It was in the spring of the year 1860 that I first became acquainted
with "George Eliot" and G H. Lewes in Florence. But it was during
their second visit to Italy in 1861 that I saw a good deal more of
them. It was in that year, towards the end of May, that I succeeded
in persuading them to accompany me in a visit to the two celebrated
Tuscan monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia. I had visited both on
more than one occasion previously--once with a large and very merry
party of both sexes, of whom Colley Grattan was one--but the excursion
made in company with G.H. Lewes and George Eliot was another-guess
sort of treat, and the days devoted to it stand out in high relief in
my memory as some of the most memorable in my life.
They were anxious to be moving northwards from Florence, and I had
some difficulty in persuading them to undertake the expedition. A
certain weight of responsibility, therefore, lay on me--that folks
whose days were so sure of being turned to good profit, should not by
my fault be led to waste any of them. But I had already seen enough of
both of them to feel sure that the specialties of the very exceptional
little experience I proposed to them would be appreciated and
acceptable. Neither he nor she were fitted by their habits, or indeed
by the conditions of their health, to encounter much "roughing," and
a certain amount of that was assuredly inevitable--a good deal more
five-and-twenty years ago than would be the case now. But if the flesh
was weak, truly the spirit was willing! I have heard grumbling and
discontent from the young of either sex in the heyday of health and
strength in going over the same ground. But for my companions on the
present occasion, let the difficulties and discomforts be what they
might, the continually varied and continually suggestive interest they
found in everything around them, overrode and overbore all material
considerations.
Never, I think, have I met with so impressionable and so delicately
sensitive a mind as that of George Eliot! I use "sensitive" in the
sense in which a photographer uses the word in speaking of his plates.
Everything that passed within the ken of that wonderful organism,
whether a thing or combination of things seen, or an incident, or a
trait revealing or suggesting character, was instantly reproduced,
fixed, registered by it, the operating light being the wonderful
native force of her intellect. And the photographs so produced were by
no means evanescent. If ever the admirably epigrammatic phrase, "wax
to receive and marble to retain," was applicable to any human mind,
it was so to that of George Eliot. And not only were the enormous
accumulations of stored-up impressions safe beyond reach of oblivion
or confusion, but they were all and always miraculously ready for
co-ordination with those newly coming in at each passing moment! Think
of the delight of passing, in companionship with such a mind, through
scenes and circumstances entirely new to it!
Lewes, too, was a most delightful companion, the cheeriest of
philosophers! The old saying of "_Comes jucundus in viâ pro vehiculo
est_," was especially applicable to him. Though very exhaustible in
bodily force, he was inexhaustible in cheerfulness, and above all in
unwearied, incessant, and minute care for "Polly." In truth, if any
man could ever be said to have lived in another person, Lewes in those
days, and to the end of his life, lived in and for George Eliot. The
talk of worshipping the ground she trod on, and the like, are pretty
lovers phrases, sometimes signifying much, and sometimes very little.
But it is true accurately and literally of Lewes. That care for her,
at once comprehensive and minute, unsleeping watchfulness, lest she
should dash her foot against a stone, was _never_ absent from his
mind. She had become his real self, his genuine _ego_ to all intents
and purposes. And his talk and thoughts were egoistic accordingly. Of
his own person, his ailments, his works, his ideas, his impressions,
you might hear not a word from him in the intercourse of many days.
But there was in his inmost heart a _naïf_ and never-doubting faith
that talk on all these subjects as regarded _her_ must be profoundly
interesting to those he talked with. To me, at all events, it was so.
Perhaps had it been otherwise, there would have been less of it.
We were to reach Camaldoli the first night, and had therefore to
leave Florence very early in the morning. At Pelago, a little
_paése_--village we should call it--on the Arno some fourteen or
fifteen miles above Florence, we were to find saddle-horses, the
journey we were about to make being in those days practicable in no
other way, unless on foot. There was at that time a certain Antonio da
Pelago, whose calling it was to act as guide, and to furnish horses.
I had known him for many years, as did all those whose ramblings took
them into those hills. He was in many respects what people call
"a character," and seemed to fancy himself to have in some degree
proprietary rights over the three celebrated Tuscan monasteries,
Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Vernia. He was well known to the
friars at each of these establishments, and indeed to all the sparse
population of that country-side. He was a very good and competent
guide and courier, possessed with a very amusingly exaggerated notion
of his own importance, and rather bad to turn aside from his own
preconceived and predetermined methods of doing everything that had to
be done. George Eliot at once made a study of him.
I am reminded, too, as I write, of the great amusement with which my
old and highly-valued friend of many years, Alfred Austin, who long
subsequently was making the same excursion with me and both our wives,
listened to an oration of the indispensable Antonio. One of his
baggage horses had strayed and become temporarily lost among the
hills. He was exceedingly wroth, and poured forth his vexation in
a torrent of very unparliamentary language. "_Corpo di Guida!_"
he exclaimed, among a curious assortment of heterogeneous
adjurations--"Body of Judas!" stooping to the ground as he spoke, and
striking the back of his hand against it, with an action that very
graphically represented a singular survival of the classical _testor
inferos!_ Then suddenly changing his mood, he apostrophised the
missing beast with the almost tearful reproach, "There! there now!
Thou hast made me throw away all my devotions! All! And Easter only
just gone!" That is to say, your fault has betrayed me into violence
and bad language, which has begun a new record of offences just after
I had made all clear by my Easter devotions.
The first stage of our rough ride was to the little hill town of
Prato Vecchio on the infant Arno, and close under the lofty peaks of
Falterona, in the flanks of which both the Arno and the Tiber rise.
The path, as it descends to the town, winds round the ruins of an
ancient castle, beneath the walls of which is still existent that
Fontebranda fountain, which Adam the forger in the _Inferno_ longed
for a drop of, and which almost all Dantescan scholars and critics
mistake for a larger and nowadays better known fountain of the same
name at Siena. On pointing it out to George Eliot, I found, of course,
that the name and the whole of Adam the forger's history was familiar
to her; but she had little expected to find his local habitation among
these wild hills; and she was unaware of the current mistake between
the Siena Fontebranda, and the little rippling streamlet before us.
The little _osteria_, at which we were to get some breakfast, was a
somewhat lurid dwelling in an uninviting back lane. But the ready and
smiling good-humour with which the hostess prepared her coffee and
bread, and eggs and bacon, availed much to make up for deficiencies,
especially for guests far more interested in observing every minute
specialty of the place, the persons, and the things, than they were
extreme to mark what was amiss. I remember George Eliot was especially
struck by the absence of either milk or butter, and by the fact that
the inhabitants of these hills, and indeed the Tuscans of the remoter
parts of the country generally, never use them at all--or did not in
those days.
But it was beyond Prato Vecchio that the most characteristic part of
our ride began. The hills, into the folds and gullies of which we
plunged almost immediately after leaving the walls of the little town,
are of the most arid, and it is hardly too much to say, repulsive
description. It is impossible to imagine soil more evidently to the
least experienced eye hopeless for any purpose useful to man, than
these rolling and deeply water-scored hills. Nor has the region any
of the characters of the picturesque. The soil is very friable,
consisting of an easily disintegrated slaty limestone, of a pale
whitey-brown in prevailing colour, varied here and there by stretches
of similar material greenish in tint. For the most part the hill-sides
are incapable of nourishing even a blade of grass; and they are
evidently in the process of rapid removal into the Mediterranean, for
the further extension of the plain that has been formed between Pisa
and the shore since the time, only a few hundred years ago, when Pisa
was a first-class naval power. All this, with the varied historical
corollaries and speculations which it suggested, was highly
interesting to my fellow-travellers.
But the ride, nowhere dangerous, though demanding some strong faith in
the sure-footedness of Antonio's steeds, is not an easy one. The
sun was beating with unmitigated glare on those utterly shadeless
hill-sides. It was out of the question to attempt anything beyond
a walk. The sides of the gullies, which had to be ascended and
descended, though never reaching to the picturesque proportions
of precipices, were yet sufficiently steep and rough to make very
fatiguing riding for a lady unaccustomed to such exercise. And George
Eliot was in no very robust condition of health at the time. And
despite his well dissembled anxiety I could see that Lewes was not
easy respecting her capability of resisting the heat, the fatigue, and
the unwonted exercise. But her cheerfulness and activity of interest
never failed her for an instant. Her mind "made increment of
everything." Nor even while I led her horse down some of the
worst descents did the exigencies of the path avail to interrupt
conversation, full of thought and far-reaching suggestiveness, as her
talk ever was.
At last we reached the spot where the territory of the monastery
commences; and it is one that impresses itself on the imagination and
the memory in a measure not likely to be forgotten. The change is like
a pantomime transformation scene! The traveller passes without the
slightest intermediate gradation from the dreary scene which has been
described, into the shade and the beauty of a region of magnificent
and well-managed forest! The bodily delight of passing from the severe
glare of the sun into this coolness, welcome alike to the skin and to
the eye, was very great. And to both my companions, but especially to
George Eliot, the great beauty of the scene we entered on gave the
keenest pleasure.
Assuredly Saint Romuald in selecting a site for his Camaldolese did
not derogate from the apparently instinctive wisdom which seems to
have inspired the founders of monasteries of every order and in every
country of Europe. Invariably the positions of the religious houses
were admirably well chosen; and that of Camaldoli is no exception to
the rule. The convent is not visible from the spot where the visitor
enters the forest boundary which marks the limit of the monastic
domain. Nearly an hour's ride through scenery increasing in beauty
with each step, where richly green lawns well stocked with cattle
are contrasted wonderfully with the arid desolation so recently left
behind, has still to be done ere the convent's hospitable door is
reached.
The convent door, however, in our case was not reached, for the
building used for the reception of visitors, and called the
_forestieria_, occupies its humble position by the road side a hundred
yards or so before the entrance to the monastery is reached. There
Antonio halted his cavalcade, and while showing us our quarters with
all the air of a master, sent one of his attendant lads to summon
the _padre forestieraio_--the monk deputed by the society to receive
strangers.
Had our party consisted of men only, we should have been received in
the convent, where there was a very handsome suite of rooms reserved
for the purpose. But females could not enter the precincts of the
cloister. The father in question very shortly made his appearance, a
magnificent figure, whose long black beard flowing over his perfectly
clean white robe made as picturesque a presentment of a friar as could
be desired. He was extremely courteous, and seemed to desire nothing
better than to talk _ad libitum_. But for my fellow travellers, rest
after their broiling ride was the thing most urgently needed.
And this requirement brought us to the consideration of our
accommodation for the night. The humble little _forestieria_ at
Camaldoli was not built for any such purpose. It never, of course,
entered into the heads of the builders that need could ever arise
for receiving any save male guests. And for such, as I have said, a
handsome suite of large rooms, both sitting-rooms and bedrooms,
with huge fireplaces for the burning of colossal logs, is provided.
Ordinary brethren of the order would not be lodged there. The
magnificence is reserved for a Cardinal (Gregory XVI. who had been
a Camaldolese frequently came here), or a travelling Bishop and his
suite, or a heretic English or American milord! But not for any
daughter of Eve! And the makeshift room over a carpenter's shop, which
is called the _forestieria_, has been devoted to the purpose only in
consequence of the incomprehensible mania of female English heretics
for visiting the disciples of St. Romuald. And there the food supplied
from the convent can be brought to them. But for the night? I had
warned my friends that they would have to occupy different quarters;
and it now became necessary to introduce George Eliot to the place she
was to pass the night in.
At the distance of about twenty minutes' walk above the convent,
across a lovely but very steep extent of beautifully green turf,
encircled by the surrounding forest, there is a cow-house, with an
annexed lodging for the cowherd and his wife. And over the cow stable
is--or was, for the monks have been driven away and all is altered
now!--a bedchamber with three or four beds in it, which the
toleration of the community has provided for the accommodation of the
unaccountable female islanders. I have assisted in conveying parties
of ladies up that steep grassy slope by the light of a full moon,
when all the beds had to be somewhat more than fully occupied. But
fortunately George Eliot had the whole chamber to herself--perhaps,
however, not quite fortunately, for it was a very novel and not
altogether reassuring experience for her to be left absolutely alone
for the night, to the protection of an almost entirely unintelligible
cowherd and his wife! But there was no help for it! G.H. Lewes did not
seem to be quite easy about it; but George Eliot did not appear to be
troubled by the slightest alarm or misgiving. She seemed, indeed, to
enjoy all the novelty and strangeness of the situation; and when she
bade us good-night from the one little window of her chamber over the
cows, as we turned to walk down the slope to our grand bedrooms at the
convent, she said she should be sure to be ready when we came for her
in the morning, as the cows would call her, if the cowherds failed to
do so.
The following morning we were to ride up the mountain to the Sagro
Eremo. Convent hours are early, and soon after the dawn we
had convoyed our female companion down the hill to the little
_forestieria_ for breakfast, where the _padre forestieraio_ gave us
the best coffee we had had for many a day. George Eliot declared that
she had had an exceptionally good night, and was delighted with the
talk of the magnificently black-bearded father, who superintended our
meal, while a lay brother waited on us.
The former was to start in a day or two on his triennial holiday, and
he was much excited at the prospect of it. His _naïf_ talk and quite
childlike questions and speculations as to times and distances, and
what could be done in a day, and the like, amused George Eliot much.
In reckoning up his available hours he deducted so much in each day
for the due performance of his canonical duties. I remarked to him
that he could read the prescribed service in the diligence, as I had
often seen priests doing. "Secular priests no doubt!" he said, "but
that would not suit one of _us!_"
Our ride up to the Sagro Eremo was a thing to be remembered! I had
seen and done it all before; but I had not seen or done it in company
with George Eliot. It was like doing it with a new pair of eyes, and
freshly inspired mind! The way is long and steep, through magnificent
forests, with every here and there a lovely enclosed lawn, and
fugitive peeps over the distant country. On our way up we met a
singular procession coming down.
It consisted of a low large cart drawn by two oxen, and attended by
several lay brothers and peasants, in the centre of which was seated
an enormously fat brother of the order, whose white-robed bust with
immense flowing white beard, emerging from a quantity of red wraps
and coverings, that concealed the lower part of his person, made an
extraordinary appearance. He was being brought down from the Sagro
Eremo to the superior comfort of the convent, because he was unwell.
At the Sagro Eremo--the sacred hermitage--is seen the operation of the
Camaldolese rule in its original strictness and perfection. At the
convent itself it is, or has become, much relaxed in many respects.
The Camaldolese, like other Carthusians, are properly _hermits_, that
is to say, their life is not conventual, but eremitical. Each brother
at the Sagro Eremo inhabits his own separately built cell,
consisting of sleeping chamber, study, wood-room, and garden, all of
microscopical dimensions. His food, exclusively vegetable, is
passed in to him by a little turntable made in the wall. There is a
refectory, in which the members of the community eat in common on two
or three festivals in the course of the year. On these occasions only
is any speech or oral communication between the members permitted.
There is a library tolerably well furnished with historical as well as
theological works. But it is evidently never used. Nor is there any
sign that the little gardens are in any degree cultivated by the
occupants of them. I remarked to George Eliot on the strangeness of
this abstinence from both the two permitted occupations, which might
seem to afford some alleviation of the awful solitude and monotony of
the eremitical life. But she remarked that the facts as we saw them
were just such as she should have expected to find!
The Sagro Eremo is inhabited by three classes of inmates; firstly, by
novices, who are not permitted to come down to the comparative luxury
and comfort and milder climate of the convent till they have passed
three or four years at the Sagro Eremo. Secondly, by those who have
been sent thither from the convent below as punishment for some
misdoing. Thirdly, by those who remain there of their own free will,
in the hope of meriting a higher and more distinguished reward for
their austerities in a future life. One such was pointed out to us,
who had never left the Eremo for more than fifty years, a tall,
very gaunt, very meagre old man with white hair, hollow cheeks, and
parchment skin, a nose like an eagle's beak, and deep-set burning
eyes--as typical a figure, in its way, as the rosy mountain of a man
whom we met travelling down in his ox cart.
Lewes was always anxious lest George Eliot should over-tire herself.
But she was insatiably interested both in the place and the denizens
of it.
Then before supper at the _forestieria_ was ready, our friend the
father _forestieraio_ insisted on showing us the growing crop of
haricot beans, so celebrated for their excellence that some of them
were annually sent to Pope Gregory the Sixteenth as long as he lived.
Then followed another night in the cow-house for George Eliot and for
us in the convent, and the next morning we started with Antonio and
his horses for La Vernia.
The ride thither from Camaldoli, though less difficult, is also less
peculiar than that from Prato Vecchio to the latter monastery, at
least, until La Vernia is nearly reached. The _penna_ (Cornish, Pen;
Cumbrian, Penrith; Spanish, Peña) on which the monastery is built is
one of the numerous isolated rocky points which have given their names
to the Pennine Alps and Apennines. The Penna de la Vernia rises very
steeply from the rolling ground below, and towers above the traveller
with its pyramidal point in very suggestive fashion. The well-wooded
sides of the conical hill are diversified by emergent rocks, and the
plume of trees on the summit seems to suggest a Latin rather than a
Celtic significance for the "Penna."
It is a long and tedious climb to the convent, but the picturesque
beauty of the spot, the charm of the distant outlook, and above all
the historical interest of the site, rewards the visitor's toil
abundantly. There is a _forestieria_ here also, within the precincts
of the convent, but not within the technical "cloister." It is simply
a room in which visitors of either sex may partake of such food as the
poor Franciscans can furnish them, which is by no means such as the
more well-to-do Carthusians of Camaldoli supply to their guests. Nor
have the quarters set apart for the sleeping accommodation of male
visitors within the cloister anything of the spacious old-world
grandeur of the strangers' suite of rooms at the latter monastery. The
difficulty also of arranging for the night's lodging of a female is
much greater at La Vernia. There is indeed a very fairly comfortable
house, kept under the management of two sisters of the order of Saint
Francis, expressly for the purpose of lodging lady pilgrims to the
shrine. For in former days--scarcely now, I think--the wives of the
Florentine aristocracy used to undertake a pilgrimage to La Vernia
as a work of devotion. But this house is at the bottom of the long
ascent--nearly an hour's severe climb from the convent--an arrangement
which necessarily involves much additional fatigue to a lady visitor.
George Eliot writes to Miss Sara Hennell on the 19th of June, a letter
inserted by Mr. Cross in his admirable biography of his wife--"I
wish you could have shared the pleasures of our last expedition from
Florence to the monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia. I think it
was just the sort of thing you would have entered into with thorough
zest." And she goes on to speak of La Vernia in a manner which seems
to show that it was the latter establishment which most keenly
interested and impressed her. She was in fact under the spell of the
great and still potent personality of Saint Francis, which informs
with his memory every detail of the buildings and rocks around you.
Each legend was full of interest for her. The alembic of her mind
seemed to have the secret of distilling from traditions, which in
their grossness the ordinary visitor turns from with a smile of
contempt, the spiritual value they once possessed for ages of faith,
or at least the poetry with which the simple belief of those ages has
invested them. Nobody could be more alive to every aspect of natural
beauty than she showed herself during the whole of this memorable
excursion. But at La Vernia the human interest over-rode the simply
aesthetic one.
Her day was a most fatiguing one. And when Lewes and I wearily climbed
the hill on foot, after escorting her to her sleeping quarters, he was
not a little anxious lest on the morrow she should find herself unable
for the ride which was to take us to the spot where a carriage was
available for our return to Florence.
But it was not so. She slept well under the care of the Franciscan
nuns, who managed to get her a cup of milkless coffee in the morning,
and so save her from the necessity of again climbing the hill. A
charming drive through the Casentino, or valley of the Upper Arno,
showing us the aspect of a Tuscan valley very different from that
of the Lower Arno, brought to an end an expedition which has always
remained in my memory as one of the most delightful of my life.
I had much talk with George Eliot during the time--very short at
Florence--when she was maturing her Italian novel, _Romola_. Of
course, I knew that she was digesting the acquisitions of each day
with a view to writing; but I had not the slightest idea of the period
to which her inquiries were specially directed, or of the nature of
the work intended. But when I read _Romola_, I was struck by the
wonderful power of absorption manifested in every page of it. The
rapidity with which she squeezed out the essence and significance of a
most complex period of history, and assimilated the net results of its
many-sided phases, was truly marvellous.
Nevertheless, in drawing the girl Romola, her subjectivity has
overpowered her objectivity. Romola is not--could never have been--the
product of the period and of the civilisation from which she is
described as having issued. There is far too much of George Eliot in
her. It was a period, it is true, in which female culture trod upon
the heels of the male culture of the time perhaps more closely than it
has ever done since. But let Vittoria Colonna be accepted, as probably
she may be, as a fair exponent of the highest point to which that
culture had reached, and an examination of the sonnets into which
she has put her highest thoughts and aspirations together with a
comparison of those with the mental calibre of Romola will, I think,
support the view I have taken.
Tito, on the other hand, gives us with truly wonderful accuracy and
vigour "the very form and pressure of the time." The pages which
describe him read like a quintessential distillation of the Florentine
story of the time and of the human results which it had availed to
produce. The character of Savonarola, of course, remains, and must
remain, a problem, despite all that has been done for the elucidation
of it since _Romola_ was written. But her reading of it is most
characteristically that which her own idiosyncrasy--so akin to it
in its humanitarian aspects, so superior to it in its methods of
considering man and his relations to the unseen--would lead one to
expect.
In 1869-70, George Eliot and Mr. Lewes visited Italy for the fourth
time. I had since the date of their former visit quitted my house in
Florence, and established myself in a villa and small _podere_ at
Ricorboli, a commune outside the Florentine Porta San Niccolò. And
there I had the great pleasure of receiving them under my roof,
assisted in doing so by my present wife. Their visit was all too short
a one--less than a week, I think.
But one knows a person with whom one has passed even that short time
under the same roof far better than can ever be the result of a very
much longer acquaintanceship during which one meets only in the
ordinary intercourse of society. And the really intimate knowledge of
her which I was thus enabled to obtain has left with me the abiding
conviction that she was intellectually by far the most extraordinarily
gifted person it has ever been my good fortune to meet. I do not
insist much on the uniform and constant tender consideration for
others, which was her habitual frame of mind, for I have known others
of whom the same might have been said. It is true that it is easy for
those in the enjoyment of that vigorous health, which renders mere
living a pleasure, to be kindly; and that George Eliot was never
betrayed by suffering, however protracted and severe, into the
smallest manifestation of impatience or unkindly feeling. But neither
is this trained excellence of charity matchless among women. What
was truly, in my experience, matchless, was simply the power of her
intelligence; the precision, the promptitude, the rapidity (though
her manner was by no means rapid), the largeness of the field of
knowledge, the compressed outcome of which she was at any moment ready
to bring to bear on the topic in hand; the sureness and lucidity
of her induction; the clearness of vision, to which muddle was as
impossible and abhorrent as a vacuum is supposed to be to nature; and
all this lighted up and gilded by an infinite sense of, and capacity
for, humour,--this was what rendered her to me a marvel, and an object
of inexhaustible study and admiration.
To me, though I never passed half an hour in conversation with her
without a renewed perception of the vastness of the distance which
separated her intelligence from mine, she was a companion each minute
of intercourse with whom was a delight. But I can easily understand
that, despite her perfect readiness to place herself for the nonce on
the intellectual level of those with whom she chanced to be brought in
contact, her society may not have been agreeable to all. I remember a
young lady--by no means a stupid or unintelligent one--telling me that
being with George Eliot always gave her a pain in "her mental neck,"
just as an hour passed in a picture gallery did to her physical neck.
She was fatigued by the constant attitude of looking up. But had she
not been an intelligent girl, she need not have constantly looked up.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that George Eliot's mental
habits exacted such an attitude from those she conversed with.
Another very prominent and notable characteristic of that most
remarkable idiosyncrasy was the large and almost universal tolerance
with which George Eliot regarded her fellow creatures. Often and
often has her tone of mind reminded me of the French saying, "_Tout
connaître ce serait tout pardonner!_" I think that of all the human
beings I have ever known or met George Eliot would have made the most
admirable, the most perfect father confessor. I can conceive nothing
more healing, more salutary to a stricken and darkened soul, than
unrestricted confession to such a mind and such an intelligence as
hers. Surely a Church with a whole priesthood of such confessors would
produce a model world.
And with all this I am well persuaded that her mind was at that time
in a condition of growth. Her outlook on the world could not have
been said at that time to have been a happy one. And my subsequent
acquaintance with her in after years led me to feel sure that this had
become much modified. She once said to me at Florence that she wished
she never had been born! I was deeply pained and shocked; but I am
convinced that the utterance was the result, not of irritation and
impatience caused by pain, but of the influence exercised on the tone
of thought and power of thinking by bodily malady. I feel sure that
she would not have given expression to such a sentiment when I and my
wife were subsequently staying with her and Lewes at their lovely
home in Surrey. She had by that time, I cannot but think, reached a
brighter outlook and happier frame of mind.
We had as neighbours at Ricorboli, although on the opposite bank of
the Arno, our old and very highly-valued friends, Mr. G.P. Marsh, the
United States Minister, and his charming wife, to whom for the sake of
both parties we were desirous of introducing our distinguished guests.
We thought it right to explain to Mrs. Marsh fully all that was not
strictly normal in the relationship of George Eliot and G.H. Lewes
before bringing them together, and were assured both by her and by her
husband that they saw nothing in the circumstances which need deprive
them of the pleasure of making the acquaintance of persons whom it
would be so agreeable to them to know. The Marsh's were at that time
giving rather large weekly receptions in the fine rooms of their
villa, and our friends accompanied us to one of these. It was very
easy to see that both ladies appreciated each other. There was a
large gathering, mostly of Americans, and Lewes exerted himself to be
agreeable and amusing--which he always was, when he wished to be, to a
degree rarely surpassed.
He and I used to walk about the country together when "Polly" was
indisposed for walking; and I found him an incomparable companion,
whether a gay or a grave mood were uppermost. He was the best
_raconteur_ I ever knew, full of anecdote, and with a delicious
perception of humour. She also, as I have said--very needlessly
to those who have read her books--had an exquisite feeling and
appreciation of the humorous, abundantly sufficient if unsupported by
other examples, to put Thackeray's dicta on the subject of woman's
capacity for humour out of court. But George Eliot's sense of humour
was different in quality rather than in degree from that which Lewes
so abundantly possessed. And it was a curious and interesting study to
observe the manifestation of the quality in both of them. It was not
that the humour, which he felt and expressed, was less delicate
in quality or less informed by deep human insight and the true
_nihil-humanum-a-me-alienum-puto_ spirit than hers, but it was less
wide and far-reaching in its purview of human feelings and passions
and interests; more often individual in its applicability, and less
drawn from the depths of human nature as exhibited by types
and classes. And often they would cap each other with a mutual
relationship similar to that between a rule of syntax and its example,
sometimes the one coming first and sometimes the other.
I remember that during the happy days of this visit I was writing a
novel, afterwards published under the title of _A Siren_, and Lewes
asked me to show him the manuscript, then nearly completed. Of course
I was only too glad to have the advantage of his criticism. He was
much struck by the story, but urged me to invert the order in which
it was told. The main incident of the plot is a murder caused by
jealousy, and I had begun by narrating the circumstances which led up
to it in their natural sequence. He advised me to begin by bringing
before the reader the murdered body of the victim, and then unfold the
causes which had led to the crime. And I followed his advice.
The murder is represented as having been committed on a sleeping
person by piercing the heart with a needle, and then artistically
covering the almost imperceptible orifice of the wound with wax, in
such sort as to render the discovery of the wound and the cause of
death almost impossible even by professional eyes. And I may mention
that the facts were related to me by a distinguished man of science at
Florence, as having really occurred.
Perhaps, since I have been led to speak of this story of mine, I may
be excused for recording an incident connected with it, which occurred
some years subsequently at Rome, in the drawing-room of Mrs. Marsh.
The scene of the story is Ravenna. And Mrs. Marsh specially introduced
me to a very charming young couple, the Count and Countess Pasolini
of Ravenna, as the author of _A Siren_. They said they had been most
anxious to know who could have written that book! They thought that no
Englishman could have been resident at Ravenna without their having
known him, or at least known _of_ him. And yet it was evident that a
writer, who could photograph the life and society of Ravenna as it had
been photographed in the book in question must have resided there and
lived in the midst of it for some time. But I never was in Ravenna for
a longer time than a week in my life.
It was many years after the visit of George Eliot and Mr. Lewes to my
house at Ricorboli that I and my wife visited them at The Heights,
Witley, in Surrey. I found that George Eliot had grown! She was
evidently happier. There was the same specially quiet and one may say
harmonious gentleness about her manner and her thought and her ways.
But her outlook on life seemed to be a brighter, a larger, and as I
cannot doubt, a healthier one. She would no longer, I am well assured,
have talked of regretting that she had been born! It would be to give
an erroneous impression if I were to say that she seemed to be more in
charity with all men, for assuredly I never knew her otherwise. But,
if the words may be used, as I think they may be understood, without
irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she
seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator. The ways of God
to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the
futurity of the world was a more hopeful one. Of course optimism had
with her to be long-sighted! But she seemed to have become reconciled
to the certainty that he who stands on a lofty eminence must needs see
long stretches of dusty road across the plains beneath him.
Nothing could be more enjoyable than the evenings passed by the
_partie carrée_ consisting of herself and Lewes, and my wife and
myself. I am afflicted by hardness of hearing, which shuts me out from
many of the pleasures of society. And George Eliot had that excellency
in woman, a low voice. Yet, partly no doubt by dint of an exertion
which her kindness prompted, but in great measure from the perfection
of her dainty articulation, I was able to hear her more perfectly than
I generally hear anybody. One evening Mr. and Mrs. Du Maurier joined
us. The Lewes's had a great regard for Mr. Du Maurier, and spoke to us
in a most feeling way of the danger which had then recently threatened
the eyesight of that admirable artist. We had music; and Mr. Du
Maurier sang a drinking song, accompanying himself on the piano.
George Eliot had specially asked for this song, saying, I remember, "A
good drinking song is the only form of intemperance I admire!"
I think also that Lewes seemed in higher spirits than when I had
been with him at Florence. But this was no more than an additional
testimony to the fact that _she_ was happier.
She also was, I take it, in better health, for we had some most
delightful walks over the exceptionally beautiful country in the
neighbourhood of their house, to a greater extent than she would, I
think, have been capable of at Florence.
One day we made a most memorable excursion to visit Tennyson at Black
Down. It was the first time I had ever seen him. He walked with us
round his garden, and to a point finely overlooking the country below,
charmingly varied by cultivated land, meadow and woodland. It was
a magnificent day; but as I looked over the landscape I thought I
understood why the woods, which one looks down on from a similar
Italian height, are called _macchie_--stains, whereas our ordinarily
more picturesque language knows no such term and no such image. In
looking over a wide-spread Italian landscape one is struck by the
accuracy and picturesque truth of the image; but it needs the sun and
the light and the atmosphere of Italy to produce the contrast of light
and shade which justifies the phrase.
Our friends were evidently _personae gratae_ at the court of the
Laureate; and after our walk he gave us the exquisite treat of reading
to us the just completed manuscript of _Rizpah_. And how he read it!
Everybody thinks that he has been impressed by that wonderful poem to
the full extent of the effect that it is capable of producing. They
would be astonished at the increase of weird terror which thrills the
hearer of the poet's own recital of it.
He was very good-natured about it. It was explained to him by George
Eliot that I should not be able to enjoy the reading unless I were
close to him, so he placed me by his side. He detected me availing
myself of that position to use my good eyes as well as my bad ears,
and protested; but on my appeal _ad misrecordiam_, and assurance that
I should so enjoy the promised treat to infinitely greater effect, he
allowed me to look over his shoulder as he read. After _Rizpah_ he
read the _Northern Cobbler_ to us, also with wonderful effect. The
difference between reading the printed lines and hearing them so read
is truly that between looking on a black and white engraving and the
coloured picture from which it has been taken. Another thing also
struck me. The provincial dialect, which, when its peculiarities are
indicated by letters, looks so uncouth as to be sometimes almost
puzzling, seemed to produce no difficulty at all as he read it, though
he in nowise mitigated it in the least. It seemed the absolutely
natural and necessary presentation of the thoughts and emotions to be
rendered. It was, in fact, a dramatic rendering of them of the highest
order.
I remember with equal vividness hearing Lowell read some of his
_Biglow Papers_ in the drawing-room of my valued friend Arthur Dexter,
of Boston, when there were no others present save him and his mother
and my wife and myself. And that also was a great treat; that also was
the addition of colour to the black and white of the printed page. But
the difference between reading and hearing was not so great as in the
case of the Laureate.
When, full of the delight that had been afforded us, we were taking
our leave of him, our host laid on us his strict injunctions to say
no word to any one of what we had heard, adding with a smile that was
half _naïf_, half funning, and wholly comic, "The newspaper fellows,
you know, would get hold of the story, and they would not do it as
well!"
And then our visit to the Lewes's in their lovely home drew to an end,
and we said our farewells, little thinking as we four stood in that
porch, that we should never in this world look on their faces more.
The history of George Eliot's intellect is to a great extent legible
in her books. But there are thousands of her readers in both
hemispheres who would like to possess a more concrete image of her
in their minds--an image which should give back the personal
peculiarities of face, voice, and manner, that made up her outward
form and semblance. I cannot pretend to the power of creating such an
image; but I may record a few traits which will be set down at all
events as truthfully as I can give them.
She was not, as the world in general is aware, a handsome, or even a
personable woman. Her face was long; the eyes not large nor beautiful
in colour--they were, I think, of a greyish blue--the hair, which she
wore in old-fashioned braids coming low down on either side of her
face, of a rather light brown. It was streaked with grey when last I
saw her. Her figure was of middle height, large-boned and powerful.
Lewes often said that she inherited from her peasant ancestors a frame
and constitution originally very robust. Her head was finely formed,
with a noble and well-balanced arch from brow to crown. The lips and
mouth possessed a power of infinitely varied expression. George Lewes
once said to me when I made some observation to the effect that she
had a sweet face (I meant that the face expressed great sweetness),
"You might say what a sweet hundred faces! I look at her sometimes in
amazement. Her countenance is constantly changing." The said lips and
mouth were distinctly sensuous in form and fulness.
She has been compared to the portraits of Savonarola (who was
frightful) and of Dante (who though stern and bitter-looking, was
handsome). _Something_ there was of both faces in George Eliot's
physiognomy. Lewes told us in her presence, of the exclamation uttered
suddenly by some one to whom she was pointed out at a place of public
entertainment--I believe it was at a Monday Popular Concert in St.
James's Hall. "That," said a bystander, "is George Eliot." The
gentleman to whom she was thus indicated gave one swift, searching
look and exclaimed _sotto voce_, "Dante's aunt!" Lewes thought this
happy, and he recognised the kind of likeness that was meant to the
great singer of the _Divine Comedy_. She herself playfully disclaimed
any resemblance to Savonarola. But, although such resemblance was very
distant--Savonarola's peculiarly unbalanced countenance being a strong
caricature of hers--some likeness there was.
Her speaking voice was, I think, one of the most beautiful I ever
heard, and she used it _conscientiously_, if I may say so. I mean that
she availed herself of its modulations to give thrilling emphasis to
what was profound in her utterances, and sweetness to what was gentle
or playful. She bestowed great care too on her enunciation, disliking
the slipshod mode of pronouncing which is so common. I have several
times heard her declare with enthusiasm that ours is a beautiful
language, a noble language even to the ear, when properly spoken; and
imitate with disgust the short, _snappy_, inarticulate way in which
many people utter it. There was no touch of pedantry or affectation in
her own measured, careful speech, although I can well imagine that she
might have been accused of both by those persons--unfortunately more
numerous than could be desired--who seem to take it for granted that
_all_ difference from one's neighbour, and especially a difference in
the direction of superiority, must be affected.
It has been thought by some persons that the influence of George Henry
Lewes on her literary work was not a fortunate one, that he fostered
too much the scientific bent of her mind to the detriment of its
artistic richness. I do not myself hold this opinion. I am even
inclined to think that but for his companionship and encouragement she
might possibly never have written fiction at all. It is, I believe,
impossible to over-estimate the degree to which the sunshine of
his complete and understanding sympathy and his adoring affection
developed her literary powers. She has written something to this
effect--perhaps more than once; I have not her biography at hand at
this moment for reference--in a letter to Miss Sara Hennell. And no
one who saw them together in anything like intimate intercourse could
doubt that it was true. As I have said before, Lewes worshipped
her, and it is considered a somewhat unwholesome experience to be
worshipped. Fortunately the process is not so common as to constitute
one of the dangers of life for the average human being! But in George
Eliot's case I really believe the process was not deleterious. Her
nature was at once stimulated and steadied by Lewes's boundless faith
in her powers, and boundless admiration for their manifestation. Nor
was it a case of sitting like an idol to be praised and incensed. Her
own mental attitude towards Lewes was one of warm admiration. She
thought most highly of his scientific attainments, whether well
foundedly or mistakenly I cannot pretend to gauge with accuracy. But
she also admired and enjoyed the sparkling brightness of his talk,
and the dramatic vivacity with which he entered into conversation and
discussion, grave or gay. And on these points I may venture to record
my opinion that she was quite right. I always used to think that the
touch of Bohemianism about Lewes had a special charm for her. It must
have offered so piquant a contrast with the middle-class surroundings
of her early life. I observed that she listened with great complacency
to his talk of theatrical things and people. Lewes was fond of
talking about acting and actors, and in telling stories of
celebrated theatrical personages, would imitate--half involuntarily
perhaps--their voice and manner. I remember especially his doing this
with reference to Macready.
Both of them loved music extremely. It was a curious, and, to me,
rather pathetic study to watch Lewes--a man naturally self-sufficient
(I do not use the word in any odious sense), of a combative turn of
intellect, and with scarcely any diffidence in his nature--so humbly
admitting, and even insisting upon, "Polly's" superiority to himself
in every department. Once when he was walking with my wife in the
garden of their house in Surrey, she turned the conversation which had
been touching other topics to speak of George Eliot. "Oh," said Lewes,
stopping short and looking at her with those bright eyes of his,
"_Your blood be on your own head_! I didn't begin it; but if you wish
to speak of her, _I_ am always ready." It was this complete candour,
and the genuineness of his admiring love for her, which made its
manifestations delightful, and freed them from offence.