"ADAM BEDE" AND "THE MILL ON THE FLOSS"--HER EARLY STORIES ARE
RICH IN CHARACTER SKETCHES, WITH MUCH PATHOS AND HUMOR.
George Eliot is a novelist in a class by herself. She never impressed
me as a natural story-teller, save when she lived over again that
happy girlhood which served to relieve the sadness of her mature life.
In parts of _Adam Bede_ and throughout _The Mill on the Floss_ she
seems to tell her stories as though she really enjoyed the work. All
the scenes of her beautiful girlhood in the pleasant Warwickshire
country, when she drove through the pleasant sweet-scented lanes and
enjoyed the lovely views that she has made immortal in her
books--these she dwelt upon, and with the touch of poetry that
redeemed the austerity of her nature she makes them live again,
even for us in an alien land. So, too, the English rustics live for
us in her pages with the same deathless force as the villagers in
Hardy's novels of Wessex life. And George Eliot and Thomas Hardy are
the two English writers who have made these villagers, with their
peculiar dialect and their insular prejudices, serve the purpose of
the Greek chorus in warning the reader of the fate that hangs over
their characters.
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT IN 1864 FROM THE ETCHING BY MR. PAUL
RAJON--DRAWN BY MR. FREDERICK BURTON--FROM THE FRONTISPIECE TO THE
FIRST EDITION OF "GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE," BY HER HUSBAND, J.W.
CROSS]
Of all English novelists, George Eliot was probably the best equipped
in minute and accurate scholarship. Trained as few college graduates
are trained, she was impelled for several years to take up the study
of German metaphysics. Her mind, like her face, was masculine in its
strength, and though she suffered in her youth from persistent
ill-health, she conquered this in her maturity and wrought with
passionate ardor at all her literary tasks. So keen was her conscience
that she often defeated her own ends by undue labor, as in the
preparation for _Romola_, whose historical background swamps the
story.
Above all she was a preacher of a stern morality. She laid down the
moral law that selfishness, like sin, corrodes the best nature, and
that the only happiness lies in absolute forgetfulness of self and in
working to make others happy. Thus all her books are full of little
sermons on life, preached with so much force that they cannot fail to
make a profound impression even upon the careless reader.
George Eliot impresses one as a very sad woman, with an eager desire
to recapture the lost religious faith of her happy, unquestioning
childhood and a still more passionate desire to believe in that
immortality which her cold agnostic creed rejected as illogical. It
was pitiful, this strong-minded woman reaching out for the things that
less-endowed women accept without question. It was even more pitiful
to see her, with her keen moral sense, violate all the conventions of
English law and society in order to take up life with the man who
stimulated her mind and actually made her one of the greatest of
English novelists.
Left alone, it is very doubtful whether George Eliot ever would have
found herself, ever would have developed that mine of reminiscence
which produced those perfect early stories of English country life. To
George Henry Lewes, the man for whose love and companionship she
incurred social ostracism, readers in all English-speaking countries
owe a great debt of gratitude, for it was his wise counsel and his
constant stimulus and encouragement which resulted in making George
Eliot a writer of fine novels instead of an essayist on ethical and
religious subjects. It detracts little from this debt that Lewes was
also responsible for the stimulus of George Eliot's bent toward
philosophical speculation and to that cold if clear scientific
thought, which spoiled parts of _Middlemarch_ and ruined _Daniel
Deronda_.
Marian Evans was born at Ashbury farm in Warwickshire in 1819 and died
in 1880. Her father was the agent for a large estate, and the happiest
hours of her girlhood were spent in driving about the country with
him. Those keen eyes which saw so deeply into human nature were early
trained to observe all the traits of the English rustic, and those
childish impressions gave vitality to her humorous characters. Before
she was ten years old Marian had read Scott and Lamb, as well as
_Pilgrim's Progress_ and _Rasselas_. When thirteen years old she
revealed unusual musical gifts. She had the misfortune at seventeen to
lose her mother, and for years after she managed her father's house.
Evidently the old farmer, whom his daughter has sketched with loving
hand in _Adam Bede_, took great pride in the mental superiority of his
daughter, for he hired tutors for her in Latin, Greek, Italian and
German. All four languages she mastered as few college men master
them. She read everything, both old and new, and her intimacy with the
wife of Charles Bray of Coventry led her to refuse to go to church.
This free thinking angered her father and caused him to demand that
she leave his house. After three weeks her love and her keen sense of
duty led her to conform to her father's wishes and to resume the
church-going, which in his eyes was a part of life that could not be
dropped.
But that early departure from the established religion carried her
into the field of German skepticism. She translated Strauss' _Life of
Jesus_. For three years her studies were interrupted by the serious
illness of her father. When he died she went to Geneva and remained on
the Continent a year. Then she came home and took up her residence
with the Brays. The development of her mind was very rapid. She served
for some time as editor of the WESTMINSTER REVIEW. She then formed
a strong friendship with Herbert Spencer, and through Spencer she met
George Henry Lewes, who made a special study of Goethe and the German
philosophers, and who was the editor of the LEADER, the organ of the
Free Thinkers.
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT'S BIRTHPLACE, SOUTH FARM, ARBURY,
NUNEATON]
Lewes and Marian Evans soon became all the world to each other, but
Lewes had an insane wife, and the foolish law of England forbade him
to get a divorce or to marry again. So the two decided to live
together and to be man and wife in everything except the sanction of
the law. The result was disastrous for a time to the woman. There is
no question that the social isolation that resulted hurt her deeply.
Her close friends like Spencer remained loyal, and her husband was
always the devoted lover as well as the ideal companion.
Two years after this new connection Lewes induced his wife to try
fiction. Her first story was _The Sad Adventures of the Rev. Amos
Barton_ which was followed by _Janet's Repentance_. These stories
appeared under the pen name of George Eliot, which she never
relinquished. Gathered into book form under the title _Scenes From
Clerical Life_, these stories in a minor key made a profound
impression on Charles Dickens, who divined they were the work of a
woman of unusual gifts.
The praise of Lewes and the appreciation of Dickens and other experts
gave great stimulus to her mind, and she produced _Adam Bede_, perhaps
her best work, which had a great success. In the following year came
_The Mill on the Floss_, an even greater success. Then in quick
succession came the other early novels, _Silas Marner_, _Romola_ and
_Felix Holt_. A break of six years follows, and then came
_Middlemarch_ and _Daniel Deronda_.
Lewes died in 1878, and two years later this woman, almost exhausted
by her tremendous literary labors, married J.W. Cross, an old friend,
but, like Charlotte Brontë, she had only short happiness, for she died
in the following year. The nations praised her, but she never
recovered from the shock of Lewes' death.
Of George Eliot's work the things that impress one most are her fine
descriptions of natural scenes, her keen analyses of character and her
many little moral sermons on life and conduct. With an abnormal
conscience and a keen sense of duty, life proved very hard for her.
This is reflected in the somberness of her stories and in the dread
atmosphere of fate that hangs over her characters. But over against
this must be placed her joy in depicting the rustic character and
humor and her delight in reproducing the scenes of her childhood in
one of the most beautiful counties of England.
Herbert Spencer, who was long associated with George Eliot, and for a
time contemplated the possibility of a union with that remarkable
woman, pays her a high tribute in _The Study of Sociology_. After
explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly
the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this
feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state
of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed
without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there
is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there results in
extremely remarkable ability to interpret the mental states of others.
Of this ability we have a living example (George Eliot) never hitherto
paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among
men."
Perhaps the reader who does not know George Eliot would do well to
begin with _The Mill on the Floss_, her finest work, which is full of
humor, lovely pictures of English rural life and an analysis of soul
in Maggie Tolliver that has never been surpassed. Yet the end is cruel
and unnatural, as hard and as unsatisfying as the author's own
religious creed. Next read _Adam Bede_, one of the saddest books in
all literature, with comic relief in Mrs. Poyser, one of the most
humorous characters in English fiction.
George Eliot drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a
Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came
from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to
her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had
clouded her sky. Also read _Silas Marner_ with its perfect picture of
Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered,
undrowned by new voices." These descriptions are instinct with poetry,
and they affect one like Wordsworth's best poems or like Tennyson's
vignettes of rural life. The pale weaver of Raveloe will always remain
as one of the great characters in English fiction.
Of George Eliot's more elaborate work it is impossible to speak in
entire praise. If you have the leisure, and these books I have named
please you, then by all means read _Romola_, which is a remarkable
study of the degeneracy of a young Greek and of the noble strivings of
a great-hearted woman. The pictures of Florence in the time of
Savonarola are splendid, but they smell of the lamp. _Middlemarch_ is
also worth careful study for its fine analysis of character and
motive. In all George Eliot's books her characters develop before our
eyes, and this is especially true in this elaborate study of the
pathos and the tragedy of human life.
George Eliot wrote little poetry, but one piece may be commended to
careful attention, "The Choir Invisible." It sums up with impassioned
force her ethical creed, which she put in these fine lines:
Oh, may I join 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.
* * * * *
This is life to come
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love.
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty--
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
This was the creed of George Eliot, which she preached in her books
and which she followed in her life. This was the only hope of
immortality that she cherished--to "live again" in minds that she
stimulated.