MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).(George Eliot.)1819-1880.MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).(George Eliot.)
MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).(George Eliot.)1819-1880.
Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury Farm, in the parish of Chilvers Coton, on the 22nd of November, 1819. She was the third and youngest child of Robert Evans and his second wife Christiana Pearson. In 1820 the family removed to Griff House, on the Arbury estate, where Mary Ann’s happy childhood was passed. At five years of age she was sent with her sister to Miss Lathom’s boarding-school at Attleboro; in her eighth or ninth year, to Miss Wallington’s at Nuneaton, where Miss Lewis, the principal governess, and “an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman,” became her intimate friend, exercising great influence over her. In her thirteenth year she was transferred to the school of the Miss Franklins at Coventry. In the summer of 1836 Mrs. Evans died; in the following spring the elder sister, Christiana, was married; and thenceforward Mary Ann took entire charge of the Griff household, engaging in various studies and active charities at the same time. In March, 1841, Mr. Robert Evans and his daughter removed to a house on the Foleshill road, near Coventry; Griff being given up to Isaac, the brother, who had recently married. In this new neighborhood Miss Evans formed the friendship of several congenial people—notablyMr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, and Miss Sara Hennell, a sister of the latter. The impressible young woman, who had till now held her eager nature “buckramed in formalities,” adopted the tone of her friends’ thought the more rapidly and easily because of the inevitable reaction from artificial restraints. She became an agnostic—though neither this nor any other single word fully explains her position.
In the spring of 1844 she took up the translation of Strauss’s ‘Life of Jesus,’ which had already been begun by Mrs. Charles Hennell. Miss Evans did not complete the work until April, 1846.
On the 31st of May, 1849, Mr. Robert Evans died, after a long illness. The Brays persuaded his daughter, who was worn out by anxiety and hard work, to accompany them in a trip to the Continent. At Geneva, where they arrived in July, she decided to remain a while, living at apension, and carrying on various studies. In October she left thepensionto board in the family of M. d’Albert Durade, an artist. He and his wife became her fast friends; M. Durade painted her portrait, and subsequently translated some of her works into French.
Miss Evans returned to England in March, 1850, and, after visiting her brother and sister, made her home at Rosehill with the Brays for more than a year, with occasional visits to London. At the end of September, 1851, she accepted the position of assistant editor of The Westminster Review, and went to board with the family of the publisher, Mr. Chapman, in the Strand. She now became acquainted with Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and other leading thinkers and writers. In 1854 was published her translationof Feuerbach’s ‘Essence of Christianity,’ with her name (now writtenMarianEvans), on the title-page; this, Mr. Cross informs us, was the only time her real name ever appeared in connection with her work.
In July, 1854, Marian Evans consented to become the wife of George Henry Lewes, though a formal and legal marriage was impossible. They at once went abroad, where they remained until March, 1855; spending the greater part of the time at Weimar and Berlin. After their return to England they lived for over three years in lodgings at Richmond, both working hard, though the health of neither was good. Mrs. Lewes contributed at this time to The Leader and The Westminster Review. She also finished a translation of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics,’ which she had commenced abroad.
In September, 1856, she began, as an experiment, to write fiction. In NovemberThe Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Bartonwas forwarded to the Blackwoods by Mr. Lewes as the work of a friend of his. It was published in Blackwood’s Magazine early in 1857, and fifty guineas paid for it. An arrangement was made by which “George Eliot” was to supply furtherScenes from Clerical Life.Mr. Gilfil’s Love Storycame next, followed byJanet’s Repentance. In December these stories were issued in a volume by the Blackwoods, and the author received £120 for the first edition.
Adam Bede, her first novel, was published in 1859. She received £800 for the copyright during four years. The book was received with enthusiasm. It was followed byThe Mill on the Floss(1860),Silas Marner(1861),Romola(1863),Felix Holt(1866),The Spanish Gypsy, a drama (1868),Middlemarch(1871-2),Poems, collected “1874,”Daniel Deronda(1876), andThe Impressions of Theophrastus Such(1879). The short story calledThe Lifted Veilwas published in Blackwood’s, July, 1859;Brother Jacobappeared in The Cornhill Magazine, July, 1864.Romolaalso made its appearance in The Cornhill, the publishers paying for it the sum of £7,000. £5,000 was received from the Blackwoods forFelix Holt; and the profits ofMiddlemarchandDaniel Derondawere still greater.
In February, 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes removed to Holly Lodge, Wandsworth; in December, 1860, to 16 Blandford Square; and in November, 1863, to their permanent home, “The Priory,” 21 North Bank, Regent’s Park. They purchased in 1876 a country-house at Witley, near Godalming, Surrey. They were both fond of travelling, and the record of their many continental journeys is full of interest. It was their custom to leave town at once as soon as George Eliot had finished a book.
In November, 1878, occurred the death of Mr. Lewes. For some time George Eliot remained in seclusion, broken down by grief. She edited Mr. Lewes’ MSS., and established as a memorial the George Henry Lewes studentship at Cambridge.
In May, 1880, she was married to Mr. John Walter Cross, who had long been the dear friend of herself and Mr. Lewes. Her marriage created general surprise. It may best be understood by those who have become acquainted, through Mr. Cross’s delicate and conscientious work, ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ with the needs of her singularly sensitive nature.
Mr. and Mrs. Cross immediately left England for the Continent, returning in July to Witley. Mrs. Cross had a long illness in the autumn, which left her much weakened. On the 22d of December, 1880, she died at No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, having been confined to the house only four days.
Her husband concludes her biography with the words: “Her spirit joined
‘—— that choir invisibleWhose music is the gladness of the world.’”
Nor can any other words be so fit as these of her own—words wherein “the precious life-blood of a master spirit” is “embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
Early home.
An anecdote of her childhood.
The road ascends through a deep cutting overhung by trees which cling to the rocky bank wherever they can find roothold, while festoons of ivy catch every ray of sunlight on their glossy leaves. Past the wood, green fields stretch away on the right of the road; and beyond them, through the branches of fir, elm, oak and birch-trees, a glint of red brick tells us we have reached our goal, for there stands Griff House.... It is a pleasant, substantial house, built of warm red brick, with old-fashioned, small-paned casement windows. The walls are almost hidden by creepers, a glorious old pear-tree, roses and jessamine, and over one end a tangle of luxuriant ivy. Across the smooth green lawn and its flower-beds an old stone vase covered with golden lichen made apoint of color beneath the silver stems of a great birch-tree. Outside the light iron fence a group of sheep were bleating below a gnarled and twisted oak. Behind them rose the rich purple-brown wood we had come through, and beyond the wood we caught glimpses of far-away blue distance, swelling uplands and wide-stretching valleys, with here and there a huge chimney sending up a column of black smoke or white puff of steam. On the house-roof pigeons were cooing forth their satisfaction at the sunshine. From the yew-tree close by, a concert of small chirping voices told that Spring was coming.... Within, the house is much in the same state as in the days of Mary Ann Evans’s girlhood. She went for a short time to school at Nuneaton, coming home from Saturday till Monday; but one week, in spite of her love of learning, the little maiden’s heart failed her, and when the time came to start for school she had disappeared. After hours of search, she was at last discovered hiding under the great four-post mahogany bed, which was shown us in its original place in the spare room.
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County,’ inThe Century, July, 1885.
Her father.
The father was a remarkable man, and many of the leading traits in his character are to be found in Adam Bede and in Caleb Garth—although, of course, neither of these is a portrait.
Her mother.
Not a precocious child.
“A large slow-growing nature”: Mr. Cross’s important characterization.
His second wife was a woman with an unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd, practical person, with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Hers was an affectionate,warm-hearted nature, and her children, on whom she cast “the benediction of her gaze,” were thoroughly attached to her. She came of a race of yeomen, and her social position was, therefore, rather better than her husband’s at the time of their marriage. Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in the “Mill on the Floss.” The little girl very early became possessed with the idea that she was going to be a personage in the world; and Mr. Charles Lewes has told me an anecdote which George Eliot related of herself as characteristic of this period of her childhood. When she was only four years old she recollected playing on the piano, of which she did not know one note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. This was the time when the love for her brother grew into the child’s affections. She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything he did. She was not, in these baby-days, in the least precocious in learning. In fact, her half-sister, Mrs. Houghton, who was some fourteen years her senior, told me that the child learned to read with some difficulty; but Mr. Isaac Evans says that this was not from any slowness in apprehension, but because she liked playing so much better. Mere sharpness, however, was not a characteristic of her mind. Hers was a large, slow-growing nature; and I think it is, at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant phenomenon about her. In her moral development she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that was most marked in her all through life, namely, the absolute need ofsome one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment or the keenest suffering, knowing “all the wealth and all the woe” of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive in the highest degree.
The sort of happiness that belongs to this budding-time of life, from the age of three to five, is apt to impress itself very strongly on the memory; and it is this period which is referred to in the Brother and Sister Sonnet, “But were another childhood’s world my share, I would be born a little sister there.”
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
At the Miss Franklin’s school.
When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words of a neighbor, who occasionally called at Griff House, “a queer, three-cornered, awkward girl,” who sat in corners and shyly watched her elders, she was placed as boarder with the Misses Franklin at Coventry. This school, then in high repute throughout the neighborhood, was kept by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of unusual attainments and lady-like culture, although not without a certain taint of Johnsonian affectation. She seems to have thoroughly grounded Miss Evans in a sound English education, laying great stress in particular on the propriety of a precise and careful manner of speaking and reading. She herself always made a point ofexpressing herself in studied sentences.... Miss Evans, in whose family a broad provincial dialect was spoken, soon acquired Miss Rebecca’s carefully elaborated speech, and, not content with that, she might be said to have created a new voice for herself. In later life every one who knew her was struck by the sweetness of her voice, and the finished construction of every sentence as it fell from her lips; for by that time the acquired habit had become second nature, and blended harmoniously with her entire personality. But in those early days the artificial effort at perfect propriety of expression was still perceptible, and produced an impression of affectation, perhaps reflecting that of her revered instructress.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.
Evangelical influences at school—Miss Lewis.
At Miss Wallington’s the growing girl soon distinguished herself by an easy mastery of the usual school-learning of her years, and there, too, the religious side of her nature was developed to a remarkable degree. Miss Lewis was an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman, and exerted a strong influence on her young pupil, whom she found very sympathetically inclined.
The Miss Franklins.
In talking about those early days, my wife impressed on my mind the debt that she felt she owed to the Miss Franklins for their excellent instruction, and she had also the very highest respect for their moral qualities. With her chameleon-like nature she soon adopted their religious views with intense eagerness and conviction, although she never formally joined the Baptists or any other communionthan the Church of England. She at once, however, took a foremost place in the school, and became a leader of prayer-meetings among the girls. In addition to a sound English education the Miss Franklins managed to procure for their pupils excellent masters for French, German, and music; so that, looking to the lights of those times, the means of obtaining knowledge was very much above the average for girls. Her teachers, on their side, were very proud of their exceptionally gifted scholar; and years afterwards, when Miss Evans came with her father to live in Coventry, they introduced her to one of their friends, not only as a marvel of mental power, but also as a person “sure to get something up very soon in the way of clothing-club or other charitable undertaking.”
Lonely life at Griff: housekeeper, Lady Bountiful, and student.
After Christiana’s marriage the entire charge of the Griff establishment devolved on Mary Ann, who became a most exemplary housewife, learned thoroughly everything that had to be done, and, with her innate desire for perfection, was never satisfied unless her department was administered in the very best manner that circumstances permitted. She spent a great deal of time in visiting the poor, organizing clothing-clubs, and other works of active charity. But over and above this, as will be seen from the following letters, she was always prosecuting an active intellectual life of her own. Mr. Brezzi, a well-known master of modern languages at Coventry, used to come over to Griff regularly to give her lessons in Italian and German. Mr. McEwen, also from Coventry, continued her lessons in music, and she got through a large amount of miscellaneous reading by herself. In the evening she was always inthe habit of playing to her father, who was very fond of music. But it requires no great effort of the imagination to conceive that this life, though full of interests of its own, and the source from whence the future novelist drew the most powerful and the most touching of her creations, was, as a matter of fact, very monotonous, very difficult, very discouraging. It could scarcely be otherwise to a young girl with a full, passionate nature and hungry intellect, shut up in a farm-house in the remote country. For there was no sympathetic human soul near with whom to exchange ideas on the intellectual and spiritual problems that were beginning to agitate her mind.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Butter and cheese making.
One of her chief beauties was in her large, finely shaped, feminine hands—but she once pointed out to a friend at Foleshill that one of them was broader across than the other, saying, with some pride, that it was due to the quantity of butter and cheese she had made during her housekeeping days at Griff.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
Her narrow views of fiction at this period.
As to the discipline our minds receive from the perusal of fictions, I can conceive none that is beneficial but may be attained by that of history. It is the merit of fictions to come within the orbit of probability: if unnatural they would no longer please. If it be said the mind must have relaxation, “Truth is strange—stranger than fiction.” When a person has exhausted the wonders of truth there is no other resort thanfiction: till then, I cannot imagine how the adventures of some phantom conjured up by fancy can be more entertaining than the transactions of real specimens of human nature, from which we may safely draw inferences.
Mary Ann Evans:Letter to Miss Lewis, 1839, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Opinions on music.
We have had an oratorio at Coventry lately, Braham, Phillips, Mrs. Knyvett, and Mr. Shaw—the last, I think, I shall attend. I am not fitted to decide on the question of the propriety or lawfulness of such exhibitions of talent and so forth, because I have no soul for music. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” I am a tasteless person, but it would not cost me any regrets if the only music heard in our land were that of strict worship, nor can I think that a pleasure that involves the devotion of all the time and powers of an immortal being to the acquirement of an expertness in so useless (at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred) an accomplishment, can be quite pure or elevating in its tendency.
Mary Ann Evans:Letter to Miss Lewis, 1838, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
A significant reaction.
The above remarks on oratorio are the more surprising because, two years later, when Miss Evans went to the Birmingham festival, in September, 1840, previous to her brother’s marriage, she was affected to an extraordinary degree, so much so that Mrs. Isaac Evans—then Miss Rawlins—told me that the attention of people sitting nearwas attracted by her hysterical sobbing. And in all her later life music was one of the chiefest delights to her, and especially oratorio.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Mr. Bray’s impressions in 1841.
Although I had known Mary Ann Evans as a child at her father’s house at Griff, our real acquaintance began in 1841, when after she came with her father to reside near Coventry, my sister, who lived next door to her, brought her to call upon us one morning, thinking, amongst other natural reasons for introducing her, that the influence of this superior young lady of Evangelical opinions might be beneficial to our heretical minds. She was then about one-and-twenty, and I can well recollect her appearance and modest demeanor as she sat down on a low ottoman by the window, and I had a sort of surprised feeling when she first spoke, at the measured, highly-cultivated mode of expression, so different from the usual tones of young persons from the country. We became friends at once. We soon found that her mind was already turning toward greater freedom of thought in religious opinion, that she had even bought for herself Hennell’s ‘Inquiry,’ and there was much mutual interest between the author and herself in their frequent meeting at our house.
Charles Bray: ‘Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life.’ London: Longmans & Co., 1885.
Remarkable proportions of Miss Evans’ head.
Mr. Bray, an enthusiastic believer in phrenology,was so much struck with the grand proportions of her head that he took Marian Evans to London to have a cast taken. He thinks that, after that of Napoleon, her head showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person’s recorded.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
The house in the Foleshill road.
Marian’s study.
Her bedroom.
If you go through the quaint old city of Coventry, with its glorious spires, its huge factories, its narrow, irregular streets of timbered houses, you reach at last the road leading to the village of Foleshill, a mile or so outside the limits of the borough. Dirty coal-wharves and smoke-grimed houses, last remnants of the town, gradually give place to scattered cottages, dropped here and there among fields and hedge-rows, smoke-grimed too, but still green in summer. Then on the right comes a little brook with a pathway through some posts beside it. Three tall poplars in a garden fence overshadow it; and through the trees behind, you catch a glimpse of two unpretending brown-stone, semi-detached houses, regular suburban villas, with the same carriage-drive winding up among the trees to each, the same grass-lawn with its beds of evergreens, the same little strips of garden at the back—a mournful attempt to combine town and country; as uninspiring a spot as one can well conceive. To the first of these houses in 1841 came Mr. Evans, when he left Griff; and with him his grave, soft-voiced daughter, Mary Ann, or, as she now called herself, Marian.... “How often have I seen that pale, thoughtful face wandering along the path by the little stream,” said one of herearly friends, as we turned into the gate.... Upstairs I was taken into a tiny room over the front door, with a plain square window. This was George Eliot’s little study. Here to the left on entering was her desk; and upon a bracket, in the corner between it and the window, stood an exquisite statuette of Christ, looking towards her. Here she lived among her books, which covered the walls. Here she worked with ardor in the new fields of thought which her friendship with the Brays opened to her.... Out of the study opened her bedroom, looking over the little villa garden with its carriage-drive under the shady trees. But three of these trees remain—a weeping lime, a venerable acacia, with the silvery sheen of a birch between them. In old days there were many more—so many, indeed, as to render the house gloomy in the extreme. But they served to shut off all the sight of the noisy road thirty yards away, though they could not shut off the sound of the busy coal-wharf farther on, whence foul and cruel words to horse and fellow-man floated up through the still summer air, and jarred painfully on that highly strung organization, as Miss Evans sat plunged in thought and work beside her window. It was one of the penalties of a nearer approach to the civilization she had so ardently longed for in her old country life at Griff. From the study you look on the exquisite spires of Coventry, or through the tree-stems on gently-swelling fields with their row of hedge-row elms against the sky.
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
Marian’s appearance and temperament.
A sketch by Mrs. Bray.
Her voice.
Though not above the middle height Marian gavepeople the impression of being much taller than she really was, her figure, although thin and slight, being well-poised and not without a certain sturdiness of make. She was never robust in health, being delicately strung, and of a highly nervous temperament. In youth the keen excitability of her nature often made her wayward and hysterical. In fact her extraordinary intellectual vigor did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a peculiarly feminine organization. There exists a colored sketch done by Mrs. Bray about this period, which gives one a glimpse of George Eliot in her girlhood. In those Foleshill days she had a quantity of soft pale-brown hair worn in ringlets. Her head was massive, her features powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman, yet having a certain delicacy of outline. A neutral tone of coloring did not help to relieve this general heaviness of structure, the complexion being pale but not fair. Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its frame-work. Her eyes, of a gray-blue, constantly varying in color, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out gray, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. So much was this the case, that a young lady who had once enjoyed an hour’s conversation with her, came away under its spell with the impression that she was beautiful, but afterwards, on seeing George Eliot again when shewas not talking, she could hardly believe her to be the same person. The charm of her nature disclosed itself in her manner and her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea in being “like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Æolian harp.” It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy.
Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’
Conduct on her great change of opinion.
It was impossible for such a nature as Miss Evans’s, in the enthusiasm of this first great change, to rest satisfied in compliance with the old forms, and she was so uneasy in an equivocal position that she determined to give up going to church. This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was a Churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter. Upon this, Miss Evans made up her mind to go into lodgings at Leamington, and to try to support herself by teaching.
The conclusion of the matter was that Mr. Evans withdrew his house from the agent’s hands, and his daughter went to stay at Griff, with Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Evans.
Resumes attendance at church.
Her subsequent regrets.
Miss Evans remained for about three weeks at Griff, at the end of which time, through the intervention of her brother, the Brays, and Miss Rebecca Franklin, the father was very glad to receive her again, and she resumed going to church as before....In the last year of her life she told me that, although she did not think she had been to blame, few things had occasioned her more regret than this temporary collision with her father, which might, she thought, have been avoided with a little management.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
A devoted daughter.
As her friend said with loving pride, “She was the most devoted daughter for those nine years that it is possible to imagine.” Her father always spent three days in the week away from home; and those three days were Miss Evans’ holidays, given up to her work and her friends. But on the evenings he was at home, not the most tempting invitation in the world would induce her to leave him.
Her housekeeping.
“If I am to keep my father’s house, I am going to do it thoroughly,” she would say. And thoroughly she did try to do her duty, even to the matter of cooking on certain occasions. A friend recalls a visit one afternoon, when she found Marian in comical distress over her failures. The cook was ill, and Miss Evans undertook to manufacture a batter-pudding. “And when it came to table, it broke. To think that the mistress could not even make a batter-pudding!”
Rose G. Kingsley: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
Remarks on her connection with George Henry Lewes.
Not only was Mr. Lewes’ previous family life irretrievably spoiled, but his home had been wholly broken up for nearly two years. In forming a judgmenton so momentous a question, it is, above all things, necessary to understand what was actually undertaken, what was actually achieved; and, in my opinion, this can best be arrived at, not from any outside statement or arguments, but by consideration of the whole tenor of the life which follows.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Her own words on the subject.
One thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties donotact as I have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by remembering how subtile and complex are the influences that mould opinion.... From the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except, indeed, that being happy in each other, we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that.
Marian Evans [Lewes]:Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1855, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will out-weigh the small negative good that would have consistedin my not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am—but least of all faulty where others most blame.
Marian Evans [Lewes]:Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1857, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
“George Eliot” and George Lewes.
What a contrast the pair presented! He,pétillant d’esprit, as the French say, as brimful of life, geniality, and animation, as it was possible for any human being often oppressed with bodily ailments to be, ever able to shake off these for the sake of lively, engrossing talk, ever on the alert to discover intellectual qualities in others; she, grave, pensive, thoughtful, not disinclined for sportiveness and wit certainly, as ready as he to bring out the best in those around her, but equally devoid of his habitual gayety and lightheartedness, as was he of her own earnest mood. There was something irresistibly winning and attractive about Mr. Lewes. The heart warmed to him at once, he was so kindly, so ready to offer help or counsel, so pleased to be of use. George Eliot’s large-hearted, deep-souled benevolence took in all human kind, but could not so easily individualize. That commanding spirit, that loyal, much-tried nature, could not be expected to testify the same catholicity in personal likings as a man, who, despite his rare intellectual endowments and devotion to especial fields of learning, yet remained a man of the world.
Charles Lamb speaks somewhere of a woman’s“divine plain face,” and perhaps the same criticism might be passed on George Eliot. The plainness vanished as soon as she smiled, and the tone of the voice was singularly sympathetic and harmonious. As to Mr. Lewes’ looks or personal appearance, one never thought of the matter at all. Small, spare, sallow, much bearded, with brilliant eyes, he could neither be called handsome nor ugly. Delightful he ever was, kindness itself, always on the look-out to serve and to amuse. For he knew—none better—the value of a smile.
With George Eliot acquaintance ripened slower into friendship. In spite of her warm human sympathies and the keenness of her desire to enter into the feelings of others, her manner at first awed, perhaps even repelled. It was so much more difficult for her than for Mr. Lewes to quit her own world of thought and speculation, and enter into that of the common joys and sorrows and aspirations of humanity. Yet few delighted more in gathering her friends together. “From my good father I learned the pleasure of being hospitable,” she once said to me with a glow of feeling. “He rejoiced ever to receive his friends, and to my eyes now the pleasure wears the shape of a duty.”
I am not sure as to the precise words she used, but this was the sentiment.
It is pleasant to record their love of the good and the beautiful in the least little thing—George Eliot’s rapture at the sight of an exquisite flower, Mr. Lewes’ delight in a bright happy child; also the keenness of their sympathy with common joys and sorrows, and the unbounded kindliness and pitifulness of their nature.
—— ——: ‘A Week with George Eliot.’Temple Bar, February, 1885.
First attempt at fiction.
“A capital title.”
‘Scenes from Clerical Life.’
Last chapters of ‘Amos Barton.’
September, 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went further towards the actual writing of the novel 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 every thing 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 of a novel. My “introductory chapter” was pure description, though there were good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted—indeed, disbelieved in—my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try some time what I could do in fiction, and by and by, when we came back to England, and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my mental power would go towards the production of a novel, was strengthened. He began to say very positively, “You must try and write a story,” and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. Ideferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of which the title was ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton.’ I was soon wide awake again and told G. He said, “Oh, what a capital title!” and from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. George used to say, “It may be a failure—it may be that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps it may be just good enough to warrant your trying again.” Again, “You may write achef d’œuvreat once—there’s no telling.” But his prevalent impression was, that though I could not write apoornovel, my effort would want the highest quality of fiction—dramatic presentation.... I did not begin my story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan of writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own observation of the clergy, and calling them ‘Scenes from Clerical Life,’ opening with ‘Amos Barton.’ He at once accepted the notion as a good one—fresh and striking; and about a week afterwards, when I read him the first part of ‘Amos,’ he had no longer any doubt about my ability to carry out the plan. The scene at Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had been doubtful about—it was clear I could write good dialogue. There still remained the question whether I could command any pathos; andthat was to be decided by the mode in which I treated Milly’s death. One night G. went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, “I think your pathos is better than your fun.”
Marian Evans [Lewes]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Her pseudonym.
I may mention that my wife told me the reason she fixed on this name [George Eliot] was that George was Mr. Lewes’ Christian name, and Eliot was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.
J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
Genesis of “Adam Bede.”
The germ of “Adam Bede” was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my father’s younger brother)—an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal—a very ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and shedescribed to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun to write the “Scenes of Clerical Life.” He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story, with some points in my father’s early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chiefdramatis personæ, and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of “Scenes,” but afterward when several motives had induced me to close these with “Janet’s Repentance,” I determined on making what we always called in our conversation “My Aunt’s Story” the subject of a long novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857.
Dinah.
The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when shecould not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods—once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father’s last residence, Foleshill.
Adam.
The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father’s early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede—only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and the mutual relation to Hetty—i. e., to the girl who commits child-murder—the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax toward which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader’s interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’