The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

1859, 1964 Holt, Rinehart and Winston edition
George Meredith
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son
Original price unknown, bought used for $4.25
Worn paperback but not bad condition for its age
B+

I'm not sure why I don't read this book more often.  It's just as good as Don Quixote and Tom Jones, and certainly not as long.   It might be that, despite its proto-Wildean wit, it's emotionally draining, especially the ending.  I'm not bothered by there being an unhappy ending, since, as Charles J. Hill notes in the introduction, there's lots of foreshadowing.  It's more that it's not the unhappy ending that it seems to be building to.  If Richard died in the duel, that would have a literary and karmic justice.  But Lucy's death comes almost out of nowhere.  And the worst part about the ending is in the chapters just before it.  It's all so preventable, if someone would speak up.

The title seems at first a paradox.  Is this about Richard or about him and his father?  The answer is it's about the "ordeal," the burden that is on father and son because Lady Feverel ran off with the father's best friend.  Austin Feverel responds by, one, writing a book that seems misogynist but wins him the admiration of women, and two, raising his son according to a system.  Richard turns out well in the sense that he's physically healthy, intelligent, and pure-minded.  However, he's inherited both his mother's impetuosity and his father's stubbornness, a very dangerous combination.  When he falls for a working-class Catholic girl, while his father has betrothed him to the youngest daughter of a more ridiculous system, things do not go well.  And they keep going not well, because Austin punishes Richard in a way that's unemotional on the surface and bitter underneath.

I remembered this book as very like Vanity Fair, and certainly a few of the characters, such as The Eighteenth Century, could've stepped out of Thackeray.  Some of the simpler characters, such as Tom Bakewell and Mrs. Berry, feel like they're out of Dickens.  But there is more complexity and less caricature than in either Thackeray or Dickens.  In fact, I was reminded a bit of Jane Austen, down to Meredith putting in a witty but flawed character, Adrian Harley.

One thing that sets this apart from Vanity Fair and so many other books of its time is that it's contemporary.  Yes, the beginning tells of Richard's early childhood, but the main part of the book covers a span of about seven years.  And it's a world of trains and telegrams, a world where Adrian can comment on expanding the vote (even further than in the pre-1832-Reform-Act world of Middlemarch, which is coming up).  Much as I love Austen, it's almost a relief to move into the "modern world."  (I can relate to the mid-1800s much more than to the early 1800s.)

That the writing, especially plotting, isn't as solid as the best of Austen, that the novel is just very, very good rather than fantastic is nothing to be ashamed of.  As father and son learn, flaws are part of being human.