Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening.
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 to v20 - Phi to Qui
9915 (#323) ###########################################
9915
GEORGE MEREDITH
(1828–)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
M
HAT Robert Browning is among English poets, George Mere-
dith is among English novelists. A writer of genius who
had no predecessors and who can have no posterity, the
isolation of Meredith is inherent in the very constitution of his re-
markable novels. These are so completely of the man himself that
their kind will perish with him. Their weaknesses elude the imi-
tation of the most scholarly contortionists
of English. Their strength is altogether
superlative and unique.
In the preface to a late work Meredith
writes: «The forecast may be hazarded that
if we do not speedily embrace philosophy
in fiction, the art is doomed to extinction. ”
The Meredithian principle of the novel is
summed up in this prophecy. There have
not been wanting critics to whom the lusty
embraces of art with philosophy in Mr.
Meredith's novels seem productive of little
but intolerable weariness to the reader.
Be this as it may, the writer of 'The Egoist GEORGE MEREDITH
and of the Tragic Comedians) has been
scrupulously faithful to his ideal of what constitutes vitality in fiction.
He never descends to the deadening vulgarity of an intricate plot,
nor does he swamp character in incident. His men and women
reveal themselves by their subtle play upon one another in the slow
progress of situations lifelike in their apparent unimportance. They
are actors not in a romance nor in a melodrama, but in a drama of
philosophy. Sometimes this philosophy of Meredith's lies like a cloak
of lead about the delicate form of his rare poetical imagination.
The enchanting lines can only be faintly traced through the formless
shroud. The man who wrote this love passage in (Richard Feverel?
might seem to have made sad uses of philosophy in his later books:-
«The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his eyes
## p. 9916 (#324) ###########################################
9916
GEORGE MEREDITH
from her nor speaking: and she with a soft word of farewell passed across the
stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of
the arch of the light, away from his eyes. ”
From the delight of pure beauty like this, the reader passes to
sentences where the metaphysician has buried the artist and poet
under the unhewn masses of his thought.
“A witty woman is a treasure: a witty beauty is a power. Has she actual
beauty, actual wit ? not an empty, tidal, material beauty that passes current
among pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness ? Grant the combination:
she will appear a veritable queen of her period, fit for homage, at least meriting
a disposition to believe the best of her in the teeth of foul rumor; because the
well of true wit is truth itself, the gathering of the precious drops of right
reason, wisdom's lighting; and no soul possessing it and dispensing it can
justly be a target for the world, however well armed the world confronting
her. Our contemporary world, that Old Credulity and stone-hurling urchin
in one, supposes it possible for a woman to be mentally active up to the point
of spiritual clarity, and also fleshly vile — a guide to life and a biter at the
fruits of death — both open mind and a hypocrite.
Between these two passages there is apparently a great gulf fixed,
but they are equally expressive of the genius of George Meredith.
He is a poet whose passion for mind has led him far enough away
from the poetical environment. Of all English novelists, none ap-
proach him in his absorption in the minds of men. He weaves his
novels not around what men do, but what they think. Mental sensa-
tions form the subject-matter of his chapters. He delights in minute
analyses, which, as in “The Egoist,' reveal human nature unclothed.
He laughs over his own amazing discoveries, but he seldom victim-
izes a woman. What sympathy he has with his creations falls to the
lot of his heroines. The minds of women are to George Meredith
the most fascinating subjects of research in the universe.
jest at times over their contradictions; but he attributes their worst
features to man, who should have been the civilizer of woman, but
who has been instead the refined savage, gloating over veiled, vir-
ginal dolls. ”
Meredith, who was born in 1828, was many years in revealing
himself to the British public, who loved him not. He had published
a volume of verse in 1851, and he was known to the narrow circle of
his friends as a poet only. His first wife was the daughter of Thomas
Love Peacock, who was in a sense the spiritual progenitor of George
Meredith the novelist. The' eccentric author of Headlong Hall' and
(Maid Marian,' whose novels are peopled with “perfectibilians, dete-
riorationists, statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political
economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, enthusiasts,
lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners,”
might well have influenced the author of "One of Our Conquerors.
He may
## p. 9917 (#325) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9917
Among the earlier works of Meredith “The Shaving of Shagpat'
and 'Farina' witness to the splendor of his imagination, but not to
the wealth of his psychological experience. "The Shaving of Shagpat'
is an extravaganza which puts the Arabian Nights) to shame.
(The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel’ is his first typical novel, and in a sense
one of his greatest, because it combines his passion for philosophical
estimates of character with his passion for beauty Beauty to George
Meredith means women and nature. The genius of the man forgets
theories when under this double inspiration.
One of the most perfect love scenes in the whole range of fiction
is that between Richard and Lucy alone together in the sweet fields.
Richard Feverel was a youth with whom it was intended that nature
should have little to do. He was reared upon a system, the fruit of
the dejected brain and hurt heart of his father, Sir Austin Feverel.
This system in its sublimated perfection overlooks human nature,
and provides for marriage as a play of Hamlet' with Hamlet left
out. Richard, young, ardent, living in his youth as in a halo, breaks
through the paddock of the appointed order to marry Lucy, a farm-
er's daughter, the one woman of George Meredith adjusted to the
sentimental type. Separated from his bride, Richard is plunged
into his fiery ordeal. He comes out of it spotted, wretched, unwill-
ing to return to his girl bride, whose love had not held him from un-
faithfulness. The book closes in the sombreness of tragedy; an
ending unusual with Meredith, who inclines naturally to the comedy
of human nature. There is not a little of this comedy in Richard
Feverel. ' The household of Sir Austin is essentially the fruit of the
author's humorous insight into the eccentricities of men and women.
In his portrayal of the wise youth Adrian Harley, who will speak
only in epigrams; of Algernon Feverel, to whom dinner is both
heaven and hell; of the scheining mother; of the pale Clare, the type
of feminine submission to the inevitable, — Meredith exhibits his com-
prehension of twisted and damaged human nature and his detach-
ment from it.
No author ever took his creations less seriously, unless indeed
they are women, full of rich, vibrant life. Meredith's characters must
be a match for him, else he will hold them up to the subtle ridicule
of those who are in his secret. The men and women of 'Evan Har-
rington' are thus put on the stage. Parts of this novel are supposed
to be pages from Meredith's own experience when living in a village
near London. The struggles of Evan and his sisters, who have been
hampered in their social career by their father, a tailor of foppish
pretensions, are related with delicate gusto. About these central
figures come and go a host of Meredith's own people, enveloped one
and all in the rose light of a dainty comedy of manners.
## p. 9918 (#326) ###########################################
9918
GEORGE MEREDITH
In Sandra Belloni? and in its sequel Vittoria) the transition be-
comes marked from the well-tempered realistic romance of Richard
Feverel,' and the frank comedy of Evan Hai ston,' to the meta-
physical, enigmatic, subtle novels of Meredith's later manner. Yet
(Sandra Belloni' and Vittoria’ are brilliant with “noble strength on
fire. ” The heroine Emilia is the daughter of great passions. Her
meteoric life is traced by flashes through heavy clouds of profound
and lengthy epigrams, - epigrams after the manner of Meredith, whole
paragraphs long.
In Diana of the Crossways the peculiar genius of Meredith finds
more complete expression. This is a year-long novel for the reading,
and like The Egoist requires perhaps a lifetime for digestion. The
career of Diana, an Irish gentlewoman, strong and beautiful, pure and
fervid, made for love and leadership, is the subject of this remark-
able novel. The men who love her are seen and judged less by a
light of their own making than by the radiance of Diana. They are,
as is usual with Meredith's men, the dependents of the woman. The
author introduces his reader to his heroine by a preface unintelligible
to the uninitiated :-
« To demand of us truth to nature excluding philosophy is really to bid
a pumpkin caper. As much as legs are wanted for the dance, philosophy
is required to make our human nature credible and acceptable. Fiction
implores you to heave a bigger breast and take her in with this heavenly
preservative helpmate, her inspiration and her essence. There is a peep-
show and a Punch's at the corner of every street: one magnifying the lace-
work of life, another the ventral tumulus; and it is there for you, dry bones,
if you do not open to Philosophy. ”
Philosophy, the guiding star of Meredith's artistic pilgrimage, leads
him in The Egoist' into heavy quagmires of mannerisms. Yet this
novel is the most typical of his intricate genius. It reveals to the
full his passion for unveiling man to the gaze of man. Sir Willoughby
Patterne, the egoist, might be embodied satire on the dearest frailty
of man, were he not too lifelike and too remote from the region of
the abstract. His monstrous selfishness is set forth in such exquisite
detail that the lesson cannot possibly fail of its purpose through un-
due exaggeration. Clara Middleton, “the dainty rogue in porcelain,”
too precious for the clumsy fingers of Sir Willoughby, ranks with
Diana as one of the most finished creations of Meredith. She gives
to (The Egoist whatever charm it has. It is mainly for the sake
of George Meredith's women that the reader adventures o'er moor
and fen and crag and torrent of his philosophical mysteries of style.
The prize is worth the quest. No one but Hardy has approached
Meredith in the portrayal of woman nature, and Hardy falls short of
## p. 9919 (#327) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9919
Meredith, because the creator of Diana has done what the creator of
Tess omits doing. He has given to the world its own nineteenth-
century women of the best type, - brilliant but not neurotic, thought-
ful but not morbid. Renée and Cecilia in Beauchamp's Career,'
Clara Middleton in "The Egoist,' Aminta in Lord Ormont,' Diana,
Vittoria, and others of their kin, are in their mentality women of no
century but the present; yet in their capacity for noble passion they
might be placed with Elaine in the airy tower of a forgotten castle,
or with Penelope in the sea wanderer's palace, or with Senta in the
fisherman's hut. The milkmaid type of woman Meredith drew but
once, in Lucy. She is much more of a pink-and-white country lass
than Dahlia and Rhoda in 'Rhoda Fleming. These sisters are in no
sense country women, unless the straightforward passionate career of
Rhoda seeking to right a ruined sister establishes her as a child of
nature. To George Meredith it is the woman who combines heart
and intellect who is to be worshiped on bended knees. His ideal of
women- and perhaps the best description of his own
- is
summed up in this passage from his essay on Comedy':-
women
(
« But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless! Is it not preferable to
be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable bundle of caprices,- very
feminine, very sympathetic of romantic and sentimental fiction ? Our women
are taught to think so. The Agnès of the (École des Femmes) should be
a lesson for men. The heroines of comedy are like women of the world:
not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted; they seem so to the sen-
timentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not
wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition
of their battle with men, and that of men with them; and as the two, however
divergent, both look on one object, — namely, Life,- the gradual similarity of
their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet
dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness: he is for
saying that when they draw together in social life their minds grow liker; just
as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl until the girl is
marched away to the nursery. Philosopher and comic poet are of a cousinship
in the eye they cast on life; and they are equally unpopular with our willful
English of the hazy region, and the ideal that is not to be disturbed. ”
George Meredith explains himself and his doctrine so lucidly in
this paragraph, that it seems impossible ever again to join forces
with the “willful English of the hazy region. ” Yet in his latest nov-
els he sometimes compels his most penetrative disciples to apostasy.
Professor Dowden has well said that the obscurity of an author is
a matter for subsequent generations to decide; yet the obscurity of
Meredith in One of Our Conquerors,' in the Amazing Marriage,'
or in Lord Ormont and his Aminta,' can scarcely be due to the
## p. 9920 (#328) ###########################################
9920
GEORGE MEREDITH
smoked glasses of his contemporaries. A writer like Meredith, who
possesses in the highest degree the unique gift of the comic insight
into life, with all that it implies of delicate sympathy and subtle
comprehension of human nature, must be expected to tell of his
extraordinary discoveries in an extraordinary tongue. The question is
pertinent, however, of whether supreme genius might not be able to
relate the same marvelous stories of humanity in a simpler speech.
George Meredith the novelist cannot overshadow George Meredith
the poet. His brilliant imagination, his admiration, his love, escape
from philosophy and the trammels of prose and become clothed in
verse when he looks with a single eye upon nature. Meredith ap-
proaches Wordsworth in his love of nature, untainted with the mor-
bidness which sees its own moods reflected in the changes of earth
and air and sky. He sings her praise out of the fullness of an un-
selfconscious passion.
In Modern Love,' a series of sonnets, Meredith gives to his
insight into men and women a poetical embodiment. An alienated
husband and wife seek the secret of their alienation through the
labyrinths of married human nature. The poet sums up their pitiful-
ness in two lines of the closing sonnet:
“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! »
The series is rich in poetry. George Meredith might be remem-
bered if he had written nothing else but the perfect sonnet begin-
ning -
(We saw the swallows gathering in the sky,
And in the osier-isle we heard their noise. "
To future generations George Meredith may not be known as
the greatest novelist of this century. He may take his place as the
supreme exponent of philosophy in fiction; or as an author to whose
mystic realism the key has been lost, whose faint laughter irritates
because the source of it is not apparent. Yet the prophecy may be
ventured that there will be those in each successive generation to
whom the flavor of Meredith will be as fine wine, and who will catch
the inspiration of his genius through the intervening solidities of his
depressing cleverness.
Alla Mare Shall
## p. 9921 (#329) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9921
RICHARD AND LUCY: AN IDYL
From "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel'
W**
HEN nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs
that the Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for
the flame.
Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the
thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor
among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick
with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter
of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a
flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and some-
times nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her
shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow,
almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply
dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection
you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young
person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the
bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant,
for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastid-
ious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her
exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must
suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poeti-
cal, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating
them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to
the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand
are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went
up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding
hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note;
the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged
heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her,
containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and
ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territo-
ries, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer
buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty
of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair set-
ting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to
note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision,
XVII-621
## p. 9922 (#330) ###########################################
9922
GEORGE MEREDITH
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric
clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making
straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one
most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him
beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save
herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe
earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.
HE HAD landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him; Raynham hung in the mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand which
had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an eye-
twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What splendor in the
heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted head!
And, () you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen. Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is
at your feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the
First Woman to him.
And she — mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they
stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair
among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth edu-
cated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he,
it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft
rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to
the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bear-
ing Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to
## p. 9923 (#331) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9923
>
flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow
curls, only half-curls,— waves of hair, call them, - rippling at the
ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost
to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious
features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the
blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long
and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights
of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful
creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to
the gazer.
Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot
out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes,
a mystery of meaning — more than brain was ever meant to
fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts
of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle,
shall match the depth of its lightest look ?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to
the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish
called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across
the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there,— felt
more than seen, so slight it was,- and gave to his profile a
bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering
charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her. He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in
with all his eyes,- and young Love has a thousand. Then truly
the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let
it Ay, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again,
and said to the world, “Match him! ” Such keen bliss as the
youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
"O women! ” says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary
outbursts, women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake!
how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to
your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is
the slime of the Lake of Sin! »
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not
Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been
different.
-
## p. 9924 (#332) ###########################################
9924
GEORGE MEREDITH
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite com-
mon simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a com-
mon simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting
spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the
incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chron.
icled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows play-
ing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My
book! my book! ” and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. What have you lost ? »
he said.
“My book! my book! ” she answered, her long delicious curls
swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to
him, divining his rash intention, "Oh, no, no! let me entreat you
not to,” she said: "I do not so very much mind losing it. ” And
in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gen-
tle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray do
not!
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water
was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure;
and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick,
the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the
bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught
its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land dis-
consolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and
pretty expostulations.
"Let me try again,” he said.
"No indeed! ” she replied, and used the awful threat, “I will
run away if you do;” which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and bright-
ened as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is
that. I do not care for the book. No, please' you are not to
look at it. Give it me. ”
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin
## p. 9925 (#333) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9925
between Two Wheatsheaves; his crest in silver; and below –
oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his
burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom pre-
served from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else per-
ished, - Odes, fluttering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls, Lines,
Stanzas, - this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove
to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had
composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as see.
ing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined,
and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and
described her in a couplet —
« Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair. ”
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two
blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that
appeared like the working of a Divine finger, she had become
the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfill it! The
youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the
damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her
conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she
drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding
brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish
air), crying, “But where are you going to ? You are wet through.
Let me thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly. "
“Wet ? ) replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender
interest: “not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you
while you dry your stockings in the sun. ”
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.
« Not I, but you.
You know you saved me, and would try to
get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet.
not very uncomfortable ? »
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
"And you really do not feel that you are wet ? ”
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
Are you
## p. 9926 (#334) ###########################################
9926
GEORGE MEREDITH
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed
lids.
"I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sound-
ing harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won't
>
you ? »
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of
her.
“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very mo-
ment after! ” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers,
and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than senti-
ment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast
to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a soli-
tary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and
laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each
cried out to other, “It is I. It is I. ”
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the
sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the
blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth
from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir,
and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current
down the rapid backwater.
“Will you let it go ? ” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
« Yes,” he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his
thought. « What do I care for it now! ”
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His
new life was with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. « You must really not
come any farther,” she softly said.
"And will you go and not tell me who you are ? ” he asked,
growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And
will you not tell me before you go " -- his face burned how
you came by that
that paper ? ”
She chose to select the easier question to reply to: "You
ought to know me: we have been introduced. ” Sweet was her
winning off-hand affability.
»
## p. 9927 (#335) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9927
C
« Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never
could have forgotten you. "
"You have, I think,” she said demurely.
“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you! ”
She looked up to him quickly.
“Do you remember Belthorpe ? »
“Belthorpe! Belthorpe! ” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch
his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old
Blaize's farm ? »
« Then I am old Blaize's niece. ” She tripped him a soft
curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it
that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old
churl!
« Then what what is your name? ” said his mouth; while
his eyes added, "I wonderful creature? how came you to enrich
the earth ? »
Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too ? ” She
peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
« The Desboroughs of Dorset »» A light broke in on him.
"And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there! ”
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his
eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look,
and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually con-
strained.
“You see,” she murmured, we are old acquaintances. ”
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
“You are very beautiful! ”
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like
an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he
spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a dam-
sel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, - praise from
him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened
her steps to the stile.
»
(
>
## p. 9928 (#336) ###########################################
9928
GEORGE MEREDITH
»
“I have offended you! ” said a mortally wounded voice across
her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
“Oh no, no! you would never offend me. ” She gave him her
whole sweet face
« Then why, why do you leave me ? »
«Because,” she hesitated, "I must go. ”
«No. You must not go. Why must you go! Do not go. ”
“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent
to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand
out, and said “Good-by," as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white white and fragrant as the frosted
blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast
before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and
kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for pay-
ment of the penalty of such daring — by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
“Good-by,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of
adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
« You will not go ? ”
Pray let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrin-
kles.
"You will not go ? ” Mechanically he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
"I must,” she faltered piteously.
« You will not go ? ”
“Oh yes, yes! ”
« Tell me — do you wish to go ? ”
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
“Do you — do you wish to go ? ” He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
« You wish — wish to leave me? ) His breath went with the
words.
« Indeed I must. ”
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her
frame From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.
»
>>>
## p. 9929 (#337) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9929
Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to
heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the
bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trem-
bling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
morning.
When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go ? ”
«
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend
upward her gentle wrist.
« Then farewell! ” he said; and dropping his lips to the soft
fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her,
ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words,
“You are not angry with me? "
“With you, O Beloved! ” cried his soul. "And you forgive
me, fair charity! ”
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with
the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh
and gaze at her wonderingly.
“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The
gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her
hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with
a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the path-
way through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch
of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvelous splendors had sown seeds in him, ready to spring
up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid con-
juration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and
illumine him like fitful summer lightnings - ghosts of the van-
ished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love
and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.
Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of
softest fire! - how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead
## p. 9930 (#338) ###########################################
9930
GEORGE MEREDITH
to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously
asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory,- the river and the
meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a tem-
ple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old
blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred
repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is
chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the
most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he
taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives
place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him
by a sphere.
RICHARD'S ORDEAL IS OVER
From «The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:
W"
HERE are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a
child ? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same; yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most com-
mon performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. “A father! ” he kept repeat-
ing to himself: "a child! ” And though he knew it not, he was
striking the keynotes of Nature. But he did know of a singular
harmony that suddenly burst over his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright; the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high-road and pierced into the forest. His
walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks;
the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet Some-
thing of a religious joy — a strange sacred pleasure — was in
him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself; and now he
was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared
never see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall
upon, He was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it
seemed to him that Clare looked down on him Clare, who saw
## p. 9931 (#339) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9931
him as he was- and that to her eyes it would be infamy for
him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern
efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
iron.
By the log of an ancient tree, half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached
his journey's end.
9915
GEORGE MEREDITH
(1828–)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
M
HAT Robert Browning is among English poets, George Mere-
dith is among English novelists. A writer of genius who
had no predecessors and who can have no posterity, the
isolation of Meredith is inherent in the very constitution of his re-
markable novels. These are so completely of the man himself that
their kind will perish with him. Their weaknesses elude the imi-
tation of the most scholarly contortionists
of English. Their strength is altogether
superlative and unique.
In the preface to a late work Meredith
writes: «The forecast may be hazarded that
if we do not speedily embrace philosophy
in fiction, the art is doomed to extinction. ”
The Meredithian principle of the novel is
summed up in this prophecy. There have
not been wanting critics to whom the lusty
embraces of art with philosophy in Mr.
Meredith's novels seem productive of little
but intolerable weariness to the reader.
Be this as it may, the writer of 'The Egoist GEORGE MEREDITH
and of the Tragic Comedians) has been
scrupulously faithful to his ideal of what constitutes vitality in fiction.
He never descends to the deadening vulgarity of an intricate plot,
nor does he swamp character in incident. His men and women
reveal themselves by their subtle play upon one another in the slow
progress of situations lifelike in their apparent unimportance. They
are actors not in a romance nor in a melodrama, but in a drama of
philosophy. Sometimes this philosophy of Meredith's lies like a cloak
of lead about the delicate form of his rare poetical imagination.
The enchanting lines can only be faintly traced through the formless
shroud. The man who wrote this love passage in (Richard Feverel?
might seem to have made sad uses of philosophy in his later books:-
«The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his eyes
## p. 9916 (#324) ###########################################
9916
GEORGE MEREDITH
from her nor speaking: and she with a soft word of farewell passed across the
stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of
the arch of the light, away from his eyes. ”
From the delight of pure beauty like this, the reader passes to
sentences where the metaphysician has buried the artist and poet
under the unhewn masses of his thought.
“A witty woman is a treasure: a witty beauty is a power. Has she actual
beauty, actual wit ? not an empty, tidal, material beauty that passes current
among pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness ? Grant the combination:
she will appear a veritable queen of her period, fit for homage, at least meriting
a disposition to believe the best of her in the teeth of foul rumor; because the
well of true wit is truth itself, the gathering of the precious drops of right
reason, wisdom's lighting; and no soul possessing it and dispensing it can
justly be a target for the world, however well armed the world confronting
her. Our contemporary world, that Old Credulity and stone-hurling urchin
in one, supposes it possible for a woman to be mentally active up to the point
of spiritual clarity, and also fleshly vile — a guide to life and a biter at the
fruits of death — both open mind and a hypocrite.
Between these two passages there is apparently a great gulf fixed,
but they are equally expressive of the genius of George Meredith.
He is a poet whose passion for mind has led him far enough away
from the poetical environment. Of all English novelists, none ap-
proach him in his absorption in the minds of men. He weaves his
novels not around what men do, but what they think. Mental sensa-
tions form the subject-matter of his chapters. He delights in minute
analyses, which, as in “The Egoist,' reveal human nature unclothed.
He laughs over his own amazing discoveries, but he seldom victim-
izes a woman. What sympathy he has with his creations falls to the
lot of his heroines. The minds of women are to George Meredith
the most fascinating subjects of research in the universe.
jest at times over their contradictions; but he attributes their worst
features to man, who should have been the civilizer of woman, but
who has been instead the refined savage, gloating over veiled, vir-
ginal dolls. ”
Meredith, who was born in 1828, was many years in revealing
himself to the British public, who loved him not. He had published
a volume of verse in 1851, and he was known to the narrow circle of
his friends as a poet only. His first wife was the daughter of Thomas
Love Peacock, who was in a sense the spiritual progenitor of George
Meredith the novelist. The' eccentric author of Headlong Hall' and
(Maid Marian,' whose novels are peopled with “perfectibilians, dete-
riorationists, statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political
economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, enthusiasts,
lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners,”
might well have influenced the author of "One of Our Conquerors.
He may
## p. 9917 (#325) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9917
Among the earlier works of Meredith “The Shaving of Shagpat'
and 'Farina' witness to the splendor of his imagination, but not to
the wealth of his psychological experience. "The Shaving of Shagpat'
is an extravaganza which puts the Arabian Nights) to shame.
(The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel’ is his first typical novel, and in a sense
one of his greatest, because it combines his passion for philosophical
estimates of character with his passion for beauty Beauty to George
Meredith means women and nature. The genius of the man forgets
theories when under this double inspiration.
One of the most perfect love scenes in the whole range of fiction
is that between Richard and Lucy alone together in the sweet fields.
Richard Feverel was a youth with whom it was intended that nature
should have little to do. He was reared upon a system, the fruit of
the dejected brain and hurt heart of his father, Sir Austin Feverel.
This system in its sublimated perfection overlooks human nature,
and provides for marriage as a play of Hamlet' with Hamlet left
out. Richard, young, ardent, living in his youth as in a halo, breaks
through the paddock of the appointed order to marry Lucy, a farm-
er's daughter, the one woman of George Meredith adjusted to the
sentimental type. Separated from his bride, Richard is plunged
into his fiery ordeal. He comes out of it spotted, wretched, unwill-
ing to return to his girl bride, whose love had not held him from un-
faithfulness. The book closes in the sombreness of tragedy; an
ending unusual with Meredith, who inclines naturally to the comedy
of human nature. There is not a little of this comedy in Richard
Feverel. ' The household of Sir Austin is essentially the fruit of the
author's humorous insight into the eccentricities of men and women.
In his portrayal of the wise youth Adrian Harley, who will speak
only in epigrams; of Algernon Feverel, to whom dinner is both
heaven and hell; of the scheining mother; of the pale Clare, the type
of feminine submission to the inevitable, — Meredith exhibits his com-
prehension of twisted and damaged human nature and his detach-
ment from it.
No author ever took his creations less seriously, unless indeed
they are women, full of rich, vibrant life. Meredith's characters must
be a match for him, else he will hold them up to the subtle ridicule
of those who are in his secret. The men and women of 'Evan Har-
rington' are thus put on the stage. Parts of this novel are supposed
to be pages from Meredith's own experience when living in a village
near London. The struggles of Evan and his sisters, who have been
hampered in their social career by their father, a tailor of foppish
pretensions, are related with delicate gusto. About these central
figures come and go a host of Meredith's own people, enveloped one
and all in the rose light of a dainty comedy of manners.
## p. 9918 (#326) ###########################################
9918
GEORGE MEREDITH
In Sandra Belloni? and in its sequel Vittoria) the transition be-
comes marked from the well-tempered realistic romance of Richard
Feverel,' and the frank comedy of Evan Hai ston,' to the meta-
physical, enigmatic, subtle novels of Meredith's later manner. Yet
(Sandra Belloni' and Vittoria’ are brilliant with “noble strength on
fire. ” The heroine Emilia is the daughter of great passions. Her
meteoric life is traced by flashes through heavy clouds of profound
and lengthy epigrams, - epigrams after the manner of Meredith, whole
paragraphs long.
In Diana of the Crossways the peculiar genius of Meredith finds
more complete expression. This is a year-long novel for the reading,
and like The Egoist requires perhaps a lifetime for digestion. The
career of Diana, an Irish gentlewoman, strong and beautiful, pure and
fervid, made for love and leadership, is the subject of this remark-
able novel. The men who love her are seen and judged less by a
light of their own making than by the radiance of Diana. They are,
as is usual with Meredith's men, the dependents of the woman. The
author introduces his reader to his heroine by a preface unintelligible
to the uninitiated :-
« To demand of us truth to nature excluding philosophy is really to bid
a pumpkin caper. As much as legs are wanted for the dance, philosophy
is required to make our human nature credible and acceptable. Fiction
implores you to heave a bigger breast and take her in with this heavenly
preservative helpmate, her inspiration and her essence. There is a peep-
show and a Punch's at the corner of every street: one magnifying the lace-
work of life, another the ventral tumulus; and it is there for you, dry bones,
if you do not open to Philosophy. ”
Philosophy, the guiding star of Meredith's artistic pilgrimage, leads
him in The Egoist' into heavy quagmires of mannerisms. Yet this
novel is the most typical of his intricate genius. It reveals to the
full his passion for unveiling man to the gaze of man. Sir Willoughby
Patterne, the egoist, might be embodied satire on the dearest frailty
of man, were he not too lifelike and too remote from the region of
the abstract. His monstrous selfishness is set forth in such exquisite
detail that the lesson cannot possibly fail of its purpose through un-
due exaggeration. Clara Middleton, “the dainty rogue in porcelain,”
too precious for the clumsy fingers of Sir Willoughby, ranks with
Diana as one of the most finished creations of Meredith. She gives
to (The Egoist whatever charm it has. It is mainly for the sake
of George Meredith's women that the reader adventures o'er moor
and fen and crag and torrent of his philosophical mysteries of style.
The prize is worth the quest. No one but Hardy has approached
Meredith in the portrayal of woman nature, and Hardy falls short of
## p. 9919 (#327) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9919
Meredith, because the creator of Diana has done what the creator of
Tess omits doing. He has given to the world its own nineteenth-
century women of the best type, - brilliant but not neurotic, thought-
ful but not morbid. Renée and Cecilia in Beauchamp's Career,'
Clara Middleton in "The Egoist,' Aminta in Lord Ormont,' Diana,
Vittoria, and others of their kin, are in their mentality women of no
century but the present; yet in their capacity for noble passion they
might be placed with Elaine in the airy tower of a forgotten castle,
or with Penelope in the sea wanderer's palace, or with Senta in the
fisherman's hut. The milkmaid type of woman Meredith drew but
once, in Lucy. She is much more of a pink-and-white country lass
than Dahlia and Rhoda in 'Rhoda Fleming. These sisters are in no
sense country women, unless the straightforward passionate career of
Rhoda seeking to right a ruined sister establishes her as a child of
nature. To George Meredith it is the woman who combines heart
and intellect who is to be worshiped on bended knees. His ideal of
women- and perhaps the best description of his own
- is
summed up in this passage from his essay on Comedy':-
women
(
« But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless! Is it not preferable to
be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable bundle of caprices,- very
feminine, very sympathetic of romantic and sentimental fiction ? Our women
are taught to think so. The Agnès of the (École des Femmes) should be
a lesson for men. The heroines of comedy are like women of the world:
not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted; they seem so to the sen-
timentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not
wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition
of their battle with men, and that of men with them; and as the two, however
divergent, both look on one object, — namely, Life,- the gradual similarity of
their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet
dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness: he is for
saying that when they draw together in social life their minds grow liker; just
as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl until the girl is
marched away to the nursery. Philosopher and comic poet are of a cousinship
in the eye they cast on life; and they are equally unpopular with our willful
English of the hazy region, and the ideal that is not to be disturbed. ”
George Meredith explains himself and his doctrine so lucidly in
this paragraph, that it seems impossible ever again to join forces
with the “willful English of the hazy region. ” Yet in his latest nov-
els he sometimes compels his most penetrative disciples to apostasy.
Professor Dowden has well said that the obscurity of an author is
a matter for subsequent generations to decide; yet the obscurity of
Meredith in One of Our Conquerors,' in the Amazing Marriage,'
or in Lord Ormont and his Aminta,' can scarcely be due to the
## p. 9920 (#328) ###########################################
9920
GEORGE MEREDITH
smoked glasses of his contemporaries. A writer like Meredith, who
possesses in the highest degree the unique gift of the comic insight
into life, with all that it implies of delicate sympathy and subtle
comprehension of human nature, must be expected to tell of his
extraordinary discoveries in an extraordinary tongue. The question is
pertinent, however, of whether supreme genius might not be able to
relate the same marvelous stories of humanity in a simpler speech.
George Meredith the novelist cannot overshadow George Meredith
the poet. His brilliant imagination, his admiration, his love, escape
from philosophy and the trammels of prose and become clothed in
verse when he looks with a single eye upon nature. Meredith ap-
proaches Wordsworth in his love of nature, untainted with the mor-
bidness which sees its own moods reflected in the changes of earth
and air and sky. He sings her praise out of the fullness of an un-
selfconscious passion.
In Modern Love,' a series of sonnets, Meredith gives to his
insight into men and women a poetical embodiment. An alienated
husband and wife seek the secret of their alienation through the
labyrinths of married human nature. The poet sums up their pitiful-
ness in two lines of the closing sonnet:
“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! »
The series is rich in poetry. George Meredith might be remem-
bered if he had written nothing else but the perfect sonnet begin-
ning -
(We saw the swallows gathering in the sky,
And in the osier-isle we heard their noise. "
To future generations George Meredith may not be known as
the greatest novelist of this century. He may take his place as the
supreme exponent of philosophy in fiction; or as an author to whose
mystic realism the key has been lost, whose faint laughter irritates
because the source of it is not apparent. Yet the prophecy may be
ventured that there will be those in each successive generation to
whom the flavor of Meredith will be as fine wine, and who will catch
the inspiration of his genius through the intervening solidities of his
depressing cleverness.
Alla Mare Shall
## p. 9921 (#329) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9921
RICHARD AND LUCY: AN IDYL
From "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel'
W**
HEN nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs
that the Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for
the flame.
Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the
thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor
among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick
with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter
of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a
flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and some-
times nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her
shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow,
almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply
dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection
you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young
person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the
bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant,
for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastid-
ious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her
exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must
suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poeti-
cal, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating
them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to
the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand
are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went
up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding
hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note;
the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged
heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her,
containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and
ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territo-
ries, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer
buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty
of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair set-
ting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to
note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision,
XVII-621
## p. 9922 (#330) ###########################################
9922
GEORGE MEREDITH
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric
clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making
straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one
most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him
beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save
herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe
earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.
HE HAD landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him; Raynham hung in the mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand which
had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an eye-
twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What splendor in the
heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted head!
And, () you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen. Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is
at your feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the
First Woman to him.
And she — mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they
stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair
among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth edu-
cated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he,
it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft
rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to
the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bear-
ing Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to
## p. 9923 (#331) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9923
>
flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow
curls, only half-curls,— waves of hair, call them, - rippling at the
ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost
to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious
features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the
blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long
and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights
of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful
creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to
the gazer.
Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot
out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes,
a mystery of meaning — more than brain was ever meant to
fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts
of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle,
shall match the depth of its lightest look ?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to
the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish
called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across
the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there,— felt
more than seen, so slight it was,- and gave to his profile a
bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering
charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her. He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in
with all his eyes,- and young Love has a thousand. Then truly
the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let
it Ay, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again,
and said to the world, “Match him! ” Such keen bliss as the
youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
"O women! ” says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary
outbursts, women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake!
how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to
your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is
the slime of the Lake of Sin! »
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not
Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been
different.
-
## p. 9924 (#332) ###########################################
9924
GEORGE MEREDITH
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite com-
mon simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a com-
mon simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting
spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the
incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chron.
icled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows play-
ing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My
book! my book! ” and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. What have you lost ? »
he said.
“My book! my book! ” she answered, her long delicious curls
swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to
him, divining his rash intention, "Oh, no, no! let me entreat you
not to,” she said: "I do not so very much mind losing it. ” And
in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gen-
tle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray do
not!
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water
was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure;
and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick,
the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the
bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught
its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land dis-
consolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and
pretty expostulations.
"Let me try again,” he said.
"No indeed! ” she replied, and used the awful threat, “I will
run away if you do;” which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and bright-
ened as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is
that. I do not care for the book. No, please' you are not to
look at it. Give it me. ”
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin
## p. 9925 (#333) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9925
between Two Wheatsheaves; his crest in silver; and below –
oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his
burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom pre-
served from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else per-
ished, - Odes, fluttering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls, Lines,
Stanzas, - this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove
to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had
composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as see.
ing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined,
and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and
described her in a couplet —
« Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair. ”
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two
blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that
appeared like the working of a Divine finger, she had become
the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfill it! The
youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the
damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her
conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she
drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding
brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish
air), crying, “But where are you going to ? You are wet through.
Let me thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly. "
“Wet ? ) replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender
interest: “not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you
while you dry your stockings in the sun. ”
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.
« Not I, but you.
You know you saved me, and would try to
get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet.
not very uncomfortable ? »
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
"And you really do not feel that you are wet ? ”
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
Are you
## p. 9926 (#334) ###########################################
9926
GEORGE MEREDITH
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed
lids.
"I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sound-
ing harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won't
>
you ? »
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of
her.
“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very mo-
ment after! ” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers,
and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than senti-
ment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast
to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a soli-
tary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and
laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each
cried out to other, “It is I. It is I. ”
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the
sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the
blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth
from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir,
and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current
down the rapid backwater.
“Will you let it go ? ” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
« Yes,” he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his
thought. « What do I care for it now! ”
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His
new life was with her, alive, divine.
She flapped low the brim of her hat. « You must really not
come any farther,” she softly said.
"And will you go and not tell me who you are ? ” he asked,
growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And
will you not tell me before you go " -- his face burned how
you came by that
that paper ? ”
She chose to select the easier question to reply to: "You
ought to know me: we have been introduced. ” Sweet was her
winning off-hand affability.
»
## p. 9927 (#335) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9927
C
« Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never
could have forgotten you. "
"You have, I think,” she said demurely.
“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you! ”
She looked up to him quickly.
“Do you remember Belthorpe ? »
“Belthorpe! Belthorpe! ” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch
his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old
Blaize's farm ? »
« Then I am old Blaize's niece. ” She tripped him a soft
curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it
that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old
churl!
« Then what what is your name? ” said his mouth; while
his eyes added, "I wonderful creature? how came you to enrich
the earth ? »
Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too ? ” She
peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
« The Desboroughs of Dorset »» A light broke in on him.
"And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there! ”
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his
eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look,
and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually con-
strained.
“You see,” she murmured, we are old acquaintances. ”
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
“You are very beautiful! ”
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like
an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he
spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a dam-
sel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, - praise from
him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened
her steps to the stile.
»
(
>
## p. 9928 (#336) ###########################################
9928
GEORGE MEREDITH
»
“I have offended you! ” said a mortally wounded voice across
her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
“Oh no, no! you would never offend me. ” She gave him her
whole sweet face
« Then why, why do you leave me ? »
«Because,” she hesitated, "I must go. ”
«No. You must not go. Why must you go! Do not go. ”
“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent
to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand
out, and said “Good-by," as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white white and fragrant as the frosted
blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast
before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and
kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for pay-
ment of the penalty of such daring — by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
“Good-by,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of
adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
« You will not go ? ”
Pray let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrin-
kles.
"You will not go ? ” Mechanically he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
"I must,” she faltered piteously.
« You will not go ? ”
“Oh yes, yes! ”
« Tell me — do you wish to go ? ”
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
“Do you — do you wish to go ? ” He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
« You wish — wish to leave me? ) His breath went with the
words.
« Indeed I must. ”
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her
frame From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.
»
>>>
## p. 9929 (#337) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9929
Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to
heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the
bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trem-
bling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
morning.
When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go ? ”
«
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend
upward her gentle wrist.
« Then farewell! ” he said; and dropping his lips to the soft
fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her,
ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words,
“You are not angry with me? "
“With you, O Beloved! ” cried his soul. "And you forgive
me, fair charity! ”
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with
the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh
and gaze at her wonderingly.
“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The
gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her
hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with
a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the path-
way through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch
of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvelous splendors had sown seeds in him, ready to spring
up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid con-
juration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and
illumine him like fitful summer lightnings - ghosts of the van-
ished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love
and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.
Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of
softest fire! - how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead
## p. 9930 (#338) ###########################################
9930
GEORGE MEREDITH
to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he seriously
asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory,- the river and the
meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a tem-
ple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old
blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred
repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is
chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the
most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he
taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives
place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him
by a sphere.
RICHARD'S ORDEAL IS OVER
From «The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:
W"
HERE are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a
child ? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same; yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most com-
mon performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. “A father! ” he kept repeat-
ing to himself: "a child! ” And though he knew it not, he was
striking the keynotes of Nature. But he did know of a singular
harmony that suddenly burst over his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright; the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high-road and pierced into the forest. His
walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks;
the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet Some-
thing of a religious joy — a strange sacred pleasure — was in
him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself; and now he
was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared
never see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall
upon, He was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it
seemed to him that Clare looked down on him Clare, who saw
## p. 9931 (#339) ###########################################
GEORGE MEREDITH
9931
him as he was- and that to her eyes it would be infamy for
him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern
efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
iron.
By the log of an ancient tree, half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached
his journey's end.
