It is no false judgment which has assigned to George Eliot a very distinguished place among the masters of fiction. This writer had a better right than perhaps any other of her sex to assume thenom-de-plumeof a man; for one of the striking characteristics of her work is its essentially masculine quality.
“Romola” is a somber tale. There is very little merriment in it, hardly the faintest suspicion of humor, but there is a great deal of deep feeling, and perhaps even more thought than feeling. Every chapter is pervaded with reflections which are often striking, sometimes subtle, and nearly always convincing.
Many phrases can be taken from different parts of the book, which, while perfectly appropriate to the places where they are found, would also be adapted to a general collection of maxims or epigrams. For instance:
“Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.”
“There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by andwonder.”
“Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race, and to have acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble.”
“It is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday’s faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow.”
Moralizing of this kind is apt to become tiresome in an ordinary writer, but George Eliot’s mind, like that of Shakespeare, has the rare and masterful power of appropriately blending fiction and philosophy into a single substance.
The story opens in 1492, at the time of the death of Lorenzo dei Medici, when Tito Melema, a young Greek scholar, who has been recently shipwrecked, makes his appearance in Florence, where the barber Nello (a gossipy fellow, as barbers are wont to be, and with a smattering of learning) offers to get him introduced to Bartolomeo Scala, the Secretary of the Republic, who will perhaps employ him, and purchase some valuable gems which he has in his possession. For this purpose Nello brings him to the house of Bardo dei Bardi, a blind old scholar, who has collected a valuable library which he intends to bequeath to Florence to be kept as a memorial of himself. In this library Tito meets Romola, the daughter of Bardo and the companion and associate of her father in his classical researches. Through Bardo, Melema isintroduced to Scala, who buys some of his gems, and moreover finds the young Greek very useful to him in a war of epigrams he is waging with Politian, another celebrated scholar of the time.
The gems which Tito sells are not, however, his own. They belong to Baldasarre, a man now stricken in years, who had rescued Melema in childhood, had adopted him, had loved him, and had educated him. The galley in which Baldasarre was travelling had been taken by a Turkish vessel, and it was not certain whether he had perished or was held as a slave. Tito says to himself, “If it were certain my father is alive, I would search for him throughout the world to ransom him.” But as he does not know, he keeps the money, stays in Florence, and consoles himself with the thought, “I believe he is dead.”
And Tito flourishes. He assists Bardo in his studies and soon becomes enamored of Romola. And when later, a monk who has come from the East gives him a bit of parchment from his father saying: “I am sold for a slave. I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone will serve to ransom me,” he reasons that he is not bound to seek his father and give up his prosperous life. But he is filled with fear lest his baseness may be discovered, when he learns that the monk who gave him the parchment is Dino, the brother of Romola.
Melema’s love is returned, and old Bardo regards him as the son who has taken the place of the one who forsook him to become a monk. ButDino is about to die. He sends for his sister and tells her a vague vision which has appeared to him, warning her not to marry. Romola, however, shares her father’s skepticism of monkish prophecies, and the betrothal is not long postponed.
The second book opens after a lapse of eighteen months, when Charles VIII, the French king, is about to enter Florence. Before he comes, three prisoners are brought in bound by three French soldiers and ordered to beg money for their ransom. One of these, the oldest, escapes, and as he flees to the cathedral he encounters Tito upon the steps and clutches him by the arm. Melema turns and sees the face of Baldasarre close to his own. And when one of Tito’s companions asks “Who is he?” Tito answers, “Some madman surely.”
The old man, transformed into a fiend by this shameless ingratitude, now devotes his failing faculties and clouded mind to the one purpose of revenge, and Tito, filled with inexpressible terror, purchases a suit of chain armor, which Romola discovers and is filled with suspicion, not only at this, but also at a picture of “Fear” which she accidentally sees, painted by Piero di Cosimo, who saw the incident on the steps of the cathedral and used her husband as his model.
In the meantime Bardo has died, and Tito, in violation of his plighted word, determines to dispose of the library of the blind scholar, appropriate the proceeds, and depart from Florence.The library is sold before he discloses this purpose to his wife. When her husband’s treachery is thus made clear to her, she asks him in bitter scorn, “Have you robbed somebody else who is not dead? Is that the reason you wear armor?”
Tito is about to depart from Rome on an errand of importance. Before he leaves he goes to a banquet in the Rucellai gardens, and old Baldasarre suddenly appears before the guests and denounces him. Melema coolly declares that his accuser is an old servant, who had been dismissed for misdemeanors, and had become insane. Rucellai, the host, proceeds to test the old man’s scholarship in proof of his credibility, but his memory is a blank. Tito is exonerated and Baldasarre is cast into prison.
Romola, unwilling to live longer with a husband whom she has come to despise, departs from the city. On her way Savonarola meets her, declares to her her name and purpose, and commands her to return and resume her duties, not only as wife, but as a citizen of Florence. Overcome by his commanding presence and persuasive words, she obeys and returns to her dreary home, throwing all the energy of her will into a life of renunciation.
At the opening of the third book, two years more have elapsed.
Romola learns of Tito’s participation in a plot for decoying Savonarola without the walls of the city. The monk is now the support and inspirationof her life. She determines to save him, and threatens to denounce her husband. The plot is thwarted, but the abyss between Romola and Melema constantly widens. Baldasarre, released from prison, tells her the story of her husband’s perfidy, and also of Melema’s relations to another wife, an innocent, harmless little peasant girl, named Tessa, who thinks she has been married to Tito by a sham ceremony performed by a mountebank, and by whom he has two children. And now Bernardo del Nero, Romola’s godfather, to whom she is deeply devoted, has been arrested, together with a number of the companions and intimates of Tito, for conspiring to restore the Medici, and her heart is filled with loathing for her husband when she learns from him that he is safe, for she realizes that this must be by reason of some new treachery of his own. And so indeed it was. He has been playing fast and loose with each of the three factions in Florence, and betraying each by turns to secure his own safety or promotion.
Bernardo and his associates are condemned to death, and the question is whether an appeal shall be allowed to the Grand Council according to the law. Romola seeks an interview with Savonarola and implores him to intercede, reminding him that it was through his agency that the law was passed, and that he has already spoken on behalf of another and more guilty conspirator. But she fails to secure his help, and departs with deep indignation against the man who had so long beenthe controlling influence of her life. She consoles Bernardo in his last moments, and is present even at the execution. Then, filled with bitterness, she flees again, and on the shore of the Mediterranean enters a small skiff and sets sail alone, drifting across the sea, hoping for death.
In the meantime Savonarola has fallen into the toils of his enemies. He has attacked the evil life of Pope Alexander, he has been excommunicated and has defied the excommunication. And now a challenge comes to him to submit to an ordeal. A Franciscan monk offers to walk through the fire with him. He declines, but his associate, Fra Domenico, accepts the challenge. The ordeal is to prove whether the tenets and prophecies of Savonarola be true or false. On the appointed day the multitude assemble to see the spectacle. Fra Domenico is ready, but there are long disputes regarding details—what garb he shall wear, whether he shall bear the crucifix or the host into the flames, until a shower of rain renders the trial impossible. But there are loud murmurs among the multitude against Savonarola. If he were a prophet, why did he not himself accept the ordeal? That night there was a wild riot, and Savonarola was arrested and hurried to prison.
In the meantime Dolpho Spini, the leader of the Compagnacci, who have instigated the riot, learns that Tito has also been false to that faction, and orders him to be seized. He escapes, leaps into the Arno and swims down the river in thedarkness, but when, exhausted and fainting, he reaches the shore, there is waiting for him among the rushes the old man Baldasarre, who has found the opportunity for vengeance, and under whose hand he falls at last.
Romola has drifted to a little village on the coast which the plague had emptied of most of its inhabitants. Here for a while she tends the suffering, and finally, reconciled again with life, she feels that she must return. When she reaches Florence and learns of her husband’s death, she seeks the helpless little Tessa and her children and takes them under her protection.
And now Savonarola, amid the agonies of the torture, has confessed that he was not a prophet, and he is condemned to death. She is present at the solemn scene of execution, awaiting from him some word, free from constraint, which should tell the final truth of his past life. But he is silent upon the scaffold.
It is in the Epilogue that it first clearly appears that “Romola” is a novel with a purpose, for here the heroine, many years afterwards, in an earnest talk with Tessa’s boy, thus tells him the moral of his father’s life:
“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young and clever and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and caredfor nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds, such as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”
“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young and clever and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and caredfor nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds, such as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”
The account of the gradual degeneration of the character of Tito Melema is, indeed, the strongest feature in the book. Tito was a man of sunny disposition, who never made himself disagreeable, never boasted of his own doings, was generous in small things, gave others the credit to which they were entitled, and claimed little for himself, was frank and engaging in manners, subtle in thought, supple in conduct, and had an innate love of reticence, which often acted as other impulses do, without any conscious motive. This was the character selected by the author for her story of degradation and ruin.
The painter Piero foreshadows the outcome when he desires the face of Tito as a model for his picture of Sinon deceiving old Priam: “A perfect traitor,” says Piero, “should have a face which vice can write no marks on—lips that will lie with a dimpled smile—eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them—cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard.”
The character of Romola herself is a very interesting one. She is full of womanly dignity and genuine nobility of soul, honorable, proud, self-sacrificing, devoted to her duty, but she is too clear-headedto deceive herself as to her husband’s baseness. At first, although her dreams of happiness have not been fulfilled, she makes every excuse; and even afterwards she seeks a return of his confidence. But when that is impossible, her love becomes entirely extinct.
Running side by side with the character of Romola, and in sharp contrast to it, is that of Tessa, the innocent peasant girl, with a baby face. In her presence, Melema finds no reproaches, nothing but artless affection. It was pity more than anything else which first induced Tito to take her under his protection, and his relations with her have been developed so unconsciously that there seems very little guilt in each particular act. No doubt the author’s purpose was to describe the almost imperceptible steps by which men pass from virtue to crime.
“Romola” is a historical novel, and the part of it which deals with Savonarola is history itself, or perhaps more properly biography. George Eliot has not created the character of the Florentine monk; she has merely analyzed and interpreted that character by the light of her own imagination. Whether the man she has thus drawn is the real Savonarola or not, he is a very interesting personage, who, with many inconsistencies and shortcomings, is essentially a great man, as well as a benefactor of mankind. He is often a hero, though he falls short of heroism at the supreme moment; and his last words, written in prison before his execution, the outpouring of self-abasement,fill us with added sympathy for his misfortunes.
“God placed thee,” he says, “in the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others, and thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom, and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.”
The psychological development of each of the chief characters in this remarkable book proceeds by a natural law from the antecedents and surroundings of the individual. We feel as we read that the changes of thought and motive must have occurred just as they are described, yet in that description itself it is evident that George Eliot lacks something of dramatic power. She tells us in great detail what her characters think and why they act as they do. The highest form of art would show us this from their own words and actions without the telling. Her characters are often extremely complex. It might be harder to make them speak for themselves than in the case of simpler personages, such as those described by Dickens or Cervantes. Still the reader will often wish that George Eliot had not told him so much of motives and reasons, but had left these to necessary inference.
“Romola” is a work not addressed to the great mass of mankind, but to the student. It presupposesconsiderable knowledge on the part of the reader of Italian names, customs, and events. It is evidently the product of an elaborate study and of a rather intimate knowledge of Florentine institutions and history. It is essentially accurate in its description of the public events of the time, although there are some facts of minor importance which are not confirmed by the most authentic records.
George Eliot follows the chronological and not the logical order in her narrative. There is sometimes a lack of vividness which results from this, and the book as a whole does not impress itself readily on the memory. There are portions of the work which are overloaded with details concerning public ceremonies or historical facts, or illustrating the manners of the people; for instance, the long description of the festival of San Giovanni in the early part of the book. Indeed, the feeling is irrepressible that this work, especially the first half of it, is too prolix, and that unimportant and subsidiary matters becloud in a measure the essential facts upon which the tale depends. In the latter part of the work, however, the dramatic interest of the story becomes more intense, and the narrative proceeds naturally and directly to the double tragedy with which it closes—the death of Melema and the execution of Savonarola.
“Romola” is very little like “The Scarlet Letter” either in the scenes or the construction of the plot. It is far more elaborate than the American romance, yet there is a close similarity in themethods of thought of George Eliot and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The husband of Hester Prynne and the father of Tito Melema appear in the same sinister way, demanding vengeance. Though Florence is very little like the Puritan town, religious fanaticism is a prominent feature in both the stories. The two books leave much the same general impression upon the mind.