| | | | | | It is not often that it is safe to praise a novel, for although a | little over-tenderness may not only be acceptable, but even | useful, to an author whose promise is better than his | performance, and may guide the regular novel-reader to a book | that is better than usual, it has the bad effect of making persons | waste their time who do not wish to read novels unless they are | really good. But Adam Bede is a novel that we can | have no remorse in speaking well of. Persons who only read one | novel a year ~~ and it is seldom that more than one really good | novel is published in a year ~~ may venture to make their | selection, and read Adam Bede. Whatever faults | they may discover in it, they will also find that it contains things | which stamp it as a book by itself, leaving new impressions and | awakening new feelings. The author has got into an original | field of observation, and as he has very great powers of | observing, and a happy method of making his detached points | of observation into a connected whole, he gives us something | we have not had before. He is evidently a country clergyman, | and the object of his observation has been the rustic life of a | village in one of the central counties ~~ a very unpromising | object of observing to most men, but most men are not | observers. We all know that a country carpenter may have a | history and a character ~~ plans, hopes, and regrets ~~ which, | if unfolded before us, would interest us as much as the | revelation of the secrets of a richer man. But between the | educated man and the country carpenter there is generally an | impassable barrier. It is easy to ascertain that he | wears a flannel-jacket, that he is civil and not | drunk; but to go a step further, to | guess even whether he thinks you civil and not drunk, is by no | means so easy. Every now and then, however, the carpenter | comes across the path of a gentleman who has a natural gift for | understanding him, and then, if this gentleman will take the | trouble not only to exercise his faculty, but to record the result, | we arrive at some sort of knowledge of the carpenter. This is | what the author of Adam Bede has done. Adam Bede | is a carpenter, and | | his acquaintances are farmers and blacksmiths. It is a real credit | for a writer to have made such characters realities, and not | have made them, as most novelists who attempt the thing do, | mere lay figures on which the authors hang their old | shooting-jackets, while they walk round in an evening dress | smirking and pointing out how jolly and genial they are | with their own old clothes. | We see the process by which the book has attained its | excellence when we examine the sketches of characters that | are entirely subordinate. Sometimes we have capital sketches, | even when the character is introduced once, and is evidently | introduced only that the sketch may be given. We have, for | instance, a description of an adult night-school, the only object | of which is to introduce sketches of three of the scholars. They | were rustics whom the author had studied, and these studies | are brought in to fill up a corner of the larger picture. In these | sketches, slight as they are, there is great merit; and it may be | remarked that mere observation is never enough to make even a | slight sketch good. There must be something more than the | faculty of noting distinct, telling, characteristic points ~~ | there must be a central idea of the subject of the sketch | around which minutiae are to be grouped. There must be | something that answers to the hypothesis in experimental | inquiry ~~ something that comes from the observer, not the | observed ~~ a general key to the character which the drawer of | the character assumes at first, and then proves by elaborating it. | In its widest and highest form, the power of adding to | observation the element of the observer's own thought is | humour, and ,rg orig="no one"> no-one can doubt that | in Adam Bede there is real humour of a rare and | genuine kind. Mrs Poyser, a farmer's wife, is a really humorous | creation, and she is humorous with the humour of truth, and not | of exaggeration. The Hall Farm is like a farm with a real dairy | to be kept clean, and real maids scolded, not a mere theatrical | farm, intended to display the powers of the first and second | rustic clown. And yet every sentence that Mrs Poyser says | has something entertaining in it. She is so consistent, so busy | and practical, so warm-hearted, and so very sharp with her | tongue. | The continuity of character is so well kept up, not only in Mrs | Poyser, but in Adam Bede and in Mrs Poyser's two nieces, with | whom Adam successively falls in love, that it would be unfair | to speak of the tale as a series of disconnected sketches; but | die continuity is wholly in the characters, and the story, as a | story, breaks down. Probably the author found it difficult to hit | on any very dramatic and stirring incident in rustic life to | make the turning point of his novel; but whatever his | difficulties may have been, his choice has been very | unfortunate. The story turns on the seduction of one of Mrs | Poyser's nieces by a neighbouring squire. In the early days of | the squire's love-making there are some well-imagined scenes, | and although we think Hetty in danger, we are not much | frightened or shocked. Adam will be rather jealous, but that is | all. At the end of the second volume, however, | | we are plunged into a sea of horrors. Poor Hetty is deserted by | her lover, and agrees to marry Adam Bede; but she cannot make | up her mind finally to deceive him or herself. She leaves her | uncle's house, and sets off southward in quest of her lover. | Finally, she bears a child, murders it, is tried for the murder, and | sentenced to death. The rope is almost round her neck, when her | old lover dashes up to the scaffold bearing a commutation of her | sentence into transportation. This series of events takes the | author from ground where he is strong to ground where he is | weak. He knows and cares nothing about trials, scaffolds, and | pardons. He only brings them in because he conceives that a | certain allowance of melodrama is a necessary ingredient. The | consequence is, that the third volume is weak, poor, and | superficial, compared with the other two. We are taken away | from the new region of lifelike carpenters and dairymaids into | the hackneyed region of sham legal excitement. The degree of | horror and painfulness is also out of keeping with the calm | simplicity of rural life. Of course, | everyone knows that every sin under heaven is | committed freely in agricultural villages, and if | anyone chooses to | insist that pretty dairymaids | are in danger of being seduced, he at least keeps within the | bounds of fact. But that is no reason why a picture of village | character and village humour should be made so painful as it is | by the introduction into the foreground of the startling horrors | of rustic reality. We do not expect that we are to pass from the | discreet love of a well-to-do carpenter to child-murder and | executions, and the shock which the author inflicts on us | seems as superfluous as it is arbitrary. There is also another | feature in this part of the story on which we cannot refrain from | making a passing remark. The author of Adam Bede | has given in his adhesion to a very curious practice that is now | becoming common among novelists, and it is a practice that | we consider most objectionable. It is that of dating and | discussing the several stages that precede the birth of a child. | We seem to be threatened with a literature of pregnancy. We | have had White Lies and Sylvan Holt's Daughter, | and now we have Adam Bede. Hetty's feelings | and changes are indicated with a punctual sequence that makes | the account of her misfortunes read like the rough notes of a | man-midwife's conversations with a bride. This is intolerable. Let | us copy the old masters of the art, who, if they gave us a baby, | gave it us all at once. A decent author and a decent public may | surely take the premonitory symptoms for granted. | There is also some fault to be found with the manner in which | the author intrudes himself in the book. Original as he is in all | that depends on his own personal observation, he falls, as almost | all men fall, under the influences of his age in his general views | of life and duty. Evidently he has sat at the feet of Mr Kingsley, | and Mr Kingsley may in many points be proud of his follower. | He is tolerant, large-hearted, sensible, and discreet. But he | follows the custom of his school in a direction where that school | is very apt to err. He makes a great deal too much of a very slight | novelty of opinion at which | | he has himself arrived, and he puts the merit of holding this | opinion on much too grand a footing. The story of Adam | Bede is supposed to have taken place fifty years ago, and | one of the characters is a good, easy-going rector. That such a | man, though not fervent in doctrinal controversies, and given to | a little quiet sporting, might really be a good and useful man | seems a very simple truth, and one that might be advanced | without the slightest danger of affronting public opinion at this | day. But the author of Adam Bede makes what he | calls a pause in the story, and, in the language of Mause | Headrigg, declares himself willing to and undergo | any reasonable sort of martyrdom, while all that he really does | is to emit the most harmless and inoffensive proposition. But | these are only incidental blemishes in a very meritorious work. | After all that can be said against it, Adam Bede | remains a novel that is rarely rivalled even in these days of | abundant fiction writing.