CHARLES BRAY: ‘Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life.’ London: Longmans & Co., 1885.
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[Sidenote: Remarkable proportions of Miss Evans’ head.]
Mr. Bray, an enthusiastic believer in phrenology, was so much struck with the grand proportions of her head that he took Marian Evans to London to have a cast taken. He thinks that, after that of Napoleon, her head showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person’s recorded.
MATHILDE BLIND: ‘George Eliot.’
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[Sidenote: The house in the Foleshill road.]
[Sidenote: Marian’s study.]
[Sidenote: Her bedroom.]
If you go through the quaint old city of Coventry, with its glorious spires, its huge factories, its narrow, irregular streets of timbered houses, you reach at last the road leading to the village of Foleshill, a mile or so outside the limits of the borough. Dirty coal-wharves and smoke-grimed houses, last remnants of the town, gradually give place to scattered cottages, dropped here and there among fields and hedge-rows, smoke-grimed too, but still green in summer. Then on the right comes a little brook with a pathway through some posts beside it. Three tall poplars in a garden fence overshadow it; and through the trees behind, you catch a glimpse of two unpretending brown-stone, semi-detached houses, regular suburban villas, with the same carriage-drive winding up among the trees to each, the same grass-lawn with its beds of evergreens, the same little strips of garden at the back--a mournful attempt to combine town and country; as uninspiring a spot as one can well conceive. To the first of these houses in 1841 came Mr. Evans, when he left Griff; and with him his grave, soft-voiced daughter, Mary Ann, or, as she now called herself, Marian.... “How often have I seen that pale, thoughtful face wandering along the path by the little stream,” said one of her early friends, as we turned into the gate.... Upstairs I was taken into a tiny room over the front door, with a plain square window. This was George Eliot’s little study. Here to the left on entering was her desk; and upon a bracket, in the corner between it and the window, stood an exquisite statuette of Christ, looking towards her. Here she lived among her books, which covered the walls. Here she worked with ardor in the new fields of thought which her friendship with the Brays opened to her.... Out of the study opened her bedroom, looking over the little villa garden with its carriage-drive under the shady trees. But three of these trees remain--a weeping lime, a venerable acacia, with the silvery sheen of a birch between them. In old days there were many more--so many, indeed, as to render the house gloomy in the extreme. But they served to shut off all the sight of the noisy road thirty yards away, though they could not shut off the sound of the busy coal-wharf farther on, whence foul and cruel words to horse and fellow-man floated up through the still summer air, and jarred painfully on that highly strung organization, as Miss Evans sat plunged in thought and work beside her window. It was one of the penalties of a nearer approach to the civilization she had so ardently longed for in her old country life at Griff. From the study you look on the exquisite spires of Coventry, or through the tree-stems on gently-swelling fields with their row of hedge-row elms against the sky.
ROSE G. KINGSLEY: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
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[Sidenote: Marian’s appearance and temperament.]
[Sidenote: A sketch by Mrs. Bray.]
[Sidenote: Her voice.]
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 vigor did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a peculiarly feminine organization. There exists a colored sketch done by Mrs. Bray about this period, which gives one a glimpse of George Eliot in her girlhood. In those Foleshill days she had a quantity of soft pale-brown hair worn in ringlets. Her head was massive, her features powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman, yet having a certain delicacy of outline. A neutral tone of coloring did not help to relieve this general heaviness of structure, the complexion being pale but not fair. Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its frame-work. Her eyes, of a gray-blue, constantly varying in color, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out gray, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. So much was this the case, that a young lady who had once enjoyed an hour’s conversation with her, came away under its spell with the impression that she was beautiful, but afterwards, on seeing George Eliot again when 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 her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea in being “like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Æolian harp.” It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy.
MATHILDE BLIND: ‘George Eliot.’
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[Sidenote: Conduct on her great change of opinion.]
It was impossible for such a nature as Miss Evans’s, in the enthusiasm of this first great change, to rest satisfied in compliance with the old forms, and she was so uneasy in an equivocal position that she determined to give up going to church. This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was a Churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter. Upon this, Miss Evans made up her mind to go into lodgings at Leamington, and to try to support herself by teaching.
The conclusion of the matter was that Mr. Evans withdrew his house from the agent’s hands, and his daughter went to stay at Griff, with Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Evans.
[Sidenote: Resumes attendance at church.]
[Sidenote: Her subsequent regrets.]
Miss Evans remained for about three weeks at Griff, at the end of which time, through the intervention of her brother, the Brays, and Miss Rebecca Franklin, the father was very glad to receive her again, and she resumed going to church as before.... In the last year of her life she told me that, although she did not think she had been to blame, few things had occasioned her more regret than this temporary collision with her father, which might, she thought, have been avoided with a little management.
J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
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[Sidenote: A devoted daughter.]
As her friend said with loving pride, “She was the most devoted daughter for those nine years that it is possible to imagine.” Her father always spent three days in the week away from home; and those three days were Miss Evans’ holidays, given up to her work and her friends. But on the evenings he was at home, not the most tempting invitation in the world would induce her to leave him.
[Sidenote: Her housekeeping.]
“If I am to keep my father’s house, I am going to do it thoroughly,” she would say. And thoroughly she did try to do her duty, even to the matter of cooking on certain occasions. A friend recalls a visit one afternoon, when she found Marian in comical distress over her failures. The cook was ill, and Miss Evans undertook to manufacture a batter-pudding. “And when it came to table, it broke. To think that the mistress could not even make a batter-pudding!”
ROSE G. KINGSLEY: ‘George Eliot’s County.’
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[Sidenote: Remarks on her connection with George Henry Lewes.]
Not only was Mr. Lewes’ previous family life irretrievably spoiled, but his home had been wholly broken up for nearly two years. In forming a judgment on so momentous a question, it is, above all things, necessary to understand what was actually undertaken, what was actually achieved; and, in my opinion, this can best be arrived at, not from any outside statement or arguments, but by consideration of the whole tenor of the life which follows.
J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
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[Sidenote: Her own words on the subject.]
One thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do _not_ act as I have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by remembering how subtile and complex are the influences that mould opinion.... From the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except, indeed, that being happy in each other, we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that.