‘The Mill on the Floss’

Tracy Niven

Tuesday 12 May 2020

Good morning,

Today’s Contribution to Companionship comes from Leslie Stevenson, one of our Honorary Quaker Chaplains….

For years I have had the habit of reading some good literature before turning out the light to sleep.  Recently I started on The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans), in my father’s copy with his annotations.

It begins with the childhood of the clever and impulsive Maggie Tulliver (age 9) and her boyish practical brother Tom (12) whose company and love she craves.  (Maggie is clearly based on Mary Ann’s own childhood experiences.)  They have their tiffs and jealousies, but I found the following passage (at the end of I.5) extraordinarily affecting:

It was one of their happy mornings.  They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other  . . .

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives.  We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it – if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass – the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows – the same redbreast that we used to call “God’s birds”, because they did no harm to the precious crops.  What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because is it known?

(There is a somewhat similar passage at the end of II.1.)  There are already hints that their father’s angry disposition will lead to downfall (I haven’t read that far yet).  In passages like this Eliot stands back from her narrative and dialogue and offers commentary that is psychological, sociological, economic, geographical, botanical, or poetic (though there are some long paragraphs of telling rather than showing).  She gives us a vivid, solid picture of life in provincial rural England in the early 19^th century, as Constable did in his paintings – where mills also figure!  She offers us penetrating insights into human nature, and into childhood.

If we have been fortunate in our family and our circumstances (and we must hope that early traumatic experiences can be overcome by therapy and love) “the thoughts and loves of our first years will always make part of our lives”.  Wordsworth said the same at greater length in his enormous autobiographical poem The Prelude.  As a grandfather, I hope that the present difficult circumstances will not damage, and may even in some small ways enhance, the thoughts and loves of the new generation.  But they will need to go to school for education and for socialisation, and to get out on the grass.

Yours,
Donald.