“‘For, after all, Mrs. Arabin, what are the things of this world?—dust beneath our feet, ashes between our teeth, grass cut for the oven, vanity, vexation, and nothing more!’—well pleased with which variety of Christian metaphors, Mrs. Proudie walked on, still muttering, however, something about worms and grubs, by which she intended to signify her own species and the Dumbello and Grantly sects of it in particular.”
George Eliot’s zealots,—Dinah Morris, Savonarola, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda, are not ridiculed, except for some sarcastic repartee put into the mouths of Mrs. Poyser and Esther Lyon. Nor is the pseudo-scholar Casaubon, though he is described as having a soul that “went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying,” and on a certain occasion, as slipping “again into the library, to chew a cud of erudite mistake about Cush and Mizraim.”
Of all fanatics, those who are obsessed by an educational theory are perhaps the most dangerous, as they impose their systems on flexible youth, the result being often an orchard of lamentably bent twigs. Two exponents of opposite divisions of this type are Gradgrind, who aimed at the elimination of the imagination, and Feverel, who proposed to circumvent the element of original sin in human composition, by the policy of watchful waiting and absolute dictation. Both come to grief through the failure of facts to support their philosophies; but Dickens in his optimism makes Gradgrind a wiser man through being a sadder, while Meredith in his realism keeps Feverel blandly unconscious and untaught by a lesson that would have pierced any heart protected by a less impervious pericardium.
All the materials that go into the warp and woof of human nature are thus seen to be so commingled and interwoven that even the degree of separation necessary for examination is almost impossible. And when this dissection is after a fashion accomplished, it is the less useful, in that the same strand is discovered to change its color and texture from one section to another. Deception is here a vice and there a virtue. Folly is here amusing and there horrifying. Egoism is here absorbent and there encroaching. There are sentimental epicures and unsentimental epicures and ascetic sentimentalists. There are vulgar snobs and refined snobs and a vulgarity that is not snobbish. All of these are criticizably absurd at times, and yet the same things may at others be admirable or pathetic or tragic. Frequently the sublime and the ridiculous advance on the one step that separates them, and merge their diverse identities.
A peculiarly good illustration of the qualified nature of human traits, in view of which we are wise to discard nouns in favor of adjectives for identifying purposes, is furnished by Trollope’s Lady Carbury. She is hypocritical in her wire-pulling intrigues, but not a hypocrite, for her pretenses are not utterly hollow; her sincerity is about on the average level, and her industry much above it. She is sentimentally foolish in her maternal devotion to a son who has no possible claim on toleration, much less on a patient and sacrificing indulgence, but not a fool, for her cleverness is indisputable. She is as tyrannic to her daughter as lenient to her son, but not a selfish egoist, for she refuses to take advantage of Mr. Broune’s offer of marriage, especially tempting to her harassed soul, on the altruistic grounds that she and her family would be more of a burden than a comfort to Mr. Broune. She is not a vulgar snob, but her respect for aristocratic connections is not always marked by refinement of method in her pursuit of them. Much of all this is unconsciously betrayed in the series of three letters to editors and critics, bespeaking their good offices for her new book, Criminal Queens. The epistles are tactfully adjusted to their respective recipients. To Mr. Broune, of The Morning Breakfast Table, she is intimately confiding and begs frankly for a lift, while pointing out the attractive features of her volume:[402]
“The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had to twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from Shakespeare: what a wench she was! I could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass over so piquant a character. * * * Marie Antoinette I have not quite acquitted. It would be uninteresting,—perhaps untrue. I have accused her lovingly, and have kissed when I have scourged. I trust the British public will not be angry because I do not whitewash Caroline, especially as I go along with them altogether in abusing her husband.”
To Mr. Booker, of The Literary Chronicle, she is gently menacing, reminding him that she has engaged to review his New Tale of a Tub for The Morning Breakfast Table;[403]
“Indeed, I am about it now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you wish to have specially said as to your view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely do.”
To Mr. Alf, of The Evening Pulpit, of whom she has reason to be afraid, her candor assumes a more impersonal and business-like air. She alludes to a recent caustic criticism in the Pulpit of some poor poetic wretch who well deserved it:
“I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who contrive by toadying and underground influences to get their volumes placed on every drawing-room table. * * * Is it not singular how some men contrive to obtain the reputation of popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of their country worthy of note? It is accomplished by unflagging assiduity in the system of puffing. To puff and to get one’s self puffed have become different branches of a new profession. Alas, me! I wish I might find a class open in which lessons could be taken by such a poor tyro as myself.”