The Mill on the Floss

“ But all this while Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and prevent Wakem from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill. Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her chicks to market ”

“ It was transfigured—a fairy palace, just as the mud barges in the Suez Canal had been transformed by the search-light of the 'Fulvia'. For the moment, in the wonder of change from darkness to light, the valley became the picture of a dream. Every man was at his post in the mill, and in an instant work was going on as we had seen it in the morning. Then, all at once, there came a great roar, as it were, from the very heart of the mill—a deep diapason, dug out of the throat of the hills: the big whistle. ”

“ It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge....
Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. ”

“ As we troop to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and infirmity—but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel between its merciless jaws is the little child.
So long as I am part of its food and triumph I will study the mill.
Leaving the line of flashing, whirling spools, I lean against the green box full of cotton refuse and regard the giant room. ”

“ Not,” he added, with polite significance,—“not that a man can’t be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.”
“I believe you,” said Mr Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one side; “but that’s where it is. I don’t mean Tom to be a miller and farmer. I see no fun i’ that. Why, if I made him a miller an’ farmer, he’d be expectin’ to take to the mill an’ the land, an’ a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. ”

“ Tulliver?" said Mr. Wakem rather sharply. "What do you want to ask me?"
"Why, sir, if you'll be so good," said Mrs. Tulliver, starting a little, and speaking more hurriedly,–"if you'll be so good not to buy the mill an' the land,–the land wouldn't so much matter, only my husband ull' be like mad at your having it." ”

“ Out of the darkness of the other part of the mill there came in a sound of rushing water, plainly distinguishable above the roar of the water flowing over the dam, and the dashing rain and the gusts of wind. Then, as they stood, listening curiously, there came a deep, rumbling sound out of the very vitals of the old mill; there was a gentle quivering throughout all its timbers; a groaning in all its aged structure; a whirring, droning sound—the wheels of the mill were turning, and there was needed only the pushing of one of the levers to set the great mill-stones, themselves, to grinding. ”

“ Follow the grass-fringed banks in their graceful curve around yonder dark, gray promontory, until your eye rests upon a long ridge of snowy foam, where a stream of considerable magnitude mingles its waters with those of the river. Glancing a little way up this stream, a huge old mill presents itself to view, blackened with exposure, and grown picturesque by the lapse of years. Here and there the green moss adorns its roof, and slumbers along the walls with a quaint richness, especially where the heavy water-wheel, revolving in a sea of foam, keeps it shadowy and moist. ”

“ And water’s a very particular thing; you can’t pick it up with a pitchfork. That’s why it’s been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It’s plain enough what’s the rights and the wrongs of water, if you look at it straight-forrard; for a river’s a river, and if you’ve got a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it’s no use telling me Pivart’s erigation and nonsense won’t stop my wheel ”

“ The walls were often bulging and split. The door of the parlour—for there was no such luxury as a hall—had lost a hinge. A mangy dog of all known breeds lay asleep on a heap of dirty straw in the yard. I saw that the place was built upon the bank of a little stream here flowing swiftly into the main river; and must once have been a prosperous mill. But that, I judged, was years ago.
I left my canoe in the mill-pool, then whipped into ripples by the storm; and, regardless of the fact that water streamed out of my flannels, I knocked upon the open door of the kitchen. ”

“ He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own mill, and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable substance. ”

“ Another or two of those strangely drawn-out seconds passed, and then the watchers had their reward. The great, green, mossy wall, with all its luxuriance of orange-tinted bracken and golden fern, seemed to shiver as if touched by a passing wind. Then the quivering motion ceased, the whole centre crumbled softly down, and it was as if some huge, hoary monster, a living earthquake, had leaped from the prison in which it was bound, to spring upon its prey—the great mill buildings below. ”

“ Fire followed as naturally as the spark follows the jar of flint and steel, and with a hundred and fifty years to dry its beams, its cobwebbed walls hung with mouldy dust from the grinding of as many harvests, its complex wooden troughs and grain-shoots parched to tinder, the old mill was a ready prey. ”

“ But when I look back now, after some years, at the experiences of that day, I am astonished by the running fire of events, which, unfortunately, were not all joy.
As I write I can hear that keen wild singing of the saw come to us distantly, with a pleasant, weird elation. The big mill hung above the river, its sides all open, humming with labour, as I had seen it many a time during my visit to Roscoe. The sun beat in upon it, making a broad piazza of light about its sides. Beyond it were pleasant shadows, through which men passed and repassed at their work. Life was busy all about it. ”

“ From their short half-hour of mid-noon rest, the whistle, piercing, inanimate call, has dared to command the slavish obedience of animate and intelligent beings. I pause by the trestle over which rumble the cars, heavily laden with the cotton cloth whose perfection has made this Southern mill justly famous.
The file of humanity that passes me I shall never forget! The Blank Mill claims 1,500 of these labourers; at least 200 are children. The little things run and keep step with the older men and women; their shaggy, frowzled heads are bent, their hands protrude pitifully from their sleeves ”

“ Nothing can be more peaceful, more secluded, more shut in; and if not wildly sublime, yet rock and wood and torrent combined to render it picturesque; a rustic bridge crossed the stream, and there, abutting against the hill side, stood the mill, and before the mill a large pleasant room for the reception of guests, for many come, especially on feast days, to dine here. ”

“ If you remember, at the time my father's property was sold, there was some thought of your firm buying the Mill; I know you thought it would be a very good investment, especially if steam were applied. ”

“ A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. ”

“ Here too we discovered a rambling old mill, the subdued droning of whose great wheel mingled with the plashing of falling water and the murmuring sur—sur—suring of the wind-stirred foliage—sounds that were just enough to make us realise the stillness and tranquilness of the spot. One does not always comprehend the quietude of Nature; we travel too much in company to do this. But besides the old mill, that so pleased us that we forthwith made a sketch of it, there was close at hand an ancient lock, gray and green, and just sufficiently tumble-down to be perfectly picturesque. ”

“ Mills are mills indeed, and own no kindred with beauty. But along the slopes of the Hollow, behind and between the mill buildings, were tokens of life. Numbers of new cottages were risen, and rising, on the upper slopes of the banks, the new village even flowing over the crest of the hill upon the level land above. ”

“ When I finally came out in the rear of what was plainly the remains of an ancient water-driven cane-crushing mill, I realized that the old grade by which I had descended must have been the bullock-cart road from the plantation. The mill was a picturesque old [pg 202] ruin, with its mossy water-wheel, crumbling roof and sprawling pier, and I made mental note of the lovely little cove as a place well worth returning to with paintbox and easel when opportunity offered. ”

“ The reverberating noises of the mills, the scream of steam, the slow, perpetual unfurling of smoke, the trundling cars of stone and ore without visible hand to guide or control, the swinging of huge cranes and beams,—and then in comparison the tininess, the unimportance of the scattering human forms passing in the mill-yards, made it seem as if mighty forces had been put in operation and then abandoned to their fate. ”

“ His breath began to come in short gasps, thinking of what was unplayed—what no man had ever yet played. He listened, and amid the uproar of the storm, while the loose planks rattled and the wind drew screaming through the whistling places, he caught the rhythm of the old mill, and he knew that after a time he would play it on the fiddle and make it into music that would cheer him on his way. ”

“ It was filled with bristling, gnarled oak, and the walls beneath were draped with Nature’s curtains, formed of the long strands of small-leaved ivy; and there, if you liked, you could look down, to the left, upon a lovely garden, the mossy roofs of mill and house, all to the left; while to the right you looked up the zig-zag gorge with its closed-in, often perpendicular walls, to see the glancing waters of the stream, and far up, the great plunging fall, flashing with light when the sun was overhead, deep in shadow as it passed onward towards the west. ”

“ She loved old mills; no country was beautiful without them. Had she seen old mills? No, she had not, but she had read of them and had found them scattered throughout the pages of art. She acknowledged after a time that the lakes were charming, the woods replete with sweet dreaming, the lanes full of a vagabond fancy, tinkers of imagination sleeping under the leaves; but without a ruined mill there could be no perfect rest for the mind. ”

“ The greetings of old friends at an end, he would whistle to Miracle, a venerable spaniel some fisherman had once found on a bit of wreckage at sea, and climb up to his mill, there to browse and dream and wander in fancy whithersoever the spirits of the place should beckon.
“The mill was a ruin,” he says; “a crumbling mass of stone, iron, and ancient boards which had not turned in the wind for many years, and which lay, with broken limbs, as useless as a poet, while all around on the hillside the miller’s trade prospered and ground and ground with all its wings. ”

“ The consequence was that not a dozen words passed between us, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him draw near the old mill in almost complete forgetfulness of my proximity. This was what I wanted, for in the few minutes I had to think, many curious surmises had risen in my mind, and I wished to perform my little part in this adventure without hindrance from his watchfulness or care. ”

“ With Excelsior as my future workshop I leave the mill to seek lodging in the mill village.
The houses built by the corporation for the hands are some five or six minutes' walk, not more, from the palace-like structure of the mill proper. To reach them I plod through a roadway ankle-deep in red clay dust. The sun is bright and the air heavy, lifeless and dull; the scene before me is desolate, meager and poverty-stricken in the extreme.
The mill houses are all built exactly alike. Painted in sickly greens and yellows, they rise on stilt-like elevations above the malarial soil. ”

“ Just as a burning forest is a magnificent scene with a dismal sequel, so the saw-miller’s industry, though it finds a paradise and leaves a rubbish-yard, is, while it goes on, a picturesque business. Like many forms of destruction, it lends itself to the exertion of boldness, strength, and skill. The mill itself is probably too primitive to be exactly ugly, and the complicated machinery is interesting when in action, albeit its noises, which at a distance blend into a humming vibration, rise near at hand to tearing and rending, clattering and howling. ”

“ We were three brothers, sons of a gray, old man, whose father, and his father before him, had owned and run a flour mill in the ancient city of Winton in Hampshire. This mill stood a little back from the north side of the east and more deserted end of the High street, and faced a little bridge—wooden in those days, but stone now—through which raced the first of the mill fall that came thundering out from under the old timber building, as though it had burst at a push some ancient dam and were hurrying off to make up for lost ages of restraint. ”

“ Both were post mills, more or less like the reconstructed windmill of William Robertson in Williamsburg. This is the simplest among several types of wind-operated mills and was the type first adopted in Europe, in England generally, and in the colonies.
Anyone who has read much poetry cannot fail to realize that a watermill is by nature a more romantic machine than a windmill. Poets recognize this as a fact, and perhaps non-poets who have spent some well remembered moments down by the old mill stream will agree. ”