Marian Evans: Letter to the Brays, 1852.
Many of the most interesting little stories in it [her ‘Autobiography’] about herself and others she had told me, ... when I was staying with her, and almost in the very same words. But they were all the better for being told in her silvery voice. She was a charming talker, and a perfect lady in her manners as a hostess.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
Personal appearance.
In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height, “inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time, I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and motherly.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
One of her letters described.