Gradually came that mental eclaircissement which produced the editor, the magazinist, the translator of Strauss. The friendship with the Brays more than any one thing marks the external cause of this awakening: but it was latent, this response to the world of thought and of scholarship, and certain to be called out sooner or later. Our chief interest in it is due to the query how much it ministered to her coming career as creative author of fiction.
George Eliot at this period looked perilously like a Blue Stocking. The range and variety of her reading and the severely intellectual nature of her pursuits justify the assertion. Was this well for the novelist?
The reply might be a paradox: yes and no. This learning imparted to Eliot's works a breadth of vision that is tonic and wins the respect of the judicious. It helps her to escape from that bane of the woman novelist—excessive sentiment without intellectual orientation. But, on the other hand, there are times when she appears to be writing a polemic, not a novel: when the tone becomes didactic, the movement heavy—when the work seems self-conscious and over-intellectualized. Nor can it be denied that this tendency grew on Eliot, to the injury of her latest work. There is a simple kind of exhortation in the "Clerical Scenes," but it disappears in the earliest novels, only to reappear in stories like "Daniel Deronda." Any and all culture that comes to a large, original nature (and such was Eliot's) should be for the good of the literary product: learning in the narrower, more technical sense, is perhaps likely to do harm. Here and there there is a reminder of the critic-reviewer in her fiction.
George Eliot's intellectual development during her last years widened her work and strengthened her comprehensive grasp of life. She gained in interpretation thereby. There will, however, always be those who hold that it would have been better for her reputation had she written nothing after "Middlemarch," or even after "Felix Holt." Those who object on principle to her agnosticism, would also add that the negative nature of her philosophy, her lack of what is called definite religious convictions, had its share in injuring materially her maturest fiction. The vitality or charm of a novel, however, is not necessarily impaired because the author holds such views. It is more pertinent to take the books as they are, in chronologic order, to point out so far as possible their particular merits.
And first, the "Scenes from Clerical Life." It is interesting to the student of this novelist that her writing of fiction was suggested to her by Lewes, and that she tried her hand at a tale when she was not far from forty years old. The question will intrude: would a genuine fiction-maker need to be thus prodded by a friend, and refrain from any independent attempt up to a period so late? Yet it will not do to answer glibly in the negative. Too many examples of late beginning and fine fiction as a consequence are furnished by English literature to make denial safe. We have seen Defoe and Richardson and a number of later novelists breaking the rules—if any such exist. No one can now read the "Clerical Scenes" without discovering in them qualities of head and heart which, when allowed an enlarged canvas and backed by a sure technique, could be counted on to make worthy fiction. The quiet village life glows softly under the sympathetic touch of a true painter.
A recent reading of this first book showed more clearly than ever the unequalness of merit in the three stories, their strong didactic bent, and the charmingly faithful observation which for the present-day reader is their greatest attraction. The first and simplest, "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," is by far the best. The poorest is the second, "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," which has touches of conventional melodrama in a framework reminiscent of earlier fictionists like Disraeli. "Janet's Repentance," with its fine central character of the unhappy wedded wife, is strong, sincere, appealing; and much of the local color admirable. But—perhaps because there is more attempt at story-telling, more plot—the narrative falls below the beautiful, quiet chronicle of the days of Amos: an exquisite portrayal of an average man who yet stands for humanity's best. The tale is significant as a prelude to Eliot's coming work, containing, in the seed, those qualities which were to make her noteworthy. Perusing the volume to-day, we can hardly say that it appears an epoch-making production in fiction, the declaration of a new talent in modern literature. But much has happened in fiction during the half century since 1857, and we are not in a position to judge the feeling of those who then began to follow the fortunes of the Reverend Amos.
But it is not difficult for the twentieth century reader, even if blase, to understand that "Adam Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused a furore of admiration: it still holds general attention, and many whose opinion is worth having, regard it with respect, affection, even enthusiasm.
The broader canvas was exactly what the novelist needed to show her power of characterization, her ability to build up her picture by countless little touches guided by the most unflinching faith in detail and given vibrancy by the sympathy which in all George Eliot's fiction is like the air you breathe. Then, too, as an appeal to the general, there is more of story interest, although neither here nor in any story to follow, does plot come first with a writer whose chief interest is always character, and its development. The autobiographic note deepens and gives at once verity and intensity to the novel; here, as in "The Mill on the Floss" which was to follow the next year, Eliot first gave free play to that emotional seizure of her own past to which reference has been made. The homely material of the first novel was but part of its strength. Readers who had been offered the flash-romantic fiction of Disraeli and Bulwer, turned with refreshment to the placid annals of a village where, none the less, the human heart in its follies and frailties and nobilities, is laid bare. The skill with which the leisurely moving story rises to its vivid moments of climactic interest—the duel in the wood, Hetty's flight, the death of Adam's father—is marked and points plainly to the advance, through study and practice, of the novelist since the "Clerical Scenes"; constructive excellencies do not come by instinct. "Adam Bede" is preeminently a book of belief, written not so much in ink as in red blood, and in that psychic fluid that means the author's spiritual nature. She herself declared, "I love it very much," and it reveals the fact on every page. Aside from its indubitable worth as a picture of English middle-class country life in an earlier nineteenth century than we know—the easy-going days before electricity—it has its highest claim to our regard as a reading in life, not conveyed by word of mouth didactically, but carried in scene and character. The author's tenderness over Hetty, without even sentimentalizing her as, for example, Dumas sentimentalizes his Camille, suggests the mood of the whole narrative: a large-minded, large-hearted comprehension of humankind, an insistence on spiritual tests, yet with the will to tell the truth and present impartially the darkest shadows. It is because George Eliot's people are compounded with beautiful naturalness of good and bad—not hopelessly bad with Hetty, nor hopelessly good with Adam—that we understand them and love them. Here is an element of her effectiveness. Even her Dinah walks with her feet firmly planted upon the earth, though her mystic vision may be skyward.
With "Adam Bede" she came into her own. The "Clerical Scenes" had won critical plaudits: Dickens, in 1857 long settled in his seat of public idolatry, wrote the unknown author a letter of appreciation, so warm-hearted, so generous, that it is hard to resist the pleasure of quoting it: it is interesting to remark that in despite the masculine pen-name, he attributed the work to a woman. But the public had not responded. With "Adam Bede" this was changed; the book gained speedy popularity, the author even meeting with that mixed compliment, a bogus claimant to its authorship. And so, greatly encouraged, and stimulated to do her best, she produced "The Mill on the Floss," a novel, which, if not her finest, will always be placed high on her list of representative fiction.
This time the story as such was stronger, there was more substance and variety because of the greater number of characters and their freer interplay upon each other. Most important of all, when we look beyond the immediate reception by the public to its more permanent position, the work is decidedly more thoroughgoing in its psychology: it goes to the very core of personality, where the earlier book was in some instances satisfied with sketch-work. In "Adam Bede" the freshness comes from the treatment rather than the theme. The framework, a seduction story, is old enough—old as human nature and pre-literary story-telling. But in "The Mill on the Floss" we have the history of two intertwined lives, contrasted types from within the confines of family life, bound by kin-love yet separated by temperament. It is the deepest, truest of tragedy and we see that just this particular study of humanity had not been accomplished so exhaustively before in all the annals of fiction. As it happened, everything conspired to make the author at her best when she was writing this novel: as her letters show, her health was, for her, good: we have noted the stimulus derived from the reception of "Adam Bede"—which was as wine to her soul. Then—a fact which should never be forgotten—the tale is carried through logically and expresses, with neither paltering nor evasion, George Eliot's sense of life's tragedy. In the other book, on the contrary, a touch of the fictitious was introduced by Lewes; Dinah and Adam were united to make at the end a mitigation of the painfulness of Hetty's downfall. Lewes may have been right in looking to the contemporary audience, but never again did Eliot yield to that form of the literary lie, the pleasant ending. She certainly did not in "The Mill on the Floss": an element of its strength is its truth. The book, broadly considered, moves slow, with dramatic accelerando at cumulative moments; it is the kind of narrative where this method is allowable without artistic sin. Another great excellence is the superb insight into the nature of childhood, boy and girl; if Maggie is drawn with the more penetrating sympathy, Tom is finely observed: if the author never rebukes his limitations, she states them and, as it were, lifts hands to heaven to cry like a Greek chorus: "See these mortals love yet clash! Behold, how havoc comes! Eheu! this mortal case!"