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.