While the great woman who wrote under the _nom de plume_ of George Eliot
was alive, there was much appreciative interest and much unlawful
curiosity felt regarding her private life. This as a matter of course.
No such striking personality as hers could project itself into a time of
dulness and mediocrity without exciting unusual interest and attention.
And the half-knowledge which had been gained of her life and character
served as an active stimulus to this curiosity. One or two leading facts
in her history had become known and had been made the most of by a
gossip-loving time; but aside from these isolated facts there was very
little known of George Eliot, except by a little close circle of
personal friends, who seem to have refrained in a remarkable manner from
writing of her in the newspapers. That modern and almost purely American
institution, the interviewer, allowed her to escape, and even up to the
time of her death comparatively little was said of her except as a
writer of books. But the interest in her as a woman has been deepening
constantly since her death, fed by some half-revelations which have been
made; and few books of our own time have been so eagerly anticipated and
so universally sought after as the biography by her husband, which
lately appeared. Here at last we have that wonderful woman painted by
her own hand; not in an autobiography, where a person poses for the
public, but in the private letters and journals of a lifetime. Like
Mrs. Carlyle, she had unconsciously drawn her own portrait from day to
day. An admiring world looks upon the work, and with one voice must
pronounce it well done. For it is easy to gather from these unconscious
touches everything of real importance in regard to the character and
life of this woman. Much as we should have enjoyed the letters and
journals in a complete form, untouched by pruning fingers, we cannot but
heartily approve the wisdom of Mr. Cross in carefully selecting and
editing them. He has shown himself a person of excellent taste and
judgment, and one could scarcely ask to fall into better hands, if one's
life must be given to the public at all when one has travelled away from
the things of time and sense.
Let us see, then, what manner of woman this was who held a world
entranced by the splendor of her genius for so many years. Here is one
of the earliest glimpses of the child:--
"Any one who happened to look through the windows of Griff House
would have seen a pretty picture in the dining-room Saturday
evening after tea. The powerful, middle-aged man, with the strongly
marked features, sits in his deep leather-covered arm-chair at the
right-hand corner of the ruddy fire-place, with the head of the
'little wench' between his knees. The child turns over the book
with pictures which she wishes her father to explain to her, or
that perhaps she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious hair is
all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother who sits
on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with much service,
letting no instant of time escape the inevitable click of the
knitting-needles. The father is already proud of the astonishing
and growing intelligence of his little girl. An old-fashioned
child, already living in a world of her own imagination,
impressible to her finger-tips, and ready to give her views upon
any subject."
To readers of "The Mill on the Floss" little description of her
child-life will be necessary. She has, in Maggie, pictured herself as
nearly as possible during childhood. Here is her own description:--
"A creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was
beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear
straining after dreamy music that died away, and would not come to
her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would
link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and
give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this
contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful
collisions come of it."
In Adam Bede we have a partial portrait of her father, and there are
other striking resemblances to him in Caleb Garth, although neither
character is to be really identified with him. Mrs. Poyser bears the
same partial relation to her mother. With these people for the _dramatis
personae_, the drama could scarcely fail to be a striking one. The
relation existing between herself and her sister is described in
"Dorothea and Celia,"--no intellectual affinity, but strong family
affection. The repression of these early years she afterwards refers to
in saying,--
"You may try, but you can never imagine, what it is to have a man's
force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a
girl."