*• .«'H«« 
 
 
 •M: 
 
 
 * vi; 
 
 "1, 
 
 
 
 .-zt^- 
 
 
 
 ^ "'^r-
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH
 
 TO 
 
 ANY WHO DESIRE TO JOIN 
 "THAT ACUTE AND HONOURABLE 
 MINORITY WHICH CONSENTS TO BE 
 THWACKED WITH APHORISMS AND 
 SENTENCES AND A FANTASTIC 
 DELIVERY OF THE VERITIES."
 
 George Meredith 
 
 A Primer to the Novels 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MOFFATT 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 LONDON MCMIX
 
 Printed at The Edinburgh Press 
 
 Sixty-eight Old Bailey 
 
 LondoD, E.G.
 
 Page 
 
 Contents 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT . . 67 
 
 FARINA 83 
 
 THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL , 91 
 EVAN HARRINGTON . . . .117 
 
 EMILIA IN ENGLAND (SANDRA BELLONI) 137 
 
 RHODA FLEMING 155 
 
 VITTORIA 171 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND 191 
 
 865213
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER . . .209 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH . . 231 
 
 THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND 
 
 LADY CAMPER . . . .239 
 THE TALE OF CHLOE . . . .247 
 THE EGOIST . . . . 255 
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS . . .275 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS . . . 289 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS . . .309 
 LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA. . 335 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE . . .353 
 INDEX '♦Ol 
 
 VI
 
 Preface 
 
 npHE object of this primer is to help some 
 -'- readers of Meredith over the fence. A 
 brief sketch of his general aims and method 
 has been prefixed, but any exposition of his 
 cardinal ideas must be sought elsewhere. All 
 that has been attempted in these pages is to 
 tell, in the bare outline of a reporter's column, 
 the exact course of the story and the precise 
 facts of the narrative underlying each novel. 
 Meredith's style and execution often render 
 it rather a difficult matter for the general 
 reader to make out what has happened or 
 what is happening; even when his manner 
 is not round-about or riddling, it is frequently 
 elusive, and hardly any of the novels, I think, 
 will be the worse for such a plain summary of 
 its framework as this primer tries to furnish. 
 I have therefore printed an analysis of each, 
 adding a note or two upon the contents and 
 construction. From this descriptive report 
 
 vii
 
 George Meredith 
 
 millions. It seemed to him that these differ- 
 ent complexions or types of nature must re- 
 act on one another. To their interchange and 
 counterpoise he considered that the English 
 character owed a large measure of its virility. 
 Only three years or so after the idealist of 
 Concord had published his survey, the smaller 
 of these nations was to receive at least one 
 notable recruit in the person of a novelist 
 who was not afraid to state that he specially 
 wanted "the practical Englishman to settle 
 his muzzle in a nosebag of ideas." The year 
 1859 may be taken, for the sake of conven- 
 ience, as one of the landmarks in the English 
 literature of the nineteenth century. Before 
 it closed, Leigh Hunt, de Quincey, Hallam 
 and Macaulay passed away, while Thackeray 
 and Dickens gave to the world their evening 
 gifts in "The Virginians" and **A Tale of 
 Two Cities." Garlyle's work lay almost en- 
 tirely behind him. New lights were rising. 
 "The Idylls of the King," Fitzgerald's 
 "Omar Khayyam," Mill's essay on Liberty, 
 "The Origin of Species," and "Adam 
 Bede," all published in 1859, usher in the later 
 period of Victorian literature. Freeman and 
 
 2
 
 Introduction 
 
 Froude, Huxley and Tyndall, were just enter- 
 ing the arena, while Spencer was presently 
 to follow them. "The Defence of Guene- 
 vere" had recently caught the attention of 
 the cultured, and in the following year Swin- 
 burne was to woo deaf ears with "The 
 Queen Mother" and "Rosamund." " Adam 
 Bede " took the wind out of the sails of most 
 contemporary j&ction upon the serious tack, 
 however, and among that becalmed class 
 must be reckoned a prose romance entitled 
 "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." It was 
 written by a young Londoner, hitherto known 
 for the most part as the author of some rather 
 unsuccessful verse and of two fantastic 
 stories whose merit and promise had been 
 generously recognised by the discerning few, 
 and cordially reviewed — it is a pleasure to re- 
 call—by George Eliot herself, no fewer than 
 three times. 
 
 It would be idle and impertinent to raise 
 the veil which Meredith's reticence and 
 modesty have drawn over his career. His 
 life is in his books, though few writers have 
 published perhaps so much and left their per- 
 sonalities so deeply in the shadow. Such 
 
 3
 
 George Meredith 
 
 items of his biography as are relevant to this 
 sketch can be stated very briefly. He was 
 born in Hampshire, on the 12th of February, 
 in the same year as Ibsen and Tolstoy, 1828, 
 with the blood of working-people in his veins. 
 His father was of Welsh extraction, his mother 
 of Irish. After they separated he was 
 educated in Germany, and it is superfluous 
 to point out the significance of this for his 
 intellectual development. Returning to this 
 country in his sixteenth year, he was appren- 
 ticed unwillingly to the study of law, from 
 which, like Dickens, he soon rolled oflf into 
 literature and journalism, acting, for example, 
 as the war-correspondent of the Morning Post 
 in Italy during 1866. He first tried verse, 
 in a simple, lyric vein. His later poetry 
 became a more characteristic medium of 
 utterance, but he is never pensive, or blithe, 
 or stately for long, and, as 'an acute re- 
 viewer once pointed out, verse with him 
 virtually tends to become more and more **a 
 kind of imaginative logic, a reasoning in pic- 
 tures." Meredith ultimately became a poet 
 of almost the first rank, within certain limit- 
 ations, but from the very first he was a poet 
 
 4
 
 Introduction 
 
 in his prose. Yet even his early prose, im- 
 measurably finer than his early verse, won 
 quite an inadequate hearing. Recognition 
 came slowly to his door, and amid deprecia- 
 tion and comparative neglect he had to 
 struggle for years with actual privation. One 
 solace in this ordeal was his friendship with 
 a brilliant coterie of men, including James 
 Thomson, the author of ** The City of Dread- 
 ful Night," and that strange humourist, 
 Thomas Love Peacock, whose daughter be- 
 came Meredith's first wife. Holman Hunt 
 thus describes his appearance about this time : 
 ** Of nut-brown hair and blue eyes, the per- 
 fect type of a well-bred Englishman, he stood 
 about five feet eight." Eventually he shared 
 the curious household organised at Chelsea 
 by Swinburne and the two Rossettis, but four 
 men of genius within four walls are scarcely 
 a permanent concourse of atoms, and Mere- 
 dith's stay was only shorter than that of 
 Swinburne. His later years were mostly 
 spent amid the Surrey hills, gladdened by the 
 widening reputation which the years brought 
 tardily around his name. Public apprecia- 
 tion of his genius was comparatively slow 
 
 5
 
 George Meredith 
 
 and limited. This has been partly due to 
 the peculiar nature of his work, partly, 
 perhaps, to the general state of the English 
 literary conscience when he first made his 
 appeal to the reading public — if it be true, 
 as Professor Saintsbury declares, that our 
 criticism had reached a humiliating nadir 
 between 1840 and 1860. Meredith's reception 
 at any rate is not an isolated phenomenon ; it 
 illustrates the familiar law that contemporary 
 criticisms of a masterpiece are often a stagger- 
 ing bequest to posterity. He had to row 
 against the tide, and the effort was harder for 
 him than for many others. His ideal of prose- 
 fiction was in daring revolt against the con- 
 ventional canons of an age which was not 
 prepared to welcome even a consummate 
 genius setting itself to be the exponent of life 
 lived under restless tendencies due to the 
 [Scientific movement and the ethical idealism 
 of the period, with its sense of social respon- 
 sibility and trend towards introspectiveness. 
 iHe also shared the tendency of the Victorian 
 period to be less inspired and more artistic 
 than its predecessor, and in this way became 
 a voice for other audiences than those found 
 
 6
 
 Introduction 
 
 in the market-place. "My way," he con- 
 fessed, "is like a Rhone island in the summer 
 drought, stony, unattractive and difficult, 
 between the two forceful streams of the un- 
 real and the over-real. My people are actual, 
 yet uncommon. It is the clock-work of the 
 brain that they are directed to set in motion.** 
 Or, in another of his metaphors, he set out to 
 make a road between Adam and Macadam, 
 and he did so, using prose-fiction to mirror 
 contemporary life as it lay between the ani- 
 mal existence and the artificial. To this task 
 he brought imagination and penetration, flexi- 
 bility of mind and a cosmopolitan freedom of 
 outlook, gifts which were certain to prevail 
 before long with the competent, but as certain 
 to miss immediate or widespread favour with 
 people who found it difficult to appreciate his 
 methods or to sympathise with his peculiar 
 aims. 
 
 For, however it may be rated, his work 
 must be allowed to possess distinction. Even 
 a casual reader can hardly fail to be impressed 
 by its sense of power and its absence of 
 echoes. In reach and range it breathes an 
 originality, often a daring originality, which 
 
 7
 
 George Meredith 
 
 differentiates it easily from previous or con- 
 temporary fiction. The influence of Richard- 
 son has been traced here and there, but taken 
 as a whole, Meredith's work occupies a class 
 of its own and goes back to few serious pat- 
 terns. There is, indeed, more than a remin- 
 iscence of Peacock, e.g., in the fantastic ele- 
 ment which occasionally crops up, from 
 "The Shaving of Shagpat "— that amazingly 
 witty burlesque of the Arabian Nights — to 
 the weariful apologues of Delphica and the 
 Rajah in London which disfigure that already 
 tangled web, "One of Our Conquerors." Dr. 
 FoUiot in "Crotchet Castle" is cousin to 
 Dr. Middleton in "The Egoist," and the idea 
 underlying books like "Maid Marian" and 
 "Farina" is substantially the same — an at- 
 tempt to reproduce, with gentle satire, the 
 mediaeval romance of sentiment and gay 
 adventure. The whimsical , element, in 
 "Nightmare Abbey," for example, the bril- 
 liant dialogue of " Melincourt " and "Head- 
 long Hall," the attitude of keen and even 
 caustic humour towards contemporary society 
 and its foibles, the admixture of raillery and 
 sympathy, the subservience of the love- 
 
 8
 
 Introduction 
 
 interest to wider matters, the Rabelaisian fling, 
 the dash of farce, the combination of narra- 
 tive and dissertation, the sense that nothing 
 can be too good and few things too bad to be 
 laughed at — these are some of the elements 
 common to Peacock and his distinguished son- 
 in-law, although the latter is exact and careful 
 in his use of language and free from outbursts 
 of boyish petulance. In the prelude to *' The 
 Egoist," and occasionally in the rhapsodical 
 apostrophes and some of the ethical concep- 
 tions throughout the novels especially, there 
 are not indistinct echoes of Garlyle, for 
 whom, as readers of "Beauchamp's Career** 
 will recollect, Meredith, like Dickens had 
 undisguised admiration. Garlyle is one of 
 the few contemporary writers directly men- 
 tioned by the novelist, and the affinities of 
 thought and even expression between the two 
 writers demand rather more attention than 
 seems to have been as yet bestowed on them. 
 How much of Meredith's own succinct and 
 irregular style, for example, is recalled in 
 his famous account of " Heroes and Hero- 
 Worship" — **a style resembling either early 
 architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and 
 
 9
 
 George Meredith 
 
 rough it seemed ; a wind-in-the-orchard style, 
 that tumbled down here and there an appre- 
 ciable fruit with uncouth bluster ; sentences 
 without commencements running to abrupt 
 endings and smoke, like waves against a sea- 
 wall ... all the pages in a breeze, the whole 
 book producing a kind of electrical agitation 
 in the mind and the joints." Many a reader of 
 Meredith has felt precisely like Nevil Beau- 
 champ in Malta, as he read the black and 
 bright lecturer on Heroes, "getting nibbles of 
 golden meaning by instalments, as with a 
 solitary pick in a very dark mine, until the 
 illumination of an idea struck him that there 
 was a great deal more in the book than 
 there was in himself." 
 
 It is this volume and animation, informed 
 by a brilliant style and imagination of a very 
 high order, that constitutes the main title of 
 George Meredith to literary fame. His work 
 has been remarkably sustained and even in 
 quality. ** Richard Feverel " was pronounced 
 by the Times to be **a powerful work, pene- 
 trative in its depth of insight and rich in its 
 variety of experience." It is a remarkable 
 piece of writing, but it is doubly remarkable 
 
 10
 
 Introduction 
 
 when we consider that it was composed by a 
 man of thirty as his first serious romance, and 
 as far back as 1859. Plenty of writers possess 
 ability enough to secure one conspicuous 
 success, comparatively speaking, and there are 
 authors in every age who practically live upon 
 the reputation of a single early work. But 
 ** Richard Fever el" was only the first blossom 
 of Meredith's genius. It was not tentative nor 
 did it exhaust the author's power. The long line 
 of its successors proved that he possessed 
 intellectual resources versatile and serious 
 enough to deserve the closest consideration 
 from anyone who would estimate the central 
 currents of literary influence flowing through 
 the Victorian era. A dozen times at least 
 in almost every one of his novels we stop to 
 say, "this is literature"; the workmanship 
 wears what Coventry Patmore called "the 
 glittering crown of wit," viz., ** a synthesis of 
 gravity of matter and gaiety of manner." 
 But Meredith is more than a litterateur. There 
 are passages which arrest and impress the 
 reader with a still deeper feeling, when the 
 mass of thought or the thrill of action is 
 clothed upon with passion, and words fit 
 
 11
 
 George Meredith 
 
 emotion with a felicitousness or a closeness 
 which seems inevitable. At Belthorpe or at 
 Wilming Weir, with Emilia singing in the 
 wood, over Clare Doria Forey's diary and 
 the marine duet in "Lord Ormont and his 
 Aminta," with Mazzini in Italy or Beauchamp 
 at Venice, at the cricket supper in ** Evan 
 Harrington" or with Harry and Temple on the 
 Priscilla, with Lord Fleetwood at his prize 
 fight and Diana Warwick at the Crossways — 
 over these and fifty other passages, salt and 
 aglow with the breath of reality, the pulse 
 quickens. We forget the author, we forget 
 the book ; the word springs to our lips, "This 
 — this is life. " The sense of style and com- 
 position, elsewhere (it must be owned) not 
 always unobtrusive, falls away before the 
 consciousness of life seen and life shown. 
 Genius is not a word to be applied broadcast, 
 particularly among novelists, but no other 
 term is adequate to such proofs of mental 
 power. No doubt there are tracts in Meredith 
 over which, more or less reasonably, people 
 gasp and yawn, but these are trifling compared 
 to the total achievement of the author, and 
 it is upon the evidence of such passages as I 
 
 12
 
 Introduction 
 
 have indicated that in all fairness he must be 
 judged. A racehorse, Montaigne will tell 
 you in his acute and charitable way, is remem- 
 bered not by his defeats but by the races he 
 has won. 
 
 If novels are to be written on a theory, 
 it is good to have the theory expounded 
 by the novelist himself, as by Fielding in 
 the preface to "Joseph Andrews." Thanks 
 to scattered hints throughout the novels, 
 principally in defence of his hand-maiden 
 Philosophy, as well as to the published "Essay 
 upon Comedy," we possess sufficient points to 
 enable us roughly to calculate the curve pur- 
 sued by Meredith's vivacious, graceful genius. 
 Take first and foremost these lines from his 
 "Modern Love." He writes : 
 
 In tragic life, God wot. 
 
 No villain need be ! Passions spin the plot : 
 
 We are betrayed by what is false within. 
 
 The heart of Meredith's method lies in these 
 three lines, and it is true to the Aristotelian 
 canon. There are really no villains in his 
 novels. The oversong of the philosophy 
 which dominates his prose, is that character 
 amounts to fate ; some inward twist of the 
 
 13
 
 George Meredith 
 
 soul, some mental deviation, that explains the 
 mischief done by a man to himself or others. 
 Impulses and motives swarm in the pool of 
 consciousness, and over that pool you find 
 Meredith bending eagerly. It is rippled by 
 circumstance, to be sure, but he is mainly 
 engrossed in a minute and varied study of 
 that "busy little creature," the human self, 
 with its attendant infusoria of whims and 
 passions. This was not by any means a new 
 departure in fiction. Such a psychological 
 attitude had been already occupied by George 
 Eliot, whose lineal successor in this direction 
 Meredith undoubtedly may claim to be ; and 
 it is not perhaps insignificant that the definitive 
 edition of the Comedie Humaine was published 
 in the same year as "Richard Feverel." But 
 es giebt kein Plagiat in der Philosophies and this 
 interest in mental chemistry is perennial. 
 Meredith captivates his audience at any rate 
 by quite an original application of the psycho- 
 logical method, combining the unconcern of 
 the artist with something of the keen serious- 
 ness felt by a responsible thinker. He sums 
 all this up conveniently in the phrase — "the 
 Comic Spirit"; a hint which supplies us with 
 
 14
 
 Introduction 
 
 the colours upon his palette and the features 
 of the one model who sits to him in all 
 manner of positions for her portrait. 
 
 The " Comic Spirit " represents an attitude 
 of mind to life. Contemplative passion or — 
 better still — impassioned contemplation might 
 be taken as its definition. It is the ethos of a 
 calm, curious observer, alive to the pretences 
 and foibles of mankind, yet loving them none 
 the less that he is thus acutely sensitive to 
 their untrained opinions, their affectations, 
 pedantries, delusions, inconsistencies, hypo- 
 crisies. The Comic Spirit is incisive. But it 
 is creative and instructive, as well as critical. 
 It represents the wit of wisdom, sly, shrewd, 
 and sympathetic — as we find it, for example, 
 in Chaucer or in Shakespeare, the Shake- 
 speare of Theseus in the "Midsummer Night's 
 Dream " as he chides Hippolyta. In Meredith 
 it plays upon men's motives as these are 
 rippled by the social world. It feels for the 
 springs of action lying in the ideas rather than 
 in the appetites of man. Life, Meredith pro- 
 tests, is crossed and recrossed by people who 
 drift into absurdities, or riot in unconscious 
 vanities, or make pretensions, or violate indi- 
 
 15
 
 George Meredith 
 
 vidually and in the bulk unwritten laws of 
 justice, reason, and good sense, getting them- 
 selves into every kind of tragic or false 
 position. The Comic Spirit traces in all 
 this "what is false within," what pulls the 
 strings. And its object is not malign. Really 
 it is on the side of hope, imagination, and 
 romance ; it is never spiteful or superior. It 
 prevents the lassitude of indifference and 
 delivers from a bitter and mad despair. You 
 come near defining it when you speak of "the 
 humour of the mind," rich and warm and 
 wise, which strives to transmute sympathy 
 from Intolerable pain into active interest, 
 and which is pleasantly bent upon disen- 
 tangling commonsense from its corruptions 
 and from what is often worse — its caricatures. 
 What then is the proper field of the Comic 
 Spirit? Evidently social life, and especially 
 the refined and polished existence peculiar 
 to the trim parks of modem civilisation, 
 "where we have no dust of the struggling 
 outer world, no mire, no violent crashes.** 
 Like his favourite poets, Menander, Terence, 
 and Moli^re, Meredith is a painter of man- 
 ners — manners being ultimately mores. He 
 
 16
 
 Introduction 
 
 is deeply concerned with the qualities and 
 conditions of contemporary society, the 
 marsh where the plant of his quest grows 
 luxuriantly. Man's future on earth, he is 
 frank to confess, does not concern the 
 Comic Spirit ; but man's honesty and shape- 
 liness in the present does. To Meredith, 
 accordingly, the state of English society with 
 its mental lethargy, is a fair province for the 
 exercise of his analysis. "The English," we 
 read, "are people requiring to be studied, 
 who mean well, and are warm somewhere 
 below, as chimney-pots are, though they are so 
 stiff." "They call themselves practical for hav- 
 ing an addiction to the palpable." This applies 
 mainly to the upper classes ; for although 
 Meredith hardly ever fails in depicting coun- 
 try folk or vulgar natures, these are foils as a 
 rule to the leading figures, and his method 
 naturally leads him to find his central pivots 
 elsewhere. He succeeds, where Dickens 
 failed, with his aristocrats. Over and again 
 his microscope is turned upon the British 
 aristocracy or upper middle class, not seldom 
 (like the Matthew Arnold of "Culture and 
 Anarchy ") upon young gentlemen " who are 
 
 17
 
 George Meredith 
 
 simply engines of their appetites and to the 
 philosophic eye " quite savage and primeval. 
 His backgrounds range from Wales to Italy; 
 German socialism, the Italian or Spanish 
 War of Independence, English politics, 
 mining, education, railways, the navy— any- 
 thing to throw into relief the pettiness of 
 luxury, whether luxury means the wrapping 
 up of the mind or the indulgence of the 
 appetites. It is noticeable, too, that he is fond of 
 introducing some conflict and play of different 
 temperaments, either social or racial, English 
 or foreign ; for example, Celtic and Italian, 
 Radical and Tory, Conservative and Philis- 
 tine, artistic and patriotic. This is due not 
 merely to his fine cosmopolitanism, elevated 
 above any Florentine idea offuori, but to the 
 obvious advantages afforded by such situa- 
 tions for the trial and purgation of character 
 Emergencies and exigencies' like these pro- 
 vide ample and easy material for the Comic 
 Spirit alert to understand the workings of our 
 British nature. Too busy to be diverted by 
 the contemporary revival of mediaevalism, 
 Meredith has strenuously warred against the 
 solid materialism and complacent impervious- 
 
 18
 
 Introduction 
 
 ness to ideas which, in his judgment, 
 distinguish and imperil the fat, opulent epoch 
 lying under his own eyes. How ironical is 
 such a use of the English novel ! In Meredith's 
 hands it is a sort of boomerang, as is apparent 
 when we recollect the circumstances of its 
 origin, in an essentially unheroic and prosaic 
 society of people, who were (as T. H. Green 
 excellently puts it) quite "self-satisfied and 
 pleased with their surroundings." Satire 
 lavished on this state of things is not ejffec- 
 tive. Native obtuseness proves too thick 
 for most of its quick shafts. Besides, prop- 
 erly speaking, the satirist is but semi-artistic; 
 like the bluebottle, to borrow from Emilia's 
 fancy, he only sings when he is bothered. 
 Meredith has the gentler and more piercing 
 method of delicately analysing a decadent 
 society to itself, and assisting health by the 
 revelation of innate capacities for mischief 
 as subtle and formidable as bacilli. An artist 
 to the finger-tips, he would be inadequately 
 described as a man of letters. He is that, 
 but he is more. Not unlike Hugo and 
 Tolstoy, he can allow his art to be saturated 
 with his ethic, and yet retain the essentials of 
 
 19
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the artist's glamour ; which is wise indeed 
 for an author who addresses people rightly 
 suspicious of prose or verse that has designs 
 upon them. But this ethical interest steers 
 wide of malignant irony and cynicism, those 
 barbarian forms of humour. They are spiteful 
 and superior. They represent a savage type 
 of the genuine Comic Spirit, and Meredith is 
 at pains to show, in characters like Adrian 
 Harley and Colney Durance, how ineffec- 
 tive and subordinate a place is assigned to 
 the satirical temper in the direction of 
 affairs. What are the spurts of satire? 
 " Darkening jests on a river of slime." The 
 Comic Spirit is a spirit of silvery laughter. 
 "You may estimate your capacity for comic 
 perception by being able to detect the 
 ridicule of them you love, without loving 
 them less." Meredith's art, indeed, like that 
 of all genuine humourists, rises from deep 
 pools of gravity. Laughter, with him, to be 
 legitimate must be the child of sympathy and 
 of delight. It is infinitely serious, too serious 
 to be cynical or pessimistic. To be cynical, 
 he bluntly declares, is merely the raw 
 attempt of the worldly man to appear deep ; 
 
 20
 
 Introduction 
 
 as a form of mental and moral superficiality, 
 it should be dismissed by the penetrative 
 observer with derision. Neither depression 
 nor scepticism is the ultimate attitude 
 towards the inconsistencies and errors 
 of the race. "Who is the coward 
 among us ? He who sneers at the failings of 
 Humanity." "What is contempt," he asks 
 again, "but an excuse to be idly minded, or 
 personally lofty, or comfortably narrow, not 
 perfectly humane ? " Meredith never sneers. 
 He is never savage or morose, hardly 
 ever mocking in the vein of Ibsen and 
 Anatole France, though he can be caustic 
 when he chooses. The controlling principle 
 of his work is to be nobly serious and witty, 
 often in the same breath. Wit with him has 
 a surgical function in contemporary society, 
 but this does not involve an accumulation of 
 physiological details or the pursuit of human 
 documents. Folly indeed seems to him cap- 
 able of ever new shapes in an effeminate and 
 decadent age. A pestilence flieth abroad ; 
 but its infection is to be met by common- 
 sense allied to laughter. " The vigilant Comic 
 Spirit as the genius of thoughtful laughter " — 
 
 21
 
 George Meredith 
 
 such is Meredith's contribution to the moral 
 sanitation of the day. It is too intellectual, too 
 limited in its range, too rarefied, to be a per- 
 fect purge, but it has a function of its own. 
 He is never done praising laughter, thought- 
 ful laughter. It clears the heart, as thunder 
 clears the air. It is the wine and bread 
 of sanity. In his opinion, one great cure 
 for the age and its troubles would be 
 reached if people could be persuaded first of 
 all to laugh at themselves a little, and thus 
 get rid of silly pride and obstinacy ; then to 
 laugh, with trembling in their mirth, at other 
 people, instead of growing impatient and 
 angry at the follies and affectations of the 
 race. Folly is the natural prey of the Comic 
 Spirit; and if people are to be lifted out of 
 folly, with its pretensions, its love of posing, 
 its indulgence of the senses or the emotions 
 at the expense of the mind, the first step is to 
 make them smart and meditate. Meredith, 
 like Thackeray, although with weapons of a 
 different calibre, strikes at his age, with its 
 absurdities and maladies, in a splendid discon- 
 tent. But his blows are as positive in direc- 
 tion as they are delivered with artistic grace. 
 
 22
 
 Introduction 
 
 To resume a simile applied somewhere by 
 Chateaubriand to Cromwell's revolutionary- 
 methods, he destroys what he encounters in 
 much the same peremptory and deliberate 
 fashion as Michael Angelo destroyed the 
 marble with his chisel. 
 
 Unflinching realism of this kind helps 
 to make Meredith's optimism both grate- 
 ful and convincing. **I can hear a faint 
 crow of the cocks of fresh mornings far, far, 
 yet distinct." However the artistic merits 
 of the two writers be adjusted, there is no 
 doubt that the moral atmosphere in Thomas 
 Hardy's novels is distinctly autumnal : in 
 Meredith, upon the other hand, it is that of 
 a bright, keen day in spring, when to be out- 
 of-doors is a healthy joy for those who do 
 not mind tingling ears and cheeks slapped by 
 the rain. This — were the word less ugly — 
 might be termed his meliorism. He stands 
 much nearer to an invigorating cordial Scandi- 
 navian, like his contemporary Bjornson, than 
 to the sombre genius of Ibsen. He contests 
 and challenges, because it seems to him 
 worth while to do so. The tide is usually 
 turning on his beach. Face all the facts, he 
 
 23
 
 George Meredith 
 
 insists, instead of shrouding inconvenient 
 things in a painted veil of sentiment ; yet as 
 eagerly he urges "the rapture of the forward 
 view," and with elastic optimism hurries on 
 to administer a sharp rebuke to those who 
 nod gloomily and dolefully over progress, 
 breaking into Jobisms over the nightmare of 
 **life as a wheezy crone." Ideals, or idols, 
 are not always gifted with two legs. What 
 of that? "Who can really think and not 
 think hopefully?" "When we despair or 
 discolour things, it is our senses in revolt, 
 and they have made the sovereign brain their 
 drudge. . . There is nothing the body suffers, 
 that the soul may not profit by. . . Philosophy 
 bids us to see that we are not so pretty as 
 rosepink, not so repulsive as dirty drab ; and 
 that the sight of ourselves is wholesome, 
 bearable, fructifying, finally a delight." Here 
 we have the ethical soul of Meredith articu- 
 late. It is an optimism which is surer of 
 itself than in Matthew Arnold, and less 
 exasperating, because drawn from deeper 
 fountains, than in Browning ; on its horizon 
 there is the promise, absent from Mark 
 Rutherford's quiet and gray skies, of 
 
 24
 
 Introduction 
 
 a dawn with uplifting power. Meredith 
 
 knows his Richter, and many sections of his 
 
 philosophy are little more than a brilliant 
 
 expansion and application of the German's 
 
 adage: be great enough to despise the world, 
 
 and greater in order to esteem it. Only from 
 
 such a mental attitude does endurance flow: 
 
 "A fortitude quiet as Earth's 
 
 At the shedding of leaves." 
 
 Progress, accordingly, is bound up with 
 
 mental and moral discipline, alike for men 
 
 and nations. "Strength is not won by 
 
 miracle or rape." Shibli must be thwacked, 
 
 if he is to reach his goal, and the resolute 
 
 philosophy of thwacking — for mind no less 
 
 than for body and fortune — pervades all 
 
 Meredith's romances. It is the only way to 
 
 cure egoism with its arrogance and mischief. 
 
 "Lo! of hundreds who aspire. 
 
 Eighties perish — nineties tire! 
 
 They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and 
 
 wracks. 
 Were seasoned by celestial hail of thwacks. 
 Fortune in this mortal race 
 Builds on thwackings for a base." 
 Or, as Dr. Middleton rudely shocked that 
 arch-sentimentalist Sir Willoughby Patterne 
 
 25
 
 George Meredith 
 
 by blurting out, all unwhipped boys make 
 ill-balanced men. "They won't take rough 
 and smooth as they come. They make bad 
 blood, can't forgive, sniff right and left for 
 approbation, and are excited to anger if an 
 east wind does not flatter them. . . We 
 English beat the world, because we take a 
 licking well." The rain and wind blow 
 through Meredith's verse and prose, and 
 they form by no means an accidental setting. 
 He is an obstinate believer in the sweet uses 
 of adversity, and spends pages of instruction 
 and amusement in an effort to commend the 
 old thesis that the bloom of health comes to 
 the soul as to the body by frank battling 
 with the elements, not by luxurious coddling 
 within doors. "I am well and 'plucky,* 
 — a word which I propose to substitute for 
 * happy' as more truthful." In this remark 
 of George Eliot to Mrs. Bray there is a good 
 deal of Meredith's philosophy about facing 
 facts and accepting adversity bravely. 
 
 It is at this point that the Comic Spirit 
 pounces, with relentless beak, upon the two 
 cardinal foes to health and progress in con- 
 temporary life. These are both bom of the
 
 Introduction 
 
 habit of taking ourselves too seriously, and 
 their names are pride and sentimentalism. To 
 avoid thwackings, to neglect inconvenient 
 ideas and experiences, to shelter oneself be- 
 hind incredulity or disdain from awkward 
 things in the rough, actual world, is the chosen 
 paradise of quite a host of men and women. 
 Meredith's soul does not weep in secret for 
 this mischievous and widespread pride. He 
 darts on it like an unhooded falcon. From 
 first to last, with all his gaiety and gravity, he 
 is engaged in exposing the pride of egoism, to 
 its own shame and good. Social ambition — 
 the disposition to rise in the world — naturally 
 forms its most obvious expression, as in '* The 
 House on the Beach," or better still in that 
 most pitiful tale ** Rhoda Fleming" (more 
 pitiful because wider than ** The Tale of 
 Chloe") and in the sparkling comedy of 
 **Evan Harrington." But this had been for 
 long exploited by Thackeray, and after all it 
 forms a naive and therefore less dangerous 
 symptom of the disease. ** Dombey and Son," 
 too, had lashed sufl&ciently the pride of mer- 
 cantile position. Yet more subtle phases lie 
 behind ; the conceit of a peacock, as in the 
 
 27
 
 George Meredith 
 
 strutting vanity of Shibli Bagarag ; a vain pas- 
 sion for hereditary distinction, as in "Harry 
 Richmond;" an affectation of cuhure and re- 
 finement, as in the Misses Pole ; an attempt to 
 play Providence and cut down nature to suit 
 an artificial theory, as in Sir Austin Feverel : 
 and so on. Pride is a very Proteus in these 
 novels. You have the pride of injured feel- 
 ings, the obstinate pride that (in Lord Ormont 
 and Lord Fleetwood, 'the base Indians' of 
 their tribe) inflicts cruelty half unwittingly 
 upon others and even starves itself for some 
 fancied insult; you have the pride, half 
 creditable, half Quixotic, that drives Richard 
 Feverel from his wife and child, in a passage 
 which Stevenson, with brave enthusiasm, 
 pronounced the "strongest since Shakespeare, 
 in the English tongue"; you have the feudal 
 pride of Egoism, a narrow self-confidence 
 which calmly appropriates as much of the 
 world as it can reach and as calmly dooms the 
 rest. In short, if "passions spin the plot,** 
 the master-passion with Meredith's heroes 
 and heroines is pride. Or rather, we should 
 say, false pride. For the author is quick 
 to allow that "a man's pride is the front and 
 
 28
 
 Introduction 
 
 headpiece of his character, his soul's support 
 or snare." It is a snare in almost all the 
 Meredith-romances, to lover, husband, father, 
 man of the world. Life is continually netting 
 itself in the meshes of false pride ; in a 
 refusal to admit one has been wrong, in the 
 disinclination to repair a mistake, in the habit 
 of clinging at all costs to belief in one's own 
 superior wisdom, in the greed of admiration, 
 or the dislike of criticism. The battle of false 
 pride is always against itself, and Meredith is 
 never finer, he is seldom more satisfying, than 
 in portraying this struggle of the soul to ex- 
 tricate itself from the results of a past impulse 
 of passion or from the coil of inherited pre- 
 judice. Tragedy with him consists in showing 
 how this awakening is either inadequate or 
 too late, and failure (in the last analysis) 
 means pride imperfectly beaten out of life. 
 "Surely an unteachable spirit, "he declares, "is 
 one of the most tragic things in life." Which 
 is a variation upon Garlyle's favourite thesis 
 that no one falls into misery without having 
 first tumbled into folly. Perhaps the irony of 
 this is even less evident in the sullen forms of 
 pride than in the disasters that await sheer, 
 
 29
 
 George Meredith 
 
 irrepressible, good-natured souls like Roy 
 Richmond and Victor Radnor, in whom false 
 pride exists as a lovable but fatal spirit of san- 
 guine and infatuated buoyancy. 
 
 To sentimentalism, or emotional self-indul- 
 gence, which forms the companion weed of 
 highly civilized society, Meredith is equally 
 remorseless. Here also there is to be detected, 
 in his judgment, a fatal lack of that inward 
 and thorough grappling with the facts of life 
 (and by facts Meredith does not exclude ideas) 
 which is the fundamental virtue of his ethic. 
 The sentimentalist lives in unrealities. He 
 looks at Nature with his eyes half-closed, or 
 else he considers some select portions of her. 
 Factitious and morbid, he is a dilettante play- 
 ing delicately and selfishly with extracts from 
 the Book of Life ; the result being that his 
 opinions and aims are essentially false, his 
 aspirations generally little better than mere 
 twitches of egoism, and his tenderness a petty 
 whimper of false sympathy. Peace is his 
 ideal, meaning a lotos-land of freedom from 
 disturbance; "peace, that lullaby word for 
 decay ! " A character of this kind is the nat- 
 aral, trashy product of a fat soil, where 
 
 30
 
 Introduction 
 
 wealth and leisure often can be adjusted so as 
 to shut off the elect from impolite Nature. 
 Sentimentalists, as Meredith goes on gravely 
 to explain, are a variety due to a long process 
 of comfortable feeding, but there is one differ- 
 ence between them and the pig. The pig 
 too passes through a training of rich nourish- 
 ment. Only it is not in him combined with 
 an indigestion of high German romance. 
 Pray do justice to the pig! Particularly in 
 the "Egoist" and (with an unwonted note of 
 tragedy) in "Sandra Belloni," Meredith takes 
 wicked delight in analysing the absurdity and 
 mischief of a spirit which would varnish 
 civilization, or — in another metaphor — con- 
 ceal the tails of those polished, stately crea- 
 tures who inhabit culture's paradise. Garlyle 
 lashed this Werterism or Transcendentalism ; 
 Heine mocked it ; Emerson pricked it ; Mere- 
 dith laughed it out of court. Sentimentalism 
 in a word spells for him mental immaturity 
 and moral opium. It is, to use his own fine 
 aphorism, enjoyment without obligation, an 
 attempt to taste existence without incurring 
 responsibility. Upon the other hand, the 
 better policy of treating Nature frankly, 
 
 31
 
 George Meredith 
 
 which Meredith shares with the scientific 
 movement of the age, makes an incessant 
 demand upon courage and brains, especially 
 brains. If people are to peruse Nature with 
 virile and keen intelligence — and by Nature 
 Meredith seems to mean the whole system of 
 accessible facts and forces within and around 
 the human consciousness — an open eye and 
 unflinching sincerity are required ; hence the 
 earliest symptom of philosophy in man is 
 aversion to sentimentalism, in the guise either 
 of self-pity or Byronic melancholy or contempt 
 for the world. Attempts to cheat Nature 
 by ignoring the flesh, for example, are not 
 much less mischievous than the tendency to 
 idolize it. Asceticism and sensuality alike, he 
 is careful to point out, rest upon a common 
 basis of sentimentalism, which is fundament- 
 ally onesided and consequently vicious ; 
 and no reader of "The Egoist" is likely to 
 forget the merciless exposure of a pseudo- 
 Puritanism which in aesthetic and aristocratic 
 superiority bans the rough, wholesome world. 
 Sex and the senses have their place some- 
 where in the moral order, and it is always a 
 grateful service to have the truth enunciated 
 
 32
 
 Introduction 
 
 afresh that Nature with her plain and bracing 
 laws cannot be misjudged or undervalued by 
 any man, however civilized, with impunity. 
 That applies to enigmas as well as to aspira- 
 tions. "We do not get to any heaven by re- 
 nouncing the Mother we spring from ; and 
 when there is an eternal secret for us, it is 
 best to believe that Earth knows, to keep near 
 her, even in our utmost aspirations." Thus 
 Meredith finds but empty flashes in the sham 
 spiritualism, so characteristic of the early 
 Victorian age, which affects in prudery or 
 piety to obliterate the physical. To stigmatize 
 it is senseless ; to decorously conceal it is 
 hypocrisy and in the long run — though some- 
 times the run is not very long — sheer cruelty. 
 The natural precedes the spiritual, which 
 invariably presupposes it. '* Nature, though 
 heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool 
 of the Highest. Through Nature only can 
 we ascend. St. Simeon saw the Hog in 
 Nature, and took Nature for the Hog." But 
 if this uglier under-side of things has to be 
 reckoned with in philosophy and practice, 
 without dainty shudders, it is wholly mis- 
 conceived by those who regard it callously. 
 
 33
 
 George Meredith 
 
 There is no vulgar realism in Meredith. He 
 stands remote from the voluptuousness of the 
 early Swinburne and from the strange acqui- 
 escence in man's earthly bias which recurs, 
 sadly or savagely, in Thomas Hardy. A strong 
 Rabelaisian love of wine and prizefighting 
 and the like, running even to the verge of 
 grossness, pervades some of his pages ; but 
 you are seldom allowed out of hearing of his 
 own adages that "the mistake of the world is 
 to think happiness possible to the senses," and 
 that "all life is a lesson that we live to enjoy 
 but in the spirit." With this proviso, it may 
 be fairly said that uncompromising reality is 
 the supreme note of his ethic ; a note echoed 
 by the one poet of our own day who ap- 
 proaches Meredith upon this plane — I mean 
 Mr. William Ernest Henley. Glough is as 
 sincere in resenting the habit of playing 
 tricks with the soul, but his sincerity is 
 practically helpless. The sum of Meredith's 
 deliverance is that you are stepping down not 
 up, if you are amiably taking opium in the 
 soul or singing lullabies to the brain, instead 
 of resolutely facing the web of cause and con- 
 sequence in their real, actual proportions. 
 
 34
 
 Introduction 
 
 Failure to see this elementary principle, he 
 attributes not inaccurately to cowardice, 
 which is simply a form of mental blindness. 
 And when conscience is only a passenger, 
 with the passions and prejudices working the 
 vessel, and the brain a prisoner in the state- 
 cabin, the uncertainty of the future merely 
 consists of the variety of ways in which the 
 final disaster may arrive. ** Resolution," we 
 are told, **is a form of light, our native light 
 in this dubious world." The worst charge 
 against sentimentalism is that it festers a flabby, 
 stupid character, in which courage, the cour- 
 age of veracity, is melted away. 
 
 Thanks to their conventional training, at 
 least in the earlier Victorian periods at which 
 Meredith's novels began to appear, women 
 especially are apt to find themselves from 
 time to time in a trying situation, before or 
 after marriage, where they are hampered or 
 put in a somewhat false position. Meredith 
 is never weary of depicting such phases of 
 experience, in which moral courage is the one 
 path to safety (not to say, honour), and yet 
 often the least obvious or easy resource open 
 to "those artificial creatures called women 
 
 35
 
 George Meredith 
 
 who dare not be spontaneous, and cannot act 
 independently if they would continue to be 
 admirable in the world's eye." They have to 
 avoid motion, in order "to avoid shattering or 
 tarnishing." That is perhaps why his heroines, 
 like some of George Eliot's, annoy us by the 
 marriages they make. Meredith's ideal is a 
 clear-sighted, free, and sensible womanhood, 
 and he has a rude contempt for the weak, 
 clinging, girl and her emotional delights. 
 The bevy of girls, mainly English, who con- 
 stitute one of the most charming features 
 in his fiction, are no "wandering vessels 
 crying for a pilot," but healthy, open-eyed 
 mates. What a splendid company they are ! 
 Besides Renee and Ottilia, you live with 
 Diana Warwick, Cecilia Halkett, Jenny 
 Denham, Clara Middleton (" the dainty rogue 
 in porcelain "), Rose Jocelyn, Emilia, Aminta, 
 Carinthia ("the haggard Venus"), Julia Rip- 
 penger, Elizabeth Ople, Nesta Radnor, 
 Annette, and Jane Ilchester — 
 
 A troop of maids, brown as burnt 
 heather-bells, 
 
 And rich with life as moss-roots 
 breathe of earth, 
 
 In the first plucking of them. 
 
 36
 
 Introduction 
 
 For the womanhood of his women, in their 
 passage from girlhood to maturity and in their 
 relations with one another as well as with 
 men, the highest praise that need be given to 
 Meredith is that he makes us think, and think 
 without incongruity, of Shakespeare. His 
 heroines have both character and charm ; 
 they are fresh, bright creatures, with a native 
 bloom upon them, and he is versatile enough 
 to succeed with other types ; e.g., the clever 
 old ladies, headed by Lady Eglett and Lady 
 Camper (in that little perfect tale of her re- 
 lations with General Ople), or the stout, 
 cheery, vulgar women represented by Mrs. 
 Berry, Mrs. Grickeldon, and the inimitable 
 Mrs, Chump, who rank with the nurse in 
 ** Romeo and Juliet." It is only another taste 
 of his fine quality, in the reading of woman, 
 which the reader finds in the mischievous 
 etchings of the Countess de Saldar, or of 
 Li via and Henrietta in " The Amazing Marri- 
 age," the Misses Pole — especially Cornelia — 
 and the feminine pariahs in " Richard Feverel" 
 and "One of Our Conquerors." Per contra, 
 Meredith has a Brontesque antipathy to the 
 ** veiled, virginal dolly-heroine " of ordinary 
 
 37
 
 George Meredith 
 
 fiction, just as he shows little regard for those 
 who fling over the traces of their sex to 
 **trot upon the borders of the Epicene." 
 Start women on that track, and it is a race- 
 course ending in a precipice. His golden hope 
 seems to be a witty, charming woman, of clear 
 intellect and free movement, yielding not a 
 feather of her womanliness for some portion 
 of man's strength. If Beauchamp, we may 
 guess, was his own favourite hero, Diana 
 Warwick embodies most of the feminine 
 qualities which he desiderates. The ** Ballad 
 of Fair Ladies in Revolt " is sufficient proof 
 that he was in full sympathy with the modern 
 reaction of woman against the conventional 
 restraints of a position which was generally 
 disposed to treat her as a sort of fringe upon 
 human nature, or a creature bound to go in 
 bit and blinkers. Nevertheless^ respect for 
 her is assumed as a test of social health. It is 
 the civilization, not the abolition, of marriage 
 which her best friends will advocate. Any- 
 thing less, however specious, means a dance 
 to dissolution. There are a dozen passages 
 in Meredith which indicate this cardinal idea 
 of his social ethics. Consistently upon the 
 
 38
 
 Introduction 
 
 side of women in their demand for a fuller 
 scope, instead of being forced to "march and 
 think in step, the hard-drilled Prussians of 
 society," he is as resolutely against any wild, 
 crude claim for rights which would ignore the 
 individual quality of woman or obliterate the 
 natural distinctions of sex. He would pro- 
 bably have refused to join Ibsen in shaking 
 down the pillars of conventional society. 
 Samson is not his model in reform. His policy 
 rather is lustily to drive out the Philistines 
 from the temple. Naturally, "the ancient 
 game of two," which ends or at least develops 
 in marriage, can hardly fail to form a cen- 
 tral problem for any writer who deals with 
 the bases of modern society ; and Meredith's 
 triumph is that upon this ground he has 
 created women who have brains and judg- 
 ment, yet are women to the core. What are 
 the " Maid of Air " and the " Grace of Clay " 
 compared to the loveliness of the truly natural 
 woman filled with God's fire ? He is neither 
 for Lesbia nor for Beatrice, neither for 
 Aspasia nor for Hypatia ; his quarrel with 
 the average man on behalf of woman is that 
 she is wronged by having false demands made 
 
 39
 
 George Meredith 
 
 of her, being usually expected to form some 
 sort of accompaniment to a tune played by 
 the lordly male. Vittoria's wit and courage, 
 for example, are missed by Carlo Ammiani 
 after marriage ; she is but "a little boat tied 
 to a big ship," and even Nevil Beauchamp 
 smiles at the idea of a pretty woman exercis- 
 ing her mind independently, much less moving 
 him to examine his own. Meredith's indig- 
 nant heart is surely in Diana Warwick's 
 epigram, "Men may have rounded Seraglio 
 Point ; they have not yet doubled Gape Turk." 
 "What Nature originally decreed," he said 
 once, "men are but beginning to see, namely, 
 that women are fitted for most of the avenues 
 open to energy, and by their entering upon 
 active life they will no longer be open to the 
 accusation men so frequently bring against 
 them of being narrow and craven." 
 
 In their loves, enthusiasms, and appetites 
 Meredith likens women somewhere to boys, 
 and it would be tempting to enlarge on his 
 boys — another of the conspicuous successes in 
 his work, possibly because (when unspoiled) 
 boys exhibit a nonchalant, fresh, unsentimen- 
 tal attitude to things in general. Fortunately, 
 
 40
 
 Introduction 
 
 anyone who knows Meredith knows Heriot, 
 Temple, litde Collett, and Ripton, as he 
 knows Sam Weller or the rustics in Thomas 
 Hardy's novels. We must be content to take 
 boys farther on in their career. 
 
 "The chief object in life, if happiness be 
 the aim and the growing better than we are, 
 is to teach men and women how to be one ; 
 for if they're not, then each is a morsel for 
 the other to prey on." Absorbed in this 
 dilemma of the sexes, Meredith concentrates 
 his efforts, not only on man's treatment of 
 woman, but on man's ideal of himself. One 
 of his real contributions to social ethics is the 
 analysis of the true gentleman, particularly 
 in " Evan Harrington " and "Sandra Belloni.** 
 A.S an observer of English society, he has only 
 derision for false gentility, an antipathy 
 which, like the enthusiasm for prizefighting 
 and gipsies, he shares with George Borrow. 
 Upon the other hand, he evidently seeks to 
 destroy the prevalent delusion that good nature 
 is a form of weakness and "strength" to be 
 measured by self-assertion. He is strong in 
 heroes, but they are of an original type. The 
 flamboyant, brilliant man seldom comes to 
 
 41
 
 George Meredith 
 
 much in Meredith's romances. Self-confident, 
 young characters generally drop into disaster, 
 from Alvan to Victor Radnor, in a sense from 
 Nevil Beauchamp to Lord Fleetwood. The 
 quiet, strong, trustworthy nature, again, gets 
 a far larger stroke in Meredith than (for 
 example) in Thackeray. Major Dobbin and 
 Warrington win nothing like the reward that 
 falls to such men as Redworth, Merthyr 
 Powys, Dartrey Fenellan, Austin Wentworth, 
 Seymour Austin, Owain Wythan, Vernon 
 Whitford, and Matthew Weyburn. They lack 
 or at any rate are outshone in social arts and 
 graces, but they possess solid qualities that 
 manage somehow to bring them out success- 
 ful in the end. Impetuousness and bubbling 
 ardour play the rocket's career in Meredith, 
 His avowed partiality is for the drab men — 
 "drab" being the antithesis of ** effervescing" 
 and "irrepressible" — for men of deep, self- 
 controlled natures, who refuse lightly to kindle 
 at the spark of personal ambition, and who — 
 above all — will not stoop to regard women as 
 objects upon which to practise daintily the 
 fowler's art. Clean, brave, unselfish and intel- 
 ligent are Meredith's high adjectives for man. 
 
 42
 
 Introduction 
 
 These ideals of womanhood and manhood 
 run up into Meredith's general conception of 
 human nature as part of Nature. The latter 
 conception is developed principally in his 
 poetry, but it underlies his prose, and the 
 novels cannot be intelligently read apart from 
 some grasp of what he means by the Earth or 
 Nature. It is not a mere accessory to human 
 life and feeling, a background to be painted 
 in, by way of contrast or harmony. Meredith's 
 Nature is, as in Aristotle — to quote Professor 
 Butcher's definition — , "not the outward world 
 of created things; it is the creative force, the 
 productive principle of the universe." Nature 
 in these novels and poems is vital, radiant, 
 and supreme, a living presence which re- 
 minds us of the pulsing, all-embracing Nature 
 of Lucretius, and, in certain other aspects, of 
 Nature as the expression and embodiment of 
 that divine wisdom for man which Marcus 
 Aurelius inculcated. The distinctive value 
 of Meredith's teaching on this point, how- 
 ever, is that nature is for him deeper and 
 more complex than it could be for the ancient 
 stoics. His Nature is the cosmos of evolu- 
 tionary science. "The Ordeal of Richard 
 
 43
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Feverel," as we have seen, was published in 
 the same year as "The Origin of Species," 
 and the salient feature of Meredith's work is 
 that it has been carried out in full view of the 
 contemporary scientific movement which 
 seeks in Nature the ethical standards as well 
 as the physical origin of man. The cardinal 
 principle of his ethical idealism is the 
 trustworthiness of the moral instincts. Nat- 
 ure is a living organism, whose end for man 
 is spiritual, not material, and human life is 
 unintelligible apart from its relationship to 
 natural facts and forces. Life according to 
 Nature is man's destiny, which means, not the 
 worship of the senses, nor the ascetic denial 
 of the senses, but the spirit's control of the 
 senses. The end of Nature is man's ethical 
 completeness. Neither the mind, nor the 
 senses, nor the soul, is to be starved, but each 
 and all must play their part in the drama of 
 being. 
 
 " Blood and brain and spirit, three 
 Join for true felicity. 
 Are they parted, then expect 
 Some one sailing will be wrecked." 
 
 The beginning of wisdom, therefore, is to 
 
 44
 
 Introduction 
 
 let Nature reach and teach us ; otherwise it is 
 not possible to perceive man's ideal or the 
 conditions under which it can be realised. 
 This requires courage, for self and the senses 
 render man disinclined to face and welcome 
 the total order of Nature. 
 
 "The senses loving Earth or well or ill 
 Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. 
 The mind is in their trammels." 
 
 Most forms of contemporary pessimism and 
 sentimentalism are traced by Meredith to this 
 handicap — the refusal to confront the order of 
 Nature frankly and fully. Only the mind or 
 brain is equal to this task. If a man dares 
 to face and trust Nature, he is rewarded with 
 hope and insight. If he does not, his view of 
 the world and of himself is distorted. Thus 
 — to take but one example — cynicism is bound 
 up with a false view of Nature. '* You hate 
 Nature," says Gower Woodseer to the cynical 
 Lord Fleetwood, "unless you have it served 
 on a dish by your own cook. That's the way 
 to the madhouse or the monastery. There we 
 expiate the sin of sins. A man finds the 
 woman of all women fitted to stick him in the 
 soil, and trim and point him to grow, and 
 
 45
 
 George Meredith 
 
 she 's an animal for her pains ! The secret of 
 your malady is, you 've not yet, though you 're 
 on the heakhy leap for the practices of Nature, 
 hopped to the primary conception of what 
 Nature means. Women are in and of Nat- 
 ure." False views of oneself, as well as of 
 the other sex, whether these views are ascetic 
 or sensual, proceed from the same root, 
 according to Meredith. A primary concep- 
 tion of Nature is a-wanting. 
 
 This primary conception involves not only 
 a just relation of the sexes but their common 
 interest in self-sacrifice, brotherliness, and 
 unselfishness. Nature's supreme function is 
 to recall her children from their moods of 
 indulgence and egotism to the higher discipline 
 of helpfulness. The great thing to think 
 about, Meredith reiterates, is not reaping but 
 sowing (compare, e.g.^ the fifth chapter of 
 "Lord Ormont and his Amirita," and "Vit- 
 toria" throughout). His passionate recoil from 
 anything like luxurious individualism, and his 
 stress on human fellowship as the true sphere 
 of Nature's revelation, spring from his reading 
 of her primary law — the law of sacrifice and 
 service. Nature's crown and flower is man, 
 
 46
 
 Introduction 
 
 but man conscious that personality means 
 kinship and helpfulness to his fellows. As 
 the author puts it, in Vittoria's ringing stanza 
 at Mil^n : 
 
 Our life is but a little holding, lent 
 
 To do a mighty labour ; we are one 
 With heaven and with the stars, when 
 it is spent 
 To serve God's aim: else die we 
 with the sun. 
 
 "Service," said Diana Warwick, "is our des- 
 tiny in life and death. Then let it be my 
 choice, living to serve the living, and be fret- 
 ted uncomplainingly." 
 
 The joy of Earth belongs to those who thus 
 enter intelligently and bravely into the order 
 of her discipline, which aims at speeding the 
 race upwards to God and good. This is the 
 burden of Meredith's philosophy, and it lifts 
 him clear of any languid or defiant or sus- 
 picious attitude towards Nature. He has a 
 coherent, balanced view of human nature ; 
 he believes that men are meant for good ; and 
 he is sure that Nature or the universe is on 
 their side in the struggle against lust and pas- 
 sion. ** I say the profoundest service that 
 
 47
 
 George Meredith 
 
 poems or any other writings can do for 
 their reader is not merely to satisfy the intel- 
 lect, or supply something polished and inter- 
 esting, nor even to depict great passions 
 or persons or events, but to fill him with 
 vigorous and clean manliness, religiousness, 
 and give him good heart as a radical possession 
 and habit." That sentence of Walt Whitman 
 sums up the drift of Meredith's prose as well 
 as of his verse. There is not a whimper in it, 
 not an atom of cowardice. He invigorates 
 the reader while he amuses. And he does so, 
 claiming to present the right order and use of 
 life, because he has read Earth deep enough 
 to see the rose of the soul unfold itself bravely 
 under the grey skies of evolutionary science. 
 The novels testify to this conviction in grave, 
 buoyant, and energetic prose. They are 
 studies in several types of human character, 
 tragic and comic, designed to expound the 
 bracing philosophy of Nature as that is inter- 
 preted by the Spirit of Comedy (in the 
 Meredithian sense of the term), which is "the 
 fountain of sound sense, not the less perfectly 
 sound on account of the sparkle." 
 
 Novels written in this vein cannot fail 
 
 48
 
 Introduction 
 
 to have a keen interest and value of their 
 own, but it is superfluous to observe that 
 their appeal is to a circle which must be 
 comparatively restricted. This subtle, in- 
 tellectual treatment of human nature in prose 
 fiction, through the medium of the "Comic 
 Spirit," addresses itself to people of sharp 
 perception and sensitive faculties, even 
 when the subjects are by no means recon- 
 dite in themselves. A writer like Meredith 
 finds his audience as well as his material, not 
 in the marketplace, but in a society of quick- 
 witted, cultured beings. A certain nimble- 
 ness of mind is requisite for the appreciation 
 of his work, and this implies, as he is well 
 aware, that his audience constitutes "an acute 
 and honourable minority." For the crowd 
 prefers to be thumped rather than tickled, 
 and resents fiction being ranked as an elect 
 handmaiden to philosophy. 
 
 Thanks to his high conception of the 
 English novel and its function, Meredith 
 makes little or no attempt to catch the 
 multitude with broad effects, high colours, 
 or strong flavours. His work has an extra- 
 ordinary range. But, like Diana Warwick, 
 
 49 
 
 D
 
 George Meredith 
 
 he does not lay himself out as a writer for 
 "clever transcripts of the dialogue of the 
 day, and hairbreadth escapes," breathless ad- 
 ventures, gushing sentiment, and the ooze 
 of pathos. Consequently the atmosphere is 
 somewhat rarefied at times. Certainly it 
 cannot be described as wholly congenial to 
 the average Briton, an excellent person who 
 commonly prefers blunt, hard satire, humour 
 with its i's dotted and its t's carefully crossed. 
 As Meredith himself confesses genially, "the 
 national disposition is for hard-hitting with 
 a moral purpose to sanction it"; ethereal, 
 nimble wit does not allure the many. As 
 handled by Meredith, it is often clear 
 and true. But it invokes "the conscience 
 residing in thoughtfulness," and comedy of 
 this kind must frequently be content to play to 
 empty benches. To the first edition of 
 "Modern Love" he prefixed the lines: 
 "This is not meat 
 For little people or for fools." 
 Unfortunately it is apt to become food for 
 a cult or coterie, which is a serious handicap 
 upon any writer. 
 So far as an author's refusal to be simple is 
 
 50
 
 Introduction 
 
 wilful and affected, the public revenges itself 
 by visiting him with an unworthy but not 
 undeserved neglect. Now, two spirits struggle 
 forNthe soul of Meredith as a literary artist. 
 There is a lyric, spontaneous feeling, which 
 now and then issues in passages of direct 
 intuition and unaffected charm, vibrating with 
 emotion and pure fancy. Meredith has his 
 "native woodnotes wild"; and they are by no 
 means confined to his prose, as readers of 
 poems like "Juggling Jerry" and "Love in a 
 Valley" (especially in its original version) will 
 gladly testify. Along with this, however, a 
 spirit of strain and affectation makes itself 
 heard. There is a tone of painful artifice in 
 him, of which e.g. "Modern Love," the 
 later odes, and "One of Our Conquerors" 
 bear melancholy traces. Whole pages of 
 Meredith's work are spoiled by a passion for 
 the intricate. It is as though he were fascina- 
 ted by anything off the high road : complex 
 motives, tangled situations, abstruse points of 
 conduct. "In Our fat England," he pleads 
 unabashed, "the gardener Time is playing all 
 sorts of delicate freaks in the hues and 
 traceries of the flower of life, and shall we not 
 
 51
 
 George Meredith 
 
 note them? If we are to understand our 
 species, and mark the progress of civilization 
 at all, we must." To which one would be 
 inclined to answer not by a simple negative 
 but by drawing distinctions, and especially 
 by demurring to the implication that twists 
 and freaks are anything but a subordinate 
 element in average human existence. To 
 Meredith, in fact, the flower of life is an 
 orchid oftener than a lily of the field. His 
 predilection for subtle shades and traceries 
 tends to present ordinary life to him as morally 
 exotic. His creative imagination redeems 
 him, certainly ; the natural sights and 
 sounds that fill his pages protect the reader 
 generally against any prolonged sense of 
 artificiality. I would not go nearly so far as 
 to say that nothing seems to interest him 
 strongly except "derangement, the imper- 
 ceptible grain of sand that sets the whole 
 mechanism out of gear." That is true, but it 
 is not all the truth, although one can readily 
 understand how a case for this verdict could 
 be strongly and unfairly stated, if critics 
 persist in remaining blind to the fact that the 
 dramatic motif in a novel of Meredith is 
 
 52
 
 Introduction 
 
 really never far-fetched. Its variations and 
 developement, however, often are. "The 
 light of every soul burns upward ; let us allow 
 for atmospheric disturbance." This would be 
 an adequate defence, were it not that in ex- 
 patiating upon the allowance and watchfully 
 detecting the whirl of motes within the beam, 
 he now and then seems clean to forget that 
 he has a taper needing his attention. 
 
 The difficulty is aggravated by his fondness 
 for developing a story by diverting allusions 
 rather than by plain straightforward narrative. 
 It is a vexatious and often an inartistic method. 
 Meredith has usually a story to tell, and 
 plenty of emotion and adventure wherewith 
 to carry it forward. Only, you must go be- 
 hind the booth and see the showman working 
 his puppets. The result is that the characters 
 are not always kept at blood-heat, while the 
 impatient spectator's interest is first divided 
 and then apt to flag. In reading some of the 
 novels for the first time you feel like a small 
 man in a crowd, when some procession is 
 passing — bewildered and aggrieved. Colour 
 and movement are there ; but they are neither 
 coherent nor made obvious to you. In a 
 
 53
 
 George Meredith 
 
 more poetical figure, the stream of narrative 
 is so overlaid at some places with lilies of 
 comment and aphorism, that the current is 
 seriously impeded and the flow of water 
 almost hidden. No doubt the lilies are fresh 
 and splendid ; but that is hardly the point 
 at issue. The novelist is conscious of his fault. 
 He is constantly pausing, especially in the 
 later novels, to apologise for the intrusion of 
 the philosopher upon the artist and for the 
 marriage of comedy and narrative, but his 
 contrite excuses remind one too vividly of 
 FalstafFs. The habit seems too strong for 
 him. Partly it is a defect of his intense in- 
 tellectualism ; partly it is one consequence of 
 his analytic principle thai the ideas rather 
 than the appetites of men form the best clue 
 to their conduct. But in any case he is open 
 to severe criticism upon this point of technical 
 execution. Like all mannerisms it has probably 
 been aggravated by the partial obscurity in 
 which the author had for long to work. 
 Absence of popular recognition upon a scale 
 commensurate to a man's ability is apt to 
 foster any innate tendency to mental perversi- 
 ties, just as the bodily gestures of a recluse 
 
 54
 
 Introduction 
 
 acquire insensibly a certain uncouth awkward- 
 ness ; and Meredith is not wholly to be 
 acquitted of the artistic crime of eccentricity. 
 Isolation here also has intensified an inborn 
 freakishness of manner. "Mystic wrynesses 
 he chased." No one would insist upon a 
 novel of the highest rank furnishing the 
 precise details of a reporting column; yet 
 how few of Meredith's romances would have 
 been spoiled by the omission of some dis- 
 quisitions upon mental pathology, and by the 
 introduction of a little plain information about 
 what exactly has been and is being done ! Is 
 it only the "happy bubbling fool " who desires 
 to know the progress as well as the causes of 
 events ? In ** Diana of the Grossways," for 
 example (as in the "Amazing Marriage"), the 
 opening chapter is devoted to a delightful 
 preliminary talk, full of clever hints, anticipa- 
 tions, side allusions and the like, which 
 certainly create an interest and atmosphere 
 for the subsequent tale. But it is only in 
 Chapter II. that the story plunges from ex- 
 position of feelings and gossip into the gay 
 whirl of an Irish ball. " Let us to our story," 
 says the author coolly, " the froth being out of 
 
 55
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the bottle." But surely the froth should be 
 out of the bottle before it is held to the lips ! 
 
 Admittedly the novelist is never feverish 
 or fragmentary in manner, never a wayward 
 visionary even in his exalted moments, 
 never prolix or laborious in the sense 
 in which George Eliot occasionally plays 
 the pedant, almost never ornate or irrele- 
 vant like Balzac with his descriptions of 
 locality and furniture. But as a composer 
 he has a dangerous endowment of fertility, 
 and one would rather that his afl&nities had 
 been with any school except the German, 
 from which — headed by Jean Paul Richter — 
 it is not inapposite to conjecture that he has 
 caught an inartistic forgetfulness of the bound- 
 aries that separate the essay and the romance. 
 One is glad to have Hazlitt's countenance 
 in finding the similar passages in Meredith's 
 prototype, Moli^re, somewhat verbose and 
 intricate ; they are that, even when in the 
 one case they are carried oflF by the rapid 
 dialogue in verse, in the other by the flashing 
 prose. At the worst they are never opaque 
 or muddy — which is always something. But 
 the trouble about these diverting and ingenious 
 
 56
 
 Introduction 
 
 asides is that Meredith knows better. If he 
 likes, and fortunately he often likes, he can 
 give his readers Stevenson's luxury of laying 
 aside the judgment and being submerged by 
 the tale as by a billow. The pity of it is that he 
 prefers now and again to keep your head 
 prosaically safe above the water, while he 
 expounds to you in witty words the sequence 
 of the tides. 
 
 A passion for the bizarre in action or char- 
 acter, accompanied by a preoccupation with 
 the integral calculus of motives, is not un- 
 fitly set in a compressed form of utterance 
 which is rich to the point of obscurity. 
 Meredith's style reflects his mental temper 
 of keen, pregnant observation. It is terse 
 and quick and brilliant; but it has a tendency, 
 where inspiration flags, to lapse now and 
 then into euphuism, extravagance, over- 
 subtlety. It has oftener the flashing edge of 
 crystals than limpid fluidity. Language be- 
 comes with him in certain moods a shower of 
 audacious and prismatic epigrams, or "a 
 flushed Bacchanal in a ring of dancing 
 similes." There is little or none of Swin- 
 burne's riot in verbiage, or of Ruskin's 
 
 57
 
 George Meredith 
 
 billowy rhetoric. The writer seems nervously 
 and even awkwardly to avoid all approaches 
 to smooth and flexible expression. The style is 
 difl&cult, but through sheer excess of thought, 
 not through confusion. It is never plush, 
 though too frequently it becomes brocade, 
 rather than the silk which closely fits the 
 limbs. Stiff in parts, though jewelled, it is 
 apt to hang in somewhat rigid folds. There are 
 passages of his poetry, for example, compared 
 to which Sordello and Pacchiarotto are trans- 
 cripts of lucidity. 
 
 Some of the common clamour about Mere- 
 dith's style, however, is due to intellectual 
 torpidity. Years ago Mark Pattison observed 
 that Meredith's name was **a label warning 
 * novel readers' not to touch. They know 
 that in the volumes which carry that mark 
 they will not find the comfortable convention- 
 alities and the paste diamonds which make 
 up their ideal of life. Worse than this, 
 Mr. Meredith's style requires attention ; an 
 impertinent requirement on the part of a 
 novelist." Some people also fail to observe 
 that in the dialogues, for example, he is true 
 to life. Ordinary conversation as a rule 
 
 58
 
 Introduction 
 
 answers thoughts as well as words; it runs 
 on a level where the speakers address what 
 is meant rather than what is said. (Readers 
 of^'Rhoda Fleming" will recollect a famous 
 instance.) Further, one is very seldom 
 annoyed in Meredith with quips and verbal 
 puzzles or with disagreeable attempts to paint 
 in words, and although the staccato movement 
 is somewhat clicking, it is never obtrusive in 
 his readings of Nature or in his love-scenes. 
 There one has not to pause and unravel a 
 paragraph or disentangle sense from a sen- 
 tence. The clotted manner drops away, 
 confusion and inversion disappear, and the 
 result is a vivid transcript of reality. For 
 Meredith is like the historian. Green, **a jolly 
 vivid man ... as vivid as lightning," to quote 
 Tennyson's verdict on the latter. In repro- 
 ducing subtle shades of feeling or in describing 
 physical impressions, he has a marvellous 
 skill ; a handful of words becomes almost 
 transparent with imagination and delicate in- 
 sight. No doubt, of his verse in large sections, 
 though seldom of his finer prose, it is not 
 extravagant to say that " the aim to astonish 
 is greater than the desire to charm." 
 
 59
 
 George Meredith 
 
 "Forcible" suits him better than "urbane"; 
 "dazzling," as a rule, better than "chaste" 
 or "Attic." A style naturally luminous and 
 picturesque sails perilously near the coasts 
 of tortuous euphuism ; for by a strange 
 perversity he seems upon occasion to 
 court the very foppery of genius, till one 
 is sadly tempted to recall the tribe of 
 Donne and Cowley with their quaint and 
 cumbersome conceits. Sir Lukin sends a boy 
 to run for news of the score at a cricket-match 
 — "and his emissary taught lightning a les- 
 son." That is Meredith all over, though his 
 "euphuism" is adventitious rather than es- 
 sentially frigid and trivial. Yet, judged by 
 his best, and his best is the greater part of his 
 output, he has command of a diction almost 
 unrivalled for its purposes, surging and full 
 and radiant. It is a pure joy to read many of 
 his pages, were it only for their unflagging wit 
 and marvellous use of metaphor — that literary 
 gift which Aristotle singled out as a sure mark 
 of literary genius. Such qualities of style are 
 the reflection of mental splendour in any 
 writer, and, though cultivated, are never a 
 mere trick. Limpid simplicity indeed is not 
 
 60
 
 Introduction 
 
 one of his main notes ; which is to be regretted, 
 as simplicity is one condition of vitality in liter- 
 ature. He tends to be elliptic and — in a good 
 sense — embroidered, in language. In musical 
 phrase there is more harmony and orchestra- 
 tion than melody in parts of his work ; he is, 
 perhaps, the Berlioz of modern prose-fiction in 
 this country. But he has melody as well as 
 counterpoint. The supreme qualities of bril- 
 liant phrasing, terseness of expression, energy, 
 exquisite colouring, and luxuriant fancy, are 
 all conspicuous in his style ; they rightly 
 count for much, and their wealth covers a 
 great multitude of minor sins. If here and 
 there he deserves the charge implied in Fal- 
 staff's retort to Pistol, one must remember 
 that, judged by this standard, Shakespeare 
 himself falls to be criticised like Meredith for 
 the same offence. In both it is as patent as it 
 is — comparatively speaking — venial. Shakes- 
 peare is king of the continent where Meredith 
 is a prince ; and Johnson's famous verdict on 
 the Elizabethan recurs to the mind with curi- 
 ous persistency as one attempts to estimate the 
 Victorian. "A quibble was to him the fatal 
 Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and 
 
 61
 
 George Meredith 
 
 was content to lose it. . . . I cannot say he is 
 everywhere alike. He is many times flat and 
 insipid. But he is always great when some 
 great occasion is presented to him ; no man 
 can say he ever had a fit subject for his art 
 and did not then raise himself as high above 
 his fellows, quantum lenta solent inter viburna 
 cupressi. " 
 
 This slight summary of some cardinal ideas 
 in Meredith's fiction, and of some salient 
 features in his technical method, will serve 
 perhaps to put one en route with him. I have 
 left myself no space to touch upon some other 
 fascinating aspects, such as his cosmopolitan 
 outlook, from which all insularity is purged : 
 his minor characters : his versatile humour : 
 his technical execution : his poetical work- 
 manship: his relation to men like Dickens, 
 Balzac, Hugo, and especially Thomas 
 Hardy : his attitude to politics and progress : 
 his estimates of religion (in semitones, 
 scanty but firm), patriotism, education, and 
 the Celtic temperament. These and other 
 lines of study can be worked out from the 
 general standpoint which I have tried to sug- 
 gest in this paper. For the primary thing to 
 
 62
 
 Introduction 
 
 be insisted on with regard to Meredith is that 
 in focussing his position we may with advant- 
 age look at the content rather than the form 
 of hi^ work. It is only consonant with his 
 own avowed desire that we should thus ap- 
 proach him from the side of ethics as well as 
 of art, although no huger injustice could be 
 done to him than to claim him for a cult or for 
 a party, much less to convey the impression 
 that his novels are a species — even a glorified 
 species — of pamphlets. Meredith is a master 
 of literature. Some of his novels are triumphs 
 of creative prose, and — despite their depend- 
 ence upon a knowledge of contemporary 
 feeling in nineteenth-century England — they 
 will rank with the supreme contributions 
 of last century to English literature, even 
 although they win him security rather than 
 fulness of fame. In style and conception, we 
 may surely say, without being Meredlthy- 
 ramblc, that he is a peer of the few great 
 literary artists in our age. His line and colour 
 belong to the great style In literature, and 
 three-fifths of his work is bathed in what 
 his friend Swinburne called "passionate and 
 various beauty." The artistic Impulse asserts 
 
 63
 
 George Meredith 
 
 itself in almost every chapter he has written, 
 for in spite of the writer's rich mental con- 
 stitution, his complexity of material is rarely 
 suffered to compromise the symmetry and 
 the movement which are essential to great- 
 ness in a genuine prose romance. Still, any 
 eulogy of Meredith's intellectual subtlety and 
 imaginative reach — and an estimate here passes 
 quickly into eulogy — must be balanced by 
 the admission that prose-fiction in his hands 
 moves out into the strenuous and stirring 
 tideway of contemporary life ; he is highly 
 serious for all his wit and charm, and he has 
 not the slightest notion of enticing you into a 
 house boat or a racing gig. 
 
 Some of you will remember this prose- 
 parable by Maarten Maartens: "There was 
 a man once — a satirist. In the natural course 
 of time his friends slew him and he died. And 
 the people came and stood about his corpse. 
 *He treated the whole round world as his 
 football,' they said indignantly, 'and he kicked 
 it.' The dead man opened one eye. 'But 
 always toward the goal,' he said." Meredith 
 is no satirist. He does not even turn a 
 superb and deliberate censor of the universe 
 
 64
 
 Introduction 
 
 like William Morris and John Ruskin ; 
 though his aim is to waken and to brace his 
 age, he never ostentatiously lifts the scourge 
 or broom, and "kicking" is altogether too 
 coarse and direct an expression to denote his 
 genial influence. But he is really aggressive, 
 in one sense. He produces a distinct impact 
 upon "that conscience residing in thought- 
 fulness," which it is his design to exercise 
 and to increase. Resent it or not as you 
 please, what Meredith is concerned with 
 is that you shall treat the novel as something 
 other than a brassy or a bun. To stir the mind's 
 interest by a vital and varied application of 
 "the Comic Spirit," is the motive of George 
 Meredith. He would make his prose both 
 voice and force. If readers fling down his 
 works without being pushed an inch or two 
 nearer sanity and sincerity, or without sus- 
 pecting that these are a goal, or even without 
 dreaming that for them a goal exists at all, 
 then a fault lies somewhere. But the fault 
 is not wholly Meredith's. 
 
 65 
 
 £
 
 ^ 
 
 THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 "npHE Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian 
 ■'- Entertainment," Meredith's first work 
 in prose, was published in 1856, five years 
 after his first book of poems. Beckford's 
 "Vathek," which had appeared nearly 
 seventy years earlier, "remained without 
 distinguished progeny," says Professor 
 Raleigh. But "Shagpat" is its late-born 
 child. It also draws upon ** The Arabian 
 Nights," though Meredith easily outstrips 
 Beckford in the skill by which he has 
 caught the discursiveness, the luxuriant 
 fancy, the riot of imagination, and the brilliant 
 atmosphere of the Oriental phantasmagoria. 
 Both novels are written in high spirits. But 
 ** The Shaving of Shagpat " is composed in a 
 characteristic vein of the mock-heroic, with 
 touches of passion and romance and exuber- 
 ant humour. George Eliot, in one of her 
 reviews, hailed it "as an apple tree among 
 
 69
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the trees of the wood," and, once the public- 
 grew accustomed to its puzzling qualities, 
 the wit and genius of this four de force 
 prevailed with its audience, although a 
 second edition was not called for until 1865. 
 
 Three separate stories, ** The Story ot 
 Bhanavar the Beautiful,** ** The Punishment 
 of Shahpesh, the Persian, or Khipil the 
 Builder," and "The Case of Rumdrum, A 
 Reader of Planets, that was a Barber," are 
 woven, in oriental manner, into the plot. 
 But the outline of the main story is as 
 follows : — 
 
 Noorna bin Noorka, a waif beside her 
 dead mother in the desert, is rescued and 
 reared by a certain chief Raveloke in the 
 city of Oolb, where in her twelfth year she 
 obtains from an old beggar — in return for a 
 piece of gold given in charity — her heart's 
 desire in dresses, gems, a«d toys, but 
 especially a red book of magic. She be- 
 comes proficient in spells and sorcery, owing 
 to her eagerness to discover her father, and 
 thereby incurs the jealousy of Princess 
 Goorelka, an accomplished sorceress, whose 
 genie Karaz eventually manages to carry off 
 
 70
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 Nooma as his prize. She promises to give 
 herself to the possessor of the Identical, or 
 hair of fortune, which was on his head, in 
 return for his help in disenchanting her 
 father. The latter, Feshnavat by name, is 
 shown by Karaz to be one of a number of 
 birds in the aviary of Goorelka. These birds 
 are her former lovers, and they can only be 
 disenchanted if they are kept laughing for 
 one hour uninterruptedly. Noorna happens 
 by accident to gain possession of Goorelka's 
 magic ring which made its possessor ** mis- 
 tress of the marvellous hair which is a 
 magnet to the homage of men, so that they 
 crowd and crush and hunger to adore it, 
 even the Identical." She disenchants her 
 father, and then, anxious to evade her 
 promise to Karaz, discovers that, while the 
 hair Identical must live on some head, the ring 
 is powerless over it except in the genie's 
 head. She therefore manages to outwit 
 Karaz, tears the hair from his head, and 
 drops it on that of an innocent clothier called 
 Shagpat. Karaz forthwith becomes her re- 
 bellious slave. But he has his revenge. For 
 Goorelka had persuaded Noorna, who loved 
 
 71
 
 George Meredith 
 
 flowers, to tend the Lily of Light upon 
 the Enchanted Sea, which meant that her 
 beauty was bound up with that of the Lily. 
 ** Whatever was a stain to one withered the 
 other." Goorelka then blighted the petals 
 of the Lily and turned Noorna into a 
 wrinkled crone, ugly and tottering. Never- 
 theless Noorna, by the power of the ring, 
 is able to advance Feshnavat to the position 
 of vizier, and in the meantime she anxiously 
 awaits the coming of the barber who, as her 
 spells inform her, is destined to shave the 
 Identical from the head of the vain-glorious 
 Shagpat. For the worthy clothier, finding 
 himself the object of homage on account of 
 his hair, naturally remains unshorn, '* a 
 miracle of hairiness, black with hair as he 
 had been muzzled by it, and his head as it 
 were a berry in a huge bush by reason of it." 
 The whole city, including the king, lies 
 under the enchantment of the hair. Only 
 Feshnavat and Noorna retain their wits, 
 and Shagpat audaciously claims the latter in 
 marriage. 
 
 It is at this juncture that the story opens. 
 Noorna's magic has revealed to her that 
 
 72
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 Shagpat is to be shaved by a certain youth 
 who comes along a magic line which she 
 draws from the sandhills outside the city. 
 Thi^ youth is Shibli Bagarag of Shiraz, 
 "nephew to the renowned Baba Mustapha, 
 chief barber to the Court of Persia." Hungry 
 and abject, Shibli is met by Noorna in her 
 hag-like form, who persuades him that his 
 fortune is made if he only succeeds in shaving 
 Shagpat. The youth is vain and enterpris- 
 ing. He makes the attempt, and is soundly 
 thwacked for the insult to Shagpat and the 
 citizens ; the latter indignantly throw him 
 out of the city. Noorna however consoles 
 him with the promise of honour and happi- 
 ness, if he agrees to marry her. This, after 
 some hesitation, he agrees to do. They are 
 betrothed in the house of Feshnavat; Shibli 
 is amazed to find that each of his rather 
 reluctant kisses makes the hag become 
 younger and prettier, whereupon Noorna 
 reveals to his astonished ears the destiny to 
 which he is appointed. The news turns his 
 head. Noorna had already detected his con- 
 ceit. **Tis clear," she said to her father, 
 *' that vanity will trip him, but honesty is a 
 
 73
 
 George Meredith 
 
 strong upholder." Shibh verifies this prog- 
 nostication by his swelling pride at the news 
 of what he was designed to accomplish. ** He 
 exulted, and his mind strutted through the 
 future of his days, and down the ladder of 
 all time, exacting homage from men, his 
 brethren ; and 'twas beyond the art of Noorna 
 to fix him to the present duties of the enter- 
 prise : he was as feathered seed before the 
 breath of vanity." 
 
 The serious campaign now begins. Three 
 motives are at work in Shibli : the desire of 
 taking vengeance for the thwacking he had 
 received, the ambition excited by his destiny, 
 and a genuine love for Noorna. But the 
 obstacles are formidable. The first consists 
 of the illusions with which Rabesqurat, the 
 queen of the. Enchanted Sea, has surrounded 
 Shagpat ; these ** make it difficult to know 
 him from his semblances, whenever real 
 danger threateneth him." Secondly, there 
 is the weakness of natural man, who is un- 
 likely to finish oflF Shagpat at one effort. 
 And thirdly, there is the difficulty of getting 
 Shagpat ready for shaving, as well as the 
 trouble of finding a blade keen enough to 
 
 74
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 reap the magic hair which defies all mortal 
 razors. The only blade is a sword which is 
 to he found in Aklis, and to gain it three 
 charms are requisite. The first is (i) a phial 
 of water from the fountain of Paravid, each 
 drop of which makes flowers and stones and 
 sand to speak ; this, with the aid of Karaz, 
 Noorna enables Shibli to secure, (ii) Then 
 some hairs from the tail of the horse 
 Garaveen are required. But Shibli's incur- 
 able vanity prompts him to ride the danger- 
 ous steed, until, to save him, Noorna is 
 obliged to let Karaz seize Garaveen. She 
 manages to pull three hairs from the horse's 
 tail, but Karaz is now their foe, instead of 
 their slave, and Shibli has to return dolefully 
 to the city of Oolb, by aid of drops from his 
 magic phial. Noorna, in the form of a hawk, 
 rescues him en route from various perils, 
 enables him to shave the king and court of 
 Oolb, to steal the cockle-shell from under 
 the pillow of Goorelka, and, hotly pursued 
 by the latter, to tear up the Lily on the 
 Enchanted Sea, thus rescuing Noorna from 
 the spell of ugliness, and turning Goorelka 
 into a repulsive hag who is carried off by 
 
 75
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Karaz. The Lily is the third help (iii) in their 
 enterprise. Equipped with it, Noorna and 
 Shibli make for the fairy mountain of Aklis. 
 But first they must pass through the palace 
 of Illusions, where Rabesqurat reigns as 
 queen. Left to himself, Shibli succumbs to 
 her Circe-like wiles, but manages to recover 
 himself and to plunge on through similar 
 seductions of vanity and ambition in the 
 palace of Aklis. By the help of the seven 
 sons of Aklis and their sister. Princess 
 Gulrevaz, he secures the coveted Sword, at 
 the price of all his three enchantments. His 
 first task is to rescue poor Noorna who, by 
 the spells of Rabesqurat, had been chained 
 to a pillar in the sea ; this, however, is 
 effected by Princess Gulrevaz and her magic 
 bird Koorookh. Shibli now leaves Aklis with 
 his precious sword, but unluckily he bran- 
 dishes it with a silly flourish, in order to look 
 through the veil that shrouded Rabesqurat as 
 she ferried him across the sea to Noorna. 
 The only cure for the disastrous illusions 
 produced by this vision is to sleep in the 
 bosom of his beloved ; thanks to the hair of 
 Garaveen and to Abarak, Rabesqurat's 
 
 76
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 dwarf slave, he gets clear from Aklis and is 
 rescued by Noorna, in whose lap he finds 
 new manhood. Meantime Koorookh bears 
 theni safe into the desert, where Feshnavat 
 joins them with the news that during their 
 absence Shibli's uncle, the loquacious and 
 irrepressible barber Mustapha, had been 
 thwacked for daring to practise his craft in 
 Oolb, and that in a subsequent fit of delirium 
 he had — by the wiles of Goorelka disguised 
 as a hag — contrived to ruin his protector 
 Feshnavat. All this had contributed to the 
 greater glory of Shagpat, who was at the 
 zenith of his arrogance. 
 
 Feshnavat and his daughter now return to 
 Oolb to mature the final plot. A fresh 
 attempt by Mustapha, who gets the length of 
 lathering Shagpat, is frustrated by Karaz in 
 the form of a flea. By way of punishment 
 the barber is condemned to try and shave 
 Shagpat before the court ; at the third essay he 
 is hurled ignominiously " like a stone from a 
 sling, even into the outer air and beyond the 
 city walls." The Identical blazes up for 
 three days and three nights in triumph on the 
 head of Shagpat who lies in a trance. But the 
 
 77
 
 George Meredith 
 
 clothier's triumph is short-lived. On the 
 fourth day, after a fierce conflict of genii, the 
 flashing blade in Shibli's hand shaves Shagpat 
 clean, to the consternation of the populace ; 
 the Identical is shorn off, and "day was on 
 the baldness of Shagpat." So the story ends. 
 Baba Mustapha is hailed king of Oolb, and 
 Shibli marries Nooma, 
 
 The book is studded with scraps of verse and 
 aphorisms, some of which illustrate germi- 
 native ideas in the author's subsequent work. 
 Thus the power of Illusion is represented as 
 operating upon people of one idea. Queen 
 Rabesqurat is "the mistress of the single- 
 thoughted, and them that follow one idea to 
 the exclusion of a second." See below under 
 ** Beauchamp's Career" and "One of Our 
 Conquerors." Shibli illustrates the mischief 
 done by airy conceit and also the profit of 
 chastening — both characteristic ideas of 
 Meredith's ethic. The former, as a source of 
 aberration, comes out also in the character of 
 Shagpat, lolling gravely in his shop before the 
 crowds who assembled to gaze at his shaggy 
 pate. Noorna exhibits the union of wit and 
 charm in a woman which Meredith is never 
 
 78
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 weary of commending, and the story closes by 
 hinting that Shibli, unlike some other heroes 
 of the later novels, respected the wisdom of 
 his bride, while he admired her beauty. 
 As fbr minor details, note that the love scene 
 in ** The Story of Bhanavar " is placed beside 
 running water, as is so often the case in 
 Meredith's romances, and that the power of 
 laughing at oneself is pronounced the cure 
 for pedantry and conceit. In the palace of 
 Rabesqurat Shibli sees "divers sitters on 
 thrones, with the diadem of asses' ears 
 stiffened upright, and monkey's skulls grin- 
 ning with gems ; they having on each 
 countenance the look of sovereigns and the 
 serenity of high estate." As Shibli reflected, 
 ** if these sitters could but laugh at them- 
 selves, there would be a release for them, 
 and the crown would topple off which getteth 
 the homage of asses and monkeys." 
 
 The snatches of verse, which enliven 
 "Shagpat" as well as " Farina," partly recall 
 the quality of Meredith's early poems. When 
 the latter were published. Dr. Hort wrote of 
 then) : ** They are not deep, but show a rare 
 eye and ear. There is a Keatsian sensuous- 
 
 79
 
 George Meredith 
 
 ness about them, but the activity and go 
 prevent it from being enervating and 
 immoral." ** I send a scrap of Meredith . . . 
 is it not sweet and perfect in itself as a song ? 
 Talk of Horace and Herrick ! It seems to 
 me more like Shakespeare's songs." This en- 
 thusiastic criticism is borne out by several of 
 the lyric stanzas in "The Shaving of Shagpat." 
 The story has been beset by misconceptions. 
 Meredith anticipated one of them in a 
 prefatory note to the first edition, which 
 gravely explained that the work was not a 
 translation. Another view of it has been 
 more persistent. Attempts have been made 
 to read an allegorical significance into the 
 adventures of Shibli, as though that worthy 
 person represented the true reformer who 
 seeks to emancipate men from the old customs 
 and abuses to which they bow down. Some 
 ground for this theory might plausibly be 
 found in the conclusion, where Meredith 
 observes gravely that ** the mastery of an 
 Event lasteth among men for the space of 
 one cycle of years, and after that a fresh 
 Illusion springeth to befool mankind. As 
 the poet declareth in his scorn : 
 
 80
 
 The Shaving of Shagpat 
 
 * Some doubt Eternity : from life begun, 
 Has folly ceased within them, sire to son ? 
 So, ever fresh Illusions will arise 
 And lord creation until men are wise. 
 
 » n 
 
 But it is as vain to allegorise this story as 
 " Don Quixote." At the most, " The Shaving 
 of Shagpat," like "The Idylls of the King," 
 has ' ' an allegory in the distance " ; no elabo- 
 rate symbolism can be read into the details 
 of the plot. In fact, as early as the second 
 edition, Meredith humorously disclaimed 
 such an intention in another prefatory note. 
 " It has been suggested to me," he wrote, 
 "by one who has no fear of allegories on 
 the banks of the Nile, that the hairy Shagpat 
 must stand to mean umbrageous Humbug 
 conquering the sons of men ; and that 
 Noorna bin Noorka represents the Seasons, 
 which help us, if there is health in us, to 
 dispel the affliction of his shadow ; while 
 my heroic Shibli Bagarag is actually to be 
 taken for Circumstance, which works under 
 their changeful guidance towards our ultimate 
 release from bondage, but with a disappoint- 
 ing apparent waywardness. The excuse for 
 F 81
 
 George Meredith 
 
 such behaviour as this youth exhibits, is so 
 good that I would willingly let him wear the 
 grand mask hereby offered to him. But, 
 though his backslidings cry loudly for some 
 sheltering plea, or garb of dignity, and though 
 a story-teller should be flattered to have it 
 supposed that anything very distinct was 
 intended by him, the Allegory must be rejected 
 altogether. The subtle Arab who conceived 
 Shagpat, meant either very much more, or he 
 meant less ; and my belief is, that, designing 
 in his wisdom simply to amuse, he attempted 
 to give a larger embrace to time than is 
 possible to the profound dispenser of 
 Allegories, which are mortal ; which, to be of 
 any value, must be perfectly clear, and, when 
 perfectly clear, are as little attractive as Mrs. 
 Malaprop's reptile." 
 
 82
 
 ^ 
 
 FARINA
 
 ^ Farina 
 
 "TTARINA: a Legend of Cologne" was 
 A^ published in 1857. Slighter than "The 
 Shaving of Shagpat," it is also a burlesque, 
 although the subject is mediaeval, not 
 oriental. The story is a subtly ironical 
 sketch of superstition and chivalry, which 
 reminds one of Peacock's " Maid Marian" 
 — itself a gentle satire on the romantic 
 movement represented by M. G. Lewis and 
 Sir Walter Scott. ** Farina," however, with 
 its blend of the supernatural and the heroic 
 lies nearer to " The Abbot " and '* The 
 Monastery." At the close of the first chapter 
 of "The Tale of Ghloe," Meredith after- 
 wards wrote that *' A living native duke is 
 worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, 
 and a buxom young lass of the fields mounting 
 from a pair of pails to the estate of duchess, 
 a more romantic object than troops of your 
 visionary Yseults and Guineveres." "Farina" 
 
 85
 
 George Meredith 
 
 is a practical illustration of this scorn for the 
 revival of mediaevalism. In spite of its love- 
 passages and fits of spirited narrative, it is 
 hardly an adequate example of the writer's 
 power over the short story, but it reflects 
 his German education and one or two of his 
 characteristic ideas. 
 
 Gottlieb von Groschen, a rich merchant 
 and money-lender of Cologne, has one lovely 
 daughter Margarita, in whose honour the 
 youths of the city have formed a White Rose 
 Club sworn to uphold her beauty against all 
 comers. Only one youth, the slender, fair 
 Farina, refuses to join this league of tender 
 and quarrelsome fanatics. Farina is poor ; 
 as a student of chemistry, he is also suspected 
 of tampering with the black art ; but Mar- 
 garita's heart is tender towards him, and he 
 is in love with her. 
 
 The story opens three days before the 
 entry of Kaiser Heinrichs into Cologne after 
 a campaign on the Danube. A troop of wild 
 cavalry, belonging to the robber baron 
 Werner, of Werner's Eck, an independent 
 royal adherent, ride into the city and attempt 
 to offer an indignity to Margarita in front of 
 
 86
 
 Farina 
 
 her father's house. Thanks to the interven- 
 tion of a sturdy stranger, Guy the Gosshawk, 
 who is in the Kaiser's service, the girl is 
 rescued ; Werner rides up to scatter his un- 
 ruly followers ; and the Gosshawk is feted by 
 the grateful Gottlieb, while Farina goes oflF, 
 rewarded for his share in the rescue by soft 
 words from Margarita's lips and a silver 
 arrow from her hair. Later in the evening, 
 Guy and he foregather, and, after some 
 nocturnal adventures in foiling an attack of 
 Schmidt, Werner's dupe and confederate, 
 upon Gottlieb's house, both are captured by 
 the White Rose Club who suspect them ot 
 designs upon Margarita. Guy is released at 
 Gottlieb's request, but Farina, who has lost 
 his silver arrow during the night, is consigned 
 to prison. 
 
 Next day the prowling Werner sends a 
 forged letter from Farina to Margarita with 
 the silver arrow which Schmidt had picked 
 up. The note, however, is opened by the 
 girl's aunt Lisbeth, a sour and suspicious 
 prude, who thinks it best to keep the assig- 
 nation herself, in the disguise of her niece. 
 The result is that she is carried off to the 
 
 87
 
 George Meredith 
 
 robber baron's castle. On discovering their 
 mistake, the troopers return and secure 
 Margarita who, after opening a letter to 
 Lisbeth from her crony, Farina's mother, 
 had gone to visit Farina in prison. 
 
 The plot is now complicated rather awk- 
 wardly by a combat on the Drachenfels 
 between Satan and a mysterious monk who 
 carries oflf Farina from prison to witness the 
 ghostly combat. Meredith describes the latter 
 in Lucianic style. Satan is openly vanquished 
 and takes refuge underground in Cologne. 
 Monk Gregory, inflated with a victory which 
 is apparently complete, finds himself a spiritual 
 hero ; but, instead of having Farina to corrob- 
 orate his tale of prowess, he is deserted by 
 that youth, who is off with Guy to rescue 
 Margarita. The rescue is effected after a 
 hand-to-hand conflict between Guy and the 
 Baron, assisted by the supernatural agency of 
 a Water-Lady who helps Farina into the 
 castle and paralyses the Baron by announcing 
 that his doom has come, inasmuch as a true 
 lover (i.e.. Farina) has dipped three times in 
 the stream round the Eck. 
 
 Returning to Cologne, the party meet the 
 
 88
 
 Farina 
 
 White Rose Club, and, on discovering that 
 Lisbeth is still a prisoner in the castle, retrace 
 their steps to deliver her. Farina alone 
 proceeds to the city to resume his captivity 
 and take his place again beside monk Gregory-. 
 The poor monk's hour of triumph has 
 passed into degradation. Satan's overpowering 
 stench, as he went underground, keeps the 
 Kaiser at a distance from the city, and the 
 blame of this pestilential odour is naturally 
 laid by the citizens upon the luckless ecclesi- 
 astic. Farina, however, solves the problem 
 and mends his own fortunes by furnishing 
 the Kaiser with a bottle of his new essence, 
 Eau de Cologne. The king and his army thus 
 find it possible to enter the city, and Farina's 
 reward is the hand of Margarita. 
 
 The main indications of promise in this 
 slight tale are Meredith's treatment of young 
 love, his description of the nightingales over- 
 heard by Farina outside the castle, and his 
 mastery of the art of being grave and absurd 
 in the same breath. Margarita is the first 
 sketch of later heroines like Jane Ilchester 
 and Aminta and Rose Jocelyn, with her 
 frank, blue eyes, and her mixture of boyish 
 
 89
 
 George Meredith 
 
 camaraderie and womanly charm. Again, as in 
 "The Shaving of Shagpat," pride has its rdle ; 
 the monk Gregory boasts of his victory over 
 Satan, but has to confess : ** How great must 
 be the virtues of them that encounter Sathanas! 
 Valour availeth naught. But if virtue be not 
 in ye, soon will ye be puffed to bursting with 
 that devil's poison, self-incense." It is notice- 
 able, too, that while the ascetic, who has 
 forsworn the joys of life, falls into the snare 
 of spiritual pride, the brave and healthy 
 lover, in the person of Farina, escapes and 
 succeeds. As the second last paragraph of 
 the conclusion hints, the final victory over 
 conceit is gained by true love. Meredith here 
 draws a burlesque vignette of what reappears 
 in tragic and comic shapes on almost every 
 one of his later and larger canvases. 
 
 90
 
 ^ 
 
 THE ORDEAL 
 OF RICHARD FEVEREL
 
 ^he Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 n f Fathf 
 tEeEgoi 
 
 npHE sub-title of this novel, which 
 -■- was published in 1859, is "A History 
 ipr '^"'^ ^"" " It is a study of 
 Lgoist as father, and of a son who 
 has the misfortune to be the victim of 
 a paternal system. When Meredith wrote 
 this novel, the romantic movement was 
 beginning to give way before the scientific ; 
 fresh ideas about evolution, heredity, and 
 environment were in the air ; and Herbert 
 Spencer had just published in the "British 
 Quarterly Review " (April, 1858) his famous 
 essay upon the place of natural reactions in 
 education, contending that parents ought to 
 let their children feel the true consequences 
 of their conduct, and pleading among other 
 things that "in its injurious effects on both 
 parent and child a bad system is twice 
 cursed." Like Austin Gaxton and Mr.N 
 Shandy, Sir Austin Feverel has a system of/ 
 
 93
 
 George Meredith 
 
 'his own, but it is the system of a benevolent 
 despot who exaggerates his parental re- 
 sponsibilities.* His aim is to shut out the 
 
 \ world from the tender plant, to repress some 
 of the more natural instincts, and to bend the 
 ^twig into the shape of his own personality. 
 The consequences of this system form the 
 contents of the story. 
 
 Like George Eliot, Meredith had tried his 
 'prentice hand in short stories before he 
 published his first masterpiece. The "Scenes 
 of Clerical Life," written contemporaneously 
 with "Shagpat" and "Farina," gave far 
 more promise of "Adam Bede," however, 
 than Meredith's first stories did of "The 
 Ordeal of Richard Feverel." When Lewes 
 read "Amos Barton," he told George Eliot, 
 "I think your pathos is better than your 
 fun." "Shagpat"and "Farina" are full of 
 fun. Pathos is not in them. No reader of 
 these jeux d'esprit could expect anything like 
 the imaginative power, the penetration into 
 human nature, the combination of sombre 
 
 * There is an excellent statement of this error, in the sphere of 
 political despotism, by Mr. Chesterton in his sentences on Strafford 
 ("Browning," p. 31). 
 
 94
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 pathos and brilliant comedy, which "The 
 Ordeal of Richard Feverel " presented. 
 
 There should be a Society for the Protec- 
 tion of Books against their Authors. This 
 novel is one of those which have suffered 
 from revision ; it has been repeatedly pruned 
 by Meredith, and not always with discretion. 
 If he had applied his knife to a book like 
 "One of Our Conquerors," it would have 
 been more to the point. As it is, a reader of 
 the earlier editions may congratulate himself 
 upon the fact that their defects in format are 
 more than counterbalanced by their un- 
 thinned chapters. The alterations, however, 
 have not affected the essentials of the plot, 
 which works out as follows. 
 
 Sir Austin Feverel, of Raynham Abbey, 
 had been deserted by his wife, who eloped 
 five years after their marriage with his 
 friend Denzil Somers. Somers, a minor 
 poet whose pseudonym was Diaper Sandoe, 
 "being inclined to vice, and occasionally, and 
 in a quiet way, practising it, was of course a 
 sentimentalist and a satirist, entitled to lash 
 the Age and complain of human nature." 
 The moral tone of his poems was unex- 
 
 95
 
 George Meredith 
 
 ceptional. But he deceived his friend and 
 patron, and, after playing Rizzio to Lady 
 Feverel's Mary, carried off the pretty, in- 
 experienced woman to a life of disenchant- 
 ment and privation. The two hardly appear 
 upon the stage of the story. Lady Feverel 
 steals in once or twice to get a glimpse of her 
 boy, and Somers stoops to ask an annuity 
 from Sir Austin. ""But the latter despised his 
 former friend too much to seek any revenge, 
 though he was incapable of forgiving the 
 wound dealt his pride by his wife.* To 
 their only child Sir Austen devotes himself 
 
 iwith a fussy, fingering attention. He has a 
 cherished system of education for the boy, 
 based half on pride and half on sentimen- 
 talism. Convinced that schools and colleges 
 were corrupt, he aims at playing Providence 
 himself. He wishes to direct every move in 
 the lad's moral and mental development. 
 If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, 
 one human being might almost impersonate 
 Providence to another." (But the very ordeal 
 
 * Sir Austin, however, is not vindictive. The twist given to bia 
 bruised heart produces simply a suspicion of women — one of the sonrces to 
 which Meredith is fond of tracing the aberrations of men. 
 
 96 
 
 \.
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 of Richard arises from his father's well-meant, 
 unwise endeavour to confine natural ten- 
 dencies within the artificial restraints of/ 
 a preconceived theory. This in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances would turn out a prig or a rake." 
 Which will Richard be? Or, is he to be 
 either ? 
 
 The novel opens on the boy's fourteenth 
 birthday, when he and his companion, Riptott- 
 Thompson, the son of Sir Austin's solicitor, 
 are~horsewhipped by a certain Farmer Blaize j 
 for poaching and trespassing. In order to 
 revenge themselves, the boys persuade a 
 country lad) Tom Bakewell, to set fire that 
 evening to the farmer's ricks. Tom is 
 arrested and imprisoned, to the conster- 
 nation of the lads, whose plot is found out 
 by the baronet and his circle. Finally, after 
 considerable manoeuvring on the part of 
 various members of the family, the yokel is 
 acquitted, but not until Richard has had to 
 apologise humbly to the farmer.* His con- 
 quest of pride appears to his father a fresh 
 
 * Austin Wenlworth, whose influence helps Richard here as in the 
 end of the tale, partly belongs to the class of Vernon Whitford, partly 
 to that of Oartrey Fenellan. Adrian Harley ranks with Colney Durance, 
 no higher. 
 
 G 97
 
 
 George Meredith 
 
 proof of the correctness of the system. The 
 small dose of the world, for which poor 
 iRipton is blamed, has turned out well, the 
 Ibaronet reflects, owing to the excellent way 
 in which Richard has been trained. 
 \ The second stage of the ordeal, however, 
 lis more serious and less satisfactory. ^During 
 the next four years, the baronet's main 
 anxiety is to keep all ideas of love away from 
 the lad's mind.^ The preliminary blossoming 
 season, as he terms it, when conscience 
 and mind have to be awakened, passes 
 safely, though Richard is on the fair way to 
 become a little prig. * The only bad omen 
 is an attack of scribbling. Sir Austin, how- 
 ever, gets the boy to burn his verses. "He 
 drew out bundle after bundle : each neatly 
 tied, named, and numbered ; and pitched 
 them into flames. And so farewell my 
 young Ambition ! and with it farewell all 
 true confidence between Father and Son." 
 Sir Austin is blissfully unconscious of this 
 error. He congratulates himself on having 
 
 * His intercourse with Ralph Morton knocks manliness into him; 
 but, if it hits a wholesome stroke at his vanity, it also fosters the disposition 
 to love. For Ralph is in the first stages of a boyish passion for Clare 
 Doria Forey. 
 
 98
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 a pure and obedient boy, and now proceeds 
 to safeguard his treasure against the tempta- 
 tions of the Magnetic age. His precautions, 
 border on the ludicrous. All servants at 
 the Abbey who show any visible symptoms <^ 
 of the tender passion are at once dismissed, 
 thanks mainly to the efforts of heavy Benson, 
 the butler ; Glare Doria Forey, Richard's 
 I little cousin, has to leave the Abbey with 
 \ her mother ; and Sir Austin proceeds to 
 London in order to look out a suitable wife 
 i for his young hopeful. Richard is eighteen ; \ 
 
 / he is to marry, acccording to the system, at y 
 
 I ^-th^ age of twenty-five. 
 
 But the schemes of baronets as well as of 
 mice "gang aft a-gley." Like Pisistratus 
 Gaxton, Richard is already at school with the 
 two great teachers. Nature and Love^ He has 
 chosen his mate, by falling in love with 
 Lucy Desborough, the seventeen-year old 
 niece of Farmer Blaize. Adrian Feverel, 
 his uncle and tutor, finds out the secret ; 
 Benson, the butler, writes to Sir Austin ; 
 and Richard is inveigled up to town by a false 
 report of his father's illness. He soon di^\ 
 covers that Sir Austin is not only perfectly ) 
 
 99 ^^^
 
 George Meredith 
 
 well but quite aware of the engagement. 
 iHis father's thinly-veiled advice and 
 sarcasms destroy any chance of conj&dences 
 being exchanged between the two,) but 
 Richard is kept dangling for three weeks 
 beside him, until Adrian and Lady Blandish 
 (a sentimental widow, who is in Sir Austin's 
 confidence) get the farmer to pack off Lucy 
 back to her French school. Richard returns to 
 the Abbey and falls ill, only to recover from 
 his physical and apparently from his amorous 
 malady.* The following March, as he 
 accompanies one of his uncles to London, 
 he happens to hear that Lucy is coming 
 home to be married to young Tom Blaize, 
 the farmer's son — an arrangement which had 
 been carefully concealed from him. The 
 love-passion revives at once. He meets her, 
 places her, with the aid of Ripton, under 
 the care of a Mrs. Berry in lodgings, and 
 then marries her secretly. Miranda is 
 rescued from the Caliban v^ho threatened 
 to be her fate, and Ferdinand is the rescuer. 
 
 ■^ Meredith here and elsewhere is careful to note the effects produced 
 by physical illness apon the spirit of his men and women. 
 
 100
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 Sir Austin blames neither himself* nor] 
 the system, but his son, whom he moodily [ 
 reproaches for treachery and deception. J 
 Theibaronet nurses the devil of his wounded 
 pride. His conceit is unbroken ; he will 
 not admit the possibility of any error in the 
 experiment which he has been practising 
 on his boy. Beyond making him an allow- 
 ance, he declines to take any notice of the 
 marriage, shutting his heart against his only 
 son. This bitter attitude leaves Richard 
 sad and- angry, and Lucy rather depressed. 
 "What Richard wants is not money, but n 
 kind word from his father, which the latter, 
 in his cold superiority and unnatural reserve, 
 will not stoop to bestow. 
 
 Meantime the young couple at the Isle of 
 Wight are in dangerous company. Richard, 
 for the first time, is meeting men and 
 women in free intercourse, including a Lord 
 Mountfalcon and a dark, tall, attractive Lady 
 
 * The irony of the business is that Richard's instinct of love is 
 vaguely stirred first of all by witnessing his father's lordly philandering 
 with Lady Blandish. Benson, who spies another instance ofthis, is finally 
 dismissed for his inquisitiveness, but not before he has been flogged by 
 Richard for intruding upon the privacy of the younger lovers. The amorous 
 Curate, who has strayed in from the pages of " Pendennis " is an even 
 milder figure than his fellow in "The Adventures of Harry Richmond." 
 
 101
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Judith Felle. The former is a villain, the 
 latter a sentimental married woman. By 
 the diplomacy of Adrian and Lady Blandish, 
 Richard is persuaded to come alone 
 to London, in the hope that Sir Austin 
 may consent at least to see him, if not to 
 take him back. Adxian-persuade&_.Lucy^to_ 
 agree to this sacrifice, and even to urge it, 
 arguing that this is in Richard's interest ; the°" 
 "young husband, though accusing her of 
 cowardice and unable to understand her real 
 motTve,Talls inwith IBis uncle's plan. Mrs. 
 Doria Forey further persuades him, after 
 Clare's marriage, to wait for his father in 
 London, unless he wishes to make Sir Austin 
 marry Lady Blandish. Sir Austin's real 
 aim, however, is to separate husband and 
 wife. His angry temper has devised this 
 punishment for Richard ; the latter, wishing 
 to humour and manage his father, and 
 ignorant of the dastardly plot, remains in the 
 metropolis, where another plot is laid 
 against him and Lucy. He is inveigled by a 
 Mrs. Mountstuart, acting under the instruc- 
 tions of Lord Mountfalcon, who has designs 
 upon poor Lucy at the Isle of Wight 
 
 102
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 Richard's impulse of chivalry* leads him to 
 champion the reputation of this woman, and 
 also to rescue his mother from the life she 
 was living. He summons Lucy, but she — 
 misled by Adrian — thinks she will make the 
 family feel her worth more by patiently wait- 
 ing where she is, in case the baronet should 
 feel aggrieved by any sudden move upon his 
 privacy. The result is that Richard, in a 
 moment of disappointment with her, flings 
 himself recklessly into Mrs. Mountstuart's 
 company, and is carried further than he 
 meant. 
 
 Meantime, Sir Austin's pride has begun to 
 relent towards his son and daughter-in-law. 
 He had gone oflf with a note-book to write 
 aphorisms in Wales, but has now returned. 
 Only, his amendment is too late, t 
 Richard receives his father's tentative 
 
 * The first ebullition of this quixotic instinct broke out in his attempt 
 to hinder the loveless marriage which was being forced on his cousin 
 Clare. This was one of the reasons which hurried him up to London. 
 The second course of folly was due to his ignorance of the world (one result 
 of the system) and his vanity. Sir Austin has told Adrian to let Richard 
 see the world, this being partly designed as an education, partly in order 
 to keep him away from Lucy. 
 
 t Meredith here touches the string which we shall find sounding 
 loudly in " Rboda Fleming," " Lord Ormont and his Aminta," and " The 
 Amazing Marriage." 
 
 103
 
 George Meredith 
 
 advances coldly ; black shame keeps him 
 from joining Lucy, whom he has wronged ; 
 and, as Sir Austin refuses to receive her at 
 the Abbey without him, matters are at a 
 stand-still. Richard, cursing himself for his 
 folly, goes off to the Continent, where he 
 joins the sentimental Lady Felle, while Lucy, 
 whom Mrs. Berry has rescued from her 
 aristocratic admirer, gives birth to a child in 
 London. At this point, Austin Wentworth, 
 one of Richard's uncles, a quiet, strong, 
 chivalrous gentleman, returns from abroad, 
 and intervenes. He takes Lucy and her baby 
 to Raynham Abbey, where the baronet 
 capitulates at sight to the girl-wife's charm. 
 Then he fetches Richard home from Nassau 
 in the Rhine-land, after hard persuasion, by 
 telling him the amazing news of his father- 
 hood. " He felt in his heart the cry of his 
 child, his darling's touch. With shut eyes he 
 saw them both. They drew him from the 
 depths ; they led him a blind and tottering 
 man. And as they led him he had a sense 
 of purification so sweet he shuddered again 
 and again." 
 All is now going well, and Richard is 
 
 104
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 hurrying home, when in passing through 
 London he happens to hear of Lord Mount- 
 falcon's infamous and unsuccessful plot 
 agains^his wife, which had been the cause of 
 his degradation. The lad's hot blood is up. 
 He challenges the aristocrat to a duel, feeling 
 that he must take vengeance on the villain 
 and clear his personal honour * before he 
 can settle down with Lucy. A hurried 
 visit to Raynham Abbey follows ; he tears 
 himself from his wife and child, after al 
 heartrending scene, and is severely \ 
 wounded in France by his opponent. He ^ 
 recovers, only to be told that Lucy, who had j 
 crossed to nurse him, had died of brain fever. / 
 
 When the novel had been published, Jarti'es 
 Thomson told his friend frankly that no 
 woman, and scarcely any man, would ever 
 forgive him for "the cruel, cruel ending." 
 Lucy's death is one of the few blots in the 
 book, and the objections to it are not to be 
 
 * Thus it is false or wounded pride which wrecks the son, as, in a 
 different form, it was a mixture of pride and vanity which had warped the 
 father. "A mad pleasure in the prospect of wreaking vengeance on the 
 villain who had laid the trap for him, once more blackened his brain." In 
 the instant when he confesses to Lucy that he had been a vain fool, he ia 
 ■till yielding, as Meredith observes, to " the powers of hell." 
 
 105
 
 George Meredith 
 
 bundled aside as so many weak cravings for 
 the sugar-plum ending. It is not required by 
 the system, and it is even more inartistic* 
 than the drowning of Beauchamp. The girl's 
 character is described, otherwise, with 
 singular precision, from the day when, as a 
 pretty little child of thirteen, she sees the 
 handsome, sulky boy coming to apologize to 
 her uncle, down to the ripening of her nature 
 through marriage and motherhood. She is 
 young, even when she dies, but never 
 insipid for an instant. Her sweet womanli- 
 ness, even more than her beauty, is the clue 
 to the charm which she exercises on the 
 Feverels. She is the sort of girl Meredith 
 paints in ** Marian," except that she never 
 dealt ** a wound that lingers." There is just 
 a suspicion of unreality in Meredith's account 
 of her relations with Lord Mountfalcon ; her 
 innocence and simplicity are too credulous. 
 Even her subservience to Adrian's influence 
 is left half-explained. But whenever she is 
 
 * The shadow of the cypress (in chapter xxi) may be intended as a 
 preliminary hint, but Lucy's pretty fear of it only came after Richard has 
 scattered her anxieties about his father. The tree is too subtle to bear 
 the weight of a premonition. 
 
 106
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 with Richard the sheer loveHness of her 
 nature breaks through.* 
 
 Mrs. Berry takes us to her capacious heart 
 from ihe moment when we go with Richard 
 to her lodgings at West Kensington. She 
 proves a shrewd and kind and homely nurse 
 to Lucy. But she also reads Sir Austin's 
 character and speaks to him bravely when 
 she gets the chance. Her talk t has the plain 
 sense and wit of Mrs. Poyser's, and she richly 
 deserves the return of her erring Berry 
 towards the novel's close. She had been a 
 cook at Raynham, from which she had been 
 exiled on a small pension for having assisted 
 once to carry Adrian drunk to bed ; the 
 baronet's pride could not endure the presence 
 of this witness to his relative's oflFence. Her 
 revenge came to her unsought in the services 
 she chanced to render to Richard and Lucy 
 against Sir Austin's will. She thereby be- 
 came an unconscious agent in upsetting 
 the baronet's system. 
 
 * She has French blood in her veins, though her father was on 
 English naval officer. 
 
 t" Don't neglect your cookery. Kissing don't last: cookery do." 
 " One gets so addle-pated thinkin' many things. That 's why we see 
 wonder clever people al'ays goin' wrong — to my mind. I think it 'a 
 al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward." 
 
 107
 
 George Meredith 
 
 The baronet, like Sir Willoughby Patterne, 
 is further punished by the fact that the 
 woman, on whose admiration he counted, 
 comes to see through him. Lady Blandish 
 ceases to be a worshipper and is forced to 
 become a critic. The book ends with a 
 letter to Austin Wentworth, which voices her 
 vehement contempt for Sir Austin and his 
 mad self-deceit.* Meredith characteristically 
 traces this infatuation in large measure to 
 his lack of humour. ** The faculty of 
 laughter was denied him. A good wind of 
 laughter had relieved him of much of the 
 blight of self-deception, and oddness, and 
 extravagance ; had given a healthier view of 
 our atmosphere of life ; but he had it not." 
 This was the philosophy t which afterwards 
 appeared in the ode "To the Comic Spirit." 
 As Meredith notes, even Richard and Lucy 
 could laugh, in the dawn of tKeir love-passion ; 
 which proves that their feelings were not 
 
 * Adrian Feverel, the wise youth, whose satirical wisdom proves so 
 ineffective, is guilty of the same error. "The wise youth's two ears were 
 stuffed with his own wisdom." 
 
 t Fi'.lding has a touch of it in the fourth paragraph of his invocation in 
 "Tom Jones" (bookxiii, ch. i). 
 
 108
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 sentimental rouge. " Better than sentiment, 
 laughter opens the breast to love." 
 
 Ripton, for all his peccadilloes,* shows that 
 the normal training of youth is healthier 
 than the system of Sir Austin. For one 
 thing, Ripton, like Shibli and Pisistratus 
 Caxton, has known what it is to be thwacked. 
 Richard had missed the wholesome birchings 
 of school, but his friend was familiar with 
 the rod. " He was seasoned wood, and took 
 the world pretty wisely ; not reckless of 
 castigation, as some boys become, nor over- 
 sensitive to dishonour, as his friend and 
 comrade beside him was." His humble, 
 adoring devotion for Lucy, which is one with 
 his loyalty to Richard, shows the good 
 heart in him. "He had the Old Dog's 
 eyes in his head. They watched the 
 door she had passed through ; they listened 
 for her, as dogs' eyes do. When she hung 
 on her lover timidly, and went forth, he 
 followed without an idea of envy, or any- 
 thing save the secret raptures the sight of her 
 
 * The law of gavelkind which he uses as a feint (in ch, xiv), was a 
 Saxon custom, surviving in Wales and Kent, by which primogeniture was 
 get aside in favour of an equal distribution of property, at a man's death. 
 among his sons and daughters, 
 
 109
 
 George Meredith 
 
 gave him, which are the Old Dog's own. 
 His sensations cannot be heroic, but they 
 have a fulness, and a wagging delight, as 
 good in their way."* 
 
 The variety of power in the novel is illus- 
 trated by the typical chapters, "Ferdinand 
 and Miranda "t and ** A Diversion played on 
 a Penny-Whistle," which breathe the spirit of 
 ** Love in a Valley " ; the successive episodes 
 of the marriage, including the rather broad 
 farce of Ripton's hilarious conduct, which is 
 on much the same level as the chapters 
 entitled "A Dinner Party at Richmond" and 
 " An Enchantress " ; the account of Glare's 
 diary (which verges on the sentimental) ; and 
 the agonizing interview of the penultimate 
 chapter. Twice, when Richard finds Lucy 
 beside the river, and when he hears that he 
 is a father (in the chapter, "Nature Speaks"), 
 Meredith reproduces the wonderful rhythm 
 
 * Carintbia, at the end of "The Amazing Marriage." accepted 
 Wythan because he wooed her "with dog's eyes instead of words." 
 
 t The paragraph which closes the chapter immediately before, and 
 which describes Richard coming upon Lucy by the river's edge, is full of the 
 colour and fragrance which had already been felt in some of the early 
 poems. In his next novel, Meredith almost repeated this success in the 
 description of Rose and Evan beside the stream, but the lovers there do 
 Dot flash on one another with the thrill of their predecessors. 
 
 110
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 of nature with the moods and passions of the 
 soul which was always a characteristic feature 
 alike of his prose and of his verse. 
 
 Meredith's devicejjor-floatin^his epigrams 
 in this novel is J^'^The Pilgrim's Scri]^," which^ 
 is supposed to be~a volum e of a phorisms 
 pTrbtisft edlBy the bar onet. These are couched 
 sometimes in a deliberately commonplace 
 shape, but now and then the author stamps 
 himself upon a phrase, as in the following 
 instances : ** The compensation for injustice 
 is, that in that dark ordeal we gather the 
 worthiest around us." " Who rises from 
 prayera bet ter man, his prayer is answered^ 
 ^**^V^o can say when he is not walking a pup- 
 pet to some woman ? " * ' * Sentimentalists are 
 they who seek to enjoy without incurring the 
 Immense Debtorship for a thing done." 
 "Give me purity to be worthy the good in 
 her, and grant her patience to reach the good 
 in me " (the lover's petition). The baronet, 
 however, did not like his aphorisms to be 
 criticised or questioned ; they were to be taken 
 as oracles; even "the direct application of 
 
 * This is expounded in " Evan Harrington " (see the close of chapter 
 zviii). 
 
 Ill
 
 George Meredith 
 
 an aphorism was unpopular at Raynham." 
 ** The Pilgrim's Scrip" and several episodes 
 show that the author is a trifle conscious of 
 his powers, but the scheme and style of the 
 novel prove that the powers are there, even 
 though sometimes they are devoted to the 
 splitting of psychological seeds. One out- 
 standing feature is the maturity of conception 
 which is displayed in the treatment of the 
 leading characters. The motive-grinding, 
 which is audible in several of the later novels, 
 has already begun, but this is a defect of the 
 writer's strength as a watcher of the deep 
 moods of the human soul. 
 
 Note, by the way, id) the satirical allusion 
 to Richardson's hero at the opening of the 
 nineteenth chapter, where the author also 
 describes Mrs. Caroline Grandison who bore 
 eight daughters in succession, and then, 
 despairing of a son, "relapsed upon religion 
 and little dogs." She was "a colourless lady 
 of an unequivocal character, living upon 
 drugs, and governing her husband and the 
 world from her sofa. Woolly negroes blest 
 her name, and whiskered John-Thomases de- 
 plored her weight. " A sister of Mrs. Jellyby ! 
 
 112
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 (J)) The paragraph on snobbery in chapter 
 XXXV ('* The Conquest of an Epicure"), with 
 its thesis that "the national love of a lord is 
 less subservience than a form of self-love,'* 
 was echoed, years later, by Ruskin in his 
 "Fors Glavigera" (letter Ixiii) criticism of 
 Thackeray, whom he accused of being blind 
 to the fact that ** it is himself the snob truly 
 worships, all the time, and not the Lord he 
 looks at." (c) SirF. C. Burnand, in his "Rec- 
 ords and Reminiscences," recalled the ifigure of 
 Maurice Fitzgerald, an eccentric epicure and 
 scholar, whom Meredith used to call " the 
 wise youth." The novelist, however, repu- 
 diated the inference that Fitzgerald was the 
 prototype of Adrian Harley. Fitzgerald was 
 neither selfish nor unprincipled. It is need- 
 less to do more than mention, as a curiosity 
 of error, the idea that Adrian is meant to 
 represent the author's characteristic attitude 
 towards life. (</) Boiardo and Berni, whom 
 Lady Blandish included in her studies of liter- 
 ature, were two Italian poets. The former a 
 distinguished scholar of the fifteenth century, 
 wrote an "Orlando Innamorato," which 
 formed the basis of Ariosto's more famous 
 H 113
 
 \J 
 
 George Meredith 
 
 poem. Berni, who was a comic poet of the 
 next century, edited and recast Boiardo's 
 romantic epic. Meredith more than once 
 alludes to them, as Peacock had already done. 
 Finally the novel is remarkable as contain- 
 ing a defence, by way of anticipation, of the 
 psychological, introspective method upon 
 which the author proposed to write. "At 
 present, I am aware, an audience impatient 
 for blood and glory scorns the stress I am 
 putting on incidents so minute, a picture so 
 little imposing. An audience will come" — it 
 has come, but not nearly so soon as the writer 
 perhaps expected or certainly deserved — ** to 
 whom it will be given to see the elementary 
 machinery at work : who, as it were, from 
 some slight hint of the straws, will feel the 
 winds of March when they do not blow . . . 
 And they will perceive, moreover, that in 
 real life all hangs together r the train is laid 
 in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon 
 the field of thousands." Nineteen years 
 passed before a second edition of the novel 
 was required. But Meredith persisted in his 
 chosen course, though, five years later, he 
 recognised in "Sandra Belloni" with a wry, 
 
 114
 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 
 
 impenitent air that the philosophic digressions 
 were resented in fiction : " and away flies 
 my book back at the heads of the librarians, 
 hitting me behind them a far more grievous 
 blow." He answers his critics not only, like 
 Terence and Fielding, in prologues but in 
 unexpected places, and the answer usually 
 heralds a fresh offence. Still Meredith, even 
 in his irrelevance, might have safely pled 
 with Montaigne : ** 'Tis the indifferent reader 
 that loses my subject, not I ; there will 
 always be found some words or other in a 
 corner that are to the purpose." 
 
 The minor characters include specimens 
 of the modern equivalents of the parasite and 
 the demi-monde which social comedy had 
 retained since the days of Menander. Mrs. 
 Mount's type re-appears in Mrs. Marsett in 
 ** One of our Conquerors," though the setting 
 is different, and the parasite of Lord Mount- 
 falcon ranks with Captain Cumnock in 
 " Lord Ormont and his Aminta " and with the 
 toadies of Lord Fleetwood in " The Amazing 
 Marriage." The book further gives proof of 
 Meredith's ability to describe the life of the 
 English upper classes, especially in country 
 
 115
 
 George Meredith 
 
 houses — a department in which both Dickens 
 and Richardson before him had rarely shown 
 themselves at home. The later novels, par- 
 ticularly " The Egoist " and ** Beauchamp's 
 Career," exhibit still happier results in this 
 line. Fielding once attributed to ignorance 
 the failure of many English novelists to de- 
 scribe the manners of good society. Oddly 
 enough, he confided to his readers (in "Tom 
 Jones," book xiv, ch. i) that such a know- 
 ledge of upper life " is no very great resource 
 to a writer whose province is comedy or that 
 kind of novel which is of the comic class." 
 Meredith's conception of the Comic Spirit 
 led him to a very different opinion, as his 
 next novel was to show. 
 
 116
 
 ^ 
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 THE sub-title of this novel, as it 
 appeared serially in ** Once a Week," 
 during 1860, was : ** He would be a Gentle- 
 man." It really puts, in the form of 
 a social comedy, some aspects of the question 
 which Ruskin raised simultaneously in the 
 fifth volume of his ** Modern Painters" — the 
 question, what constitutes a gentleman on the 
 one hand and vulgarity on the other ? Both 
 Ruskin and Meredith attacked the conven- 
 tional English idea that a gentleman is one 
 who lives in idleness, upon the fruits of other 
 people's labour, and the equally absurd notion 
 that birth and blood are of no account. 
 Ruskin analysed vulgarity into callousness, 
 suspiciousness, cruelty, and meanness, as the 
 expression of indifference to the interests of 
 other people ; its reverse side was an undue 
 regard to appearances and manners, and ** the 
 assumption of behaviour, language, or dress 
 
 119
 
 George Meredith 
 
 unsuited to them, by persons in inferior 
 stations of life." Sensitiveness of feeling, 
 sympathy, and self-command, he noted among 
 the traits of the essential gentleman. 
 Newman, eight years before,* had essayed 
 to define a gentleman in " The Idea of a 
 University" — the most versatile and perma- 
 nent of all his works. His definition of good 
 breeding suffers from undue restriction. Its 
 main element is the refusal to inflict pain. 
 But consideration for the feelings of others at 
 all costs would rule out gentlemen from a 
 number of useful professions ; besides, the 
 essence of a gentleman is to remember not 
 only what is due to others but to himself. 
 Meredith's analysis, as given in this novel 
 of manners, is that to be a gentleman is 
 inconsistent, not with trade but with pretence 
 of any kind, and that the primary requisites 
 are sincerity and courage. When T. H. Green 
 opened the Oxford High School, he closed 
 his address with these words : "As it was the 
 aspiration of Moses that all the Lord*s people 
 should be prophets, so with all serious- 
 
 * " John Halifax, Gentleman," Miss Mulock's masterpiece, had 
 appeared in 1856. 
 
 120
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 ness and reverence we may hope and pray 
 for a condition of English Society in which 
 all honest citizens will recognise themselves 
 and Bp recognised by others as gentlemen." 
 Meredith's contribution to this end, in "Evan 
 Harrington," was to hold up to ridicule false 
 gentility and sham social pretensions ; he took 
 a tailor as his hero, and used the Comic 
 Spirit to illustrate his philosophy of society. 
 In "Sandra Belloni," three years later, 
 he touched on the same problem incident- 
 ally. But "Evan Harrington" was his full- 
 dress exposition of the theme, in semi-comic 
 guise. 
 
 If it is true that Meredith's father * was a 
 naval outfitter at Portsmouth and that 
 Melchisedec was the name of the author's 
 grandfather, we might be justified in spying 
 behind this story as we do behind " David 
 Copperfield." But its intrinsic merits are 
 independent of this attraction. The outline 
 of the tale, as told by Meredith, is this : — 
 
 Melchisedec Harrington, a tailor, at Lym- 
 
 * The story goes that oace, on a visit to Bath, he was taken for a 
 foreign Count in disguise (see ch. i). When the story appeared, he was a 
 tailor in Capetown, and resented his son's use of the paternal exploits. 
 
 121
 
 George Meredith 
 
 port-on-the-Sea, ** whom people in private 
 oalled the great Mel, had been at once the 
 sad dog of Lymport, and the pride of the 
 town. He was a tailor, and he kept horses ; 
 he was a tailor, and he had gallant adventures ; 
 he was a tailor, and he shook hands with his 
 customers." He had married a strong, 
 sensible woman, Henrietta Maria Dawley, by 
 whom he had four children, three daughters 
 and one son. Mel's great aim and pleasure 
 was to move in county society, where he was 
 welcomed for his gay wit and manners, par- 
 ticularly as these were coupled with a strong 
 sense of personal honour. Mel never cringed 
 or sailed under false colours. "He was a 
 robust Brummel, and the Regent of low 
 life," who was respected by his betters, in 
 spite of his snobbish tastes. ** Combine — say 
 Mirabeau and Alcibiades, and the result is 
 the Lymport tailor : — he measures your 
 husband in the morning : in the evening he 
 makes love to you, through a series of panto- 
 mimic transformations. He was a colossal 
 Adonis." Mel fostered the same tastes in his 
 family. He read heraldry with his daughters, 
 and saw them all make good matches. The 
 
 122
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 eldest of them, Caroline, married Major 
 Strike ; the second, Harriet, was won by a 
 wealthy London brewer, Mr. Andrew 
 Cogglesby ; while the third, Louisa, became 
 the wife of a Portuguese diplomatist, Seiior 
 Silva Diaz, Gonde de Saldar. The husband 
 of the eldest daughter knew the trade of his 
 father-in-law ; Mr. Cogglesby came to suspect 
 it in due time ; but the Count was kept in igno- 
 rance. All three wives agreed, however, to 
 avoid the neighbourhood of Lymport. Car- 
 oline, a weak and pretty woman, had the 
 hardest lot. She had married a military 
 edition of Quilp. "If we may be permitted 
 to suppose the colonel of a regiment on 
 friendly terms with one of his corporals, we 
 have an estimate of the domestic life of Major 
 and Mrs. Strike." Harriet had a good 
 husband, a large family, and plenty of money. 
 Louisa had no money, but then she had no 
 children and her husband was a puppet whom 
 she had met under Harriet's auspices. She 
 was the pushful, independent genius of the 
 family, and it was she who headed the 
 enterprise of rescuing Evan, their brother, 
 from the bondage of tailordom. He was to 
 
 123
 
 George Meredith 
 
 be a soldier, and meantime he "spent the 
 hours not devoted to his positive profession 
 — that of gentleman — in the oflSces of the 
 brewery, toying with big books and bal- 
 ances which he despised with the combined 
 zeal of the sucking soldier and emanci- 
 pated tailor." The Countess determined to 
 furnish him with money, if not with a title ; 
 she took him to Portugal to meet Rose Joce- 
 lyn, the niece of the British representative 
 there. Rose had the prospects of an heiress, 
 and Evan was to marry money in her 
 person. 
 
 The story opens with the return of the 
 Countess, her husband and brother, and Miss 
 Jocelyn, in the company of the Hon. Melville 
 Jocelyn, the diplomatist. Rose and Evan are 
 already close friends, and the aim of the 
 Countess is to secure an invitation for all her 
 party to Beckley Court, in Hampshire, the 
 seat of the Jocelyns, where she hopes to bring 
 off the engagement ; Beckley Court is not 
 far from Lymport, but she is resolved to take 
 the risks of its proximity to tailordom. They 
 are met at London by the news of the great 
 Mel's death. Evan alone goes down to the 
 
 124
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 funeral,* He finds that the evil that men do 
 lives after them. The great Mel has left a 
 mass of debts, which Mrs. Harrington deter- 
 mines) her son is to clear off. He shares this 
 honourable impulse. He is willing enough to 
 enter the business and devote himself to this 
 enterprise. But his father has left another 
 legacy, in the shape of the false ambitions and 
 ideals which he had instilled into his children. 
 Evan is still susceptible to these, and the 
 interest of his career now centres upon the 
 uncertainty as to which course he is strong 
 enough to choose and to keep. Under the 
 influence of his mother's determination, he 
 decides manfully to clear his father's name, 
 and, with a view to this, to serve in the London 
 shop. But his sisters have other views. The 
 Countess descends upon Lymport, and, 
 although unable to intercept Evan's flight, 
 manages to catch him at a cricket-match and 
 draw him in her train to Beckley Court, where 
 Sir Frank and Lady Jocelyn welcome them as 
 friends of their daughter Rose. Meantime, 
 
 * The description of his journey and his postillion, in ch. iv, is 
 Meredith 's first essay in the " open-road adventures" which he afterwards 
 reproduced in "Diana of the Crossvrays," ^" Lord Ormont and hi^ 
 Aminta," and "The Amazing Marriage." 
 
 125
 
 George Meredith 
 
 however, Evan has publicly called himself a 
 tailor * in the hearing of some young men at an 
 inn who chanced to quarrel with him and an 
 eccentric friend, John Raikes. These youths 
 include Harry, a brother of Rose, and Ferdin- 
 and Laxley, an aristocratic suitor for her hand. 
 They are naturally amazed to find the "tailor" 
 a fellow-guest at Beckley Court, but the 
 Countess, by consummate intriguing, manages 
 to allay their suspicions for a time. She enjoys 
 the sense of rank at Beckley ; a visit there 
 gratifies what had been one of her girlish 
 dreams. But the main object of her general- 
 ship is to bring Rose and Evan together, and 
 Beckley is the vantage-ground for the engage- 
 ment. Rose, who loves Evan, has begun 
 already to suspect he is a tradesman, and the 
 persistent hints dropped by Laxley and the 
 rest confirm her idea. Evan, under the 
 delightful influence of her charm, is beginning 
 to forget his vows to tailordom ; his surround- 
 ings threaten to soften the fibre of his resolve. 
 But meantime Mr. Tom Gogglesby, the eccen- 
 
 * " He gathered his pride as a cloak, and defied the world, and gloried 
 io the sacrifice that degraded him. Later on, a similar infusion of 
 false pride spoils his honourable conduct in assuming responsibility for 
 the forged letter. 
 
 126
 
 i 
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 trie brother of Andrew, proposes anonymously 
 to pay him £360 a year, as soon as he puts his 
 name over the shop in Lymport. This offer 
 recall^ Evan to his senses, and, by the medium 
 of Mr. John Raikes,* he accepts it. The die 
 now seems cast. But the spell of Rose is not 
 so easily broken ; he learns from her maid 
 that she suspects his trade, and, letting his 
 anger at Laxley get the better of his prudence, 
 he calls himself a "gentleman," intending, in 
 all sincerity, to leave Beckley for London the 
 next day. The wily Countess proves too 
 many for him, however. She works on his 
 love for Mrs. Strike, who has come to Beckley 
 to escape further ill-treatment at the Major's 
 hands. He must not leave her unprotected ! 
 Both sisters have to suffer torture in listening 
 to tales of the great Mel told by unconscious 
 guests in the house, but Evan is made 
 happy by confessing his love to Rose and 
 winning hers in return. He then summons 
 up courage to write a letter to her, telling her 
 
 * Raikes has been heavily criticised. Henley asserted that he and 
 Dr. Shrapnel were "two of the most flagrant unrealities ever perpetrated 
 in the name of fiction by an artist of genius,' Shrapnel may be left behind. 
 He is little more than a seven-foot funnel for Meredith 's social philosophy. 
 But Raikes has blood in him — the blood of Dickens. 
 
 127
 
 George Meredith 
 
 frankly the whole truth about his birth and 
 position. The Countess steals the letter, and 
 Evan, supposing that Rose has received it, is 
 relieved to find she makes no change in her 
 bearing to him. Rose then tells her mother 
 about her engagement, but is staggered, a 
 moment afterwards, to learn from some of 
 the guests that her lover is a tailor, with his 
 name over a shop in Lymport. Rose now has 
 to face her ordeal. Evan's insinuations had 
 wakened her suspicions even in Portugal, and 
 the scene on board the ship — when the great 
 Mel's foreman, in announcing his death, had 
 mentioned the fatal word "shop" — had half 
 confirmed her suspicions. But her love 
 had hitherto felt itself strong enough to 
 conquer such prejudices. The actual news, 
 however, fills her with a sick despair ; it 
 looks as if Evan had wooed her under false 
 pretences. Evan at once clears himself of 
 duplicity * by telling her orally what he had 
 written to her in the purloined letter, and 
 
 * Rose, like Princess Ottilia in " The Adventures of Harry Rich- 
 mond," can bear anything except concealment or dishonesty (ch. xxvii). 
 Evan's frankness "hurried her spirit out of all shows and forms, and habits 
 of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him 
 limply as God had created him and her, and clave to him " (cb. xxviii). 
 
 128
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 Rose, sure of his candour, has now to struggle 
 against the class-prejudices of a girl who finds 
 herself engaged to one who is socially her 
 inferior. "It was some time before she was 
 was able to get free from the trammels of 
 prejudice, but when she did, she did without 
 reserve, saying : * Evan, there is no man who 
 would have done so much,' and he was told 
 that he was better loved than ever." 
 
 The troubles of the lovers are not yet over, 
 however. Mrs. Harrington, on hearing that 
 Evan was idling at a country-house instead 
 of attending to his business in London, starts 
 for Beckley to bring her son to his senses. 
 En route she falls in with the eccentric Tom 
 Cogglesby, who also is on his way to visit 
 Lady Jocelyn * and to ascertain the conduct 
 of the youth who had bound himself to 
 tailordom. Old Tom promises her ladyship 
 to endow Evan with a thousand a year at 
 least, if Rose is allowed to marry him, but the 
 
 * " Was it tme that her ladyship had behaved rather ill to old Tom 
 in her youth? Excellent women have been naughty girls, and yountf 
 beauties will have their train. It is also very possible that old Tom had 
 presumed upon trifles and found it difficult to forgive her his own folly " 
 (ch. xxviii). He had attributed her rejection of him to the fact that he was • 
 cobbler's son ; hence he takes a revenge in furthering Rose's marriage to 
 a tailor ! 
 
 I 129
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Jocelyns disapprove of the match, and Mrs. 
 Mel appears at a picnic to claim her tailor-son 
 for the career to which he had pledged his 
 honour. The Countess, exasperated at her 
 brother and her mother, has meantime taken 
 her revenge on Laxley by forging a letter in his 
 name. (She had found, on looking at Rose's 
 album, that Laxley's writing resembled her 
 own.) Evan, on discovering this trick, 
 quixotically assumes responsibility for the 
 letter, in order to shield his sister's name. 
 His engagement is at once broken off, and the 
 three Harringtons leave Beckley Court. 
 Rose is stunned by the revelation of what 
 appears to be Evan's low-bred deceit, and the 
 only person who disbelieves in his confession 
 is Juliana Bonner, the sickly little heiress of 
 the Court, who has a morbid, romantic, and 
 unrequited passion for him. 
 
 Thus ends the fourth act of the comedy. 
 Evan now becomes a tailor in London ; he 
 is done with Beckley and its inmates. But 
 the Countess, with the aid of her sisters, 
 continues to keep up a correspondence with 
 Juliana, in order to bring the latter and Evan 
 together and so win Beckley Court in the 
 
 130
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 end. Rose is out of the question; she has 
 practically pledged herself to Laxley, and be- 
 sides she is no longer the heiress. Juliana 
 dies, ! however, and to the consternation of 
 the Jocelyns, she is found to have bequeathed 
 Beckley Court and all her property "to Mr. 
 Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor." The 
 Countess is overjoyed, but her triumph is 
 short-lived. Evan rises to the occasion. He 
 chivalrously renounces the estate. '* Upon 
 my honour," says Sir Franks, " he must have 
 the soul of a gentleman ! There 's nothing he 
 can expect in return, you know ! " Whatever 
 Evan may have expected, he at any rate wins 
 Rose ; for, when the Jocelyns go to Lymport, 
 to thank him for his generosity, she hears from 
 his own lips * the true tale of the Laxley-letter, 
 and the lovers come together. The curtain 
 falls on the hero as attache to the Naples 
 embassy. 
 
 ** Most youths are like Pope's women ; they 
 have no character at all." This verdict of 
 Meredith is truer of Wilfrid Pole and Harry 
 Richmond than of Evan. Like the latter he 
 is managed by stronger influences ; indeed 
 
 * Juliana had left her the news as a bitter legsoy. 
 
 131
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Roy Richmond's intriguing filled Ottilia with 
 much the same disgust as the Countess de 
 Saldar's vulgar scheming threatened to stir in 
 the honest Rose, who was tempted to think 
 hardly of a brother who had such a sister for 
 his ally. But Evan has fibre and grit in him. 
 Besides, he is steadied by his true love for 
 Rose as well as by the determined honesty of 
 his mother, which saves him at the expense 
 of his dignity. Love furnishes the real ordeal, 
 however, and it brings out the best as well as 
 the worst in him, purifying the latter. The 
 hinge of the plot is, will Evan be a man, as 
 well as a gentleman? He has the makings 
 of the latter, and, once his early weakness 
 and false pride * are overcome, he regains his 
 self-respect and, with it, his moral force of 
 character. 
 
 Rose's conduct from the moment of Evan's 
 confession becomes rather unconvincing, and 
 the end of the story is huddled up, as too often 
 happens in Meredith ; the lovers are flung to- 
 gether by a sort of accident. But the courage 
 of her love entitles her to happiness. She 
 
 • " Pride was the one developed faculty of Evan's nature. The Fates 
 who mould us, always work from the mainspring " (ch. vi). 
 
 132
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 masters the fear of ridicule as Evan does in 
 his own way. Love had set for her as for 
 him a moral test, even though the details of 
 the test seem paltry enough. She had to de- 
 cide whether it was really in Nature's power, 
 unaided by family-portraits, coats-of-arms, 
 ball-room practice, and at least one small 
 phial of essence of society, to make a gentle- 
 man." By her truthfulness to the facts of 
 life, she wins clear of the unrealities and con- 
 ventions which beset her position, and thus, 
 unlike Ottilia, retains her lover. At the same 
 time her task must be admitted to have been 
 easier in some respects than that of the German 
 princess ; Evan could play the second fiddle 
 better than Harry Richmond ever learnt to 
 do, and besides the social gulf between Rose 
 and Evan was more easily bridged than in 
 the case of the other pair. 
 
 But the glory — though it is a spotted glory — 
 of the novel is the character of the Countess, 
 a superb adventuress, with her sentimental 
 aspirations for society, her vulgarity, and her 
 unscrupulous scheming. Tous les comediens 
 ne sont pas au theatre. The Countess is an 
 actress of high rank in the social comedy. 
 
 133
 
 George Meredith 
 
 She might have stepped out of Thackeray's 
 pages, but, while Becky Sharp fights for her 
 own hand, the Countess has a larger scheme 
 in view ; she is bent on carrying her family, 
 especially her brother, out of the cold shades 
 of Tailordom into the warm paradise of So- 
 ciety. The Comic Spirit revels in her, and 
 Meredith lets her reveal herself in letters as 
 well as in conversation. "I hope I shall be 
 pardoned," she writes, ''but it always seems 
 to me that what we have to endure is infinitely 
 worse than any other suffering, for you find 
 no comfort for the children of T — s in Scrip- 
 ture, nor any defence of their dreadful position. 
 Robbers, thieves, Magdalens ! but, no ! the 
 unfortunate offspring of that class are not even 
 mentioned ; at least, in my most diligent peru- 
 sal of the Scriptures, I never lighted upon 
 any remote allusion, and we know the Jews 
 did wear clothing." Her nauseous affectation 
 of religion prepares us for her final move into 
 the Roman Church where she finds gentility * 
 
 • The sentimental Cornelia Pole, in "Sandra Belloni" (ch. xvii), sighi 
 over Mrs. Chump : " Do you know, my feeling is, and I cannot at all ac- 
 count for it, that if she were a Catholic, she would not seem so gross." 
 Constance Asper thought of becoming a nun when Percy seemed to jilt 
 her for Diana Warwick. 
 
 134
 
 Evan Harrington 
 
 and peace of mind — a proceeding which here, 
 as in "The Amazing Marriage," Meredith 
 traces to rank sentimentalism. * * It is the sweet 
 sovereign Pontiff alone who gathers all in his 
 arms,' not excepting tailors. Here, if they 
 could but know it, is their blessed comfort ! 
 . . . Postscript : I am persuaded of this ; that 
 it is utterly impossible for a man to be a true 
 gentleman who is not of the true Church. . . . 
 Whatever Evan may think of himself, or Rose 
 think of him, I know the thing. " This scathing 
 exposure of sentimentalism in its religious, or 
 rather pseudo-religious phase, echoes the third 
 last paragraph of "Vanity Fair," though Becky 
 evidently did not "know the thing." 
 
 Her mother's unflinching sincerity* and 
 Lady Jocelyn's transparent magnanimity are 
 an adequate foil to Louisa's trickery. Of the 
 minor characters. Jack Raikes has a rdle sim- 
 ilar to that of Braintop in "Sandra Belloni," 
 but he might have been the brother of Dick 
 Swiveller ; in him as in the eccentric brothers 
 Cogglesby, Meredith has indulged in a broad 
 humour which becomes riotous farce, and 
 
 * The picnic-scene (ch. xxx — xxxi) is parallel to the similar episode in 
 "Sandra Belloni " (ch. xxxi — xxxii), when Mrs. Chump appears at the Rte. 
 
 135
 
 George Meredith 
 
 this is barely tempered by the pathetic, morbid 
 little figure of Juliana Bonner. Her fate 
 resembles that of Clare Doria Forey in the 
 preceding novel,* but she is spiteful in her rela- 
 tions to Rose, as Clare never could have been. 
 
 The most notable passages in the novel, so 
 for as description goes, are the fantastic di- 
 gression upon habits (ch. viii), the opening of 
 ch. X, the wine-chapter (ch. xii),t the cricket- 
 match (ch. xiii), the love-scene between Rose 
 and Evan beside the stream (ch. xxiii), and 
 the various inn-episodes at the Green Dragon, 
 the Aurora, and the Dolphin. 
 
 The Spanish story, to which the Duke al- 
 ludes in ch. xxii, is told of Villamediana (1582 
 — 1622), who, during a fire which took place 
 at the performance of one of his masques in 
 1622, gallantly carried out Queen Isabel de 
 Bourbon. The Queen had been acting in the 
 play. For this and other indiscretions the 
 cavalier had to pay with his life. 
 
 * There is another minor parallel. One touch ol' aatnre makes the 
 sexes kin. Lady Jocelyn (in oh. xvii), notes that the Countess is a female 
 enphuist in her talk. " She has made a capital selection of her vocabulary 
 from Johnson." Berry, Sir Austin Feverel's valet, also uses dictionary 
 words, which he collects from a pocket-Johnson. 
 
 t " Both Ale and Eve seem to speak imperiously to the soul of man. See 
 that they be good, see that they come in season, and we bow to the con- 
 •equences." 
 
 136
 
 ^ 
 
 SANDRA BELLONI
 
 \
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 THIS novel, which originally appeared in 
 1864 under the title of "Emilia in 
 England," is the only story which Meredith 
 furnished with a sequel. After publishing 
 "Evan Harrington," he wrote nothing but 
 poetry for three years, and then published 
 three novels in three years, " Rhoda Fleming" 
 intervening between the two "Emilia" books. 
 Both of the latter throb with that keen sympa- 
 thy for the Italians in their struggle for liberty 
 which Meredith had already voiced incident- 
 ally in "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," 
 where Richard and Lady Judith Felle sighed 
 sentimentally over the plight of Italy. "Who 
 has not wept for Italy ? I see the aspirations 
 of a world arise for her, thick and frequent as 
 the puffs of smoke from cigars of Pannonian 
 sentries." Emilia's passion for Italy is the 
 central theme of " Sandra Belloni " as well as 
 of its sequel. " Whenever I think of Italy, 
 
 139
 
 George Meredith 
 
 night or day, pant-pant goes my heart. The 
 name of Italy is my nightingale : I feel that 
 somebody lives that I love, and is ill-treated 
 shamefully, crying out to me for help." The 
 very phrases about Emilia run into poetry. 
 Her wonderful figure dominates this novel, 
 even when she is off the scene, and the variety 
 of comedy, burlesque, pathos, and even tra- 
 gedy which Meredith has crowded into its 
 pages runs up in the end into the single im- 
 pression of the heroine's personality. She 
 represents the artistic temperament combined 
 with a soul, with a deep passion for her 
 country and with the power of inspiring and 
 enjoying human affections. James Thomson 
 declared, "For integral grandeur and origin- 
 ality of conception, and for perfectness of 
 execution, the heroine of his "Emilia" appears 
 to me the sovereign character of our modern 
 fiction." This Is too largely said. Even If the 
 range of comparison is narrowed to Meredith's 
 own fiction, Diana would dispute the primacy 
 of Emilia.* Into both women Meredith has 
 
 * Both can be impulsive and at the same time are capable of aplomb and 
 coolness. Powys told Emilia that she should never act from an impulse 
 «vhich was not the impulse of all her nature. She needed the advice, and 
 Meredith constantly shows how his best women-characters take long to 
 decide on a course of importance. 
 
 140
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 put a great deal of his own heart and soul, 
 and many — perhaps from insular prejudice — 
 will prefer the Irish beauty to the Italian, the 
 novelist to the singer. Thomson carries us 
 with him, however, in the comment on 
 Meredith's style which he published in his 
 " Note on George Meredith" (1876), reprinted 
 in his ** Essays and Phantasies," a comment 
 which applies pre-eminently to this novel and 
 its predecessor. "His style is very various and 
 flexible, flowing freely in whatever measures 
 the subject and the mood may dictate. At 
 its best it is so beautiful in simplest Saxon, so 
 majestic in rhythm, so noble with noble ima- 
 gery, so pregnant with meaning, so vital and 
 intense, that it must be ranked among the 
 supreme achievements of our literature." 
 The outline of the story is as follows : 
 Emilia Alessandra Belloni is the daughter 
 of Guiseppe Belloni, an Italian revolutionary ; 
 her English* mother had married him after 
 he had been obliged to fly as an exile to 
 
 * Partly Welsh, it appears. This is one of the traits which afterwards 
 drew her to Merthyr Powys and Georgiana. "All subtle feelings are 
 discerned by Welsh eyes when untroubled by any mental agitation. 
 Brother and sister were Welsh, and I may observe that there is human 
 nature and Welsh nature " (ch. xxviii). 
 
 141
 
 George Meredith 
 
 London.* He is a violinist in the orchestra of 
 the Italian Opera, but becomes a drunken 
 wretch, who wishes to make capital dishon- 
 ourably out of his daughter's musical talent. 
 She escapes from him into the country, where 
 her singing is overheard by the daughters and 
 the partner of Mr. Pole, a wealthy London 
 merchant, whose estate is in the neighbour- 
 hood. The daughters simply wish to exploit 
 her music in order to advance their own social 
 ambitions, but Mr. Pericles, their father's 
 partner, has higher aims for her. Antonio Peri- 
 cles Agriopoulos is a Greek who has an over- 
 powering passion for music ; he "held millions 
 of money as dust compared to a human voice," 
 and, in his rapture over Emilia's singing, he 
 proposes to dominate her career. He will 
 train her to be a queen of opera. ** Yeaz ! I 
 am made my mind ! I send her abroad to ze 
 Academic for one, two, tree year. She shall 
 be instructed as was not before. Zen a noise 
 at La Scala. No — Paris ! No — London ! She 
 shall astonish London fairst. — Yez ! if I take 
 a theatre ! Yez ! if I buy a newspaper ! Yez ! 
 
 * His experience reaembled that described by Browning in "The Italian 
 in England." 
 
 142
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 if I pay feefty-sossand pound ! " He gets her 
 father's consent to take her to Italy. But, 
 unluckily for the connoisseur's programme, 
 Emilia loses her heart to Wilfrid Pole, a 
 young soldier, who loves his sister's protegee 
 in a gallant, sentimental fashion. His own 
 prospects, however, and a sense of duty to 
 his father, oblige him at the same time to en- 
 tangle himself with Lady Charlotte Chilling- 
 worth,* with whom he has been philandering. 
 Emilia, who has given up Italy for his sake, 
 is at first incredulous ; her trustful nature is 
 shocked by the revelation of her lover's du- 
 plicity, which for a long while she refuses to 
 credit. Her appeal to Mr. Pole drives the 
 merchant into a fit ; his affairs make it neces- 
 sary that Lady Charlotte should be Wilfrid's 
 wife. Emilia meantime is rescued from her 
 father, who is acting in the interests of 
 
 * Lady Charlotte at first seems to belong to the class of the de Courcys 
 whom Trollope delighted to pourtray, but Meredith develops her character 
 with some subtlety. Wilfrid, he says, was not in love with her ; he was 
 simply in harness to her, feeling that her strength of character brought ovt 
 something in himself. She saw his faults but liked him none the less that 
 she felt she could help him and be a mate for him. What disgusted her was 
 his double-dealing. She was too generous to be jealous of Emilia, even 
 when the latter fascinated Wilfrid away from her. " Being of a nature 
 leaning to great-mindedness, though not of the first rank, she could not 
 meanly mask her own deficiency by despising it. To do this is the secret 
 evil by which souls of men and women stop their growth." 
 
 143
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Pericles, and Lady Charlotte, in order to 
 spare her feelings and to cure her of her 
 infatuation for the youth, arranges for her to 
 overhear Wilfrid's declaration to herself at 
 an inn in Dover. The poor girl, on being 
 convinced of his treachery, collapses under 
 the shock, and flies to London, where she 
 nurses her despair under the protection of an 
 Italian patriot, Marini, and his wife, who had 
 already rescued her from the machinations of 
 her father. She clings to the consolation that 
 if she has lost her lover, she still has her 
 voice. The proposal of Pericles now appears 
 to be her one chance of happiness ; she goes 
 to his ofl&ce and offers to accept his programme. 
 But the strain of the past few months and a 
 severe cold have temporarily affected her 
 throat. Pericles, who has followed Belloni 
 in a wild-goose chase after Emilia, is naturally 
 exasperated at her silly philandering with 
 Wilfrid as well as at her misuse of her voice ; 
 he rudely dismisses her, with the threat that 
 he will put her father on her track. "You 
 shall go to old Belloni ; and, crack, if ze 
 voice will come back to a whip, — bravo, old 
 Belloni ! " Terrified at the thought of falling 
 
 144
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 once more into her father's clutches, Emilia 
 tries to hide herself in London. She is eventu- 
 ally Rescued by Merthyr Powys, a Welsh 
 squire who loves Italy ; he has befriended her 
 from the first with a loyal, unselfish affection, 
 and now carries her off to stay with his half- 
 sister,* where she may regain her health and 
 self-confidence before travelling with them to 
 begin her studies in Italy. 
 
 Emilia, however, is destined to reach Italy 
 in another way. She learns accidentally that 
 Wilfrid proposes to enter the Austrian army, 
 where his uncle is a general. This news hurts 
 her far more than the prospect of his marriage 
 to Lady Charlotte. She cannot bear to think of 
 him serving against her beloved Italy, and, in a 
 paroxysm of patriotic emotion, she promises 
 Wilfrid that she will stay in England if he re- 
 fuses to wear the Austrian white coat. Wilfrid, 
 who has been hanging about her for months, 
 takes advantage of her promise and agrees to 
 the stipulation ; as Powys has left for Italy, 
 he thinks the coast is now clear for a resump- 
 
 * Georgiana Ford is a sterling woman, who is great enough to overcome 
 her jealousy of Emilia and her dislike of Italian revolutions, out of sheer 
 loyalty to Merthyr. 
 
 T 145
 
 George Meredith 
 
 tion of his own courtship. Emilia soon feels 
 the bondage of her impulse and hasty promise. 
 The folly of it dawns on her, when she realises 
 that her heart is in Italy, where an uprising 
 of the patriots has taken place ; but she is 
 chained by her word, and Wilfrid selfishly 
 refuses to release her. At last she summons 
 up courage to break her promise. Before she 
 leaves England, however, she is able to come 
 to the aid of Mr. Pole and his family, who are 
 in danger of being ruined by Pericles. Mr. 
 Pole, in order to marry off his children grandly 
 and to maintain the extravagant household on 
 which his daughters insist, has been tempted 
 to speculate and to misappropriate trust-funds 
 belonging to a vulgar, Irish widow, Mrs. 
 Chump. Pericles, exasperated at the Poles, 
 and especially Wilfrid, for having ruined 
 Emilia's career, refuses to pay up what his 
 partner owes. At this crisis, Emilia's voice 
 returns to her; she arranges for Pericles to 
 overhear her,* and the Greek, overjoyed at 
 the prospect of saving her for her true 
 
 * This scene, entitled " FroBt on a May Night " (ch. Iviii), recalls not 
 only the opening episode of the novel, but the poem entitled " A Night of 
 Frost in May," where, as in "Farina,'' Meredith describes in inimitable 
 words the singing of the nightingales. 
 
 146
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 vocation, promises to settle Mr. Pole's affairs, 
 provided that Emilia will accompany her 
 motljier to the Milan Gonservatorio and for 
 three years put her art above politics and 
 love-making.* Emilia thus leaves for Italy 
 under the auspices of Pericles, not of Powys. 
 The closing episode of the novel enables 
 Meredith to administer his final blow to the 
 vanity of the Misses Pole. These superfine 
 ladies, who aflfected to despise Emilia and who 
 patronised her simply for the sake of the 
 social credit they hoped to win from her, live 
 to see their pride and sentimentalism shat- 
 tered, and are forced to accept deliverance 
 from ruin at the hand of this unselfish and 
 forgiving little lady. "Sandra Belloni" is 
 Meredith's full-length study of sentimentalism, 
 in its tragic as well as its comic aspects. He 
 scourges the social pretensions of the par- 
 venus, indeed ; but this is done elsewhere in 
 the novels, and the group of the Misses Pole, 
 especially Cornelia, is selected as typical of 
 
 * " It is a little grief to me that I think this man loves music more deeply 
 than I do." This confession, made in her letter to Powys (ch. lix), will be 
 better understood when " Vittoria *' is read. The letter itself, with its 
 outpouring of frank and shy affection, makes it more di£Bcult than ever to 
 understand how the writer of it could treat Powys as she did afterwards in 
 Italy ; in this respect she foils below the level of Diana and Carinthia. 
 
 147
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the feminine sentimentalist in full blossom, 
 who finds herself in the end the prey of un- 
 realities, and entangled in hypocrisies, deceits, 
 and suffering. Meredith suggests that they 
 inherited this tendency. Their father, he 
 remarks, "was one of those men who have 
 no mental, little moral, feeling. With him 
 feeling was almost entirely physical, as it was 
 intensely so. That is the key to Mr. Pole, 
 and to not a few besides. It is certainly a 
 degree in advance of no feeling at all, and may 
 give to many people who are never tried, the 
 reputation of good parents, jolly friends, ex- 
 cellent citizens." * Mr. Pole and his family, 
 however, had the misfortune to be tried. 
 
 Like the three daughters of the great Mel, 
 the Misses Pole have a brother. Wilfrid 
 is depicted as the youthful sentimentalist in 
 love, an egoist of Sir Willoughby Patterne's 
 type upon the minor scale, and Meredith has 
 etched him to the very quick. Like 
 Evan, he is in the unformed period of life, 
 
 * " He was neat, insignificant, and nervously cheerful ; with the eyes of 
 a bird, that let you into no interior " (ch. xiv). Andrew Cogglesby was 
 another kind of bird : " he eyed every man living with the benevolence of 
 a patriarch, dashed with the impudence of a London sparrow" ("Evan 
 Harrington," ch. viii). 
 
 148
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 but the tailor comes out of it better than the 
 cornet ; while Evan rises to the occasion, 
 Wilfrid proves too much of a sentimentalist 
 to rdtain any deep impressions. He liked to 
 be comfortable and to feel himself important, 
 either as Lady Charlotte's husband or as the 
 champion of Emilia. He was not so much a 
 coxcomb, says Meredith, as a man who was 
 desperately afraid of ridicule and fond of 
 sentiment ; his gallantry and courage were 
 handicapped by these weaknesses, and he was 
 very properly jilted by both the women with 
 whom he triiSed. In ch. liii a farcical appli- 
 cation of this anti-sentimental philosophy is 
 thrown out, by way of interlude, but Meredith 
 elsewhere analyses it with some seriousness. 
 The false and fantastic passion of sentiment he 
 calls "riding on the HippogrifF" (see chapters 
 xliv and li). Real passion is "noble strength 
 on fire," and it never makes its possessor un- 
 natural or artificial. It "may tug against 
 commonsense but is never, in a great nature, 
 divorced from it." The sentimentalist, on 
 the contrary, unconsciously loves feeling for 
 feeling's sake ; he becomes high-flying and 
 absurd in his demands to have it gratified ; 
 
 149
 
 George Meredith 
 
 what excites him is not the object itself so 
 much as the emotions which it is able to excite 
 in him, and this morbid craving prevents him 
 from realizing his proper condition as well as 
 from appreciating the profound passion which 
 lifts and sustains human nature in the pursuit 
 of a worthy object. The spurious passion of 
 the sentimentalist confines him to the circle 
 of his own emotions. It renders him irritable, 
 short-sighted, and essentially selfish. 
 
 The forty-fourth chapter also reveals an- 
 other vein of Meredith's mind. German 
 sentimentalism, as Richter wittily observed, 
 inculcated "a universal love for all men and 
 all beasts — except reviewers." Meredith 
 loathed sentimentalism but he was at one 
 with it in making this exception, and ** Sandra 
 Belloni" contains the first of the sarcastic, 
 almost bitter, comments upon English review- 
 ers (as well as upon the English public) which 
 spurt up throughout the later novels, when- 
 ever the author feels obliged to defend his 
 own psychological method (see above p. 114), 
 In his review of "Owen Meredith's" poetical 
 effusions, four years later, he wrote : " Re- 
 viewers of poetry are always able men — able 
 
 150
 
 Sandra Belloni" 
 
 to express their opinions — and between heavy 
 pufFs and contemptuous notices, the public 
 gains from them in the end some approximate 
 idea^f a poet's value." This is less truculent 
 than 'the paragraph in ch. xliii of *' Sandra 
 Belloni " ; but he did not always rein in his 
 scorn for reviewers of fiction so successfully. * 
 Tracy Runningbrook, in this novel, is, like 
 Agostino and even Lydiard afterwards, a finer 
 plant than Diaper Sandoe in "The Ordeal of 
 Richard Feverel," but he is less attractive 
 than the young Arthur Rhodes whom Diana 
 generously championed . There is more about 
 music than about poetry, however, from the 
 passage on the drum (ch. ix) to the eulogy of 
 Beethoven and the description of Emilia play- 
 ing on the harp in the booth (ch. xi). The 
 operatic stars appear in ch. xxxii as they do 
 later in "One of Our Conquerors" (ch. xx). 
 Sir Purcell is an organist but it was not till 
 the twelfth chapter of " Beauchamp's Career " 
 that Meredith elaborated his philosophy of 
 the organ as a symbol of monarchism. The 
 
 * Art-critics get their passing flick of the whip in the fifth chapter of 
 'One of Our Conquerors." They are " sometimes onanimous, and are 
 then taken for guides, and are fatal." 
 
 151
 
 George Meredith 
 
 zither is described in the twenty - seventh 
 chapter of ** Vittoria," and in the forty-fifth 
 chapter of that novel the effect of the military 
 drum is analysed. 
 
 In Mrs. Chump, the stout, coarse, good- 
 hearted Irish widow, Meredith has given play 
 to the element of farce which he had indulged 
 with such riotous effects in ** Evan Har- 
 rington." Mrs. Chump is drawn in broad 
 caricature ; her blue satin, her brogue, her 
 love of liquor, her ill-concealed affection for 
 poor Mr. Pole, and her distressing frankness 
 of speech, all drive the ladies of Brookfield 
 out of "fine shades and nice feelings " into an 
 inferno of torture. Mrs. Chump does not see 
 why she should not become the second Mrs. 
 Pole, and her suspicions of Mr. Pole's honesty 
 give her a hold upon that distracted gentleman 
 which makes her, as well as Emilia, an instru- 
 ment of retribution upon the ladies who had 
 formerly scorned and insulted her. The 
 scenes at the supper (ch. xxxii) and with 
 Braintop (ch. xxxv) * show her at her richest ; 
 
 * The theatre-scene (ch. xxv), where the amorous clerk gazes up at 
 Emilia, is oddly reminiscent of the similar scene in " Bleak House" (ch. 
 xiii). But Mr. Guppy was not so careful of his locks and general appear- 
 ance as Braintop was. 
 
 152
 
 Sandra Belloni 
 
 but she is always vital, and her naturalness 
 forms a foil to the silly affectation and artifici- 
 ality of the Misses Pole,* just as the sterling 
 chivalry of Merthyr Powys and even the 
 artistic enthusiasm of Pericles are meant to 
 throw Wilfrid's shallowness into sharp relief. 
 The suicide of Sir Purcell Barrett, Cornelia's 
 rejected lover, comes with an unexpected 
 shock, but Meredith evidently intended from 
 the first to strike this sterner note. Pride and 
 sentimentalism are an opening for more than 
 laughter, he insists ; they may lead to tragedy 
 as well as to social complications. The yacht- 
 episode, on the other hand, is out of proportion, 
 and the description of Mr. Pole's illness leans 
 to the long side, but the country-house scenes 
 are as rich as in " Evan Harrington," and the 
 fencing between the Tinleys and the Poles 
 shows Mr. Meredith's dramatic power at its 
 very best upon the petty scale. The beer- 
 chapters (viii, ix, and xi) recall the eighth poem 
 of "Modern Love," which had been pub- 
 
 * " Why," Mrs. Chump expostulates, " if they was to be married at the 
 altar, they'd stare and be 'ffendud if ye asked them if they was thinking 
 of their husbands, they would! 'Oh, dear, not and ye' re mistaken, and 
 we 're thinkin' o' the coal-scuttle in the back parlour,' — or somethin' about 
 souls, if not coals." 
 
 153
 
 George Meredith 
 
 lished two years earlier, and the twentieth 
 poem of that series ("That man I do suspect 
 A coward who would burden the poor deuce 
 With what ensues from his own slipperiness") 
 anticipates the analysis of Sir Purcell in the 
 beginning of ch. Iv. The absurdity of re- 
 proaching Providence for our mishaps had 
 been already noticed in "Evan Harrington" 
 (ch. x), however, and Meredith stops to under- 
 line it more than once in the later novels, just 
 as the passage on adversity in ch. xviii (" This 
 fellow had been fattening all his life on pros- 
 perity ; the very best dish in the world : but 
 it does not prove us," etc.) is a prose variation 
 on the theme of " Hard Weather " and " The 
 Empty Purse" ("A Conservative youth ! who 
 the cream-bowl skimmed, Desiring affairs to 
 be left as they are," etc.) 
 
 154
 
 ^ 
 
 RHODA FLEMING
 
 Rhoda Fleming. 
 
 TN "Rhoda Fleming," published the year 
 -*- after "Emilia in England," Meredith 
 essayed the delicate and difficult task of des- 
 cribing the innate purity of a woman after a 
 moral lapse. The story is superior in grasp 
 and strength to Mrs. Gaskell's "Ruth"; 
 the difference of scale makes it less easy 
 to compare it with "Adam Bede," but the 
 outstanding feature of its treatment is the 
 prominence assigned to the punishment 
 not of the woman so much as of the man. 
 Unlike his own "enamoured sage," Meredith 
 never passes his honest readers " through the 
 
 * Compare " Odes in Contribution to the Song 'of French History ' 
 0898), page 58, with their description of France in 1870 : — 
 
 " She sees what seed long sown, ripened oriete. 
 Bears this fierce crop ; and she discerns her fate 
 From origin to agony, and on 
 As far as the wave washes long and wan 
 Off one disastrous impulse : for of waves 
 Our life is. and our deeds are pregnant graves 
 Blown roiling to the sunset from the dawn." 
 
 157
 
 George Meredith 
 
 sermon's dull defile," but this poignant tale* 
 reads like a lay-sermon on the text : "Be not 
 deceived ; God is not mocked ; for what a 
 man soweth, that shall he also reap." Edward 
 Blancove has a remorse like that of Lovelace 
 in Richardson's great novel, but his punish- 
 ment resembles that meted out to Lord 
 Fleetwood in "The Amazing Marriage"; 
 both repent too late. 
 
 Dahlia and Rhoda Fleming are the daugh- 
 ters, fair and dark, of a Kentish yeoman- 
 farmer. Their story is a study in the develop- 
 ment of country-girls who have innocent social 
 ambitions or aspirations, and who start with 
 sentimental ideas about London and London- 
 life. For them ** the mysterious metropolis 
 flew with fiery fringes through dark space, in 
 their dreams." * This romantic prepossession 
 inclines them for any move which promises 
 to gratify their social desires to rise. An 
 avenue is soon opened to them. After their 
 mother's death, her brother Anthony 
 Hackbut appears on the scene. An old money 
 porter at Boyne's Bank in London, he has the 
 
 * Contrast the vehement description of London simultaneously published 
 by Ruskin in the " Crown of Wild Olive." 
 
 158
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 reputation at Queen Anne's Farm of being 
 rich and miserly — a reputation which he se- 
 cretly enjoys. Dahlia goes up to keep house 
 for him, and happens, as she accompanies 
 him to the bank, to meet a young lawyer of 
 23 years of age, Edward Blancove, the son 
 of Sir William Blancove, at present head of 
 the bank. His admiration for her fresh 
 country beauty is undisguised. The casual 
 acquaintance ripens into something warmer. 
 The lovers meet secretly, and Dahlia's 
 education is advanced, at Edward's orders, 
 by attendance at various classes. 
 
 Presently, feeling neglected by his niece, 
 Anthony goes down again to Queen Anne's 
 Farm, to bring up Rhoda. Like her sister, she 
 has ^he provincial's idealization of the metro- 
 polis. ** Great powerful London — the new 
 universe to her spirit — ^was opening its arms to 
 her." She happens to arrive on the very night 
 when Edward had succeeded in persuading 
 Dahlia to elope ; the latter, returning to 
 Anthony's lodgings for her mother's Bible, is 
 surprised to find Rhoda sleeping in her bed, 
 and is pulled up in time. But only for a time. 
 Hhoda returns, after her London visit, to the 
 
 159
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Farm, and the next news is a letter from 
 Dahlia who, as " Mrs Edward Ayrton," has 
 eloped to the Continent with her lover. The 
 farmer's suspicions of his daughter are 
 aroused, though Rhoda's loyal heart still 
 fights down its uneasiness. 
 
 Meantime Rhoda is mildly pursued by 
 young Algernon Blancove, a clerk at Boyne's 
 Bank, who had chanced to see her there, as 
 his cousin Edward had seen her sister. 
 Algernon, the son of Squire Blancove, whose 
 property adjoins Queen Anne's Farm, is a 
 weak fashionable youth, whose philandering is 
 easily frustrated by Robert Armstrong, the 
 farmer's assistant, himself in love with 
 Rhoda. His real name is Robert Eccles. The 
 son of a Hampshire yeoman-farmer, he had 
 enlisted, after a wild time in youth, in a 
 cavalry regiment where Algernon had 
 chanced to be an officer. Out of this, thanks 
 to a small legacy, he was able to buy himself. 
 Taking to farming, and changing his name, 
 he had been able to curb his passions, thanks 
 to Rhoda's influence, and now he endeavours 
 to keep her from Algernon, whom he knows 
 to be a mixture of the fool and the rascal. 
 
 160
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 On Dahlia's return to London, her father 
 and Rhoda go up to see her, but the girl is 
 ashai^ed to face them. Her lover pleads for 
 the delay of their marriage, on account of his 
 prospects. He conceals the liaison from his 
 own family, and she sadly agrees to avoid her 
 relatives. The crisis comes when, in a 
 London theatre, the farmer and Rhoda 
 chance to recognise Dahlia in the company — 
 not of Edward, who meanly remains in the 
 background — but of Algernon who is em- 
 ployed by his cousin to get the girl out of the 
 theatre, unknown to her relatives. This 
 accident naturally throws the Flemings on to 
 a false scent. Algernon is deemed the culprit, 
 and Dahlia is disowned by her crushed, 
 indignant, unforgiving father. Rhoda alone 
 champions her sister, whilst Robert, though 
 refusing to share her faith, undertakes to 
 tackle the supposed villain Algernon, whom 
 he now suspects of designs upon Rhoda as 
 well. He tracks the youth to a country-house 
 in Hampshire, where the house-party includes 
 both Edward and Algernon. The former has 
 begun to repent of his escapade and to seek 
 relief from his connexion with Dahlia. 
 
 161 
 
 K
 
 George Meredith 
 
 " Already he looked back upon Dahlia from a 
 prodigious distance. He knew that there 
 was something to be smoothed over ; some- 
 thing written in the book of facts which had 
 to be smeared out, and he seemed to do it, 
 while he drank the bubbling wine and heard 
 himself talk. . . . He closed, as it were, a 
 black volume, and opened a new and bright 
 one. Young men easily fancy that they may 
 do this, and that, when the black volume is 
 shut, the tide is stopped. Saying ** I was 
 a fool," they believe they have put an end to 
 the foolishness. What father teaches them 
 that a human act once set in motion flows on 
 for ever to the great account?" Edward's 
 mood of disgust is fostered by the cynical 
 worldliness of the seniors with whom he 
 mixes, and also by the luxury of his present 
 surroundings. In addition to this he is 
 feeling anew the fascination of his lovely 
 cousin and hostess, Mrs. Margaret Lovell, a 
 blonde young widow, whose "beauty shone 
 as from an illumination of black flame, under 
 the light of two duels" fought about her in India. 
 It is at this moment that Robert's pursuit of 
 Algernon irritates Edward. Farmer Eccles' 
 
 162
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 & 
 
 farm, at Warbeach village, adjoins the 
 country-house, and Robert, determined to 
 find out what Algernon (the supposed seducer) 
 has done with Dahlia, attacks the youth 
 twice at the hunt, and is only pacified by the 
 adroitness of Mrs. Lovell, who undertakes to 
 satisfy the irate champion of Dahlia. Mean- 
 while, maddened by this interference, Edward, 
 who has allowed Algernon to borrow his name 
 in order to ward off persecution, pays money to 
 Nic Sedgett, an old enemy of Robert, to make 
 a murderous attack on him, whilst Mrs. 
 Lovell fools him on the next day by her wit 
 and charms. Robert then discovers that he 
 has mistaken Algernon for Edward, and 
 scorning to touch Nic Sedgett,* threatens and 
 challenges the young lawyer. The latter now 
 finds himself in a coil of awkward conse- 
 quences. But he is too vain to admit his 
 
 * "Leave real rascals to the Lord above," he tells his friend and 
 landlady, Mrs. Boulby. " He 's safe to punish them. They 've stepped 
 outside the chances. That 's my idea. I wouldn't go out of my way to 
 kick them — not I ! It 's the half-and-half villains we 've got to dispose of. 
 They 're the mischief" Nic Sedgett is Meredith's nearest approach to a 
 villain. Yet even he is not a villain in the true sense of the term. The 
 hero and villain of the tale are, as Meredith points out, combined in 
 Edward. Selfish and cunning, Sedgett has no deep-laid plot of his own. 
 The initiative does not rest with him. He is rather the tool of others, 
 actinii in accordance with his low nature upon their suggestion, and 
 carrying ont their plana. 
 
 163
 
 George Meredith 
 
 cowardice and act justly towards his victim, 
 and so has recourse to subterfuges. He pre- 
 tends to suppose that Dahlia, whose only re- 
 proach to him was her suffering, participated 
 in the scheme to worry him ; snatching at this 
 miserable pretext for blaming her, he dis- 
 appears to Paris, leaving the matter in the 
 hands of Mrs. Lovell. Her plan is to make 
 provision (including a husband) for Dahlia, 
 as the easiest way of ending the entanglement. 
 Consequently she still endeavours to keep 
 Robert in ignorance of Dahlia's, whereabouts, 
 but is brought to terms by the appearance on 
 the scene of Major Percy Waring, a friend and 
 former fellow officer of Robert, whose previous 
 acquaintance with the fair widow enables 
 him to force her hand. By this time, however. 
 Dahlia is invisible. Deserted by her lover, 
 she has had brain-fever, and has fallen in 
 accidentally with Nic Sedgett, who has shown 
 some kindness to her. He had undertaken, 
 for a large sum of money, to marry the girl 
 and then emigrate. The pivot of the whole 
 story lies in Dahlia's reasons for agreeing to 
 this extraordinary step, and in the ways, 
 partly deliberate, partly accidental, by which 
 
 164
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 it is executed. Dahlia's illness has sapped 
 her spirit. Though still in love with Edward, 
 she ^rings herself to marry Sedgett simply 
 for the sake of protection. Marriage, she felt, 
 would secure her good name, wipe the spot 
 of shame from her character, and enable her 
 to face her father and sister again. Hence 
 she could rise, trembling and bewildered, to 
 sacrifice her happiness and love, for the sake 
 of being made an "honest woman" in her 
 relatives' eyes. In this resolve she is stoutly 
 abetted, even urged, by Rhoda, who overbears 
 any hesitation on the part of her shrinking 
 sister. Even Robert favours the step ; for, 
 ignorant who the proposed husband is, he 
 feels Dahlia's marriage is the one means of 
 restoring her to her family and thus securing 
 her own happiness. The catastrophe is 
 furthered, also, by the foolish blundering of 
 Algernon, who does cot forward Dahlia's 
 pathetic letters of appeal to Edward, and 
 spends on himself the money sent by his 
 cousin to buy oflF Sedgett. For meanwhile 
 Edward has been coming to his right mind. 
 His flight to Paris, *' leaving all the brutality 
 CO be done for him behind his back," had put 
 
 165
 
 George Meredith 
 
 a chasm between him and Mrs. Lovell. The 
 latter, now under the better guidance of 
 Major Waring, visits DahHa and honestly 
 seeks to provide for her future by means of 
 this marriage. At the same time she throws 
 over Edward, who, still forced to believe 
 that Dahlia is agreeable to the marriage, and 
 perhaps * ignorant as yet that the husband 
 is Sedgett, is roused from his cynicism 
 and inaction by receiving at last poor Dahlia's 
 letters. He hurries home to stop the marriage 
 and avow his connexion with Dahlia. But the 
 repentance is too late. Partly owing to Al- 
 gernon's folly in refusing to carry out his 
 telegraphed directions, partly as a result of 
 Dahlia's passive weakness, but chiefly owing 
 to Rhoda's not unnatural suspicion of her sis- 
 ter's seducer and her resolute determination 
 to make the frail girl reach the altar, Edward's 
 frantic efforts to get an interview with his mis- 
 tress (and so avert the marriage) are in vain, 
 though seconded at the end by Robert, who 
 
 * " It may not, perhaps, be said that he had distinctly knofni 
 Sedgett to be the man. He had ceitaialy suspected the possibility of hi* 
 being the man. It is out of the power of most wilful and selfish natures 
 to imagine, so as to see accurately, the deeds they prompt or permit 
 to be done. They do not comprehend them until these black realities 
 •tand up before their eyes." Ch. xxxvii (end). 
 
 166
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 begins dimly to suspect that something is 
 wrong. After the ceremony Sedgett brutally 
 flings Dahlia off. She returns, however, in 
 peace to the farm and her father. But a delayed 
 letter from Edward reveals to her the terrible 
 mistake she has just committed, and her fren- 
 zied anguish stirs compunction in poor Rhoda's 
 heart for the sorrow which she has caused 
 by doing what she had believed was for the 
 best. Robert and she now undertake the 
 defence of Dahlia from Sedgett. When the 
 latter appears to claim his wife with coarse 
 brutality, he is supported by the farmer who 
 is unable to comprehend why a husband's 
 rights should not be upheld. Dahlia, in her 
 extremity, attempts to poison herself. But, in 
 the nick of time, it is discovered that the 
 marriage is invalid. Sedgett, it turns out, 
 had been playing a double game. Already 
 married, he had agreed to marry Dahlia 
 simply for the sum of money offered by the 
 Blanco ves. Dahlia consequently is free. 
 She recovers from her poison, but her life 
 is shattered. The rose of womanhood has 
 become a frail bent lily, and Edward's 
 penitence fails to requicken her affections. 
 
 167
 
 George Meredith 
 
 "She Tvould marr>' him." Mrs. Lovell 
 explains, "if she could bring herself to it; — 
 the truth is, he killed her pride. Her taste 
 for life is gone.*^ Rhoda marries Robert, ai^d 
 Mrs, Lovell, ruined by her mania for betting, 
 deserts Major Waring for the rich Sir William 
 Blancove, Thus Edward missed both the 
 women of his desire, the society dame as well 
 as the countn. -girl. Through his cowardice 
 he had forfeited his fair cousin's esteem, 
 whilst the >-ictor>- over his pride came too 
 late to preserve for him the love of the rustic 
 beauty with whom he had trifled. 
 
 The convivial scene, without which no 
 novel of Meredith would be quite complete, 
 occurs in chapter xviii. One of his keenest 
 analyses of the French character is put into 
 chapter xxii, and chapter xxvii opens with a 
 handful of sentences which are quite in the 
 vein of Carlyle, The forty-third chapter con- 
 tains a well-known example of Meredithian 
 dialogue, fortunately with a key supplied in 
 brackets, but the novel as a whole is remark- 
 ably free from Meredithese ; it is rare to meet 
 with such lapses as "vulnerability" in the 
 mouth of a yeoman (chapter xxiv). 
 
 168
 
 Rhoda Fleming 
 
 The two weak points in the construction of 
 the story are Dahlia's consent to marry Sed- 
 gett and the r6le of Mrs. Lovell. The latter, 
 an Abglo-Indian "Venus Annodomini" after 
 Mr. Kipling's heart, has a part too important 
 for her character. "A far-fetched motive, 
 an ingenious evasion of the issue, a witty in- 
 stead of a passionate turn, offend us like an 
 insincerity," says Stevenson. ** All should be 
 plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence 
 it is that, in * Rhoda Fleming,' Mrs. Lovell 
 raises such resentment in the reader ; her 
 motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equiv- 
 ocal, for the weight and strength of her sur- 
 roundings." Much more satisfactory is the 
 treatment of pride in the various characters, 
 particularly in Anthony Hackbut and in Ed- 
 ward. The former has the vanity of riches, 
 or rather of the reputation for riches ; money 
 acts on his imagination and fires his brain 
 (compare chapter xxv) ; he risks his good 
 character in order to live up to the false char- 
 acter which he has taught his poorer relatives 
 to attribute to him (compare chapter xl). 
 Edward's pride is much more tragic and 
 subtle. His pride of position keeps him from
 
 George Meredith 
 
 avowing his relationship with Dahlia ; later 
 on, his false pride leads him to subterfuges 
 which force him into cowardice and selfish- 
 ness ; and finally, when this meaner pride is 
 killed by the crisis, it is too late. 
 
 170
 
 ^ 
 
 VITTORIA
 
 Vittoria 
 
 THIS sequel to "Sandra Belloni" appeared 
 in the "Fortnightly Review" for 1866, 
 the year* when Meredith was acting as war- 
 correspondent for the "Morning Post" in 
 Italy and Austria. It narrates the experiences 
 of Emilia in Italy during 1848-1849. There the 
 revolution broke out on January 2nd, 1848, at 
 Milan, and then at Venice ; the temporary 
 success of the insurgents ended on the 23rd of 
 March, 1849, at the battle of Novara, which 
 led to the abdication of Charles Albert, and 
 the historical scene of action in "Vittoria" 
 practically lies between these two dates, t The 
 novel contains a series of vivid military 
 
 * Ibsen settled in Rome in the autumn of 1866. But how differently 
 he and Meredith viewed Italy 1 
 
 t "Vittoria" is Meredith's contribution to the volume of generous 
 sympathy with the Italian struggle for freedom, which threw up such 
 remarkable waves in the English poetry and prose of last century. He 
 does not write as a partisan, but his account of Italy's plight answers to 
 that of Fogazzaro in "Piccolo Mondo antico." 
 
 173
 
 George Meredith 
 
 scenes, plots, and intrigues, but these have 
 spoiled the symmetry of the story. The 
 thread of Vittoria's personality, which con- 
 stitutes the realunity of its chapters, disappears 
 altogether, now and then ; episodes are heaped 
 on episodes ; Austrians, Italians, and English 
 folk crowd the pages with more or less 
 irrelevance ; and, although Meredith pleads 
 that " these half-comic little people have their 
 place in the history of higher natures and 
 darker destinies," his method assigns some of 
 them more than their due stroke in the plot. 
 This applies particularly to the English char- 
 acters retained from "Sandra Belloni." The 
 foreigners are more vital, but there are too 
 many of them, and their under-plots and 
 counter-plots form a whirling kaleidoscope, in 
 which it is often difficult to keep the central 
 figures in sight. 
 The novel follows this scheme of events : — 
 Emilia, on leaving England, had changed 
 her name to Vittoria Gampa ("her own name 
 being an attraction to the blow-flies in her own 
 country"). In terms of her agreement with 
 Pericles, she had studied for three years at the 
 Milan Gonservatorio, and abstained from any 
 
 174
 
 Vittoria 
 
 political action. But while her voice had 
 developed, her passion for Italy had also 
 grown deeper with the years, and it is arranged 
 that s^e is to make her debut as a prima donna 
 at La Scala, in an opera written for the purpose 
 by one of the patriots, which, at one point, is 
 to give the signal for the Milanese rising 
 against the Austrians. 
 
 The novel opens on the eve of this debut. 
 Mazzini, who is at the head of the plot, trusts 
 and admires Vittoria, but several of the con- 
 spirators have only too good reason to suspect 
 women, and especially singers. They dislike 
 the idea of Vittoria's co-operation, and 
 unluckily she gives them some apparent cause 
 to doubt her, by entering into correspondence 
 with her old friends Adela Pole (now Mrs 
 Sedley), and Wilfrid Pole (now Lieutenant 
 Pierson, serving with his uncle in the Austrian 
 army). Her letters are innocent but indiscreet. 
 They force Barto Rizzo, the agent of Count 
 Medole, an aristocratic leader of the conspir- 
 acy, to conclude that Vittoria must be either 
 an idiot or a traitor ; in either case she is unfit 
 to be trusted with so important a part in the 
 plot. Barto is a study in the headstrong, 
 
 175
 
 George Meredith 
 
 suspicious conspirator, whose error lies in his 
 conceit and in his doubts of women. Imagin- 
 ing that he knows what should be done, better 
 even than Mazzini, he determines, in the 
 temporary absence of the chief, to have the 
 rising postponed. Vittoria is equally deter- 
 mined to go on with her opera, however ; she 
 hotly resents the suspicions of her loyalty. 
 Pericles attempts to kidnap her with the aid 
 of Captain Weisspriess, an Austrian ofl&cer ; 
 he hopes to tame her into a state where she 
 will be kindled by the passion of love, not of 
 politics, and, like Carlo Ammiani, who is in 
 love with her, he foresees the risk of letting 
 her sing, as had been arranged, at La Scala on 
 the appointed evening. But, by the cleverness 
 of Beppo, one of Vittoria's bodyguard, the plot 
 fails ; her rival, Irma di Karski, is kidnapped 
 in her stead, and Vittoria does appear, to 
 win an instant success by her magnificent 
 singing, in the patriotic opera. "The house 
 rose, Italians and Germans together. Genius, 
 music, and enthusiasm break the line of 
 nationalities." Vittoria closes the opera by 
 singing the unprinted lyric which had been 
 agreed upon as the signal for the rising of 
 
 176
 
 Vittoria 
 
 Young Italy, beginning : — 
 
 ** I cannot count the years, 
 
 That you will drink, like me, 
 X The cup of blood and tears, 
 ' Ere she to you appears ; — 
 
 Italia, Italia, shall be free. ** 
 This defiance of the Austrians throws the 
 audience into confusion. Pericles is in terror 
 lest his precious singer should be injured by 
 their knavish tricks and politics, but Vittoria 
 is smuggled into safety by her well-wishers, 
 and eventually ensconced, by the intervention 
 of Weisspriess, at the Castle of Sonnenberg, 
 near Meran. Meantime, Milan remains as 
 before ; no rising takes place ; but Carlo 
 Ammiani, the young Milanese conspirator 
 who has aided his beloved to escape after the 
 opera, is thrown into prison. Wilfrid joins 
 the Lenkensteins * at Meran ; he is engaged to 
 Countess Lena, as he had been to Lady 
 Charlotte in England, but he has fallen into 
 disgrace with the Austrian authorities by 
 helping Vittoria to escape from the theatre. 
 
 * Anna and Lena are described as the "German beauties of Milan, 
 lively little women, and sweet." They become bitter enemies of Vittoria, 
 particularly because she had helped Angelo Guidascarpi to escape, who 
 had killed their brother Paul and wounded Weisspriess, Anna's lover. 
 
 177
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Wilfrid's sentimentalism is not yet cured, and 
 the least encouragement would attach him 
 once more to Vittoria. She begins to feel the 
 Austrian atmosphere of the Castle uncongenial 
 and hostile, and uses Wilfrid to further some 
 of her own plans. The party breaks up; 
 Lena throws over Wilfrid ; and Vittoria goes 
 back to resume her professional career in 
 Turin. 
 
 The autumn episodes of the story end here. 
 With the twenty-ninth chapter Meredith 
 begins the winter and spring episodes of the 
 revolt and war in "the year of flames for 
 continental Europe." Carlo, who escapes 
 from prison, falls under the spell of the 
 Countess Violetta d'Isorella, an aristocratic 
 beauty of the royalist party, who, before her 
 marriage, had stirred his boyish passions. 
 Her characteristics are **a leaning towards 
 evil, a light sense of shame, a desire for money, 
 a: :d in her heart a contempt for the principles 
 she did not possess, but which, apart from the 
 intervention of other influences, could oc- 
 casionally sway her actions." She instils a 
 doubt of Vittoria into his impressionable 
 heart, and he, on starting for Brescia, sends a 
 
 178
 
 Vittoria 
 
 message to his mother that Vittoria must stay 
 beside her at Milan. Violetta deHvers the 
 message to Vittoria in a careless way. 
 Vittoria thinks it wiser to remain at Turin, 
 where she is not only safe but able to make 
 money on the stage for the patriotic cause. 
 Carlo resents this disobedience. He cannot 
 believe in Charles Albert,* "the wobbling 
 king," as Vittoria does,t and, in a fit of ardent 
 republicanism, he demands peremptorily that 
 she shall leave Turin and break with her mon- 
 archical delusion. Thus the schism between 
 monarchists and republicans which hurt the 
 patriotic cause hurts the lovers also. Instead 
 of obeying him, or of going to sing in London, 
 as Pericles besought her, she considers it 
 better to follow the king's army and help as 
 far as she can in the liberation of Italy. 
 Vittoria's mind is too independent to be 
 swayed by Carlo at a distance. The latter 
 
 * Carlo shared the Mazzinist suspicions of Charles Albert, which, 
 together with the king's military irresolution, helped to wreck the revolution. 
 
 t Compare Mrs Browning's tribute in "Casa Guidi Windows" (the 
 second part). Meredith analyses Vittoria's view of the king into a sympa- 
 thetic pity for one whom she thought misjudged. She prided herself on 
 thinking "that she divined the king's character by mystical intuition." 
 Slight touches of self-importance are also noted in chapters xxxi and xxxii, 
 
 179
 
 George Meredith 
 
 fails to realise her strength of character, * 
 however, and he is wounded, alike in his 
 personal vanity and in his republican sym- 
 pathies, by her repeated refusal to quit the 
 king. 
 
 Meantime, Pericles manages, with the aid of 
 the Austrians, to carry off his pearl of singers ; 
 Carlo rescues her, however, and she obeys 
 his injunction to join his mother at Brescia. 
 But instead of following the Countess to Lago 
 Maggiore, when the rebellion was collapsing 
 under Radetzsky's vigorous attack, Vittoria 
 stays on in Milan to nurse Merthyr Powys, 
 She is sincerely longing for her marriage with 
 Carlo, t yet the sight of Powys makes her feel 
 some compunction at the thought of leaving 
 him to recover from his wounds, only to find 
 her married. Carlo, in her absence, falls 
 once more under Violetta's spell; she advises 
 
 * " It is the curse of man's education in Italy. He can see that she 
 has wits and courage. He will not consent to make use of them. She, 
 who hsB both heart and judgment — she is merely a little boat tied to a big 
 ship." See "Sandra Belloni" (chap Hi). 
 
 t Meredith (in ch. xxxv) admits her momentary lapse from devotion 
 to either music or patriotism. "She wept with longing for love and 
 dependence. She was sick of personal freedom. The blessedness of 
 marriage, of peace and dependence, came on h«r imagination like a soft 
 breeze from a hidden garden, like sleep," 
 
 180
 
 Vittoria 
 
 him to postpone his marriage in the interests 
 of the cause, and when Vittoria rejoins his 
 mother and himself at Lago Maggiore, it is to 
 find tjie chill of silent blame resting on herself 
 for the delay in arriving. She finds a passion- 
 less courtesy in Carlo, who is more concerned 
 now for the cause in Lombardy than for 
 his marriage. Besides, his vanity has been 
 inflamed by Violetta ; Vittoria has wounded 
 his pride by her delay and disobedience ; and 
 finally he is told that Barto Rizzo's mad 
 suspicions would handicap his influence if 
 Vittoria were to take his name at the present 
 crisis. Eventually, however. Carlo's silly 
 pique is overcome, and the marriage takes 
 place. Merthyr Powys chivalrously exerts 
 his influence to bring it about, while Carlo 
 realises that Vittoria will need his name to 
 protect her against Rizzo's fanatical ven- 
 geance Their marriage serves to stir up the 
 enemies of Vittoria in Milan, including not 
 only the conspirators who blame her for 
 double-dealing, but also the women who envy 
 her beauty and voice. Vittoria is stabbed by 
 Rizzo's wife, but not fatally. Her suffering 
 makes Carlo remorseful for his past treat- 
 
 181
 
 George Meredith 
 
 ment of her, before and after marriage, but he 
 still ignores her wisdom and advice in his 
 conceit of masculine superiority. "Her 
 husband!" Pericles thunders, "oh! she must 
 marry a young man, little donkey that she is ! 
 And he plays false to her. Good ; I do not 
 object. But imagine in your own mind, — 
 instead of passion, of rage, of tempest, she is 
 frozen wiz a repose." Instead of pushing on 
 to join Mazzini at Rome, as Vittoria and the 
 rest urge. Carlo plots to make a fresh fight for 
 Lombardy, where his plans have been already 
 betrayed to the authorities by the heartless 
 Violetta. His obstinate pride * refuses to 
 listen to any remonstrances. Vittoria bewails 
 her partial responsibility for his conduct, t 
 "I could have turned my husband from this 
 dark path ; I preferred to dream and sing. 
 I would not see — it was my pride that would 
 not see his error. My cowardice would not 
 wound him with a single suggestion." In any 
 
 ^ Policy took the others to Rome ; Carlo said grandly that he would 
 not leave beaten Lombardy, and admired himself, as he was admired bv 
 others, for this devotion. By the time that he saw through Violetta'i 
 treachery and his own folly, he had pledged himself to his followers too 
 &r to retreat. Read the penetrating paragraph at the opening of oh. zlv. 
 
 t The parallel between her and Nataly Radnor is very close at this 
 point. 
 
 182
 
 Vittoria 
 
 case, whether Carlo would have condescended 
 to listen to her or not, it is now too late to pull 
 him up. He heads the forlorn enterprise, 
 which is fore-doomed to failure. The battle 
 of Novara is fought, Brescia is bombarded, 
 and Carlo perishes with his party in their 
 flight. Vittoria's child is born safely, and 
 called Carlo Merthyr Ammiani. The reader 
 is left in the same tantalising uncertainty as at 
 the close of "Lord Ormont and his Aminta." 
 Did Vittoria ever change her last name to 
 Powys? It is to be hoped that she did. 
 
 " Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts 
 the flowers with hailstones 
 Off a sunny border, she was made to 
 bruise and bless." 
 She had bruised Powys often enough. He 
 deserved at least that she should bless him 
 even with a tardy gleam of sunshine. 
 
 Vittoria herself is the great figure in the 
 story. The superb creature dominates even 
 Pericles ; she sways Mazzini to belief in her ; 
 she catches the heart of the conspirators ; she 
 impresses, even while she offends, the Italian 
 aristocrats with an inexplicable combination 
 of charm and resolution. Meredith praises 
 
 183
 
 George Meredith 
 
 her singing enthusiastically. "Her voice 
 belonged to the order of the simply great 
 voices, and was a royal voice among them. 
 The great voice rarely astonishes our ears. 
 It illumines our souls." She puts her gift at 
 the service of the country, but her supreme 
 contribution to the struggle is the passionate 
 and tenacious idealism (see the passages in 
 chapters xv and xvi) of her faith in Italy. 
 This is one of the reasons why she and Carlo 
 disappoint one another ; he is the type of the 
 so-called practical conspirator, who is apt to 
 lose, in intrigues and compromises, the larger 
 vision to which Vittoria, like Mazzini, clung. 
 At the same time the total impression left 
 by Vittoria, it must be confessed, is somewhat 
 disappointing. She is a magnificent personal- 
 ity but she achieves little or nothing ; after 
 the great operatic scene, her influence is 
 scattered and fitful. She begins by behaving 
 with an indiscretion, almost amounting to 
 folly, in communicating with her old English 
 friends among the Austrians. Then she 
 repeats her English mistake by accepting the 
 love of Carlo ; he is at least a nobler char- 
 acter than Wilfrid, but he is no proper mate 
 
 184
 
 Vittoria 
 
 for her, and it is only the glamour of his heady 
 patriotism which blinds her to this ; her true 
 mate, Merthyr Powys, is still passed over. 
 The strain of the insurrection further weakens 
 her into a mood of yearning for married bliss 
 at one point, and into an almost flighty passion 
 for the king at another. Thus, while it has 
 become conventional to rank Vittoria as 
 priuia inter pares among the Meredithian 
 heroines, a close analysis of the tale seems to 
 show that, although her setting is heroic and 
 her qualities those of a great soul, the author 
 has not succeeded in conveying the impression 
 of unity, intensity, and passionate absorption 
 which we are entitled to expect from his 
 delineation of the peerless singer into which 
 the raw girl, Emilia, has developed. 
 
 But if Vittoria becomes in one sense less 
 interesting than Emilia, Pericles waxes in 
 force and favour. One's heart warms to this 
 Greek millionaire. His divine passion for 
 music has its humorous side, but there is 
 something epic in his devotion to the art ; it 
 is deeper than that of Vittoria herself. 
 Vittoria is patriot, singer, and woman by 
 turns. Pericles lives for music, or rather for 
 
 185
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the spiritual endowment of Vittoria's voice. 
 He follows her anxiously even inside the 
 fighting line. He threatens her, cajoles her, 
 appeals to her, spends money for her, with 
 the whole-hearted passion of the artistic 
 nature which counts no sacrifice too great for 
 its art. *'I am possessed wiz passion for her 
 voice. So it will be till I go to ashes. It is to 
 me ze one zsing divine in a pig, a porpoise 
 world." "Ser, if I wake not very late on 
 Judgment-Day, I shall zen hear — but why 
 should I talk poetry to you to make you laugh? 
 I have a divin' passion for zat woman. Do I 
 not give her to a husband, and say. Be happy ! 
 onnly sing ! Be kissed ! Be hugged ! onnly 
 give Pericles your voice." "It is not onnly 
 voice he craves, but a soul, and Sandra, your 
 countess, she has a soul." Meredith never 
 again created the musical enthusiast with such 
 power. The music-lovers in' ** One of Our 
 Conquerors" are creeping things compared 
 to this superb, vulgar, unselfish merchant, 
 who is ready to spend his wealth for music 
 and is wrathful because others will not see 
 the duty of putting it before patriotism and 
 love.
 
 Vittoria 
 
 The course of the novel * is uninterrupted 
 by the intrusion of the Philosopher's com- 
 ments upon pride and sentimentalism which 
 ret^d the progress of its lineal predecessor. 
 In his humorous apology for the psycho- 
 logical digressions in "Sandra Belloni," 
 Meredith announces that when Emilia is in 
 Italy, the Philosopher proposes to keep 
 entirely in the background, since in Italy 
 ** there is a field of action, of battles and con- 
 spiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights 
 for plain issues, and he can but sum results." 
 We shall be quit of the Philosopher, my friends 
 "in the day when Italy reddens the sky with 
 the banners of a land revived." This pi omise 
 is kept. The defects of technique in "Vittoria" 
 are not due to the love of abstract digressions, 
 but to the fact that Meredith had several 
 stories, instead of one, to tell, and that the 
 exigencies of the historical background forced 
 him to tell them all together, with the result 
 that the masses of detail overlap, and a certain 
 cumbrousness ensues. The supreme moments 
 
 * James Thomson applied to Meredith Coleridge's saying about Shakes- 
 peare, that "the intellectual power and the creative energy wrestle as in a 
 war-embrace." In "Vittoria," which is crowded with phases of this 
 combat, the creative energy is hardly ever overpowered in episodes. 
 
 187
 
 George Meredith 
 
 or episodes are in the Mazzini-scenes at the 
 beginning ("Vittoria" is one of the few 
 novels in Meredith's list which open well) ; 
 in the opera-chapters (ch. xviii — xxii) ; in ch. 
 xxvi (the duel in the pass) ; and in the Rinaldo 
 Guidascarpi passages. These do not win for 
 "Vittoria" the position of primacy which is 
 claimed among George Eliot's novels for 
 *' Romola" — written three years before. They 
 do not even place " Vittoria" on a level with 
 the older writer's Italian romance in point of 
 symmetry and structure. But they introduce 
 peasants, citizens, and soldiers who are not 
 simply correct but vital ; every figure in 
 " Vittoria " throbs with reality, and the novel 
 never leaves the impression of a manu- 
 factured article which some of '* Romola" 's 
 more finished pages produce. 
 
 Like Carlyle's ** French Revolution," the 
 story requires to be read alongside of a plain 
 historical summary of the period across which 
 it throws quick flashes of light. Such a sum- 
 mary may be found by the English reader 
 in the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco's 
 "Liberation of Italy," in Mr. Bolton King's 
 succinct "History of Italian Unity," or in 
 
 188
 
 Vittoria 
 
 Mr. G. M. Trevelyan's fine historical study, 
 ** Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Repub- 
 lic." Mr. Trevelyan incidentally points out 
 tha^ Laura Piaveni reproduces part of the 
 character of the Princess Belgiojoso, a high- 
 minded and devoted aristocratic adherent of 
 the revolution, while Luciano Romara is a 
 study of L. Manara, the Milanese aristocrat 
 who commanded the Lombard Bersaglieri 
 (see the allusion in ch. xii of ** The Egoist "). 
 The opening chapter of Carlyle's ''Latter-day 
 Pamphlets " should also be read, in order to 
 catch the revolutionary throb of the period. 
 
 The Alpine scene at the opening is one of 
 the mountain-pictures which Meredith fre- 
 quently painted (see below, under "The 
 Adventures of Harry Richmond "). Mazzini 
 himself, after crossing by the St. Gothard pass 
 to Milan in 1848, wrote: **no one knows 
 what poetry is, who has not found himself 
 there, at the highest point of the route, on the 
 plateau, surrounded by the peaks of the Alps 
 in the everlasting silence which speaks of 
 God. There is no atheism possible in the 
 Alps." 
 
 189
 
 ) 
 
 ^ THE ADVENTURES 
 
 OF HARRY RICHMOND 
 
 i
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 THIS long novel, published in book form 
 in 1871, is, like "The Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel," a study in the relations of father and 
 son,* but it is written in the first person, and 
 Harry plays a much less active r6le than 
 Richard. When the story begins, Harry is 
 carried oflF in his father's arms, and the hero, 
 as boy or youth, has little initiative ; he is 
 always being carried on some tide, or swayed, 
 to his good or undoing, by the influence of 
 two or three stronger natures, particularly 
 that of his father. Roy Richmond is the real 
 hero of the story. Unlike Sir Austin, he 
 wins the confidence of his boy, but his errors 
 fail to wreck his son's happiness. Roy is a 
 wonderful father. A preposterous adven- 
 turer, if you like, but not a scamp or scoundrel 
 
 * la both cases the father wrongs the son not by harshness but br 
 misguided affection. Sir Austin's pride is in the system he has devised, 
 Roy Richmond's in the ancestral dignity for which he conceives it hia 
 duty to train Harry. But while Harr>''a fortunes turn out happily. 
 Richard's close in tragic gloom. 
 
 M 193
 
 George Meredith 
 
 of the Barry Lyndon order. He is not even 
 bitten with the ambition of the great Mel ; his 
 social aspiration, for all its folly, is unselfishly 
 directed to what he conceives to be the best 
 interests of his boy ; if it is egoism, it is egoism 
 of the higher kind. The fascination of the 
 man, with his incorrigibly dramatic vein and 
 florid temper, throws Harry into the shade, 
 and the titular hero's character never develops 
 much independent interest. The wealth of 
 minor characters, of whom the country folk 
 are specially good, and the episodical nature 
 of the school-scenes, the German scenes, and 
 the gipsy-adventures, also tend to divert the 
 reader's attention, not from the father's superb 
 faith in his own genius and the contagion of 
 his personality, but from the character of the 
 son, who becomes little more than a pawn 
 upon the chess-board. 
 
 The following is an outline of the pawn's 
 movements. 
 
 Harry Richmond, in his childhood, re- 
 sembled ** a kind of shuttle-cock flying between 
 two battledores." He had the worst possible 
 training for a child, an existence divided 
 between two parties in his family. This unsat- 
 
 194
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 isfactory state of matterscame about as follows. 
 His father, a music-master, had eloped with 
 one of the two daughters of Squire Beltham of 
 Riversley in Hampshire. The marriage proved 
 unfortunate. The lady's fortune was squan- 
 dered, and she was driven crazy before her 
 death. Harry, the only child of the marriage, 
 was taken to Riversley, where his grandfather 
 and aunt brought him up, for foui years. 
 
 Roy Richmond, however, had plans for his 
 little son. Richmond was the son of an actress, 
 Anastasia Dewsbury, but he firmly believed 
 that his father had been one of the Royal Fam- 
 ily, and he therefore determined to claim royal 
 honours for his son. He called himself Augus- 
 tus Fitzgeorge Frederick William Richmond 
 Guelph Roy. Meredith portrays him as an 
 unselfish, chivalrous, and warm-hearted man, 
 with irresistible powers of fascination, who 
 deceives even himself. He is voluble and vol- 
 atile, half a charlatan, incorrigibly dramatic,* 
 
 * He tells bow he used to stand, as a boy, beside his nurse-washer- 
 woman's tub, "blowing bubbles and listening to her prophecies of my 
 fortune for hours " (ch. xxxix). This is one of the significant little touches 
 which Meredith loves to put in, casually. Another is to be found in the 
 44th chapter of "The Egoist," where Lady Isabel recalls how Willoughby, 
 as a child, one day mounted a chair and told the family, " I am the sun of 
 the house." 
 
 195
 
 George Meredith 
 
 a spendthrift of the first water, and an im- 
 postor on the grand scale. Roy's egotism is 
 of a glorified character. There is a plausible, 
 radiant gaiety about him which overpowers 
 even his son's judgment till nearly the end 
 of the tale, and which prevails with not a 
 few women of his acquaintance. Goethe 
 once wrote : 
 
 Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, 
 Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren. 
 Whatever steady control of life belonged to 
 Harry Richmond, he did not inherit it from 
 his flamboyant sire. 
 
 The novel opens with a scene in which Roy 
 carries off Harry from Riversley. The boy 
 is five years old, and, after a short time in 
 London, he is sent finally to school. Mean- 
 time Roy is off abroad, after financial troubles 
 in London. Harry runs away from school, 
 but is rescued from some gipsies by his aunt, 
 and taken home to Riversley, where he is 
 educated on the tacit understanding that he is 
 heir to the estate, if he breaks with his father. 
 Telemachus, however, yearns for Ulysses. 
 From a stray hint Harry infers that his father 
 is in London, and, in company with Temple, 
 
 196
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 a ■chool-friend, he decamps for the metropolis. 
 In a fog and a crowd, the pair are kidnapped 
 by a philanthropic sea-captain, who fancies 
 they have fallen into bad company and thinks 
 a voyage will bring them to their senses. On 
 board the ** Priscilla,"* in spite of their pro- 
 testations, they are carried to Germany, 
 where they manage to make their way to a 
 ■mall Cjerman court. Here Roy is found, 
 match-making on Harry's behalf, whom he 
 represents not only as " the grandson and heir 
 of one of the richest commoners in England" 
 but, in addition, as possessed of royal blood, 
 and therefore a suitable match for princess 
 Ottilia, a little, sensible fairy of twelve or 
 thirteen. 
 
 A 
 
 Father and son then return to England via 
 Paris, "the central hotel on the high-road of 
 civilization." The squire welcomes Harry 
 back to Riversley, while Roy's career in 
 London again lands him in prison for debt. 
 After being released, by the aid of Harry, the 
 incorrigible spendthrift displays himself at 
 
 • Tb« one touoh of unraality in these clever ohapteri (xii-TdU) is the 
 ■talcnicnt that two small schoolboys oould recollsot •oou^b C(o«r» ta4 
 Saiiuga to rcfulti thoir captor's theological arftumaats. 
 
 197
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Bath,* where a Welsh heiress falls in love 
 with him. This escapade, from which he 
 emerges scatheless, opens Harry's eyes to his 
 father's scheming character, but the lad's love 
 and pride are unaffected ; in fact, the very 
 contempt of the squire for Roy accentuates 
 the son's obstinate determination to side 
 with his erratic sire. On his twenty-first 
 birthday, Harry inherits his grandmother's 
 fortune and is promised by the squire estates 
 and money to the value of £20,000 a year on 
 the day when he marries Miss Jane Ilchester, 
 the squire's protegee. In fulfilment of an old 
 promise, however, he rejoins his father, 
 who carries him off to Ostend, where the 
 princess is recruiting after an illness. Harry's 
 love for Ottilia and his affection for his 
 father induce him to furnish the latter with 
 funds to take the princess -for a cruise in 
 a vacht, which ends in a visit to Sarkfeld. 
 Here the love-affair between Ottilia and 
 Harry is wrecked, not only by her relatives' 
 interference, but by Roy's attempt to en- 
 
 * It is in one of these chapters, the trventy-seoond, that the famous 
 leg " is brought forward, whiob afterwards was used with suob ssrin- 
 •omic effect in " The Egoist." 
 
 198
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 trap* the former into a formal engagement ; 
 the girl's self-respect is wounded, and Harry 
 returns sadly to England with his father, and 
 to Riversley without him. Ere long the 
 story of the German affair leaks out, for 
 Richmond is in the field again, vaunting the 
 alliance between his son and Ottilia. The 
 squire discovers, to his disgust, that Harry's 
 money has been at the disposal of Roy. All 
 remonstrances with the latter fail. He is 
 infatuated by the opportunity of gaining 
 money to push his claim to royal birth on 
 behalf of Harry, and thus to forward his 
 interests at Sarkfeld. The invincible bonhomie 
 of the man leads him to venture on another 
 social flight in London, where his ambitious 
 follies drive the squire to exasperation and 
 even alarm Harry. Roy gets the latter elected 
 M.P. for Chippenden, and receives a 
 mysterious gift of £25,000, which relieves him 
 from serious embarrassment. This money is 
 really paid by the self-sacrificing, devoted 
 Dorothy Beltham, who has supplied him 
 secretly with funds all along, but Roy, in his 
 
 * The device of a love-scene overheard had been already OMd la 
 "Sandra Belloni" (ch. xxxvi). 
 
 199
 
 George Meredith 
 
 infatuation, takes the gift as a tacit attempt 
 on the part of Royalty to hush up his claim. 
 His manoeuvres therefore become more pro- 
 nounced than ever. He inveigles Princess 
 Ottilia over to the Isle of Wight, by sending 
 an exaggerated report of Harry's health, and 
 apparently has the threads of the plot in his 
 own hands. But the entanglement fails. 
 The meshes of the net break. Harry realises * 
 that Ottilia cannot be won in this underhand 
 fashion, or indeed at all ; she herself is too 
 high-minded to let Roy, ** the hopping, skip- 
 ping social meteor, weaver of webs," manage 
 her destiny ; her relatives interfere in time to 
 safeguard the honour of her name, which 
 Roy imagined could only be saved by her 
 marriage to his son ; the Squire and Janet 
 appear on the scene, and side with the 
 princess ; finally, in a tremendous interview, 
 Roy is denounced and exposed by the indig- 
 nant squire as an impostor, a blackguard, and 
 a swindler. 
 The squire only lives for eight months after 
 
 * " This looking at the roots of yourself, if you are possessed of a nobler 
 half that will do it, is a sound corrective of an excessive ambition. Un- 
 fortunately it would seem that youn£ men can do it only in sickness" 
 (eh. xlvii). 
 
 200
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 this. Janet inherits all his property, while 
 £3,000 a year is Harry's comparatively slender 
 portion. The latter devotes himself to his 
 father, whose spirits are shattered, though he 
 never whines over the collapse of his ambi- 
 tions. Ottilia marries a German prince, 
 and Harry, still sore at what he is conceited 
 enough to consider Janet's hard treatment 
 of himself, goes off to travel on the Continent,* 
 returning to find Janet engaged to the Marquis 
 of Edbury, a vicious young aristocrat. He 
 then realises the sterling worth of this ador- 
 able English girl and the depth of his real 
 feeling for her. But it is too late. On the 
 eve of the marriage, however, the Marquis 
 is killed, and Harry eventually wins Janet 
 under Ottilia's roof. They go back to 
 England, only to find Riversley on fire, and 
 Roy burned to death. 
 
 This novel is one of the easiest to read in 
 all the series of the Meredith-romances. It is 
 a study in one form of social ambition, but in 
 a sense there is more adventure in it than in 
 
 * " Carry your fever to the Alps, you of minds diseased. " The passage 
 •t the close of oh. liii, beginning with these words, is paralleled by the 
 Alpine scenes in " Diana of the Crossways " (oh. xv xvi) and partially 
 in " Beauchamp's Career " (oh. xlvi, at the beginning). 
 
 ?^ 201
 
 George Meredith 
 
 most of the others, and considerably less 
 intrusion of philosophic comment. Now and 
 again the author pulls himself up with the 
 reflection: "My English tongue admonishes 
 me that I have fallen upon a tone resembling 
 one who uplifts the finger of piety in a salon 
 of conversation.** *But as a rule incident and 
 action abound ; in fact, as has been already 
 hinted, they abound to the detriment of the 
 story's construction. 
 
 Among the interspersed comments, particu- 
 larly in the German scenes, Meredith has put 
 some of his keenest work into Dr. Julius von 
 Karsteg's incisive criticism of the English 
 character (ch. xxix)t and Prince Hermann's 
 estimate of the English in India (ch. xxxiv : 
 "The masses in India are in character 
 elephant all over, tail to proboscis ! servile 
 till they trample you, and not so stupid as 
 they look. But you've done wonders in 
 
 * This semi-serious apology, in ch. xxxii, follows a profound paoiiatfe 
 upon the influence of the past. "We are eons of yesterday, not of the 
 morning. The past is our mortal mother, no dead thing." 
 
 t With the description of plutocrats as " huge human pumpkins, who 
 cover your country and drain its blood and intellect," compare the use of 
 the gourd in " Beauchamp's Career " (ch. xxv). The swollen, ungainly 
 pumpkin is a favourite Meredithian symbol for rich vapidity and 
 Belfishness. 
 
 202
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 in India, and we can't forget it. Your 
 administration of justice is worth all your 
 battles there"), the latter recurring in "Lord 
 Ormjont and his Aminta" more than once. 
 The great descriptive passages are in chapters 
 ii and iii, where Harry's boyhood is delineated, 
 in ch. xi (the fog in London), in ch. xv (the 
 meeting with Ottilia in the forest), in ch. xxx 
 (the love-scene beside the lake), and in ch. 
 xlvi (Harry's convalescence among the 
 gipsies). In the last-named chapter, Mere- 
 dith contrasts Kiomi * with some other 
 members of her sex. ** Chastity of nature, 
 intense personal pride, were as proper to her 
 as the free winds are to the heaths : they 
 were as visible to dull divination as the milky 
 blue about the iris of her eyeballs. She had 
 actually no animal vileness, animal though 
 she might be termed, and would have 
 appeared if compared with Heriot's admirable 
 Cissies and Gwennies, and other ladies of 
 the Graces that run to fall, and spend their 
 pains more in kindling the scent of the hunts- 
 man than in effectively flying." The said 
 
 * She belongs to the line which runs from the " Gitanilla " of Csrvantaa 
 ts Jiaio's " Eimaralda" and Sorrow's " Isopsl Bemtrs." 
 
 20^
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Heriot and the Marquis of Edbury divide 
 the rdle of Steerforth, and it takes both 
 Heriot and Temple to do for Harry what 
 Ripton does for Richard Feverel, or even 
 little Gollett for Matthew Weyburn. The 
 gipsy girl, Kiomi, and the beautiful, vivacious 
 Julia Rippenger* are more living than Mabel 
 Sweetwinter, the Em'ly of the story, but 
 Martha Thresher and Mrs. Waddy are 
 moulded out of the same brown wholesome 
 clay as Mrs. Boulby and Mrs. Sumfit in 
 "Rhoda Fleming." Mrs. Waddy's sub- 
 servience to Roy, in fact, is the glorification 
 of Mrs. Todger's reverential attitude to Mr. 
 Pecksniff. t As for the squire, Meredith has 
 sketched in him "the Tory mind, in its 
 attachment to solidity, fixity, certainty, its un- 
 matched generosity within a limit, its devotion 
 to the family, and its family eye for the 
 country," but in his next novel he was to 
 draw another type of this sturdy, loyal 
 character, upon more heroic lines, in the 
 
 * The love-passages between her and Heriot at school are echoed in 
 the opening scenes of " Lord Ormont and his Aminta." 
 
 t " Give me leave to tell you it requires a most penetrating eye to 
 discern a fool through the disguises of gaiety and good breeding." Field- 
 ing gives this saying to a woman (" Tom Jones," book xi, cb. S). 
 
 204
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 Earl of Romfrey. It is one proof of the 
 writer's skill that, while we sympathise with 
 the squire in his contempt and anger, the 
 exposure of Roy leaves us with a certain pity 
 for the poor wretch. Mr. Peterborough, the 
 clerical tutor, is treated with the same deadly 
 sarcasm as his fellow clergymen in the rest of 
 the novels ; he is a pompous and amorous lay- 
 figure. The Bulsted brothers are a refined, 
 upper-class type of the farcical pair in ** Evan 
 Harrington." 
 
 Pride and sentimentalism, as usual, are 
 among the dominant motives of the tale. 
 Harry has a pride of his own, in his 
 fancied sense of mastery over the squire and 
 of penetration into Janet's real character, as 
 well as in the craving for '*the vain glitter of 
 hereditary distinction " (ch. xxxiii), which he 
 caught from Roy, but the sentimentalism of 
 his nonsensical airs is equally marked. He 
 allows his dreams of his father and his roman- 
 tic attachment to Ottilia to interfere with his 
 better judgment, till they blind him to the 
 real facts of the case. As he confesses, he 
 was an egotist. His self-love was his worst 
 enemy. " I remember walking at my swiftest 
 
 205
 
 George Meredith 
 
 pace, blaming everybody I knew for insuffi- 
 ciency, for want of subordination to my 
 interests, for poverty of nature, grossness, 
 blindness to the fine lights shining in me ; I 
 blamed the Fates for harassing me, circum- 
 stances for not surrounding me with friends 
 worthy of me. The central / resembled the 
 sun of this universe, with the difference that 
 it shrieked for nourishment, instead of dis- 
 pensing it. My monstrous conceit of elevation 
 will not suffer condensation into sentences.* 
 It is the carnival of egotism which occurs in 
 the love-season of youth. 
 
 Like Evan Harrington, Harry is brought to 
 his senses by the influence of good and true 
 women. Janet Ilchester read him more truly 
 than Princess Ottilia,* and while the character 
 of the latter is drawn in exquisite half-lines, 
 it is the English girl who develops better. 
 Meredith makes her a woman of courage and 
 sense. From "a bold, plump girl, fond of 
 male society," she grows into a splendid 
 Englishwoman, self-reliant and shrewd, " as 
 
 * As later in "The Egoist," so here, Meredith shows how two women, 
 interested in the same man, are able to avoid suspicion of one another, if 
 they are large-hearted enough. The relations between Lady Charlotte and 
 Emilia, in " Sandra Belloni," are similar but inferior. 
 
 206
 
 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 
 
 firm as a rock and as sweet as a flower on it." 
 Ottilia is more elusive. She is apparently in 
 love with Harry, but courage is required to 
 bring) their love to a point, and her traditions 
 and training handicap her. She has not even 
 the help of finding courage in Harry, who 
 misses her as Beauchamp missed Renee. 
 " She was a woman who could only love 
 intelligently — love, that is, in the sense of 
 giving herself. She had the power of passion, 
 and it could be stirred ; but he who kindled it 
 wrecked his chance if he could not stand clear 
 in her intellect's unsparing gaze." Ottilia, 
 especially after her illness, let her romantic 
 imagination dwell on Harry ; but her native 
 sense soon controlled the generous sentiment 
 of her heart, and she was saved from what 
 would have been a mesalliance by her per- 
 ception of Roy's scheming* and of Harry's 
 weaknesses. At the same time, her marriage 
 to the German prince is left unexplained, 
 
 * One of Roy's ejaculations recalrs a sentence in " The Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel." When he is ba£9ed by the straightforwardness of Lieschen, a 
 German maid, he apostrophises the untameable things of life as " Idiots, 
 insects, women, and the salt sea ocean 1 " Meredith had already remarked 
 that "argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a 
 ■tone-wall." 
 
 207
 
 George Meredith 
 
 as is Janet's engagement to the Marquis 
 Edbury. The episode of the election (in ch. 
 xliii) is equally loose ; but in his next novel 
 Meredith was to lift English politics into a 
 really central place, just as he was to draw at 
 full length in Cecilia Halkett the figure which 
 he had merely outlined in Clara Goodwin. 
 
 208
 
 ) 
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 TN 1868 Meredith assisted his friend, 
 -'- Captain Frederick Maxse, R.N., who 
 was standing as Radical candidate for South- 
 ampton after a brilliant phase of service in 
 the Crimea. "Beauchamp's Career," first 
 published in book-form in 1876, was an 
 outcome of this electioneering experience. 
 Captain (afterwards Admiral) Maxse was 
 one of the author's closest friends ; ** Modern 
 Love " had been dedicated to him in 1862 ; 
 and it was this personal friendship which lent 
 such glow to the delineation of Nevil Beau- 
 champ's character and also helped to make 
 the novel one of the richest in the Meredith- 
 series. The author frankly confesses it is a 
 political novel, but the reader need not be 
 afraid. This is neither a viewy nor a dull 
 book ; it is political in the sense that all 
 questions of social reform and imperial policy 
 are viewed through the vivid, engaging 
 
 211
 
 George Meredith 
 
 temperament of a personality.* The book has 
 no plot. Nevil Beauchamp's career seems 
 to be opening just when he is drowned. 
 But the episodes of the sailor - politician's 
 life can be arranged so as to throw light 
 upon his development, more easily than in 
 the case of "Vittoria," which is equally 
 plotless. 
 
 The outline of events is as follows. 
 
 Nevil Beauchamp is an orphan ; his father, 
 a colonel in the British army, had married 
 the eldest sister of the Hon. Everard Romfrey, 
 of Steynham in Sussex, a sturdy aristocrat. 
 Nevil had become a midshipman, and when 
 the story opens his chivalrous temper is 
 excited on behalf of his country, which is 
 threatened by a French invasion, t He also 
 fights a young cousin, Cecil Baskelett, for 
 casting reflections upon the name of Mrs. 
 
 * " I give you the position of the country . . . The youth I introduce to 
 you will rarely let us escape from it ; for the reason that he was born with 
 so extreme and passionate a love for his country, that he thought all things 
 else of mean importance in comparison." 
 
 t The prose version of the panic in 1853 will be found in Morley's "Life 
 of Cobden " (ch. xxiii). The third and fourth chapters of the novel 
 should be read along with the twenty-fourth chapter of the same 
 biography. 
 
 212
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 Rosamund Gulling,* the widow of an English 
 ofl&cer, who keeps house for his uncle, and 
 who has a warm, maternal love for the boy. 
 Wh^ the Crimean war breaks out, he agrees 
 with Bright and the Manchester school — to 
 his uncle's disgust. But, when ordered to 
 the Dardanelles, he behaves pluckily. A 
 French friend. Captain Roland de Croisnel, 
 takes him to Venice, to recover from a 
 wound, and there he falls madly in love with 
 his friend's sister, a lovely girl of seventeen. 
 Roland owes his life to Nevil, and the girl's 
 gratitude presently ripens, under the subtle 
 charm of the place and of Beauchamp's 
 personality, into a warmer feeling. Renee, 
 however, has been already promised by her 
 father to a middle-aged French count, who 
 appears upon the scene. She refuses, t after 
 
 * One of Richardson's lady-correspondents pled with him to make a 
 widow the heroine of a story. " I wish to see an exemplary widow drop 
 from your pen." Rosamund Gulling is Meredith's nearest approach to 
 this, for Lady Blandish and Lady Grace Halley are secondary figures ; 
 Mrs. Ghump is out of the question, and the rest are either not exemplary 
 or unimportant. He never challenged the laurels won by Thackeray in 
 " Esmond." 
 
 t Lack of courage at Venice, as afterwards at Tourdestelle, prevents her 
 from breaking through conventionalities ; but Meredith also mentions 
 the sense of duty to her family. He was in love with to is Frenchwoman 
 among his heroines, and the reader is almost inclined to share his feelioga 
 towards her. 
 
 213
 
 George Meredith 
 
 a passionate love-scene with Nevil (in the 
 glorious chapters viii and ix), to obey the 
 instincts of her heart and marry the English 
 officer. Nevil's appeals by letter to his uncle 
 only provoke the latter's amusement, and, 
 instead of returning to settle in England, he 
 goes off cruising in the Mediterranean on a 
 war-ship, and serves with distinction on the 
 African coast. He is made commander. 
 When he does return to England, it is to 
 stand as Radical candidate for Bevisham, 
 under the aegis of a Dr. Shrapnel, aged 
 eighty-six, who is a single-minded Radical 
 agitator against game-laws, land-laws, creeds, 
 and marriage-laws. 
 
 Everard Romfrey, annoyed at this breach in 
 the family traditions of Toryism, puts up Cecil 
 Baskelett, now an idle, mischievous army 
 officer, as the rival candidate. At the height 
 of the canvass, an enigmatic message from 
 Renee summons Beauchamp to Tourdestelle, 
 her country-seat in France, where she had 
 boasted to a young admirer about her English 
 friend's chivalry, and had staked her glove that 
 he would respond to her summons within a 
 specified term of hours. As a storm had delayed 
 
 214
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 Hm beyond his time, the glove is forfeited, but 
 Beauchamp recovers it, outwits his French 
 rival, and returns to England, leaving Renee 
 as he had found her, a neglected, unhappy 
 wife. Her whim costs Nevil his election. 
 The repeated rumours of an intrigue with a 
 Frenchwoman ruin his chances, and he is at 
 the bottom of the poll. He also endangers 
 his chances in another direction. Miss 
 Cecilia Halkett, the daughter of an English 
 colonel, an heiress, a yachtswoman, and a 
 beauty, finds it harder than ever to champion 
 her friend Beauchamp against the persistent 
 gossip of the county, while the glamour of 
 Renee prevents him from doing justice to the 
 splendid qualities of the English girl's char- 
 acter.* Mrs. Culling does her best to open 
 his eyes to his opportunity. His uncle 
 favours the match, and even Renee writes, 
 advising him to marry. He does make a move 
 towards Cecilia. But matters are suddenly 
 twisted by an unscrupulous action t on the 
 
 * A more creditable scruple also swayed him: he was at this time 
 in need ot money Csee ch. xxxix). 
 
 t Done under the influence of liquor ; but it was bad wine, Meredith 
 explains ! 
 
 215
 
 George Meredith 
 
 part of Captain Baskelett, who misrepresents 
 Dr. Shrapnel to Everard Romfrey as having 
 reflected on Mrs. Gulling's character. Rom- 
 frey's anger leads him to horsewhip the 
 doctor, * for which Nevil insists that he must 
 apologise. Romfrey, however, appeals to 
 Mrs. Culling for proof that Shrapnel had 
 previously insulted her, when she went to 
 remonstrate with him for entangling Nevil. 
 She has not courage to confess that her 
 personal dislike for Shrapnel had led her to 
 exaggerate the doctor's language into an un- 
 truth, giving Romfrey a wrong impression of 
 him. Her weakness has the effect of 
 confirming Romfrey in his refusal to apologise, 
 and of embittering Nevil against his uncle and 
 herself. "You set fire to the train," the 
 indignant youth tells her. "You hated the 
 old man, and you taught Mr. Romfrey to 
 think you had been insulted. I see it all. 
 Now you must have the courage to tell him 
 of your error." His very courtship of Cecilia 
 
 • He does not describe the horsewhipping, any more than Wilfrid's 
 Mstifiation of Mr. Pericles in " Sandra Belloni " ; even the account in 
 " One of Our Conquerors" (ch. xxx\'ii) is bare and allusive. Similarly 
 with the duels throughout the novels : Meredith often discusses them, bnt 
 ha never describes them, althouifh they are sometimes vital to his plot. 
 
 216
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 is subordinated to the desire of exacting an 
 apology from Everard. 
 
 The unexpected succession of the latter to 
 the^itle of Lord Avonley only whets Beau- 
 champ's zeal, until his uncle is stung into 
 losing his temper and retorting with a demand 
 that Beauchamp shall apologise to Mrs. 
 Gulling ; when the youth refuses, he is or- 
 dered to leave the family house in London 
 which he had been allowed to tenant. Sud- 
 denly Renee appears in London, flying in 
 desperation from her husband to throw herself 
 on Nevil's protection. But, like Clotilde in 
 ** The Tragic Comedians," she is taken aback. 
 She finds that her lover wishes prudently to 
 safeguard her position, before taking any rash 
 step, instead of impetuously carrying her off.* 
 He telegraphs for Mrs. Gulling to chaperon 
 her, and her family are summoned, like Prin- 
 cess Ottilia's in " The Adventures of Harry 
 Richmond," to safeguard her reputation. 
 
 * Besides, Shrapnel's ethical teaching upon the danger of passion inter- 
 fering with duty had borne fruit. "He could not possibly talk to her, 
 who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and the world's 
 dues, fees, and claims on us." " A man standing against the world in a 
 good cause, with a runaway wife on his bands, carries a burden, however 
 precious it be to him." But he cannot admit this scruple to the runaway 
 herself I 
 
 217
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Ren^e, half against her will, is again saved 
 from herself by Beauchamp. Before the 
 French party leave, Lord Avonley at last 
 manages to persuade Mrs. Culling to marry 
 him, while Cecilia, at the fresh evidence of 
 what seems to be Beauchamp's persistent in- 
 fatuation for Renee, feels it unmaidenly to let 
 her heart go out to him any longer. She and 
 her father start for Italy ; on her return she 
 agrees to marry a Mr. Blackburn Tuckham, 
 who has been persistently wooing her. She 
 has no sooner done so than Beauchamp arrives 
 to propose to her on his own account. After a 
 last interview they part, she bitterly re- 
 proaching herself for having ever doubted 
 him, he stunned by the loss of a woman whom 
 he had only learned to appreciate rightly when 
 it was too late. 
 
 Meantime Lady Avonley, who is expecting 
 her first child,* is broken-hearted at Nevil's 
 loss of Cecilia, and blames herself bitterly for 
 her cowardice in having failed to give her 
 husband a true account of Shrapnel's conduct 
 
 * This is the third instance of Meredith's insight into the effects pro- 
 duced by maternity upon a woman's character. He had touched the same 
 string in describing Lucy Feverel and Vittoria Ammiani, and be was to do 
 •o again, with even greater power, in Carinthia Fleetwood. 
 
 218
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 towards herself. She sets herself to per- 
 suade the Earl to make an apology. The 
 news of Nevil's illness swells her eagerness ; 
 she plans to apologise herself; and eventually 
 her husband, in order to pacify her, bends 
 his pride and apologises handsomely to Dr. 
 Shrapnel. 
 
 This is the emotional climax of the story. 
 The last two chapters huddle up the closing 
 events of the career of Beauchamp. On 
 recovering from his illness he marries Jenny 
 Denham, the doctor's ward, who has been 
 his nurse. The marriage is one of gratitude, 
 rather than of love, but the pair are happy 
 together during their brief married life. It is 
 brief, for, a year later, Beauchamp is drowned 
 in the Otley, when rescuing a little boy. 
 
 The gratuitous tragedy of Beauchamp's 
 death lies open to the same shafts of criticism 
 as fell upon the conclusion of "The Ordeal 
 of Richard Feverel," But it is thankless to 
 dwell on any such flaws of construction when 
 the novel offers a wealth of pregnant insight 
 and romance which is unrivalled in the entire 
 series of the Meredithian stories. It is not a 
 one-figure book, by any means, but the hero's 
 
 219
 
 George Meredith 
 
 character * is the outstanding feature of its 
 pages. Beauchamp is a young naval ofl&cer 
 of the best type, full of spirit, keen on his 
 profession, chivalrous,t and tenacious of his 
 purpose. What deflects him, like Alvan, is 
 the disturbing element of passion. In his 
 romantic adoration of Renee Meredith marks 
 the danger of passion being stirred too early, 
 when the nature is apt to be swayed beyond 
 the control of reason. Eve came too soon 
 upon the scene. Beauchamp's love is no 
 mere susceptibility to the charms of women. 
 He remains loyal to Renee. But while his 
 nature is not inflammable, it is described as 
 thrown out of its proper balance and harmony 
 by the entrance of this love-passion for the 
 French girl. Strongly as Meredith empha- 
 sises the truth that a capacity for being stirred 
 and moved by passion forms an element of all 
 growth, he is thoroughly alive to the risk of 
 it breaking loose from the sovereign brain. 
 One of the most unfortunate results of this 
 
 * He begins on tlie good foundation of hero-worship, not only for men 
 of action but for men of ideas like Carlyle. This saves him from being 
 conceited and priggish, even in his youthful propaganda against the Tory- 
 ism of his relations. 
 
 t He inherited this from his father (see ch. zxvO. 
 
 220
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 aberration, in the case of Beauchamp, is the 
 injustice which he does to himself and to 
 Cecilia Halkett.* She is wasted upon Mr. 
 Blackburn Tuckham, a dogmatic, exuberant 
 Tory with ** a round head, square flat fore- 
 head, and ruddy face ; he stood as if his feet 
 claimed the earth under them for his own." 
 The comic spirit revels in this type of English- 
 man. Every touch tells. "On the question 
 of politics, ' I venture to state,' he remarked 
 in anything but the tone of a venture, * that 
 no educated man of ordinary sense who has 
 visited our colonies will come back a Liberal.' 
 As for a man of sense and education being a 
 Radical, he scouted the notion with a pooh 
 sufl&cient to awaken a vessel in the doldrums." 
 Mr. Tuckham still walks on the grain-giving 
 earth, though the Cecilia Halketts of real 
 life are more likely to throw themselves away 
 on detestable, plausible army captains like 
 
 * She had all the makiags of a true mate for Beauchamp. In ch. : 
 after describing her fresh, graceful beauty, Meredith gives her this keen 
 saying : " Intellectual differences do not cause wounds, except when very 
 nnintellectual sentiments are behind-them : — my conceit, your impatience." 
 Impatience was Beauchamp's defect. Cecilia's was not conceit, whatever 
 it may have been ; feminine prejudice in her, as in Mrs. Culling, it 
 responsible for mistakes of judgment, but Meredith draws her quick- 
 witted, warm, high-spirited, and noble character in colours which leave 
 her only second to Diana among the Englishwomen of the novels. 
 
 221
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Cecil Baskelett than on dry politicians. 
 Tuckham, however, was a gentleman ; and 
 he had more ideas than Mr. Caddis or than 
 Sir Twickenham Pryme, who bored the 
 Misses Pole with his mangold-wurzel and 
 statistics. Meredith drew him partly from 
 his old and valued friend, Sir William Hard- 
 man, editor of the "Morning Post." 
 
 The second weakness in the youth's char- 
 acter was the intolerance produced by the 
 domination of a single idea.* Meredith 
 shows (especially in ch. xxxviii) how he got 
 irritated by opposition, and irritated instead of 
 conciliating others, the reason being that he 
 had "given up his brains for a lodging to a 
 single idea. It is at once a devouring dragon 
 and an intractable steam force. Inspired of 
 solitude and gigantic size it claims divine 
 origin." In Nevil's case, it prevented him 
 from doing justice to his opponents, and it led 
 him to consider Cecilia less as a woman than 
 as a splendid prize to be cut out by means of 
 Radical argument from under the guns of the 
 
 * This mort/ recurs ia " One of Our Conquerors," but it is also noted in 
 " The Amazing Marriage " (see Carinthia's confession to Rebecca 
 Wythan in ch. xxx). 
 
 222
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 Tory fort. Cecilia evidently shared Lady 
 Mary Montagu's opinion that politics and 
 controversy were as unbecoming to the sex 
 as the dress of a prizefighter. She wanted 
 love not logic* 
 
 The real strength of Beauchamp lay in (a) his 
 fine public spirit. *' He questioned his justifi- 
 cation, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an 
 ill-regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, 
 sin, and bounties unrighteously dispensed 
 — not sufficiently dispersed." A true aristo- 
 cracy, he held, should lead the people, instead 
 of lolling in luxury. Cb) He had also brains, 
 and used them, (c) He was not a senti- 
 mentalist, though he was an idealist. 
 ** Beauchampism may be said to stand for 
 nearly everything which is the obverse of 
 Byronism, and shuns the statuesque pathetic, 
 or any kind of posturing." Meredith is much 
 fairer to Byron than, e.g., Peacock ever 
 could bring himself to be, but Byronism he 
 derided on all occasions, and Beauchamp 
 serves as its natural foil. 
 
 * When she defended, for argument's sake partly, her inherited Toryism, 
 he felt she was "not yet so thoroughly mastered as to grant her husbaad 
 his just prevalence with her " I 
 
 223
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Ten years earlier, George Eliot had pub- 
 lished her political novel, but, while "Felix 
 Holt" and "Beauchamp's Career" both turn 
 upon the same problem, viz., the love-inter- 
 ests of a young man as these are affected by 
 pre-occupation in political and social reforms, 
 the heroes differ widely. Felix Holt is a 
 Radical of the 1832 period, Beauchamp belongs 
 to an age twenty years later. The one is a 
 fiery Glasgow student, the other a naval 
 officer ; the one is lacking in masculine fibre, 
 whereas Beauchamp is never mawkish ; 
 Beauchamp, too, is the chivalrous gentleman 
 throughout, even when he bores Cecilia and 
 remonstrates with Mrs. Culling hotly, while 
 Felix Holt plies Esther with rude taunts upon 
 her pretensions to be a fine lady. 
 
 Meredith's sympathies are obvious here, as 
 in "Vittoria," but in both novels he writes 
 with impartial justice. The Liberal spouter, 
 Timothy Turbot, and the incorruptible (!) 
 Radical, Tomkins, are painted as faithfully as 
 the brainless Tory aristocrats ; the political 
 analysis wrings the withers of Liberal, Tory, 
 and Radical alike. The election is described 
 with more lavish detail than in "TheAdven- 
 
 224
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 tures of Harry Richmond," and the description 
 contains far more than humorous incidents or 
 the stock-in-trade of the subject. Dr. Shrap- 
 nel's'N letter, and indeed his conversation 
 throughout the novel, simply epitomise the 
 characteristic opinions which Meredith voices 
 in "The Empty Purse," "Foresight and 
 Patience," "The Old Chartist," "Aneurin's 
 Harp," "To Colonel Charles," "England 
 Before the Storm," "A Faith on Trial," 
 "Hard Weather," and "The Test of Man- 
 hood." One of the fairest criticisms of 
 Shrapnel is put into the mouth of Seymour 
 Austin, who thus defines the politics of 
 impatience. "He perceives a bad adjustment 
 of things ; which is correct. He is honest, 
 and takes his honesty for a virtue : and that 
 entitles him to believe in himself : and that 
 belief causes him to see in all opposition to 
 him the wrong he has perceived in existing 
 circumstances : and so in a dream of power 
 he invokes the people : and as they do not 
 stir, he takes to prophecy." 
 
 The wonderful love-scenes on the Adriatic 
 and at Venice are an expansion of the hints 
 in Vittoria (ch. xxx), where " Ammiani 
 o 225
 
 George Meredith 
 
 remembered his having stood once on the 
 Lido of Venice, and eyed the dawn across the 
 Adriatic, and dreamed that Violetta was born 
 of the loveliness and held in her bosom the 
 hopes of morning," and also in " The Ordeal 
 of Richard Feverel " where Richard dreamed 
 of floating with Bella in a gondola "past grand 
 old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, 
 and out and on with her, on into the silver 
 infinity shaking over seas." Incidentally, 
 Meredith throws in a number of edged aphor- 
 isms (e.g. "Shrugging and sneering is about 
 as honourable as blazing fireworks over your 
 own defeat, " and '* most of our spiritual 
 guides neglect the root to trim the flower "), 
 states his views on journalism * (ch. xliv), on 
 the English church (chs. xvii and xxix) and 
 the clergy in general (ch. Ivi), on luxury and 
 wealth, and on the army and navy. The 
 various descriptions of the women's beauty 
 (e.g. " Cecilia was a more beautiful woman 
 than Renee : but on which does the eye linger 
 longest — which draws the heart ? a radiant 
 landscape, where the tall ripe wheat flashes 
 
 * Compare Lytton's treatment of Mr. JackTibbets in "The Caxton*." 
 
 226
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 between shadow and shine in the stately 
 march of Summer, or the peep into dewy 
 woodland on to dark water ? "), the account 
 of Garlyle's style (ch. ii) * and of John Bright 
 (ch. iv), the subtle analysis of chapters xl — 
 xlii, and the yachting-scenes t (especially that 
 in ch. xv), are all examples of the author's 
 versatility and rare powers of imagination. 
 The allusion to women ("who dare not be 
 spontaneous. This is their fate, only in 
 degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and 
 Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods ") in 
 ch.xxxii, by the way, is repeated in the next 
 novel (see the end of ch. xliii of "The 
 Egoist "). Seymour Austin (see the character- 
 isation in ch. xxxix) is modelled on the lines 
 of Merthyr Powys, but unfortunately we 
 get too little of him and his conversation. 
 Stukely Gulbrett, again, is kept within limits 
 more successfully than his more acid fellow- 
 satirist, Golney Durance, in "One of Our 
 Conquerors." 
 
 In the original version of ch. liv, Jenny 
 
 * There is a fine tribute to Garlyle's humour in "The Eisay on 
 Comedy." 
 
 t Nevil is a more expert yachtsman than Richard Feverel or Redworth, 
 naturally. 
 
 227
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Denham, who is one of the first-rate musical 
 amateurs in Meredith, plays the ninth sym- 
 phony of Beethoven on the piano. This would 
 be strong meat even for a musical enthusiast 
 in good health, and Beauchamp was neither 
 the one (see ch. xxxii) nor the other. But it 
 would require a full orchestra and chorus. 
 Besides, it would take up a whole evening. 
 In response to friendly remonstrances, the 
 author has restricted Jenny in the later 
 editions to selections from the aforesaid 
 symphony. 
 
 Meredith makes Jenny Denham walk ** like 
 a yacht before the wind." He is fond of com- 
 paring ships and girls, and there is more 
 about the sea in this story than in any of its 
 predecessors. Cecilia "loved the sea, and 
 the stinging salt spray, and circling gull and 
 plunging gurnet, the sun on the waves and 
 the torn cloud." To love Beauchamp, as she 
 did, was like being at sea in a storm. The sea 
 is more than an apt background for several of 
 the episodes, however. It symbolises the 
 vitality and freshness and pulse of the ideas 
 which surge through the novel. ** Beau- 
 champ's Career" is a clever book, but 
 
 228
 
 Beauchamp's Career 
 
 cleverness is the last thing we think about as 
 we read its pages. It is an ennobling and 
 inspiriting book, and a large part of its 
 attractiveness lies in the delineation of human 
 nature in contact with the surge and spray of 
 deep elemental forces in the modern world. 
 In his next great novel Meredith was to bend, 
 with keen eyes, over an inland pool. 
 
 229
 
 ^ 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH
 
 The House on the Beach 
 
 nnmS "realistic tale," published in "The 
 -■- New Quarterly Magazine " for January, 
 1877, is a study in the social ambitions of a 
 tradesman. The hero, a fussy, local magis- 
 trate, recalls the type satirised by Dickens in 
 Mr. Nupkins of "The Pickwick Papers," but 
 he is used by Meredith to illustrate the absurd- 
 ity and mischief of social aspirations. The 
 desire to mount in the scale of society leads to 
 affectation, unreality, unhappiness, and the 
 breaking of old, true ties : such is the burden 
 of this story, as of "Rhoda Fleming" and 
 " Sandra Belloni " especially. " The land is in 
 a state of fermentation to mount." Meredith, 
 like Thackeray before him, satirises in parti- 
 cular the effort to throw off the name of trades- 
 man as he had already done at greater length 
 in "Evan Harrington," although "satirises" is 
 hardly the right word to use in this connexion, 
 for in Herbert Fellingham Meredith shows 
 
 233
 
 George Meredith 
 
 once more the futihty of mere satire as a 
 corrective power in human life, just as in 
 Mrs. Grickledon, the joiner's wife, he draws 
 a picture of the sensible, common woman, 
 which recalls the more important sketch of 
 Mrs. Berry. 
 
 Mr. Mart Tinman is a retired tradesman 
 who has become bailiff of Grikswich, one of 
 the Cinque Ports. He resides with his 
 widowed sister in a house on the beach 
 ** posted where it stood, one supposes, for the 
 sake of the sea- view, from which it turned 
 right about to face the town across a patch of 
 grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and 
 scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual 
 review of an awkward squad of recruits." 
 Tinman has strong social ambitions. He has 
 retired from business at the age of 40, in the 
 hope of marrying *' a born lady," but his 
 matrimonial aims have failed ; Tinman is 
 handicapped fatally by his low birth, an un- 
 certainty about his h's, and his bad wine. 
 When the story opens, he is trying another 
 tack. He is anxious to present an address to 
 the Queen, congratulating her in the name of 
 the Port on the betrothal of one of the 
 
 234
 
 The House on the Beach 
 
 princesses, and, in order to practise his 
 gestures, hires a cheval-glass before which to 
 posb in court-dress. This occupation leaves 
 him too busy and too proud to welcome his 
 rich old friend, Van Diemen Smith, who has 
 returned from Australia with his daughter 
 Annette, in order to settle in the old country. 
 Van Diemen Smith is an alias for Philip 
 Ribstone, who had deserted from the army 
 years before in order to protect his wife's 
 honour; but this secret is known only to 
 Tinman, for whom the Australian has a 
 sentimental and loyal affection. His chival- 
 rous good-nature is wounded by Tinman's 
 cool reception, but, after some squabbling, he 
 settles down in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Meantime Annette is courted by a young 
 journalist, Herbert Fellingham, whose satir- 
 ical spirit is resented by the others. He 
 makes merciless fun of Tinman's address, and 
 thereby ruins his chances of winning Annette, 
 for Smith's simple, good-nature is offended 
 by the caricaturing of his friend. The 
 differences between the two men, however, 
 grow more pronounced. Smith outbids 
 Tinman at sales, thwarts his public policy, 
 
 235
 
 George Meredith 
 
 and ventures even to praise Australia at the 
 expense of England. The bailiflfs narrow, 
 envious nature resents this implicit de- 
 preciation of himself. " His main grievance 
 against Van Diemen was the non-recognition 
 of his importance by that uncultured Aus- 
 tralian, who did not seem to be conscious of 
 the dignities and distinctions we come to in 
 our country." In order to gratify his wounded 
 pride, he threatens to expose Smith to the 
 War OflBce as a deserter. He thus has the 
 Australian in his power, and, eager to secure 
 a hold upon his ducats and his daughter, he 
 meanly employs this lever to further his suit 
 to Annette, who feels herself obliged to 
 favour Tinman's wooing, in order to safe- 
 guard her father's interests. Fellingham 
 begins to suspect the truth, from certain 
 hints dropped in conversation, but no out- 
 sider's aid is needed ; Tinman precipitates the 
 issue by his own spiteful temper. Irritated at 
 the delay and obstinacy of Smith in the matter 
 of the marriage, he writes a letter to the 
 Horse Guards, giving information about 
 Smith's past. But the house is destroyed that 
 night by a storm and a high tide, and the 
 
 236
 
 The House on the Beach 
 
 letter, rescued by the maid-servant, is opened 
 by Smith, who thus discovers his friend's 
 treachery. Fellingham had already told him 
 that the threat was not nearly so serious as 
 he feared, and the revelation merely proved 
 to him the meanness and petty nature of his 
 quondam comrade. Thus the house on the 
 beach collapses, and with it the vulgar and 
 pretentious authority claimed by Tinman 
 over Crikswich and his friend. The end of 
 the story is rather huddled up — a not un- 
 common fault in Meredith — but in the 
 last paragraph he finds room to mention one 
 of his leading ideas, viz., the wholesome 
 effect of laughter.* 
 
 • Compare, e.g., the "Ode to the Comic Spirit," and "The Appease, 
 ment of Oemeter." 
 
 237
 
 1 
 
 GENERAL OPLE 
 AND LADY CAMPER
 
 ^ The Case of General Ople 
 and Lady Camper 
 
 npHE scene of this delicious litde story, 
 -■- which appeared in "The New Quar- 
 terly Magazine" for July, 1877, is laid on 
 the hanks of the Thames, where General 
 Wilson Ople, a retired olEcer, aged fifty- 
 five, has taken a small villa for himself and 
 his young daughter Elizabeth. Next to this 
 "gentlemanly residence, "as the General loved 
 to call it, stands Douro Lodge, which is sub- 
 sequently rented by an eccentric, aristocratic 
 widow, aged forty-one. Lady Camper is of 
 Welsh blood, and, like Lady Eglett in " Lord 
 Ormont and his Aminta," she is one of those 
 ladies in whom Meredith delights to show 
 how an active brain and high spirit are com- 
 patible with middle age. The point of the 
 tale is the relationship between this clever, 
 keen woman and the simple soldier at her 
 gates. The latter cherishes deferential and 
 obsequious feelings towards the aristocracy, 
 p 241
 
 George Meredith 
 
 He is also shy and susceptible, so far as women 
 are concerned, and he is intensely sensitive to 
 ridicule. "Clever women alarmed and par- 
 alysed him. Their aptness to question and 
 require immediate sparkling answers ; their 
 demand for fresh wit, of a kind that is not 
 furnished by publications which strike it 
 into heads with a hammer, and supply it 
 wholesale ; their various reading ; their power 
 of ridicule too ; made them awful in his con- 
 templation." The General is becoming self- 
 satisfied, and rather vain, however. Egoism 
 is preventing him, for example, from realising 
 that his daughter and Mr. Reginald Rolles, 
 a nephew of Lady Camper, have fallen 
 in love. Observing this. Lady Camper 
 proceeds to take her inflammable and 
 gallant neighbour in hand, in order to 
 weed him of his selfishness. Presently 
 she reduces him, by a mixture of haughtiness 
 and friendliness, to an abject state of slavery. 
 Her aim is to rouse him to consideration 
 for his daughter's happiness and prospects, 
 but the infatuated ofiicer, hoodwinked by his 
 egoism, interprets her remarks on marriage 
 as advances to himself. In order to punish 
 
 242
 
 General Ople and Lady Camper 
 
 him, as well as to make a fresh attempt to 
 stir his fatherly instincts, Lady Camper 
 leaves for the Continent, and the poor 
 General is persecuted by a series of merciless 
 caricatures of himself. These, drawn and 
 posted by his witty neighbour, drive the 
 sensitive man nearly distracted, but, instead 
 of disgusting him, they rather fascinate him. 
 ** It was partly her whippings of him, partly 
 her penetration ; her ability that sat so finely 
 on a wealthy woman, her indifference to con- 
 ventional manners, that so well beseemed a 
 nobly-born one, and more than all, her 
 correction of his little weaknesses and in- 
 competencies, in spite of his dislike of it, won 
 him." At last she returns home and ends 
 the General's torture by opening his eyes to 
 the object of her cruel treatment, namely, a 
 sense of his duty to the young people. By 
 working on his fear of ridicule. Lady Camper 
 explains that she has saved him from a selfish 
 indifference to his daughter's happiness, and 
 also from the smug, suburban existence of 
 his neighbours, from being reduced "to the 
 level of the people round about us here — 
 who are, what ? Inhabitants of gentlemanly 
 
 243
 
 George Meredith 
 
 residences, yes ! But what kind of creatures ? 
 They have no mental standard, no moral 
 aim, no native chivalry." The two then 
 marry. For Lady Camper relents. She has 
 not only secured Elizabeth's happiness but 
 has found in the General a husband "likely 
 ever to be a fund of amusement for her 
 humour, good, irrepressible, and above all, 
 very picturesque." This merry, shrewd lady 
 is well mated, according to Meredith's 
 philosophy of laughter, with a man who has 
 learned to laugh at himself for his vain idea 
 of being "one of our conquerors." 
 
 This little piece of social comedy is a skit 
 on social ambitions, like "The House on the 
 Beach," but while Tinman wanted to be a 
 gentleman, General Ople was a gentleman, 
 or at any rate had the makings of one. The 
 other motif of the story is equally character- 
 istic of Meredith, viz., the need for putting 
 aside one's private ends in order to further 
 the interests of the next generation. The 
 General was not a tyrant ; he was fond of his 
 daughter ; but he was inclined to subordinate 
 her interests to his own, and to treat her 
 prospects as secondary to her father's, so 
 
 244
 
 General Ople and Lady Camper 
 
 much so that he became indifferent to her 
 reputation and happiness. The fuller and 
 deeper bearings of this law of unselfishness 
 were developed later in "The Empty Purse." 
 Lady Camper is one of Meredith's "cruci- 
 ble-women." The story of her dealings with 
 the General shows how, next to his use of 
 money, it is a man's conduct towards women 
 which forms the surest test of his character. 
 
 24S
 
 ) 
 
 THE TALE OF CHLOE
 
 The Tale of Chloe 
 
 'T^HIS short, tragic story was published 
 -*- in "The New Quarterly Magazine** 
 for July, 1879. It is described in the sub- 
 title as "An episode in the history of 
 Beau Beamish," but it really gathers round 
 the experience of two women in the fashion- 
 able and artificial society of 18th century 
 Bath — a phase of life which Meredith had 
 already sketched, with inimitable touches of 
 mock-heroic comedy, in the twenty-first and 
 twenty-second chapters of " The Adventures 
 of Harry Richmond. '* 
 
 Susan Bailey, a rustic beauty, had been 
 suddenly lifted from the dairy to ducal rank 
 by marrying an elderly, and infatuated, 
 peer. Her mania for pleasure reduces the 
 Duke to his wits* end, and after three years 
 he finds himself obliged to appeal to Beau 
 Beamish, the suave autocrat of the local 
 society, to <^ake charge of the young flighty 
 
 249
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Duchess during a month's gaiety which she 
 had been promised at the Wells. The Beau 
 undertakes the responsibility. He is sure 
 that he can guarantee the girl-wife a taste of 
 society without letting her be carried oflf her 
 feet. He assigns her the mocking incognito 
 of " The Duchess of Dewlap," * and attaches 
 to her person, as companion, Miss Catherine 
 Martinsward (the "Chloe" of the tale), a 
 gentle, discreet, and noble lady, uncorrupted 
 by the society of Bath, who had spent her 
 fortune to pay the gambling debts of an 
 unworthy lover, the handsome and spend- 
 thrift Sir Martin Gaseldy. Her love is 
 unrequited, but she has no reproaches for 
 him. With the loyalty of a sound, bright 
 nature, she lives in daily expectation of 
 seeing Gaseldy at Bath, but he treacherously 
 refuses to reward her generosity and fulfil 
 his word, "with a blacker brand upon him 
 every morning that he looks forth across his 
 property, and leaves her to languish." In 
 spite of this ill-treatment, which has now 
 lasted for seven years, she has neither lost 
 
 * An allusion to this story occurs in the seeond chapter of " TIm 
 Adventures of Harry Richmond." 
 
 250
 
 The Tale of Ghloe 
 
 faith in him nor dropped her sprightly air 
 and gay spirits. 
 
 Driving out with the Beau to meet the 
 Duchess, Chloe recognises Caseldy in the 
 distance playing the cavalier to the new 
 arrival. He has returned to Bath at last, 
 but to flirt with the Duchess, not to win 
 Chloe. The latter's suspicions are aroused, 
 and when Caseldy publicly appears on the 
 scene, his conduct is far from reassuring 
 her, though he lets it be understood that he 
 is to marry her when her month's engage- 
 ment with the Duchess is over. He and 
 the Duchess meet secretly. Their mutual 
 passion grows, whilst Chloe has to look on. 
 At every fresh evidence of her lover's 
 treachery, she ties a knot in a thick silken 
 skein which she carries in one hand, but 
 without any revengeful feelings towards 
 either of the pair. "She treated them both 
 with a proud generosity surpassing gentleness. 
 All that there was of selfishness in her 
 bosom resolved to the enjoyment of her one 
 month of strongly willed delusion." For, 
 while she has her own plan for preventing 
 mischief and saving her friend the Duchess, 
 
 251
 
 George Meredith 
 
 meantime, with a tragic humility, she deter- 
 mines to enjoy her month of nearness to 
 Caseldy, even though she sees through the 
 doubleness of his conduct towards herself. 
 Caseldy hoodwinks the Beau. But Chloe 
 is not blind to her lover's ungenerous and 
 treacherous behaviour. At the same time 
 she will not remonstrate with him, any 
 more than with his infatuated companion. 
 " Her lover," she reflects, " would not have 
 come to her but for his pursuit of another 
 woman." 
 
 Presently matters are brought to a head 
 by the Duchess and Caseldy planning to 
 elope on the following morning at three 
 o'clock. Chloe, who sleeps in the room 
 next to her friend, now puts her plan in 
 execution. She hangs herself on the door 
 of their sitting-room by the skein she had 
 knotted, and as the Duchess slips out she 
 encounters this tragic obstacle to her flight. 
 The girl's shrieks raise the house and 
 neighbourhood, and so the elopement is 
 eff"ectively prevented by the despairing 
 self-sacrifice of Chloe, that "most admirable 
 of women, whose heart," as the Beau reflects, 
 
 252
 
 The Tale of Ghloe 
 
 "was broken by a faithless man ere she 
 devoted her wreck of life to arrest one 
 weaker than herself on the descent to 
 perdition." 
 
 The tragic note almost jars in this little 
 story ; self-devotion seems carried to a 
 quixotic length in Ghloe's suicide. But 
 Meredith does not allow the sombre intensity 
 which pervades the tale to affect the 
 impressions of Ghloe's sprightly womanhood. 
 "She became the comrade of men without 
 forfeit of her station among sage sweet 
 ladies, and was like a well-mannered spark- 
 ling boy, to whom his admiring seniors 
 have given the lead in sallies, whims, and 
 flights ; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft 
 hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit." 
 These elements of true womanhood, together 
 with an entire absence of sentimentalism, 
 make up the attractiveness of Ghloe in 
 Meredith's long gallery of women, where 
 her position is close to that of Dahlia Fleming. 
 
 2S3
 
 ) 
 
 THE EGOIST
 
 ' The Egoist 
 
 'T^HIS "comedy in narrative," published in 
 -■- 1879, is the study of a priggish baronetU 
 who desired to run his fiancee's mind into thei 
 mould of his own and to dominate her per-|| 
 sonality, as Sir Austin Feverel wished to do/l 
 with his son. But "The Egoist " has very 
 little action in it. The period of the comedy 
 only lasts for a few weeks, and the vital 
 interest of its pages lies not in what happens 
 so much as in the desperately clever analysis 
 of the motives which set the main characters 
 in play. '* Like Shakespere," Henley wrote, 
 ** Meredith is a man of genius, who is a clever 
 man as well ; and he seems to prefer his 
 cleverness to his genius." This preference is 
 visible in the psychological calculus of 
 motives which fills the latter half of "The 
 Egoist," in the self-consciousness of the artist,' 
 and in the laboured efforts to produce certain 
 effects ; all of which tend to complicate the 
 Q 257
 
 George Meredith 
 
 reader's attitude to the story. As a matter of 
 fact, an outline of the facts underlying this 
 novel has perforce to be meagre. Fortu- 
 nately, it is less necessary than in the case 
 of any of the other Meredith-romances. 
 
 "He, they say, who is not handsome by 
 Twenty, strong by Thirty, wise by Forty, rich 
 by Fifty, will never be either handsome, 
 strong, wise, or rich." The hero of Meredith's 
 novel improved upon Richardson's pro- 
 gramme of the ideal life. He was rich at 
 twenty as well as handsome, and strong 
 before he was thirty. Whether he was ever 
 wise, and, if so, what was the value of his 
 wisdom, is the problem set by the novelist to 
 jhis readers. 
 
 / Sir Willoughby Patteme, of Patteme Hall, 
 ' is a young and wealthy aristocrat, who grows 
 up in an atmosphere of feminine adulation. 
 He cultivates his mind in a way, however ; 
 toys with science in a laboratory, but directs 
 " his admirable passion to excel upon sport ; 
 and so great was the passion in him that it 
 was commonly the presence of rivals which 
 led him to the declaration of love." This 
 jealousy of being outdone is responsible for 
 
 258
 
 The Egoist 
 
 his engagement at the age of twenty-one to 
 Miss Gonstantia Durham, who "had money, 
 and health and beauty ; three mighty qualifi-i 
 cations for a Patterne bride." * Sir Willoughby i 
 is one of several in pursuit of her. Like Mrs. 
 Millamant in "The Way of the World"— one 
 of Meredith's favourite comedies — " She had 
 the glory of the racing cutter full sail on a 
 winning breeze," and the danger of being^ 
 outsailed by a rival induces the baronet to 
 propose to her, although his sentimental 
 conceit causes him a pang of regret that she 
 has not come to him "out of cloistral purity," , 
 instead of having been admired and courted by J 
 his bugbear "the World." Miss Durham! 
 discovers his stupendous egotism in time. J 
 Ten days before the marriage, she sails away 
 with Captain Harry Oxford, and Sir 
 Willoughby is forced to save his face by al 
 mild, condescending courtship of Miss Laetitia 
 Dale,t a female adorer at his gates, who is the 
 portionless, poetic daughter of a retired and 
 invalid Anglo-Indian surgeon. "She was 
 
 * Sir Austin Feverel's list of names of possible brides for Richard wa» 
 marked " M. or Po. or Pr." (money, position, principles). 
 
 t He pretends that Gonstantia was his mother's choice, and that she 
 had been madly jealoos of his true love, Leetitia I 
 
 259
 
 George Meredith 
 
 pretty, her eyelashes were long and dark, her 
 eyes dark blue, and her soul was ready to 
 shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from 
 
 fWilloughby." He could count upon her as a 
 satellite, whoever failed. 
 
 The baronet then disappears on a tour round 
 the world, " holding an English review of his 
 Maker's grotesques." He returns after three 
 years to look out for a more brilliant bride 
 
 [than the patient Laetitia. This time it is 
 Clara, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Middleton, 
 
 \ a stout clerical scholar, who is a bon vivant, 
 like the Dr. Gaster and Dr. Portpipe of 
 Peacock's world.* The girl is eighteen — the 
 same age as Aminta, when Lord Ormont 
 wooed and married her — and she also has 
 "money and health and beauty, the triune 
 of perfect starriness, which makes all men 
 astronomers." Sir Willoughby woos her hotly 
 and carries her off from the rivals who 
 surrounded him. Clara is too inexperienced 
 to fathom his real character. She is not so much 
 
 * Peacock made partial amends for these in Dr. Opimian or in Dr. 
 Folliott, who is nearer to Dr. Middleton than the Casanbon of "Middle- 
 march." Dr. Middleton is at least warm-blooded. He would have 
 agreed with Prince Seithenyn in Peacock's tale, " wine is my medicine, 
 and my quantity is a little more." 
 
 260
 
 The Egoist 
 
 in love with him as in love with love, and it 
 is this false step, this mistaken engagement, 
 which gives rise to the situation of the story. 
 The action of the story, from the seventh 
 chapter onwards, takes place at Patterne 
 Hall where Dr. Middleton and his daughter 
 have been invited to stay for a month with 
 Willoughby's aunts, the Ladies Eleanor and 
 Isabel. Special attractions are held out for 
 the Doctor in the shape of a wine-cellar, a 
 library, and the company of Vernon Whitford, 
 Willoughby's cousin and secretary. Clara is 
 already beginning to criticise her lover's pre- 
 occupation with himself and to ponder 
 whether she cannot retrieve the mistake of 
 her engagement. She chafes at the lordly 
 selfishness even of his generosity, wondering 
 whether an escape is not yet possible with 
 honour from a marriage which she has come 
 to anticipate as the state "of a woman tied 
 not to a man of heart, but to an obelisk I 
 lettered all over with hieroglyphics, and j 
 everlastingly hearing him expound them, / 
 
 relishingly renewing his lectures on them."* 
 
 —] 
 
 * In ch. X Sir Willoughby actually supplies his own title, to Clara's i 
 amazement. He gravely warns her against marrying an egoist I This is i 
 a spurt of Meredith's fim. 
 
 261
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Besides the sense of honour, however, Clara 
 is fettered by a feeling of cowardice or 
 impotence (see ch. xxv). She has no Harry 
 ^Oxford to carry her off, for although Vernon 
 Whitford and she have begun to admire each 
 I other, he is too loyal to make any move. He 
 reads her, and she knows it, but his stedfast- 
 ness of honour and his humility keep him from 
 any intrigue. 
 
 I Poor Sir Willoughby is blissfully uncon- 
 
 jscious of all that is passing in her heart. 
 
 "The love-season is the carnival of egoism," 
 
 and the fatuous baronet imagines that Clara 
 
 shares the blind devotion to himself which 
 
 inspires his aunts and Laetitia Dale.* His 
 
 j treatment of his dependents and his conversa- 
 
 \tion, revolving round the **I"of his worshipful 
 
 ■ and weariful personality, become more and 
 
 ■ more intolerable to his betrothed. Her first 
 
 attempt to win liberty leads her to suggest 
 
 that Laetitia would make a better wife for 
 
 him, but he perversely sets this down to 
 
 feminine jealousy, and actually invites her 
 
 * " With ladies his aim was the Gallican courtier of any period from 
 Louis Treize to Louis Quinze. He could dote on those who led him to 
 talk in that character — backed by English solidity, you understand." 
 
 262
 
 The Egoist 
 
 assistance to marry oflF Laetitia to Vernon. 
 Clara confides in Vernon, from whom she 
 receives sensible, dispassionate advice, and 
 also) in Laetitia, who is amazed and horrified 
 that any woman should propose to break with 
 Sir Willoughby. On both sides she is foiled. 
 Meantime, Colonel Horace de Craye 
 arrives. He is to be the best man at the 
 marriage. Like Clara, he has Irish blood in 
 his veins, and the pair of them strike up a 
 merry friendship. De Craye detects the 
 chasm between the lovers, and his budding 
 hopes of carrying off" Clara rouse Sir 
 Willoughby's temper. "Remember," says 
 Meredith, *' the poets upon Jealousy. It is 
 to be haunted in the heaven of two by a 
 Third." Willoughby is now beginning to be 
 angry and seriously alarmed at the state of 
 matters, while Clara, unable to persuade her 
 father to leave the cellar and comforts of 
 Patterne Hall, and too shrewd to rely on De 
 Craye, determines to depart secretly. A 
 series of accidents, however, forces her to 
 return from the railway station, in the com- 
 pany of Colonel De Craye who has suspected 
 her design. Sir Willoughby's wrath is 
 
 263
 
 George Meredith 
 
 kindled at her deception and at her confidence 
 in the Colonel ; besides, the rumour of Clara's 
 attempted flight has got abroad in the county, 
 and he has now to face the terror of being 
 twice jilted. His reputation is in jeopardy. 
 He philanders once more with Laetitia, in 
 order to have her in reserve, should the worst 
 come to the worst, while Clara confides in 
 Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, the witty lady 
 of the district. Sir Willoughby feels he has 
 been betrayed, and his injured pride is up in 
 ^rms. The policy he sketches for himself is 
 to prevent De Craye at any cost from marry- 
 ing Clara. He proposes to pair off Vernon and 
 Miss Middleton and to marry Laetitia him- 
 self, so as to be able to say that he generously 
 handed over Clara to his cousin and secretary, 
 ** who opened his mouth and shut his eyes," 
 while he himself remained true to "the lady 
 of his first and strongest affections." Poor 
 gentleman ! He reckons confidently upon 
 Laetitia, who was always at his beck and call ; 
 but, to his horror, she refuses the offer of his 
 hand. To be pitied by her is bad ; to be 
 rejected by her is fearful ! In terror of being 
 left brideless, and exposed to the jeers of a 
 
 264
 
 / 
 
 The Egoist 
 
 world which he affected to despise, he puts 
 fresh pressure on Clara, who hears indirectly 
 of his secret proposal to Laetitia and taxes him 
 roundly with a breach of faith which condones 
 her refusal to abide by the engagement. Sir 
 Willoughby, driven to his wits' end, pretends 
 he has been proposing to Laetitia on Vernon's 
 behalf, and meantime makes a last desperate 
 effort to save his vanity from the gossip 
 and ridicule of the county.* Vernon and 
 Clara own tentatively and tenderly to one 
 another the love which has been ripening 
 slowly out of their friendship. But Sir 
 Willoughby has to rave in a persistent and 
 unmanly fashion, employing all manner of 
 artifices and arguments, before he can induce 
 the disillusioned Laetitia to accept his hand. 
 She tells him and his aunts frankly that she 
 will try to respect him, but that she cannot 
 venerate him, much less love a "gentleman 
 nurtured in idolatry." Sir Willoughby, how 
 ever, is only too glad to take her on these terms, 
 and the curtain falls upon Vernon and Clara to- 
 gether as the true lovers, while the poor Egoist 
 is mated to a woman who heartily despises him. 
 
 * Compare Alvan's horror at the thought of being jilted, in " The Tragic 
 Comedians " (ch. xiv). 
 
 265 
 
 U
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Both Laetitia* and Clara avow themselves 
 to be egoists, but neither deserves the title in 
 
 IJthe sense in which Sir Willoughby earns it. 
 
 TMeredith indeed never drew a female Egoist. 
 Religion and love are the two phases of 
 experience where a human being is most apt 
 to be engrossed with himself. " A man," says 
 Tolstoy in "The Cossacks," "is never so 
 much an egotist as at the moment when his 
 whole being is stirred with spiritual exaltation. 
 It seems to him that there is nothing in the 
 world more beautiful, more interesting, than 
 himself at such a moment." But Meredith 
 eschews this line of analysis. Only in " Queen 
 Theodolinda" and in one or two casual 
 allusions does he touch upon the danger of 
 self-engrossment in the sphere of personal 
 
 ! religion. Love, on the other hand, furnishes 
 him with rich material for the study of 
 egoism, and, as the male has usually more 
 initiative and scope in love than the woman, 
 this is probably one reason why SirWilloughby 
 remains without any female counterpart in his 
 
 ^' Lily Dale, the jilted heroine whose woes had moved the readers of 
 " The Small House at Allington," fifteen years before, is not given the 
 chance of action at the close which Meredith confers on Leetitia Dale, and 
 in any case she is as water unto wine compared with the later Miss Dale. 
 
 266
 
 The Egoist 
 
 gallery of portraits. The baronet is a blend of 
 pride and sentimentalism. The lover as sen- 
 timentalist had been already drawn at full 
 length in Wilfrid Pole, as well as in his 
 sister Cornelia and her lover. But Sir 
 Willoughby answers to Peacock's definition 
 of "Sentiment," in his pessimistic essay upon 
 "The Four Ages of Poetry," as "canting 
 egotism in the mask of refined feeling," and 
 Meredith has treated him with the severity 
 and sparkle of the true Comic Spirit. He is 
 not drawn with satirical irony. The author 
 plays with him, draws him out in his strong 
 points as well as in his foibles, and punishes 
 him with such dexterity as almost to blind 
 the reader to his sorry fate. Hardly anyone 
 who reads the book for the first time fails to 
 wish that Sir Willoughby had not succeeded 
 in protecting himself against the gossip of the 
 county. He seems to get off too easily. We 
 wish Laetitia had held her ground. But when 
 one reflects that he has to marry a woman * 
 
 * It is part of Meredith's triumph not only to have depicted Leetitia and J 
 Clara as loyal to one another, in spite of their relations to Sir Willoughby, 
 but to have drawn Loetitia without awakening a suspicion of ridicule. The 
 woman, whose love has been trifled with, remains a dignified figure ; she 
 never descends to be spiteful or resentful. 
 
 267
 
 George Meredith 
 
 who has seen through him, a former adorer 
 who has turned critic and judge, and that — 
 instead of tossing his glove for her to pick up 
 humbly — he has had to woo her in sheer 
 desperation, then one begins to understand 
 the deadly significance of the last sentence in 
 the book. Stevenson wrote of it : " here is a 
 Nathan for the modern David ; here is a 
 book to send the blood into men's faces . . . 
 It is yourself that is hunted down ; these are 
 your faults that are dragged into the day, and 
 numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel 
 cunning and precision. A young friend of 
 Mr. Meredith's (as I have heard the story) 
 came to him in an agony. 'This is too bad of 
 you,' he cried. * Willoughby is me.' *No, 
 my dear fellow,' said the author; *he is all of 
 us.' I have read 'The Egoist' five or six 
 times myself, and I mean to read it again ; for 
 I am like the young friend of the anecdote — I 
 think Willoughby an unmanly but a very 
 serviceable exposure of myself." 
 
 To Laetitia Meredith is more tender than to 
 almost any other of his prominent feminine 
 characters, for Dorothy Beltham is always in 
 the shade, like Glare Doria Forey. If she is 
 
 268
 
 The Egoist 
 
 the victim of the Egoist's callousness,* she | 
 gets her revenge heaped up and brimming 
 over in the end. Clara, the "dainty rogue 
 in porcelain," has neither the wit nor the 
 courage of her sisters in the front rank of 
 Meredith's heroines — Aminta Farrell or 
 rather Glotilde is perhaps nearest to her in 
 general character — but she has more charm 
 and warmth than some of them, just because 
 she is cast upon a less heroic scale. 
 
 The minor characters of the book need 
 little or no comment. In "Mansfield Park" 
 the daughter of a marine is adopted by her 
 aristocratic relatives, but in "The Egoist " it 
 is a boy — Grossjay — one of the most natural 
 and delightful lads in all the novels. Every 
 line about Grossjay tells. "It was a good 
 month before he could see pudding taken 
 away from table without a sigh of regret that 
 he could not finish it as deputy for the Devon- 
 port household. . . . He was not only 
 indolent, he was opposed to the acquisition 
 of knowledge through the medium of books, 
 
 * " Men who are Egoists have goodwomen for their victims ; women on 
 whose devoted constancy they feed ; they drink it like blood." This 
 remark of Clara helps to open Lastitia's eyes. It shows that Thackeray'* 
 Arthur Pendennis was not quite an Egoist of the Meredithian type. 
 
 269
 
 George Meredith 
 
 and would say : * But I don't want to ! ' in a 
 tone to make a logician thoughtful." Some 
 traits in the character of Vernon Whitford, 
 **a Phoebus Apollo turned friar," are supposed 
 to have been drawn from Sir Leslie Stephen, 
 but he is of the same fibre as Redworth, and 
 Dr. Middleton's indifference to his daughter's 
 matrimonial difl&culties is a replica of General 
 Ople's attitude towards Elizabeth. The 
 fadmission in the prelude that Egoism has a 
 sober and serviceable and valiant phase in the 
 
 upbuilding of social and national tenacity, is 
 a brief echo of what Meredith had already 
 explained in the second chapter of ** Beau- 
 champ's Career. " 
 
 The novel is stronger in dialogue and 
 analysis than in epigrams. Meredith has put 
 some of his most original work into the vivid 
 descriptive passages which occur in the 
 accounts of "the aged and great wine" (ch. 
 xx) — an admirable mock-heroic study — , the 
 rain-storm (ch. xxvi), the conversation at 
 lunch (ch. xxxvi), and, on a smaller scale, 
 Clara's beauty (in chapters v and ix and 
 xviii). The brilliant prelude, with its sough 
 of Carlyle, is spoiled by the dreadful 
 
 270
 
 The Egoist 
 
 Meredithese which recurs here and there 
 throughout the later chapters, but it is a fitting 
 pendant to "The Essay on Comedy," and 
 serves as an introduction to more than one of 
 the major novels. An equally characteristic 
 passage occurs at the end of ch. xxxvi, where, 
 after the conversation at lunch, Lady Gulmer 
 admits to Sir Willoughby, "Though what it 
 all meant, and what was the drift of it, I 
 couldn't tell to save my life. Is it every day 
 the same with you here?" "Very much." 
 " How you must enjoy a spell of dulness!" 
 This is a remark which comes home to the 
 reader of some conversations in the next four 
 novels. The dialogue flashes with crisp 
 repartee and brilliant epigram, but now and 
 then we do get the contortions of the Sibyl 
 without her inspiration — partly owing to the 
 fact that "The Egoist," especially in its latter 
 half, is a study of misconceptions and cross- 
 purposes. The treatment suits the subject, 
 though the Comic Spirit has been infected 
 with the affectation and trickery of its prey.] 
 There are deep things in the book, but here 
 as in some of the ballads and larger poems 
 you have not only to dive far down but to 
 
 271
 
 George Meredith 
 
 wriggle through a mass of waving tangle under 
 which the treasure has been hidden. Mere- 
 dith here, even more than elsewhere, 
 ** delights in elaborate analysis of abstruse 
 problems, whose solutions when reached are 
 scarcely less diflficult to ordinary apprehension 
 than are the problems themselves ; discrim- 
 inating countless shades where the common 
 eye sees but one gloom or glare ; pursuing 
 countless distinct movements where the 
 common eye sees only a whirling perplexity.'* 
 These words of James Thomson state the 
 impression of Meredith's art with great 
 precision, as it is revealed in **The Egoist." 
 The development of the relations between 
 Vernon and Clara, for example, is an illustra- 
 tion of the author's subtle diagnosis which is 
 less poignant than his dissection of Cecilia's 
 feelings toward Beauchamp but which was 
 hardly bettered till he came to weigh the 
 quivering, netted soul of Nataly Radnor. 
 The essence of the art, however, does not lie 
 in the fact that the author enters into the 
 inner feelings of the characters, instead of 
 describing them from the standpoint of an 
 outsider. That would simply be dramatic 
 
 272
 
 The Egoist 
 
 skill. What he does is to analyse motives of 
 which often the actors, no less than the on- 
 lookers, are almost unconscious. It is this 
 feature which is responsible for the delicacy 
 as well as for the persistent unreality felt by 
 the reader of the novels, and which has 
 helped to make the latter half of "The 
 Egoist " caviare to the generaL 
 
 273
 
 ) 
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 THE sub-title of this novel is " a study in 
 a well-known story," i.e., the tragic 
 story of the final love-affair in the life of 
 Ferdinand Lassalle, a brilliant young Jewish 
 Hungarian, the leader of the German 
 Republican Socialists, who died, after a 
 meteoric career, on August 31st, 1864, from 
 the effects of a duel. Sixteen years later 
 Meredith's book appeared. It sits close to 
 the facts of the story. Nothing in it is 
 invented, "because an addition of fictitious 
 incidents could never tell us how she came to 
 do this, he to do that ; or how the comic in 
 their natures led by interplay to the tragic 
 issue." The novel is an actual transcript of 
 "the bare railway line of their story," and 
 though it is set out with all the intellectual 
 power and ethical insight which the writer's 
 genius has at its command, this fidelity has 
 handicapped the movement of his imagina- 
 
 277
 
 George Meredith 
 
 tion. One advantage of it, however, is that 
 the reader needs to know * nothing but the 
 correspondence of the names. These are as 
 follows : 
 
 Ferdinand Lassalle Sigismund Alvan 
 Helene von Donniges ClotildevonRadiger 
 Yanko von Racowitza Prince Marko 
 
 Romaris 
 Baron Korff Count KolHn 
 
 Countess von Hatzfeldt Lucie, Baroness von 
 
 Crefeldt 
 Rustow Tresten 
 
 Dr. Haenle Dr. StOrchel 
 
 Clotilde, a young German beauty, has had 
 two love-affairs before she meets with Alvan. 
 Her first lover. Count Constantine, was flung 
 over for the dashing young Prince Marko 
 Romaris. But even the latter failed to satisfy 
 her heart. Her sentimental dream was not 
 of an adoring pliant fianc^ but, like Margarita 
 in ** Farina," she expected a Siegfried who 
 would dominate her by sheer superiority and 
 force of character. For Clotilde, as Meredith 
 
 * To the third edition, reviiad by the anthor and published by Mesm. 
 Ward, Lock, Bowden, and Co., in 1892, Mr. Clement Shorter prefixed 
 •a adequate statement of the historical basis underlying the novel. 
 
 278
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 draws her, is one of the revolutionary aristo- 
 crats. Her parents and circle belong to the 
 class of established conservatives ; her father 
 is av gouty old Bavarian diplomatist, her 
 mother a faded beauty of Society, but she 
 herself is a vivid aspiring young woman whose 
 ideal of manhood is higher than any men 
 known to her. She dreams of some eagle, 
 some predestined mate. Only, "the man 
 must be a gentleman. Poets, princes, war- 
 riors, potentates, marched before her 
 speculative fancy unselected."* 
 
 It is in this receptive mood that she first hears 
 of Alvan, when she is nineteen and he is 
 thirty-nine. She is told that she resembles 
 Alvan in her talk, but that Alvan is no 
 gentleman, only a diabolically clever Jew and 
 a notorious demagogue, who by birth and 
 position is utterly antagonistic to all her 
 inherited instincts. The girl's curiosity is 
 whetted. The two meet at a party in Berlin, 
 and at once fall in love with each other. 
 
 * Compare the similar dream of the sentimental Cornelia Pole in 
 "Sandra Belloni" (ch. i), whose " heart of hearts demanded for her as 
 spouse, a lord, a philosopher, and a Christian, in one ; and he must be a 
 Member of Parliament. Hence her isolated air." Both women foaad 
 the issue of their love-episodec to be tragic. 
 
 279
 
 George Meredith 
 
 The infatuation is sudden and complete on 
 both sides. For he too confesses he had 
 heard of her as " a gold-crested serpent," just 
 when he was in lack of a comrade. " I 
 wanted my comrade young and fair, necess- 
 arily of your sex, but with heart and brain : 
 an insane request, I fancied, until I heard that 
 you were the person I wanted." Their 
 common anticipations and aspirations burst 
 through all conventions at this interview. 
 Alvan escorts her home and prepares to sur- 
 mount the social barriers that lie between 
 him and her family. The girl's heart fails her 
 for a moment at the thought of her relatives' 
 horror over Al van's *' hissing reputation — for 
 it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and 
 the geese of the world." But his overwhelm- 
 ing passion carries her away. The two go 
 through ** a demi-ceremony of betrothal." 
 Then Glotilde is ordered to Switzerland for 
 her health, whither Alvan also retires after a 
 successful political campaign. The two meet 
 once more, this time at Berne, and the 
 struggle begins between Clotilde's bourgeois 
 prejudices and conventional instincts on the 
 one side and on the other the passion kindled 
 
 280
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 in her by Al van's hot wooing.* The latter 
 urges an immediate elopement. But Clotilde 
 hesitates to cast the die for love, although he 
 removes one obstacle, viz., the prejudice 
 excited by his previous connexion with an 
 older married woman, the Baroness von 
 Grefeldt, whose cause he had chivalrously 
 championed, though at the cost of stirring 
 considerable scandal round his own name. 
 The two at last part on the understanding 
 that Alvan is to see her parents formally next 
 day at Geneva. But the crisis comes other- 
 wise. Clotilde, on breaking the news to her 
 family, is appalled at their brutal wrath and 
 the curses heaped upon her lover ; she flies 
 to throw herself upon his protection, and is 
 now prepared to do what he had urged some 
 days before. The girl's passion has risen over 
 the barriers of social convention ; she is ready 
 and eager to elope. Unluckily Alvan 
 hesitates. Too sure of his ability to overcome 
 her parents' opposition, driven by a certain 
 pride to the resolve that he would have no 
 
 • With Alvan's inability to understand women (" women for him were 
 objects to be chased, the politician's relaxation," ch. vii) compare the 
 similarly tragic misunderstanding of woman's character cherished by Cario 
 Ammiani in " Vittoria " (cb. xli). 
 
 281
 
 George Meredith 
 
 run-away bride, and also fearing to hurt the 
 socialist cause by any scandal, he dissuades 
 Clotilde from her proposal and hands her 
 back to her family, bidding her leave the rest 
 of the fighting to himself. His mistimed 
 prudence and mixture of conceit and chivalry 
 are his undoing. To the stunned girl it seems 
 as if he had tossed her off and rejected her 
 self-sacrifice. Abandoned by her lover she 
 finds herself exposed to furious pressure from 
 her scandalised relatives and at last she 
 submits to their entreaties. 
 
 Meanwhile Al van plots and chafes within the 
 false position into which his pride had flung 
 him. ''Ceasing to be a social rebel, he 
 conceived himself as a recognised dignitary, 
 and he passed under the bondage of that 
 position." Now he sees, too late, that he had 
 cringed to the world instead of, as usual, defy- 
 ing it, when he resolved to let Clotilde go. 
 The latter is removed from the town, out of 
 reach of Alvan's machinations. His letters 
 never reach her. Even his envoys, distrust- 
 ful of their leader's alliance with a daughter 
 of Society, mislead Clotilde, who finally is 
 forced to write and sign a letter to Alvan 
 
 282
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 closing their connexion by announcing her 
 engagement to Prince Marko. Thus her 
 family's diplomacy triumphs, the more so that 
 it is abetted secretly by Alvan's friends who 
 disapprove of their leader's marriage. Glotilde 
 believes she is deserted by Alvan for his 
 former jQame, the Baroness, while he in a fury 
 of rage believes that Glotilde has perjured 
 herself. Driven desperate, she declines, to 
 Alvan's treacherous envoy, a final interview 
 with Alvan himself. The latter, provoked 
 beyond control, challenges her father to a 
 duel. Prince Marko undertakes the challenge, 
 and — to the surprise of all, and the bitter dis- 
 appointment of Glotilde, who secretly hopes 
 for another issue — Alvan falls. Three days 
 later he is dead. Glotilde then marries 
 Marko, who dies a few months afterwards. 
 "From that day, or it may be, on her 
 marriage day, her heart was Alvan's." 
 
 Though the frame-work of the story is 
 borrowed, Meredith has enriched it with 
 some of his most brilliant and original aphor- 
 isms. "Barriers are for those who cannot 
 fly." "Try to think individually upon what 
 you have to learn collectively — that is your 
 
 283
 
 George Meredith 
 
 task." " It is the soul that does things in thi 
 life — the rest is vapour." "The choicest 
 women are those who yield not a feather of 
 their womanliness for some amount of man- 
 like strength." ** Harness is harness, and a 
 light yoke-fellow can make a proud career 
 deviate." The wine-chapter or rapture, which 
 Meredith must have in almost every one of 
 his novels, occurs in ch. iv. Apart from this, 
 the most prominent passages in the book are 
 the allusions to Hamlet (ch. iii — iv), the glow- 
 ing defence of light literature in ch. vi (while 
 in the following chapter we seem to hear 
 Meredith himself speaking through the 
 words — " My pen is my fountain — the key of 
 me ; and I give myself, I do not sell. I write 
 when I have matter in me and in the direction 
 it presses for, otherwise not a word"), the 
 sketch of Bismarck in ch. vii, the outburst 
 against Horace (the piper of the bourgeois in 
 soul") in ch. xiv, and the vindication of 
 idealism (in ch. xv, as already in chs. xv — ^xvi 
 of "Vittoria"). 
 
 There are three ominous hints of the coming 
 tragedy thrown out as the novel proceeds. 
 One is the title of "Indian Bacchus" applied 
 
 284
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 to Prince Marko, whose ultimate r6le it is to 
 console this forlorn Ariadne after her nobler 
 Theseus has gone.* Another is the blighted 
 black lihcen-smitten tree (eh. vii), which the 
 lovers pass and repass near Berne. The third 
 is Alvan's musing remark in their first con- 
 versation : "Part of you may be shifty sand. 
 The sands are famous for their golden shining 
 — as you shine. Well, then, we must make 
 the quicksands concrete" (ch. iv). Set this 
 beside the remark in ch. ix : "he, when no 
 longer flattered by the evidence of his mastery, 
 took her for sand " — and you have the clue to 
 Meredith's treatment of the whole affair 
 between the two lovers. It is his favourite 
 topic, the thwarting power of conventional 
 society, especially with regard to women, who 
 are daughters of the Philistines, and rarely 
 possess sufficient courage to be true to them- 
 selves. That was Glotilde's weakness. Her 
 training and situation were against bravery. 
 Alvan saw that before she did (see ch. vi), 
 and the tragedy of the situation was that 
 when she came to recognise this, false pride 
 
 *' This recalls one of Diana's witticisms (see the opening chapter of 
 " Diana of the Crossways "). 
 
 285
 
 George Meredith 
 
 prevented him from taking her at her word. 
 Society is thus to blame for such a tragedy. 
 So is the woman herself, however. And so 
 is the man. 
 
 Alvan is represented as a tragic comedian, 
 " that is, a grand self-pretender, a self- 
 deceiver." Meredith interprets his character 
 as a fine mind wrecked by stormy blood. He 
 was "a revolutionist in imagination, the 
 workman's friend in rational sympathy, their 
 leader upon mathematical calculation, but a 
 lawyer, a reasoner in law, and therefore of 
 necessity a cousin germane, leaning to become 
 an ally, of the Philistines." Thus his passion 
 for a daughter of the Philistines might, if 
 successful, have meant the blunting of his 
 radical edge. As a matter of fact, his momen- 
 tary deference to Philistine sentiment in his 
 courtship proved his ruin. He ceased to be 
 himself. He was no longer' independent of 
 opinion and single-minded, and he paid for 
 the lapse into vanity. 
 
 Like Sir Willoughby Patterne, Alvan is an 
 egoist, who has a fear of being jilted, for jilt- 
 ing means ridicule ; he also seeks to master 
 for his own purposes the mind of a young lady 
 
 286
 
 The Tragic Comedians 
 
 whose heart he has captured. ** When we 
 are man and wife," he boasts, "then I shall 
 have * will ' enough for both, and she will be 
 as cjay in the hands of the potter." "It is 
 really a piece of extraordinary good fortune 
 that at the age of thirty-nine and a half, I 
 should be fortunate enough to find a wife so 
 beautiful, so sympathetic — who loves me so 
 much, and who — an indispensable require- 
 ment — is so entirely absorbed in my 
 personality." What is pure comedy in the Mr. 
 Collins of "Pride and Prejudice" becomes 
 tragedy in the pages of Meredith's semi- 
 historical romance. 
 
 287
 
 ^ 
 
 DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS
 
 Diana of the Crossways 
 
 'TpHIS novel, issued in book-form in 1885, 
 -*- had a larger immediate success than 
 any other of Meredith's romances ; it went 
 through no fewer than three editions in the 
 year of publication. There was a special 
 reason for this. "Diana" was published in a 
 time of political excitement, and it carried 
 on the political motive which had been opera- 
 tive in the previous two or three novels. 
 It proved to be more significant as the 
 first of the final quartette which were all to 
 handle with some daring the problems of 
 modern marriage, but what helped largely 
 to recommend it to the public, was its 
 reputation as a roman a clef* Like its 
 immediate predecessor, it drew upon a 
 
 * The facts were summarised in an article which appeared in " Temple 
 Bar," vol. cxxi. The colourless notes written by Lord Melbourne, which 
 the Hon. George Norton actually produced as evidence, are said to have 
 supplied a bint to Dickens when be was writing the famous trial-scene in 
 Pickwick. 
 
 291
 
 George Meredith 
 
 comparatively recent episode which had 
 caused a huge sensation in political circles, 
 though Meredith's use of the radiant and 
 witty Caroline Norton's career was far more 
 free and slight and kind than his treatment 
 of Helene von Donniges. In **The Tragic 
 Comedians" he had iaced his philosophy on the 
 woman's version of a love-episode in her life. 
 His sympathy with Lassalle had made him 
 unjust to Helene, and therefore inartistic ; the 
 attempt to gloss over the dismal stupidity of 
 the hero's attempt to find a Republican 
 princess in a sweet, forward, weak coquette, 
 left the latter unequal to the weight of the 
 dramatic situation. In " Diana," however, 
 Meredith was in love with his heroine, and 
 the husband of real life oflFered no serious 
 obstacle to the novelist's art. The result was 
 a masterpiece, which has had far more than 
 an ephemeral or factitious success. 
 
 Diana Antonia Merion is a clever and 
 beautiful young Irish orphan,* whose closest 
 friend is Lady Dunstane. "I nursed her," 
 says the latter, "when she was an infant ; my 
 
 * Like Aminta. Diana has also a vein of Spanish blood in her. 
 
 292
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 father and Dan Merion were chums. We 
 were parted by my marriage and the voyage 
 to India." When the story opens, Sir Lukin, 
 Lady Dunstane's husband, is retiring from the 
 army for the ostensible reason of looking after 
 his estates at Copsley in Surrey and in Scot- 
 land, and of devoting himself to his wife, whose 
 health is not strong. Lady Dunstane meets 
 Diana once more at a Dublin ball, given in 
 honour of an Irish general.* The girl is 
 nineteen and alone in the world ; during a 
 series of visits to various country-houses in 
 England she finds her unprotected position is 
 rendered intolerable by the odious attentions 
 of certain male guests. She returns to 
 Copsley, where she imagines she is safe with 
 her friend. To her horror, however, she 
 discovers that Sir Lukin is trying to take 
 liberties with her. In order to spare Emma, 
 her friend, she keeps silence upon the insult. 
 But her outraged pride and sense of loyalty to 
 Lady Dunstane force her to the conviction 
 that Copsley cannot any longer be a real 
 home to her ; she departs on a round of visits, 
 
 She makes everything in the room dast round a blazing jewel," says 
 Lord Larrian. 
 
 293
 
 George Meredith 
 
 and the next news of her is that she is to 
 marry a Mr. Augustus Warwick, aged thirty- 
 four, nearly fifteen years her senior. He is a 
 retired barrister, a cold, self-satisfied person, 
 whom Lady Dunstane compared to "a house 
 locked up and empty : a London house 
 conventionally furnished and ^decorated by 
 the upholsterer and empty of inhabitants." 
 Diana had once dubbed him "a gentlemanly 
 official " ; she had met him first at the Gross- 
 ways, of which his aunt and uncle were 
 tenants, and her reason for marrying him is 
 attributed by Meredith mainly to an impulse 
 of self-defence. She is not in love with him. 
 She simply wants a husband in order to secure 
 a position in the social world which will 
 relieve her from unpleasant attentions. The 
 dismay of Lady Dunstane — who is baffled by 
 Diana's action — is only equalled by the 
 disappointment of Mr. Thomas Redworth, a 
 sterling gentleman,* who had been in love 
 with the brilliant beauty since the night of the 
 
 * In oh. V Meredith, by one of his flying touches, notes Redvrorth's 
 appreciation of Diana's mind as well asof her beauty. "Her view of things 
 had a throne beside bis own, even in their diGferences." Add the fine 
 passage in ch. xxxvii: "Redworth believed in the soul of Diana. . . She wa« 
 k soul ; therefore perpetually pointing to growth in purification," etc. 
 
 294
 
 Diana of the Crossways 
 
 Irish ball but had hesitated to propose to her 
 on account of an honourable conviction that 
 no man has the right to court a woman unless 
 he iaas baMk-book ability to support her 
 comfortably. Redworth's financial position, 
 however, has improved so much that he is on 
 the point of asking Diana's hand, when the news 
 of her mysterious engagement arrives. He is 
 too staunoh and brave to be piqued. He mag- 
 nanimously wishes Diana to know ** she has 
 not lost a single friend through her marriage." 
 The girl soon needs all her friends. Before 
 long she realises that her marriage has been a 
 -,alse step. She and her husband are hope- 
 lessly incompatible. Her house in England is 
 called *' The Crossways," and the name 
 becomes grimly symbolic of her situation. 
 "No two," she confesses, '*ever came together 
 so naturally antagonistic as we two. We 
 walked a dozen steps in stupefied union, and hit 
 upon crossways. From that moment it was 
 tug and tug ; he me, and I him. By resisting, 
 I made him a tyrant, and he by insisting made 
 me a rebel." Her husband's ambitions bring 
 them into political society, where Diana, in 
 reckless indifference to gossip, soon enters 
 
 295
 
 George Meredith 
 
 upon an apparently compromising relationship 
 with the Whig premier, Lord Dannisburgh. 
 Her r6le is that of his Egeria. She finds in 
 him what she misses in her husband, 
 appreciation of her wit and intelligence. 
 Warwick, in a fit of malign jealousy, sues for 
 a divorce. Diana, proudly conscious of her 
 innocence but shrinking from a public scandal, 
 which would oblige her to act the part of 
 injured innocent, prepares to leave England. 
 Lady Dunstane, feeling that this would expose 
 her to fatal misconception, sends Redworth to 
 intercept her. He finds her at "The Gross- 
 ways" and, after a great scene — one of the 
 strong passages in the book — induces her to 
 return first to Copsley and then to London, 
 where her friends rally round her. The case 
 is decided in her favour (rather to her secret 
 disappointment), but she has soon to be taken 
 abroad by friends in order "to escape the 
 meshes of the terrific net of the marital law, 
 brutally whirled to capture her by the man 
 her husband." The sick, jealous partner in 
 the background, trying to thwart a mate in 
 the open, is a foretaste of Mrs. Burman in 
 ** One of Our Conquerors." 
 
 296
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 This is the first phase of Diana's married 
 life. The second opens with her literary 
 ambitions. She takes to writing fiction, partly 
 for ^he sake of a livelihood, and returns to 
 London to enter on the career of a successful 
 novelist and a society lady with a salon or circle 
 of congenial spirits. Meantime, however, she 
 has met * and fascinated t the Hon. Percy 
 Dacier, Lord Dannisburgh's nephew, who 
 is a rising young politician ; her second 
 novel, "The Young Minister of State," is 
 supposed to be a study of him, and gossip is 
 rife upon their relationship, which is in reality 
 ripening into a genuine love-passion. Mr. 
 Warwick's renewed threats of enforcing his 
 marital rights bring matters to a head. X Dacier 
 pleads with her to elope with him. In 
 desperation she eventually consents, but, on 
 the eve of departing, she is summoned to 
 Copsley where Lady Dunstane has to undergo 
 
 * The description of this meeting, at Rovio, in ch. xvi, is a fresh illusrta* 
 tion of Meredith's ability to set nature and human moods in rhythm. 
 
 t The rather melodramatic episode of her vigi! beside the corpse of the 
 Prime Minister heightens the emotional tension between her and Dacier. 
 
 I The scene between Diana and Lady Watkin (in ch. xxiii) recalls the 
 inimitable interview between C^limine and Arsino^ in the fourth scene of 
 the third act of " Le Misanthrope" — one of Meredith's favourite comedies 
 (alluded to in ch. xviii). 
 
 297
 
 George Meredith 
 
 a serious operation. Redworth is her lady- 
 ship's messenger, and thus he again intervenes 
 — this time unconsciously — so as to save 
 Diana from a false step. **I am always at 
 Crossways," she reflects, "and he saves me." 
 Nearly a year passes before Dacier and 
 Diana meet again. The former has got over 
 the blow to his pride inflicted by Diana's 
 failure to keep her promise, and their passion 
 is renewed. What finally wrecks it is Diana's 
 betrayal of a political secret which he 
 entrusted to her. She tells this to the editor 
 of ** The Times " ; Dacier angrily throws her 
 off, and the next news of him is his engage- 
 ment to a Miss Constance Asper, with whom 
 his name had been connected for some years. 
 Diana collapses under the shock. Mr. 
 Warwick dies, by the irony of events, but 
 while she is now free to marry Dacier, the 
 latter has broken with her. Lady Dunstane 
 nurses her back to health and spirits, and 
 eventually Redworth persuades her to accept 
 his long-tried love. When she had begun life, 
 she had undervalued his noble heart. " I 
 wanted a hero, and the jewelled garb and the 
 feather did not suit him." But she is now 
 
 298
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 cured of her girlish sentimentalism, which 
 tended among other things to make her 
 regard courage as essentially a military virtue 
 (coitipare the thirty-first chapter of "Beau- 
 champ's Career ")• Her wounded pride takes 
 longer to heal. Not for some time does she 
 consent, like Mrs. Millamant, to "dwindle 
 into a wife." The treatment she has received 
 during her married life makes her reluctant 
 to give up her new liberty. ** The thought 
 of a husband cuts one from any dreaming. 
 It's all dead flat earth at once!" (compare the 
 outbursts in chs. iv and xiv). Thanks largely 
 to Lady Dunstane's wise management, how- 
 ever, which recalls the treatment of Emilia by 
 Powys and his sister, Diana ceases to be 
 hyper-sensitive ; she no longer shifts and 
 winds to escape Redworth's patient wooing ; 
 and her hesitation at last yields to the chivalry 
 and nobility of her lover. Lady Dunstane 
 had stamped him as "one of those rare men 
 of honour who can command their passion ; 
 who venerate when they love." Diana 
 comes to recognise the truth of this character- 
 isation before it is too late, and Meredith for 
 once allows his readers to lay down a novel 
 
 299
 
 George Meredith 
 
 with that sense of pleasure which Darwin 
 thought every novel should provide at the 
 close of its evolutions. 
 
 Later editions of "Diana" contain the 
 following prefatory note. *' A lady of high 
 distinction for wit and beauty, the daughter 
 of an illustrious Irish house, came under the 
 shadow of calumny. It has latterly been 
 examined and exposed as baseless. The story 
 of ' Diana of the Grossways ' is to be read as 
 fiction." Thereby hangs a tale. Certain 
 traits in Diana's character had been originally 
 derived from that of Caroline Norton, the 
 novelist. A granddaughter of Sheridan, who 
 had married a barrister, the Hon. George 
 Norton, she was the defendant in an un- 
 successful divorce-case in which Lord 
 Melbourne, the Prime Minister, appeared 
 as co-respondent.* Mrs. Norton, who con- 
 tinued to live as a beautiful and popular 
 woman in London society, was further 
 suspected of having disclosed to the editor of 
 the "Times" Sir Robert Peel's decision to 
 
 * Melbourne, then over fifty, was one of her admirers. She had applied 
 to him, for the sake of his friendship with her father, to procure an appoint- 
 ment for her lazy husband. 
 
 300
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 repeal the Corn Laws, a secret which had 
 been told her in confidence by Sidney 
 Her-bert, one of her admirers. Lord DufFerin 
 subsequently found that this rumour was 
 unfounded. The person responsible for the 
 journalistic coup was Lord Aberdeen, and, so 
 far from the transaction being surreptitious, 
 it is probable that the communication was 
 made with Sir Robert Peel's consent. 
 
 Meredith's analysis of the motives which 
 led his Diana to take this step is the weak spot 
 in the novel. If any explanation is to be 
 sought for this inexplicable action, the real 
 clue probably lies in her excited mood, when 
 Dacier came back at night to tell her the great 
 secret. ** Her present mood was a craving 
 for excitement — for incident, wild action." 
 She could not satisfy this craving in the story 
 she was writing, and when an opportunity of 
 gratifying her passion for dramatic effect in 
 real life came, it was the psychological 
 moment.* The great editor had often taunted 
 her with the staleness of her news. Now, 
 she was a day or two before anyone, and she 
 
 * Daoier, for his own purpose, " had artfully lengthened out * the newt.* 
 to excite and overbalance her." 
 
 301
 
 George Meredith 
 
 leapt at the chance of astonishing her friend 
 the journalist and of enjoying a thrilling 
 moment of triumph. She was on the verge 
 of bankruptcy, thanks to her extravagant 
 mode of life,* but the price of the secret was 
 not her primary motive. The curious thing 
 is that she seems to have ignored any thought 
 of an injury done to Dacier. The liberty he 
 had taken of embracing her had evidently 
 humiliated her pride and stirred a fit of 
 resentment against him, which prevented her 
 from considering his feelings. The result of 
 the interview with the editor, Meredith is 
 careful to explain, is to revive her sense of 
 importance and self-esteem. It was not till 
 the indignant Dacier taxed her next day with 
 treachery, that the full meaning of her im- 
 pulsive action broke upon her. 
 
 It was not only from Mrs. Norton, however, 
 that Meredith drew the portrait of his Diana. 
 One must also read, in this connexion, some 
 sentences from his introduction to the new 
 edition (1902) of "Lady DuflF Gordon's 
 
 * She had fluttered into speculation in the city, like Lady Grace in "One 
 of Our Conquerors," but there was no Mr. Radnor to pluck her out before 
 ■he was plucked. 
 
 302
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 Letters from Egypt.** "Women, not en- 
 thusiasts, inclined rather to criticise, and to 
 criticise so independent a member of their sex 
 particularly, have said that her entry into a 
 ball-room took the breath. Poetical compari- 
 sons run under heavy weights in prose ; but 
 it would seem, in truth, from the reports of 
 her, that wherever she appeared she could be 
 likened to Selene breaking through cloud ; 
 and, further, the splendid vessel was richly 
 freighted. Trained by a scholar, much in the 
 society of scholarly men, having an innate bent 
 to exactitude, and with a ready tongue docile 
 to the curb, she stepped into the world to be 
 a match for it. She cut her way through the 
 accustomed troop of adorers, like what you 
 will that is buoyant and swims gallantly.** 
 This characterisation of a woman who com- 
 bined radiant beauty * with a fine intelligence 
 suggests one of the quarters where Meredith 
 must have found hints not only for Clara 
 Middleton but for Diana Warwick. 
 
 Meredith compares her (in ch. viii) to 
 Hermione, who also was a beautiful wife 
 
 ** The dark brov7B and Grecian features of Lady Gordon correspond to 
 frhat we are told of Diana's personal appearance in ch. i. 
 
 303
 
 George Meredith 
 
 suspected and wronged by her vindictive 
 husband. But Hermione was a mother ; she 
 became reconciled to Leontes in the end ; and 
 her love lacked any impulsive or ardent 
 passion. In all these respects, particularly in 
 the last, Diana differs from her Shakesperean 
 prototype. What really suggests Hermione is 
 the bravery and high spirits of Mrs. Warwick,* 
 who also has the good fortune to enjoy 
 the devoted confidence and respect of her 
 supporters. Hermione is not witty, but 
 Diana is given some of the author's happiest 
 and deepest sayings. "The more I know of 
 the world the more clearly I perceive that its 
 top and bottom sin is cowardice, physically 
 and morally alike." ** We women miss life 
 only when we have to confess we have never 
 met the man to reverence." "Gossip is a 
 beast of prey that does not wait for the death 
 of the creature it devours." "We women are 
 taken to be the second thoughts of the 
 Creator ; human nature's fringes, mere finish- 
 
 * Not mvariably, of course. Meredith is too wise to make of her, any- 
 more than of Vittoria, a plaster model. Compare her confession of vanity 
 and cowardice in ch. xxvii and her sentimental worship of military courage 
 at the outset. " I am open to be carried on a tide of unreasonableoeM 
 when the coward cries out." 
 
 304
 
 Diana of the Grossways 
 
 ing touches, not a part of the texture." "To 
 be pointedly rational is a greater difficuhy to 
 me than a fine delirium." This last aphorism 
 is tal^en from the opening chapter, which is of 
 the same stuff as the preludes to "The 
 Amazing Marriage" and "The Egoist," but 
 the writing is more personal and less abstract 
 than in the latter case. It is better read after 
 than before a first perusal of the story. 
 Meredith's triple object is to create an atmos- 
 phere of expectancy for the entrance of his 
 heroine, to analyse sentimentalism afresh, and 
 to defend his own method of philosophic 
 fiction more widely and vigorously than in the 
 introduction to "The Tragic Comedians." 
 One of Diana's sayings quoted in this chapter, 
 by the way, beginning: "A brown cone 
 drops from the fir-tree before my window, a 
 nibbled green from the squirrel. Service is 
 our destiny in life and death" — is the prose 
 core of the little " Dirge in the Woods" which 
 he had written fourteen years before.* In 
 the "nuptial chapter" which closes the 
 
 * Another saying on the world (" From the point of vision of the angels 
 this ugly monster, only half out of slime, must appear our one constant 
 hero ") anticipates the thought of the lines on " Men and Man " which 
 appeared two years later in " Ballade and Poems of Tragic Life." 
 
 T 305
 
 George Meredith 
 
 novel, Diana returns to the same thought. 
 " Marriage," she reflects, "might be the arch- 
 way to the road of good service." 
 
 Lady Dunstane is a closer friend to Diana 
 than Rebecca Wythan to Garinthia, and Red- 
 worth's part * in her life is more intimate than 
 that of Owain Wythan, but Redworth is 
 moulded out of the same clay as the Welsh 
 squires in "Sandra Belloni" or in "The 
 Amazing Marriage," and, next to Dacier, this 
 staunch, humble, honourable admirer is the 
 most important male figure in Diana's story. 
 When the tale opens, he is in Ireland on 
 Government business ; he happens to meet 
 the young beauty at the ball, where he falls 
 in love with her at first sight ; but too scrupu- 
 lously he waits till his income, swollen by 
 successful railway speculations, is large 
 enough to give this matchless girl what he 
 considers that she deserves. Redworth is the 
 
 * Like Matey Weybum, he is a cricketer and looks well in flannels (see 
 ch. xl). Compare Crossjay's attempt to explain Vernon Whitford'a 
 reliable character to Clara (in "The Egoist," ch. viii). " If you look on at 
 cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He may get more, and he never 
 gets less ; and you should hear the old farmers talk of him in the booth." 
 This is rather clever for a boy, but it hits oflF the class of men to whom 
 Redworth belongs (see above, page 42). He wins Diana for the reason 
 given by Faust : " Nur der verdient die Gunst der Frauen, der kraft gst sie 
 zu schittzen weiss." 
 
 306
 
 Diana of the Crossways 
 
 high hero of the book, though he is an M.P., 
 and Meredith honours him by putting into his 
 lips the acute estimate of the Irish character 
 in ch. iii ("Irishmen are, like horses, bundles 
 of nerves ; and you must manage them, as 
 you do with all nervous creatures, with firm- 
 ness but good temper, etc "). Next year the 
 author interposed in the panic of the Home 
 Rule controversy with four pages upon 
 "Concessions to the Gelt" (in the October 
 "Fortnightly Review"), which appealed to 
 the English public for sanity and justice 
 instead of coercion. The article elaborated 
 what the novel had suggested. One of its 
 most characteristic passages is as follows : 
 "The cries we have been hearing for Crom- 
 well or for Bismarck prove the existence of 
 an impatient faction in our midst fitter to 
 wear the collars of those masters whom they 
 invoke than to drop a vote into the ballot-box. 
 . . - The braver exemplar for grappling with 
 monstrous political tasks is Cavour, and he 
 would not have hinted at the iron method 
 or the bayonet for a pacification. Cavour 
 challenged debate ; he had faith in the active 
 intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed for 
 
 307
 
 George Meredith 
 
 by statesmen who would register permanent 
 successes." Read with this the paragraphs in 
 ch. xxi of the novel ; they reveal Meredith's 
 possession of the "firm and instructed genius'* 
 which Bagehot happily ascribed to Scott in 
 another province. 
 
 Diana's love of natural science (ch- xvi) 
 reflects the teaching of "Melampus"; the 
 same interest in botany, which was so vivid 
 in Meredith's own mind, comes out in Selina 
 CoUett and Goren, amongst others. The 
 book is also studded with little gems of wood- 
 land scenery, e.g., at the opening of ch. xix or 
 of ch. xxxix. The latter passage character- 
 istically describes how Diana felt her way back 
 to mental peace and happiness by giving her- 
 self up to the habit of noting "what bird had 
 piped, what flower was out on the banks, and 
 the leaf of what tree it was that lay beneath 
 the budding." It was her love of Nature that 
 saved her from despair and cynicism. 
 
 308
 
 ) 
 
 ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 'TpHIS novel, published in book-form in 
 -'- 1891, received from most of its critics 
 pail after pail of cold water. It is the least 
 popular of all the novels, and this is due not 
 simply to its subject — the union of a man and 
 woman who defy the conventional marriage 
 laws — but to its style and construction. 
 The book has three supremely fine studies 
 in character, Victor, Nataly, and Dudley 
 Sowerby ; but, unluckily, it riots in 
 Meredithese, and the sense of effort is more 
 than the sense of power. Mr. William 
 Watson, in his famous article in ** The 
 National Review" had asserted that no milder 
 word than detestable could be applied to 
 Meredith's style. Nothing but the blunt 
 phrase of "intellectual coxcombry" could 
 ** adequately describe the airs of superiority, 
 the affectation of originality, the sham pro- 
 fundities, the counterfeit subtleties, the 
 
 311
 
 George Meredith 
 
 pseudo-oracularisms of this book." He was 
 alluding to "The Egoist," but his invective 
 applies more truly to "One of Our Con- 
 querors."* It is blotted by ornate and forced 
 phrases, by a swarm of unusually recondite 
 allusions, and also by a singular weakness of 
 construction. Its pages are too crowded with 
 minor characters, who are rarely in proper 
 perspective, and of these the musical circle 
 which surrounds the Radnors is simply a 
 bundle of eccentricities labelled with names. 
 The sole exceptions are the Frenchwoman, 
 Mdlle. Louise de Seilles, and the ponderous 
 cleric, Septimus Barmby ; the former gets 
 the cosmopolitan comments on British in- 
 sularity which Meredith loves to introduce, 
 while the latter is at least more human than 
 the rest of his brethren in this or in the other 
 novels, and is treated with a certain touch of 
 respect and even sympathy. The unusual 
 prominence given to the clergy among the 
 minor dramatis personcB is due to the fact that 
 the clergy, together with the lawyers, repre- 
 sent to Meredith the buttresses of the 
 
 * C3£lim^e's remark on Damis applies to Meredith's style here t 
 II est guind^ sans cesse ; et dans tons ses propos 
 On voit qu'il se travaille ^ dire leg bona mots. " 
 
 312
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 conventional society, with its institutions and 
 traditions, which the novelist is bent on 
 criticising. Thus, while Peacock in his 
 stories usually makes the Tory clerical bon 
 vivants the exponents of his own philosophy of 
 jovial delight in the good things of this world, 
 Meredith turns upon them with caustic and 
 even satirical contempt. From the priest in 
 " Vittoria " to the cleric here, they exercise no 
 influence whatever upon the central figures of 
 the story. The Comic Spirit never penetrated 
 into the inner world of vital Christianity, any 
 more than Balzac's genius did. 
 
 The reader is tantalised all through the 
 novel by references to an Idea which is 
 supposed to elude Victor from beginning to 
 end. No novel by a first-rate writer ever 
 began worse, and this Idea is one of its 
 mistakes. But an equally exasperating feature 
 is the number of clever, nimble-witted 
 digressions. Several of Meredith's novels 
 tempt more than the hazy, lazy reader to 
 repeat Don Quixote's advice to the puppet- 
 showman : '* Go straight on with your story, 
 and don't run into curves and slants." 
 ** One of Our Conquerors" provokes this 
 
 313
 
 George Meredith 
 
 retort perhaps more often than aiiy of its 
 predecessors Meredith loiters in it, and the 
 loitering is all the more unsatisfactory that it is 
 a pleasure to himself; it allows him to show 
 off his psychological paces and to curvet from 
 side to side of the road. 
 
 The main track of the tale is as follows. 
 
 Victor Montgomery Radnor, when barely 
 twenty-one had married a middle-aged widow, 
 Mrs. Burman, for the sake of her money. 
 She was about forty years old and was 
 enamoured of the gay, mercurial youth. She 
 actually encouraged her young husband to 
 practise singing along with her handsome lady- 
 companion, a Miss Natalia Dreighton, the 
 daughter of a good Yorkshire family. The 
 two young people, thus thrown together, fell 
 in love. Victor's inflammable nature started 
 into rebellion against the false position in 
 which he had placed himself; Nataly gave up 
 the stage in order to save him from despair 
 and worse, and the pair eloped. The first 
 error of Victor's life had been submission to 
 the world, a consent to secure wealth and 
 social position at the expense of natural affec- 
 tion. He then tried to retrieve this error by 
 
 314
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 breaking through the conventional limits of 
 the world and following for the first time the 
 instincts of Nature in the guise of love for 
 Miss Dreighton. Neither he nor Nataly ever 
 regretted the step.* Their marriage was 
 perfectly happy ; a daughter Nesta was born 
 to them ; and^ Mr. Radnor amassed a large 
 fortune in the City. He was liberal and 
 popular, desirous to be on good terms with all 
 and sundry. " Mr. Radnor could rationally 
 say that he was made for happiness ; he flew 
 to it, he breathed, he dispensed it." 
 
 To the world the pair seemed an ordinary 
 husband and wife. But their union was still 
 illegal. Mrs. Burman, instead of suing for a 
 divorce, against which she had religious 
 scruples, had preferred the subtler revenge of 
 retaining her legal position as Radnor's wife, 
 and thereby preventing him from marrying 
 Natalia. She had fallen into ill-health and 
 never went into society. No persecution of 
 
 * See the passage in oh.vi, the first of the marvellous analyses of Nataly 's 
 nature : — " Her surrender then might be likened to the detachment of 
 a flower on the river's bank by swell of flood : she had no longer root of 
 her own ; away she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a 
 crashing fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the 
 whirling surface. . . . But even when it is driving us on the breakers, call 
 it love : and be notnaworthy of it, hold to it." See further, oh. xi and 
 oh. xzv. 
 
 315
 
 George Meredith 
 
 the pair was undertaken by her. So long 
 as they lived quietly, she never interfered. 
 But the irrepressible social ambitions of 
 Victor could not be satisfied short of an open 
 and popular position in society,* and, when- 
 ever he made any such move, Mrs. Burman 
 contrived to circulate rumours which let a 
 cold wind of suspicion blow upon the pair, 
 until they were obliged to withdraw. This 
 had happened twice, at Graye Farm and 
 Creckholt, where the situation had become 
 intolerable for them, and especially for the 
 sensitive Natalia. Mr. Radnor could not bear 
 to stay where she had felt wounded by social 
 ostracism. But, in spite of all this, he could 
 not grasp the idea of a life simply lived 
 according to Nature ; though his relations 
 with Nataly had given bim the chance of 
 that, he madly tried to improve upon it by 
 incongruously demanding the sanctions and 
 luxuries of conventional society. 
 Victor, however, true to his name, has deter- 
 
 * It is characteristic of his inveterate sangoinet/css that he had beea 
 inflaenced, if not prompted, to this course of action by realising that he 
 conld exact respect from his partner and his partner's wife ; both of them 
 kn.-w the secret, and yet they were sabservient to liim. " Wh^," Victor 
 argued, " this foreshadows a conquered world ! If I can win them, I can 
 win all the rest I " 
 
 316
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 mined to make a third and final effort to win 
 the esteem of the world which he has defied. 
 This isi the second and tragic folly of his career. 
 "A position secretly rebellious," Meredith 
 explains, "is equal to water on the brain for 
 stultifying us." He tries to keep from his wife 
 and daughter the fact that he has bought a new 
 estate and built a large mansion, to form the 
 scene of fresh operations. There are special 
 reasons for this move. Nesta is by this time 
 nearly twenty-one, and for her sake especially 
 the father feels that he must retrieve his false 
 position before the world. There is a rumour, 
 too, that Mrs. Burman is about to sue for a 
 divorce at last. Altogether Victor is in his 
 element, plotting for social happiness anew. 
 
 The book opens on the eve of the visit 
 ^ which he has arranged for his wife and 
 daughter and a party of their friends to pay 
 to Lakelands, by way of inaugurating the new 
 venture. Nataly is alarmed and distressed at 
 her husband's fresh infatuation. ** Now once 
 more they were to run the same round of 
 alarms, undergo the love of the place, with 
 perpetual apprehensions of having to leave 
 it." Victor is even contemplating a seat in 
 
 317
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Parliament, which, as she realises, will mean 
 the exposure of herself and him and their 
 daughter to the gossip of the world. She has 
 no heart for her position of rebel against the 
 world's conventions. But her love for Victor 
 is genuine, and she is prepared as usual to let 
 him have his way. The situation is compli- 
 cated by Nesta, however. The daughter 
 knows nothing of her parents' past. Neither 
 does Dudley Sowerby, a young aristocrat,* 
 who is courting Nesta with the full consent of 
 Victor ; the latter sees in such a marriage the 
 protection of his dear daughter, but Nataly 
 honourably shrinks from allowing the youth 
 to entangle himself unawares. Victor feels 
 Nataly's lack of cordiality in the matter of 
 Lakelands and of the love-suit ; he rather 
 resents it and attributes it to a feminine lack 
 of nerve. In reality her moral courage is 
 greater than her physical j the strain has 
 produced symptoms of heart disease, and 
 attacks of this illness periodically recur, 
 although she conceals them heroically from 
 her husband. 
 
 * Meredith's analysis of this young man's victory over pride and 
 prejudice, through his love for Nesta, is one of the triumphs of the book. 
 He develops from a cold, conventional scion of the Philistines into a 
 manly fellow. 
 
 318
 
 One oi' Our Conquerors 
 
 Meantime the campaign at Lakelands opens 
 with great eclat, but Mrs. Burman once more 
 interferes, by sending her butler to warn 
 Victor that he must retire into obscurity. 
 He, buoyed up by reports of her increasing 
 ill-health, determines to defy her, and 
 summons poor Nataly to face the risk of 
 becoming Godiva to the gossips for a while. 
 In order to prevent Nesta from hearing too 
 much, he induces his two maiden sisters* 
 near Tunbridge Wells to take her for a visit. 
 As Sowerby s family-seat is in the neighbour- 
 hood, he uses his opportunity to woo Nesta 
 successfully. Meantime the father and mother 
 had fled to the Continent, to escape rumours 
 about their position which were circulating 
 round Lakelands. 
 
 Nataly, on her return, hears that Captain 
 Dartrey Fenellan, a friend who has returned 
 from South Africa, is now a widower, and 
 conscious that he is a truer mate for Nesta 
 than Sowerby, as well as sensible of her 
 duty to the latter suitor, she takes her courage 
 in her two hands and tells Sowerby the 
 
 * They are puritanic in their conventional horror of Victor's relation to 
 Nataly, and it is only after persistent appeals (described with a farcical 
 humour) that they consent to receive even Nesta. 
 
 319
 
 George Meredith 
 
 relations between herself and Victor. The 
 latter, who hears nothing about this step for 
 a week, then feels slightly aggrieved at what 
 he considers the lack of true courage on 
 Nataly's part, whom he actually thinks 
 inferior to a Lady Halley in this respect. 
 He had wanted to wait till Mrs. Burman's 
 death — which he confidently expected very 
 soon — before speaking out. Meantime Nesta,* 
 who has accompanied the Duvidney ladies to 
 Brighton, t happens to meet a certain Mrs. 
 Judith Marsett, who is one of the Rahabs of 
 Society (compare the poem, **The Sage 
 Enamoured and the Honest Lady"), but who 
 is more wronged than evil. Nesta, with 
 quick intuition, divines the good element in 
 her and, in spite of a maidenly aversion, 
 sympathises with her freely. Major Worrell, 
 an objectionable friend of Mrs. Marsett, takes 
 
 * It is owing to Nesta's sisterly championship of Judith Marsett that 
 Captain Marsett agrees to marry the woman who as yet has no legal title 
 to his name. 
 
 t She bad been entrusted to their care, to be out of harm's way. But it 
 is when with them that she gets her eyes opened to the inner facts about 
 women and men who are outside the laws of matrimony. When the good 
 ladies arrange for her departure, they do so saying, " The good innocent 
 ^1 we received from the hands of your father, we return to him ; we arc 
 sure of that." But Nesta's visit to Brighton had changed her outlook 
 upon life 
 
 320
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 advantage of the girl's friendship with the 
 latter to insult Nesta; for which Captain 
 Dartrey Fenellan horsewhips him. The 
 news of this scandal repels Sowerby ; he has 
 just managed to overcome his pride enough 
 to go on with his engagement to Nesta, but 
 this entanglement of her with a public scandal 
 makes him inclined in a fit of disgust to give 
 her up altogether. She, the last of all women 
 to allow herself to be talked about, had 
 become a topic at the clubs ! Nesta, knowing 
 nothing of this, goes home, and learns the 
 fecret of her birth from Nataly, whose 
 heroism touches her heart. Mother and 
 daughter at last fully understand one another. 
 Victor, meanwhile, perseveres with his social 
 campaign, which causes torture to the wife 
 and the daughter ; and, to make matters 
 worse, Sowerby tells Nataly of the scandal 
 round Nesta's name at Brighton. The mother 
 is upset. She feels humiliated and irritated 
 at the girl, fearing ''that corruption must 
 come of the contact with impurity." Their 
 confidence is broken. Captain Dartrey re- 
 assures her, however ; Nesta's conduct only 
 adds to his admiration for the tall, pure- 
 u 321
 
 George Meredith 
 
 minded girl, who had lifted Mrs. Marsett by 
 her innocent sympathy. But Nataly refuses 
 to be comforted. She now thinks Sowerby 
 a more suitable husband for her daughter, 
 whose indiscretion shows that she requires 
 "for her husband a man whose character and 
 station guaranteed protection instead of incit- 
 ing to rebellion." Dartrey's character, on the 
 contrary, appeals more and more to Nesta's 
 growing sense of what a true mate must be 
 in life, for the Captain takes an independent, 
 unconventional view of women's rights. She 
 resents Sowerby 's plea that she should dis- 
 sociate herself from a notorious woman, and, 
 to the intense disappointment of her father 
 and mother, decides to reject him. Victor 
 had always associated Lakelands with her 
 marriage to Sowerby, and the break-down 
 of the latter project threatens to aflFect the 
 former enterprise. He is undaunted, how- 
 ever, in his efforts to win a seat in Parliament. 
 On the day before his candidature opens, 
 he is summoned by Mrs. Burman, now on 
 her death-bed, to an interview. Nataly 
 accompanies him, and the dying woman 
 formally forgives the pair. Victor's triumph 
 
 322
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 now seems at last within reach.* Mrs. 
 Burman's death will enable him to legalise 
 his union with Nataly ; another week will 
 see ithem settled in Lakelands ; and a seat 
 in Parliament will crown his social am- 
 bitions. But the strain of the interview 
 with Mrs. Burman, supervening on her 
 alienation from Nesta, proves too much for 
 Nataly. She dies, the next evening, of heart- 
 disease, while Victor is at his first meeting. 
 He returns to find her gone, and the shock 
 drives him mad. By the irony of fate, the 
 news of Mrs. Burman's death arrives just at 
 this moment ; she had died five and a half 
 hours after her younger rival. 
 
 Nesta t refuses Sowerby's renewed offer of 
 his hand ; she marries Dartrey Fenellan whom 
 she owns "for leader, her fellow soldier, 
 warrior friend, hero, of her own heart's mould, 
 but a greater." Dartrey respected women, 
 
 * Like Beaucbamp, he is under the domination of a single idea (see 
 below) ; but he only gets a tardy glimpse of the idea which Beaucbamp 
 urged from the first, that the true aristocracy of the country must give a 
 lead to the people by showing them the right use of money, among other 
 things, and by abjuring the pursuit of luxury and self-display. Victor only 
 perceives this vaguely, and only after he has been chastened by a touch of 
 failure or a threatening of danger in his wild schtmes (see chap. i). 
 
 t She recruits her health, like Harry Richmond, amon^ the Alps. 
 
 323
 
 George Meredith 
 
 instead of sentimentalising over them, and 
 this decides her in his favour. 
 
 The title of the story (taken from an earlier 
 tale) is semi-satirical. Victor Montgomery 
 Radnor does not prove a real victor in his 
 struggle against the world. He loses his cause, 
 his wife, and his reason. He is a successful 
 merchant, who regards money as a means to 
 higher things ; he is a man not of the world 
 but of ideas, generous, philanthropic, hospit- 
 able, intelligent, and chivalrous in his own 
 way ; he is faithful in all his relationships, 
 fond of music, and a brilliant host. But he is 
 conquered in the end, and the reason of his 
 defeat lies chiefly in his false attitude to life. 
 His demand for recognition at the hands of 
 conventional society is analysed as a violation 
 of Nature. " We are distracted, perverted, 
 made strangers to ourselves, by a false 
 position." In this subtle study of the incor- 
 rigible optimist, Meredith shows how Victor 
 suffers not only from the results of his initial 
 false step but from the fact that he allows his 
 wealth and social ambitions (equivalent to 
 circumstance or conventionality) to divert 
 him from his true self and turn him into an 
 
 324
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 object propelled by forces outside his control, 
 which he cannot fathom. ** He who has a 
 scheme is the engine of it ; he is no longer 
 the Iman of his tastes or of his principles ; . . . 
 he is more the arrow to his bow than the bow 
 to his arrow." Victor's enterprise thus 
 acquires such a grasp of him as to precipitate 
 him into courses of action, or rather of 
 intrigues and scheming, which wreck the 
 happiness of his wife and destroy his better 
 self. He cannot bear to be beaten in his 
 campaign against society. His fall on London 
 Bridge is a dramatic reminder of the risks he 
 is running ; life had become the crossing of 
 a bridge, with a slippery bit on it; but he 
 waves off the reminder with the heat of wine 
 and self-confidence. His spirit is unteachable, 
 and the vanity of the man, nourished on his 
 past series of successes, lures him on until he 
 falls into the pit digged for him by his own 
 folly.* In his power of deceiving himself and 
 others for the time being he resembles Roy 
 Richmond. Like him he cannot see the true 
 
 * Victor, like more than one of Meredith's leading characters, illustrates 
 the Aristotelian maxim that the proper character for a tragedy is a 
 prosperous, reputable man, who is wrecked not by vice or depravity but 
 by some error. 
 
 325
 
 George Meredith 
 
 strength and happiness of a simple life, or 
 the fact that the only success worth seeking 
 implies brotherhood and service of one 
 another, not any social triumph. 
 
 Victor's overpowering fascination and 
 magnetic personality lead him to treat Nataly 
 as a pleasant slave rather than as a true mate 
 — the common fault of those who fail in the 
 Meredith-romances. The analysis of her 
 nature, with its loyalty to love, its heroic 
 devotion, its torture and perversion, is 
 masterly. Victor declines to consult with his 
 wife ; he prefers to plan for her on his own 
 account ; and the result is that her wisdom 
 and better intuitions prove of no use to him. 
 It is only towards the end that Nataly, like 
 Vittoria, realises she would have done better 
 to resist her husband's glamour than to give in 
 to him as she has done. She blames herself for 
 not having been stronger, and > she plucks up 
 courage to act upon her own initiative ; but it 
 is too late. The main mischief has been done. 
 For this Meredith blames not the woman so 
 much as the conventional standards of society 
 which put her "into her woman's harness of 
 the bit and the blinkers, and taught to know 
 
 326
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 herself for the weak thing, the gentle parasite. 
 . . . And she must have a sufficient intelli- 
 gence ; for her stupidity does not flatter the 
 po^essing man. It is not an organic growth 
 that he desires in his mate, but a happy 
 composition." Nesta, the daughter, inherits 
 from her mother this hard-won lesson of 
 experience. She has "a nature pure and 
 sparkling as mid-sea foam," as her husband 
 once said of her ; she reminds one of the 
 American girl at her best ; but she is a trifle 
 sententious, and it is Nataly who is the 
 heroine of the story. Victor's bright spirits had 
 been at first her rescue from a morbid despair ; 
 "he raised the head of the young flower from 
 its contemplation of grave-mould." But, by 
 the irony of events, it was his irrepressible 
 optimism which crushed this lily among 
 women. One of Meredith's loveliest stanzas 
 describesa bright morning after a stormy night: 
 "As beholds her flowers 
 Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, 
 Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, 
 When lowly, with a broken neck. 
 The crocus lays her cheek to mire." 
 We cannot but think of that stanza when we 
 
 327
 
 George Meredith 
 
 read poor Nataly's fate. All her instincts were 
 for the normal civilisation, and circumstances 
 made her a rebel ! She never regretted her 
 push for love, but she was obliged, by her 
 husband's uncontrolled ambition, to take part 
 in a struggle for recognition at the hands of a 
 world whose laws they had, in all good 
 conscience, broken. Her flower-like nature 
 collapses under the illogical strain.* The 
 pathos and tragedy of her lot form one of 
 Meredith's great successes in psychological 
 analysis and creative art. 
 
 As for minor points : note the glimpses 
 of London (e.g. in ch. v : ** and if haply down 
 an alley some olive mechanic of street-organs 
 has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic 
 footing, they strike on thoughts braver than 
 pastoral") which often recall Henley's lines 
 "In the Dials" and his "London Voluntaries"; 
 "One of Our Conquerors" is more of a 
 London book than even " Rhoda Fleming." 
 Meredith's whole vision of the squalor and 
 romance of London-life ("a thing for hospital 
 operations rather than for poetic rhapsody ") 
 
 * The crocjis-simile is applied, less tragically, to Ottilia in the tweoty- 
 fimrth chapter of "The Adventures of Harry Richmond." 
 
 328
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 in this chapter is a pendant to de Quincey's 
 famous seventh chapter in his ** Autobio- 
 graphic Sketches." His appreciative attitude 
 towards the Salvation Army in the person of 
 Matilda Pridden answers to the poem on 
 "Jump to Glory Jane" which had appeared 
 two years before. 
 
 The sketch of Skepsey, the clerk with a love 
 of boxing, has the breath of Dickens about 
 it, but it is more than caricature. The 
 insistence (in ch. v) upon the inadequacy of 
 satire to fulfil the conditions of song, which 
 is the test of sanity, was echoed next year in 
 The Empty Purse": — 
 
 Ask of thyself: this furious Yea 
 Of a speech I thump to repeat, 
 In the cause I would have prevail, 
 For seed of a nourishing wheat. 
 Is it accepted of Song P 
 Does it sound to the mind through the ear. 
 Right sober, pure sane? has it 
 disciplined feet ? 
 Thou wilt find it a test severe ; 
 Unerring whatever the theme." 
 There are more farthings among the gold 
 pieces in this novel than in almost any of its 
 
 329 

 
 George Meredith 
 
 predecessors, but now and then we get a 
 sterling thought, tersely or daintily stamped, 
 e.g., "If you would like a further definition 
 of genius, think of it as a form of swiftness." 
 "Look upon bouquets and clusters, and the 
 idea of woman springs up at once." "Modern 
 Realists imagine it's an exposition of positive 
 human nature, when they've pulled down 
 our noses to the worst parts." "The very 
 meaning of having a heart, is to suffer through 
 others or for them." " One of the scraps of 
 practical wisdom gained by hardened sufferers 
 is to keep from spying at horizons when they 
 drop into a pleasant dingle." Note also the 
 analysis of the French character in ch. x, the 
 epigram on clubs (ch. xiii), and the witty 
 sketch of Mr. Inchling in ch. xviii. 
 
 The wine-chapters (iii — iv) are a fresh 
 reminder that Meredith's leading characters 
 are apt to be what Rabelais called beuverge, 
 i.e. addicted and inclined to wine ; but 
 Meredith does not go to the length of Peacock* 
 
 * In "Fraser's Magazine " for October, 1857, Peacock wrote an essay 
 on "The Bacchic Birth of Poetry," in order to prove that good poetry 
 depended on good liquor, and the same vinous enthusiasm reappears in 
 the second chapter of " The Misfortunes of Elphin." The sentence in the 
 preface to a re-issue of his novels (1837), that "the fastidious in old wine 
 •re a race that does not decay," has quite a Meredithian flavour about it. 
 
 330
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 in his glorification of conviviality, and in 
 this novel he expressly adds the aphorism : 
 "The fighter for conquering is the one 
 who can last and has the open brain ; and 
 there you have a point against alcohoU' His 
 enthusiasm for wine arises partly from his 
 desire to appreciate the full joys of the natural 
 life and also from his sense of its social effects, 
 Meredith's drinkers are not sots. Their very 
 taste in wine forms part of their culture. 
 
 Meredith does equal justice to the qualities 
 of the third source of happiness as defined in 
 "Wein, Weib, und Gesang." Next to the 
 Emilia novels, this is his most musical. 
 " What glory is it to a Gentleman," says 
 Richardson, "if he were even a fine Per- 
 former, that he can strike a String, touch a 
 Key, or sing a Song with the Grace and 
 Command of a hired Musician ? " Meredith 
 takes a much more sympathetic and intelligent 
 view of music in relation to the upper classes. 
 Music drew Victor and Nataly together, and 
 it proved one of their consolations, but it was 
 music of a first-class order. They were not 
 pottering amateurs. Dudley Sowerby, in- 
 deed, when he played on the flute, "went 
 
 331
 
 George Meredith 
 
 through the music somewhat like an inquisi- 
 tive tourist in a foreign town, conscientious 
 to get to the end of the work of pleasure." 
 But the rest are genuine musicians, and in 
 this they resemble several of Meredith's 
 larger figures. Beauchamp is unmusical, but 
 Redworth enjoys the opera intelligently and 
 sings himself; so does Diana. Meredith 
 acknowledges in *' Sandra Belloni," as here, 
 the high genius of Beethoven, but in " One 
 of Our Conquerors " (see ch. xiii) he shows 
 his old preference for the earlier Italian opera 
 of melody as compared to Wagner. Vittoria 
 sings to the conspirators "a song of flourishes ; 
 one of those beflowered arias in which the 
 notes flicker and leap Hke young flames." 
 Diana's favourite opera is the " Puritani,'* 
 and Victor is fond of Gorelli, " the old barley- 
 sugar of Bellini or a Donizetti-Serenade. 
 Never mind Wagner's tap of his pedagogue's 
 baton — a cadence catches one still." 
 
 The allusions to a dramatic satire called 
 "The Rajah in London" are passable, though 
 Peacock's " Aristophanes in London," which 
 may have been its partial prototype, was 
 more vital to "Gryll Grange." But the 
 
 332
 
 One of Our Conquerors 
 
 semi-allegorical tale of Delphica, which Golney 
 Durance is allowed to inflict upon his friends, 
 is simply intolerable. Dudley Sowerby 
 protested that it was neither fact nor fun, and 
 probably it was only the feeling that he was 
 talking to a lady— and to a friend of the 
 author — which prevented him from doing the 
 same justice to the subject as Alceste did to 
 the far-fetched lines of Oronte's sonneL 
 
 333
 
 ) 
 
 LORD ORMONT 
 AND HIS AMINTA
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 'T^HIS novel, published in book-form in 
 -*- 1894, is shorter and easier to read than 
 either "One of Our Conquerors" or "The 
 Amazing Marriage," but, although the style 
 and the plot are simpler, it deals with much 
 the same problem, viz. the false position 
 created by (a) a marriage into which the man 
 and woman have entered from motives other 
 than genuine love, and (b) by the man's false 
 pride afterwards. The basis of the story is 
 the career of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of 
 Peterborough, a brilliant and hot-headed 
 soldier who served with distinction, especially 
 in the Spanish war, but fell into disgrace with 
 the authorities for his arbitrary actions in the 
 field. Not until a few years before his death 
 did he acknowledge that he had married 
 Anastasia Robinson, a well-known vocalist, 
 about a dozen years earlier. The historical 
 germ of the novel was truer than in the case 
 V, 337
 
 George Meredith 
 
 of " Diana of the Grossways," but the real 
 interest of the book — which is more of a 
 sketch than a finished picture — lies in the 
 deft studies of character and in the analysis 
 of the marriage-problem with which Meredith 
 has enriched his pages. 
 
 The following is an analysis of the plot. 
 
 Lord Ormont is a major-general of cavalry, 
 who had learnt riding before he was ten, 
 fighting before he was twelve, and outpost 
 duty in the Austrian frontier cavalry before 
 he was twenty. He had served in the Penin- 
 sula, in Canada, and in India where his 
 exploits as a cavalry leader and as a swords- 
 man had won him high repute throughout 
 the army. He is a courteous, gallant, and 
 honourable soldier, with a lurid kind of 
 reputation in the field of love, where he had 
 been obliged to fight more than one duel. 
 
 An enthusiastic hero-worship * of Lord 
 Ormont unites the boys and girls in two 
 adjacent English schools. The former are 
 headed by Matthew Weyburn, or Matey, 
 whose father, Colonel Sidney Weyburn, had 
 
 * This is one of the traits common to Wejrbum and Beauchamp. 
 Aaother ig that both were the sons of British officers. 
 
 338
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 died in a cavalry charge at Toulouse. The 
 girls are led by Aminta Farrell, or Browny, a 
 pre~tty brunette. Her face seems " a frontis- 
 piece of a romantic story some day to be read," 
 and the romantic story begins before very long. 
 A flirtation between Matey and Browny ends 
 in the withdrawal of the latter from school to 
 live with her aunt near Dover. Matey also 
 leaves school soon afterwards. Unable to 
 enter the army for lack of money, he prepares 
 himself, by study abroad, for a schoolmaster's 
 career ; his idea being to form a cosmopolitan 
 school in the Bernese Alps, where boys and 
 girls of any nationality or religion can be 
 trained together, and Old England taught to the 
 Continent, as the Continent to Old England. 
 Meantime, a daring exploit of Lord Ormont 
 brings him into conflict with the political 
 authorities in India, and he continues the 
 controversy by writing letters to the English 
 newspapers. Disgusted at the way he has 
 been treated, he returns home to nurse his 
 resentment of the country's black ingratitude. 
 A year or two later, when travelling in Spain 
 he meets Aminta and her aunt. Aminta has 
 Spanish blood in her, and she retains her 
 
 339
 
 George Meredith 
 
 girlish worship for Lord Ormont, the hero of 
 her schooldays. They are married at Madrid ; 
 he actuated by admiration for Aminta's style 
 and beauty, and also by an impulse of satis- 
 faction with her obvious hero-worship, which 
 falls like balm upon his wounded pride ; she, 
 not in love so much as in the sentimental 
 passion of a girl not yet out of her teens for a 
 man whom she has idealised. The romance 
 does not last very long. Aminta soon 
 discovers that it is one thing to worship a 
 hero, another thing to marry him. Lord 
 Ormont, soured and angry at his country for 
 having broken his military career and 
 ridiculed his part in the newspaper contro- 
 versy, refuses curtly to return to England 
 with his bride ; when eventually he does so, 
 after seven years, he declines to enter English 
 society. He prefers to sulk in his tent. He 
 regards Aminta's natural desire for social 
 recognition as erratic and disloyal, and he 
 fails to see that this inaction on his part is a 
 covert reflection on his wife. His relatives, 
 especially Lady Charlotte Eglett, his sister, 
 knowing his reputation and character, decline 
 to believe that he has married the girl ; the 
 
 340
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 result is that she appears to society in the r6le 
 of a Lady Doubtful, and this false position, in 
 whii|h his wounded pride has placed her, 
 exposes Aminta to unpleasant gossip as well 
 as to dangerous sympathy. Lord Ormont 
 is too self-centred to realise this. He wishes 
 to hit the world for having slighted him, and 
 in doing so he hits the honour and happiness 
 of his own wife. *'A finer weapon," he 
 reflects, "wherewith to strike at a churlish 
 world was never given into the hands of man. 
 These English may see in her, if they like, 
 that they and their laws and customs are 
 defied. It does her no hurt, and it hits them 
 a ringing buffet." As a matter of fact, it does 
 hurt Aminta. Her pride is wounded irrepar- 
 ably. She begins to criticise her hero, 
 recognising his military and personal virtues 
 but also his ignorance of the proper way to 
 treat a woman and his disbelief **in her having 
 equal life with him on earth." She has 
 courage and nerve and capacity. But he 
 neglects her claims to the status of a recognised 
 wife, and insists on regarding her as a sort of 
 puppet instead of as a comrade. The fact is, 
 Lord Ormont's idea of managing a wife was 
 
 341
 
 George Meredith 
 
 practically that of managing a regiment ; his 
 orders must be followed ; he gives the lead, 
 *' their 's not to reason why, their 's not to 
 make reply." 
 
 Matters are brought to a head by the 
 unintentional intervention of Matthew 
 Weybum, who is sent by Lady Eglett 
 ostensibly to be private secretary to Lord 
 Ormont and to assist him in the writing of 
 his memoirs.* Lady Eglett's secondary motive 
 for this action is bad. She thinks Weyburn's 
 handsome figure may detach Aminta from 
 Lord Ormont and so relieve the latter of an 
 incubus. This dim hope is justified in a very 
 different manner from what she expects. 
 Matey and Browny eventually recognise each 
 other, and their relationship becomes both 
 delicate and equivocal. The old romantic 
 passion stirs in them, though at first they are 
 hardly conscious of it. But — as Meredith 
 implies, in a subtle, almost hyper-subtle, 
 analysis of their relations — they are too hon- 
 ourable to admit it even to themselves, though 
 
 * The allusion to the fit of panic over a threatened invasion (ch. ix) recalls 
 tha more detailed and equally sarcastic description in the first chapter of 
 " Beaucbamp's Career," and the lines "To Colonel Charles." 
 
 342
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 Aminta's admiration for Weyburn is as 
 undisguised as his sympathy with her toneless, 
 unhappy position in London and his contempt 
 for Lord Ormont's perverse and cruel conduct. 
 The latter adds to his offences by refusing to 
 take his wife to Steignton, his country estate 
 — a refusal which is naturally set down by 
 Lady Eglett to the fact that her brother is 
 heartily ashamed of his connexion with the 
 girl. Lord Ormont then leaves for a visit to 
 Paris, and in his absence the end of the 
 business begins. Three incidents help to 
 precipitate the crisis. One is the death of 
 Weybum's mother ; Aminta happens to be 
 present, and the emotional strain * brings the 
 pair of them closer together. Pity for her 
 clouded position did not create his love for 
 her, but it quickened it into a perilous warmth. 
 The undesirable attentions of a London roue, 
 Mr. Morsfield, further help to awaken 
 Aminta to the slumbering capacities of passion 
 in her nature, at the very moment when she 
 realises that her affinity is Weyburn. Finally, 
 she determines to pay a flying visit to 
 
 * With the passage on prayer (cb. xiv), compare Dr. Shrapnel's remarka 
 m " Beauchamp's Career" (ch. xxLz). 
 
 343
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Steignton on her own account, that she may 
 see the place where she might have been 
 happy. This impulse marks the ebb, not the 
 flow, of her belief in Lord Ormont. It is due 
 to the sense that he had now forfeited her 
 affection. The visit, she feels, will "close a 
 volume. She could not say why the volume 
 must be closed." As a matter of fact, she had 
 forgiven her husband, but, like Garinthia in 
 "The Amazing Marriage," "the shattering of 
 their union was the cost of forgiveness." 
 She is conscious that he has degraded her by 
 wounding her self-respect, " and what is a 
 woman's pride but the staff and banner of her 
 soul, beyond all gifts? He who wounds it 
 cannot be forgiven — never ! — he has killed 
 the best of her." Meantime Lord Ormont 
 has partially relented. On hearing that his 
 wife had been refused presentation at Court, 
 he hurries home in order to prepare Steignton 
 for her reception and surprise her by thus 
 yielding to her wishes. He will bend his 
 pride thus far. She must give up all thoughts 
 of a London career, but, if she agrees to this, 
 he is willing to live with her at Steignton, and 
 so make amends to her for the past. **To 
 
 344
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to 
 bend. It is the form of submission of the 
 bulrush to the wind, of courtesy in the cavalier 
 to a lady." Lady Eglett, who has heard of 
 her brother's preparations at Steignton, drives 
 down with Weyburn to ascertain the reason 
 of it. They meet there Aminta and her aunt, 
 who had been joined on the road by Mr. 
 Morsfield, against Aminta's wishes. Lord 
 Ormont, in a fit of irritation, sends Aminta 
 back in charge of Weyburn, and, under the 
 tension of the moment, the two realise that 
 only honour keeps them from trembling into 
 one another's arms. Weyburn's self-command 
 prevails, however. He will not take advan- 
 tage of the situation. Lord Ormont, too proud 
 to apologise to Aminta or to acknowledge that 
 he has wronged her, then tries to make some 
 practical amends in another direction by 
 taking a house for her on the Thames. But 
 Aminta's eyes are at last opened to his real 
 character and to the state of her own heart ; 
 the disillusionment is complete. After a 
 stubborn struggle, he induces his sister to part 
 with the family jewels, hoping by the gift of 
 them to propitiate Aminta, while at the same 
 
 345
 
 George Meredith 
 
 time he arranges to fight a duel with Mr. 
 Morsfield. But his repentance, like that of 
 Lord Fleetwood in ** The Amazing Marriage," 
 comes too late.* Weyburn goes to say good- 
 bye to her before leaving for Switzerland, and 
 she realises that she must make a leap in the 
 dark ; at any cost she must be clear of her 
 husband : she returns the jewels to Lord 
 Ormont, takes farewell of him by letter, and 
 leaves his house to stay with her friends the 
 Colletts. Weyburn meets her there by a 
 sheer chance ; the two are surprised into a 
 confession of their mutual love, and they 
 resolve to elope to Switzerland. "We 
 commit this indiscretion," Weyburn tells her 
 frankly, ** with a world against us, our love 
 and labour are constantly on trial ; we must 
 have great hearts, and if the world is hostile 
 we are not to blame it. My own soul, we 
 have to see that we do — though not publicly, 
 not insolently, offend good citizenship. But 
 we believe — I with my whole faith, and I may 
 say it of you — that we are not offending 
 Divine law." They start the school near 
 
 * " He said of his country: That Lout comes to a ifnowledge of his want* 
 too late. But what if his words were flung at him in turn P Short of 'Lout, ' 
 it rang correctly " (ch. xxz). 
 
 346
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 Berne. Seven years later, Lord Ormont, who 
 chances to visit it, places his grand-nephew 
 there,; he retains no rancour in his heart 
 against Weyburn, and he magnanimously 
 believes in the purity and justice of Aminta. 
 Six months later, his death makes it possible 
 for the pair to marry one another. 
 
 The novel, like more than one of Meredith's 
 stories, serves to illustrate the remark of 
 Payne Knight, which Peacock applied to 
 Shelley's marriage, that "the same kind of 
 marriage which usually ends a comedy as 
 usually begins a tragedy." Only, Aminta and 
 Weyburn end in bliss. The justification of their 
 offence against the conventions of the world 
 is found in the power, conferred on them by 
 their union, "to make amends to the world." 
 They realise that they do not **go together 
 into a garden of roses." They unite their 
 lives because each can be a true mate to the 
 other in the career of service* opening before 
 
 * Meredith, in oh. v, comments on " the hardest of the schoolmaster'a 
 taslcs — away fly the boys in sheaves. After his toil with them, to instruct, 
 restrain, animate, their minds, they leave him, they plunge into the world 
 and are ({one. To sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, he 
 must be sure of his having charged them \'\ith good matter." This faith 
 and faithfulness in sowing is, of course, the dominant thought in poems 
 like " Seed-Time " and " The Question Whither." 
 
 347
 
 George Meredith 
 
 them, whereas Lord Ormont had denied 
 Aminta any comradeship or rights in the 
 married state, till her mind was repressed and 
 her spirits deadened. The tragic injustice of 
 the marriage was checked, Meredith argues, 
 by the courage of Aminta and her lover. 
 *' Hardly blushing, she walks on into the new 
 life beside him, and hears him say : * I in my 
 way, you in yours ; we are equals, the stronger 
 for being equals,' and she quite agrees, and 
 she gives him the fuller heart for his not re- 
 quiring her to be absorbed — she is the braver 
 mate for him." This description of Meredith's 
 ideal for a wife, which occurs in the sixteenth 
 chapter, tallies with his other definitions in 
 *' Diana" (ch. xiv) and "The Tragic Com- 
 edians" (ch. vii) as well as elsewhere. 
 
 Meredith usually prefers to take an only 
 child or son as his central figure, but here, as 
 in "The Amazing Marriage " (and to a lesser 
 degree in "Evan Harrington" or in "Beau- 
 champ's Career," where Renee and her 
 brother are secondary figures), he delineates 
 brother and sister.* Lord Ormont and his 
 
 * Compare the passage on the love of brother and sister in ch. zxi with 
 George Eliot's poem " Brother and Sister." 
 
 348
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 sister are quite the most vital characters in 
 the story. Lady Charlotte Eglett is one of 
 Meredith's cleverest studies in the middle- 
 aged aristocratic lady; she has a stinging 
 tongue, intense family affection, Tory 
 prejudices, and a keen brain. Like Lady 
 Jocelyn, in "Evan Harrington," she loves to 
 read Memoirs, and she is much stronger than 
 her husband. "They were excellent friends. 
 Few couples can say more." The foil to her 
 is Mrs. Nargett Pagnell, the vulgar, scheming 
 widow of a solicitor, who has the social 
 ambition of a feminine snob and "a tongue," 
 as Lady Charlotte remarked, "that goes like 
 the reel of a rod, with a pike bolting out of 
 the shallows to the snag he knows — to 
 wind round it and defy you to pull." She 
 engages in a game of Pull with Lord 
 Ormont, using his wife as a lever, and 
 repeatedly exasperating the husband by her 
 offensive intrigues. Her influence on him 
 resembles that exerted by Harriet's sister 
 upon Shelley ; it involves the innocent wife 
 in the repugnance of the husband for her 
 relatives. At the same time, it must be 
 allowed that Aminta's toleration of her aunt 
 
 349
 
 George Meredith 
 
 is a weak point in the story, or at least in 
 her character. 
 
 Pride is more conspicuous than sentiment- 
 alism in the plot. Aminta's error lay 
 partially in her undisciplined and sentimen- 
 tal passion for this modern Goriolanus, 
 but in her and in her husband the right 
 and the wrong sort of pride are dominant.* 
 Pride, in its particular form of underbred 
 social ambition, is represented by Mrs. 
 Pagnell, who makes nearly the same kind 
 of mischief by her attempt to excite Lord 
 Ormont*s jealousy and force his hand as 
 the Countess de Saldar in " Evan Har- 
 rington." 
 
 Besides several bits of impressionism, 
 aptly thrown in, there are three capital 
 passages of descriptive narrative : the ride 
 behind a postillion back from Steignton (ch. 
 xviii — xx), which recalls the well-known ride 
 in " Diana of the Crossways" (ch. xi) ; the 
 
 * In ch. ix the English capacity for taking a licking well is praised, as in 
 " The Egoist " (ch- ix) ; the same chapter contains Weyburn's criticism of 
 Lord Ormont's sore temper as "a curmudgeonly, humping solitariness, 
 that won't forgire an injury, nurses rancour, smacks itself in the face, 
 because it can 't — to use the old schoolboy words — take • licking 1 " 
 
 350
 
 Lord Ormont and His Aminta 
 
 day on the Thames * (ch. xxiv) ; and the 
 swimming-scene or marine duet in ch. xxvii. 
 The school-scenes t are not inferior to those 
 in "The Adventures of Harry Richmond,** 
 though their scale is smaller, but nothing in 
 that novel surpasses the incisive analysis, 
 given by Weyburn to Lady Eglett, of " men 
 of brains" and "men of aptitude " (ch. xiii) — 
 a caustic and penetrating piece of psycho- 
 logical discernment. Among the minor 
 characters, the Anglican clergyman gets the 
 same hard knocks as his fellow^s in "The 
 Adventures of Harry Richmond " and " One 
 
 * A poetical sketch of this scenery was drawn in one of the pastorals in 
 the first volume of his poems. Compare especially these hexameters, whioii 
 Kingsley singled out for praise :— 
 
 *' O joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country ; 
 Revel all day till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet ' tirra-lirra," 
 Thrilling delightfully. See on the river the slow rippled surface 
 Shining; the slow ripple broadens in circles ; the bright surface 
 
 smoothens. . . . 
 There by the wet-mirror'd osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher 
 Flashes, the fish in his beak! There the dabchick dived, and the motio* 
 Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes. 
 O joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward ! 
 Till all the lingering, deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over. 
 And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit 
 Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried." 
 
 t Boys, however, do not feel as they are said to feel about Browny in 
 ch. i. The description is as Meredithian as that of the sailor's feelings in 
 eh. rxvi, which also contains one of the few lapses into Meredithese 
 thronghout the entire novel — "the unwonted supper in them withheld an 
 answer to the intimidating knock." The purport of this cryptic utterance 
 is that a heavy sapper made them sleep soundly in the morning. 
 
 35k
 
 George Meredith 
 
 of Our Conquerors," while Mrs. Lawrence 
 Finchley and the circle of London pleasure- 
 lovers are painted in the same colours as their 
 predecessors in "The Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel." 
 
 Lady Eglett's brief appreciation of the 
 Jewish character, in ch. xvi, is a foil to the 
 less sympathetic references in "The Tragic 
 Comedians " and " One of Our Conquerors." 
 The eulogy on boxing (in ch. iii) tallies with 
 the similar allusions in " Rhoda Fleming," 
 "One of Our Conquerors," and "The 
 Amazing Marriage." 
 
 35?
 
 ~) 
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 W
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 T^HIS rich and striking novel, the last which 
 -■■ came from Meredith's pen, appeared in 
 1895, about the same time as "Jude the 
 Obscure,** and wits of the day suggested that 
 the proper titles would be **The Obscure 
 Marriage "and "The Amazing Jude." The 
 criticism was more clever than just. There 
 is little or no obscurity about the motives and 
 results of the marriage between Garinthia and 
 Lord Fleetwood, although there is a good deal 
 to amaze the reader. The book forms a 
 curious contrast to "Lord Ormont and his 
 Aminta." In both stories the heroine's char- 
 acter is developed through ill-treatment at 
 her husband*s hands ; but instead of driving 
 her to vice or, as in the case of Aminta, to 
 elope with a worthy lover, the discipline of 
 injustice matures the heroine of this story 
 within her legal position. She refuses to live 
 with her husband, but she will not take 
 
 355
 
 George Meredith 
 
 another man. Both Carinthia and Aminta 
 are flung on the world ; both, on Meredith's 
 reading of their lives, are of equal purity, but 
 they differ in their growth. 
 
 The book is an account of the amazing 
 prelude and the more amazing outcome of 
 the marriage between Lord Fleetwood and 
 Carinthia Jane Kirby. The main facts of the 
 story are as follows. 
 
 When close upon his seventieth year, 
 Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, who came 
 of old Lincolnshire stock "and claimed 
 descent from a chief of the Danish rovers," 
 ran off openly and skilfully with the Countess 
 of Cressett, a lovely and spirited Irish girl 
 aged twenty-three. She had been wooed 
 rapidly by her husband, who excelled as a 
 four-in-hand coachman. But as "she could 
 not always be on the top of a coach, which 
 was his throne of happiness," the young couple 
 fell apart after a year of matrimony. Mean- 
 while Captain Kirby, "the old Buccaneer," 
 "with his great white beard and hair — not a 
 lock of it shed — and his bronze lion-face," 
 captivated the heart of the Countess, and was 
 in turn captivated by her. Friendship passed 
 
 356
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 into infatuation, and at midnight on the 21st 
 of June, the sturdy sailor outwitted the 
 London cavaHers of the Countess Fanny 
 (so-called from a popular ballad on the 
 subject), who eloped with her hero to the 
 Continent. Lord Cressett took his wife's 
 flight philosophically. "Ah! Fan!" was all 
 he said, ' ' she never would run in my ribbons." 
 He declined to pursue the pair, and died a 
 fortnight later, having fallen from his coach- 
 box in a fit. Thereupon the Captain and his 
 Countess were married in Switzerland, 
 where their first child was born eleven 
 months afterwards ; he was christened 
 Chillon Switzer John Kirby after his birth- 
 place and his father. The Captain then 
 settled in Carinthia, on the borders of Styria, 
 where he purchased and worked a mine ; 
 there his second child, the heroine of this 
 story, was born, and christened* Carinthia 
 Jane. 
 
 * "All novelists." Scott declares in the preface to 'Ivanhoe,' "have 
 had occasion at some time or other to wish with Falstaff that they knew 
 where a commodity of good names was to be had." Meredith was 
 particularly rich and happy in this department. The geographical names 
 of the Kirbys are perhaps among his least successful efforts, but the 
 nomenclature of the novel does not show any dearth of inventiveness or 
 lapse into unreality otherwise. 
 
 357
 
 George Meredith 
 
 After being educated in England and serving 
 a term in the German army, the son was sent 
 back to adopt a military career in England, 
 where he devoted himself to explosive inven- 
 tions together with his uncle Lord Levellier. 
 The separation together with the fear of 
 English scandal quenching her son's love 
 killed his mother before long, and a week 
 later her loyal disconsolate husband followed 
 her. When the action of the story proper 
 begins, the brother and sister, aged twenty- 
 three and twenty-one respectively, are leaving 
 their old home in the mountains for England, 
 where Chillon had determined that Garinthia 
 should live under the guardianship of their 
 uncle, a miserly nobleman, at Lekkatts 
 (popularly known as "Leancats"). She is 
 described as a girl of red-gold hair, rugged 
 brows, fine physique and fair education. 
 
 Their immediate destination is Baden, 
 where Ghillon hopes to meet his lady-love. 
 Miss Henrietta Fakenham, only daughter of 
 Commodore Baldwin Fakenham, whose elder 
 brother Gurtis had been an unsuccessful rival 
 of Captain Kirby in wooing the Countess of 
 Cressett. Henrietta is travelling with her 
 
 358
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 ather and her cousin Livia. The latter, a 
 daughter of Curtis, was "the young widow of 
 Lord Duffield when she accepted the Earl of 
 Fleetwood, and was his third countess, and 
 again a widow at eight-and-twenty. " The Earl 
 of Fleetwood's great wealth, due to a previous 
 marriage (engineered by Captain Kirby) with 
 a Welsh heiress, had passed to Livia's step-son 
 Russell, the Earl of Fleetwood, who is the 
 hero of the story. His money and generosity 
 enable his beautiful young step-mother to 
 gratify a passion for gambling, which she 
 indulges by means of her attendant cavaliers. 
 In return for this, as well as with a view 
 to retaining her hold of the capricious, self- 
 willed Earl, she schemes to further his suit to 
 Henrietta, in pursuit of whom the young 
 nobleman is now travelling on the Continent. 
 Walking over the mountains, Chillon and 
 his sister overtake and render some aid to a 
 young English tourist, Gower Woodseer, an 
 impressionable lover of Nature and phrases, 
 with a Bohemian philosophy curiously 
 opposed to the Dissenting faith of his Welsh 
 father, a shoemaker and preacher in White- 
 chapel. Woodseer's heart is divided between 
 
 3S9
 
 George Meredith 
 
 a passion for mountains and a thirst for style, 
 and when he and Lord Fleetwood happen 
 to meet some days later, they strike up a 
 young man's friendship, which ends in the 
 enthusiastic young nobleman carrying off his 
 plebeian comrade for a week's walking-tour.* 
 Their admiration of the picturesque and 
 mountainous in Nature is varied by discussions 
 of Garinthia whom (without knowing more 
 than her name) Woodseer had described in his 
 note-book as " a beautiful Gorgon — a haggard 
 Venus." The phrase arrests Lord Fleet- 
 wood's fancy, and, with a sentimental interest 
 in the fair unknown, he pictures her face thus 
 hinted. It haunts him. Even the phrase 
 "Garinthia Saint and Martyr" catches the 
 very man who, by the irony of events, is to be 
 the agent of her martyrdom. From Woodseer's 
 hint of description and further talk, he 
 conjures up the vision of this woman. 
 "That's a face high over beauty. Just to 
 know there is a woman like her, is an antidote." 
 Lord Fleetwood prides himself on his know- 
 
 '' This passion for walking was characteristic of Meredith himself. He 
 would have subscribed with heartiness, in all likelihood, to the spirit of 
 Nietzsche's saying that " sedentary application is the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost. Only thoughts won by walking are valuable." 
 
 360
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 ledge of women, and at once rushes off to 
 idealise this rock-like heroine of his friend's 
 diary. " Tell me you met her, you saw her. 
 I want only to hear she lives, she is in the 
 world." Woodseer fails to ascribe this senti- 
 mental craving to its true source, or to 
 diagnose the youthful malady of "one bitten 
 by the serpent of love, and athirst for an 
 image of the sex to serve for the cooling herb." 
 A casual remark of the Earl seems to show 
 that he is already jealous of Henrietta and 
 (perhaps) Ghillon — " Beautiful women com- 
 pared to roses may whirl away with their 
 handsome dragoons ! A pang from them is a 
 thing to be ashamed of ! And there are men 
 who trot about, whining with it ! " Anyhow, 
 the second-hand vision of Carinthia comes at 
 an apt psychological moment in the young 
 inflammable lord's development, although he 
 is rather damped to find from Woodseer that 
 she is a woman, not a mere girl, for, like 
 Sir Willoughby Patterne, he would senti' 
 mentally exclude the world, and " woman '* 
 suggests that intrusive object. 
 
 The two strangely yoked comrades finally 
 join Lord Fleetwood's party at Baden, where 
 
 361
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Woodseer falls under the spell of Livia, dips 
 into what his father terms the "spotty 
 business " of gaming, and has to tramp home 
 penniless to London. 
 
 Meanwhile, Henrietta had accompanied her 
 father to cavalry manceuvres near Garlsruhe. 
 There Chillon and Garinthia find her, and the 
 former leaves for England, whilst the rest 
 rejoin the Countess Livia at Baden, where 
 Lord Fleetwood had promised Henrietta to 
 attend a ball at the ducal Schloss. Unfortu- 
 nately he hears of Henrietta having escorted 
 Chillon part of the road on his departure and 
 having returned with red eyes from the 
 farewell. This news adds fuel to the Earl's 
 displeasure at Miss Fakenham. Wounded by 
 her coquettish behaviour, and resenting the 
 poison of her fascination, he proudly with- 
 draws from the sight of her to spend the 
 night at a neigbouring village. The next 
 morning he accidentally comes upon Carinthia 
 (without knowing who she is) stepping 
 gracefully, daringly, and nimbly along a 
 horizontal pine-stem jutting out from a 
 mountain-precipice. Ever at her best among 
 the mountains, "where the cold engraving of 
 
 362
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 her face became a picture of colour," the girl 
 appealed instantly to Lord Fleetwood's sense 
 of the picturesque as **a noble daughter of 
 the woods. Not comparable to Henrietta in 
 feminine beauty, she was on an upper 
 plateau," with "a savage poignancy in 
 serenity " stamped on her face, intrepid, 
 individual, full of character. She seemed to 
 him akin to the sort of Garinthia which 
 Woodseer had described; and, as he spent 
 the day alone among the woods, "the course 
 of the poison Henrietta infused, and to which 
 it disgraced him to be so subject," was more 
 than diverted by the inner contemplation of 
 this girl. A single glimpse of her " raised 
 him out of his grovelling perturbations, cooled 
 and strengthened him." 
 
 Still, when night came, to the ball he had 
 to go. He was the prisoner of his word, or it 
 suited his humour to think so. One key to 
 his character and conduct is repeatedly 
 described by Meredith as a proud ambition 
 never to go back from a promise. It is the 
 comic element in his nature, and from it the 
 tragedy oozes. The rarest of gentlemen 
 on this point of honour, and punctilious to 
 
 363
 
 George Meredith 
 
 ehivalry, he considered himself bound by his 
 lightest word, no matter what were the con- 
 sequences. "His pride," as Henrietta said 
 once, "is in his word, and supposing he's in 
 love, it 's with his pride, which never quits 
 him." Down he goes therefore to fulfil this 
 distasteful engagement by looking in for a few 
 moments at the Schloss. Dis aliter uisum. 
 At the castle he meets Woodseer's Carinthia, 
 the girl he had seen that morning in the 
 woods, but now brilliant in the glow and 
 glamour of her first ball. During their third 
 dance he pleads imperiously for her to marry 
 him, and is accepted. 
 
 This, the first amazing step in the story of 
 an amazing marriage, seems at first sight 
 abrupt and improbable. Meredith, as usual, 
 narrates the incident indirectly, putting the 
 whole account of the ball into a letter (ch. xii) 
 from Henrietta to Ghillon. But he has not 
 failed to suggest motives on both sides for the 
 step, and these become visible, if not very 
 credible, on a careful perusal of the novel. 
 
 On neither side is love the primary motive. 
 Garinthia's love of her brother and desire to 
 relieve him of the burden of supporting her 
 
 364
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 had already turned her unselfish innocent 
 thoughts to matrimony as one means by 
 which she might further his prospects and 
 enable him to marry Henrietta. On their 
 last walk, she had asked in distress how she 
 could avoid burdening him, and he had 
 lightly replied, "Marry, and be a blessing to a 
 husband." The words whispered to her also 
 of a possible escape from her avaricious 
 uncle's guardianship. But, conscious of her 
 inadequate physical attractions and of her lack 
 of fortune, she feels she would be humbly 
 grateful to '* the noble, knightly gentleman 
 who would really stoop to take a plain girl by 
 the hand." To this sentimental feeling must 
 be added her scanty previous knowledge of 
 Lord Fleetwood as a lover of the mountains 
 and a rival of her brother in Henrietta's 
 love. Before ever the two met, the woman 
 had dreamt of some lordly, attractive, irre- 
 sistible youth, who should claim rather 
 than supplicate a woman's stricken heart. 
 Flushed by such aims and expectations, 
 romantic or otherwise, Garinthia was ob- 
 viously tinder to the spark flung down by 
 the young earl's impetuous wooing. She 
 
 365 /
 
 George Meredith 
 
 yielded to him, gravely, irrevocably, and 
 with all her soul. 
 
 Upon his side the motives appear to have 
 been more complex ; they were so elusive that 
 they characterise his action as a sudden freak. 
 His restless eyes indicated an ill-regulated 
 spirit, capable of sudden shifts under any 
 stress of passion. He had come to the ball 
 smarting under a sense of injury at Henrietta's 
 coquetry, which humiliated his pride. He 
 found there the fair unknown, whom he had 
 ardently discussed with Woodseer and subse- 
 quently seen with his own admiring eyes. He 
 saw her, too, in a fresh and brilliant aspect, 
 irradiated with ** the something above 
 beauty" — to quote Henrietta's letter — "more 
 unique and impressive — like the Alpine snow- 
 cloak towering up from the flowery slopes." 
 Thus the rebound of wounded jealous pride 
 was caught upon the vision of this brilliant, 
 stedfast creature, who satisfied "his passion 
 for the wondrous in the look of a woman's 
 face" and was innocent of shifty dealings with 
 mankind. The mad impulse of his proposal 
 was consonant with the erratic, splendid 
 character of an aristocratic dragon-fly, who 
 
 366
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 had inherited Celtic sentimentality as well as 
 a strain of eccentricity from his mother, and 
 whilst the quixotic circumstances of his 
 engagement roused astonishment and con- 
 sternation in his own circle and beyond it, 
 they were not wholly inexplicable to those 
 who were familiar with his overbearing, 
 impulsive disposition. 
 
 Amazement followed amazement. The 
 next morning. Lord Fleetwood disappeared 
 without a word to anyone. Reflection had 
 brought him the intolerable sense of being 
 now in bondage. "Prone to admire and 
 bend the knee when he admired, he chafed 
 at subjection, unless he had the particular 
 spell constantly renewed." His pride resented 
 any encroachment on its freedom, for that 
 threatened to interfere with his ambition to 
 lead others, and in a black fit of re-action 
 he became desperate, even relentless and 
 unscrupulous, in the attempt to get quit of 
 this girl of poor birth who had — he perversely 
 imagined — ensnared his word and captured 
 him by some illusion of the senses. He made 
 off for Wales, "supposing, as he well might, 
 that his latest mad freak of the proposal of 
 
 367
 
 George Meredith 
 
 his hand and title to the strange girl in a 
 quadrille at a foreign castle" would presently 
 be forgotten by her, when nothing more was 
 said about it. In the course of time all risk of 
 annoyance on the subject would blow over. 
 
 Carinthia, however, was built otherwise ; 
 as we know, she was prepared to look upon 
 her engagement with very different eyes. 
 Lord Fleetwood's disappearance and silence 
 were accepted by her quietly as part and 
 parcel of the whole strange affair. Grossing 
 to England, she stayed two months with 
 Admiral Fakenham in Hampshire, "patiently 
 expecting and rebuking the unmaidenliness of 
 her expectations, as honest young women in 
 her position used to do." Her humble 
 gratitude for being chosen at all by a husband 
 kept her still unsuspicious of any estrange- 
 ment or foul play on his part. » 
 
 Meanwhile, to protect her reputation and 
 interests, or to save himself from the cost of 
 maintaining her. Lord Levellier put himself 
 into action. He surprised Lord Fleetwood, 
 who had returned to London, imagining he 
 had done penance for his impulsiveness and 
 got rid of his fetters. A message was wrung 
 
 368
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 from him to the effect that ahhough "not 
 particularly fitted for the married state," he 
 asked Garinthia whether it was her wish that 
 he should marry her. The first warning clause 
 of the communication never reached Garin- 
 thia. Her answer would have been the same, 
 says Meredith, even had she heard it. But 
 she did not get her odd lover's preliminary 
 warning, perhaps because it was suppressed 
 by the miserly Lord Levellier who was inter- 
 ested in getting his niece married to a wealthy 
 husband, or because Ghillon and Henrietta, 
 by a sort of half-innocent intrigue, omitted to 
 repeat it, in the hope that her marriage would 
 promote, as it did promote, their own engage- 
 ment and marriage. Ghillon, at any rate, 
 blamed himself afterwards for the curtailed 
 version of the reluctant bridegroom's message. 
 Neither he nor Henrietta, both of whom knew 
 Lord Fleetwood's character, took the respon- 
 sibility of standing out against the marriage. 
 It suited their own scheme excellently when 
 Garinthia replied simply and directly to the 
 Earl's question, " Oh, I will, I am ready, tell 
 him." The intriguing Li via persuades her to 
 refrain from either writing or worrying him 
 s 369
 
 George Meredith 
 
 for a fulfilment of his promise. But piqued 
 at the marriage of Chillon and Henrietta, he 
 at last yields to the dunning demands of Lord 
 Levellier by despatching the following insolent 
 note written on the tenth of the month: — 
 "My Lord: I drive to your church-door on 
 the fourteenth of the month at ten a.m., to 
 keep my appointment with Miss G. J. Kirby, 
 if I do not blunder the initials. Your Lord- 
 ship's obedient servant, Fleetwood." Lord 
 Levellier transmits the peremptory summons, 
 but not the letter, to Garinthia. Three days 
 after she heard it, she was married to a man 
 to whom she had not spoken since the night 
 of their sudden engagement. 
 
 As Ghillon was absent on his honeymoon, 
 and Admiral Fakenham suddenly prostrated 
 with a fierce attack of gout, no male relative 
 of the bride was present to witness the 
 amazing marriage, except Lord Levellier who 
 was not anxious to see anything strange in a 
 bridegroom appearing at the altar in coaching 
 costume. For with delicate consideration 
 Lord Fleetwood, who had a pugilist inside his 
 carriage, put his wife on the box and drove 
 her forthwith to witness a prize-fight, which 
 
 370
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 he had pledged himself to attend, between his 
 protege, Kit Ines, and another bruiser patron- 
 ised by Lord Brailstone. The day resembled 
 that t)n which Garinthia had first landed in 
 England some months before ; it was wild, 
 dark, threatening, and with this auspicious 
 setting of weather and occupation, her married 
 life began under a cloud of the noble earl's 
 black spite and temper. 
 "Was ever woman in this fashion wooed? 
 Was ever woman in this fashion won?" 
 If the prelude to the marriage was amazing, 
 its consequences are more amazing still. En 
 route to the prize-fight. Lord Fleetwood 
 behaves with the sullenness and insolence of 
 an aristocrat who chooses to regard himself 
 as cleverly entrapped into matrimony by a 
 scheming girl and her relatives. The bad 
 stuflF in his character rises to the surface. 
 Recollections of Baden mock him. Having 
 lost Henrietta, he is doubly piqued to find 
 himself bound for life to the sister of his 
 successful rival, to a wife whose father came 
 of no creditable stock. By the irony of fate, 
 he is tied to her by his own word. ** He was 
 renowned and unrivalled as the man of 
 
 S71
 
 George Meredith 
 
 stainless honour : the one living man of his 
 word. There was his distinction among the 
 herd. . . But, by all that is holy, he pays for 
 his distinction." And dishonourably, even 
 brutally, he is in the humour to make the girl 
 pay too, by treating her with a studied cruelty 
 of speech and silence which springs from his 
 devilish enjoyment of the irony in their 
 situation. His own idiocy, or what he chooses 
 to regard as such, is visited upon Garinthia. 
 She had completed her crimes by failing to 
 appear at the altar in the same radiant 
 splendour as on the night of the ball at Baden. 
 And his lordship's aggrieved soul resents even 
 her natural address, " My husband." It was 
 ** a manner of saying * my fish ' " ! Meanwhile 
 poor Garinthia sits beside him, hungry to 
 admire and trust, for all her self-possession. 
 Innocent of intrigue, she recalls him as he 
 was at Baden, and feels herself" passionately 
 grateful for humbleness exalted, virginly 
 sensible of treasures of love to give." She 
 had put her life into her husband's hands, and 
 was content, but her trust is quickly and 
 grimly repaid. After the prize-fight (described 
 in Meredith's best manner), at which Kit Ines 
 
 372
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 vanquishes his opponent, my lord returns with 
 her to an inn where he heartlessly leaves her, 
 driving off to spend the evening at Ganleys 
 with his own set. Had he not pledged his 
 word to attend this ball ? A Whitechapel girl, 
 Madge Winch, who follows the fortunes of 
 Kit Ines, is left to attend Garinthia, who sits 
 stunned and suffering under such treatment 
 yet enduring it meekly. " Pain breathed out 
 of her, and not a sign of pain was visible." 
 The sympathy and admiration of Madge 
 were almost her only consolation on her 
 wedding-night. 
 
 Almost ; for Lord Fleetwood was impres- 
 sionable and had his moments of amorous 
 weakness. Driving back alone after midnight, 
 he climbed by a ladder to her window ; when 
 she sprang from her bed to defend herself, he 
 saw "the look of steel melting into the bridal 
 flower," as she recognised her husband in the 
 intruder and received him with passionate joy. 
 Yet even this revelation of her charms failed 
 to move him from his pride or to appease the 
 black resentment that still tore him away from 
 her. "The devil in him" was " still insatiate 
 for revenge upon her who held him to his 
 
 373
 
 George Meredith 
 
 word," and after this midnight hurried visit 
 he disappeared. He tried to indemnify himself 
 for the yoke of marriage by making his 
 capturer smart still more. The day after his 
 marriage he was in the House of Lords, "and 
 then went down to his estates in Wales, being 
 an excellent holder of the reins, whether on 
 the coach-box or over the cash-box." While 
 there, he ruminates on the advisability of 
 following a suggestion of his weak young 
 friend. Lord Feltre, a Roman Catholic peer 
 whose recipe for the soul entangled by women 
 is religion ; monasticism seems to offer a 
 possible, honourable escape from life-long 
 bondage to the "beautiful Gorgon." Woodseer 
 had once said it was a question of the man or 
 the monk with him, and that, unless he chose 
 to treat women frankly as part of the Nature 
 whom he pretended to love, instead of 
 cynically viewing them as temptresses or 
 victims of the male, he was on the straight 
 road to a cowl. Lord Fleetwood, in his fresh 
 dilemma, dallies with the latter course. But 
 the mood is only a passing fit. 
 
 Meantime this mess ot a marriage had had 
 its effects upon Carinthia. She walked to the 
 
 374
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 Earl's Kentish seat, Esslemont, but failed to 
 find him. After staying on till her heart was 
 broken, she resolved to leave the inn, where 
 Lord Fleetwood had ordered all her expenses 
 to be paid, although he left her penniless. 
 Walking part of the way, she came to London 
 with her loyal humble friend, Madge Winch, 
 and lodged in Whitechapel with the latter's 
 sister in a greengrocer's shop. There she is 
 found by Gower Woodseer, whose father is 
 acquainted with the Winches. Gower is 
 is despatched to inform Admiral Fakenham, 
 whose gout alone prevents him from executing 
 his wrathful purpose of rising to champion his 
 injured favourite in London. A letter is 
 written by the Admiral to Lady Arpington, 
 whose mother had known Countess Fanny, 
 begging her to give temporary shelter to 
 Carinthia ; but this missive is wiled out of 
 Woodseer's hands by Livia. The Admiral's 
 death, however, sets the youth free, and he 
 informs Lady Arpington of all that has trans- 
 pired. She hotly summons the Earl, who is 
 a connection of her own. He has just returned 
 to London, " disposed for marital humaneness 
 and jog-trot harmony, by condescension.** 
 
 375
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Since his marriage, as he is forced to admit, 
 his black devil had been partly exorcised. 
 His memory of her charm at the midnight 
 interview inclines him to think her love must 
 be sincere. Impressed with these better 
 feelings of tolerance and magnanimity, he goes 
 to his interview with Lady Arpington, rather 
 inclined to relent and take up his wife again, 
 but in no sense ashamed or sorry for his past 
 conduct. And it is this false pride which 
 again thwarts his better purposes. For under- 
 neath these lay a desire to find "solace for 
 the hurt to his pride in spreading a snare for 
 the beautiful Henrietta," by using his money 
 to work upon her love of luxury and music. 
 If he succeeded with this butterfly of a Riette, 
 it would appease his wrath at her for having 
 refused him and also tied him to Carinthia; 
 besides, her weak conduct would justify his 
 lordship's contempt for her and show him 
 what a fine fate he had escaped in an alliance 
 with her. He was moved by jealousy and 
 vindictiveness and selfishness, not love. All 
 he wanted was to know she was purchasable, 
 not to possess or taste her fascinations for 
 himself again. The mere proof that she was 
 
 376
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 accessible to seduction, would "release him 
 from vile subjection to one of the female heap," 
 and by this sacrifice or (at least) this crucial 
 temptation of the coquette his lordship's blood 
 would be washed clean of her image. By 
 means of this "formless plot," with "a shade 
 of the devilish in it, he acknowledged," he 
 would be able to despise Henrietta and so to 
 crush out the sparks which she had kindled 
 in his inflammable soul, and which he angrily 
 found himself unable otherwise to quench. 
 Besides, it would be a blow struck at Ghillon, 
 his successful rival, and through him at 
 Carinthia. The malice of the scheme was 
 only a degree worse than that which had 
 made him lure Woodseer to gamble at Baden. 
 This pleasant intrigue had fallen into 
 abeyance during his temporary residence with 
 Lord Feltre. But it is roused, and with it the 
 eccentric aristocrat's dogged pride, by Lady 
 Arpington's reproaches and report. His 
 tender sensibilities are rudely irritated by 
 the news of poor Garinthia's flight to White- 
 chapel. The man becomes iron and ice at 
 once. Entirely ignoring the position in which 
 his own conduct had left her, he chooses to 
 
 377
 
 George Meredith 
 
 resent her action as a personal insuh, which 
 he interprets as a clever stroke at himself; to 
 his cynical theory of women, it seems **a 
 move worthy the daughter of the old 
 Buccaneer," crafty and deliberate. Conse- 
 quently, he refuses all intercourse with her, 
 and the epithet "Countess of Whitechapel," 
 with which London gossip and ridicule 
 decorated her, is set down by his wounded 
 pride as a fresh dart of the enemy.* He 
 sullenly remains in the West-End, occasionally 
 visited by his good genius, Gower Woodseer. 
 For he is his own lago. Carinthia never gives 
 him occasion to be jealous. She resists the 
 entreaties of Ghillon and Henrietta, and stays 
 on in her Whitechapel obscurity, tending the 
 poor. She will not accept the Earl's offer of 
 his country-seat Esslemont. Her one desire 
 and claim of love is to meet him. Hearing 
 through Kit Ines that his lordship and party 
 are to visit Vauxhall Gardens one evening in 
 June, Madge takes her mistress there, and in 
 the midst of a disturbance Carinthia commits 
 the mortal offence of coming coolly to her 
 
 * His resentment reminds one of the French naturalist who described 
 ■ certain animal as "tr^s m^chant, — quand on I'attaque, il se defend." 
 
 378
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 husband's assistance with a stick. This is an 
 unpardonable outrage to his dignity ! He sees 
 this malignant woman pestering him with 
 unwelcome attentions, thwarting and goading 
 him perpetually, posing as "a demoiselle 
 Moll Flanders," and covering her liege lord 
 with derision and ridicule before the world. 
 He chooses to think that she is persecuting 
 him. Then, being a man of quick temper and 
 few scruples, he makes a wanton reprisal for 
 this imaginary insult by employing his prize- 
 fighter to kidnap Madge and Garinthia. 
 Thanks to the former and Gower Woodseer, 
 Garinthia escapes from her suburban villa 
 next morning. Accompanied by Gower, she 
 manages to reach her husband's town-house ; 
 but finding her there on his return from a 
 morning-ride, he withdraws haughtily to a 
 neighbouring hotel, still refusing a personal 
 interview to the lady who bore his title. His 
 "erratic, if not mad, and in any case ugly, 
 conduct" becomes now a mixture of fast 
 living and sentimental philandering with 
 Gatholicism ; while Garinthia, who has 
 Henrietta to live with her and frequent 
 visits from Woodseer to enliven her, is 
 
 379
 
 George Meredith 
 
 content to endure for a time this dog's 
 treatment in what London merrily termed 
 "the Battle of the Spouses." 
 
 The intolerable strain of her position is 
 relieved by a journey to Wales, for which his 
 lordship with scrupulous justice provides the 
 money, though he still refuses her a shilling 
 for her own purse. On the 11th of 
 December, she gives birth to a son. The 
 news of this reaches her husband on his 
 return from a yachting cruise with Lord 
 Feltre, but it is simply a grosser offence and 
 irritation to his smarting dignity. Again the 
 twisted workings of his pride urge him to 
 carry on his plot against Henrietta. Besides, 
 the absence of any communication from 
 Garinthia herself is surely an added insult. 
 "She sulked! after besmutting the name 
 she had filched from him, she, let him under- 
 stand that there was no intention to repent. 
 Possibly she meant war." At all events, "the 
 crowd of his grievances with the woman 
 rushed pell-mell, deluging young shoots of 
 sweeter feelings" in his petulant, egotistic 
 soul. Yet one symptom of sanity appears 
 in his generosity to Sarah Winch, Madge's 
 
 380
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 sister, whom — out of gratitude for their kind- 
 ness to Garinthia — the eccentric Croesus sets 
 up in a Piccadilly fruit-shop. Indeed, on 
 furthei) reflection, **he grew so far reconciled 
 to her [Garinthia] as to have intimation of a 
 softness coming on"; his past conduct, "so 
 justifiable then, as he forced himself to think," 
 seemed now hideous. But his pride still 
 prevents him from seeing all his past 
 misdeeds and his present duty, whilst 
 Garinthia's association with the former is 
 actually set down to her discredit. 
 
 Meanwhile Garinthia also had slowly 
 awakened. She is convinced that her husband 
 hated her ; otherwise his conduct is inexplic- 
 able. The birth of her child naturally roused 
 a new sense of dread and antagonism, since 
 both child and mother would now be "under 
 perpetual menace from an unscrupulous 
 tyrannical man." For herself, Garinthia 
 cared little now. "Sure of her rectitude, 
 a stranger to the world, she was not very 
 sensible of dishonour done to her name." 
 But on behalf of her child and her brother, 
 who now absorb all her affection, she would 
 welcome a treaty of peace with Lord Fieet- 
 
 381
 
 George Meredith 
 
 wood. "I am spared loving him when I 
 forgive him ; and I do. The loving is the 
 pain. That is gone by." When a strike 
 among the miners induces Lord Fleetwood 
 to send down Kit Ines to protect Garinthia 
 and her child, she, mindful of a former 
 experience, fears this is an attempt to kidnap 
 the child, and so withdraws to the house 
 of a neighbouring mine-owner, Mr. Owain 
 Wythan, who had chanced to be at the prize- 
 fight on her wedding-day. His invalid wife 
 is one of her staunchest friends, and to him 
 Garinthia is "Morgana le Fay Ghristianised."* 
 Gower Woodseer, to whom his lordship has 
 become reconciled, is then despatched to 
 persuade her to withdraw from Wales to 
 Esslemont. But his errand is in vain. 
 Designs upon the child are still suspected, 
 and Gower remains to fall in love with 
 
 * The subtle point of this allusion (ch. zxix) is that in Boiardo's 
 " Orlando Innamorato " the beautiful and enchanting Morgana punishes 
 Orlando, who has failed to seize his opportunity, by eluding for a while his 
 pursuit ; in his quest of her, he is scourged by " La Penitenza," and 
 warned against carelessly losing his prize even when he has secured it. 
 The relevant passages are worked into the plot of Peacock's " Gryll 
 Grange " (chs. xx— xxiv) ; already in " Beauchamp's Career" Meredith 
 had reterred to Boiardo and his later adapter, Berni. To Owain, 
 the relations of Garinthia and Lord Fleetwood seem to re'.emble those of 
 Morgana and her tardily awakened lover. 
 
 382
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 Madge and see "the priceless woman whom 
 Lord Fleetwood could call wife fast slipping 
 away from him. " Despite his stiflF reluctance 
 to m^et her, the Earl at last arrives, partly 
 to settle the strike, partly through a cold 
 curiosity to see his child or rather "the male 
 infant of such a mother," partly through an 
 irrepressible feeling of attraction for Carinthia 
 which he is puzzled and half-ashamed to own. 
 She is at least unique, he confesses, and "the 
 wealthy young nobleman prized any form of 
 rareness wherever it was visible." Possibly 
 even she had something to forgive, he admits. 
 But certainly, he recollects, his injustice to her 
 is more excusable than the grotesque ridicule 
 with which she had covered them both. 
 
 Apologising thus for himself, and making 
 his very imperfect penitence a means of 
 securing his dignity and pleasure, the Earl is 
 disgusted to find himself actually suspected of 
 designs upon the child. Garinthia's suspicions 
 — for she had never complained or con- 
 descended to speak of injuries — are a new 
 outrage to his pride- Her absence from the 
 castle is construed as a personal insult 
 Hence, in spite of some plain-speaking from 
 
 383
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Gower, he refuses to see her and prepares for 
 instant departure. * ' Capable of villainy as of 
 nobility," he swings back to the former. 
 When Carinthia calmly ('* like a lance in air") 
 appears next day with her child to bid him 
 farewell and consult him on the boy's name, 
 he curtly rejects her appeal for an allowance 
 of money, orders her to live at Esslemont, 
 and looks at her child as hastily as he would 
 kick a stone in his path. The climax of her 
 offence is furnished by her bravery in 
 protecting him, at the risk of her own life, 
 from a mad dog, and by her fruitless attempt 
 to persuade a Welsh mother to have her 
 bitten child cauterised. Her courage made 
 him feel small and eclipsed, even while he 
 was forced to admit her coolness. Yet 
 "courage to grapple with his pride and open 
 his heart was wanting in him." Assuming a 
 lordly indifference, though he secretly felt 
 obscured and was wrathful alike at the feeling 
 and at the woman who stirred it, the Earl 
 drove away to rejoin his yachting party at 
 Cardiff. Again his warmer feelings of admira- 
 tion and respect for Carinthia — for unlike 
 Othello he has stray thoughts that ebb back 
 
 384
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 to love — had been chilled by his proud dread 
 of subjection and the disappointment to his 
 hope, of finding her gratefully submissive to 
 his superior authority. 
 
 Two months later, Rebecca Wythan's death 
 sets Carinthia free to journey South to 
 Esslemont. But this act of tardy submission 
 is a source of fresh irritation to her husband. 
 In her honour, and to prevent any risk of the 
 child being kidnapped, nine Welsh gentlemen, 
 headed by Mr. Wythan, act as her escort to 
 Kent, a proceeding which the Earl wrath- 
 fuUy regards as pantomimic and gratuitous. 
 (Meredith introduces at this point a 
 characteristically Rabelaisian account of a 
 drinking-bout, ch. xxxiv.) He suspects her 
 of trying to dominate him or to make him 
 ridiculous, and he will not listen to Woodseer's 
 explanation that her dread of the child being 
 kidnapped is physiologically due to her own 
 capture and imprisonment during her preg- 
 nancy. Exasperation irrationally drives him 
 once more to the device of perverting 
 Henrietta and feeding on her humiliation, 
 while he also lets Kit Ines use foul play in 
 order to prevent Chillon winning a wager at 
 
 38S
 
 George Meredith 
 
 athletics. Chillon had undertaken the wager 
 to get money, and it was to help her brother 
 that Garinthia really wished an allowance 
 from her husband. Thus by stinting her and 
 cheating him, he imagined his revenge 
 complete. But Garinthia has well-founded 
 suspicions of his treachery in regard to 
 Ghillon ; and when he goes down to visit her 
 for the first time at Esslemont, his reception 
 is as chilly as the March day on which they 
 meet. When he arrives, she is absent at 
 Groridge on a visit to her brother, who has 
 been forced to sell out of the army for money 
 to pay his debts and support Henrietta. When 
 she does appear, it is with Mr. Wythan, whom 
 (at his wife's dying request) she calls by his 
 first name. Her own term for himself, ** my 
 lord," is a rude change from the earlier 
 **my husband," which he had once resented, 
 and which, since his conduct in London, she 
 had finally dropped. He makes a weak 
 attempt, not to apologise, but to regain his 
 hold of her, but his tardy offer of money is 
 now rejected, since Ghillon's need for it 
 (thanks to his own intrigue) is gone. Lastly, 
 his proposal to spend the night is met by the 
 
 386
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 blunt, defensive, significant phrase, "I guard 
 my rooms." The moody young earl drives 
 away^ divided between respect for the 
 strength of character which extorted his 
 reluctant admiration, and furious anger at her 
 quiet disdain of what he considers to have 
 been his undeserved generosity. Respect 
 on the whole prevails. By an ironic accident, 
 he finds himself obliged to spend the night 
 at the very inn where he had abandoned 
 Garinthia on her honeymoon, and this helps 
 to warn the fool of what he is doing. 
 
 Jealousy of Lord Brailstone, who is flirting 
 with Henrietta in his absence, almost throws 
 him oiF the line again. But he is steadied by 
 the suicide of one of his sycophants or 
 Ixionides (as Gower termed them) through 
 losses at gambling and a penchant for Livia. 
 In a fluctuation of passion, he resolves to 
 settle the latter lady with a handsome income, 
 conditional on her marriage, and to establish 
 Garinthia at the head of the forthcoming 
 entertainments at Galesford which he had 
 promised to give in honour of Henrietta. 
 Woodseer is employed as the envoy ; but, 
 while he manages for himself to win Madge's 
 
 387
 
 George Meredith 
 
 heart, his mission to Carinthia is a failure. 
 Apart from the injuries done to herself, she 
 cannot forgive Lord Fleetwood for his 
 treachery to her brother. Thus at last the 
 luckless Earl begins to see that " there 's not 
 an act of a man's life lies dead behind him, but 
 it is blessing or cursing him every step he 
 takes." Most of the Earl's acts, in his ill- 
 assorted relationship with Carinthia, are 
 cursing him now. Her arctic, courteous, 
 dignified behaviour punishes and vexes him 
 cruelly. His own appeals, his tardy fits of 
 partial penitence (**I was possessed! sort of 
 were-wolf ! "), produce no impression, for 
 Carinthia inherits from her father a stern 
 aversion to the weakness of forgiving an 
 injury, and she bluntly tells him that her 
 heart is given now to her brother and her 
 child. By a strange fatality, they part at the 
 graveyard of the church in which they had 
 been married. She turns from him, promising 
 to honour the marriage-tie and yet refusing 
 any further relations with himself, till the 
 Earl, now in a lover's mood, as he watches 
 her vanish, fears she may be lost to him. For 
 his egotistic soul is distressed rather by what 
 
 388
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 he is losing in her than by what she has 
 suffered from him. 
 
 Yel^ another effort, however, he will make 
 to regain her. Thanks to the varied influences 
 of Lord Feltre and Woodseer, he is beginning 
 to waken ** to the claims of others — youth's 
 intant conscience," and actually to the need 
 and duty of doing some penance to his injured 
 wife, if ever he is to be clean again or to 
 win back her affection. He is haunted by the 
 apposite saying, "half of our funny heathen 
 lives we are bent double to gather things we 
 have tossed away." In this enterprise of 
 gathering he secures an interview with 
 Garinthia and Ghillon. The latter, thanks to 
 Lord Fleetwood's underhand intrigue at the 
 athletic contest, is now forced to gratify his 
 soldiering instinct by taking service in the 
 English contingent of the Spanish army, and 
 as Garinthia, who prefers to accompany him, 
 is in any case indignant at the treatment of her 
 brother, the poor Earl thus finds himself hoist 
 by his own petard. His attempts to apologise 
 to Garinthia are spoiled by two flaws. In 
 the first place, his pride will not stoop to that 
 complete exposure of himself which probably 
 
 389
 
 George Meredith 
 
 would have stirred brother and sister to some 
 oompassion. He feels the degradation of 
 confession more than the degradation of what 
 has to be confessed, and in the cowardice of 
 pride he hesitates to strip himself bare. 
 Further, his intercourse with Lord Feltre 
 had fostered the sentimental delusion that such 
 extreme penitential acts are due from men to 
 the priest only. With his ethical sense thus 
 impaired, he naturally fails to persuade 
 Carinthia and Ghillon of his sincerity ; he is 
 quietly tried, judged, and put aside, after a 
 tardy and imperfect disavowal of his pride. 
 Unaware of any conflict, Carinthia wrestled 
 with him, "flung him, pitied him, and passed 
 on along her path elsewhere." 
 
 Thereupon Lord Fleetwood, after a 
 rupture with Lord Brailstone, dallies with 
 the alternative: — his wife or Rome (to the 
 consternation of Protestant society). Having 
 apparently forfeited his manhood, he will take 
 refuge in monasticism. Lord Levellier's death 
 frees Ghillon from monetary embarrassments, 
 but he is still bent on Spain, and Carinthia is 
 divided between the plan of accompanying 
 him and the duty of remaining at home to be
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 with the weak, flighty, Henrietta, who will 
 not accompany her infatuated and indulgent 
 hushed to the scene of war. Chillon 
 persuades his sister to remain, hinting at 
 the possibility and advisability of some com- 
 promise with her husband. She herself 
 retains some slight emotion of pity for the 
 weak young nobleman. But in their final 
 interview his pride again blinds him to the 
 fact that his one chance lies in complete, 
 immediate confession, and in confession to 
 Carinthia instead of to a priest. ** In spite of 
 horror, the task of helping to wash a black 
 soul white would have been her compensation 
 for loss of companionship with her soldier 
 brother. She would have held hot iron to 
 the rabid wound, and come to a love of the 
 rescued sufferer." Carinthia, in short, was in 
 a mood melting to union and reconciliation 
 with her husband. But, with the tactlessness 
 of pride, he failed to use his opportunity. 
 Nor did he get another. The crisis is pre- 
 cipitated by an outburst of jealous passion on 
 Lord Brailstone's part, which suddenly reveals 
 to Henrietta Lord Fleetwood's previous 
 intrigue against herself. She flies to her 
 
 391
 
 George Meredith 
 
 sister-in-law for protection, and this discovery 
 of her husband's additional villainy iBnally 
 destroys Carinthia's inclination towards him. 
 His guilt absolves her from any further deal- 
 ings with him. She and Henrietta at once 
 proceed to Spain. Returning two years later, 
 she finds that Lord Fleetwood has become a 
 Roman Catholic monk; after his death, she ful- 
 fils Rebecca Wythan's dying wish and marries 
 Owain, who thus, like the staunch Redworth, 
 at last wins the rare pearl which a base Indian, 
 "richer than all his tribe," had flung away and 
 tried, when it was too late, to recover. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood is the conventional young 
 man of society, whose wealth makes him 
 think he can buy anything, even a woman. 
 Meredith has satirized this plutocratic view 
 of life in "The Empty Purse," where he 
 attacks the aristocrat's abuse of money to 
 indulge his passions. 
 " Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing, 
 
 Fixed eye, and the world was prey. . . • 
 
 And O the grace of his air, 
 
 As he at the goblet sips, 
 
 A centre of girdles loosed, 
 
 With their grisly label, sold." 
 
 392
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 This ideal of woman* is fostered by Fleet- 
 wood's experience of the Countess Livia, and 
 the cyclical, eccentric peer makes the mistake 
 of treating Garinthia as one of the crowd. 
 Meredith develops this favourite theme with 
 gusto, but also with a minuteness and a wealth 
 of illustrationwhich become almostwearisome. 
 
 The scene (in ch. xi) in which Lord 
 Fleetwood first sees Carinthia poised daringly 
 on a tree, should be compared with the similar 
 scene, of which it is evidently a reminiscence 
 and adaptation, in Peacock's "Crotchet 
 Castle" (ch. xviii), where also the lover's 
 passion is kindled by his first glimpse of the 
 self-possessed heroine (like Carinthia, a lover 
 of the mountains) calmly and gracefully seated 
 on a tree overhanging a cataract. 
 
 The Carlist war in Spain, referred to in 
 ch. xliii, is not the insurrection of Don Carlos 
 against Queen Christina (1834 — 1840), when 
 a British corps was raised by Sir De Lacy 
 Evans and other soldiers in aid of her 
 Majesty, but the later insurrection by General 
 
 " There is ■ prose ▼ersion of it in theSStb chapter of "The Adventure* of 
 Harry Richmond " : " hia (i.e. Heriot's) talk of womeo atill luggested the 
 hawk with the downy featheri of the last little plucked bird ttickiug to 
 bie beak."
 
 George Meredith 
 
 O'Donnell in favour of the Queen during 
 1841 — 1843, which centred in the Pyrenees. 
 As Carinthia left for Spain with Ghillon in 
 the year after her child's birth, the amazing 
 marriage cannot therefore have been much 
 later than 1839, when Chillon was twenty - 
 four years of age. Reckoning back from this 
 we reach 1814 as the time when Captain Kirby 
 eloped with his Countess, and this synchron- 
 ises with the data of the opening chapter 
 which describes the presence of a Russian 
 Emperor in London, after a long period of 
 warfare. It was in the early summer of 1814 
 that Alexander I of Russia visited this 
 country, after the surrender of Paris to the 
 Allies and the collapse of Napoleon. 
 
 Several characteristics of Meredith's craft 
 reappear throughout this novel. The racy, 
 pungent sayings from the old Buccaneer's 
 "Book of Maxims for Men" correspond to 
 those from the "Pilgrim's Scrip" in "The 
 Ordeal of Richard Feverel. " The device of 
 introducing the tale with a cloud of gossip is 
 employed in the opening chapter of " Diana," 
 whilst the cognate use of ballads is familiar to 
 readers of "Chloe." But all through the 
 
 394
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 present novel Meredith uses Dame Gossip (in 
 whose name the first three chapters are 
 writt^) as an occasion for introducing his 
 repeated defence of the analytic, introspective 
 element in a story of character ; see chapters 
 xiii, XX, XXXV, xxxviii, and the closing para- 
 graph of the novel. The style is not tainted 
 at many points with Meredithese ; the 
 "sensational shanks'* and "vertiginous roast 
 haunch " are, on the whole, exceptional. 
 
 For a comparative study of the novelist, it 
 may be observed that the fine passage in ch. 
 xxviii (beginning : *' Now to the Gymry and 
 to the pure Kelt, the past is at their elbows 
 continually**) corresponds to an earlier passage 
 in "One of Our Gonquerors'* (ch. xi, begin- 
 ning: "The Kelts, as they are called, can*t 
 and won't forgive injuries*'); and that 
 Ghillon's sole apology for Lord Fleetwood's 
 rascally conduct ("he had never been 
 thrashed," ch. xlvii) echoes the favourite 
 Meredithian principle enunciated most decis- 
 ively by Dr. Middleton in "The Egoist **(ch. 
 ix). Some hints for the sketch of Gower Wood- 
 seer, it has been conjectured, were taken 
 from the character of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 395
 
 George Meredith 
 
 Meredith makes him the exponent of 9 
 healthy Open Road philosophy, but at one 
 point (ch. XX v) he describes him as '*a young 
 man studying abstract and adoring surface 
 nature too exclusively to be aware of the 
 manifestation of her spirit in the flesh." This 
 is a significant touch. For Nature in Mere- 
 dith's scheme of life includes human nature, 
 as appears in the "Earth's Secret" and "The 
 Thrush in February " especially. 
 
 Pride and sentimentalism are, as usual, the 
 forces of mischief in the "Amazing Marriage.** 
 The latter is the key to Henrietta's romantic, 
 emotional, shallow soul. The former pre- 
 dominates in Lord Fleetwood's complex 
 character, which sways between the dog and 
 the gentleman, the devil and the cherub ; it 
 is developed through his relations with 
 women, and these bring out i^s latent weak- 
 ness, as they exhibit the secret fibre of 
 Woodseer's nature. Great wealth, with the 
 opportunity of gratifying his whims, fosters 
 in the earl an autocratic spirit which demands 
 submission to its will as the condition of 
 experiencing its generosity. This forms the 
 cause of his moral disaster. Accustomed to 
 
 396
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 luxurious dependants on his bounty, like 
 Livia, he misreads Carinthia's nobler soul, 
 and Meredith makes him an example of how 
 a man s attitude to women is bound up with 
 his view of Nature. Between the brainless 
 Lord Feltre's Catholic conception of women as 
 "devil's bait, "essentially a snare and hindrance 
 to man's purity, and Lord Fleetwood's cynical 
 use or abuse of the sex as toys, Gower Wood- 
 seer presents the sane Meredithian philosophy 
 of a frank, healthy attitude of respect towards 
 women as neither Lesbias nor Beatrices. Lord 
 Fleetwood has his sentimental impulses, as is 
 shown by his purchase of the greengrocer's 
 shop where Carinthia once had stayed, and 
 by his final lapse into monasticism. But 
 these are not necessarily moral. They can exist 
 alongside of shiftiness, cruelty, and obstinacy, 
 and indeed it is his pride that ultimately ruins 
 him by obtaining the ascendancy over his 
 better impulses. 
 
 Livia belongs to the unpleasant sisterhood 
 of Mrs. Lovell in " Rhoda Fleming." On the 
 other hand, Mrs. Wythan recalls Lady Dun- 
 stane, and the stout-hearted, loyal, comely 
 Madge Winch (Gower's "flower among grass-
 
 George Meredith 
 
 blades"), with her devotion to Carinthia, forms 
 one of the most attractive figures in Meredith's 
 series of minor female characters. Carinthia 
 herself is not so lovable as women like Diana, 
 Nataly Radnor, andVittoria. The more passive 
 circumstances of her marriage oflfer less scope 
 for her development than in the case of Mrs. 
 Warwick. But Meredith has given her in 
 rich measure the charm of womanliness and 
 mettle, of sensitiveness knit to courage, and of 
 an unspoiled, calm strength of character which 
 only ripens through ill-treatment. Like 
 Aminta, this superb woman is left by her lord 
 to the world, and she remains pure ; although 
 the course of the two women is widely differ- 
 ent, their sheen is untarnished by temptations. 
 Cruelty drives neither to mawkish pathos or 
 self-assertion. In Carinthia's case the bitter 
 discipline is successfully endured through her 
 hereditary nerve and native seribusness, whilst 
 the "sad and ripe corage" of her soul is devel- 
 oped through motherhood and deep affection 
 for her brother into something higher than 
 Griselda's gentle patience. 
 
 The psychological interest of the novel lies 
 in its treatment of the two leading characters, 
 
 396
 
 The Amazing Marriage 
 
 with Henrietta as a foil to Garinthia, and 
 Woodseer as a relief to Lord Fleetwood. But 
 Garinthia, Madge, and Woodseer are the vital 
 figure^ of the tale. The hero (?) is exaggerated 
 to the point of unreality. Despite his friend- 
 ships with Cower and Lord Feltre, he really 
 is influenced, like Edward Blancove, by the 
 tone of his society associates, whilst like draws 
 to like in the intercourse of the Wythans and 
 Madge with Garinthia. The writer's descrip- 
 tive power shows no falling off in the passages 
 on the mountain-scenery of the Black Forest 
 district (ch. iv-v), and the prize-fight (ch. xvi), 
 to say nothing of the portrait of Gharles Dump 
 (ch. ii), the old Buccaneer's postillion, which, 
 like the smaller sketches in ** Diana " (ch. xi), 
 and "Lord Ormont,"* calls up vividly the 
 atmosphere of the stage-coaching days in 
 pre-Victorian England. 
 
 '" There is another parallel. Sir Walter Soott was convineed " that no 
 schoolmaster whatsoever has existed, without his having some private 
 reserve of extreme absnrdity "—an opinion, by the way, which is as reason- 
 able as hit estimate of journalists. In "Lord Ormont" it looks as if 
 Meredith took the schoolmaster as hero, in order to brush aside such 
 conventional prejudices. Weyburn shows Lord Ormont how to behave, 
 and, in his own way, Woodseer, the son of a dissenting minister, reads 
 Lord Fleetwood a proper lesson upon how gentlemen should conduct 
 themselves towards women. The aristocrats in both cases behave, in 
 Mr. Le Gallienne's phrase. " with that studied brutality for which no one 
 can match an Eogliah aristocrat." 
 
 399
 
 Index 
 
 ) 
 
 "Adventures of Harry Richmond, 
 
 The," 28, 191/, 217. 249/, 393 
 Adversity, profit of. 24. 109. 154. 350, 
 
 395 
 Alps, the, 189, 201. 323 
 "Amazing Marriage, The," 222, 272, 
 
 353/ 
 Ambitions, social, 27, 158, 201, 233, 350 
 Apologizing, duty of. 345, 389/ 
 Aristocracy and aristocrats, 17, 115/, 
 
 223. 323, 392/, 399 
 Aristotle, 13, 43, 60, 325 
 Austen, Jane, 269, 287 
 
 Balzac, 14. 56. 313 
 Bath. 249/ 
 "Beauchamp's Career," 9-10. 209/, 
 
 270 
 Beckford, 69 
 Beethoven, 228, 332 
 Bismarck, 284, 307 
 Boiardo. 113, 382 
 Boxing, 352, 370/ 
 Boys, Meredith on, 40. 197. 269/. 306. 
 
 351 
 Brain, vroman's. 78/ 
 Bravery, not exclusively military, 299, 
 
 304 
 Brother and sister, 348. 
 BrowTiing, 58, 94, 142 
 Brovrning, Mrs., 179 
 Byronism, 223 
 
 Carlyle. 2. 9-10, 29, 31, 168, 189, 227, 
 
 270 
 "Case of General Opie and Lady 
 
 Camper. The." 239/ 
 Cavour, 307/ 
 
 Celtic character. 395 
 Chateaubriand. 23 
 "Chloe. The Tale of," 85, 247/ 
 Chnrch, the English, 226 
 Clergymen. 101. 205, 260. 3iy 
 Coaching days, 125, 350, 399 
 Coleridge, 187 
 
 Comic Spirit, the, 14/, 20/, 48 
 Conceit, 73/, 78, 90, 108, 149, 176, 181. 
 
 325 
 Congreve, 259, 299 
 Consequences, 34, 157/, 162. 202, 388 
 Contempt, 21, 143 
 Conventionality, 129, 280/. 285/, 316, 
 
 318, 326 
 Courage, 34/, 132/, 213, 285, 299, 304. 
 
 318. 384 
 Cricket. 136. 30& 
 
 Darwin. 44. 300 
 "Diana of the Crossways." 55, 289/ 
 Dickens, 2, 4, 17, 27, 135, 152, 204. 
 
 233, 291 
 Discipline, good of, 24/, 109 
 Don Quixote. 81, 313 
 
 Education, 93, 96. 347 
 "Egoist, The," 25/, 195, 198, 227, 255/ 
 Egotism, Meredith on, 46/, 194, 205/, 
 
 242/, 262 
 Eliot, George, 3, 14. 26, 56, 69, 94, 
 
 188,224 
 Emerson, 1-2, 31 
 "Emilia in England," 137/, 199, 279 
 "Empty Purse, The," 154, 245, 329. 
 392/ 
 England, invasion of, 212, 342 
 English character, 17, 20? 
 
 401
 
 Index 
 
 "Farina." 8, 83/, 278 
 Father and son, 193 
 "Feverel, The Ordeal of Richard." 
 3. 10-11, 28, 43/, 193, 259 
 Fiction, Meredith's conception of. 19/, 
 
 64/, 284 
 Fielding, 13, 108, 116, 204 
 Forgiveness, 344, 388 
 French character, 168, 330 
 
 Gentleman, ideal of, 41/, 119/, 244 
 
 Gipsies, 203 
 
 Goethe, 196, 306 
 
 Gordon, Lady Duff. 302/ 
 
 Gossip, 304 
 
 Green, T. H.. 19. 120 
 
 '•Harrington, Evan," 111, 117/ 154 
 Henley. W. E.. 34, 127, 257, 328 
 Heroes, Meredith's real, 42 
 Hero-worship, 220, 338 
 Horace, 284 
 Hort. Dr. F. J. A.. 79-80 
 
 "House on the Beach. The," 27. 231/ 
 Husbands, faults of, 123, 341/ 
 
 Ibsen, 4, 21, 23. 39. 173 
 
 Idealism in politics, 183, 284 
 
 Illness, effects of, 100. 165. 200 
 
 Illusions, 80/ 
 
 India. English in. 202 
 
 Infatuation, 325/ 
 
 Irish character. 4. 307 
 
 Italy. Meredith on. 139/. 173/ 
 
 Jealousy, 263 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 61-62, 136 
 
 Journalism, 173, 226 
 
 Lassalle, 275/ 292 
 
 Laughter, the philosophy of, 2C/, 22, 
 79, 108. 237. 244 
 
 London, 158/, 328/ 
 "Lord Ormont and his Aminta," 46, 
 335/ 
 Love and Egoism, 206, 266 
 Love-scenes, 79, 110. 203 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 93/, 226 
 
 Man's view of woman, 39/, 96, 176, 
 
 180, 207, 223, 245, 281. 287, 326. 
 
 374, 397 
 Marriage, 38/ 180, 306, 337 ; wrong 
 
 motives for. 294. 337. 364/ 
 Materialism. 34 
 Maternity, 106, 218, 385 
 Maxse, Admiral, 211 
 Mazzini, 183/ 
 Melbourne, Lord, 291/ 
 Meredith, early life, 4/, 121 ; affinities. 
 
 8/; style. 57/. etc. 
 Meredithese, 60, 168, 271, 312, 351, 
 
 395 
 Methods, Meredith's literary. 50/, 
 
 114/, 187/ 216, 313 
 "Modern Love," 13, 50, 153/ 
 Molifere, 16, 56, 297, 312, 333 
 Montaigne, 13, 115 
 Music, Meredith on, 151, 176, 184, 
 
 185/, 228, 331/ 
 
 Nature, Meredith's view of, 3V, 4y, 
 
 308, 324, 374, 396 
 Newman, 120 
 Nietzsche, 360 
 Nightingales. 89, 146 
 Norton, Caroline, 291/ 
 
 Obscurity of Meredith, 50/, 271/ 
 One idea, obsession of, 78, 222/, 323 
 "One of Our Conquerors," 182, 244. 
 296, 309/ 
 Optimism, Meredith's, 23/ 
 
 402
 
 Index 
 
 Passion, 149, 220 
 
 Pattison. Mark, 58 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 5, 8-9, 85, 
 260, 267, 313, 330/, 332, 347. 382, 
 393 A 
 
 Pessimism, 24 
 
 Plutocrats, 202, 392 
 
 Poetry, Meredith's, 4, 13, 25, 36, 38/, 
 44/, 47. 50/. 59, 79/, 106, lOo, 146, 
 154, 157, 183, 225, 237. 305. 327. 
 347. 351, 396 : see also " Empty 
 Purie " and " Modern Love " 
 
 Politics, 208, 211/, 225, 291/ 
 
 Prayer, 107, HI, 343 
 
 Pride. 27/. 90. 105. 126, 132, 153, 168/, 
 182, 193, 205/, 258, 318, 325, 341/, 
 344. 350, 363/, 376/, 396/ 
 
 Progress, 25/ 
 
 Realism, in fiction, 34. 330 
 Religion. 112. 266. 313 
 Retribution, see Consequences 
 Reviewers, 150/ 
 "Rhoda Fleming," 27. 155/. 397 
 Richardson, 8, 112. 213. 258 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 25, 56, 150 
 Ridicule, fear of, 133. 242, 264/, 286, 
 
 378/ 
 Roman Catholicism. 134, 374 
 Ruskin, 65, 113. 119/, 158 
 
 'Sandra Belloni," see "Emilia in 
 England" 
 Satire, 19/, 64, 233/. 329 
 Schoolmasters, 347, 399 
 Scott, 85. 308, 357. 399 
 Sentimentalism. 30/, 111, 147/. 153, 
 205/, 223, 267. 278/. 298, 299. 340. 
 350. 396/ 
 Service of others, 46, 244, 305. 347. 
 
 389 
 Shakespeare. 15. 61-62. 187. 284, 303 
 "Shaving of Shagpat. The." 8. 25, 69/ 
 Shelley. 347, 349 
 Snobbishness. 113, 122, 241 
 
 Spencer, 93 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 28, 57, 169. 268.395 
 
 Style, Meredith's, 57, 141, 311/ 
 
 Suburban life, 243/ 
 
 Suffering, 330 ; see also Adversity and 
 
 Discipline 
 Swinburne, 3. 5. 34. 63 
 
 Thackeray. 2. 22. 27. 101, 134. 213. 
 
 233, 269 
 Thames, the, 351 
 
 Thomson, James, 5, 105, 140, 187, 272 
 Tolstoy, 4, 19, 266 
 Toryism, 204, 221 
 "Tragic Comedians, The," 265, 275^, 
 
 292, 305 
 Trollope, 143, 266 
 
 Unselfishness, 223, 243/, 305, 330, 347 
 Upper Classes. 17. 115/ 
 
 Vanity, see Conceit 
 Venice, 225/ 
 Villains, 13. 163 
 "Vittoria." 47. 171 
 
 Wagner. 332 
 
 Walking. love of. 360 
 
 Watson. William. 311/ 
 
 Welsh character. 4. 141, 395 
 
 Whitman. Walt, 48 
 
 Widows, 213 
 
 Wife, ideal of a. 348 
 
 Wine, praise of, 136, 153, 168. 270. 284. 
 330/. 385 
 
 Women, types of. 34/; ideal. 35/. 78/. 
 253/. 284 ; beauty of. 226/. 270. 
 302/; bravery of. 207, 213; 
 intellect of, 140, 242, 294; rela- 
 tions between, 143, 145, 206, 267 ; 
 respect for, 38/ ; power of. 111 
 
 World, the, 1 103, 305, 314, 361 
 
 Yachting. 227/, 259 
 Young men, 131, 162, 206 
 
 403
 
 Printed at The Edinburgh Press. London.
 
 ^
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 .1.1968 
 
 B 
 
 Uh 
 
 ^c^D ir' 
 
 uURC 
 
 14UN171969 
 
 1 (-1 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 m MAY 2 1,1974 
 
 ID 
 
 ^^^N 
 
 
 % 
 
 ■■^.M^' 
 
 IK 
 
 DEC 1 9 19^9 
 
 REC'D tD-URD 
 
 Z MAR2 9I9S 
 
 ■%. 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ^03 ANGSi R.^
 
 )