LAST YEARS.
'Daniel Deronda' is the last great imaginative work with which George
Eliot was destined to enrich the world. It came out in small volumes,
the appearance of each fresh number being hailed as a literary event. In
allusion to an author's feeling on the conclusion of a weighty task,
George Eliot remarks in one of her letters: "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 never 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."
This singular diffidence, arising from a sense of the tremendous
responsibility which her position entailed, was one of the most
noticeable characteristics of this great woman, and struck every one who
came in contact with her. Her conscientiousness made her even painfully
anxious to enter sympathetically into the needs of every person who
approached her, so as to make her speech a permanently fruitful
influence in her hearer's life. Such an interview, for example, as that
between Goethe and Heine--where the younger poet, after thinking all the
way what fine things to say to Goethe, was so disconcerted by the
awe-inspiring presence of the master, that he could find nothing better
to say than that the plums on the road-side between Jena and Weimar were
remarkably good--would have been impossible with one so eager always to
give of her best.
This deep seriousness of nature made her Sunday afternoon receptions,
which became more and more fashionable as time went on, something of a
tax to one who preferred the intimate converse of a few to that more
superficially brilliant talk which a promiscuous gathering brings with
it. Among the distinguished visitors to be met more or less frequently
at the Priory maybe mentioned Mr. Herbert Spencer, Professor Huxley, Mr.
Frederic Harrison, Professor Beesly, Dr. and Mrs. Congreve, Madame
Bodichon, Lord Houghton, M. Tourguenief, Mr. Ralston, Sir Theodore and
Lady Martin (better known as Helen Faucit), Mr. Burton of the National
Gallery, Mr. George Howard and his wife, Mr. C. G. Leland, Mr. Moncure
Conway, Mr. Justin McCarthy, Dr. Hueffer, Mr. and Mrs. Buxton Forman,
Mr. F. Myers, Mr. Sully, Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Pattison, Mr.
and Mrs. Clifford, Lady Castletown and her daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Burne
Jones, Mr. John Everett Millais, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr. Tennyson.
Persons of celebrity were not the only ones, however, that were made
welcome at the Priory. The liveliest sympathy was shown by both host
and hostess in many young people as yet struggling in obscurity, but in
whom they delighted to recognise the promise of some future excellence.
If a young man were pursuing some original scientific inquiry, or
striking out a new vein of speculation, in all London there was none
likely to enter with such zest into his ideas as G. H. Lewes. His
generous appreciation of intellectual gifts is well shown in the
following lines to the late Professor W. K. Clifford:
"Few things have given us more pleasure than the intimation in your note
that you had a _fiancee_. May she be the central happiness and motive
force of your career, and, by satisfying the affections, leave your
_rare_ intellect free to work out its glorious destiny. For, if you
don't become a glory to your age and time, it will be a sin and a shame.
Nature doesn't often send forth such gifted sons, and when she does,
Society usually cripples them. Nothing but marriage--a happy
marriage--has seemed to Mrs. Lewes and myself wanting to your future."
On the Sunday afternoon receptions just mentioned, G. H. Lewes acted, so
to speak, as a social cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the
fascination of his manners, diffused that general sense of ease and
_abandon_ so requisite to foster an harmonious flow of conversation. He
was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and Thackeray, Trollope, and Arthur
Helps were fond of quoting some of the stories which he would dramatise
in the telling. One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs
oftenest to George Eliot's friends, is that of the frail-looking woman
who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning
womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the
privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its
strongly-marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life
than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves
more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of
expression, especially softening the too prominent under-lip and massive
jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with grey, whose smooth bands made a
kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with
lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her
grey-blue eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute
sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully-shaped hands. She had a
pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely
sympathetic in quality: it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang
or played before more than one or two friends. Though her conversation
was perfectly easy, each sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed,
as the style of her published works. Indeed, she laid great stress on
the value of correct speaking and clearness of enunciation; and in
'Theophrastus Such' she laments "the general ambition to speak every
language except our mother English, which persons 'of style' are not
ashamed of corrupting with slang, false foreign equivalents, and a
pronunciation that crushes out all colour from the vowels, and jams them
between jostling consonants."
Besides M. d'Albert's Genevese portrait of George Eliot, we have a
drawing by Mr. Burton, and another by Mr. Lawrence, the latter taken
soon after the publication of 'Adam Bede.' In criticising the latter
likeness, a keen observer of human nature remarked that it conveyed no
indication of the infinite depth of her observant eye, nor of that
cold, subtle, and unconscious cruelty of expression which might
occasionally be detected there. George Eliot had an unconquerable
aversion to her likeness being taken: once, however, in 1860, she was
photographed for the sake of her "dear sisters" at Rosehill. But she
seems to have repented of this weakness, for, after the lapse of years,
she writes: "Mr. Lewes has just come to me after reading your letter,
and says, 'For God's sake tell her not to have the photograph
reproduced!' and I had nearly forgotten to say that the fading is what I
desired. I should not like this image to be perpetuated. It needs the
friendly eyes that regret to see it fade, and must not be recalled into
emphatic black and white for indifferent gazers. Pray let it vanish."
Those who knew George Eliot were even more struck by the force of her
entire personality than by her writings. Sympathetic, witty or learned
in turn, her conversation deeply impressed her hearers, being enriched
by such felicities of expression as: "The best lesson of tolerance we
have to learn is to tolerate intolerance." In answer to a friend's
surprise that a clever man should allow himself to be contradicted by a
stupid one, without dropping down on him, she remarked: "He is very
liable to drop down as a baked apple would." And of a very plain
acquaintance she said: "He has the most dreadful kind of ugliness one
can be afflicted with, because it takes on the semblance of beauty."
Poetry, music, and art naturally absorbed much attention at the Priory.
Here Mr. Tennyson has been known to read 'Maud' aloud to his friends:
Mr. Browning expatiated on the most recondite metrical rules: and
Rossetti sent presents of poems and photographs. In the following
unpublished letters George Eliot thanks the latter for his valued
gifts--"We returned only the night before last from a two months'
journey to the Continent, and among the parcels awaiting me I found your
generous gift. I am very grateful to you both as giver and poet.
"In cutting the leaves, while my head is still swimming from the
journey, I have not resisted the temptation to read many things as they
ought not to be read--hurriedly. But even in this way I have received a
stronger impression than any fresh poems have for a long while given me,
that to read once is a reason for reading again. The sonnets towards
'The House of Life' attract me peculiarly. I feel about them as I do
about a new cahier of music which I have been 'trying' here and there
with the delightful conviction that I have a great deal to become
acquainted with and to like better and better." And again, in
acknowledgment of some photographs: "The 'Hamlet' seems to me perfectly
intelligible, and altogether admirable in conception, except in the type
of the man's head. I feel sure that 'Hamlet' had a square anterior lobe.
"Mr. Lewes says, this conception of yours makes him long to be an actor
who has 'Hamlet' for one of his parts, that he might carry out this
scene according to your idea.
"One is always liable to mistake prejudices for sufficient inductions,
about types of head and face, as well as about all other things. I have
some impressions--perhaps only prejudices dependent on the narrowness of
my experience--about forms of eyebrow and their relation to passionate
expression. It is possible that such a supposed relation has a real
anatomical basis. But in many particulars facial expression is like the
expression of hand-writing: the relations are too subtle and intricate
to be detected, and only shallowness is confident."
George Eliot read but little contemporary fiction, being usually
absorbed in the study of some particular subject. "For my own spiritual
good I need all other sort of reading," she says, "more than I need
fiction. I know nothing of contemporary English novelists with the
exception of ----, and a few of ----'s works. My constant groan is that
I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have
sifted for me unread for want of time." For the same reason, on being
recommended by a literary friend to read Walt Whitman, she hesitated on
the ground of his not containing anything spiritually needful for her,
but, having been induced to take him up, she changed her opinion and
admitted that he _did_ contain what was "good for her soul." As to
lighter reading, she was fond of books of travel, pronouncing "'The
Voyage of the Challenger' a splendid book." Among foreign novelists she
was very partial to Henry Greville, and speaks of 'Les Koumiassine' as a
pleasant story.
Persons who were privileged enough to be admitted to the intimacy of
George Eliot and Mr. Lewes could not fail to be impressed by the immense
admiration which they had for one another. Lewes's tenderness, always on
the watch lest the great writer, with her delicately poised health,
should over-exert herself, had something of doglike fidelity. On the
other hand, in spite of George Eliot's habitually retiring manner, if
any one ever engaged on the opposite side of an argument to that
maintained by the brilliant _savant_, in taking his part, she usually
had the best of it, although in the most gentle and feminine way.
Although there was entire oneness of feeling between them, there was no
unanimity of opinion. George Eliot had the highest regard for Lewes's
opinions, but held to her own. One of the chief subjects of difference
consisted in their attitude towards Christianity: whereas he was its
uncompromising opponent, she had the greatest sympathy with its various
manifestations, from Roman Catholic asceticism to Evangelical austerity
and Methodist fervour. Her reverence for every form of worship in which
mankind has more or less consciously embodied its sense of the mystery
of all "this unintelligible world" increased with the years. She was
deeply penetrated by that tendency of the Positivist spirit which
recognises the beneficial element in every form of religion, and sees
the close, nay indissoluble, connection between the faith of former
generations and the ideal of our own. She herself found ample scope for
the needs and aspirations of her spiritual nature in the religion of
humanity. As has already been repeatedly pointed out, there runs through
all her works the same persistent teaching of "the Infinite Nature of
Duty." And with Comte she refers "the obligations of duty, as well as
all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and
real; the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the
past, the present, and the future."
Though George Eliot drew many of her ideas of moral cultivation from the
doctrines of Comte's _Philosophie Positive_, she was not a Positivist in
the strict sense of the word. Her mind was far too creative by nature
to give an unqualified adhesion to such a system as Comte's. Indeed, her
devotion to the idea of mankind, conceived as a collective whole, is not
so much characteristic of Positivists as of the greatest modern minds,
minds such as Lessing, Bentham, Shelley, Mill, Mazzini, and Victor Hugo.
Inasmuch as Comte co-ordinated these ideas into a consistent doctrine,
George Eliot found herself greatly attracted to his system; and Mr.
Beesly, after an acquaintance of eighteen years, considered himself
justified in stating that her powerful intellect had accepted the
teaching of Auguste Comte, and that she looked forward to the
reorganisation of belief on the lines which he had laid down. Still her
adherence, like that of G. H. Lewes, was only partial, and applied
mainly to his philosophy, and not to his scheme of social policy. She
went farther than the latter, however, in her concurrence. For Mr.
Lewes, speaking of the _Politique Positive_ in his 'History of
Philosophy,' admits that his antagonistic attitude had been considerably
modified on learning from the remark of one very dear to him, "to regard
it as an Utopia, presenting hypotheses rather than
doctrines--suggestions for future inquiries rather than dogmas for
adepts."
On the whole, although George Eliot did not agree with Comte's later
theories concerning the reconstruction of society, she regarded them
with sympathy "as the efforts of an individual to anticipate the work of
future generations." This sympathy with the general Positivist movement
she showed by subscribing regularly to Positivist objects, especially to
the fund of the Central Organisation presided over by M. Laffitte, but
she invariably refused all membership with the Positivist community. In
conversation with an old and valued friend, she also repeatedly
expressed her objection to much in Comte's later speculations, saying on
one occasion, "I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance
of Comte." The fact is that, although George Eliot was greatly
influenced by the leading Positivist ideas, her mind was too original
not to work out her own individual conception of life.
What this conception is has been already indicated, so far as space
would permit, in the discussion of her successive works. Perhaps in the
course of time her moralising analytical tendency encroached too much on
the purely artistic faculty. Her eminently dramatic genius--which
enabled her to realise characters the most varied and opposite in type,
somewhat in the manner of Shakespeare--became hampered by theories and
abstract views of life. This was especially shown in her latest work,
'The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,' a series of essays chiefly
satirising the weaknesses and vanities of the literary class. In these
unattractive "impressions" the wit is often laboured, and does not play
"beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice,
as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows." Its cutting
irony and incisive ridicule are no longer tempered by the humorous
laugh, but have the corrosive quality of some acrid chemical substance.
One of the papers, however, that entitled 'Debasing the Moral Currency,'
expresses a strongly marked characteristic of George Eliot's mind. It is
a pithy protest against the tendency of the present generation to turn
the grandest deeds and noblest works of art into food for laughter. For
she hated nothing so much as mockery and ridicule of what other people
reverenced, often remarking that those who considered themselves freest
from superstitious fancies were the most intolerant. She carried this
feeling to such a pitch that she even disliked a book like 'Alice in
Wonderland' because it laughed at the things which children had had a
kind of belief in. In censuring this vicious habit of burlesquing the
things that ought to be regarded with awe and admiration, she remarks,
"Let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty and pathos,
and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the
lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering,
and make ambition one with virtue."
'Looking Backward' is the only paper in 'Theophrastus Such' quite free
from cynicism. It contains, under a slightly veiled form, pathetically
tender reminiscences of her own early life. This volume, not published
till May 1879, was written before the incalculable loss which befell
George Eliot in the autumn of the preceding year.
After spending the summer of 1878 in the pleasant retirement of Witley,
Lewes and George Eliot returned to London. A severe cold taken by Lewes
proved the forerunner of a serious disorder, and, after a short illness,
this bright, many-sided, indefatigable thinker, passed away in his
sixty-second year. He had frequently said to his friends that the most
desirable end of a well-spent life was a painless death; and although
his own could not be called painless, his sufferings were at least of
short duration. Concerning the suffering and anguish of her who was left
behind to mourn him, one may most fitly say, in her own words, that,
"for the first sharp pangs there is no comfort--whatever goodness may
surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain." In her
case, also, the "clinging companionship with the dead" was gradually
linked with her living affections, and she found alleviation for her
sorrow in resuming those habits of continuous mental occupation which
had become second nature with her. In a letter addressed to a friend,
who, only a few short months afterwards, suffered a like heavy
bereavement, there breathes the spirit in which George Eliot bore her
own sorrow: "I understand it all.... There is but one refuge--the having
much to do. You have the mother's duties. Not that these can yet make
your life other than a burden to be patiently borne. Nothing can, except
the gradual adaptation of your soul to the new conditions.... It is
among my most cherished memories that I knew your husband, and from the
first delighted in him.... All blessing--and even the sorrow that is a
form of love has a heart of blessing--is tenderly wished for you."
On seeing this lady for the first time after their mutual loss, George
Eliot asked her eagerly: "Do the children help? Does it make any
difference?" Some help there was for the widowed heart of this sorrowing
woman in throwing herself, with all her energies, into the work which
Lewes had left unfinished at his death, and preparing it for
publication, with the help of an expert. Another subject which occupied
her thoughts at this time, was the foundation of the "George Henry Lewes
Studentship," in order to commemorate the name of one who had done so
much to distinguish himself in the varied fields of literature, science,
and philosophy. The value of the studentship is slightly under L200 a
year. It is worth noticing that persons of both sexes are received as
candidates. The object of the endowment is to encourage the prosecution
of original research in physiology, a science to whose study Lewes had
devoted himself most assiduously for many years. Writing of this matter
to a young lady, one of the Girton students, George Eliot says: "I know
... will be glad to hear also that both in England and Germany the type,
or scheme, on which the studentship is arranged has been regarded with
satisfaction, as likely to be a useful model."
Amid such preoccupations, and the preparation of 'Theophrastus Such' for
the press, the months passed on, and George Eliot was beginning to see
her friends again, when one day she not only took the world, but her
intimate circle by surprise, by her marriage with Mr. John Walter Cross,
on the 6th of May, 1880. The acquaintance with this gentleman, dating
from the year 1867, had long ago grown into the warmest friendship, and
his boundless devotion to the great woman whose society was to him as
his daily bread, no doubt induced her to take a step which could not
fail to startle even those who loved her the most. But George Eliot's
was a nature that needed some one especially to love. And though that
precious companionship, at once stimulating and sympathetic, which she
had so long enjoyed, was taken from her, she could still find comfort
during the remainder of her life in the love, the appreciation, and the
tender care which were proffered to her by Mr. Cross. Unfortunately her
life was not destined to be prolonged.
Although seeming fairly well at this date, George Eliot's health, always
delicate, had probably received a shock, from which it never recovered.
Only six months before her marriage three eminent medical men were
attending her for a painful disease. However, there seemed still a
prospect of happiness for her when she and Mr. Cross went for a tour in
Italy, settling, on their return, at her favourite country house at
Witley. In the autumn they once more made their home in London, at Mr.
Cross's town house at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and Mrs. Cross, who was
again beginning to receive her friends, seemed, to all appearances, well
and happy, with a prospect of domestic love and unimpaired mental
activity stretching out before her. But it was not to be. On Friday, the
17th of December, George Eliot attended a representation of the
'Agamemnon,' in Greek, by Oxford undergraduates, and was so stirred by
the grand words of her favourite AEschylus, that she was contemplating a
fresh perusal of the Greek dramatists with her husband. On the following
day she went to the Saturday popular concert, and on returning home
played through some of the music she had been hearing. Her fatal cold
was probably caught on that occasion, for, although she received her
friends, according to custom, on the Sunday afternoon, she felt
indisposed in the evening, and on the following day an affection of the
larynx necessitated medical advice. There seemed no cause for alarm at
first, till on Wednesday it was unexpectedly discovered that
inflammation had arisen in the heart, and that no hope of recovery
remained. Before midnight of the 22nd of December, 1880, George Eliot,
who died at precisely the same age as Lewes, had passed quietly and
painlessly away; and on Christmas Eve the announcement of her death was
received with general grief. She was buried by the side of George Henry
Lewes, in the cemetery at Highgate.
George Eliot's career has been habitually described as uniform and
uneventful. In reality nothing is more misleading. On the contrary, her
life, from its rising to its setting, describes an astonishingly wide
orbit. If one turns back in imagination from the little Staffordshire
village whence her father sprang, to the simple rural surroundings of
her own youth, and traces her history to the moment when a crowd of
mourners, consisting of the most distinguished men and women in England,
followed her to the grave, one cannot help realising how truly eventful
was the life of her who now joined in spirit the
"Choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end in self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."
LONDON: PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.