In a later one he analyzes a dubious citizen:[359]
“But our banker was really a charitable man, and a benevolent man, and a sincere believer. How, then, was he a hypocrite? Simply because he professed to be far more charitable, more benevolent, and more pious than he really was. His reputation had now arrived to that degree of immaculate polish that the smallest breath, which would not have tarnished the character of another man, would have fixed an indelible stain upon his.”
The same might be said of another banker, the respectable Bulstrode, whom George Eliot presents with no satire and an almost pitiful sympathy.
The wealthy plebeian Avenel is embarrassed by the inopportune arrival of his rustic sister in the presence of his aristocratic guests. By a brilliant counter-stroke of a candid and courageous confession, he stems the tide and wins the day. But in private he is very severe with the poor culprit, and then admits to himself, “I’m a cursed humbug, * * * but the world is such a humbug!”[360]
The only Pecksniffian hypocrite outside of Dickens is the Reverend Brocklehurst, whom Jane Eyre describes as lecturing to the half starved and shivering girls at the school of which he was trustee, on the beauty of asceticism and the holiness of economy, while his wife and daughters sit in state on the platform, curled, bejewelled, opulent in plumes and velvet.
The cant and manœuvering of the Thackeray and Trollope hypocrites are necessary as first aid to the ambitious. By means of them Becky Sharp achieves a husband, Mrs. Mackenzie a son-in-law, Moffit and Crosbie a patrician father-in-law, and Lady Carbury a literary reputation. Mr. Slope and the Pateroffs fail but no less bear up beneath their unsuccess. Melmotte, another Merdle, succumbs, like him, forced to realize that deceit may strike one with a tragic rebound.
Jermyn and Grandcourt, the latter especially, indulge in deceit out of pure selfishness, but in neither of them does George Eliot consider hypocrisy a matter for even satirical mirth. In lighter vein she does indeed show up the poseur in low life. Mr. Dowlas, oracle of The Rainbow, laying down the law about ghosts, is too frightened by the apparition of Silas Marner to speak. Having recovered and feeling “that he had not been quite on a par with himself and the occasion,” he intrigues to get appointed as deputy constable, and consents to serve, after “duly rehearsing a small ceremony known in high ecclesiastical life as nolo episcopari.” Mr. Scales, discoursing largely on excommunication, is another caught in the Socratic trap by being asked for definition of the term. He is no less ready than Mr. Curdle, though more sententious:[361]
“Well, it’s a law term—speaking in a figurative sort of way—meaning that a Radical was no gentleman.”
It is George Eliot who sees the necessity of the mask that most are content simply to tear away or disfigure. Although she speaks through a worldly wise character, she sounds no note of dissent:[362]
“‘I’ll tell you what, Dan,’ said Sir Hugo, ‘a man who sets his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered impracticable fellow. There’s a bad style of humbug, but there is also a good style—one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible.’”