In her final novel, "Daniel Deronda," between which and "Middlemarch" there were six years, so that it was published when the author was nearly sixty years old, we have another large canvas upon which, in great detail and with admirable variety, is displayed a composition that does not aim at complete unity—or at any rate, does not accomplish it, for the motive is double: to present the Jew so that Judenhetze may be diminished: and to exhibit the spiritual evolution through a succession of emotional experiences of the girl Gwendolen. This phase of the story offers an instructive parallel with Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways." If the Jew theme had been made secondary artistically to the Gwendolen study, the novel would have secured a greater degree of constructive success; but there's the rub. Now it seems the main issue; again, Gwendolen holds the center of the stage. The result is a suspicion of patchwork; nor is this changed by the fact that both parts are brilliantly done—to which consideration may be added the well-known antipathy of many Gentile readers to any treatment of the Jew in fiction, if an explanation be sought of the relative slighting of a very noble book.
For it has virtues, many and large. Its spirit is broad, tolerant, wide and loving. In no previous Eliot fiction are there finer single effects: no one is likely to forget the scene in which Gwendolen and Harcourt come to a rupture; or the scene of Deronda's dismissal. And in the way of character portrayal, nothing is keener and truer than the heroine of this book, whose unawakened, seemingly light, nature is chastened and deepened as she slowly learns the meaning of life. The lesson is sound and salutary: it is set forth so vividly as to be immensely impressive. Mordecai, against the background necessary to show him, is sketched with splendid power. And the percentage of quotable sayings, sword-thrusts, many of them, into the vitals of life, is as high perhaps as in any other of the Novels, unless it be "Middlemarch." Nevertheless those who point to "Deronda" as illustrating the novelist's decadence—although they use too harsh a word—have some right on their side. For, viewed as story, it is not so successful as the books of the first half of George Eliot's career. It all depends whether a vital problem Novel is given preference over a Novel which does not obtrude message, if it have any at all. And if fiction be a fine art, it must be confessed that this latter sort is superior. But we have perfect liberty to admire the elevation, earnestness and skill en detail that denote such a work. Nay, we may go further and say that the woman who wrote it is greater than she who wrote "The Mill on the Floss."
With a backward glance now at the list, it may be said in summary that the earlier fiction constitutes George Eliot's most authoritative contribution to English novel-making, since the thinking about life so characteristic of her is kept within the bounds of good story-telling. And the compensation for this artistic loss in her later fiction is found in its wider intellectual outlook, its deeper sympathy, the more profound humanity of the message.
But what of her philosophy? She was not a pessimist, since the pessimist is one who despairs of human virtue and regards the world as paralyzing the will nobly to achieve. She was, rather, a meliorist who hoped for better things, though tardy to come; who believed, in her own pungent phrase, "in the slow contagion of good." Of human happiness she did in one of her latest moods despair: going so far in a dark moment as to declare that the only ideal left her was duty. In a way, she grew sadder as she grew older. By intellect she was a positivist who has given up any definite hope of personal immortality—save that which by a metaphor is applied to one's influence upon the life of the world here upon earth. And in her own career, by her unconventional union with Lewes, she made a questionable choice of action, though from the highest motives; a choice which I believe rasped her sensitive soul because of the way it was regarded by many whom she respected and whose good opinion she coveted. But she remained splendidly wholesome and inspiring in her fiction, because she clung to her faith in spiritual self-development, tested all life by the test of duty, felt the pathos and the preciousness of inconspicuous lives, and devoted herself through a most exceptional career to loving service for others. She was therefore not only a novelist of genius, but a profoundly good woman. She had an ample practical credo for living and will always be, for those who read with their mind and soul as well as their eyes, anything but a depressing writer. For them, on the contrary, she will be a tonic force, a seer using fiction as a means to an end—and that end the betterment of mankind.
CHAPTER XI
TROLLOPE AND OTHERS
Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has attained a position like that of the three great Victorians already considered, yet all of whom loomed large in their day, have met with unequal treatment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might well be added to the list. The men are mentioned in the order of their birth; yet it seems more natural to place Trollope last, not at all because he lived to 1882, while Kingsley died seven years earlier. Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems chronologically far before him as a novelist. In the same way, Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we now look back upon them, appear to be figures of another age; though the former lived to within a few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason that Disraeli impresses us as antiquated where Trollope looks thoroughly modern, is because the latter is nearest our own day in method, temper and aim. And this is the main reason why he has best survived the shocks of time and is seen to be the most significant figure of an able and interesting group. Before he is examined, something may be said of the others.
In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the remaining writers was secured in divisions of literature other than fiction; or derived from activities not literary at all. Thus Beaconsfield was Premier, Bulwer was noted as poet and dramatist, and eminent in diplomacy; Kingsley a leader in Church and State. They were men with many irons in the fire: naturally, it took some years to separate their literary importance pure and simple from the other accomplishments that swelled their fame. Reade stood somewhat more definitely for literature; and Trollope, although his living was gained for years as a public servant, set his all of reputation on the single throw of letters. He is Anthony Trollope, Novelist, or he is nothing.
I
Thinking of Disraeli as a maker of stories, one reads of his immense vogue about the middle of the last century and reflects sagely upon the change of literary fashions. The magic is gone for the reader now. Such claim as he can still make is most favorably estimated by "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," all published within four years, and constituting a trilogy of books in which the follies of polite society and the intimacies of politics are portrayed with fertility and facility. The earlier "Henrietta Temple" and "Venetia," however fervid in feeling and valuable for the delineation of contemporary character, are not so characteristic. Nor are the novels of his last years, "Lothair" and "Endymion," in any way better than those of his younger days. That the political trilogy have still a certain value as studies of the time is beyond argument. Also, they have wit, invention and a richly pictorial sense for setting, together with flamboyant attraction of style and a solid substratum of thought. One recognizes often that an athletic mind is at play in them. But they do not now take hold, whatever they once did; an air of the false-literary is over them, it is not easy to read them as true transcripts from life. To get a full sense of this, turn to literally contemporaneous books like Dickens' "David Copperfield" and "Hard Times"; compared with such, Disraeli and all his world seem clever pastiche. Personal taste may modify this statement: it can hardly reverse it. It would be futile to explain the difference by saying that Disraeli was some eight years before Dickens or that he dealt with another and higher class of society. The difference goes deeper: it is due to the fact that one writer was writing in the spirit of the age with his face to the future and so giving a creative representation of its life; whereas the other was painting its manners and only half in earnest: playing with literature, in sooth. A man like Dickens is married to his art; Disraeli indulges in a temporary liaison with letters. There is, too, in the Lothair-Endymion kind of literature a fatal resemblance to the older sentimental and grandiose fiction of the eighteenth century: an effect of plush and padding, an atmosphere of patchouli and sachet powder. It has the limitation that fashion ever sets; it is boudoir novel-writing: cabinet literature in both the social and political sense. As Agnes Repplier has it: "Lothair is beloved by the female aristocracy of Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, die happy with his kisses on their lips." It would be going too far perhaps to say that this type never existed in life, for Richardson seems to have had a model in mind in drawing Grandison; but it hardly survives in letters, unless we include "St. Elmo" and "Under Two Flags" in that denomination.