"But our banker was really a charitable man, and a benevolent man, and a sincere believer. How, then, was he a hypocrite? Simply because he professed to be far more charitable, more benevolent, and more pious than he really was. His reputation had now arrived to that degree of immaculate polish that the smallest breath, which would not have tarnished the character of another man, would have fixed an indelible stain upon his."
The same might be said of another banker, the respectable
Bulstrode, whom George Eliot presents with no satire
and an almost pitiful sympathy.
The wealthy plebeian Avenel is embarrassed by the inopportune arrival of his rustic sister in the presence of his aristocratic guests. By a brilliant counter-stroke of a candid and courageous confession, he stems the tide and wins the day. But in private he is very severe with the poor culprit, and then admits to himself, "I'm a cursed humbug,
- * * but the world is such a humbug!"[1]
The only Pecksniffian hypocrite outside of Dickens is the Reverend Brocklehurst, whom Jane Eyre describes as lecturing to the half starved and shivering girls at the school of which he was trustee, on the beauty of asceticism and the holiness of economy, while his wife and daughters sit in state on the platform, curled, bejewelled, opulent in plumes and velvet.
The cant and manœuvering of the Thackeray and Trollope hypocrites are necessary as first aid to the ambitious. By means of them Becky Sharp achieves a husband, Mrs. Mackenzie a son-in-law, Moffit and Crosbie a patrician father-in-law, and Lady Carbury a literary reputation. Mr. Slope and the Pateroffs fail but no less bear up beneath their unsuccess. Melmotte, another Merdle,
- ↑ My Novel, 353.
