"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now, as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of miles from Stratford brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and mental maturity. Our course by "Avon's stream," bowered by willows or bordered by meads, lies past the noble park where Shakespeare did not steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of Scott's "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire"Loamshire whose characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features, theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas of low-lying meads with circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,—survivors of Shakespeare's "Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it, indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"—green, fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of Godiva and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert Evans—newly appointed agent of the estate—temporarily placed his family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack, at five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 1819, his youngest child, Mary Ann, was born.Birthplace and Home of George Eliot It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems and were already venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House, "the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of life were passed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy mantles its walls, climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned casements; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to the sunshine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie upon either side of the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in "The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household. Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family by repeating stories from "Miller's Jest Book," a treasured volume of hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver—in whose childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a child—that Defoe's "History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites, and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her "Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in part—like Caleb Garth—from the novelist's father. In this same room, but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary Ann's chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver's retreat, where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here is the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame Moore's school, where the novelist began her education, and where years after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away, and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist.Scenes of her Tales In a shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are the "Red Deeps" where Maggie met her lover; the "brown canal" of the poem winds through the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows of multishaped panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway's tragedy "The Orphan."
Shepperton Church
A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton, where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-butter, and where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty years. It is a massive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail running up the outer wall," still leads to the children's gallery as in the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil read his sermons from manuscript "rather yellow and worn at the edges," and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane is the church-yard, with its grassy mounds and mouldering tombstones, one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where MillyMilly's Grave was laid,—"the sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"—the grave to which Barton came back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in George Eliot's girlhood: during his incumbency the community felt aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far from Milly's monument the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother" of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor—smelling no longer of his or Barton's pipe—where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above, its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction, the death of Milly Barton.
A half-mile distant lies the village of Attleboro, where, at the age of five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn's school; and a mile southward from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of Bedworth,—"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"—whose men "walk with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard, overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have wrought little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings, proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we find the market-town of Nuneaton, the MilbyMilby of the romances. The shaking of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot's school-days here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy, smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side, the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows, and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall, black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," LigginsLiggins by name, who afterward claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin at the pump. All about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet's Repentance," Dempser is discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig, delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later; adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with casement windows was Dempser's home, whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the arched passage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way westward amid the pits is Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran preached. A cousin of George Eliot's was recently a coal-master in this vicinity.
Coventry
Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing in Little Park Street, and saw there that lady's father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the stone villa of Birds Grove,Birds Grove which was the home of the novelist after Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the superb spire of St. Michael's Church,—where Kemble and Siddons were married,—was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father's housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here her translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night through at his bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite trees remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill, whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the most valued friendsCoventry Friends of the novelist's young-womanhood and exerted the strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends constitute a great part of Cross's "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman, Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day, "I have seen Emerson—the first man I have ever seen." Sara Hennel testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her father's death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in another suburb of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the Mary Sibtree of the novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed some of the letters used by Cross.
In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of Chapman's house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."
YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY