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George Meredith, His Life, Genius & Teaching

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George Meredith, His Life, Genius & Teaching IS mttmmaxBi ill Ill r.K i&ZjL - V f GEORGE MEREDITH GEORGE MEREDITH HIS LIFE, GENIUS & TEACHING FROM THE FRENCH OF GONSTANTIN PHOTIADES RENDERED INTO ENGLISH :: BY ARTHUR PRICE :: NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1913 CONTENTS CHAPTER r*u* 1 I. A Visit to Flint Cottage (22nd September, 1908) II. George Meredith's Life . .25 III. George Meredith's Genius . -7° IV. George Meredith's Art . .164 V. George Meredith's Teaching . .199 Conclusion . -249 GEORGE MEREDITH CHAPTER I A VISIT TO FLINT COTTAGE (22ND September, 1908) arriving at George Meredith's home, at Box ONHill, near Dorking, one showery afternoon at the end of September, I found a pretty country house, quite different from the luxurious retreats inhabited by those fashionable French writers who are well assured of their fame. Many wealthy tradesmen possess villas far more pretentious on the outskirts of Paris or of London. But the charm of Flint Cottage lies in its absolute simplicity. The little house, where Meredith had lived for forty years, is situated half-way up a slope which inclines slowly firs little towards a wood of ; a garden, admirably kept, surrounds it. When I entered the garden, the convolvuluses were more than half-closed and the first drops of rain fell noiselessly upon the grassy hill-side. It autumn and the slopes of the was ; day 2 GEORGE MEREDITH was calm and fresh. A light breeze just swayed the leaves of the lime trees and the elms, which had begun to turn colour. The blackberries were already laurel ripe upon the brambles ; and from the hedges exhaled a bitter odour. I am received by a lady, who is a trained nurse and also Meredith's housekeeper. While I am taking off my overcoat, on my right hand, through the open door of a narrow room or study I catch sight of the poet. A dark-coloured rug is wrapped about his knees, as he sits in an invalid's chair facing a photographic reproduction of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. Over the mantelpiece is the framed picture of his wife, and there are other pictures in colour on the walls. Some books and periodicals litter a low table on the left-hand side of his chair the ; and on right is a fire-place. Through the window and the haze beyond one can see, at the bottom of the garden, the branches of a beech intertwined with ivy and the little lawn and garden between the house and the road. Meredith's head, as outlined in this unreal light, stands out with vigour, even with severity, against the grey depth beyond. His abundant silvery hair curls around his noble and ruddy countenance. His snow-white beard and moustache do not conceal a rather large and very mobile mouth. His nostrils A VISIT TO FLINT COTTAGE 3 and his retain indicate both delicacy pride ; eyes their eloquent expression, despite the film which sometimes veils their depths. To my mind Sargent 1 has caught their expression better than Watts. A loose, light homespun jacket amplifies his figure. His hands display a movement, an energy, and a vigour truly surprising in an old man who is partly paralysed. The nervous and quick gestures which accompany his speech, denote a temperament certainly passionate if not irritable. Decay is not in this old of apparent splendid man eighty ; and, so far from yielding to physical decadence, he struggles to deny it. Thus, though attacked by ataxy, Meredith complains that he is no longer allowed to go out, as formerly, and ramble across the is fields. He tells me that he a great smoker ; but in my presence he does not even smoke a cigarette. His memory betrays him only on one occasion, when he gropes for the name of Gobineau. He attracts and compels attention by the energy of his utterances and by the variety of his reminiscences. From the first words of welcome which I receive, I notice that he speaks both clearly and distinctly, and that he articulates each syllable with a precision very remarkable in an Englishman. Certainly, apart from his sad affliction, he would appear to be the embodiment of health. 1 " Cf. the portrait at the commencement of the edition de " luxe of The Complete Works, published by Constable and Co.- 4 GEORGE MEREDITH " Even the broken pieces of Alexander's empire were said Pierre magnificent," Beyle ; and Meredith, broken by age, seemed to me more alert than most of our young writers. visit of the But few strangers the house poet ; for, as he produced his masterpieces in solitude, and without other encouragement than that which he received from a limited circle of friends, he now shrinks from his new admirers. Failing health and increasing deafness make him shun the unfamiliar faces of men who cannot now see him as he was in his prime, an active and untiring walker, a brilliant and dazzling conversationalist, a man full of fire, vigorous in body and mind. He distrusts clamorous enthusiasm. He subjects each request for an interview to a severe examination ; and, for his request to be accorded, the visitor must either be a person who interests him or must come, as I did, in the guise of a messenger from France. If Meredith has grown somewhat reserved, it is " " not because of his amour-propre and the whims old it is rather his aversion which accompany age ; to the interview, by which quite recently he has been badly treated. For example, his opinion upon marriage, wrongly understood and wrongly reported, has shocked the whole Anglo-Saxon race. He also defends himself against interviewers, under the pretext that the interview did not exist in his day, when he himself was a journalist. A publicist A VISIT TO FLINT COTTAGE 5 despite himself, he has kept a very painful memory of his forced labour in journalism. " His bete noire is the reporter. Demand nothing original from my modern compatriots ! To-day they choose their models from beyond the sea, and for preference copy the French and the Americans. France, naturally, purifies their taste. But America, that cradled Hercules, infects us with the too free manners of her cowboys and rough riders. These their trappers communicate to us eccentricity ; that mania for besieging persons of note to expose their innermost secrets. Such effrontery stupefies are too to take this unceremoniousness us ; we apt for strength. And, now, behold, the English insolent journals are enviously imitating the most " habits of their Transatlantic brethren ! " as With regard to journalists, men who are influential as they are susceptible, a young author to has a choice of two courses ; either have nothing to do with them, or to make use of them. For my : I never own part, they make my flesh creep have been able to tolerate them. Robert Browning old certainly did not neglect them in his age. Dickens and Thackeray petted them as a horseman pets his mount before putting it at an obstacle. As for Lord Tennyson, he was a past-master in the art of provoking panegyrics and dithyrambs." " Here you have a real business man ! He has literature he has even made a fortune made pay ; 6 GEORGE MEREDITH out of it. Like an ingenious husbandman he has ' changed the barren field into a gold mine. He ' bleeds me ! groaned his publisher piteously, but paid him all the same. It was useless for publishers to deprecate Tennyson's so-called eagerness for gain. They yielded to his demands, and the world would have its beloved poet at any price. But then, you see, my countrymen take pleasure in these interest- little in these ing elegies ; edifying apologues ; these psychic crises of young clergymen silently tormented by doubt. If they do delight in these peaceful struggles, these silent conflicts, it is because they themselves can be interested without any risk of danger to their faith, to which the young cleric, after many vicissitudes, fails not to conform. Of course, such emotions have their peculiar charm. In Memoriam was a triumphant success. A matter of after all ! But Frenchmen do not admire taste, — you make-believes above all, make-believe champagne ! " However, let us be just ! Lord Tennyson, whom I admire, has the enviable distinction and the lucky privilege of having made our ugly mono- syllabic language sing. An English musician is really a kind of blue-bird. Is it not truly awful to compose with words of one foot, and with a vocabu- lary which limps and then leaps ? We pipe upon a bad flute which is shrill and discordant. Shake- speare has played upon it with wonderful skill, Milton with more facility. However, to come to our A VISIT TO FLINT COTTAGE 7 day, Tennyson and Swinburne have wrung out of this wretched instrument melodies, stately, im- passioned and well sustained. " It is the custom to be enraptured by the verbal nights of imagination of my old friend Swinburne. Good ! But there is another hidden splendour, and to to the it is one which ought be revealed public ; his daring flow of language. What a torrent of boiling lava ! Do you like the translation of Omar Khayyam, by FitzGerald ? Yes ? That is good ! The plastic seductiveness of that work fully justifies its immense success. I relish to the full the rhymes of FitzGerald and his beautifully plaintive harmonies, withal so but can one of mysterious ; how approve his pessimism ? Omar Khayyam is the vogue to-day, I it too well but it is to and know only ; necessary have food more nourishing, more invigorating for the children of earth ! However, let that pass ! In 1859 I was with some friends at Copsham Cottage, in full near Esher ; and on a certain afternoon, view of all, came Swinburne brandishing a pamphlet which resembled in the distance a Pietistic or Methodist tract.
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