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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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The Significance Of George Meredith'S Revisions Of 'The Ordeal Of Richardfeverel'
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The Significance Of George Meredith'S Revisions Of 'The Ordeal Of Richardfeverel'
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This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received 6 7 -8 0 2 6
SACCO, Lillian, 1923-
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GEORGE MEREDITH’S RE
VISIONS OF THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL.
U niversity of Southern California, Ph.D., 1967
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
‘Copyright by
LILLIAN SACCO
1967
The Significance of George Meredith’s Revisions
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
by
Lillian Sacco
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
January 1967
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N C A LIFO RNIA
T H E GRADUATE SC H O O L
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS A N G ELES, C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
....... Lilli9:n..Sa.Q.C.Q...
under the direction of h&£....Dissertation Com
m ittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
g ......
Dean
Z)fli^..Februarjl, 1967........
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
V . « ( / ' { 6 * . e.. -ft-v...
Chairman
Table of Contents
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV 0
V.
Introduction
The Textual Facts of the Three Versions
of The Ordeal
Changes in the System and Its Originator
A. The Changing Role of Sir Austin
Feverel's System of Education
B. Changes in the Characterization
of Sir Austin Feverel
Reduction of Varied Comic and Satiric
Elements
A. Changes in the Presentation of
Adrian Harley and Ripton Thompson
B„ Other Relevant Changes
The Change in Meaning of the Term "Ordeal"
The Net Effect of the Revisions
List of Works Cited
Page
1
8
23
43
57
80
114
143
160
Introduction
According to Gordon N. Ray, "the peculiar bibliograph
ical and related problems" of nineteenth-century English
books "require extensive study and offer a rich field for
investigators."’ * ' He points out further that
the nineteenth century was the first age of wide
spread professional authorship; as a consequence it
was also the first age in which authors generally
took a continuing interest in the text of their
books. During this period there is always the pos
sibility that any book published within the author's
own lifetime may have been corrected or revised by
him. (pp. 8-9)
As a result, editors of "nineteenth-century books [that]
were revised by their authors" must decide
whether it is better to print the initial version
which was responsible for the book's immediate im
pact or the version which embodies the author's
final thoughts. (pp. 9-10)
Fredson Bowers states that
the last-edition-in-the-author's-life-time formula
no longer holds the estimation formerly accorded it,
[but] a reaction that exalts the first edition at
the expense of all others can be dangerous too.^
In fact, as Gordon N. Ray points out, the term "first edi
tion" acquires a broader meaning if the book has been re
vised more than once and the
1
Gordon N. Ray, Carl J. Weber, and John Carter, Nine
teenth-Century English Books: Some Problems in Bibliogra
phy CUrbana~ Illinois, 1952), p. vii.
^Textual and Literary Criticism (Cambridge, 1959),
p. 24.
later editions embody . . . significant textual re
visions, [since] . . . these editions provide in a
sense original versions of the passages revised.
(Nineteenth-Century, p. 3)
Therefore, the editor of a nineteenth-century book
that exists in more than one version faces the problem of
determining whether or not the later versions embody "sig
nificant textual revisions." In order to determine the
significance of the revisions, the "original versions" must
be collated, and for this purpose, "the central importance
3
of research collections" is obvious. However, according
to a survey made by Gordon N. Ray, research facilities are
not always adequate. Ray tested
the availability of volumes of nineteenth century
English fiction, . . . [including] later editions
important for textual revisions. (Bibliographical,
pp. 6 and 17)
He concluded from the survey that
first and significant later editions of nineteenth
century English fiction are much scarcer than has
been realized. . . . There is no library in England
or in the United States which does not have a long
way to go before its holdings in nineteenth century
English fiction can be regarded as adequate for
serious literary and bibliographical study. . . .
(pp. 20-21)
Because of the inadequate research facilities, the
editor of a revised nineteenth-century English novel finds
published bibliographies of his author’s works a useful
3
Gordon N. Ray, Bibliographical Resources for the
Study of Nineteenth Century English Fiction (Los Angeles,
1964), p. 6.
tool in the preliminary determination of the "textual
facts" (Bowers, Textual, p. 3) of the novel he is editing.
As Fredson Bowers points out,
whenever revision is established in any later edi
tion, editorial procedures of some delicacy may be
involved, and the bibliographical facts become para
mount as the basis for general as well as specific
decision. (Textual, p. 24)
Bowers further states that
Bibliography concerns itself with editorial problems
not as a usurper of the functions of legitimate
criticism, but instead as the necessary foundation
on which, in certain investigations, textual crit
icism must be based and to which criticism must con
stantly refer for more or less definitive judgments.
Bibliography, in W. W. Greg's acute phrase, is the
grammar of literary investigation.^-
Several bibliographical guides were available to the
editors of the current American editions of George Mere
dith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Outstanding is
Maurice Buxton Forman's A Bibliography of the Writings in
Prose and Verse of George Meredith,^ which C. L. Cline de
scribes as "both accurate and complete," in the chapter on
Meredith in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research. For
man's bibliographical descriptions agree in substance with
^"Some Relations of Bibliography to Editorial Prob
lems ," Studies in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliograph
ical Society of the University of Virginia, III (1950-
1951), 37.
^Edinburgh, 1922.
f l
ed. Lionel Stevenson (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p.
325.
the information available in other bibliographies by
William Dallam Armes, Bertha Coolidge, Arundell Esdaile,
and John Lane.^
Forman's Bibliography clearly indicates that there are
three distinct existent versions of The Ordeal: the origi
nal three-volume edition, published in 1859 by Chapman and
Hall; the first revised version published as Volumes 1508
and 1509 of Baron Tauchnitz's Collection of British Authors,
Leipzig, 1875; and the final revised version of 1896, pub
lished in the Edition de Luxe and Memorial Edition of Mere
dith's works by Constable and Company. However, the intro
ductions to four of the currently available American edi
tions indicate that the editors are apparently unaware of
the existence of the 1896 revision, or they are confused
about the differences between the 1875 and 1896 revisions.
Thus, their editing decisions and critical introductions
^William Dallam Armes, The Principal Works of George
Meredith: A Brief Bibliography (Berkeley, Calif., 1898).
Bertha Coolidge, A Catalogue of the Altschul Col-
lection of George Meredith in the Yale University Library
(Boston, 1931).----------- --------------------- --------
Arundell Esdaile, Bibliography of the Writings in
Prose and Verse of George Meredith, 0„M. (London, 1907) ;
A Chronological List of George Meredith's Publications:
1849-1911 (London, 1914).
John Lane, "George Meredith and His Reviewers (1849-
1899): A Bibliography, in George Meredith: Some Character
istics , 6th ed., by Richard Le Gallienne (London and New
York, 1905).
are based on partial and inadequate knowledge of the text
itself. A similar problem exists among literary critics,
for analysis of the critical material written about Mere
dith reveals that many of the critics are also unfamiliar
with the revisions of The Ordeal. Even more crucial, some
literary critics deliberately select the text which sup
ports their individual theses--and acknowledge that the
other text or texts would not be suitable. As a result,
some of the critical appraisals have limited validity.
It is obvious from the foregoing that the biblio
graphical information available about The Ordeal has "an
immediate textual application and . . . underlie[s] accu
rate criticism" (Bowers, "Some Relations of Bibliography,"
p. 41). As R. C. Bald has pointed out, "the text must
be established before a just critical appraisal is pos
sible. . . .
A tabulation of the textual variations of Meredith's
novels is available in Volume XXXVI of the Edition de Luxe
and Volume XXVII of the Memorial Edition, both entitled
Bibliography and Various Readings. However, the listing
of the revisions of The Ordeal is incomplete, and in addi
tion, no distinction is made between Meredith's first and
final revisions. As a result, the text of Various Readings
^"Editorial Problems--A Preliminary Survey," Studies
in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of
the University of Virginia, III (1950-1951), 3.
is inadequate for accurate determination of the textual
variations among the three versions. Therefore, I have
collated the texts of the following editions:
1st version: Three volumes, Chapman and Hall, London,
1859.
2nd version: Volumes 1508 and 1509 of Baron
Tauchnitz's Collection of British
Authors, Leipzig, 1875.
3rd version: Volume II, Memorial Edition, Constable
and Company, Ltd., London, 1909.
I used the Memorial Edition rather than the Edition de
Luxe because the former is considered "the standard edi
tion of Meredith's works" (Cline, p. 325). However, both
editions print the final version of The Ordeal.^
In the following study, I analyze the extent and sig
nificance of Meredith's two revisions of The Ordeal: Chap
ter I concerns the bibliographical facts and Meredith's
general method of revision; Chapters II and III analyze in
detail the changing role of Sir Austin's System of Educa
tion and the complementary reduction of comic and/or satir
ic elements, including modifications in the presentation of
characters; Chapter IV defines the change in meaning of
the key term "Ordeal." These chapters reveal that the
trend of both the 1875 and 1896 revisions is toward a
q
I spot checked to insure that no variations of sig
nificance occurred between the 1896 and 1909 editions of
The Ordeal. In this study, I will quote the 1909 reprint
of the 1896 version.
diminution of satiric elements. Chapter V summarizes the
effect of the revisions: the shift from a satiric comi-
tragedy to a comi-tragedy with a corresponding increase of
emphasis on the emotional elements involved in the father-
son and the Lucy-Richard relationships.
Chapter I
The Textual Facts of the Three Versions of The Ordeal
The bibliographical description of the original edi
tion of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel included in Maurice
Buxton Forman's A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose
and Verse of George Meredith reads partly as follows:
The Ordeal j of I Richard Feverel. / A History of
Father and Son. / By / George Meredith. / In three
volumes. / Vol. I. {II0 III.] / London: / Chapman
and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. / 1859. / [The Right of
Translation is reserved.] (p. 18)
Forman further states that "Vol. i contains nineteen chap
ters, Vol. ii sixteen chapters, and Vol. iii fourteen
chapters" (p. 19). Thus, the three volumes contained a
total of forty-nine chapters.
Forman describes the printing of the second version
of The Ordeal:
In 1875 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was sub
jected to considerable revision, the most important
change being the condensation of the first four
chapters under one heading, The Inmates of Raynham
Abbey, and was issued as volumes 1508 and 1509 of
Baron Tauchnitz's "Collection of British Authors."
Vol. i contains twenty-eight chapters; Vol. ii
eighteen, (p. 20)
The two volumes contained a total of forty-six chapters,
three fewer than the 1859 version. Forman further states
that
the second English edition was published by Messrs.
C» Kegan Paul and Company in 1878 in one volume with
the revisions made for the Tauchnitz edition, (p. 20)^
According to Forman, Constable and Company published
the third version of The Ordeal in 1896 as Volumes I and II
of the Edition de Luxe of Meredith's works. The prospectus
for this edition read in part as follows:
Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co. have the pleas
ure to announce that they are about to publish the
first uniform and complete edition of Mr. George
Meredith's Works. The issue will contain, in addi
tion to all the Novels and Poems which are in print
at the present time, some work which has not been
accessible for many years.
Mr. Meredith has revised his works for this edi
tion, which he wishes to be regarded as textually
final. (p. 282)
Although Forman does not furnish the same kind of specific
details about the extent of the 1896 revision as he did
with the 1875 revision, he does indicate that Meredith's
total revisions of his various works were extensive enough
for Constable and Company to add Volume XXXVI, Bibliography
and Various Readings, to the Edition de Luxe in 1911.
Forman further states that Constable and Company also
published the Memorial Edition of Meredith's works from
1909 to 1911; The Ordeal is Volume II of this series. The
prospectus issued by the publisher in October 1909 included
A personal letter to me, dated January 11, 1966, from
The New American Library, Inc.. states that the text used
for the 1961 Signet paperback was the 1878 Kegan Paul
(London) edition." My collation of the Signet paperback
with the 1875 Tauchnitz edition indicates that no further
changes were made by Meredith in the 1878 edition.
10
a "Publisher's Note" which read in part:
In this Memorial Edition the Publishers offer in
definitive form, and at a moderate price per volume,
the Complete Works of George Meredith. . . .
• * • • • • • • • • * * • • • • • • • • • • * • •
The Text followed will be that which received the
latest revisions of the author. A special volume
will be provided, in which will be given the emenda
tions and additions made by Mr. Meredith in the text
of his works, together with a Bibliography. (p. 296)
The 1896 version received "the latest revisions of the
author"; therefore, the Memorial Edition follows the text
of the Edition de Luxe, as corroborated by my comparison
of the two texts.
Since the textual facts available in Forman's Bibli
ography reveal that the original version of The Ordeal
contained forty-nine chapters and the first revision con
tained forty-six chapters, and since the final revision has
only forty-five chapters, the possibility that the later
versions embody "significant textual revisions" (Ray, Nine
teenth-Century, p. 3) becomes apparent. In view of these
textual facts, the guidelines for sound editorial pro
cedures and editing standards established by the field of
textual criticism become important.
Fredson Bowers discusses the aims and methods of
textual criticism in the chapter "Textual Criticism" in
cluded in the Modem Language Association publication, The
Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modem Languages and
Literatures. He states that
11
the aim of textual criticism [is] . . . the recovery
of the initial purity of an author’s text and of its
revision (insofar as this is possible from the pre
served documents), and the preservation of this puri
ty despite the usual corrupting process of reprint
transmission. . . .2
Although most of Bowers' discussion of the methods of tex
tual criticism concerns the editing of critical editions,
he also establishes useful guidelines for general editori
al procedure in the case of revised editions. He points
out that
the question of authority is paramount. . . . the
author’s revisions, insofar as these can be isolated
from non-authorial variants, . . . have authority,
one that usually must supersede his original inten
tions. (p. 38)
This stipulation, however, applies to definitive editions,
and Bowers also indicates that an editor may choose any of
the versions he prefers and "edit these as entities in
their own right" (p. 38).
The editor's personal preference, therefore, may de
termine which version of the book is available to the
reading public, and this version may be the only text that
is perpetuated. As a result,
Sometimes the American reader is denied access to
what the author wanted to give him and at other
times the reader is given what the author had tried
to keep from him. (Weber, Nineteenth-Century, p. 48)
Furthermore, according to Fredson Bowers, many critics
^ed. James Thorpe (New York, 1964), p. 24.
12
also read the "American editions instead of the more au
thentic and often the revised English texts" (Textual,
p. 5). He further points out that
it is still a current oddity that many a literary
critic has investigated the past ownership and
mechanical condition of his second-hand automobile,
or the pedigree and training of his dog, more
thoroughly than he has looked into the qualifica
tions of the text on which his critical theories
rest. (Textual, p. 5)
This indicates a serious
lack of contact between literary critics and textual
critics. . . . [And] common ignorance of textual con
ditions and of editing standards . . . puts the critic
quite at the mercy of the editor. (Bowers, Textual,
p. 4)
According to Carl J. Weber, there has been some im
provement in American editions of nineteenth-century
English authors:
However, this improvement in the reliability of
modern American editions of the works of English
authors carries along with it an unfortunate ten
dency to lull the unwary American reader into a
complacent and unsuspecting trust. It induces
him to step blithely forward, when he sets out to
explore Victorian territory, unaware of the booby
traps that await his progress.
The wise man will act differently. He will know
his American edition before he goes far with it” He
will trust it as he would a rattlesnake. He will
neither quote from it, nor rely on conclusions drawn
from it, until he has compared it, word for word,
with the parent English edition, or has assured him
self that the English author saw and approved of what
his American publisher put into print for him. This
has, unfortunately, not been the practice of all
American critics, scholars, bibliographers, and
others who have worked with the books of English
authors. They have thus opened the door to unsound
critical judgments, to inaccurate quotations, to
misleading conclusions, and to the perpetuation of
13
faulty texts. (Nineteenth-Century, p. 50)
It is obvious that editors of nineteenth-century novels
that have been revised have a serious responsibility:
their editorial decisions may not only determine the tex
tual basis of critical interpretations, but, as discussed
earlier, may also determine which version of the text will
be perpetuated. Therefore, editors must base their edi
torial decisions on accurate textual information.
In view of the importance of accurate textual in
formation as furnishing the basis for sound editorial de
cisions, and in view of the textual information available
in Forman's Bibliography, it is surprising to find that,
according to the introductions to four of the five current
ly available American editions of George Meredith's The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, the editors are apparently not
aware of the existence of the 1896 version, or they are
confused about the differences between the 1875 and 1896
revisions. Thus, their editing decisions appear to be
based on partial and inadequate knowledge of the text it
self. Inaccurate textual information is also found in the
chapter on Meredith, included in Victorian Fiction: A Guide
to Research, in which C. L. Cline states that
there are two different textual forms of Feverel:
the original version of 1859 (Modem Library, for
example, with a good critical introduction) and the
revised version of 1878 (Signet, for example, with
a perceptive afterword). (pp. 325-326)
14
Cline's omission of the 1896 revision is difficult to un
derstand since he identifies the Memorial Edition of 1909-
1911 as "the standard edition of Meredith's works" (p. 325),
and this edition reprints the final version.
With reference to the separate editions of The Ordeal,
Cline notes that these
are limited to . . . Everyman, edited by Robert Sen-
court; Modem Library, edited by Lionel Stevenson;
Signet, edited by Norman Kelvin; and Rinehart, edited
by Charles J. Hill. . . . (p. 325)
In addition to these four editions, the 1965 edition of
Books in Print also lists the Washington Square paperback,
published in 1962. Of these five texts, the Everyman edi
tion is the only one that reprints the 1896 version of The
Ordeal. The Signet paperback reprints the 1878 edition,
which is a reprint of the 1875 revision. The Rinehart,
Washington Square, and Modern Library editions all reprint
the 1859 version.
In the "Afterword" to the 1961 Signet edition, Norman
Kelvin states that "in 1878 Meredith revised the novel, and
the text given here follows the later version."3 Kelvin
then discusses the reasons for his preference:
Meredith reduced the first four chapters to one, and
though he eliminated points of information which were
useful as an introduction to subsequent events, the
main effect of his cutting was the improvement of the
novel's structure. (p. 472)
With reference to the 1878 reprint of the 1875 revision
^(New York), p. 472.
15
compressing the first four chapters into one, Kelvin is
correct. However, he further states that
another reason for choosing the 1878 edition is that
Meredith removed from it a chapter concerning a
middle-class mother, Mrs. Grandison; [sic] and her
young daughter, who is a candidate for marriage with
Richard. The stress upon the Grandisons' middle-
class characteristics is somewhat confusing in a
novel which avoids, wherever possible, making class
experience an important determinant of behavior.
(pp. 472-473)
But Chapter XIX, "A Shadowy View of Coelebs Pater Going
about with a Glass-slipper," covering pages 127 to 136 in
the Signet edition, is the chapter about the Grandison
family that Kelvin said had been excised. The Memorial
Edition, which Kelvin lists in his bibliography as the
"standard edition of Meredith's writing" (p. 475), re
prints the 1896 revision of The Ordeal, and the chapter
about the Grandisons is excised from this version.
The Rinehart, Washington Square, and Modern Library
editions all reprint the 1859 version. In his "Note on
the Text," Charles J. Hill discusses his reasons for se
lecting this version for the Rinehart edition:
For a new edition in 1878 Meredith made a number of
revisions, the most substantial of which were the
compression of the first four chapters into one, the
abridgment of Chapter V, and the suppression of
Chapter XXII ("A Shadowy View of Coelebs Pater Going
About with a Glass Slipper"). . . . By the suppres
sion of Chapter XXII Meredith gave up what many have
regarded as a silly episode but which is in fact an
important piece of comic counterpointing, like the
"Unmasking of Master Ripton Thompson" in Chapter
XIX0 Despite superfluities and excrescences, the
16
original text of the novel is much to be preferred
to the author's subsequent revision of it.4-
As was the case with Cline and Kelvin, Hill seems unaware
of Meredith's 1896 revision. As already noted, Chapter
III, Volume II of the 1859 version^ is not excised from
the 1878 reprint of the 1875 revision but is reprinted as
Chapter XIX.
William H. Marshall edited the Washington Square
paperback edition, which also reprints the 1859 version.
However, Marshall's reasons for choosing the original
version are somewhat different:
That The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was published in
1859 and republished with minor revisions in 1878,
is significant. The first date is also that of the
publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of
Species . . .; in its evolutionary implications
Meredith's book can be placed near Darwin's. The
second date follows by one year the time of Mere
dith's lecture, so that, considering that his re
visions did not in any essential way alter the
meaning of the novel, we can validly use "The Idea
of Comedy" as a gloss to The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel.b
Since Marshall states that "the second date [1878] follows
^(New York, 1964), p. xxix.
5
Hill follows the practice of other critics of The
Ordeal in citing chapter numbers as though they were in a
continuous sequence in one volume. However, each volume
of the three-volume 1859 edition and the two-volume 1875
edition starts with Chapter I. In this study, I will cite
the chapter numbers of each of the original editions.
6(New York, 1962), p. xiv.
17
by one year the time of Meredith's lecture," and that,
therefore, "we can validly use 'The Idea of Comedy,1 as a
gloss" to the novel, he is apparently not aware that the
1878 edition is a reprint of the 1875 revision, which pre
ceded Meredith's lecture by two years. In addition, Mar
shall considers that the revisions are "minor" and "did not
in any essential way alter the meaning of the novel"; how
ever, the textual facts reveal that there are significant
variations which do affect the interpretation.
Lionel Stevenson also selected the 1859 version of
The Ordeal for the Modem Library edition. In his "Intro
duction," he states that
before a new edition was published in 1878 [Meredith]
. . . revised some parts of it, particularly the be
ginning. The first four chapters were boiled down
into one, and chapter V was shortened. Thereafter
the only major excisions were chapter XXIV and parts
of other chapters which portrayed Mrs. Grandison and
her family. . . . Some of the changes, unquestion
ably, were improvements. . . . Mrs. Grandison, . . .
the dominating mother of daughters, had been too
manifestly contrived to serve as counterpart for
Sir Austin and his system for his son; though the
disappearance of her tomboy daughter Carola was re
grettable. 7
Part of Stevenson's comments are not completely clear.
When he says that
The first four chapters were boiled down into one,
and chapter V was shortened. Thereafter the only
major excisions were chapter XXIV and parts of
other chapters which portrayed Mrs. Grandison and
her family,
^(New York, 1950), p. xxv.
18
it is not clear whether he means that Chapter XXIV^ was
excised after Chapter V or after 1878. However, Steven
son's biography of Meredith, The Ordeal of George Meredith,
offers clarification and reveals that, like Kelvin and
Hill, Stevenson has also confused variant texts of the
novel. Stevenson states that Meredith revised The Ordeal
for its publication by the Leipzig firm of Tauchnitz, and
for this revision
The first four chapters were condensed into one. . . .
Another discarded chapter was one in which Sir Austin
interviewed his feminine counterpart, Mrs. Grandison,
in the hope of selecting one of her daughters as a
mate for his son.9
However, as pointed out earlier in this study, the chapter
concerning Sir Austin's interview with Mrs. Grandison is
not excised from the 1875 revision, but is reprinted as
Chapter XIX, Volume I.
Thus, according to the introductions to the four
American editions discussed, it appears that the editors
based their editorial decisions on inaccurate textual in
formation. Such inaccuracies are a critical problem
O
L. T. Hergenhan points out that "perhaps Stevenson
means to refer" to Chapter XXII of the original version,
which is actually Chapter III, Volume II, of the 1859
edition. "Meredith's Use of Revision: A Consideration
of the Revisions of 'Richard Feverel' and 'Evan Harring
ton,'" Modern Language Review, LIX (October 1964), 539.
9(New York, 1953), p. 196.
19
because, as Gordon N. Ray points out, accurate textual in
formation is essential in determining
whether the revision of a given text has been bene
ficial or harmful, whether it is better to print the
initial version which was responsible for the book's
immediate impact or the version which embodies the
author's final thoughts. Yet these questions should
clearly be asked, and they are by no means easy to
answer. (Nineteenth-Century, p. 10)
Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the editors' deci
sions may determine which version of a revised nineteenth-
century novel will be perpetuated. That this applies to
The Ordeal is revealed by the fact that of the five edi
tions listed in the 1965 issue of Books in Print, the 1859
version is available in three editions, the Rinehart,
Washington Square, and Modem Library; the 1878 reprint of
the 1875 version is available in one edition, Signet; and
the 1896 version is available in one edition, Everyman.
However, the Everyman edition is more easily obtained in
libraries than on the open-book market. Thus we have the
paradoxical situation that the 1896 version of The Ordeal,
that "embodies the author's final thoughts" (Ray, Nine
teenth-Century, p. 10) and that is printed in the standard
edition of Meredith's works, is probably not the one being
read. And it is because of this situation that I have un
dertaken an analysis of the extent and significance of
Meredith's revisions of The Ordeal.
Actually, the word "revision" does not accurately
describe Meredith's method of altering the text in 1875
20
and again in 1896. Since most of Meredith's alterations
consisted of wholesale omissions rather than rephrasings,
"excision” is a more precise descriptive term. Hugh
Chisholm clearly indicates the appropriateness of the word
"excision" to describe Meredith's method of revision for
the 1875 edition:
Of the original first five chapters no less than
69 per cent, of the matter was cut out; the opening
of chapter v. becomes that of chapter ii.; the first
four chapters are condensed into chapter i., 80 per
cent, of their original matter being omitted. Out
of a total of 25,260 lines in the original book,
1768 were cut out, 1559 of these being from the
first five chapters (2268 lines), and 1395 from the
first four (1729). Or, in what is equivalent to
pages, 71 were altogether cut out of 1010; 62 of
these being from the first five chapters (91 pages).
These figures surely speak for themselves. Over 7
per cent, of the original novel was o m i t t e d .10
Lionel Stevenson also describes Meredith's method of
alteration for the 1875 revision:
. . . he merely changed a few words here and there,
and at two or three points cut out large gobbets
and crudely stitched up the incisions. (Ordeal of
Meredith, p. 196)
Hugh Chisholm's article on Meredith in the eleventh edi
tion of Encyclopedia Britannica indicates that Meredith
used the same method of alteration for the 1896 revision.
Chisholm states that the novel "was now robbed . . . of
some of its best-known passages.Meredith's own words
l^MMr. Meredith's Revision of 'Richard Feverel,'"
The Academy, June 3, 1905, p. 589.
XVIII, 162.
21
verify that he continued the same method of alteration in
the 1896 revisions of his novels. According to Lionel
Stevenson, "Gissing was perturbed when Meredith told him
that he was 'slashing at them"1 (Ordeal of Meredith, p.
329).
Meredith's method of altering by excision rather than
by rephrasing is relevant to the extent and significance
of the revisions. The most extensive revisions in 1875
were the compression of the first four chapters into one
chapter. As indicated in Hugh Chisholm's article in The
Academy," Meredith omitted "80 per cent, of their original
matter." Furthermore, according to Chisholm's line count,
Meredith deleted thirty per cent of Chapter V from the re
vised second chapter. Since Chisholm indicates that all
but 209 of the excised lines were from the first five
chapters, it is obvious that Meredith made the most exten
sive excisions from the beginning of the novel.
Chisholm also states that there was "a fairly full ex
posure in 1897 of the drastic revision" (p. 589) the year
before for the Edition de Luxe; apparently the 1897 study
12
was as detailed as Chisholm's study of the 1875 revision.
■^1 believe Chisholm is referring to an article en
titled "Mr. Meredith's Blue-Pencil," which appeared in the
January 2, 1897 issue of The National Observer, pages 186
and 187. However, 1 have not been able to locate a copy
of this issue.
22
Although I cannot quote these parallel statistics, based on
my collation of the 1875 and 1896 versions, the most ex
tensive revision in 1896 involved the excision of Chapter
XIX, Volume I of the 1875 version, Chapter III, Volume II
of the 1859 edition. The excision of this chapter elimi
nated a total of eighteen pages from the 1859 text.
Thus, the most extensive alterations in both 1875 and
1896 consisted of the wholesale omission of sequential pas
sages. In addition, Meredith excised other sections, re
phrased some passages, and made a number of brief but im
portant "pure" additions. My analysis of these textual
variations reveals that the changes were not only exten
sive but also resulted in a shift in the focus of the
novel.
Chapter II
Changes in the System and Its Originator
A. The Changing Role of Sir Austin
Feverel's System of Education
In the revised versions of The Ordeal, there is less
emphasis on Sir Austin's System of Education for his son
than there was in the original version. This decrease in
emphasis is largely the result of Meredith's compression
of the first four chapters of the novel into one in the
1875 revision. That is, the abridgment of the first four
chapters "blurred the premises of the System and muted its
initial impact" (Hill, "Note on the Text" to Rinehart edi
tion, p. xxix). As a result, the revised versions do not
portray Sir Austin's System of Education as having so
decisive an influence on Richard's development as the
original version did. Meredith had also included many
comic exaggerations in the initial description of the Sys
tem; his deletion of these details in 1875 made the
"'System' . . . less idiosyncratic" (Hergenhan, "Meredith's
Use of Revision," p. 541) and thereby reduced the burlesque
elements in the revised versions of The Ordeal.
In one of the excised passages of Chapter I, Sir
Austin made the preliminary explication of the premises of
the System to his "Court of Women," a group of admirers he
had acquired by the anonymous publication of "a small book
24
of original Aphorisms, under the heading, THE PILGRIM'S
SCRIP.Some of the details about this publication re
vealed an important basic assumption about the opposite
sex held by the originator of the System:
The book was noticeable for its quaint earnestness,
and a perversity of view regarding Women, whom the
writer seldom extolled, and appeared with all con
science to rank as creatures still doing service to
the Serpent. . . . (I, 1)
Another passage further revealed Sir Austin's negative
attitude toward women:
On the subject of Women, certainly, the Aphorist
seemed to lose his main virtue. He was not splenetic:
nay, he proved in the offending volume he could be
civil, courteous, chivalrous, towards them: yet, by
reason of a twist in his mental perceptions, it was
clear he looked on them as domesticated Wild Cats,
ready, like the lady in the fable, to resume their
natural habits when there was a little mouse to tear,
and, after they had done so, not to be allowed to
reappear as the seraphs we thought them when they
had a silly male mortal to lure: in fact, to be
stamped Wild Cats, to the dissipation of Illusion.
(I, 3-4)
According to William H. Marshall, these passages were an
initial indication of
the theological implications of the story, . . .
[the first of the] abundant allusive suggestions
[that] require a comparison between the story of „
Richard's Ordeal and the myth of Adam's Fall. . . .
• ^ The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father
and Son (London, 1859), I, 1.
^"Richard Feverel, 'The Original Man,'" The Vic
torian Newsletter, XVIII (Fall 1960), 15.
25
Although Meredith deleted these sections in 1875, he re
tained other allusions to the "Adamic Fall" (Marshall, p.
15). However, the excised passages had been significant
in revealing certain assumptions held by Sir Austin that
influenced the System of Education he developed for his
son.
Other passages Meredith omitted in the 1875 revision
revealed women's reactions to "The Pilgrim's Scrip": al
though "men read, and tossed [the book] aside, amused or
weary" (I, 4), the ladies took "the Dedication to them
selves, . . . cherished [the] book" (I, 5), and attempted
to discover the identity of the author.
Bodies of ladies made application to the publisher,
who maintained the good repute of his craft in keep
ing his secret, and was not to be seduced, and in
creased the mystery. . . . one adventurous fair one
betook herself to the Herald's College, and there,
after immense labour, ascertained that [the] Griffin
between two Wheatsheaves . . . [which appeared on]
the title-page in the place of a signature of author
ship . . . formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy
Beame Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a cer
tain Western County folding Thames. . . .(I, 5-6)
As a result of the Baronet’s identification as the author
of "The Pilgrim's Scrip,"
His breakfast-table grew odoriferous with dainty
notes from fair correspondents, deploring their
non-intimacy, and begging the favour of a Copy of
his Beautiful Book, while remonstrating humbly
against the severity of his judgment pronounced
on a sex, which, whatever its shortcomings, could,
and did, reverence a Sage. Showers of the en- —
thusiastic rose-pink descended on Raynham. (I, 6-7)
In the original version, women displayed a ludicrous
26
interest in the author of a publication that maligned their
sex. The exaggerated reaction on the part of the objects
of Sir Austin’s vituperative remarks produced a burlesque,
ridiculous effect which Meredith reinforced in another pas
sage by a mock heroic description of the women's siege of
Raynham:
Miss Blewins, the long-nosed, the literary, was the
first to arrive. Her followed the short-haired Joy,
the half-man. Then came Mrs. Cashentire, succeeded
by the bony big Celt, and the swift Camilla, and
nameless worshipers, who all introduced themselves,
and claimed admittance, on the strength of their ad
miration of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP.
. . . They came, and did not go. They formed a
Court about him; listening to him eagerly, and sigh
ing at his inveterate conclusions: hoping higher
things of Woman, and meekly combating till they
fell. A Tournament was held nightly. (I, 11)
Meredith parodied epic conventions in the catalogue of
women which imitates the epic catalogue of warriors; the
inverted syntax of the second sentence, "Her followed the
short-haired Joy . . .,1 1 which echoes the Homeric inver
sion; the compound adjective "short-haired," which paro
dies the Homeric epithet; and the reference to the nightly
Tournament, which parodies the epic games. In addition,
"swift Camilla" is a classical allusion referring to a
swift-footed virgin warrior in Virgil's Aeneid. Meredith's
parody of the epic style intensified his comic portrayal
of Sir Austin's "Court of Women," and complemented Sir
Austin's exaggerated negative attitude toward women.
The Baronet1s reaction to his admirers further re-
27
vealed his misogynous attitude and also included another
"allusion . . . to the Garden of Eden and the forbidden
fruit.
The ladies who formed the Court at Raynham had doubt
less no conspiracy to succumb to the insult of the
SHADDOCK DOGMA, thereby to ensnare and make foolish
its pronouncer; and the Baronet assuredly enter
tained no idea than [sic] an uninterrupted career
of logical conquest endangered his stability. He
thought, naturally, that the more he overthrew her
in argument, the safer his position. Nevertheless,
he was melting to Woman. Woman appreciated his
Aphorisms, and Man did not. That was possibly a
reason. When the inferior creature appreciates us,
we cease to despise her. . . . The change was in
sensible in Sir Austin; a work of months and years.
He was surrounded by an admiring circle of sweet
women, and against the charm of their society what
Shaddock Dogmatist, however soured and reluctant,
can hold out lastingly? . . . Be it said, for the
honour of the sex, Women esteem not easy game. . . .
It is the rank misogynist, who flees them, whom they
hunt down as far as he will go. Him they regard as
the noble stag of the forest, and to catch him they
disencumber themselves of many garments retained in
a common chase. (I, 15-17)
The references to the "Shaddock Dogma" and to Sir Austin as
a "Shaddock Dogmatist" echo an earlier passage in Chapter
I in which the "Great Shaddock Dogma" was "organically
related to the central doctrine of Sir Austin['s] . . .
book of aphorisms" (Marshall, "Richard Feverel: 'The
Original Man,"' p. 15):
"We live and learn," said the Baronet to young
Adrian Harley, his nephew and intimate; "but it is
odd that, when we whip her, Madam should love us
3
Lionel Stevenson, The English Novel: A Panorama
(Boston, 1960), p. 346.
28
the more."
"You have propounded it frequently, Sir," replied
that clever youth, "in the GREAT SHADDOCK DOGMA."
(For so, on account of its constant and ungenerous
citation of the primal slip in Paradise, Adrian
chose to entitle THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP). (I, 7)
According to Guy B. Petter,
The shaddock is a kind of grape fruit, named
after its first European discoverer, Captain
Shaddock. It grows in the East Indies and is
known there as "forbidden fruit.
Joseph Warren Beach explains the "Great Shaddock Dogma" as
follows:
Shaddock . . . is by some taken to be the apple of
Eden, source of all our depravity. Now woman tempted
man to eat of the apple. Woman remains our chief
tempter, the root of sin. She is indeed the present
apple of our temptation. She is the germ of the
Apple-Disease.5
Beach also indicates the relevance of the "Great Shaddock
Dogma" to Sir Austin's System of Education:
The system applied to Richard is an outcome of
Sir Austin's view of women as the source of corrup
tion, the chief menace to character; and in the
original version, the author sounds much more
loudly than in revision the note of ridicule upon
this theme. (p. 37)
Although Meredith retained some later allusions to the
"Apple-Disease" and the "Great Shaddock Dogma," Lionel
Stevenson points out that
^George Meredith and His German Critics (London,
1939), p. 78.
^The Comic Spirit in George Meredith: An Interpreta
tion (New York and London, 1911), p. 40.
29
The removal of explanatory material in the opening
chapters made many later allusions far more cryptic
than they had originally been. (Introduction to
Modern Library edition, p. xxv)
The first explicit reference in the original version
to Sir Austin's System occurred in a discussion of the
danger Sir Austin faced from his "Court of Women":
Beyond dispute, Sir Austin must have fallen a
prey to them, and they were to have added a Griffin
to their Zoological Garden of tributaries: the greater
his aesthetic, the more positive their earthy, tri
umphs: and he might say, 'If I fall, I fall perforce
of spiritual superiority, for they can but tempt my
baser nature, and were they to rise to me, there
would be no jeopardy.' He must have been ultimate
ly betrayed by his softness, but, as often happens,
he was fully armed at his weakest point; namely, the
heart. He had a son, and his heart was filled by
him. He had a son, and he was incubating a System.
(I, 17-18)
It was at this point that Sir Austin introduced "the Son
and . . . the System [to] the stranger ladies of the
Court" (I, 18):
In the former, they beheld a handsome, graceful,
boy, not unlike other boys, but looking the pick
of them. The latter was a puzzle.
Sir Austin explained it in his Aphoristic fashion.
"Sin is an alien element in our blood. 'Tis the
Apple-Disease with which Nature has striven since
Adam. To treat Youth as naturally sinful, is, there
fore, false, and bad; as it is bad, and false, to
esteem it radically pure. We must consider that we
have forfeited Paradise, but were yet grown there.
"Belonging, then, by birth to Paradise, our ten
dency should even be towards it: allowing no lower
standard than its Perfection.
"The Triumph of man's intellect, the proof of
his power, is to make the Serpent who inhabits us
fight against himself, till he is destroyed.
"My son possesses Pride, say. Human Pride is a
well-adjusted mixture of Good and Evil. Well; it
30
tempts him to conceive that he is more than his fel
lows. Let it, as it can, lift him to be more than
his fellows, and at once he will cease to conceive
it: the fight will have been fought: the Devil will
be dead.
"For this is our divine consolation: that Evil
may be separated from Good: but Good cannot be sepa
rated from Evil: the Devil may, the Angel will not
be driven out from us. A truly good man is possible
upon Earth: a thoroughly bad man is not possible.”
(I, 18-19)
Here, Sir Austin explicated the "theological or ethical
dualism"^ on which he based his System. As William R.
Mueller points out, Sir Austin viewed man as a mixture of
"Good" and "Evil,"
’ a prize for which God and the Devil are struggling.
The System is designed to place insuperable barriers
in the path of Satan and to make God s conquest the
easier, (p. 140)
The end of Chapter I of the original version included
a further explication of the premises of the System:
The gist of the System set forth: That a Golden
Age, or something near it, might yet be established
on our sphere, when fathers accepted their solemn
responsibility, and studied human nature with a Sci
entific eye, knowing what a high Science it is, to
live: and that, by hedging round the Youth from cor
ruptness, and at the same time promoting his animal
health, by helping him to grow, as he would, like a
Tree of Eden; by advancing him to a certain moral
fortitude ere the Apple-Disease was spontaneously
developed, there would be seen something approach
ing to a perfect Man, as the Baronet trusted to make
this one Son of his, after a receipt of his own.
What he exactly meant by the Apple-Disease, he
did not explain: nor did the ladies ask for an ex-
^William R. Mueller, "Theological Dualism and the
'System’ in Richard Feverel." ELH, XVIII (1951), 140.
31
planation. Intuitively they felt hot when it was
mentioned. (I, 20)
Clearly, Sir Austin had a specific "receipt of his own" for
raising his son. He based his System on the study of
"human nature with a Scientific eye" and had designed it
to protect "the Youth from corruptness," and to advance
him "to a certain moral fortitude ere the Apple-Disease
was spontaneously developed."
In addition to excising all of these references in
Chapter I to the premises of Sir Austin’s System of Educa
tion for his son, in 1875 Meredith also deleted other pas
sages in Chapters III and IV which depicted Richard’s
early development as rigorously guided and controlled by
Sir Austin’s System. Included among these were parallel
birthday scenes, the first occurring on Richard's seventh
birthday and the second on his fourteenth birthday, which
portrayed "the climactic events of Richard's development
[as] . . . rebellions against a system which ignorefd] his
basic needs.Although Meredith added a brief reference
to Richard's rebellion on his fourteenth birthday to Chap
ter II of the 1875 revision, the addition has less signif
icance than the original passage because Meredith omitted
"the whole of Richard’s seventh-birthday scene . . . when
^Howard 0. Brogan, "Fiction and Philosophy in the
Education of Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, and Richard
Feverel," College English, XIV (December 1952), 148.
32
he refused to strip for his physical examination" (Steven
son, Ordeal of Meredith, pp. 196-197).
Chapter III of the original version, entitled "Mrs.
Malediction," concerned the celebration of Richard's
seventh birthday. Meredith compressed this chapter in the
1875 revision to one paragraph of summary and one addition
al sentence. In one omitted passage, the birthday guests
persuaded Sir Austin to allow Richard a glass of claret.
The succeeding passage read:
It may be conceived, that while Sir Austin could
hesitate and permit himself to be overborne in his
judgment of what was good for his son, his System
was not yet ripe. In fact, it grew as the boy grew.
On Richard's seventh birthday, it was excited to some
definite shape, and was not so pliable. (I, 39)
This passage clearly indicated that when the "System was
. . . ripe," Sir Austin's decision as to "what was good
for his son” would be final. Prior to Richard's seventh
birthday, the System "grew as the boy grew," and the final
sentence quoted revealed that on Richard's birthday, the
System became less "pliable." The developing inflexibility
in Sir Austin's System provided the motive for Richard's
rebellions against the physical examinations decreed by the
System on his seventh and fourteenth birthdays. In Chapter
III, Sir Austin indicated to Lady Blandish his reasons for
the first physical examination:
"He is seven years old to-day, Madam. . . . I wish
him to be examined medically from head to foot, that
I may be sure he is physically sound for his second
33
seven-years' march, as he is morally promising."
(I, 44)
Richard's reaction to his father's command to "Come" was
to fall "back sullenly"; however, the rebellion was short
lived :
"I desire you to come, my boy," said his father,
with the gentle severity of a last command.
And the young seven-year-old, wrought to the fur
thest pitch of endurance, stamped his foot, and
flushed, as he cried, looking his father full in the
face, "I won't! Damned if I do!"
Of course, he had to go. . . . (I, 45)
The omission of all references to Richard's seventh birth
day eliminated also his first attempt to rebel against the
System.
Another passage in Chapter III concerned Sir Austin's
reactions to Richard's imaginative embellishment of a noc
turnal visit his mother made while he was half asleep. At
first, Sir Austin interpreted Richard's discussion of his
"dream" of a "beautiful lady" as the "supernatural visita
tion" of an ancestral ghost that was "in the habit of
coming . . . when something [was] about to happen" (I, 42).
As a result, Sir Austin rigorously supervised Richard's
activities on his seventh birthday:
Master Richard . . . had his enjoyments thwarted
at every turn. His uncle Cuthbert had proposed to
take him for a sail on the river. A peremptory mes
sage arrived just as they were getting ready, that
the boy was on no account to go on the water. His
tears were dried by the promise of a ride on horse
back with his uncle Vivian, and the horse was brought
round, Vivian in the saddle, and the boy just being
lifted up to him, when Sir Austin appeared, and for
bade it, to the grief and rage of the poor little
34
fellow. Then he was to have fired off with his own
hand some beautiful pieces of small brass cannon, his
uncle Algernon's birthday present, and again his fa
ther was on the spot, and would only allow him to
take hold of Algernon's coat-skirt while the match
was applied. On the cricketing field, whither he
went later in the day, . . . his temper was so put
to it that he exhibited the gravest sign of pre
cocious intelligence: he swore. He had requested
the favour of an ice: but was begged by his father
to consider that it would not agree with him. He
petitioned for a cake, and Reason again stept for
ward, like a detestable friend, to ask him to with
stand his inclinations till dinner-time. (I, 42-43)
Joseph Warren Beach points out that this
series of petty tyrannies practised upon Richard as
the result of a superstitious fear [was] especially
ridiculous in one who pretend[ed] to base his Sys
tem on Science, (p. 45)
Meredith's elimination of the passages which portrayed Sir
Austin's System as an incongruous combination of "Science”
and "Superstition” made the System less ridiculous in the
revised versions of the novel.
In Chapter IV of the original version, Meredith des
cribed the various inhabitants of Raynham Abbey, retaining
much of the description in the revised first chapter. How
ever, he excised many passages depicting the System's
rigorous control of Richard's early development. The first
relevant reference to the System had followed the descrip
tion of "The Inmates of Raynham Abbey”:
With these intimates young Richard Feverel lived
in the great House, unconscious of the tight jacket
he was gathering flesh to feel. The System hung
loosely on his limbs at first. The Curate of
Loboume attended to his rudimentary lessons: a
Papworth being sometimes invited to Raynham to play
35
with him, who said, he was a lucky fellow not to be
sent to school, and tried to make the boy think so,
for which purpose he had, perhaps, been brought over.
Now and then a well-meaning friend of Sir Austin's
ventured to remonstrate on the dangerous trial he
was making in modelling any new plan of Education
for a youth, but the Baronet was firm. He pointed
to his son, and said, "Match him." (I, 60-61)
Up to this point, the "System hung loosely" on Richard, but
the figurative comparison of the System to a "tight jacket
[Richard] was gathering flesh to feel" suggests that the
System was becoming less pliable, as presaged in the pas
sage in Chapter III discussed earlier. That Richard was
"not to be sent to school" was the first indication of the
extent of Sir Austin's plan which "now and then" caused
"a well-meaning friend . . . to remonstrate on the danger
ous trial" Sir Austin was making.
Chapter IV of the original version also included
Richard's second rebellion against the System. The follow
ing passage foreshadowed the coming rebellion:
Towards his fourteenth year, however, the young
Experiment began to grow exceedingly restless. The
Curate of Lobourne sent in a report that Master
Richard's lessons were contumaciously disregarded:
that in his Latin and Greek he was retrograding: in
propriety of behaviour likewise; for witness, ex
hibiting a broken slate and a broken window of the
room set apart for his studies. Heavy Benson also
laid a portentous book on the Baronet's table, found
by him in Master Richard's bedroom, proving to be a
Lempriere, and a rather grave sign in Sir Austin's
estimation. (I, 61)
The passage describing the Baronet's reactions to this
news included the first specific indication that Sir
Austin's notebook served a dual purpose: it included his
36
entries for "The Pilgrim’s Scrip" and also contained de
tailed information about his System of Education for his
son:
"What can this be?" the Baronet meditated, and re
ferred to his Note-Book (a famous and much-feared In
strument at Raynham, which held the bare bones of THE
PILGRIM'S SCRIP), wherein the youth's progressionary
phases were mapped out in sections, from Simple Boy
hood to the Blossoming Season, The Magnetic Age, The
Period of Probation, from which, successfully passed
through, he was to emerge into a Manhood worthy of
Paradise. It was now Simple Boyhood; The Ante-Pomona
Stage, as Adrian named it. A slate sent through a
window was mere insubordination: a Lempriere in the
bedroom looked like precocity,--looked like Pomona
in person. Supposing the boy to be precocious, the
whole System was disorganized. . . . (I, 61-62)
This passage revealed the full extent of Sir Austin's Sys
tem: "the youth's progressionary phases were mapped out in
sections." Furthermore, the System lacked flexibility:
"Supposing the boy to be precocious, the whole System was
disorganized. ..." In addition, the description of Sir
Austin's reaction to Richard's reading a book by Lempriere
had a comic effect. Richard was probably reading
Lempriere's Bibliotheca Classica, and Sir Austin would
consider that the mythological stories confirmed his "view
of women as the source of corruption" (Beach, The Comic
Spirit, p. 37). However, the Baronet's belief that "a
Lempriere in the bedroom . . . looked like Pomona in per
son" served to ridicule his grave concern for Richard.
Although Richard's attempted rebellion against the
physical examination decreed by the System on his seventh
37
birthday had been short-lived, his reaction on his four
teenth birthday was more severe:
[Richard told Ripton] he would leave Raynham— he
would quit the country, if he could--be a sailor—
a cabin boy— a common soldier--anything, that he
might never be seen there again. All this he ut
tered between a gnawing of the lips, and a blink
ing of the eyes, a flushing of the cheeks, and a
clenching of the fists, showing a frenzy of shame
facedness. He seemed in the gripe of his birthday
devil, as they called it at Raynham, where, till
that day, he was generally a brisk happy boy.
(I, 66)
The detailed description of Richard's physical reactions
shows the extent of his personal resentment against the
decrees of the System. The fact that Raynham called Rich
ard's violent reactions "his birthday devil” indicated
that he had to submit regularly to similar "indignities"
on his birthday.
Chapter IV of the original version also included an
explicit discussion between Sir Austin and Dr. Clifford
about the methods and objectives of Sir Austin's System of
Education for his son. Dr. Clifford attributed Richard's
rebellion to the System and pointed out that
"At a school . . . there are the two extremes:
good boys, and the reverse. Your son does not see
that distinction here. He is a heathen as to right
and wrong. Good from instinct--not from principle:
a creature of impulse. A noble lad, I admit, but--
you know, I am of the old school, Sir Austin. I
like boys to be boys, and mix together. Christians
are not born in hermitages.
"Very well said, Doctor!" remarked the Baronet,
always alive to a phrase, even in his tribulation.
"A spice of the Devil, then, is necessary for a
Christian?"
I
38
Dr. Clifford stroked his chiri. "I don’t say
that," he replied. "But I don't mind saying that
a fair stand-up fight with him is." (I, 68-69)
Dr. Clifford voiced the opinion that Richard's isolation
from groups of boys his own age imposed by the dictates of
Sir Austin's System would handicap Richard in the future.
Sir Austin's reply was that
"... none of you understand my System. . . . I am
not preparing my son to avoid the fight. I know it
is inevitable. I brace him for the struggle.”
"By keeping him out of his element?" quoth the
Doctor.
"By giving him all the advantages of Science,"
Sir Austin emphasized. "By training him. Our the
ory is the same, with this difference: that you set
the struggle down at an earlier date than do I. It
may be true I sacrifice two or three little advan
tages in isolating him at present: he will be the
better fortified for his trial to come. You know
my opinion, Doctor: we are pretty secure from the
Serpent till Eve sides with him. I speak, of course,
of a youth of good pure blood."
"I don't think the schools would harm such a
youth,” said the Doctor.
"The schools are corrupt!" said the Baronet.
Dr. Clifford could not help thinking there were
other temptations than that one of Eve. For youths
and for men, Sir Austin told him, She was the main
bait: the sole to be dreaded for a youth of good
pure blood: the main to resist. (I, 69-70)
Here, Sir Austin enunciated a basic premise of his System:
he viewed "women as the source of corruption, the chief
menace ..." (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 37) "for a
youth of good pure blood." And he considered that Rich
ard's isolation from other boys served to fortify him "for
[the] trial to come." The System was preparing Richard for
this trial "by giving him all the advantages of Science. .
. . By training him."
39
Another part of the conversation between Sir Austin
and Dr. Clifford revealed that the System went well beyond
the training of the youth, including specific plans for
Richard's future. Sir Austin told the Doctor that Richard
"shall not marry till he is thirty." To the Doctor's re
tort, "He need not marry at all," Sir Austin replied, "On
my System he must marry" (I, 71). This suggests that Sir
Austin viewed marriage as something roughly equivalent to
an annual physical; that is, in the same way that he or
dered yearly physical examinations for Richard, he arbi
trarily decreed that Richard "must marry," but not for
another sixteen years. A passage, concerning Sir Austin's
reasons for not hiring Austin Wentworth as his son's tutor,
implied that Sir Austin's choice of tutor may also have in
fluenced Richard's future:
Very different for young Richard would it have been
had Austin taken his right place in the Baronet's
favour: but Austin had offended against the Baronet's
main crotchet, . . . that, to ally oneself randomly
was to be guilty of a crime before Heaven greater
than the offence it sought to extinguish; and he had
heard that his nephew was the one seduced. Wherefore
he was doubly foolish; a thing in Sir Austin's opin
ion, he said, almost equal to depravity.
. . . he, a young man of excellent qualities, has
madly disinherited his future, and is barren to pos
terity, while knaves are propagating. I do not for
give him. The nobler he, the worse his folly. I do
not forgive him." (I, 54-55)
In the revision, Meredith rephrased this passage to read:
[Austin Wentworth] did not live with his wife; and
Sir Austin, whose mind was bent on the future of our
species, reproached him with being barren to pos-
40
terity, while knaves were propagating. &
And another passage, partially deleted in 1875, reinforced
the implication in the original version that "it [would]
have been . . . very different for . . . Richard . . . had
Austin taken his right place in the Baronet's favour. . .
The passage, in Chapter IX of the original version, Chapter
VI of the revised versions, concerned Austin's reactions to
Adrian's seeming lack of awareness of the moral principles
involved in Richard's rick-burning escapade:
Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of
the Wise Youth, his cousin, and the little that he
knew of his fellows told him he might talk for ever
here, and not be comprehended. The Wise Youth's two
ears were stuffed with his own wisdom. One evil only
Adrian dreaded, it was clear: the action of the Law.
Austin saw it sadly, and foreboded of Richard's fu
ture. (1859, I, 147)
Meredith deleted the last sentence in the 1875 revision,
eliminating another implication that Sir Austin's choice
of tutor influenced future events.
The fact that the revised first chapter includes only
two passages concerning Sir Austin's System of Education
suggests that Meredith intended the System to play a less
important role in the revised versions than it did in the
original. The first passage, which also appeared in the
1859 edition, concerns Richard's tutor:
^(London, 1909), p. 8. (Passages I quote which are
common to two or more versions will follow the spelling,
punctuation, and pagination of the later version.)
41
Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's
intellectual favourites, chosen from mankind to su
perintend the education of his son at Raynham. Adrian
had been destined for the Church. He did not enter
into Orders. He and the baronet had a conference to
gether one day, and from that time Adrian became a
fixture in the Abbey. (1909, pp. 9-10)
The other passage, at the end of the chapter, is a brief
reference to Sir Austin's "system of education for his
A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the
only comrade of his age that he ever saw, was Master
Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir Austin's solicitor,
a boy without a character.
A comrade of some description was necessary, for
Richard was neither to go to school nor to college.
Sir Austin considered that the schools were corrupt,
and maintained that young lads might by parental
vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent
until Eve sided with him: a period that might be
deferred, he said. He had a system of education for
his son. How it worked we shall see. (1909, p. 10)
The revised final paragraph does indicate that Sir Austin
based his System on the premise that "young lads might by
parental vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent
until Eve sided with him." However, Meredith's deletion
of the other references to "the temptation in the Garden"
(Beach, The Comic Spirit, pp. 38-39), and his elimination
of the comic metaphors, "Apple-Disease” and the "Great
Shaddock Dogma," reduced the significance of the single
allusion.
The revised final paragraphs state also that Ripton
Thompson was "the only comrade of his age that [Richard]
ever saw," for Richard "was neither to go to school nor to
42
college,” making clear Richard's isolation from groups of
boys his own age. This fact, however, lacks the signifi
cance it had in the original version because Meredith
eliminated the detailed conversation between Sir Austin
and Dr. Clifford in Chapter IV.
Meredith's compression of the first four chapters into
one chapter, therefore, resulted in a decrease in emphasis
on Sir Austin's System of Education for his son in succeed
ing versions of the novel. Furthermore, many of the ex
cised passages had "treated . . . Sir Austin and his Sys
tem . . . in a gay spirit of ridicule” (Beach, The Comic
Spirit, p. 35); consequently, Meredith's deletion of these
passages also reduced the burlesque elements in the re
visions .
43
Bo Changes in the Characterization
of Sir Austin Feverel
Consistent with his decrease in emphasis on Sir
Austin's System of Education in the revised versions of
The Ordeal, Meredith also reduced the comic elements in
the characterization of Sir Austin; as a result, in the
final version of the novel, Sir Austin is "less foolish
and credulous, less of a ludicrous monomaniac and more
of a misguided human figure ..." (Hergenhan, "Meredith's
Use of Revision," p. 541). The close relationship between
the changes relating to Sir Austin's System and the change
in Sir Austin's characterization is readily apparent in
the effect of the most extensive excision of 1896, the
deletion of Chapter III, Volume II of the original ver
sion, Chapter XIX, Volume I of the 1875 version, both en
titled "A Shadowy View of Coelebs Pater Going About with
a Glass-Slipper." In this chapter,
. . . Sir Austin interviewed his feminine counter
part, Mrs. Grandison, in the hope of selecting one
of her daughters as a mate for his son. (Stevenson,
Ordeal of Meredith, p. 196)
An 1896 review of the Edition de Luxe, the first edition
in which this chapter was omitted, stated that
[Mrs. Grandison] had but one chapter, and this dis
connexion with the structure of Richard Feverel
was.doubtless one of the reasons why she was lopped
44
off from the new and final edition.^
However, Mrs. Grandison and her System actually served a
dual function in the novel. First, Sir Austin's System
was "thrown into comic relief by Mrs. Grandison's ridicu
lous regimen for raising her hapless daughters" (Hill, In
troduction to Rinehart edition, p. xx) . Since Mrs. Grandi
son 's System for her daughters was a "burlesque counter-
pointing" (Hill, Introduction to Rinehart edition, p. xx)
of Sir Austin's System for his son, the excision of the
entire chapter in 1896 continued the trend of the 1875
revision toward a decrease in emphasis on Sir Austin's
System of Education for his son. But an even more impor
tant function of the chapter on the Grandison family was
its effect on the characterization of Sir Austin; since
Mrs. Grandison was Sir Austin's comic counterpart, the
burlesque elements in her characterization had heightened
the burlesque effect of Sir Austin's characterization.
The preliminary description of Mrs. Grandison indi
cated her idiosyncrasies:
One of those mammas favoured by Doctor Benjamin
Bairam, was Mrs. Caroline Grandison, said to be a
legitimate descendant of the great Sir Charles: a
lady who, in propriety of demeanour and pious man
ners, was the petticoated image of her admirable
ancestor. The clean-linen of her morality was spot
less as his. As nearly she neighboured perfection,
^"The Going of Mrs. Grandison" (anon, rev.), The
Academy, December 5, 1896, p. 498.
45
and knew it as well. Let us hope that her history-
wili some day be written, and the balance restored
in literature which it was her pride to have estab
lished for her sex in life.
Mrs. Caroline was a colourless lady of an un
equivocal character, living upon drugs, and govern
ing her husband and the world from her sofa. Woolly
-Negroes blest her name, and whiskered John-Thomases
deplored her weight. The world was given to under
stand that sorrows and disappointments had reduced
her to the contemplative posture which helped her
to consider the urgent claims of her black fellow-
creatures, and require the stalwart services of her
white. In her presence the elect had to feel how
very much virtue is its own reward; for if they
did not rightly esteem the honour she did them, they
had little further encouragement from Mrs. Caroline
Grandison. On the other hand her rigour towards
vice was unsparing; especially in the person of one
of her own sex, whom she treated as heaven treats
fallen angels.10
Mrs. Grandison thus emerges as a comic figure. Her "sor
rows and disappointments" had made an invalid of her, and
her "contemplative posture" on the sofa "helped her to
consider the urgent claims of her black fellow-creatures,"
but, at the same time, she required "the stalwart services
of her white" fellow-creatures. The juxtaposition of
these points ^hows Mrs. Grandison1s pretensions of serving
humanity as mere affectation; actually others served her.
In addition, the statement that she governed "her husband
and the world from her sofa" indicates the extent of Mrs.
Grandison's pretentious self-glorification.
Mrs. Grandison's excessive emphasis on physical exer
cise enhanced her comic portrayal. The daughters gave Sir
(Leipzig, 1875), I, 169.
46
Austin a demonstration of the strenuous daily physical
regimen decreed by their mother:
Daughters and little girls trooped to the Gymnasi
um, which was fitted up in the court below, and con
tained swing-poles, and stride-poles, and newly in
vented instruments for bringing out special virtues:
an instrument for the lungs: an instrument for the
liver: one for the arms and thighs: one for the
wrists: the whole for the promotion of the Christian
accomplishments.
Owing, probably, to the exhaustion consequent on
their previous exercises of the morning, the young
ladies, excepting Carola, looked fatigued and pale,
and anything but well-braced; and for the same
reason, doubtless, when the younger ones were re
quested by their mother to exhibit the use of the
several instruments, each of them wearily took hold
of the depending strap of leather and wearily pulled
it, like mariners oaring in the deep sea; oaring to
a haven they have no faith in.
"I sometimes hear them," said their mamma, "while
I am reclining above, singing in chorus. 'Row,
brothers, row,1 is one of their songs. It sounds
pretty and cheerful."
The baronet was too much wrapped up in the en
lightenment of her principle, to notice the des
pondency of their countenances. (I, 179)
By describing Mrs. Grandison as "the strenuous invalid"
(I, 179), Meredith reinforced the comic irony of Mrs.
Grandison's demanding so much physical activity from her
daughters.
Because the two originators of Systems were parallel
figures in many respects, the caricature produced by the
burlesque exaggeration of Mrs. Grandison's individual qual
ities served to emphasize Sir Austin's peculiarities. For
example, the initial conversation between Sir Austin and
Mrs. Grandison disclosed that they both considered them
selves, and their Systems, superior to other human beings:
47
Sir Austin and Mrs. Caroline discovered that they
had in common from an early period looked on life as
a science: and having arrived at this joint under
standing, they, with the indifference of practised
dissectors, laid out the world and applied the knife
to the people they knew. In other words, they talked
most frightful scandal. It is proverbial what a cold
torturer science can be. Malice is nothing to it.
They reviewed their friends. Pure blood was nowhere.
Sir Austin hinted his observations since his arrival
in town, and used a remark or two from Bairam and
Thompson. Mrs. Caroline cleverly guessed the fami
lies, and still further opened his eyes. Together
they quashed the wild-oats special plea. Mrs.
Caroline gave him a clearer idea of his system than
he had ever had before. (I, 175-176)
As originators of "scientific" Systems, Sir Austin and Mrs.
Grandison "reviewed their friends" and found them defec
tive: "Pure blood was nowhere"; they thus concurred in con
demning the degeneracy of the rest of the human race.
A second parallel between Sir Austin and Mrs. Grandi
son is that both considered it their prerogative to select
the mates for their offspring. Mrs. Grandison's require
ments for her own mate echo her later exacting requirements
for her daughters' mates:
In her sweet youth this lady fell violently in
love with the great Sir Charles, and married him in
fancy. The time coming when maiden fancy must give
way to woman fact, she compromised her reverent pas
sion for the hero by declaring that she could never
change the name he had honoured her with, and must,
if she espoused any mortal, give her widowed hand to
a Grandison. Accordingly two cousins were proposed
to her; but the moral reputation of these Grandisons
was so dreadful, and such a disgrace to the noble
name they bore, that she rejected them with horror.
Woman's mission, however, being her perpetual pre
cept, she felt, at the age of twenty-three, bound
to put it in practice, and, as she was handsome,
and most handsomely-endowed, a quite unobjectionable
48
gentleman was discovered who, for the honour of as
sisting her in her mission, agreed to disembody him
self in her great name, and be lost in the blaze of
Sir Charles. (I, 170-171)
Because Mrs. Grandison applied these specifications,
None of . . . Iher] daughters had married; owing it
was rumoured, to the degeneracy of the males of our
day. The elder ones had, in their ignorance, wished
to marry young gentlemen of their choosing. Mrs.
Caroline Grandison bade them wait till she could find
for them something like Sir Charles; she was aware
that such a man would hardly be found alive again.
(I, 172)
Mrs. Grandison's careful control of the plans of her daugh
ters corresponded to Sir Austin's attempt to control Rich
ard's future. In a passage common to all three versions,2 - 3 .
Sir Austin explained to Lady Blandish his plans for Rich
ard 1s marriage:
[Richard] was now nearly eighteen. He was to marry
when he was five and twenty. Meantime a young lady,
some years his junior, was to be sought for in the
homes of England, who would be every way fitted by
education, instincts, and blood--on each of which
qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged--
to espouse so perfect a youth and accept the honour
able duty of assisting in the perpetuation of the
Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he pro
posed to set forth immediately, and devote a couple
of months, to the first essay in his Coelebite
search.12 (1909, pp. 110-111)
llChapter XVI, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter XIII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XIII, 1909.
12ln an excised passage of Chapter IV, Vol. I, of the
1859 edition, Sir Austin told Dr. Clifford that Richard
"shall not marry until he is thirty" (I, 71). The incon
sistency in the original version was probably due to an
oversight by Meredith.
49
The beginning of the chapter entitled "Unmasking of Master
Ripton T h o m p s o n ” 13 included further details;
Lady Blandish, and others who professed an inter
est in the fortunes and future of the systematized
youth, had occasionally mentioned names of families
whose alliance according to apparent calculations,
would not degrade his blood; and over these names,
secretly preserved on an open leaf of the note-book,
Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly
dropped his eye. There were names historic and
names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might
have called in his muster-roll; names that had been,
clearly, tossed into the upper stratum of civilized
life by a mill-wheel or a merchant-stool. Against
them the baronet had written M. or Po., or Pr.-
signifying, Money, Position, Principles, favouring
the latter with special brackets. The wisdom of a
worldly man, which he could now and then adopt, de
termined him, before he commenced his round of vis
its, to consult and sound his solicitor and his
physician thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the
rats who know best the merits of a house, and on
what sort of foundation it may be standing. (1909,
p. 131)
Sir Austin's question to Dr. Bairam, "... if you had a
pure-blood Arab barb, would you cross him with a hack?”
(1875, I, 1 6 7 ) indicated that Sir Austin was also an
aspiring eugenicist.
A third significant parallel between Sir Austin and
Mrs. Grandison is that both had absurd specifications for
their children's mates. Mrs. Grandison's search for eight
duplicates of Samuel Richardson's fictional hero, Sir
Charles Grandison, corresponds with the following figura-
■^Chapter XIX, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter XVI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XVI, 1909.
14-In 1896 Meredith changed the word "hack" to "screw."
50
tive description of Sir Austin's search:
[Sir Austin] went abroad shyly. He was never to be
met in general society. The rumour of him was every
where, and an extremely unfavourable rumour it was,
from mothers who had daughters, and hopes for their
daughters, which a few questions of his had kindled,
and a discovery of his severe requisitions extin
guished. It appeared that he had seen numerous
young ladies. He had politely asked them to sit
down and take off their shoes; but such monstrous
feet they had mostly, that he declined the attempt
to try on the Glass Slipper, and politely departed;
or tried it on, and, with a resigned sad look, de
clared that it would not, would not fit!
Some of the young ladies had been to schools.
Their feet were all enormously too big, and there
was no need for them to take off their shoes. Some
had been very properly educated at home; and to
such, if Bairam, physician, and Thompson, lawyer,
did not protest, the Slipper was applied; but by
occult arts of its own it seemed to find out that
their habits were somehow bad, and incapacitated
them from espousing the Fairy Prince. The Slipper
would not fit at all.
Unsuspecting damsels were asked, at what time
they rose in the morning; and would reply, at any
hour. Some said, they finished in the morning the
romance they had relinquished to sleep overnight;
little considering how such a practice made the
feet swell. (1875, I, 172-173)
■^The 1859 edition included the following two para
graphs :
"And I assure you, my dear," said Mrs. Rectangle,
one of those outraged mothers, to Mrs. Caroline
Grandison, "he does not scruple to ask the most abom
inable things of you, where this son of his is con
cerned. He made me quite blush, and but for his man
ner, which, I admit, is dignified. I should have been
indignant. He asked absolutely-- and she sank her
voice. "I really now believe everything Miss Joy and
Mrs. M'Murphy say of him. What does the man want?"
"What none of you can give him," was Mrs. Caroline
Grandison's mental ejaculation. (II, 28-29)
Meredith probably deleted these sections in 1875 because
Miss Joy and Mrs. M'Murphy were mentioned in excised por
tions of Chapter I.
51
The metaphor of the "Glass Slipper" for Sir Austin's speci
fications for his son's future mate served to draw an anal
ogy between Sir Austin's search and the Fairy Prince's
search in "Cinderella," an analogy placing Sir Austin's
search in the realm of fairy stories and thereby further
revealing its absurdity.
Because Meredith portrayed Mrs. Grandison as a comic
figure, the statement that "No lady living was better
fitted to appreciate Sir Austin, and understand his Sys
tem" (1875, I, 172) ridiculed both the System and its
originator. Sir Austin's attitude toward Mrs. Grandison
paralleled her attitude toward him:
The theorist was dazzled, delighted. Lady Blandish
was too like a submissive slave to the System. Mrs.
Caroline wedded it on the equal standing of an Eng
lish wife, who gives her half, and more, to the
union. (1875, I, 176-177)
Sir Austin also wholeheartedly endorsed Mrs. Grandison's
comic System of Education for her daughters: "'They talk
of the Future Man, madam,' he said. 'I seem to be in the
house of the Future Woman'" (1875, I, 180). The final
paragraph of the chapter revealed that Sir Austin's ap
proval of Mrs. Grandison and her System was serious and
complete: ". . . returning to the drawing-room, they ex
changed Systems anew, as a preparatory betrothal of the
objects of the Systems" (1875, I, 180). As Joseph Warren
Beach points out,
52
The success of Mrs. Grandison in taking in Sir
Austin . . . [made] of Sir Austin not a figure of
high comedy, but one of those marionettes with which
we are entertained in "Pickwick Papers." (The Comic
Spirit, p. 44)
By excising the entire chapter in 1896, Meredith shifted
the characterization of Sir Austin, making him a more seri
ous figure in the final version of the novel.
Other relevent omissions reinforced the change in Sir
Austin's characterization and made him less idiosyncratic.
For example, some of the passages Meredith excised from
the first four chapters revealed in detail Sir Austin's
excessively misogynous attitude. Although in all three
versions Sir Austin's unfavorable attitude toward women
was motivated by "the failure of his own marriage [which]
rendered him suspicious of romance and intolerant of
women" (Stevenson, Ordeal of Meredith, p. 63), in the re
vised versions Sir Austin is not so monomaniacal in his
anti-feminist views. This change can be traced to
Meredith's deletion in 1875 of the numerous preliminary
references to the "Apple-Disease" and the "Great Shaddock
Dogma" which had reinforced the characterization of Sir
Austin as a misogynist. The excision of the initial ex
planations made many of the later "allusions to the Garden
of Eden and the forbidden fruit" (Stevenson, English Novel,
p. 346) "far more cryptic than they had originally been"
(Stevenson, Introduction to Modem Library edition, p.
xxv) .
53
In addition, the numerous references in the original
four chapters to the "peculiar malady" of the Feverels and
the "special Ordeal for their race" characterized Sir
Austin as superstitious. After his wife's desertion,
He believed that a curse was in his blood; a poison
of Retribution, which no life of purity could expel;
and grew, perhaps, more morbidly credulous on the
point than his predecessor: speaking of the Ordeal
of the Feverels, with sonorous solemnity, as a thing
incontrovertibly foredecreed to them. (1859, I, 29)
With such a fatalistic attitude, Sir Austin tended to be
dogmatic in his opinions and inflexible in his decrees.
Two significant passages common to all three versions
indicate that "Sir Austin wished to be Providence to his
son." In the first passage,g^r Austin overhears Rich
ard and Ripton plotting:
He was half disposed to arrest the two conspira
tors on the spot, and make them confess, and absolve
themselves; but it seemed to him better to keep an
unseen eye over his son: Sir Austin's old system
prevailed.
Adrian characterized this system well, in saying
that Sir Austin wished to be Providence to his son.
(1909, p. 35)
The second passage^ - 7 further develops this idea:
It was a difficult task for Sir Austin to keep
his old countenance toward the hope of Raynham,
knowing him the accomplice-incendiary, and believ
ing the deed to have been unprovoked and wanton.
16Chapter VII, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter IV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter IV, 1909.
17Chapter VIII, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter V, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter V, 1909.
54
But he must do so, he knew, to let the boy have a
fair trial against himself. Be it said, moreover,
that the baronet's possession of his son's secret
flattered him. It allowed him to act, and in a
measure to feel, like Providence; enabled him to
observe and provide for the movements of creatures
in the dark. He therefore treated the boy as he
commonly did, and Richard saw no change in his fa
ther to make him think he was suspected. (1909,
pp. 38-39)
Thus we have a fallible human being attempting to play a
God-like role.
But some of Meredith's changes result in more flexi
bility in Sir Austin's attitude. For example, the paral
lel sections concerning Sir Austin's reaction to Austin
Wentworth's marriage show him as less dogmatic. The origi
nal version revealed that Sir Austin was implacable in his
opinions;
. . . Austin had offended against the Baronet's
main crotchet: [Sir Austin] said, in answer to
Lady Blandish, that, to ally oneself randomly was
to be guilty of a crime before Heaven greater than
the offence it sought to extinguish; and he had
heard that his nephew was the one seduced. Where
fore he was doubly foolish; a thing in Sir Austin's
opinion . . . almost equal to depravity.
"Think Madam," he argued, "think of the children."
"There may be none," she said.
"They live apart: the woman is vicious, true,"
the Baronet resumed. "Think then, Madam--! may
speak to you,— think that he, a young man of excel
lent qualities, has madly disinherited his future,
and is barren to posterity, while knaves are propa
gating. I do not forgive him. The nobler he, the
worse his folly. I do not forgive him." (1859, I,
54-55)
The revised passage illustrates the shift:
[Austin Wentworth] did not live with his wife;
and Sir Austin, whose mind was bent on the future
55
of oar species, reproached him with being barren to
posterity, while knaves were propagating. (1909,
p. 8)
Meredith's rephrasing of this passage and his omission of
the other passage concerning Austin Wentworth^ also make
Sir Austin seem less foolish in his choice of Adrian
rather than Austin as Richard's tutor.
Meredith's deletion in 1875 of a significant sentence
from a long passage in Chapter II, Volume I, of the origi
nal version, retained in Chapter I of the revised versions,
further reinforces the shift in Sir Austin's characteriza
tion. In the passage outlining the "Baronet's story," the
pertinent section in the first version read:
The outline of the Baronet's story was by no means
new. He had a wife, and he had a friend. His mar
riage was for love; his wife was a beauty; his friend
was a poet. Sir Austin Feverel did nothing by halves.
His wife had his whole heart, and his friend all his
confidence. (1859, I, 29-30)
The revised versions omit the sentence, "Sir Austin Feverel
did nothing by halves," again suggesting less rigidity in
Sir Austin's attitude.
In the original version, Sir Austin was also exces
sively self-confident; he could not and would not admit the
possibility that he might be in error. Although there are
passages common to all three versions which develop this
trait, Meredith's excision in 1896 of a significant section
■^See p. 40.
56
from the chapter entitled "Crisis in the Apple Disease,
results in less emphasis being placed on it. In this chap
ter Richard attempted to flee from Raynham Abbey in order
to be reunited with Lucy. However, he became seriously
ill, and his father and Lady Blandish found him in a
"strange bed" at the Inn, "straight and motionless, with
fever on his cheeks, and altered eyes." Meredith excised
the following passage from the final version:
"See what you do to us!" said the baronet, sorrow
fully eyeing the bed.
"But if you lose him?" Lady Blandish whispered.
Sir Austin walked away from her, and probed the
depths of his love. "The stroke will not be dealt
by me," he said.
His patient serenity was a wonder to all who knew
him. Indeed, to have doubted and faltered now was
to have subverted the glorious fabric just on the
verge of completion. He believed that his son's
pure strength was fitted to cope with any natural
evil, that such was God's Law. To him Richard's
passion was an ill incident to the ripeness of his
years, and his perfect innocence; and this crisis
the struggle of the poison passing out of him--not
to be deplored. He was so confident that he did
not even send for Dr. Bairam. (1875, I, 255-256)
In the earlier versions, even his son's serious illness did
not alter Sir Austin's inflexible determination to follow
the dictates of his System. This excessive confidence in
himself and his System made Sir Austin seem foolish. Con
sequently, Meredith's changes reduced the comic elements
in the characterization of Sir Austin.
19Chapter VIII, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXIV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXIII, 1909.
Chapter III
Reduction of Varied Comic and Satiric Elements
A. Changes in the Presentation of Adrian
Harley and Ripton Thompson
In addition to shifting the emphasis in the character
ization of Sir Austin in the 1875 revision, Meredith also
reduced or deleted some of the comic and/or satiric ele
ments in the presentation of two of the minor characters
closest to Richard: his tutor, Adrian Harley, and his
closest friend, Ripton Thompson; Meredith continued the
same trend in the final revision.
In the earlier versions, Meredith portrayed Adrian as
a self-centered opportunist and exposed his hypocritical
pretenses. The cumulative changes in both revisions re
sult in the elimination of many satiric details. The first
significant change in Adrian's presentation occurs in par
allel passages of Chapter IV of the original version, Chap
ter I of the revised versions. The passage in the 1859
edition followed a discussion between Sir Austin and Adrian
about the foolish mistake Austin Wentworth made in marrying
his mother's housemaid to redeem "a fault in early youth"
(I, 52):
Adrian, the Wise Youth Adrian, would never have
made such a mistake. Some people are born green:
others yellow. Adrian was born yellow. He was
always on the ripe sensible side of a question.
(I, 55)
58
The rephrased passage eliminates the satiric details de
picting Adrian as an opportunist:
The principal characteristic of the second neph
ew, Adrian Harley, was his sagacity. He was essen
tially the wise youth, both in counsel and in action.
(1909, p. 8)
Another passage Meredith deleted states that "The Wise
Youth spread out his mind to the System like a piece of
blank paper” (1859, I, 59), a comparison that satirized
his role as Richard’s tutor by implying excessive passivi
ty.
In 1875 Meredith also omitted this comic description:
Adrian had a logical contempt for creatures who do
things for mere show, as losing, he said, the core
of enjoyment for the rind of respectability. The
world might find itself in the wrong: it would find
him the same. His ambition, within the reserved
limits, was to please himself, as being the best
judge and the absolute gainer. Placed on Crusoe's
Island, his first cry would have been for clean
linen: his next for the bill-of-fare; and then, for
that Grand Panorama of the Mistress of the World
falling to wreck under the barbarians, which had
been the spur and the seal to his mind: twittering
Horace in Roman feast-attendant's tunic, twanging
his lyre, might charm him to sleep, careless of
the morrow, since the day was good. (1859, I,
57-58)
The passage showed Adrian to be a self-centered egoist
whose "ambition, within the reserved limits, was to please
himself."
Another section Meredith excised in 1875 from Chapter
VII characterized Adrian as excessively cynical. The pas
sage verbalized Adrian's thoughts as he listened to Sir
Austin making his midnight tour as "sentinel of Raynham"
(I, H4):
"What seemed inviolable barriers are burst asunder
in a trice: men, God's likeness, are at one an
other's throats, and the Angels may well be weep
ing. In youth, 'tis love, or lust, makes the
world mad: in age, 'tis prejudice. Superstition
holds a province: Pride an empire. Tinker's right!
There's a battle raging above us. One can't wonder
at Ploughman's contrary opinion, as to which is
getting the upper hand. If we were not mad, we
should fight it for ourselves, and end it. We are;
and we make Life the disease, and Death the cure.
Good night, my worthy Uncle! Can I deem the man
mad who holdeth me much?” And Adrian buried a
sleepy smile in his pillow, and slept, knowing him
self wise in a mad world. (1859, I, 115)
In the original version of the novel, Adrian agreed with
Speed-the-Plough's view that the Devil occasionally has
"the upper hand" over God. Adrian also considered that
because man was "mad," he made "Life the disease, and
Death the cure." Meredith's suppression of this passage
eliminated these heretical views.
Other passages Meredith deleted revealed that Adrian
tended to tease the victims of his cynical wit. Although
a passage common to all three versions^- states that "The
wise youth's dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with
many peculiarities of the professional joker" (1909, p.
230), Meredith eliminated many of the dramatized exhibi
tions in his final revision of the novel. For example,
1Chapter X, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXVI, Vol. I, 1875
Chapter XXV, 1909.
60
Meredith omitted some of Adrian's witty sallies at Hippias
and Richard in the chapter entitled "Celebrates the Time-
r \
Honoured Treatment of a Dragon by the Hero" :
"I fancy, uncle, you have swallowed a fairy," says
Richard. You know what malicious things they are.
Is there a case in the mythology of anybody swallow
ing a fairy?"
Hippias grimly considered, and thought there was
not.
"Upon my honour," Adrian composes his features to
remark, "I think Ricky has hit the right nail. You
have not only swallowed one, you have swallowed the
whole mythologyI I'm not astonished you suffer so.
I never could, I confess, so they don't trouble me;
but, if I had, I should pour a bottle of the best
on him every night. I should indeed."
"You will drink a bottle and drown the fairy on
the day Ricky's married," says Adrian, eyeing the
traitor blush he calls up on the ingenuous cheeks.
Hippias realizes distant consequences immediate
ly, and contracts his jaw to stipulate for it at
night, then: not in the morning at the breakfast.
He is capable of nothing but very weak tea and dry
toast, or gruel, in the morning. He adds that, how
people can drink wine at that early hour amazes
him. "I should," he exclaims energetically, "I
should be afraid to go to bed that night, if I did
such a thing!"
Adrian leans to Richard, and bids the blush-
mantled youth mind he does not swallow his fairy,
or he may have a similar unbewitching fear upon
him on the awful occasion. (1875, I, 187-188)
Adrian not only mocked Hippias's dyspepsia but also made
Richard blush by alluding to "the day Ricky's married."
Meredith deleted another of Adrian's witticisms di
rected against Richard and Hippias from the chapter en-
^Chapter V, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXI, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter XX, 1909.
61
titled "In Which the Hero Takes a Step."3 In the chapter,
Richard, with his father's approval, selected Hippias
rather than Adrian to accompany him on his visit to London
Sir Austin "softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that
in about two weeks they would follow" (1909, p. 227). How
ever, Adrian was still annoyed, and, on the way to the
railway station, he teased Richard and Hippias and tried
"zealously to torment a laugh, or a confession of irrita
tion" (1909, pp. 229-230) from them; in 1896 Meredith
omitted the following passage of Adrian's bantering:
"My uncle, I dread, is madly bent upon returning
thanks publicly for the pill, so you must be content
to let Ignotus wear your laurels, or the critics
will confound you together. 'Notwithstanding the
deplorable state of this gentleman's stomach,' they
will say, 'the Muse and Cupid have taken so strong
a hold on him, that he is evidently one of those who,
to avoid more punishable transgressions, must commit
verse, and we prefer to attribute any shortcomings
which it may be our duty to indicate, rather to the
utter distraction of his internal economy than to a
want of natural propensity.'" (1875, I, 275)
Adrian simultaneously derided Richard's attempts to amuse
Hippias with light verse and Hippias's attempts to find a
cure for his dyspepsia; at the same time, he ridiculed
versifiers and critics in general.
In 1896 Meredith made two changes in the chapter en
titled "An Enchantress,"^ eliminating more of Adrian's
3Chapter X, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXVI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXV, 1909.
^Chapter VII, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XI, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXVIII, 1909.
62
bantering that had been inappropriate for the serious situ
ation in which it occurred. The first passage involved
Adrian's preliminary attempt to persuade Richard to stop
seeing Mrs. Mount. After Adrian's statement that even "a
Bishop would have no chance in contact" with her, Meredith
deleted the following section:
"Methinks I see the reverend manI though he takes
excellent care to make it a contemptible hypothesis.
That part of his pastoral duty he wisely leaves to
weanling laymen." (1875, II, 189)
The second change occurred in the conversation in which
Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria persuaded Adrian to approach
Richard again about his involvement with Mrs. Mount. The
1875 version read:
"Command him!" exclaimed the practical animal.
"Command an Engine, ma'am?"
"Gentle means are, I think, the only means with
Richard," said Lady Blandish.
"Appeal to his reason," the practical animal
iterated.
"The reason of an Engine, ma'am?" (II, 199)
The 1896 version reads:
_
'Command him!' exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
'Gentle means are, I think, the only means with
Richard,' said Lady Blandish. (1909, p. 441)
Other changes in the chapter entitled "Celebrates the
Time-Honoured Treatment of a Dragon by the Hero"^ modified
Adrian's characterization by suppressing or reducing some
undesirable traits. In the 1896 revision, Meredith deleted
5Chapter V, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXI, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter XX, 1909.
63
passages which revealed that Adrian deliberately instigated
Richard's thrashing of Benson for spying on his lover's
tryst with Lucy. Adrian was motivated by envy and hurt
pride at Benson's having been the first to notify Sir
Austin of Richard's relationship with Lucy. Meredith also
omitted some passages which described Adrian's sadistic
delight at the outcome of his machinations. One relevant
change occurred in Adrian's preliminary talk with Benson
and his subsequent conversation with Lady Blandish. The
1875 version read:
"Then why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson?
Ah, I see! you waited for the worst--eh? Hm!— or
what? Benson? This is not the first time you have
been attendant on Mr. Apollo and Miss Dryope? You
have written to head-quarters, have you? Nothing
like zeal, Benson!”
"I did my dooty, Mr. Hadrian."
"Don't let it rob you of your breath, Benson."
The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and
informed her of Benson's zeal. The lady's eyes
flashed. "I hope Richard will treat him as he de
serves," she said.
Adrian bowed, and left her. . . .
"An odd creature!" muttered the wise youth. . . .
Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson. He has had
the impudence to steal a march on me! Not a bad sug
gestion of the Blandish. We'll see about it." (I,
201)
The 1896 version reads:
'Then why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson?
Ah, I see! you waited— what? This is not the first
time you have been attendant on Apollo and Miss
Dryope? You have written to headquarters?'
'I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian.'
The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and in
formed her of Benson's zeal. The lady's eyes flashed.
'I hope Richard will treat him as he deserves,' she
64
said.
Adrian bowed and left her.
'An odd creature!' muttered the wise youth. . . .
Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has
had the impudence to steal a march on me!1 (1909,
pp. 170-171)
Here, Meredith deleted Adrian's hint that Benson's prurient
tastes led him to wait "for the worst" in his spying upon
Richard and Lucy.^ He also omitted Adrian's satiric thrust
at Benson, "Nothing like zeal. . . . Don't let it rob you
of your breath. ..." Even more important, by eliminating
the sentences, "Not a bad suggestion of the Blandish.
We'll see about it," Meredith suppressed the idea that
Adrian intentionally instigated the thrashing in revenge
for Benson's "steal[ing] a march" on him.
Meredith also rephrased some of the passage verbal
izing Adrian's thoughts while he listened to Benson's
"bellow for help . . . amid horrid resounding echoes."
Part of Adrian's musing in the 1875 version read:
". . .or words to that effect. Not a bad idea, that
of the Fates being Jews— Jewesses more classically
£
Another passage Meredith deleted from the same chap
ter in 1896 further developed this idea: "Heavy Benson's
epistle of warning, addressed to Sir Austin Absworthy
Beame Feverel, Bart., and containing an extraordinary
travesty of the mutual converse of two love-sick beings,
specially calculated to alarm a moral parent, was posted
and travelling to town. His work was done. Unluckily for
his bones, he had, in the process, acquired a prurient
taste for the service of spy upon Cupid; and, after doing
duty at table, he was again out over the dews, hoping to
behold the extreme wickedness of the celestial culprit”
(1875, I, 193).
65
speaking. The heavens evidently love Benson, seeing
that he gets his punishment on the spot. He don't
like it. What a lovely night! Those two young ones
do it well. Master Ricky is a peppery young man.
Love and war come as natural to him as bread and
butter." (I, 205)
The parallel passage in the 1896 version reads:
' . . .or words to that effect. The heavens evident
ly love Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on
the spot. Master Ricky is a peppery young man.'
(1909, p. 174)
Meredith's elimination of the two sentences, "He don't
like it. What a lovely night!", serves to mitigate Adrian's
keen enjoyment at the success of his scheme.
Meredith also rephrased the following passage de
tailing the extent of Benson's injuries:
Adrian caught hold of Benson's collar and lifted
him to a sitting posture. He then had a glimpse of
what his hopeful pupil's hand could do in wrath.
The wretched butler s coat was slit and welted; his
hat knocked in; the stain of a tremendous blow across
his nose, which made one of his eyes seem gone; his
flabby spirit so broken that he started and trembled
if his pitiless executioner stirred a foot. (1875,
I, 207)
The parallel passage in the 1896 version omits the descrip
tion of the most serious injuries: "the stain of a tre
mendous blow across his nose, which made one of his eyes
seem gone. ..." Because Benson's injuries were more ex
tensive in the original description, Adrian's subsequent
discussion with Richard, in the 1859 and 1875 versions,
revealed more fully his perverse delight in the violence
he had triggered:
66
"The coward bobbed while I struck," said Richard.
"I marked his back. He ducked. I told him he was
getting it worse."
At this civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened
his mouth to shake out a coil of laughter.
"Did you really? I admire that. You told him he
was getting it worse? I thought you were in a pas
sion. Beautifully cool! Bravo!--You are politely
informed that if you take that posture, in the na
ture of things, and by reasonable calculation, you
will get it worse." (1875, I, 207-208)
The parallel passage in the 1896 version reads:
'The coward bobbed while I struck,' said Richard.
'I marked his back. He ducked. I told him he was
getting it worse.’
At so civilized a piece of savagery, Adrian
opened his mouth wide.
’Did you really? I admire that. You told him
he was getting it worse?’
Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another
roll of laughter out. (1909, pp. 176-177)
Meredith also deleted Adrian's sardonic remark concerning
Benson's hat that Richard's blows had "knocked in"; in the
1859 and 1875 versions, Adrian said: "Never part with that
hat, Benson! Love it as you love yourself" (1875, I,
208).
In the same chapter, Meredith also excised passages
which revealed Adrian's immoral relationship with Molly
Davenport, Farmer Blaize's maid. The changes in Adrian's
"comic bucolic dialogue"^ with Molly eliminated her ridi
cule of Adrian's "hypocritical pretense" (Wright, p. 153)
and thereby suppressed the dramatized revelation of
^Walter F. Wright, Art and Substance in George Mere
dith: A Study in Narrative (Lincoln, 1953), p. 153.
67
Adrian's hypocrisy. In the pertinent passages, Adrian was
ostensibly seeking information about Richard's relation
ship with Molly's young mistress. The section Meredith
omitted in 1875 followed Molly's statement that Lucy "looks
like a Angel in her nightgown!" and read:
"Can one be favoured with the opportunity . . . ,?"
said Adrian.
"That you shan't," Molly cried.
"I only want to see, and worship," said Adrian.
"Worship— you!" Molly stepped jeeringly back from
him. (1859, II, 58-59)
In this way, Meredith revealed that Molly distrusted
Adrian's motives.
The sections subsequently deleted in 1896 furnished
proof that Molly's distrust of Adrian's motives was based
on personal experience. The pertinent passage in the 1875
version read as follows:
"Are you looking for your young gentleman?" Molly
presently asked.
Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand,
to see if the coast was clear, and replied to her,
"I am miss. I want you to tell me about him."
"Dear!" said the buxom lass, "was you coming for
me to-night?"
Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, appar
ently.
"Cause I can't stop out long to-night," Molly
explained, taking the rebuke to refer altogether to
her bad grammar.
"You may go in when you please, miss. Is that
anyone coming? Come here in the shade."
"Now, get along!" said Miss Molly.
It was hard upon the wise youth, and he felt it
so, that she would not accept his impeccability.
He said austerely: "I desire you to know, miss,
that, notwithstanding your unprotected situation
and the favouring darkness, a British female, in
all places, and at all seasons, may confidently
repose the precious jewel— "
68
The buxom lass interrupted the harangue by an ex
plosion of giggles. "I declare," she cried, "I used
for to believe you at fust; and when you begin you
looks like it now. You're al'ays as good as a play.
I say— don't you remember— "
Adrian spoke with resolution. "Will you listen
to me, Miss Davenport!" He put a coin in her hand
which had a medical effect in calming her to atten
tion. "I want to know whether you have seen him at
all?"
"Who? Your young gentleman? I sh'd think I did.
I seen him to-night only. Ain't he growed handsome.
He's al'ays about Beltharp now. It ain't to fire no
more ricks. He's afire 'unself. Ain't you seen 'em
together? He's after the missis, and you're after
the--"
Adrian checked the audacious accusation. He re
quested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine
herself to particulars. (I, 189-190)
The 1896 version reads as follows:
'Are you looking for your young gentleman?' Molly
presently asked.
Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand,
to see if the coast was clear, and replied to her,
'I am, miss. I want you to tell me about him.'
'Dear!' said the buxom lass, 'was you coming for
me to-night to know?'
Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparent
ly.
''Cause I can't stop out long to-night,' Molly ex
plained, taking the rebuke to refer altogether to her
bad grammar.
'You may go in when you please, miss. Is that
any one coming? Come here in the shade.'
'Now, get along!’ said Miss Molly.
Adrian spoke with resolution. 'Listen to me,
Molly Davenport!' He put a coin in her hand, which
had a medical effect in calming her to attention.
'I want to know whether you have seen him at all?'
'Who? Your young gentleman? I sh'd think I did.
I seen him to-night only. Ain't he growed handsome.
He's al'ays about Beltharp now. It ain't to fire no
more ricks. He's afire 'unself. Ain't you seen 'em
together? He's after the missis--'
Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful,
and confine herself to particulars. (1909, pp. 160-
161)
69
Three significant differences between the two versions of
the conversation served to delete references to Adrian's
previous immoral relationship with Molly. The first change
was the addition of the phrase "to know" at the end of Mol
ly's second question to Adrian. The implication in the
original question, "was you coming for me to-night?", was
that Adrian had been in the practice of visiting Molly at
night. However, the revised question, "was you coming for
me to-night to know?", focuses Molly's question on the in
formation Adrian is seeking and thereby eliminates the im
plication of the original wording. The second difference
was Meredith's suppression of the two paragraphs of the
conversation in which Molly mocked Adrian's pretenses by
explicitly indicating that her distrust of Adrian's motives
was based on personal experience. The third passage
Meredith omitted reinforced Molly's explicit reference to
previous meetings with Adrian: . . and you're after
the--' Adrian checked the audacious accusation." By ex
cising these passages, Meredith eliminated the comic ex
posure of Adrian's illicit relationship with Molly which
had ridiculed his pretensions to "impeccability."
In the revisions, Meredith also deleted some of the
comic elements in the presentation of Ripton Thompson,
Richard's closest friend. In the original version, Ripton
was a stock figure, the faithful but foolish friend, but
in the final version, Ripton is more individualistic, a
70
three-dimensional figure. The first relevant change was
Meredith's reduction of the initial description of Ripton
that appeared in Chapter IV of the first version to one
paragraph in Chapter I of the revisions. In the 1859 edi
tion, Dr. Clifford advised Sir Austin that Richard's re
bellion on his fourteenth birthday indicated his need for
"companions of his own age" (I, 62):
Sir Austin continued to meditate some days, and
then requested the Wise Youth's advice on a propo
sition conceived by him, to have a boy of Richard's
age to stay with him in the house and be his comrade.
"I think your idea excellent,” said Adrian, giving
him all the credit of it. "And I know the very boy
that will suit. Thompson, your solicitor, has a son.
Poor fellow! only one, I believe, and about a dozen
girls with parchment exteriors and snub noses. The
whole family's a genesis of sheepskin. ..."
Sir Austin determined to try the lad whose sisters
were so innocuous. A message was forwarded to Mr.
Thompson, for the loan of his son for a term; and . .
. his son was, in compliance, joyfully packed down to
Raynham Abbey, big with anticipations of aristocratic
intimacies. In this way Richard was gifted with a
comrade, and Master Ripton Thompson became an inmate
of Raynham.
Master Ripton Thompson was quite a common boy; shy,
and awkward, and prepared to be totally subservient to
the young Prince whose Court he had come to. His hair
and his eyes were of no colour, and everybody said,
there was nothing in him; to which Mrs. Doria excepted
'sound principle.' . . . Sound principle was all Sir
Austin required of him in his probational contact with
the Hope of Raynham. The two boys soon assumed their
relative positions. Richard led, and Ripton followed.
(1859, I, 63-65)
The parallel passage in the revised versions reads:
A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the
only comrade of his age that he ever saw, was Master
Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir Austin's solicitor,
a boy without a character. (1909, p. 10)
71
Meredith deleted Adrian's comic comparison of the Thompson
family to the "genesis of sheepskin," and also eliminated
the farcical description of Ripton as a pseudo-albino, a
boy whose "hair and . . . eyes were of no colour."
Other passages in Chapter V of the original version
further developed the point that Ripton had aristocratic
pretensions. In the pertinent section, Richard insisted
that he and Ripton desert the birthday festivities and get
a gun for "a day's shooting":
It seemed mad and stupid to Ripton's sense of reason,
but he was a bondsman and bound to acquiesce. He
mumbled something about not having a license, and was
putting that in for a plea against the expedition,
till Richard assured him positively that every gen
tleman had a license, and Ripton, who deeply de
lighted in the notion of belonging to that privi
leged class, and walked with tight boots, and under
went daily tortures, to induce the world to accept
him as one, admitted it was the case that every
gentleman had a license, and therefore he must have
one.
[Ripton was also] rather short-sighted and inex
perienced in guns, though it was out of the question
he should admit the fact, every gentleman being famil
iar with guns from his birth. (1859, I, 75, 76, 78,
and 79)
Meredith portrayed Ripton as an incongruous combination:
he was Richard's "bondsman"; yet he "underwent daily tor
tures to induce the world to accept him" as a gentleman.
In 1896, Meredith deleted a comic passage that ap
peared in Chapter V of the original version, Chapter II of
the 1875 revision, in which Ripton worried about Farmer
Blaize's comment that "ye din't much mind what come t' yer
72
nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do" (1875,
I, 22). After Ripton's statement, "I wonder whether my
nose is as bad as he says I Where can I see myself?", the
first two versions of the novel included the following:
"Gracious! what shall I do when we get to Raynham,
if it is? What’ll the ladies think of me? 0 Lord,
Ricky! suppose it turns blue?"
Ripton moved a meditative forefinger down the
bridge of his nose, as this horrible suspicion
clouded him. Farmer Blaize passed from his mind.
The wretched boy called aloud in agony that his
nose was turning blue. "Oh, if I had a bit of raw
meat to lay across it!" he cried. "What a fool I
was to fight!--Won11 I learn boxing!— What shall
I look like?" (1875, I, 25)
Although in Chapter II of the revised versions, Meredith
retained many humorous descriptions of the altercation be
tween Richard and Ripton, and Farmer Blaize*s subsequent
whipping of the two boys, his excision of the above pas
sage eliminated Ripton's comic concern about what "the
ladies" would think of his appearance and, thereby, served
to place more emphasis on Richard’s reactions to the situ
ation.
In 1896 Meredith also drastically reduced a burlesque
scene extending over two chapters in which Ripton drank ex
cessively while celebrating Richard's marriage. As a re
sult, the final versions of the chapters focus on Richard's
actions and emphasize the attitudes of the central charac-
Q
ters. In the chapter, "Celebrates the Breakfast," Mere-
^Chapter XV, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter III, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXX, 1909.
73
dith deleted the following portions of Ripton's boisterous
drunken speeches from the conversation between Ripton and
Richard:
. .1 feel tremendous! I feel, upon my honour,
Ricky, I feel as if nobody coul1 resis1 me!" Ripton
stamped his might on the table. "I shall tell him
the whole affair point-blank. I can tell you that
if it comes to argument ’tween us, I can lay on the
man who'll have the best of it. I shall tell him I
was a witness. And I hope, Sir Austin, in a year's
time you'll have best witness of all, sir!--jolly
'ittle grandson!" Ripton's head went roguishly to
right and left, and he emptied his glass at a
draught.
Richard arrested his resumption of speech, and
he continued slowly to fizz like an ill-corked ef
fervescence. . . .
.... He endeavoured to get a leap beyond the
angels, but, being of tame imagination those common
place hosts had to stand for what he felt. . . .
". . . . Your oldest friend, Ricky!— Eh? A cool
head and a heart in the right place! A man who'd
want to drink better wine than this--he'd bet1 not
drink any 't all. I think I was, hem!--marking
that we know what wine is. Talking of old Blaize,
ain't it odd we should be drinking cleret 'gether,
just married? I mean, when you come to think of it,
Ricky? It strikes me 's odd. But as for your think
ing there'll be much fuss, you know, there you're
wrong. Let's have s'more cleret."
Richard hospitably opened another bottle for him,
and sat knocking his finger-nails on his teeth, im
patient for the bride, while Ripton freely flowed
forth. In spite of the innocuousness of claret, his
words were displaying an oily tendency to run into
one another, and his eyes were growing vivaciously
stupid.
Strikes me, Richard, every fresh bottle's better
than one before. Well, I was saying, you know, I
shall make all right with your father. Oh! he won't
stand out after a little talking. And mind you, Mr.
Ricky, I can talk! I ought to have gone the Bar,
you know. Fancy me in offices! AhaT Why, they
haven't got so many good fellows at the Bar that
they should keep me in off'ces. cleret! cleret I
keep saying:--claret, sir! 'Minds me of Gravelkind.
I'm always making 'stakes of that sort. Best of it
74
is, it never 'fects you. You may drink as much as
ever you like, and it never ’fects you. Gentleman's
wine! When I m in practise, you know, I--I never
drink anything else. I— I never drink anything else!
Though if you ask me point-blank which I p’fer, why,
I’d rather go the Bar. I’m an only son, you know,
and a mother and four sisters, and I must do as I m
tole. Ha! ha! that Letty! whar a face she’ll make
when she hears of it! sil' ’ittie thing!— ha! ha!—
I do think this has been the jollies' day I ever
knew! Behave, sir? She did behave most beautiful!
I hear her voice now— like that glass. Oh! I ain't
going to get married. I can’t see the girl to suit
me. Tell you the truth, girls don't quite take to
me--not in that way, you know. I don t know how to
talk to them unless they begin, and look all right.
It went as smooth, Rickyl--but lor'.' you're such a
chap. You're sure to do it if you say you will. .
Ripton drank Penelope, and afterwards had an idea
that Penelope did not mean Lucy. He tried to tell
Richard that the health proposed was that of his
lovely wife, but Richard had no ear for him, and let
him mumble on. . . . (1875, II, 53-57)
As a result of Meredith's excisions, most of the conversa
tion in the final version of the chapter consists of Rich
ard's thoughtful instructions to Ripton. Because Ripton
does not act so foolishly in the revised passage, Richard
also seems less foolish in trusting him as the emissary to
Raynham Abbey.
In the same chapter, Meredith also deleted a humorous
description of Ripton's drunken attempt to pay due homage
to Lucy:
Ripton's expressive bibulous invitation was: "Aha!
Mrs. Berry!
Penelope bowed and bumped her duty to them all.
Richard and Lucy talked apart. Ripton balanced his
body against the back of his chair. A notion pos
sessed his nodding head that it devolved upon him to
75
make a formal speech, and that now was the time. If
ever the Old Dog was to enunciate in human language
his devoted appreciation of Beauty, the occasion was
present. But how was he to fashion his phrases?
Notwithstanding the state he was in, his sincere
homage caused him to be critical of his capabili
ties: and then his brain whirled: innumerable phan
tom forms of sentences with a promise of glowing
periods, offered their heads to him, and immediate
ly cut themselves off from all consequence, so that
he was afraid to commence. Speaking, moreover, he
found to affect his balance. It became a problem
whether he should talk, or retain his perpendicular.
His latent sense of propriety counselled him not to
risk it, and he stood mute, looking like a mask of
ancient comedy, beneath which general embracing took
place. . . . Ripton's long tight smile elaborated as
the mad idea, engendered by these proceedings, of
claiming certain privileges due to him in his charac
ter of bridesman, flashed across him. Someone no
ticed that the cake had not been cut, and his atten
tion was drawn to the cake, and he fell upon it,
literally, rising sufficiently ashamed not to dare
to look in the fair bride’s face, much more to claim
a privilege. (1875, II, 57-58)
Meredith's elimination of these passages served to focus
the final version of the chapter on the major figures,
Richard and Lucy, and on Mrs. Berry's preparations for the
expected arrival of the unwelcome guest, "The Philoso
pher."
Meredith also deleted most of Ripton1s drunken gib
bering from the conversation between Ripton and Mrs. Berry
in the following chapter, "The Philosopher Arrives in Per-
Q
son, and omitted some passages which had revealed Mrs.
Berry's deviousness in extracting information about the
^Chapter XVI, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter IV, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXI, 1909.
76
bride and groom from Ripton. The passages enclosed in
brackets do not appear in the final version:
["Ha! hah!"] Ripton laughed louder, and caught
his chest on the edge of the table and his nose on
a chicken. "That's goo1!" he said, recovering,
and rocking under Mrs. Berry's eyes. "No frien'
[send to? I like that!"
Mrs. Berry searched him with a glance. Perhaps
the inebriate youth might let her into a few sweet
particulars of this interesting business, denied to
her by the wary bridegroom and his obedient bride,
she thought. She wanted to have the stern father
and cruel uncle described to her; their stature,
complexion, and annual net incomes; also their
places of residence.]
"I did not say, 'no friend,'" she remarked, "I
said, no one: meanin', I know not where for to send
it to."
Ripton's response to this was: ["You cut fair,
Mizz Berry. There won't be much for 'em, I sh . . .
'sure you. Take glass wine. Cleret's my wine,
Sh . . . herry's yours. Why'n't you put Richard's
crez' on that Cake?— Mr. Richards ha! ha!— best fun
the worldI--why'n't you put a Griffin on that cake,
Mizz Berry? Wheatsheaves each si'. Plenty 't
means and plenty te-te-'tis! I'm very fond of her
aldry," he added with a reflective visage, and fell
half asleep upon the attachment.] 10
"His crest?" Mrs. Berry [winningly waked him.]
"Oldest bar'netcy in England!" waved Ripton.
"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
["Oldest bar'netcy 'n England! If 'tisn't my
name's not Rip'm Thomps'— Es . . . quire. Gentleman,
ma'am, though he is arricled the law. Take glass
wine, M . . . Mizz Berry. Cleret's my wine, Sh . .
. herry's yours. This bom my third bod’l. What's
three to a gentleman, though he isn't a bar'net's
son with fifty th— thousand a-year."
"Fifty thousand! My goodness gracious me!"
ejaculated Mrs. Berry in flattering accents.
1 0
■^Meredith rephrased this paragraph in 1896 to read:
'You put a Griffin on that cake. Wheatsheaves each side'
(1909, p. 314).
•^The 1896 version reads: "said sweetly."
"Na a penny less, ma'm! And I'm his oldts
friend. Very near transp . . . orted once, drinking
cleret 'gether. Nev' 'fects youI Do take glass
wine. Hal hall you think he's Richards. [Nor a bir
of it I No bar net Richards's I know. We're 'bliged
be secret. Mizz Berry.” Ripton looked profoundly
secret. Anything if 't's your own dedriment. That'
law, Mizz Berry. And 't's not his own dedriment.
It's his delaight--hal hahI"
Here gravitation gave Ripton a strong pull. He
just saved himself, and went on, with a hideous mim
icry of the God of Secrecy:] "We're oblige' be very
close. And she's the most lovely!--If I hear man
say thing 'gainst her, [I . . . I knock 'm down! I
. . . I . . . I knock 'm down! She is such a pretty
creature!" he sang in falsetto.]
"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said
Mrs. Berry, [who was resolved to stop his claret the
moment she had the secret, and indulged him for that
sole object.
Ripton attempted the God of Secrecy again, but his
lips would not protrude enough, and his eyebrows were
disaffected. He laughed outright. ”Wha' 's it mat
ter now? They're married, sir. Wha' 've you be
'shamed of?--eh? I can talk! Here, I say, Mizz
Berry! come--bumper! La'ies and gen'1'menI I rise
'pose toas' d--hay!"
Filling Mrs. Berry's glass, and his own, to over
flowing, and again splitting the solitary female who
formed his audience into two sexes, Ripton commanded
silence, and pendulously swayed over Mrs. Berry's lap
in total forgetfulness of what he had ventured on his
legs to celebrate. Aware that they did duty for some
purpose, he shut his eyes to meditate, but at this
congenial action densest oblivion enwrapped his sen
ses, and he was in danger of coming into Mrs. Berry's
lap head foremost; a calamity she averted by rising
likewise, and shaking him roughly, which brought him
back to visionary consciousness, when he sank into
his chair, and mildly asked: "Wha'm I 'bout? That
you. Mizz Berry?"
A little asperity was in her voice as she replied.
"You were going to propose a toast. And then, young
man, you'd better lie down a bit, and cool yourself.
Do it sitting," she gesticulated peremptorily, "I'll
open the bottle and fill your glass for you. I de
clare you're drinking it out of tumblers. It's
shocking! You're never going to have another full
tumbler?"
Ripton chivalrously insisted on a bumper. She
78
filled it for him, under mental protest, for con
science pricked her. Ripton drained his bumper in
emphatic silence.
"Young man," said Mrs. Berry severely,] "I wanted
for to drink their right healths by their right
names, and then go about my day's work, and I do
hope you won't keep me."
[As if by miracle,] Ripton stood bold upright at 9
her words. "You do? 1 he said, and filling [another] • L
bumper, he with cheerfully vinous articulation and
glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and
Lucy Feverel, of Raynham AbbeyI and, that mankind
should not require an expeditious example of the way
to accept the inspiring toast, he drained his bumper
at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing-rushlight
of his reason leapt and expired. He [staggered]13
to the sofa, and there stretched. [Ripton was far
from being in practice. ]-*-^
Meredith's compression of the conversation between Ripton
and Mrs. Berry served a dual purpose. First, it reduced
the amount of dialogue. Royal A. Gettmann points out that
as publisher's reader for Chapman and Hall, Meredith
strongly objected to the abuse of dialogue. So
many manuscripts suffered from excessive talk that
it became a sore point with him.-*-^
Secondly, it served to focus the final version of the
chapter on the climactic scene: Mrs. Berry's reaction to
the news of Richard's identity and her subsequent conver
sation with Adrian. This shift in emphasis accords with
•^The 1896 version reads: "a."
•^The 1896 version reads: "tumbled."
141875, II, 60-63; 1909, p. 314.
■^"Meredith as Publisher's Reader," The Journal of
English and Germanic Philology, XLVIII (January 1949), 55.
79
Meredith's stress on the dramatic scene as an essential
part of his narrative technique. As he wrote to G. P.
Baker on July 22, 1887,
My method has been to prepare my readers for a
crucial exhibition of the personae, and then to
give the scene in the fullest of their blood and
brain under stress of a fiery situation.16
Moreover, by compressing RiptonTs conversations with Rich
ard and with Mrs. Berry, Meredith drastically reduced the
extent of Ripton's boisterous exhibitions in the final ver
sions of the two chapters. As a result of these varied
changes, Ripton is less of a foolish figure in the final
version of the novel.
■^George Meredith, Letters of George Meredith, ed.
William M. Meredith, 2nd ed. (London, 1912), II, 398.
80
B. Other Relevant Changes
Allied to the changes in the presentation of Sir Aus
tin, Adrian, and Ripton, Meredith also deleted or rephrased
numerous comic descriptions and conversations of minor
characters: some of the changes modify a caricature; others
merely delete humorous details. Many of the alterations
serve to shift the emphasis of a chapter to more important
characters and events. Meredith also made some stylistic
modifications in capitalization and wording of dialect.
Because of the extensive number of all of these changes,
and because they involve most of the characters in the
novel, there is a marked diminution of satiric elements in
the final version. Moreover, many of the excised passages
concerned Sir Austin and his System; consequently, these
revisions contribute to the decrease of emphasis on the
System and its originator.
One of the most extensive series of changes resulted
in a marked reduction of the satiric portrayals of women.
In the 1875 revision, Meredith eliminated the caricatures
of Sir Austin's "Court of Women" in Chapter I and also re
duced the comic elements in the presentation of Mrs. Doria.
The 1896 revision included similar changes in Mrs. Doria's
portrayal, the excision of the entire chapter which por
trayed Mrs. Grandison as a comic figure, and the reduction
of Letitia T ' . ompson's teasing persecution of Ripton.
Meredith's compression of the twenty-one pages of
Chapter I to approximately one page in 1875 eliminated the
caricatures of the predatory females who formed Sir Aus
tin1 s "Court of Women" at Raynham Abbey. The description
of the women's exodus from,Raynham Abbey, at the end of
the original first chapter, reveals the extent of Mere
dith's satiric thrusts: "Others departed to combat the
GREAT SHADDOCK DOGMA in books, and justify it by their
acts" (1859, I, 21).
Another factor that contributed to the reduction of
the satiric portrayals of women was Meredith's elimination
from Chapters I and IV of the comic metaphoric descrip
tions of the Adamic Fall as the "Apple-Disease” and the
"Great Shaddock Dogma." Sir Austin defined the "Apple-
Disease” as "'Sin [which] is an alien element in our
blood . . . with which Nature has striven since Adam'"
(1859, I, 18). Adrian called Sir Austin's publication,
"The Pilgrim's Scrip," the "Great Shaddock Dogma” because
"of its constant and ungenerous citation of the primal
slip in Paradise ...” (1859, I, 7). In Sir Austin's
, mind, "the Apple-Disease and sin are always associated
with the temptations of sex" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p.
39), and he ranked "Women . ... as creatures still doing
service to the Serpent" (1859, I, 1). Since Sir Austin
considers that man is ’"pretty secure from the Serpent
till Eve sides with him'" (1859, I, 70), the numerous
82
repetitions of the comic metaphor "Apple-Disease" served to
emphasize Sir Austin's view of women as the "source of all
our depravity" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 40). Because
of Sir Austin’s strong anti-feminist beliefs, women's en
thusiastic interest in him made them seem foolish and ri
diculous. Furthermore, the omniscient author indicated
that when Sir Austin discussed his theory of the "Apple-
Disease” with his "Court of Women," the ladies did not "ask
for an explanation. Intuitively they felt hot when it was
mentioned" (1859, I, 20). However, the women were not un
aware of the implications:
. . . the Hon. Mrs. Breakyeline vowed, "She liked a
man to be a man.” She was evidently not the Uncor
rupted Eve, . . . [and] M'Murphy . . . plainly told
Sir Austin, that, now young men had got the taste
for Apples, they would bite at them. (1859, I, 21)
Another passage Meredith deleted, from the chapter en
titled "The System Encounters the Wild Oats P l e a , "17 de
scribed the women's attempts, approximately twelve years
later, to form a "new Court” at Sir Austin's London hotel;
The old feminine enthusiasm for his productions re
vived . He was threatened with the formation of a new
Court at his hotel. Miss Joy Blewins, now an Author
ess of greater celebrity than her sister, and even
more the man than formerly, came to him repentant of
her attacks on his private history (which she called
her exhibition of their common difference of view re
garding Woman, whose champion she was acknowledged to
be), trusting to convert him to support her. The
17Chapter II, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XVIII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XVIII, 1909.
83
swift Camilla, transformed by tricksy Time into the
fat wife of a wheezy Squire, paid him a flying visit
during the wretched two weeks she was annually al
lowed in Town, to call his attention to a tiny para
gon daughter she possessed, with none of its father's
complaints and all her youthful energies. Mrs.
M ’Murphy also, after writing innumerable novels of
which he was the villain and she the heroine, tried
to get admittance to him, but the Baronet shudder-
ingly gave orders to be denied to her, and the rest
of them. As in other interesting cases, no Irish
were tolerated. (1859, II, 14-15)
Since Sir Austin held the same misogynous views, the re
vival of "the old feminine enthusiasm for his productions"
was ludicrous.
Meredith eliminated many satiric details concerning
Mrs. Doria, Sir Austin’s sister. He deleted her initial
description from Chapter IV which followed the statement
that she "invite[d] herself to Raynham, and, with . . .
[her] daughter, she fixed herself,"
. . . to watch the System, and sap it. Not that she
did not love her brother, Austin; she thought him
an incomparable man, and tenderly pitied him: but
that she deemed the System Nonsense: its interdict
against the espousals of cousins, Nonsense: all ex
periments in education, Nonsense. (1859, I, 50-51)
Mrs. Doria deemed her brother's "System Nonsense" because
it prevented the fulfillment of her own scheme, the mar
riage of her daughter to Richard; therefore, she illogi-
cally condemned "all experiments in education" as "Non
sense." The original version of the novel also exposed
Mrs. Doria's hypocrisy:
She had never forgiven Cromwell the execution of the
Martyr Charles; and to extenuate the conduct of the
84
great Roundhead Captain, was to make Mrs. Doria de
spise and detest you, if you did not lie direct in
her line of tactics for the time being: in which in
stance she would sigh, and deplore your mistake, and
draw melting pictures of the sufferings of her Mar
tyr, and ask you whether you had a heart. Adrian
Harley, who sided with the Commonwealth, not from
any sympathy, for he abjured politics, as a Wise
Youth should, but for the pleasure of taking an
adverse view, and to tease her,— him she was, dur
ing the first period of her residence at Raynham,
inclined for that sole reason to hate, till she
perceived his influence with the Baronet, and then
she said, lamenting for him, he had no heart: but
Austin Wentworth, the Colonel's son, a Republican
on principle, as true a Christian and kindly a
spirit as ever walked the earth, who had small in
fluence with the Baronet, she for her sole reason
quite hated, and conscientiously damaged him
wherever she could; not shrinking from frequent
hints and amplifications of an unhappy story of
the poor youth's, in support of the Cause of her
Martyr; and it is certain that Mrs. Doriafs con
stant insinuations made the Baronet look dubiously
on one who was ever his son's best friend. (1859,
I, 51-52)
Here, Meredith revealed that Mrs. Doria was an opportunist:
she despised and attacked those who disagreed with her
views, but if the person had any important influence, she
merely lamented his lack of "heart."
Meredith also eliminated some satiric thrusts at
women's attitudes toward marriage. A passage excised from
Chapter IV described women's attitudes toward Austin Went
worth's marriage to "'his mother's housemaid'":
And women gave the young man a cold shoulder.
Marble-cold they can make that lovely feature of
their persons, when they please; in a way unknown
to men. What right had he, for a whim, for a folly,
to destroy for ever his prospects?--and theirs? It
was true, he was not rich. Still he had an indepen
dence. And he was extremely presentable: fair-haired,
85
with a smile sweet as a woman’s: gentle as a child:
a face set with the seal of a courageous calm: so
pure a face that looking on it you seemed to see
into his soul. You could not misdoubt him. And he
had gone and ruined himself: married that creature.’
The world of women turned from him as from a blighted
rose. (1859, I, 53)
The passage ridiculed women for basing their judgments of
men solely on their eligibility as prospective husbands:
they considered that Austin had ’’ ruined himself” because
he had ’’for ever" destroyed "their . . . prospects."
Therefore, they "turned from him as from a blighted rose."
Another such change involved the conversation between
Mrs. Doria and John Todhunter,!^ in which Mrs. Doria ar
ranged for her admirer's marriage to her daughter, Clare.
The 1875 version read:
For that reason he was dry wood to a soft glance.
He was quickly incandescent. He proposed, at the
close of an hour's conflagration, thus: "Aren't
you ever going to change your state, Helen?"
"Oh no; never, indeed! the fair widow replied.
"Then it's a shame," muttered John, thinking how
many children and cries of "Papa" this woman--to
whom he fancied he had been constant, utterly de
voted— owed him.
Ere he could fall back upon his accustomed resig
nation, Mrs. Doria had assured the man that she knew
of no one who would make so good a husband, no one
she would like so well to have related to her.
"And you ought to be married, John: you know you
ought."
"But if I can't have her?" returned John, staring
stupidly at her enigmatical forefinger.
'Well, well! might you not have something better?"
Mr. Todhunter gallantly denied the possibility of
that.
18Chapter IV, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter VIII, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXV, 1909.
86
"Something younger is something better, John. No.
I'm not young, and I intend to remain what I am. Put
me by. You must marry a young woman, John. You are
well preserved— younger than most of the young men of
our day. You are eminently domestic, a good son, and
will be a good husband and good father. Someone you
must marry.— What do you think of Clare for a wife
for you?"
At first John Todhunter thought it would be very
much like his marrying a baby. However, he listened
to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria. "i'll do
the wooing for you, John," she said.
She did more. She went down to John's mother. .
. . (II, 136-137)
The final version reads:
For that reason he was dry wood to a soft glance.
And now she said: 'It is time you should marry;
and you are the man to be the guide and helper of a
young woman, John. You are well-preserved— younger
than most of the young men of our day. You are em
inently domestic, a good son, and wil^ be a good
husband and good father. Some one you must marry.--
What do you think of Clare for a wife for you?'
At first John Todhunter thought it would be very
much like his marrying a baby. However, he listened
to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria.
She went down to John s mother. . . . (1909,
p. 382)
The omission of the statement that John "proposed, at the
close of an hour's conflagration," suppressed the idea
that Mrs. Doria deliberately aroused his desires. Meredith
also eliminated the references to John's comic self-pity,
"thinking lq.ow many children and cries of 'Papa'" Mrs. Doria
"owed him." And the deletion of Mrs. Doria's statement,
"i'll do the wooing for you, John" makes both of them seem
less foolish— Mrs. Doria is less comically aggressive, and
John is less comically passive.
By excising the entire chapter which had presented
87
Mrs. Grandison as a totally comic figure,Meredith fur
ther reduced the burlesqued portrayals of women and also
eliminated the detailed description of the parent-arranged
betrothal of Carola and Richard. The latter had paralleled
Mrs. Doria*s businesslike arrangements with John and sati
rized scientifically planned marriages.
By deleting approximately two pages from the chapter
entitled ”ln which the Last Act of the Bakewell Comedy Is
Closed in a Letter,”20 which described Letitia Thompson's
teasing persecution of Ripton as he worried about his role
in the rick-buming episode being discovered, Meredith
eliminated the comic descriptions of the adolescent girl's
attitude toward love. In all three versions of the novel,
the Thompson family attributed Ripton's "nervousness and
unwonted propensity to sudden inflammation of the cheeks
. . . to love," and Letitia "tormented him daily" (1909,
p. 83). In the passage Meredith modified, Letitia con
fronted Ripton with a "large and illuminated" capital "A"
and "laughed triumphantly" at his guilty reactions:
"Ah--aI she sang, "you are found out, Mr. Mum.'"
and innocently followed up the attack by asking him
how he would wear his badge, before or behind? which
precipitated Ripton from the room, in sick certainty
19Chapter III, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XIX, Vol. I,
1875.
20Chapter XIV, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter XI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XI, 1909.
88
that he was discovered, and thrilled the motherly
heart of Mamma Thompson with the blissful prospect
of marrying two of her brood to the House of Feverel.
"Why, what does A stand for? SillyI" said Letitia,
after rallying her brother next morning at breakfast.
"For Angel, doesn’t it?"
"Yes: and for America," Ripton answered gloomily.
"Yes, and you know what else!" rejoined his perse
cutor, while another sister, previously instructed,
presumed it might possibly stand for Amor.
"And for Arson, added the deep paternal voice,
unwittingly springing a mine under poor Ripton.
Letty s study of the aspects of love, and of the
way young people should look, and of the things they
should do, under the dominion of the passion, was
not much assisted by its outward development in the
supposed love-stricken youth. "I'm sure," she
thought, "I shall never be like that. He bounds in
his seat. He never looks comfortable. He seems to
hate us all, and does nothing but mumble his food,
and growl, and frown. If that's love, I can't do
it!" she sorrowfully concluded her reflections.
(1875, I, 93-94)
Meredith reduced the parallel passage in the 1896 version
to one sentence: "Amor, the word she had in mind, certainly
has a connection with Arson" (1909, p. 84), thereby elimi
nating Letty's comic interpretation of the effects of love.
In the same chapter, Meredith cut the detailed de
scription of Letitia's ingenious stratagems to get Rich
ard's letter away from her brother. The 1859 and 1875
versions read:
In love, it is said, all stratagems are fair, and many
little ladies transverse the axiom by applying it to
discover the secrets of their friends. Letty ran
sacked the drawers in Ripton's rooms, she dived her
hands into the pockets of his garments lying about,
she turned down the pillow, she spied under the mat
tress of his bed, with an easy conscience; and if
she found nothing, of course, as she was doing a
wrong, she did not despair of gaining her object, and
soon knew that Ripton carried it about in his left
89
jacket-pocket, persecuting Ripton with her caresses
till she felt the tantalizing treasure crack beneath
her fingers. Some sisters would have coaxed him for
a sight of it. Letty was not so foolish: she did
not allude to it, and was still hovering round the
pocket, at a loss to devise any new scheme, when ac
cident bestowed on her what artifice denied. They
were standing on a hill together, and saw some people
of their acquaintance coming up in a pony-chaise.
Letty told Ripton to wave his handkerchief, which he
snatched from the very pocket, and waved vigorously,
and continued waving, heedless that his sister had
on a sudden lost her interest in the pony-chaise.
Indeed she presently commanded him to turn a con
trary way, and was voluble with reasons for getting
home immediately, though they had set out for a long
walk into the country. Once home, Letitia darted
upstairs to be alone with her naughty self. She had
the letter. Ripton had dropped it as he drew forth
his handkerchief. (1875, I, 94-95)
Again, Meredith reduced the parallel passage in the 1896
version to one sentence: "She succeeded, of course, she
being a huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded"
(1909, p. 84). In the compression of this last passage,
Meredith deleted another comic thrust at the effects of
love in which he applied the axiom of love, that "all
stratagems are fair," to the deviousness of "many little
ladies" in discovering "the secrets of their friends."
The compression of the two lengthy passages to two senten
ces in the final version reduced the amount of space de
voted to the Thompson family in this chapter; as a result,
there is more emphasis placed on Richard's letter to Rip
ton. That is, in the first two versions of the chapter,
space was about equally divided between the discussion of
Ripton's persecution by his sister and the details of
90
Richard's letter, but in the final version Richard's letter
is the major focus of the chapter.
Another series of changes Meredith made drastically
reduced Benson's role in the final version of the novel.
Since Benson and Sir Austin were parallel figures in many
respects, it is logical that with the reduction of the
satire against Sir Austin, Meredith also decreased the role
of the companion burlesqued figure. The single use of the
comic metaphor, the "Great Shaddock Dogma," in Chapter IV
occurred in the preliminary description of Benson, excised
in 1875:
Another chief personage of the establishment was
Benson, the butler: Heavy Benson, Adrian called him,
from the mace-like fashion with which he wielded his
respectability, and the fact of a connubial misfor
tune. The latter had recommended him to his patron.
Benson was the GREAT SHADDOCK DOGMA condensed in a
look: potential with silence:— a taciturn hater of
Woman; burly, flabby, and implacable. In him Sir
Austin had his only faithful believer, and Adrian
his solitary rival. When, after THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP
was published, the fair ladies, its admirers, swarmed
down to form a Court at Raynham, they were soon
taught to stand in fear of Heavy Benson, who read
their object, and, if one by chance got closeted
with the Baronet, as they were all seeking to do, a
knock was sure to come, and Heavy Benson obtruded
his glum person into the room on pressing business,
and would not go till he had rescued the prey. As
Dragons of old guarded the dwellings of beautiful
princesses, Heavy Benson stood sentinel over the
Baronet. He held the door to them, as they sever
ally departed, and took their discomfiture to his
own praise. (1859, I, 59-60)
This passage revealed significant parallels between Benson
and Sir Austin: both had had "connubial misfortune[s]"
which resulted in excessively misogynous attitudes. Be-
91
cause of this similarity, the exaggerated description of
Benson as the "Great Shaddock Dogma" personified, "burly,
flabby, and implacable," added comic elements to both of
their characterizations. Furthermore, Benson's watching
to protect Sir Austin from women paralleled Sir Austin's
attempts to protect Richard. The figurative comparison of
Benson with the "Dragons of old” and Sir Austin with the
"beautiful princesses” not only derided Benson's self-
appointed guardianship of the Baronet and the Baronet's re
lationship with his female admirers, but, by implication,
also ridiculed the Baronet's attempts to shield his son
from women.
In 1875 and 1896, Meredith excised some passages from
two later chapters in which Benson assumed a similar over-
protective attitude toward the Baronet's relationship with
Lady Blandish, thus suggesting a link with Sir Austin's
earlier relationship to his "Court of Women." The chapter
entitled "Of the Spring Primrose and the Autumnal”21 de
scribed Lady Blandish's deepening admiration for Sir Aus
tin; "Every day" she found "a hundred fresh reasons for
loving him . . .” (1909, p. 221). In all three versions,
Benson worried about the relationship developing between
Sir Austin and Lady Blandish and believed that "the object
21Chapter IX, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXIV, 1909.
92
of the System was no sooner safe than its great author was
in danger" (1909, p. 218). Meredith deleted the subsequent
passage in 1875:
Benson alone was sincere, and wretched! Consequent
ly he turned prophet. He foretold the Downfall of
the System, and carried it in his face. There was
no escaping from his horrible heaviness. The Bar
onet complained of it. At a time of exuberant self-
congratulation, a dear lady worshiping, a beloved
boy obedient, a System triumphant, and scoffers con
founded, Benson’s dead weight was offensive. (1859,
Passages Meredith excised in 1896 from the preceding chap
t e r ^ gave further details about Benson’s offensive at
tempts to protect the Baronet. In the deleted sections,
Benson interrupted what he thought was a dangerous private
conversation between Sir Austin and Lady Blandish:
"Well, Benson? well?" said the baronet, not under
standing the interruption, and impatient at Benson's
presence.
Benson persisted in the flabby-severe without
speaking, and the appearance of this strange owl pre
siding stupidly over them, was so astonishing as to
keep them all looking at him. They had disconcerted
Benson, who was of slow wit, by being three, instead
of two, and he was troubled what to say for himself.
At last he said the thing he would have said had they
been but two, and one of the two a born Pagan.
"if you please, Sir Austin! it's very late."
Benson regarded the impression he had made. It
was not a very distinct one. Lady Blandish laughed
and said: "I see. Benson wishes to have us up early
in the morning! Hasn’t my maid gone to bed?"
"She has gone, my lady."
"Are you sure?" said Adrian.
22Chapter VIII, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXIV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXIII, 1909.
93
"To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Hadrian, she
has gone to her bed. Benson s tone defied miscon
struction or imputation.
"Then X will follow soon to mine, Benson," said
Lady Blandish.
This should have satisfied Benson, but still he
did not go. (1875, I, 252-253)
Meredith's deletion of all these passages served a dual
purpose. First, it eliminated the comic parallel between
Lady Blandish and Sir Austin's earlier admirers. Sec
ondly, and even more important, it reduced the caricature
of Benson which had contributed to the satire against Sir
Austin.
In 1875 and 1896, Meredith deleted some of the farci
cal descriptions and conversations of Berry, Farmer Blaize,
Hippias, Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Berry, and Tom Bakewell. Since
these are secondary characters, each change, by itself, is
relatively unimportant in terms of the total effect of the
novel. But because of the extensive number of such
changes and because they are closely allied with the re
duction of other comic elements discussed throughout this
study, they contribute to the cumulative effect of both
series of revisions.
One such change occurred in the conversation between
Adrian and Berry^ which had humorously dramatized Berry's
misuse of long words. In the 1875 revision, Meredith
23Chapter VI, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXI, 1909.
94
eliminated the following passage:
"... His idihoshincrazy. I may have my own retro
spections against Mr. Benson; but, hem! as homo,"--
and Berry ventured a familiar smile as he joined
Adrian on classical ground; "as homo, Sir, I am con
cerned."
"But if you discovered that Benson dogged you in
the woods with Betsy Sommersault--eh, Berry? How
then?"
"0 fie, Mr. Adrian! a Spy, Sir?" Berry expanded
his magnificent chest, and stated his opinion that,
"That quite altered the catastrophe."
"Benson wishes it did, no doubt," said Adrian.
"So Mr. Richard refuses to go?"
"Voiciferously, Sir." 3
"What did he say?"
"His accentuation was of the wildest. Sir. Er
ratic."
"Trochaic, you mean, Berry! On the first syl
lable altogether, I suppose? Trochaic running into
the anapaestic," Adrian suggested, drumming the
measure.
That was what Berry meant. On the first syl
lable altogether! Trochaic.
Adrian soon got tired of Berry, who was poor fun
to him, and occupied the rank in his order of house
hold amusement that a pun does to wit. (1859, II,
89-90)
Meredith's excision of this passage suppressed Adrian's
reference to "Betsy Sommersault," a comic allusion to
Berry's affairs with the maids of "the lower household."
Furthermore, Meredith's deletion of the last paragraph
eliminated the explicit statement that Adrian habitually
amused himself at the expense of others.
In the 1896 revision, Meredith omitted the following
sections of the conversation which had appeared in both
the 1859 and 1875 versions:
Adrian tacitly acknowledged the choiceness of the
phraseology, and asked, if he had seen Benson.
"I have enjoyed an interview with Mr. Benson, sir."
95
"I daresay you did enjoy it, Berry!"
Berry protested: "On my honour, sir! From the
plenitude of health and spirits, I regarded Mr. Ben
son with profound— a--profound--" a word fine enough
for his emotion seemed wanting.
"Mr. Richard have shattered his ganglions, sir."
"His what?" Adrian asked.
Berry corrected the casual error: "I should say,
his idioshincrazy, Sir."
"Accentuate the fourth, not the fifth, syllable,
Berry."
"Exactly, sir."
Berry retired, saying to himself, "What I like,
is to confabulate with educated people. You always
learn something new from them." And he drew forth
his pocket-Johnson that he might commit the new
words he had learnt to memory. (1875, I, 210-211)
The conversation in the final version reads:
'You should have come to me first,' said Adrian.
rI should have imagined you were shrewd enough for
that, Berry?'
'Pardon me, Mr. Adrian,' Berry doubled his elbow
to explain. Pardon me, sir. Acting recipient of
special injunctions, I was not a free agent.1
'Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be
a little confusion if he holds back. Perhaps you
had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy. A
slight hint will do. And here— Berry! when you
return to town, you had better not mention anything
— to quote Johnson— of Benson's spiflication.
'Certainly not, sir.' (1909, p. 179)
Thus, Meredith excised all of the portions of the conver
sation which had satirized Berry's misuse of long words.
Meredith made a similar compression of the conversa
tion between Farmer Blaize and Richard in the chapter en
titled "Crisis in the A p p l e - D i s e a s e . " ^ The passages en
closed in brackets do not appear in the final version:
24Chapter VIII, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXIV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXIII, 1909.
96
. .He's al'ays at that ther* Folly now," [the
farmer addressed Richard, as he of the seraph’s
bliss sullenly cast the Fashions among the musk-pots,
and stumped off mumbling unintelligible grumblings.]
"I say there never were a better name for a book than
that ther1 FollyI Talk about attitoods! [Why,
they’re all attitood! they're nothing else." The
farmer laughed broadly. If we went about in that
style I don’t think we sh'd do much work, and get
much t’ eat— in style o’ that ther’ Folly!--ha, hal
’counts for ther’ bein’ se thin, mayhap— ha, ha, ha!
Thin ain’t lissome, though, in style o that ther’
Folly."]
[A blush went over Richard: he was thinking--’Is
this the chair she sat in?'--She seemed to put her
arms about him, and say, ’Suppose I have gone? Shall
I not soon be back to you? Why are you so downcast?'
"I asks ’un," the farmer was unable to quit the
subject his humour had fixed on, "I asks 'un, what
he expects out of a Folly but fools? And take care
he don't get among ’em. 25 Seems Folly's a new name
for them Fashens. So they tells me. Not a bad ’un,
I think!— Hope yer father's well, Mr. Fev'rel? Ah,
if he'd been the man he bid fair to be— though we was
opp'site pol'tics--well! it’s a loss anyhow!— Not
the first time you've bin in this apartment, young
gentleman?"
"No, Mr. Blaize! it is not," Richard now spoke.
"I think I ought to have— you see, that was my book
of Folly, and I shall be glad to think it's closed."
To this proper speech, the farmer replied dryly:
"Wall! so long as that sort of Folly don't grow to be
the Fashen! 'somever that’s over and past— no more
said about 't!"
A rather embarrassing silence ensued, broken by a
movement of legs changing places, like evolutions of
infantry before the dread Artillery opens.] (1859,
II, 136-138)
As a result of Meredith's compression of the above section
of the conversation, the dialogue in the final version of
the chapter focuses on Richard's request to Farmer Blaize
^Meredith deleted the first part of this paragraph
in 1875.
97
to bring Lucy back.
In 1896, Meredith omitted two comic descriptions of
Hippias. The first passage was a description by the omnis
cient author2**;
"Can my uncle," Richard meditates, his eyes on
Hippias's wizened face, "ever have been, as my fa
ther says, happy, and like other men? Was he ever
in love?"
Alas, and alack a day! Yes! Love had once piped
even to Hippias in dewy shade. He was once an ardent
youth, the genius of the family, master of his func
tions. "Which, when one ceases to be," says the Pil
grim's Scrip, one is no longer man:" and appends
that "it is the tendency of very fast people to grow
organically downward." Pity the sorrows of a poor
dyspepsy! Like an Actinia, poor Hippias had grown
to be all stomach— though not so pretty to look at.
(1875, I, 188)
Here, Meredith compared Hippias to a sea anemone and found
him "not so pretty to look at."
In the other passage, Hippias described the effects
of his digestive ailments27;
"Besides," said Hippias, "it's singular, but at
this time of the year, Richard, I always have the
same idea. I can t go out and see a garden without
thinking I ought to be upside down, and have the
bulbous part underneath me, like those--what do you
call those flowers?--yes, like those crocuses. And
you can't imagine how distressing it really is when
you think those things in earnest." (1875, I, 266)
Although Meredith portrayed Hippias as a comic dyspeptic
26Chapter V, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XX, 1909.
27Chapter X, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXVI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXV, 1909.
98
in all three versions of the novel, his deletion of the
above passages reduced the exaggerated descriptions of
Hippias's suffering in the final version.
In 1896 Meredith toned down the comic scene in which
Mr. Thompson acted foolishly after drinking excessively
during his interview with Sir Austin in the chapter en
titled "Good Wine and Good B l o o d .”28 The pertinent passage
in the 1859 and 1875 versions read:
"We require--Ahem! have I taken my second glass?"
Mr. Thompson meditated; conceived that he had, and
again that he had not. The same luxury of indecision
occurred daily, and daily another glass solved the
difficulty.
"Too much is decidedly bad," he continued, looking
firmly convinced. "But just the quantum makes men of
us."
Launched on the theme, he determined to overbear
his client vinously. (1875, I, 162-163)
The parallel passage in the 1896 version reads;
The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine
had renovated, and gratitude to the wine inspired
his tongue. He thought that his respected client,
of the whimsical mind, though undoubtedly correct
moral views, had need of a glass. (1909, p. 147)
Although an earlier passage in this chapter, which appears
in all three versions, states that Mr. Thompson is "allow
anced two glasses” of wine "three hours before dinner" for
a "stomachic" disorder (1909, p. 147), the rephrasing of
the above section suppressed the point that Mr. Thompson
habitually took three glasses instead of the "allowanced
^Chapter I, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XVII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XVII, 1909.
99
two" and, therefore, probably acted in a similar fashion
daily. Another passage later in the novel, which occurs in
all three versions,2^ also discloses that Mr. Thompson's
"third glass of Port . . . always stood for his second"
(1909, p. 244), but Meredith's deletion of the first state
ment of this idea reduced the effect of the second.
Changes made in 1896 eliminated some of Mrs. Berry's
comic dialogue. In the chapter entitled "The Philosopher
on
Arrives in Person" Meredith deleted the following section
of the conversation between Mrs. Berry and Adrian:
"And it's fort'nate I didn't I " she exclaimed,
"for out I should 'a shrieked there and then, never
mind where's the spot, to think I been and married
my own baby unbeknown. Not till this Mr. Thompson
proposed their healths tipsy by their right names,
did I think--FeverelI Raynham Abbey! Oh! then I
had been and married my baby! and so you found me,
Mr. Harley, and I dare say I looked it."
"You looked as if you were suffering from a pre
mature indigestion of bride-cake, ma'am," said Adrian.
(1875, II, 69)
Meredith's excision of this passage and his compression of
the earlier conversation between Mrs. Berry and Ripton
served to focus the final version of the chapter on
Adrian's arrival.
Similarly, two other sections of Mrs. Berry's comic
dialogue excised from later chapters also reduced the
2 ^ C h a p t e r XI, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXVII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXVI, 1909.
30Chapter XVI, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter IV, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXI, 1909.
100
emphasis on Mrs. Berry's reactions to the specific situ
ations, thereby shifting the focus to the attitudes and re
actions of the other characters involved. The first such
change occurred in the chapter entitled "The Little Bird
and the Falcon: A Berry to the Rescue I"31 aiuj minimized the
minor incident of Mrs. Berry's comic mistake in kissing
Lord Mountfalcon whom she erroneously identified as Rich
ard. Meredith deleted Mrs. Berry's effusive apologies to
Lord Mountfalcon:
"'M sure, my lord! 'm'sure, my lord! had I 'a known--
your lordship know I never should 'a presume. Oh,
dear! oh, dear! my lord! it was accidentals,, quite,
my lord! mistakin of your lordship for another. I
never, never kiss a man but my babe and my Berry,
never, no indeed! not bein' the woman to--"
"Pray don't exclude me now," said the affable
nobleman. (1875, II, 228)
In the chapter entitled "Again the Magian Conflict}"32
Meredith excised Mrs. Berry's detailed explication to Lucy
of her attitude toward her own marriage:
She explained herself: "Let me see my Berry with
his toes up, and I'm his tender nurse. It's a nurse-
woman he've found--not a wife. 'Tain't revengin'
him, my darlin'! She never is to a baby— not a woman
isn t--what she grow to a man. I had to see my Berry
again to learn that, it seem. We goes off--somehow--
to a man. Hard on em, it may be. Nat'ral, it is.
The Scriptures tells of concubines. And there was
Abram, we read. But it's all a puzzle, man and
woman, and we perplexes each other on toe the end.
31Chapter VIII, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XII, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXIX, 1909.
32Chapter XII, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XVI, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XLIII, 1909.
101
Nor 'tain't that Berry's alter. That man's much as
he was, in body both and in spirit. It's me am
changed, and Berry discovers it to me I am. It's a
mis'rable truth, it be, my feelin's as a wedded wife
seem gone now I got him. 'Kiss me,' says he. I
gives him my cheek. 'So cold, Bessy Berry,' he says
reproachful. I don’t say nothin', for how d he un
derstand if I tell him I gone back to a spinster?
So it is! and was I to see my Berry kissin' another
woman now, I'd only feel perhaps--just that," Mrs.
Berry simulated a short spasm. "And it makes me
feel different about Eternal Life now," she con
tinued. "it was always a-marriagin' it in before:
--couldn't think of it without partners-all for
sex! But now them words 'No givin' in Marriage'
comes home to me. A man and a woman they does their
work below, and it's ended long afore they lays
their bodies in the grave— leastways the woman. It's
be hoped you won't feel that, my darlin', yet awhile--
you se rosy simmerin' there!
"Be quiet, Mrs. Berry," says Lucy, wishing to be
pens ive.
"Boilin', then. Bless her! she knows she is!"
And Mrs. Berry, in contemplation of the reunion of
the younger couple, went into amorous strophes im
mediately. (1875, II, 286-287)
This change helped to focus the final version of the chap
ter on Richard's reactions to the letter from Bella and his
subsequent challenge of Lord Mountfalcon.
Two deletions Meredith made from Tom Bakewell's dia
logue served to focus the relevant chapters on the atti
tudes and actions of more important characters. For ex
ample, in 1875 Meredith excised most of Tom's conversation
with Austin from the chapter entitled "Juvenile Strata-
■^Chapter IX, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter VI, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter VI, 1909.
102
"Yew've doan me good. Sir," said Tom, "and made me
feel— there! I knows I m a sinner, though yew an't
said ut--that's where't is!— like a man! And a man
I intends to be let coam what coam may! Now, Sir,
Muster Went’orth! you knows what a bad chap I be.
But I an't a blackguard. Now, Sir, ’skews me for
sayin' I moight !a doan your fam’ly a bad turn. But
I an't a-goin' to. Leastways, if I was ever a-minded
to, which I warn't. Leastways, not now, I an’t. . . .
That’ll mak' un easy, or he’ll mayhap be funkin'-
loike. They knows at Beltharpe ut’s all on moy
shoolders. I did ut. Thay’re broad 'nough. Tall’n
that, Sir. Sure-ly they be!" And Tom shook his
much-burdened shoulders with a grin. (1859, I, 136)
Since the one paragraph of Tom's dialogue that Meredith
retained clearly indicates that Tom does not intend to be
tray the two boys, "I an’t the chap to peach. . . . I an't
a blackguard" (1909, p. 44), Meredith's deletion of most of
Tom's dialogue does not suppress Tom's willingness to ac
cept all the blame for the rick-burning episode, but shifts
the emphasis from Tom's reactions to the comic stratagems
devised by Richard and Ripton to free Tom and to the sub
sequent conversation between Austin and Adrian.
Meredith accomplished a similar shift of emphasis in
the chapter entitled "Indicates the Approaches of Fever"34
by his elimination of the passage in which Tom gave Rich
ard a lengthy analysis of the reasons he was unable to
prevent Lucy's leaving:
Tom stepped back to Cassandra's hind-quarters, and
round to her fore-feet, pretending to be spying after
34Chapter VII, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXIII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXII, 1909.
103
furze-thorns. Between anger and alarm at Tom's hesi
tation to answer honestly, a quality that served for
patience restrained his master; but Tom saw that this
trifling would not do, and he got up from the mare's
loins, and said, holding forth both hands open,
"There, sirI I don't mind saying it. I know I ought
for to have powsted a letter, tell'n you all of it as
much as I'd come to hear— but there, Mr. Richard, I
do writ so shocken bad, and that's the truth, I
wasn't the man fo't. Well, sir," Tom warmed to speak
out now he had begun, "I should a' stopped her. I
know that. sir. I know'd how it'd knock you down.
But I ain t a scholar! I ain't what you thinks or
hopes for--bain't a bit of a hero! I never can do
anything 'less it's in company. I can't do't by my
self. I'm no hero. I know very well Lord Nelson d
'a done it," continued Tom, remembering, doubtless,
many a lecture on the darling hero of Britain. "He'd
'a done it. So'd the Duke o Wellington, or any o ' 1 "
them Peninsular War chaps. But I hadn't the spirit
to step in and say— You shan't take her away! I
thought about 't, but there--! couldn't! There's no
more mistakes between us now, Mr. Richard. You see,
I ain't a bit better than any other chap." (1875,
I, 235)
As a result of this deletion, there is greater emphasis in
the final version of the chapter on the role played by Sir
Austin and on Richard's reactions to the news that Lucy
was gone.
A passage Meredith deleted in 1896 from the chapter
entitled "Procession of the Cake"33 illustrates his elimi
nation of peripheral farcical details that detracted from
the central comic situation when Adrian distributed por
tions of the wedding-cake to Richard's relatives. Meredith
deleted the following passage which was irrelevant to the
35Chapter I, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter V, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXII, 1909.
104
major focus of the chapter:
,rSing this, dear," said Angelica. ’’ This is pretty:
'I know I have not loved in vain!1 Eh? don’t you like
that? or this: 'He knew not that I watched his ways.'
What's this correction in the lines. ! T? *1 thougEvt
he knew not I wore--’ 'it's that Clarence! Really
it1s a shame how he treats our books. And here again:
’ When I heard he was married.1 Spliced! he has written
in’ ! One of his dreadful slang words i i'll serve him
out, though. Oh! he is too absurd. Look: *1 dare not
breathe his name.' He has written: 'For it is not
pretty--TomkinsT' Clarence has no idea of sentiment."
But Clarence candidly revealed the estimation in
which the British balladmonger is held by the ap
plausive sons of Britain (not enamoured of the fair
cantatrice), who murmur ’’ Beautiful!” "Charming song!"
and nightly receive drawing-room lessons of disgust
at hearts, and bosoms, and bowers, that may partly
account for their reticence and gaucherie when hearts,
and bosoms, and bowers, are things of earnest with
them. (1875, II, 89)
Meredith also eliminated some of the comic parallels
between Mrs. Doria's businesslike arrangements for the mar
riage of Clare and John and Sir Austin's businesslike ar
rangements with Mrs. Grandison for the marriage of Carola
and Richard; both of these provided, in some respects, a
satiric contrast with the natural love of Richard and Lucy.
The first two versions revealed more fully that the parent-
controlled betrothals were outgrowths of the parent's Sys
tem for the child: Sir Austin contracted Richard's be
trothal to protect him from temptation; Mrs. Doria con
trived Clare's betrothal because she had been foiled in the
objective of her System, the marriage of Clare to Richard.
Neither parent considered the wishes of the child; each
apparently viewed marriage as nothing more than a con
105
tractual agreement, subject to his strict control. Sir
Austin seemingly regarded marriage as roughly equivalent to
an annual physical; in the same way that he ordered yearly
examinations for his son, he also issued decrees about
Richard's marriage. "Mrs. Doria, while mocking Sir Aus
tin's elaborate plans, . . . [also] trie[d] to reduce her
child to an obedient p u p p e t ."^6 She prescribed marriage
for Clare in the same way that she had prescribed three
daily glasses of mineral water:
Now that she saw Clare wanted other than iron, it
struck her she must have a husband, and be made se
cure as a woman and a wife. This seemed the thing
to do: and, as she had forced the iron down Clare s
throat, so she forced the husband, and Clare gulped
at the latter as she had at the former. (1909,
p. 381)
Probably the most striking point of similarity was
the incongruity of the matches; in both cases the pro
spective mates were, or seemed to be, a generation apart.
Clare was to marry a former admirer of her mother's, a man
old enough to be her father; Richard considered Carola "a
little girl":
"My father has some sort of System with me, it appears,
and when I came to town the time before, he took me to
some people--the Grandisons--and what do you think?
one of the daughters is a little girl--a nice little
thing enough--very funny--and he wants me to wait for
her! He hasn't said so, but I know it. I know what
he means. . . . I know he loves me, and is one of the
^Frederick R. Karl, A Reader's Guide to the Nine
teenth Century British Novel (New York, 1965), p. 217.
best of men--but just consider!--a little girl who
just comes up to my elbow. Isn't it ridiculous?"
(1909, p. 259)
Of course, there were also important differences between
the two parental marriage schemes. Meredith presented the
Carola-Richard relationship in comic terms throughout
whereas Clare's marriage to John resulted in Clare's sui
cide.
Although the final version of the novel includes some
development of the points discussed above, Meredith deleted
many of the details that had emphasized the contrast be
tween the two parent-arranged matches and the spontaneous
love of Richard and Lucy. For example, by excising Chap
ter III, Volume II, of the 1859 version, Chapter XIX, Vol
ume I, of the 1875 version, Meredith eliminated Sir Aus
tin's interview with Mrs. Grandison which culminated in the
betrothal of Carola and Richard. This interview had paral
leled Mrs. Doria's conversation-with John.37 Even more
important, the entire chapter provided a burlesque counter
pointing of the following one, "A Diversion Played on a
Penny-Whistle," which contained a lyrical love scene be
tween Richard and Lucy. By juxtaposing the two chapters,
Meredith showed the striking antithesis between Sir Aus
tin's pseudo-scientific marriage arrangements and the
37Chapter IV, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter VIII, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXV, 1909.
107
earthy, passionate pledging of the two lovers. Meredith
heightened the contrast by shifting from literal, factual
prose to highly figurative, emotive language. The end of
Chapter XIX and the beginning of Chapter XX illustrate the
stylistic variations. Chapter XIX concludes:
"Happy you that have a sonI" exclaimed Mrs.
Caroline, and, returning to the drawing-room, they
exchanged Systems anew, as a preparatory betrothal
of the objects of the Systems. (1875, I, 180)
Chapter XX begins:
Away with Systems.1 Away with a corrupt World I
Let us breathe the air of the Enchanted Island.
Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams;
red gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming
down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters.
The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields
and the waters shout to him golden shouts. (1875,
I, 180)
As Ernest A. Baker points out, Chapter XX
is a piece of lyrical prose contrasting the heaven
of nature and innocence where the two lovers sit
oblivious of harsh actualities, with the realism
and the dehumanized logic of the father's System
which is fated to blast them. Hence the high pitch
of the induction. . . .3°
In addition to the other variations discussed, there
are also appreciable differences among the three ver
sions in capitalization and some minor differences in the
wording of dialect. But because I have been unable to lo
cate Meredith's holograph copies of the three "first edi-
GO
The History of the English Novel: From the Brontes
to Meredith: Romanticism in the English Novel, VIII (New
York, 1957), 311.
108
tions,"39 it is difficult to distinguish accurately between
authorial variants and non-authorial variants in these ac
cidentals of the text. Fredson Bowers indicates that the
problem is even more complex
if a revised edition is even partially a reprint of
another, some of its variants will be authoritative
and others unauthoritative, the results of the cor
ruption consequent upon any textual transmission.
("Textual Criticism, p. 30)
Because both of Meredith's revisions generally involved ex
tensive excisions rather than rephrasings, it is reasonable
to assume that he used an 1859 text as the basis for the
1875 revision, and a reprint of the 1875 text as the basis
for the 1896 revision. Therefore, the accidentals of the
revised texts may include "unauthoritative compositorial
changes" (Bowers, "Textual Criticism," p. 39); this is also
true, of course, of the 1859 edition. However, the changes
reflected in the accidentals of capitalization follow the
trend of the changes in the substantives that X have dis
cussed in this study; in‘both cases, the alterations result
in a reduction of burlesque elements in the revised ver
sions. Because the changes are complementary, it seems
39
The following works include interesting accounts of
Meredith's unorthodox disposition of some of his manu
scripts: S. M. Ellis, George Meredith; His Life and Friends
in Relation to His Work, 2nd ed. (London, 1920), footnote
on p.* 299; Walter T. Spencer, "Meredith at my Shop. How a
Bonfire was made of his Manuscripts. The Masterworks under
the Gardener's Bed," Forty Years in My Bookshop, ed. Thomas
Moult (Boston, 1923), pp. 234-238.
109
reasonable to assume that these accidentals generally re-
fleet authorial variants.
Joseph Warren Beach discusses Meredith's "interesting
. . . use of capital letters" and points out that
Everything related to the System, everything related
to Sir Austin's philosophy of life, is accorded this
burlesque dignity. To this System, persons are not
persons but types, abstractions proper for the use
of the Aphorist. Sir Austin is a Theorist with a
large T. (The Comic Spirit, p. 52).
Onthe whole, the use of capitals for "everything related to
the System" occurs in all three versions of the novel, but
in the original version, Meredith also capitalized many
nouns and adjectives not relevant to the System. The
liberal use of capitalization in the original version pro
duced a burlesque effect because many of the words received
an undue emphasis. In 1875 Meredith somewhat limited this
practice, and in 1896 he further reduced the stylistic de
vice. The following brief excerpts from Adrian's conversa
tion in the chapter entitled "Juvenile Stratagems"4^ illus
trate the trend toward less idiosyncratic capitalization.
The 1859 version reads:
"This will be his first nibble at Experience, old
Time's fruit. . . . Mournful you call it? Well!
all Wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that
the Wise do love the Comic Muse. . . . The Stage is
the pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that
the Stage is now down. An Age of rampant little minds
. . . how I hate that cant of yours about an Age of
40Chapter IX, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter VI, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter VI, 1909.
110
Work . . . rank Radicals all of you, base Material
ists!" (I, 142-143)
The 1875 version reads:
"This will be his first nibble at experience, old
Time's fruit. . . . Mournful you call it? Well, all
wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the
wise do love the Comic Muse. . . . The Stage is the
pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that
the Stage is now down. An Age of rampant little
minds. . . . How I hate that cant of yours about an
Age of Work . . . rank radicals all of you, base
materialists!" (I, 56)
The final version reads:
'This will be his first nibble at experience, old
Time's fruit. . . . Mournful you call it? Well I all
wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the
wise do love the Comic Muse. . . . The stage is the
pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that
the stage is now down. An age of rampant little
minds. . . . How I hate that cant of yours about an
Age of Work . . . rank radicals all of you, base
materialists!' (1909, p. 48)
In these passages, there is a fifty per cent decrease in
the use of capitals in each revision. However, Meredith
was not consistent. For example, the end of the chapter
entitled "The Magian Conflict"4^ reads as follows in the
1859 version: "... the Autumn land from the western edge
of the rain-cloud" (I, 103). The 1875 version reads the
same, but the final version reads: "... the autumn land
from the Western edge of the rain-cloud" (1909, p. 25).
In this last example, the incidence of capitalization is
the same in all three versions, but the choice of words
41Chapter VI, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter III, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter III, 1909.
Ill
appears to be arbitrary. That alterations in capitaliza
tion are not consistent in the different versions is well
illustrated by the occurrences of the key word "Ordeal":
in five passages common to all three versions, the word is
capitalized in each edition42; in another passage, the word
is not capitalized in the final revision43; in two other
passages, the word is not capitalized in either revision44;
finally, in one case, the word reads "ordeal" in all three
versions.43 Yet, there are no apparent reasons for these
differences because the contexts suggest no logical ex
planation for the variations.
In view of the importance of the word "Ordeal," this
inconsistency in capitalization is difficult to understand;
however, capitalization of other nouns is also inconsistent
among the versions and even within each version. Without
manuscript proof that each specific change is an authorial
variant, it would be fallacious to read too much into
each inconsistency in capitalization since it may be due
to non-authorial variants. Nevertheless, the general
trend can be assessed, and, on this basis, the appreciable
421859: I, 53 and 232; II, 191 and 284; III, 377.
1875: I, 14, 111, and 274; II, 30 and 309.
1909: pp. 8, 100, 231, 287, and 547.
431859, III, 387; 1875, II, 315; 1909, p. 553.
441859, II, 97 and 277; 1875, I, 215 and II, 26;
1909, pp. 183 and 283.
451859, III, 45; 1875, II, 99; 1909, p. 347.
112
reduction in the use of capitals in the 1875 revision and
the further reduction in the 1896 revision result in the
curtailing of a burlesque device.
There are also some alterations in the wording of dia
lect. In the original version Meredith attempted a pho
netic reproduction of the dialectal pronunciation of the
lower-class, represented by Farmer Blaize, Mrs. Berry, Tom
Bakewell, the Tinker, and the Bantam, and the pretentious
pronunciation of the pseudo-upper-class, represented by
the Honorable Peter Brayder and Mrs. Mount in her masquer
ade as a cavalier. A letter Meredith wrote to Edward
Chapman of the publishing firm of Chapman and Hall, on
December 15, 1856, reveals his interest in provincial dia
lect :
Have you, or do any of your people know of, a
book of Hampshire Dialect? I have a Sussex. Bal
lads, or Songs, with the provincialisms will serve.
Perhaps Mr. Frederick Chapman may know of such a
thing? Also a slang Dictionary, or book of the
same with Gloss. And if you have, or can get these,
will you forward them by post? (Meredith, Letters,
I, 10)
According to S. M. Ellis, Meredith probably used the dia
lect books for the "evolving of Farmer Blaize, Tom Bake
well, and the Bantam" (George Meredith, pp. 88-89) in the
first edition of The Ordeal. Perhaps at that time Mere
dith felt that the highly idiosyncratic spelling effected
a realistic reproduction of the speech. At least one
critic considers that the "dialogue, especially from
113
Blaize and Mrs. Berry, is flavorfully realistic."^ But
according to Edward Clodd, Meredith later developed an an
tipathy toward the reproduction of dialect. He told Clodd:
’"I cannot stomach the . . . novels which are three-fourths
dialect. M,47 Meredith may have considered that the use of
dialect was not appropriate for the more serious focus of
the revised Ordeal, and in 1875 he moved toward more con
ventional spelling; in 1896 he continued the same trend.
The comparative spelling of the following words from Mrs.
Berry's conversation with Richard in the chapter entitled
"Mrs. Berry on M a t r i m o n y " ^ reflects this shift:
1859 1875 1909
yerself yourself yourself
becomin1 becoming becoming
a inn'cent a innocent an innocent
circylation circulation circulation
of yer blood of your blood of your blood
widerhood widowhood widowhood
men's 'arts men's 'arts men's hearts
Although Meredith was not entirely consistent in his shift
toward standard spelling, the changes he did make result
in a decrease of emphasis on individual peculiarities of
pronunciation.
46
Martin S. Day, History of English Literature: 1837
to the Present (Garden City, New York, 1964), p. 212.
^Memories, 3rd ed. (London, 1916), p. 156.
48Chapter VI, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter X, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXVII, 1909.
Chapter IV
The Change in Meaning of the Term "Ordeal”
Meredith's revisions of The Ordeal effected a gradual
shift in the meaning of the key term "Ordeal"; it does not
have as wide a range of meaning in the revised versions as
it did in the 1859 version. In the original edition, the
first few chapters revealed that Sir Austin believed that
a "special Ordeal" was "incontrovertibly decreed" for the
Feverels (1859, I, 28-29). As Joseph Warren Beach points
out,
the ravages of nature, commonly attributed to ill-
luck, are attributed in this distinguished family to
a special malice of the ruling powers. (The Comic
Spirit, p. 45)
In the 1859 version, Richard's "Ordeal" was "not so much a
trial of character as a menace of fate, . . . a foredecreed
trial" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 46). Because of this,
Sir Austin's System of Education for his son was paradoxi
cal: it was.supposedly based on scientific principles, yet
its objective was to circumvent destiny. Meredith elimi
nated this comic paradox in his compression of the first
four chapters into one by deleting the concept of an in
herited "Ordeal" and also omitting the preliminary explica
tion of Sir Austin's System. As a result, in the revi
sions, there is more emphasis on the "Ordeal" as a trial of
character for Richard, a trial that represents his initia
tion into adulthood. Therefore, the meaning of the term
1X5
"Ordeal” is both more limited with respect to Richard, yet
more generalized in its universal application.
’ But The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is also the "Ordeal”
:of his father; Meredith gives a preliminary indication of
this in the subtitle of the novel, A History of a Father
and Son. And just as Richard's "Ordeal" acquires a more
universal significance in the revised versions, so also do
the "linked ordeals of father and son."-*- Partially this
broader application results from Meredith's elimination of
imany of the details about Sir Austin's System of Education
which had emphasized the idiosyncrasies of the System and
its originator, and the complementary changes in the char
acterization of Sir Austin which resulted in his being less
of a "ludicrous monomaniac and more of a misguided human
figure” (Hergenhan, "Meredith's Use of Revision," p. 541)
in the final version of the novel. In addition to these
important modifications, Meredith made other changes which
more clearly reveal that the human weaknesses of the two
main characters generate the final tragic outcome. As a
result, in the final version, the "linked ordeals" are
trials of character for both Richard and Sir Austin. And
because Meredith stresses their human weaknesses, they are
L. T. Hergenhan, "The Reception of George Meredith's
Early Novels," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, XIX (December
1964), 221.
116
both more representative figures, and, as such, their
linked testing acquires more general significance.
Three passages in Chapter II of the original version
indicated the connection between a "peculiar malady" of the
Feverels and the meaning of Richard's "Ordeal"; Meredith's
excision of three-fourths of this chapter in 1875 elimi
nated all of the pertinent references. The first relevant
passage read as follows:
There was a Mrs. Malediction in the House (bequeathed
by the great Sir Pylcher). Often had she all but cut
them off from their old friend, Time, and they re
vived again. Whether it was the Apple-Disease, or
any other, strong constitutions seemed struggling in
them with some peculiar malady. (1859, I, 23-24)
The second section, which described the effect on Sir Aus
tin of Lady Feverel's desertion, indicated the explicit
correlation between the "peculiar malady" of the Feverels
and a "special Ordeal for their race":
People were astonished at the utter change wrought
in so apparently proud and self-reliant a man: but
old folks, that knew the family, said, they expected
it some day or other. It was in the blood, they said:
Sir Caradoc, his father, was a strange hand, and so
was his father, Sir Algernon, before him: they were
all sure to turn out a little wrong some day or other.
And the old folks tapped their foreheads meaningly.
Sir Austin also came to their conclusion, that it
was in his blood; a superstition he had aforetime
smiled at. He had regarded his father, Sir Caradoc,
as scarce better than a madman when he spoke of a
special Ordeal for their race; and when, in his last
hour . . . the old Baronet caught his elder son's
hand, and desired him to be forewarned, Austin had,
while bowing respectfully, wondered that Reason was
not vouchsafed to his parent at that supreme instant.
From the morning hills of existence he beheld a clear
horizon. He was no sooner struck hard than Sir
Caradoc's words smote him like a revelation. He
117
believed that a curse was in his blood; a poison of
Retribution, which no life of purity could expel;
and grew, perhaps, more morbidly credulous on the
point than his predecessor: speaking of the Ordeal
of the Feverels, with sonorous solemnity, as a thing
incontrovertibly foredecreed to them. (1859, I,
28-29)
The third passage concerned Sir Austin's reactions when
Richard's nursemaid expressed her sympathy for him when she
saw him "sobbing" over his sleeping son:
To express sympathy for a Feverel during his Ordeal,
was a grave misdemeanour: to surprise the Head of the
family unmanned was a mortal offence. Dian was not
more chastely jealous of her bath, than Sir Austin of
the moment when his knightly chainmail was removed,
and his heart stood bare. (1859, I, 36)
Phyllis Bartlett points out that these three excised pas
sages established the "Ordeal"
as a knightly and hereditary one; the word is capi
talized and is not used simply for the suffering
that any mortal may expect to e n d u r e .^
Ghapter III of the 1859 version developed more spe
cifically the somewhat obscure reference in Chapter II to
Mrs. Malediction as an ancestral ghost. In the chapter,
Sir Austin interpreted Richard's imaginative embellishment
of a visit his mother made one night as follows:
"What he has seen, has been seen in this house be
fore, and is not a good omen. I do not perhaps al
together believe in supernatural visitations. Call
it an optical delusion. It is in the habit of coming
to us when something is about to happen." (1859,
I, 42)
^"Richard Feverel, Knight-Errant," Bulletin of the
New York Public Library, LXIII (July 1959), 330.
118
Because of the '’ visitation," Sir Austin carefully super
vised his son's activities that day. The following conver
sation occurred later in the day when Algernon Wentworth,
;the Baronet's brother, had a leg amputated because of—a-
serious injury during a cricket match:
"Said I not, Something would happen?” remarked
Sir Austin, not altogether dissatisfied.
"Oh, confound Mrs. Malediction.'” Algernon groaned
to Colonel Wentworth. (1859, I, 46)
Meredith's compression of Chapter III in the 1875 revision
to one paragraph of summary and one additional sentence
eliminated these passages. The following is the only
reference to an ancestral ghost in the revised first chap
ter:
Once, when he was seven years old, the little fel
low woke up at night to see a lady bending over him.
He talked of this the next day, but it was treated
as a dream; until in the course of the day his uncle
Algernon was driven home from Lobourne cricket-ground
with a broken leg. Then it was recollected that
there was a family ghost; and, though no member of
the family believed in the ghost, none would have
given up a circumstance that testified to its exis
tence; for to possess a ghost is a distinction above
titles. (1909, p. 5)
Although some later passages common to all three ver
sions mention a ghost that supposedly inhabits the left
wing of Raynham Abbey, none of them include the signifi
cant details given in the excised passages of Chapters II
and III. There is no correlation drawn between an inher
ited "Ordeal” of the Feverels and visitations by their an
cestral ghost. Furthermore, the idea is no longer opera
119
tive that such visitations indicate that "something is
about to happen" to one of the Feverels.
In 1875, Meredith also deleted the first reference to
a symbolic cypress tree about which "there was a legend
that if any Feverel should find the shadow of the cypress
pointing at him there would be trouble" (Hill, Introduction
to Rinehart edition, p. xxii). The passage occurred in
Chapter V, describing Richard's and Ripton's escapade on
Richard's fourteenth birthday;
Rearward of the Abbey lay a lake that took the
morning sun, and the shadow of a solitary cypress,
planted by some sad-minded Ancestress. The boys
had to round the lake before they could plunge into
perfect concealment, and as they did so, Richard
cried out, "Look! do you see how that shadow follows
me?--just look."
Ripton cast a dissatisfied eye on the phenomenon,
not a whit inclined to express any wonder, if he felt
it.
"Do you see it, Rip?" Richard moved forward and
back on the brink of the lake, pretending that the
reflection of the cypress pointed after him.
"What do you think!" he continued. "They say in
our family that when any of us come across it in this
way--like this, look!--there's going to be mischief.
My father doesn't believe in that kind of thing; nor
more do I. But it's strange isn't it? Look!" The
boy held to the spot like one fascinated. "It's true
my great-grandfather, Sir Algernon Feverel, noticed
it pointing at him as he passed the morning he fought
the duel, and was killed. And he went half round the
lake. Of course I don't believe there's anything in
it. Do you?"
Ripton said, he did not, because all shadows seemed
to do the same, in a modified way; but there, Richard
assured him, he was wrong, as this cypress was the
only tree ever known to do it.
'Though I don't believe it means anything," he
added. (1859, I, 76-77)
This discussion about the legend and Richard's great-grand-
120
father, Sir Algernon Feverel, echoed an earlier passage in
Chapter II, also excised in 1875, in which Sir Algernon's
experiences were explicitly correlated with the "peculiar
malady" of the Feverels, the "special Ordeal for their
race." Thus, in the original version, the first reference
to the cypress tree reinforced the idea of a "special
Ordeal" for the Feverels.
Meredith retained two later references to the shadow
of the cypress in the revised versions, but, as Lionel
Stevenson comments, the deletion of the first one made the
others "far more cryptic than they had originally been"
(Introduction to Modern Library edition, p. xxv). The
first citation that is common to all three versions occurs
in the chapter entitled "Celebrates the Time-Honoured
Treatment of a Dragon by the Hero."^ This chapter focuses
on Richard and Lucy, and the allusion to the shadow of the
cypress occurs during their conversation:
'LucyI come with me to-night, and look at the
place where you are some day to live. Come, and I
will row you on the lake. You remember what you said
in your letter that you dreamt?--that we were float
ing over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work
by torchlight felling the cypress, and they handed
us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best omen
in the world, their felling the old trees.' . . .
The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the
lake. The moon was climbing high. As Richard rowed
3Chapter V, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXI, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter XX, 1909.
121
the boat, Lucy sang to him softly. She sang first a
fresh little French song, reminding him of a day
when she had been asked to sing to him before, and
he did not care to hear. 'Did I live?’ he thinks.
Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic
old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear
them, seem to build up cathedral walls about you.
The young man dropped the sculls. The strange sol
emn notes gave a religious tone to his love, and
wafted him into the knightly ages and the reveren
tial heart of chivalry.
They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow
of the boat against the shingle. He jumps out, and
lifts her ashore.
'SeeI' she says, as the blush of his embrace sub
sides— 'See!’ and prettily she mimics awe and feels
it a little, 'the cypress does point toward us. 0
Richard! it does!'
And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress,
delighting in her arch grave ways—
'Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy.
She mustn't dream, my darling! or dream only of me.'
'Dearest! but I do.' (1909, pp. 168, 171, and
172)
Because Meredith deleted the first passage concerning the
cypress tree, it is not clear in the revised versions why
the nuns "felling the old trees" is "the best omen in the
world." However, the context of the entire quotation ef
fects a change in the meaning of the shadow of the cypress.
As will be noted, the conversation occurs during an idyllic
love scene. And, although there is the ambiguous reference
to an "omen," the next explicit reference states that "the
shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake," implying
that the mysterious danger that was presaged by the cypress
no longer applies. The rest of the passage supports this
more favorable implication by adding religious and chival-
ric overtones to the love between Richard and Lucy. In
122
addition, Lucy's comment that "the cypress does point
toward us" is said "prettily [as] she mimics awe and feels
lit a little." Finally, Richard points out that "there's
hardly any shadow at all."
The second reference to the shadow of the cypress oc
curs in the chapter entitled "The Last Scene.In this
chapter, Lucy and Richard are momentarily reunited after
a separation of approximately a year, but the scene ends
disastrously with Richard running off to a duel with Lord
Mountfalcon. However, Richard's brief allusion to the
cypress tree reflects his yearning recollection of the
earlier idyllic love scene:
'LookI . . . do you remember our rowing there one
night, and we saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish
I could have come early to-night that we might have
had another row, and I have heard you sing there!'
(1909, p. 551)
Thus, the two references to the shadow of the cypress in
the revised versions lack the ominous implications that
linked the repeated symbol to a "special Ordeal" of the
Feverels in the original version.
Because Meredith eliminated "the original concept of
an inherited Ordeal” (Bartlett, "Richard Feverel," p. 329)
and the complementary descriptions of the ancestral ghost
and the symbolic cypress tree as portents of trouble for
^Chapter XIII, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XVII, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XLIV, 1909.
123
the Feverel family, Richard's "Ordeal" is no longer re
lated to a peculiar destiny of the Feverels which had
served to limit the relevance of the experience by defining
it as "peculiar to a fated few" (Wright, Art and Substance,
p. 151). As a result, the experiences which constitute
Richard's "Ordeal" in the revised versions of the novel
have a broader application as indicated in a passage in
which the omniscient author discusses the implications of
Richard's forthcoming marriage to Lucy, at the beginning
of the chapter entitled "In which the Last Act of a Comedy
Takes the Place of the First"^:
Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Ru
bicon, the passage of that river is commonly calm;
calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his fare, the
ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries:
he pulls with a will, and heroes may be over in half
an hour. Only when they stand on the opposite bank,
do they see what a leap they have taken. The shores
they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remote
ness. There they have dreamed: here they must act.
There lie youth and irresolution: here manhood and
purpose. They are veritably in another land: a
moral Acheron divides their life. Their memories
scarce seem their own! The PHILOSOPHICAL GEOGRAPHY
(about to be published) observed that each man has,
one time or other, a little Rubicon— a clear or a
foul water to cross. It is asked him: 'Wilt thou
wed this Fate, and give up all behind thee?' And
'I will,' firmly pronounced, speeds him over. The
above-named manuscript authority informs us, that
by far the greater number of carcases rolled by this
heroic flood to its sister stream below, are those
of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have
tried to swim back to the bank they have blotted out.
5Chapter XIV, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter II, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXIX, 1909.
124
For though every man of us may be a hero for one
fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march
even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant,
and wears the features of the terrible Universal Fate
to him? Fail before her, either in heart or in act,
and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither
and sicken to what it is modelled onI Be your Ru
bicon big or small, clear or foul, it is the same:
you shall not return. On— or to Acheron!--I sub
scribe to that saying of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP:
'The danger of a little knowledge of things is
disputable: but beware the little knowledge of one's
self!1
Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his
Ordeal. Already the mists were stealing over the
land he had left: his life was cut in two, and he
breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His
father, his father's love, his boyhood and ambition,
were shadowy. His poetic dreams had taken a living
attainable shape. (1909, pp. 286-287)
In the passage, Meredith draws a figurative comparison be
tween Richard's "crossing the River of his Ordeal" and an
irreversible step that each man must take "one time or oth
er," which involves relinquishing the shores where "they
have dreamed." Furthermore, after they have made the
crossing, "they must act": they have left behind "youth
and irresolution" and now face "manhood and purpose." The
crossing is irreversible: "Be your Rubicon big or small,
clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return."
Meredith emphasizes that the process cannot be reversed
by citing a fictional publication as a vehicle for his
ideas. He states that the "manuscript authority" of
"Philosophical Geography"
informs us, that by far the greater number of car
cases rolled by this heroic flood to its sister
stream below, are those of fellows who have re
125
pented their pledge, and have tried to swim back to
the bank they have blotted out.
Since Acheron is the river the dead have to cross, it is
obvious that the only event that can interrupt the process
each man must undergo is death itself: time cannot be re
versed; ’’ youth and irresolution” are left behind, "manhood
and purpose" lie ahead. Thus, Richard's "Ordeal" is fig
uratively described as his passage from boyhood to manhood,
his initiation into adulthood. And, in this respect, as
Walter F. Wright points out, Richard's "Ordeal" symbolizes
a universal experience, "the eternally repeated process of
man's coming spiritually of age" (Art and Substance, p.
151) .
Moreover, the context of the passage reveals that
Richard's marriage constitutes the initiation rites: his
marriage is his Rubicon. Meredith reinforces this idea by
the use of words from the marriage ceremony in the quota
tion from the "Philosophical Geography":
It is asked him: 'Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give
up all behind thee?' And 'I will,’ firmly pronounced,
speeds him over.
The close relationship between Richard's marriage and his
"Ordeal" indicates that "the actual Ordeal of Richard
comes after his marriage" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 50).
However, it is not the marriage itself but rather Sir Aus
tin's reaction to it that initiates Richard's "Ordeal."
Norman Kelvin states that
126
The cause of the tragedy is . . . Sir Austin's
character. . . . This becomes clear when we realize
that the real trouble does not begin until after the
System has done its work and ought to be dropped.
Sir Austin's tragic fault is his inability to see
that after Richard marries Lucy--albeit without his,
Sir Austin's, permission--the System is no longer
applicable.6
Kelvin's interpretation accords with Meredith's letter to
Samuel Lucas written July 7-14, 1859^:
The fact is, that the 'System' does succeed through
the young fellow's luck in finding so charming a
girl. The strength of his pure love for a woman is
a success— till the father strikes down his fabric.
(Coolidge, Catalogue of the Altschul Collection,
P. 79)
A foreshadowing that the "father [will] strike . . . down
his fabric" because he fails to recognize that Richard's
marriage marks the success of his System occurs in the
omniscient author's description of Richard and Lucy's first
meeting, in the chapter entitled "Ferdinand and Miranda"®;
Then truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to
fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw
the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would
fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said
to the world, 'Match him 11 . . .
[But] if these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir
Austin was not Prospero, and was not present, or their
fates might have been different. (1909, pp. 121-122)
®A Troubled Eden: Nature and Society in the Works of
George Meredith (Stanford, 1961), p. 8.
^See Hergenhan, "The Reception of Meredith's Early
Novels," p. 220 about the dating of this letter.
^Chapter XVTII, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter XV, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XV, 1909.
127
"Sir Austin was not Prospero" in that his subsequent "pa
rental interference (Wright, Art and Substance, p. 149)
separated Richard and Lucy and thereby generated the final
tragic outcome.
There are earlier indications that Richard's "Ordeal"
is closely associated with his father; the first occurs in
the subtitle, A History of a Father and Son. But more im
portant with regard to the change in meaning of the key
term "Ordeal," and foreshadowing the role that Sir Austin
will play in the "linked ordeals of father and son" (Her-
genhan, "The Reception of Meredith's Early Novels," p.
221), in its first four occurrences in the revised ver
sions, the word "Ordeal" is closely associated with Sir
Austin; that is, either he uses the term, or it is related
to some of his ideas. The first appearance of the word is
in one of Sir Austin's aphorisms at the end of a descrip
tion of Richard's cousin, Austin Wentworth^:
'The compensation for Injustice,' says the 'Pil
grim's Scrip,' 'is, that in that dark Ordeal we gath
er the worthiest around us.'
And the baronet;s fair friend, Lady Blandish, and
some few true men and women, held Austin Wentworth
high. (1909, p. 8)
The aphorism characterizes "Lady Blandish and some few
true men and women" as "worthiest," referring indirectly
^Chapter IV, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter I, Vol. I, 1875;
Chapter I, 1909.
128
to the role Lady Blandish will play later in the linked
testing of father and son.
The second occurrence of the word "Ordeal," in the
chapter title, "Richard Passes through his Preliminary Or
deal, and Is the Occasion of an A p h o r is m ,"I® again relates
the term to one of Sir Austin's aphorisms; however, this
time the aphorism applies to Richard. In this chapter,
Richard accepts the moral responsibility for his role in
the Bakewell Comedy, the burning of Farmer Blaize's rick,
as revealed in his following words to his father;
'I must see the farmer myself. It was my fault,
sir. I--I lied to him— the Liar must eat his Lie.
Oh, forgive me for disgracing you, sir. I did it--
I hope I did it to save Tom Bakewell. Let me go
in alone, and speak the truth.' (1909, p. 81)
Sir Austin indicates his approval of Richard's actions by
the aphorism he records in his notebook;
'There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness:
from that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we
see that this world is well designed.' (1909,
p. 82)
The chapter entitled "The Blossoming Season""^ marks
the turning point in the father-son relationship, and the
passage in which the key term occurs for the third time
reveals that it is Sir Austin's total lack of understand-
10
Chapter XIII, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter X, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter X, 1909.
■^Chapter XV, Vol. I, 1859; Chapter XII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XII, 1909.
129
ing of his son that causes the initial estrangement between
the generations:
So far certainly the experiment had succeeded.
A comelier, braver, better boy was nowhere to be
met. His promise was undeniable. The vessel, too,
though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been
proved by the buffets of the elements on the great
ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well
through stormy weather, as the records of the Bake
well Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury
could be hopefuler. The Fates must indeed be hard,
the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could
destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was,
the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant super
vision. He said to his intimates: 'Every act, every
fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this
Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future.
The living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness.'
And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch.
The youth submitted to an examination every night
before he sought his bed; professedly to give an
account of his studies, but really to recapitulate
his moral experiences of the day. He could do so,
for he was pure. Any wildness in him that his fa
ther noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in
his expressions, was set down as incidental to the
Blossoming Season.12 There is nothing like a theory
for binding [sic] the wise. Sir Austin, despite
his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son than
the servant of his household. And he was deaf, as
well as blind. (1909, pp. 100-101)
Up to this point, Sir Austin's "experiment had succeeded,"
but during the period Sir Austin considered crucial in his
son's development, he actually "knew less of his son than
the servant of his household"; his "system of surveillance"
(Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 49) was futile because of his
own limitations: "he was deaf as well as blind." And be-
12In the first two versions, this sentence followed:
"The Blossoming Season explained and answered for all."
Meredith may have excised this passage to avoid redundancy.
130
cause Sir Austin fails to understand the needs and desires
of his son, he later instigates Richard's burning of the
manuscripts of his poems; this act marks the end of "all
true confidence between Father and Son" (1909, p. 102).
In the next occurrence of the key term, in the chapter
entitled "Richard Is Summoned to Town to Hear a Sermon,
Sir Austin defines the word "Ordeal" and connects it with
an inherited malady of the Feverels; however, the single
allusion to the "peculiar blood" of the Feverels that Mere
dith retained in the revised versions serves to character
ize the Baronet as somewhat superstitious rather than in
dicating that Richard's "Ordeal" is foreordained. In the
chapter, Sir Austin takes steps to separate Richard and
Lucy by having Richard meet him in town. During their
first extended conversation, he warns his son about the
dangers he believes Richard faces:
'in our House, my son, there is peculiar blood.
We go to wreck very easily. It sounds like super
stition; I cannot but think we are tried as most
men are not. I see it in us all. And you, my son,
are compounded of two races. Your passions are vio
lent. You have had a taste of revenge. You have
seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws
rivers of blood. But there is now in you another
power. You are mounting to the table-land of life,
where mimic battles are changed to real ones. And
you come upon it laden equally with force to create
and to destroy.' He deliberated to announce the in
telligence, with deep meaning: 'There are women in
the world, my son!1
13Chapter VI, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXII, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXI, 1909.
131
The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.-^
'.It is when you encounter them that you are thor
oughly on trial. It is when you know them that life
is either a mockery to you, or, as some find it, a
gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of
any human object is the soul's ordeal; and they are
ours, loving them, or not.' (1909, p. 183)
Sir Austin draws a specific parallel between "the form of
Ordeal to which [he believed] Richard was destined as the
inheritor of the family Malediction" (Beach, The Comic
Spirit, p. 46) and the basic premise of his System of Edu
cation for his son: he considers "women as the source of
corruption" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p. 37) and believes
that Richard's encounter with them will be his "trial."
These views influence Sir Austin's later course of action,
or inaction, regarding Richard's marriage to Lucy. In
another passage, Sir Austin's obtuseness antagonizes
Richard:
Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never
could see when he was winning the battle, thought
proper in his wisdom to water the dryness of his ser
mon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young
men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were
raw and green, absolutely wanting to be— that most
awful thing, which the wisest and strongest of men
undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification
and penance--marriedI . . . He harped upon the Fool
ish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt
his skin tingle and was half suffocated with shame
and rage.
•^In the first two versions, this sentence followed
in a separate paragraph: "The Baronet gravely repeated his
last sentence. Meredith's deletion of the sentence re
duced the comic effect because the Baronet's "grave" re
statement had emphasized the absurdity of his assumption
that he was divulging an obscure profound truth.
132
After this, the baronet might be as wise as he
pleased: he had quite undone his work. He might an
alyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might accord to
her her due position, and paint her fair: he might
be shrewd, jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully
wise: he spoke to deaf ears. (1909, pp. 185-186)
Here, Meredith discloses a further alienation of father and
son. Because the Baronet "never could see when he was
winning the battle," he loses his son's confidence; this
loss of trust in his father later leads to Richard's re
volt against his father's dominance and culminates in the
secret marriage with Lucy. The serious weakness in Sir
Austin's judgment makes him unable to recognize that the
marriage is actually the fruition of his System, and his
subsequent manipulation of the married couple leads to the
linked "Ordeals" of father and son.
In two additional passages, the omniscient author
clearly indicates that the "Ordeal" is a linked trial of
both father and son. The first occurs in the chapter en
titled "Relates how Preparations for Action Were Conducted
under the April of Lovers.While arrangements were be
ing made under Mrs. Berry's supervision for the forth
coming marriage of Richard and Lucy,
Regularly every morning a letter arrived from Rich
ard to his father, containing observations on the
phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on the
speeches and acts of Parliament; and reasons for not
having yet been able to call on the Grandisons. They
15Chapter XIII, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter I, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXVIII, 1909.
133
were certainly rather monotonous and spiritless. The
baronet did not complain. That cold dutiful tone as
sured him there was no internal trouble or distrac
tion. 'The letters of a healthful physique!1 he said
to Lady Blandish, with sure insight. Complacently he
sat and smiled, little witting that his son's ordeal
was imminent, and that his son's ordeal was to be his
own. (1909, p. 283)
Meredith draws a distinct connection between Richard's mar
riage and the "imminent" ordeals of father and son, and
again discloses Sir Austin's lack of perception by iron
ically describing his stress on Richard's "healthful
physique" as indicating "sure insight."
In the other passage, in the chapter entitled "Nurs
ing the Devil,Meredith points out that Sir Austin re
acts to Richard's marriage in the same way he reacted to
what he termed his own "Ordeal," his wife's desertion; in
both cases, wounded pride causes him to "shut his heart
and mask his face":
A Manichaean tendency, from which the sententious
eulogist of nature had been struggling for years
(and which was partly at the bottom of the System),
now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind.
As he sat alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his li
brary, he saw the devil.
How are we to know when we are at the head and
fountain of the fates of them we love?
There by the springs of Richard's future, his
father sat: and the devil said to him: 'Only be
quiet: do nothing: resolutely do nothing: your ob
ject now is to keep a brave face to the world, so
that all may know you superior to this human nature
that has deceived you.
■^Chapter II, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter VI, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXIII, 1909.
134
How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the
Manichaeans when he talks our own thoughts to us?
Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He
took him into his bosom at once, as if he had been
ripe for him, and received his suggestions, and
bowed to his dictates. Because he suffered, and
decreed that he would suffer silently, and be the
only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was great-
minded in his calamity. He had stood against the
world. The world had beaten him. What then? He
must shut his heart and mask his face: that was
all....
It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at
the bounds of a nature not great, chose to colour
his retrogression and countenance his shortcoming;
and it was thus that he set about ruining the work
he had done. He might well say, as he once did,
that there are hours when the clearest soul becomes
a cunning fox. For a grief that was private and pe
culiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon human
ity; just as he had accused it in the period of what
he termed his own ordeal. How had he borne that?
By masking his face. And he prepared the ordeal for
his son by doing the same. (1909, pp. 345 and 347)
Meredith describes in theological terms this crucial scene
in which Sir Austin "sat . . . by the springs of Richard's
future." But he indicates clearly that the devil verbal
izes Sir Austin’s "own thoughts" and, therefore, represents
his own human weaknesses: "it was thus that [Sir Austin] .
. . chose to colour his retrogression and countenance his
shortcoming." And because the Baronet determined to
"resolutely do nothing," "he set about ruining the work he
had done."
A passage from the letter Meredith wrote Samuel Lucas
on July 7-14, 1859, indicates that he considered this
chapter of central importance to the illumination of his
theme:
135
The 'System,' you see, had its origin not so much in
love for his son, as in wrath at his wife, and so
carries its own Nemesis. This is shown in the chap
ter 'Nursing the Devil.' But I did not insist on it
and lecture my dear public. I thought providing a
contrast sufficient--in the 'Unmasking of Ripton
Thompson.' The moral is that no System of the sort
succeeds with human nature, unless the originator
has conceived it purely independent of personal pas
sion. That was Sir Austin's way of wreaking his
revenge. However, it requires twice reading to see
this, and my fault has been that I have made the
book so dull that it does not attract a second read
ing. At least not among newspaper critics--to whom
all honour and gloryI (Coolidge, Catalogue of the
Altschul Collection, p. 79)
For this reason, then, Meredith not only made no changes
in the crucial chapter "Nursing the Devil," but also, in
order to reinforce the point that the human fallibility of
the originator of the System had a decisive influence on
the final tragic outcome, in 1896 he added a brief but sig
nificant phrase to the chapter entitled "in which the Hero
Takes a Step."-*-7 In the pertinent section, Sir Austin has
decided to permit Richard to accompany Hippias to town.
The original passage read:
The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of the
imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man's
movements, and letting him imagine he was under sur
veillance. Richard having been, as it were, pol
larded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and
bloom again, in complete independence, as far as he
could feel. So did the sage decree: and we may pause
a moment to reflect how wise were his previsions, and
how successful they must have been, had not Fortune,
the great foe to human cleverness, turned against him.
(1875, I, 271)
1^Chapter X, Vol. II, 1859; Chapter XXVI, Vol. I,
1875; Chapter XXV, 1909.
136
Meredith added the following phrase to the end of the above
passage: "or he against himself" (1909, p. 228).^ This
"pure" addition in the omniscient author’s voice reinforces
the import of the chapter "Nursing the Devil" in the final
version of the novel by indicating that Sir Austin "turned
. . . against himself" and "set about ruining the work he
had done." That is, because of the Baronet's wounded
pride and lack of insight, he
not only refuses at first to receive the couple, who
have married without his consent, but devises a scheme,
in the name of science, to "test Richard by keeping
him apart from his bride for a time. The object of
this experiment is vague, but Sir Austin still has
enough power over Richard--the boy loves his father—
to maneuver him into circumstances which separate
him from his wife. (Kelvin, Troubled Eden, p. 6)
This "senseless separation" (Beach, The Comic Spirit, p.
51) of Richard and Lucy leaves Richard vulnerable to the
wiles of the "Enchantress." Therefore, according to
Gladys W. Ekeberg, Sir Austin "is largely responsible for
providing the fatal circumstances."-^
However, Richard also bears some responsibility for
the final tragic outcome. Meredith indicates Richard's
responsibility for his own actions in the figurative com
parison between Richard's "crossing the River of his Or-
fj
■^®L. T. Hergenhan erroneously identifies this addi
tion as appearing in "the second English edition (1878)"
("The Reception of Meredith's Early Novels," p. 222).
^"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel as Tragedy," College
English,~VII (April 1946), 389.
137
deal” and an irreversible step that each man must take "one
time or other,” after which "they must act" because they
have left behind "youth and irresolution" and now face
"manhood and purpose" (1909, pp. 286-287). As an adult,
Richard was personally responsible for his decision to
leave Lucy in order to meet his father in London and his
subsequent loitering in London for months while awaiting
word from his father. This is clearly evident in all three
versions of the novel. Through the years, however, many
critics have pointed to the lengthy separation of Richard
and Lucy as a structural defect in the novel; that is, they
criticize Richard's actions as lacking adequate motivation.
For example, in his 1859 review of the novel, Samuel Lucas
states that it is not the
System which retains him in London; but Mr. Meredith,
who accomplishes the result at the expense of con-
gruity and probability. ^
William Watson, in his "memorable attack"^ on Meredith in
The National Review in 1889, criticized Richard's "inex
plicable conduct":
20"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," The Times, October
14, 1859, p. 5; reprinted in Maurice Buxton Forman, ed.,
George Meredith: Some Early Appreciations (New York, 1909),
p. 6o.
91
^■LJ. A. Hammerton, George Meredith: His Life and Art
in Anecdote and Criticism, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1911),
p. 34.
138
Was Sir Austin's "system" altogether a tragic blun
der? Then let us see calamitous consequences natu
rally flowing from its operation. Calamitous con
sequences do indeed flow, but not naturally, so far
as the reader can see, from anything; certainly not
from "the system." They are directly chargeable,
not upon Sir Austin's doctrinaire perversities, but
upon his son's utterly inconceivable and inexplicable
conduct after his marriage with a delightful girl-
wife, whom, with a callous cruelty wholly at variance
with his own previous record, he almost immediately
deserts for the space of three months, and for no
earthly reason that the reader can d i s c o v e r .22
In a more recent criticism, Lionel Stevenson points out
that
One of the major troubles besetting the author was
the separation of Richard and Lucy after their mar
riage. Though he offers many reasons for it--Sir
Austin's orders, Adrian's advice, Lucy's insistence,
Richard's quixotic ideals, and the machinations of
Lord Mountfalcon— nevertheless the reader not only
questions the probability of it but also loses too
much of his sympathy for Richard. (Introduction to
Modern Library edition, pp. xix-xx)
In the final revision of the novel, Meredith at
tempted to make Richard's actions more credible by six
changes which emphasized Richard's excessive innocence.
It was this innocence that made him unable to recognize
the full implications of his actions; it explains his
seeming unawareness of the dangers besetting both himself
and Lucy and his consequent vulnerability to seduction.
Because Richard's innocence was excessive for the society
in which he lived, both on the Isle of Wight and in Lon-
^^"Fiction--Plethoric and Anaemic," XIX (October
1889), 177.
139
don, it was a weakness, a character flaw.
Two of the changes concerned Richard's relationship
with Clare and involved deletions from the chapter entitled
"Clare’s Marriage."23 In the first omitted passage, Ralph
Morton told Richard: "My belief, Mr. Dick, is that she's
in love with you, if it's anybody" (1875, II, 138). The
second deletion was from Richard's conversation with Clare
when he attempted to dissuade her from marrying John Tod-
hunter: "Oh! to think of that mouth being given over to .
. . 0 curses of hell! to think . . ." (1875, II, 140).
Meredith's elimination of these passages suppressed the
idea that before Clare's marriage Richard was not only
aware of her attraction toward him but was also attracted
toward her.
Meredith also made three changes in the chapter en
titled "Mrs. Berry on Matrimony."24 The first involved
the excision of some of Richard's remarks to Ripton about
Lucy's eyes: "And when I make them bashful--by heaven"
(1875, II, 176). These words in the first two versions of
the novel made Richard seem less innocent in his attitude
toward Lucy. The other two changes in the chapter con
cerned Richard's attitude toward Mrs. Berry's warnings
23Chapter IV, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter VIII, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXV, 1909.
24Chapter VI, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter X, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXVII, 1909.
140
about the dangers of his long separation from Lucy. In the
first two versions of the novel, "Richard was respectfully
attentive to the sermon" (1875, II, 182), and he "paced up
and down uneasily" (1875, II, 184). But in the final ver
sion of the novel, "Richard was humorously respectful to
the sermon" (1909, p. 425), and he merely "paced up and
down" (1909, p. 427). Thus, in the final version, Richard
seems less aware of the import of Mrs. Berry's warnings.
Another significant change Meredith made involved a
"pure" addition to the chapter entitled "An Enchantress."^
During one of Richard's visits, Bella dresses as a cava
lier, a masquerade Richard finds charming. At one point^h©.
teases her about her height and lifts her "to the looking-
glass . . . exactly on a level with his head." The follow
ing appears in all three versions:
'. . . Oh, but I can't stay here.’
'Why can’t you?'
'Why can't I?'
Their eyes met. He put her down instantly. (1909,
P- 439)
In 1896, Meredith added the following paragraph:
He should have known then— it was thundered at a
closed door in him, that he played with fire. But
the door being closed, he thought himself internally
secure. (1909, p. 439)
This addition indicates that Richard lacked self-knowledge;
he was unaware of his own vulnerability.
25Chapter VII, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XI, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XXXVIII, 1909.
141
Thus, in the final version of the novel, Meredith em
phasizes the character flaws of both father and son that
have a determining influence on the course of events. But
the System is not thereby absolved of blame. Meredith
makes this clear by a significant "pure" addition to the
chapter entitled "Nature Speaks.The following passage,
which appears in all three versions, reveals that Richard
feels he cannot return to Lucy because his body has been
desecrated:
Far in the West fair Lucy beckons him to come. Ah,
heaven! if he might! How strong and fierce the
temptation is! how subtle the sleepless desire! it
drugs his reason, his honour. For he loves her; she
is still the first and only woman to him. Otherwise
would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise would
his limbs be chained while her arms are spread open
to him. And if he loves her, why then what is one
fall in the pit, or a thousand? Is not love the pass
word to that beckoning bliss? So may we say; but here
is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and
it is desecrated.
A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for
but for a dance of devils? (1909, p. 513)
The final version includes the following sentence: "His
education has thus wrought him to think" (1909, p. 513).
In this way, Meredith indicates that
even though Sir Austin abandons his "System" toward
the end of the novel, so far as it has been imple
mented it does continue to contribute to the final
tragedy, aad hence at the same time to be tested,
because in his ordeal Richard is undone by the very
weaknesses it has fostered in him. (Hergenhan, "The
Reception of Meredith's Early Novels," pp. 221-222)
26Chapter XI, Vol. Ill, 1859; Chapter XV, Vol. II,
1875; Chapter XLII, 1909.
142
Therefore, the System, its originator, and its subject all
bear responsibility for the final tragic outcome. And be
cause Meredith made the System less idiosyncratic, and be
cause he stressed the character flaws of both Richard and
Sir Austin that generated the tragedy, the linked "Ordeals"
of father and son acquire a more universal significance in
the final version of the novel.
Chapter V
The Net Effect of the Revisions
In his study of The Comic Spirit in George Meredith,
Joseph Warren Beach discusses some of the passages Meredith
omitted in the revisions of The Ordeal and points out that
the bulk have to do with Sir Austin and his System,
which are invariably treated in a gay spirit of ridi
cule. The result is that, while in its present form
the story gives the impression of being the tragic
history of Richard, in its original form it has more
the effect of being the comic history of Sir Austin's
System. (p. 35)
The detailed analysis of the textual variations among the
three versions included in this study corroborates Beach's
statement. In Section A of Chapter II, I discussed the de
crease in emphasis on Sir Austin's System of Education that
resulted from Meredith's compression of the first four
chapters into one in the 1875 revision. Meredith's dele
tion of the detailed explication of the System not only
blurred its premises but also eliminated many comic de
scriptions. In Section B of Chapter II, I discussed the
changes in Sir Austin's characterization that result in
his being "less foolish and credulous, less of a ludicrous
monomaniac, and more of a misguided human figure" (Hergen-
han, "Meredith's Use of Revision," p. 541). I also pointed
out the close relationship between the changes relating to
Sir Austin's System and the changes in Sir Austin's charac
terization. The changes in the presentation of Adrian
Harley and Ripton Thompson, which I discussed in Section A
of Chapter III, are relevant to the System since Adrian is
the tutor chosen for Richard, and Ripton is the selected
comrade. The fact that Meredith reduced many of the comic
elements in their presentation makes the System less ridic
ulous. In Chapter IV, I discussed the change in meaning
of the key term ’’ Ordeal" that resulted from Meredith's de
letion of the concept of an inherited "Ordeal" for the
Feverels, and I pointed out that Sir Austin's attempt to
circumvent destiny by devising a scientific System of Edu
cation for his son was ludicrous. Therefore, my analysis
reveals a marked reduction of comic elements concerning
Sir Austin and his System. Because Meredith had exagger
ated the idiosyncrasies of both the System and its origi
nator in the original version, the changes result in a
marked diminution of satiric elements in the final version
of the novel.
As a result of this extensive reduction, the focus of
the novel shifts from a satiric comi-tragedy to a comi-
tragedy with a corresponding increase of emphasis on the
emotional elements involved in the father-son and the
Lucy-Richard relationships. Of primary importance in in
dicating this increased emphasis is the fact that Meredith
made no changes in the relationship between Richard and
Lucy. The idyllic love scenes in the chapters entitled
"Ferdinand and Miranda" and "A Diversion Played on a
145
Penny-Whistle” were left untouched. Nor are there any im
portant changes in the chapter ’’ Nature Speaks,” in which
Richard experiences a spiritual rebirth during the storm;
the passages in the chapter ’’ Again the Magian Conflict,”
which detail Richard's discovery of Lord Mountfalcon's
plot; and the sections of ’’ The Last Scene” in which Lucy
and Richard are momentarily reunited. Furthermore, in 1896
Meredith made two significant changes in the chapter en
titled "An Attraction" which serve to keep the emphasis on
the forthcoming initial meeting of Richard and Lucy. One
passage concerned Sir Austin's guilty feelings as he left
his son for the first time:
Had he cast a second glance at his own chamber, he
might have seen the ever-vigilant head on the watch.
Sir Austin had slept no more than his son. Beholding
him so early abroad,bis worst fears were awakened.
He hurried to gaze at the forsaken couch, a picture
of tempest: the papers, with half-written words
ending in reckless tails and wild dashes, strewn
everywhere about, blankly eloquent: chairs upset,
drawers left open, companion slippers astray about
the room. The abashed baronet dared not whisper to
his soul what had thus distracted the youth. As
little could he make self-confession that it was im
possible for him to face his son for some time to
come. No doubt his conscious eye looked inward, and
knew; but he chose to juggle with it, and say to him
self that not an hour must be lost in betrothing
Richard, and holding him bond to virtue, and there
fore he would immediately depart on his expedition.
The pain of not folding the beloved son to his breast
before he went, was moreover a fortunate beguilement
of the latent dread that his going just now was a
false step. It would be their first separation. Sir
Austin ascended to the roof of the Abbey, and descried
him hastening to the boat-house by the river-side. Ere
he was out of sight, the baronet’s sense of sacrifice
had blinded his conscious eye, and enabled him to feel
altogether a martyr to duty. (1875, I, 127-128)
146
Meredith's deletion of the above passage, which was nar
rated from Sir Austin's point of view, keeps the focus of
the chapter on Richard as the center of consciousness.
The other change reduced the conversation between
Ralph Morton and Richard. The pertinent passage in the
1875 version read:
"Have I?" murmured Ralph, hiding his hot face in
a stumble, and then peeping at the address to verify.
"So I have. The address, you know . . . It's be
cause I like to write the name of Clare," he added
hurriedly, by way of excellent justification.
"Is that the name you like best?"
Ralph counterqueried, "Don't you think it very
nice--beautiful, I mean?"
"Not so good as Clara," said Richard.
"Oh! a hundred times better," shouted young Ralph
in a fervour.
Richard meditated unwittingly: "I suppose we like
the names of the people we like best?"
No answer from Ralph.
"Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blan
dish," Richard continued in a low tone, transferring
the names, and playing on them like musical strings.
"Eh?" quoth Ralph.
"I'm certain." said Richard, as he finished his
performance, "I m certain we like the names of the
people we like best.” And having made this great
discovery for himself. . . . (I, 131)
The parallel passage in the final version reads:
That was plain to see.
'Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blan
dish, ' Richard continued in a low tone, transferring
the names, and playing on the musical strings they
were to him. Then he said: 'Names of ladies! How
they sweeten their names!' (1909, p. 117)
The final version of the conversation limits Ralph's role
and stresses Richard's awakening interest in the "Realm of
Mystery" (1909, p. 116).
Moreover, Meredith made no changes in Lucy's charac-
147
terization. Her role in the final version of the novel
corresponds with her role in the original edition. In this
connection, it is interesting to note that, according to
Siegfried Sassoon, Meredith's "first provisional title"
for The Ordeal was The Fair Frankincense, a title that
"suggested the sacrifice of Lucy."-*- However, Lionel
Stevenson states that
There is little reason to doubt that The Fair Frank
incense was the story published in August, 1857,
under the title of Farina: a Legend of Cologne. . .
. (Ordeal of Meredith, p. 55)
Jack Lindsay disagrees with Stevenson:
Prof. Stevenson takes The Fair Frankincense to be
Farina, but Meredith describes it as having two
Prophets 'and altogether a new kind of villain, be
ing Humbug active— a great gun likely to make a
noise, if I prime him properly.' (Christmas 1856).
This can hardly fit Farina.
Lindsay's quotation is from Meredith's letter to Edward
Chapman, dated December 15, 1856, in which Meredith re
quested "a book of Hampshire Dialect. . . . Also a slang
Dictionary, or book of the same with Gloss" (Letters, I,
10). Since Meredith probably used these books for the
provincial dialect he attempted to reproduce in The Ordeal,
it seems reasonable to assume that Meredith's statement,
"The name of this novel is to be 'The Fair Frankincense'"
^Meredith (New York, 1948), p. 18.
n
George Meredith: His Life and Work (London, 1956) ,
p. 384.
148
^Letters, I, 10), also refers to The Ordeal. And this sug
gests that Meredith's original concept of the novel in
cluded the sacrifice of Lucy. The fact that Lucy's role
is unchanged in the final version further indicates that
Meredith's concept remained unchanged during the thirty-
seven years that elapsed between the first and final ver
sions; however, Meredith's reduction of various satiric
elements does result in more emphasis being placed on the
tragedy of Lucy's death.
The changes Meredith made in the introductory chap
ters also reflect the more serious focus of the final ver
sion of the novel. In the original edition,
the first four chapters are taken up chiefly with a
comic portrayal of Sir Austin and with droll illus
tration of the early workings of the System. (Beach,
The Comic Spirit, pp. 34-35)
It is not until the fifth chapter that the focus shifts to
Richard and the beginning of the rick-burning escapade.
But in the final version the second chapter concerns Rich
ard's escapade, the introductory material having been com
pressed into one chapter. As a result, the plot concen
trates earlier on Richard as the central figure. Meredith
also eliminated a farcical description of Richard's rebel
lion against the physical examination ordered by his fa
ther on his fourteenth birthday:
[Ripton] was standing waiting for the favoured boy
on the gravel-walk fronting the breakfast room . . .
when forth started Richard, and, catching him by the
arm, bore him hurriedly towards the darkest corner
149
of the clustered beeches, and then told him, he would
see nobody— he would leave Raynham— he would quit the
country, if he could--be a sailor--a cabin boy— a
common soldier— anything, that he might never be seen
there again. All this he uttered between a gnawing
of the lips, and a blinking of the eyes, a flushing
of the cheeks, and a clenching of the fists, showing
a frenzy of shamefacedness. He seemed in the gripe
of his birthday devil, as they called it at Raynham,
where, till that day, he was generally a brisk happy
boy.
Ripton kindly endeavoured to console him, but was
silenced by a fiercer repetition of the threats.
"Well, then— what is it?" Ripton jerked out at.
last. "What ever's the matter?
"I have been insulted," cried Richard; "insulted
by my own father. Lucky it wasn’t anyone else!
Come along!" and he dragged Ripton further into the
covert.
"But what is it?" asked Ripton once more, when
he could grasp at a halt. "You may as well tell a
friend."
"I tell you I've been insulted! Isn’t that enough?"
Richard replied. "Come along!" and Ripton had to re
sume his trot.
By-and-by, after deep dark hints, under the deepest
darkest shelter of the foliage, the intimacy of boys
brought it all out.
Sir Austin had asked his son to submit to medical
examination, and strip!
"Don't laugh!" shouted Richard menacingly, as he
saw the great mute 0 of Ripton's mouth stretch its
length towards explosion.
With an effort that cost him tears, Ripton swal
lowed his guffaw.
"And don't speak of it, or allude to it, if you
don't wish mortally to offend me," said the outraged
youth. (1859, I, 65-67)
The exaggerated description of Richard's violent physical
reactions served to ridicule Richard's attempted rebellion
against the dictates of his father. The fact that Raynham
called Richard's violent reactions "his birthday devil"
revealed that Richard had had similar outbursts on other
birthdays. Meredith reduced the parallel passage in the
150
final version to one sentence:
For Richard had been requested by his father to sub
mit to medical examination like a boor enlisting for
a soldier, and he was in great wrath. (1909, p. 11)
By omitting the descriptive details, Meredith's initial
introduction of Richard presents him as a more serious
figure. This modification and the elimr^ation of much of
the peripheral introductory material accord with the in
creased emphasis on the Richard-Lucy relationship. Their
initial meeting occurs earlier in the novel and, therefore,
engrosses more of the reader's attention. Furthermore, the
changes in Richard's characterization that I discussed in
Chapter IV elicit more of the reader's sympathy for Rich
ard. As a result of all of these changes, in the final
version there is more emphasis on the romantic tragedy of
Richard and Lucy than there was in the original version.
In addition, the final version of the novel places
more stress on the father-son relationship. This results
partially from the decrease in emphasis on Sir Austin's
System of Education and partially from the changes in Sir
Austin's characterization that make him a more representa
tive figure. Furthermore, as I discussed in Chapter IV,
because Meredith stressed the character flaws of both fa
ther and son that generated the tragedy, their linked
testing acquires a more universal significance. Because
of this broader application, there is an increase in the
emotional appeal.
151
Therefore, there are appreciable differences between
the first and final versions which result in a shift of
focus from a many-faceted satiric comi-tragedy to a comi-
tragedy with an increased emphasis on the emotional ele
ments. However, many critics seem to be unaware of the ex
tensive variations, and, as a result, they have generally
ignored, misinterpreted, or over-simplified the import of
Meredith's revisions. The fact that we find completely
contradictory judgments as to "whether the revision[s have]
. . . been beneficial or harmful" (Ray, Nineteenth-Century,
p. 10) indicates the extent of confusion that exists. For
example, Mary Sturge Gretton finds it "impossible to
agree" with those who "prefer the story as it stood in the
first edition" and praises the "alterations [as] . . . the
best of witnesses to Meredith’s power of self-criticism."^
But J. B. Priestley states that
Far too much fuss has been made about this revision.
. . . There is actually little to choose between the
original and the revised versions. . . A
On the other hand, James Moffatt condemns the revisions:
There should be a Society for the Protection of Books
against their Authors. This novel is one of those
which have suffered from revision; it has been re
peatedly pruned by Meredith, and not.always with dis
cretion. If he had applied his knife to a book like
^The Writings and Life of George Meredith: A Centen
ary Study (London, 1926), p. 30.
^George Meredith (New York, 1926), pp. 46 and 47.
152
"One of Our Conquerors," it would have been more to
the point. As it is, a reader of the earlier edi
tions may congratulate himself upon the fact that
their defects in format are more than counter
balanced by their unthinned chapters.^
To compound the confusion, although Moffatt states that he
prefers the original text, his summary of the plot indi
cates that he used either the 1875 edition or the 1878 re
print .
A major reason for these different judgments lies in
the critic's evaluation of Meredith's compression of the
first four chapters into one. Many critics who prefer the
original version consider that Meredith's extensive ex
cision of introductory material "create[d] obscurities in
the subsequent narration.Lionel Stevenson summarizes
this critical position in his "Introduction" to the Modern
Library edition:
The process of excision was so roughly handled
as to suggest haste and impatience. Actual rewrit
ing was infrequent. Some of the changes, unques
tionably, were improvements. The whole Peacockian
burlesque upon the group of feminists had merely
delayed action at the beginning. . . . Other omis
sions, however, wrought positive harm upon the story.
The removal of explanatory material in the opening
chapters made many later allusions far more cryptic
than they had originally been. The role of Benson
the butler in subsequent events lost much plausi
bility with the cancellation of his preliminary
^George Meredith: A Primer to the Novels (London,
1909) , p. 95
^Phyllis Bartlett, George Meredith (London, 1963),
p. 21.
153
portrait. The whole of Richard's seventh-birthday
scene, and its parallel seven years later when he
refused to strip for his physical examination, were
a lamentable loss, both for their comedy and for
their psychological foreshadowing. By the disap
pearance of another paragraph, even the "ordeal
in the title was deprived of some significance.
Worst of all, the basic principles of the great
System were almost wholly deleted, (p. xxv)
Certainly some of this criticism is justifiable. The read
er of the final version might well be puzzled by the reason
for Benson's overprotective attitude toward Sir Austin's
relationship with Lady Blandish, as described in Chapters
XXIV and XXXIII. Furthermore, the reference in Chapter
XXXIII to Benson as "the one believer in the Great Shaddock
dogma" (1909, p. 354) is enigmatic because Meredith elimi
nated the initial discussion of the Great Shaddock Dogma.
Although the comic metaphor appears in two additional pas-
sages, neither one includes explanatory details.
Yet, Stevenson's statement that "the process of ex
cision was so roughly handled as to suggest haste and im
patience," a criticism echoed by others throughout the
years, can be refuted. Despite the fact that much of the
revisions consisted of the extensive excision of sequen
tial passages and that "actual rewriting was infrequent,"
there is strong evidence to support L. T. Hergenhan's view
that the revisions "were more carefully undertaken"
("Meredith's Use of Revision," p. 544) than Stevenson con-
71909, pp. 361 and 398.
154
cedes. First, most critics fail to recognize that Meredith
did add brief descriptive details to compensate for earlier
omissions; for example, Meredith inserted identifying
phrases in the first references to Benson^ and Lady
Blandish^ in the revised versions. A second important
point is that there is a relationship among the introduc
tory details that Meredith omitted. As I discussed in
various parts of this study, Meredith's deletion of the
original concept of an inherited "Ordeal" for the Feverels
correlates with the decrease of emphasis on the idiosyn
crasies of the System and its originator. That is, there
is a reduction of complementary satiric elements.
A third point to support Hergenhan's views is that the
1896 revision followed the same trend as the 1875 and re
sulted in a shift in the focus of the novel. For example,
Meredith's most extensive excision in 1896, the deletion of
the entire chapter concerning Mrs. Grandison, Sir Austin's
burlesqued counterpart, is closely allied with the 1875
omission of the explanatory details about Sir Austin's Sys
tem and the corollary burlesqued portrayals of Sir Austin's
"Court of Women.” In fact, as Ernest A. Baker points out,
the first version of the novel could have been called '"The
Ordeal of Sir Austin Feverel,' for it is Richard's overwise
81909, p. 27.
^1909, pp. 8 and 26.
155
father that is really on trial" (The History of the English
Novel, p. 319), but the final version emphasizes the
"Ordeal" as a trial of character for Richard.
Another point supporting the view that Meredith's re
visions were done more carefully than is generally recog
nized is that the final version has a more uniform tone.
The original version was a "mixture of Dickensian farce
and Meredithian comedy" (Baker, The History of the English
Novel, p. 325) which required the reader
to adapt himself quickly, and sometimes almost simul
taneously, to levels of caricature, burlesque, real
istic comedy, irony, romantic idyl, serious explora
tion of man's darker motives, and finally to pathos
and tragedy. (Hergenhan, "Meredith's Use of Re
vision, p. 541)
In fact, Elmer James Bailey states that Meredith "borrowed
a part of [Dickens'] . . . panoply"^® in the writing of
The Ordeal. Yet literary historians consider that the 1859
version of The Ordeal and George Eliot's Adam Bede mark
the time "when English fiction arrived at artistic and in
tellectual maturity" (Stevenson, English Novel, p. 348).
As Walter Allen points out, the "seriousness of intent, .
. . both moral and aesthetic, . . . came into our fiction
consciously"-^ with these two writers. By 1875, when
~ ^The Novels of George Merediths A Study (New York,
1907), p. 61.
~ ^The English Novel: A Short Critical History (New
York, 1954), p. 255.
156
Meredith revised his novel for the first time, he may have
felt that the "Dickensian exaggeration" (Stevenson, Ordeal
of Meredith, p. 292) detracted from his "psychological
study [of] . . . human nature” (Stevenson, English Novel,
p. 345), and he eliminated some of the Dickensian elements.
Meredith's own views about Dickens support this supposi
tion:
Not much of Dickens will live, because it has so
little correspondence to life. He was the incar
nation of cockneydom, a caricaturist who aped the
moralist; he should have kept to short stories.
If his novels are read at all in the future, people
will wonder what we saw in them, save some possible
element of fun meaningless to them. (Clodd,
Memories, p. 156)
Although Meredith revised the novel with care and was
consistent in the types of changes he made, the critical
question of whether or not the revisions improved the novel
is not easy to answer. The major weakness of the original
version, pointed out by critics through the years, is that
Lucy's death seems capricious. Ernest A Baker states that
the change of key from the love-romance with its
undertone of comedy is so harsh and abrupt that at
first perusal the reader is felled as by a bolt
from the blue, and rebels at the seeming gratuitous
ness of the tragedy. (History of the English Novel,
p. 320)
Even though Meredith emphasized the emotional elements
involved in the Lucy-Richard relationship in the final
version of the novel, Lucy's death is still "arbitrary
because nothing in the book provides a sufficient cause
157
1 r y
for it. John W. Morris's analysis of the artistic
structure of the novel, which he based on the Memorial edi
tion, reveals that "the book fails to realize its artistic
potential" because the ending "is formally inappropriate"
(p. 334):
Three principles of order--the generic archetype
(New Comedy), organic unity or harmony (structural
probability and reader expectation), and reiterated
metaphor--combine to determine the artistic struc
ture of Richard Feverel--a structure vitiated by
the incongruous ending. (p. 340)
Therefore, the final version has the same structural weak
ness as the original. But actually Lucy's death is a more
critical structural weakness in the final version because
Meredith eliminated many foreshadowings of serious action.
Frank D. Curtin points out that in the first edition,
serious overtones of the early sections--from the
first, when Richard's mother is introduced and ap
pears as Mrs. Malediction on Richard's birthday—
. . . come repeatedly through the novel.13
Other significant details which presaged serious action in
the original version include the concept of an inhericed
"Ordeal” and the first reference to the symbolic cypress
tree. Because Meredith stressed the romantic tragedy of
Richard and Lucy in the final version, his elimination of
these premonitory details resulted in a serious weakening
l^john W. Morris, "Inherent Principles of Order in
Richard Feverel," PMLA, LXXVIII (September 1963), 336.
13"Adrian Harley: The Limits of Meredith's Comedy,"
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, VII (March 1953), 280.
158
of structural probability, a crucial shortcoming that, in
my opinion, detracts from the value of his revisions.
However, because of the extensive differences among
the three versions, critics' evaluation of their relative
merits ultimately depends upon the criteria each critic
stresses. Those who place more value on the satiric mode
will favor Meredith's original conception; others who view
the novel as the romantic tragedy of Richard and Lucy may
well prefer the final version. As a result, some readers
and critics will agree with J. A. Hammerton that the origi
nal edition of
'Richard Feverel' is a masterpiece which George Mere
dith aetat 67 was scarcely capable of writing, and
[that! It-is a fair contention that he was equally
unfitted to alter seriously the work of his dead
self. The outlook of a man of thirty and that of
the same man at sixty-seven must be so different on
many vital points that they are in effect the out
looks of two different persons. (George Meredith,
p. 37)
Others will disagree with this view, and their position
may be summarized by an 1896 review that appeared in The
Academy:
, . . it is treasure that comes to us fresh from the
hands of its creator. It has his own last touch.
Unlike most editions de luxe, it is a living, not a
dead, edition. . . . It is said that Mr. Meredith
had not read some of his books for many years until
he studied them for the purposes of this new edi
tion. He came to them freshly. Mr. Meredith was
a reader of Mr. Meredith. . . . In a sense, he was
his only reader. For as none but he could have con
ceived those books, so none but he could bring a
sensibility adequate to the perusal of them with
full comprehension. . . . And Mr. Meredith was not
159
only a reader, but a critic, of Mr. Meredith--his
only possible critic. So we have the author and
the critic together in this new edition. And af
ter the lapse of nearly forty years, Richard
Feverel has passed through this, his greatest,
Ordealunscathed.14
Or, as C. L. Cline states: "Meredithians are apt to prefer
the original version; others are supported by the mature
Meredith1’ ("George Meredith," p. 326). Because of the
diversity of critical criteria and the resulting differ
ences of opinion, Meredith's own statement about the role
of the critic serves to summarize the difficulty of ar
riving at a definitive agreement:
Critics make sport of authors. They behave despot
ically to us, as do sultans and czars; yet each of
them is at best but the slave placed near the con
queror in order to remind him of his mortal con
dition. The object of their delight they exalt to
the skies. Here and there they find fault with
a weak rhyme, a defective image; then they or
ganise the distribution of their favours, enumer
ate the masterpieces, classify them, and comment
upon them. The rest is cast upon one side, and
all is ended. Do not implore their clemency I1- 5
14"Mr. Meredith's Works: The New Edition: Richard
Feverel (as It Was, and as It Is)" (anon, rev.), November
14",""T8'96, p. 389.
l^Arthur Price, trans., George Meredith: His Life,
Genius, and Teaching, by Constantin Phot fades (!New York,
1913), p. lO.
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Bailey, Elmer James. The Novels of George Meredith: A
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Sacco, Lillian
(author)
Core Title
The Significance Of George Meredith'S Revisions Of 'The Ordeal Of Richardfeverel'
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Doctor of Philosophy
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English
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), Casson, Allan Perham (
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