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.