Massey, Bartle

The caustic, keen-witted old schoolmaster of Hayslope, who is patient with backward pupils, but bitter towards all women. "The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side, had rather a formidable character ; and ids brow, more over, had that peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impatient temperament : the blue veins stood out like cords under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever." He is a man of ability and education who has been made a crabbed woman-hater by some experience of his youth. He is at odds with Joshua Bann on the subject of church music, and often comments sharply on Hayslope doings and sayings. To Adam Bede, who had been a pupil in his night-school, Bartle Massey is a loyal friend, giving up all of his own interests to go to Stoniton to stay with Adam during Hetty Sorrel's trial. Bartle Massey is one of the real named used by George Eliot in Adam Bede. The master of the school which her father, Robert Evans ("Adam Bede ") attended near Roston, was named Bartle Massey, and, according to the account of him given by Mottram, had some of the characteristics of the Bartle Massey of the story. (See Mottram, True Story of George Eliot, pp. 15, 24; Parkinson, Scenes from the George Eliot Country, p. 96)

<em>Adam Bede</em>

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