FOOTNOTES:
[8] Haworth Churchyard.
[9] A name playfully applied to Emily by her sisters.
MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).
(George Eliot.)
1819-1880.
MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).
(George Eliot.)
Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury Farm, in the parish of Chilvers Coton, on the 22nd of November, 1819. She was the third and youngest child of Robert Evans and his second wife Christiana Pearson. In 1820 the family removed to Griff House, on the Arbury estate, where Mary Ann’s happy childhood was passed. At five years of age she was sent with her sister to Miss Lathom’s boarding-school at Attleboro; in her eighth or ninth year, to Miss Wallington’s at Nuneaton, where Miss Lewis, the principal governess, and “an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman,” became her intimate friend, exercising great influence over her. In her thirteenth year she was transferred to the school of the Miss Franklins at Coventry. In the summer of 1836 Mrs. Evans died; in the following spring the elder sister, Christiana, was married; and thenceforward Mary Ann took entire charge of the Griff household, engaging in various studies and active charities at the same time. In March, 1841, Mr. Robert Evans and his daughter removed to a house on the Foleshill road, near Coventry; Griff being given up to Isaac, the brother, who had recently married. In this new neighborhood Miss Evans formed the friendship of several congenial people—notably Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, and Miss Sara Hennell, a sister of the latter. The impressible young woman, who had till now held her eager nature “buckramed in formalities,” adopted the tone of her friends’ thought the more rapidly and easily because of the inevitable reaction from artificial restraints. She became an agnostic—though neither this nor any other single word fully explains her position.
In the spring of 1844 she took up the translation of Strauss’s ‘Life of Jesus,’ which had already been begun by Mrs. Charles Hennell. Miss Evans did not complete the work until April, 1846.
On the 31st of May, 1849, Mr. Robert Evans died, after a long illness. The Brays persuaded his daughter, who was worn out by anxiety and hard work, to accompany them in a trip to the Continent. At Geneva, where they arrived in July, she decided to remain a while, living at a pension, and carrying on various studies. In October she left the pension to board in the family of M. d’Albert Durade, an artist. He and his wife became her fast friends; M. Durade painted her portrait, and subsequently translated some of her works into French.
Miss Evans returned to England in March, 1850, and, after visiting her brother and sister, made her home at Rosehill with the Brays for more than a year, with occasional visits to London. At the end of September, 1851, she accepted the position of assistant editor of The Westminster Review, and went to board with the family of the publisher, Mr. Chapman, in the Strand. She now became acquainted with Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and other leading thinkers and writers. In 1854 was published her translation of Feuerbach’s ‘Essence of Christianity,’ with her name (now written Marian Evans), on the title-page; this, Mr. Cross informs us, was the only time her real name ever appeared in connection with her work.
In July, 1854, Marian Evans consented to become the wife of George Henry Lewes, though a formal and legal marriage was impossible. They at once went abroad, where they remained until March, 1855; spending the greater part of the time at Weimar and Berlin. After their return to England they lived for over three years in lodgings at Richmond, both working hard, though the health of neither was good. Mrs. Lewes contributed at this time to The Leader and The Westminster Review. She also finished a translation of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics,’ which she had commenced abroad.
In September, 1856, she began, as an experiment, to write fiction. In November The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton was forwarded to the Blackwoods by Mr. Lewes as the work of a friend of his. It was published in Blackwood’s Magazine early in 1857, and fifty guineas paid for it. An arrangement was made by which “George Eliot” was to supply further Scenes from Clerical Life. Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story came next, followed by Janet’s Repentance. In December these stories were issued in a volume by the Blackwoods, and the author received £120 for the first edition.
Adam Bede, her first novel, was published in 1859. She received £800 for the copyright during four years. The book was received with enthusiasm. It was followed by The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Felix Holt (1866), The Spanish Gypsy, a drama (1868), Middlemarch (1871-2), Poems, collected “1874,” Daniel Deronda (1876), and The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879). The short story called The Lifted Veil was published in Blackwood’s, July, 1859; Brother Jacob appeared in The Cornhill Magazine, July, 1864. Romola also made its appearance in The Cornhill, the publishers paying for it the sum of £7,000. £5,000 was received from the Blackwoods for Felix Holt; and the profits of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda were still greater.
In February, 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes removed to Holly Lodge, Wandsworth; in December, 1860, to 16 Blandford Square; and in November, 1863, to their permanent home, “The Priory,” 21 North Bank, Regent’s Park. They purchased in 1876 a country-house at Witley, near Godalming, Surrey. They were both fond of travelling, and the record of their many continental journeys is full of interest. It was their custom to leave town at once as soon as George Eliot had finished a book.
In November, 1878, occurred the death of Mr. Lewes. For some time George Eliot remained in seclusion, broken down by grief. She edited Mr. Lewes’ MSS., and established as a memorial the George Henry Lewes studentship at Cambridge.
In May, 1880, she was married to Mr. John Walter Cross, who had long been the dear friend of herself and Mr. Lewes. Her marriage created general surprise. It may best be understood by those who have become acquainted, through Mr. Cross’s delicate and conscientious work, ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ with the needs of her singularly sensitive nature.
Mr. and Mrs. Cross immediately left England for the Continent, returning in July to Witley. Mrs. Cross had a long illness in the autumn, which left her much weakened. On the 22d of December, 1880, she died at No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, having been confined to the house only four days.
Her husband concludes her biography with the words: “Her spirit joined
‘—— that choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.’”
Nor can any other words be so fit as these of her own—words wherein “the precious life-blood of a master spirit” is “embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
Early home.
An anecdote of her childhood.
The road ascends through a deep cutting overhung by trees which cling to the rocky bank wherever they can find roothold, while festoons of ivy catch every ray of sunlight on their glossy leaves. Past the wood, green fields stretch away on the right of the road; and beyond them, through the branches of fir, elm, oak and birch-trees, a glint of red brick tells us we have reached our goal, for there stands Griff House.... It is a pleasant, substantial house, built of warm red brick, with old-fashioned, small-paned casement windows. The walls are almost hidden by creepers, a glorious old pear-tree, roses and jessamine, and over one end a tangle of luxuriant ivy. Across the smooth green lawn and its flower-beds an old stone vase covered with golden lichen made a point of color beneath the silver stems of a great birch-tree. Outside the light iron fence a group of sheep were bleating below a gnarled and twisted oak. Behind them rose the rich purple-brown wood we had come through, and beyond the wood we caught glimpses of far-away blue distance, swelling uplands and wide-stretching valleys, with here and there a huge chimney sending up a column of black smoke or white puff of steam. On the house-roof pigeons were cooing forth their satisfaction at the sunshine. From the yew-tree close by, a concert of small chirping voices told that Spring was coming.... Within, the house is much in the same state as in the days of Mary Ann Evans’s girlhood. She went for a short time to school at Nuneaton, coming home from Saturday till Monday; but one week, in spite of her love of learning, the little maiden’s heart failed her, and when the time came to start for school she had disappeared. After hours of search, she was at last discovered hiding under the great four-post mahogany bed, which was shown us in its original place in the spare room.
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County,’ in The Century, July, 1885.
Her father.
The father was a remarkable man, and many of the leading traits in his character are to be found in Adam Bede and in Caleb Garth—although, of course, neither of these is a portrait.
Her mother.
Not a precocious child.
“A large slow-growing nature”: Mr. Cross’s important characterization.
His second wife was a woman with an unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd, practical person, with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Hers was an affectionate, warm-hearted nature, and her children, on whom she cast “the benediction of her gaze,” were thoroughly attached to her. She came of a race of yeomen, and her social position was, therefore, rather better than her husband’s at the time of their marriage. Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in the “Mill on the Floss.” The little girl very early became possessed with the idea that she was going to be a personage in the world; and Mr. Charles Lewes has told me an anecdote which George Eliot related of herself as characteristic of this period of her childhood. When she was only four years old she recollected playing on the piano, of which she did not know one note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. This was the time when the love for her brother grew into the child’s affections. She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything he did. She was not, in these baby-days, in the least precocious in learning. In fact, her half-sister, Mrs. Houghton, who was some fourteen years her senior, told me that the child learned to read with some difficulty; but Mr. Isaac Evans says that this was not from any slowness in apprehension, but because she liked playing so much better. Mere sharpness, however, was not a characteristic of her mind. Hers was a large, slow-growing nature; and I think it is, at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant phenomenon about her. In her moral development she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that was most marked in her all through life, namely, the absolute need of some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment or the keenest suffering, knowing “all the wealth and all the woe” of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive in the highest degree.
The sort of happiness that belongs to this budding-time of life, from the age of three to five, is apt to impress itself very strongly on the memory; and it is this period which is referred to in the Brother and Sister Sonnet, “But were another childhood’s world my share, I would be born a little sister there.”
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
At the Miss Franklin’s school.
When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words of a neighbor, who occasionally called at Griff House, “a queer, three-cornered, awkward girl,” who sat in corners and shyly watched her elders, she was placed as boarder with the Misses Franklin at Coventry. This school, then in high repute throughout the neighborhood, was kept by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of unusual attainments and lady-like culture, although not without a certain taint of Johnsonian affectation. She seems to have thoroughly grounded Miss Evans in a sound English education, laying great stress in particular on the propriety of a precise and careful manner of speaking and reading. She herself always made a point of expressing herself in studied sentences.... Miss Evans, in whose family a broad provincial dialect was spoken, soon acquired Miss Rebecca’s carefully elaborated speech, and, not content with that, she might be said to have created a new voice for herself. In later life every one who knew her was struck by the sweetness of her voice, and the finished construction of every sentence as it fell from her lips; for by that time the acquired habit had become second nature, and blended harmoniously with her entire personality. But in those early days the artificial effort at perfect propriety of expression was still perceptible, and produced an impression of affectation, perhaps reflecting that of her revered instructress.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.
Evangelical influences at school—Miss Lewis.
At Miss Wallington’s the growing girl soon distinguished herself by an easy mastery of the usual school-learning of her years, and there, too, the religious side of her nature was developed to a remarkable degree. Miss Lewis was an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman, and exerted a strong influence on her young pupil, whom she found very sympathetically inclined.
The Miss Franklins.
In talking about those early days, my wife impressed on my mind the debt that she felt she owed to the Miss Franklins for their excellent instruction, and she had also the very highest respect for their moral qualities. With her chameleon-like nature she soon adopted their religious views with intense eagerness and conviction, although she never formally joined the Baptists or any other communion than the Church of England. She at once, however, took a foremost place in the school, and became a leader of prayer-meetings among the girls. In addition to a sound English education the Miss Franklins managed to procure for their pupils excellent masters for French, German, and music; so that, looking to the lights of those times, the means of obtaining knowledge was very much above the average for girls. Her teachers, on their side, were very proud of their exceptionally gifted scholar; and years afterwards, when Miss Evans came with her father to live in Coventry, they introduced her to one of their friends, not only as a marvel of mental power, but also as a person “sure to get something up very soon in the way of clothing-club or other charitable undertaking.”
Lonely life at Griff: housekeeper, Lady Bountiful, and student.
After Christiana’s marriage the entire charge of the Griff establishment devolved on Mary Ann, who became a most exemplary housewife, learned thoroughly everything that had to be done, and, with her innate desire for perfection, was never satisfied unless her department was administered in the very best manner that circumstances permitted. She spent a great deal of time in visiting the poor, organizing clothing-clubs, and other works of active charity. But over and above this, as will be seen from the following letters, she was always prosecuting an active intellectual life of her own. Mr. Brezzi, a well-known master of modern languages at Coventry, used to come over to Griff regularly to give her lessons in Italian and German. Mr. McEwen, also from Coventry, continued her lessons in music, and she got through a large amount of miscellaneous reading by herself. In the evening she was always in the habit of playing to her father, who was very fond of music. But it requires no great effort of the imagination to conceive that this life, though full of interests of its own, and the source from whence the future novelist drew the most powerful and the most touching of her creations, was, as a matter of fact, very monotonous, very difficult, very discouraging. It could scarcely be otherwise to a young girl with a full, passionate nature and hungry intellect, shut up in a farm-house in the remote country. For there was no sympathetic human soul near with whom to exchange ideas on the intellectual and spiritual problems that were beginning to agitate her mind.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Butter and cheese making.
One of her chief beauties was in her large, finely shaped, feminine hands—but she once pointed out to a friend at Foleshill that one of them was broader across than the other, saying, with some pride, that it was due to the quantity of butter and cheese she had made during her housekeeping days at Griff.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
Her narrow views of fiction at this period.
As to the discipline our minds receive from the perusal of fictions, I can conceive none that is beneficial but may be attained by that of history. It is the merit of fictions to come within the orbit of probability: if unnatural they would no longer please. If it be said the mind must have relaxation, “Truth is strange—stranger than fiction.” When a person has exhausted the wonders of truth there is no other resort than fiction: till then, I cannot imagine how the adventures of some phantom conjured up by fancy can be more entertaining than the transactions of real specimens of human nature, from which we may safely draw inferences.
Mary Ann Evans: Letter to Miss Lewis, 1839, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Opinions on music.
We have had an oratorio at Coventry lately, Braham, Phillips, Mrs. Knyvett, and Mr. Shaw—the last, I think, I shall attend. I am not fitted to decide on the question of the propriety or lawfulness of such exhibitions of talent and so forth, because I have no soul for music. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” I am a tasteless person, but it would not cost me any regrets if the only music heard in our land were that of strict worship, nor can I think that a pleasure that involves the devotion of all the time and powers of an immortal being to the acquirement of an expertness in so useless (at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred) an accomplishment, can be quite pure or elevating in its tendency.
Mary Ann Evans: Letter to Miss Lewis, 1838, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
A significant reaction.
The above remarks on oratorio are the more surprising because, two years later, when Miss Evans went to the Birmingham festival, in September, 1840, previous to her brother’s marriage, she was affected to an extraordinary degree, so much so that Mrs. Isaac Evans—then Miss Rawlins—told me that the attention of people sitting near was attracted by her hysterical sobbing. And in all her later life music was one of the chiefest delights to her, and especially oratorio.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Mr. Bray’s impressions in 1841.
Although I had known Mary Ann Evans as a child at her father’s house at Griff, our real acquaintance began in 1841, when after she came with her father to reside near Coventry, my sister, who lived next door to her, brought her to call upon us one morning, thinking, amongst other natural reasons for introducing her, that the influence of this superior young lady of Evangelical opinions might be beneficial to our heretical minds. She was then about one-and-twenty, and I can well recollect her appearance and modest demeanor as she sat down on a low ottoman by the window, and I had a sort of surprised feeling when she first spoke, at the measured, highly-cultivated mode of expression, so different from the usual tones of young persons from the country. We became friends at once. We soon found that her mind was already turning toward greater freedom of thought in religious opinion, that she had even bought for herself Hennell’s ‘Inquiry,’ and there was much mutual interest between the author and herself in their frequent meeting at our house.
Charles Bray: ‘Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life.’ London: Longmans & Co., 1885.
Remarkable proportions of Miss Evans’ head.
Mr. Bray, an enthusiastic believer in phrenology, was so much struck with the grand proportions of her head that he took Marian Evans to London to have a cast taken. He thinks that, after that of Napoleon, her head showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person’s recorded.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
The house in the Foleshill road.
Marian’s study.
Her bedroom.
If you go through the quaint old city of Coventry, with its glorious spires, its huge factories, its narrow, irregular streets of timbered houses, you reach at last the road leading to the village of Foleshill, a mile or so outside the limits of the borough. Dirty coal-wharves and smoke-grimed houses, last remnants of the town, gradually give place to scattered cottages, dropped here and there among fields and hedge-rows, smoke-grimed too, but still green in summer. Then on the right comes a little brook with a pathway through some posts beside it. Three tall poplars in a garden fence overshadow it; and through the trees behind, you catch a glimpse of two unpretending brown-stone, semi-detached houses, regular suburban villas, with the same carriage-drive winding up among the trees to each, the same grass-lawn with its beds of evergreens, the same little strips of garden at the back—a mournful attempt to combine town and country; as uninspiring a spot as one can well conceive. To the first of these houses in 1841 came Mr. Evans, when he left Griff; and with him his grave, soft-voiced daughter, Mary Ann, or, as she now called herself, Marian.... “How often have I seen that pale, thoughtful face wandering along the path by the little stream,” said one of her early friends, as we turned into the gate.... Upstairs I was taken into a tiny room over the front door, with a plain square window. This was George Eliot’s little study. Here to the left on entering was her desk; and upon a bracket, in the corner between it and the window, stood an exquisite statuette of Christ, looking towards her. Here she lived among her books, which covered the walls. Here she worked with ardor in the new fields of thought which her friendship with the Brays opened to her.... Out of the study opened her bedroom, looking over the little villa garden with its carriage-drive under the shady trees. But three of these trees remain—a weeping lime, a venerable acacia, with the silvery sheen of a birch between them. In old days there were many more—so many, indeed, as to render the house gloomy in the extreme. But they served to shut off all the sight of the noisy road thirty yards away, though they could not shut off the sound of the busy coal-wharf farther on, whence foul and cruel words to horse and fellow-man floated up through the still summer air, and jarred painfully on that highly strung organization, as Miss Evans sat plunged in thought and work beside her window. It was one of the penalties of a nearer approach to the civilization she had so ardently longed for in her old country life at Griff. From the study you look on the exquisite spires of Coventry, or through the tree-stems on gently-swelling fields with their row of hedge-row elms against the sky.
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
Marian’s appearance and temperament.
A sketch by Mrs. Bray.
Her voice.
Though not above the middle height Marian gave people the impression of being much taller than she really was, her figure, although thin and slight, being well-poised and not without a certain sturdiness of make. She was never robust in health, being delicately strung, and of a highly nervous temperament. In youth the keen excitability of her nature often made her wayward and hysterical. In fact her extraordinary intellectual vigor did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a peculiarly feminine organization. There exists a colored sketch done by Mrs. Bray about this period, which gives one a glimpse of George Eliot in her girlhood. In those Foleshill days she had a quantity of soft pale-brown hair worn in ringlets. Her head was massive, her features powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman, yet having a certain delicacy of outline. A neutral tone of coloring did not help to relieve this general heaviness of structure, the complexion being pale but not fair. Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its frame-work. Her eyes, of a gray-blue, constantly varying in color, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out gray, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. So much was this the case, that a young lady who had once enjoyed an hour’s conversation with her, came away under its spell with the impression that she was beautiful, but afterwards, on seeing George Eliot again when she was not talking, she could hardly believe her to be the same person. The charm of her nature disclosed itself in her manner and her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea in being “like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Æolian harp.” It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
Conduct on her great change of opinion.
It was impossible for such a nature as Miss Evans’s, in the enthusiasm of this first great change, to rest satisfied in compliance with the old forms, and she was so uneasy in an equivocal position that she determined to give up going to church. This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was a Churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter. Upon this, Miss Evans made up her mind to go into lodgings at Leamington, and to try to support herself by teaching.
The conclusion of the matter was that Mr. Evans withdrew his house from the agent’s hands, and his daughter went to stay at Griff, with Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Evans.
Resumes attendance at church.
Her subsequent regrets.
Miss Evans remained for about three weeks at Griff, at the end of which time, through the intervention of her brother, the Brays, and Miss Rebecca Franklin, the father was very glad to receive her again, and she resumed going to church as before.... In the last year of her life she told me that, although she did not think she had been to blame, few things had occasioned her more regret than this temporary collision with her father, which might, she thought, have been avoided with a little management.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
A devoted daughter.
As her friend said with loving pride, “She was the most devoted daughter for those nine years that it is possible to imagine.” Her father always spent three days in the week away from home; and those three days were Miss Evans’ holidays, given up to her work and her friends. But on the evenings he was at home, not the most tempting invitation in the world would induce her to leave him.
Her housekeeping.
“If I am to keep my father’s house, I am going to do it thoroughly,” she would say. And thoroughly she did try to do her duty, even to the matter of cooking on certain occasions. A friend recalls a visit one afternoon, when she found Marian in comical distress over her failures. The cook was ill, and Miss Evans undertook to manufacture a batter-pudding. “And when it came to table, it broke. To think that the mistress could not even make a batter-pudding!”
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
Remarks on her connection with George Henry Lewes.
Not only was Mr. Lewes’ previous family life irretrievably spoiled, but his home had been wholly broken up for nearly two years. In forming a judgment on so momentous a question, it is, above all things, necessary to understand what was actually undertaken, what was actually achieved; and, in my opinion, this can best be arrived at, not from any outside statement or arguments, but by consideration of the whole tenor of the life which follows.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Her own words on the subject.
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 subtile and complex are the influences that mould opinion.... From the majority of persons, of course, we never 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. Levity and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1855, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will out-weigh the small negative good that would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am—but least of all faulty where others most blame.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1857, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
“George Eliot” and George Lewes.
What a contrast the pair presented! He, pétillant d’esprit, as the French say, as brimful of life, geniality, and animation, as it was possible for any human being often oppressed with bodily ailments to be, ever able to shake off these for the sake of lively, engrossing talk, ever on the alert to discover intellectual qualities in others; she, grave, pensive, thoughtful, not disinclined for sportiveness and wit certainly, as ready as he to bring out the best in those around her, but equally devoid of his habitual gayety and lightheartedness, as was he of her own earnest mood. There was something irresistibly winning and attractive about Mr. Lewes. The heart warmed to him at once, he was so kindly, so ready to offer help or counsel, so pleased to be of use. George Eliot’s large-hearted, deep-souled benevolence took in all human kind, but could not so easily individualize. That commanding spirit, that loyal, much-tried nature, could not be expected to testify the same catholicity in personal likings as a man, who, despite his rare intellectual endowments and devotion to especial fields of learning, yet remained a man of the world.
Charles Lamb speaks somewhere of a woman’s “divine plain face,” and perhaps the same criticism might be passed on George Eliot. The plainness vanished as soon as she smiled, and the tone of the voice was singularly sympathetic and harmonious. As to Mr. Lewes’ looks or personal appearance, one never thought of the matter at all. Small, spare, sallow, much bearded, with brilliant eyes, he could neither be called handsome nor ugly. Delightful he ever was, kindness itself, always on the look-out to serve and to amuse. For he knew—none better—the value of a smile.
With George Eliot acquaintance ripened slower into friendship. In spite of her warm human sympathies and the keenness of her desire to enter into the feelings of others, her manner at first awed, perhaps even repelled. It was so much more difficult for her than for Mr. Lewes to quit her own world of thought and speculation, and enter into that of the common joys and sorrows and aspirations of humanity. Yet few delighted more in gathering her friends together. “From my good father I learned the pleasure of being hospitable,” she once said to me with a glow of feeling. “He rejoiced ever to receive his friends, and to my eyes now the pleasure wears the shape of a duty.”
I am not sure as to the precise words she used, but this was the sentiment.
It is pleasant to record their love of the good and the beautiful in the least little thing—George Eliot’s rapture at the sight of an exquisite flower, Mr. Lewes’ delight in a bright happy child; also the keenness of their sympathy with common joys and sorrows, and the unbounded kindliness and pitifulness of their nature.
—— ——: ‘A Week with George Eliot.’ Temple Bar, February, 1885.
First attempt at fiction.
“A capital title.”
‘Scenes from Clerical Life.’
Last chapters of ‘Amos Barton.’
September, 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went further towards the actual writing of the novel than an introductory chapter describing a Staffordshire village and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about every thing else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. My “introductory chapter” was pure description, though there were good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted—indeed, disbelieved in—my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try some time what I could do in fiction, and by and by, when we came back to England, and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my mental power would go towards the production of a novel, was strengthened. He began to say very positively, “You must try and write a story,” and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of which the title was ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton.’ I was soon wide awake again and told G. He said, “Oh, what a capital title!” and from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. George used to say, “It may be a failure—it may be that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps it may be just good enough to warrant your trying again.” Again, “You may write a chef d’œuvre at once—there’s no telling.” But his prevalent impression was, that though I could not write a poor novel, my effort would want the highest quality of fiction—dramatic presentation.... I did not begin my story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan of writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own observation of the clergy, and calling them ‘Scenes from Clerical Life,’ opening with ‘Amos Barton.’ He at once accepted the notion as a good one—fresh and striking; and about a week afterwards, when I read him the first part of ‘Amos,’ he had no longer any doubt about my ability to carry out the plan. The scene at Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had been doubtful about—it was clear I could write good dialogue. There still remained the question whether I could command any pathos; and that was to be decided by the mode in which I treated Milly’s death. One night G. went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, “I think your pathos is better than your fun.”
Marian Evans [Lewes]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Her pseudonym.
I may mention that my wife told me the reason she fixed on this name [George Eliot] was that George was Mr. Lewes’ Christian name, and Eliot was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Genesis of “Adam Bede.”
The germ of “Adam Bede” was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my father’s younger brother)—an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal—a very ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and she described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun to write the “Scenes of Clerical Life.” He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story, with some points in my father’s early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief dramatis personæ, and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of “Scenes,” but afterward when several motives had induced me to close these with “Janet’s Repentance,” I determined on making what we always called in our conversation “My Aunt’s Story” the subject of a long novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857.
Dinah.
The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods—once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father’s last residence, Foleshill.
Adam.
The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father’s early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede—only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and the mutual relation to Hetty—i. e., to the girl who commits child-murder—the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax toward which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader’s interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
‘The Mill on the Floss’ not strictly autobiographical.
Labor of writing ‘Romola.’
Her sense of possession.
Dorothea and Rosamond.
We must be careful not to found too much on suggestions of character in George Eliot’s books; and this must particularly be borne in mind in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ No doubt the early part of Maggie’s portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot’s own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life, but so mixed with fictitious elements and situations that it would be absolutely misleading to trust to it as a true history. The writing of ‘Romola’ ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, “I began it a young woman—I finished it an old woman.” She told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a “not herself,” which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this in regard to the scene in ‘Middlemarch’ between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond’s drawing-room. Then, abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. Of all the characters she had attempted she found Rosamond’s the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of “possession” it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Her MSS.
George Eliot was the most careful and accurate among authors. Her beautifully written manuscript, free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second-hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work’s sake, which she makes a prominent characteristic of ‘Adam Bede,’ and ‘Stradivarius.’
—— ——: ‘George Eliot,’ Blackwood’s Magazine, February, 1881.
Inscriptions on MSS.
The manuscript of ‘Adam Bede’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life.”
The manuscript of ‘The Mill on the Floss’ bears the following inscription:
“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March, 1860.”
The manuscript of ‘Romola’ bears the following inscription:
“To the Husband whose perfect love has been the best source of her insight and strength, this manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer.”
The manuscript of ‘Felix Holt’ bears the following inscription: “From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love.”
The manuscript of ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear—every day dearer—Husband.”
The manuscript of ‘Middlemarch’ bears the following inscription:
“To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.”
The manuscript of ‘Daniel Deronda’ bears the following inscription:
“To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes.
“Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on thee—and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Depression after finishing each book.
As to the “great novel,” which remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future books.... Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The responsibility of the writer grows heavier and heavier—does it not?—as the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really needed contribution to the poetry of the world—I mean possible to oneself to do it.
Attitude towards criticism.
I hardly ever read anything that is written about myself—indeed, never unless my husband expressly wishes me to do so by way of exception. I adopted this rule many years ago as a necessary preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying my power of writing....
I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the short-comings in my works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.
George Eliot: Letters, quoted by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in ‘Last Words from George Eliot,’ Harper’s Magazine, for March, 1882.
George Eliot in 1864.
It was at Villino Trollope, [the Florentine residence of Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope] that we first saw ... George Eliot. She is a woman of forty, perhaps, of large frame and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation, Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed a young girl who had just began to handle a pen, how frankly she related her own literary experience, and how gently she suggested advice. True genius is always allied to humility, and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as much as we had ever admired the writer. “For years,” said she to us, “I wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.”
Kate Field: ‘English Authors in Florence,’ The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1864.
Mr. Cross’s first impression in 1869.
I still seem to hear, as I first heard them, the low, earnest, deep, musical tones of her voice; I still seem to see the fine brows, with the abundant auburn-brown hair framing them, the long head, broadening at the back, the gray-blue eyes, constantly changing in expression, but always with a very loving, almost deprecating look at my mother, the finely-formed, thin, transparent hands, and a whole Wesen that seemed in complete harmony with everything one expected to find in the author of ‘Romola.’
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
The Priory.
Receptions.
Manner of life.
Recreations.
In the course of the year 1865, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes moved from 16 Blandford Square to the Priory, a commodious house in North Bank, St. John’s Wood, which has come to be intimately associated with the memory of George Eliot. Here in the pleasant dwelling-rooms decorated by Owen Jones might be met, at her Sunday afternoon receptions, some of the most eminent men in literature, art and science. For the rest, her life flowed on its even tenor, its routine being rigidly regulated. The morning till lunch time was invariably devoted to writing; in the afternoon she either went out for a quiet drive of about two hours, or she took a walk with Lewes in Regent’s Park. There the strange-looking couple—she with a certain weird, sibylline air, he not unlike some unkempt Polish refugee of vivacious manners—might be seen, swinging their arms as they hurried along at a pace as rapid and eager as their talk. Besides these walks, George Eliot’s chief recreation consisted in frequenting concerts and picture galleries. To music she was passionately devoted, hardly ever failing to attend the Saturday afternoon concerts at St. James’ Hall, besides frequenting various musical reunions.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
A retired life.
Perhaps no one filling a large portion of the thoughts of the public in two hemispheres has ever been so little known to the public at large. Always in delicate health, always living a student life, caring little for what is called general society, though taking a genial delight in that of her chosen friends, she very seldom appeared in public. She went to the houses of but a few, finding it less fatiguing to see her friends at home. Those who knew her by sight beyond her own immediate circle did so from seeing her take her quiet drives in Regent’s Park and the northern slopes of London, or from her attendance at those concerts where the best music of the day was to be heard.
C. Kegan Paul: ‘George Eliot.’ Harper’s Magazine, May, 1881.
Visits to the Zoological Gardens.
Interest in animals.
Another favorite resort of George Eliot’s was the Zoölogical Gardens. She went there a great deal to study the animals, and was particularly fond of the “poor dear ratel” that used to turn somersaults. In fact her knowledge of and sympathy with animals was as remarkable as that which she showed for human nature. Thus she astonished a gentleman farmer by drawing attention to the fine points of his horses. Her intimate acquaintance with the dog comes out in a thousand touches in her novels, and her humorous appreciation of the little pigs led her to watch them attentively, and to pick out some particular favorite. In her country rambles, too, she was fond of turning over stones to inspect the minute insect life teeming in moist, dark places; and she was as interested as Lewes himself in the creatures, frogs, etc., he kept for scientific purposes, and which would sometimes, like the frog in the fairy tale, surprise the household by suddenly making their entrance into the dining-room. Her liking for the “poor brutes,” as she called them, had its origin no doubt in the same source of profound pity which she feels for “the twists and cracks” of imperfect human beings.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot’
Receptions at the Priory.
George Eliot’s conversation.
When London was full, the little drawing-room in St. John’s Wood was now and then crowded to overflowing by those who were glad to give their best of conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes even too great tolerance. But those afternoons had the highest pleasure when London was empty or the day wet, and only a few friends were present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to hear.
C. Kegan Paul: ‘George Eliot.’
Appearance.
One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot’s friends, is that of the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its strongly-marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of expression, especially softening the too prominent under-lip and massive jaw. Her abundant hair, whose smooth bands made a kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue eyes, under noticeable eye-lashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully-shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than one or two friends.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
The entertainment at the Priory was frequently varied by music when any good performer happened to be present. I think, however, that the majority of visitors delighted chiefly to come for the chance of a few words with George Eliot alone. When the drawing-room door opened a first glance revealed her always in the same low arm-chair on the left-hand side of the fire. On entering, a visitor’s eye was at once arrested by the massive head. The abundant hair, streaked with gray now, was draped with lace, arranged mantilla fashion, coming to a point at the top of the forehead. If she were engaged in conversation, her body was usually bent forward with eager, anxious desire to get as close as possible to the person with whom she talked. She had a great dislike to raising her voice, and often became so wholly absorbed in conversation that the announcement of an incoming-visitor sometimes failed to attract her attention; but the moment the eyes were lifted up and recognized a friend they smiled a rare welcome—sincere, cordial, grave; a welcome that was felt to come straight from the heart. Early in the afternoon, with only one or two guests, the talk was always genial and delightful. But her talk, I think, was always most enjoyable à deux. Of evening entertainments there were very few. I think, after 1870, I remember some charming little dinners—never exceeding six persons; and one notable evening when the Poet Laureate read aloud ‘Maud,’ ‘The Northern Farmer,’ and parts of other poems. It was very interesting on this occasion to see the two most widely-known representatives of contemporary English literature sitting side by side.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
An inward beauty.
“A strenuous Demiurge.”
Everything in her aspect was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply-lined face, the too-marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal—all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice that best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a world of feeling that must remain untold.... And then again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not one to be soon forgotten. It had not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to whose child-like confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was the look (if I may use a Platonic phrase) of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy.
Frederick W. H. Myers: ‘George Eliot.’ Century Magazine, November, 1881.
Her personal bearing.
Love of laughter.
Distinctively feminine qualities.
In her personal bearing George Eliot was seldom moved by the hurry which mars all dignity in action. Her commanding brows and deep, penetrating eyes were seconded by the sweet, restrained, impressive speech, which claimed something like an awed attention from strangers. But to those very near to her there was another side of her nature, scarcely suspected by outside friends and acquaintances. No one could be more capable of enjoying and of communicating genuine, loving, hearty, uncontrollable laughter. It was a deep-seated wish, expressed in the poem of ‘Agatha’—“I would have young things merry.” And I remember, many years ago, at the time of our first acquaintance, how deeply it pained her when, in reply to a direct question, I was obliged to admit that, with all my admiration for her books, I found them, on the whole, profoundly sad. But sadness was certainly not the note of her intimate converse. For she had the distinctively feminine qualities which lend a rhythm to the movement of life. The quick sympathy that understands without words; the capacity for creating a complete atmosphere of loving interest; the detachment from outside influences; the delight in everything worthy—even the smallest thing—for its own sake; the readiness to receive as well as to give impressions; the disciplined mental habit which can hold in check and conquer the natural egoism of a massive, powerful personality; the versatility of mind; the varied accomplishments—these are characteristics to be found more highly developed among gifted women than among gifted men.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Type of her face.
The face was one of a group of four, ... all of the same spiritual family, and with a curious interdependence of likeness. These four are Dante, Savonarola, Cardinal Newman and herself.... In the group of which George Eliot was one, there is the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye.
We can hardly hope that posterity will ever know her from likenesses as those who had the honor of her acquaintance knew her in life. The two or three portraits that exist, though valuable, give but a very imperfect presentment. The mere shape of the head would be the despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain.
C. Kegan Paul: ‘George Eliot.’
Her appearance described.
Conversation.
... Her face, instead of beauty, possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow.... Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea Brooke.... She talked as she wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same manner of linking events by analogy and inference.
Her surroundings.
The walls were covered with pictures. I remember Guido’s Aurora, Michael Angelo’s prophets, Raphael’s sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are friends of the house. A grand piano, open and covered with music, indicated recent and continual use.
Mrs. Annie Downs: ‘A Visit to George Eliot.’ The Congregationalist, May 28th, 1879.
Account of a visit to George Eliot.
Her gracious welcome.
Her voice.
No one who had ever seen her could mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men’s) covered with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman’s shoulders. But, as she rose up, her figure appeared but of medium height. She received me very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because very simple, and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of freemasonry among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. “Come, sit by me on this sofa,” she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy that one feels the magnetism of a large mind informed by a true woman’s heart; then, as the soul shines through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can give the full expression of the eye, any more than of the voice. Looking into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in woman. It is a special charm of the most finely-cultured English ladies. But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener—so soft and low, that one must almost bend to hear.
Conversation.
Tact.
Earnestness.
... I should do her great injustice, if I gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at display. There is no wish to “shine.” She is above that affectation of brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of herself, or even to hear the heart-felt praise of others. She does not engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has that delicate tact—which is one of the fine arts among women—to make others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with a broad, free current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of the refined and highly-cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her intellectual superiority, you feel naturally elevated into a higher sphere. The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility.
Mrs. Henry M. Field: ‘Home Sketches in France, and other Papers.’ New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1875.
The character of Casaubon.
A confession.
Mr. Lewes and she were one day good-humoredly recounting the mistaken effusiveness of a too-sympathizing friend, who insisted on assuming that Mr. Casaubon was a portrait of Mr. Lewes, and on condoling with the sad experience which had taught the gifted authoress of ‘Middlemarch’ to depict that gloomy man. And there was indeed something ludicrous in the contrast between the dreary pedant of the novel and the gay self-content of the living savant who stood acting his vivid anecdotes before our eyes. “But from whom, then,” said a friend, turning to Mrs. Lewes, “did you draw Casaubon?” With a humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, nevertheless, she pointed to her own heart. She went on to say—and this we could well believe—that there was one character, that of Rosamond Vincy, which she had found it hard to sustain; such complacency of egoism being alien to her own habits of mind. But she laid no claim to any such natural magnanimity as could avert Casaubon’s temptations of jealous vanity, of bitter resentment. No trace of these faults was ever manifest in her conversation. But much of her moral weight was derived from the impression which her friends received that she had not been by any means without her full share of faulty tendencies to begin with, but that she had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue—what Plato calls an iron sense of truth and right—to which others also, however faulty, by effort might attain.
F. W. H. Myers: ‘George Eliot.’
Anecdote of her parting with Tennyson.
She never tired of the lovely scenery about Witley, and the great expanse of view obtainable from the tops of the many hills. It was on one of her drives in that neighborhood that a characteristic conversation took place between her and one of the greatest English poets, whom she met as he was taking a walk. Even that short interval enabled them to get into somewhat deep conversation on evolution; and as the poet afterward related it to a companion on the same spot, he said, “Here was where I said good-bye to George Eliot; and as she went down the hill, I said, ‘Well, good-bye, you and your molecules,’ and she said to me, ‘I am quite content with my molecules.’” A trifling anecdote, perhaps, but to those who will read between the lines, not other than characteristic of both speakers.
C. Kegan Paul: ‘George Eliot.’
George Eliot’s reading aloud.
We generally began our reading at Witley with some chapters of the Bible, which was a very precious and sacred book to her, not only from early associations, but also from the profound conviction of its importance in the development of the religious life of man. She particularly enjoyed reading aloud some of the finest chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul’s Epistles. With a naturally rich, deep voice, rendered completely flexible by constant practice; with the keenest perception of the requirements of emphasis, and with the most subtile modulations of tone, her reading threw a glamour over indifferent writing, and gave to the greatest writings fresh meanings and beauty. The Bible and our elder English poets best suited the organ-like tones of her voice, which required, for their full effect, a certain solemnity and majesty of rhythm. Her reading of Milton was especially fine; and I shall never forget four great lines of the ‘Samson Agonistes’ to which it did perfect justice—
“But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.”
The delighted conviction of justice in the thought—the sense of perfect accord between thought, language, and rhythm—stimulated the voice of the reader to find the exactly right tone. Such reading requires for its perfection a rare union of intellectual, moral, and physical qualities. It cannot be imitated. It is an art, like singing—a personal possession that dies with the possessor, and leaves nothing behind except a memory.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Intense mental vitality.
Nothing was more remarkable in the last period of her life than her intense mental vitality, which failing health did not seem in the least to impair. She possessed in an eminent degree that power which has led to success in so many directions—which is ascribed both to Newton and to Napoleon—of keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She would cease to read or to ponder when other duties called her, but never (as it seemed) because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to a picture-gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch of earnest interest, and outweary strong men.
F. W. H. Myers: ‘George Eliot.’
Her great stores of reading.
Her memory held securely her great stores of reading. Even of light books her recollections were always crisp, definite, and vivid. On our way home from Venice, after my illness, we were reading French novels of Cherbuliez, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Droz, George Sand. Most of these books she had read years before, and I was astonished to find what clear-cut, accurate impressions had been retained, not only of all the principal characters, but also of all the subsidiary personages—even their names were generally remembered. But, on the other hand, her verbal memory was not always to be depended on. She never could trust herself to write a quotation without verifying it.
Wide culture: languages.
Mathematics.
In foreign languages George Eliot had an experience more unusual among women than among men. With a complete literary and scholarly knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, she spoke all four languages with difficulty, though accurately and grammatically; but the mimetic power of catching intonation and accent was wanting. Greek and Latin she could read with thorough delight to herself; and Hebrew was a favorite study to the end of her life. In her younger days, especially at Geneva, inspired by Professor de la Rive’s lectures, she had been greatly interested in mathematical studies. At one time she applied herself heartily and with keen enjoyment to geometry, and she thought that she might have attained to some excellence in that branch if she had been able to pursue it. In later days the map of the heavens lay constantly on her table at Witley, and she longed for deeper astronomical knowledge. She had a passion for the stars; and one of the things to which we looked forward on returning to London was a possible visit to Greenwich Observatory, as she had never looked through a great telescope of the first-class.
Botany.
Her knowledge of wild-flowers gave a fresh interest each day to our walks in the Surrey lanes, as every hedgerow is full of wonders—to “those who know;” but she would, I think, have disclaimed for herself real botanical knowledge, except of an elementary sort.
Self-distrust.
This wide and varied culture was accompanied with an unaffected distrust of her own knowledge, with the sense of how little she really knew, compared with what it was possible for her to have known, in the world. Her standard was always abnormally high—it was the standard of an expert.
A religious mind.
Her many-sidedness makes it exceedingly difficult to ascertain, either from her books or from the closest personal intimacy, what her exact relation was to any existing religious creed or to any political party. Yet George Eliot’s was emphatically a religious mind. My own impression is that her whole soul was so imbued with, and her imagination was so fired by, the scientific spirit of the age—by the constant rapid development of ideas in the Western world—that she could not conceive that there was, as yet, any religious formula sufficient, nor any known political system likely to be final. She had great hope for the future, in the improvement of human nature by the gradual development of the affections and the sympathetic emotions, and “by the slow, stupendous teaching of the world’s events,” rather than by means of legislative enactments.
Views on the status of women.
She was keenly anxious to redress injustices to women, and to raise their general status in the community. This, she thought, could be best effected by women improving their work—ceasing to be amateurs. But it was one of the most distinctly marked traits in her character that she particularly disliked everything generally associated with the idea of a “masculine woman.” She was, and as a woman she wished to be, above all things, feminine—“so delicate with her needle, and an admirable musician.”
Interest in higher education.
The end of all life.
George Eliot was deeply interested in the higher education of women, ... and was among the earliest contributors to Girton College.... The danger she was alive to in the system of collegiate education was the possible weakening of the bonds of family affection and family duties. In her view, the family life holds the roots of all that is best in our mortal lot; and she always felt that it is far too ruthlessly sacrificed in the case of English men by their public school and university education, and that much more is such a result to be deprecated in the case of women. But, the absolute good being unattainable in our mixed condition of things, those women especially who are obliged to earn their own living must do their best with the opportunities at their command, as “they cannot live with posterity,” when a more perfect system may prevail. Therefore, George Eliot wished Godspeed to the women’s colleges. It was often in her mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is, that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for culture’s sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of producing at best a shrivelled branch.
A meliorist.
In her general attitude toward life George Eliot was neither optimist nor pessimist. She held to the middle term, which she invented for herself, of “meliorist.” She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. She often thought it wisest not to raise too ambitious an ideal, especially for young people, but to impress on ordinary natures the immense possibilities of making a small home circle brighter and better. Few are born to do the great work of the world, but all are born to this. And to the natures capable of the larger effort the field of usefulness will constantly widen.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’