In beginning to get some clear view of the actual living personality which I have hitherto designated as George Eliot, one is immediately struck with the fact that it has enjoyed more of what Jack Falstaff would call a commodity of good names than falls to the lot of most mortals. As one rehearses these names it is curious also to reflect what a different train of associations each one suggests. It is hard to believe that Marian Evans, Amos Barton (for when the editor of Blackwood's was corresponding with her about her first unsigned manuscript, which was entitled, The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, I find him addressing her as "My dear Amos"), George Eliot, Mrs. Lewes, and Mrs. Cross are one and the same person. Amid all these appellations I find myself most strongly attracted towards that of George Eliot. This was the name which she chose for herself; it was under this name that she made her great successes; it was by this name that she endeared herself to all who love great and faithful work; and surely—if one may paraphrase Poe—the angels call her George Eliot. Since therefore we are mainly interested in Marian Evans, or Mrs. Lewes, or Mrs. Cross, just in so far as they bear intimate relations to George Eliot, I find myself drawn, in placing before you such sketch as I have been able to make of this remarkable personage, to begin with some account of the birth of the specific George Eliot, and having acquired a view of the circumstances attending that event, to look backward and forward from that as a central point at the origin and life of Marian Evans on the one hand, and of Mrs. Lewes and Mrs. Cross on the other.
On a certain night in the autumn of 1856, the editor of Blackwood's Magazine, was seated in an apartment of his own house, reading a manuscript which he had lately received from London, called The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton. About 11 o'clock in the evening Thackeray, who had been staying with him and had been out to dinner, entered the room, and the editor remarked, "Do you know I think I have lighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger?"
Hereupon he read to Thackeray a passage from the manuscript which he held in his hand. We are able to identify this passage, and it seems interesting to reproduce it here, not only as a specimen of the kind of matter which was particularly striking to the editor of a great magazine twenty-five years ago, but as about the first tangible utterance of the real George Eliot. The passage occurs early in the second chapter of the story. In the first chapter we have had some description of the old church and the existing society in Shepperton "twenty-five years ago," which dating from 1856 would show us that village about the year 1830-31. In the second chapter we are immediately introduced to the Rev. Amos Barton, and the page or two which our editor read to Thackeray was this:
Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard! The silver light that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons. He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp decision at the vicarage door. It is opened without delay by the nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at once—that is to say, by the robust maid-of-all work, Nanny; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his hat in the passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular complexion—even the small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a mongrel, indefinite kind—with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no particular expression, is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising from brow to crown. You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The house is quiet, for it is half-past ten, and the children have long been gone to bed. He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife, as he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light of one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the red fire-light, holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks over her shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large and small stockings lying unmended on the table.
She was a lovely woman—Mrs. Amos Barton; a large, fair, gentle Madonna, with thick, close chestnut curls beside her well rounded cheeks, and with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing line of her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed black silk seemed to repose on her bust and limbs with a placid elegance and sense of distinction, in strong contrast with the uneasy sense of being no fit, that seemed to express itself in the rustling of Mrs. Farquhar's gros de Naples. The caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous—for in those days even fashionable caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her long, arched neck, and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with her chestnut curls, they seemed miracles of successful millinery. Among strangers she was shy and tremulous as a girl of fifteen; she blushed crimson if any one appealed to her opinion; yet that tall, graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its mildness, that men spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity.... I venture to say Mrs. Barton would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps have had in your eye for her—a man with sufficient income and abundant personal éclat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.
"I wish we could do without borrowing money, and yet I don't see how we can. Poor Fred must have some new shoes; I couldn't let him go to Mrs. Bond's yesterday because his toes were peeping out, dear child; and I can't let him walk anywhere except in the garden. He must have a pair before Sunday. Really, boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are."
Mrs. Barton was playfully undervaluing her skill in metamorphosing boots and shoes. She had at that moment on her feet a pair of slippers which had long ago lived through the prunella phase of their existence, and were now running a respectable career as black silk slippers, having been neatly covered with that material by Mrs. Barton's own neat fingers.
Wonderful fingers those! they were never empty; for if she went to spend a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came her thimble and a piece of calico or muslin, which before she left, had become a mysterious little garment with all sorts of hemmed ins and outs. She was even trying to persuade her husband to leave off tight pantaloons; because if he would wear the ordinary gun-cases, she knew she could make them so well that no one would suspect the tailor.
But by this time Mr. Barton has finished his pipe, the candle begins to burn low, and Mrs. Barton goes to see if Nanny has succeeded in lulling Walter to sleep. Nanny is that moment putting him in the little cot by his mother's bedside; the head with its thin wavelets of brown hair, indents the little pillow; and a tiny, waxen, dimpled fist hides the rosy lips, for baby is given to the infantine peccadillo of thumb-sucking. So Nanny could now join in the short evening prayer, and all go to bed. Mrs. Barton carried up stairs the remainder of her heap of stockings, and laid them on a table close to her bedside, where also she placed a warm shawl, removing her candle, before she put it out, to a tin socket fixed at the head of her bed. Her body was weary, but her heart was not heavy, in spite of Mr. Woods the butcher, and the transitory nature of shoe-leather; for her heart so overflowed with love, she felt sure she was near a fountain of love that would care for her husband and babes better than she could foresee; so she was soon asleep. But about half-past five o'clock in the morning, if there were any angels watching round her bed—and angels might be glad of such an office—they saw Mrs. Barton rise up quietly, careful not to disturb the slumbering Amos, who was snoring the snore of the just; light her candle, prop herself upright with the pillows, throw the warm shawl round her shoulders, and renew her attack on the heap of undarned stockings. She darned away until she heard Nanny stirring, and then drowsiness came with the dawn; the candle was put out, and she sank into a doze. But at nine o'clock she was at the breakfast-table busy cutting bread and butter for five hungry mouths, while Nanny, baby on one arm, in rosy cheeks, fat neck, and night-gown, brought in a jug of hot milk and water.