[118] Perhaps pardon should be asked on behalf of the irresponsible Circumstance which allowed so large a preponderance in this matter to the sex notoriously romantic, flighty, ignorant of real life, and impatient of its prose and drudgery. As to the one man, Bryce remarks, in his Studies in Contemporary Biography, “But whoever does read Trollope in 1930 will gather from his pages better than from any others an impression of what everyday life was like in England in the ‘middle Victorian’ period.”
[119] Ernest Maltravers, 32. Cf. How It Strikes a Contemporary.
[120] These types may be summarized for convenience in a topical outline:
[121] Trollope: Ralph the Heir, 275.
[122] Ibid., 275–276.
[123] The Bertrams, 150.
[124] Vanity Fair, I, 225.
[125] Vanity Fair, I, 396. In Chapter XIX occurs the remark, “Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters.”
[126] Ibid., I, 214.
[127] Ibid., I, 233.
[128] Vanity Fair, II, 304.
[129] Among countless such gems, the following is of purest ray serene:
“Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.” Vanity Fair, II, 43.
[130] Pendennis, II, 53.
The introductory chapter of The Newcomes needs only to be recalled as an instance of the satirical fable. Nor is the beginning of Henry Esmond lacking in the satirical tone.
[131] Oliver Twist, 350. The idea was possibly suggested by Sartor Resartus.
[132] Nicholas Nickleby, I, 286. This thrust is aimed especially at Paul Clifford.
[133] Barnaby Rudge, I, 296.
[134] Bleak House, 553.
[135] Little Dorrit, I, 139.
[136] Cf. his description of one of his favorite characters, Nesta Radnor,—“what she did, she intended to do.”
[137] Beauchamp’s Career, 2, 3, 4.
[138] Beauchamp’s Career, 6.
[139] The Egoist, 132. Later he indicates the corollary of this,—
“But not many men are trained to courage; young women are trained to cowardice. For them to front an evil with plain speaking is to be guilty of effrontery and forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and therewith their commanding place in the market.” Ibid., 296.
Cf. Evan Harrington, 208, for the muddled state of a young woman’s mind, only to be penetrated by “that zigzag process of inquiry conducted by following her actions, for she can tell you nothing, and if she does not want to know a particular matter, it must be a strong beam from the central system of facts that shall penetrate her.”
[140] The Egoist, 156.
[141] The Egoist, 5.
[142] The Egoist, 5.
[143] Our Mutual Friend, I, 166.
[144] Trollope: Barchester Towers, 299.
[145] The Egoist, 4. The “her” refers to Comedy.
[146] Barchester Towers, 472–3.
[147] Last Chronicles of Barset.
[148] Book II, Chapter I.
[149] Vol. I, 78–9.
[150] Lytton’s Kenelm Chillingly, 1873, and Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career, 1876.
[151] Lytton’s Kenelm Chillingly, 38.
[152] Ibid., 39. An echo from The Coming Race, published two years earlier.
[153] Ibid., 40.
[154] Ibid., 90. Later he imagines a hypothetical contribution to The Londoner, bringing “that highly intellectual journal into discredit by a feeble attempt at a good-natured criticism or a generous sentiment.” 161.
Kenelm grows into some likeness to his old tutor Welby, an unpedantic, versatile scholar, who belonged to “the school of Eclectical Christology.” The Rev. John Chillingly, for instance, did not perceive Welby’s realism, for the latter listened to idealistic eulogies without contradicting them; having “grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished cruelty of sarcasm.” 34.
[155] Beauchamp’s Career, 167.
[156] Shirley, II, 90.
[157] Ibid., II, 351.
[158] Ibid., II, 250.
[159] It is not in a novel but the shortest of his Short Stories that Meredith has presented to us his truly wittiest character, shown with the brief but startling distinctness of a flash-light. Nowhere is there a more perfect embodiment of the satiric spirit than Lady Camper. It required a malicious imagination to produce the cartoons of the City of Wilsonople, and to use them with such wicked effectiveness. Yet this Limb of Satan was maleficent only to bless, ultimately. The fine military figure upon which she turned the shaft of illumination is equally perfect as the incarnate satirizible; not a sinner, not a villain, but a complacent, fatuous, selfish gentleman, “open to exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies,” but capable of an improvement that amounted to regeneration.
“Well, General,” his teleological tormentor finally explains, “you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I would assist you. I gave you plenty of subject-matter. I will not say I meant to work a homœopathic cure.”
She further admonishes him that the triumph is his rather than hers, if he cares to make the most of it. “Your fault has been to quit active service, General, and love your ease too well * * * You are ten times the man in exercise. Why, do you mean to tell me that you would have cared for those drawings of mine when marching?” Idleness, moreover, is a first aid to vanity. “You would not have cared one bit for a caricature,” Lady Camper continues, “if you had not nursed the absurd idea of being one of our conquerors.” His final salvation, she concludes, was his sensitiveness to ridicule.
[160] Last Chronicles of Barset, 97.
[161] Ibid., 175.
[162] Framley Parsonage, 259.
[163] Framley Parsonage, 264.
[164] Ibid., 266.
[165] On dramatic irony, see American Philological Association Transactions, 1917, for summary of an interesting unpublished paper read before the Society by Dr. J. S. P. Tatlock.
[166] As advised by John Brown in his Essay on Satire:
And not long before this, Dryden had been saying: “How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of these opprobrious terms! * * * Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not.” Essay on Satire, 98.
[167] Stephen: Hours in a Library, Second Series. 347.
Another critic of another novelist makes the point by a vivid illustration:
“A rabbit fondling its own harmless face affords no matter of amusement to another rabbit, and Miss Austen has had many readers who have perused her works without a smile.” Raleigh: The English Novel, 253.
[168] Life and Letters, I, 207.
[169] The Renaissance in Italy, V, 8.
[170] Irony, Living Age, 259: 250.
[171] A Second Century Satirist, 187. A translation by W. D. Sheldon.
[172] Adventures of an Atom, II, 121.
[173] Randolph Bourne: The Life of Irony. Atlantic, III, 357.
[174] Corbyn Morris, in An Essay towards fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule.
[175] The English Novel, 195.
[176] Wives and Daughters, 397.
[177] Shirley, I, 236.
[178] Alton Locke, 58.
[179] Yeast, 158.
[180] Pelham, 9.
[181] Crochet Castle, 21.
[182] Kenelm Chillingly, 25.
[183] Coming Race, 43.
[184] As an introduction this reminds one of the ironic terseness of Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (Pride and Prejudice.) And—“About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income.” (Mansfield Park.)
[185] The Young Duke, 85. Cf. a similar account of Tom Towers, of The Jupiter, in Trollope’s Warden.
[186] Tancred, 37.
[187] Ibid., 37.
[188] Tancred, 39.
[189] Sybil, 113.
[190] Oliver Twist, 42.
[191] Martin Chuzzlewit, I, 17.
[192] Ibid., I, 234.
[193] Dombey and Son, II, 416. Cf. the Musical Banks of Erewhon.
[194] Hard Times, 156.
[195] Arthur Clennam had remarked that the patriarchal Mr. Casby is a fine old fellow. Mr. Panks snorts a bitter concurrence of opinion:
“Noble old boy, an’t he? * * * generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent I engaged to pay him, sir. But we never do business for less, at our shop.” Little Dorrit, I, 554.
[196] Oliver Twist, 219.
[197] Nicholas Nickleby, II, 26.
[198] Bleak House, 195.
[199] Nicholas Nickleby, II, 85.
[200] Dombey and Son, 433.
[201] Bleak House, 105.
[202] Phineas Finn, I, 214. In the story same Lady Glencora uses the Socratic method on Mrs. Bonteen to make her admit she is really an advocate of social equality.
[203] Framley Parsonage, 180.
[204] Ibid., 183. Cf. Heine’s remark of Louis Phillipe, that he “rose in solid majesty, every pound a king.”
[205] The Bertrams, 6. There are pages in this strain.
[206] Dr. Thorne, 207.
[207] Framley Parsonage, 477.
[208] Last Chronicles, 16.
[209] Maid Marian, 15.
[210] Maid Marian, 96.
[211] Crochet Castle, 90.
[212] Erewhon, 110.
[213] Ibid., 113–116.
[214] Erewhon, 153. Butler’s ability to deliver the casual nudge as well as the deliberate blow is shown in a feature of the prison régime; convict labor is required,—a trade already learned, if possible, otherwise—“if he be a gentleman born and bred to no profession, he must pick oakum, or write art criticisms for a newspaper.” 126.
[215] The Way of All Flesh, 26.
[216] Vanity Fair, I, 115.
[217] Vanity Fair, I, 128.
[218] Ibid., 192.
[219] Ibid., 255.
[220] Ibid., 110.
[221] Pendennis, II, 22.
[222] Mill on the Floss, I, 189.
[223] Middlemarch, I, 161. This book is also pervaded by the exuberant presence of the versatile but cautious Mr. Brooke, who had always “gone a good deal into that at one time,” but always wisely refrained from pushing it too far, as one never can tell where such things will lead.
[224] Romola, II, 523.
[225] Middlemarch, I, 179.
[226] Adam Bede, I, 245. It could not be said of him as it was of Vincy in the above connection,—“The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”
[227] Letters, II, 501. In another he speaks of the fine irony of French criticism, which “instructs without wounding any but the vanitous person”: and adds that “England has little criticism beyond the expression of likes and dislikes, the stout vindication of an old conservatism of taste.” Ibid., 569.
[228] The Egoist, 43. (The “leg” of course referring to Mrs. Jenkinson’s famous epigram).
[229] The Egoist, 113.
[230] _Sandra Belloni_, 157.
[231] Ibid., 153.
[232] One of Our Conquerors, 415.
[233] Ibid., 195.
[234] Vittoria, 373.
[235] Beauchamp’s Career, 369.
[236] Sandra Belloni, 68. This is followed by a fling at the “alliance with Destiny”, which reminds us of our recent American slogan of “Manifest Destiny.”
[237] Letters, II, 555. To Leslie Stephen, 1904.
[238] An Amazing Marriage, 480.
[239] Ibid., 147. Cf. also citations in the first part of this chapter.
[240] Middlemarch, I, 142. She also comments as follows on the undeniably just statement of Jermyn to Mrs. Transome that Harold should be told the secret of his birth:
“Perhaps some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is this of a deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it.” Felix Holt, II, 242.
[241] Diana of the Crossways, 423.
[242] Evan Harrington, 117.
[243] Evan Harrington, 137.
[244] Rhoda Fleming, 301. Later, however, an equivalent amount, placed in his hands in trust for another purpose, conveniently paid this debt. “It was enough to make one in love with civilization.” Ibid., 326.
[245] The Tragic Comedians, 195.
[246] Richard Feverel, 8.
[247] Ibid., 322.
[248] Van Laun: History of French Literature, II, 27.
[249] Cf. also the riot of personalities in Blackwood’s, Frazer’s, and other periodicals of their time.
[250] Butler’s etchings in The Way of All Flesh, are also from personal sources.
[251] Freeman observes, “Peacock abused contemporary poets generally, the Lake School particularly, and Southey in especial, for eighteen years.” Thomas Love Peacock, A Critical Study, 141.
[252] Melincourt, 106.
[253] Melincourt, 108.
[254] Nightmare Abbey, 23. That this was a typical experience is well known. Cf. Browning’s Lost Leader.
[255] Ibid., 49.
[256] Melincourt, 80. In his Review of Southey’s Colloquies of Society, Macaulay points out the Laureate’s two unique faculties,—“of believing without a reason, and of hating without a provocation.”
[257] Quoted in his biography, by the Earl of Lytton, I, 347.
The Ettrick Shepherd tries to rally Tickler out of his glumness by the argument,—“Everybody kens ye’re a man of genius, without your pretending to be melancholy.”
[258] Beauchamp’s Career, 39.
[259] Both are quoted in the Life by the Earl of Lytton, I, 548, 549.
[260] Journey to Parnassus, Chapter IV. Gibson’s translation.
[261] Spectator, 451, C.
[262] Charity, II, 501 ff.
[263] Lionel Johnson, in Post Liminium.
[264] Victorian Age of Eng. Lit., 461.
[265] One of Our Conquerors, 267.
[266] Shirley, I, 330.
[267] Melincourt, 10.
[268] Melincourt, 17.
[269] Ibid., 150.
[270] Shirley, II, 71. Trollope speaks through Laura Kennedy and Madame Max Goesler, in Phineas Finn, the former of whom longs vainly to go out and milk the cows, while the latter complains of having only vicarious interests.
[271] Phineas Finn, III, 103. After finally accepting Lord Chiltern, she almost gives him up because she cannot stand his idleness.
[272] The Egoist, 21.
[273] Lord Ormont and his Aminta, 182.
[274] Diana of the Crossways, 158.
[275] The Egoist, 163. Cf. Simeon Strunsky’s essay on The Eternal Feminine, in The Patient Observer; a humorous sermon which might have been developed from this logical text.
[276] Yeast, 110. Elsewhere in the volume the author expounds his feministic philosophy: “She tried, as women will, to answer him with arguments, and failed, as women will fail.” 29. “Woman will have guidance. It is her delight and glory to be led.” 177.
[277] The Adventures of Philip, II, 42.
[278] Ibid., I, 237. Thackeray’s patronizing smugness and antique attitude towards women come out with a beautiful unconsciousness in a letter to one of them, and that one a prime favorite with him, Mrs. Brookfield: “I am afraid I don’t respect your sex enough, though. Yes I do, when they are occupied with loving and sentiment rather than with other business of life.” His fair correspondent could not retort that he would have found a congenial soul in Meredith’s Lady Wathin, who “both dreaded and detested brains in women, believing them to be devilish;” but she might have reminded him of the twinkling chivalry of Christopher North, who confessed, “To my aged eyes a neat ankle is set off attractively by a slight shade of cerulian.”