And
every man and woman mentioned in this history was
still living, except those whose end we know.
every man and woman mentioned in this history was
still living, except those whose end we know.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
With George Eliot the process of adaptation, the resolun
tion of the discord, and if not the establishment of harmony, then)
the clear and impressive indication of the best way to its establish,
ment, is the real motive and end of her writing. There is in her noi
great trágic fatalism, which makes the art of the Greek dramatist
deeply and overwhelmingly tragic. Each one of her leading charac-
ters is at fault, when viewed in the light of the healthy social ideal.
In the exposition of the character the fault will be shown up strongly :
the hero will either be developed into greater social perfection, or
the' tragic end will impress upon the reader the disease and its
remedy, the bane and its antidote.
:) The social failings and shortcomings which stand in the way of
this harmony. are grouped by her into two leading faults of a general
nature: the discord between the individual and selfish and the gen-)
eral and altruistic; between thoughtless social materialism and con-
formity, and questioning originality and spiritual revolt; between
conventionality and originality; between common-sense and prophetic
far-sightedness; between the Philistine and the artistic, the humdrum
worker 'and the world-reformer, the materialist and the dreamer)
The one looks down before him on the ground and ignores the
heights beyond and the clear sky above, and in his heavy-footed
advance shoves the sky-gazer aside and walks over him when he has
fallen; the other gazes at the heights and the stars, and spurns the
clod and soil, tripping over them,- nay, slipping in the mud. They
each ignore one another and the world in which each lives, or they
despise each other and their respective goals and aims.
Now, in all her novels this problem is repeated and a solution is
attempted. Over and over again she presents this situation as the
central point in the composition of her novels, in different layers of
society, in most varied characters. And the understanding of this is
the key to the understanding of George Eliot's works. She either
brings it out in presenting two central figures as the contrasts which
represent either faulty extreme, or one figure as opposed to the sur-
roundings, or both these means are used to impress the central fact.
We shall take one pregnant instance to illustrate this: Daniel
Deronda' has been estimated and criticized chiefly as a novel in
which the Jewish question has been discussed by her in a dramatic
manner. That it deals powerfully with this question is no doubt
true; but the Jewish question is but a side issue - no doubt appealing
to her deep sympathies and sense of justice; but it is not the cen-
tral motive to the story nor the artistic keystone of the novel as
## p. 5372 (#548) ###########################################
5372
GEORGE ELIOT
constructed. The central figure in that story is Gwendolen Harleth
(who ought properly to have given her name to the novel). The
contrasting figure at the other extreme is Mordecai the Jew, and
Daniel is the intermediary figure (almost figure-head) between these
two extremes. The personality which, I am sure, set her sympa-
thetic intellect and imagination throbbing into artistic creation was
Gwendolen. As an ordinary though beautiful young lady of English
society (in her rank what Hetty Sorrel and Rosamond Vincy are
in theirs), she is the clod-born, materialistic, and hopelessly selfish
representative of the unsocial member of a society in which ideas
and ideals are unknown, and in which blind impulse, feebly directed
by prejudice and tradition, petty vanity and greed, at most per-
sonal ambition, are the motives to action, and produce the discord
and misery which surround even those who live in affluence. Her
beauty, her position in her family, her whole education, have kept
from her every higher ideal, all semblance of an ideal, and all
altruism and feeling for or with her fellow-men. Her world in the
opening of the story is the most contracted world of a small self,
with a pervading passion out of all proportion to its extent, in
which the desires whirl round and round this little circle in hideous
compression. Now the fundamental problem of the story is: How
can this little, selfish, and materialistic nature, which only realizes
the things before its desiring eyes and grasping touch, be made
large, unselfish, and idealistic, so that it reaches out beyond and
above the world of self into the regions of great ideas, in which the
individual is completely submerged; and that through this whole-
some straining of the heart and of sympathetic power, through this
realization and love of the ideal, it may learn to love and pity, and
think for and in, mankind and all men and women ? And this pro-
cess of artistic development of character is sensuously and convin-
cingly represented in this novel. The reader enters sympathetically
into the little soul of that beautiful girl at the very beginning of the
story, and in her he passes through all the phases, until without any
forced hiatus he sees before him at the end the purified and en-
larged Gwendolen, who has learnt her ennobling lesson in the great
school of suffering. It is perhaps the greatest achievement in her art.
The more definite question is: How can such a girl realize the
great world of ideas? The answer is: It must come through the
heart, through the emotions and not the intellect, — the intellect will
be widened and matured after her personality has been thrilled. She
must fall in love with a man who is the impersonation of an idea,
whose whole existence centres round a great desire far removed
from the petty world of self in which she has lived, — nay, opposed
to it, in direct contrast to it.
## p. 5373 (#549) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5373
This impersonation is presented in Daniel Deronda; and the fault
in the book is that George Eliot's theoretical bias has been too strong
for her, and in her eagerness to make him the bearer of an idea to
the central figure of the story she has sacrificed the realistic drawing
of Daniel, who is an impersonation at the cost of flesh and blood.
Given the fact that Daniel must in his personality represent some
unselfish idea, the question was: What actual idea, great in extent
and enough to fill a man's mind and soul, should be chosen ? The
difficulty here arose, that if George Eliot had chosen some purely im-
aginary topic it would have lacked reality, and would have moved
neither Gwendolen nor the reader into sympathy. If on the other
hand she had taken some stirring question of the day, the question
as such would have engrossed the interest and attention of the reader,
and would no longer have been subordinated to the chief artistic pur-
pose it has in the story. As it is, to many, the Jewish question as
treated and suggested in the novel has itself engrossed the atten-
tion of readers, and has diverted their minds from the main artistic
gist of the story. But to the ordinary English reader the subject of
Jewish social life and aspirations was sufficiently remote. Nay, so
narrow are the sympathies and the intellectual horizon of many cul-
tivated Englishmen, that though they can be interested in the lives
of gipsies and farm laborers, they cannot « screw up an interest in
those Jews. ”
To Daniel however it was a real, stirring, and great idea to
which he wished to devote his life. Now, in order that Gwendolen
should realize in herself such a great impersonal idea, she had to fall
in love with the man whose life they filled, and through her heart
and her love for him it would reach her mind and raise her thoughts.
Daniel, again, the man she loves, is contrasted with the narrow and
selfish man, the hardened and crystallized type of another social
world, consuming itself in its own self-love.
A11 Gwendolen's experiences directly or indirectly tend to bring
about this development of her soul. A striking scene in this sense
is her interview with Klesmer, the genuine and thorough musician
devoted to his art and work. And when she comes out of the final
soul's tragedy we feel that the woman has stood the test of fire, and
has realized the greatness and overwhelming vastness of the spiritual
world. G. H. Lewes, to whom the writer communicated this concep-
tion of Daniel Deronda,' assured him that he had grasped the cen-
tral idea which George Eliot had in her mind, and the actual history
in the story's construction.
Gwendolen's counterpart (and there are many in George Eliot's
books) is Dorothea in Middlemarch. ' She starts with great and
extraordinary ideas, and must, through life and suffering, realize the
## p. 5374 (#550) ###########################################
5374
GEORGE ELIOT
moral justification of the simple and commonplace in life.
The con-
trasting types illustrating this central point can be found in every
work: Dorothea and Rosamond on the one side,-original, spiritual,
striving as commonplace selfishness, — and Dorothea and Ladislaw as
heavy, serious, intellectual morality, and light, playful, artistic free-
dom, on the other; Lydgate with his great reformatory ideas, slowly
enfeebled and annihilated in his Samson-like vigor by the pretty,
selfish, shallow-souled Rosamond of provincial worldliness. Gwendolen
is also contrasted with Mirah. In Adam Bede,' again, Dinah and
Hetty present the same contrasts as do Tito Melema and Romola,
Esther and Felix Holt. Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom, the
spirit of revolt in Maggie and the hard conventionality of respecta-
bility in her brother Tom, are strongly marked types of this kind.
Maggie's conflict with her narrow and commonplace surroundings and
their conventional respectability are typified in the Mill. It is a
wonderful touch of artistic suggestion that she and her brother are
finally submerged in the Miil, carried away by the flood. This novel
reflects more thoroughly the spirit of Greek tragedy than any other
work of modern fiction. The Mill, and the part it plays in the life
of the Tulliver family and in Maggie's sorrows, are like great Fate in
the Greek tragedy. It is an embodiment of the hard and unrelenting
tyranny of the powers that are. Even in (Silas Marner,' the most
artistic and least doctrinaire of her novels, the moral promess of
X remedying Silas's social unfitness and misanthropy is the central
idea. Space will not allow us to give further illustrations of this idea
in her novels; but enough has been said to enable the reader to test
it and follow it up for himself.
The two most striking qualities in George Eliot as a writer are
her humor and her sympathy. They are really connected with one
another. The power of intellectual observation, when coupled with
the power of feeling sympathy, produces humor; the purely intellect-
ual or objective cast of mind produces wit; while the purely subject-
ive habit of mind is unable to produce either.
But with all her wide range of sympathy, upon which we have
been dwelling, its limitations can still be discerned. The careful
observer will recognize that the subjective attitude of the woman can-
not wholly be hidden from view. The chief women into whom she
projects herself are after all those that are nearest to herself, and she
cannot help treating them as favorites and bestowing the greater
attention upon them: Daniel only exists as a creation to develop
Gwendolen; nay, Savonarola is really constructed for Romola's spirit-
ual development, Casaubon for Dorothea, and so on. A still more
marked and important limitation in her sympathies, arising out of her
ethical bias, is her pronounced dislike to all morbid art, all that is
## p. 5375 (#551) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5375
fantastic. The poetry of Byron, the music of Chopin, all forms of
morbid sentiment, are so repulsive to her nature that she cannot treat
them with tolerance or even with humor. Remarks on Esther in
(Felix Holt' bear this out. Probably this is an autobiographical
touch, and having freed herself from these morbid tendencies in her
youth, she could never look back upon them with tolerance.
Her seriousness and ethical bias may at times also have impaired
her style. Her extensive studies in science and philosophy often
make her ponderous in thought and in expression. The fondness with
which she takes her similes from science is often confusing to the
reader who is unfamiliar with the facts and thoughts that are used
as illustrations. She never quite overcame the temptation to insert
what was new and striking to herself; so that her science and phi-
losophy never reached that mature stage of mental assimilation in
which they manifest themselves merely in the general fullness of
thought, without ever asserting themselves as science or as philoso-
phy. Still, no writer of fiction has ever introduced reflections and epi-
sodes in propria persona which are so striking and well worth reading
in themselves. When her imitators attempt this they fail signally,
and one need but compare such passages with those of George Eliot
to realize her greatness as a writer and as a thinker.
To sum up the estimate of George Eliot as a novelist, we would
say that she is the greatest representative of the analytical and
psychological school, fixing with truth and sensuousness the types
of English provincial life; with a final purpose, which she achieved, of
illustrating by them the ideals of social ethics for the wider life of
humanity.
Cha Srecklin
THE FINAL RESCUE
From The Mill on the Floss)
A"
T THAT moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden
cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under
her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the
door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an
instant; she knew it was the flood !
The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last
twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; without
## p. 5376 (#552) ###########################################
5376
GEORGE ELIOT
screaming, she hurried with the candle up-stairs to Bob Jakin's
bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the
shoulder
“Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house! let us see if we
can make the boats safe. ”
She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her
baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to
see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into
the room at the door leading from the staircase; she saw that
the water was already on a level with the step. While she was
looking, something came with a tremendous crash against the
window and sent the leaded panes and the old wooden frame-
work inwards in shivers, the water pouring in after it.
"It is the boat! ” cried Maggie. "Bob, come down to get the
boats! ”
And without a moment's shudder of fear she plunged through
the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glim-
mering light of the candle she had left on the stairs she mounted
on to the window-sill and crept into the boat, which was left
with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Bob
was not long after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but
with the lantern in his hand.
«Why, they're both here,— both the boats,” said Bob, as he
got into the one where Maggie was. “It's wonderful this fast-
ening isn't broke too, as well as the mooring. ”
In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening
it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger
Maggie incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless when
we are companions in their danger, and Bob's mind was absorbed
in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless in-doors.
The fact that Maggie had been up, had waked him, and had
taken the lead in activity, gave Bob a vague impression of her
as one who would help to protect, not need to be protected.
She too had got possession of an oar and had pushed off, so as
to release the boat from the overhanging window frame.
“The water's rising so fast,” said Bob, "I doubt it'll be in
at the chambers before long,— th' house is so low. I've more
mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother into the boat,
if I could, and trusten to the water, — for th' old house is none
so safe. And if I let go the boat - but you! ” he exclaimed, ,
suddenly lifting the light of his lantern on Maggie, as she
## p. 5377 (#553) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5377
stood in the rain with the car in her hand and her black hair
streaming
Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept
along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to
the wide water with a force that carried them far past the
meeting current of the river.
In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing,
but that she had suddenly passed away from that life which she
had been dreading; it was the transition of death without its
agony,- and she was alone in the darkness with God.
The whole thing had been so rapid, so dream-like, that the
threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank down on
the seat clutching the oar mechanically, and for a long while had
no distinct conception of her position. The first thing that
waked her to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the rain,
and a perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest
light, which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasur-
able watery level below. She was driven out upon the flood,
that awful visitation of God which her father used to talk of,
which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams. And
with that thought there rushed in the vision of the old home,
and Tom, and her mother, they had all listened together.
"O God, where am I? Which is the way home? ” she cried
out, in the dim loneliness.
What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had
once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in distress,
- her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond reach of
help! Her whole soul was strained now on that thought; and
she saw the long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness,
and finding none.
She was floating in smooth water now,- perhaps far on the
over-flooded fields. There was sense of present danger to
check the outgoing of her mind to the old home; and she strained
her eyes against the curtain of gloom that she might seize the
first sight of her whereabouts, – that she might catch some faint
suggestion of the spot towards which all her anxieties tended.
Oh, how welcome the widening of that dismal watery level,
the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defin-
ing blackness of objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must
be out on the fields; those were the tops of hedgerow trees.
Which way did the river lie ? Looking behind her, she saw the
no
IX-337
## p. 5378 (#554) ###########################################
5378
GEORGE ELIOT
lines of black trees; looking before her, there were none; then
the river lay before her. She seized an oar and began to paddle
the boat forward with the energy of wakening hope; the dawning
seemed to advance more swiftly, now she was in action; and she
could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a
mound where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and
rowed by turns in the growing twilight; her wet clothes clung
round her, and her streaming hair was dashed about by the
wind, but she was hardly conscious of any bodily sensations, -
except a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty emotion.
Along with the sense of danger and possible rescue for those
long-remembered beings at the old home, there was an undefined
sense of reconcilement with her brother: what quarrel, what
harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the pres-
ence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life
is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal
needs ? Vaguely Maggie felt this, in the strong resurgent love
towards her brother that swept away all the later impressions of
hard, cruel offense and misunderstanding, and left only the deep,
underlying, unshakable memories of early union.
But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and
near to her Maggie could discern the current of the river. The
dark mass must be yes, it was - St. Ogg's. Ah, now she
knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the well-known
trees -- the gray willows, the now yellowing chestnuts - and above
them the old roof! But there was no color, no shape yet; all
was faint and dim. More and more strongly the energies seemed
to come and put themselves forth, as if her life were a stored-
up force that was being spent in this hour, unneeded for any
future.
She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she
would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house:
this was the thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with
more and more vividness the state of things round the old home.
But then she might be carried very far down, and be unable to
guide her boat out of the current again. For the first time dis-
tinct ideas of danger began to press upon her; but there was no
choice of courses, no room for hesitation, and she floated into the
current. Swiftly she went now, without effort; more and more
clearly in the lessening distance and the growing light she began
to discern the objects that she knew must be the well-known
H
1
1
## p. 5379 (#555) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5379
see
trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing muddy cur-
rent that must be the strangely altered Ripple.
Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash
against her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon.
What were those masses ?
For the first time Maggie's heart began to beat in an agony
of dread. She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she was being
floated along, more intensely conscious of the anticipated clash.
But the horror was transient; it passed away before the oncom-
ing warehouses of St. Ogg's. She had passed the mouth of the
Ripple, then; now, she must use all her skill and power to man-
age the boat and get it if possible out of the current. She could
now that the bridge was broken down; she could see the
masts of a stranded vessel far out over the watery field.
But no
boats were to be seen moving on the river, — such as had been
laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets.
With new resolution Maggie seized her oar, and stood up
again to paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness
of the river, and she was carried along beyond the bridge. She
could hear shouts from the windows overlooking the river, as if
the people there were calling to her. It was not till she had
passed on nearly to Tofton that she could get the boat clear of
the current. Then with one yearning look towards her uncle
Deane's house that lay farther down the river, she took to both
her oars and rowed with all her might across the watery fields,
back towards the Mill. Color was beginning to awake now, and
as she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints
of the trees, could see the old Scotch firs far to the right; and
the home chestnuts,- oh, how deep they lay in the water, - deeper
than the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill —
where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the Rip-
ple, - what had they meant? But it was not the house, - the
house stood firm; drowned up to the first story, but still firm;-
or was it broken in at the end towards the Mill ?
With panting joy that she was there at last, -joy that over-
came all distress, – Maggie neared the front of the house. At
first she heard no sound; she saw no object moving. Her boat
was on a level with the up-stairs window. She called out in a
loud piercing voice: -
« Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is
Maggie! ”
## p. 5380 (#556) ###########################################
5380
GEORGE ELIOT
1
Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she
heard Tom's voice: -
“Who is it? Have you brought a boat ? »
"It is I, Tom,- Maggie. Where is mother ? »
“She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yester-
day. I'll come down to the lower window. ”
"Alone, Maggie? ” said Tom, in a voice of deep astonish-
ment, as he opened the middle window, on a level with the boat.
“Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to you.
Get in quickly. Is there no one else ? ”
"No," said Tom, stepping into the boat, "I fear the man is
drowned; he was carried down the Ripple, I think, when part
of the Mill fell with the crash of trees and stones against it;
I've shouted again and again, and there has been no answer.
Give me the oars, Maggie. ”
It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were
on the
wide water,— he face to face with Maggie, - that the full mean-
ing of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with
so overpowering a force,- it was such a new revelation to his
spirit of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision, which
he had fancied so keen and clear,—that he was unable to ask a
question. They sat mutely gazing at each other,- Maggie with
eyes of intense life looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom
pale, with a certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy
though the lips were silent; and though he could ask no ques-
tion, he guessed a story of almost miraculous, Divinely protected
effort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, and
the lips found a word they could utter,— the old childish Mag-
sie!
Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of that
mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain.
As soon as she could speak, she said:—“We will go to Lucy,
Tom; we'll go and see if she is safe, and then we can help the
rest. »
Tom rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed
from poor Maggie's. The boat was soon in the current of the
river again, and soon they would be at Tofton.
Park House stands high up out of the flood,” said Maggie.
"Perhaps they have got Lucy there. "
Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried towards
them by the river. Some wooden machinery had just given way
## p. 5381 (#557) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5381
on one of the wharves, and huge fragments were being floated
along. The sun was rising now, and the wide area of watery
desolation was spread out in dreadful clearness around them;
in dreadful clearness floated onward the hurrying, threatening
masses. A large company in a boat that was working its way
along under the Tofton houses observed their danger, and shouted,
Get out of the current!
But that could not be done at once; and Tom, looking before
him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging
together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass across the
stream.
“It is coming, Maggie! ) Tom said, in a deep, hoarse voice,
loosing the oars and clasping her.
The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water,
and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.
But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on
the golden water.
The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down
in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one
supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little
hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.
NATURE repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine,
and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood
had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years
The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in
thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and
warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager
voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
And
every man and woman mentioned in this history was
still living, except those whose end we know.
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees
are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is
a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the
hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past
rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no
thorough repair.
Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote church-yard -- where
the brick grave that held a father whom we know, was found
with the stone laid prostrate upon it after the flood — had recov-
ered all its grassy order and decent quiet.
## p. 5382 (#558) ###########################################
5382
GEORGE ELIOT
Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon
after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace;
and it was visited at different moments by two men who both
felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever
buried there.
One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside
him; but that was years after.
The other was always solitary. His great companionship was
among the trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed
still to hover, like a revisiting spirit.
The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and
below the names it was written :-
“In their death they were not divided. ”
THE VILLAGE WORTHIES
1
1
From (Silas Marner)
TE
He conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when
Silas approached the door of the Rainbow, had as usual
been slow and intermittent when the company first assem-
bled. The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an
air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits
and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were
depending on the first man who winked; while the beer-drinkers,
chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids
down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if their
draughts of beer were a funeral duty attended with embarrassing
sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral
disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences
as those of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke
silence by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher:-
“Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yester-
day, Bob? »
The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not dis-
posed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat,
and replied, “And they wouldn't be fur wrong, John. ”
After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely
as before.
«Was it a red Durham ? » said the farrier, taking up the
thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.
## p. 5383 (#559) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5383
The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at
the butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of
answering
“Red it was,” said the butcher, in his good-humored husky
treble,– "and a Durham it was. ”
« Then you needn't tell me who you bought it of,” said the
farrier, looking round with some triumph: “I know who it is has
got the red Durhams o’ this country-side. And she'd a white
star on her brow, I'll bet a penny ? The farrier leaned forward
with his hands on his knees as he put this question, and his eyes
twinkled knowingly.
“Well, yes — she might,” said the butcher, slowly, consider-
ing that he was giving a decided affirmative.
« I don't say
contrairy. ”
"I knew that very well,” said the farrier, throwing himself
backward again, and speaking defiantly; "if I don't know Mr.
Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does — that's all.
And as for the cow you've bought, bargain or no bargain, I've
been at the drenching of her - contradick me who will. ”
The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational
spirit was roused a little.
« I'm not for contradicking no man,” he said; “I'm for peace
and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs — I'm for cutting
'em short myself; but I don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's
a lovely carkiss — and anybody as was reasonable, it 'ud bring
tears into their eyes to look at it. ”
“Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,” pursued the
farrier, angrily; "and it was Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told
a lie when you said it was a red Durham. ”
“I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huski-
ness as before; (and I contradick none not if a man was to
swear himself black; he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bar-
gains. All I say is, it's a lovely carkiss. And what I say I'll
stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man. ”
"No," said the farrier with bitter sarcasm, looking at the
company generally; "and p'raps you aren't pig-headed; and p'raps
you didn't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'raps you didn't
say she'd got a star on her brow — stick to that, now you're
at it. ”
« Come, come,” said the landlord, “let the cow alone. The
truth lies atween you; you're both right and both wrong, as I
## p. 5384 (#560) ###########################################
5384
GEORGE ELIOT
allays say. And as for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say
nothing to that; but this I say, as the Rainbow's the Rainbow.
And for the matter o' that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters,
you know the most upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey? You remem-
ber when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, and
took the Warrens ? »
Mr. Macey, tailor and parish clerk, the latter of which func-
tions rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-
featured young man who sat opposite him, held his white head
on one side, and twirled his thumbs with an air of complacency,
slightly seasoned with criticism. He smiled pityingly in answer
to the landlord's appeal, and said:
"Ay, ay; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid
by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been
to school at Tarley; they've learned pernouncing; that's come up
since my day. ”
"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey,” said the deputy clerk,
with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out
of my place. As the psalm says:
«< I know what's right; nor only so,
But also practice what I know. ) »
“Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune when it's set
for you; if you're for practicing I wish you'd practice that,” said a
large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-
day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as
he spoke, at two of the company who were known officially as
“the bassoon” and “the key bugle,” in the confidence that he was
expressing the sense of the musical profession in Raveloe.
Mr. Tookey the deputy clerk, who shared the unpopularity
common to deputies, turned very red, but replied with careful
moderation :-"Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm
in the wrong, I'm not the man to say I won't alter. But there's
people set up their own ears for a standard, and expect the
whole choir to follow 'em. There may be two opinions, I hope. ”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with
this attack on youthful presumption; "you're right there, Tookey:
there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of him-
sen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd
be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear
itself. ”
## p. 5385 (#561) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5385
It's your
“Well, Mr. Macey,” said poor Tookey, serious amidst the
general laughter, “I undertook to partially fill up the office of
parish clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirm-
ities should make you unfitting; and it's one of the rights
thereof to sing in the choir - else why have you done the same
yourself? ”
“Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks,” said
Ben Winthrop. "The old gentleman's got a gift. Why, the
Squire used to invite him to take a glass, only to hear him sing
the Red Rovier'; didn't he, Mr. Macey? It's a nat'ral gift.
There's my little lad Aaron, he's got a gift — he can sing a tune
off straight, like a throstle. But as for you, Master Tookey,
you'd better stick to your Amens': your voice is well enough
when you keep it up
in
your nose.
inside as isn't
right made for music: it's no better nor a hollow stalk. ”
This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant
form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Win-
throp's insult was felt by everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's
epigram.
"I see what it is plain enough,” said Mr. Tookey, unable to
keep cool any longer. “There's a consperacy to turn me out o'
the choir, as I shouldn't share the Christmas money that's
where it is. But I shall speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I'll not be
put upon by no man. "
"Nay, nay, Tookey,” said Ben Winthrop.
« We'll pay you
your share to keep out of it -- that's what we'll do. There's
things folks 'ud pay to be rid on, besides varmin. ”
“Come, come,” said the landlord, who felt that paying people
for their absence was a principle dangerous to society; "a joke's
a joke. We're all good friends here, I hope. We must give and
take. You're both right and you're both wrong, as I say. I
agree wi' Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions; and if mine
was asked, I should say they're both right. Tookey's right and
Winthrop's right, and they've only got to split the difference
and make themselves even. ”
The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some con-
tempt at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself,
and never went to church, as being of the medical profession, and
likely to be in requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher,
having music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire, for
Tookey's defeat and for the preservation of the peace.
## p. 5386 (#562) ###########################################
5386
GEORGE ELIOT
"To be sure,” he said, following up the landlord's conciliatory
view, we're fond of our old clerk; it's nat'ral, and him used
to be such a singer, and got a brother as is known for the first
fiddler in this country-side. Eh, it's a pity but what Solomon
lived in our village, and could give us a tune when he liked, eh,
Mr. Macey? I'd keep him in liver and lights for nothing - that
I would. ”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency;
our family's been known for musicianers as far back as any-
body can tell. But them things are dying out, as I tell Solomon
every time he comes round; there's no voices like what there
used to be, and there's nobody remembers what we remember, if
it ain't the old crows. "
“Ay, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father came
into these parts, don't you, Mr. Macey? " said the landlord.
"I should think I did,” said the old man, who had now gone
through that complimentary process necessary to bring him up
to the point of narration; "and a fine old gentleman he was- as
fine and finer nor the Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from
a bit north'ard, so far as I could ever make out. But there's
nobody rightly knows about those parts; only it couldn't be far
north'ard, nor much different from this country, for he brought a
fine breed o' sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and
everything reasonable. We heard tell as he'd sold his own land
to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as
had land of his own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place.
But they said it was along of his wife's dying; though there's
reasons in things as nobody knows on — that's pretty much what
I've made out; though some folks are so wise that they'll find
you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's
winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't. Howsom-
ever, it was soon as we'd got a new parish'ner as know'd
the rights and customs o' things, and kep a good house, and was
well looked on by everybody. And the young man — that's the
Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver a sister - soon begun to
court Miss Osgood, that's the sister o' the Mr. Osgood as now is,
and a fine handsome lass she was - eh, you can't think — they
pretend this young lass is like her, but that's the way wi' people
as don't know what come before 'em. I should know, for I helped
the old rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I helped him marry
'em. ”
seen
## p. 5387 (#563) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5387
Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in in-
stallments, expecting to be questioned according to precedent.
“Ay, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't it, Mr. Macey,
so as you were likely to remember that marriage ? ” said the
landlord, in a congratulatory tone.
"I should think there did - a very partic'lar thing,” said Mr.
Macey, nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow poor old gen-
tleman, I was fond on him, though he'd got a bit confused in
his head, what wi' age and wi' taking a drop o' summat warm
when the service come of a cold morning; and young Mr.
Lammeter he'd have no way but he must be married in Jani-
wary, which, to be sure, 's a unreasonable time to be married in,
for it isn't like a christening or a burying, as you can't help;
and so Mr. Drumlow — poor old gentleman, I was fond on him;
but when he come to put the questions, he put 'em by the rule
o' contrairy like, and he says, Wilt thou have this man to thy
wedded wife ? ' says he, and then he says, Wilt thou have this
woman to thy wedded husband ? ' says he. But the partic’larest
thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it but me, and
they answered straight off Yes,' like as if it had been me saying
Amen' i' the right place, without listening to what went before. ”
“But you knew what was going on well enough, didn't you,
Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh ? ” said the butcher.
"Lor bless you! ” said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in
pity at the impotence of his hearers' imagination, -"why, I was
all of a tremble: it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by the two
tails, like; for I couldn't stop the parson, I couldn't take upon
me to do that; and yet I said to myself, I says, “Suppose they
shouldn't be fast married, 'cause the words are contrairy? ' and
my head went working like a mill, for I was allays uncommon
for turning things over and seeing all round 'em; and I says to
myself, Is't the meanin' or the words as makes folks fast i'
wedlock? ' For the parson meant right, and the bride and bride-
groom meant right. But then when I come to think on it,
meanin' goes but a little way i' most things, for you may mean
to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then
where are you? And so I says to mysen, It isn't the meanin',
it's the glue. ' And I was worreted as if I'd got three bells to
pull at once, when we got into the vestry, and they begun to
sign their names. But where's the use o' talking ? - you can't
think what goes on in a 'cute man's inside. ”
## p. 5388 (#564) ###########################################
5388
GEORGE ELIOT
But you held in for all that, didn't you, Mr. Macey ? ” said
the landlord.
“Ay, I held in tight till I was by mysen, wi' Mr. Drumlow,
and then I out wi' everything, but respectful, as I allays did.
And he made light on it, and he says: -Pooh, pooh, Macey,
make yourself easy,' he says, 'it's neither the meaning nor the
words — it's the register does it — that's the glue. ' So you see
he settled it easy; for parsons and doctors know everything by
heart, like, so as they aren't worreted wi' thinking what's the
rights and wrongs o' things, as I'n been many and many's the
time. And sure enough the wedding turned out all right, on'y
poor Mrs. Lammeter — that's Miss Osgood as was — died afore
the lasses were growed up; but for prosperity and everything
respectable, there's no family more looked on. ”
Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard this story many
times, but it was listened to as if it had been a favorite tune,
and at certain points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily
suspended, that the listeners might give their whole minds to
the expected words. But there was more to come; and Mr.
Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading question:-
“Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn't they
say, when he come into these parts ? ”
“Well, yes," said Mr. Macey; but I dare say it's as much as
this Mr. Lammeter's done to keep it whole.
Why, they're
stables four times as big as Squire Cass's, for he thought o'
nothing but hosses and hunting, Cliff didn't -a Lunnon tailor,
some folks said, as had gone mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't
ride, Lor bless you! they said he'd got no more grip o' the hoss
than if his legs had been cross-sticks: my grandfather heared old
Squire Cass say so many and many a time. But ride he would,
as if Old Harry had been a-driving him; and he'd a son, a lad o'
sixteen; and nothing would his father have him do but he must
ride and ride — though the lad was frightened, they said. And it
was a common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out
o' the lad, and make a gentleman on him -- not but what I'm a
tailor myself, but in respect as God made me such, I'm proud on
it, for Macey, tailor,' 's been wrote up over our door since afore
the Queen's heads went out on the shillings. But Cliff, he was
ashamed o’ being called a tailor, and he was sore vexed as his
riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the gentlefolks here about
could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got sickly and died,
## p. 5389 (#565) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5389
and the father didn't live long after him, for he got queerer nor
ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night,
wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights
burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was
a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi’ the poor dumb
creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as
he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity,
and that's how the Warrens come to be Charity Land; though
as for the stables, Mr. Lammeter never uses 'em — they're out o'
all charicter — Lor bless you! if you was to set the doors a-banging
in 'em, it 'ud sound like thunder half o'er the parish. ”
"Ay, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks
see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey ? " said the landlord.
“Ay, ay; go that way of a dark night, that's all,” said Mr.
Macey, winking mysteriously, “and then make believe, if you
like, as you didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping
o'the hosses, nor the cracking o' the whips, and howling too, if
it's tow'rt daybreak. Cliff's Holiday' has been the name of it
ever sin’ I were a boy; that's to say, some said as it was the
holiday Old Harry gev him from roasting, like. That's what my
father told me, and he was a reasonable man, though there's
folks nowadays know what happened afore they were born better
nor they know their own business. ”
“What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas ? " said the landlord,
turning to the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his
cue: “here's a nut for you to crack. ”
Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was
proud of his position.
Say? I
say
what a
man should say as doesn't shut his
eyes to look at a finger-post. I say as I'm ready to wager any
man ten pound, if he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the
pasture before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights
nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's
what I say, and I've said it many a time; but there's nobody
'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as they make so
sure of. ”
«Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is,” said Ben Win-
throp. «You might as well bet a man as he wouldn't catch the
rheumatise if he stood up to 's neck in the pool of a frosty
night. It 'ud be fine fun for a man to win his bet as he'd
## p.
tion of the discord, and if not the establishment of harmony, then)
the clear and impressive indication of the best way to its establish,
ment, is the real motive and end of her writing. There is in her noi
great trágic fatalism, which makes the art of the Greek dramatist
deeply and overwhelmingly tragic. Each one of her leading charac-
ters is at fault, when viewed in the light of the healthy social ideal.
In the exposition of the character the fault will be shown up strongly :
the hero will either be developed into greater social perfection, or
the' tragic end will impress upon the reader the disease and its
remedy, the bane and its antidote.
:) The social failings and shortcomings which stand in the way of
this harmony. are grouped by her into two leading faults of a general
nature: the discord between the individual and selfish and the gen-)
eral and altruistic; between thoughtless social materialism and con-
formity, and questioning originality and spiritual revolt; between
conventionality and originality; between common-sense and prophetic
far-sightedness; between the Philistine and the artistic, the humdrum
worker 'and the world-reformer, the materialist and the dreamer)
The one looks down before him on the ground and ignores the
heights beyond and the clear sky above, and in his heavy-footed
advance shoves the sky-gazer aside and walks over him when he has
fallen; the other gazes at the heights and the stars, and spurns the
clod and soil, tripping over them,- nay, slipping in the mud. They
each ignore one another and the world in which each lives, or they
despise each other and their respective goals and aims.
Now, in all her novels this problem is repeated and a solution is
attempted. Over and over again she presents this situation as the
central point in the composition of her novels, in different layers of
society, in most varied characters. And the understanding of this is
the key to the understanding of George Eliot's works. She either
brings it out in presenting two central figures as the contrasts which
represent either faulty extreme, or one figure as opposed to the sur-
roundings, or both these means are used to impress the central fact.
We shall take one pregnant instance to illustrate this: Daniel
Deronda' has been estimated and criticized chiefly as a novel in
which the Jewish question has been discussed by her in a dramatic
manner. That it deals powerfully with this question is no doubt
true; but the Jewish question is but a side issue - no doubt appealing
to her deep sympathies and sense of justice; but it is not the cen-
tral motive to the story nor the artistic keystone of the novel as
## p. 5372 (#548) ###########################################
5372
GEORGE ELIOT
constructed. The central figure in that story is Gwendolen Harleth
(who ought properly to have given her name to the novel). The
contrasting figure at the other extreme is Mordecai the Jew, and
Daniel is the intermediary figure (almost figure-head) between these
two extremes. The personality which, I am sure, set her sympa-
thetic intellect and imagination throbbing into artistic creation was
Gwendolen. As an ordinary though beautiful young lady of English
society (in her rank what Hetty Sorrel and Rosamond Vincy are
in theirs), she is the clod-born, materialistic, and hopelessly selfish
representative of the unsocial member of a society in which ideas
and ideals are unknown, and in which blind impulse, feebly directed
by prejudice and tradition, petty vanity and greed, at most per-
sonal ambition, are the motives to action, and produce the discord
and misery which surround even those who live in affluence. Her
beauty, her position in her family, her whole education, have kept
from her every higher ideal, all semblance of an ideal, and all
altruism and feeling for or with her fellow-men. Her world in the
opening of the story is the most contracted world of a small self,
with a pervading passion out of all proportion to its extent, in
which the desires whirl round and round this little circle in hideous
compression. Now the fundamental problem of the story is: How
can this little, selfish, and materialistic nature, which only realizes
the things before its desiring eyes and grasping touch, be made
large, unselfish, and idealistic, so that it reaches out beyond and
above the world of self into the regions of great ideas, in which the
individual is completely submerged; and that through this whole-
some straining of the heart and of sympathetic power, through this
realization and love of the ideal, it may learn to love and pity, and
think for and in, mankind and all men and women ? And this pro-
cess of artistic development of character is sensuously and convin-
cingly represented in this novel. The reader enters sympathetically
into the little soul of that beautiful girl at the very beginning of the
story, and in her he passes through all the phases, until without any
forced hiatus he sees before him at the end the purified and en-
larged Gwendolen, who has learnt her ennobling lesson in the great
school of suffering. It is perhaps the greatest achievement in her art.
The more definite question is: How can such a girl realize the
great world of ideas? The answer is: It must come through the
heart, through the emotions and not the intellect, — the intellect will
be widened and matured after her personality has been thrilled. She
must fall in love with a man who is the impersonation of an idea,
whose whole existence centres round a great desire far removed
from the petty world of self in which she has lived, — nay, opposed
to it, in direct contrast to it.
## p. 5373 (#549) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5373
This impersonation is presented in Daniel Deronda; and the fault
in the book is that George Eliot's theoretical bias has been too strong
for her, and in her eagerness to make him the bearer of an idea to
the central figure of the story she has sacrificed the realistic drawing
of Daniel, who is an impersonation at the cost of flesh and blood.
Given the fact that Daniel must in his personality represent some
unselfish idea, the question was: What actual idea, great in extent
and enough to fill a man's mind and soul, should be chosen ? The
difficulty here arose, that if George Eliot had chosen some purely im-
aginary topic it would have lacked reality, and would have moved
neither Gwendolen nor the reader into sympathy. If on the other
hand she had taken some stirring question of the day, the question
as such would have engrossed the interest and attention of the reader,
and would no longer have been subordinated to the chief artistic pur-
pose it has in the story. As it is, to many, the Jewish question as
treated and suggested in the novel has itself engrossed the atten-
tion of readers, and has diverted their minds from the main artistic
gist of the story. But to the ordinary English reader the subject of
Jewish social life and aspirations was sufficiently remote. Nay, so
narrow are the sympathies and the intellectual horizon of many cul-
tivated Englishmen, that though they can be interested in the lives
of gipsies and farm laborers, they cannot « screw up an interest in
those Jews. ”
To Daniel however it was a real, stirring, and great idea to
which he wished to devote his life. Now, in order that Gwendolen
should realize in herself such a great impersonal idea, she had to fall
in love with the man whose life they filled, and through her heart
and her love for him it would reach her mind and raise her thoughts.
Daniel, again, the man she loves, is contrasted with the narrow and
selfish man, the hardened and crystallized type of another social
world, consuming itself in its own self-love.
A11 Gwendolen's experiences directly or indirectly tend to bring
about this development of her soul. A striking scene in this sense
is her interview with Klesmer, the genuine and thorough musician
devoted to his art and work. And when she comes out of the final
soul's tragedy we feel that the woman has stood the test of fire, and
has realized the greatness and overwhelming vastness of the spiritual
world. G. H. Lewes, to whom the writer communicated this concep-
tion of Daniel Deronda,' assured him that he had grasped the cen-
tral idea which George Eliot had in her mind, and the actual history
in the story's construction.
Gwendolen's counterpart (and there are many in George Eliot's
books) is Dorothea in Middlemarch. ' She starts with great and
extraordinary ideas, and must, through life and suffering, realize the
## p. 5374 (#550) ###########################################
5374
GEORGE ELIOT
moral justification of the simple and commonplace in life.
The con-
trasting types illustrating this central point can be found in every
work: Dorothea and Rosamond on the one side,-original, spiritual,
striving as commonplace selfishness, — and Dorothea and Ladislaw as
heavy, serious, intellectual morality, and light, playful, artistic free-
dom, on the other; Lydgate with his great reformatory ideas, slowly
enfeebled and annihilated in his Samson-like vigor by the pretty,
selfish, shallow-souled Rosamond of provincial worldliness. Gwendolen
is also contrasted with Mirah. In Adam Bede,' again, Dinah and
Hetty present the same contrasts as do Tito Melema and Romola,
Esther and Felix Holt. Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom, the
spirit of revolt in Maggie and the hard conventionality of respecta-
bility in her brother Tom, are strongly marked types of this kind.
Maggie's conflict with her narrow and commonplace surroundings and
their conventional respectability are typified in the Mill. It is a
wonderful touch of artistic suggestion that she and her brother are
finally submerged in the Miil, carried away by the flood. This novel
reflects more thoroughly the spirit of Greek tragedy than any other
work of modern fiction. The Mill, and the part it plays in the life
of the Tulliver family and in Maggie's sorrows, are like great Fate in
the Greek tragedy. It is an embodiment of the hard and unrelenting
tyranny of the powers that are. Even in (Silas Marner,' the most
artistic and least doctrinaire of her novels, the moral promess of
X remedying Silas's social unfitness and misanthropy is the central
idea. Space will not allow us to give further illustrations of this idea
in her novels; but enough has been said to enable the reader to test
it and follow it up for himself.
The two most striking qualities in George Eliot as a writer are
her humor and her sympathy. They are really connected with one
another. The power of intellectual observation, when coupled with
the power of feeling sympathy, produces humor; the purely intellect-
ual or objective cast of mind produces wit; while the purely subject-
ive habit of mind is unable to produce either.
But with all her wide range of sympathy, upon which we have
been dwelling, its limitations can still be discerned. The careful
observer will recognize that the subjective attitude of the woman can-
not wholly be hidden from view. The chief women into whom she
projects herself are after all those that are nearest to herself, and she
cannot help treating them as favorites and bestowing the greater
attention upon them: Daniel only exists as a creation to develop
Gwendolen; nay, Savonarola is really constructed for Romola's spirit-
ual development, Casaubon for Dorothea, and so on. A still more
marked and important limitation in her sympathies, arising out of her
ethical bias, is her pronounced dislike to all morbid art, all that is
## p. 5375 (#551) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5375
fantastic. The poetry of Byron, the music of Chopin, all forms of
morbid sentiment, are so repulsive to her nature that she cannot treat
them with tolerance or even with humor. Remarks on Esther in
(Felix Holt' bear this out. Probably this is an autobiographical
touch, and having freed herself from these morbid tendencies in her
youth, she could never look back upon them with tolerance.
Her seriousness and ethical bias may at times also have impaired
her style. Her extensive studies in science and philosophy often
make her ponderous in thought and in expression. The fondness with
which she takes her similes from science is often confusing to the
reader who is unfamiliar with the facts and thoughts that are used
as illustrations. She never quite overcame the temptation to insert
what was new and striking to herself; so that her science and phi-
losophy never reached that mature stage of mental assimilation in
which they manifest themselves merely in the general fullness of
thought, without ever asserting themselves as science or as philoso-
phy. Still, no writer of fiction has ever introduced reflections and epi-
sodes in propria persona which are so striking and well worth reading
in themselves. When her imitators attempt this they fail signally,
and one need but compare such passages with those of George Eliot
to realize her greatness as a writer and as a thinker.
To sum up the estimate of George Eliot as a novelist, we would
say that she is the greatest representative of the analytical and
psychological school, fixing with truth and sensuousness the types
of English provincial life; with a final purpose, which she achieved, of
illustrating by them the ideals of social ethics for the wider life of
humanity.
Cha Srecklin
THE FINAL RESCUE
From The Mill on the Floss)
A"
T THAT moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden
cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under
her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the
door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an
instant; she knew it was the flood !
The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last
twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; without
## p. 5376 (#552) ###########################################
5376
GEORGE ELIOT
screaming, she hurried with the candle up-stairs to Bob Jakin's
bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the
shoulder
“Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house! let us see if we
can make the boats safe. ”
She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her
baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to
see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into
the room at the door leading from the staircase; she saw that
the water was already on a level with the step. While she was
looking, something came with a tremendous crash against the
window and sent the leaded panes and the old wooden frame-
work inwards in shivers, the water pouring in after it.
"It is the boat! ” cried Maggie. "Bob, come down to get the
boats! ”
And without a moment's shudder of fear she plunged through
the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glim-
mering light of the candle she had left on the stairs she mounted
on to the window-sill and crept into the boat, which was left
with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Bob
was not long after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but
with the lantern in his hand.
«Why, they're both here,— both the boats,” said Bob, as he
got into the one where Maggie was. “It's wonderful this fast-
ening isn't broke too, as well as the mooring. ”
In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening
it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger
Maggie incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless when
we are companions in their danger, and Bob's mind was absorbed
in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless in-doors.
The fact that Maggie had been up, had waked him, and had
taken the lead in activity, gave Bob a vague impression of her
as one who would help to protect, not need to be protected.
She too had got possession of an oar and had pushed off, so as
to release the boat from the overhanging window frame.
“The water's rising so fast,” said Bob, "I doubt it'll be in
at the chambers before long,— th' house is so low. I've more
mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother into the boat,
if I could, and trusten to the water, — for th' old house is none
so safe. And if I let go the boat - but you! ” he exclaimed, ,
suddenly lifting the light of his lantern on Maggie, as she
## p. 5377 (#553) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5377
stood in the rain with the car in her hand and her black hair
streaming
Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept
along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to
the wide water with a force that carried them far past the
meeting current of the river.
In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing,
but that she had suddenly passed away from that life which she
had been dreading; it was the transition of death without its
agony,- and she was alone in the darkness with God.
The whole thing had been so rapid, so dream-like, that the
threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank down on
the seat clutching the oar mechanically, and for a long while had
no distinct conception of her position. The first thing that
waked her to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the rain,
and a perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest
light, which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasur-
able watery level below. She was driven out upon the flood,
that awful visitation of God which her father used to talk of,
which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams. And
with that thought there rushed in the vision of the old home,
and Tom, and her mother, they had all listened together.
"O God, where am I? Which is the way home? ” she cried
out, in the dim loneliness.
What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had
once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in distress,
- her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond reach of
help! Her whole soul was strained now on that thought; and
she saw the long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness,
and finding none.
She was floating in smooth water now,- perhaps far on the
over-flooded fields. There was sense of present danger to
check the outgoing of her mind to the old home; and she strained
her eyes against the curtain of gloom that she might seize the
first sight of her whereabouts, – that she might catch some faint
suggestion of the spot towards which all her anxieties tended.
Oh, how welcome the widening of that dismal watery level,
the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defin-
ing blackness of objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must
be out on the fields; those were the tops of hedgerow trees.
Which way did the river lie ? Looking behind her, she saw the
no
IX-337
## p. 5378 (#554) ###########################################
5378
GEORGE ELIOT
lines of black trees; looking before her, there were none; then
the river lay before her. She seized an oar and began to paddle
the boat forward with the energy of wakening hope; the dawning
seemed to advance more swiftly, now she was in action; and she
could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a
mound where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and
rowed by turns in the growing twilight; her wet clothes clung
round her, and her streaming hair was dashed about by the
wind, but she was hardly conscious of any bodily sensations, -
except a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty emotion.
Along with the sense of danger and possible rescue for those
long-remembered beings at the old home, there was an undefined
sense of reconcilement with her brother: what quarrel, what
harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the pres-
ence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life
is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal
needs ? Vaguely Maggie felt this, in the strong resurgent love
towards her brother that swept away all the later impressions of
hard, cruel offense and misunderstanding, and left only the deep,
underlying, unshakable memories of early union.
But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and
near to her Maggie could discern the current of the river. The
dark mass must be yes, it was - St. Ogg's. Ah, now she
knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the well-known
trees -- the gray willows, the now yellowing chestnuts - and above
them the old roof! But there was no color, no shape yet; all
was faint and dim. More and more strongly the energies seemed
to come and put themselves forth, as if her life were a stored-
up force that was being spent in this hour, unneeded for any
future.
She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she
would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house:
this was the thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with
more and more vividness the state of things round the old home.
But then she might be carried very far down, and be unable to
guide her boat out of the current again. For the first time dis-
tinct ideas of danger began to press upon her; but there was no
choice of courses, no room for hesitation, and she floated into the
current. Swiftly she went now, without effort; more and more
clearly in the lessening distance and the growing light she began
to discern the objects that she knew must be the well-known
H
1
1
## p. 5379 (#555) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5379
see
trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing muddy cur-
rent that must be the strangely altered Ripple.
Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash
against her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon.
What were those masses ?
For the first time Maggie's heart began to beat in an agony
of dread. She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she was being
floated along, more intensely conscious of the anticipated clash.
But the horror was transient; it passed away before the oncom-
ing warehouses of St. Ogg's. She had passed the mouth of the
Ripple, then; now, she must use all her skill and power to man-
age the boat and get it if possible out of the current. She could
now that the bridge was broken down; she could see the
masts of a stranded vessel far out over the watery field.
But no
boats were to be seen moving on the river, — such as had been
laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets.
With new resolution Maggie seized her oar, and stood up
again to paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness
of the river, and she was carried along beyond the bridge. She
could hear shouts from the windows overlooking the river, as if
the people there were calling to her. It was not till she had
passed on nearly to Tofton that she could get the boat clear of
the current. Then with one yearning look towards her uncle
Deane's house that lay farther down the river, she took to both
her oars and rowed with all her might across the watery fields,
back towards the Mill. Color was beginning to awake now, and
as she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints
of the trees, could see the old Scotch firs far to the right; and
the home chestnuts,- oh, how deep they lay in the water, - deeper
than the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill —
where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the Rip-
ple, - what had they meant? But it was not the house, - the
house stood firm; drowned up to the first story, but still firm;-
or was it broken in at the end towards the Mill ?
With panting joy that she was there at last, -joy that over-
came all distress, – Maggie neared the front of the house. At
first she heard no sound; she saw no object moving. Her boat
was on a level with the up-stairs window. She called out in a
loud piercing voice: -
« Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is
Maggie! ”
## p. 5380 (#556) ###########################################
5380
GEORGE ELIOT
1
Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she
heard Tom's voice: -
“Who is it? Have you brought a boat ? »
"It is I, Tom,- Maggie. Where is mother ? »
“She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yester-
day. I'll come down to the lower window. ”
"Alone, Maggie? ” said Tom, in a voice of deep astonish-
ment, as he opened the middle window, on a level with the boat.
“Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to you.
Get in quickly. Is there no one else ? ”
"No," said Tom, stepping into the boat, "I fear the man is
drowned; he was carried down the Ripple, I think, when part
of the Mill fell with the crash of trees and stones against it;
I've shouted again and again, and there has been no answer.
Give me the oars, Maggie. ”
It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were
on the
wide water,— he face to face with Maggie, - that the full mean-
ing of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with
so overpowering a force,- it was such a new revelation to his
spirit of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision, which
he had fancied so keen and clear,—that he was unable to ask a
question. They sat mutely gazing at each other,- Maggie with
eyes of intense life looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom
pale, with a certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy
though the lips were silent; and though he could ask no ques-
tion, he guessed a story of almost miraculous, Divinely protected
effort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, and
the lips found a word they could utter,— the old childish Mag-
sie!
Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of that
mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain.
As soon as she could speak, she said:—“We will go to Lucy,
Tom; we'll go and see if she is safe, and then we can help the
rest. »
Tom rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed
from poor Maggie's. The boat was soon in the current of the
river again, and soon they would be at Tofton.
Park House stands high up out of the flood,” said Maggie.
"Perhaps they have got Lucy there. "
Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried towards
them by the river. Some wooden machinery had just given way
## p. 5381 (#557) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5381
on one of the wharves, and huge fragments were being floated
along. The sun was rising now, and the wide area of watery
desolation was spread out in dreadful clearness around them;
in dreadful clearness floated onward the hurrying, threatening
masses. A large company in a boat that was working its way
along under the Tofton houses observed their danger, and shouted,
Get out of the current!
But that could not be done at once; and Tom, looking before
him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging
together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass across the
stream.
“It is coming, Maggie! ) Tom said, in a deep, hoarse voice,
loosing the oars and clasping her.
The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water,
and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.
But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on
the golden water.
The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down
in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one
supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little
hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.
NATURE repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine,
and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood
had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years
The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in
thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and
warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager
voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
And
every man and woman mentioned in this history was
still living, except those whose end we know.
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees
are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is
a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the
hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past
rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no
thorough repair.
Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote church-yard -- where
the brick grave that held a father whom we know, was found
with the stone laid prostrate upon it after the flood — had recov-
ered all its grassy order and decent quiet.
## p. 5382 (#558) ###########################################
5382
GEORGE ELIOT
Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon
after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace;
and it was visited at different moments by two men who both
felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever
buried there.
One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside
him; but that was years after.
The other was always solitary. His great companionship was
among the trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed
still to hover, like a revisiting spirit.
The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and
below the names it was written :-
“In their death they were not divided. ”
THE VILLAGE WORTHIES
1
1
From (Silas Marner)
TE
He conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when
Silas approached the door of the Rainbow, had as usual
been slow and intermittent when the company first assem-
bled. The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an
air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits
and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were
depending on the first man who winked; while the beer-drinkers,
chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids
down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if their
draughts of beer were a funeral duty attended with embarrassing
sadness. At last Mr. Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral
disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences
as those of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke
silence by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher:-
“Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yester-
day, Bob? »
The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not dis-
posed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat,
and replied, “And they wouldn't be fur wrong, John. ”
After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely
as before.
«Was it a red Durham ? » said the farrier, taking up the
thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.
## p. 5383 (#559) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5383
The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at
the butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of
answering
“Red it was,” said the butcher, in his good-humored husky
treble,– "and a Durham it was. ”
« Then you needn't tell me who you bought it of,” said the
farrier, looking round with some triumph: “I know who it is has
got the red Durhams o’ this country-side. And she'd a white
star on her brow, I'll bet a penny ? The farrier leaned forward
with his hands on his knees as he put this question, and his eyes
twinkled knowingly.
“Well, yes — she might,” said the butcher, slowly, consider-
ing that he was giving a decided affirmative.
« I don't say
contrairy. ”
"I knew that very well,” said the farrier, throwing himself
backward again, and speaking defiantly; "if I don't know Mr.
Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does — that's all.
And as for the cow you've bought, bargain or no bargain, I've
been at the drenching of her - contradick me who will. ”
The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational
spirit was roused a little.
« I'm not for contradicking no man,” he said; “I'm for peace
and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs — I'm for cutting
'em short myself; but I don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's
a lovely carkiss — and anybody as was reasonable, it 'ud bring
tears into their eyes to look at it. ”
“Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,” pursued the
farrier, angrily; "and it was Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told
a lie when you said it was a red Durham. ”
“I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huski-
ness as before; (and I contradick none not if a man was to
swear himself black; he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bar-
gains. All I say is, it's a lovely carkiss. And what I say I'll
stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man. ”
"No," said the farrier with bitter sarcasm, looking at the
company generally; "and p'raps you aren't pig-headed; and p'raps
you didn't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'raps you didn't
say she'd got a star on her brow — stick to that, now you're
at it. ”
« Come, come,” said the landlord, “let the cow alone. The
truth lies atween you; you're both right and both wrong, as I
## p. 5384 (#560) ###########################################
5384
GEORGE ELIOT
allays say. And as for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say
nothing to that; but this I say, as the Rainbow's the Rainbow.
And for the matter o' that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters,
you know the most upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey? You remem-
ber when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, and
took the Warrens ? »
Mr. Macey, tailor and parish clerk, the latter of which func-
tions rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-
featured young man who sat opposite him, held his white head
on one side, and twirled his thumbs with an air of complacency,
slightly seasoned with criticism. He smiled pityingly in answer
to the landlord's appeal, and said:
"Ay, ay; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid
by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been
to school at Tarley; they've learned pernouncing; that's come up
since my day. ”
"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey,” said the deputy clerk,
with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out
of my place. As the psalm says:
«< I know what's right; nor only so,
But also practice what I know. ) »
“Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune when it's set
for you; if you're for practicing I wish you'd practice that,” said a
large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-
day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as
he spoke, at two of the company who were known officially as
“the bassoon” and “the key bugle,” in the confidence that he was
expressing the sense of the musical profession in Raveloe.
Mr. Tookey the deputy clerk, who shared the unpopularity
common to deputies, turned very red, but replied with careful
moderation :-"Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm
in the wrong, I'm not the man to say I won't alter. But there's
people set up their own ears for a standard, and expect the
whole choir to follow 'em. There may be two opinions, I hope. ”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with
this attack on youthful presumption; "you're right there, Tookey:
there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of him-
sen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd
be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear
itself. ”
## p. 5385 (#561) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5385
It's your
“Well, Mr. Macey,” said poor Tookey, serious amidst the
general laughter, “I undertook to partially fill up the office of
parish clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirm-
ities should make you unfitting; and it's one of the rights
thereof to sing in the choir - else why have you done the same
yourself? ”
“Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks,” said
Ben Winthrop. "The old gentleman's got a gift. Why, the
Squire used to invite him to take a glass, only to hear him sing
the Red Rovier'; didn't he, Mr. Macey? It's a nat'ral gift.
There's my little lad Aaron, he's got a gift — he can sing a tune
off straight, like a throstle. But as for you, Master Tookey,
you'd better stick to your Amens': your voice is well enough
when you keep it up
in
your nose.
inside as isn't
right made for music: it's no better nor a hollow stalk. ”
This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant
form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Win-
throp's insult was felt by everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's
epigram.
"I see what it is plain enough,” said Mr. Tookey, unable to
keep cool any longer. “There's a consperacy to turn me out o'
the choir, as I shouldn't share the Christmas money that's
where it is. But I shall speak to Mr. Crackenthorp; I'll not be
put upon by no man. "
"Nay, nay, Tookey,” said Ben Winthrop.
« We'll pay you
your share to keep out of it -- that's what we'll do. There's
things folks 'ud pay to be rid on, besides varmin. ”
“Come, come,” said the landlord, who felt that paying people
for their absence was a principle dangerous to society; "a joke's
a joke. We're all good friends here, I hope. We must give and
take. You're both right and you're both wrong, as I say. I
agree wi' Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions; and if mine
was asked, I should say they're both right. Tookey's right and
Winthrop's right, and they've only got to split the difference
and make themselves even. ”
The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some con-
tempt at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself,
and never went to church, as being of the medical profession, and
likely to be in requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher,
having music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire, for
Tookey's defeat and for the preservation of the peace.
## p. 5386 (#562) ###########################################
5386
GEORGE ELIOT
"To be sure,” he said, following up the landlord's conciliatory
view, we're fond of our old clerk; it's nat'ral, and him used
to be such a singer, and got a brother as is known for the first
fiddler in this country-side. Eh, it's a pity but what Solomon
lived in our village, and could give us a tune when he liked, eh,
Mr. Macey? I'd keep him in liver and lights for nothing - that
I would. ”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency;
our family's been known for musicianers as far back as any-
body can tell. But them things are dying out, as I tell Solomon
every time he comes round; there's no voices like what there
used to be, and there's nobody remembers what we remember, if
it ain't the old crows. "
“Ay, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father came
into these parts, don't you, Mr. Macey? " said the landlord.
"I should think I did,” said the old man, who had now gone
through that complimentary process necessary to bring him up
to the point of narration; "and a fine old gentleman he was- as
fine and finer nor the Mr. Lammeter as now is. He came from
a bit north'ard, so far as I could ever make out. But there's
nobody rightly knows about those parts; only it couldn't be far
north'ard, nor much different from this country, for he brought a
fine breed o' sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and
everything reasonable. We heard tell as he'd sold his own land
to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as
had land of his own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place.
But they said it was along of his wife's dying; though there's
reasons in things as nobody knows on — that's pretty much what
I've made out; though some folks are so wise that they'll find
you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's
winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't. Howsom-
ever, it was soon as we'd got a new parish'ner as know'd
the rights and customs o' things, and kep a good house, and was
well looked on by everybody. And the young man — that's the
Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver a sister - soon begun to
court Miss Osgood, that's the sister o' the Mr. Osgood as now is,
and a fine handsome lass she was - eh, you can't think — they
pretend this young lass is like her, but that's the way wi' people
as don't know what come before 'em. I should know, for I helped
the old rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I helped him marry
'em. ”
seen
## p. 5387 (#563) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5387
Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in in-
stallments, expecting to be questioned according to precedent.
“Ay, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't it, Mr. Macey,
so as you were likely to remember that marriage ? ” said the
landlord, in a congratulatory tone.
"I should think there did - a very partic'lar thing,” said Mr.
Macey, nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow poor old gen-
tleman, I was fond on him, though he'd got a bit confused in
his head, what wi' age and wi' taking a drop o' summat warm
when the service come of a cold morning; and young Mr.
Lammeter he'd have no way but he must be married in Jani-
wary, which, to be sure, 's a unreasonable time to be married in,
for it isn't like a christening or a burying, as you can't help;
and so Mr. Drumlow — poor old gentleman, I was fond on him;
but when he come to put the questions, he put 'em by the rule
o' contrairy like, and he says, Wilt thou have this man to thy
wedded wife ? ' says he, and then he says, Wilt thou have this
woman to thy wedded husband ? ' says he. But the partic’larest
thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it but me, and
they answered straight off Yes,' like as if it had been me saying
Amen' i' the right place, without listening to what went before. ”
“But you knew what was going on well enough, didn't you,
Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh ? ” said the butcher.
"Lor bless you! ” said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in
pity at the impotence of his hearers' imagination, -"why, I was
all of a tremble: it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by the two
tails, like; for I couldn't stop the parson, I couldn't take upon
me to do that; and yet I said to myself, I says, “Suppose they
shouldn't be fast married, 'cause the words are contrairy? ' and
my head went working like a mill, for I was allays uncommon
for turning things over and seeing all round 'em; and I says to
myself, Is't the meanin' or the words as makes folks fast i'
wedlock? ' For the parson meant right, and the bride and bride-
groom meant right. But then when I come to think on it,
meanin' goes but a little way i' most things, for you may mean
to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then
where are you? And so I says to mysen, It isn't the meanin',
it's the glue. ' And I was worreted as if I'd got three bells to
pull at once, when we got into the vestry, and they begun to
sign their names. But where's the use o' talking ? - you can't
think what goes on in a 'cute man's inside. ”
## p. 5388 (#564) ###########################################
5388
GEORGE ELIOT
But you held in for all that, didn't you, Mr. Macey ? ” said
the landlord.
“Ay, I held in tight till I was by mysen, wi' Mr. Drumlow,
and then I out wi' everything, but respectful, as I allays did.
And he made light on it, and he says: -Pooh, pooh, Macey,
make yourself easy,' he says, 'it's neither the meaning nor the
words — it's the register does it — that's the glue. ' So you see
he settled it easy; for parsons and doctors know everything by
heart, like, so as they aren't worreted wi' thinking what's the
rights and wrongs o' things, as I'n been many and many's the
time. And sure enough the wedding turned out all right, on'y
poor Mrs. Lammeter — that's Miss Osgood as was — died afore
the lasses were growed up; but for prosperity and everything
respectable, there's no family more looked on. ”
Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard this story many
times, but it was listened to as if it had been a favorite tune,
and at certain points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily
suspended, that the listeners might give their whole minds to
the expected words. But there was more to come; and Mr.
Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading question:-
“Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn't they
say, when he come into these parts ? ”
“Well, yes," said Mr. Macey; but I dare say it's as much as
this Mr. Lammeter's done to keep it whole.
Why, they're
stables four times as big as Squire Cass's, for he thought o'
nothing but hosses and hunting, Cliff didn't -a Lunnon tailor,
some folks said, as had gone mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't
ride, Lor bless you! they said he'd got no more grip o' the hoss
than if his legs had been cross-sticks: my grandfather heared old
Squire Cass say so many and many a time. But ride he would,
as if Old Harry had been a-driving him; and he'd a son, a lad o'
sixteen; and nothing would his father have him do but he must
ride and ride — though the lad was frightened, they said. And it
was a common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out
o' the lad, and make a gentleman on him -- not but what I'm a
tailor myself, but in respect as God made me such, I'm proud on
it, for Macey, tailor,' 's been wrote up over our door since afore
the Queen's heads went out on the shillings. But Cliff, he was
ashamed o’ being called a tailor, and he was sore vexed as his
riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the gentlefolks here about
could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got sickly and died,
## p. 5389 (#565) ###########################################
GEORGE ELIOT
5389
and the father didn't live long after him, for he got queerer nor
ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night,
wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights
burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand,
cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was
a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi’ the poor dumb
creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as
he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity,
and that's how the Warrens come to be Charity Land; though
as for the stables, Mr. Lammeter never uses 'em — they're out o'
all charicter — Lor bless you! if you was to set the doors a-banging
in 'em, it 'ud sound like thunder half o'er the parish. ”
"Ay, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks
see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey ? " said the landlord.
“Ay, ay; go that way of a dark night, that's all,” said Mr.
Macey, winking mysteriously, “and then make believe, if you
like, as you didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping
o'the hosses, nor the cracking o' the whips, and howling too, if
it's tow'rt daybreak. Cliff's Holiday' has been the name of it
ever sin’ I were a boy; that's to say, some said as it was the
holiday Old Harry gev him from roasting, like. That's what my
father told me, and he was a reasonable man, though there's
folks nowadays know what happened afore they were born better
nor they know their own business. ”
“What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas ? " said the landlord,
turning to the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for his
cue: “here's a nut for you to crack. ”
Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was
proud of his position.
Say? I
say
what a
man should say as doesn't shut his
eyes to look at a finger-post. I say as I'm ready to wager any
man ten pound, if he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the
pasture before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see lights
nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's
what I say, and I've said it many a time; but there's nobody
'ull ventur a ten-pun' note on their ghos'es as they make so
sure of. ”
«Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is,” said Ben Win-
throp. «You might as well bet a man as he wouldn't catch the
rheumatise if he stood up to 's neck in the pool of a frosty
night. It 'ud be fine fun for a man to win his bet as he'd
## p.
