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.