On this assertive side sentimentality is related to egoism. But the relation is difficult to express, for egoism is another complexity that baffles analysis. Self-respect and attention to one’s own affairs are basic and indispensable virtues; while conversely, altruism is often but egoism in disguise and of all things the most sentimental. We may conclude, however, that it is egoism pushed to its two extremes, vanity on the one side and selfishness on the other, that is the satirizible sort. It is to the vanity wing that sentimentality is more closely connected, as the assumption it makes is usually that of our own superiority in possession and attainment, our own sincerity of motive, and our own immunity from ordinary consequences. Such is the attitude of the sentimental egoists, of which Meredith gives us a full complement.
The Countess de Saldar is abused by the exposure of her schemes, but resolute:[392]
“Still to be sweet, still to smile and to amuse,—still to give her zealous attention to the business of the diplomatist’s Election, still to go through her church service devoutly, required heroism; she was equal to it, for she had remarkable courage; but it was hard to feel no longer at one with Providence.”
Wilfred Pole, by Wilming Weir in the moonlight, vows his love for Emilia:[393]
“Having said it, he was screwed up to feel it as nearly as possible, such virtue is there in uttered words.”
Edward Blancove is visited by the facile compunction that attacks Arthur Donnithorne and others of the kind:[394]
“He closed, as it were, a black volume, and opened a new and bright one. Young men easily fancy that they may do this, and that when the black volume is shut the tide is stopped. Saying ‘I was a fool,’ they believe they have put an end to the foolishness.”
Outside of Eliot and Meredith, the best examples of the youthful sentimental egoist are Thackeray’s George Osborne, and Trollope’s Crosbie. The latter argues himself into a state of innocence over his desertion of Lily Dale by soliloquizing that he did not deserve her, could not make her happy, and was bound to tell the truth, which, however painful, was always best.[395]
A word might be vouchsafed for this trait in low life, usually brushed lightly by the novelist. Dale of Allington is a great man in the market town, “laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who usually knew more about barley and oxen than he did.” Squire Cass, a person of some importance, “had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord.” Craig looks to Mrs. Poyser “like a cock as thinks the sun’s rose o’ purpose to hear him crow.”[396] And Robert Armstrong says of Master Gammon,—“There’s nothing to do, which is his busiest occupation, when he’s not interrupted at it.”
Then there are the unsentimental egoists, attached to the selfish and domineering wing of egoism. They are less amenable to satire, being less deceptive by nature, and more prone to tyranny and cruelty, thereby deserving rebuke without humor. This class is represented by Paul Dombey, Barnes Newcome, Tom Tulliver, and others from the author of the last. This is another favorite type with Eliot, the self-willed sharing honors with the self-indulgent. Grandcourt “meant to be master of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would have been capable of mastering another man.” Tito Melema “felt that Romola was a more unforgiving woman than he had imagined; her love was not that sweet, clinging instinct, stronger than all judgments, which, he began to see now, made the great charm of a wife.” Harold Transome, who “had a padded yoke ready for the neck of every man, woman, and child that depended on him,” makes the alarming discovery about Esther that a lightning “shot out of her now and then, which seemed the sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see this.” Meredith portrays this irresponsible selfishness in Roy Richmond, Lord Ormont, and Lord Fleetwood; and defines it in Sir Austin’s Pilgrim’s Scrip, which says that sentimentalists “are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done.”[397]