CHAPTER III
THE IRONIC
The science of Esthetics is a tribute to our zeal in attempting to define the indefinable word beauty. Nearly as elusive of categoric bondage is irony; but for its capture no formal scientific crusade has as yet been organized. It is, however, whether in spite of its vagueness or because of it, a term of great and increasing popularity. No phrase is at present more of a general favorite than “The Irony of Fate,” no exclamation more frequent than “How ironic!” In this expressive and impressive utterance there is as much individual variation of meaning as in “How beautiful!” And it coexists with as much possibility of a standardized conception. What the latter may be, it is the business of the student of the subject to try to determine.
The etymology and early usage of the word are familiar enough. Generically, to the ancient Greeks, irony meant dissimulation in speech; specifically, that form of dissimulation used by Socrates for the confusion of his dialectic opponent, consisting on the part of the wise man of an assumption of ignorance which longed for enlightenment. On this bated hook were caught the unwary who pretended to wisdom the while they had it not, lured by flattering inquiry to a fatal communicativeness.
In its present status the term has two fairly distinct divisions, characterized by Bishop Thirwall, in his essay on the Irony of Sophocles, as the verbal and the practical. The former is the rhetorical device whereby a certain idea or circumstance is implied by its statement in terms to the contrary or to the opposite effect. The latter is the contrast between the real and apparent state of things, or between the expected and the eventual, commonly described as the Irony of Fate. A third form, the kind known as dramatic irony, might be mentioned, though it is really a subdivision of cosmic irony.[165] For the actor makes his blunders and gets into his predicaments through ignorance; and this discrepancy between his notion of things and their actuality adds zest to the enjoyment of the spectator, who is in the secret. So the great unseen Spectator is conceived to observe the stage of the world, and derive the amusement of superior knowledge from that
Among these varieties, and between all of them and the original meaning, there must be enough common ground to account for the persistence of the terminology through the centuries, allowing for the divergence natural to a slow and half conscious evolution. This common ground of denotation is of course dissimulation, whether in the restricted field of knowledge, or the complete reversal of statement and intention, or the specious show of things whereby we are deluded into an erroneous supposition or a false sense of security. But this simple matter of deception is enveloped in an atmosphere of connotation that is charged with complication and subtlety.
The ironic habit of speech is a sign of a mind imaginative and averse to the obvious. Its indulgence indicates a love of concealment, from æsthetic motives, and a corresponding abhorrence of flat, naïve exposure. The ironist has taken the veil of covertness to protect himself from the garish overt day.[166] Its reception, on the other hand, is an equally sure indicator of disposition. For it is beloved of its own kin, deep answering unto deep, and distrusted by the alien with a repulsion as strong as that of the subtle for the simple. To understand or not to understand the ironic is an acid test of the literal mind. An apposite reference to this fact is found in a comment on one of our novelists.[167]
“Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humourist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Mr. Disraeli’s novels must be a standing offense, for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other is imperceptible.”
Another reason for the prejudice against ironic language may be that it is popularly supposed to emanate from a caustic soul, with leanings toward cynicism; an error due to a narrow identification of irony with its extreme right wing,—sarcasm, which is indeed, as its etymology would signify, a flesh-tearing, or at least heart-rending, performance, belonging, as Bishop Hall would say, to the toothed division of satire.
But on the extreme left sits banter, entirely amiable and even affectionate. “You scamp, you rascal, you young villain!” is a favorite way of expressing parental pride and tenderness. Reticent youth apostrophizes his cherished friend as an “old fraud.” “Philosophic irony,” says Anatole France, “is indulgent and gentle.”[168] And Symonds[169] describes Ariosto as watching “the doings of humanity with a genial half smile, an all pervasive irony that had no sting in it.” Ranging thus from the playful to the ferocious, irony is at its best when not too near either margin, having in itself more point than banter and more polish than sarcasm. “They are all,” says another critic,[170] “with others of the family, in the regular service of Satire.”
The metaphor of service may be allowed, in that satire, being the largest and most general type, includes the others. The relationship may be stated more literally by saying that irony is the form of humorous criticism which is expressed through innuendo, partly because of preference for verbal inversion, and partly in recognition of the topsy-turvydom of life. All irony is therefore satirical, though not all satire is ironical. The ironist conveys his own point of view by stating another’s, condemning by appearing to approve, or vice versa. Boisterousness and didacticism are foreign to irony and not to be feared so long as it is dominant. Perfection in its employment indicates that complete self-control which is supposed to be a patrician trait.
This does not mean, however, that ironic usage or attitude has been confined to the upper social stratum as its special prerogative. Nietzsche may indeed exclaim, “We should look upon the needs of the masses with ironic compassion: they want something which we have got—Ah!” But these compassionated masses have themselves been capable of the retort ironic, and have had also their spokesmen, from Lucian to Galsworthy. In The Cock, Lucian gives an ironic enumeration of the dangers and troubles of the rich and powerful, and displays the advantage of being poor and obscure. In The Ferry, Mycellus, the cobbler, voices an ironic lament on leaving life, and parodies the regrets of the wealthy:[171]
“Oh, dear, dear! My shoe-soles! Oh! My old boots! Oh! What will become of my rotten sandals? Alas, poor wretch that I am, I shall no longer go without food from early morning until evening, nor in winter time walk barefoot and half naked, my teeth chattering from the cold. Ah, me! Who, forsooth, is going to have my shoemaker’s knife and my awl?”
As manner of speech is but a reflection of manner of thought, it is evident that the ironist is not sufficiently accounted for as a devotee of a certain verbal device. This, on the contrary, is only an external manifestation of something more subjective and permanent,—a mood or an attitude which may enlarge into a definite interpretation of life. Of this interpretation the keynote is that Fate is ironical. In its unmitigated form this philosophy declares that there is a deviltry that misshapes our ends, construct them how we will. It is more often found, however, in a modified creed which admits that the presence of this perverse element in existence does not prove that all life is of the same piece; that the mad pranks are those of destiny’s underlings, dressed in a little brief authority, and not perpetrated by the ruler of the universe.
Such speculations lead into the realm of religion, and religion has had to provide a place in its pantheon for this spirit of disastrous caprice. There it lurks under various guises. Baal may fall asleep or go on a journey at a time most inauspicious for his followers. The behavior of the Olympians quite justifies the debate between Timocles and Damis, reported by Lucian, as to the theocratic mismanagement of the world. Setebos slays and saves with an eye single to the bewilderment of the human puppets. The presiding goddess in The House of Fame rewards and punishes with a similar unaccountability. “The gods,” says Smollett[172] “not yet tired with sporting with the farce of human government, were still resolved to show by what inconsiderable springs a mighty empire may be moved.” Sport is a need also of the President of the Immortals, and where so agreeably found as in undermining the patient structure of poor little Tess, and bringing it to the ground with a splendid crash?
The essence of an ironic circumstance lies in its apparently wanton thwarting by a narrow margin of a normal sequence in itself logical and desirable, or in an imposition of calamity on the same exasperating terms. Either it frustrates not merely what might have been but what almost was, or it brings to pass the disaster that was almost averted. It might come under the simpler caption of bad luck, except that not all bad luck is ironic; only a particular brand of it. Irony is the obverse side of that happy concatenation of events which we approvingly designate as Providential. The favoring and therefore the rational and commendable happening is an act of special providence. The contrary comes from the malicious mischief of the Aristophanes of Heaven.
In literature the ironic temper has acquitted itself with distinguished success. Among its contributions one recalls The Dinner of Trimalchio, The Golden Ass (and the medieval Burnellus), Letters of Obscure Men, Praise of Folly, Gargantua, Don Quixote, The Gull’s Hornbook, Knight of the Burning Pestle, A Modest Proposal, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Candide, Jonathan Wild, Murder as a Fine Art, Castle Rackrent, Northanger Abbey, The Fair Haven. A glance at the list shows the versatile nature of irony both as to form and idea, though its history taken as a whole has shown more predilection for the romantic than for the realistic method. It is an ingredient in all burlesque and caricature, and is on the other hand least necessary to an explicit presentation of reality, however full this last may be of implicit irony. Its consistent practice is to deceive, and this can more easily be accomplished through fantasy and symbolism. When, however, it is accomplished by more demure and disarming means, the deception is more thorough just because of taking the reader unaware. One is on guard against any form of the symbolic, knowing that some suspicious thing is therein concealed. But who would think of questioning a collection of letters, an essay or a treatise? Yet these are the culprits guilty of ruthlessly hoodwinking the trusting literal mind.
Ulrich von Hutten’s Epistolæ were edited by Maittaire, and the edition reviewed by Steele (whom we should not expect to be caught napping), both taking them seriously. Defoe’s pilloried renown is well known. Butler’s work “in Defense of the Miraculous Element in Our Lord’s Ministry upon Earth,” was solemnly greeted by the reviewers as a champion of orthodoxy, and sent by Canon Ainger to a friend he wished to convert. Swift and De Quincey have been condemned for abuse of children and encouragement of crime.
Misunderstanding of this sort is a triumph for irony, a test of success. But there are also signs of a misapprehension of the ironic disposition, especially as related to the satiric. Of this conception two modern critics afford examples. In the Introduction to his Defoe, Masefield remarks,—
“An ironical writer has always nobility of soul; a satirist has seldom any quality save greater baseness than his subject. An ironical writer knows the good; a satirist need only know the evil.”
The superb eulogy of the first statement may be dismissed as a bit of rhetoric, but the doom pronounced in its corollary, is based on a double confusion; first between the ironist and the humorist, and second between the satirist and the misanthrope. In a recent discussion the same fallacy is promulgated at greater length:[173]
“The satirist is the aggressive lawyer, fastening upon particular people and particular qualities. But irony is no more personal than the sun that sends his flaming darts into the world. The satirist is a purely practical man, with a business instinct, bent on the main chance and the definite object. He is often brutal, and always overbearing; the ironist, never. Irony may wound from the very fineness and delicacy of the attack, but the wounding is incidental. The sole purpose of the satirist and the burlesquer is to wound; and they test their success by the deepness of the wound. But irony tests its own by the amount of generous light and air it has set flowing through an idea or a personality, and the broad significance it has revealed in neglected things.”
The only pertinent reply to such eloquence is one that may seem impertinent, namely, to refer the special pleader to a useful principle in argument greatly favored by a certain canny Greek dialectician, and quaintly restated in the eighteenth century:[174]
“If once it was expected by the Public that Authors should strictly define their Subjects, it would instantly cheque an Innundation of Scribbling. The desultory Manner of Writing would be absolutely exploded; and Accuracy and Precision would be necessarily introduced upon every Subject. * * * If Definitions had been constantly expected from Authors there would not have appeared one hundredth Part of the present Books, and yet every Subject had been better ascertained.”
Irony, it is true, is defined by the essayist as “the science of comparative experience,” but this attempt to fit a philosophic giant to the bed of his smaller ironic brother meets with the usual Procrustian result. As for the tribute to irony, a far more impressive one is paid in the almost casual utterance of Lamb, who makes it the climax of his enumeration of the blessings vouchsafed to mortality,—“and irony itself—do these things go out with life?”
In Victorian fiction the presence of this element is found very much as it is in life, unobstrusive but easily detectable. What Saintsbury says of Jane Austen would apply in varying degrees to her successors:[175]
“Precisely to what extent the attractive quality of this art is enhanced by the pervading irony of the treatment would be a very difficult problem to work out. It is scarcely hazardous to say that irony is the very salt of the novel; and that just as you put salt even in a cake, so it is not wise to neglect it wholly even in a romance. Life itself, as soon as it gets beyond mere vegetation, is notoriously full of irony; and no imitation of it which dispenses with the seasoning can be worth much.”
This vital importance of what might be called negative value is suggested by the juvenile’s definition of salt as “what makes your potato taste bad if there isn’t any on it.” It is just this fact, however, that allows the ironic to defy analysis. By itself one spoonful of salt is very much like another. The whole secret is in the combination. Its presence or absence gives one the immediate feeling of the little more and how much it is, the little less and how far away. But to segregate it for scrutiny is to destroy the charm of the savor.
Since such segregation must nevertheless be attempted for the sake of the information it may yield, it seems advisable to keep to the division already noted, and distinguish between verbal and philosophical irony as they exist in the novel. These correspond in a general way to the direct and the dramatic methods used in the larger field of satire.
Of ironic language we find practically none in Reade, very little in Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë, more frequent flashes in Lytton and Disraeli, increasing still more in Dickens and Trollope. In Peacock, Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Butler, it is more pervasive, even when less in quantity, and representative of a consistent attitude.
As Mrs. Kirkpatrick-Gibson is Mrs. Gaskell’s favorite game, she constantly exposes her to ironic self-betrayal, and finally allows her disciplined husband the luxury of an ironic retort,—not in the lady’s presence, of course, but by way of reply to his daughter Molly’s anticipation of an orgy of freedom in her absence.[176]
“The doctor’s eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave. ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I’ve reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be pulled down again.’”
Kingsley and Brontë are both incapable of this quiet banter, and can produce from their earnest souls only an awkward and angry sarcasm.
The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely are asking whether Shirley’s expressive manner of singing can be proper.[177]
“Was it proper? * * * Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.”
Alton Locke says of his own aspiration,[178]
“No doubt it was very self-willed and ambitious of me to do that which rich men’s sons are flogged for not doing, and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships, for doing.”
But in the midst of his bitterness he stops to remark,
“I really do not mean to be flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as much as any man, in myself and in my own class.”
The description in Yeast of the fight between the squire’s retainers and the London poachers, which results in the death of faithful old Harry Verney, concludes with this comment,—characteristic in that it breathes the spirit of irony but lacks its complete form.[179]
“And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if the pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake!”
That Lytton should gain in poise and subtlety in the forty-five years intervening between Pelham and Kenelm Chillingly is to be expected, although the progression is by no means a steady one. Some of his most absurd sarcastic moralizing is found in My Novel, about midway in time,—particularly on the March of Enlightenment, with a smart sketch of half a dozen typical Marchers; and on liberal notions generally. And in the youthful volume are some very good touches, as this concerning his country uncle:[180]
“He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man: built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his farmers’ rents; indeed, on account of these and similar eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by others.”
This pales perceptibly, however, by the side of Peacock’s firm and vivid treatment of the same subject, embodied in Squire Crochet:[181]
“He could not become, like a true-born English squire, part and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he could not find in game-bagging, poacher-shooting, trespasser-pounding, footpath-stopping, common-enclosing, rack-renting, and all the other liberal pursuits and pastimes which make a country gentleman an ornament to the world, and a blessing to the poor; he could not find in these valuable and amiable occupations, and in a corresponding range of ideas, nearly commensurate with that of the great king Nebuchadnezzer, when he was turned out to grass; he could not find in this great variety of useful action, and vast field of comprehensive thought, modes of filling up his time that accorded with his Caledonian instinct.”
This in turn is quite equaled by Kenelm’s coming-of-age speech, though his indictment of the genus squire is couched in unironical satire. Not that the youth was unacquainted with the uses of irony. At the age of nine he had had occasion to send a letter to a schoolmate, conveying his conviction of that lad’s lack of intelligence. He had heard his father remark that a certain neighbor was an ass, and that he was going to write and tell him so. He made inquiries into the matter of phrasing such information. He received the following reply,—by which he profited most effectively in his own correspondence:[182]
“But you can not learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman is an ass, he does not say it point-blank—he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.”
This principle is applied on a national scale in the discourse of the intruder among the Vrilya, whose situation resembles that of Gulliver eulogizing to the king of the Brobdingnagians the Institutions of England, except that Lytton does not blunt his irony by relapsing into plain terms, as Swift does in the “pernicious race of little odious vermin.” The visitor waxes eloquent about America:[183]
“Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously sees its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowest citizens in point of property, education, and character.”
This is the ironic version of Matthew Arnold’s polished dubiety about majorities in Numbers; and of the robustious satire of Dickens. If we feel that Lytton excels the latter in pithy conciseness and allusive point, we have to remember that he was at this time more than twice the age of Dickens when Martin Chuzzlewit was written, and that in the intervening quarter century some improving changes had taken place in their common object of satire.
Disraeli’s irony is less tangible and quotable. His favorite method is to hint at the implication in a burlesque comparison; as in the opening sentence of The Young Duke:[184]
“George Augustus Frederick, Duke of Saint James, completed his twenty-first year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest.”
Later his toilette is described in terms of a campaign, concluding,[185]
“He assumes the look, the air that befit the occasion: cordial, but dignified; sublime, but sweet. He descends like a deity from Olympus to a banquet of illustrious mortals.”
Tancred is introduced by an epic of the chefs. Prevost is discoursing to Leander (who will take no engagements but with crowned heads), of their profession and of Adrien, a neophyte:[186]
“‘It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ added Prevost, with the grand air of the Imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been for Waterloo, I should have had the cross. But the Bourbons and the cooks of the Empire never could understand each other. * * *
“‘He is too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on the third day. I entrusted the souffles to him, and, but for the most desperate personal exertions all would have been lost. It was an affair of the bridge of Areola. * * * Ah! mon Dieu! those are moments!’”
Later the same functionary is scandalized at the diners’ neglect of his colleague (shown in the failure to present him with tokens of esteem) when he had surpassed himself in a superb dinner:[187]
“How can he compose when he is not appreciated? Had he been appreciated he would today not only have repeated the escalopes a la Bellamont, but perhaps even invented what might have outdone it. * * * These things in themselves are nothing; but they prove to a man of genius that he is understood. Had Leander been in the Imperial kitchen, or even with the emperor of Russia, he would have been decorated!”
It transpires, however, that the artist’s wounded feelings were soothed by a belated acknowledgment, accompanied by a tactful hint that he suffered in a good cause, and that as an esthetic missionary he should be lenient to the social delinquencies of the barbarians he ministered unto:[188]
“Was it nothing, by this development of taste, to assist in supporting that aristocratic influence which he wished to cherish, and which can alone encourage art?”
It is not to be supposed that this indicates the range of Disraeli’s ideas, merely the subject on which he chiefly expends his ironic persiflage. A representative example of his more serious sarcasm is found in the second volume of his Young England Trilogy, the one most alive with social sympathy:[189]
“Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.”
In Dickens and Trollope irony is a substantial though not exactly an integral element; more substantial in the former than the latter. We find ironic comment both direct, by the writer, and indirect, through ironic characters; and the still more indirect, in the betraying speech that relates facts true in a different sense from that meant by the speaker, thus conveying a reverse effect from the one intended.
A text for the first kind is furnished by Noah Claypole, the sordid bully and snob, prompt to retaliate on one still lower in the scale of circumstance than himself:[190]
“This affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a charming thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.”
Another is the Chuzzlewit Family, introduced by a long prologue of ironic symbolism. Specifically there is the eulogy of the head of the present branch of it:[191]
“Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but these were his enemies; the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.”
Later in his illustrious career, he is upheld in his holy horror at the mercenary diplomacy of a landlady. Mr. Pecksniff rebukes,—
“Oh, Baal, Baal! Oh my friend, Mrs. Todgers! To barter away that precious jewel, self-esteem, and cringe to any mortal creature—for eighteen shillings a week!”
And Dickens echoes,[192]
“Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, they censure, upright Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man’s smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie, or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred,—but to worship the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! Oh pitiful, pitiful!”
Two more characteristic instances may be cited. The first is concerning the failure of the firm of Dombey and Son.[193]
“The world was very busy now, forsooth, and had a deal to say. It was an innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world was very angry indeed; and the people especially who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be bankrupt traders themselves in shows and pretenses, were observed to be mightily indignant.”
The second is anent the Whelp, Tom Gradgrind.[194]
“It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under the continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.”
In character we have a range from the vulgar, vigorous sarcasm of Mr. Panks[195] to the languid patrician banter of Sir John Chester, exercised on the uncomprehending Sim Tappertit and Gabriel Varden. There are also ironic touches in the two heroes, Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield.
The most delightful pictures of those who entertain irony unaware are Mr. Bumble, Mr. Squeers, Mr. Turveydrop, Mrs. Skewton, Mrs. Nickleby, and Mrs. Pardiggle.
Entrenched in wisdom, these philosophers all enunciate profound truths about life.
The beadle discovers the illimitable vistas of human desires, together with the unreasonable expectation of having them gratified. He laments the ingratitude of the pauper who, in antiparochial weather, having been granted bread and cheese, has the audacity to ask for a bit of fuel.[196]
“That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give ’em a apron full of coals today, and they’ll come back for another, the day after tomorrow, as brazen as alabaster.”
The pedagogue learns that parental prejudice sometimes extends to an extravagant pampering of offspring, even carried so far as an absurd opposition to wholesome discipline. Summoned to London on some bothering law business for what was called the neglect of a boy, he explains to the sympathetic Ralph Nickleby that the lad had as good grazing as there was to be had.[197]
“When a boy gets weak and ill and don’t relish his meals, we give him a change of diet—turn him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbor’s turnip-field, or sometimes, if it’s a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends brings a lawsuit against me!”
The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts, inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a succes d’estime, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of a stupid public.[198]
“It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am,—still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”
The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.[199]
“But that was always the way with your poor dear papa,—just his way—always wandering, never able to fix his thoughts on any one subject for two minutes together. I think I see him now! * * * looking at me while I was talking to him about his affairs, just as if his ideas were in a state of perfect conglomeration! Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed I was confusing and distracting him instead of making things plainer; upon my word they would.”
Mrs. Skewton and Mrs. Pardiggle have solved the secret of a happy life, but by different ways. The former perceives it to spring from scholarship vivified by enthusiasm for the fascinating perspectives of history.[200]
“Those darling bygone times, Mr. Carker, * * * with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated. * * * We have no faith in the dear old barons, who were the most delightful creatures—or in the dear old priests, who were the most warlike of men—or even in the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, which were so extremely golden! Dear creature! She was all heart! And that charming father of hers! I hope you dote on Henry the Eighth!”
The latter, on the other hand, lives in the present, is attuned to the carpe diem idea, and realizes the joy of self-expression and the exhilaration of labor.[201]
“I freely admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard work, that I don’t know what fatigue is. * * * This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds. If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell that person directly, ‘I am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on till I have done.’ It answers admirably!”
In contrast to the various methods of Dickens, Trollope practically confines himself to direct comment. His favorite topics are politics and society. As to the former, radical iconoclasm is described in the person of Mr. Turnbull.[202]
“Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called upon either to study details or to master even great facts. * * * Mr. Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms of that inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition.”
The always useful ironic device of simply delineating one’s objects with brushes and colors of their own, of presenting them as they see themselves, is used in one episode both on an institution and an individual. The Press reacts to the appointment of a scoundrel to the Cabinet.[203]
“The Jupiter, with withering scorn, had asked whether vice of every kind was to be considered, in these days of Queen Victoria, as a passport to the cabinet. Adverse members of both Houses had arrayed themselves in a pure panoply of morality, and thundered forth their sarcasms with the indignant virtue and keen discontent of political Juvenals.”
Nevertheless, the new incumbent enjoys his emoluments.[204]
“Now, as he stood smiling on the hearthrug of his official fireplace, it was quite pleasant to see the kind, patronizing smile which lighted up his features. He delighted to stand there, with his hands in his trousers pocket, the great man of the place, conscious of his lordship, and feeling himself every inch a minister.”
With reference to what was then a new policy of administration, he employs ironic exhortation.[205]
“Let every place in which a man can hold up his head be the reward of some antagonistic struggle, of some grand competitive examination. Let us get rid of the fault of past ages. With us, let the race be ever to the swift, and victory always to the strong. And let us always be racing, so that the swift and strong shall ever be known among us. But what, then, for those who are not swift, not strong? Væ victis! Let them go to the wall. They can hew wood, probably; or, at any rate, draw water.”
The thing in society which Trollope apparently finds most open to ironic treatment is the commercializing of marriage. In one place this takes the form of sage advice.[206]
“There is no doubt but that the privilege of matrimony offers opportunities to money loving young men which ought not to be lightly abused. Too many young men marry without giving any consideration to the matter whatever. * * * A man can be young but once, and, except in cases of a special interposition of Providence, can marry but once. The chance, once thrown away, may be said to be irrecoverable. * * * Half that trouble, half that care, a tithe of that circumspection would, in early youth, have probably secured to them the enduring comforts of a wife’s wealth. * * * There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony; that is, of course, provided that the aspirant declines the slow course of honest work.”
However, in default of golden attractions, a wife may have other assets. Griselda Grantly had neither houses nor land, neither title nor position. But Lord Dumbello had all these, and needed only a lay figure for lovely clothes to grace his establishment; the more icily regular and splendidly null, the better.[207]