Connie heard long conversations going on between the two. Or rather,it was mostly Mrs Bolton talking. She had unloosed to him thestream of gossip about Tevershall village. It was more than gossip. It wasMrs Gaskell and George Eliot and Miss Mitford all rolled in one, with agreat deal more, that these women left out. Once started, Mrs Boltonwas better than any book, about the lives of the people. She knew themall so intimately, and had such a peculiar, flamey zest in all theiraffairs, it was wonderful, if just a trifle humiliating to listento hero. At first she had not ventured to 'talk Tevershall', as shecalled it, to Clifford. But once started, it went on. Clifford was listeningfor smaterial, and he found it in plenty. Connie realized that his so-called genius was just this: a perspicuous talent for personal gossip,clever and apparently detached. Mrs Bolton, of course, was very warmwhen she 'talked Tevershall'.Carried away, in fact. And it wasmarvellous, the things that happened and that she knew about. She wouldhave run to dozens of volumes.
Connie was fascinated, listening to her. But afterwards always a little ashamed. She ought not to listen with this queer rabid curiosity.After all, one may hear the most private affairs of other people, but only in a spirit of respect for the struggling, battered thing which any humansoul is, and in a spirit of fine, discriminative sympathy. For even satireis a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils thatreally determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of thenovel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flowof our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away inrecoil from things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properlyhandled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for itis in the passional secret places of life, above all, thatthe tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow,cleansing and freshening.
But the novel, like gossip, can also excite spurious sympathies andrecoils, mechanical and deadening to the psyche. The novel can glorifythe most corrupt feelings, so long as they are conventionally 'pure'.Then the novel, like gossip, becomes at last vicious, and, like gossip,all the more vicious because it is always ostensibly onthe side of the angels0. Mrs Bolton's gossip was always on theside of the angels. And he was such a bad fellow, and she was such anice woman.' Whereas, as Connie could see even from Mrs Bolton'sgossip, the woman had been merely a mealy-mouthed sort, and the manangrily honest. But angry honesty made a 'bad man' of him, and mealy-mouthedness made a 'nice woman' of her, in the vicious, conventionalchannelling of sympathy by Mrs Bolton.
For this reason, the gossip was humiliating. And for the samereason, most novels, especially popular ones, are humiliating too. Thepublic responds now only to an appeal to its vices.
Nevertheless, one got a new vision of Tevershall village from MrsBolton's talk. A terrible, seething welter of ugly life itseemed: not at all the flat drabness it looked from outside. Clifford ofcourse knew by sight most of the people mentioned, Connie knew onlyone or two. But it sounded really more like a Central African jungle thanan English village.
I suppose you heard as Miss Allsopp was married last week!Would you ever! Miss Allsopp, old James' daughter, the boot-and-shoe Allsopp. You know they built a house up at Pye Croft. The oldman died last year from a fall; eighty-three, he was, an' nimble as a lad.An' then he slipped on Bestwood Hill, on a slide as the lads 'ad madelast winter, an' broke his thigh, and that finished him, poor old man, itdid seem a shame. Well, he left all his money to Tattie: didn't leave theboys a penny. An' Tattie, I know, is five years-yes, she's fifty-threelast autumn. And you know they were such Chapel people, myword! She taught Sunday school for thirty years, till her father died.And then she started carrying on with a fellow from Kinbrook, Idon't know if you know him, an oldish fellow with a red nose, ratherdandified, Will cock, as works in Harrison's woodyard.
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