greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute
sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be
faithful to coming duties."
For _Scenes of Clerical Life_ she received six hundred dollars for the
first edition, and much more after her other books appeared.
And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind, _Adam
Bede_, the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her
aunt, Elizabeth Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant
girl had murdered her child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans,
who was a Methodist preacher, stayed with her all night, praying with
her, and at last she burst into tears and confessed her crime.
Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and
ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.
When the first pages of _Adam Bede_ were shown to Mr. Blackwood,
he said, "That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich,
Dresden, and Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the
book in this time. When it was finished, she wrote on the manuscript,
_Jubilate_. "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of
a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which
his love has conferred on my life."
For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright
for four years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were
talking about it. John Murray said there had never been such a book.
Charles Reade said, putting his finger on Lisbeth's account of her
coming home with her husband from their marriage, "the finest thing
since Shakespeare." A workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my
boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on
us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am
sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton said, in the House of Commons: "As the
farmer's wife says in _Adam Bede_, 'It wants to be hatched over again
and hatched different.'" This of course greatly helped to popularize
the book.
To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest gratitude. They
were able now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once.
The poverty and the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my
magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy;
but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known
less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as
the accompaniments of success. I often think of my dreams when I was
four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make
me.... I am assured now that _Adam Bede_ was worth writing,--worth
living through those long years to write. But now it seems impossible
that I shall ever write anything so good and true again." Up to this
time the world did not know who George Eliot was; but as a man by
the name of Liggins laid claim to the authorship, and tried to borrow
money for his needs because Blackwood would not pay him, the real name
of the author had to be divulged.
Five thousand copies of _Adam Bede_ were sold the first two weeks, and
sixteen thousand the first year. So excellent was the sale that Mr.
Blackwood sent her four thousand dollars in addition to the first
four. The work was soon translated into French, German, and Hungarian.
Mr. Lewes' _Physiology of Common Life_ was now published, but it
brought little pecuniary return.
The reading was carried on as usual by the two students. The _Life
of George Stephenson_; the _Electra_ of Sophocles; the _Agamemnon_ of
Aeschylus, Harriet Martineau's _British Empire in India_; and _History
of the Thirty Years' Peace_; Béranger, _Modern Painters_, containing
some of the finest writing of the age; Overbech on Greek art; Anna
Mary Howitt's book on Munich; Carlyle's _Life of Frederick the Great_;
Darwin's _Origin of Species_; Emerson's _Man the Reformer_, "which
comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning"; Buckle's _History of
Civilization_; Plato and Aristotle.
An American publisher now offered her six thousand dollars for a book,
but she was obliged to decline, for she was writing the _Mill on the
Floss_, in 1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars
for the first edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers
fifteen hundred dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz paid her five
hundred for the German reprint.
She said: "I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that
I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But
it is time that I should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh
ideas." They went at once to Italy, where they spent several months in
Florence, Venice, and Rome.
In the former city she made her studies for her great novel, _Romola_.
She read Sismondi's _History of the Italian Republics_, Tenneman's
_History of Philosophy_, T.A. Trollope's _Beata_, Hallam on the _Study
of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, Gibbon on the _Revival of Greek
Learning_, Burlamachi's _Life of Savonarola_; also Villari's life
of the great preacher, Mrs. Jameson's _Sacred and Legendary Art_,
Machiavelli's works, Petrarch's Letters, _Casa Guidi Windows_, Buhle's
_History of Modern Philosophy_, Story's _Roba di Roma_, Liddell's
_Rome_, Gibbon, Mosheim, and one might almost say the whole range of
Italian literature in the original. Of Mommsen's _History of Rome_
she said, "It is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it
without the deepest stirrings."
The study necessary to make one familiar with fifteenth century times
was almost limitless. No wonder she told Mr. Cross, years afterward,
"I began _Romola_ a young woman, I finished it an old woman"; but
that, with _Adam Bede_ and _Middlemarch_, will be her monument. "What
courage and patience," she says, "are wanted for every life that
aims to produce anything!" "In authorship I hold carelessness to be
a mortal sin." "I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write
_Romola_."
For this one book, on which she spent a year and a half, _Cornhill
Magazine_ paid her the small fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars.
She purchased a pleasant home, "The Priory," Regent's Park, where she
made her friends welcome, though she never made calls upon any, for
lack of time. She had found, like Victor Hugo, that time is a very
precious thing for those who wish to succeed in life. Browning,
Huxley, and Herbert Spencer often came to dine.
Says Mr. Cross, in his admirable life: "The entertainment was
frequently varied by music when any good performer happened to be
present. I think, however, that the majority of visitors delighted
chiefly to come for the chance of a few words with George Eliot
alone. When the drawing-room door of the Priory opened, a first glance
revealed her always in the same low arm-chair on the left-hand side
of the fire. On entering, a visitor's eye was at once arrested by the
massive head. The abundant hair, streaked with gray now, was draped
with lace, arranged mantilla fashion, coming to a point at the top
of the forehead. If she were engaged in conversation, her body was
usually bent forward with eager, anxious desire to get as close as
possible to the person with whom she talked. She had a great
dislike to raising her voice, and often became so wholly absorbed in
conversation that the announcement of an in-coming visitor failed to
attract her attention; but the moment the eyes were lifted up, and
recognized a friend, they smiled a rare welcome--sincere, cordial,
grave--a welcome that was felt to come straight from the heart, not
graduated according to any social distinction."
After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political
economy, _Felix Holt_ was written, in 1866, and for this she received
from Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.
Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every
way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of
her books, which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for
rest.
In 1868 she published her long poem, _The Spanish Gypsy_, reading
Spanish literature carefully, and finally passing some time in Spain,
that she might be the better able to make a lasting work. Had she
given her life to poetry, doubtless she would have been a great poet.
_Silas Marner_, written before _Romola_, in 1861, had been well
received, and _Middlemarch_, in 1872, made a great sensation. It was
translated into several languages. George Bancroft wrote her from
Berlin that everybody was reading it. For this she received a much
larger sum than the thirty-five thousand which she was paid for
_Romola_.
A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of
pleasure grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and
flowers about her house. "Sunlight and sweet air," she said, "make a
new creature of me." _Daniel Deronda_ followed in 1876, for which, it
is said, she read nearly a thousand volumes. Whether this be true
or not, the list of books given in her life, of her reading in these
later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for any who desire
real knowledge.
At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few
friends like the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady
Holland. Both were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor
health. Finally, after a ten days' illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.
To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and
his affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to
be told that I am loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe
Spencer a debt of gratitude. It was through him that I learned to know
Marian,--to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been
a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God
bless her!"
Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had
long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than
George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry
Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to
be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory
of the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do
certain things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the
Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.
Mr. Cross' mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died,
and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting.
They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger
man found that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind
of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.
"I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could
have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this
gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all
the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous
little planet."
Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a
half after Mr. Lewes' death, his son Charles giving her away, and went
at once to Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my
old self.... To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and
to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength
to endure." Having passed through a severe illness, she wrote to a
friend: "I have been cared for by something much better than angelic
tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life has been
prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection
that has chosen to watch over me."
She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse,
she said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could
have the happiness instead of me."
On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne
Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily.
George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five
hundred dollars for woman's higher education at Girton College, and
helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of
early times who was proud to be remembered.
She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she
especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. Then
they read Max Muller's works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever
was best in English, French, and German literature. Milton she called
her demigod. Her husband says she had "a limitless persistency in
application." Her health was better, and she gave promise of doing
more great work. When urged to write her autobiography, she said, half
sighing and half smiling: "The only thing I should care much to dwell
on would be the absolute despair I suffered from, of ever being able
to achieve anything. No one could ever have felt greater despair, and
a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler."
Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to see _Agamemnon_ performed in
Greek by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St.
James Hall. She took cold, and on Monday was treated for sore throat.
On Wednesday evening the doctors came, and she whispered to her
husband, "Tell them I have great pain in the left side." This was
the last word. She died with every faculty bright, and her heart
responsive to all noble things.
She loved knowledge to the end. She said, "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."
She had the broadest charity for those whose views differed from
hers. She said, "The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn, is to
tolerate intolerance." She hoped for and "looked forward to the time
when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as
irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am
falling."
One Sunday afternoon I went to her grave in Highgate Cemetery, London.
A gray granite shaft, about twenty-five feet high, stands above it,
with these beautiful words from her great poem:--
"O may I join the choir invisible,
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence."
HERE LIES THE BODY
OF
GEORGE ELIOT,
MARY ANN CROSS.
BORN, 22d NOVEMBER, 1819;
DIED, 22d DECEMBER, 1880.
A stone coping is around this grave, and bouquets of yellow crocuses
and hyacinths lie upon it. Next to her grave is a horizontal slab,
with the name of George Henry Lewes upon the stone.
ELIZABETH FRY.
[Illustration: My attached and obliged friend Elizabeth Fry]
When a woman of beauty, great wealth, and the highest social position,
devotes her life to the lifting of the lowly and the criminal, and
preaches the Gospel from the north of Scotland to the south of France,
it is not strange that the world admires, and that books are written
in praise of her. Unselfishness makes a rare and radiant life, and
this was the crowning beauty of the life of Elizabeth Fry.
Born in Norwich, England, May 21, 1780, Elizabeth was the third
daughter of Mr. John Gurney, a wealthy London merchant. Mrs. Gurney,
the mother, a descendant of the Barclays of Ury, was a woman of much
personal beauty, singularly intellectual for those times, making her
home a place where literary and scientific people loved to gather.
Elizabeth wellnigh idolized her mother, and used often to cry after
going to bed, lest death should take away the precious parent. In the
daytime, when the mother, not very robust, would sometimes lie down
to rest, the child would creep to the bedside and watch tenderly and
anxiously, to see if she were breathing. Well might Mrs. Gurney say,
"My dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and is, in every
sense of the word, truly engaging."
Mrs. Fry wrote years afterward: "My mother was most dear to me, and
the walks she took with me in the old-fashioned garden are as fresh
with me as if only just passed, and her telling me about Adam and Eve
being driven out of Paradise. I always considered it must be just
like our garden.... I remember with pleasure my mother's beds of wild
flowers, which, with delight, I used as a child to attend with her; it
gave me that pleasure in observing their beauties and varieties that,
though I never have had time to become a botanist, few can imagine, in
my many journeys, how I have been pleased and refreshed by observing
and enjoying the wild flowers on my way."
The home, Earlham Hall, was one of much beauty and elegance, a seat of
the Bacon family. The large house stood in the centre of a well-wooded
park, the river Wensum flowing through it. On the south front of the
house was a large lawn, flanked by great trees, underneath which wild
flowers grew in profusion. The views about the house were so artistic
that artists often came there to sketch.
In this restful and happy home, after a brief illness, Mrs. Gurney
died in early womanhood, leaving eleven children, all young, the
smallest but two years old. Elizabeth was twelve, old enough to feel
the irreparable loss. To the day of her death the memory of this time
was extremely sad.
She was a nervous and sensitive child, afraid of the dark, begging
that a light be left in her room, and equally afraid to bathe in
the sea. Her feelings were regarded as the whims of a child, and her
nervous system was injured in consequence. She always felt the lack of
wisdom in "hardening" children, and said, "I am now of opinion that my
fear would have been much more subdued, and great suffering spared,
by its having been still more yielded to: by having a light left in my
room, not being long left alone, and never forced to bathe."
After her marriage she guided her children rather than attempt "to
break their wills," and lived to see happy results from the good sense
and Christian principle involved in such guiding. In her prison work
she used the least possible governing, winning control by kindness and
gentleness.
Elizabeth grew to young womanhood, with pleasing manners, slight and
graceful in body, with a profusion of soft flaxen hair, and a bright,
intelligent face. Her mind was quick, penetrating, and original. She
was a skilful rider on horseback, and made a fine impression in her
scarlet riding-habit, for, while her family were Quakers, they did not
adopt the gray dress.
She was attractive in society and much admired. She writes in her
journal: "Company at dinner; I must beware of not being a flirt, it is
an abominable character; I hope I shall never be one, and yet I fear I
am one now a little.... I think I am by degrees losing many excellent
qualities. I lay it to my great love of gayety, and the world.... I am
now seventeen, and if some kind and great circumstance does not happen
to me, I shall have my talents devoured by moth and rust. They will
lose their brightness, and one day they will prove a curse instead of
a blessing."
Before she was eighteen, William Savery, an American friend, came to
England to spend two years in the British Isles, preaching. The seven
beautiful Gurney sisters went to hear him, and sat on the front seat,
Elizabeth, "with her smart boots, purple, laced with scarlet."
As the preacher proceeded, she was greatly moved, weeping during the
service, and nearly all the way home. She had been thrown much among
those who were Deists in thought, and this gospel-message seemed a
revelation to her.
The next morning Mr. Savery came to Earlham Hall to breakfast. "From
this day," say her daughters, in their interesting memoir of their
mother, "her love of pleasure and the world seemed gone." She,
herself, said, in her last illness, "Since my heart was touched, at
the age of seventeen, I believe I never have awakened from sleep, in
sickness or in health, by day or by night, without my first waking
thought being, how best I might serve my Lord."
Soon after she visited London, that she might, as she said, "try all
things" and choose for herself what appeared to her "to be good." She
wrote:
"I went to Drury Lane in the evening. I must own I was extremely
disappointed; to be sure, the house is grand and dazzling; but I
had no other feeling whilst there than that of wishing it over.... I
called on Mrs. Siddons, who was not at home; then on Mrs. Twiss, who
gave me some paint for the evening. I was painted a little, I had my
hair dressed, and did look pretty for me."
On her return to Earlham Hall she found that the London pleasure had
not been satisfying. She says, "I wholly gave up on my own ground,
attending all places of public amusement; I saw they tended to promote
evil; therefore, if I could attend them without being hurt myself, I
felt in entering them I lent my aid to promote that which I was sure
from what I saw hurt others."
She was also much exercised about dancing, thinking, while "in a
family, it may be of use by the bodily exercise," that "the more the
pleasures of life are given up, the less we love the world, and our
hearts will be set upon better things."
The heretofore fashionable young girl began to visit the poor and the
sick in the neighborhood, and at last decided to open a school for
poor children. Only one boy came at first; but soon she had seventy.
She lost none of her good cheer and charming manner, but rather grew
more charming. She cultivated her mind as well, reading logic,--Watts
on Judgment, Lavater, etc.
The rules of life which she wrote for herself at eighteen are worth
copying: "First,--Never lose any time; I do not think that lost which
is spent in amusement or recreation some time every day; but always be
in the habit of being employed. Second,--Never err the least in truth.
Third,--Never say an ill thing of a person when I can say a good thing
of him; not only speak charitably, but feel so. Fourth,--Never be
irritable or unkind to anybody. Fifth,--Never indulge myself
in luxuries that are not necessary. Sixth,--Do all things with
consideration, and when my path to act right is most difficult, put
confidence in that Power alone which is able to assist me, and exert
my own powers as far as they go."
Gradually she laid aside all jewelry, then began to dress in quiet
colors, and finally adopted the Quaker garb, feeling that she could
do more good in it. At first her course did not altogether please her
family, but they lived to idolize and bless her for her doings, and to
thankfully enjoy her worldwide fame.
At twenty she received an offer of marriage from a wealthy London
merchant, Mr. Joseph Fry. She hesitated for some time, lest her active
duties in the church should conflict with the cares of a home of her
own. She said, "My most anxious wish is, that I may not hinder my
spiritual welfare, which I have so much feared as to make me often
doubt if marriage were a desirable thing for me at this time, or even
the thoughts of it."
However, she was soon married, and a happy life resulted. For most
women this marriage, which made her the mother of eleven children,
would have made all public work impossible; but to a woman of
Elizabeth Fry's strong character nothing seemed impossible. Whether
she would have accomplished more for the world had she remained
unmarried, no one can tell.
Her husband's parents were "plain, consistent friends," and his sister
became especially congenial to the young bride. A large and airy house
was taken in London, St. Mildred's Court, which became a centre for
"Friends" in both Great Britain and America.
With all her wealth and her fondness for her family, she wrote in her
journal, "I have been married eight years yesterday; various trials
of faith and patience have been permitted me; my course has been very
different to what I had expected; instead of being, as I had hoped,
a useful instrument in the Church Militant, here I am a careworn
wife and mother outwardly, nearly devoted to the things of this life;
though at times this difference in my destination has been trying
to me, yet I believe those trials (which have certainly been very
pinching) that I have had to go through have been very useful, and
have brought me to a feeling sense of what I am; and at the same time
have taught me where power is, and in what we are to glory; not in
ourselves nor in anything we can be or do, but we are alone to desire
that He may be glorified, either through us or others, in our being
something or nothing, as He may see best for us."