George Meredith: A Study

It is our habit to class under the name of light literature all fiction, from that of Richardson to the ephemeral stories of the latest London favourite, though, as a matter of fact, even that historic bore, Gibbon, is not heavier reading than the novels of Richardson. We accept the term ‘light’ literature in a high sense as well as in a low one, and to the high class of light writers belong our old English masters and friends, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray. These writers were purely and simply novelists, and if they showed themselves to the thinkers in their just interpretation of the motives whence actions and complications arise, and the consequences to which they lead us, it was hardly because they thought so much as that they observed exactly, and, with the exquisite intuition of genius, penetrated life and its meaning by the road of sympathy rather than reflection, and unconsciously gave the colour of philosophy to their reproduction of observations.

Men of wide sympathies and humorous observers, which are the two most truthful qualities of portraiture, they were able to enter into all, or nearly all, phases of existence, and under the influence of the personalities and the scenes they portrayed, give us what I take to be a false impression—that of having deliberately thought out each one. The falseness of this impression is proved by the confession of Thackeray and Dickens, that no one could be more completely surprised than either by the doings and sayings of their various characters. And this confession is borne out by the mixture of exuberant spirits and sentiment that colours all the works of these novelists. Serious thinkers are neither prone to exhibit high spirits, like schoolboys let loose among pens and paper and a reckless abundance of ink, nor tears of sentiment, like a distraught heroine recording her melancholy impressions. Writers of this sort, however great and universal, are ‘light,’ because their double aim—for which we cannot be too grateful—is to touch us by the tragic or homely sorrows of existence, or to amuse us by the absurdities and tricks of our fellows, and if, by chance, they should happen to instruct us through the great lessons of life they unconsciously teach us, it is due to the simplicity and directness of their genius. And this is the estimate we English readers will ever preserve of Thackeray, in spite of the severe pronouncement against him beyond the Channel by our more artistic brethren. He may preach, as the eminent French critic, M. Taine, complains; but we are glad to be so sermonized, and return to him as to a friend who can never fail us. He may digress, but we are thankful for such digressions as his, and feel that we would not yield his faults for the more acrid greatness of Balzac.

But this latter half of the nineteenth century has produced quite a different sort of novelist; one whose mission is deliberately chosen, heavily weighed, and unweariedly fulfilled. Not in the least anxious is he to amuse us, or rouse soft and pleasurable emotions in us. The artistic exactions of the dilettanti are unregarded by him, and his voice carries far other than the note of caressing persuasion in it. He does not court our suffrage, rather does he seek to break and bend us before the sweeping storm of thought, and carry us through new paths into a world where no word is idle, no action or instinct without its most serious consequences; heedless of the fact that we may entangle ourselves inextricably in the briars and brambles of a strange phraseology, indifferent to what may be our mental suffering in endeavouring to follow him, and decipher his oddly-clothed meaning.

This kind of writer is a thinker first and a novelist afterwards, and not a thinker only, but a scientific psychologist. The novel is to him the sum of his mental labour, as the system is that of the metaphysician. The simple art of the first story-teller, Homer, and of Scott, no less differs from his method than from Kant’s ‘Kritik.’ His appearance, taking into account the materials of which his peculiar genius is composed, and the bewildering use he makes of them, is rare; and if, happily, he should obtain a hearing, after long strife with the general stupidity of the blockheads and patient endurance of the bites and barks of literary puppydom at his heels, he is sure to create a revolution in the world which subsists on amusement and distraction by this new way of popularizing philosophy through fiction and the rose-lights of imagination. His chance, of course, very much depends upon diction, and this explains to us George Eliot’s immediate recognition. As the first of the modern analytical novelists in England, she had the good fortune to start by a simple and facile style, within reach of the least intellectual reader. Hence, those who did not want to be compelled to think, could, without twist or turning, without racking their brains, or grasping a distracted head in their palms, follow her story even when they ignored the profound mental consciousness from which it sprang. But picture the catastrophe, the wide convulsion and fright her first appearance as the author of ‘Daniel Deronda’ would have created! She would have had to wait, at least, as long for recognition and admiration as her great and inadequately appreciated successor.

Remote from her in point of style, though still of her school, by reason of severe thought worked to a conclusion, oftener than hers an unanswerable interrogation, is the only living master in English literature—George Meredith. He stands beside her and Tolstoi in the rank of serious intellectual workers, though we may doubt if foreign nations will ever reach the glib acquaintance with his name and the titles of his books that they are pleased to boast with those of the Russian master. Mr. Meredith is above and beyond all a thinker, less simple and direct, less wholly preoccupied with the mission of improving humanity and beautifying life, than either George Eliot or Tolstoi. Perhaps he has a healthier conviction that the world is very well as it is, and that in the main it is all the better that we are neither so muddy nor so pink as realists and sentimentalists would have us believe, but are just comfortably spotted and well-meaning to escape excess of censure or admiration.

The British race, we know, has never been remarkable for brilliancy, nor, to any special degree, has it given evidence of perspicacity. But nowhere has it shown such an inexcusable and comical consistency of stupidity as in its slow recognition of Mr. Meredith, and its blundering acceptance of him when once a few laudatory reviews have revealed to it the existence of a prophet in its midst. We have had among us for more than thirty years a giant, and a race of pigmies, noted for nothing but the absence of genius, of even marked individuality in their stream of literary production, that flows on continuously and uneventfully, gape and blink at the odd sound of his voice, and persist in regarding him as a grotesque monster. He brings us the fruits of his colossal intellect in masterpiece after masterpiece, and because he applies some hard knocks to our understanding, never bright and always fearful of the new, we either turn from him in cold neglect, or else we grow witty with the wit of pigmies, at his expense, and accuse him ‘of breaking his shins over his own wit.’ That which we do not understand, we decide, with the superiority of the inane and the ignorant, to be not worthy the understanding. Used as we have been to the lucid prose of Thackeray and the brilliant vulgarity and homeliness of Dickens, spoiled as our literary talent has been more recently by the flood of bloodless fiction poured into the circulating libraries and fast bringing the monthly magazines to a deadlock of incompetency and unimaginative drivel, can we wonder, though we may deplore, that the taste for excellence and vigour has diminished?

That his first novel, ‘Richard Feverel,’ should have passed unheeded, in spite of the remarkable review which the Times gave it in 1859, is something to wonder at, for surely such a book might have been expected to startle the best of his country into superlative praise, and meet with immediate popularity. It had already been preceded by a volume of notable poetry, by that extraordinary tour de force, ‘The Shaving of Shagpat,’ and by ‘Farina, a Legend of Cologne.’ Yet these were not sufficient to convince his fellows that in their presence stood mighty genius claiming the poor return it is in our power to make it—the hospitality and welcome of our minds. Does such denseness deserve pity or blame? For churlishness it cannot be called, as the neglect shown the great is never deliberate. Two years were we left to sharpen our wits upon the pages of ‘Richard Feverel,’ and, mayhap, acquire a taste for qualities utterly novel to the age and, in a measure, to the nation—for something more than English characteristics go to the forming of a writer like Mr. Meredith—and in 1861 we were asked to make what we could of ‘Evan Harrington.’ The story appeared in Once a Week, and was illustrated by the late Charles Keene, under the title of ‘Evan Harrington; or, He Would be a Gentleman.’ Mr. Stevenson makes doleful mention of a serial of Meredith’s that nearly wrecked a newspaper financially, and presumably this was the unlucky experiment, from which it may be gathered that ‘Evan Harrington’ had no greater success than ‘Richard Feverel,’ and that the hour of recognition had not yet dawned. Explain it who can. Was there not a grain of perversity at the bottom of it? And can there be a more thankless task than that of labouring against the tide of fatal dulness, or an unkinder solitude than that of a man who is a head and a half above the tallest of his fellows, and can neither lift them up to his level nor descend to theirs? There are compensations, certainly, but these only serve to mitigate the sufferings of intellectual isolation, and, to the artist, can never fill adequately the place of generous and hearty appreciation. Wrapped in his philosophic cloak, the thinker may make shift to do without his fellows, and call them by hard names, but to the artist and the poet, sympathy and the warm praise of living voices is like sunshine to the human frame. But reliable, if rare, critics had begun to find him out. In 1862, when his second book of poetry appeared, ‘Modern Love,’ the Spectator chose to assail, as an unfledged beginner, the man who had given such work as his to the world; whereupon Mr. Swinburne, wrathful, though not invective—rare chance!—wrote a letter that all disciples of Meredith remember with gratitude. But it is still hard for us to understand how the career of any man of letters could be so slow, and appreciation so long grudged him, as has been the case with a penman of so pronounced a type. That he should excite hostility, being himself of no tender fabric, is comprehensible and easily explained by the impatience and sense of irritation that he often rouses in the breasts of his admirers. But we can recognise the qualities and greatness of the writer who provokes our hostility, and generously give him that which is his due, while not withholding that which he excites. Writing of ‘Modern Love,’ Mr. Swinburne, who is certainly upon his own ground in criticising a brother poet, says, ‘Every section of this great progressive poem is connected with the other by links of the finest and most studied workmanship,’ and that ‘a more perfect piece of writing no man alive has ever turned out’ than the noble sonnet beginning,

‘We saw the swallows gathering in the skies.’

Bear in mind this was written by the third living English poet in the year 1862, of a comparatively unknown poet, while yet Browning and Tennyson were writing their best. And then explain how it is that Meredith the poet is still less known than Meredith the novelist, and that until very lately reading people, if asked about George Meredith, invariably corrected the rash questioner by the suggestion that he doubtless meant Owen Meredith. With Owen Meredith they were familiar enough, but George Meredith? They would shake their heads and tell you that they never heard of him, or if, perchance, they had, invariably added the rumour that they had also heard: ‘A perfectly unreadable writer, I believe, whom nobody—possibly not even himself—understands, and very few try to understand.’

Five or six years ago I imagined this incredible ignorance to be exclusive to Dublin, where we are not very assiduous in the pursuit of literature, or of anything else but the fortunes of the political heroes of the hour. But upon crossing the Channel, and finding myself in the blessed atmosphere of literary fervour and progress, I was amazed to see how few were the literary persons I met who knew much more of Mr. Meredith than his name, and even here I was more than once confronted with the inevitable Owen Meredith. That the lovers of Mr. Rider Haggard and John Strange Winter should not read his works is but the completion of their intellectual taste; and strange, indeed, would it be to see a copy of ‘Diana of the Crossways’ in the hands of these worthy persons; but that the readers of Shakespeare and Thackeray and George Eliot should shun him—this is where the incredible and inexplicable eccentricity of public taste displays itself. And yet in 1862 he had written:

It may be argued that the long delay in the acknowledgment of his sovereignty is due to himself, to his obscurities, his ruggedness, his enormous intellectual difficulties offered the reader, like five-barred gates, to leap, and, in the event of failure, fall against, stunned and aching all over from the force of big mental bruises. But Browning is fifty times more obscure, more rugged, more difficult. It is true, Browning’s apotheosis, in somewhat ironical form, lies in a Browning Society that, perhaps, may achieve a glossary and a full compilation of notes. Whereas, all the poet asks us to bring to him is a little thought and some brains. As Browning has his lucid and melodious words, when the simplest may understand him upon a first reading, so has Mr. Meredith—a fact that does not seem to have served him to such popularity as Browning enjoyed. Can anything be sweeter, softer, more musical than this little poem ‘The Meeting’?—

And still are we confronted with the mystery of such a poet’s unpopularity. Explain it by the unattractiveness of his difficulties, and what have you to say against the soothing charm and the exquisite simplicity of such lines as these, that linger in the memory, not only because of their delicate music, but because of their vividness of picture and the autumn sadness that lies upon it. In workmanship the poem is equal to the best of its sort, and Heine, in his matchless songs, has never touched us with a pathos more searching from its unpretentiousness.

Two years after the appearance of ‘Modern Love,’ ‘Emilia in England’ was published, and in the same year M. E. D. Forgues translated an adaptation of it for the Revue des Deux Mondes, under the title of ‘Sandra Belloni, Roman de la Vie Anglaise.’ This looks like progress in public opinion. At least, it may be thought, after thirteen years of neglected labour in strife with feeble and vitiated taste, the author of so much brilliant work is upon the point of enthusiastic recognition. Not so at all. ‘Emilia’ created as little sensation as ‘Richard,’ and we may believe that the subscribers to the circulating libraries were as little fluttered by the production of the one as they had been by that of the other—being equally unaware of the existence of either. The book was not extensively reviewed, and only the happy few congratulated themselves upon the acquisition. Perhaps their satisfaction in it was increased by the fact that it was not shared by the crowd, for though the lovers of an unappreciated novelist may ardently desire to bestrew their paths with converts, it is not unusual in them to cover themselves in a sort of fierce and holy pride with a bit of his cloak of isolation. If he is miserably misunderstood, do not they share to some extent his misfortunes? And is there not a very decided superiority—sad, if you will, for none but the churlish and carping few desire to keep salvation and paradise exclusively for themselves—in the fact of their mutual want of appreciation?

‘Rhoda Fleming’ appeared in 1865, and this book seems to have made a more decided impression, though the writer still remained in the background among well-known men of letters, and his name, like his presence, was on the whole ignored. It was published by Messrs. Tinsley, in itself an instructive lesson in the author’s popularity. But there can be no doubt that the tide was changing, slowly, it is true—indeed, imperceptibly. In 1867 ‘Vittoria’ first came out in the Fortnightly Review, a review henceforth devoted to the fiction of Mr. Meredith, and to which he seems to have contributed a good many reviews and short poems. After this, in 1871, we meet him in Cornhill recording the brilliant and ever-delightful adventures of ‘Harry Richmond,’ and this, coupled with the fact that Mr. George Du Maurier illustrated the story, and that it ran through two editions in the same year, gives us breathing-space in our long vent of indignation. We may now conclude that a portion, at least, of the British public had awaked, and were capable of relishing such entrancing novels as ‘Richard Feverel,’ ‘Sandra Belloni’ and ‘Harry Richmond,’ in which we hardly read so much as we drink in life, vividly, eagerly—life with all its sharp, sweet thrills and poignant aversions, its breathless alternation of mood and swift race of the passions.

‘Beauchamp’s Career’ followed in 1876, first in the Fortnightly Review, between 1874 and 1876, and afterwards in Messrs. Chapman and Hall’s collected editions of 1886 and 1889. Although Mr. Meredith’s career cannot be said to have been crowned with anything like a wide acknowledgment, or even anything approaching a fair reward, until he wrote ‘Diana of the Crossways’ in 1885, which brought him his first taste of substantial and general success, and cast a retrospective glamour upon its predecessors, people from the date of ‘Harry Richmond’ began to know that there was a novelist named George Meredith who was not Owen Meredith.

Considering all that the writer has had to contend with in the way of block-headedness, this is most certainly a step in advance. But to his own especial minority, it is not ‘Diana,’ with all its charm and its perilous brilliancy, that crowns Mr. Meredith’s career, but that unique masterpiece, ‘The Egoist,’ which was published in 1879. Here was a memorable triumph of art, at which we have not yet ceased to wonder, and which we hold apart from all other books that we have read. After it he may write ‘Tragic Comedians,’ ‘Diana of the Crossways,’ and volumes of poems. Anything he writes we are prepared to welcome with cordial delight and gratitude, but we do not expect another Sir Willoughby Patterne. We are satisfied with the impossibility of the repetition of such an achievement. It is not given to many artists to produce one flawless work, and to expect a second from even such a mighty one as this would be to prove one’s self insatiable.

From this time forward, reviews, articles, criticisms—hostile, humorous, and eulogistic—begin to abound; and by the time of ‘Diana’s’ appearance, the British public has been made ready to receive the intelligence that a master is in their midst—a living, breathing master, such as Tennyson and Browning, and from whom work may happily still be expected. What effect this announcement may have had upon the British public cannot be perfectly defined. Being unenthusiastic, except in the matter of low and familiar literature, it is to be feared that such news has but moderately moved it, and in the matter of taste, has not influenced it at all. This new master is unfamiliar to them in his speech and in his ideas. He does not dwell upon sordid scenes with visible pleasure; he claims them with a voice that is not of their common tongue, and faces them without the old-fashioned twinkle of the grave jester’s glance. If he caricatures humanity, it is not as Dickens caricatures it, to tickle us into inextinguishable laughter, nor yet as Thackeray does, in a vein of comic satire. If he calls upon us to recognise that life is often a sad blunder, and to pity the blunderers, he is neither sentimental in his claim, nor consciously pathetic. He indulges neither in the mawkish sentiment of Dickens, nor in the sentimental tenderness of Thackeray, and as little courts our tears as our laughter. Brain is what he asks of us, and its use in reading him.