This is recognized also by Lytton, who quotes “an anonymous writer of 1722:”[363]
“Deceit is the strong but subtile chain which runs through all the members of a society, and links them together; trick or be tricked, is the alternative; ’tis the way of the world, and without it intercourse would drop.”
Trollope subscribes with qualification, by having the archdeacon say, on the death of Mrs. Proudie,—[364]
“The proverb of De Mortuis is founded on humbug. Humbug out of doors is necessary.”
At the extreme opposite from the hypocrites, shrewd, knowing, wise at least in their own conceit, stand the incompetent, victims of folly; satirized not for ignorance but for bland unconsciousness of it, usually accompanied by a hallucination of efficiency. As the hypocrites shade off into villains, to be rebuked without humor, such as Jasper Losely, Randal Leslie, Bill Sykes, Sedgett, so the fools merge into the artless, to be smiled at without rebuke, as Colonel Digby and Colonel Newcome, Frank Hazeldean, the Vardens, Tom Pinch, Captain Cuttle, and “poor, excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and a toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one.”
It is Dickens again who contributes the most data to this study, and particularly to the genus, Silly Dame. Here his amusement over mere fatuous complacency becomes warmed into scorn when that stupidity affects the home she has in charge, and lowers into a failure the very thing that it is most important to raise into success,—such success not being automatic. Mrs. Nickleby, Mrs. Wilfer, Mrs. Finching, like Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Palmer, and Susan Ferrier’s Lady Juliana Douglass, are comparatively harmless, and are indulged accordingly. But an incapacity that may be picturesque in easy circumstances deepens into a grave misdemeanor when joined to a small income. Mrs. Micawber, Mrs. Pocket, Mrs. Pardiggle, and especially Mrs. Jellyby are domestic pests, at whom we are more exasperated than amused.
Aside from Dickens, the only artist much interested in this stratum of human nature is the one who has given us Mrs. Tulliver and Mrs. Vincy and her daughter, but they are not real sources of trouble, except Rosamund, and her failure is more spiritual than material. Mrs. Tulliver, a plaintive, hopelessly literal soul, is distressed over her husband’s metaphoric speech about “a good wagoner with a mole on his face.” She resents feebly the dogmatizing of the majestic Mrs. Glegg, but would never go “to the length of quarreling with her any more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones.” Under another metaphor she is an amiable fish, which, “after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years, would go at it again today with undiluted alacrity.”[365]
Out of her saddening experience Rosamund did emerge somewhat wiser, but with none of the higher wisdom which constitutes character.
“She simply continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and also to frustrate him by stratagem.”[366]
The other section of this class most fully recruited is made up of the foolish young men. It might look as though in the novelist’s world masculine folly were a malady incident to youth, while on the other hand, the feminine sort appeared late. For it happens that Lydia and Kitty Bennet have no real successors. There are indeed plenty of Hetty Sorrels, Lucy Deanes, Rosa Mackenzies, Amelia Sedleys, Dahlia Flemings; but their innocence and pathos protect them from satire. And the merely vapid and vain school girl is apparently too worthless a figure to be given a place on Victorian pages. So also seems the man whose mental growth has not kept pace with the years. Mr. Micawber may be taken as the exception that proves the rule. Sir Lukin Dunstane likewise shows that one may reach man’s estate and flourish therein on a small allotment of intelligence. He makes his best record in a gossipy little conversation with his wife, to whom he is giving an account of the Dacier-Asper wedding. Emmy had commented on the eloquence of his report:[367]