GEORGE MEREDITH (1828–1909)
Of the later Victorian novelists Meredith takes rank as the most noteworthy.
1. His Life. The known details of Meredith’s earlier life are still rather scanty, and he himself gives us little enlightenment. He was born at Portsmouth, and until he was sixteen he was educated in Germany. At first he studied law, but, rebelling against his legal studies, took to literature as a profession, contributing to magazines and newspapers. Like so many of the eager spirits of his day, he was deeply interested in the struggles of Italy and Germany to be free. For some considerable time he was reader to a London publishing house; then, as his own books slowly won their way, he was enabled to give more time to their composition. In 1867 he was appointed editor of The Fortnightly Review. He died at his home at Boxhill, Surrey.
2. His Poetry. During all his career as a novelist Meredith published much verse. Chillianwallah (1849), his first published work, contains much spirited verse; other works are Modern Love (1862), Ballads and Poems (1887), and Poems (1892). Like his novels, much of Meredith’s poetry is almost willfully obscure, as it undoubtedly is in Modern Love; but in the case of such poems as The Nuptials of Attila he is clear and vigorous. He loved nature and the open air, and in poems like the beautiful Love in the Valley such affection is brightly visible. Like Swinburne, he was always eager to champion the cause of the oppressed.
3. His Novels. Meredith’s first novel of importance is The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). Almost at one stride he attains to his full strength, for this novel is typical of much of his later work. In plot it is rather weak, and almost incredible toward the end. It deals with a young aristocrat educated on a system laboriously virtuous; but youthful nature breaks the bonds, and complications follow. Most of the characters are of the higher ranks of society, and they are subtly analyzed and elaborately featured. They move languidly across the story, speaking in a language as extraordinary, in its chiseled epigrammatic precision, as that of the creatures of Congreve or Oscar Wilde. The general style of the language is mannered in the extreme; it is a kind of elaborate literary confectionery—it almost seems a pity on the part of the hasty novel-reader to swallow it in rude mouthfuls. Nevertheless, behind this appearance of artificiality there ranges a mind both subtle and sure, an elfish, satiric spirit, and a passionate ideal of artistic perfection. Such a novel could hardly hope for a ready recognition; but its ultimate fame was assured.
The next novel was Evan Harrington (1860), which contains some details of Meredith’s own family life; then followed Emilia in England (1864), the name of which was afterward altered to Sandra Belloni, in which the scene is laid partly in Italy. In Rhoda Fleming (1865) Meredith tried to deal with plebeian folks, but with indifferent success. The heroines of his later novels—Meredith was always careful to make his female characters at least as important as his male ones—are aristocratic in rank and inclinations. Vittoria (1867) is a sequel to Sandra Belloni, and contains much spirited handling of the Italian insurrectionary movement. Then came The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1870), in which the scene is laid in England, and Beauchamp’s Career (1874), in which Meredith’s style is seen in its most exaggerated form. In The Egoist (1879), his next novel, Meredith may be said to reach the climax of his art. The style is fully matured, with much less surface glitter and more depth and solidity; the treatment of the characters is close, accurate, and amazingly detailed; and the Egoist himself, Sir Willoughby Patterne—Meredith hunted the egoist as remorselessly as Thackeray pursued the snob—is a triumph of comic artistry. The later novels are of less merit. The Tragic Comedians (1880) is chaotic in plot and over-developed in style; and the same faults may be urged against Diana of the Crossways (1885), though it contains many beautiful passages; One of our Conquerors (1890) is nearly impossible in plot and style, and The Amazing Marriage (1895) is not much better.
We add a short typical specimen of Meredith’s style. Observe the studied precision of phrase and epithet, the elaboration of detail, and the imaginative power.
She had the mouth that smiles in repose. The lips met full on the centre of the bow and thinned along to a lifting dimple; the eyelids also lifted slightly at the outer corners and seemed, like the lip into the limpid cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her features were playfellows of one another, none of them pretending to rigid correctness, nor the nose to the ordinary dignity of governess among merry girls, despite which the nose was of fair design, not acutely interrogative or inviting to gambols. Aspens imaged in water, waiting for the breeze, would offer a susceptible lover some suggestion of her face; a pure smooth-white face, tenderly flushed in the cheeks, where the gentle dints were faintly intermelting even during quietness. Her eyes were brown, set well between mild lids, often shadowed, not unwakeful. Her hair of lighter brown, swelling above her temples on the sweep to the knot, imposed the triangle of the fabulous wild woodland visage from brow to mouth and chin, evidently in agreement with her taste; and the triangle suited her; but her face was not significant of a tameless wildness or of weakness; her equable shut mouth threw its long curve to guard the small round chin from that effect; her eyes wavered only in humour, they were steady when thoughtfulness was awakened; and at such seasons the build of her winter-beechwood hair lost the touch of nymph-like and whimsical, and strangely, by mere outline, added to her appearance of studious concentration. Observe the hawk on stretched wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to the Mountain Echo, and Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be “a dainty rogue in porcelain.”
The Egoist