George Meredith with His Daughter and Grandchildren—From a Photograph Taken Shortly Before His Death[ToList]
Meredith's life was that of a scholar; it contained few exciting episodes. He was of Welsh and Irish stock. At an early age he was sent to Germany, where he remained at a Moravian school until he was fifteen. He then returned to England to study law, but he never practiced it. For a number of years he was a regular contributor to the London Morning Post, and in 1866 he acted as correspondent during the Austro-Italian war. For many years he served as chief reader and literary adviser to Chapman & Hall, the English publishers, and in that capacity he showed an insight that led to the development of many authors whose first work was crude and unpromising. Meredith himself began his literary career with The Shaving of Shagpat, a series of Oriental tales the central idea of which is the overcoming of established evil. Shagpat stands for any evil or superstition, and Shibli Bagarag, the hero, is the reformer. This book, with its wealth of metaphor, opened the door for Meredith, but he did not score a success until he wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, two years later. Despite its faults, this is his greatest book, and it is the one which readers should begin with. It is overloaded with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's Scrip," which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, the father of Richard. The boy is trained to cut women out of his life, and just when the father's theory seems to have succeeded Richard meets and falls in love with Lucy, and the whole towering structure founded on the "Pilgrim's Scrip" falls into ruin. The scene in which Richard and Lucy meet is one of the great scenes in English fiction, in which Meredith's passionate love of nature serves to bring out the natural love of the two young people. Earth was all greenness in the eyes of these two lovers, and nature served only to deepen the love that they saw in each other's gaze and felt with thrilling force in each other's kisses. But even stronger that this scene is that last terrible chapter, in which Richard returns to his home and refuses to stay with Lucy and her child. Stevenson declared that this parting scene was the strongest bit of English since Shakespeare. It certainly reaches great heights of exaltation, and in its simplicity it reveals what miracles Meredith could work when he allowed his creative imagination full play.
Another story which is usually bracketed with this is Diana of the Crossways. This great novel was founded on a real incident in English history of Meredith's time. Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline Norton, one of the three beautiful and brilliant granddaughters of Sheridan, author of The School for Scandal. Her marriage was disastrous, and her husband accused her of infidelity with Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time. His divorce suit caused a great scandal, but it resulted in her vindication. Then later she was accused of betraying to a writer on the Times the secret that Sir Robert Peel had decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret had been confided to her by Sidney Herbert, one of her admirers. Meredith's novel, in which the results of Diana's treachery were brought out, resulted in a public inquiry into the charge against Caroline Norton, which found that she was innocent. But the fact that Meredith used such an incident as the climax of his story gave Diana of the Crossways an enormous vogue, and did much to bring the novelist into public favor.
Flint Cottage, Boxhill, the Home of George Meredith—His Writing was done in a Small Swiss Chalet in the Garden[ToList]
No more brilliant woman than Diana has ever been drawn by Meredith, but despite the art of her creator it is impossible for the reader to imagine her selling for money a great party secret which had been whispered to her by the man she loved. She was too keen a woman to plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of this secret, for the defense is cut away by her admission that she was promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that her extravagances had loaded her with debts.
Space is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of Meredith's other novels that are fine works of art. These are Rhoda Fleming, Sandra Belloni, Evan Harrington and The Egoist. Each is a masterpiece in its way; each is full of human passion, yet tinged with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith himself called "honorable fiction, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood." The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual nature, "a soul born active, wind-beaten, but ascending."
A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his later years was not happy. The Amazing Marriage and Lord Ormont and His Aminta are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you can enlarge your acquaintance with Meredith to your own exceeding profit, for he is one of the great masters of fiction, who used the novel merely to preach his doctrine of the richness and fulness of human life if we would but see it with his eyes.