange, said George Eliot,
that people should fancy that she had "copied"
Dinah Morris's sermons and prayers, when they were
really "written with hot tears as they surged up in
her own mind." They have no doubt the earnestness
of genuine feeling. And yet to me that accounts for
one characteristic without quite justifying it. Mrs.
Samuel Evans had, one may assume, the defects
incident to her position. She must have been provincial
and ignorant, and the beautiful soul shone
through an imperfect medium. George Eliot, in
modifying or, as she thought, entirely changing the
"individuality," has deprived her heroine of the
colouring which would make her fully harmonise with
her surroundings. She is a little too good not only
for Seth but for this world, and I have a difficulty
in obeying the summons to fall upon my knees and
worship.
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People of happier constitution must accept this as
a confession. I only wish to explain why I feel myself
to be rather at cross purposes with my author,
and to admit that the criticism which I am about
to make may, if not erroneous, be based upon partly
insufficient reasons. That criticism is briefly that
the development of the story does not quite follow
the lines required by the reader's sympathies. The
main situation naturally reminds one of Scott's Heart
of Midlothian. Both novels turn upon an accusation of
child-murder, and Jeanie and Effie Deans correspond
roughly to Dinah Morris and Hetty Sorrel. To "compare"
the two, except by admitting that they are both
masterpieces in different styles, would be absurd:
both in their strength and their weakness they are
obviously to be judged by different standards; and
I only speak of Scott because his story suggests one
significant difference. The interest of the Heart of
Midlothian culminates in the trial scene where Jeanie
Deans has to make the choice between telling the
fatal truth or saving her sister by perjury. Scott
treats it magnificently in his own way by broad
masculine touches. One advantage is naturally
offered by the facts from which he started. Jeanie
Deans is exposed to a tremendous ordeal, which brings
out most effectively her character, and involves a true
tragical catastrophe. The scene in the prison, which,
as George Eliot tells us, was to be the climax of Adam
Bede, is curiously wanting in impressiveness of this
nature. Poor helpless little Hester Sorrel has been
convicted of murder, and expects to be hanged next
day. Dinah Morris goes to her in order to persuade
her to make a confession. From the point of
view of the persons concerned that was no doubt
a very desirable result. But it does not in the
least matter to the story, as Hetty's guilt has been
already conclusively proved. Neither is it a result
which requires any great ability for its achievement.
Hetty is anything but a criminal who would make
a point of "dying game." She is a most pathetic
figure, bewildered, deserted, and in immediate prospect
of the gallows; and is quite unable to make
any opposition to the woman who comes to her with
the first message of love from outside her prison.
To have failed to extract a confession from her would
have shown a singular want of capacity in her spiritual
guide. One would have expected that a humdrum
gaol chaplain, or a rough revivalist with threats of
hell-fire, could equally have accomplished that end.
Dinah Morris undoubtedly does her duty with admirable
tact and tenderness, and shows herself to be--what
we know her to be--a woman with a beautiful
soul. The result, however, is that the real interest
of the scene is with the pathetic criminal, and not
with the admirable female confessor. The story of
Hetty's wanderings in search of her seducer is told
with inimitable force and pathos; and we are not
surprised to learn that it was written continuously
under the influence of strong feeling. Hetty moves
us to the core. Dinah Morris, on the other hand,
instead of forming the real centre of interest, is a most
charming person, who looks in occasionally, and acts
as an edifying and eloquent chorus to comment upon
the behaviour of the people in whom we are really
interested. The last book, therefore, comes upon us,
if we take this view, as superfluous and rather unpleasant.
Hetty is despatched to Botany Bay, and we
are suddenly invited to be interested in a new love
affair, when we discover that the saint is not above
marrying, and that Adam Bede, who up to this time
has been passionately in love with Hetty, can be sensible
enough to discover the merits of her antithesis.
The tragedy is put aside; all the unpleasant results
are swept away as carefully as possible; and everything
is made to end happily in the good old fashion.
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I cannot, therefore, accept Adam Bede as centred
upon this religious motive. On that assumption it
ought to have been called Dinah Morris; and the
other characters should have been interesting as
transmitting or resisting the grace which inspires
her. But there all hostile criticism may end. I
can be unfeignedly grateful to the beautiful Methodist
for introducing me to a delightful circle, who were
evoked from George Eliot's early memories. If they
won't stay in the background, I am all the better
pleased. Adam Beds himself is, one is forced to
guess, a closer portrait of her father than she
intended. We are told that an old friend of Robert
Evans had the story read to him, and sat up for
hours to listen to descriptions which he recognized,
exclaiming at intervals: 'That's Robert, that's
Robert to the life!' No doubt an ordinary reader
exaggerates superficial resemblances, and is blind to
more refined differences which seem all-important to
the writer. That the father was one model is undisputed;
and one remark is suggested by the portrait,
namely, that in spite of her learning and her philosophy,
George Eliot is always pre-eminently feminine.
The Scenes of Clerical Life suggested, as we have seen,
a dispute as to the sex of the author. Now that we
know, we can, of course, see that others ought to
have showed Dickens's penetration. There is always,
I fancy, a difference which should be perceptible to
acute critics. Men drawn by women, even by the
ablest, are never quite of the masculine gender. They
may, indeed, be admirable portraits, but still portraits
drawn from outside. In each of the clerical stories,
the official heroes are men--Amos Barton, Gilfil, and
Tryan. But in each of them the women--Milly and
Caterina and Janet--are drawn with a more intimate
sympathy; and though a man might have been author
of the heroes, no man, as we may safely say now,
could have described the heroines. Adam Bede is
a most admirable portrait; but we can, I think, see
clearly enough that he always corresponds to the view
which an intelligent daughter takes of a respected
father. That is, perhaps, the way in which one
would like to have one's portrait taken; but one is
sensible that the likeness though correct is not quite
exhaustive. One characteristic point is the kind of
resentment with which the true woman contemplates
a man unduly attracted by female beauty. Adam
Bede's passion for Hetty produces an exposition of
the theory: "How pretty the little puss looks in that
odd dress! It would be the easiest folly in the world
to fall in love with her," with her "sweet baby-like
roundness," "the delicate dark rings of hair," and
the "great dark eyes with their long eyelashes."
"What a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride
like Hetty!" "The dear, young, round, soft, flexible
thing!" A man is conscious of being a great "physiognomist"
under such circumstances, and thinks that
"Nature has written out his bride's character for him
in those exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin,
in those eyelids delicate as petals, in those long
lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the dark
liquid depths of those wonderful eyes!" That was
the way in which Adam Bede reasoned, poor man!
George Eliot knows better, and suspects "that there
is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals;
or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of
the fair one's grandmother, which is on the whole less
important to us." In fact, as she truly remarks,
"it is generally the feminine eye that first detects the
moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of
beauty," and Mrs. Poyser is not to be hoodwinked.
"She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on
the wall, and spread its tail when the sun shone if all
the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing
seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when
we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit." Mrs.
Poyser, no doubt, is as right as usual, and the remark,
indeed, had been made, like most others, by satirists
of both sexes; but it is specially congenial to the
feminine mind. Miss Brontë, for example, looks on
with similar indignation at the dulness of man when
"Dr. John" in Villette is attracted by the frivolous
Ginevra Fanshawe. George Eliot had an eye for the
"kitten-like" beauty of brainless young women, and
her power over the male sex is described as a sort of
natural perversity. "Every man who is not a monster,
a mathematician, or a mad philosopher," she says in
Amos Barton, "is the slave of some woman or other,"
and we must confess the undeniable truth. Strong
men do fall in love with pretty fools. Perhaps we are
not as much ashamed of it as we should be. Hetty is
made so thoroughly charming in her way that we
sympathise with Adam Bede's love for her, and are
quite aware that many precedents might be adduced
for him since the time of Samson. George Eliot thinks
it necessary to apologize, by showing eloquently that
feminine beauty may affect a strong man like music;
and to remonstrate in rather superfluous irony with
the sensible people who despise such weaknesses. No
apology is necessary. Rather we see the point of
Lewes's suggestion. We can perceive that the real
danger was that Adam might be too "passive."
His love for Hetty, we might fancy, is to be passed over
as if it were a painful admission of imperfect sanity.
Luckily the fight with Arthur Donnithorne, when the
flirtation begins to excite suspicion, reassures us. It
shows that Adam can really be as great a fool as he
ought to be; and afterwards when the whole story
comes to light, his agony is as genuine and forcible
as we can desire. Adam, in fact, is powerfully
drawn from the striking scene, when he sits up at
night to finish the coffin left by his drunken father
and hears the mysterious stroke of the willow wand
which intimates that the father is being drowned,
down to the last interview with Hetty after her conviction.
The character reacts, as we feel that it ought
to react, under the given circumstances. If his later
discovery of Dinah's merits does not strike us quite in
the same way, we must sorrowfully admit that it is
possible. Men do become commonplace and reasonable
as they grow older.
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Meanwhile, though I have spoken of Adam Bede
from the point of view suggested by the author's
theory, it is neither Dinah Morris nor Adam himself
who really made the fortune of the book. Adam Bede
for most of us means pre-eminently Mrs. Poyser. Her
dairy is really the centre of the whole microcosm.
We are first introduced to it as the background which
makes the "kitten-like" beauty of Hester Sorrel irresistible
to young Captain Donnithorne. But Mrs.
Poyser is the presiding genius. She represents the
very spirit of the place; and her influence is the
secret of the harmony of the little world of squire and
parson and parish clerk and schoolmaster and blacksmith
and carpenter and shepherd and carter. Each
of these types is admirably sketched in turn, but the
pivot of the whole is the farm in which Mrs. Poyser
displays her conversational powers. The little rustic
world is painted in colours heightened by affection.
There is, it may be, a little more of Goldsmith's
beautifying touch than of Crabbe's uncompromising
realism. But it is marvellously life-like, and Mrs.
Poyser's delightful shrewdness seems to guarantee the
fidelity of the portraits. She had no humbug about her,
and one naturally takes it for granted that they must
be as she sees them. It is, indeed, needless to insist
upon her excellence; for Mrs. Poyser became at once
one of the immortals. She was quoted by Charles
Buxton--as George Eliot was pleased to hear--in the
House of Commons before she had been for three
months before the public: "It wants to be hatched
over again, and hatched different." One is glad to
know that Mrs. Poyser's wit was quite original. "I
have no stock of proverbs in my memory," said George
Eliot; "and there is not one thing put into Mrs.
Poyser's mouth that is not fresh from my own mint."
She had written the dialogue with obvious enjoyment,
and appreciated its merits herself. "You're mighty
fond o' Craig," Mrs. Poyser had said "in confidence to
her husband"; "but for my part, I think he 's welly
like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose to hear
him crow." She said it to other people, it seems, for
Mr. Irwine quotes the remark to his mother as one of
the "capital things" he has heard her say. "That is
an Aesop's fable in a sentence," he adds; and he
remarks that Mrs. Poyser is "quite original in her
talk, one of the untaught wits that help to stock a
country with proverbs." It is not often that an author
ventures to praise his own speeches; and that George
Eliot did so shows how much Mrs. Poyser's special
wit was one ingredient of her own intellectual tendency.
In her later novels one sometimes regrets that Mrs.
Poyser did not come to the fore to temper the graver
moods. Mrs. Poyser may take rank with Sam Weller
as one of the irresistible humorists. She has a special
gift for attracting us by the most unscrupulous feats of
sophistry. Poor Molly breaks a jug, and has been just
driven to tears by Mrs. Poyser's eloquence for her
unparalleled clumsiness, when Mrs. Poyser repeats the
feat, to the amusement of her husband. "It 's all very
fine to look on and grin," she retorts; "but there's
times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o'
your hand like a bird.... What is to be broke will be
broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my life for want
o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery
all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding." She
quenches an outburst of laughter soon after by summoning
up a sudden vision of her being laid up in
bed, and the children dying, and the murrain coming
among the cattle, and everything going to rack and
ruin--a prophetic picture which, though logically irrelevant,
is most effective rhetorically. Another brilliant
specimen of the same figure of speech occurs when
she is roused to speak her mind to the squire, who has
hinted at giving the farm to a new tenant. "It's a
pity," she says, "but what Mr. Thurle should take it,
and see if he likes to live in a house wi' all the
plagues o' Egypt in't--wi' the cellar full o' water, and
frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens--and
the floors-rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every
bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i'
bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy
they hanna eat the children long ago." It is superfluous
to quote fragments of Mrs. Poyser's familiar
eloquence--spoilt by necessary curtailment--except to
suggest the problem, Why is she so charming? The
answer is, I suppose, in a general way to be found in
the delicious contrast between Mrs. Poyser's intense
shrewdness and strong affections, with the quick
temper and the vivacity with which she snatches at the
most preposterous flights of fancy which will bewilder
and discomfit her antagonists for the moment. A
logician might amuse himself by analysing her ingenious
arguments. Meanwhile her love for her
husband and the irrepressible Totty--one of the portraits
which, without being sentimental, shows George
Eliot's most feminine appreciation of the charms of
childhood--and even her kindness to Hetty, though
she does see through that young woman's weaknesses,
entitles her to the regard felt for her by all readers.
That regard, indeed, is so well established that I am
only using fragments to recall, not to justify the
universal sentiment. I will only note in passing
that a full criticism of Adam Bede would have to touch
upon many other subordinate characters. Bartle
Massey, for example, the schoolmaster, is in his
way, an admirable pendant to Mrs. Poyser. Adam
Bede's mother is equally life-like, and the passage in
which she speaks of her wedding was judiciously
noticed by Charles Reads as a masterly touch of
human nature. Seth Bede, I confess, bores me.
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If I cannot say, therefore, that Adam Bede impresses
me as the author intended it to impress her readers, I
think that by a kind of felicitous accident it came to
be a masterpiece in a rather different sense. The
memory of Mrs. Samuel Evans brought up a vivid
picture of the little world in which she moved; though
her world, as represented by Adam Bede and Mrs.
Poyser themselves, looked upon Methodism as rather
an intruding and questionable force than as the spiritual
leaven which was to redeem it. George Eliot, meaning
to set forth the beauty of Dinah Morris's character,
incidentally comes to draw a more attractive picture
of the sinners whom she ought to have awakened.
Dinah gives up preaching when the Society decides
against the practice, whereas her prototype, it is said,
joined another sect rather than be silenced. Dinah
settles down by her domestic hearth, and Adam remains
a sound Churchman. He admits in his old age,
we are told, that the excellent vicar, Mr. Irwine,
"didn't go into deep speritial experience," and only
preached short moral sermons. Apparently Adam
thought none the worse of him. He quotes Mrs.
Poyser's dictum that Mr. "Irwine was like a good
meal o' victual; you were the better for him without
thinking on it; and Mr. Ryde [his successor] was like
a dose of physic; he gripped you and worreted you,
and after all he left you much the same." We get the
impression that Mrs. Poyser and Adam took the most
judicious view; and that the rustic congregation, with
its "ruddy faces and bright waistcoats," which reposed
in the great square pews and listened to Mr. Irwine's
moral without attaching any particular meaning to
theological formula, did very well without stronger
spiritual stimulants. "The world," in Sir W. Besant's
formula, "went very well then." Adam Bede, like
Waverley, might have had for a second title 'Tis
Sixty Years Since; and the verdict seems to be that
the simple society of that period was sound at the
core; wholesome and kindly, if not very exciting.
The pathos to be found in commonplace lives was the
main topic of the Scenes of Clerical Life; and now,
looking back with fondness to her early days, and
through them to the early days of her parents, George
Eliot finds a beauty not in the individuals alone, but
in the whole quiet humdrum order of existence of the
rustic population. Everybody is treated with a kindly
touch. Even the seducer, Arthur Donnithorne, instead
of being the wicked baronet who generally appears on
such occasions, is a thoroughly amiable, if rather weak,
young man, who is not aware of the sufferings of his
victim till too late, and then does all he can to obviate
unpleasant consequences. "At present," she says,
writing a little later, my "mind works with most freedom
and the keenest sense of poetry in my remotest
past, and there are many strata to be worked through
before I can begin to use, artistically, any material I
may gather in the present." The world of Adam Bede
clearly is the world of her first years, harmonized by
loving memories and informed, no doubt, with more
beauty than it actually possessed. Her philosophy,
indeed, reminds her that the range of ideas of her
characters was singularly narrow and hopelessly obsolete.
She has no sympathy with the romanticism
which leads to reactionary fancies. She is perfectly
well aware of the darker sides of the past, though she
does not insist upon them. She has herself breathed
a larger atmosphere. Only her affectionate recognition
of the merits of the old world makes one feel how
much conservatism really underlay her acceptance, in
the purely intellectual sphere, of radical opinions.
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The Scenes of Clerical Life had made a more decided
success with critics than with the public. Adam Bede
had an equal and triumphant success with both classes.
The original agreement with Blackwood had been for
£800 for four years' copyright. Seven editions and
16,000 copies were printed during the first year (1859).
Blackwood acknowledged the success generously by
another check for £800, and gave back the copyright.
He offered at the same time £2000 for 4000 copies of
her next novel, and proposed to pay at the same rate
for subsequent editions. The pecuniary success put
her at once and permanently beyond the reach of
any pecuniary pressure. Meanwhile she had received
hearty greetings on all sides. In April she notes that
she has left off recording the "pleasant letters and
words" that had come to her: "the success has been
so triumphantly beyond anything I had dreamed of,
that it would be tiresome to put down particulars."
"Shall I ever," she asks herself, "write another book
as true as Adam Bede?" The "weight of the future
presses on me and makes itself felt even more than
the deep satisfaction of the past and present." Old
friends had been delighted. One of them, Mme.
Bodichon, had discovered the authorship, though she
had only inferred it from extracts in the reviews.
Her friends the Brays were not so perspicacious, and
were "overwhelmed with surprise" when in June she
revealed the secret to them. She reopened her acquaintance
with M. D'Albert by announcing to him
that she had "turned out" to be, like him, "an
artist," though in words, not with the pencil. Mr.
Herbert Spencer wrote an "enthusiastic" letter, and
declared that he felt the better for reading the book.
Mrs. Carlyle felt herself in "charity with the whole
human race" after the same experience, though her
husband apparently could not be persuaded to try
whether his views of the race could be softened by
the same application. Letters from Froude and John
Brown of Rab and his Friends called forth grateful
acknowledgments. Fellow-novelists were equally warm.
Dickens made her personal acquaintance, and begged
for a novel in Household Words. Charles Reade declared
that "Adam Bede was the finest thing since
Shakespeare." Mrs. Gaskell said how "earnestly, fully,
and humbly" she admired both Adam Bede and its
precursors. "I never read anything so complete and
beautiful in fiction in my life before." Bulwer, with
less expansiveness, pronounced the book to be "worthy
of great admiration," and congratulated Blackwood
upon his discovery. He thought, it seems, from a
later note, that the defects of the book were the use
of dialect and the marriage of Adam Bede. "I would
have my teeth drawn," says George Eliot, "rather
than give up either." One comic incident occurred
amidst this general chorus of praise. The originals of
some of the descriptions in the novel had been guessed
by people familiar with the neighbourhood; and in
searching for an author, they had guessed at a Mr.
Liggins, who dwelt in that region. A Warwickshire
friend, writing to the real author, asked her whether
she had read the books written under the name of
George Eliot, and told her the secret of the Liggins
authorship. Mr. Liggins, he added, got no profit out
of Adam Bede, and gave it freely to Blackwood. The
incident was not unparalleled. A young lady, shortly
after this time, made a false claim to one of Trollope's
stories, then appearing anonymously in a magazine.
The claim being taken seriously, she had not the
heart to disavow it; and her father soon afterwards
called upon the proprietor to inquire indignantly why
his daughter had been allowed to write gratuitously.
It does not appear whether Mr. Liggins accepted the
authorship or only refrained from a direct disavowal.
The claim seems to have caused rather more vexation
than was necessary; but the main result was that the
secret soon became known. It had been revealed to
Blackwood in the previous year (Feb. 1858), soon after
the publication of the Clerical Scenes.
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