"And friends, dear friends, when it shall beThat this low breath is gone from me,And round my bier ye come to weep,Let one most loving of you allSay, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,--He giveth his beloved sleep!'"The Italians, who loved her, placed on the doorway of Casa Guidi a white marble tablet, with the words:--"Here wrote and died E.B. Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, united the science of a sage and the spirit of a poet, and made with her verse a golden ring binding Italy and England."Grateful Florence placed this memorial, 1861."For twenty-five years Robert Browning and his artist-son have done their work, blessed with the memory of her whom Mr. Stedman calls "the most inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have composed in ancient or modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time."George Eliot.GEORGE ELIOT--1864.Going to the Exposition at New Orleans, I took for reading on the journey, the life of George Eliot, by her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, written with great delicacy and beauty. An accident delayed us, so that for three days I enjoyed this insight into a wonderful life. I copied the amazing list of books she had read, and transferred to my note-book many of her beautiful thoughts. To-day I have been reading the book again; a clear, vivid picture of a very great woman, whose works, says theSpectator, "are the best specimens of powerful, simple English, since Shakespeare."What made her a superior woman? Not wealthy parentage; not congenial surroundings. She had a generous, sympathetic heart for a foundation, and on this she built a scholarship that even few men can equal. She loved science, and philosophy, and language, and mathematics, and grew broad enough to discuss great questions and think great thoughts. And yet she was affectionate, tender, and gentle.Mary Ann Evans was born Nov. 22, 1819, at Arbury Farm, a mile from Griff, in Warwickshire, England. When four months old the family moved to Griff, where the girl lived till she was twenty-one, in a two-story, old-fashioned, red brick house, the walls covered with ivy. Two Norway firs and an old yew-tree shaded the lawn. The father, Robert Evans, a man of intelligence and good sense, was bred a builder and carpenter, afterward becoming a land-agent for one of the large estates. The mother was a woman of sterling character, practical and capable.For the three children, Christiana, Isaac, and Mary Ann, there was little variety in the commonplace life at Griff. Twice a day the coach from Birmingham to Stamford passed by the house, and the coachman and guard in scarlet were a great diversion. She thus describes, the locality inFelix Holt: "Here were powerful men walking queerly, with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine, going home to throw themselves down in their blackened flannel, and sleep through the daylight, then rise and spend much of their high wages at the alehouse with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the pale, eager faces of handloom weavers, men and women, haggard from sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for the languid mothers gave their strength to the loom."Mary Ann was an affectionate, sensitive child, fond of out-door sports, imitating everything she saw her brother do, and early in life feeling in her heart that she was to be "somebody." When but four years old, she would seat herself at the piano and play, though she did not know one note from another, that the servant might see that she was a distinguished person! Her life was a happy one, as is shown in herBrother and Sister Sonnet:--"But were another childhood's world my share,I would be born a little sister there."At five, the mother being in poor health, the child was sent to a boarding-school with her sister, Chrissy, where she remained three or four years. The older scholars petted her, calling her "little mamma." At eight she went to a larger school, at Nuneaton, where one of the teachers, Miss Lewis, became her life-long friend. The child had the greatest fondness for reading, her first book, aLinnet's Life, being tenderly cared for all her days.Aesop's Fableswere read and re-read. At this time a neighbor had loaned one of the Waverley novels to the older sister, who returned it before Mary Ann had finished it. Distressed at this break in the story, she began to write out as nearly as she could remember, the whole volume for herself. Her amazed family re-borrowed the book, and the child was happy. The mother sometimes protested against the use of so many candles for night reading, and rightly feared that her eyes would be spoiled.At the next school, at Coventry, Mary Ann so surpassed her comrades that they stood in awe of her, but managed to overcome this when a basket of dainties came in from the country home. In 1836 the excellent mother died. Mary Ann wrote to a friend in after life, "I began at sixteen to be acquainted with the unspeakable grief of a last parting, in the death of my mother." In the following spring Chrissy was married, and after a good cry with her brother over this breaking up of the home circle, Mary Ann took upon herself the household duties, and became the care-taker instead of the school-girl. Although so young she took a leading part in the benevolent work of the neighborhood.Her love for books increased. She engaged a well-known teacher to come from Coventry and give her lessons in French, German, and Italian, while another helped her in music, of which she was passionately fond. Later, she studied Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Hebrew. Shut up in the farm-house, hungering for knowledge, she applied herself with a persistency and earnestness that by-and-by were to bear their legitimate fruit. That she felt the privation of a collegiate course is undoubted. She says inDaniel Deronda: "You may try, but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl."She did not neglect her household duties. One of her hands, which were noticeable for their beauty of shape, was broader than the other, which, she used to say with some pride, was owing to the butter and cheese she had made. At twenty she was reading theLife of Wilberforce, Josephus'History of the Jews, Spenser'sFaery Queen,Don Quixote, Milton, Bacon, Mrs. Somerville'sConnection of the Physical Sciences, and Wordsworth. The latter was always an especial favorite, and his life, by Frederick Myers in theMen of Lettersseries, was one of the last books she ever read.Already she was learning the illimitableness of knowledge. "For my part," she says, "I am ready to sit down and weep at the impossibility of my understanding or barely knowing a fraction of the sum of objects that present themselves for our contemplation in books and in life."About this time Mr. Evans left the farm, and moved to Foleshill, near Coventry. The poor people at Griff were very sorry, and said, "We shall never have another Mary Ann Evans." Marian, as she was now called, found at Foleshill a few intellectual and companionable friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bray, both authors, and Miss Hennell, their sister.Through the influence of these friends she gave up some of her evangelical views, but she never ceased to be a devoted student and lover of the Bible. She was happy in her communing with nature. "Delicious autumn," she said. "My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about the earth, seeking the successive autumns.... I have been revelling in Nichol'sArchitecture, of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System, and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system, from universe to universe."In 1844, when Miss Evans was twenty-five years old, she began the translation of Strauss'Life of Jesus. The lady who was to marry Miss Hennell's brother had partially done the work, and asked Miss Evans to finish it. For nearly three years she gave it all the time at her command, receiving only one hundred dollars for the labor.It was a difficult and weary work. "When I can work fast," she said, "I am never weary, nor do I regret either that the work has been begun or that I have undertaken it. I am only inclined to vow that I will never translate again, if I live to correct the sheets for Strauss." When the book was finished, it was declared to be "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike translation ... word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence." Strauss himself was delighted with it.The days passed as usual in the quiet home. Now she and her father, the latter in failing health, visited the Isle of Wight, and saw beautiful Alum Bay, with its "high precipice, the strata upheaved perpendicularly in rainbow,--like streaks of the brightest maize, violet, pink, blue, red, brown, and brilliant white,--worn by the weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep blue sky above, and the glorious sea below." Who of us has not felt this same delight in looking upon this picture, painted by nature?Now Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as other famous people, visited the Bray family. Miss Evans writes: "I have seen Emerson,--the firstmanI have ever seen." High praise indeed from our "great, calm soul," as he called Miss Evans. "I am grateful for the Carlyle eulogium (on Emerson). I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love another."Each evening she played on the piano to her admiring father, and finally, through months of illness, carried him down tenderly to the grave. He died May 31, 1849.Worn with care, Miss Evans went upon the Continent with the Brays, visiting Paris, Milan, the Italian lakes, and finally resting for some months at Geneva'. As her means were limited, she tried to sell herEncyclopaedia Britannicaat half-price, so that she could have money for music lessons, and to attend a course of lectures on experimental physics, by the renowned Professor de la Rive. She was also carefully reading socialistic themes, Proudhon, Rousseau, and others. She wrote to friends: "The days are really only two hours long, and I have so many things to do that I go to bed every night miserable because I have left out something I meant to do.... I take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft."On her return to England, she visited the Brays, and met Mr. Chapman, the editor of theWestminster Review, and Mr. Mackay, upon whoseProgress of the Intellectshe had just written a review. Mr. Chapman must have been deeply impressed with the learning and ability of Miss Evans, for he offered her the position of assistant editor of the magazine,--a most unusual position for a woman, since its contributors were Froude, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and other able men.Miss Evans accepted, and went to board with Mr. Chapman's family in London. How different this from the quiet life at Foleshill! The best society, that is, the greatest in mind, opened wide its doors to her. Herbert Spencer, who had just publishedSocial Statics, became one of her best friends. Harriet Martineau came often to see her. Grote was very friendly.The woman-editor was now thirty-two; her massive head covered with brown curls, blue-gray eyes, mobile, sympathetic mouth, strong chin, pale face, and soft, low voice, like Dorothea's inMiddlemarch,--"the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Aeolian harp." Mr. Bray thought that Miss Evans' head, after that of Napoleon, showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person's recorded.She had extraordinary power of expression, and extraordinary psychological powers, but her chief attraction was her universal sympathy. "She essentially resembled Socrates," says Mathilde Blind, "in her manner of eliciting whatsoever capacity for thought might be latent in the people she came in contact with; were it only a shoemaker or day-laborer, she would never rest till she had found out in what points that particular man differed from other men of his class. She always rather educed what was in others than impressed herself on them; showing much kindliness of heart in drawing out people who were shy. Sympathy was the keynote of her nature, the source of her iridescent humor, of her subtle knowledge of character, of her dramatic genius." No person attains to permanent fame without sympathy.Miss Evans now found her heart and hands full of work. Her first article was a review of Carlyle'sLife of John Sterling. She was fond of biography. She said: "We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer, that when some great or good person dies, instead of the dreary three-or-five volume compilation of letter and diary and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real 'life,' setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows."A few such lives (chiefly autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading.... It is a help to read such a life as Margaret Fuller's. How inexpressibly touching that passage from her journal, 'I shall always reign through the intellect, but the life! the life! O my God! shall that never be sweet?' I am thankful, as if for myself, that it was sweet at last."The great minds which Miss Evans met made life a constant joy, though she was frail in health. Now Herbert Spencer took her to hearWilliam Tellor theCreation. She wrote of him: "We have agreed that we are not in love with each other, and that there is no reason why we should not have as much of each other's society as we like. He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him.... My brightest spot, next to my love ofoldfriends, is the deliciously calm,newfriendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. We see each other every day, and have a delightfulcamaraderiein everything. But for him my life would be desolate enough."There is no telling what this happy friendship might have resulted in, if Mr. Spencer had not introduced to Miss Evans, George Henry Lewes, a man of brilliant conversational powers, who had written aHistory of Philosophy, two novels,Ranthorpe, andRose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a contributor to several reviews. Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a newspaper, and unsuccessful in his domestic relations.That he loved Miss Evans is not strange; that she admired him, while she pitied him and his three sons in their broken home-life, is perhaps not strange. At first she did not like him, nor did Margaret Fuller, but Miss Evans says: "Mr. Lewes is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy."Miss Evans tired of her hard work, as who does not in this working world? "I am bothered to death," she writes, "with article-reading and scrap-work of all sorts; it is clear my poor head will never produce anything under these circumstances;but I am patient.... I had a long call from George Combe yesterday. He says he thinks theWestminsterundermymanagement the most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence; theEdinburgh, under Jeffrey, nothing to it, etc. I wishIthought so too."Sick with continued headaches, she went up to the English lakes to visit Miss Martineau. The coach, at half-past six in the evening, stopped at "The Knoll," and a beaming face came to welcome her. During the evening, she says, "Miss Martineau came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way, telling me she was so glad she had got me here."Meantime Miss Evans was writing learned and valuable articles onTaxation, Woman in France, Evangelical Teaching, etc. She received five hundred dollars yearly from her father's estate, but she lived simply, that she might spend much of this for poor relations.In 1854 she resigned her position on theWestminster, and went with Mr. Lewes to Germany, forming a union which thousands who love her must regard as the great mistake of a very great life.Mr. Lewes was collecting materials for hisLife of Goethe. This took them to Goethe's home at Weimar. "By the side of the bed," she says, "stands a stuffed chair where he used to sit and read while he drank his coffee in the morning. It was not until very late in his life that he adopted the luxury of an armchair. From the other side of the study one enters the library, which is fitted up in a very make-shift fashion, with rough deal shelves, and bits of paper, with Philosophy, History, etc., written on them, to mark the classification of the books. Among such memorials one breathes deeply, and the tears rush to one's eyes."George Eliot met Liszt, and "for the first time in her life beheld real inspiration,--for the first time heard the true tones of the piano." Rauch, the great sculptor, called upon them, and "won our hearts by his beautiful person and the benignant and intelligent charm of his conversation."Both writers were hard at work. George Eliot was writing an article onWeimarforFraser, onCummingforWestminster, and translating Spinoza'sEthics. No name was signed to these productions, as it would not do to have it known that a woman wrote them. The education of most women was so meagre that the articles would have been considered of little value. Happily Girton and Newnham colleges are changing this estimate of the sex. Women do not like to be regarded as inferior; then they must educate themselves as thoroughly as the best men are educated.Mr. Lewes was not well. "This is a terrible trial to us poor scribblers," she writes, "to whom health is money, as well as all other things worth having." They had but one sitting-room between them, and the scratching of another pen so affected her nerves, as to drive her nearly wild. Pecuniarily, life was a harder struggle than ever, for there were four more mouths to be fed,--Mr. Lewes' three sons and their mother."Our life is intensely occupied, and the days are far too short," she writes. They were reading in every spare moment, twelve plays of Shakespeare, Goethe's works,Wilhelm Meister, Götz von Berlichingen, Hermann and Dorothea, Iphigenia, Wanderjahre, Italianische Reise, and others; Heine's poems; Lessing'sLaocoönandNathan the Wise; Macaulay'sHistory of England; Moore'sLife of Sheridan; Brougham'sLives of Men of Letters; White'sHistory of Selborne; Whewell'sHistory of Inductive Sciences; Boswell; Carpenter'sComparative Physiology; Jones'Animal Kingdom; Alison'sHistory of Europe; Kahnis'History of German Protestantism; Schrader'sGerman Mythology; Kingsley'sGreek Heroes; and theIliadandOdysseyin the original. She says, "If you want delightful reading, get Lowell'sMy Study Windows, and read the essays calledMy Garden AcquaintancesandWinter." No wonder they were busy.On their return from Germany they went to the sea-shore, that Mr. Lewes might perfect hisSea-side Studies. George Eliot entered heartily into the work. "We were immensely excited," she says, "by the discovery of this little red mesembryanthemum. It was acrescendoof delight when we found a 'strawberry,' and afortissimowhen I, for the first time, saw the pale, fawn-colored tentacles of anAnthea cereusviciously waving like little serpents in a low-tide pool." They read here Gosse'sRambles on the Devonshire Coast, Edward'sZoology, Harvey's sea-side book, and other scientific works.And now at thirty-seven George Eliot was to begin her creative work. Mr. Lewes had often said to her, "You have wit, description, and philosophy--those go a good way towards the production of a novel." "It had always been a vague dream of mine," she says, "that sometime or other I might write a novel ... but I never went further toward the actual writing than an introductory chapter, describing a Staffordshire village, and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that. I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about everything else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts."After she had written a portion ofAmos Bartonin herScenes of Clerical Life, she read it to Mr. Lewes, who told her that now he was sure she could write good dialogue, but not as yet sure about her pathos. One evening, in his absence, she wrote the scene describing Milly's death, and read it to Mr. Lewes, on his return. "We both cried over it," she says, "and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, 'I think your pathos is better than your fun!'"Mr. Lewes sent the story to Blackwood, with the signature of "George Eliot,"--the first name chosen because it was his own name, and the last because it pleased her fancy. Mr. Lewes wrote that this story by a friend of his, showed, according to his judgment, "such humor, pathos, vivid presentation, and nice observation as have not been exhibited, in this style, since theVicar of Wakefield."Mr. John Blackwood accepted the story, but made some comments which discouraged the author from trying another. Mr. Lewes wrote him the effects of his words, which he hastened to withdraw, as there was so much to be said in praise that he really desired more stories from the same pen, and sent her a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.This was evidently soothing, asMr. Gilfil's Love StoryandJanet's Repentancewere at once written. Much interest began to be expressed about the author. Some said Bulwer wrote the sketches. Thackeray praised them, and Arthur Helps said, "He is a great writer." Copies of the stories bound together, with the titleScenes of Clerical Life, were sent to Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Faraday. Dickens praised the humor and the pathos, and thought the author was a woman.Jane Welch Carlyle thought it "ahumanbook, written out of the heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an author, full of tenderness and pathos, without a scrap of sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes one feel friends at once and for always with the man or woman who wrote it." She guessed the author was "a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom he has got those beautifulfemininetouches in his book, a good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness for as I have for my little Nero."Mr. Lewes was delighted, and said, "Her fame is beginning." George Eliot was growing happier, for her nature had been somewhat despondent. She used to say, "Expecting disappointments is the only form of hope with which I am familiar." She said, "I feel a deep satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose-root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come." "'Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails' is my gospel," she would say. "Writing is part of my religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within. At the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world have been written with the hope of getting money for them.""My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties."ForScenes of Clerical Lifeshe received six hundred dollars for the first edition, and much more after her other books appeared.And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind,Adam Bede, the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her aunt, Elizabeth Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant girl had murdered her child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, stayed with her all night, praying with her, and at last she burst into tears and confessed her crime. Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.When the first pages ofAdam Bedewere shown to Mr. Blackwood, he said, "That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich, Dresden, and Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the book in this time. When it was finished, she wrote on the manuscript,Jubilate. "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life."For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright for four years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were talking about it. John Murray said there had never been such a book. Charles Reade said, putting his finger on Lisbeth's account of her coming home with her husband from their marriage, "the finest thing since Shakespeare." A workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton said, in the House of Commons: "As the farmer's wife says inAdam Bede, 'It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different.'" This of course greatly helped to popularize the book.To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest gratitude. They were able now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once. The poverty and the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make me.... I am assured now thatAdam Bedewas worth writing,--worth living through those long years to write. But now it seems impossible that I shall ever write anything so good and true again." Up to this time the world did not know who George Eliot was; but as a man by the name of Liggins laid claim to the authorship, and tried to borrow money for his needs because Blackwood would not pay him, the real name of the author had to be divulged.Five thousand copies ofAdam Bedewere sold the first two weeks, and sixteen thousand the first year. So excellent was the sale that Mr. Blackwood sent her four thousand dollars in addition to the first four. The work was soon translated into French, German, and Hungarian. Mr. Lewes'Physiology of Common Lifewas now published, but it brought little pecuniary return.The reading was carried on as usual by the two students. TheLife of George Stephenson; theElectraof Sophocles; theAgamemnonof Aeschylus, Harriet Martineau'sBritish Empire in India; andHistory of the Thirty Years' Peace; Béranger,Modern Painters, containing some of the finest writing of the age; Overbech on Greek art; Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich; Carlyle'sLife of Frederick the Great; Darwin'sOrigin of Species; Emerson'sMan the Reformer, "which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning"; Buckle'sHistory of Civilization; Plato and Aristotle.An American publisher now offered her six thousand dollars for a book, but she was obliged to decline, for she was writing theMill on the Floss, in 1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars for the first edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers fifteen hundred dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz paid her five hundred for the German reprint.She said: "I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas." They went at once to Italy, where they spent several months in Florence, Venice, and Rome.In the former city she made her studies for her great novel,Romola. She read Sismondi'sHistory of the Italian Republics, Tenneman'sHistory of Philosophy, T.A. Trollope'sBeata, Hallam on theStudy of Roman Law in the Middle Ages, Gibbon on theRevival of Greek Learning, Burlamachi'sLife of Savonarola; also Villari's life of the great preacher, Mrs. Jameson'sSacred and Legendary Art, Machiavelli's works, Petrarch's Letters,Casa Guidi Windows, Buhle'sHistory of Modern Philosophy, Story'sRoba di Roma, Liddell'sRome, Gibbon, Mosheim, and one might almost say the whole range of Italian literature in the original. Of Mommsen'sHistory of Romeshe said, "It is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it without the deepest stirrings."The study necessary to make one familiar with fifteenth century times was almost limitless. No wonder she told Mr. Cross, years afterward, "I beganRomolaa young woman, I finished it an old woman"; but that, withAdam BedeandMiddlemarch, will be her monument. "What courage and patience," she says, "are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!" "In authorship I hold carelessness to be a mortal sin." "I took unspeakable pains in preparing to writeRomola."For this one book, on which she spent a year and a half,Cornhill Magazinepaid her the small fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars. She purchased a pleasant home, "The Priory," Regent's Park, where she made her friends welcome, though she never made calls upon any, for lack of time. She had found, like Victor Hugo, that time is a very precious thing for those who wish to succeed in life. Browning, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer often came to dine.Says Mr. Cross, in his admirable life: "The entertainment 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 of the Priory 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 in-coming visitor 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, not graduated according to any social distinction."After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political economy,Felix Holtwas written, in 1866, and for this she received from Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of her books, which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for rest.In 1868 she published her long poem,The Spanish Gypsy, reading Spanish literature carefully, and finally passing some time in Spain, that she might be the better able to make a lasting work. Had she given her life to poetry, doubtless she would have been a great poet.Silas Marner, written beforeRomola, in 1861, had been well received, andMiddlemarch, in 1872, made a great sensation. It was translated into several languages. George Bancroft wrote her from Berlin that everybody was reading it. For this she received a much larger sum than the thirty-five thousand which she was paid forRomola.A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of pleasure grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and flowers about her house. "Sunlight and sweet air," she said, "make a new creature of me."Daniel Derondafollowed in 1876, for which, it is said, she read nearly a thousand volumes. Whether this be true or not, the list of books given in her life, of her reading in these later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for any who desire real knowledge.At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few friends like the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady Holland. Both were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor health. Finally, after a ten days' illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and his affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe Spencer a debt of gratitude. It was through him that I learned to know Marian,--to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!"Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory of the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.Mr. Cross' mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting. They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul."I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet."Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half after Mr. Lewes' death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self.... To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure." Having passed through a severe illness, she wrote to a friend: "I have been cared for by something much better than angelic tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection that has chosen to watch over me."She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the happiness instead of me."On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily. George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars for woman's higher education at Girton College, and helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was proud to be remembered.She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. Then they read Max Muller's works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever was best in English, French, and German literature. Milton she called her demigod. Her husband says she had "a limitless persistency in application." Her health was better, and she gave promise of doing more great work. When urged to write her autobiography, she said, half sighing and half smiling: "The only thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I suffered from, of ever being able to achieve anything. No one could ever have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler."Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to seeAgamemnonperformed in Greek by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St. James Hall. She took cold, and on Monday was treated for sore throat. On Wednesday evening the doctors came, and she whispered to her husband, "Tell them I have great pain in the left side." This was the last word. She died with every faculty bright, and her heart responsive to all noble things.She loved knowledge to the end. She said, "My constant groan is that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time."She had the broadest charity for those whose views differed from hers. She said, "The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn, is to tolerate intolerance." She hoped for and "looked forward to the time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am falling."One Sunday afternoon I went to her grave in Highgate Cemetery, London. A gray granite shaft, about twenty-five feet high, stands above it, with these beautiful words from her great poem:--"O may I join the choir invisible,Of those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence."HERE LIES THE BODYOFGEORGE ELIOT,MARY ANN CROSS.BORN, 22d NOVEMBER, 1819;DIED, 22d DECEMBER, 1880.A stone coping is around this grave, and bouquets of yellow crocuses and hyacinths lie upon it. Next to her grave is a horizontal slab, with the name of George Henry Lewes upon the stone.Elizabeth Fry.My attached and obliged friend Elizabeth FryWhen a woman of beauty, great wealth, and the highest social position, devotes her life to the lifting of the lowly and the criminal, and preaches the Gospel from the north of Scotland to the south of France, it is not strange that the world admires, and that books are written in praise of her. Unselfishness makes a rare and radiant life, and this was the crowning beauty of the life of Elizabeth Fry.Born in Norwich, England, May 21, 1780, Elizabeth was the third daughter of Mr. John Gurney, a wealthy London merchant. Mrs. Gurney, the mother, a descendant of the Barclays of Ury, was a woman of much personal beauty, singularly intellectual for those times, making her home a place where literary and scientific people loved to gather.Elizabeth wellnigh idolized her mother, and used often to cry after going to bed, lest death should take away the precious parent. In the daytime, when the mother, not very robust, would sometimes lie down to rest, the child would creep to the bedside and watch tenderly and anxiously, to see if she were breathing. Well might Mrs. Gurney say,"My dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and is, in every sense of the word, truly engaging."Mrs. Fry wrote years afterward: "My mother was most dear to me, and the walks she took with me in the old-fashioned garden are as fresh with me as if only just passed, and her telling me about Adam and Eve being driven out of Paradise. I always considered it must be just like our garden.... I remember with pleasure my mother's beds of wild flowers, which, with delight, I used as a child to attend with her; it gave me that pleasure in observing their beauties and varieties that, though I never have had time to become a botanist, few can imagine, in my many journeys, how I have been pleased and refreshed by observing and enjoying the wild flowers on my way."The home, Earlham Hall, was one of much beauty and elegance, a seat of the Bacon family. The large house stood in the centre of a well-wooded park, the river Wensum flowing through it. On the south front of the house was a large lawn, flanked by great trees, underneath which wild flowers grew in profusion. The views about the house were so artistic that artists often came there to sketch.In this restful and happy home, after a brief illness, Mrs. Gurney died in early womanhood, leaving eleven children, all young, the smallest but two years old. Elizabeth was twelve, old enough to feel the irreparable loss. To the day of her death the memory of this time was extremely sad.She was a nervous and sensitive child, afraid of the dark, begging that a light be left in her room, and equally afraid to bathe in the sea. Her feelings were regarded as the whims of a child, and her nervous system was injured in consequence. She always felt the lack of wisdom in "hardening" children, and said, "I am now of opinion that my fear would have been much more subdued, and great suffering spared, by its having been still more yielded to: by having a light left in my room, not being long left alone, and never forced to bathe."After her marriage she guided her children rather than attempt "to break their wills," and lived to see happy results from the good sense and Christian principle involved in such guiding. In her prison work she used the least possible governing, winning control by kindness and gentleness.Elizabeth grew to young womanhood, with pleasing manners, slight and graceful in body, with a profusion of soft flaxen hair, and a bright, intelligent face. Her mind was quick, penetrating, and original. She was a skilful rider on horseback, and made a fine impression in her scarlet riding-habit, for, while her family were Quakers, they did not adopt the gray dress.She was attractive in society and much admired. She writes in her journal: "Company at dinner; I must beware of not being a flirt, it is an abominable character; I hope I shall never be one, and yet I fear I am one now a little.... I think I am by degrees losing many excellent qualities. I lay it to my great love of gayety, and the world.... I am now seventeen, and if some kind and great circumstance does not happen to me, I shall have my talents devoured by moth and rust. They will lose their brightness, and one day they will prove a curse instead of a blessing."Before she was eighteen, William Savery, an American friend, came to England to spend two years in the British Isles, preaching. The seven beautiful Gurney sisters went to hear him, and sat on the front seat, Elizabeth, "with her smart boots, purple, laced with scarlet."As the preacher proceeded, she was greatly moved, weeping during the service, and nearly all the way home. She had been thrown much among those who were Deists in thought, and this gospel-message seemed a revelation to her.The next morning Mr. Savery came to Earlham Hall to breakfast. "From this day," say her daughters, in their interesting memoir of their mother, "her love of pleasure and the world seemed gone." She, herself, said, in her last illness, "Since my heart was touched, at the age of seventeen, I believe I never have awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health, by day or by night, without my first waking thought being, how best I might serve my Lord."Soon after she visited London, that she might, as she said, "try all things" and choose for herself what appeared to her "to be good." She wrote:"I went to Drury Lane in the evening. I must own I was extremely disappointed; to be sure, the house is grand and dazzling; but I had no other feeling whilst there than that of wishing it over.... I called on Mrs. Siddons, who was not at home; then on Mrs. Twiss, who gave me some paint for the evening. I was painted a little, I had my hair dressed, and did look pretty for me."On her return to Earlham Hall she found that the London pleasure had not been satisfying. She says, "I wholly gave up on my own ground, attending all places of public amusement; I saw they tended to promote evil; therefore, if I could attend them without being hurt myself, I felt in entering them I lent my aid to promote that which I was sure from what I saw hurt others."She was also much exercised about dancing, thinking, while "in a family, it may be of use by the bodily exercise," that "the more the pleasures of life are given up, the less we love the world, and our hearts will be set upon better things."The heretofore fashionable young girl began to visit the poor and the sick in the neighborhood, and at last decided to open a school for poor children. Only one boy came at first; but soon she had seventy. She lost none of her good cheer and charming manner, but rather grew more charming. She cultivated her mind as well, reading logic,--Watts on Judgment, Lavater, etc.The rules of life which she wrote for herself at eighteen are worth copying: "First,--Never lose any time; I do not think that lost which is spent in amusement or recreation some time every day; but always be in the habit of being employed. Second,--Never err the least in truth. Third,--Never say an ill thing of a person when I can say a good thing of him; not only speak charitably, but feel so. Fourth,--Never be irritable or unkind to anybody. Fifth,--Never indulge myself in luxuries that are not necessary. Sixth,--Do all things with consideration, and when my path to act right is most difficult, put confidence in that Power alone which is able to assist me, and exert my own powers as far as they go."Gradually she laid aside all jewelry, then began to dress in quiet colors, and finally adopted the Quaker garb, feeling that she could do more good in it. At first her course did not altogether please her family, but they lived to idolize and bless her for her doings, and to thankfully enjoy her worldwide fame.At twenty she received an offer of marriage from a wealthy London merchant, Mr. Joseph Fry. She hesitated for some time, lest her active duties in the church should conflict with the cares of a home of her own. She said, "My most anxious wish is, that I may not hinder my spiritual welfare, which I have so much feared as to make me often doubt if marriage were a desirable thing for me at this time, or even the thoughts of it."However, she was soon married, and a happy life resulted. For most women this marriage, which made her the mother of eleven children, would have made all public work impossible; but to a woman of Elizabeth Fry's strong character nothing seemed impossible. Whether she would have accomplished more for the world had she remained unmarried, no one can tell.Her husband's parents were "plain, consistent friends," and his sister became especially congenial to the young bride. A large and airy house was taken in London, St. Mildred's Court, which became a centre for "Friends" in both Great Britain and America.With all her wealth and her fondness for her family, she wrote in her journal, "I have been married eight years yesterday; various trials of faith and patience have been permitted me; my course has been very different to what I had expected; instead of being, as I had hoped, a useful instrument in the Church Militant, here I am a careworn wife and mother outwardly, nearly devoted to the things of this life; though at times this difference in my destination has been trying to me, yet I believe those trials (which have certainly been very pinching) that I have had to go through have been very useful, and have brought me to a feeling sense of what I am; and at the same time have taught me where power is, and in what we are to glory; not in ourselves nor in anything we can be or do, but we are alone to desire that He may be glorified, either through us or others, in our being something or nothing, as He may see best for us."After eleven years the Fry family moved to a beautiful home in the country at Plashet. Changes had come in those eleven years. The father had died; one sister had married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and she herself had been made a "minister" by the Society of Friends. While her hands were very full with the care of her seven children, she had yet found time to do much outside Christian work.Naturally shrinking, she says, "I find it an awful thing to rise amongst a large assembly, and, unless much covered with love and power, hardly know how to venture." But she seemed always to be "covered with love and power," for she prayed much and studied her Bible closely, and her preaching seemed to melt alike crowned heads and criminals in chains.Opposite the Plashet House, with its great trees and flowers, was a dilapidated building occupied by an aged man and his sister. They had once been well-to-do, but were now very poor, earning a pittance by selling rabbits. The sister, shy and sorrowful from their reduced circumstances, was nearly inaccessible, but Mrs. Fry won her way to her heart. Then she asked how they would like to have a girls' school in a big room attached to the building. They consented, and soon seventy poor girls were in attendance."She had," says a friend, "the gentlest touch with children. She would win their hearts, if they had never seen her before, almost at the first glance, and by the first sound of her musical voice."Then the young wife, now thirty-one, established a depot of calicoes and flannels for the poor, with a room full of drugs, and another department where good soup was prepared all through the hard winters. She would go into the "Irish Colony," taking her two older daughters with her, that they might learn the sweetness of benevolence, "threading her way through children and pigs, up broken staircases, and by narrow passages; then she would listen to their tales of want and woe."Now she would find a young mother dead, with a paper cross pinned upon her breast; now she visited a Gypsy camp to care for a sick child, and give them Bibles. Each year when the camp returned to Plashet, their chief pleasure was the visits of the lovely Quaker. Blessings on thee, beautiful Elizabeth Fry!She now began to assist in the public meetings near London, but with some hesitation, as it took her from home; but after an absence of two weeks, she found her household "in very comfortable order; and so far from having suffered in my absence, it appears as if a better blessing had attended them than common."She did not forget her home interests. One of her servants being ill, she watched by his bedside till he died. When she talked with him of the world to come, he said, "God bless you, ma'am." She said, "There is no set of people I feel so much about as servants, as I do not think they have generally justice done to them; they are too much considered as another race of beings, and we are apt to forget that the holy injunction holds good with them, 'Do as thou wouldst be done unto.'"She who could dine with kings and queens, felt as regards servants, "that in the best sense we are all one, and though our paths here may be different, we have all souls equally valuable, and have all the same work to do; which, if properly considered, should lead us to great sympathy and love, and also to a constant care for their welfare, both here and hereafter."When she was thirty-three, having moved to London for the winter, she began her remarkable work in Newgate prison. The condition of prisoners was pitiable in the extreme. She found three hundred women, with their numerous children, huddled together, with no classification between the most and least depraved, without employment, in rags and dirt, and sleeping on the floor with no bedding, the boards simply being raised for a sort of pillow. Liquors were purchased openly at a bar in the prison; and swearing, gambling, obscenity, and pulling each other's hair were common. The walls, both in the men's and women's departments, were hung with chains and fetters.When Mrs. Fry and two or three friends first visited the prison, the superintendent advised that they lay aside their watches before entering, which they declined to do. Mrs. Fry did not fear, nor need she, with her benign presence.On her second visit she asked to be left alone with the women, and read to them the tenth chapter of Matthew, making a few observations on Christ's having come to save sinners. Some of the women asked who Christ was. Who shall forgive us for such ignorance in our very midst?The children were almost naked, and ill from want of food, air, and exercise. Mrs. Fry told them that she would start a school for their children, which announcement was received with tears of joy. She asked that they select one from their own number for a governess. Mary Conner was chosen, a girl who had been put in prison for stealing a watch. So changed did the girl become under this new responsibility, that she was never known to infringe a rule of the prison. After fifteen months she was released, but died soon after of consumption.When the school was opened for all under twenty-five, "the railing was crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situations, with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation."Mrs. Fry saw at once the need of these women being occupied, but the idea that these people could be induced to work was laughed at, as visionary, by the officials. They said the work would be destroyed or stolen at once. But the good woman did not rest till an association of twelve persons was formed for the "Improvement of the Female Prisoners of Newgate"; "to provide for the clothing, the instruction, and the employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety, and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable whilst in prison, and respectable when they leave it."It was decided that Botany Bay could be supplied with stockings, and indeed with all the articles needed by convicts, through the work of these women. A room was at once made ready, and matrons were appointed. A portion of the earnings was to be given the women for themselves and their children. In ten months they made twenty thousand articles of wearing apparel, and knit from sixty to one hundred pairs of stockings every month. The Bible was read to them twice each day. They received marks for good behavior, and were as pleased as children with the small prizes given them.One of the girls who received a prize of clothing came to Mrs. Fry, and "hoped she would excuse her for being so forward, but if she might say it, she felt exceedingly disappointed; she little thought of having clothing given to her, but she had hoped I would have given her a Bible, that she might read the Scriptures herself."No woman was ever punished under Mrs. Fry's management. They said, "it would be more terrible to be brought up before her than before the judge." When she told them she hoped they would not play cards, five packs were at once brought to her and burned.The place was now so orderly and quiet, that "Newgate had become almost a show; the statesman and the noble, the city functionary and the foreign traveller, the high-bred gentlewoman, the clergyman and the dissenting minister, flocked to witness the extraordinary change," and to listen to Mrs. Fry's beautiful Bible readings.Letters poured in from all parts of the country, asking her to come to their prisons for a similar work, or to teach others how to work. A committee of the House of Commons summoned her before them to learn her suggestions, and to hear of her methods; and later the House of Lords.Of course the name of Elizabeth Fry became known everywhere. Queen Victoria gave her audience, and when she appeared in public, everybody was eager to look at her. The newspapers spoke of her in the highest praise. Yet with a beautiful spirit she writes in her journal, "I am ready to say in the fulness of my heart, surely 'it is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes'; so many are the providential openings of various kinds. Oh! if good should result, may the praise and glory of the whole be entirely given where it is due by us, and by all, in deep humiliation and prostration of spirit."Mrs. Fry's heart was constantly burdened with the scenes she witnessed. The penal laws were a caricature on justice. Men and women were hanged for theft, forgery, passing counterfeit money, and for almost every kind of fraud. One young woman, with a babe in her arms, was hanged for stealing a piece of cloth worth one dollar and twenty-five cents! Another was hanged for taking food to keep herself and little child from starving. It was no uncommon thing to see women hanging from the gibbet at Newgate, because they had passed a forged one-pound note (five dollars).George Cruikshank in 1818 was so moved at one of these executions that he made a picture which represented eight men and three women hanging from the gallows, and a rope coiled around the faces of twelve others. Across the picture were the words, "I promise to perform during the issue of Bank-notes easily imitated ... for the Governors and Company of the Bank of England."He called the picture a "Bank-note, not to be imitated." It at once created a great sensation. Crowds blocked the street in front of the shop where it was hung. The pictures were in such demand that Cruikshank sat up all night to etch another plate. The Gurneys, Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir James Mackintosh, all worked vigorously against capital punishment, save, possibly, for murder.Among those who were to be executed was Harriet Skelton, who, for the man she loved, had passed forged notes. She was singularly open in face and manner, confiding, and well-behaved. When she was condemned to death, it was a surprise and horror to all who knew her. Mrs. Fry was deeply interested. Noblemen went to see her in her damp, dark cell, which was guarded by a heavy iron door. The Duke of Gloucester went with Mrs. Fry to the Directors of the Bank of England, and to Lord Sidmouth, to plead for her, but their hearts were not to be moved, and the poor young girl was hanged. The public was enthusiastic in its applause for Mrs. Fry, and unsparing in its denunciation of Sidmouth. At last the obnoxious laws were changed.Mrs. Fry was heartily opposed to capital punishment. She said, "It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them"; it does not lead to reformation, and "does not deter others from crime, because the crimes subject to capital punishment are gradually increasing."When the world is more civilized than it is to-day, when we have closed the open saloon, that is the direct cause of nearly all the murders, then we shall probably do away with hanging; or, if men and women must be killed for the safety of society, a thing not easily proven, it will be done in the most humane manner, by chloroform.Mrs. Fry was likewise strongly opposed to solitary confinement, which usually makes the subject a mental wreck, and, as regards moral action, an imbecile. How wonderfully in advance of her age was this gifted woman!Mrs. Fry's thoughts now turned to another evil. When the women prisoners were transported to New South Wales, they were carried to the ships in open carts, the crowd jeering. She prevailed upon government to have them carried in coaches, and promised that she would go with them. When on board the ship, she knelt on the deck and prayed with them as they were going into banishment, and then bade them a tender good by. Truly woman can be an angel of light.Says Captain Martin, "Who could resist this beautiful, persuasive, and heavenly-minded woman? To see her was to love her; to hear her was to feel as if a guardian angel had bid you follow that teaching which could alone subdue the temptations and evils of this life, and secure a Redeemer's love in eternity."At this time Mrs. Fry and her brother Joseph visited Scotland and the north of England to ascertain the condition of the prisons. They found much that was inhuman; insane persons in prison, eighteen months in dungeons! Debtors confined night and day in dark, filthy cells, and never leaving them; men chained to the walls of their cells, or to rings in the floor, or with their limbs stretched apart till they fainted in agony; women with chains on hands, and feet, and body, while they slept on bundles of straw. On their return a book was published, which did much to arouse England.Mrs. Fry was not yet forty, but her work was known round the world. The authorities of Russia, at the desire of the Empress, wrote Mrs. Fry as to the best plans for the St. Petersburg lunatic asylum and treatment of the inmates, and her suggestions were carried out to the letter.Letters came from Amsterdam, Denmark, Paris, and elsewhere, asking counsel. The correspondence became so great that two of her daughters were obliged to attend to it.Again she travelled all over England, forming "Ladies' Prison Associations," which should not only look after the inmates of prisons, but aid them to obtain work when they were discharged, or "so provide for them that stealing should not seem a necessity."About this time, 1828, one of the houses in which her husband was a partner failed, "which involved Elizabeth Fry and her family in a train of sorrows and perplexities which tinged the remaining years of her life."They sold the house at Plashet, and moved again to Mildred Court, now the home of one of their sons. Her wealthy brothers and her children soon re-established the parents in comfort.She now became deeply interested in the five hundred Coast-Guard stations in the United Kingdom, where the men and their families led a lonely life. Partly by private contributions and partly through the aid of government, she obtained enough money to buy more than twenty-five thousand volumes for libraries at these stations. The letters of gratitude were a sufficient reward for the hard work. She also obtained small libraries for all the packets that sailed from Falmouth.In 1837, with some friends, she visited Paris, making a detailed examination of its prisons. Guizot entertained her, the Duchess de Broglie, M. de Pressensé, and others paid her much attention. The King and Queen sent for her, and had an earnest talk. At Nismes, where there were twelve hundred prisoners, she visited the cells, and when five armed soldiers wished to protect her and her friends, she requested that they be allowed to go without guard. In one dungeon she found two men, chained hand and foot. She told them she would plead for their liberation if they would promise good behavior. They promised, and kept it, praying every night for their benefactor thereafter. When she held a meeting in the prison, hundreds shed tears, and the good effects of her work were visible long after.The next journey was made to Germany. At Brussels, the King held out both hands to receive her. In Denmark, the King and Queen invited her to dine, and she sat between them. At Berlin, the royal family treated her like a sister, and all stood about her while she knelt and prayed for them.The new penitentiaries were built after her suggestions, so perfect was thought to be her system. The royal family never forget her. When the King of Prussia visited England, to stand sponsor for the infant Prince of Wales, in 1842, he dined with her at her home. She presented to him her eight daughters and daughters-in-law, her seven sons and eldest grandson, and then their twenty-five grandchildren.Finally, the great meetings, and the earnest plans, with their wonderful execution, were coming to an end for Elizabeth Fry.There had been many breaks in the home circle. Her beloved son William, and his two children, had just died. Some years before she had buried a very precious child, Elizabeth, at the age of five, who shortly before her death said, "Mamma, I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better than everybody, and I love Almighty much better than thee, and I hope thee loves Almighty much better than me." This was a severe stroke, Mrs. Fry saying, "My much-loved husband and I have drank this cup together, in close sympathy and unity of feeling. It has at times been very bitter to us both, but we have been in measure each other's joy and helpers in the Lord."During her last sickness she said, "I believe this is not death, but it is as passing through the valley of the shadow of death, and perhaps with more suffering, from more sensitiveness; but the 'rock is here'; the distress is awful, but He has been with me."The last morning came, Oct. 13, 1845. About nine o'clock, one of her daughters, sitting by her bedside, read from Isaiah: "I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." The mother said slowly, "Oh! my dear Lord, help and keep thy servant!" and never spoke afterward.She was buried in the Friends' burying-ground at Barking, by the side of her little Elizabeth, a deep silence prevailing among the multitudes gathered there, broken only by the solemn prayer of her brother, Joseph John Gurney.Thus closed one of the most beautiful lives among women. To the last she was doing good deeds. When she was wheeled along the beach in her chair, she gave books and counsel to the passers-by. When she stayed at hotels, she usually arranged a meeting for the servants. She was sent for, from far and near, to pray with the sick, and comfort the dying, who often begged to kiss her hand; no home was too desolate for her lovely and cheerful presence. No wonder Alexander of Russia called her "one of the wonders of the age."Her only surviving son gives this interesting testimony of her home life: "I never recollect seeing her out of temper or hearing her speak a harsh word, yet still her word was law, but always the law of love."Naturally timid, always in frail health, sometimes misunderstood, even with the highest motives, she lived a heroic life in the best sense, and died the death of a Christian. What grander sphere for woman than such philanthropy as this! And the needs of humanity are as great as ever, waiting for the ministration of such noble souls.
"And friends, dear friends, when it shall beThat this low breath is gone from me,And round my bier ye come to weep,Let one most loving of you allSay, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,--He giveth his beloved sleep!'"
"And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,--He giveth his beloved sleep!'"
The Italians, who loved her, placed on the doorway of Casa Guidi a white marble tablet, with the words:--
"Here wrote and died E.B. Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, united the science of a sage and the spirit of a poet, and made with her verse a golden ring binding Italy and England.
"Grateful Florence placed this memorial, 1861."
For twenty-five years Robert Browning and his artist-son have done their work, blessed with the memory of her whom Mr. Stedman calls "the most inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have composed in ancient or modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time."
Going to the Exposition at New Orleans, I took for reading on the journey, the life of George Eliot, by her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, written with great delicacy and beauty. An accident delayed us, so that for three days I enjoyed this insight into a wonderful life. I copied the amazing list of books she had read, and transferred to my note-book many of her beautiful thoughts. To-day I have been reading the book again; a clear, vivid picture of a very great woman, whose works, says theSpectator, "are the best specimens of powerful, simple English, since Shakespeare."
What made her a superior woman? Not wealthy parentage; not congenial surroundings. She had a generous, sympathetic heart for a foundation, and on this she built a scholarship that even few men can equal. She loved science, and philosophy, and language, and mathematics, and grew broad enough to discuss great questions and think great thoughts. And yet she was affectionate, tender, and gentle.
Mary Ann Evans was born Nov. 22, 1819, at Arbury Farm, a mile from Griff, in Warwickshire, England. When four months old the family moved to Griff, where the girl lived till she was twenty-one, in a two-story, old-fashioned, red brick house, the walls covered with ivy. Two Norway firs and an old yew-tree shaded the lawn. The father, Robert Evans, a man of intelligence and good sense, was bred a builder and carpenter, afterward becoming a land-agent for one of the large estates. The mother was a woman of sterling character, practical and capable.
For the three children, Christiana, Isaac, and Mary Ann, there was little variety in the commonplace life at Griff. Twice a day the coach from Birmingham to Stamford passed by the house, and the coachman and guard in scarlet were a great diversion. She thus describes, the locality inFelix Holt: "Here were powerful men walking queerly, with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine, going home to throw themselves down in their blackened flannel, and sleep through the daylight, then rise and spend much of their high wages at the alehouse with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the pale, eager faces of handloom weavers, men and women, haggard from sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for the languid mothers gave their strength to the loom."
Mary Ann was an affectionate, sensitive child, fond of out-door sports, imitating everything she saw her brother do, and early in life feeling in her heart that she was to be "somebody." When but four years old, she would seat herself at the piano and play, though she did not know one note from another, that the servant might see that she was a distinguished person! Her life was a happy one, as is shown in herBrother and Sister Sonnet:--
"But were another childhood's world my share,I would be born a little sister there."
At five, the mother being in poor health, the child was sent to a boarding-school with her sister, Chrissy, where she remained three or four years. The older scholars petted her, calling her "little mamma." At eight she went to a larger school, at Nuneaton, where one of the teachers, Miss Lewis, became her life-long friend. The child had the greatest fondness for reading, her first book, aLinnet's Life, being tenderly cared for all her days.Aesop's Fableswere read and re-read. At this time a neighbor had loaned one of the Waverley novels to the older sister, who returned it before Mary Ann had finished it. Distressed at this break in the story, she began to write out as nearly as she could remember, the whole volume for herself. Her amazed family re-borrowed the book, and the child was happy. The mother sometimes protested against the use of so many candles for night reading, and rightly feared that her eyes would be spoiled.
At the next school, at Coventry, Mary Ann so surpassed her comrades that they stood in awe of her, but managed to overcome this when a basket of dainties came in from the country home. In 1836 the excellent mother died. Mary Ann wrote to a friend in after life, "I began at sixteen to be acquainted with the unspeakable grief of a last parting, in the death of my mother." In the following spring Chrissy was married, and after a good cry with her brother over this breaking up of the home circle, Mary Ann took upon herself the household duties, and became the care-taker instead of the school-girl. Although so young she took a leading part in the benevolent work of the neighborhood.
Her love for books increased. She engaged a well-known teacher to come from Coventry and give her lessons in French, German, and Italian, while another helped her in music, of which she was passionately fond. Later, she studied Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Hebrew. Shut up in the farm-house, hungering for knowledge, she applied herself with a persistency and earnestness that by-and-by were to bear their legitimate fruit. That she felt the privation of a collegiate course is undoubted. She says inDaniel Deronda: "You may try, but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl."
She did not neglect her household duties. One of her hands, which were noticeable for their beauty of shape, was broader than the other, which, she used to say with some pride, was owing to the butter and cheese she had made. At twenty she was reading theLife of Wilberforce, Josephus'History of the Jews, Spenser'sFaery Queen,Don Quixote, Milton, Bacon, Mrs. Somerville'sConnection of the Physical Sciences, and Wordsworth. The latter was always an especial favorite, and his life, by Frederick Myers in theMen of Lettersseries, was one of the last books she ever read.
Already she was learning the illimitableness of knowledge. "For my part," she says, "I am ready to sit down and weep at the impossibility of my understanding or barely knowing a fraction of the sum of objects that present themselves for our contemplation in books and in life."
About this time Mr. Evans left the farm, and moved to Foleshill, near Coventry. The poor people at Griff were very sorry, and said, "We shall never have another Mary Ann Evans." Marian, as she was now called, found at Foleshill a few intellectual and companionable friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bray, both authors, and Miss Hennell, their sister.
Through the influence of these friends she gave up some of her evangelical views, but she never ceased to be a devoted student and lover of the Bible. She was happy in her communing with nature. "Delicious autumn," she said. "My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about the earth, seeking the successive autumns.... I have been revelling in Nichol'sArchitecture, of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System, and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system, from universe to universe."
In 1844, when Miss Evans was twenty-five years old, she began the translation of Strauss'Life of Jesus. The lady who was to marry Miss Hennell's brother had partially done the work, and asked Miss Evans to finish it. For nearly three years she gave it all the time at her command, receiving only one hundred dollars for the labor.
It was a difficult and weary work. "When I can work fast," she said, "I am never weary, nor do I regret either that the work has been begun or that I have undertaken it. I am only inclined to vow that I will never translate again, if I live to correct the sheets for Strauss." When the book was finished, it was declared to be "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike translation ... word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence." Strauss himself was delighted with it.
The days passed as usual in the quiet home. Now she and her father, the latter in failing health, visited the Isle of Wight, and saw beautiful Alum Bay, with its "high precipice, the strata upheaved perpendicularly in rainbow,--like streaks of the brightest maize, violet, pink, blue, red, brown, and brilliant white,--worn by the weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep blue sky above, and the glorious sea below." Who of us has not felt this same delight in looking upon this picture, painted by nature?
Now Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as other famous people, visited the Bray family. Miss Evans writes: "I have seen Emerson,--the firstmanI have ever seen." High praise indeed from our "great, calm soul," as he called Miss Evans. "I am grateful for the Carlyle eulogium (on Emerson). I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love another."
Each evening she played on the piano to her admiring father, and finally, through months of illness, carried him down tenderly to the grave. He died May 31, 1849.
Worn with care, Miss Evans went upon the Continent with the Brays, visiting Paris, Milan, the Italian lakes, and finally resting for some months at Geneva'. As her means were limited, she tried to sell herEncyclopaedia Britannicaat half-price, so that she could have money for music lessons, and to attend a course of lectures on experimental physics, by the renowned Professor de la Rive. She was also carefully reading socialistic themes, Proudhon, Rousseau, and others. She wrote to friends: "The days are really only two hours long, and I have so many things to do that I go to bed every night miserable because I have left out something I meant to do.... I take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft."
On her return to England, she visited the Brays, and met Mr. Chapman, the editor of theWestminster Review, and Mr. Mackay, upon whoseProgress of the Intellectshe had just written a review. Mr. Chapman must have been deeply impressed with the learning and ability of Miss Evans, for he offered her the position of assistant editor of the magazine,--a most unusual position for a woman, since its contributors were Froude, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and other able men.
Miss Evans accepted, and went to board with Mr. Chapman's family in London. How different this from the quiet life at Foleshill! The best society, that is, the greatest in mind, opened wide its doors to her. Herbert Spencer, who had just publishedSocial Statics, became one of her best friends. Harriet Martineau came often to see her. Grote was very friendly.
The woman-editor was now thirty-two; her massive head covered with brown curls, blue-gray eyes, mobile, sympathetic mouth, strong chin, pale face, and soft, low voice, like Dorothea's inMiddlemarch,--"the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Aeolian harp." Mr. Bray thought that Miss Evans' head, after that of Napoleon, showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person's recorded.
She had extraordinary power of expression, and extraordinary psychological powers, but her chief attraction was her universal sympathy. "She essentially resembled Socrates," says Mathilde Blind, "in her manner of eliciting whatsoever capacity for thought might be latent in the people she came in contact with; were it only a shoemaker or day-laborer, she would never rest till she had found out in what points that particular man differed from other men of his class. She always rather educed what was in others than impressed herself on them; showing much kindliness of heart in drawing out people who were shy. Sympathy was the keynote of her nature, the source of her iridescent humor, of her subtle knowledge of character, of her dramatic genius." No person attains to permanent fame without sympathy.
Miss Evans now found her heart and hands full of work. Her first article was a review of Carlyle'sLife of John Sterling. She was fond of biography. She said: "We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer, that when some great or good person dies, instead of the dreary three-or-five volume compilation of letter and diary and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real 'life,' setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows.
"A few such lives (chiefly autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading.... It is a help to read such a life as Margaret Fuller's. How inexpressibly touching that passage from her journal, 'I shall always reign through the intellect, but the life! the life! O my God! shall that never be sweet?' I am thankful, as if for myself, that it was sweet at last."
The great minds which Miss Evans met made life a constant joy, though she was frail in health. Now Herbert Spencer took her to hearWilliam Tellor theCreation. She wrote of him: "We have agreed that we are not in love with each other, and that there is no reason why we should not have as much of each other's society as we like. He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him.... My brightest spot, next to my love ofoldfriends, is the deliciously calm,newfriendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. We see each other every day, and have a delightfulcamaraderiein everything. But for him my life would be desolate enough."
There is no telling what this happy friendship might have resulted in, if Mr. Spencer had not introduced to Miss Evans, George Henry Lewes, a man of brilliant conversational powers, who had written aHistory of Philosophy, two novels,Ranthorpe, andRose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a contributor to several reviews. Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a newspaper, and unsuccessful in his domestic relations.
That he loved Miss Evans is not strange; that she admired him, while she pitied him and his three sons in their broken home-life, is perhaps not strange. At first she did not like him, nor did Margaret Fuller, but Miss Evans says: "Mr. Lewes is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy."
Miss Evans tired of her hard work, as who does not in this working world? "I am bothered to death," she writes, "with article-reading and scrap-work of all sorts; it is clear my poor head will never produce anything under these circumstances;but I am patient.... I had a long call from George Combe yesterday. He says he thinks theWestminsterundermymanagement the most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence; theEdinburgh, under Jeffrey, nothing to it, etc. I wishIthought so too."
Sick with continued headaches, she went up to the English lakes to visit Miss Martineau. The coach, at half-past six in the evening, stopped at "The Knoll," and a beaming face came to welcome her. During the evening, she says, "Miss Martineau came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way, telling me she was so glad she had got me here."
Meantime Miss Evans was writing learned and valuable articles onTaxation, Woman in France, Evangelical Teaching, etc. She received five hundred dollars yearly from her father's estate, but she lived simply, that she might spend much of this for poor relations.
In 1854 she resigned her position on theWestminster, and went with Mr. Lewes to Germany, forming a union which thousands who love her must regard as the great mistake of a very great life.
Mr. Lewes was collecting materials for hisLife of Goethe. This took them to Goethe's home at Weimar. "By the side of the bed," she says, "stands a stuffed chair where he used to sit and read while he drank his coffee in the morning. It was not until very late in his life that he adopted the luxury of an armchair. From the other side of the study one enters the library, which is fitted up in a very make-shift fashion, with rough deal shelves, and bits of paper, with Philosophy, History, etc., written on them, to mark the classification of the books. Among such memorials one breathes deeply, and the tears rush to one's eyes."
George Eliot met Liszt, and "for the first time in her life beheld real inspiration,--for the first time heard the true tones of the piano." Rauch, the great sculptor, called upon them, and "won our hearts by his beautiful person and the benignant and intelligent charm of his conversation."
Both writers were hard at work. George Eliot was writing an article onWeimarforFraser, onCummingforWestminster, and translating Spinoza'sEthics. No name was signed to these productions, as it would not do to have it known that a woman wrote them. The education of most women was so meagre that the articles would have been considered of little value. Happily Girton and Newnham colleges are changing this estimate of the sex. Women do not like to be regarded as inferior; then they must educate themselves as thoroughly as the best men are educated.
Mr. Lewes was not well. "This is a terrible trial to us poor scribblers," she writes, "to whom health is money, as well as all other things worth having." They had but one sitting-room between them, and the scratching of another pen so affected her nerves, as to drive her nearly wild. Pecuniarily, life was a harder struggle than ever, for there were four more mouths to be fed,--Mr. Lewes' three sons and their mother.
"Our life is intensely occupied, and the days are far too short," she writes. They were reading in every spare moment, twelve plays of Shakespeare, Goethe's works,Wilhelm Meister, Götz von Berlichingen, Hermann and Dorothea, Iphigenia, Wanderjahre, Italianische Reise, and others; Heine's poems; Lessing'sLaocoönandNathan the Wise; Macaulay'sHistory of England; Moore'sLife of Sheridan; Brougham'sLives of Men of Letters; White'sHistory of Selborne; Whewell'sHistory of Inductive Sciences; Boswell; Carpenter'sComparative Physiology; Jones'Animal Kingdom; Alison'sHistory of Europe; Kahnis'History of German Protestantism; Schrader'sGerman Mythology; Kingsley'sGreek Heroes; and theIliadandOdysseyin the original. She says, "If you want delightful reading, get Lowell'sMy Study Windows, and read the essays calledMy Garden AcquaintancesandWinter." No wonder they were busy.
On their return from Germany they went to the sea-shore, that Mr. Lewes might perfect hisSea-side Studies. George Eliot entered heartily into the work. "We were immensely excited," she says, "by the discovery of this little red mesembryanthemum. It was acrescendoof delight when we found a 'strawberry,' and afortissimowhen I, for the first time, saw the pale, fawn-colored tentacles of anAnthea cereusviciously waving like little serpents in a low-tide pool." They read here Gosse'sRambles on the Devonshire Coast, Edward'sZoology, Harvey's sea-side book, and other scientific works.
And now at thirty-seven George Eliot was to begin her creative work. Mr. Lewes had often said to her, "You have wit, description, and philosophy--those go a good way towards the production of a novel." "It had always been a vague dream of mine," she says, "that sometime or other I might write a novel ... but I never went further toward the actual writing than an introductory chapter, describing a Staffordshire village, and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that. I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about everything else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts."
After she had written a portion ofAmos Bartonin herScenes of Clerical Life, she read it to Mr. Lewes, who told her that now he was sure she could write good dialogue, but not as yet sure about her pathos. One evening, in his absence, she wrote the scene describing Milly's death, and read it to Mr. Lewes, on his return. "We both cried over it," she says, "and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, 'I think your pathos is better than your fun!'"
Mr. Lewes sent the story to Blackwood, with the signature of "George Eliot,"--the first name chosen because it was his own name, and the last because it pleased her fancy. Mr. Lewes wrote that this story by a friend of his, showed, according to his judgment, "such humor, pathos, vivid presentation, and nice observation as have not been exhibited, in this style, since theVicar of Wakefield."
Mr. John Blackwood accepted the story, but made some comments which discouraged the author from trying another. Mr. Lewes wrote him the effects of his words, which he hastened to withdraw, as there was so much to be said in praise that he really desired more stories from the same pen, and sent her a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.
This was evidently soothing, asMr. Gilfil's Love StoryandJanet's Repentancewere at once written. Much interest began to be expressed about the author. Some said Bulwer wrote the sketches. Thackeray praised them, and Arthur Helps said, "He is a great writer." Copies of the stories bound together, with the titleScenes of Clerical Life, were sent to Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Faraday. Dickens praised the humor and the pathos, and thought the author was a woman.
Jane Welch Carlyle thought it "ahumanbook, written out of the heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an author, full of tenderness and pathos, without a scrap of sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes one feel friends at once and for always with the man or woman who wrote it." She guessed the author was "a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom he has got those beautifulfemininetouches in his book, a good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness for as I have for my little Nero."
Mr. Lewes was delighted, and said, "Her fame is beginning." George Eliot was growing happier, for her nature had been somewhat despondent. She used to say, "Expecting disappointments is the only form of hope with which I am familiar." She said, "I feel a deep satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose-root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come." "'Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails' is my gospel," she would say. "Writing is part of my religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within. At the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world have been written with the hope of getting money for them."
"My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties."
ForScenes of Clerical Lifeshe received six hundred dollars for the first edition, and much more after her other books appeared.
And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind,Adam Bede, the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her aunt, Elizabeth Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant girl had murdered her child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, stayed with her all night, praying with her, and at last she burst into tears and confessed her crime. Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.
When the first pages ofAdam Bedewere shown to Mr. Blackwood, he said, "That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich, Dresden, and Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the book in this time. When it was finished, she wrote on the manuscript,Jubilate. "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life."
For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright for four years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were talking about it. John Murray said there had never been such a book. Charles Reade said, putting his finger on Lisbeth's account of her coming home with her husband from their marriage, "the finest thing since Shakespeare." A workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton said, in the House of Commons: "As the farmer's wife says inAdam Bede, 'It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different.'" This of course greatly helped to popularize the book.
To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest gratitude. They were able now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once. The poverty and the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make me.... I am assured now thatAdam Bedewas worth writing,--worth living through those long years to write. But now it seems impossible that I shall ever write anything so good and true again." Up to this time the world did not know who George Eliot was; but as a man by the name of Liggins laid claim to the authorship, and tried to borrow money for his needs because Blackwood would not pay him, the real name of the author had to be divulged.
Five thousand copies ofAdam Bedewere sold the first two weeks, and sixteen thousand the first year. So excellent was the sale that Mr. Blackwood sent her four thousand dollars in addition to the first four. The work was soon translated into French, German, and Hungarian. Mr. Lewes'Physiology of Common Lifewas now published, but it brought little pecuniary return.
The reading was carried on as usual by the two students. TheLife of George Stephenson; theElectraof Sophocles; theAgamemnonof Aeschylus, Harriet Martineau'sBritish Empire in India; andHistory of the Thirty Years' Peace; Béranger,Modern Painters, containing some of the finest writing of the age; Overbech on Greek art; Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich; Carlyle'sLife of Frederick the Great; Darwin'sOrigin of Species; Emerson'sMan the Reformer, "which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning"; Buckle'sHistory of Civilization; Plato and Aristotle.
An American publisher now offered her six thousand dollars for a book, but she was obliged to decline, for she was writing theMill on the Floss, in 1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars for the first edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers fifteen hundred dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz paid her five hundred for the German reprint.
She said: "I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas." They went at once to Italy, where they spent several months in Florence, Venice, and Rome.
In the former city she made her studies for her great novel,Romola. She read Sismondi'sHistory of the Italian Republics, Tenneman'sHistory of Philosophy, T.A. Trollope'sBeata, Hallam on theStudy of Roman Law in the Middle Ages, Gibbon on theRevival of Greek Learning, Burlamachi'sLife of Savonarola; also Villari's life of the great preacher, Mrs. Jameson'sSacred and Legendary Art, Machiavelli's works, Petrarch's Letters,Casa Guidi Windows, Buhle'sHistory of Modern Philosophy, Story'sRoba di Roma, Liddell'sRome, Gibbon, Mosheim, and one might almost say the whole range of Italian literature in the original. Of Mommsen'sHistory of Romeshe said, "It is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it without the deepest stirrings."
The study necessary to make one familiar with fifteenth century times was almost limitless. No wonder she told Mr. Cross, years afterward, "I beganRomolaa young woman, I finished it an old woman"; but that, withAdam BedeandMiddlemarch, will be her monument. "What courage and patience," she says, "are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!" "In authorship I hold carelessness to be a mortal sin." "I took unspeakable pains in preparing to writeRomola."
For this one book, on which she spent a year and a half,Cornhill Magazinepaid her the small fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars. She purchased a pleasant home, "The Priory," Regent's Park, where she made her friends welcome, though she never made calls upon any, for lack of time. She had found, like Victor Hugo, that time is a very precious thing for those who wish to succeed in life. Browning, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer often came to dine.
Says Mr. Cross, in his admirable life: "The entertainment 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 of the Priory 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 in-coming visitor 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, not graduated according to any social distinction."
After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political economy,Felix Holtwas written, in 1866, and for this she received from Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.
Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of her books, which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for rest.
In 1868 she published her long poem,The Spanish Gypsy, reading Spanish literature carefully, and finally passing some time in Spain, that she might be the better able to make a lasting work. Had she given her life to poetry, doubtless she would have been a great poet.
Silas Marner, written beforeRomola, in 1861, had been well received, andMiddlemarch, in 1872, made a great sensation. It was translated into several languages. George Bancroft wrote her from Berlin that everybody was reading it. For this she received a much larger sum than the thirty-five thousand which she was paid forRomola.
A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of pleasure grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and flowers about her house. "Sunlight and sweet air," she said, "make a new creature of me."Daniel Derondafollowed in 1876, for which, it is said, she read nearly a thousand volumes. Whether this be true or not, the list of books given in her life, of her reading in these later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for any who desire real knowledge.
At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few friends like the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady Holland. Both were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor health. Finally, after a ten days' illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.
To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and his affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe Spencer a debt of gratitude. It was through him that I learned to know Marian,--to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!"
Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory of the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.
Mr. Cross' mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting. They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.
"I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet."
Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half after Mr. Lewes' death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self.... To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure." Having passed through a severe illness, she wrote to a friend: "I have been cared for by something much better than angelic tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection that has chosen to watch over me."
She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the happiness instead of me."
On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily. George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars for woman's higher education at Girton College, and helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was proud to be remembered.
She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. Then they read Max Muller's works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever was best in English, French, and German literature. Milton she called her demigod. Her husband says she had "a limitless persistency in application." Her health was better, and she gave promise of doing more great work. When urged to write her autobiography, she said, half sighing and half smiling: "The only thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I suffered from, of ever being able to achieve anything. No one could ever have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler."
Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to seeAgamemnonperformed in Greek by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St. James Hall. She took cold, and on Monday was treated for sore throat. On Wednesday evening the doctors came, and she whispered to her husband, "Tell them I have great pain in the left side." This was the last word. She died with every faculty bright, and her heart responsive to all noble things.
She loved knowledge to the end. She said, "My constant groan is that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time."
She had the broadest charity for those whose views differed from hers. She said, "The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn, is to tolerate intolerance." She hoped for and "looked forward to the time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am falling."
One Sunday afternoon I went to her grave in Highgate Cemetery, London. A gray granite shaft, about twenty-five feet high, stands above it, with these beautiful words from her great poem:--
"O may I join the choir invisible,Of those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence."
HERE LIES THE BODYOFGEORGE ELIOT,MARY ANN CROSS.BORN, 22d NOVEMBER, 1819;DIED, 22d DECEMBER, 1880.
A stone coping is around this grave, and bouquets of yellow crocuses and hyacinths lie upon it. Next to her grave is a horizontal slab, with the name of George Henry Lewes upon the stone.
When a woman of beauty, great wealth, and the highest social position, devotes her life to the lifting of the lowly and the criminal, and preaches the Gospel from the north of Scotland to the south of France, it is not strange that the world admires, and that books are written in praise of her. Unselfishness makes a rare and radiant life, and this was the crowning beauty of the life of Elizabeth Fry.
Born in Norwich, England, May 21, 1780, Elizabeth was the third daughter of Mr. John Gurney, a wealthy London merchant. Mrs. Gurney, the mother, a descendant of the Barclays of Ury, was a woman of much personal beauty, singularly intellectual for those times, making her home a place where literary and scientific people loved to gather.
Elizabeth wellnigh idolized her mother, and used often to cry after going to bed, lest death should take away the precious parent. In the daytime, when the mother, not very robust, would sometimes lie down to rest, the child would creep to the bedside and watch tenderly and anxiously, to see if she were breathing. Well might Mrs. Gurney say,
"My dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and is, in every sense of the word, truly engaging."
"My dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and is, in every sense of the word, truly engaging."
Mrs. Fry wrote years afterward: "My mother was most dear to me, and the walks she took with me in the old-fashioned garden are as fresh with me as if only just passed, and her telling me about Adam and Eve being driven out of Paradise. I always considered it must be just like our garden.... I remember with pleasure my mother's beds of wild flowers, which, with delight, I used as a child to attend with her; it gave me that pleasure in observing their beauties and varieties that, though I never have had time to become a botanist, few can imagine, in my many journeys, how I have been pleased and refreshed by observing and enjoying the wild flowers on my way."
The home, Earlham Hall, was one of much beauty and elegance, a seat of the Bacon family. The large house stood in the centre of a well-wooded park, the river Wensum flowing through it. On the south front of the house was a large lawn, flanked by great trees, underneath which wild flowers grew in profusion. The views about the house were so artistic that artists often came there to sketch.
In this restful and happy home, after a brief illness, Mrs. Gurney died in early womanhood, leaving eleven children, all young, the smallest but two years old. Elizabeth was twelve, old enough to feel the irreparable loss. To the day of her death the memory of this time was extremely sad.
She was a nervous and sensitive child, afraid of the dark, begging that a light be left in her room, and equally afraid to bathe in the sea. Her feelings were regarded as the whims of a child, and her nervous system was injured in consequence. She always felt the lack of wisdom in "hardening" children, and said, "I am now of opinion that my fear would have been much more subdued, and great suffering spared, by its having been still more yielded to: by having a light left in my room, not being long left alone, and never forced to bathe."
After her marriage she guided her children rather than attempt "to break their wills," and lived to see happy results from the good sense and Christian principle involved in such guiding. In her prison work she used the least possible governing, winning control by kindness and gentleness.
Elizabeth grew to young womanhood, with pleasing manners, slight and graceful in body, with a profusion of soft flaxen hair, and a bright, intelligent face. Her mind was quick, penetrating, and original. She was a skilful rider on horseback, and made a fine impression in her scarlet riding-habit, for, while her family were Quakers, they did not adopt the gray dress.
She was attractive in society and much admired. She writes in her journal: "Company at dinner; I must beware of not being a flirt, it is an abominable character; I hope I shall never be one, and yet I fear I am one now a little.... I think I am by degrees losing many excellent qualities. I lay it to my great love of gayety, and the world.... I am now seventeen, and if some kind and great circumstance does not happen to me, I shall have my talents devoured by moth and rust. They will lose their brightness, and one day they will prove a curse instead of a blessing."
Before she was eighteen, William Savery, an American friend, came to England to spend two years in the British Isles, preaching. The seven beautiful Gurney sisters went to hear him, and sat on the front seat, Elizabeth, "with her smart boots, purple, laced with scarlet."
As the preacher proceeded, she was greatly moved, weeping during the service, and nearly all the way home. She had been thrown much among those who were Deists in thought, and this gospel-message seemed a revelation to her.
The next morning Mr. Savery came to Earlham Hall to breakfast. "From this day," say her daughters, in their interesting memoir of their mother, "her love of pleasure and the world seemed gone." She, herself, said, in her last illness, "Since my heart was touched, at the age of seventeen, I believe I never have awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health, by day or by night, without my first waking thought being, how best I might serve my Lord."
Soon after she visited London, that she might, as she said, "try all things" and choose for herself what appeared to her "to be good." She wrote:
"I went to Drury Lane in the evening. I must own I was extremely disappointed; to be sure, the house is grand and dazzling; but I had no other feeling whilst there than that of wishing it over.... I called on Mrs. Siddons, who was not at home; then on Mrs. Twiss, who gave me some paint for the evening. I was painted a little, I had my hair dressed, and did look pretty for me."
"I went to Drury Lane in the evening. I must own I was extremely disappointed; to be sure, the house is grand and dazzling; but I had no other feeling whilst there than that of wishing it over.... I called on Mrs. Siddons, who was not at home; then on Mrs. Twiss, who gave me some paint for the evening. I was painted a little, I had my hair dressed, and did look pretty for me."
On her return to Earlham Hall she found that the London pleasure had not been satisfying. She says, "I wholly gave up on my own ground, attending all places of public amusement; I saw they tended to promote evil; therefore, if I could attend them without being hurt myself, I felt in entering them I lent my aid to promote that which I was sure from what I saw hurt others."
She was also much exercised about dancing, thinking, while "in a family, it may be of use by the bodily exercise," that "the more the pleasures of life are given up, the less we love the world, and our hearts will be set upon better things."
The heretofore fashionable young girl began to visit the poor and the sick in the neighborhood, and at last decided to open a school for poor children. Only one boy came at first; but soon she had seventy. She lost none of her good cheer and charming manner, but rather grew more charming. She cultivated her mind as well, reading logic,--Watts on Judgment, Lavater, etc.
The rules of life which she wrote for herself at eighteen are worth copying: "First,--Never lose any time; I do not think that lost which is spent in amusement or recreation some time every day; but always be in the habit of being employed. Second,--Never err the least in truth. Third,--Never say an ill thing of a person when I can say a good thing of him; not only speak charitably, but feel so. Fourth,--Never be irritable or unkind to anybody. Fifth,--Never indulge myself in luxuries that are not necessary. Sixth,--Do all things with consideration, and when my path to act right is most difficult, put confidence in that Power alone which is able to assist me, and exert my own powers as far as they go."
Gradually she laid aside all jewelry, then began to dress in quiet colors, and finally adopted the Quaker garb, feeling that she could do more good in it. At first her course did not altogether please her family, but they lived to idolize and bless her for her doings, and to thankfully enjoy her worldwide fame.
At twenty she received an offer of marriage from a wealthy London merchant, Mr. Joseph Fry. She hesitated for some time, lest her active duties in the church should conflict with the cares of a home of her own. She said, "My most anxious wish is, that I may not hinder my spiritual welfare, which I have so much feared as to make me often doubt if marriage were a desirable thing for me at this time, or even the thoughts of it."
However, she was soon married, and a happy life resulted. For most women this marriage, which made her the mother of eleven children, would have made all public work impossible; but to a woman of Elizabeth Fry's strong character nothing seemed impossible. Whether she would have accomplished more for the world had she remained unmarried, no one can tell.
Her husband's parents were "plain, consistent friends," and his sister became especially congenial to the young bride. A large and airy house was taken in London, St. Mildred's Court, which became a centre for "Friends" in both Great Britain and America.
With all her wealth and her fondness for her family, she wrote in her journal, "I have been married eight years yesterday; various trials of faith and patience have been permitted me; my course has been very different to what I had expected; instead of being, as I had hoped, a useful instrument in the Church Militant, here I am a careworn wife and mother outwardly, nearly devoted to the things of this life; though at times this difference in my destination has been trying to me, yet I believe those trials (which have certainly been very pinching) that I have had to go through have been very useful, and have brought me to a feeling sense of what I am; and at the same time have taught me where power is, and in what we are to glory; not in ourselves nor in anything we can be or do, but we are alone to desire that He may be glorified, either through us or others, in our being something or nothing, as He may see best for us."
After eleven years the Fry family moved to a beautiful home in the country at Plashet. Changes had come in those eleven years. The father had died; one sister had married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and she herself had been made a "minister" by the Society of Friends. While her hands were very full with the care of her seven children, she had yet found time to do much outside Christian work.
Naturally shrinking, she says, "I find it an awful thing to rise amongst a large assembly, and, unless much covered with love and power, hardly know how to venture." But she seemed always to be "covered with love and power," for she prayed much and studied her Bible closely, and her preaching seemed to melt alike crowned heads and criminals in chains.
Opposite the Plashet House, with its great trees and flowers, was a dilapidated building occupied by an aged man and his sister. They had once been well-to-do, but were now very poor, earning a pittance by selling rabbits. The sister, shy and sorrowful from their reduced circumstances, was nearly inaccessible, but Mrs. Fry won her way to her heart. Then she asked how they would like to have a girls' school in a big room attached to the building. They consented, and soon seventy poor girls were in attendance.
"She had," says a friend, "the gentlest touch with children. She would win their hearts, if they had never seen her before, almost at the first glance, and by the first sound of her musical voice."
Then the young wife, now thirty-one, established a depot of calicoes and flannels for the poor, with a room full of drugs, and another department where good soup was prepared all through the hard winters. She would go into the "Irish Colony," taking her two older daughters with her, that they might learn the sweetness of benevolence, "threading her way through children and pigs, up broken staircases, and by narrow passages; then she would listen to their tales of want and woe."
Now she would find a young mother dead, with a paper cross pinned upon her breast; now she visited a Gypsy camp to care for a sick child, and give them Bibles. Each year when the camp returned to Plashet, their chief pleasure was the visits of the lovely Quaker. Blessings on thee, beautiful Elizabeth Fry!
She now began to assist in the public meetings near London, but with some hesitation, as it took her from home; but after an absence of two weeks, she found her household "in very comfortable order; and so far from having suffered in my absence, it appears as if a better blessing had attended them than common."
She did not forget her home interests. One of her servants being ill, she watched by his bedside till he died. When she talked with him of the world to come, he said, "God bless you, ma'am." She said, "There is no set of people I feel so much about as servants, as I do not think they have generally justice done to them; they are too much considered as another race of beings, and we are apt to forget that the holy injunction holds good with them, 'Do as thou wouldst be done unto.'"
She who could dine with kings and queens, felt as regards servants, "that in the best sense we are all one, and though our paths here may be different, we have all souls equally valuable, and have all the same work to do; which, if properly considered, should lead us to great sympathy and love, and also to a constant care for their welfare, both here and hereafter."
When she was thirty-three, having moved to London for the winter, she began her remarkable work in Newgate prison. The condition of prisoners was pitiable in the extreme. She found three hundred women, with their numerous children, huddled together, with no classification between the most and least depraved, without employment, in rags and dirt, and sleeping on the floor with no bedding, the boards simply being raised for a sort of pillow. Liquors were purchased openly at a bar in the prison; and swearing, gambling, obscenity, and pulling each other's hair were common. The walls, both in the men's and women's departments, were hung with chains and fetters.
When Mrs. Fry and two or three friends first visited the prison, the superintendent advised that they lay aside their watches before entering, which they declined to do. Mrs. Fry did not fear, nor need she, with her benign presence.
On her second visit she asked to be left alone with the women, and read to them the tenth chapter of Matthew, making a few observations on Christ's having come to save sinners. Some of the women asked who Christ was. Who shall forgive us for such ignorance in our very midst?
The children were almost naked, and ill from want of food, air, and exercise. Mrs. Fry told them that she would start a school for their children, which announcement was received with tears of joy. She asked that they select one from their own number for a governess. Mary Conner was chosen, a girl who had been put in prison for stealing a watch. So changed did the girl become under this new responsibility, that she was never known to infringe a rule of the prison. After fifteen months she was released, but died soon after of consumption.
When the school was opened for all under twenty-five, "the railing was crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situations, with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation."
Mrs. Fry saw at once the need of these women being occupied, but the idea that these people could be induced to work was laughed at, as visionary, by the officials. They said the work would be destroyed or stolen at once. But the good woman did not rest till an association of twelve persons was formed for the "Improvement of the Female Prisoners of Newgate"; "to provide for the clothing, the instruction, and the employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety, and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable whilst in prison, and respectable when they leave it."
It was decided that Botany Bay could be supplied with stockings, and indeed with all the articles needed by convicts, through the work of these women. A room was at once made ready, and matrons were appointed. A portion of the earnings was to be given the women for themselves and their children. In ten months they made twenty thousand articles of wearing apparel, and knit from sixty to one hundred pairs of stockings every month. The Bible was read to them twice each day. They received marks for good behavior, and were as pleased as children with the small prizes given them.
One of the girls who received a prize of clothing came to Mrs. Fry, and "hoped she would excuse her for being so forward, but if she might say it, she felt exceedingly disappointed; she little thought of having clothing given to her, but she had hoped I would have given her a Bible, that she might read the Scriptures herself."
No woman was ever punished under Mrs. Fry's management. They said, "it would be more terrible to be brought up before her than before the judge." When she told them she hoped they would not play cards, five packs were at once brought to her and burned.
The place was now so orderly and quiet, that "Newgate had become almost a show; the statesman and the noble, the city functionary and the foreign traveller, the high-bred gentlewoman, the clergyman and the dissenting minister, flocked to witness the extraordinary change," and to listen to Mrs. Fry's beautiful Bible readings.
Letters poured in from all parts of the country, asking her to come to their prisons for a similar work, or to teach others how to work. A committee of the House of Commons summoned her before them to learn her suggestions, and to hear of her methods; and later the House of Lords.
Of course the name of Elizabeth Fry became known everywhere. Queen Victoria gave her audience, and when she appeared in public, everybody was eager to look at her. The newspapers spoke of her in the highest praise. Yet with a beautiful spirit she writes in her journal, "I am ready to say in the fulness of my heart, surely 'it is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes'; so many are the providential openings of various kinds. Oh! if good should result, may the praise and glory of the whole be entirely given where it is due by us, and by all, in deep humiliation and prostration of spirit."
Mrs. Fry's heart was constantly burdened with the scenes she witnessed. The penal laws were a caricature on justice. Men and women were hanged for theft, forgery, passing counterfeit money, and for almost every kind of fraud. One young woman, with a babe in her arms, was hanged for stealing a piece of cloth worth one dollar and twenty-five cents! Another was hanged for taking food to keep herself and little child from starving. It was no uncommon thing to see women hanging from the gibbet at Newgate, because they had passed a forged one-pound note (five dollars).
George Cruikshank in 1818 was so moved at one of these executions that he made a picture which represented eight men and three women hanging from the gallows, and a rope coiled around the faces of twelve others. Across the picture were the words, "I promise to perform during the issue of Bank-notes easily imitated ... for the Governors and Company of the Bank of England."
He called the picture a "Bank-note, not to be imitated." It at once created a great sensation. Crowds blocked the street in front of the shop where it was hung. The pictures were in such demand that Cruikshank sat up all night to etch another plate. The Gurneys, Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir James Mackintosh, all worked vigorously against capital punishment, save, possibly, for murder.
Among those who were to be executed was Harriet Skelton, who, for the man she loved, had passed forged notes. She was singularly open in face and manner, confiding, and well-behaved. When she was condemned to death, it was a surprise and horror to all who knew her. Mrs. Fry was deeply interested. Noblemen went to see her in her damp, dark cell, which was guarded by a heavy iron door. The Duke of Gloucester went with Mrs. Fry to the Directors of the Bank of England, and to Lord Sidmouth, to plead for her, but their hearts were not to be moved, and the poor young girl was hanged. The public was enthusiastic in its applause for Mrs. Fry, and unsparing in its denunciation of Sidmouth. At last the obnoxious laws were changed.
Mrs. Fry was heartily opposed to capital punishment. She said, "It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them"; it does not lead to reformation, and "does not deter others from crime, because the crimes subject to capital punishment are gradually increasing."
When the world is more civilized than it is to-day, when we have closed the open saloon, that is the direct cause of nearly all the murders, then we shall probably do away with hanging; or, if men and women must be killed for the safety of society, a thing not easily proven, it will be done in the most humane manner, by chloroform.
Mrs. Fry was likewise strongly opposed to solitary confinement, which usually makes the subject a mental wreck, and, as regards moral action, an imbecile. How wonderfully in advance of her age was this gifted woman!
Mrs. Fry's thoughts now turned to another evil. When the women prisoners were transported to New South Wales, they were carried to the ships in open carts, the crowd jeering. She prevailed upon government to have them carried in coaches, and promised that she would go with them. When on board the ship, she knelt on the deck and prayed with them as they were going into banishment, and then bade them a tender good by. Truly woman can be an angel of light.
Says Captain Martin, "Who could resist this beautiful, persuasive, and heavenly-minded woman? To see her was to love her; to hear her was to feel as if a guardian angel had bid you follow that teaching which could alone subdue the temptations and evils of this life, and secure a Redeemer's love in eternity."
At this time Mrs. Fry and her brother Joseph visited Scotland and the north of England to ascertain the condition of the prisons. They found much that was inhuman; insane persons in prison, eighteen months in dungeons! Debtors confined night and day in dark, filthy cells, and never leaving them; men chained to the walls of their cells, or to rings in the floor, or with their limbs stretched apart till they fainted in agony; women with chains on hands, and feet, and body, while they slept on bundles of straw. On their return a book was published, which did much to arouse England.
Mrs. Fry was not yet forty, but her work was known round the world. The authorities of Russia, at the desire of the Empress, wrote Mrs. Fry as to the best plans for the St. Petersburg lunatic asylum and treatment of the inmates, and her suggestions were carried out to the letter.
Letters came from Amsterdam, Denmark, Paris, and elsewhere, asking counsel. The correspondence became so great that two of her daughters were obliged to attend to it.
Again she travelled all over England, forming "Ladies' Prison Associations," which should not only look after the inmates of prisons, but aid them to obtain work when they were discharged, or "so provide for them that stealing should not seem a necessity."
About this time, 1828, one of the houses in which her husband was a partner failed, "which involved Elizabeth Fry and her family in a train of sorrows and perplexities which tinged the remaining years of her life."
They sold the house at Plashet, and moved again to Mildred Court, now the home of one of their sons. Her wealthy brothers and her children soon re-established the parents in comfort.
She now became deeply interested in the five hundred Coast-Guard stations in the United Kingdom, where the men and their families led a lonely life. Partly by private contributions and partly through the aid of government, she obtained enough money to buy more than twenty-five thousand volumes for libraries at these stations. The letters of gratitude were a sufficient reward for the hard work. She also obtained small libraries for all the packets that sailed from Falmouth.
In 1837, with some friends, she visited Paris, making a detailed examination of its prisons. Guizot entertained her, the Duchess de Broglie, M. de Pressensé, and others paid her much attention. The King and Queen sent for her, and had an earnest talk. At Nismes, where there were twelve hundred prisoners, she visited the cells, and when five armed soldiers wished to protect her and her friends, she requested that they be allowed to go without guard. In one dungeon she found two men, chained hand and foot. She told them she would plead for their liberation if they would promise good behavior. They promised, and kept it, praying every night for their benefactor thereafter. When she held a meeting in the prison, hundreds shed tears, and the good effects of her work were visible long after.
The next journey was made to Germany. At Brussels, the King held out both hands to receive her. In Denmark, the King and Queen invited her to dine, and she sat between them. At Berlin, the royal family treated her like a sister, and all stood about her while she knelt and prayed for them.
The new penitentiaries were built after her suggestions, so perfect was thought to be her system. The royal family never forget her. When the King of Prussia visited England, to stand sponsor for the infant Prince of Wales, in 1842, he dined with her at her home. She presented to him her eight daughters and daughters-in-law, her seven sons and eldest grandson, and then their twenty-five grandchildren.
Finally, the great meetings, and the earnest plans, with their wonderful execution, were coming to an end for Elizabeth Fry.
There had been many breaks in the home circle. Her beloved son William, and his two children, had just died. Some years before she had buried a very precious child, Elizabeth, at the age of five, who shortly before her death said, "Mamma, I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better than everybody, and I love Almighty much better than thee, and I hope thee loves Almighty much better than me." This was a severe stroke, Mrs. Fry saying, "My much-loved husband and I have drank this cup together, in close sympathy and unity of feeling. It has at times been very bitter to us both, but we have been in measure each other's joy and helpers in the Lord."
During her last sickness she said, "I believe this is not death, but it is as passing through the valley of the shadow of death, and perhaps with more suffering, from more sensitiveness; but the 'rock is here'; the distress is awful, but He has been with me."
The last morning came, Oct. 13, 1845. About nine o'clock, one of her daughters, sitting by her bedside, read from Isaiah: "I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." The mother said slowly, "Oh! my dear Lord, help and keep thy servant!" and never spoke afterward.
She was buried in the Friends' burying-ground at Barking, by the side of her little Elizabeth, a deep silence prevailing among the multitudes gathered there, broken only by the solemn prayer of her brother, Joseph John Gurney.
Thus closed one of the most beautiful lives among women. To the last she was doing good deeds. When she was wheeled along the beach in her chair, she gave books and counsel to the passers-by. When she stayed at hotels, she usually arranged a meeting for the servants. She was sent for, from far and near, to pray with the sick, and comfort the dying, who often begged to kiss her hand; no home was too desolate for her lovely and cheerful presence. No wonder Alexander of Russia called her "one of the wonders of the age."
Her only surviving son gives this interesting testimony of her home life: "I never recollect seeing her out of temper or hearing her speak a harsh word, yet still her word was law, but always the law of love."
Naturally timid, always in frail health, sometimes misunderstood, even with the highest motives, she lived a heroic life in the best sense, and died the death of a Christian. What grander sphere for woman than such philanthropy as this! And the needs of humanity are as great as ever, waiting for the ministration of such noble souls.