Tryan, Reverend Edgar

The evangelical curate at Paddiford Common, Milby, by whose in fluence Janet Dempster is rescued. "The strange light from the golden sky falling on his light brown hair, which is brushed high up round his head, makes it look almost like an aureole. His grey eyes, too, shine with unwonted brilliancy this evening. They were not remarkable eyes, but they accorded completely in their changing light with the changing expression of his person, which indicated the paradoxial character often observable in a large-limbed sanguine blond; at once mild and irritable, gentle and overbearing, indolent and resolute, self-con scious and dreamy." "But Mr. Tryan was not cast in the mould of the gratuitous martyr. With a power of persistence which had been often blamed as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking. Every form of disapproval jarred him painfully; and, though he fronted his opponents manfnlly, and often with considerable warmth of temper, he had no pugnacious pleasure in the contest. It was one of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly alive to every harsh wind of opinion." In his youth he had been wild, and the realization of his sins had caused him to enter the churoh and to devote his life to others. When he comes to Milby he has to struggle against the indifference of those whom he would help and the malevolent opposition of Lawyer Dempster. In the end his sympathy, faith, and high purpose give him the victory, for which, however, he pays with his life. He dies happy in the knowledge that, through his influence, Janet Dempster has been rescued from despair. There was undoubtedly an original for the story of the persecution of Mr. Tryan. George Eliot, in 1857, said: "The story, as far as regards the persecution, is a real bit in the religious history of England that happened about eight and twenty years ago." The Reverend W. P. Jones wrote to William Blackwood that Mr. Tryan was drawn from his deceased brother but George Eliot disclaimed this, saying: "Mr. Tryan is not a portrait of any clergyman, living or dead." (See Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol.1, pp. 458, 462.)

<em>Janet's Repentance</em>

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