A BETTING EPIC—ESTHER WATERS.*
"WE know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality," said Lord Macaulay. We do not agree. Even more ridiculous is the spectacle of the British critic in one of his periodical fits of unchartered enthusiasm. As a rule our critics plod on year after year, doing excellent work after their kind, praising and blaming —not quite sensitive enough perhaps to the impression of good work without a name, or of bad work with it, but still doing their best and keeping their powder tolerably dry. Then and on a sudden some book meets one of them in a fortunate hour, and in an instant all critical considerations are thrown to the winds, and the new work is landed to the skies as "incomparably the greatest work of modern fiction." If the omens are propitious, the infection spreads like wild- fire, and the cry, "Greatest work of modern fiction" runs along the smithies of literature. On a hundred anvils the hammers are set going in a triumphal tattoo. Nothing is too great and good for the new writer. Like the heavy dragoon in Mr. Gilbert's play he combines all the excellences of- " Tupper and Tennyson, Daniel Defoe, Anthony Trollope, and M. Guizot."
The effect of this periodical liability to join in a sort of literary "devil-dance" from which our critics suffer, is not beneficial to English letters. If the work is a bad one, the result is obviously injurious. If it is a good one, this blare of brazen trumpets is Btill harmful to a proper appreciation of the book's excellence. The work is forced out of perspec- tive, and it becomes exceedingly difficult to those who want to make a real estimate, and not merely to join in the shouting, to prevent themselves from falling into the errors of reaction. Meantime, the hunt of eulogy with which the author is pursued is as likely as not to impair his own critical faculty. Nothing is so demoralising to an author as to see a foolish face of praise made indifferently at his weak and his strong points. An outburst of such uncritical enthusiasm has just been witnessed in regard to Mr. Moore's novel, Esther Waters. Its appearance threw the critics entirely off their balance, and made them vie with each other in the use of superlatives. Indeed, they did more. Their generous impulses actually forced them into a crusade, the object of which was to teach a respectable trading firm the proper way of con- ducting its own business. Let us, however, say at once that Mr. Moore's book belongs to the category of good books which suffer from an access of enthusiasm among the critics. In many ways it is an excellent piece of literary work, and deserves high praise, both for matter and manner. It is not a great novel, but it undoubtedly has some of the elements of a great novel. A great novel must have both humour and narrative charm,—the story, that is, must please and interest while considered apart from the characters. Esther Waters has neither. There is practically nothing in the book to raise a smile, while the story, per se, is entirely devoid of entertainment. Esther Waters has, however, other elements of the great novel. The heroic element is there. The love of the daughter for her mother, and of the mother for her son, is portrayed with a passion, a force, and a simplicity which fully deserve the word "heroic." The sense of pathos is not less happily conveyed, and throughout, the book is, as regards the heroine, suffused with a true nobility of senti- ment. "Man is a noble animal," said Sir Thomas Browne. The novelist who denies it in his work as a whole, will fail to be truly human, and so far must fall away from perfection. In spite of the squalid and degraded setting of his book, Mr. Moore does not forget that man is a noble animal. Esther • Etther Waters. A Novel. By George Moore. London; Walter Scott. 1894.
Waters is made to prove it as strongly as Cordelia or Jeanie Deans. Indeed, Esther may be said to prove it more strongly and convincingly, for she acts instinctively, they consciously.
The structure of Mr. Moore's book is simple. He takes the vice of betting, and works out its moral and material effects upon a knot of people who are grouped round his principal character, Esther Waters. The moral and scientific interest of the book consists in the way in which the doom falls upon the gamblers. The emotional interest is derived from the -character of Esther, the strong, ball-necked servant-girl whose simple, honest, wholesome, and yet passionate nature, carries her through the furnace of life, if not with " un- singed hair," yet in such a way that the reader feels her throughout to have been "free—from taint of deadliest injury." Esther, brought up as one of the Plymouth Brethren, goes as a kitchenmaid to the house of a Sussex squire who keeps a racing-stable. The whole household, from the housemaid to the butler, is given over to betting, and nothing is thought of but the odds and the chances of the "crack." Esther soon falls in love with William, the foot- man, and is seduced by him, but under circumstances which afford her considerable excuse. The conflict of feelings which fill the girl's mind after this event are portrayed with great artistic skill. Shame and misery in regard to her own conduct, indignation with her lover, and religious remorse, combine to make up her punishment. At first, her lover had meant to marry Esther ; but he is alienated by her cold treatment of him —she does not know how to forgive him—and finally deserts her. The story of how Esther goes to the lying-in hospital ; of her struggles to keep her child while she toils as a " general ; " of how she is on the point of marrying a religious man, but throws him over for William, who re- appears as a betting-man ; and of how she is again brought down to the lowest misery, cannot be set forth here in detail. Suffice it to say that the various episodes are well and con- vincingly rendered, and that, as a rule, the characters are properly maintained,—that is, they talk and act as they would have talked and acted in life, and do not, to suit the con- venience of the author, talk and act, now like a Dissenting minister, now like a sergeant in a marching regiment, and again like an impressionist painter or a transcendental meta- physician. In regard to Mr. Moore's treatment of his subject in detail, we have one or two comments to make. In spite of his parade of realism, he is often exceedingly conventional. Take, for example, his comment when Esther's second lover tells her that he has always led a pure life: "Esther did not like him better for his purity." It is positively bewildering to find Mr. Moore dragging in this very threadbare old tag. And not only is the remark quite conventional. It is quite out of place. Given the downright, matter-of-fact, and sincerely re- ligious character of Esther, she would certainly not have allowed herself this cheap piece of cynicism. No doubt she would not have liked her lover any the better if he had declared all passion sinful ; but then he did nothing of the sort. Very conventional, too, is an elaborate descrip- tion of the London streets, given on p. 170. A great deal of it is the mere common form of realism,—trivial details and semi-improper suggestions well mixed under "the pale air woven with delicate wire, a gossamer web underneath which the crowd moved like lazy flies." Before realism went out of fashion in Paris, M. Zola and his imitators, when in doubt for copy, invariably played this sort of description of Paris. Con- ventional, too, in spirit, if not in detail, is the elaborate de- scription of Esther Waters's confinement in the hospital.
We must not, however, end by finding fault with Mr. Moore, for we are fully alive to the strength of his book as a whole. Judged fairly, he is to be congratulated upon having pro- duced a novel which, if not perfect, is at any rate one which no novelist, however great his ability, need feel ashamed of having written. The book is fall of things that touch the heart and stimulate the imagination ; and in the end the
feelings of pity and ruth that have been aroused find their legitimate and adequate solution in Esther's happiness in her handsome and, as far as we see him, dutiful son. We shall choose for quotation the vivid piece of dialogue in which Esther, who is acting as a wet-nurse, hears that her baby is ill, and tells her mistress that she must, and will, see it :—
"'1 must see my baby,' Esther replied.—' So you will, when the doctor says it is quite well.'—' I must see my baby to-night, To-night ! Nurse, I could not hear of it. You might bring back some infection and give it to my baby.'—' Your baby is not more to you than mine is to You forget that I'm paying you fifteen shillings a week and everything found.'—' I took the money for my child's sake, not for yours.'—`Come, nurse, don't lose your temper. You shall see your baby the moment the doctor says it is fit to come here. You can't expect me to do more than that.' Esther did not move, and thinking that it would not be well to argue with her, Mrs. Rivers went over to the cradle. See, nurse, the little darling has just woke up; come and take her, I'm sure she wants you.' Esther paid no attention. She stood looking into space, and it seemed to Mrs. Rivers that it would be better not to provoke a scene. She went towards the door slowly. A little cry from the cradle stopped her, and she said, 'Come, nurse, what is it? Come, the baby is waiting for you.'—Then, like one waking from a dream, Esther said, If you are so fond of yours, why don't you nurse it yourself, I'd like to know. You're as strong and as healthy as I am, there don't seem much the matter with you.'—' You forget who you are speaking to, nurse.'—' No, I don't; I'm speaking to the mother of that baby, am I not? Why don't you nurse it yourself?'—' Nurse,' said Mrs. Rivers, who was trying hard to keep her temper, I pay you for nursing my baby; you take my money, that's sufficient?—
' Yes, I do take your money, but that's no reason. What about them two that died ? When you spoke first, I thought you meant two of your own children, but the housemaid told me that they was the children of the two wet-nurses you had before me, them whose milk didn't suit your baby. It is our babies that die, it is life for a life ; more than that, two lives for a life, and now the life of my boy is asked for.' Esther stopped talking, and the two women stood and looked at each other.—' I will not be spoken to in this way; you are forgetting yourself ? '= No, I'm not, ma'am, and you know very well that I'm saying no more than the simple truth. I've been a-thinking of it over, and I understands it all well enough now. How many times have you not hinted that I should never be able to bring up my child, that he'd only be a drag on me all my life ! I dare say you meant no particular harm, but the thought was there all the same, that if my baby did die I would belong all the more to yours.' Esther spoke in her quiet stolid way, finding her words unconsciously.—'You
don't know what you're saying you can't You've forgotten yourself. Next time I engage a nurse, I'll try to get one who has last her baby, and then there will be no bother.'" One word on the question of the fitness of Esther Waters for general reading by the young person. There is nothing in the book which could exert a demoralising influence on any one, rather the reverse. At the same time, there are one or two passages which must be called exceedingly coarse; and the sensational, and in a certain sense exaggerated, description of the scene in Queen Charlotte's Hospital is hardly the thing to be put into a girl's hands.
Previous page
