Journal, 1880.
Dec. 3.—Came to 4 Cheyne Walk.
Dec. 4.—Went to Popular Concert at St. James's Hall. Heard Madame Neruda, Piatti, and Miss Zimmermann.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th Dec. 1880.
Only on Friday evening did we get into this new house, and I had deferred writing to you till I could say "Come and see me." I can say so now, but on reflection I have come to the conclusion that you would like yourself to fix a time beforehand, the journey here being rather long. Perhaps you will like to choose a day on which you could go to Emily also, her house being less formidably distant—across the park and down Sloane Street would be an easy way to us. This week we shall be much engaged in household matters, such as the reduction to order of the chaos which still reigns in certain places least obvious to visitors, and the procuring of small objects, either necessary or desirable. But after this week I shall be most glad if you and Dr. Congreve will come to see us just as and when you would find the least inconvenience in doing so—either at lunch-time (half-past one) or at a later hour.
I find myself in a new climate here—the London air and this particular house being so warm compared with Witley. I hope that you too find the air mild, for I know that suits you best.
Dr. and Mrs. Congreve paid their promised visit the week after this letter was written; and Madame Belloc lunched with us the following day. Order was beginning to reign in the new house. The books had all been arranged as nearly as possible in the same order that they had occupied at the Priory, Mr. Radermacher of the Pantechnicon having given his personal attention to this arrangement of some thousands of volumes, for which George Eliot was particularly grateful. Notwithstanding all this care, however, there were many unforeseen details of furnishing still to be completed, which caused a considerable expenditure of time. We continued reading aloud Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of Language," and Duffield's translation of "Don Quixote;" we were also reading "Hermann and Dorothea," Tennyson's last volume of poems, just published, and Mr. Frederic Myers's volume on Wordsworth. In the evenings we had always a little feast of music, and were becoming in every way reconciled to town life, notwithstanding the loss of country quiet, light, and beauty. On the afternoon of Friday, the 17th December, we went to see the "Agamemnon" performed in Greek by Oxford undergraduates. The representation was a great enjoyment—an exciting stimulus—and my wife proposed that during the winter we should read together some of the great Greek dramas. The following afternoon we went to the Saturday Popular Concert at St. James's Hall. It was a cold day. The air in the hall was overheated, and George Eliot allowed a fur cloak which she wore to slip from her shoulders. I was conscious of a draught, and was afraid of it for her, as she was very sensitive to cold. I begged her to resume the cloak, but, smiling, she whispered that the room was really too hot. In the evening she played through several of the pieces that we had heard at the concert, with all her accustomed enjoyment of the piano, and with a touch as true and as delicate as ever. On Sunday there was very slight trouble in the throat, but not sufficient to prevent her from coming down-stairs to breakfast as usual. In the afternoon she was well enough to receive visits from Mr. Herbert Spencer and one or two other friends. Afterwards she began the following letter to Mrs. Strachey. It was left unfinished in her writing-case, and is printed as it stands.
Letter to Mrs. Strachey, 19th Dec. 1880.
I have been thinking so much of Lady Colvile, and yet I shrank from troubling even your more indirect sympathetic sorrow with a letter. I am wondering how far her health is in a state to endure this loss—a loss which extends even to me, who only occasionally saw, but was always cheered by, the expression of a wise and sweet nature, which clearly shone in Sir James Colvile's manner and conversation. One great comfort I believe she has—that of a sister's affection.
Here the letter is broken off. The pen which had delighted and comforted so many minds and hearts here made its last mark. The spring, which had broadened out into so wide a river of speech, ceased to flow.
Little more remains to be told. On Monday the doctor treated the case as one of laryngeal sore throat; and when Dr. Andrew Clark came for consultation on Wednesday evening the pericardium was found to be seriously affected. While the doctors were at her bedside she had just time to whisper to me, "Tell them I have great pain in the left side," before she became unconscious. Her long illness in the autumn had left her no power to rally. She passed away, about ten o'clock at night, on the 22d December, 1880.
She died, as she would herself have chosen to die, without protracted pain, and with every faculty brightly vigorous.
Her body rests in Highgate Cemetery, in the grave next to Mr. Lewes. In sleet and snow, on a bitter day—the 29th December—very many whom she knew, very many whom she did not know, pressed to her grave-side with tributes of tears and flowers.
Her spirit joined that choir invisible "whose music is the gladness of the world."