Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/273



"'The scales;' here Mrs. Chick cast down an imaginary pair, such as are commonly used in grocers' shops; 'have fallen from my sight.' * * * 'How can I speak to you like that?' retorted Mrs. Chick, who, in default of having any particular argument to sustain herself upon, relied principally upon such repetitions for her most withering effects. 'Like that! You may well say like that, indeed!'"

Thackeray is included in this list chiefly on the strength of the Osbornes, Pitt Crawley, and to a less degree, Blanche Armory and Mrs. Bute. Of the first he says, regarding certain declarations of disinterested friendliness and admiration,—"There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and that the girls were quite in earnest in their protestations of affection for Miss Swartz." And his thrust at the hoodwinked Pitt's delighted apprehension that the clever Becky really understood and appreciated him, is a palpable hit. He also arraigns under this head his favorite satirical object,—"the moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name." On the other hand, more than any other novelist, he has given us sentimentalists unaware; that is, in such characters as Helen, Laura, and Arthur Pendennis, Lady Castlewood, and Colonel Newcome, he shares their own unawareness of the possession of this foible, though in all these it is of an innocent variety.

George Eliot is keenly alive to this blindness in human nature, particularly as it manifests itself in the pernicious optimism of weak and wilful youth; but as with other mortal failures, it is usually too serious in her eyes for satire. Of all her novels, Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda alone have no character of this type. In the others he appears as Arthur Donnithorne, Stephen Guest, Godfrey Cass, Tito