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diff --git a/36847.txt b/36847.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dfe98ee --- /dev/null +++ b/36847.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6312 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: George Eliot + +Author: Mathilde Blind + +Release Date: July 25, 2011 [EBook #36847] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +_Eminent Women Series_ + +EDITED BY JOHN H. INGRAM + +GEORGE ELIOT + +[_All Rights Reserved_] + + + + +GEORGE ELIOT + +BY +MATHILDE BLIND + +LONDON: +W. H. ALLEN AND CO. +13, WATERLOO PLACE +1883. + +[_All Rights Reserved_] + + +LONDON: +PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, +STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +Detailed accounts of GEORGE ELIOT'S life have hitherto been singularly +scanty. In the dearth of published materials a considerable portion of +the information contained in this biographical study has, necessarily, +been derived from private sources. In visiting the places connected with +GEORGE ELIOT'S early life, I enjoyed the privilege of meeting her +brother, Mr. Isaac Evans, and was also fortunate in gleaning many a +characteristic fact and trait from old people in the neighbourhood, +contemporaries of her father, Mr. Robert Evans. For valuable help in +forming an idea of the growth of GEORGE ELIOT'S mind, my warm thanks are +especially due to her oldest friends, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, and +Miss Hennell of Coventry. Miss Jenkins, the novelist's schoolfellow, and +Mrs. John Cash, also generously afforded me every assistance in their +power. + +A great part of the correspondence in the present volume has not +hitherto appeared in print, and has been kindly placed at my disposal by +Mrs. Bray, Mrs. Gilchrist, Mrs. Clifford, Miss Marks, Mr. William M. +Rossetti, and the late James Thomson. I have also quoted from letters +addressed to Miss Phelps which were published in _Harper's Magazine_ of +March 1882, and from one or two other articles that have appeared in +periodical publications. For permission to make use of this +correspondence my thanks are due to Mr. C. L. Lewes. + +By far the most exhaustive published account of GEORGE ELIOT'S life and +writings, and the one of which I have most freely availed myself, is Mr. +Call's admirable essay in the _Westminster Review_ of July 1881. +Although this, as indeed every other article on the subject, states +GEORGE ELIOT'S birthplace incorrectly, it contains many important _data_ +not mentioned elsewhere. To the article on GEORGE ELIOT in _Blackwood's +Magazine_ for February 1881, I owe many interesting particulars, chiefly +connected with the beginning of GEORGE ELIOT'S literary career. Amongst +other papers consulted may be mentioned a noticeable one by Miss Simcox +in the _Contemporary Review_, and an appreciative notice by Mr. +Frederick Myers in _Scribner's Magazine_, as well as articles in +_Harper's Magazine_ of May 1881, and _The Century_ of August 1882. Two +quaint little pamphlets, 'Seth Bede: the Methody,' and 'George Eliot in +Derbyshire,' by Guy Roslyn, although full of inaccuracies, have also +furnished some curious items of information. + +MATHILDE BLIND. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE +CHAPTER I. + +INTRODUCTORY 1 + +CHAPTER II. + +CHILDHOOD AND EARLY HOME 9 + +CHAPTER III. + +YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND FRIENDSHIPS 22 + +CHAPTER IV. + +TRANSLATION OF STRAUSS AND FEUERBACH--TOUR ON +THE CONTINENT 44 + +CHAPTER V. + +THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW" 59 + +CHAPTER VI. + +GEORGE HENRY LEWES 77 + +CHAPTER VII. + +SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE 91 + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ADAM BEDE 106 + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE MILL ON THE FLOSS 123 + +CHAPTER X. + +SILAS MARNER 137 + +CHAPTER XI. + +ROMOLA 148 + +CHAPTER XII. + +HER POEMS 161 + +CHAPTER XIII. + +FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH 175 + +CHAPTER XIV. + +DANIEL DERONDA 192 + +CHAPTER XV. + +LAST YEARS 204 + + + + +GEORGE ELIOT. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +INTRODUCTORY. + + +Speaking of the contributions made to literature by her own sex, George +Eliot, in a charming essay written in 1854, awards the palm of +intellectual pre-eminence to the women of France. "They alone," says the +great English author, "have had a vital influence on the development of +literature. For in France alone the mind of woman has passed, like an +electric current, through the language, making crisp and definite what +is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, if the writings of +women were swept away, a serious gap would be made in the national +history." + +The reason assigned by George Eliot for this literary superiority of +Frenchwomen consists in their having had the courage of their sex. They +thought and felt as women, and when they wrote, their books became the +fullest expression of their womanhood. And by being true to themselves, +by only seeking inspiration from their own life-experience, instead of +servilely copying that of men, their letters and memoirs, their novels +and pictures have a distinct, nay unique, value, for the student of art +and literature. Englishwomen, on the other hand, have not followed the +spontaneous impulses of nature. They have not allowed free play to the +peculiarly feminine element, preferring to mould their intellectual +products on the masculine pattern. For that reason, says George Eliot, +their writings are "usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine +style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire." + +This novel theory, concerning a specifically feminine manifestation of +the intellect, is doubly curious when one compares it with Madame de +Stael's famous saying, "_Le genie n'a pas de sexe._" But an aphorism, +however brilliant, usually contains only one half the truth, and there +is every reason to think that women have already, and will much more +largely, by-and-by, infuse into their works certain intellectual and +emotional qualities which are essentially their own. Shall we, however, +admit George Eliot's conclusion that Frenchwomen alone have hitherto +shown any of this original bias? Several causes are mentioned by her in +explanation of this exceptional merit. Among these causes there is one +which would probably occur to every one who began to reflect on this +subject. The influence of the "Salon" in developing and stimulating the +finest feminine talents has long been recognised. In this school for +women the gift of expression was carried to the utmost pitch of +perfection. By their active co-operation in the discussion of the most +vital subjects, thought became clear, luminous, and forcible; sentiment +gained indescribable graces of refinement; and wit, with its brightest +scintillations, lit up the sombre background of life. + +But among other causes enumerated as accounting for that more +spontaneous productivity of Frenchwomen, attributed to them by George +Eliot, there is one which would probably have occurred to no other mind +than hers, and which is too characteristic of her early scientific +tendencies to be omitted. For according to her, the present superiority +of Frenchwomen is mainly due to certain physiological peculiarities of +the Gallic race. Namely, to the "small brain and vivacious temperament +which permit the fragile system of woman to sustain the superlative +activity requisite for intellectual creativeness," whereas "the larger +brain and slower temperament of the English and Germans are in the +womanly organisation generally dreamy and passive. So that the +_physique_ of a woman may suffice as the substratum for a superior +Gallic mind, but is too thin a soil for a superior Teutonic one." + +So knotty and subtle a problem must be left to the scientist of the +future to decide. Perhaps some promising young physiologist, profiting +by the "George Henry Lewes Studentship" founded by George Eliot, may +some day satisfactorily elucidate this question. In the meanwhile it is +at least gratifying to reflect that she does not deny the future +possibilities of even English and German women. She admits that +conditions might arise which in their case also would be favourable to +the highest creative effort; conditions which would modify the existing +state of things according to which, to speak in her own scientific +phraseology: "The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the +absorption of ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the +energy required for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong +enough to produce crystallisations." + +But was the author of 'Adam Bede' not herself destined to be a +triumphant refutation of her theory? Or had those more favourable +circumstances mentioned as vague possibilities already arisen in her +case? Not that we believe, for that matter, in the superior claims of +illustrious Frenchwomen. It is true George Eliot enumerates a formidable +list of names. But on the whole we may boast of feminine celebrities +that need not shrink from the comparison. + +There is, of course, much truth in the great Englishwoman's generous +praise of her French compeers. "Mme. de Sevigne remains," she says, "the +single instance of a woman who is supreme in a class of literature which +has engaged the ambition of men; Mme. Dacier still reigns the queen of +blue-stockings, though women have long studied Greek without shame; Mme. +de Stael's name still rises to the lips when we are asked to mention a +woman of great intellectual power; Mme. Roland is still the unrivalled +type of the sagacious and sternly heroic yet lovable woman; George Sand +is the unapproached artist who, to Jean Jacques' eloquence and deep +sense of external nature, unites the clear delineation of character and +the tragic depth of passion." + +Shall we be forced to admit that the representative women of England +cannot justly be placed on as high a level? Is it so certain that they, +too, did not speak out of the fulness of their womanly natures? That +they too did not feel the genuine need to express modes of thought and +feeling peculiar to themselves, which men, if at all, had but +inadequately expressed hitherto? + +Was not Queen Elizabeth the best type of a female ruler, one whose keen +penetration enabled her to choose her ministers with infallible +judgment? Did not Fanny Burney distil the delicate aroma of girlhood in +one of the most delightful of novels? Or what of Jane Austen, whose +microscopic fidelity of observation has a well-nigh scientific accuracy, +never equalled unless in the pages of the author we are writing of? Sir +Walter Scott apparently recognised the eminently feminine inspiration of +her writings, as he says: "That young lady had a talent for describing +the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which +is for me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Bow-wow strain I can +do myself like any now agoing; but the exquisite touch, which renders +ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of +the descriptions and the sentiment, is denied to me." Then turning to +the Brontes, does not one feel the very heartbeats of womanhood in those +powerful utterances that seem to spring from some central emotional +energy? Again, does not Mrs. Browning occupy a unique place among poets? +Is there not a distinctively womanly strain of emotion in the throbbing +tides of her high-wrought melodious song? And, to come to George Eliot +herself, will any one deny that, in the combination of sheer +intellectual power with an unparalleled vision for the homely details of +life, she takes precedence of all writers of this or any other country? +To some extent this wonderful woman conforms to her own standard. She +undoubtedly adds to the common fund of crystallised human experience, as +literature might be called, something which is specifically feminine. +But, on the other hand, her intellect excels precisely in those +qualities habitually believed to be masculine, one of its chief +characteristics consisting in the grasp of abstract philosophical ideas. +This faculty, however, by no means impairs those instinctive processes +of the imagination by which true artistic work is produced; George Eliot +combining in an unusual degree the subtlest power of analysis with that +happy gift of genius which enabled her to create such characters as Amos +Barton, Hetty, Mrs. Poyser, Maggie, and Tom Tulliver, Godfrey Cass and +Caleb Garth, which seem to come fresh from the mould of Nature itself. +Indeed, she has hardly a rival among women in this power of objective +imagination by which she throws her whole soul into natures of the most +varied and opposite types, whereas George Sand only succeeds greatly +when she is thoroughly in sympathy with her creations. + +After George Eliot's eulogium of French women, one feels tempted to +institute a comparison between these two great contemporaries, who +occupied the same leading position in their respective countries. But it +will probably always remain a question of idiosyncracy which of the two +one is disposed to rank higher, George Eliot being the greatest realist, +George Sand the greatest idealist, of her sex. The works of the French +writer are, in fact, prose poems rather than novels. They are not +studies of life, but life interpreted by the poet's vision. George Sand +cannot give us a description of any scene in nature, of her own +feelings, of a human character, without imparting to it some magical +effect as of objects seen under the transfiguring influence of moonlight +or storm clouds; whereas George Eliot loves to bathe her productions in +the broad pitiless midday light, which leaves no room for illusion, but +reveals all nature with uncompromising directness. The one has more of +that primitive imagination which seizes on the elemental side of +life--on the spectacle of the starry heavens or of Alpine solitudes, on +the insurrection and tumult of human passion, on the shocks of +revolution convulsing the social order--while the other possesses, in a +higher degree, the acute intellectual perception for the orderly +sequence of life, for that unchangeable round of toil which is the lot +of the mass of men, and for the earth in its homelier aspects as it +tells on our daily existence. In George Sand's finest work there is a +sweet spontaneity, almost as if she were an oracle of Nature uttering +automatically the divine message. But, on the other hand, when the +inspiration forsakes her, she drifts along on a windy current of words, +the fatal facility of her pen often beguiling the writer into vague +diffuseness and unsubstantial declamation. + +In this respect, also, our English novelist is the opposite of George +Sand, for George Eliot invariably remains the master of her genius: +indeed, she thoroughly fulfils Goethe's demand that if you set up for an +artist you must command art. This intellectual self-restraint never +forsakes George Eliot, who always selects her means with a thorough +knowledge of the ends to be attained. The radical difference in the +genius of these two writers, to both of whom applies Mrs. Browning's apt +appellation of "large-brained woman and large-hearted man," extends +naturally to their whole tone of thought. George Sand is impassioned, +turbulent, revolutionary, the spiritual daughter of Rousseau, with an +enthusiastic faith in man's future destiny. George Eliot, contemplative, +observant, instinctively conservative, her imagination dearly loving to +do "a little Toryism on the sly," is as yet the sole outcome of the +modern positive spirit in imaginative literature--the sole novelist who +has incorporated in an artistic form some of the leading ideas of Comte, +of Mazzini, and of Darwin. In fact, underlying all her art there is the +same rigorous teaching of the inexorable laws which govern the life of +man. The teaching that not liberty but duty is the condition of +existence; the teaching of the incalculable effects of hereditary +transmission, with the solemn responsibilities it involves; the teaching +of the inherent sadness and imperfection in human nature, which render +resignation the first virtue of man. + +In fact, as a moral influence, George Eliot cannot so much be compared +with George Sand, or with any other novelist of her generation, as with +Carlyle. She had, indeed, a far more explicit ethical code to offer than +the author of 'Sartor Resartus.' For though the immense force of the +latter's personality, glowing through his writings, had a tonic effect +in promoting a healthy moral tone, there was little of positive moral +truth to be gathered from them. But the lessons which George Eliot would +fain teach to men were most unmistakable in their bearing--the lessons +of pitying love towards fellow-men; of sympathy with all human +suffering; of unwavering faithfulness towards the social bond, +consisting in the claims of race, of country, of family; of unflagging +aspiration after that life which is most beneficent to the community, +that life, in short, towards which she herself aspired in the now famous +prayer to reach + + + "That purest heaven, be to other souls + The cup of strength in some great agony, + Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, + Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- + Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, + And in diffusion ever more intense." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +CHILDHOOD AND EARLY HOME. + + +Mary Ann Evans, better known as "George Eliot," was born on November +22nd, 1819, at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of Colton, +in Warwickshire. Both the date and place of her birth have been +incorrectly stated, hitherto, in the notices of her life. The family +moved to Griff House in March of the following year, when she was only +six months old. Her father, Robert Evans, of Welsh origin, was a +Staffordshire man from Ellaston, near Ashbourne, and began life as a +carpenter. In the kitchen at Griff House may still be seen a +beautifully-fashioned oaken press, a sample of his workmanship. A +portrait of him, also preserved there, is known among the family as +"Adam Bede." It is not as good a likeness as that of a certain carefully +painted miniature, the features of which bear an unmistakable +resemblance to those of the daughter destined to immortalise his name. A +strongly marked, yet handsome face, massive in structure, and with brown +eyes, whose shrewd, penetrating glance is particularly noticeable, +betoken the man of strong practical intelligence, of rare energy and +endurance. His career and character are partially depicted in Adam Bede, +Caleb Garth, and Mr. Hackit--portraitures in which the different stages +of his life are recorded with a mingling of fact and fiction. A +shadowing forth of the same nature is discernible in the devotion of +Stradivarius to his noble craft; and even in the tender paternity of Mr. +Tulliver there are indications of another phase of the same +individuality. + +Like Adam Bede, Mr. Evans from carpenter rose to be forester, and from +forester to be land-agent. It was in the latter capacity alone that he +was ever known in Warwickshire. At one time he was surveyor to five +estates in the midland counties--those of Lord Aylesford, Lord Lifford, +Mr. Bromley Davenport, Mrs. Gregory, and Sir Roger Newdigate. The last +was his principal employer. Having early discerned the exceptional +capacity of the man, Sir Roger induced him to settle in Warwickshire, +and take charge of his estates. Sir Roger's seat, Arbury Hall, is the +original of the charming description of Cheverel Manor in 'Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story.' It is said that Mr. Evans's trustworthiness had become +proverbial in the county. But while faithfully serving his employers he +also enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle, but of +indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did +not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, +owing to ill-luck or misfortune, on quarter days. + +Mr. Evans was twice married. He had lost his first wife, by whom he had +a son and a daughter, before settling in Warwickshire. Of his second +wife, whose maiden name was Pearson, very little is known. She must, +therefore, according to Schiller, have been a pattern of womanhood; for +he says that the best women, like the best ruled states, have no +history. We have it on very good authority, however, that Mrs. Hackit, +in 'Amos Barton,' is a faithful likeness of George Eliot's mother. This +may seem startling at first, but, on reflection, she is the woman one +might have expected, being a strongly-marked figure, with a heart as +tender as her tongue is sharp. She is described as a thin woman, with a +chronic liver-complaint, of indefatigable industry and epigrammatic +speech; who, "in the utmost enjoyment of spoiling a friend's +self-satisfaction, was never known to spoil a stocking." A notable +housewife, whose clockwork regularity in all domestic affairs was such +that all her farm-work was done by nine o'clock in the morning, when she +would sit down to her loom. "In the same spirit, she brought out her +furs on the first of November, whatever might be the temperature. She +was not a woman weakly to accommodate herself to shilly-shally +proceedings. If the season didn't know what it ought to do, Mrs. Hackit +did. In her best days it was always sharp weather at 'Gunpowder Plot,' +and she didn't like new fashions." Keenly observant and quick of temper, +she was yet full of good nature, her sympathy showing itself in the +active helpfulness with which she came to the assistance of poor Milly +Barton, and the love she showed to her children, who, however, declined +kissing her. + +Is there not a strong family resemblance between this character and Mrs. +Poyser, that masterpiece of George Eliot's art? Mary Ann's gift of +pointed speech was therefore mother-wit, in the true sense, and her rich +humour and marvellous powers of observation were derived from the same +side, while her conscientiousness, her capacity, and that faculty of +taking pains, which is so large a factor in the development of genius, +came more directly from the father. + +Mr. Evans had three children by his second wife, Christiana, Isaac, and +Mary Ann. "It is interesting, I think," writes George Eliot, in reply to +some questions of an American lady, "to know whether a writer was born +in a central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly +determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family +traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts +a region of poetry to me in my early childhood." In the autobiographical +sonnets, entitled 'Brother and Sister,' we catch a glimpse of the mother +preparing her children for their accustomed ramble, by stroking down the +tippet and setting the frill in order; then standing on the door-step to +follow their lessening figures "with the benediction of her gaze." Mrs. +Evans was aware, to a certain extent, of her daughter's unusual +capacity, being anxious not only that she should have the best education +attainable in the neighbourhood, but also that good moral influences +should be brought to bear upon her: still, the girl's constant habit of +reading, even in bed, caused the practical mother not a little +annoyance. + +The house, where the family lived at that time, and in which the first +twenty years of Mary Ann Evans's life were spent, is situated in a rich +verdant landscape, where the "grassy fields, each with a sort of +personality given to it by the capricious hedge-rows," blend +harmoniously with the red-roofed cottages scattered in a happy haphazard +fashion amid orchards and elder-bushes. Sixty years ago the country was +much more thickly wooded than now, and from the windows of Griff House +might be seen the oaks and elms that had still survived from +Shakespeare's forest of Arden. The house of the Evans family, half +manor-house, half farm, was an old-fashioned building, two stories +high, with red brick walls thickly covered with ivy. Like the Garths, +they were probably "very fond of their old house." A lawn, interspersed +with trees, stretched in front towards the gate, flanked by two stately +Norway firs, while a sombre old yew almost touched some of the upper +windows with its wide-spreading branches. A farm-yard was at the back, +with low rambling sheds and stables; and beyond that, bounded by quiet +meadows, one may still see the identical "leafy, flowery, bushy" garden, +which George Eliot so often delighted in describing, at a time when her +early life, with all its tenderly hoarded associations, had become to +her but a haunting memory of bygone things. A garden where roses and +cabbages jostle each other, where vegetables have to make room for +gnarled old apple-trees, and where, amid the raspberry bushes and row of +currant trees, you expect to come upon Hetty herself, "stooping to +gather the low-hanging fruit." + +Such was the place where the childhood of George Eliot was spent. Here +she drew in those impressions of English rural and provincial life, of +which one day she was to become the greatest interpreter. Impossible to +be in a better position for seeing life. Not only was her father's +position always improving, so that she was early brought in contact with +different grades of society, but his calling made him more or less +acquainted with all ranks of his neighbours, and, says George Eliot, "I +have always thought that the most fortunate Britons are those whose +experience has given them a practical share in many aspects of the +national lot, who have lived long among the mixed commonalty, roughing +it with them under difficulties, knowing how their food tastes to them, +and getting acquainted with their notions and motives, not by inference +from traditional types in literature, or from philosophical theories, +but from daily fellowship and observation." + +And what kind of a child was it who loitered about the farm-yard and +garden and fields, noticing everything with grave, watchful eyes, and +storing it in a memory of extraordinary tenacity? One of her +schoolfellows, who knew her at the age of thirteen, confessed to me that +it was impossible to imagine George Eliot as a baby; that it seemed as +if she must have come into the world fully developed, like a second +Minerva. Her features were fully formed at a very early age, and she had +a seriousness of expression almost startling for her years. The records +of her child-life may be deciphered, amid some romantic alterations, in +the early history of Tom and Maggie Tulliver. Isaac and Mary Ann Evans +were playmates, like these, the latter having all the tastes of a boy; +whereas her sister Chrissy, said to be the original of Lucy Deane, had +peculiarly dainty feminine ways, and shrank from out-door rambles for +fear of soiling her shoes or pinafore. But Mary Ann and her brother went +fishing together, or spinning tops, or digging for earth-nuts; and the +twice-told incident of the little girl being left to mind the rod and +losing herself in dreamy contemplation, oblivious of her task, is +evidently taken from life, and may be quoted as a reminiscence of her +own childhood:-- + + + "One day my brother left me in high charge + To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait, + And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge, + Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late. + + Proud of the task I watched with all my might + For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide, + Till sky and earth took on a new strange light + And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide. + + A fair pavilioned boat for me alone, + Bearing me onward through the vast unknown. + + But sudden came the barge's pitch-black prow, + Nearer and angrier came my brother's cry, + And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo! + Upon the imperilled line, suspended high, + + A silver perch! My guilt that won the prey + Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich + Of hugs and praises, and made merry play + Until my triumph reached its highest pitch + + When all at home were told the wondrous feat, + And how the little sister had fished well. + In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet, + I wondered why this happiness befell. + + 'The little lass had luck,' the gardener said; + And so I learned, luck was to glory wed." + + +Unlike Maggie, however, little Mary Ann was as good a hand at fishing as +her brother, only differing from him in not liking to put the worms on +the hooks. + +Another incident taken from real life, if somewhat magnified, is the +adventure with the gipsies. For the prototype of Maggie also fell among +these marauding vagrants, and was detained a little time among them. +Whether she also proposed to instruct the gipsies and to gain great +influence over them by teaching them something about "geography" and +"Columbus," does not transpire. But, indeed, most of Maggie's early +experiences are autobiographic, down to such facts as her father telling +her to rub her "turnip" cheeks against Sally's to get a little bloom, +and to cutting off one side of her hair in a passion. At a very early +age Mary Ann and her brother were sent to the village free school at +Colton, in the parish of Griff, a not unusual custom in those days, when +the means of tuition for little children were much more difficult to +procure than now. There are still old men living who used to sit on the +same form with little Mary Ann Evans learning her A, B, C, and a certain +William Jacques (the original of the delightfully comic Bob Jakins of +fiction) remembers carrying her pick-a-back on the lawn in front of her +father's house. + +As the brother and sister grew older they saw less of each other, Mary +Ann being sent to a school at Nuneaton, kept by Miss Lewis, for whom she +retained an affectionate regard long years afterwards. About the same +time she taught at a Sunday-school, in a little cottage adjoining her +father's house. When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words +of a neighbour, 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 neighbourhood, was kept +by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman +of unusual attainments and ladylike 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 of expressing herself in +studied sentences, and on one occasion, when a friend had called to ask +after a dying relative, she actually kept the servant waiting till she +had framed an appropriately worded message. 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. It is also believed that +some of the beauty of her intonation in reading English poetry was owing +to the same early influence. + +Mary Ann, or Marian as she came afterwards to be called, remained about +three years with the Misses Franklin. She stood aloof from the other +pupils, and one of her schoolfellows, Miss Bradley Jenkins, says that +she was quite as remarkable in those early days as after she had +acquired fame. She seems to have strangely impressed the imagination of +the latter, who, figuratively speaking, looked up at her "as at a +mountain." There was never anything of the schoolgirl about Miss Evans, +for, even at that early age, she had the manners and appearance of a +grave, staid woman; so much so, that a stranger, happening to call one +day, mistook this girl of thirteen for one of the Misses Franklin, who +were then middle-aged women. In this, also, there is a certain +resemblance to Maggie Tulliver, who, at the age of thirteen, is +described as looking already like a woman. English composition, French +and German, were some of the studies to which much time and attention +were devoted. Being greatly in advance of the other pupils in the +knowledge of French, Miss Evans and Miss Jenkins were taken out of the +general class and set to study it together; but, though the two girls +were thus associated in a closer fellowship, no real intimacy apparently +followed from it. The latter watched the future "George Eliot" with +intense interest, but always felt as if in the presence of a superior, +though socially their positions were much on a par. This haunting sense +of superiority precluded the growth of any closer friendship between the +two fellow-pupils. All the more startling was it to the admiring +schoolgirl, when one day, on using Marian Evans's German dictionary, she +saw scribbled on its blank page some verses, evidently original, +expressing rather sentimentally a yearning for love and sympathy. Under +this granite-like exterior, then, there was beating a heart that +passionately craved for human tenderness and companionship! + +Inner solitude was no doubt the portion of George Eliot in those days. +She must already have had a dim consciousness of unusual power, to a +great extent isolating her from the girls of her own age, absorbed as +they were in quite other feelings and ideas. Strong religious +convictions pervaded her life at this period, and in the fervid faith +and spiritual exaltation which characterise Maggie's girlhood, we have a +very faithful picture of the future novelist's own state of mind. +Passing through many stages of religious thought, she was first simple +Church of England, then Low Church, then "Anti-Supernatural." In this +latter character she wore an "Anti-Supernatural" cap, in which, so says +an early friend, "her plain features looked all the plainer." But her +nature was a mixed one, as indeed is Maggie's too, and conflicting +tendencies and inclinations pulled her, no doubt, in different +directions. The self-renouncing impulses of one moment were checkmated +at another by an eager desire for approbation and distinguishing +pre-eminence; and a piety verging on asceticism did not exclude, on the +other hand, a very clear perception of the advantages and desirability +of good birth, wealth, and high social position. Like her own charming +Esther in 'Felix Holt,' she had a fine sense, amid somewhat anomalous +surroundings, of the highest refinements and delicacies which are +supposed to be the natural attributes of people of rank and fashion. She +even shared with the above-mentioned heroine certain girlish vanities +and weaknesses, such as liking to have all things about her person as +elegant as possible. + +About the age of fifteen Marian Evans left the Misses Franklin, and soon +afterwards she had the misfortune of losing her mother, who died in her +forty-ninth year. Writing to a friend in after life she says, "I began +at sixteen to be acquainted with the unspeakable grief of a last +parting, in the death of my mother." Less sorrowful partings ensued, +though in the end they proved almost as irrevocable. Her elder sister, +and the brother in whose steps she had once followed "puppy-like," +married and settled in homes of their own. Their different lots in life, +and the far more pronounced differences of their aims and ideas, +afterwards divided the "brother and sister" completely. This kind of +separation between people who have been friends in youth is often more +terrible to endure than the actual loss by death itself, and doth truly +"work like madness in the brain." Is there not some reference to this in +that pathetic passage in 'Adam Bede:' "Family likeness has often a deep +sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by +bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains, blends +yearning and repulsion, and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings +that jar us at every movement ... we see eyes--ah! so like our mother's, +averted from us in cold alienation." + +For some years after this Miss Evans and her father remained alone +together at Griff House. He offered to get a housekeeper, as not the +house only, but farm matters, had to be looked after, and he was always +tenderly considerate of "the little wench" as he called her. But his +daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into her own +hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge of her +domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on at +the same time. One of her chief beauties was in her large, +finely-shaped, feminine hands--hands which she has, indeed, described as +characteristic of several of her heroines; 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. It will be +remembered that this is a characteristic attributed to the exemplary +Nancy Lammeter, whose person gave one the idea of "perfect unvarying +neatness as the body of a little bird," only her hands bearing "the +traces of butter making, cheese crushing, and even still coarser work." +Certainly the description of the dairy in 'Adam Bede,' and all the +processes of butter making, is one which only complete knowledge could +have rendered so perfect. Perhaps no scene in all her novels stands out +with more life-like vividness than that dairy which one could have +sickened for in hot, dusty streets: "Such coolness, such purity, such +fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of wooden vessels +perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of red earthenware +and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey limestone and +rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges." + +This life of mixed practical activity and intellectual pursuits came to +an end in 1841, when Mr. Evans relinquished Griff House, and the +management of Sir Roger Newdigate's estates, to his married son, and +removed with his daughter to Foleshill, near Coventry. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND FRIENDSHIPS. + + +The period from about twenty to thirty is usually the most momentous in +the lives of illustrious men and women. It is true that the most abiding +impressions, those which the future author will reproduce most vividly, +have been absorbed by the growing brain previous to this age; but the +fusion of these varied impressions of the outward world with the inner +life, and the endless combinations in which imagination delights, rarely +begin before. Then, as a rule, the ideas are engendered to be carried +out in the maturity of life. Alfred de Vigny says truly enough: + + + "Qu'est-ce qu'une grande vie? + Une pensee de la jeunesse, executee par l'age mur." + + +Moreover, it is a revolutionary age. Inherited opinions that had been +accepted, as the rotation of the seasons, with unhesitating +acquiescence, become an object of speculation and passionate +questioning. Nothing is taken upon trust. The intellect, stimulated by +the sense of expanding and hitherto unchecked capacity, delights in +exercising its strength by critically passing in review the opinions, +laws, institutions commonly accepted as unalterable. And if the +intellect is thus active the heart is still more so. This is +emphatically the time of enthusiastic friendship and glowing love, if +often also of cruel disenchantment and disillusion. In most biographies, +therefore, this phase of life is no less fascinating than instructive. +For it shows the individual while still in a stage of growth already +reacting on his environment, and becoming a motive power according to +the measure of his intellectual and moral endowments. + +It is on this state of George Eliot's life that we are now entering. At +Foleshill she acquired that vast range of knowledge and universality of +culture which so eminently distinguished her. + +The house she now inhabited though not nearly as picturesque or +substantial as the former home of the Evanses, was yet sufficiently +spacious, with a pleasant garden in front and behind it; the latter, +Marian Evans was fond of making as much like the delicious garden of her +childhood as was possible under the circumstances. In other respects she +greatly altered her ways of life, cultivating an ultra-fastidiousness in +her manners and household arrangements. Though so young she was not only +entire mistress of her father's establishment but, as his business +required him to be abroad the greater part of each week, she was mostly +alone. + +Her life now became more and more that of a student, one of her chief +reasons for rejoicing at the change of residence being the freer access +to books. She had, however, already amassed quite a library of her own +by this time. In addition to her private studies, she was now also able +to have masters to instruct her in a variety of subjects. The Rev. T. +Sheepshanks, headmaster of the Coventry Grammar-school, gave her +lessons in Greek and Latin, as she particularly wished to learn the +former language in order to read AEschylus. She continued her study of +French, German, and Italian under the tuition of Signor Brezzi, even +acquiring some knowledge of Hebrew by her own unassisted efforts. Mr. +Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michael's, Coventry, instructed her +in the pianoforte; and probably Rosamond Vincy's teacher in +'Middlemarch' is a faithful portraiture of him. "Her master at Mrs. +Lemon's school (close to a country town with a memorable history that +had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent +musicians here and there to be found in the provinces, worthy to compare +with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful +conditions of musical celebrity." George Eliot's sympathetic rendering +of her favourite composers, particularly Beethoven and Schubert, was +always delightful to her friends, although connoisseurs considered her +possessed of little or no strictly technical knowledge. Be that as it +may, many an exquisite passage scattered up and down her works, bears +witness to her heartfelt appreciation of music, which seems to have had +a more intimate attraction for her than the fine arts. She shows little +feeling for archaeological beauties, in which Warwickshire is so rich: in +her 'Scenes of Clerical Life' dismissing a fine monument of Lady Jane +Grey, a genuine specimen of old Gothic art at Astley Church, with a +sneer about "marble warriors, and their wives without noses." + +In spite of excessive study, this period of Marian's life is not without +faint echoes of an early love-story of her own. In the house of one of +her married half-sisters she met a young man who promised, at that +time, to take a distinguished position in his profession. A kind of +engagement, or semi-engagement, took place, which Mr. Evans refused to +countenance, and finally his daughter broke it off in a letter, showing +both her strong sense and profoundly affectionate nature. At this time +she must have often had a painful consciousness of being cut off from +that living fellowship with the like-minded so stimulating to the +intellectual life. Men are not so subject to this form of soul hunger as +women; for at their public schools and colleges they are brought into +contact with their contemporaries, and cannot fail to find comrades +amongst them of like thoughts and aspirations with themselves. A fresh +life, however, at once vivifying to her intellect and stimulating to her +heart, now began for Marian Evans in the friendship she formed with Mr. +and Mrs. Charles Bray of Rosehill, Coventry. Rahel--the subtly gifted +German woman, whose letters and memoirs are a treasury of delicate +observation and sentiment--observes that people of marked spiritual +affinities are bound to meet some time or other in their lives. If not +entirely true, there is a good deal to be said for this comforting +theory; as human beings of similar nature seem constantly converging as +by some magnetic attraction. + +The circle to which Miss Evans now happened to be introduced was in +every sense congenial and inspiriting. Mr. Bray, his wife, and his +sister-in-law were a trio more like some delightful characters in a +first-rate novel than the sober inhabitants of a Warwickshire country +town. Living in a house beautifully situated on the outskirts of +Coventry, they used to spend their lives in philosophical speculations, +philanthropy, and pleasant social hospitality, joining to the ease and +_laisser aller_ of continental manners a thoroughly English geniality +and trustworthiness. + +Mr. Bray was a wealthy ribbon manufacturer, but had become engrossed +from an early age in religious and metaphysical speculation as well as +in political and social questions. Beginning to inquire into the dogmas +which formed the basis of his belief, he found, on careful +investigation, that they did not stand, in his opinion, the test of +reason. His arguments set his brother-in-law, Mr. Charles C. Hennell, a +Unitarian, to examine afresh and go carefully over the whole ground of +popular theology, the consequence of this close study being the 'Inquiry +concerning the Origin of Christianity,' a work which attracted a good +deal of attention when it appeared, and was translated into German at +the instance of David Strauss. It was published in 1838, a few years +after the appearance of the 'Life of Jesus.' In its critical examination +of the miracles, and in the sifting of mythological from historical +elements in the Gospels it bears considerable analogy to Strauss's great +work, although strictly based on independent studies, being originally +nothing more than an attempt to solve the doubts of a small set of +friends. Their doubts were solved, but not in the manner originally +anticipated. + +Mrs. Bray, of an essentially religious nature, shared the opinions of +her husband and brother, and without conforming to the external rites +and ceremonies of a creed, led a life of saintly purity and +self-devotion. The exquisite beauty of her moral nature not only +attracted Marian to this truly amiable woman, but filled her with +reverence, and the friendship then commenced was only ended by death. + +In Miss Sara Hennell, Marian Evans found another congenial companion who +became as a sister to her. This singular being, in most respects such a +contrast to her sister, high-strung, nervous, excitable, importing all +the ardour of feeling into a life of austere thought, seemed in a manner +mentally to totter under the weight of her own immense metaphysical +speculations. A casual acquaintance of these two young ladies might +perhaps have predicted that Miss Hennell was the one destined to achieve +fame in the future, and she certainly must have been an extraordinary +mental stimulus to her young friend Marian. These gifted sisters, two of +a family, all the members of which were remarkable, by some are +identified as the originals of the delightful Meyrick household in +'Daniel Deronda.' Each member of this genial group was already, or +ultimately became, an author of more or less repute. A reviewer in the +'Westminster,' writing of Mr. Bray's philosophical publications, some +years ago, said: "If he would reduce his many works to one containing +nothing unessential, he would doubtless obtain that high place among the +philosophers of our country to which his powers of thought entitle him." +His most popular book, called 'The Education of the Feelings,' intended +for use in secular schools, deals with the laws of morality practically +applied. Mrs. Bray's writings, on the same order of subjects, are still +further simplified for the understanding of children. She is the +authoress of 'Physiology for Schools,' 'The British Empire,' 'Elements +of Morality,' etc. Her 'Duty to Animals' has become a class book in the +schools of the midland counties, and she was one of the first among +those noble-hearted men and women who have endeavoured to introduce a +greater degree of humanity into our treatment of animals. + +George Eliot, writing to Mrs. Bray in March 1873 on this very subject, +says: + +"A very good, as well as very rich, woman, Mrs. S----, has founded a +model school at Naples, and has the sympathy of the best Italians in her +educational efforts. Of course a chief point in trying to improve the +Italians is to teach them kindness to animals, and a friend of Mrs. +S---- has confided to her a small sum of money--fifty pounds, I +think--to be applied to the translation and publication of some good +books for young people, which would be likely to rouse in them a +sympathy with dumb creatures. + +"Will you kindly help me in the effort to further Mrs. S----'s good work +by sending me a copy of your book on animals, and also by telling me the +periodical in which the parts of the book first appeared, as well as the +titles of any other works which you think would be worth mentioning for +the purpose in question? + +"Mrs. S---- (as indeed you may probably know) is the widow of a German +merchant of Manchester, as rich as many such merchants are, and as +benevolent as only the choicest few. She knows all sorts of good work +for the world, and is known by most of the workers. It struck me, while +she was speaking of this need of a book to translate, that you had done +the very thing." + +A few days later the following highly interesting letter came from the +same source: + +"Many thanks for the helpful things you have sent me. 'The Wounded +Bird' is charming. But now something very much larger of the same kind +must be written, and you are the person to write it--something that will +bring the emotions, sufferings, and possible consolations of the dear +brutes vividly home to the imaginations of children: fitted for children +of all countries, as Reineke Fuchs is comprehensible to all nations. A +rough notion came to me the other day of supposing a house of refuge, +not only for dogs, but for all distressed animals. The keeper of this +refuge understands the language of the brutes, which includes +differences of dialect not hindering communication even between birds, +and dogs, by the help of some Ulysses among them who is versed in the +various tongues, and puts in the needed explanations. Said keeper +overhears his refugees solacing their evenings by telling the story of +their experiences, and finally acts as editor of their autobiographies. +I imagine my long-loved fellow-creature, the ugly dog, telling the +sorrows and the tender emotions of gratitude which have wrought him into +a sensitive soul. The donkey is another cosmopolitan sufferer, and a +greater martyr than Saint Lawrence. If we only knew what fine motives he +has for his meek endurance, and how he loves a friend who will scratch +his nose! + +"All this is not worth anything except to make you feel how much better +a plan you can think of. + +"Only you must positively write this book which everybody wants--this +book which will do justice to the share our 'worthy fellow-labourers' +have had in the groaning and travailing of the world towards the birth +of the right and fair. + +"But you must not do it without the 'sustenance of labour'--I don't say +'pay,' since there is no pay for good work. Let Mr. ... be blest with +the blessing of the unscrupulous. I want to contribute something towards +helping the brutes, and helping the children, especially the southern +children, to be good to the creatures who are continually at their +mercy. I can't write the needed book myself, but I feel sure that you +can, and that you will not refuse the duty." + +Mrs. Bray's answer to this humorous suggestion may be gathered from +George Eliot's amiable reply: + +"I see at once that you must be right about the necessity for being +simple and literal. In fact I have ridiculous impulses in teaching +children, and always make the horizon too wide. + +"'The Wounded Bird' is perfect of its kind, and that kind is the best +for a larger work. You yourself see clearly that it is an exceptional +case for any one to be able to write books for children without putting +in them false morality disguised as devout religion. And you are one of +the exceptional cases. I am quite sure, from what you have done, that +you can do the thing which is still wanted to be done. As to +imagination, 'The Wounded Bird' is full of imagination." + +These extracts pleasantly illustrate both the writer and recipient of +such humane letters; and, though written at a much later period, not +only give an idea of the nature of Mrs. Bray's literary pursuits, but of +the friendly relations subsisting to the end between her and George +Eliot. + +Of Miss Hennell's work it is more difficult to speak without entering +more deeply into her subject-matter than is compatible with the scope of +the present work. In one of her best known books, entitled 'Thoughts in +Aid of Faith,' she makes the daring attempt to trace the evolution of +religion, her mode of thought partaking at once of the scientific and +the mystical. For the present she seems to be one of the very few women +who have ventured into the arena of philosophy; and, curiously enough, +her doctrine is that there should be a feminine method in metaphysics as +well as a masculine, the sexes, according to this singular theory, +finding their counterpart in religion and science. It may be remembered +that George Eliot, in one of her essays, is of opinion that women should +endeavour to make some distinctively feminine contributions to the +intellectual pursuits they engage in, saying, "Let the whole field of +reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is +peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a +source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a +necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have +that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and +feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of happiness." +Something of the same idea lies at the root of much in Miss Hennell's +mystical disquisitions. + +This circumstantial account of the circle to which Miss Evans was now +introduced has been given, because it consisted of friends who, more +than any others, helped in the growth and formation of her mind. No +human being, indeed, can be fully understood without some knowledge of +the companions that at one time or other, but especially during the +period of development, have been intimately associated with his or her +life. However vastly a mountain may appear to loom above us from the +plain, on ascending to its summit one always finds innumerable lesser +eminences which all help in making up the one imposing central effect. +And similarly in the world of mind, many superior natures, in varying +degrees, all contribute their share towards the maturing of that +exceptional intellectual product whose topmost summit is genius. + +The lady who first introduced Marian Evans to the Brays was not without +an object of her own, for her young friend--whose religious fervour, +tinged with evangelical sentiment, was as conspicuous as her unusual +learning and thoughtfulness--seemed to her peculiarly fitted to exercise +a beneficial influence on the Rosehill household, where generally +unorthodox opinions were much in vogue. + +Up to the age of seventeen or eighteen Marian had been considered the +most truly pious member of her family, being earnestly bent, as she +says, "to shape this anomalous English Christian life of ours into some +consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New +Testament." "I was brought up," she informs another correspondent, "in +the Church of England, and have never joined any other religious +society; but I have had close acquaintance with many dissenters of +various sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians." Her inner +life at this time is faithfully mirrored in the spiritual experiences of +Maggie Tulliver. Marian Evans was not one who could rest satisfied with +outward observances and lip-worship: she needed a faith which should +give unity and sanctity to the conception of life; which should awaken +"that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere +satisfaction of self, which is to the moral life what the addition of a +great central ganglion is to animal life." At one time Evangelicalism +supplied her with the most essential conditions of a religious life: +with all the vehemence of an ardent nature she flung her whole soul into +a passionate acceptance of the teaching of Christianity, carrying her +zeal to the pitch of asceticism. + +This was the state of her mind, at the age of seventeen, when her aunt +from Wirksworth came to stay with her. Mrs. Elizabeth Evans (who came +afterwards to be largely identified with Dinah Morris) was a zealous +Wesleyan, having at one time been a noted preacher; but her niece, then +a rigid Calvinist, hardly thought her doctrine strict enough. When this +same aunt paid her a visit, some years afterwards, at Foleshill, +Marian's views had already undergone a complete transformation, and +their intercourse was constrained and painful; for the young evangelical +enthusiast, who had been a favourite in clerical circles, was now in +what she afterwards described as a "crude state of freethinking." It was +a period of transition through which she gradually passed into a new +religious synthesis. + +Her intimacy with the Brays began about the time when these new doubts +were beginning to ferment in her. Her expanding mind, nourished on the +best literature, ancient and modern, began to feel cramped by dogmas +that had now lost their vitality; yet a break with an inherited form of +belief to which a thousand tender associations bound her, was a +catastrophe she shrank from with dread. Hence a period of mental +uncertainty and trouble. In consequence of these inward questionings, it +happened that the young lady who had been unwittingly brought to convert +her new acquaintances was converted by them. In intercourse with them +she was able freely to open her mind, their enlightened views helping +her in this crisis of her spiritual life; and she found it an intense +relief to feel no longer bound to reconcile her moral and intellectual +perceptions with a particular form of worship. + +The antagonism she met with in certain quarters, the social persecution +from which she had much to suffer, are perhaps responsible for some of +the sharp, caustic irony with which she afterwards assailed certain +theological habits of thought. It is not unlikely that in some of her +essays for the _Westminster Review_ she mainly expressed the thoughts +which were stirred in her by the opposition she encountered at this +period of her life--as, for example, in the brilliant paper entitled +'Worldliness and Otherworldliness,' which contains such a scathing +passage as the following: + +"For certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious +importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbour's +rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our +fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for +ourselves when it is the condition of good to others, in a word, the +extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature, we think it of +some importance to contend, that they have no more direct relation to +the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs +has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that to +some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human mortality--that +we are here for a little while and then vanish away, that this earthly +life is all that is given to our loved ones, and to our many suffering +fellow-men, lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion than the +conception of extended existence.... To us it is matter of unmixed +rejoicing that this latter necessity of healthful life is independent of +theological ink, and that its evolution is ensured in the interaction of +human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or of art, with +which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable +limits." + +It was, of course, inevitable that her changed tone of mind should +attract the attention of the family and friends of Marian, and that the +backsliding of so exemplary a member should afford matter for scandal in +many a clerical circle and evangelical tea-meeting. Close to the Evanses +there lived at that time a dissenting minister, whose daughter Mary was +a particular favourite of Marian Evans. There had been much neighbourly +intimacy between the two young ladies, and though there was only five +years' difference between them, Marian always inspired her friend with a +feeling of awe at her intellectual superiority. Yet her sympathy--that +sympathy with all human life which was the strongest element of her +character--was even then so irresistible that every little trouble of +Mary's life was entrusted to her keeping. But the sudden discovery of +their daughter's friend being an "infidel" came with the shock of a +thunderclap on the parents. Much hot argument passed between the +minister and this youthful controversialist, but the former clinched the +whole question by a triumphant reference to the dispersion of the Jews +throughout the world as an irrefutable proof of the divine inspiration +of the Bible. In spite of this vital difference on religious questions, +Miss Evans was suffered to go on giving the minister's daughter lessons +in German, which were continued for two or three years, she having +generously undertaken this labour of love twice a week, because she +judged from the shape of her young friend's head--phrenology being rife +in those days--that she must have an excellent understanding. But, +better than languages, she taught her the value of time, always cutting +short mere random talk by simply ignoring it. Altogether the wonderful +strength of her personality manifested itself even at this early period +in the indelible impression it left on her pupil's memory, many of her +sayings remaining graven on it as on stone. As, for instance, when one +day twitting Mary's too great self-esteem she remarked, "We are very apt +to measure ourselves by our aspiration instead of our performance." Or +when on a friend's asking, "What is the meaning of Faust?" she replied, +"The same as the meaning of the universe." While reading _'Wallenstein's +Lager_,' with her young pupil, the latter happened to say how life-like +the characters seemed: "Don't say _seemed_," exclaimed Marian; "we know +that they _are_ true to the life." And she immediately began repeating +the talk of labourers, farriers, butchers, and others of that class, +with such close imitation as to startle her friend. Is not this a +fore-shadowing of the inimitable scene at the 'Rainbow?' + +By far the most trying consequence of her change of views was that now, +for the first time, Marian was brought into collision with her father, +whose pet she had always been. He could not understand her inward +perplexities, nor the need of her soul for complete inward unity of +thought, a condition impossible to her under the limiting conditions of +a dogmatic evangelicalism, "where folly often mistakes itself for +wisdom, ignorance gives itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness, +turning its eyes upwards, calls itself religion." She, on the other +hand, after a painful struggle, wanted to break away from the old forms +of worship, and refused to go to church. Deeply attached though she was +to her father, the need to make her acts conform with her convictions +became irresistible. Under such conflicting tendencies a rupture between +father and daughter became imminent, and for a short time a breaking up +of the home was contemplated, Marian intending to go and live by herself +in Coventry. One of the leading traits in her nature was its +adhesiveness, however, and the threat of separation proved so painful to +her that her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bray, persuaded her to conform to her +father's wishes as far as outward observances were implied, and for the +rest he did not trouble himself to inquire into her thoughts or +occupations. + +From a letter written at this period it appears that the 'Inquiry +Concerning the Origin of Christianity' had made a most powerful +impression on her mind. Indeed, she dated from it a new birth. But so +earnest and conscientious was she in her studies, that before beginning +its longed-for perusal, she and a friend determined to read the Bible +through again from beginning to end. + +The intimacy between the inmates of Rosehill and the girl student at +Foleshill meanwhile was constantly growing closer. They met daily, and +in their midst the humorous side of her nature expanded no less than her +intellect. Although striking ordinary acquaintances by an abnormal +gravity, when completely at her ease she at times bubbled over with fun +and gaiety, irradiated by the unexpected flashes of a wit whose full +scope was probably as yet unsuspected by its possessor. Not but that +Miss Evans and her friends must have been conscious, even at that early +age, of extraordinary powers in her, destined some day to give her a +conspicuous position in the world. For her conversation was already so +full of charm, depth, and comprehensiveness, that all talk after hers +seemed stale and common-place. Many were the discussions in those days +between Mr. Bray and Marian Evans, and though frequently broken off in +fierce dispute one evening, they always began again quite amicably the +next. Mr. Bray probably exercised considerable influence on his young +friend's mind at this impressible period of life; perhaps her attention +to philosophy was first roused by acquaintance with him, and his varied +acquirements in this department may have helped in giving a positive +direction to her own thoughts. + +Mr. Bray was just then working out his 'Philosophy of Necessity,' the +problems discussed being the same as those which have occupied the +leading thinkers of the day: Auguste Comte in his 'Positive Philosophy;' +Buckle in his 'History of Civilization;' and Mr. Herbert Spencer in his +'Sociology.' The theory that, as an individual and collectively, man is +as much subject to law as any of the other entities in nature, was one +of those magnificent ideas which revolutionise the world of thought. +Many minds, in different countries, of different calibre, were all +trying to systematise what knowledge there was on this subject in order +to convert hypothesis into demonstration. To what extent Mr. Bray may +have based his 'Philosophy of Necessity' on independent research, or how +much was merely assimilated from contemporary sources, we cannot here +inquire. Enough that the ideas embodied in it represented some of the +most vital thought of the age, and contributed therefore not a little to +the formation of George Eliot's mind, and to the grip which she +presently displayed in the handling of philosophical topics. + +In 1842 the sensation created by Dr. Strauss's _Leben Jesu_ had even +extended to so remote a district as Warwickshire. Some persons of +advanced opinions, deeply impressed by its penetrating historical +criticism, which was in fact Niebuhr's method applied to the elucidation +of the Gospels, were very desirous of obtaining an English translation +of this work; meeting at the house of a common friend, the late Mr. +Joseph Parkes of Birmingham, they agreed, in the first blush of their +enthusiasm, to raise amongst them whatever sum might be required for the +purpose. Mr. Hennell, the leading spirit in this enterprise, proposed +that the translation should be undertaken by Miss Brabant, the +accomplished daughter of Dr. Brabant, a scholar deeply versed in +theological matters, who was in friendly correspondence with Strauss and +Paulus in Germany and with Coleridge and Grote in England. The lady in +question, though still in her teens, was peculiarly fitted for the task, +as she had already translated some of Baur's erudite writings on +theological subjects into English. But when she had done about one half +of the first volume, her learned labours came to an unexpected +conclusion, as she became engaged to Mr. Hennell, who to great mental +attainments joined much winning buoyancy of manner. And on her marriage +with this gentleman she had to relinquish her task as too laborious. + +Miss Brabant's acquaintance with Marian began in 1843, and in the +summer of that year the whole friendly group started on an excursion to +Tenby. During their stay at this watering-place the lady who had begun, +and the lady destined eventually to accomplish, the enormous labour of +translating the 'Life of Jesus' gave tokens of feminine frivolity by +insisting on going to a public ball, where, however, they were +disappointed, as partners were very scarce. It should be remembered that +Marian Evans was only twenty-three years old at this time, but, though +she had not yet done anything, her friends already thought her a +wonderful woman. She never seems to have had any real youthfulness, and +her personal appearance greatly improved with time. It is only to the +finest natures, it should be remembered, that age gives an added beauty +and distinction; for the most persistent self has then worked its way to +the surface, having modified the expression, and to some extent the +features, to its own likeness. + +There exists a coloured 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 colouring 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 +framework. Her eyes, of a grey-blue, constantly varying in colour, +striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out grey, +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 she was not talking, she could hardly believe +her to be the same person. The charm of her nature disclosed itself in +her manner and in her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea, in +being "like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an AEolian harp." +It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy. + +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. The similarity of type between George Eliot's face and +Savonarola's has been frequently pointed out. Some affinity in their +natures may have led her, if unconsciously, to select that epoch of +Florentine life in which he played so prominent a part. + +Though not above the middle height Marian gave people 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 +vigour did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a +peculiarly feminine organisation. With all her mental activity she yet +led an intensely emotional life, a life which must have held hidden +trials for her, as in those days she was known by her friends "to weep +bucketfuls of tears." + +A woman of strong passions, like her own Maggie, deeply affectionate by +nature, of a clinging tenderness of disposition, Marian Evans went +through much inward struggle, through many painful experiences before +she reached the moral self-government of her later years. Had she not, +it is hardly likely that she could have entered with so deep a +comprehension into the most intricate windings of the human heart. That, +of course, was to a great extent due to her sympathy, sympathy being the +strongest quality of her moral nature. She flung herself, as it were, +into other lives, making their affairs, their hopes, their sorrows, her +own. And this power of identifying herself with the people she came near +had the effect of a magnet in attracting her fellow-creatures. If +friends went to her in their trouble they would find not only that she +entered with deep feeling into their most minute concerns, but that, by +gradual degrees, she lifted them beyond their personal distress, and +that they would leave her presence in an ennobled and elevated frame of +mind. This sympathy was closely connected with her faculty of detecting +and responding to anything that showed the smallest sign of intellectual +vitality. She essentially resembled Socrates 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-labourer, 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 key-note of +her nature, the source of her iridescent humour, of her subtle knowledge +of character, and of her dramatic genius. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +TRANSLATION OF STRAUSS AND FEUERBACH.--TOUR ON THE CONTINENT. + + +Miss Brabant's marriage to Mr. Charles Hennell occurred some months +after this excursion to Tenby. In the meanwhile it was settled that Miss +Evans should continue her translation of Dr. Strauss's _Leben Jesu_. +Thus her first introduction to literature was in a sense accidental. The +result proved her admirably fitted for the task; for her version of this +searching and voluminous work remains a masterpiece of clear nervous +English, at the same time faithfully rendering the spirit of the +original. But it was a vast and laborious undertaking, requiring a large +share of patience, will, and energy, quite apart from the necessary +mental qualifications. On this occasion, to fit herself more fully for +her weighty task, Marian taught herself a considerable amount of Hebrew. +But she groaned, at times, under the pressure of the toil which had +necessarily to be endured, feeling tempted to relinquish what must often +have seemed almost intolerable drudgery. The active interest and +encouragement of her friends, however, tided her over these moments of +discouragement, and after three years of assiduous application, the +translation was finally completed, and brought out by Dr. (then Mr.) +John Chapman in 1846. It is probably safe to assume that the composition +of none of her novels cost George Eliot half the effort and toil which +this translation had done. Yet so badly is this kind of literary work +remunerated, that twenty pounds was the sum paid for what had cost three +years of hard labour! + +Indeed, by this time, most of the twelve friends who had originally +guaranteed the sum necessary for the translation and publication of the +'Life of Jesus,' had conveniently forgotten the matter; and had it not +been for the generosity of Mr. Joseph Parkes, who volunteered to advance +the necessary funds, who knows how long the MS. translation might have +lain dormant in a drawer at Foleshill? It no sooner saw the light, +however, than every one recognised the exceptional merits of the work. +And for several years afterwards Miss Evans continued to be chiefly +known as the translator of Strauss's _Leben Jesu_. + +Soon after relieving Miss Brabant from the task of translation, Miss +Evans went to stay for a time with her friend's father, Dr. Brabant, who +sadly felt the loss of his daughter's intelligent and enlivening +companionship. No doubt the society of this accomplished scholar, +described by Mr. Grote as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect," was no +less congenial than instructive to his young companion; while her +singular mental acuteness and affectionate womanly ways were most +grateful to the lonely old man. There is something very attractive in +this episode of George Eliot's life. It recalls a frequently recurring +situation in her novels, particularly that touching one of the +self-renouncing devotion with which the ardent Romola throws herself +into her afflicted father's learned and recondite pursuits. + +There exists a letter written to an intimate friend in 1846, soon after +the translation of Strauss was finished, which, I should say, already +shows the future novelist in embryo. In this delightfully humorous +mystification of her friends, Miss Evans pretends that, to her +gratification, she has actually had a visit from a real live German +professor, whose musty person was encased in a still mustier coat. This +learned personage has come over to England with the single purpose of +getting his voluminous writings translated into English. There are at +least twenty volumes, all unpublished, owing to the envious machinations +of rival authors, none of them treating of anything more modern than +Cheops, or the invention of the hieroglyphics. The respectable +professor's object in coming to England is to secure a wife and +translator in one. But though, on inquiry, he finds that the ladies +engaged in translation are legion, they mostly turn out to be utterly +incompetent, besides not answering to his requirements in other +respects; the qualifications he looks for in a wife, besides a thorough +acquaintance with English and German, being personal ugliness and a snug +little capital, sufficient to supply him with a moderate allowance of +tobacco and _Schwarzbier_, after defraying the expense of printing his +books. To find this phoenix among women he is sent to Coventry on all +hands. + +In Miss Evans, so she runs on, the aspiring professor finds his utmost +wishes realised, and so proposes to her on the spot; thinking that it +may be her last chance, she accepts him with equal celerity, and her +father, although strongly objecting to a foreigner, is induced to give +his consent for the same reason. The lady's only stipulation is that her +future husband shall take her out of England, with its dreary climate +and drearier inhabitants. This being settled, she invites her friends to +come to her wedding, which is to take place next week. + +This lively little _jeu d'esprit_ is written in the wittiest manner, and +one cannot help fancying that this German Dryasdust contained the germ +of one of her very subtlest masterpieces in characterisation, that of +the much-to-be-pitied Casaubon, the very Sysiphus of authors. In the +lady, too, willing to marry her parchment-bound suitor for the sake of +co-operating in his abstruse mental labours, we have a faint adumbration +of the simple-minded Dorothea. + +But these sudden stirrings at original invention did not prevent Miss +Evans from undertaking another task, similar to her last, if not so +laborious. She now set about translating Ludwig Feuerbach's _Wesen des +Christenthums_. This daring philosopher, who kept aloof from +professional honours, and dwelt apart in a wood, that he might be free +to handle questions of theology and metaphysics with absolute +fearlessness, had created a great sensation by his philosophical +criticism in Germany. Unlike his countrymen, whose writings on these +subjects are usually enveloped in such an impenetrable mist that their +most perilous ideas pass harmlessly over the heads of the multitude, +Feuerbach, by his keen incisiveness of language and luminousness of +exposition, was calculated to bring his meaning home to the average +reader. Mr. Garnett's account of the 'Essence of Christianity' in the +'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' admirably concise as it is, may be quoted +here, as conveying in the fewest words the gist of this "famous +treatise, where Feuerbach shows that every article of Christian belief +corresponds to some instinct or necessity of man's nature, from which he +infers that it is the creation and embodiment of some human wish, hope, +or apprehension.... Following up the hint of one of the oldest Greek +philosophers, he demonstrates that religious ideas have their +counterparts in human nature, and assumes that they must be its +product." + +The translation of the 'Essence of Christianity' was also published by +Mr. Chapman in 1854. It appeared in his 'Quarterly Series,' destined "to +consist of works by learned and profound thinkers, embracing the +subjects of theology, philosophy, biblical criticism, and the history of +opinion." Probably because her former translation had been so eminently +successful, Miss Evans received fifty pounds for her present work. But +there was no demand for it in England, and Mr. Chapman lost heavily by +its publication. + +About the same period Miss Evans also translated Spinoza's _De Deo_ for +the benefit of an inquiring friend. But her English version of the +'Ethics' was not undertaken till the year 1854, after she had left her +home at Foleshill. In applying herself to the severe labour of rendering +one philosophical work after another into English, Miss Evans, no doubt, +was bent on elucidating for herself some of the most vital problems +which engage the mind when once it has shaken itself free from purely +traditional beliefs, rather than on securing for herself any pecuniary +advantages. But her admirable translations attracted the attention of +the like-minded, and she became gradually known to some of the most +distinguished men of the time. + +Unfortunately her father's health now began to fail, causing her no +little pain and anxiety. At some period during his illness she stayed +with him in the Isle of Wight, for in a letter to Mrs. Bray, written +many years afterwards, she says, "The 'Sir Charles Grandison' you are +reading must be the series of little fat volumes you lent me to carry to +the Isle of Wight, where I read it at every interval when my father did +not want me, and was sorry that the long novel was not longer. It is a +solace to hear of any one's reading and enjoying Richardson. We have +fallen on an evil generation who would not read 'Clarissa' even in an +abridged form. The French have been its most enthusiastic admirers, but +I don't know whether their present admiration is more than traditional, +like their set phrases about their own classics." + +During the last year of her father's life his daughter was also in the +habit of reading Scott's novels aloud to him for several hours of each +day; she must thus have become deeply versed in his manner of telling +the stories in which she continued to delight all her life; and in +speaking of the widening of our sympathies which a picture of human life +by a great artist is calculated to produce, even in the most trivial and +selfish, she gives as an instance Scott's description of Luckie +Mucklebackit's cottage, and his story of the 'Two Drovers.' + +But a heavy loss now befell Marian Evans in the death of her father, +which occurred in 1849. Long afterwards nothing seemed to afford +consolation to her grief. For eight years these two had kept house +together, and the deepest mutual affection had always subsisted between +them. Marian ever treasured her father's memory. As George Eliot she +loved to recall in her works everything associated with him in her +childhood; those happy times when, standing between her father's knees, +she used to be driven by him to "outlying hamlets, whose groups of +inhabitants were as distinctive to my imagination as if they belonged to +different regions of the globe." Miss Evans, however, was not suffered +to mourn uncomforted. The tender friends who cared for her as a sister, +now planned a tour to the Continent in hopes that the change of scene +and associations would soften her grief. + +So they started on their travels, going to Switzerland and Italy by the +approved route, which in those days was not so hackneyed as it now is. +To so penetrating an observer as Miss Evans there must have been an +infinite interest in this first sight of the Continent. But the journey +did not seem to dispel her grief, and she continued in such very low +spirits that Mrs. Bray almost regretted having taken her abroad so soon +after her bereavement. Her terror, too, at the giddy passes which they +had to cross, with precipices yawning on either hand--so that it seemed +as if a false step must send them rolling into the abyss--was so +overpowering that the sublime spectacle of the snow-clad Alps seemed +comparatively to produce but little impression on her. Her moral triumph +over this constitutional timidity, when any special occasion arose, was +all the more remarkable. One day when crossing the Col de Balme from +Martigny to Chamounix, one of the side-saddles was found to be badly +fitted, and would keep turning round, to the risk of the rider, if not +very careful, slipping off at any moment. Marian, however, insisted on +having this defective saddle in spite of the protest of Mrs. Bray, who +felt quite guilty whenever they came to any perilous places. + +How different is this timidity from George Sand's hardy spirit of +enterprise! No one who has read that captivating book, her _Lettres d'un +Voyageur_, can forget the great Frenchwoman's description of a Swiss +expedition, during which, while encumbered with two young children, she +seems to have borne all the perils, fatigues, and privations of a +toilsome ascent with the hardihood of a mountaineer. But it should not +be forgotten that, although Miss Evans was just then in a peculiarly +nervous and excitable condition, and her frequent fits of weeping were a +source of pain to her anxious fellow-travellers. She had, in fact, been +so assiduous in attendance on her sick father, that she was physically +broken down for a time. Under these circumstances an immediate return to +England seemed unadvisable, and, when her friends started on their +homeward journey, it was decided that Marian should remain behind at +Geneva. + +Here, amid scenes so intimately associated with genius--where the +"self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau," placed the home of his +'_Nouvelle Heloise_,' and the octogenarian Voltaire spent the serene +Indian summer of his stirring career; where Gibbon wrote his 'History of +the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;' where Byron and Shelley +sought refuge from the hatred of their countrymen, and which Madame de +Stael complainingly exchanged for her beloved Rue du Bac--here the +future author of 'Romola' and 'Middlemarch' gradually recovered under +the sublime influences of Nature's healing beauties. + +For about eight months Miss Evans lived at a boarding-house, "Le +Plongeau," near Geneva. But she was glad to find a quieter retreat in +the family of an artist, M. d'Albert, becoming much attached to him and +his wife. Established in one of the lofty upper stories of this pleasant +house, with the blue shimmering waters of the lake glancing far below, +and the awful heights of Mont Blanc solemnly dominating the entire +landscape, she not only loved to prosecute her studies, but, in +isolation from mankind, to plan glorious schemes for their welfare. +During this stay she drank deep of Rousseau, whose works, especially +_Les Confessions_, made an indelible impression on her. And when +inciting a friend to study French, she remarked that it was worth +learning that language, if only to read him. At the same period Marian +probably became familiarised with the magnificent social Utopias of St. +Simon, Proudhon, and other French writers. Having undergone a kind of +mental revolution herself not so long ago, she must have felt some +sympathy with the thrilling hopes of liberty which had agitated the +states of Western Europe in 1849. But, as I have already pointed out, +her nature had conservative leanings. She believed in progress only as +the result of evolution, not revolution. And in one of her most incisive +essays, entitled 'The National History of German Life,' she finely +points out the "notable failure of revolutionary attempts conducted from +the point of view of abstract democratic and socialistic theories." In +the same article she draws a striking parallel between the growth of +language and that of political institutions, contending that it would be +as unsatisfactory to "construct a universal language on a rational +basis"--one that had "no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous +forms, no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms +'familiar with forgotten years'"--as abruptly to alter forms of +government which are nothing, in fact, but the result of historical +growth, systematically embodied by society. + +Besides the fascinations of study, and the outward glory of nature, the +charm of social intercourse was not wanting to this life at Geneva. In +M. D'Albert, a very superior man, gentle, refined, and of unusual mental +attainments, she found a highly desirable daily companion. He was an +artist by profession, and it is whispered that he suggested some of the +traits in the character of the delicate-minded Philip Wakem in the 'Mill +on the Floss.' The only portrait in oils which exists of George Eliot is +one painted by M. D'Albert at this interesting time of her life. She +inspired him, like most people who came into personal contact with her, +with the utmost admiration and regard, and, wishing to be of some +service, he escorted Miss Evans to England on her return thither. +Curiously enough, M. D'Albert subsequently translated one of her works, +probably 'Adam Bede,' without in the least suspecting who its real +author was. + +It is always a shock when vital changes have occurred in one's +individual lot to return to a well-known place, after an absence of some +duration, to find it wearing the same unchangeable aspect. One expects +somehow that fields and streets and houses would show some alteration +corresponding to that within ourselves. But already from a distance the +twin spires of Coventry, familiar as household words to the Warwickshire +girl, greeted the eyes of the returning traveller. In spite of all love +for her native spot of earth, this was a heavy time to Marian Evans. Her +father was dead, the home where she had dwelt as mistress for so many +years broken up, the present appearing blank and comfortless, the future +uncertain and vaguely terrifying. The question now was where she should +live, what she should do, to what purposes turn the genius whose untried +and partially unsuspected powers were darkly agitating her whole being. + +As has been already said, Marian Evans had a highly complex nature, +compounded of many contradictory impulses, which, though gradually +brought into harmony as life matured, were always pulling her, in those +days, in different directions. Thus, though she possessed strong family +affections, she could not help feeling that to go and take up her abode +in the house of some relative, where life resolved itself into a +monotonous recurrence of petty considerations, something after the Glegg +pattern, would be little short of crucifixion to her, and, however deep +her attachment for her native soil may have been, she yet sighed +passionately to break away from its associations, and to become "a +wanderer and a pilgrim on the face of the earth." + +For some little time after her return from abroad Marian took up her +residence with her brother and his family. But the children who had +toddled hand-in-hand in the fields together had now diverged so widely +that no memories of a mutual past could bridge over the chasm that +divided them. Under these circumstances the family at Rosehill pressed +her to make their home permanently hers, and for about a year, from 1850 +to 1851, she became the member of a household in fullest sympathy with +her. Here Mr. Bray's many-sided mental activity and genial brightness of +disposition, and his wife's exquisite goodness of heart, must have +helped to soothe and cheer one whose delicately strung nature was just +then nearly bending under the excessive strain of thought and feeling +she had gone through. One person, indeed, was so struck by the grave +sadness generally affecting her, that it seemed to him as if her coming +took all the sunshine out of the day. But whether grave or gay, whether +meditative or playful, her conversation exercised a spell over all who +came within its reach. + +In the pleasant house at Rosehill distinguished guests were constantly +coming and going, so that there was no lack of the needed intellectual +friction supplied by clever and original talk. Here in a pleasant +garden, planted with rustling acacia trees, and opening on a wide +prospect of richly-wooded, undulating country, with the fitful +brightness of English skies overhead, and a smooth-shaven lawn to walk +or recline upon, many were the topics discussed by men who had made, or +were about to make, their mark. Froude was known there. George Combe +discussed with his host the principles of phrenology, at that time +claiming "its thousands of disciples." Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a +lecturing tour in this country, while on a brief visit, made Marian's +acquaintance, and was observed by Mrs. Bray engaged in eager talk with +her. Suddenly she saw him start. Something said by this quiet, +gentle-mannered girl had evidently given him a shock of surprise. +Afterwards, in conversation with her friends, he spoke of her "great +calm soul." This is no doubt an instance of the intense sympathetic +adaptiveness of Miss Evans. If great, she was not by any means calm at +this period, but inwardly deeply perturbed, yet her nature, with +subtlest response, reflected the transcendental calm of the philosopher +when brought within his atmosphere. + +George Dawson, the popular lecturer, and Mr. Flower, were more +intimately associated with the Rosehill household. The latter, then +living at Stratford-on-Avon, where he was wont to entertain a vast +number of people, especially Americans, who make pilgrimages to +Shakespeare's birthplace, is known to the world as the benevolent +denouncer of "bits and bearing-reins." One day this whole party went to +hear George Dawson, who had made a great sensation at Birmingham, preach +one of his thrilling sermons from the text "And the common people heard +him gladly." George Eliot, alluding to these days as late as 1876, says, +in a letter to Mrs. Bray: + +"George Dawson was strongly associated for me with Rosehill, not to +speak of the General Baptist Chapel, where we all heard him preach for +the first time (to us).... I have a vivid recollection of an evening +when Mr. and Mrs. F---- dined at your house with George Dawson, when he +was going to lecture at the Mechanics' Institute, and you felt +compassionately towards him, because you thought the rather riotous talk +was a bad preface to his lecture. We have a Birmingham friend, whose +acquaintance we made many years ago in Weimar, and from him I have +occasionally had some news of Mr. Dawson. I feared, what you mention, +that his life has been a little too strenuous in these latter years." + +On the evening alluded to in this letter Mr. Dawson was dining at Mrs. +Bray's house before giving his lecture on 'John Wesley,' at the +Mechanics' Institute. His rich sarcasm and love of fun had exhilarated +the whole company, and not content with merely "riotous talk," George +Dawson and Mr. Flower turned themselves into lions and wild cats for the +amusement of the children, suddenly pouncing out from under the +table-cloth, with hideous roarings and screechings, till the hubbub +became appalling, joined to the delighted half-frightened exclamations +of the little ones. Mr. Dawson did the lions, and Mr. Flower, who had +made personal acquaintance with the wild cats in the backwoods of +America, was inimitable in their peculiar pounce and screech. + +Thus amid studies and pleasant friendly intercourse did the days pass at +Rosehill. Still Marian Evans was restless, tormented, frequently in +tears, perhaps unconsciously craving a wider sphere, and more definitely +recognised position. However strenuously she, at a maturer time of life, +inculcated the necessity of resignation, she had not then learned to +resign herself. And now a change was impending--a change which, fraught +with the most important consequences, was destined to give a new +direction to the current of her life. Dr. John Chapman invited her to +assist him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, which passed +at that time into his hands from John Mill. They had already met, when +Marian was passing through London on her way to the Continent, on some +matter of business or other connected with one of her translations. Dr. +Chapman's proposition was accepted; and although Marian suffered keenly +from the wrench of parting with her friends, the prompting to work out +her powers to the full overcame the clinging of affection, and in the +spring of 1851 she left Rosehill behind her and came to London. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE 'WESTMINSTER REVIEW.' + + +Dr. and Mrs. Chapman were at this time in the habit of admitting a few +select boarders, chiefly engaged in literary pursuits, to their large +house in the Strand, and Miss Evans, at their invitation, made her home +with them. Thus she found herself at once in the centre of a circle +consisting of some of the most advanced thinkers and brilliant +_litterateurs_ of the day; a circle which, partly consisting of +contributors to the _Westminster Review_, was strongly imbued with +scientific tendencies, being particularly partial to the doctrines of +Positive Philosophy. + +Those were in truth the palmy days of the _Westminster Review_. Herbert +Spencer, G. H. Lewes, John Oxenford, James and Harriet Martineau, +Charles Bray, George Combe, and Professor Edward Forbes were among the +writers that made it the leading expositor of the philosophic and +scientific thought of the age. It occupied a position something midway +between that of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly_. +Scorning, like the latter, to pander to the frivolous tastes of the +majority, it appealed to the most thoughtful and enlightened section of +the reading public, giving especial prominence to the philosophy of the +Comtist School; and while not so fashionable as the _Nineteenth +Century_, it could boast among its contributors names quite as famous, +destined as they were to become the foremost of their time and country. +With this group of illustrious writers Miss Evans was now associated, +and the articles she contributed from the year 1852 to 1858 are among +the most brilliant examples of periodical literature. The first notice +by her pen is a brief review of Carlyle's 'Life of Sterling' for January +1852, and judging from internal evidence, as regards style and method of +treatment, the one on Margaret Fuller, in the next number, must be by +the same hand. + +To the biographer there is a curious interest in what she says in her +first notice about this kind of literature, and it would be well for the +world if writers were to lay it more generally to heart. "We have often +wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of +the biographer, that when some great or good personage dies, instead of +the dreary three-or five-volumed compilations 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." Then again, speaking of the 'Memoirs of Margaret Fuller,' +she remarks, in reference to the same topic, "The old-world biographies +present their subjects generally as broken fragments of humanity, +noticeable because of their individual peculiarities, the new-world +biographies present their subjects rather as organic portions of +society." + +George Eliot's estimate of Margaret Fuller (for there can be little +doubt that it is hers) possesses too rare an interest for readers not to +be given here in her own apposite and pungent words: "We are at a loss +whether to regard her as the parent or child of New England +Transcendentalism. Perhaps neither the one nor the other. It was +essentially an intellectual, moral, spiritual regeneration--a renewing +of the whole man--a kindling of his aspirations after full development +of faculty and perfect symmetry of being. Of this sect Margaret Fuller +was the priestess. In conversation she was as copious and oracular as +Coleridge, brilliant as Sterling, pungent and paradoxical as Carlyle; +gifted with the inspired powers of a Pythoness, she saw into the hearts +and over the heads of all who came near her, and, but for a sympathy as +boundless as her self-esteem, she would have despised the whole human +race! Her frailty in this respect was no secret either to herself or her +friends.... We must say that from the time she became a mother till the +final tragedy when she perished with her husband and child within sight +of her native shore, she was an altered woman, and evinced a greatness +of soul and heroism of character so grand and subduing, that we feel +disposed to extend to her whole career the admiration and sympathy +inspired by the closing scenes. + +"While her reputation was at its height in the literary circles of +Boston and New York, she was so self-conscious that her life seemed to +be a studied act, rather than a spontaneous growth; but this was the +mere flutter on the surface; the well was deep, and the spring genuine; +and it is creditable to her friends, as well as to herself, that such at +all times was their belief." + +In this striking summing-up of a character, the penetrating observer of +human nature--taking in at a glance and depicting by a few masterly +touches all that helps to make up a picture of the real living +being--begins to reveal herself. + +These essays in the _Westminster Review_ are not only capital reading in +themselves, but are, of course, doubly attractive to us because they let +out opinions, views, judgments of things and authors, which we should +never otherwise have known. Marian Evans had not yet hidden herself +behind the mask of George Eliot, and in many of these wise and witty +utterances of hers we are admitted behind the scenes of her mind, so to +speak, and see her in her own undisguised person--before she had assumed +the _role_ of the novelist, showing herself to the world mainly through +her dramatic impersonations. + +In these articles, written in the fresh maturity of her powers, we learn +what George Eliot thought about many subjects; we learn who were her +favourite authors in fiction; what opinions she held on art and poetry; +what was her attitude towards the political and social questions of the +day; what was her conception of human life in general. There is much +here, no doubt, that one might have been prepared to find, but a good +deal, too, that comes upon one with the freshness of surprise. + +A special interest attaches naturally to what she has to say about her +own branch of art--the novel. Though she had probably no idea that she +was herself destined to become one of the great masters of fiction, she +had evidently a special predilection for works of that kind, noticeable +because hitherto her bent might have appeared almost exclusively towards +philosophy. To the three-volume circulating-library novel of the +ordinary stamp she is merciless in her sarcasm. One of her most pithy +articles of this time, or rather later, its date being 1856, is directed +against "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." "These," she says, "consist of +the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture +of all these--a composite order of feminine fatuity, that produces the +largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the _mind +and millinery_ species. We had imagined that destitute women turned +novelists, as they turned governesses, because they had no other +'ladylike' means of getting their bread. Empty writing was excused by an +empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated by tears.... It is clear that +they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen, +that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts, and +inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains." + +After finding fault with what she sarcastically calls the _white +neck-cloth_ species of novel, "a sort of medical sweetmeat for Low +Church young ladies," she adds, "The real drama of Evangelicalism, and +it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to +discern and reproduce it, lies among the middle and lower classes. Why +can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes +in England, as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's pictures of religious life +among the negroes?" + +She who asked that question was herself destined, a few years later, to +answer her own demand in most triumphant fashion. Already here and there +we find hints and suggestions of the vein that was to be so fully worked +out in 'Scenes of Clerical Life' and 'Adam Bede.' Her intimate knowledge +of English country life, and the hold it had on her imagination, every +now and then eats its way to the surface of her writings, and stands out +amongst its surrounding matter with a certain unmistakable native force. +After censuring the lack of reality with which peasant life is commonly +treated in art, she makes the following apposite remarks, suggested by +her own experience: "The notion that peasants are joyous, that the +typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is when he is +cracking a joke and showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons +are usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are +prejudices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind which looks for +its subjects into literature instead of life. The painter is still under +the influence of idyllic literature, which has always expressed the +imagination of the town-bred rather than the truth of rustic life. +Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic +shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers +dance in the chequered shade and refresh themselves not immoderately +with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual +ploughmen thinks them jocund, no one who is well acquainted with the +English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no +sense of beauty beams, no humour twinkles; the slow utterance, and the +heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal the +camel, than of the sturdy countryman, with striped stockings, red +waistcoat, and hat aside, who represents the traditional English +peasant. Observe a company of haymakers. When you see them at a distance +tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon +creeps slowly with its increasing burden over the meadow, and the bright +green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you +pronounce the scene 'smiling,' and you think these companions in labour +must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give +animation. Approach nearer and you will find haymaking time is a time +for joking, especially if there are women among the labourers; but the +coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and expresses the +triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your conception of idyllic +merriment. That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call fun +has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except tipsy revelry; the +only realm of fancy and imagination for the English clown exists at the +bottom of the third quart pot. + +"The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket-books and +never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty +has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an +unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that +slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite sure +that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical +cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn +in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing +begging-letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into +filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not +subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least +established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make men +moral something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass." + +Every one must see that this is the essay writing of a novelist rather +than of a moral philosopher. The touches are put on with the vigour of a +Velasquez. Balzac, or Flaubert, or that most terrible writer of the +modern French school of fiction, the author of 'Le Sabot Rouge,' never +described peasant life with more downright veracity. In the eyes of Miss +Evans this quality of veracity is the most needful of all for the +artist. Because "a picture of human life, such as a great artist can +give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to +what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of +sentiment." For "art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of +amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men +beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task +of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People. +Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial +aspects of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false +ideas about evanescent fashions--about the manners and conversation of +beaux and duchesses; but it is serious that our sympathy with the +perennial joys and struggles, the toil, the tragedy, and the humour in +the life of our more heavily laden fellow-men should be perverted, and +turned towards a false object instead of a true one." + +George Eliot afterwards faithfully adhered to the canons fixed by the +critic. Whether this consciousness of a moral purpose was altogether a +gain to her art may be more fitly discussed in connection with the +analysis of her works of fiction. It is only needful to point out here +how close and binding she wished to make the union between ethics and +aesthetics. + +Almost identical views concerning fundamental laws of Art are discussed +in an equally terse, vigorous, and pictorial manner in an article called +'Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction.' This article, however, is not +by George Eliot, but by George Henry Lewis. It was published in October +1858, and appeared after their joint sojourn in Germany during the +spring and summer of that year. I think that if one carefully compares +'Realism in Art' with George Eliot's other articles, there appears +something like a marriage of their respective styles in this paper. It +seems probable that Lewis, with his flexible adaptiveness, had come +under the influence of George Eliot's powerful intellect, and that many +of the views he expresses here at the same time render George Eliot's, +as they frequently appear, identical with hers. In the article in +question the manner as well as the matter has a certain suggestion of +the novelist's style. For example she frequently indicates the quality +of human speech by its resemblance to musical sounds. She is fond of +speaking of "the _staccato_ tones of a voice," "an _adagio_ of utter +indifference," and in the above-mentioned essay there are such +expressions as the "stately _largo_" of good German prose. Again, in the +article in question, we find the following satirical remarks about the +slovenly prose of the generality of German writers: "To be gentlemen of +somewhat slow, sluggish minds is perhaps their misfortune; but to be +writers deplorably deficient in the first principles of composition is +assuredly their fault. Some men pasture on platitudes, as oxen upon +meadow-grass; they are at home on a dead-level of common-place, and do +not desire to be irradiated by a felicity of expression." And in another +passage to the same effect the author says sarcastically, "Graces are +gifts: it can no more be required of a professor that he should write +with felicity than that he should charm all beholders with his personal +appearance; but literature requires that he should write intelligibly +and carefully, as society requires that he should wash his face and +button his waistcoat." Some of these strictures are very similar in +spirit to what George Eliot had said in her review of Heinrich Heine, +published in 1856, where complaining of the general cumbrousness of +German writers, she makes the following cutting remark: "A German comedy +is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it +should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an +arrangement of Providence rather than of the author." + +A passage in this article, which exactly tallies with George Eliot's +general remarks on Art, must not be omitted here. "Art is a +representation of Reality--a Representation inasmuch as it is not the +thing itself, but only represents it, must necessarily be limited by the +nature of its medium.... Realism is thus the basis of all Art, and its +antithesis is not Idealism but Falsism.... To misrepresent the forms of +ordinary life is no less an offence than to misrepresent the forms of +ideal life: a pug-nosed Apollo, or Jupiter in a great-coat, would not be +more truly shocking to an artistic mind than are those senseless +falsifications of Nature into which incompetence is led under the +pretence of 'beautifying' Nature. Either give us true peasants or leave +them untouched; either paint no drapery at all, or paint it with the +utmost fidelity; either keep your people silent, or make them speak the +idiom of their class." + +Among German novelists (or rather writers of short stories), Paul Heyse +is one of the few who is singled out for special praise in this review. +And it is curious that there should be a tale by this eminent author +called 'The Lonely Ones' (which also appeared in 1858), in which an +incident occurs forcibly recalling the catastrophe of Grandcourt's death +in 'Daniel Deronda': the incident--although unskilfully introduced--of a +Neapolitan fisherman whose momentary murderous hesitation to rescue his +drowning friend ends in lifelong remorse for his death. + +What makes the article in question particularly interesting are the +allusions to the German tour, which give it an almost biographical +interest. As has been mentioned already, Mr. Lewis and George Eliot were +travelling in Germany in the spring of 1858, and in a letter to a friend +she writes: "Then we had a delicious journey to Salzburg, and from +thence through the Salz-Kammergut to Vienna, from Vienna to Prague, and +from Prague to Dresden, where we spent our last six weeks in quiet work +and quiet worship of the Madonna." And in his essay on Art Mr. G. H. +Lewis alludes to the most priceless art-treasure Dresden contains, +"Raphael's marvellous picture, the Madonna di San Sisto," as furnishing +the most perfect illustration of what he means by Realism and Idealism. +Speaking of the child Jesus he says: "In the never-to-be-forgotten +divine babe, we have at once the intensest realism of presentation with +the highest idealism of conception: the attitude is at once grand, easy +and natural; the face is that of a child, but the child is divine: in +those eyes and in that brow there is an indefinable something which, +greater than the expression of the angels, grander than that of pope or +saint, is to all who see it a perfect _truth_; we feel that humanity in +its highest conceivable form is before us, and that to transcend such a +form would be to lose sight of the _human_ nature there represented." A +similar passage occurs in 'The Mill on the Floss,' where Philip Wakem +says: "The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine +child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we +feel it to be divine." + +Enough has probably been quoted from George Eliot's articles to give the +reader some idea of her views on art. But they are so rich in happy +aphorisms, originality of illustration, and raciness of epithet that +they not only deserve attentive study because they were the first fruits +of the mind that afterwards gave to the world such noble and perfect +works as 'The Mill on the Floss' and 'Silas Marner,' but are well worth +attention for their own sake. Indeed nothing in George Eliot's fictions +excels the style of these papers. And what a clear, incisive, masterly +style it was! Her prose in those days had a swiftness of movement, an +epigrammatic felicity, and a brilliancy of antithesis which we look for +in vain in the over-elaborate sentences and somewhat ponderous wit of +'Theophrastus Such.' + +A very vapid paper on 'Weimar and its Celebrities,' April 1859, which a +writer in the _Academy_ attributes to the same hand, I know not on what +authority, does not possess a single attribute that we are in the habit +of associating with the writings of George Eliot. That an author who, by +that time, had already produced some of her very finest work, namely, +the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and 'Adam Bede,' should have been +responsible simultaneously for the trite commonplaces ventilated in this +article is simply incredible. It is true that Homer is sometimes found +nodding, and the right-hand of the greatest master may forget its +cunning, but would George Eliot in her most abject moments have been +capable of penning such a sentence as this in connection with Goethe? +"Would not Fredricka or Lili have been a more genial companion than +Christina Vulpius for that great poet of whom his native land is so +justly proud?" It is not worth while to point out other platitudes such +as flow spontaneously from the facile pen of a penny-a-liner; but the +consistent misspelling of every name may be alluded to in passing. Thus +we read "Lily" for "Lely," "Zetter" for "Zelter," "Quintus Filein" for +"Fixlein," "Einsedel" for "Einsiedel," etc. etc. This, in itself, would +furnish no conclusive argument, supposing George Eliot to have been on +the Continent and out of the way of correcting proofs. But as it +happened she was in England in April 1859, and it is, therefore, on all +grounds impossible that this worthless production should be hers. + +Perhaps her two most noteworthy articles are the one called 'Evangelical +Teaching,' published in 1855, and the other on 'Worldliness and other +Worldliness,' which appeared in 1857. This happy phrase, by the way, was +first used by Coleridge, who says, "As there is a worldliness or the too +much of this life, so there is another _worldliness_ or rather _other +worldliness_ equally hateful and selfish with _this worldliness_." These +articles are curious because they seem to occupy a midway position +between George Eliot's earliest and latest phase of religious belief. +But at this period she still felt the recoil from the pressure of a +narrowing dogmatism too freshly not to launch back at it some of the +most stinging shafts from the armoury of her satire. Not Heine himself, +in his trenchant sallies, surpasses the irony with which some of her +pages are bristling. To ignore this stage in George Eliot's mental +development would be to lose one of the connecting links in her history: +a history by no means smooth and uneventful, as some times superficially +represented, but full of strong contrasts, abrupt transitions, outward +and inward changes sympathetically charged with all the meaning of this +transitional time. Two extracts from the above-mentioned articles will +amply testify to what has just been said. + +"Given a man with a moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than +the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, +what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may +most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is +that Goshen of intellectual mediocrity in which a smattering of science +and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will +be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism +as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he +will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great +ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a +middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun +practical extremes, and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic. Let +him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; +unflinching in insisting on the eternity of punishment, but diffident of +curtailing the substantial comforts of time; ardent and imaginative on +the pre-millenial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious towards every +other infringement of the _status quo_. Let him fish for souls, not with +the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the drag-net of +comfortable conformity. Let him be hard and literal in his +interpretation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of +unbelievers and adversaries, but when the letter of the Scriptures +presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth +century, let him use his spiritualising alembic and disperse it into +impalpable ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of Antichrist; let +him be less definite in showing what sin is than in showing who is the +Man of Sin; less expansive on the blessedness of faith than on the +accursedness of infidelity. Above all, let him set up as an interpreter +of prophecy, rival 'Moore's Almanack' in the prediction of political +events, tickling the interest of hearers who are but moderately +spiritual by showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated problems and +charades for their benefit; and how, if they are ingenious enough to +solve these, they may have their Christian graces nourished by learning +precisely to whom they may point as 'the horn that had eyes,' 'the lying +prophet,' and the 'unclean spirits.' In this way he will draw men to him +by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being +baptized with the name of piety. In this way he may gain a metropolitan +pulpit; the avenues to his church will be as crowded as the passages to +the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons, and bind them in +lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all +evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious 'light reading' +the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts, whose sting is in +their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander having +taken a horse's tail for his standard, and that the French are the very +frogs predicted in the Revelations." + +Even more scathing than this onslaught on a certain type of the popular +evangelical preacher, is the paper on the poet Young, one of the +wittiest things from George Eliot's pen, wherein she castigates with all +her powers of sarcasm and ridicule that class of believers who cannot +vilify this life sufficiently in order to make sure of the next, and +who, in the care of their own souls, are careless of the world's need. +Her analysis of the 'Night Thoughts' remains one of the most brilliant +criticisms of its kind. Young's contempt for this earth, of all of us, +and his exaltation of the starry worlds above, especially provoke his +reviewer's wrath. This frame of mind was always repulsive to George +Eliot, who could never sufficiently insist on the need of man's +concentrating his love and energy on the life around him. She never felt +much toleration for that form of aspiration that would soar to some +shadowy infinite beyond the circle of human fellowship. One of the most +epigrammatic passages in this article is where she says of Young, "No +man can be better fitted for an Established Church. He personifies +completely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is +equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of burial fees; +he languishes at once for immortal life and for 'livings;' he has a +fervid attachment to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the +Almighty. He will teach, with something more than official conviction, +the nothingness of earthly things; and he will feel something more than +private disgust, if his meritorious efforts in directing men's attention +to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His +secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as +characteristic attire for 'an ornament of religion and virtue;' he hopes +courtiers will never forget to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes +begging letters to the king's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no +motives more familiar than Golgotha and 'the skies;' it walks in +graveyards, or soars among the stars.... If it were not for the prospect +of immortality, he considers it would be wise and agreeable to be +indecent, or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be +extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a +compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being +reminded of its 'relation to the stars,' and frightened into moderation +by the contemplation of deathbeds and skulls; the angel is to be +developed by vituperating this world and exalting the next, and by this +double process you get the Christian--'the highest style of man.' With +all this our new-made divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay +compounded chiefly of the worldling and the rhetorician there is added a +real spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes +and objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel house +morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of +gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive: for this divine is +Edward Young, the future author of the 'Night Thoughts.'" + +It has seemed appropriate to quote thus largely from these essays, +because, never having been reprinted, they are to all intents and +purposes inaccessible to the general reader. Yet they contain much that +should not willingly be consigned to the dust and cobwebs, among which +obsolete magazines usually sink into oblivion. They may as well be +specified here according to their dates. 'Carlyle's Life of Sterling,' +January 1852; 'Woman in France: Madame de Sable,' October 1854; +'Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming,' October 1855; 'German Wit: Heinrich +Heine,' January 1856; 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,' October 1856; +'The Natural History of German Life,' July 1856; and 'Worldliness and +other Worldliness: the Poet Young,' January 1857. + +Miss Evans's main employment on the _Westminster Review_ was, however, +editorial. She used to write a considerable portion of the summary of +contemporary literature at the end of each number. But her co-operation +as sub-editor ceased about the close of 1853, when she left Dr. +Chapman's house, and went to live in apartments in a small house in +Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park. Marian Evans was not entirely dependent at +this time on the proceeds of her literary work, her father having +settled the sum of 80l. to 100l. a year on her for life, the capital of +which, however, did not belong to her. She was very generous with her +money; and although her earnings at this time were not considerable, +they were partly spent on her poor relations. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +GEORGE HENRY LEWES. + + +Meanwhile, these literary labours were pleasantly diversified by +frequent visits to her friends at Rosehill and elsewhere. In October +1852, she stayed with Mr. and Mrs. George Combe at Edinburgh, and on her +way back was the guest of Harriet Martineau, at her delightfully +situated house in Ambleside. Her acquaintance with Mr. Herbert Spencer +had ripened into a cordial friendship. They met constantly both in +London and in the country, and their intercourse was a source of mutual +intellectual enjoyment and profit. As must already have become evident, +it is erroneous to suppose that he had any share in the formation of her +mind: for as Mr. Herbert Spencer said, in a letter to the _Daily News_, +"Our friendship did not commence until 1851 ... when she was already +distinguished by that breadth of culture, and universality of power, +which have since made her known to all the world." + +In a letter to Miss Phelps, George Eliot touches on this rumour, after +alluding in an unmistakable manner to another great contemporary: "I +never--to answer one of your questions quite directly--I never had any +personal acquaintance with" (naming a prominent Positivist); "never saw +him to my knowledge, except in the House of Commons; and though I have +studied his books, especially his 'Logic' and 'Political Economy,' with +much benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked +epoch in my life. + +"Of Mr. ----'s friendship I have had the honour and advantage for twenty +years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had been taken +before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of course, +indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought." + +But there was another acquaintance which Miss Evans made during the +first year of her residence in the Strand, destined to affect the whole +future tenor of her life--the acquaintance of Mr. George Henry Lewes, +then, like her, a contributor to the _Westminster Review_. + +George Henry Lewes was Marian's senior by two years, having been born in +London on the 18th of April, 1817. He was educated at Greenwich in a +school once possessing a high reputation for thoroughly "grounding" its +pupils in a knowledge of the classics. When his education was so far +finished, he was placed as clerk in a merchant's office. This kind of +occupation proving very distasteful, he turned medical student for a +time. Very early in life he was attracted towards philosophy, for at the +age of nineteen we find him attending the weekly meetings of a small +club, in the habit of discussing metaphysical problems in the parlour of +a tavern in Red Lion Square, Holborn. This club, from which the one in +'Daniel Deronda' is supposed to have borrowed many of its features, was +the point of junction for a most heterogeneous company. Here, amicably +seated round the fire, a speculative tailor would hob and nob with some +medical student deep in anatomy; a second-hand bookseller having +devoured the literature on his shelves, ventilated their contents for +the general benefit; and a discursive American mystic was listened to in +turn with a Jewish journeyman watchmaker deeply imbued with Spinozism. +It is impossible not to connect this Jew, named Cohen, and described as +"a man of astonishing subtilty and logical force, no less than of sweet +personal worth," with the Mordecai of the novel just mentioned. However +wide the after divergencies, here evidently lies the germ. The weak eyes +and chest, the grave and gentle demeanour, the whole ideality of +character correspond. In some respects G. H. Lewes was the "Daniel +Deronda" to this "Mordecai." For he not only loved but venerated his +"great calm intellect." "An immense pity," says Mr. Lewes, "a fervid +indignation filled me as I came away from his attics in one of the +Holborn courts, where I had seen him in the pinching poverty of his +home, with his German wife and two little black-eyed children." + +To this pure-spirited suffering watchmaker, Lewes owed his first +acquaintance with Spinoza. A certain passage, casually cited by Cohen, +awakened an eager thirst for more in the youth. The desire to possess +himself of Spinoza's works, still in the odour of pestilential heresy, +haunted him like a passion. For he himself, then "suffering the social +persecution which embitters any departure from accepted creeds," felt in +defiant sympathy with all outcasts. On a dreary November evening, the +coveted volumes were at length discovered on the dingy shelves of a +second-hand bookseller. By the flaring gaslight, young Lewes, with a +beating heart, read on the back of a small brown quarto those thrilling +words, 'Spinoza: Opera Posthuma!' He was poor in those days, and the +price of the volume was twenty shillings, but he would gladly have +sacrificed his last sixpence to secure it. Having paid his money with +feverish delight, he hurried home in triumph, and immediately set to +work on a translation of the 'Ethics,' which, however, he was too +impatient to finish. + +This little incident is well worth dwelling upon not only as being the +first introduction of a notable thinker to philosophy, but as showing +the eager impulsive nature of the man. The study of Spinoza led to his +publishing an article on his life and works in the _Westminster Review_ +of 1843, almost the first account of the great Hebrew philosopher which +appeared in this country. This article, afterwards incorporated in the +'Biographical History of Philosophy,' formed the nucleus, I believe, of +that "admirable piece of synthetic criticism and exposition," as Mr. +Frederic Harrison calls it; a work which, according to him, has +influenced the thought of the present generation almost more than any +single book except Mr. Mill's 'Logic.' + +Before the appearance of either article or 'History of Philosophy,' Mr. +Lewes went to Germany, and devoted himself to the study of its language +and literature, just brought into fashion by Carlyle. Returning to +England in 1839, he became one of the most prolific journalists of the +day. Witty, brilliant, and many-sided, he seemed pre-eminently fitted by +nature for a press writer and _litterateur_. His versatility, was so +amazing, that a clever talker once said of him: "Lewes can do everything +in the world but paint: and he could do that, too, after a week's +study." At this time, besides assisting in the editorship of the +_Classical Museum_, he wrote for the _Morning Chronicle_, the +_Athenaeum_, the _Edinburgh_, _Foreign Quarterly_, _British Quarterly_, +_Blackwood_, _Fraser_, and the _Westminster Review_. After publishing 'A +Biographical History of Philosophy,' through Mr. Knight's 'Weekly +Volumes' in 1846, he wrote two novels, 'Ranthorpe,' and 'Rose, Blanche, +and Violet,' which successively appeared in 1847 and 1848. But fiction +was not his _forte_, these two productions being singularly crude and +immature as compared with his excellent philosophical work. Some jokes +in the papers about "rant," killed what little life there was in +"Ranthorpe." Nevertheless, Charlotte Bronte, who had some correspondence +with Mr. Lewes about 1847, actually wrote about it as follows: "In +reading 'Ranthorpe,' I have read a new book, not a reprint, not a +reflection of any other book, but a _new book_." Another great writer, +Edgar Poe, admired it no less, for he says of the work: "I have lately +read it with deep interest, and derived great _consolation_ from it +also. It relates to the career of a literary man, and gives a just view +of the true aims and the true dignity of the literary character." + +'The Spanish Drama;' 'The Life of Maximilian Robespierre, with extracts +from his unpublished correspondence;' 'The Noble Heart: a Tragedy;' all +followed in close succession from the same inexhaustible pen. The last, +it was said, proved also a tragedy to the publishers. But not content +with writing dramas, Mr. Lewes was also ambitious of the fame of an +actor, the theatre having always possessed a strong fascination for him. +Already as a child he had haunted the theatres, and now, while +delivering a lecture at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, he +shocked its staid _habitues_ not a little by immediately afterwards +appearing on the stage in the character of Shylock: so many, and +seemingly incompatible, were Lewes's pursuits. But this extreme mobility +of mind, this intellectual tripping from subject to subject, retarded +the growth of his popularity. The present mechanical subdivision of +labour has most unfortunately also affected the judgment passed on +literary and artistic products. Let a man once have written a novel +typical of the manners and ways of a certain class of English society, +or painted a picture with certain peculiar effects of sea or landscape, +or composed a poem affecting the very trick and language of some bygone +mediaeval singer, he will be doomed, to the end of his days, to do the +same thing over and over again, _ad nauseam_. Nothing can well be more +deadening to any vigorous mental life, and Mr. Lewes set a fine example +of intellectual disinterestedness in sacrificing immediate success to +the free play of a most variously endowed nature. + +The public too was a gainer by this. For the life of Goethe could not +have been made the rich, comprehensive, many-sided biography it is, had +Mr. Lewes himself not tried his hand at such a variety of subjects. This +life, begun in 1845, the result partly of his sojourn in Germany, did +not appear in print until 1855. Ultimately destined to a great and +lasting success, the MS. of the 'Life of Goethe' was ignominiously sent +from one publisher to another, until at last Mr. David Nutt, of the +Strand, showed his acumen by giving it to the reading world. + +Some years before the publication of this biography Mr. Lewes had also +been one of the founders of that able, but unsuccessful weekly, the +_Leader_, of which he was the literary editor from 1849 to 1854. Many of +his articles on Auguste Comte were originally written for this paper, +and afterwards collected into a volume for Bohn's series. Indeed, after +Mr. John Stuart Mill, he is to be regarded as the earliest exponent of +Positivism in England. He not only considered the '_Cours de Philosophie +Positive_' the greatest work of this century, but believed it would +"form one of the mighty landmarks in the history of opinion. No one +before M. Comte," he says, "ever dreamed of treating social problems +otherwise than upon theological or metaphysical methods. He first showed +how possible, nay, how imperative, it was that social questions should +be treated on the same footing with all other scientific questions. This +being his object, he was forced to detect the law of mental evolution +before he could advance. This law is the law of historical progression." +But while Mr. Lewes, with his talent for succinct exposition, helped +more than any other Englishman to disseminate the principles of Comte's +philosophy in this country, he was at the same time violently opposed to +his '_Politique Positive_,' with its schemes of social reorganisation. + +Even so slight a survey as this must show the astonishing discursiveness +of Mr. Lewes's intellect. By the time he was thirty he had already tried +his hand at criticism, fiction, biography, the drama, and philosophy. He +had enlarged his experience of human nature by foreign travel; he had +addressed audiences from the lecturer's platform; he had enjoyed the +perilous sweets of editing a newspaper; he had even, it is said, played +the harlequin in a company of strolling actors. Indeed, Mr. Thackeray +was once heard to say that it would not surprise him to meet Lewes in +Piccadilly, riding on a white elephant; whilst another wit likened him +to the Wandering Jew, as you could never tell where he was going to turn +up, or what he was going to do next. + +In this discursiveness of intellect he more nearly resembled the +Encyclopedists of the 18th century than the men of his own time. Indeed +his personal appearance, temperament, manners, general tone of thought, +seemed rather to be those of a highly-accomplished foreigner than of an +Englishman. He was a lightly-built, fragile man, with bushy curly hair, +and a general shagginess of beard and eyebrow not unsuggestive of a Skye +terrier. For the rest, he had a prominent mouth and grey, deeply-set +eyes under an ample, finely-proportioned forehead. Volatile by nature, +somewhat wild and lawless in his talk, he in turn delighted and shocked +his friends by the gaiety, recklessness, and genial _abandon_ of his +manners and conversation. His companionship was singularly stimulating, +for the commonest topic served him as a starting-point for the lucid +development of some pet philosophical theory. In this gift of making +abstruse problems intelligible, and difficult things easy, he had some +resemblance to the late W. K. Clifford, with his magical faculty of +illuminating the most abstruse subjects by his vivid directness of +exposition. + +As Lewes's life was so soon to be closely united to that of Marian +Evans, this cursory sketch of his career will not seem inappropriate. +At the time they met at Dr. Chapman's house, Mr. Lewes, who had married +early in life, found his conjugal relations irretrievably spoiled. How +far the blame of this might attach to one side or to the other does not +concern us here. Enough that in the intercourse with a woman of such +astonishing intellect, varied acquirements, and rare sympathy, Mr. Lewes +discovered a community of ideas and a moral support that had been sadly +lacking to his existence hitherto. + +In many ways these two natures, so opposite in character, disposition, +and tone of mind, who, from such different starting-points, had reached +the same standpoint, seemed to need each other for the final fruition +and utmost development of what was best in each. A crisis was now +impending in Marian's life. She was called upon to make her private +judgment a law unto herself, and to shape her actions, not according to +the recognised moral standard of her country, but in harmony with her +own convictions of right and wrong. From a girl, it appears, she had +held independent views about marriage, strongly advocating the German +divorce laws. On the appearance of 'Jane Eyre,' when every one was +talking of this book and praising the exemplary conduct of Jane in her +famous interview with Rochester, Marian Evans, then only +four-and-twenty, remarked to a friend that in his position she +considered him justified in contracting a fresh marriage. And in an +article on Madame de Sable, written as early as 1854, there is this +significant passage in reference to the "laxity of opinion and practice +with regard to the marriage-tie in France." "Heaven forbid," she +writes, "that we should enter on a defence of French morals, most of all +in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that unions formed in the +maturity of thought and feeling, and grounded only on inherent fitness +and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more intelligent +sympathy with man, and to heighten and complicate their share in the +political drama. The quiescence and security of the conjugal relation +are, doubtless, favourable to the manifestation of the highest qualities +by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but +rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in +winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert indolence into +activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into +perspicuity." + +Such a union, formed in the full maturity of thought and feeling, was +now contracted by Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes. Legal union, +however, there could be none, for though virtually separated from his +wife, Mr. Lewes could not get a divorce. Too little has as yet +transpired concerning this important step to indicate more than the bare +outline of events. Enough that Mr. Lewes appears to have written a +letter in which, after a full explanation of his circumstances, he used +all his powers of persuasion to win Miss Evans for his life-long +companion; that she consented, after having satisfied her conscience +that in reality she was not injuring the claims of others; and that +henceforth she bore Mr. Lewes's name, and became his wife in every sense +but the legal one. + +This proceeding caused the utmost consternation amongst her +acquaintances, especially amongst her friends at Rosehill. The former +intimate and affectionate intercourse with Mrs. Bray and her sister was +only gradually restored, and only after they had come to realise how +perfectly her own conscience had been consulted and satisfied in the +matter. Miss Hennell, who had already entered on the scheme of religious +doctrine which ever since she has been setting forth in her printed +works, "swerved nothing from her own principles that the maintenance of +a conventional form of marriage (remoulded to the demands of the present +age) is essentially attached to all religion, and pre-eminently so to +the religion of the future." + +In thus defying public opinion, and forming a connection in opposition +to the laws of society, George Eliot must have undergone some trials and +sufferings peculiarly painful to one so shrinkingly sensitive as +herself. Conscious of no wrong-doing, enjoying the rare happiness of +completest intellectual fellowship in the man she loved, the step she +had taken made a gap between her kindred and herself which could not but +gall her clinging, womanly nature. To some of her early companions, +indeed, who had always felt a certain awe at the imposing gravity of her +manners, this dereliction from what appeared to them the path of duty +was almost as startling and unexpected as if they had seen the heavens +falling down. + +How far the individual can ever be justified in following the dictates +of his private judgment, in opposition to the laws and prevalent +opinions of his time and country, must remain a question no less +difficult than delicate of decision. It is precisely the point where +the highest natures and the lowest sometimes apparently meet; since to +act in opposition to custom may be due to the loftiest motives--may be +the spiritual exaltation of the reformer, braving social ostracism for +the sake of an idea, or may spring, on the other hand, from purely +rebellious promptings of an anti-social egoism, which recognises no law +higher than that of personal gratification. At the same time, it seems, +that no progress could well be made in the evolution of society without +these departures on the part of individuals from the well-beaten tracks, +for even the failures help eventually towards a fuller recognition of +what is beneficial and possible of attainment. Mary Wollstonecraft +Shelley, George Sand, the New England Transcendentalists, with their +communistic experiment at Brooke Farm, all more or less strove to be +path-finders to a better and happier state of society. George Eliot, +however, hardly belonged to this order of mind. Circumstances prompted +her to disregard one of the most binding laws of society, yet, while she +considered herself justified in doing so, her sympathies were, on the +whole, more enlisted in the state of things as they are than as they +might be. It is certainly curious that the woman, who in her own life +had followed such an independent course, severing herself in many ways +from her past with all its traditional sanctities, should yet so often +inculcate the very opposite teaching in her works--should inculcate an +almost slavish adherence to whatever surroundings, beliefs, and family +ties a human being may be born to. + +I need only add here that Mr. Lewes and Marian went to Germany soon +after forming this union, which, only ending by death, gave to each what +had hitherto been lacking in their lives. Many marriages solemnised in a +church, and ushered in with all the ostentation of _trousseau_, +bridesmaids, and wedding breakfast, are indeed less essentially such in +all the deeper human aspects which this relation implies, than the one +contracted in this informal manner. Indeed, to those who saw them +together, it seemed as if they could never be apart. Yet, while so +entirely at one, each respected the other's individuality, his own, at +the same time, gaining in strength by the contact. Mr. Lewes's mercurial +disposition now assumed a stability greatly enhancing his brilliant +talents, and for the first time facilitating that concentration of +intellect so necessary for the production of really lasting philosophic +work. On the other hand, George Eliot's still dormant faculties were +roused and stimulated to the utmost by the man to whom this union with +her formed the most memorable year of his life. By his enthusiastic +belief in her he gave her the only thing she wanted--a thorough belief +in herself. Indeed, he was more than a husband: he was, as an intimate +friend once pithily remarked, a very mother to her. Tenderly watching +over her delicate health, cheering the grave tenor of her thoughts by +his inexhaustible buoyancy, jealously shielding her from every adverse +breath of criticism, Mr. Lewes in a manner created the spiritual +atmosphere in which George Eliot could best put forth all the flowers +and fruits of her genius. + +In joining her life with that of Mr. Lewes, the care of his three +children devolved upon George Eliot, who henceforth showed them the +undeviating love and tenderness of a mother. One of the sons had gone +out to Natal as a young man, and contracted a fatal disease, which, +complicated with some accident, resulted in an untimely death. He +returned home a hopeless invalid, and his tedious illness was cheered by +the affectionate tendance of her who had for so many years acted a +mother's part towards him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. + + +As has already been mentioned, Mr. Lewes and Marian went to Germany in +1854, dividing the year between Berlin, Munich, and Weimar. In the +latter pleasant little Saxon city, on which the mighty influence of +Goethe seemed still visibly resting, as the reflection of the sun +lingers in the sky long after the sun himself has set, Lewes partly +re-wrote his 'Life of Goethe.' Here must have been spent many delightful +days, wandering in Goethe's track, exploring the beautiful +neighbourhood, and enjoying some of the most cultivated society in +Germany. Several articles on German life and literature, afterwards +published in the _Westminster Review_, were probably written at this +time. The translation of Spinoza's 'Ethics' by George Eliot was also +executed in the same year. Mr. Lewes, alluding to it in 'Goethe's Life,' +says, in a foot-note, "It may interest some readers to learn that +Spinoza will ere long appear in English, edited by the writer of these +lines." This was a delusive promise, since the translation has not yet +made its appearance. But surely its publication would now be warmly +welcomed. + +The time, however, was approaching when George Eliot was at last to +discover where her real mastery lay. And this is the way, as the story +goes, that she discovered it. They had returned from the Continent and +were settled again in London, both actively engaged in literature. But +literature, unless in certain cases of triumphant popularity, is perhaps +the worst paid of all work. Mr. Lewes and George Eliot were not too well +off. The former, infinite in resources, having himself tried every form +of literature in turn, could not fail to notice the matchless power of +observation, and the memory matching it in power, of the future +novelist. One day an idea struck him. "My dear," he said, "I think you +could write a capital story." Shortly afterwards there was some dinner +engagement, but as he was preparing to go out, she said, "I won't go out +this evening, and when you come in don't disturb me. I shall be very +busy." And this was how the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' came first to be +written! On being shown a portion of the first tale, 'Amos Barton,' Mr. +Lewes was fairly amazed. + +Stories are usually fabricated after the event; but, if not true, they +often truly paint a situation. And the general testimony of friends +seems to agree that it was Mr. Lewes who first incited the gifted woman, +of whose great powers he was best able to form a judgment, to express +herself in that species of literature which would afford the fullest +scope to the creative and dramatic faculties which she so eminently +possessed. Here, however, his influence ended. He helped to reveal +George Eliot to herself, and after that there was little left for him to +do. But this gift of stimulating another by sympathetic insight and +critical appreciation is itself of priceless value. When Schiller died, +Goethe said, "The half of my existence is gone from me." A terrible +word to utter for one so great. But never again, he knew, would he meet +with the same complete comprehension, and, lacking that, his genius +itself seemed less his own than before. + +There is an impression abroad that Mr. Lewes, if anything, did some +injury to George Eliot from a literary point of view; that the nature of +his pursuits led her to adopt too technical and pedantic a phraseology +in her novels. But this idea is unjust to both. In comparing her +earliest with her latest style, it is clear that from the first she was +apt to cull her illustrations from the physical sciences, thereby +showing how much these studies had become part of herself. Indeed, she +was far more liable to introduce these scientific modes of expression +than Mr. Lewes, as may be easily seen by comparing his 'Life of Goethe,' +partly re-written in 1854, with some of her essays of the same date. As +to her matter, it is curious how much of it was drawn from the earliest +sources of memory--from that life of her childhood to which she may +sometimes have turned yearningly as to a long-lost Paradise. Most of her +works might, indeed, not inaptly be called 'Looking Backward.' They are +a half-pathetic, half-humorous, but entirely tender revivification of +the "days that are no more." No one, however intimate, could really +intermeddle with the workings of a genius drawing its happiest +inspiration from the earliest experiences of its own individual past. + +Nothing is more characteristic of this obvious tendency than the first +of the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos +Barton.' At Chilvers Coton the curious in such matters may still see the +identical church where the incumbent of Shepperton used to preach +sermons shrewdly compounded of High Church doctrines and Low Church +evangelicalism, not forgetting to note "its little flight of steps with +their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the +school-children's gallery." There they may still see the little +churchyard, though they may look in vain for the "slim black figure" of +the Rev. Amos, "as it flits past the pale gravestones," in "the silver +light that falls aslant on church and tomb." And among the tombs there +is one, a handsome substantial monument, overshadowed by a yew-tree, on +which there is this inscription: + + + HERE LIES, + WAITING THE SUMMONS OF THE ARCHANGEL'S TRUMPET, + ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF + THE BELOVED WIFE OF THE + REV. JOHN GWYTHER, B.A., + CURATE OF THIS PARISH, + NOV. 4TH, 1836, + AGED THIRTY-FOUR YEARS, + LEAVING A HUSBAND AND SEVEN CHILDREN. + + +This Emma Gwyther is none other than the beautiful Milly, the wife of +Amos, so touchingly described by George Eliot, whose mother, Mrs. Evans, +was her intimate friend. George Eliot would be in her teens when she +heard the story of this sweet woman: heard the circumstantial details of +her struggles to make the two ends of a ridiculously small income meet +the yearly expenses: heard her mother, no doubt (in the words of Mrs. +Hackit) blame her weak forbearance in tolerating the presence in her +house of the luxurious and exacting countess, who, having ingratiated +herself with the gullible Amos by her talk of the "livings" she would +get him, gave much scandal in the neighbourhood: heard of the pathetic +death-bed, when, worn by care and toil, the gentle life ebbed quietly +away, leaving a life-long void in her husband's heart and home. All this +was the talk of the neighbourhood when George Eliot was a girl; and her +extraordinary memory allowed nothing to escape. + +On the completion of 'Amos Barton,' Mr. Lewes, who, as already +mentioned, was a contributor to 'Maga.' sent the MS. to the editor, the +late Mr. John Blackwood, as the work of an anonymous friend. This was in +the autumn of 1856. The other scenes of 'Clerical Life' were then +unwritten, but the editor was informed that the story submitted to his +approval formed one of a series. Though his judgment was favourable, he +begged to see some of the other tales before accepting this, freely +making some criticisms on the plot and studies of character in 'Amos +Barton.' This, however, disheartened the author, whose peculiar +diffidence had only been overcome by Mr. Lewes's hearty commendation. +When the editor had been made aware of the injurious effect of his +objections, he hastened to efface it by accepting the tale without +further delay. It appeared soon afterwards in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for +January 1857, where it occupied the first place. This story, by some +considered as fine as anything the novelist ever wrote, came to an end +in the next number. 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,' and 'Janet's Repentance' +were written in quick succession, and the series was completed in +November of the same year. + +Although there was nothing sufficiently sensational in these 'Scenes' to +arrest the attention of that great public which must be roused by +something new and startling, literary judges were not slow to discern +the powerful realism with which the author had drawn these +uncompromising studies from life. After the appearance of 'Amos Barton,' +Mr. Blackwood wrote to the anonymous author: "It is a long time since I +have read anything so fresh, so humorous, and so touching. The style is +capital, conveying so much in so few words." Soon afterwards he began +another letter: "My dear Amos, I forget whether I told you or Lewes that +I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with me, and +having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had just +finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have +lighted upon a new author, who is uncommonly like a first-class +passenger.' I showed him a page or two, I think the passage where the +curate returns home and Milly is first introduced. He would not +pronounce whether it came up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that +he would have liked to have read more, which I thought a good sign." + +Dickens, after the publication of the 'Scenes,' sent a letter to the +unknown writer through the editor, warmly expressing the admiration he +felt for them. But he was strongly of opinion from the first that they +must have been written by a woman. In the meanwhile the tales were +reprinted in a collected form, and they were so successful that the +editor, writing to Mr. Lewes at the end of January 1858, when the book +had hardly been out a month, was able to say, "George Eliot has fairly +achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must follow, +although it may take time." And in a letter to George Eliot herself, he +wrote in February: "You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my +impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the +magazine to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough +to make your literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very +long time often elapses between the two stages of reputation--the +literary and the public. Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick +as we could wish." + +While the sketches were being re-issued in book form, Messrs. Blackwood +informed its author that they saw good cause for making a large increase +in the forthcoming reprint, and their anticipations were fully justified +by its success. All sorts of rumours were abroad as to the real author +of these clerical tales. Misled by a hint, calculated to throw him off +the real scent, Mr. Blackwood was at first under the impression that +they were the work of a clergyman, and perhaps this may have been the +origin of a belief which lingered till quite recently, that George Eliot +was the daughter of a clergyman, a statement made by several of the +leading daily papers after her death. Abandoning the idea of the +clergyman, Mr. Blackwood next fixed upon a very different sort of +person, to wit, Professor Owen, whom he suspected owing to the +similarity of handwriting and the scientific knowledge so exceptional in +a novelist. No less funny was the supposition held by others of Lord +Lytton--who more than once hoaxed the public under a new literary +disguise--having at last surpassed himself in the sterling excellence of +these tales. Now that Bulwer has gone the way of all fashions, it seems +incredible that the most obtuse and slow-witted of critics should have +mistaken for a moment his high-flown sentimental style for the new +author's terse, vigorous and simple prose. + +It was impossible, however, for an author to remain a mere nameless +abstraction. An appellation of some kind became an imperative necessity, +and, during the passage of 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' through the press, +the pseudonym of "George Eliot"--a name destined to become so justly +renowned--was finally assumed. + +The 'Scenes of Clerical Life' were to George Eliot's future works what a +bold, spirited sketch is to a carefully elaborated picture. All the +qualities that distinguished her genius may be discovered in this, her +first essay in fiction. With all Miss Austen's matchless faculty for +painting commonplace characters, George Eliot has that other nobler +faculty of showing what tragedy, pathos, and humour may be lying in the +experience of a human soul "that looks out through dull grey eyes, and +that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." While depicting some +commonplace detail of every day life, she has the power to make her +reader realise its close relation to the universal life. She never gives +you the mere dry bones and fragments of existence as represented in some +particular section of society, but always manages to keep before the +mind the invisible links connecting it with the world at large. In 'Mr. +Gilfil's Love Story' there is a passage as beautiful as any in her +works, and fully illustrating this attitude of her mind. It is where +Tina, finding herself deceived in Captain Wybrow, gives way to her +passionate grief in solitude. + +"While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy +for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and +terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the +tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was +making brilliant day to busy nations on the other side of the swift +earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening +onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships were +labouring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce +spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest; and sleepless +statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. What were our +little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one +awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering +life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish +in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its nest +with the long-sought food, and has found the nest torn and empty." + +There is rather more incident in this story of Mr. Gilfil than in either +of the two other 'Scenes of Clerical Life.' In 'Amos Barton' the +narrative is of the simplest, as has already been indicated; and the +elements from which 'Janet's Repentance' is composed are as free from +any complex entanglement of plot. The author usually describes the most +ordinary circumstances of English life, but the powerful rendering of +the human emotions which spring from them takes a most vivid hold of the +imagination: 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story,' however, seems a little Italian +romance dropped on English soil. + +It is, in brief, the narration of how Sir Christopher Cheverel and his +wife, during their residence at Milan, took pity on a little orphan +girl, "whose large dark eyes shone from out her queer little face like +the precious stones in a grotesque image carved in old ivory." Caterina, +or Tina as she is called, taken back to Cheverel Manor, grew up under +the care of the Baronet's wife, to whom she became endeared by her +exceptional musical talent. Sir Christopher had no children, but had +chosen his nephew, Captain Wybrow, for his heir, and planned a marriage +between him and Miss Assher, the handsome and accomplished owner of a +pretty estate. Another marriage, on which he has equally set his heart, +is that between his ward Maynard Gilfil, an open-eyed manly young fellow +destined for the Church, and the mellow-voiced, large-eyed Tina, for +whom he has long nursed an undeclared passion. But alas, for the +futility of human plans! Tina, to whom the elegant Anthony Wybrow has +been secretly professing love, suffers tortures of jealousy when he and +Miss Assher, to whom he has dutifully become engaged, come on a visit to +Cheverel Manor. The treacherous Captain, to lull the suspicions of his +betrothed, insinuates that poor Miss Sarti entertains a hopeless passion +for him, which puts the poor girl, who gets an inkling of this +double-dealing, into a frenzy of indignation. In this state she +possesses herself of a dagger, and as she is going to meet the Captain +by appointment, dreams of plunging the weapon in the traitor's heart. +But on reaching the appointed spot, she beholds the false lover +stretched motionless on the ground already--having suddenly died of +heart disease. Tina's anguish is indescribable: she gives the alarm to +the household, but stung by remorse for a contemplated revenge of which +her tender-hearted nature was utterly incapable, she flies unperceived +from the premises at night. Being searched for in vain, she is suspected +of having committed suicide. After some days of almost unbearable +suspense, news is brought that Tina is lying ill at the cottage of a +former maid in the household. With reviving hopes her anxious lover +rides to the farm, sees the half-stunned, unhappy girl, and, after a +while, manages to remove her to his sister's house. She gradually +recovers under Mrs. Heron's gentle tendance, and one day a child's +accidental striking of a deep bass note on the harpsichord suddenly +revives her old passionate delight in music. And 'the soul that was born +anew to music was born anew to love.' After a while Tina agrees to +become Mr. Gilfil's wife, who has been given the living at Shepperton, +where a happy future seems in store for the Vicar. "But the delicate +plant had been too deeply bruised, and in the struggle to put forth a +blossom it died. + +"Tina died, and Maynard Gilfil's love went with her into deep silence +for evermore." + +Besides this sympathy with the homeliest characters and situations, or, +more properly speaking, springing from it, there already runs through +these three tales the delicious vein of humour irradiating George +Eliot's otherwise sombre pictures of life with sudden flashes of mirth +as of sunlight trembling above dark waters. In this depth and richness +of humour George Eliot not only takes precedence of all other +distinguished women, but she stands among them without a rival. Hers is +that thoughtful outlook on life, that infinite depth of observation +which, taking note of the inconsistencies and the blunders, the +self-delusions and "fantastic pranks" of her fellow-men, finds the +source of laughter very near to tears; never going out of her way for +the eccentric and peculiar in human nature, seeing that human nature +itself appears to her as the epitome of all incongruity. It is this +breadth of conception and unerringness of vision piercing through the +external and accidental to the core of man's mixed nature which give +certain of her creations something of the life-like complexity of +Shakespeare's. + +Her power of rendering the idiom and manners of peasants, artisans, and +paupers, of calling up before us the very gestures and phrases of +parsons, country practitioners, and other varieties of inhabitants of +our provincial towns and rural districts, already manifests itself fully +in these clerical stories. Here we find such types as Mr. Dempster, the +unscrupulous, brutal, drunken lawyer; Mr. Pilgrim, the tall, heavy, +rough-mannered, and spluttering doctor, profusely addicted to bleeding +and blistering his patients; Mr. Gilfil, the eccentric vicar, with a +tender love-story hidden beneath his rugged exterior; the large-hearted, +unfortunate Janet, rescued from moral ruin by Mr. Tryan, the ascetic +evangelical clergyman, whose character, the author remarks, might have +been found sadly wanting in perfection by feeble and fastidious minds, +but, as she adds, "The blessed work of helping the world forward happily +does not wait to be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that +neither Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the +modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, +feels nothing but what is exalted, and does nothing but what is +graceful. The real heroes of God's making are quite different: they have +their natural heritage of love and conscience, which they drew in with +their mother's milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual truths +which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their +own sorrows; they have earned faith and strength so far as they have +done genuine work, but the rest is dry, barren theory, blank prejudice, +vague hearsay." + +George Eliot's early acquaintance with many types of the clerical +character, and her sympathy with the religious life in all its +manifestations, was never more fully shown than in these 'Scenes.' In +'Janet's Repentance' we already discover one of George Eliot's favourite +psychological studies--the awakening of a morally mixed nature to a new, +a spiritual life. This work of regeneration Mr. Tryan performs for +Janet, Felix Holt for Esther, and Daniel Deronda for Gwendolen. Her +protest against the application of too lofty a moral standard in judging +of our fellow-creatures, her championship of the "mongrel, ungainly dogs +who are nobody's pets," is another of the prominent qualities of her +genius fully expressed in this firstling work, being, indeed, at the +root of her humorous conception of life. One of the finest bits of +humour in the present volume is the scene in 'Amos Barton,' which occurs +at the workhouse, euphemistically called the "College." Mr. Barton, +having just finished his address to the paupers, is thus accosted by Mr. +Spratt, "a small-featured, small-statured man, with a remarkable power +of language, mitigated by hesitation, who piqued himself on expressing +unexceptionable sentiments in unexceptionable language on all occasions. + +"'Mr. Barton, sir--aw--aw--excuse my trespassing on your time--aw--to +beg that you will administer a rebuke to this boy; he is--aw--aw--most +inveterate in ill-behaviour during service-time.' + +"The inveterate culprit was a boy of seven, vainly contending against +'candles' at his nose by feeble sniffing. But no sooner had Mr. Spratt +uttered his impeachment than Mrs. Fodge rushed forward, and placed +herself between Mr. Barton and the accused. + +"'That's _my_ child, Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting +her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. +'He's aly's a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let +him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while +we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my boy alooan.' + +"Mr. Spratt's small eyes flashed, and he was in danger of uttering +sentiments not unexceptionable before the clergyman; but Mr. Barton, +foreseeing that a prolongation of this episode would not be to +edification, said 'Silence!' in his severest tones. + +"'Let me hear no abuse. Your boy is not likely to behave well, if you +set him the example of being saucy.' Then stooping down to Master Fodge, +and taking him by the shoulder, 'Do you like being beaten?' + +"'No--a.' + +"'Then what a silly boy you are to be naughty. If you were not naughty, +you wouldn't be beaten. But if you are naughty, God will be angry, as +well as Mr. Spratt; and God can burn you for ever. That will be worse +than being beaten.' + +"Master Fodge's countenance was neither affirmative nor negative of this +proposition. + +"'But,' continued Mr. Barton, 'if you will be a good boy, God will love +you, and you will grow up to be a good man. Now, let me hear next +Thursday that you have been a good boy.' + +"Master Fodge had no distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to +him from this change of courses." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ADAM BEDE. + + +Rarely has a novelist come to his task with such a far-reaching culture, +such an intellectual grasp, as George Eliot. We have seen her girlhood +occupied with an extraordinary variety of studies; we have seen her +plunged in abstruse metaphysical speculations; we have seen her +translating some of the most laborious philosophical investigations of +German thinkers; we have seen her again translating from the Latin the +'Ethics' of Spinoza; and, finally, we have seen her attracting, and +attracted by, some of the leaders in science, philosophy, and +literature. + +Compared with such qualifications who among novelists could compete? +What could a Dickens, or a Thackeray himself, throw into the opposing +scale? Lewes, indeed, was a match for her in variety of attainments, but +he had made several attempts at fiction, and the attempts had proved +failures. When at last, in the maturity of her powers, George Eliot +produced 'Adam Bede,' she produced a novel in which the amplest results +of knowledge and meditation were so happily blended with instinctive +insight into life and character, and the rarest dramatic imagination, +as to stamp it immediately as one of the great triumphs and masterpieces +in the world of fiction. + +It is worth noticing that in 'Adam Bede' George Eliot fulfils to the +utmost the demands which she had been theoretically advocating in her +essays. In some of these she had not only eloquently enforced the +importance of a truthful adherence to nature, but had pointed out how +the artist is thus in the very vanguard of social and political reforms; +as in familiarising the imagination with the real condition of the +people, he did much towards creating that sympathy with their wants, +their trials, and their sufferings, which would eventually effect +external changes in harmony with this better understanding. Such had +been her teaching. And in Dickens she had recognised the one great +novelist who, in certain respects, had painted the lower orders with +unerring truthfulness. His "Oliver Twists," his "Nancys," his "Joes," +were terrible and pathetic pictures of the forlorn outcasts haunting our +London streets. And if, as George Eliot says, Dickens had been able to +"give us their psychological character, their conception of life and +their emotions, with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his +books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the +awakening of social sympathies." Now George Eliot absolutely does what +Dickens aimed at doing. She not merely seizes the outward and accidental +traits of her characters: she pierces with unerring vision to the very +core of their nature, and enables us to realise the peculiarly subtle +relations between character and circumstance. Her primary object is to +excite our sympathy with the most ordinary aspects of human life, with +the people that one may meet any day in the fields, the workshops, and +the homes of England. Her most vivid creations are not exceptional +beings, not men or women pre-eminently conspicuous for sublime heroism +of character or magnificent mental endowments, but work-a-day folk, + + + "Not too fine or good + For human nature's daily food." + + +To this conscientious fidelity of observation and anxious endeavour to +report the truth and nothing but the truth, as of a witness in a court +of justice, are owing that life-like vividness with which the scenery +and people in 'Adam Bede' seem projected on the reader's imagination. +The story, indeed, is so intensely realistic as to have given rise to +the idea that it is entirely founded on fact. That there is such a +substratum is hardly a matter of doubt, and there have been various +publications all tending to prove that the chief characters in 'Adam +Bede' were not only very faithful copies of living people, but of people +closely connected with its author. To some extent this is +incontrovertible. But, on the other hand, there is a likelihood of the +fictitious events having in their turn been grafted on to actual +personages and occurrences, till the whole has become so fused together +as to lead some persons to the firm conviction that Dinah Morris is +absolutely identical with Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, the Derbyshire +Methodist. Such a supposition would help to reconcile the conflicting +statements respectively made by the great novelist and the writers of +two curious little books entitled 'Seth Bede, the Methody, his Life and +Labours,' chiefly written by himself, and 'George Eliot in Derbyshire,' +by Guy Roslyn. + +From these brochures one gathers that Hayslope, where the rustic drama +of 'Adam Bede' unfolds itself, is the village of Ellaston, not far from +Ashbourne in Staffordshire. This village is so little altered that the +traveller may still see the sign-board of the "Donnithorne Arms," and +the red brick hall, only with windows no longer unpatched. Samuel, +William, and Robert Evans (the father of the novelist) were born in this +place, and began life as carpenters, as their father before them. Samuel +Evans became a zealous Methodist, and was rather laughed at by his +family in consequence, for he says, "My elder brothers often tried to +tease me; they entertained High Church principles. They told me what +great blunders I made in preaching and prayer; that I had more zeal than +knowledge." In this, as in other respects, he is the prototype of Seth, +as Adam resembles Robert Evans, one of the more secular elder brothers, +only that in real life it was Samuel who married Elizabeth, the Dinah +Morris of fiction. + +Much has been written about this Elizabeth Evans (the aunt of George +Eliot, already spoken of): indeed, her life was one of such rare +devotion to an ideal cause, that even such imperfect fragments of it as +have been committed to writing by herself or her friends are of +considerable interest. Elizabeth was born at Newbold in Leicestershire, +and left her father's house when little more than fourteen years old. +She joined the Methodists in 1797, after which she had entirely done +with the pleasures of the world and all her old companions. "I saw it my +duty," she says, "to leave off all my superfluities of dress; hence I +pulled off all my bunches, cut off my curls left off my lace, and in +this I found an unspeakable pleasure. I saw I could make a better use of +my time and money than to follow the fashions of a vain world." While +still a beautiful young girl, attired in a quaker dress and bonnet, she +used to walk across those bleak Derbyshire hills looking so strangely +mournful in their treeless nudity, with their bare stone fences grey +against a greyer sky. Here she trudged from village to village gathering +the poor about her, and pouring forth words of such earnest conviction +that, as she says, "Many were brought to the Lord." The points of +resemblance between her career and that of Dinah Morris cannot fail to +strike the reader, even their phraseology being often singularly alike, +as when Mrs. Evans writes in the short account of what she calls her +"unprofitable life:" "I saw it my duty to be wholly devoted to God, and +to be set apart for the Master's use;" while Dinah says: "My life is too +short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for +myself in this world." It must be borne in mind, however, that these +similarities of expression are natural enough when one considers that +Dinah is a type of the same old-fashioned kind of Methodism to which +Mrs. Evans belonged. What is perhaps stranger is, that the account given +by George Eliot of her various meetings with her aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth +Evans, should differ considerably from what the latter herself +remembered or has stated about them. Shortly after the appearance of +'Adam Bede,' attention had been publicly called to the identity of the +heroine of fiction with the Methodist preacher. This conviction was so +strong in Wirksworth, that a number of friends placed a memorial tablet +in the Methodist chapel at Wirksworth with the following inscription:-- + + + ERECTED BY GRATEFUL FRIENDS, + + In Memory of + + MRS. ELIZABETH EVANS, + + (KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS "DINAH BEDE ") + + WHO DURING MANY YEARS PROCLAIMED ALIKE IN THE + OPEN AIR, THE SANCTUARY, AND FROM HOUSE + TO HOUSE, + + THE LOVE OF CHRIST: + + SHE DIED IN THE LORD, MAY 9TH, 1849; AGED 74 YEARS. + + +In order to give a correct notion of the amount of truth in her novel, +George Eliot wrote in the following terms to her friend Miss Hennell on +the 7th of October, 1859: "I should like, while the subject is vividly +present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, +_what_ I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in +Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire +first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my +mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, +resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far +between visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and +cousins from my father's far-off native county, and once a journey of my +own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle +William (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt +Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I +remember of northerly relatives in my childhood. + +"But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married, and I +was mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in +which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived +in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate +state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he +persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, +very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly +under the influence of evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavouring to +shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some +consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New +Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard +her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of +exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find +sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--above sixty--and, I +believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little +woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I +imagine, but was now grey--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally +different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will +believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman of +strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I have +heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of +discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now +subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her +manners, very loving, and (what she must have been from the very first), +a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and love of man were +fused together. There was nothing rightly distinctive in her religious +conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious dissenters before; +the only freshness I found in her talk came from the fact that she had +been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and though _she left the +society when women were no longer allowed to preach_, and joined the New +Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the +genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we +used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a +strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, +with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved; it +was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first +sight might seem opposed to it, yet it came from the spirit of love +which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to +fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was +speaking of a deceased minister once greatly respected, who, from the +action of trouble upon him, had taken to small tippling, though +otherwise not culpable. 'But I hope the good man's in heaven for all +that,' said my uncle. 'Oh yes,' said my aunt, with a deep inward groan +of joyful conviction, 'Mr. A.'s in heaven, that's sure.' This was at the +time an offence to my stern, ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to +me now! + +"As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of +any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling +me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an +unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to +execution; and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she +believed, among the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in +the glass_. In her account of the prison scenes I remember no word she +uttered; I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had +under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe, or told me +nothing, but that she was a common, coarse girl, convicted of +child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead +germ, apparently, till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could +fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of 'Adam Bede.' + +"I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night with my +father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our +interview was less interesting than in the former time; I think I was +less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my +uncle to see me, when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ +there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, +and was in a crude state of freethinking. She stayed about three or four +days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could +write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she +suggested 'Dinah;' but it is not possible you should see, as I do, how +entirely her individuality differed from 'Dinah's.' How curious it seems +to me that people should think 'Dinah's' sermon, prayers, and speeches +were _copied_, when they were written with hot tears as they surged up +in my own mind! + +"As to my indebtedness to facts of local and personal history of a small +kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire, you may imagine of +what kind that is, when I tell you that I never remained in either of +those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such +visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details +which I know as facts, and have made use of for my picture, were +gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my +father in his occasional talk about old times. + +"As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, +that 'Dinah' is a good portrait of my aunt, that is simply the vague, +easily-satisfied notion imperfectly-instructed people always have of +portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women, without +pretension to enlightened discrimination, should think a generic +resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public, so +accustomed to be delighted with _mis_-representations of life and +character, which they accept as representations, that they are +scandalised when art makes a nearer approach to truth. + +"Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but +I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years 'Adam Bede,' +and all that concerns it, may have become a dim portion of the past, and +that I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told +you." + +Nothing could prove more conclusively how powerful was the impression +which 'Adam Bede' created than this controversy concerning the amount of +truth which its characters contained. But, as hinted before, it seems +very likely that some of the doings and sayings of the fictitious +personages should have been attributed, almost unconsciously, to the +real people whom they resembled. How quick is the popular imagination in +effecting these transformations came only quite recently under my +notice, when some English travellers, while visiting Chateau d'If, were +taken by the guide in perfect good faith to see the actual dungeon where +Monte Christo was imprisoned! Similarly, one would think, that the +moving sermon preached by Dinah on the Green at Hayslope had been +afterwards erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Elizabeth Evans. But an account +recently published in the _Century Magazine_ by one who had long known +the Evanses of Wirksworth, seems irreconcilable with such a supposition. +According to this writer it would appear that besides the visits to her +aunt at Wirksworth, of which George Eliot speaks in the letter just +quoted, there was one other of which no mention is made. This visit, +which she paid her cousin, Mr. Samuel Evans, occurred in 1842, when she +remained a week at his house in Wirksworth. The aunt and niece were in +the habit of seeing each other every day for several hours at this time. +They usually met at the house of one of the married daughters of Mrs. +Elizabeth Evans, holding long conversations while sitting by themselves +in the parlour. "These secret conversations," says the writer of the +article, "excited some curiosity in the family, and one day one of the +daughters said, 'Mother, I can't think what thee and Mary Ann have got +to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans replied: 'Well, my dear, I +don't know what she wants, but she gets me to tell her all about my life +and my religious experience, and she puts it all down in a little book. +I can't make out what she wants it for.'" After her departure, Mrs. +Evans is reported to have said to her daughter, "Oh dear, Mary Ann has +got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and that is the notes of +the first sermon I preached at Ellaston Green." According to the same +authority, Marian Evans took notes of everything people said in her +hearing: no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, +which seemed never out of her hand; and these notes she is said to have +transcribed every night before going to bed. Yet this habit was foreign +to her whole character, and the friends who knew her most intimately in +youth and later life never remember seeing her resort to such a +practice. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the novelist +very freely used many of the circumstances connected with her aunt's +remarkable career. How closely she adhered to nature is shown by the +fact that in Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey she retained the actual names +of the characters portrayed, as they happened to be both dead. Bartle +Massey, the village cynic, had been the schoolmaster of her father, +Robert Evans. How accurately the latter, together with all his +surroundings, was described is shown by the following anecdote. On its +first appearance 'Adam Bede' was read aloud to an old man, an intimate +associate of Robert Evans in his Staffordshire days. This man knew +nothing concerning either author or subject beforehand, and his +astonishment was boundless on recognising so many friends and incidents +of his own youth portrayed with unerring fidelity. He sat up half the +night listening to the story in breathless excitement, now and then +slapping his knee as he exclaimed, "That's Robert, that's Robert to the +life." + +Although Wirksworth is not the locality described in 'Adam Bede,' it +contains features recalling that quaint little market-town, where over +the door of one of the old-fashioned houses may be read the name made +illustrious by the inimitable Mrs. Poyser. In the neighbourhood, too, +are "Arkwright's mills there at Cromford," casually alluded to by Adam +Bede; and should the tourist happen to enter one of the cottages of grey +stone, with blue-washed door and window-frames, he may still alight on +specimens of Methodism, as devout as Seth Bede, eloquently expounding +the latest political event by some prophecy of Daniel or Ezekiel. In +short, one breathes the atmosphere in which such characters as Dinah and +Seth actually lived and had their being. This uncompromising Realism, so +far from detracting, only enhances the genius of this powerful novel. A +thousand writers might have got hold of these identical materials: a +George Eliot alone could have cast these materials into the mould of +'Adam Bede.' Let any one glance at the account of their religious +experiences, as given by Elizabeth or Samuel Evans, and he will realise +all the more strongly how great was the genius of her who transfused +these rambling, commonplace effusions into such an artistic whole. I +have entered so minutely into this question of the likeness between the +actual characters and those in the novel purely on account of the +biographical interest attaching to it. In judging of 'Adam Bede' as a +work of art these facts possess next to no importance. If we could trace +the characters in any one of Shakespeare's plays to human beings +actually connected with the poet, we should consider such a discovery +immensely valuable as throwing new light on his own life, though it +would hardly affect our critical estimate of the drama itself. + +So much has been said already about the characters in 'Adam Bede' in +connection with the real people they resemble, that little need be added +here about them. Dinah Morris--the youthful preacher, whose eloquence +is but the natural, almost involuntary manifestation in words, of a +beautiful soul; whose spring of love is so abundant that it overflows +the narrow limits of private affection, and blesses multitudes of +toiling, suffering men and women with its wealth of pity, hope, and +sympathy--was a new creation in the world of fiction. Some writer has +pointed out a certain analogy between the sweet Derbyshire Methodist and +the gentle pietist whose confessions form a very curious chapter of +'Wilhelm Meister.' But the two characters are too dissimilar for +comparison. The German heroine is a dreamy, passive, introspective +nature, feeling much but doing little; whereas the English preacher does +not inquire too curiously into the mysteries of her faith, but moved by +the spirit of its teaching goes about actively, participating in the +lives of others by her rousing words and her acts of charity. Only a +woman would or could have described just such a woman as this: a woman +whose heart is centred in an impersonal ideal instead of in any +individual object of love; whereas a man's heroine always has her +existence rooted in some personal affection or passion, whether for +parent or lover, child or husband. This makes Dinah less romantically +interesting than Hetty Sorrel, the beautiful, kittenlike, self-involved +creature with whom she is so happily contrasted. George Eliot never drew +a more living figure than this of Hetty, hiding such a hard little heart +under that soft dimpling beauty of hers. Again, I think that only a +woman would have depicted just such a Hetty as this. The personal charms +of this young girl are drawn in words that have the glow of life itself; +yet while intensely conscious of her beauty, we are kept aware all the +time that, to use one of the famous Mrs. Poyser's epigrammatic sayings, +Hetty is "no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it." George +Eliot is never dazzled or led away by her own bewitching creation as a +man would have been. There is a certain pitilessness in her analysis of +Hetty's shallow, frivolous little soul, almost as if she were +saying--See here, what stuff this beauty which you adore is made of in +reality! To quote her own subtle, far-reaching interpretation of beauty: +"Hetty's face had a language that transcended her feelings. There are +faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to +the simple human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys +and sorrows of foregone generations; eyes that tell of deep love which +doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes, +perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing, just as a national +language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it." + +The sensation created by 'Adam Bede' was shown in other ways besides the +claim of some to have discovered the original characters of this +striking novel. The curiosity of the public was naturally much exercised +as to who the unknown author could possibly be, who had so suddenly +leaped into fame. And now there comes on the scene an individual who +does not claim to be the living model of one of the characters +portrayed, but to be the author of the book himself. And the name of +this person was Liggins! + +While the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' were yet appearing in _Blackwood's +Magazine_ the inhabitants of Nuneaton and its neighbourhood were +considerably perplexed and excited to find well-known places and +persons touched off to the life. In Amos Barton they recognised the +incumbent of Coton Church, in Mr. Pilgrim a medical man familiar to +every child in the town, and indeed in every one of the characters an +equally unmistakable portrait. Clearly no one but a fellow-townsman +could have hit off these wonderful likenesses. Literary talent not being +too abundant, their choice of an author was limited. The only man who by +any stretch of imagination seemed to have the making of a man of letters +in him was this above-mentioned Liggins. To have studied at Cambridge, +gallantly run through a fortune, and be in very needy circumstances, +were exactly the qualifications to be expected in a man of genius. +Further evidence seeming unnecessary, the real authorship of the +'Scenes' was now revealed in an Isle of Man paper. At first the reputed +author gently denied the impeachment, but on the appearance of 'Adam +Bede' he succumbed to the temptation. To be feted at dinner parties as a +successful author, and to have a subscription set on foot by +enthusiastic lady-admirers and fellow-townsmen, in whose eyes he was a +sadly unrequited genius, proved irresistible. A local clergyman even +wrote to the _Times_ stating Liggins to be the real surname of "George +Eliot!" The latter wrote, of course, denying the statement, and +challenging the pretender to produce some specimen of his writing in the +style of 'Adam Bede.' But the confidence of the Nuneaton public in their +hero Liggins was not to be so easily shaken. Two dissenting ministers +from Coventry went over to Attleborough to call upon the "great author," +and to find out if he really did write 'Adam Bede.' Liggins evaded their +questions, indirectly admitting that he did; but when they asked him +point blank, "Liggins, tell us, _did_ you write 'Adam Bede'?" he said, +"If I didn't, the devil did!" and that was all they could get out of +him. Another clergyman was much less sceptical, assuring every one that +he was positive as to Liggins being the author, as he had seen the MS. +of 'Adam Bede' in his hands. To this day there lives in the Isle of Man +a certain venerable old gentleman who has never lost his faith in +Liggins, but, when George Eliot is mentioned, gravely shakes his head, +implying that there is more in the name than meets the eye of the +superficial observer. But a heavy retribution befell the poor +pseudo-author at last, for when his false pretences to favour were fully +manifest he fell into utter neglect and poverty, ending his days in the +workhouse. + +This foolish misrepresentation hastened the disclosure of George Eliot's +real personality and name, which occurred on the publication of the +'Mill on the Floss.' Shortly before that, Mr. Blackwood, who had long +entertained the wish to know the author of the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' +and of 'Adam Bede,' was invited by Lewes to meet him at last. No one was +present at the dinner-table besides Mr. Lewes, Marian, and Mr. Blackwood +himself. The dinner was an extremely pleasant one, but when it was over, +the guest could not help expressing his regret that George Eliot himself +should not have been present. "Here he is," said Lewes, introducing the +quiet, low-spoken lady who had presided at table, not without enjoyment +at the sensation he produced as the astonished publisher shook hands +with his contributor. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. + + +While the public had been trying to discover who the mysterious George +Eliot could possibly be, one person there was who immediately penetrated +the disguise, and felt positive as to the identity of the author. On +reading the 'Scenes,' and especially 'Adam Bede,' he was convinced that +no one but a member of his own family could have written these stories. +He recognised incidents, touches, a saying here or there, just the +things that no one outside his own home could by any chance have come +upon. But George Eliot's brother kept this discovery closely locked +within his own breast. He trembled lest any one else should discover the +secret, fearing the outcry of neighbours who might not always feel that +the author had represented them in colours sufficiently flattering. + +When the 'Mill on the Floss' appeared, however, the veil was lifted, and +people heard that George Eliot had once been a Miss Marian Evans, who +came from the neighbourhood of Nuneaton in Warwickshire. To her brother +Isaac alone this was no news, as he had detected his sister in the first +of the 'Scenes.' The child-life of Tom and Maggie Tulliver was in many +respects an autobiography; and no biographer can ever hope to describe +the early history of George Eliot as she herself has done in the 'Mill +on the Floss.' How many joys and griefs of those happy careless days +must have been recalled to her brother--those days when little Mary Ann +had sat poring over Daniel Defoe's 'History of the Devil'--or sought +refuge in the attic at Griff house, after a quarrel with him: "This +attic was Maggie's favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was +not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud +to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark +rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she +punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden +doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of +cheeks, but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious +suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises +in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle, that luxury of vengeance +having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in +the old Bible." + +Again, at some fields' distance from their old home there had been a +"Round Pool" called "The Moat," "almost a perfect round, framed in with +willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you +got close to the brink." This was a favourite resort of Isaac and Mary +Ann, as also of Tom and his sister when they went fishing together, and +"Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook +and the large ones to Tom's." The "Red Deeps," too, where Maggie loved +to walk in June, when the "dog-roses were in their glory," and where she +lived through many phases of her shifting inner life was in the same +vicinity, and at one time a beloved haunt of the future novelist. + +But although some of the spots mentioned in the 'Mill on the Floss' +have been easily identified as connected with George Eliot's early home, +the scenery of that novel is mainly laid in Lincolnshire. St. Oggs, with +"its red-fluted roofs and broad warehouse gables," is the ancient town +of Gainsborough. The Floss is a tidal river like the Trent, and in each +case the spring-tide, rushing up the river with its terrific wave and +flooding the land for miles round, is known as the Eagre, a name not a +little descriptive of the thing itself. + +The 'Mill on the Floss' (a title adopted by the author at the suggestion +of Mr. Blackwood in preference to 'Sister Maggie') is the most poetical +of George Eliot's novels. The great Floss, hurrying between green +pastures to the sea, gives a unity of its own to this story, which opens +to the roar of waters, the weltering waters which accompany it at the +close. It forms the elemental background which rounds the little lives +of the ill-starred family group nurtured on its banks. The childhood of +Tom and Maggie Tulliver is inextricably blended with this swift river, +the traditions of which have been to them as fairy tales; its haunting +presence is more or less with them throughout their chequered existence; +and when pride and passion, when shame and sorrow have divided the +brother and sister, pursued as by some tragic fate, the Floss seems to +rise in sympathy, and submerges them in its mighty waters to unite them +once more "in an embrace never to be parted." It cannot fail to strike +the reader that in almost every one of George Eliot's novels there +occurs a death by drowning: as in the instance of Thias Bede, of Dunstan +Cass, of Henleigh Grandcourt, and nearly in that of Tito. This may be +accounted for by the fact that as a child the novelist became acquainted +with the sudden death of a near relative who had accidentally fallen +into a stream: an incident which sunk deeply into her retentive mind. + +Fate plays a very conspicuous part in this as in most of George Eliot's +novels. But it is not the Fate of the Greeks, it is not a power that +affects human existence from without: it rather lies at the root of it, +more or less shaping that existence according to obscure inherited +tendencies, and in the collision between character and circumstance, +between passion and law, potent only in proportion as the individual +finally issues conquered or a conqueror from the struggle of life. This +action of character on circumstance, and of circumstance on character is +an ever-recurring _motif_ with George Eliot. We constantly see adverse +circumstances modifying and moulding the lives of the actors in her +stories. She has hardly, if ever, therefore, drawn a hero or heroine, +for these, instead of yielding, make circumstances yield to them. +Dorothea and Lydgate in abandoning their striving after the highest kind +of life; Tito in invariably yielding to the most pleasurable prompting +of the moment; Gwendolen in being mainly influenced by circumstances +acting on her, without her reacting on them, are all types of this kind. + +Maggie belongs, on the whole, to the same type. She, too, is what Goethe +calls a problematic nature, a nature which, along with vast +possibilities and lofty aspirations, lacks a certain fixity of purpose, +and drifting helplessly from one extreme to another, is shattered almost +as soon as it has put out of port. In Maggie's case this evil springs +from the very fulness of her nature; from the acuteness of an +imagination which the many-sidedness of life attracts by turns in the +most opposite directions. Tom, on the other hand, with his narrow +practical understanding, entirely concentrated on the business in hand, +swerves neither to right nor left, because he may be said to resemble a +horse with blinkers, in that he sees only the road straight ahead. +Maggie, with all her palpable weaknesses and startling inconsistencies, +is the most adorable of George Eliot's women. In all poetry and fiction +there is no child more delicious than the "little wench" with her loving +heart and dreamy ways, her rash impulses and wild regrets, her fine +susceptibilities and fiery jets of temper--in a word, her singularly +fresh and vital nature. The same charm pervades every phase of her life. +In her case the child, if I may so far modify Wordsworth's famous +saying, is eminently the mother of the woman. + +Profoundly affectionate by nature, and sympathising as she does with her +father in his calamity, she cannot help rebelling at the sordid +narrowness of her daily life, passionately craving for a wider field +wherein to develop her inborn faculties. In this state of yearning and +wild unrest, her accidental reading of Thomas a Kempis forms a crisis in +her life, by bringing about a spiritual awakening in which Christianity, +for the first time, becomes a living truth to her. Intense as she is, +Maggie now throws all the ardour of her nature into renunciation and +self-conquest. She seeks her highest satisfaction in abnegation of all +personal desire, and in entire devotion to others. In her young +asceticism she relinquishes a world of which she is ignorant, stifling +every impulse, however innocent, that seems opposed to her new faith. + +But Maggie has more actual affinity with poets and artists than with +saints and martyrs. Her soul thrills like a finely-touched instrument to +the beauty of the world around her, and though she doubts whether there +may not even be a sinfulness in the indulgence of this enjoyment, yet +the summer flowers and the summer sunshine put her scruples to flight. +And then, when, through the intervention of Philip Wakem, the +enchantments of romance and poetry are brought within her reach, the +glory of the world again lays hold of her imagination, and a fresh +conflict is begun in her soul. Thus she drifts from one state into +another most opposed to it, and to an outside observer, such as Tom, her +abrupt transitions are a sign that she is utterly wanting in moral +stamina. + +Not only Tom, but many eminent critics, who have descanted with fond +partiality on Maggie's early life, seem to be shocked by that part of +her story in which she allows herself to fall passionately in love with +such an ordinary specimen of manhood as Stephen Guest. The author has +even been accused of violating the truth of Nature, inasmuch as such a +high-minded woman as Maggie could never have inclined to so vulgar, so +commonplace a man as her lover. Others, while not questioning the truth +of the character, find fault with the poor heroine herself, whom they +pronounce an ineffective nature revealing its innate unsoundness by the +crowning error of an abject passion for so poor a creature as the dandy +of St. Oggs. This contention only proves the singular vitality of the +character itself, and nothing is more psychologically true in George +Eliot's studies of character than this love of the high-souled heroine +for a man who has no corresponding fineness of fibre in his nature, his +attraction lying entirely in the magnetism of mutual passion. This +vitality places Maggie Tulliver by the side of the Juliets, the Mignons, +the Consuelos, the Becky Sharps and other airy inheritors of +immortality. It is curious that Mr. Swinburne, in view of such a +character as this, or, indeed, bearing in mind a Silas Marner, a Dolly +Winthrop, a Tito, and other intrinsically living reproductions of human +nature, should describe George Eliot's as intellectually constructed +characters in contrast to Charlotte Bronte's creations, the former, +according to him, being the result of intellect, the latter of genius. +If ever character came simply dropped out of the mould of Nature it is +that of Maggie. His assumption, that the 'Mill on the Floss' can in any +sense have been suggested by, or partially based upon, Mrs. Gaskell's +story of 'The Moorland Cottage,' seems equally baseless. There is +certainly the identity of name in the heroines, and some resemblance of +situation as regards portions of the story, but both the name and the +situation are sufficiently common not to excite astonishment at such a +coincidence. Had George Eliot really known of this tale--a tale feebly +executed at the best--she would obviously have altered the name so as +not to make her obligation too patent to the world. As it is, she was +not a little astonished and even indignant, on accidentally seeing this +opinion stated in some review, and positively denied ever having seen +the story in question. + +Indeed when one knows how this story grew out of her own experience, how +its earlier portions especially are a record of her own and her +brother's childhood--how even Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Pullet were only too +faithfully done from the aunts of real life, one need not go far afield +to seek for its origin. Every author usually writes one book, which he +might more or less justly entitle 'My Confessions,' into which he pours +an intimate part of his life under a thin disguise of fiction, a book +invariably exciting a unique kind of interest in the reader be he +conscious or not of the presence of this autobiographical element. +Fielding's 'Amelia,' Thackeray's 'Pendennis,'Dickens's 'David +Copperfield,' Charlotte Bronte's 'Villette,' are cases in point. The +'Mill on the Floss' is a work of similar nature. Maggie Tulliver is +George Eliot herself, but only one side, one portion, one phase of +George Eliot's many-sided, vastly complex nature. It is George Eliot's +inner life in childhood and youth as it appeared to her own +consciousness. We recognise in it her mental acuteness, her clinging +affectionateness, her ambition, her outlook beyond the present, her +religious and moral preoccupations, even her genius is not so much +omitted as left in an undeveloped, rudimentary state. While her +make-believe stories, her thirst for knowledge, her spiritual +wrestlings, and the passionate response of her soul to high thinking, +noble music, and the beautiful in all its forms, show that the making of +genius was there in germ. Much in the same manner Goethe was fond of +partitioning his nature, and of giving only the weaker side to his +fictitious representatives. Conscious in himself of fluctuations of +purpose which he only got the better of by his indomitable will, he +usually endowed these characters with his more impulsive, pliant self, +as manifested in Werther, in Tasso, in Edward of the 'Elective +Affinities.' In this sense also Maggie Tulliver resembles George Eliot. +She is her potential self, such as she might have been had there not +been counterbalancing tendencies of unusual force, sufficient to hold in +check all erratic impulses contrary to the main direction of her life. + +While tempted to dwell largely on Maggie Tulliver, the central figure of +'The Mill on the Floss,' it would be very unfair to slur over the other +admirably drawn characters of this novel. Her brother Tom, already +repeatedly alluded to, is in every sense the counterpart of "Sister +Maggie." Hard and narrow-minded he was from a boy, "particularly clear +and positive on one point, namely, that he would punish everybody who +deserved it: why, he wouldn't have minded being punished himself, if he +deserved it; but, then, he never _did_ deserve it." This strikes the +key-note of a character whose stern inflexibility, combined with much +practical insight and dogged persistence of effort, is at the same time +dignified by a high, if somewhat narrow, sense of family honour. +Conventional respectability, in fact, is Tom Tulliver's religion. He is +not in any sense bad, or mean, or sordid; he is only so circumscribed in +his perceptive faculties, that he has no standard by which to measure +thoughts or feelings that transcend his own very limited conception of +life. + +Both by his good and his bad qualities, by his excellencies and his +negations, Tom Tulliver proves himself what he is--a genuine sprig of +the Dodson family, a chip of the old block! And the Dodson sisters are, +in their way, among the most amazingly living portraitures that George +Eliot ever achieved. Realism in art can go no further in this direction. +These women, if present in the flesh, would not be so distinctively +vivid as when beheld through the transfixing medium of George Eliot's +genius. For here we have the personages, with all their quaintnesses, +their eccentricities, their odd, old-fashioned twists and ways--only +observed by fragments in actual life--successfully brought to a focus +for the delight and amusement of generations of readers. There is +nothing grotesque, nothing exaggerated, in these humorous figures. The +comic effect is not produced, as is often the case with the inventions +of Dickens, by some set peculiarity of manner or trick of speech, more +in the spirit of caricature. On the contrary, it is by a strict +adherence to the just mean of nature, by a conscientious care not to +overstep her probabilities, that we owe these matchless types of English +provincial life. And the genuine humour of these types verges on the +pathetic, in that the infinitely little of their lives is so magnified +by them out of all proportion to its real importance. Mrs. Glegg, with +her dictatorial ways, her small economies, her anxiety to make a +handsome figure in her will, and her invariable reference to what was +"the way in our family," as a criterion of right behaviour on all +occasions: Mrs. Pullet, the wife of the well-to-do yeoman-farmer, bent +on proving her gentility and wealth by the delicacy of her health, and +the quantity of doctor's stuff she can afford to imbibe: Mrs. Tulliver, +the good, muddle-headed woman, whose husband "picked her from her +sisters o' purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak, like," and for whom the +climax of misery in bankruptcy is the loss of her china and table-linen: +these, as well as the henpecked Mr. Glegg, and the old-maidish Mr. +Pullet, are worthy pendants to Mrs. Poyser and Dolly Winthrop. + +Whether too great a predominance may not be given to the narrow, +trivial views of these people, with their prosaic respectability, is a +nice question, which one is inclined to answer in the negative on +reading such a conjugal scene as that between Mr. and Mrs. Glegg, after +the latter's quarrel with Mr. Tulliver: + +"It was a hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly +capable of using any opportunity, should not meet with a single remark +from Mr. Glegg on which to exercise itself. But by-and-by it appeared +that his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself +apostrophised at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one's bosom. + +"'Well, Mr. Glegg! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've +made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd +better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then when I'd wanted +a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere--as the choice was offered me.' + +"Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new +amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we +regard constant mysteries. + +"'Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?' + +"'Done now, Mr. Glegg? _done now?_ ... I'm sorry for you.' + +"Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg reverted to his +porridge. + +"'There's husbands in the world,' continued Mrs. Glegg, after a pause, +'as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with +everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong, and you can +teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to +stand by the wife, instead of rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult +her." + +"'Now what call have you to say that?' said Mr. Glegg rather warmly, +for, though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. 'When did I rejoice +or triumph over you?' + +"'There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Glegg. +I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to +make as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in +the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as +if I was the dirt under your feet.' + +"'Sulk at you?' said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. +'You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but +himself.' + +"'Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to _me_, Mr. Glegg! It +makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself,' said Mrs. +Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. 'A man in your place should +set an example, and talk more sensible.'" + +After a good deal of sparring in the same tone, Mr. Glegg at last bursts +forth: "'Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish? A woman with +everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same +as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no +end o' expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could +expect ... to go on i' this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! +It's beyond everything, as God A'mighty should ha' made women _so_.' +(These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation. Mr. +Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his +hands.) + +"'Well, Mr. Glegg! if those are your feelings, it's best they should be +known,' said Mrs. Glegg, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an +excited manner. 'But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond what I +could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a right to expect a many +things as I don't find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it's well if +you're not cried shame on by the country for your treatment of me, for +it's what I can't bear, and I won't bear.'... + +"Here Mrs. Glegg's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and, +breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently. + +"'Sally,' she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a +choked voice, 'light a fire upstairs, and put the blinds down. Mr. +Glegg, you'll please order what you like for dinner. I shall have +gruel.'" + +Equally well drawn in their way, though belonging to a different class +of character, are Maggie's cousin, the lovely, gentle, and refined Lucy; +Philip Wakem, whose physical malformation is compensated by exceptional +culture and nobility of nature; Mr. Tulliver, the headstrong, violent, +but withal generous, father of Maggie, and his sister Mrs. Moss, whose +motherliness and carelessness of appearances form a striking foil to the +Dodson sisters. Indeed, 'The Mill on the Floss' is so rich in minor +characters that it is impossible to do more than mention such capital +sketches as that of Bob Jakin and his dog Mumps, or of Luke, the head +miller, who has no opinion of reading, considering that "There's fools +enoo--an' rogues enoo--wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em." + +The distinguishing feature of this novel, however, lies not so much in +its wealth of portraiture or freshness of humour as in a certain +passionate glow of youth, which emanates from the heroine, and seems to +warm the story through and through. For passion, pathos, and poetic +beauty of description, 'The Mill on the Floss' is certainly unique among +George Eliot's works. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +SILAS MARNER. + + +The 'Mill on the Floss,' which appeared in 1860, fully established +George Eliot's popularity with the public. In the same year she +published anonymously, in _Blackwood's Magazine_, a short story called +the 'Lifted Veil.' This tale is curious as differing considerably from +her general style, having a certain mystical turn, which perhaps +recommended it more especially to the admiration of Bulwer Lytton; but, +indeed, it attracted general attention. In the meanwhile, the relations +between author and publisher became more and more friendly; the latter's +critical acumen and sound judgment being highly esteemed by George +Eliot. "He judged well of writing," she remarked, "because he had +learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of +observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the +right place." + +This was the most productive period of George Eliot's life. In three +successive years she published 'Adam Bede,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' and +'Silas Marner,' the last story appearing in 1861. When the amount of +thought, observation, and wisdom concentrated in these novels is taken +into consideration, it must be admitted that her mental energy was +truly astonishing. But it was the accumulated experience of her whole +past, the first abundant math borne by the springtide of life which was +garnered up in these three remarkable works. Afterwards, when she came +to write her next book,'Romola,' she turned to entirely fresh fields of +inspiration; indeed, already at this date her mind was occupied with the +idea of an Italian novel of the time of Savonarola. + +In the meanwhile she produced her most perfect work. She wrote 'Silas +Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe.' I call 'Silas Marner' her most perfect +work, not only because of the symmetry with which each part is adjusted +in relation to the whole, nor because of the absence of those partly +satirical, partly moral reflections with which George Eliot usually +accompanies the action of her stories, but chiefly on account of the +simple pathos of the central motive into which all the different +incidents and characters naturally converge. How homely are the elements +from which this work of art is constructed, and how matchless the +result! + +Nothing but the story of a humble weaver belonging to a small dissenting +community which assembled in Lantern Yard, somewhere in the back streets +of a manufacturing town; of a faithless love and a false friend, and the +loss of trust in all things human or divine. Nothing but the story of a +lone, bewildered man, shut out from his kind, concentrating every +baulked passion into one--the all-engrossing passion for gold. And then +the sudden disappearance of the hoard from its accustomed hiding-place, +and in its stead the startling apparition of a golden-haired little +child, found one snowy winter's night sleeping on the floor in front of +the glimmering hearth. And the gradual reawakening of love in the heart +of the solitary man, a love "drawing his hope and joy continually onward +beyond the money," and once more bringing him into sympathetic relations +with his fellow-men. + +"In old days," says the story, "there were angels who came and took men +by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no +white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening +destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently +towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and +the hand may be a little child's." + +Curiously enough, I came quite recently upon a story which in its +leading features very closely resembles this tale of the 'Weaver of +Raveloe.' It is called 'Jermola the Potter,' and is considered the +masterpiece of J. I. Kraszewski, the Polish novelist, author of at least +one hundred and fifty works in different branches of literature. +'Jermola,' the most popular of them all, has been translated into +French, Dutch, and German. It gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of +peasant life in a remote Polish village, and not only of peasant life, +but of the manners and habits of the landed proprietor, the Jew, the +artisan, and the yeoman, in a community whose modes of life have +undergone but little modification since the Middle Ages. These pictures, +though not elaborated with anything like the minute care of George +Eliot's descriptions of English country life, yet from their extreme +simplicity produce a most powerful impression on the reader. + +The story, in brief, is that of Jermola, the body servant of a Polish +nobleman in Volhynia, whom he has served with rare devotion during the +greater part of his life. Left almost a beggar at his master's death, +without a single human tie, all he can get for years of faithful service +is a tumble-down, forsaken old inn, where he manages to keep body and +soul together in a dismantled room that but partly shelters him from the +inclemency of the weather. Hopeless, aimless, loveless, he grows old +before his time, and the passing of the days affects him hardly more +than it does a stone. But one evening, as he is sitting in front of a +scanty fire repeating the Lord's Prayer, the cry as of a little child +startles him from his devotion. Going to look what can be the meaning of +such unusual sounds, he soon discovers an infant in linen +swaddling-clothes wailing under an old oak tree. He takes the foundling +home, and from that moment a new life enters the old man's breast. He is +rejuvenated by twenty years. He is kept in a constant flutter of hope, +fear, and activity. A kind-hearted woman, called the Kozaczicha, tenders +him her services, but he is so jealous of any one but himself doing +aught for the child, that he checks her advances, and by hook or by +crook obtains a goat from an extortionate Jew, by the help of which he +rears the boy satisfactorily. Then, wishing to make a livelihood for the +child's sake, he inclines at first to the craft of the weaver, but +finally turns potter in his old age. Love sharpening his wits, he plies +quite a thriving trade in time, and the beautiful boy brings him into +more friendly relations with his neighbours. But one day, when Radionek, +who has learned Jermola's trade, is about twelve years old, the real +parents appear and claim him as their own. They had never dared to +acknowledge their marriage till the father, who had threatened to +disinherit his son in such an event, had departed this life. Now, having +nothing more to fear, they want to have their child back, and to bring +him up as befits their station in life. Jermola suffers a deadly anguish +at this separation; the boy, too, is in despair, for he clings fondly to +the old man who has reared him with more than a father's love. But the +parents insisting on their legal rights, Radionek is at last carried off +to their house in town, to be turned into a gentleman, being only +grudgingly allowed to see Jermola from time to time. The boy pines, +however, for the dear familiar presence of his foster-father, and the +free outdoor life, and at last, after some years of misery, he appears +one day suddenly in Jermola's hut, who has given up his pottery in order +to be secretly near the child he is afraid to go and see. The piteous +entreaties of Radionek, and the sight of his now sickly countenance, +induce the old man to flee into the pathless forests, where the two may +escape unseen, and reach some distant part of the country to take up +their old pleasant life once more. But the hardships and fatigues of the +journey are too much for the boy's enfeebled health, and just as they +come within sight of human dwellings, he is seized with a fever which +cuts his young life short, leaving Jermola nearly crazy with anguish. +Long afterwards a little decrepit old man was to be seen by churchgoers +sitting near a grave, whom the children mocked by calling the "bony +little man," because he seemed to consist of nothing but bones. + +Such is the bare outline of a story whose main idea, that of the +redemption of a human soul from cold, petrifying isolation, by means of +a little child, is unquestionably the same as in 'Silas Marner.' Other +incidents, such as that of the peasant woman who initiates Jermola into +the mysteries of baby management, and the disclosure of the real parents +after a lapse of years, wanting to have their child back suggest +parallel passages in the English book. But coincidences of this kind +are, after all, natural enough, considering that the circle of human +feeling and action is limited, and that in all ages and countries like +conditions must give rise to much the same sequence of events. It is +therefore most likely that George Eliot never saw, and possibly never +even heard of, 'Jermola the Potter.' + +The monotonous tone in the narrative of this Polish novel is in strong +contrast, it may be observed, to George Eliot's vivid and varied +treatment of her subject. This monotony, however, suits the local +colouring of 'Jermola,' by suggesting the idea of the league-long +expanse of ancient forests whose sombre solitudes encompass with a +mysterious awe the little temporary dwellings of men. But if the foreign +story surpasses 'Silas Marner' in tragic pathos, the latter far excels +it in the masterly handling of character and dialogue, in the underlying +breadth of thought, and, above all, in the precious salt of its humour. + +Indeed, for humour, for sheer force, for intense realism, George Eliot, +in the immortal scene at the "Rainbow," may be said to rival +Shakespeare. Her farriers, her butchers, her wheelwrights, her tailors, +have the same startling vitality, the same unmistakable accents of +nature, the same distinctive yet unforced individuality, free from +either exaggeration or caricature. How delicious is the description of +the party assembled in the kitchen of that inn, whose landlord--a strong +advocate for compromising whatever differences of opinion may arise +between his customers, as beings "all alike in need of liquor"--clinches +all arguments by his favourite phrase--"You're both right and you're +both wrong, as I say." How admirably comic are these villagers, +invariably beginning their nightly sittings by a solemn silence, in +which one and all puff away at their pipes, staring at the fire "as if a +bet were depending on the first man who winked." And when they begin at +last, how rich is the flavour of that talk, given with an unerring +precision that forthwith makes one acquainted with the crass ignorance +and shrewdness, the mother-wit and superstition, so oddly jumbled +together in the villager's mind. What sublime absence of all knowledge +of his native land is shown by the veteran parish clerk, Mr. Macey, in +speaking of a person from another county which apparently could not be +so very different "from this country, for he brought a fine breed o' +sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and everything +reasonable." Yet the same man can put down youthful presumption pretty +sharply, as when he remarks: "There's allays two 'pinions; there's the +'pinion a man has o' himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on +him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could +hear itself." + +Dolly Winthrop, the wife of the jolly wheelwright who makes one of the +company at the "Rainbow," is no less admirable. She is not cut after any +particular pattern or type of human nature, but has a distinctive +individuality, and is full of a freshness and unexpectedness which sets +foregone conclusions at defiance. A notable woman, with a boundless +appetite for work, so that, rising at half-past four, she has "a bit o' +time to spare most days, for when one gets up betimes i' the morning +the clock seems to stan' still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go about +the victual." Yet with all this energy she is not shrewish, but a calm, +grave woman, in much request in sick rooms or wherever there is trouble. +She is good-looking, too, and of a comfortable temper, being patiently +tolerant of her husband's jokes, "considering that 'men would be so,' +and viewing the stronger sex' in the light of animals whom it pleased +Heaven to make troublesome like bulls or turkey cocks.'" + +Her vague idea, shared indeed by Silas, that he has quite another faith +from herself, as coming from another part of the country, gives a vivid +idea of remote rural life, as well as her own dim, semi-pagan but +thoroughly reverential religious feelings, prompting her always to speak +of the Divinity in the plural, as when she says to Marner: "I've looked +for help in the right quarter, and give myself up to Them as we must all +give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to +be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we are, and come +short o' Theirn." + +The humour shown in these scenes and characters, or, more properly +speaking, George Eliot's humour in general, belongs to the highest +order, the same as Shakespeare's. It is based on the essential elements +of human nature itself, on the pathetic incongruities of which that +"quintessence of dust," man, is made up, instead of finding the comic in +the purely accidental or external circumstances of life, as is the case +with such humourists as Rabelais and Dickens. These latter might find a +good subject for their comic vein in seeing the Venus of Milo's broken +nose, which a mischievous urchin had again stuck on the wrong side +upwards--a sight to send the ordinary spectator into fits of laughter. +But the genuine humourist sees something in that feature itself, as +nature shaped it, to excite his facetiousness. In 'A Minor Prophet' some +lines occur in which a somewhat similar view of the genuine source of +humour is pithily put: + + + "My yearnings fail + To reach that high apocalyptic mount + Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, + Or enter warmly into other joys + Than those of faulty, struggling human kind. + That strain upon my soul's too feeble wing + Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall + Into short-sighted pity for the men + Who, living in those perfect future times, + Will not know half the dear imperfect things + That move my smiles and tears--will never know + The fine old incongruities that raise + My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits + That like a needless eyeglass or black patch + Give those who wear them harmless happiness; + The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, + That touch me to more conscious fellowship + (I am not myself the finest Parian) + With my coevals." + + +Again, in her essay on 'Heinrich Heine,' George Eliot thus defines the +difference between humour and wit: "Humour is of earlier growth than +wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more +affinity with the poetic tendencies, while wit is more nearly allied to +the ratiocinative intellect. Humour draws its materials from situations +and characteristics; wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations.... +It is only the ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift +some witticisms from reasoning into wit; they are reasoning raised to +its highest power. On the other hand, humour, in its higher forms and in +proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emotions, +continually passes into poetry; nearly all great modern humorists may be +called prose poets." + +The quality which distinguishes George Eliot's humour may be said to +characterise her treatment of human nature generally. In her +delineations of life she carefully eschews the anomalous or exceptional, +pointing out repeatedly that she would not, if she could, be the writer, +however brilliant, who dwells by preference on the moral or intellectual +attributes which mark off his hero from the crowd instead of on those +which he has in common with average humanity. Nowhere perhaps in her +works do we find this tendency so strikingly illustrated as in the one +now under consideration; for here we have the study of a human being +who, by stress of circumstances, developes into a most abnormal specimen +of mankind, yet who is brought back to normal conditions and to +wholesome relations with his fellow-men by such a natural process as the +re-awakening of benumbed sympathies through his love for the little +foundling child. The scene where he finds that child has only been +touched on in a passing allusion, yet there is no more powerfully-drawn +situation in any of her novels than that where Silas, with the child in +his arms, goes out into the dark night, and, guided by the little +footprints in the virgin snow, discovers the dead mother, Godfrey Cass's +opium-eating wife, lying with "her head sunk low in the furze and half +covered with the shaken snow." There is a picture of this subject by the +young and singularly gifted artist, the late Oliver Madox Brown, more +generally known as a novelist, which is one of the few pictorial +interpretations that seem to completely project on the canvas a visible +embodiment of the spirit of the original. The pale, emaciated weaver, +staring with big, short-sighted eyes at the body of the unconscious +young woman stretched on the ground, clutching the lusty, struggling +child with one arm, while with the other he holds a lantern which throws +a feeble gleam on the snow--is realised with exceptional intensity. + +The exquisite picture of Eppie's childhood, the dance she leads her +soft-hearted foster-father, are things to read, not to describe, unless +one could quote whole pages of this delightful idyl, which for gracious +charm and limpid purity of description recalls those pearls among +prose-poems, George Sand's 'Francois le Champi' and 'La Mare au Diable.' + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +ROMOLA. + + +'Romola' marks a new departure in George Eliot's literary career. From +the present she turned to the past, from the native to the foreign, from +the domestic to the historical. Yet in thus shifting her subject-matter, +she did not alter the strongly-pronounced tendencies underlying her +earlier novels; there was more of spontaneous, humorous description of +life in the latter, whereas in 'Romola' the ethical teaching which forms +so prominent a feature of George Eliot's art, though the same in +essence, was more distinctly wrought out. Touching on this very point, +she observes in a letter to an American correspondent: "It is perhaps +less irrelevant to say, apropos of a distinction you seem to make +between my earlier and later works, that though I trust there is some +growth in my appreciation of others and in my self-distrust, there has +been no change in the point of view from which I regard our life since I +wrote my first fiction, the 'Scenes of Clerical Life.' Any apparent +change of spirit must be due to something of which I am unconscious. The +principles which are at the root of my effort to paint Dinah Morris are +equally at the root of my effort to paint Mordecai." + +The first section of 'Romola' appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for +the summer of 1862, and, running its course in that popular periodical, +was finished in the summer of the following year. Mr. Lewes, in a letter +written from 16 Blandford Square, July 5, 1862, to some old friends of +George Eliot, makes the following remarks in reference to this new form +of publication: "My main object in persuading her to consent to serial +publication, was not the unheard-of magnificence of the offer, but the +advantage to such a work of being read slowly and deliberately, instead +of being galloped through in three volumes. I think it quite unique, and +so will the public when it gets over the first feeling of surprise and +disappointment at the book not being English, and like its predecessor." +And some time afterwards he wrote to the same friends: "Marian lives +entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much cheered every now and +then by hearing indirectly how her book is appreciated by the higher +class of minds, and some of the highest; though it is not, and cannot be +popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with delight and surprise at +such a work being executed by a foreigner; as if an Italian had ever +done anything of the kind!" + +Before writing 'Romola' George Eliot had spent six weeks in Florence in +order to familiarise herself with the manners and conversation of its +inhabitants, and yet she hardly caught the trick of Italian speech, and +for some time afterwards she hung back from beginning her story, as her +characters not only refused to speak Italian to her, but would not speak +at all, as we can well imagine Mrs. Poyser, Bartle Massey, and Maggie to +have done. These recalcitrant spirits were at last brought to order, and +she succeeded so well, especially in her delineation of the lower +classes, that they have been recognised by Italians as true to the +life. + +It should, however, be mentioned that the greatest modern Italian, +Giuseppe Mazzini, found fault with the handling, and, indeed, with the +introduction into this novel of the great figure of Savonarola. He +considered that it compared unfavourably with 'Adam Bede,' a novel he +genuinely admired, all but the marriage of Adam with Dinah Morris, +which, he said, shocked his feelings, not having any conception that the +taste of the novel-reading public demands a happy ending, whatever may +have been the previous course of the three volumes. Another illustrious +man, D. G. Rossetti, whose judgment on such a subject carries peculiar +weight, considered George Eliot to have been much less successful in +'Romola' than in her novels of English country life. He did not think +that the tone and colour of Italian life in the fifteenth century were +caught with that intuitive perception of a bygone age characteristic of +a Walter Scott or a Meinhold. The Florentine contemporaries of "Fra +Girolamo" seemed to him Nineteenth Century men and women dressed up in +the costume of the Fifteenth. The book, to use his expression, was not +"native." + +It is a majestic book, however: the most grandly planned of George +Eliot's novels. It has a certain architectural dignity of structure, +quite in keeping with its Italian nationality, a quality, by the way, +entirely absent from the three later novels. The impressive historical +background is not unlike one of Mr. Irving's magnificently wrought +Italian stage-effects, rich in movement and colour, yet helping to throw +the chief figures into greater relief. The erudition shown in this +work; the vast yet minute acquaintance with the habits of thought, the +manners, the very talk of the Florentines of that day are truly +surprising; but perhaps the very fact of that erudition being so +perceptible shows that the material has not been absolutely vitalised. +The amount of labour George Eliot expended on 'Romola' was so great, +that it was the book which, she remarked to a friend, "she began a young +woman and ended an old one." The deep impression her works had made upon +the public mind heightened her natural conscientiousness, and her +gratitude for the confidence with which each fresh contribution from her +pen was received, increased her anxiety to wield her influence for the +highest ends. + +But her gratitude to the public by no means extended to the critics. She +recoiled from them with the instinctive shrinking of the sensitive +plant. These interpreters between author and public were in her eyes a +most superfluous modern institution: though at one time she herself had +not scorned to sit in the critic's seat. It is well-known that G. H. +Lewes acted as a kind of moral screen protecting her from every gust or +breath of criticism that was not entirely genial. One lady, after +reading 'The Mill on the Floss,' had written off in the heat of the +moment, and, with the freedom of old friendship, while expressing the +warmest admiration for the beauty of the first two volumes, she had +ventured to find fault with part of the third. This letter was returned +by Lewes, who begged her at the same time never to write again in this +strain to George Eliot, to whom he had not ventured to show it for fear +it should too painfully affect her. In a letter to the American lady +already mentioned, George Eliot, after referring to this habit of Mr. +Lewes, says: "In this way I get confirmed in my impression that the +criticism of any new writing is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly +think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my +works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot +imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing +which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in +imagining circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives +for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human +interest.... I have been led into this rather superfluous sort of remark +by the mention of a rule which seemed to require explanation." + +And again on another occasion to the same effect: "But do not expect +criticism from me. I hate 'sitting in the seat of judgment,' and I would +rather impress the public generally with the sense that they may get the +best result from a book without necessarily forming an 'opinion' about +it, than I would rush into stating opinions of my own. The floods of +nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief +curse of our times--a chief obstacle to true culture." + +In spite of these severe strictures on the critics and their opinions, +an "opinion" must now be given about 'Romola.' This novel may really be +judged from two entirely different points of view, possibly from others +besides, but, as it appears to me, from two. One may consider it as an +historical work, with its moving pageants, its civic broils, its church +festivals, its religious revival, its fickle populace, now siding with +the Pope, and now with the would-be reformer of the Papacy. Or again +one may regard the conjugal relations between Romola and Tito, the slow +spiritual growth of the one, and the swifter moral disintegration of the +other, as one of the subtlest studies in psychology in literature. + +To turn to the scenic details which form a considerable element of this +historical picture, I have already hinted that they are not without a +taint of cumbrousness and pedantry. The author seems to move somewhat +heavily under her weight of learning, and we miss that splendid natural +swiftness and ease of movement which Shakespeare, Goethe, and Hugo know +how to impart to their crowds and spectacular effects. If, instead of +the people, one examines the man who dominated the people, the large, +massive, imposing figure of Savonarola, one must admit that the +character is very powerfully and faithfully executed but not produced at +one throw. He does not take the imagination by storm as he would have +done had Carlyle been at his fashioning. With an epithet or two, with a +sharp, incisive phrase, the latter would have conjured the great +Dominican from his grave, and we should have seen him, or believed at +least that we saw him, as he was in the flesh when his impassioned voice +resounded through the Duomo, swaying the hearts of the Florentine people +with the force of a great conviction. That he stands out thus tangibly +in 'Romola' it would be futile to assert: nevertheless, he is a noble, +powerful study, although one has laboriously to gather into one's mind +the somewhat mechanical descriptions which help to portray his +individuality. The idea underlying the working out of this grand +character is the same which Goethe had once proposed to himself in his +projected, but unfortunately never executed, drama of 'Mahomet.' It is +that of a man of moral genius, who, in solitude and obscurity, has +conceived some new, profounder aspect of religious truth, and who, +stirred by a sublime devotion, now goes forth among men to bless and +regenerate them by teaching them this higher life. But in his contact +with the multitude, in his efforts at influencing it, the prophet or +preacher is in his turn influenced. If he fails to move by the loftiest +means, he will gradually resort to the lower in order to effect his +purpose. The purity of his spirit is tarnished, ambition has crept in +where holiness reigned, and his perfect rectitude of purpose will be +sacrificed so that he may but rule. + +Such are the opposing tendencies co-existing in Savonarola's mixed but +lofty nature. For "that dissidence between inward reality and outward +seeming was not the Christian simplicity after which he had striven +through years of his youth and prime, and which he had preached as a +chief fruit of the Divine life. In the heat and stress of the day, with +cheeks burning, with shouts ringing in the ears, who is so blest as to +remember the yearnings he had in the cool and silent morning, and know +that he has not belied them?" And again: "It was the habit of +Savonarola's mind to conceive great things, and to feel that he was the +man to do them. Iniquity should be brought low; the cause of justice, +purity, and love should triumph, and it should triumph by his voice, by +his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless, +the sense of self melted in the sense of the Unspeakable, and in that +part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but +in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, pre-eminence +seemed a necessary condition of life." But, as George Eliot says, "Power +rose against him, not because of his sins, but because of his greatness; +not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to +make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double +agony; not only the reviling, and the torture, and the death-throe, but +the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious achievement into that +deep shadow where he could only say, 'I count as nothing: darkness +encompasses me; yet the light I saw was the true light.'" + +But after all, in George Eliot's story the chief interest attaching to +"Fra Girolamo" consists in his influence on Romola's spiritual growth. +This may possibly be a blemish; yet in most novels the fictitious +characters eclipse the historical ones. The effect produced by the +high-souled Romola is not unlike that of an antique statue, at once +splendidly beautiful and imposingly cold. By the side of Tito she +reminds one of the pure whiteness of marble sculpture as contrasted with +the rich glowing sensuousness of a Venetian picture. + +It is difficult to analyse why the proud, loving, single-hearted Romola, +who has something of the fierceness and impetuosity of the old "Bardo +blood" in her, should leave this impression of coldness; for in spite of +her acts of magnanimity and self-devotion, such, curiously enough, is +the case. Perhaps in this instance George Eliot modelled the character +too much according to a philosophical conception, instead of projecting +it, complete in its incompleteness, as it might have come from the hand +of Nature. Another objection sometimes brought forward, of Romola +having but little resemblance to an Italian woman of the fifteenth +century, seems to me less relevant. The lofty dignity, the pride, the +intense adhesion to family traditions were, on the contrary, very marked +attributes of a high national type during the period of Italian +supremacy. In fact, the character is not without hints and suggestions +of such a woman as Vittoria Colonna, while its didactic tendency +slightly recalls "those awful women of Italy who held professorial +chairs, and were great in civil and canon law." In one sense Romola is a +true child of the Renaissance. Brought up by her father, the +enthusiastic old scholar, in pagan ideas, she had remained aloof from +Roman Catholic beliefs and superstitions, and even when transformed by +the mighty influence of Savonarola into a devoted _Piagnone_, her +attitude always remains more or less that of a Protestant, unwilling to +surrender the right of private judgment to the Church. + +The clash of character when a woman like Romola finds herself chained in +a life-long bond to such a nature as Tito's--the beautiful, wily, +insinuating Greek--is wrought out with wonderful skill and matchless +subtlety of analysis. Indeed Tito is not only one of George Eliot's most +original creations, he is a unique character in fiction. Novelists, as a +rule, only depict the full-blown villain or traitor, their virtuous and +wicked people being separated from each other by a hard and fast line +much like the goats and sheep. They continually treat character as +something permanent and unchangeable, whereas to George Eliot it +presents itself as an organism flexible by nature, subject to change +under varying conditions, liable on the one hand to disease and +deterioration, but on the other hand no less capable of being +rehabilitated, refined, or ennobled. This is one of the most distinctive +notes of George Eliot's art, and gives a quickening, fructifying quality +to her moral teaching. But it is an artistic no less than a moral gain, +sharpening the interest felt in the evolution of her fictitious +personages. For this reason Tito, the creature of circumstances, is +perhaps the most striking of all her characters in the eyes of the +psychologist. We seem to see the very pulse of the human machine laid +bare, to see the corroding effect of self-indulgence and dread of pain +on a nature not intrinsically wicked, to see at last how, little by +little, weakness has led to falsehood, and falsehood to infamy. And yet +this creature, who, under our eyes, gradually hardens into crime, is one +so richly dowered with rare gifts of person and mind, that in spite of +his moral degeneracy, he fascinates the reader no less than the men and +women supposed to come into actual contact with him. His beauty is +described with the same life-like intensity as Hetty's: the warm glow of +colour in his perfectly-moulded face, with its dark curls and long +agate-like eyes; his sunny brightness of look, the velvet softness of a +manner with which he ingratiates himself with young and old, and the +airy buoyancy of his whole gracious being, are as vividly portrayed as +the quick talent to which everything comes natural, the abundant +good-humour, the acuteness of a polished intellect, whose sharp edge, +will, at need, cut relentlessly through every tissue of sentiment. + +From Melema's first uneasy debate with himself, when, in his splendid, +unsoiled youth, he enters Florence a shipwrecked stranger--a debate, +that is, as to whether he is bound to go in search of Baldassare, who +has been as a father to him--to the moment when his already blunted +conscience absolves him from such a search, and again, on to that +supreme crisis when, suddenly face to face with his benefactor, he +denies him, and so is inevitably urged from one act of baseness and +cruelty to another still blacker--we have unfolded before us, by an +unshrinking analyzer of human nature, what might not inappropriately be +called "A Soul's Tragedy." The wonderful art in the working out of this +character is shown in the fact that one has no positive impression of +Tito's innate badness, but, on the contrary, feels as if, after his +first lapses from truth and goodness, there is still a possibility of +his reforming, if only his soft, pleasure-loving nature were not driven +on, almost in spite of himself, by his shuddering dread of shame or +suffering in any form. "For," writes George Eliot, "Tito was +experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare +ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil +which gradually determines character." + +The description of the married life of Romola and Tito is unsurpassed in +George Eliot's novels for subtlety and depth of insight: notably the +young wife's fond striving after complete inner harmony, her first, +faint, unavowed sense of something wanting, her instinctive efforts to +keep fast hold of her love and trust, and her violent, irrevocable +recoil on the discovery of Tito's first faithless action. Perhaps there +is something cold, almost stern, in Romola's loathing alienation from +her husband, and the instantaneous death of her passionate love. One +cannot quite hinder the impression that a softer woman might have +forgiven and won from him a confession of his wrong-doing; a confession +which would have averted the committal of his worst and basest deeds. +Indeed, it is Tito's awe of his grand, noble wife, and his dread of her +judgment, which first of all incite him to prevarication and lies. + +It is curious to compare George Sand's theory of love, in this instance, +with George Eliot's. In 'Leon Leoni,' and in many of her novels besides, +the Frenchwoman seems to imply that for a woman to love once is to love +always, and that there is nothing so base, or mean, or cruel, but she +will forgive the man on whom she has placed her affections. In the story +mentioned above she has worked out this idea to an extent which, in many +of its details, is simply revolting. Love is there described as a +magnetic attraction, unresisted and irresistible, to which the heroine +absolutely surrenders pride, reason, and conscience. Just the opposite +kind of love is that which we find portrayed in 'Romola:' it is a love +identical with the fullest belief in the truth and goodness of the +beloved object, so that at the first realisation of moral obliquity the +repulsion created extinguishes that love, although there is no outward +severance of the marriage bond. + +This great novel closes with these significant words, which Romola +addresses to Lillo, Tito's child, but not her own: + +"And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly, and seek to know the best +things God has put within reach of man, you must learn to fix your mind +on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And +remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of +your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is +disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be +calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that +has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been +better for me if I had never been born!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +HER POEMS. + + +Few are the external events to be now recorded of George Eliot's life. +The publication of her successive works forms the chief landmarks. But +the year 1865 is distinguished by circumstances of some importance. In +this year Mr. Lewes, after assisting to found the _Fortnightly Review_, +assumed its editorship; and among the contributions to the first number +of the new Review was a short article from the pen of George Eliot on +Mr. Lecky's important work 'The Influence of Rationalism.' + +In the course of the same year Mr. and Mrs. Lewes moved from 16 +Blandford Square to the Priory, a commodious house in North Bank, St. +John's Wood, which has come to be intimately associated with the memory +of George Eliot. Here, in the pleasant dwelling-rooms decorated by Owen +Jones, might be met, at her Sunday afternoon receptions, some of the +most eminent men in literature, art, and science. For the rest, her life +flowed on its even tenor, its routine being rigidly regulated. The +morning till lunch time was invariably devoted to writing: in the +afternoon she either went out for a quiet drive of about two hours, or +she took a walk with Lewes in Regent's Park. There the strange-looking +couple--she with a certain weird, sibylline air, he not unlike some +unkempt Polish refugee of vivacious manners--might be seen, swinging +their arms, as they hurried along at a pace as rapid and eager as their +talk. Besides these walks, George Eliot's chief recreation consisted in +frequenting concerts and picture galleries. To music she was +passionately devoted, hardly ever failing to attend at the Saturday +afternoon concerts at St. James's Hall, besides frequenting various +musical reunions, such as the following extract from one of her letters +will show: "The other night we went to hear the Bach choir--a society of +ladies and gentlemen got together by Jenny Lind, who sings in the middle +of them, her husband acting as conductor. It is pretty to see people who +might be nothing but simply fashionables taking pains to sing fine music +in tune and time, with more or less success. One of the baritones we +know is a G----, who used to be a swell guardsman, and has happily taken +to good courses while still quite young. Another is a handsome young +G----, not of the unsatisfactory Co., but of the R---- G---- kin. A +soprano is Mrs. P----, wife of the Queen's Secretary, General P----, the +granddaughter of Earl Grey, and just like him in the face--and so on. +These people of 'high' birth are certainly reforming themselves a +little." + +She likewise never omitted to visit the "Exhibition of Old Masters" at +Burlington House. To most people few things exercise so great a strain +on their mental and physical powers of endurance as the inspection of a +picture gallery, with its incessant appeal to the most concentrated +attention. Yet, in spite of physical weakness, George Eliot possessed +such inexhaustible mental energy that she could go on, hour after hour, +looking with the same unflagging interest at whatever possessed any +claim to attention, tiring out even vigorous men that were in her +company. In her works the allusions to art are much less frequent than +to music; but from a few hints here and there, it is possible to form +some idea of her taste, one very significant passage in 'Adam Bede' +showing her peculiar love of Dutch paintings, and her readiness to turn +without shrinking "from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and +heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flowerpot, or eating +her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a +screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her +spinning-wheel and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things +which are the precious necessaries of life to her." + +Another favourite resort of George Eliot's was the Zoological Gardens. +She went there a great deal to study the animals, and was particularly +fond of the "poor dear ratel" that used to turn somersaults. In fact her +knowledge of, and sympathy with, animals was as remarkable as that which +she showed for human nature. Thus she astonished a gentleman farmer by +drawing attention to the fine points of his horses. Her intimate +acquaintance with the dog comes out in a thousand touches in her novels, +and her humorous appreciation of little pigs led her to watch them +attentively, and to pick out some particular favourite in every litter. +In her country rambles, too, she was fond of turning over stones to +inspect the minute insect life teeming in moist, dark places; and she +was as interested as Lewes himself in the creatures, frogs, etc., he +kept for scientific purposes, and which would sometimes, like the frog +in the fairy tale, surprise the household by suddenly making their +entrance into the dining-room. Her liking for the "poor brutes," as she +calls them, had its origin no doubt in the same source of profound pity +which she feels for "the twists and cracks" of imperfect human beings. + +Her evenings were usually passed at home, and spent in reading, or in +playing and singing; but she and Lewes used to go to the theatre on any +occasion of special interest, as when Salvini appeared in 'Othello,' a +performance attended repeatedly by both with enthusiastic delight. +Otherwise they rarely left home, seldom visiting at other people's +houses, although they made an exception in the case of a favoured few. + +They were both fond of travelling, and, whenever it was possible, would +take trips to the Continent, or seek some quiet English rural retreat +away from the sleepless tumult of London. "For," says Lewes incidentally +in a letter, "Mrs. Lewes never seems at home except under a broad sweep +of sky and the _greenth_ of the uplands round her." So we find them +frequently contriving a change of scene; and the visits to foreign +countries, the pleasant sauntering on long summer days through +Continental towns, "dozing round old cathedrals," formed delightful +episodes in George Eliot's strenuously active life. The residence in +Germany in 1854, and again in 1858, has already been alluded to. Now, in +the year 1865, they paid a short visit to France, in the course of which +they saw Normandy, Brittany, and Touraine, returning much refreshed at +the beginning of the autumn. Two years afterwards they went to Spain, a +country that must have possessed a peculiar interest for both; for in +1846 Lewes had published a charming, if one-sided, little book on 'The +Spanish Drama,' with especial reference to Lope de Vega and Calderon; +and in 1864, only a year after the appearance of 'Romola,' George Eliot +produced the first draught of 'The Spanish Gypsy.' On becoming +personally acquainted with this land of "old romance," however, her +impressions were so far modified and deepened that she re-wrote and +amplified her poem, which was not published till 1868. + +The subject of the gypsies was probably suggested to George Eliot by her +own memorable adventure in childhood, which thus became the germ of a +very impressive poem. Be that as it may, it is worth noticing that the +conception of 'The Spanish Gypsy' should have followed so closely on the +completion of the Italian novel, both being foreign subjects, belonging +to much the same period of history. In both the novelist has departed +from her habitual track, seeking for "pastures new" in a foreign soil. +After inculcating on the artist the desirability of giving "the loving +pains of a life to the faithful representation of commonplace things," +she remarks in 'Adam Bede' that "there are few prophets in the world, +few sublimely beautiful women, few heroes," and that we cannot afford to +give all our love and reverence to such rarities. But having followed +this rule, and given the most marvellously truthful delineations of her +fellow-men as they are ordinarily to be met with, she now also felt +prompted to draw the exceptional types of human character, the rare +prophets, and the sublime heroes. + +To her friend Miss Simcox, George Eliot one day mentioned a plan of +giving "the world an ideal portrait of an actual character in history, +whom she did not name, but to whom she alluded as an object of possible +reverence unmingled with disappointment." This idea was never carried +out, but at any rate Dinah Morris, Savonarola, Zarca, and Mordecai are +all exceptional beings--beings engrossed by an impersonal aim, having +the spiritual or national regeneration of their fellow-men for its +object. Dinah and Savonarola are more of the nature of prophets; Zarca +and Mordecai of that of patriots. Among these the fair Methodist +preacher, whose yearning piety is only a more sublimated love of her +kind, is the most vividly realised; while Mordecai, the patriot of an +ideal country, is but the abstraction of a man, entirely wanting in that +indefinable solidity of presentation which gives a life of its own to +the creations of art. + +On the whole, Zarca, the gipsy chief, is perhaps the most vividly drawn +of George Eliot's purely ideal characters--characters which never have +the flesh-and-blood reality of her Mrs. Poysers, her Silas Marners, and +her dear little Totties and Eppies. Yet there is an unmistakable +grandeur and power of invention in the heroic figure of Zarca, although, +in spite of this power, we miss the convincing stamp of reality in him, +and not only in him, but more or less in all the characters of the +'Spanish Gypsy.' George Eliot's feeling for the extraordinary and +romantic was very subordinate to that which she entertained for the more +familiar aspects of our life. For, although she here chose one of the +most romantic of periods and localities, the Spain of Ferdinand and +Isabella, with the mingled horror and magnificence of its national +traditions, she does not really succeed in resuscitating the spirit +which animated those devout, cruel, fanatical, but ultra-picturesque +times. The Castilian noble, the Jewish astrologer, Zarca, and the +Spanish Inquisitor, even the bright, gloriously-conceived Fedalma +herself, think and speak too much like sublimated modern positivists. +For example, would, could, or should any gipsy of the fifteenth century +have expressed himself in the following terms: + + + "Oh, it is a faith + Taught by no priest, but by this beating heart: + Faith to each other: the fidelity + Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place, + Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share + The scanty water: the fidelity + Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, + Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, + The speech that even in lying tells the truth + Of heritage inevitable as birth, + Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel + The mystic stirring of a common life + Which makes the many one: fidelity + To the consecrating oath our sponsor Fate + Made through our infant breath when we were born + The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, + Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. + Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, + But love it; for the sanctity of oaths + Lies not in lightning that avenges them, + But in the injury wrought by broken bonds + And in the garnered good of human trust." + + +The poetic mode of treatment corresponds to the exalted theme of the +'Spanish Gypsy,' a subject certainly more fitted for drama or romance +rather than for the novel, properly so called. Nothing could apparently +be better adapted for the purposes of a noble, historical poem than the +conception of a great man such as Zarca, whose aim is nothing less than +the fusion of the scattered, wandering, lawless gypsy tribes into one +nation, with common traditions and a common country: the romantic +incident of the discovery of his lost daughter in the affianced bride of +Silva, Duke of Bedmar: the supreme conflict in Fedalma's breast between +love and duty, her renunciation of happiness in order to cast in her lot +with that of her outcast people: Silva's frantic grief, his desertion of +his country, his religion, and all his solemn responsibilities to turn +gypsy for Fedalma's sake, and having done so, his agony of remorse on +seeing the fortress committed to his trust taken by the gypsies he has +joined, his dearest friends massacred, his nearest of kin, Isidor, the +inquisitor, hanged before his very eyes, a sight so maddening that, +hardly conscious of his act, he slays Zarca, and so divides himself for +ever, by an impassable gulf, from the woman for whose sake he had turned +apostate. + +Clearly a subject containing the highest capabilities, and, if great +thoughts constituted a great poem, this should be one of the greatest. +But with all its high merits, its sentiments imbued with rare moral +grandeur, its felicitous descriptions, the work lacks that best and +incommunicable gift which comes by nature to the poet. Here, as in her +novels, we find George Eliot's instinctive insight into the primary +passions of the human heart, her wide sympathy and piercing keenness of +vision; but her thoughts, instead of being naturally winged with melody, +seem mechanically welded into song. This applies to all her poetic work, +although some of it, especially the 'Legend of Jubal,' reaches a much +higher degree of metrical and rhythmical excellence. But although +George Eliot's poems cannot be considered on a par with her prose, they +possess a distinctive interest, and should be carefully studied by all +lovers of her genius, as affording a more intimate insight into the +working of her own mind. Nowhere do we perceive so clearly as here the +profound sadness of her view of life; nowhere does she so emphatically +reiterate the stern lesson of the duty of resignation and +self-sacrifice; or that other doctrine that the individual is bound +absolutely to subordinate his personal happiness to the social good, +that he has no rights save the right of fulfilling his obligations to +his age, his country, and his family. This idea is perhaps more +completely incorporated in Fedalma than in any other of her +characters--Fedalma, who seems so bountifully endowed with the fullest +measure of beauty, love and happiness, that her renunciation may be the +more absolute. She who, in her young joy suddenly knows herself as "an +aged sorrow," exclaiming: + + + "I will not take a heaven + Haunted by shrieks of far-off misery. + This deed and I have ripened with the hours: + It is a part of me--a wakened thought + That, rising like a giant, masters me, + And grows into a doom. O mother life, + That seemed to nourish me so tenderly, + Even in the womb you vowed me to the fire, + Hung on my soul the burden of men's hopes, + And pledged me to redeem!--I'll pay the debt. + You gave me strength that I should pour it all + Into this anguish. I can never shrink + Back into bliss--my heart has grown too big + With things that might be." + + +This sacrifice is the completer for being without hope; for not +counting "on aught but being faithful;" for resting satisfied in such a +sublime conviction as-- + + + "The grandest death, to die in vain--for love + Greater than sways the forces of the world." + + +Limit forbids me dwell longer on this poem, which contains infinite +matter for discussion, yet some of the single passages are so full of +fine thoughts felicitously expressed that it would be unfair not to +allude to them. Such a specimen as this exposition of the eternal +dualism between the Hellenic and the Christian ideals, of which Heine +was the original and incomparable expounder, should not be left unnoted: + + + "For evermore + With grander resurrection than was feigned + Of Attila's fierce Huns, the soul of Greece + Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form + Of calmly-joyous beauty, marble-limbed, + Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its limbs, + Looks mild reproach from out its opened grave + At creeds of terror; and the vine-wreathed god + Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns." + + +And again how full of deep mysterious suggestion is this line-- + + + "Speech is but broken light upon the depth + Of the unspoken." + + +And this grand saying-- + + + "What times are little? To the sentinel + That hour is regal when he mounts on guard." + + +Quotations of this kind might be indefinitely multiplied; while showing +that exaltation of thought properly belonging to poetry, they at the +same time indubitably prove to the delicately-attuned ear the absence +of that subtle intuitive music, that "linked sweetness" of sound and +sense which is the birthright of poets. If an intimate and profound +acquaintance with the laws and structure of metre could bestow this +quality, which appertains to the elemental, George Eliot's verse ought +to have achieved the highest success. For in mere technical knowledge +concerning rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and the manipulation of blank +verse according to the most cunning distribution of pauses, she could +hold her own with the foremost contemporary poets, being no doubt far +more versed than either Shelley or Byron in the laws governing these +matters. + +How incalculable she felt the poet's influence to be, and how fain she +would have had him wield this influence only for the loftiest ends, is +well shown in a beautiful letter, hitherto unpublished, now possessing +an added pathos as addressed to one who has but lately departed, at the +very time when his rare poetic gifts were beginning to be more widely +recognised. James Thomson, the author of "The City of Dreadful Night," a +poem which appeared first in the pages of the 'National Reformer,' with +the signature of "B. V.," was thus addressed by George Eliot: + +"DEAR POET,--I cannot rest satisfied without telling you that my mind +responds with admiration to the distinct vision and grand utterance in +the poem which you have been so good as to send me. + +"Also, I trust that an intellect informed by so much passionate energy +as yours will soon give us more heroic strains, with a wider embrace of +human fellowship, such as will be to the labourers of the world what, +the Odes of Tyrtaeus were to the Spartans, thrilling them with the +sublimity of the social order and the courage of resistance to all that +would dissolve it. To accept life and write much fine poetry, is to take +a very large share in the quantum of human good, and seems to draw with +it necessarily some recognition, affectionate, and even joyful, of the +manifold willing labours which have made such a lot possible." + +These words are of peculiar interest, because, although the writer of +them is almost as much of a pessimist as its recipient, they are so with +a difference. The pessimism of "The City of Dreadful Night," in its +blank hopelessness, paralyses the inmost nerve of life by isolating the +individual in cold obstruction. Whereas George Eliot, while recognising +to the utmost "the burthen of a world, where even the sunshine has a +heart of care," insists the more on the fact that this common suffering +binds man more indissolubly to man; that so far from justifying him in +ending his life "when he will," the groaning and travailing generations +exact that he should stand firm at his post, regardless of personal +consideration or requital, so long only as he can help towards making +the fate of his fellow mortals less heavy for them to bear. In fact, the +one is a theory of life, the other a disease of the soul. + +The same stoic view, in a different form, finds expression in this +answer to a dear friend's query: "I cannot quite agree that it is hard +to see what has been the good of your life. It seems to me very clear +that you have been a good of a kind that would have been sorely missed +by those who have been nearest to you, and also by some who are more +distant. And it is this kind of good which must reconcile us to life, +and not any answer to the question, 'What would the universe have been +without me?' The point one has to care for is, 'Are A, B, and C the +better for me?' And there are several letters of the alphabet that could +not have easily spared you in the past, and that can still less spare +you in the present." + +This lesson of resignation, which is enforced more and more stringently +in her writings, is again dwelt upon with peculiar emphasis in the +interesting dramatic sketch entitled 'Armgart.' The problem here is not +unlike that in 'Silas Marner.' It is that of an individual, in +exceptional circumstances, brought back to the average condition of +humanity; but whereas Silas, having sunk below the common standard, is +once more united to his fellow-men by love, the magnificently endowed +Armgart, who seems something apart and above the crowd, is reduced to +the level of the undistinguished million by the loss of her peerless +voice. 'Armgart' is the single instance, excepting, perhaps, the +Princess Halm-Eberstein, where George Eliot has attempted to depict the +woman-artist, to whom life's highest object consists in fame-- + + + "The benignant strength of one, transformed + To joy of many." + + +But in the intoxicating flush of success, the singer, who has refused +the love of _one_ for that "sense transcendent which can taste the joy +of swaying multitudes," loses her glorious gift, and so sinks +irretrievably to a "drudge among the crowd." In the first delirium of +despair she longs to put an end to herself, "sooner than bear the yoke +of thwarted life;" but is painfully startled from her defiant mood by +the indignant query of Walpurga, her humble cousin-- + + + "Where is the rebel's right for you alone? + Noble rebellion lifts a common load; + But what is he who flings his own load off + And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? + Say rather the deserter's. Oh, you smiled + From your clear height on all the million lots + Which yet you brand as abject." + + +It may seem singular that having once, in 'Armgart,' drawn a woman of +the highest artistic aims and ambitions, George Eliot should imply that +what is most valuable in her is not the exceptional gift, but rather +that part of her nature which she shares with ordinary humanity. This +is, however, one of her leading beliefs, and strongly contrasts her, as +a teacher, with Carlyle. To the author of 'Hero Worship' the promiscuous +mass--moiling and toiling as factory hands and artisans, as miners and +labourers--only represents so much raw material, from which is produced +that final result and last triumph of the combination of human +forces--the great statesman, great warrior, great poet, and so forth. To +George Eliot, on the contrary--and this is the democratic side of her +nature--it is the multitude, so charily treated by destiny, which claims +deepest sympathy and tenderest compassion; so that all greatness, in her +eyes, is not a privilege, but a debt, which entails on its possessor a +more strenuous effort, a completer devotion to the service of average +humanity. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. + + +In 'Felix Holt,' which was published in 1866, George Eliot returned once +more to her own peculiar field, where she stands supreme and +unrivalled--the novel of English provincial life. This work, which, +however, is not equal to her earlier or later fictions, yet possesses a +double interest for us. It is the only one of her writings from which +its author's political views may be inferred, if we exclude a paper +published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in January 1868, which, indeed, +seems to be part of the novel, seeing that it is entitled, "Address to +Working Men, by Felix Holt." The paper contains, in a more direct and +concise form, precisely the same general views as regards the principles +of government which were previously enunciated through Felix the +Radical. It was an appeal to the operative classes who had been only +recently enfranchised by the Reform Bill. Its advice is mainly to the +effect that genuine political and social improvements, to be durable, +must be the result of inward change rather than of outward legislation. +The writer insists on the futility of the belief that beneficial +political changes can be effected by revolutionary measures. She points +out the necessity of a just discrimination between what is curable in +the body politic and what has to be endured. She dwells once again, +with solemn insistence, on the "aged sorrow," the inheritance of evil +transmitted from generation to generation, an evil too intimately +entwined with the complex conditions of society to be violently +uprooted, but only to be gradually eradicated by the persistent +cultivation of knowledge, industry, judgment, sobriety, and patience. + +"This is only one example," she says, "of the law by which human lives +are linked together; another example of what we complain of when we +point to our pauperism, to the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our +fellow-countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us by blamable +wars, to the wasteful channels made for the public money, to the expense +and trouble of getting justice, and call these the effects of bad rule. +This is the law that we all bear the yoke of; the law of no man's +making, and which no man can undo. Everybody now sees an example of it +in the case of Ireland. We who are living now are sufferers by the +wrong-doing of those who lived before us; we are sufferers by each +other's wrong-doing; and the children who come after us will be +sufferers from the same causes." + +To remedy this long-standing wrong-doing and suffering, so argues Felix +Holt, is not in the power of any one measure, class, or period. It would +be childish folly to expect any Reform Bill to possess the magical +property whereby a sudden social transformation could be accomplished. +On the contrary, abrupt transitions should be shunned as dangerous to +order and law, which alone are certain to insure a steady collective +progress; the only means to this end consisting in the general spread of +education, to secure which, at least for his children, the working man +should spare no pains. Without knowledge, the writer continues, no +political measures will be of any benefit, ignorance with or without +vote always of necessity engendering vice and misery. But, guided by a +fuller knowledge, the working classes would be able to discern what sort +of men they should choose for their representatives, and instead of +electing "platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing but the ocean to +make our broth with," they would confide the chief power to the hands of +the truly wise, those who know how to regulate life "according to the +truest principles mankind is in possession of." + +The "Felix Holt" of the story is described by George Eliot as shaping +his actions much according to the ideas which are here theoretically +expressed. His knowledge and aptitude would enable him to choose what is +considered a higher calling. But he scorns the vulgar ambition called +"getting on in the world;" his sense of fellowship prompting him to +remain a simple artisan that he may exert an elevating influence on the +class to which he belongs. Class differences, so argues this +Radical-Conservative, being inherent in the constitution of society, it +becomes something of a desertion to withdraw what abilities one may have +from the medium where they are urgently needed, in order to join, for +the sake of selfish aims, some other body of men where they may be +superfluous. + +The other distinctive feature of 'Felix Holt' consists in its elaborate +construction, ranking it, so to speak, amongst sensation novels. As a +rule, George Eliot's stories have little or no plot, the incidents +seeming not so much invented by the writer for the sake of producing an +effective work, as to be the natural result of the friction between +character and circumstance. This simplicity of narrative belongs, no +doubt, to the highest class of novel, the class to which 'The Vicar of +Wakefield,' 'Waverley,' and 'Vanity Fair' belong. In 'Felix Holt,' +however, the intricate network of incident in which the characters seem +to be enmeshed, is not unlike the modern French art of story-telling, +with its fertility of invention, as is also the strangely repellent +intrigue which forms the nucleus of the whole. All the elements which go +to make up a thrilling narrative--such as a dubious inheritance, the +disappearance of the rightful claimant, a wife's guilty secret, the +involvements of the most desperate human fates in a perplexing coil +through sin and error--are interwoven in this story of 'Felix Holt the +Radical.' + +Though ingeniously invented, the different incidents seem not so much +naturally to have grown the one from the other as to be constructed with +too conscious a seeking for effect. There is something forced, uneasy, +and inadequate in the laborious contrivance of fitting one set of events +on to another, and the machinery of the disputed Transome claim is so +involved that the reader never masters the "ins" and "outs" of that +baffling mystery. Still, the groundwork of the story is deeply +impressive: its interest is, notwithstanding the complex ramification of +events, concentrated with much power upon a small group of personages, +such as Mrs. Transome, her son Harold, the little dissenting minister, +Rufus Lyon, Esther, and Felix Holt. Here, as elsewhere, the novelist +reveals the potent qualities of her genius. Not only does this story +contain such genuine humorous portraiture as the lachrymose Mrs. Holt, +and the delightfully quaint Job Tudge, but it is also enriched by some +descriptions of rural scenery and of homely existence in remote country +districts as admirable as any to be found in her writings. Rufus Lyon is +a worthy addition to that long gallery of clerical portraits which are +among the triumphs of George Eliot's art. This "singular-looking apostle +of the meeting in Skipper's Lane"--with his rare purity of heart, his +unworldliness, his zeal in the cause of dissent, his restless +argumentative spirit, and the moving memories of romance and passion +hidden beneath the odd, quaint _physique_ of the little minister encased +in rusty black--is among the most loving and lovable of characters, and +recalls more particularly that passage in the poem entitled 'A Minor +Prophet,' which I cannot but think one of the author's finest, the +passage beginning-- + + + "The pathos exquisite of lovely minds + Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them + Like fire divine within a common bush + Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, + So that men put their shoes off; but encaged + Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, + Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars, + But having shown a little dimpled hand, + Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts + Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls." + + +Esther, on the other hand, is one of those fortunate beings whose lovely +mind is lodged in a form of corresponding loveliness. This charming +Esther, though not originally without her feminine vanities and worldly +desires, is one of those characters dear to George Eliot's heart, who +renounce the allurements of an easy pleasurable existence for the higher +satisfactions of a noble love or a nobler ideal. It is curious to notice +that Eppie, Esther, Fedalma, and Daniel Deronda are all children that +have been reared in ignorance of their real parentage, and that to all +of them there comes a day when a more or less difficult decision has to +be made, when for good or evil they have to choose, once for all, +between two conflicting claims. Like Eppie, Esther rejects the +advantages of birth and fortune, and elects to share the hard but +dignified life of the high-minded Felix. But this decision in her case +shows even higher moral worth, because by nature she is so keenly +susceptible to the delicate refinements and graceful elegancies which +are the natural accompaniment of rank and wealth. + +The most curious feature of this book consists, perhaps, in its original +treatment of illicit passion. Novelists, as a rule, when handling this +subject, depict its fascinations in brilliant contrast to the sufferings +and terrors which follow in its train. But George Eliot contents herself +with showing us the reverse side of the medal. Youth has faded, joy is +dead, love has turned to loathing, yet memory, like a relentless fury, +pursues the grey-haired Mrs. Transome, who hides within her breast such +a heavy load of shame and dread. The power and intensity with which this +character of the haughty, stern, yet inwardly quailing woman is drawn +are unsurpassed in their way, and there is tragic horror in the recoil +of her finest sensibilities from the vulgar, mean, self-complacent +lawyer, too thick-skinned ever to know that in his own person he is a +daily judgment on her whose life has been made hideous for his sake. +Never more impressively than here does the novelist enforce her teaching +that the deed follows the doer, being imbued with an incalculable +vitality of its own, shaping all after life, and subduing to its guise +the nature that is in bondage to it. Like those fabled dragon's teeth +planted by Cadmus, which spring up again as armed men, spreading discord +and ruin, so a man's evil actions seem endowed with independent +volition, and their consequences extend far beyond the individual life +where they originated. + +If 'Felix Holt' is the most intricately constructed of George Eliot's +novels, 'Middlemarch,' which appeared five years afterwards, is, on the +other hand, a story without a plot. In fact, it seems hardly appropriate +to call it a novel. Like Hogarth's serial pictures representing the +successive stages in their progress through life of certain typical +characters, so in this book there is unrolled before us, not so much the +history of any particular individual, as a whole phase of society +portrayed with as daring and uncompromising a fidelity to Nature as that +of Hogarth himself. In 'Middlemarch,' English provincial life in the +first half of the nineteenth century is indelibly fixed in words +"holding a universe impalpable" for the apprehension and delight of the +furthest generations of English-speaking nations. Here, as in some kind +of panorama, sections of a community and groups of character pass before +the mind's eye. To dwell on the separate, strongly-individualised +figures which constitute this great crowd would be impossible within the +present limits. But from the county people such as the Brookes and +Chettams, to respectable middle-class families of the Vincy and Garth +type, down to the low, avaricious, harpy-tribes of the Waules and +Featherstones, every unit of this complex social agglomeration is +described with a life-like vividness truly amazing, when the number and +variety of the characters especially are considered. I know not where +else in literature to look for a work which leaves such a strong +impression on the reader's mind of the intertexture of human lives. Seen +thus in perspective, each separate individuality, with its specialised +consciousness, is yet as indissolubly connected with the collective life +as that of the indistinguishable zoophyte which is but a sentient speck +necessarily moved by the same vital agency which stirs the entire +organism. + +Among the figures which stand out most prominently from the crowded +background are Dorothea, Lydgate, Casaubon, Rosamond Vincy, Ladislaw, +Bulstrode, Caleb, and Mary Garth. Dorothea belongs to that stately type +of womanhood, such as Romola and Fedalma, a type which seems to be +specifically George Eliot's own, and which has perhaps more in common +with such Greek ideals as Antigone and Iphigenia, than with more modern +heroines. But Dorothea, however lofty her aspirations, has not the +Christian heroism of Romola, or the antique devotion of Fedalma. She is +one of those problematic natures already spoken of; ill-adjusted to her +circumstances, and never quite adjusting circumstances to herself. It is +true that her high aims and glorious possibilities are partially stifled +by a social medium where there seems no demand for them: still the +resolute soul usually finds some way in which to work out its destiny. + +"Many 'Theresas'" says George Eliot, "have been born who found for +themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of +far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a +certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; +perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet, and sank unwept +into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to +shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but, after all, to +common eyes, their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; +for these later-born 'Theresas' were helped by no coherent social faith +and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently +willing soul. + +"Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient +indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of +women; if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the +ability to count three and no more, the social lot of woman might be +treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, +and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would +imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure, and the favourite love +stories in prose and verse." + +Such a life of mistakes is that of the beautiful Dorothea, the +ill-starred wife of Casaubon. In his way the character of Casaubon is as +great a triumph as that of Tito himself. The novelist seems to have +crept into the inmost recesses of that uneasy consciousness, to have +probed the most sensitive spots of that diseased vanity, and to lay bare +before our eyes the dull labour of a brain whose ideas are stillborn. In +an article by Mr. Myers it is stated, however incredible it may sound, +that an undiscriminating friend once condoled with George Eliot on the +melancholy experience which, from her knowledge of Lewes, had taught her +to depict the gloomy character of Casaubon; whereas, in fact, there +could not be a more striking contrast than that between the pedant +groping amid dim fragments of knowledge, and the vivacious litterateur +and thinker with his singular mental energy and grasp of thought. On the +novelist's laughingly assuring him that such was by no means the case, +"From whom, then," persisted he, "did you draw 'Casaubon'?" With a +humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, she pointed to her own +heart. She confessed, on the other hand, having found the character of +Rosamond Vincy difficult to sustain, such complacency of egoism, as has +been pointed out, being alien to her own habit of mind. But she laid no +claim to any such natural magnanimity as could avert Casaubon's +temptations of jealous vanity, and bitter resentment. + +If there is any character in whom one may possibly trace some +suggestions of Lewes, it is in the versatile, brilliant, talented +Ladislaw, who held, that while genius must have the utmost play for its +spontaneity, it may await with confidence "those messages from the +universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an +attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances." But however +charming, the impression Ladislaw produces is that of a somewhat +shallow, frothy character, so that he seems almost as ill-fitted for +Dorothea as the dreary Casaubon himself. Indeed the heroine's second +marriage seems almost as much a failure as the stultifying union of +Lydgate with Rosamond Vincy, and has altogether a more saddening effect +than the tragic death of Maggie, which is how much less pitiful than +that death in life of the fashionable doctor, whose best aims and vital +purposes have been killed by his wife. + +Much might be said of Bulstrode, the sanctimonious hypocrite, who is yet +not altogether a hypocrite, but has a vein of something resembling +goodness running through his crafty character; of Farebrother, the lax, +amiable, genuinely honourable vicar of St. Botolph's; of Mrs. +Cadwallader, the glib-tongued, witty, meddling rector's wife, a kind of +Mrs. Poyser of high life; of Caleb Garth, whose devotion to work is a +religion, and whose likeness to Mr. Robert Evans has already been +pointed out; of the wholehearted, sensible Mary, and of many other +supremely vivid characters, whom to do justice to would carry us too +far. + +'Middlemarch' is the only work of George Eliot's, I believe, in which +there is a distinct indication of her attitude towards the aspirations +and clearly formulated demands of the women of the nineteenth century. +Her many sarcastic allusions to the stereotyped theory about woman's +sphere show on which side her sympathies were enlisted. On the whole, +she was more partial to the educational movement than to that other +agitation which aims at securing the political enfranchisement of women. +How sincerely she had the first at heart is shown by the donation of +50l. "From the author of 'Romola,'" when Girton College was first +started. And in a letter to a young lady who studied there, and in whose +career she was much interested, she says, "the prosperity of Girton is +very satisfactory." Among her most intimate friends, too, were some of +the ladies who had initiated and organised the Women's Suffrage +movement. Likewise writing to Miss Phelps, she alludes to the Woman's +Lectureship in Boston, and remarks concerning the new University: "An +office that may make a new precedent in social advance, and which is at +the very least an experiment that ought to be tried. America is the +seed-ground and nursery of new ideals, where they can grow in a larger, +freer air than ours." + +In 1871, the year when 'Middlemarch' was appearing in parts, George +Eliot spent part of the spring and summer months at Shottermill, a +quaint Hampshire village situated amid a landscape that unites beauties +of the most varied kind. Here we may imagine her and Mr. Lewes, after +their day's work was done, either seeking the vast stretch of heath and +common only bounded by the horizon, or strolling through the deep-sunk +lanes, or finding a soothing repose in "places of nestling green for +poets made." They had rented Brookbank, an old-fashioned cottage with +tiled roof and lattice-paned windows, belonging to Mrs. Gilchrist, the +widow of the distinguished biographer of William Blake. + +The description of Mrs. Meyrick's house in 'Daniel Deronda' "where the +narrow spaces of wall held a world-history in scenes and heads," may +have been suggested by her present abode, rich in original drawings by +Blake, and valuable prints, and George Eliot writes: "If I ever steal +anything in my life, I think it will be the two little Sir Joshuas over +the drawing-room mantelpiece." At this time she and Mr. Lewes also found +intense interest in reading the 'Life of Blake.' Some correspondence, +kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. Gilchrist, passed between this +lady and the Leweses in connection with the letting of the house, +giving interesting glimpses into the domesticities of the latter. Their +habits here, as in London, were of clockwork regularity, household +arrangements being expected to run on wheels. "Everything," writes +George Eliot, "goes on slowly at Shottermill, and the mode of narration +is that typified in 'This is the house that Jack built.' But there is an +exquisite stillness in the sunshine and a sense of distance from London +hurry, which encourages the growth of patience. + +"Mrs. G----'s" (their one servant) "pace is proportionate to the other +slownesses, but she impresses me as a worthy person, and her +cooking--indeed, all her attendance on us--is of satisfactory quality. +But we find the awkwardness of having only one person in the house, as +well as the advantage (this latter being quietude). The butcher does not +bring the meat, everybody grudges selling new milk, eggs are scarce, and +an expedition we made yesterday in search of fowls, showed us nothing +more hopeful than some chickens six weeks old, which the good woman +observed were sometimes 'eaten by the gentry with asparagus.' Those +eccentric people, the gentry! + +"But have we not been reading about the siege of Paris all the winter, +and shall we complain while we get excellent bread and butter and many +etceteras?... Mrs. S---- kindly sent us a dish of asparagus, which we +ate (without the skinny chicken) and had a feast. + +"You will imagine that we are as fond of eating as Friar Tuck--I am +enlarging so on our commissariat. But you will also infer that we have +no great evils to complain of, since I make so much of the small." + +George Eliot rarely went out in the day-time during her stay at +Shottermill, but in the course of her rambles she would sometimes visit +such cottagers in remote places as were not likely to know who she was. +She used also to go and see a farmer's wife living at a short distance +from Brookbank, with whom she would freely chat about the growth of +fruits and vegetables and the quality of butter, much to the +astonishment of the simple farm people. Speaking of her recollection of +the great novelist to an American lady by whom these facts are recorded, +the old countrywoman remarked: "It were wonderful, just wonderful, the +sight o' green peas that I sent down to that gentleman and lady every +week." + +After the lapse of a few months spent in this sweet rural retreat, +George Eliot again writes to Mrs. Gilchrist: "I did not imagine that I +should ever be so fond of the place as I am now. The departure of the +bitter winds, some improvement in my health, and the gradual revelation +of fresh and fresh beauties in the scenery, especially under a hopeful +sky such as we have sometimes had--all these conditions have made me +love our little world here, and wish not to quit it until we can settle +in our London home. I have the regret of thinking that it was my +original indifference about it (I hardly ever like things until they are +familiar) that hindered us from securing the cottage until the end of +September." + +George Eliot's conscientiousness and precision in the small affairs of +life are exemplified in her last note to Mrs. Gilchrist: "After Mr. +Lewes had written to you, I was made aware that a small dessert or +bread-and-butter dish had been broken. That arch-sinner, the cat, was +credited with the guilt. I am assured by Mrs. G---- that nothing else +has been injured during her reign, and Mrs. L---- confirmed the +statement to me yesterday. I wish I could replace the unfortunate +dish.... This note, of course, needs no answer, and it is intended +simply to make me a clean breast about the crockery." + +About this time George Eliot was very much out of health: indeed, both +she and Lewes repeatedly speak of themselves as "two nervous, dyspeptic +creatures, two ailing, susceptible bodies," to whom slight +inconveniences are injurious and upsetting. Although it was hot summer +weather, Mrs. Lewes suffered much from cold, sitting always with +artificial heat to her feet. One broiling day in August, after she had +left Brookbank, and taken another place in the neighbourhood, an +acquaintance happening to call on her, found her sitting in the garden +writing, as was her wont, her head merely shaded by a deodara, on the +lawn. Being expostulated with by her visitor for her imprudence in +exposing herself to the full blaze of the midday sun, she replied, "Oh, +I like it! To-day is the first time I have felt warm this summer." + +They led a most secluded life, George Eliot being at this time engaged +with the continuation of 'Middlemarch;' and Lewes, alluding to their +solitary habits, writes at this date: "Work goes on smoothly away from +all friendly interruptions. Lord Houghton says that it is +incomprehensible how we can live in such Simeon Stylites fashion, as we +often do, all alone--but the fact is we never _are_ alone when alone. +And I sometimes marvel how it is I have contrived to get through so much +work living in London. It's true I'm a London child." Occasionally, +however, they would go and see Tennyson, whose house is only three +miles from Shottermill, but the road being all uphill made the ride a +little tedious and uncomfortable, especially to George Eliot who had not +got over her old nervousness. The man who used to drive them on these +occasions was so much struck by this that he told the lady who has +recorded these details in the _Century Magazine_: "Withal her being such +a mighty clever body, she were very nervous in a carriage--allays wanted +to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared of being thrown out." +On one of these occasional meetings with Tennyson, the poet got involved +in a conversation with the novelist concerning evolution and such +weighty questions. They had been walking together in close argument, and +as the Poet-Laureate bade George Eliot farewell, he called to her, +already making her way down the hill, "Well, good-by, you and your +molecules!" And she, looking back, said in her deep low voice (which +always got lower when she was at all roused), "I am quite content with +my molecules." + +The country all around Shottermill with its breezy uplands, its +pine-clad hills, its undulating tracts of land purpled with heath in the +autumn, became more and more endeared to George Eliot, who, indeed, +liked it better than any scenery in England. Here she could enjoy to the +full that "sense of standing on a round world," which, she writes to +Mrs. Gilchrist who had used the phrase, "was precisely what she most +cared for amongst out-of-door delights." Some years afterwards we find +her and Mr. Lewes permanently taking a house not far off, at Witley in +Surrey, which has the same kind of beautiful open scenery. Writing from +her town residence about it to her old friend Mrs. Bray, George Eliot +says: "We, too, are thinking of a new settling down, for we have bought +a house in Surrey about four miles from Godalming on a gravelly hill +among the pine-trees, but with neighbours to give us a sense of +security. Our present idea is that we shall part with this house and +give up London except for occasional visits. We shall be on the same +line of railway with some good friends at Weybridge and Guildford." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +DANIEL DERONDA. + + +'Daniel Deronda,' which appeared five years after 'Middlemarch,' +occupies a place apart among George Eliot's novels. In the spirit which +animates it, it has perhaps the closest affinity with the 'Spanish +Gypsy.' Speaking of this work to a young friend of Jewish extraction (in +whose career George Eliot felt keen interest), she expressed surprise at +the amazement which her choice of a subject had created. "I wrote about +the Jews," she remarked, "because I consider them a fine old race who +have done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them +as I do for the Florentines. Only lately I have heard to my great +satisfaction that an influential member of the Jewish community is going +to start an emigration to Palestine. You will also be glad to learn that +Helmholtz is a Jew." + +These observations are valuable as affording a key to the leading motive +of 'Daniel Deronda.' Mordecai's ardent desire to found a new national +state in Palestine is not simply the author's dramatic realisation of +the feeling of an enthusiast, but expresses her own very definite +sentiments on the subject. The Jewish apostle is, in fact, more or less +the mouthpiece of George Eliot's own opinions on Judaism. For so great +a master in the art of creating character, this type of the loftiest +kind of man is curiously unreal. Mordecai delivers himself of the most +eloquent and exalted views and sentiments, yet his own personality +remains so vague and nebulous that it has no power of kindling the +imagination. Mordecai is meant for a Jewish Mazzini. Within his +consciousness he harbours the future of a people. He feels himself +destined to become the saviour of his race; yet he does not convince us +of his greatness. He convinces us no more than he does the mixed company +at the "Hand and Banner," which listens with pitying incredulity to his +passionate harangues. Nevertheless the first and final test of the +religious teacher or of the social reformer is the magnetic force with +which his own intense beliefs become binding on the consciences of +others, if only of a few. It is true Mordecai secures one disciple--the +man destined to translate his thought into action, Daniel Deronda, as +shadowy, as puppet-like, as lifeless as Ezra Mordecai Cohen himself. +These two men, of whom the one is the spiritual leader and the other the +hero destined to realise his aspirations, are probably the two most +unsuccessful of George Eliot's vast gallery of characters. They are the +representatives of an idea, but the idea has never been made flesh. A +succinct expression of it may be gathered from the following passage: + +"Which among the chief of the Gentile nations has not an ignorant +multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance; but the most +accursed ignorance is that which has no observance--sunk to the cunning +greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of +the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below the memory +that has withered into superstition. For the multitude of the ignorant +on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the +Divine Unity the Lord of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: +let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its +religion be an outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity, our +dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a +national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the +West; which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race, so that it may +be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come +to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of +Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the +renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, +and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved +memories." + +This notion that the Jews should return to Palestine in a body, and once +more constitute themselves into a distinct nation, is curiously +repugnant to modern feelings. As repugnant as that other doctrine, which +is also implied in the book, that Jewish separateness should be still +further insured by strictly adhering to their own race in marriage--at +least Mirah, the most faultless of George Eliot's heroines, whose +character expresses the noblest side of Judaism, "is a Jewess who will +not accept any one but a Jew." + +Mirah Lapidoth and the Princess Halm-Eberstein, Deronda's mother, are +drawn with the obvious purpose of contrasting two types of Jewish women. +Whereas the latter, strictly brought up in the belief and most minute +observances of her Hebrew father, breaks away from the "bondage of +having been born a Jew," from which she wishes to relieve her son by +parting from him in infancy, Mirah, brought up in disregard, "even in +dislike of her Jewish origin," clings with inviolable tenacity to the +memory of that origin and to the fellowship of her people. The author +leaves one in little doubt as towards which side her own sympathies +incline to. She is not so much the artist here, impartially portraying +different kinds of characters, as the special pleader proclaiming that +one set of motives are righteous, just, and praiseworthy, as well as +that the others are mischievous and reprehensible. + +This seems carrying the principle of nationality to an extreme, if not +pernicious length. If there were never any breaking up of old forms of +society, any fresh blending of nationalities and races, we should soon +reduce Europe to another China. This unwavering faithfulness to the +traditions of the past may become a curse to the living. A rigidity as +unnatural as it is dangerous would be the result of too tenacious a +clinging to inherited memories. For if this doctrine were strictly +carried out, such a country as America, where there is a slow +amalgamation of many allied and even heterogeneous races into a new +nation, would practically become impossible. Indeed, George Eliot does +not absolutely hold these views. She considers them necessary at present +in order to act as a drag to the too rapid transformations of society. +In the most interesting paper of 'Theophrastus Such,' that called 'The +Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!' she remarks: "The tendency of things is towards +quicker or slower fusion of races. It is impossible to arrest this +tendency; all we can do is to moderate its course so as to hinder it +from degrading the moral status of societies by a too rapid effacement +of those national traditions and customs which are the language of the +national genius--the deep suckers of healthy sentiment. Such moderating +and guidance of inevitable movement is worthy of all effort." + +Considering that George Eliot was convinced of this modern tendency +towards fusion, it is all the more singular that she should, in 'Daniel +Deronda,' have laid such stress on the reconstruction, after the lapse +of centuries, of a Jewish state; singular, when one considers that many +of the most eminent Jews, so far from aspiring towards such an event, +hardly seem to have contemplated it as a desirable or possible prospect. +The sympathies of Spinoza, the Mendelssohns, Rahel, Meyerbeer, Heine, +and many others, are not distinctively Jewish but humanitarian. And the +grandest, as well as truest thing that has been uttered about them is +that saying of Heine's: "The country of the Jews is the ideal, is God." + +Indeed, to have a true conception of Jewish nature and character, of its +brilliant lights and deep shadows, of its pathos, depth, sublimity, +degradation, and wit; of its infinite resource and boundless capacity +for suffering--one must go to Heine and not to 'Daniel Deronda.' In +'Jehuda-ben-Halevy' Heine expresses the love and longing of a Jewish +heart for Jerusalem in accents of such piercing intensity that compared +with it, "Mordecai's" fervid desire fades into mere abstract rhetoric. + +Nature and experience were the principal sources of George Eliot's +inspiration. And though she knew a great deal about the Jews, her +experience had not become sufficiently incorporated with her +consciousness. Otherwise, instead of portraying such tame models of +perfection as Deronda and Mirah, she would have so mixed her colours as +to give us that subtle involvement of motive and tendency--as of +cross-currents in the sea--which we find in the characters of nature's +making and in her own finest creations, such as Maggie, Silas Marner, +Dorothea Casaubon, and others. + +In turning to the English portion of the story there is at once greater +play of spontaneity in the people depicted. Grandcourt, Gascoigne, Rex, +Mrs. Davilow, Sir Hugh Mallinger, and especially Gwendolen, show all the +old cunning in the psychological rendering of human nature. Curiously +enough, this novel consists of two perfectly distinct narratives; the +only point of junction being Daniel Deronda himself, who, as a Jew by +birth and an English gentleman by education, stands related to both sets +of circumstances. The influence he exerts on the spiritual development +of Gwendolen seems indeed the true _motif_ of the story. Otherwise there +is no intrinsic connection between the group of people clustering round +Mordecai, and that of which Gwendolen is the centre: unless it be that +the author wished to show the greater intensity of aim and higher moral +worth of the Jews as contrasted with these purposeless, worldly, unideal +Christians of the nineteenth century. + +Compared with the immaculate Mirah, Gwendolen Harleth is a very naughty, +spoiled, imperfect specimen of maidenhood. But she has life in her; and +one speculates as to what she will say and do next, as if she were a +person among one's acquaintances. On that account most readers of +'Daniel Deronda' find their interest engrossed by the fate of +Gwendolen, and the conjugal relations between her and Grandcourt. This +is so much the case, that one suspects her to have been the first idea +of the story. She is at any rate its most attractive feature. In +Gwendolen, George Eliot once remarked, she had wished to draw a girl of +the period. Fascinating, accomplished, of siren-like beauty, she has +every outward grace combined with a singular inward vacuity. The deeper +aspects of life are undreamed of in her philosophy. Her religion +consists in a vague awe of the unknown and invisible, and her ambition +in the acquisition of rank, wealth, and personal distinction. She is +selfish, vain, frivolous, worldly, domineering, yet not without sudden +impulses of generosity, and jets of affection. Something there is in her +of Undine before she had a soul--something of a gay, vivacious, +unfeeling sprite, who recks nothing of human love or of human misery, +but looks down with utter indifference on the poor humdrum mortals +around her, whom she inspires at once with fear and fondness: something, +also, of the "princess in exile, who in time of famine was to have her +breakfast-roll made of the finest bolted flour from the seven thin ears +of wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork kept +out of the baggage." + +How this bewitching creature, whose "iridescence of character" makes her +a psychological problem, is gradually brought to accept Henleigh +Grandcourt, in spite of the promise she has given to Lydia Glasher (his +discarded victim), and her own fleeting presentiments, is described with +an analytical subtlety unsurpassed in George Eliot's works. So, indeed, +is the whole episode of the married life of Grandcourt. This +territorial magnate, who possesses every worldly advantage that +Gwendolen desired, is worthy, as a study of character, to be placed +beside that of Casaubon himself. Gwendolen's girlish type of egoism, +which loves to be the centre of admiration, here meets with that far +other deadlier form of an "exorbitant egoism," conspicuous for its +intense obstinacy and tenacity of rule, "in proportion as the varied +susceptibilities of younger years are stripped away." This cold, +negative nature lies with a kind of withering blight on the susceptible +Gwendolen. Roused from the complacent dreams of girlhood by the +realities of her married life, shrinking in helpless repulsion from the +husband whom she meant to manage, and who holds her as in a vice, the +unhappy woman has nothing to cling to in this terrible inward collapse +of her happiness, but the man, who, from the first moment when his eye +arrests hers at the gaming table at Leubronn, becomes, as it were, a +conscience visibly incarnate to her. This incident, which is told in the +first chapter of the novel, recalls a sketch by Dante Rossetti, where +Mary Magdalene, in the flush of joyous life, is held by the Saviour's +gaze, and in a sudden revulsion from her old life, breaks away from +companions that would fain hold her back, with a passionate movement +towards the Man of Sorrow. This impressive conception may have +unconsciously suggested a somewhat similar situation to the novelist, +for that George Eliot was acquainted with this drawing is shown by the +following letter addressed in 1870 to Dante Rossetti: + +"I have had time now to dwell on the photographs. I am especially +grateful to you for giving me the head marked June 1861: it is +exquisite. But I am glad to possess every one of them. The subject of +the Magdalene rises in interest for me, the more I look at it. I hope +you will keep in the picture an equally passionate type for her. Perhaps +you will indulge me with a little talk about the modifications you +intend to introduce." + +The relation of Deronda to Gwendolen is of a Christlike nature. He is +her only moral hold in the fearful temptations that assail her now and +again under the intolerable irritations of her married life, temptations +which grow more urgent when Grandcourt leads his wife captive, after his +fashion, in a yacht on the Mediterranean. For "the intensest form of +hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence, and drives +vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation +of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance, +with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and +soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the +secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with +the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with dread of her +husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the +pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse." + +The evil wish at last finds fulfilment, the murderous thought is +outwardly realised. And though death is not eventually the result of the +criminal desire, it yet seems to the unhappy wife as if it had a +determining power in bringing about the catastrophe. But it is precisely +this remorse which is the redeeming quality of her nature, and awakens a +new life within her. In this quickening of the moral consciousness +through guilt we are reminded, although in a different manner, of a +similar process, full of pregnant suggestions, described in Nathaniel +Hawthorne's 'Transformation.' It will be remembered that Donatello leads +a purely instinctive, that is to say animal, existence, till the +commission of a crime awakens the dormant conscience, and a soul is born +in the throes of anguish and remorse. + +In 'Daniel Deronda' there is an entire absence of that rich, genial +humour which seemed spontaneously to bubble up and overflow her earlier +works. Whether George Eliot's conception of the Jews as a peculiarly +serious race had any share in bringing about that result, it is +difficult to say. At any rate, in one of her essays she remarks that, +"The history and literature of the ancient Hebrews gives the idea of a +people who went about their business and pleasure as gravely as a +society of beavers." Certainly Mordecai, Deronda, and Mirah, are +preternaturally solemn; even the Cohen family are not presented with any +of those comic touches one would have looked for in this great humorist; +only in the boy Jacob are there gleams of drollery, such as in this +description of him by Hans Meyrick: "He treats me with the easiest +familiarity, and seems in general to look at me as a second-hand +Christian commodity, likely to come down in price; remarking on my +disadvantages with a frankness which seems to imply some thoughts of +future purchase. It is pretty, though, to see the change in him if Mirah +happens to come in. He turns child suddenly--his age usually strikes one +as being like the Israelitish garments in the desert, perhaps near +forty, yet with an air of recent production." + +A certain subdued vein of humour is not entirely absent from the +portraiture of the Meyrick family, a delightful group, who "had their +little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother's blood as well +as the father's, their minds being like mediaeval houses with unexpected +recesses and openings from this into that, flights of steps, and sudden +outlooks." But on the whole, instead of the old humour, we find in +'Daniel Deronda' a polished irony and epigrammatic sarcasm, which were +afterwards still more fully developed in the 'Impressions of +Theophrastus Such.' + +Soon after the publication of this novel, we find the following allusion +to it in one of George Eliot's letters to Mrs. Bray: "I don't know what +you refer to in the _Jewish World_. Perhaps the report of Dr. Hermann +Adler's lecture on 'Deronda' to the Jewish working-men, given in the +_Times_. Probably the Dr. Adler whom you saw is Dr. Hermann's father, +still living as Chief Rabbi. I have had some delightful communications +from Jews and Jewesses, both at home and abroad. Part of the Club scene +in 'D. D.' is flying about in the Hebrew tongue through the various +Hebrew newspapers, which have been copying the 'Maga.' in which the +translation was first sent to me three months ago. The Jews naturally +are not indifferent to themselves." + +This Club scene gave rise at the time to quite a controversy. It could +not fail to be identified with that other club of philosophers out at +elbows so vividly described by G. H. Lewes in the 'Fortnightly Review' +of 1866. Nor was it possible not to detect an affinity between the Jew +Cohen, the poor consumptive journeyman watchmaker, with his weak voice +and his great calm intellect, and Ezra Mordecai Cohen, in precisely +similar conditions; the difference being that the one is penetrated by +the philosophical idea of Spinozism, and the other by the political +idea of reconstituting a Jewish State in Palestine. This difference of +mental bias, no doubt, forms a contrast between the two characters, +without, however, invalidating the surmise that the fictitious +enthusiast may have been originally suggested by the noble figure of the +living Jew. Be that as it may, Lewes often took the opportunity in +conversation of "pointing out that no such resemblance existed, Cohen +being a keen dialectician and a highly impressive man, but without any +specifically Jewish enthusiasm." + +When she undertook to write about the Jews, George Eliot was deeply +versed in Hebrew literature, ancient and modern. She had taught herself +Hebrew when translating the _Leben Jesu_, and this knowledge now stood +her in good stead. She was also familiar with the splendid utterances of +Jehuda-ben-Halevy; with the visionary speculations of the Cabbalists, +and with the brilliant Jewish writers of the Hispano-Arabic epoch. She +had read portions of the Talmud, and remarked one day in conversation +that Spinoza had really got something from the Cabbala. On her friend +humbly suggesting that by ordinary accounts it appeared to be awful +nonsense, she said "that it nevertheless contained fine ideas, like +Plato and the Old Testament, which, however, people took in the lump, +being accustomed to them." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +LAST YEARS. + + +'Daniel Deronda' is the last great imaginative work with which George +Eliot was destined to enrich the world. It came out in small volumes, +the appearance of each fresh number being hailed as a literary event. In +allusion to an author's feeling on the conclusion of a weighty task, +George Eliot remarks in one of her letters: "As to the great novel which +remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future +books.... Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that +I can never again produce anything worth giving to the world. The +responsibility of the writer grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as +the world grows older, and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is +difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into +imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really +needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to +oneself to do it." + +This singular diffidence, arising from a sense of the tremendous +responsibility which her position entailed, was one of the most +noticeable characteristics of this great woman, and struck every one who +came in contact with her. Her conscientiousness made her even painfully +anxious to enter sympathetically into the needs of every person who +approached her, so as to make her speech a permanently fruitful +influence in her hearer's life. Such an interview, for example, as that +between Goethe and Heine--where the younger poet, after thinking all the +way what fine things to say to Goethe, was so disconcerted by the +awe-inspiring presence of the master, that he could find nothing better +to say than that the plums on the road-side between Jena and Weimar were +remarkably good--would have been impossible with one so eager always to +give of her best. + +This deep seriousness of nature made her Sunday afternoon receptions, +which became more and more fashionable as time went on, something of a +tax to one who preferred the intimate converse of a few to that more +superficially brilliant talk which a promiscuous gathering brings with +it. Among the distinguished visitors to be met more or less frequently +at the Priory maybe mentioned Mr. Herbert Spencer, Professor Huxley, Mr. +Frederic Harrison, Professor Beesly, Dr. and Mrs. Congreve, Madame +Bodichon, Lord Houghton, M. Tourguenief, Mr. Ralston, Sir Theodore and +Lady Martin (better known as Helen Faucit), Mr. Burton of the National +Gallery, Mr. George Howard and his wife, Mr. C. G. Leland, Mr. Moncure +Conway, Mr. Justin McCarthy, Dr. Hueffer, Mr. and Mrs. Buxton Forman, +Mr. F. Myers, Mr. Sully, Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Pattison, Mr. +and Mrs. Clifford, Lady Castletown and her daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Burne +Jones, Mr. John Everett Millais, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr. Tennyson. + +Persons of celebrity were not the only ones, however, that were made +welcome at the Priory. The liveliest sympathy was shown by both host +and hostess in many young people as yet struggling in obscurity, but in +whom they delighted to recognise the promise of some future excellence. +If a young man were pursuing some original scientific inquiry, or +striking out a new vein of speculation, in all London there was none +likely to enter with such zest into his ideas as G. H. Lewes. His +generous appreciation of intellectual gifts is well shown in the +following lines to the late Professor W. K. Clifford: + +"Few things have given us more pleasure than the intimation in your note +that you had a _fiancee_. May she be the central happiness and motive +force of your career, and, by satisfying the affections, leave your +_rare_ intellect free to work out its glorious destiny. For, if you +don't become a glory to your age and time, it will be a sin and a shame. +Nature doesn't often send forth such gifted sons, and when she does, +Society usually cripples them. Nothing but marriage--a happy +marriage--has seemed to Mrs. Lewes and myself wanting to your future." + +On the Sunday afternoon receptions just mentioned, G. H. Lewes acted, so +to speak, as a social cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the +fascination of his manners, diffused that general sense of ease and +_abandon_ so requisite to foster an harmonious flow of conversation. He +was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and Thackeray, Trollope, and Arthur +Helps were fond of quoting some of the stories which he would dramatise +in the telling. One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs +oftenest to George Eliot's friends, is that of the frail-looking woman +who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning +womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the +privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its +strongly-marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life +than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves +more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of +expression, especially softening the too prominent under-lip and massive +jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with grey, whose smooth bands made a +kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with +lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her +grey-blue eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute +sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully-shaped hands. She had a +pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely +sympathetic in quality: it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang +or played before more than one or two friends. Though her conversation +was perfectly easy, each sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, +as the style of her published works. Indeed, she laid great stress on +the value of correct speaking and clearness of enunciation; and in +'Theophrastus Such' she laments "the general ambition to speak every +language except our mother English, which persons 'of style' are not +ashamed of corrupting with slang, false foreign equivalents, and a +pronunciation that crushes out all colour from the vowels, and jams them +between jostling consonants." + +Besides M. d'Albert's Genevese portrait of George Eliot, we have a +drawing by Mr. Burton, and another by Mr. Lawrence, the latter taken +soon after the publication of 'Adam Bede.' In criticising the latter +likeness, a keen observer of human nature remarked that it conveyed no +indication of the infinite depth of her observant eye, nor of that +cold, subtle, and unconscious cruelty of expression which might +occasionally be detected there. George Eliot had an unconquerable +aversion to her likeness being taken: once, however, in 1860, she was +photographed for the sake of her "dear sisters" at Rosehill. But she +seems to have repented of this weakness, for, after the lapse of years, +she writes: "Mr. Lewes has just come to me after reading your letter, +and says, 'For God's sake tell her not to have the photograph +reproduced!' and I had nearly forgotten to say that the fading is what I +desired. I should not like this image to be perpetuated. It needs the +friendly eyes that regret to see it fade, and must not be recalled into +emphatic black and white for indifferent gazers. Pray let it vanish." + +Those who knew George Eliot were even more struck by the force of her +entire personality than by her writings. Sympathetic, witty or learned +in turn, her conversation deeply impressed her hearers, being enriched +by such felicities of expression as: "The best lesson of tolerance we +have to learn is to tolerate intolerance." In answer to a friend's +surprise that a clever man should allow himself to be contradicted by a +stupid one, without dropping down on him, she remarked: "He is very +liable to drop down as a baked apple would." And of a very plain +acquaintance she said: "He has the most dreadful kind of ugliness one +can be afflicted with, because it takes on the semblance of beauty." + +Poetry, music, and art naturally absorbed much attention at the Priory. +Here Mr. Tennyson has been known to read 'Maud' aloud to his friends: +Mr. Browning expatiated on the most recondite metrical rules: and +Rossetti sent presents of poems and photographs. In the following +unpublished letters George Eliot thanks the latter for his valued +gifts--"We returned only the night before last from a two months' +journey to the Continent, and among the parcels awaiting me I found your +generous gift. I am very grateful to you both as giver and poet. + +"In cutting the leaves, while my head is still swimming from the +journey, I have not resisted the temptation to read many things as they +ought not to be read--hurriedly. But even in this way I have received a +stronger impression than any fresh poems have for a long while given me, +that to read once is a reason for reading again. The sonnets towards +'The House of Life' attract me peculiarly. I feel about them as I do +about a new cahier of music which I have been 'trying' here and there +with the delightful conviction that I have a great deal to become +acquainted with and to like better and better." And again, in +acknowledgment of some photographs: "The 'Hamlet' seems to me perfectly +intelligible, and altogether admirable in conception, except in the type +of the man's head. I feel sure that 'Hamlet' had a square anterior lobe. + +"Mr. Lewes says, this conception of yours makes him long to be an actor +who has 'Hamlet' for one of his parts, that he might carry out this +scene according to your idea. + +"One is always liable to mistake prejudices for sufficient inductions, +about types of head and face, as well as about all other things. I have +some impressions--perhaps only prejudices dependent on the narrowness of +my experience--about forms of eyebrow and their relation to passionate +expression. It is possible that such a supposed relation has a real +anatomical basis. But in many particulars facial expression is like the +expression of hand-writing: the relations are too subtle and intricate +to be detected, and only shallowness is confident." + +George Eliot read but little contemporary fiction, being usually +absorbed in the study of some particular subject. "For my own spiritual +good I need all other sort of reading," she says, "more than I need +fiction. I know nothing of contemporary English novelists with the +exception of ----, and a few of ----'s works. 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." For the same reason, on being +recommended by a literary friend to read Walt Whitman, she hesitated on +the ground of his not containing anything spiritually needful for her, +but, having been induced to take him up, she changed her opinion and +admitted that he _did_ contain what was "good for her soul." As to +lighter reading, she was fond of books of travel, pronouncing "'The +Voyage of the Challenger' a splendid book." Among foreign novelists she +was very partial to Henry Greville, and speaks of 'Les Koumiassine' as a +pleasant story. + +Persons who were privileged enough to be admitted to the intimacy of +George Eliot and Mr. Lewes could not fail to be impressed by the immense +admiration which they had for one another. Lewes's tenderness, always on +the watch lest the great writer, with her delicately poised health, +should over-exert herself, had something of doglike fidelity. On the +other hand, in spite of George Eliot's habitually retiring manner, if +any one ever engaged on the opposite side of an argument to that +maintained by the brilliant _savant_, in taking his part, she usually +had the best of it, although in the most gentle and feminine way. + +Although there was entire oneness of feeling between them, there was no +unanimity of opinion. George Eliot had the highest regard for Lewes's +opinions, but held to her own. One of the chief subjects of difference +consisted in their attitude towards Christianity: whereas he was its +uncompromising opponent, she had the greatest sympathy with its various +manifestations, from Roman Catholic asceticism to Evangelical austerity +and Methodist fervour. Her reverence for every form of worship in which +mankind has more or less consciously embodied its sense of the mystery +of all "this unintelligible world" increased with the years. She was +deeply penetrated by that tendency of the Positivist spirit which +recognises the beneficial element in every form of religion, and sees +the close, nay indissoluble, connection between the faith of former +generations and the ideal of our own. She herself found ample scope for +the needs and aspirations of her spiritual nature in the religion of +humanity. As has already been repeatedly pointed out, there runs through +all her works the same persistent teaching of "the Infinite Nature of +Duty." And with Comte she refers "the obligations of duty, as well as +all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and +real; the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the +past, the present, and the future." + +Though George Eliot drew many of her ideas of moral cultivation from the +doctrines of Comte's _Philosophie Positive_, she was not a Positivist in +the strict sense of the word. Her mind was far too creative by nature +to give an unqualified adhesion to such a system as Comte's. Indeed, her +devotion to the idea of mankind, conceived as a collective whole, is not +so much characteristic of Positivists as of the greatest modern minds, +minds such as Lessing, Bentham, Shelley, Mill, Mazzini, and Victor Hugo. +Inasmuch as Comte co-ordinated these ideas into a consistent doctrine, +George Eliot found herself greatly attracted to his system; and Mr. +Beesly, after an acquaintance of eighteen years, considered himself +justified in stating that her powerful intellect had accepted the +teaching of Auguste Comte, and that she looked forward to the +reorganisation of belief on the lines which he had laid down. Still her +adherence, like that of G. H. Lewes, was only partial, and applied +mainly to his philosophy, and not to his scheme of social policy. She +went farther than the latter, however, in her concurrence. For Mr. +Lewes, speaking of the _Politique Positive_ in his 'History of +Philosophy,' admits that his antagonistic attitude had been considerably +modified on learning from the remark of one very dear to him, "to regard +it as an Utopia, presenting hypotheses rather than +doctrines--suggestions for future inquiries rather than dogmas for +adepts." + +On the whole, although George Eliot did not agree with Comte's later +theories concerning the reconstruction of society, she regarded them +with sympathy "as the efforts of an individual to anticipate the work of +future generations." This sympathy with the general Positivist movement +she showed by subscribing regularly to Positivist objects, especially to +the fund of the Central Organisation presided over by M. Laffitte, but +she invariably refused all membership with the Positivist community. In +conversation with an old and valued friend, she also repeatedly +expressed her objection to much in Comte's later speculations, saying on +one occasion, "I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance +of Comte." The fact is that, although George Eliot was greatly +influenced by the leading Positivist ideas, her mind was too original +not to work out her own individual conception of life. + +What this conception is has been already indicated, so far as space +would permit, in the discussion of her successive works. Perhaps in the +course of time her moralising analytical tendency encroached too much on +the purely artistic faculty. Her eminently dramatic genius--which +enabled her to realise characters the most varied and opposite in type, +somewhat in the manner of Shakespeare--became hampered by theories and +abstract views of life. This was especially shown in her latest work, +'The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,' a series of essays chiefly +satirising the weaknesses and vanities of the literary class. In these +unattractive "impressions" the wit is often laboured, and does not play +"beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, +as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows." Its cutting +irony and incisive ridicule are no longer tempered by the humorous +laugh, but have the corrosive quality of some acrid chemical substance. + +One of the papers, however, that entitled 'Debasing the Moral Currency,' +expresses a strongly marked characteristic of George Eliot's mind. It is +a pithy protest against the tendency of the present generation to turn +the grandest deeds and noblest works of art into food for laughter. For +she hated nothing so much as mockery and ridicule of what other people +reverenced, often remarking that those who considered themselves freest +from superstitious fancies were the most intolerant. She carried this +feeling to such a pitch that she even disliked a book like 'Alice in +Wonderland' because it laughed at the things which children had had a +kind of belief in. In censuring this vicious habit of burlesquing the +things that ought to be regarded with awe and admiration, she remarks, +"Let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty and pathos, +and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the +lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, +and make ambition one with virtue." + +'Looking Backward' is the only paper in 'Theophrastus Such' quite free +from cynicism. It contains, under a slightly veiled form, pathetically +tender reminiscences of her own early life. This volume, not published +till May 1879, was written before the incalculable loss which befell +George Eliot in the autumn of the preceding year. + +After spending the summer of 1878 in the pleasant retirement of Witley, +Lewes and George Eliot returned to London. A severe cold taken by Lewes +proved the forerunner of a serious disorder, and, after a short illness, +this bright, many-sided, indefatigable thinker, passed away in his +sixty-second year. He had frequently said to his friends that the most +desirable end of a well-spent life was a painless death; and although +his own could not be called painless, his sufferings were at least of +short duration. Concerning the suffering and anguish of her who was left +behind to mourn him, one may most fitly say, in her own words, that, +"for the first sharp pangs there is no comfort--whatever goodness may +surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain." In her +case, also, the "clinging companionship with the dead" was gradually +linked with her living affections, and she found alleviation for her +sorrow in resuming those habits of continuous mental occupation which +had become second nature with her. In a letter addressed to a friend, +who, only a few short months afterwards, suffered a like heavy +bereavement, there breathes the spirit in which George Eliot bore her +own sorrow: "I understand it all.... There is but one refuge--the having +much to do. You have the mother's duties. Not that these can yet make +your life other than a burden to be patiently borne. Nothing can, except +the gradual adaptation of your soul to the new conditions.... It is +among my most cherished memories that I knew your husband, and from the +first delighted in him.... All blessing--and even the sorrow that is a +form of love has a heart of blessing--is tenderly wished for you." + +On seeing this lady for the first time after their mutual loss, George +Eliot asked her eagerly: "Do the children help? Does it make any +difference?" Some help there was for the widowed heart of this sorrowing +woman in throwing herself, with all her energies, into the work which +Lewes had left unfinished at his death, and preparing it for +publication, with the help of an expert. Another subject which occupied +her thoughts at this time, was the foundation of the "George Henry Lewes +Studentship," in order to commemorate the name of one who had done so +much to distinguish himself in the varied fields of literature, science, +and philosophy. The value of the studentship is slightly under L200 a +year. It is worth noticing that persons of both sexes are received as +candidates. The object of the endowment is to encourage the prosecution +of original research in physiology, a science to whose study Lewes had +devoted himself most assiduously for many years. Writing of this matter +to a young lady, one of the Girton students, George Eliot says: "I know +... will be glad to hear also that both in England and Germany the type, +or scheme, on which the studentship is arranged has been regarded with +satisfaction, as likely to be a useful model." + +Amid such preoccupations, and the preparation of 'Theophrastus Such' for +the press, the months passed on, and George Eliot was beginning to see +her friends again, when one day she not only took the world, but her +intimate circle by surprise, by her marriage with Mr. John Walter Cross, +on the 6th of May, 1880. The acquaintance with this gentleman, dating +from the year 1867, had long ago grown into the warmest friendship, and +his boundless devotion to the great woman whose society was to him as +his daily bread, no doubt induced her to take a step which could not +fail to startle even those who loved her the most. But George Eliot's +was a nature that needed some one especially to love. And though that +precious companionship, at once stimulating and sympathetic, which she +had so long enjoyed, was taken from her, she could still find comfort +during the remainder of her life in the love, the appreciation, and the +tender care which were proffered to her by Mr. Cross. Unfortunately her +life was not destined to be prolonged. + +Although seeming fairly well at this date, George Eliot's health, always +delicate, had probably received a shock, from which it never recovered. +Only six months before her marriage three eminent medical men were +attending her for a painful disease. However, there seemed still a +prospect of happiness for her when she and Mr. Cross went for a tour in +Italy, settling, on their return, at her favourite country house at +Witley. In the autumn they once more made their home in London, at Mr. +Cross's town house at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and Mrs. Cross, who was +again beginning to receive her friends, seemed, to all appearances, well +and happy, with a prospect of domestic love and unimpaired mental +activity stretching out before her. But it was not to be. On Friday, the +17th of December, George Eliot attended a representation of the +'Agamemnon,' in Greek, by Oxford undergraduates, and was so stirred by +the grand words of her favourite AEschylus, that she was contemplating a +fresh perusal of the Greek dramatists with her husband. On the following +day she went to the Saturday popular concert, and on returning home +played through some of the music she had been hearing. Her fatal cold +was probably caught on that occasion, for, although she received her +friends, according to custom, on the Sunday afternoon, she felt +indisposed in the evening, and on the following day an affection of the +larynx necessitated medical advice. There seemed no cause for alarm at +first, till on Wednesday it was unexpectedly discovered that +inflammation had arisen in the heart, and that no hope of recovery +remained. Before midnight of the 22nd of December, 1880, George Eliot, +who died at precisely the same age as Lewes, had passed quietly and +painlessly away; and on Christmas Eve the announcement of her death was +received with general grief. She was buried by the side of George Henry +Lewes, in the cemetery at Highgate. + +George Eliot's career has been habitually described as uniform and +uneventful. In reality nothing is more misleading. On the contrary, her +life, from its rising to its setting, describes an astonishingly wide +orbit. If one turns back in imagination from the little Staffordshire +village whence her father sprang, to the simple rural surroundings of +her own youth, and traces her history to the moment when a crowd of +mourners, consisting of the most distinguished men and women in England, +followed her to the grave, one cannot help realising how truly eventful +was the life of her who now joined in spirit the + + + "Choir invisible + Of those immortal dead who live again + In minds made better by their presence: live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn + For miserable aims that end in self, + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues." + + +LONDON: PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, +STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT *** + +***** This file should be named 36847.txt or 36847.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/8/4/36847/ + +Produced by Delphine Lettau, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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