[Sidenote: Dinah.]
The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods--once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father’s last residence, Foleshill.
[Sidenote: Adam.]
The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father’s early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede--only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and the mutual relation to Hetty--_i. e._, to the girl who commits child-murder--the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax toward which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader’s interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.
MARIAN EVANS [LEWES]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
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[Sidenote: ‘The Mill on the Floss’ not strictly autobiographical.]
[Sidenote: Labor of writing ‘Romola.’]
[Sidenote: Her sense of possession.]
[Sidenote: Dorothea and Rosamond.]
We must be careful not to found too much on _suggestions_ of character in George Eliot’s books; and this must particularly be borne in mind in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ No doubt the early part of Maggie’s portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot’s own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life, but so mixed with fictitious elements and situations that it would be absolutely misleading to trust to it as a true history. The writing of ‘Romola’ ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, “I began it a young woman--I finished it an old woman.” She told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a “not herself,” which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this in regard to the scene in ‘Middlemarch’ between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond’s drawing-room. Then, abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. Of all the characters she had attempted she found Rosamond’s the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of “possession” it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy.
J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
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[Sidenote: Her MSS.]
George Eliot was the most careful and accurate among authors. Her beautifully written manuscript, free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second-hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work’s sake, which she makes a prominent characteristic of ‘Adam Bede,’ and ‘Stradivarius.’
---- ----: ‘George Eliot,’ _Blackwood’s Magazine_, February, 1881.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Inscriptions on MSS.]
The manuscript of ‘Adam Bede’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life.”
The manuscript of ‘The Mill on the Floss’ bears the following inscription:
“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March, 1860.”
The manuscript of ‘Romola’ bears the following inscription:
“To the Husband whose perfect love has been the best source of her insight and strength, this manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer.”
The manuscript of ‘Felix Holt’ bears the following inscription: “From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love.”
The manuscript of ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear--every day dearer--Husband.”
The manuscript of ‘Middlemarch’ bears the following inscription:
“To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.”
The manuscript of ‘Daniel Deronda’ bears the following inscription:
“To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes.
“Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
* * * * *
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising Haply I think on thee--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Depression after finishing each book.]
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 ever 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.
[Sidenote: Attitude towards criticism.]
I hardly ever read anything that is written about myself--indeed, never unless my husband expressly wishes me to do so by way of exception. I adopted this rule many years ago as a necessary preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying my power of writing....
I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the short-comings 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.
GEORGE ELIOT: _Letters_, quoted by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in ‘Last Words from George Eliot,’ _Harper’s Magazine_, for March, 1882.
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[Sidenote: George Eliot in 1864.]
It was at Villino Trollope, [the Florentine residence of Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope] that we first saw ... George Eliot. She is a woman of forty, perhaps, of large frame and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation, Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed a young girl who had just began to handle a pen, how frankly she related her own literary experience, and how gently she _suggested_ advice. True genius is always allied to humility, and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as much as we had ever admired the writer. “For years,” said she to us, “I wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.”