On the 31st of May, 1849, Mr. Robert Evans died, after a long illness. The Brays persuaded his daughter, who was worn out by anxiety and hard work, to accompany them in a trip to the Continent. At Geneva, where they arrived in July, she decided to remain a while, living at a _pension_, and carrying on various studies. In October she left the _pension_ to board in the family of M. d’Albert Durade, an artist. He and his wife became her fast friends; M. Durade painted her portrait, and subsequently translated some of her works into French.
Miss Evans returned to England in March, 1850, and, after visiting her brother and sister, made her home at Rosehill with the Brays for more than a year, with occasional visits to London. At the end of September, 1851, she accepted the position of assistant editor of The Westminster Review, and went to board with the family of the publisher, Mr. Chapman, in the Strand. She now became acquainted with Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and other leading thinkers and writers. In 1854 was published her translation of Feuerbach’s ‘Essence of Christianity,’ with her name (now written _Marian_ Evans), on the title-page; this, Mr. Cross informs us, was the only time her real name ever appeared in connection with her work.
In July, 1854, Marian Evans consented to become the wife of George Henry Lewes, though a formal and legal marriage was impossible. They at once went abroad, where they remained until March, 1855; spending the greater part of the time at Weimar and Berlin. After their return to England they lived for over three years in lodgings at Richmond, both working hard, though the health of neither was good. Mrs. Lewes contributed at this time to The Leader and The Westminster Review. She also finished a translation of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics,’ which she had commenced abroad.
In September, 1856, she began, as an experiment, to write fiction. In November _The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton_ was forwarded to the Blackwoods by Mr. Lewes as the work of a friend of his. It was published in Blackwood’s Magazine early in 1857, and fifty guineas paid for it. An arrangement was made by which “George Eliot” was to supply further _Scenes from Clerical Life_. _Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story_ came next, followed by _Janet’s Repentance_. In December these stories were issued in a volume by the Blackwoods, and the author received £120 for the first edition.
ADAM BEDE, her first novel, was published in 1859. She received £800 for the copyright during four years. The book was received with enthusiasm. It was followed by THE MILL ON THE FLOSS (1860), SILAS MARNER (1861), ROMOLA (1863), FELIX HOLT (1866), _The Spanish Gypsy_, a drama (1868), MIDDLEMARCH (1871-2), _Poems_, collected “1874,” DANIEL DERONDA (1876), and _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ (1879). The short story called _The Lifted Veil_ was published in Blackwood’s, July, 1859; _Brother Jacob_ appeared in The Cornhill Magazine, July, 1864. ROMOLA also made its appearance in The Cornhill, the publishers paying for it the sum of £7,000. £5,000 was received from the Blackwoods for FELIX HOLT; and the profits of MIDDLEMARCH and DANIEL DERONDA were still greater.
In February, 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes removed to Holly Lodge, Wandsworth; in December, 1860, to 16 Blandford Square; and in November, 1863, to their permanent home, “The Priory,” 21 North Bank, Regent’s Park. They purchased in 1876 a country-house at Witley, near Godalming, Surrey. They were both fond of travelling, and the record of their many continental journeys is full of interest. It was their custom to leave town at once as soon as George Eliot had finished a book.
In November, 1878, occurred the death of Mr. Lewes. For some time George Eliot remained in seclusion, broken down by grief. She edited Mr. Lewes’ MSS., and established as a memorial the George Henry Lewes studentship at Cambridge.
In May, 1880, she was married to Mr. John Walter Cross, who had long been the dear friend of herself and Mr. Lewes. Her marriage created general surprise. It may best be understood by those who have become acquainted, through Mr. Cross’s delicate and conscientious work, ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ with the needs of her singularly sensitive nature.
Mr. and Mrs. Cross immediately left England for the Continent, returning in July to Witley. Mrs. Cross had a long illness in the autumn, which left her much weakened. On the 22d of December, 1880, she died at No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, having been confined to the house only four days.
Her husband concludes her biography with the words: “Her spirit joined
‘---- that choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.’”
Nor can any other words be so fit as these of her own--words wherein “the precious life-blood of a master spirit” is “embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
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[Sidenote: Early home.]
[Sidenote: An anecdote of her childhood.]
The road ascends through a deep cutting overhung by trees which cling to the rocky bank wherever they can find roothold, while festoons of ivy catch every ray of sunlight on their glossy leaves. Past the wood, green fields stretch away on the right of the road; and beyond them, through the branches of fir, elm, oak and birch-trees, a glint of red brick tells us we have reached our goal, for there stands Griff House.... It is a pleasant, substantial house, built of warm red brick, with old-fashioned, small-paned casement windows. The walls are almost hidden by creepers, a glorious old pear-tree, roses and jessamine, and over one end a tangle of luxuriant ivy. Across the smooth green lawn and its flower-beds an old stone vase covered with golden lichen made a point of color beneath the silver stems of a great birch-tree. Outside the light iron fence a group of sheep were bleating below a gnarled and twisted oak. Behind them rose the rich purple-brown wood we had come through, and beyond the wood we caught glimpses of far-away blue distance, swelling uplands and wide-stretching valleys, with here and there a huge chimney sending up a column of black smoke or white puff of steam. On the house-roof pigeons were cooing forth their satisfaction at the sunshine. From the yew-tree close by, a concert of small chirping voices told that Spring was coming.... Within, the house is much in the same state as in the days of Mary Ann Evans’s girlhood. She went for a short time to school at Nuneaton, coming home from Saturday till Monday; but one week, in spite of her love of learning, the little maiden’s heart failed her, and when the time came to start for school she had disappeared. After hours of search, she was at last discovered hiding under the great four-post mahogany bed, which was shown us in its original place in the spare room.
ROSE G. KINGSLEY: ‘George Eliot’s County,’ in _The Century_, July, 1885.
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[Sidenote: Her father.]
The father was a remarkable man, and many of the leading traits in his character are to be found in Adam Bede and in Caleb Garth--although, of course, neither of these is a portrait.
[Sidenote: Her mother.]
[Sidenote: Not a precocious child.]
[Sidenote: “A large slow-growing nature”: Mr. Cross’s important characterization.]
His second wife was a woman with an unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd, practical person, with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Hers was an affectionate, warm-hearted nature, and her children, on whom she cast “the benediction of her gaze,” were thoroughly attached to her. She came of a race of yeomen, and her social position was, therefore, rather better than her husband’s at the time of their marriage. Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in the “Mill on the Floss.” The little girl very early became possessed with the idea that she was going to be a personage in the world; and Mr. Charles Lewes has told me an anecdote which George Eliot related of herself as characteristic of this period of her childhood. When she was only four years old she recollected playing on the piano, of which she did not know one note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. This was the time when the love for her brother grew into the child’s affections. She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything he did. She was not, in these baby-days, in the least precocious in learning. In fact, her half-sister, Mrs. Houghton, who was some fourteen years her senior, told me that the child learned to read with some difficulty; but Mr. Isaac Evans says that this was not from any slowness in apprehension, but because she liked playing so much better. Mere sharpness, however, was not a characteristic of her mind. Hers was a large, slow-growing nature; and I think it is, at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant phenomenon about her. In her moral development she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that was most marked in her all through life, namely, the absolute need of some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment or the keenest suffering, knowing “all the wealth and all the woe” of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive in the highest degree.