GEORGE ELIOT.
While the great woman who wrote under the nom de plume of George Eliot was alive, there was much appreciative interest and much unlawful curiosity felt regarding her private life. This as a matter of course. No such striking personality as hers could project itself into a time of dulness and mediocrity without exciting unusual interest and attention. And the half-knowledge which had been gained of her life and character served as an active stimulus to this curiosity. One or two leading facts in her history had become known and had been made the most of by a gossip-loving time; but aside from these isolated facts there was very little known of George Eliot, except by a little close circle of personal friends, who seem to have refrained in a remarkable manner from writing of her in the newspapers. That modern and almost purely American institution, the interviewer, allowed her to escape, and even up to the time of her death comparatively little was said of her except as a writer of books. But the interest in her as a woman has been deepening constantly since her death, fed by some half-revelations which have been made; and few books of our own time have been so eagerly anticipated and so universally sought after as the biography by her husband, which lately appeared. Here at last we have that wonderful woman painted by her own hand; not in an autobiography, where a person poses for the public, but in the private letters and journals of a lifetime. Like Mrs. Carlyle, she had unconsciously drawn her own portrait from day to day. An admiring world looks upon the work, and with one voice must pronounce it well done. For it is easy to gather from these unconscious touches everything of real importance in regard to the character and life of this woman. Much as we should have enjoyed the letters and journals in a complete form, untouched by pruning fingers, we cannot but heartily approve the wisdom of Mr. Cross in carefully selecting and editing them. He has shown himself a person of excellent taste and judgment, and one could scarcely ask to fall into better hands, if one's life must be given to the public at all when one has travelled away from the things of time and sense.
Let us see, then, what manner of woman this was who held a world entranced by the splendor of her genius for so many years. Here is one of the earliest glimpses of the child:—
"Any one who happened to look through the windows of Griff House would have seen a pretty picture in the dining-room Saturday evening after tea. The powerful, middle-aged man, with the strongly marked features, sits in his deep leather-covered arm-chair at the right-hand corner of the ruddy fire-place, with the head of the 'little wench' between his knees. The child turns over the book with pictures which she wishes her father to explain to her, or that perhaps she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious hair is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with much service, letting no instant of time escape the inevitable click of the knitting-needles. The father is already proud of the astonishing and growing intelligence of his little girl. An old-fashioned child, already living in a world of her own imagination, impressible to her finger-tips, and ready to give her views upon any subject."
To readers of "The Mill on the Floss" little description of her child-life will be necessary. She has, in Maggie, pictured herself as nearly as possible during childhood. Here is her own description:—
"A creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away, and would not come to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it."
In Adam Bede we have a partial portrait of her father, and there are other striking resemblances to him in Caleb Garth, although neither character is to be really identified with him. Mrs. Poyser bears the same partial relation to her mother. With these people for the dramatis personæ, the drama could scarcely fail to be a striking one. The relation existing between herself and her sister is described in "Dorothea and Celia,"—no intellectual affinity, but strong family affection. The repression of these early years she afterwards refers to in saying,—
"You may try, but you can never imagine, what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl."
During her early youth she writes thus to a friend:—
"I really feel for you, sacrificing as you are your own tastes and comforts for the pleasure of others, and that in a manner the most trying to rebellious flesh and blood; for I verily believe that in most cases it requires more of a martyr's spirit to endure with patience and cheerfulness daily crossings and interruptions of our petty desires and pursuits and to rejoice in them, if they can be made to conduce to God's glory and our own sanctification, than even to lay down our lives for the truth."
Deep religious feeling was one of the most striking characteristics of this period of her youth. On her nineteenth birthday she writes:—
"May the Lord give me such an insight into what is truly good that I may not rest contented with making Christianity a mere addendum to my pursuits, or with tacking it as a mere fringe to my garments! May I seek to be sanctified wholly!"
This religious feeling she carried with her throughout life, although she soon left behind her the tenets and creeds of the church in which she was born and for which she had so strong an affection. In later life, although placing herself entirely outside of historic Christianity, and becoming a rationalist of the rationalists, the fervor of strong religious feeling never left her, and to her latest days she loved to read the Scriptures and to feel the glow of devotional feeling which belonged to her nature. The strong and powerful motive of her life in youth and age was the intense desire to aid and help the world, for which she felt a compassion so strong as to remind one of the descriptions given of Buddha in Eastern song and story. In every period of her life, in her most private letters and journals, this burden of the world's sorrow seemed to find expression, and her pitying love was almost Christ-like in its tenderness.
In forming an estimate of the woman we must never lose sight of this predominating feeling. Next to it in intensity is to be placed the longing for love and sympathy, the strength of the affections. No such deeply loving human heart has been pictured to the world in all the realm of books. To those who have been accustomed to think of George Eliot as the master-mind of her time, the greatest intellect of her generation, the revelation of her heart will be a great surprise and delight. A deep, strong, passionate, loving human soul, with heights and depths of devotion and tenderness unthinkable even to the poorer natures around her,—it was in this that both her strength and her weakness lay. This affectionateness was shown in her youth in her devotion to her father, whose home she kept for several years, and in lavish regard for the few friends who were near her, all of whom she retained and loved to her dying day. It was shown later on in the passionate and absorbing love she gave to Mr. Lewes throughout a lifetime, and which seemed but to deepen and widen with the years; and in the tenderness and thoughtfulness of the mother-love she gave to his children, and which seem to lack not one of the elements of real maternal feeling. This strong, pitying, passionate love of hers—a love hardly to be conceived of by cold and self-contained natures—is the key to the one action of her life requiring apology and charitable construction. In the first place, she pitied Mr. Lewes for the sorrows of his life and for the unfaithfulness of the wife upon whom he had lavished his heart's devotion, and whom he had forgiven for the first offence, only to be deceived the second time. Next, the strong feeling for justice which characterized her nature rebelled against that law which bound him to this unfaithful wife simply because he had once forgiven her; and, finally, the desire she felt to comfort his loneliness and redeem his life overcame all the scruples which the integrity of her nature must have confronted her with, and she defied the law which was odious to her and the conventionalities which were dear to her, in the same act, and assumed the tie which held her in such loyal allegiance until death severed it. Here is the only allusion she made to it in all her correspondence, as far as we know. This was written to one of her oldest friends, Mrs. Bray.
"If there is any one action or relation of my life which is, and always has been, profoundly serious, it is my relation to Mr. Lewes. It is, however, natural enough that you should mistake me in many ways, for not only are you unacquainted with Mr. Lewes's real character, and the course of his actions, but also it is several years since you and I were much together, and it is possible that the modifications my mind has undergone may be quite in the opposite direction of what you imagine. No one can be better aware than yourself that it is possible for two people to hold different opinions on momentous subjects with equal sincerity and an equally earnest conviction that their respective opinions are alone the truly moral ones. If we differ on the subject of the marriage laws, I at least can believe that you cleave to what you believe to be good, and I don't know of anything in the nature of your views that should prevent you from believing the same of me. How far we differ I think we neither of us know; for I am ignorant of your precise views, and apparently you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which are not mine. We cannot set each other right in letters; but one thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by remembering how subtle and complex are the influences which mould opinion. But I do remember this, and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable thoughts about those who condemn us, even though we might have expected a somewhat different verdict. From the majority of persons we never, of course, looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except, indeed, that being happy in each other we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us."
These responsibilities were not light, for they were poor and not yet famous, and must support by their pens not only themselves, but three boys of Mr. Lewes, and their mother. This they found no easy thing to do at first; but when the great success of George Eliot's novels had been attained, their financial affairs became easy, and continued so to the end.
Their life together seemed to be one of unbroken love and confidence, their delight in each other increasing, if possible, with time. The letters and journals of George Eliot are full of expressions of this love and trust, and give us very pleasing pictures of the character and life of Mr. Lewes. He seems to have been an eminently genial, kind, loving, and appreciative man; a man, too, of fascinating manners and wonderfully keen intellect, though totally lacking in any such genius as that which has made George Eliot immortal. Charming glimpses of their home life occur on every page,—a home life that was sweet and well ordered, pervaded by such a spirit of love and devotion as would sanctify any home. George Eliot was the most womanly of women, despite what is often called her masculine intellect; and she made a genuine home, after the true and womanly fashion, delighting in good order and neatness and such attention to details as is an absolute necessity in the formation of a happy home. She never allowed her literary work to prevent her from overseeing that home, and in her younger days seems to have had a real taste for executing these housekeeping details herself. There was no remote hint of Mrs. Jellyby in her, but strong, practical common-sense in all the management of her family affairs, and a real delight in having all things well ordered and agreeable in her home. This is one of the most pleasing of the many revelations of this book. We love to know that she was a true woman, and no intellectual monstrosity. The glimpses that are given of her nursing her father through his long last sickness are very sweet and touching, and everything connected with her devotion to Mr. Lewes's children, down to poor Thornie's death, makes us love her more and more. Indeed, it is a strong, pure, loving, and noble woman that is brought out on every page of this Life. But a very sad and deep-thoughted woman, too; one to whom pity goes out as naturally as love. She was afflicted with ill health all her life, and the record of all this suffering is at times oppressive. One cannot help wishing that we might have had the same woman strong and well, and wondering what sort of books would have been the result. Far pleasanter and more cheering, no doubt, for some of them are heart-breakingly sad as it is, but perhaps no deeper or truer. Then, too, she suffered keenly through her sympathies, feeling for all loss and wrong with the acutest pain; and her lack of faith intensified all her suffering. So did lack of hope; for she was almost as destitute of this cheering friend of man as Carlyle himself, and was given to despondency as the sparks fly upward. In her earlier writing the tears and smiles are blended, her humor lighting up the dark places; but the deepening years deepened her gloom, and her later writing is sombre almost throughout. Yet she had great capacity for joy as well as for sorrow, and enjoyed with the utmost intensity the brighter parts of life, and retained this sense of the pleasure of life even to the end. She speaks much of the intense happiness of her life with Mr. Lewes, and they seem never to have been separated, taking all journeys and holidays together, and never wearying of what she calls their "solitude à deux." Such expressions as these are very frequent throughout the book:—
"I never have anything to call out my ill-humor or discontent,—which you know was always ready enough to come on slight call,—and I have everything to call out love and gratitude. I am very happy,—happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the perfect love and sympathy of a nature that stimulates my own to healthful activity. My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year. I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened, too; the blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long, sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age."
And this extract from the journal of Mr. Lewes leaves us his thought about their life, which is so like her own:—
"I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him that I learned to know Marian,—to know her was to love her,—and since then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!"
That her great books would ever have been written without this loving sympathy and appreciation on the part of Mr. Lewes, seems extremely doubtful. She needed encouragement at every step, being prone to despair about her writings, and she had the utmost reliance upon the judgment and taste of the companion of her life. And he seems to have been everything that heart could desire as loving critic and counsellor. Her sympathy with the lives and hopes of others is very charming, particularly with the love and marriage of their eldest boy, though it is shown constantly in a true womanly way; as, for instance:—
"A pretty thing has happened to an acquaintance of mine, which is quite a tonic to one's hope. She has all her life been working in various ways, as housekeeper, governess, etc.,—a dear little dot about four feet eleven in height; pleasant to look at and clever; a working-woman without any of those epicene queernesses that belong to the class. More than once she has told me that courage quite forsook her. She felt there was no good in living and striving. Well, a man of fortune and accomplishments has just fallen in love with her—now she is thirty-three. It is the prettiest story of a swift-decided passion, and made me cry for joy. Madame B—— and I went with her to buy her wedding clothes. If you will only imagine all I have not said, you will think this a very charming fairy tale."
In 1878 her happy companionship with the man she had so passionately loved was ended by his death. The only entry in her diary in 1879 is this: "Here I and sorrow sit." The desolation of her life told terribly upon her health and spirits. She saw no one, wrote to no one, had no thoughts, as she tells us, for many months. Among the first lines she wrote were these:—
"Some time, if I live, I shall be able to see you,—perhaps sooner than any one else,—but not yet. Life seems to get harder instead of easier. When I said some time, I meant still a distant time. I want to live a little time, that I may do certain things for his sake. So I try to keep up my strength, and I work as much as I can to save my mind from imbecility. But that is all at present. But what used to be joy is joy no longer, and what is pain is easier, because he has not to bear it."
Again:—
"You must excuse my weakness, remembering that for nearly twenty-five years I have been used to find my happiness in his. I can find it nowhere else. But we can live and be helpful without happiness, and I have had more than myriads who were and are better fitted for it."
As soon as she was able to see any friends, Mr. Cross, who was an old and valued one, began to visit her and be helpful to her in many ways, and he soon became a comfort to that gentle nature to which some prop was indispensable. She grew accustomed to him, and began to rely upon his support. After a while she could read with him, and her mind renewed its vigor. Still later she could play for him, and the consolation of music was added to her life. As the months went by she leaned upon him more and more, and found real comfort in his kindly ministrations. This is the first allusion to him in her letters:—
"I have a comfortable country practitioner to watch over me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who is backward and forward continually to see that I lack nothing."
Of the outcome of that watchful tenderness Mr. Cross says:—
"As the year went on George Eliot began to see all her old friends again. But her life was nevertheless a life of heart-loneliness. Accustomed as she had been for so many years to solitude à deux, the want of close companionship continued to be very bitterly felt. She was in the habit of going with me very frequently to the National Gallery and to other exhibitions of pictures. This constant companionship engrossed me completely and was a new interest to her. A bond of mutual dependence had been formed between us. It was finally decided that our marriage should take place as soon and as privately as possible."
She writes thus of this marriage:—
"All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my share, after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, so to speak, my coffin was ready for me in the next room. Deep down below there is a hidden river of sadness, but this must always be with those who have lived so long; but I am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently I think I should have become selfish.
"The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead of any former affection being displaced, I seem to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean that I had been conscious of a certain drying-up of tenderness in me, and that now the spring seems to have risen again."
The consolations of this new love and tenderness were to cheer her but a little time, for they were scarcely settled in the new home after the trip abroad, during which time she had excellent health and enjoyed everything much, before the final illness came, and "the fever called living was over at last."
Amid the falling of the bitter rain of winter, in the deadliest desolation of the year, they bore her to her rest amid the silent. She whose speech has endeared her to the whole thinking world, whose thoughts have borne us like an anthem ever upward to the loftiest and the best, all her sacred service done, shall know hereafter no more work, no more device, but the deep calm of rest, untroubled by the vexing sights and shows of time.
We cannot think that she met the solemn, swift release with dread. She looked too deeply into life to make of it a mere thing of daily bread, of common homely joys and trifling labors; but all its sorest problems weighed her down, and all its deepest doubt and dull despairing went with her to the last, saddening even the happiest moments of her life. And the falling of that cold and solemn winter rain into that grave, about which gathered many of the greatest minds in England with reverent tears, seems not sad but sweet,—a kind release from the stress and strain of a tumultuous existence. Nevermore will that still heart be crushed and riven by wrongs and woes which she has no power to aid; nevermore life's terrors hold and o'ermaster her; nevermore a questioning world look upon her in judgment. With the great of every time and nation she has at last taken her place, and will hold it evermore.
