ADAM BEDE GIVES A ROSE TO HETTY. 
 
 With a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what she 
 
 had very often done before — stuck the rose in her 
 
 hair a little above the left ear. 
 
 (Adam Bede.)
 
 A DAY WITH 
 
 GEORGE 
 ELIOT 
 
 BY MAURICE CLARE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTQN
 
 In the same Series. 
 
 Thackeray. 
 
 Dickens. 
 
 Stevenson. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 Kingsley. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 Hawthorne.
 
 A DAY WITH GEOKGE ELIOT. 
 
 T is an October morning in the 
 later 'sixties, bright, bracing, 
 breezy, with sufficient "tang" 
 in the air to justify a fire despite 
 the brilliant sunshine. The 
 London trees have taken on an 
 unmistakable tinge of autumn, 
 and the London gardens have not much to 
 show. That very-much-frequented house, The 
 Priory, in North Bank, Regent's Park, is only 
 now, at eight a.m., opening its eyes awake — 
 or in other words, drawing back its blinds and 
 curtains. Few houses in London, it is said, 
 " have been the scene of stronger and more 
 interesting emotions " : but the Priory does not 
 wear its heart upon its sleeve, and nobody 
 would guess from its stolid and reserved exterior 
 that it was a species of Mecca to the "cultured"
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of all sorts and conditions. For, some fifty 
 years ago, it required, "if not a genuine strength 
 of mind, at any rate a certain amount of 
 1 cussedness ' not to be a George Eliotite " ; and 
 the authoress of Adam Bede was alternately 
 revered as a saint, respected as a sibyl, and 
 regarded as the greatest of living novelists, by 
 her various and multitudinous admirers. 
 
 The big, bony, heavy-featured woman, 
 who appears in her own eyes as only capable 
 of "kindling unpleasant sensations, with a 
 palpitating heart and awkward manners," and 
 who is the object of unfaltering, enthusiastic 
 worship on the part of so many friends, comes 
 slowly out of her bedroom into her large study 
 on the first floor, and casts a somewhat depre- 
 cating glance upon her writing-table, strewn 
 with papers. In front of this table stands a 
 cast of the Melian yEsculapius : it looks at her 
 with a dumbly self-reproachful air, as of one 
 whose skill availed nought to counteract her 
 almost incessant ill-health. The books lying 
 here and there are almost suggestive of their 
 owner's most constant malaises, — headache and
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 cold feet : their very titles are oppressive to 
 the average mind. For George Eliot — or Mrs. 
 Lewes, as she is more usually known — is read- 
 ing aloud to Mr. Lewes, o' nights, such imposing 
 and monumental works as Plato's Republic, 
 Nisard's History of French Literature, Lecky's 
 History of Morals, and Herbert Spencer's 
 Psychology ; not to mention the consumption of 
 such hors d'ceuvres and "kickshaws" as the 
 works of Lucretius, Theocritus, Sainte Beuve, 
 Becker's Charicles, and a vast variety of minor 
 volumes in five or six different languages. It 
 would be difficult, indeed, to gather, from the 
 ponderous character of her miscellaneous reading 
 that this woman is the creator of such im- 
 mortal types, — brimming with quaint provincial 
 humour — as Mrs. Poyser {Adam Bede) or Aunt 
 Glegg (Mill on the Floss). Still more difficult, 
 when you realize, from personal acquaintance 
 with her, the extraordinary seriousness of 
 George Eliot, — the gravity with which, in her 
 eyes, the smallest detail of life is weighted. 
 "The sense of the importance of every action 
 and every word, indeed of every influence 
 which she might exercise over her fellow- 
 creatures . . . the momentous issues of the
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 thoughts and emotions which slowly build up 
 the moral character," — these have deprived her 
 of that sense of laughter, in ordinary affairs, 
 which is such a help and solace to its possessor. 
 She never says a smile-provoking thing : never 
 writes one in her letters : her vivid and 
 admirable perception of all that makes for 
 gaiety is exclusively confined to her novels. 
 Here she patiently develops her characters in 
 "rather slow but humorous dialogue, such 
 as Shakespeare loved to interpolate in his plays 
 when he chose to show us how the ' Goodman 
 Dull' of the Midlands talked awry." And 
 even here, while allowing that " I have no 
 stock of proverbs in my memory, and there is 
 not one thing put into Mrs. Poyser's mouth 
 which is not fresh from my own mint," she has 
 confessed that "my books are deeply serious 
 things to me, and come out of all the painful 
 discipline, all the most hardly-learned lessons of 
 my past life." 
 
 Mr. Lewes enters the study, and they go 
 down to breakfast together. He is in many 
 respects the exact antithesis of George Eliot.
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Not only do his bright eyes strongly contrast 
 with her pensive, penetrating, grey-blue ones, 
 his long black hair with her abundant masses of 
 auburn-brown ; but his ready wit and urbanity 
 are a singular foil to her somewhat sombre and 
 impressive manner. "A Mirabeau in mina- 
 ture," she termed him when first they met. 
 They are both, however, of a "lean and hungry 
 aspect." — "Happiness," she has complained, 
 " of which we seem to have more than anyone 
 I know, does not have the effect of making us 
 fat and strong. I often compare ourselves to 
 two mediaeval saints painted by a very naive 
 master." . . . And in the most essential point 
 of all they are alike — deep and devoted mutual 
 affection. " Always exceedingly dependent on 
 some one person for affection and support," 
 George Eliot has found in George Lewes the 
 exact fulfilment of all that most she needs. He 
 is the staff on which she leans for strength, 
 the sympathetic yet expert critic of her work, 
 the tenderest, warmest, of her many devotees. 
 "Without his insight into literary faculty, and 
 his sustaining sympathy, it is doubtful whether 
 she would have produced the writings which 
 have made her fame."
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 And while he regards " Polly" as being at 
 once a supreme genius and the best, most 
 lovable of women, she holds fast by him as the 
 ivy to the oak, and finds that "the affections, 
 instead of being dulled by age, have acquired 
 a stronger activity," — "because," as she has 
 written, " what greater thing is there for two 
 human souls than to feel that they are joined 
 for life, to strengthen each other in all pain, to 
 be one with each other in silent unspeakable 
 memories at the moment of the last parting?" 
 And she has exemplified, to the letter, in the 
 course of her life, the theory that " a supreme 
 love, a motive that gives a sublime strength to 
 a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership 
 with her soul's highest needs, is not to be had 
 how and when she wills : to know that high 
 initiation she must often tread where it is hard 
 to tread, and feel the chill air, and walk through 
 darkness. It is not true that love makes all 
 things easy : it makes us choose what is 
 difficult." 
 
 Therefore, although she loves to portray 
 some blessed and perfected union, like that of
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Adam Bede and Dinah Morris, she has attained, 
 perhaps, her highest note in the delineation of 
 love that finds its goal in abnegation, surrender 
 and self-sacrifice, — love that is crowned by 
 death. In Maggie, of The Mill on the Floss, — 
 Maggie, in whose wild, passionate, unconven- 
 tional nature George Eliot consciously or 
 unconsciously incorporated much of herself, — 
 she has reached the final outcome of her own 
 belief that " the most difficult heroism is that 
 which consists in the daily conquests of our 
 private demons, not in the slaying of world- 
 notorious dragons." 
 
 And it is just because Maggie Tulliver is 
 presented to us as, for all her splendid courage, 
 so very human a creature, that she remains, 
 and probably will remain, one of the best- 
 beloved memories in the whole great realm of 
 fiction. About her there is nothing "icily 
 regular, faultlessly null " : quite the contrary. 
 11 If the ethics of art," George Eliot has 
 declared, " do not admit the truthful presenta- 
 tion of a character essentially noble, but liable 
 to great error — error that is anguish to its own
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 nobleness — then, it seems to me, the ethics of 
 art are too narrow, and must be widened to 
 correspond to a widening psychology." . . Yet 
 "the art which leaves the soul in despair is 
 laming to the soul, and is denounced by the 
 healthy sentiment of an entire community." 
 So she has set Maggie Tulliver, in the extreme 
 of her sorrow and perplexity, upon an immortal 
 pinnacle, above the placid and complacent flood 
 of the ordinary " happy ending." And her 
 record closes, not to the tintinnabulation of 
 wedding bells, but to the roar and rush of flood- 
 ing waters, in that final conflict when " there 
 was at least this fruit from all her years of 
 striving after the highest and the best, — that 
 her soul, though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, 
 could never deliberately consent to a choice of 
 the lower." . . 
 
 And thus we see her, momentarily re-united 
 with her old comrade and playmate, as the mill- 
 house crumbles in the flood. . . . '"Alone, 
 Maggie?' said Tom in a voice of deep astonish- 
 ment, as he opened the middle window on a level
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 with the boat. ' Yes, Tom. God has taken care 
 of me, to bring me to you. Get in quickly.' " 
 
 And we must needs recognise and " love 
 the highest when we see it," on learning, almost 
 with relief, the immediately-following solution 
 of Maggie's bitter problems of existence : 
 11 Brother and sister had gone down in an 
 embrace never to be parted, living through 
 again in one supreme moment the days when 
 they had clasped their little hands in love." 
 (The Mill on the Floss.) 
 
 . . . . Breakfast over, the novelist reads 
 awhile, as is her wont, in her Bible : a large- 
 print volume has recently been given her by 
 Mr. Lewes ; her abnormally long-sighted eyes 
 are beginning to show the strain of thirty-five 
 years' laborious study. For you must understand 
 that George Eliot is not, has never been, the 
 facile scribe of light-hearted irresponsible fiction. 
 She has taken up novel-writing comparatively 
 late in life, at about forty years of age, — and 
 then only in deference to the wish and advice 
 of Mr. Lewes. It does not come naturally to
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 her, either ; it is always a harassing experience. 
 " I could no more live through one of my 
 books," she declares, " a second time, than I 
 can live through last year again." Self-distrust, 
 dejection, depression, despondency, assail her 
 the whole length of the way throughout a story. 
 "The self-questioning whether my nature will 
 be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, 
 both of personal duty and intellectual produc- 
 tion, bears upon me almost continually, in a 
 way that prevents me ever from tasting the 
 quiet joy I might have had in the work done. 
 Buoyancy and exultation, I fancy, are out of 
 the question when one has lived as long as I 
 have." . . No : she is first and foremost a 
 student. The first work she ever thought of 
 writing, when still quite young, was "a 
 synopsis of ecclesiastical history, demanding 
 nothing but great learning, clear thought, and 
 untiring industry and ingenuity." As translator, 
 as editor, as coadjutor to Lewes in his most 
 onerous literary tasks, she has still " kept the 
 force and flower of her mind for philosophy," 
 still always yearned, at the back of her 
 thoughts, after the entirely abstract and purely 
 metaphysical. And although she has, " during
 
 MAGGIE TULLIVER RESCUES TOM AT THE MILL. 
 
 " Alone, Maggie ? " said Tom in a voice of deep 
 astonishment, as he opened the middle window on a 
 level with the boat. 
 " Yes, Tom. God has taken care of me, to bring me 
 
 to you. Get in quickly." 
 
 (The Mill on the Floss.)
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 a long and studious youth, received impressions 
 of persons, of scenes, of books," and has 
 "travelled and enriched her store," — so that 
 she is able to set down bygone impressions with 
 amazing accuracy of detail, — as in Scenes of 
 Clerical Life, — yet she is rarely able to assimilate 
 what one may call life up-to-date. She "never 
 lives in the open " : she is kept in cotton-wool 
 seclusion and safety, so far as may be, from all 
 adverse influences. She has no experience of 
 active business : all her affairs are transacted 
 for her : the taste of the present, active, living, 
 workaday world has not entered her life these 
 many years. She must depend entirely upon 
 her marvellous memory, with its wealth of 
 detail, for all her finest work : and where that 
 memory cannot be utilised, as in Romola, — when 
 she has only imagination and erudition to fall 
 back upon, — she is utterly exhausted by the 
 effort. " I began Romola a young woman," she 
 sighs, " I finished it an old woman. . . Great 
 facts have struggled to find a voice through me, 
 and have only been able to speak brokenly." 
 
 There, in a few words, you have the secret 
 of George Eliot's genius. The student, the
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 philosopher, the recluse, writes novels as a 
 medium might. M My stories grow in me like 
 plants," she has avowed, — that is, without her 
 direct knowledge or volition. "It almost 
 seems as if her mind had been intended more 
 as an instrument for interpreting the minds of 
 others, more as a phonograph through the 
 agency of which the natures of all the various 
 interlocutors with whom she met could be 
 delicately registered and made to report them- 
 selves to the world, than as a distinct organ of 
 her own taste and purpose. . . There is hardly 
 a country squire or dairymaid or poacher or 
 inn-keeper or country lad or lass to whom 
 George Eliot does not give a thoroughly indi- 
 vidual voice." And where she speaks in her 
 own voice, it is not that of a romancist at all. 
 It is the accent of one whose mission, as she 
 conceives it, has been "to paint the lives of 
 those she saw about her, to describe their joys 
 and sorrows, their successes and failures, and, 
 by insisting on the deep importance of this 
 world, to teach us to hinder as little as possible 
 the good which is lingering around us." Or, in 
 her own words, " My books are a form of 
 utterance .... deliberately, carefully con-
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 structed on a basis which seen in my doubting 
 mind is never shaken by a doubt . . . my 
 conviction as to the relative goodness and 
 nobleness of human dispositions and motives. 
 And the inspiring principle which alone gives 
 me courage to write is that of so presenting our 
 human life as to help my readers in getting a 
 clearer conception and a more active admiration 
 of those vital elements which bind men together 
 and give a higher worthiness to their existence. 
 . . . We ought each of us not to sit down 
 and wait, but to be heroic and constructive 
 if possible. . ." 
 
 Now, by a curious paradox, this serious 
 and learned woman has revealed in her tales — 
 most likely without knowing it — the real reason 
 of her abnormal gravity, — and the true source 
 of her superabundant sympathy. In the same 
 manner as those artists usually draw children 
 most successfully, who have none of their own, 
 so George Eliot — admirable and beloved step- 
 mother as she is to Mr. Lewes's three boys — 
 has never known the prattle of little voices, 
 of children waking like small birds in the early
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 morning. She has never heard the headlong 
 pattering of tiny feet upon a nursery floor. In 
 a word, she has been denied the chief function 
 and supreme joy of womanhood, — and for that 
 very cause, perhaps, she can delineate childhood 
 with a sweetness of touch, an accuracy of 
 rendering, which are only comparable to the 
 canvases of Sir Joshua, and which are never 
 for an instant strained, incongruous, or other- 
 wise than exquisitely right and true. Hardly 
 a story she has ever achieved but contains one 
 or more of these delicious little chubby, rosy 
 figures : time fails to enumerate them. Perhaps 
 the most charmingly conceived, the most care- 
 fully reproduced of all, is the little Eppie in Silas 
 Marner. This tale, which "contains all her 
 merits in high perfection, concentrated by the 
 narrow limits in which the work is enclosed," 
 and which is intended to "set in a strong light 
 influences of pure, natural, human relations," 
 contains this unrivalled study of infancy. Very 
 few mothers could have conveyed, so deftly, so 
 delicately, the infinite gradations of growth in 
 the child, coupled with the correspondent growth 
 in the case-hardened, lonely old man. Almost 
 as actual spectators of the process, we see how
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 "As her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied 
 in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and 
 trembling gradually into full consciousness ; " 
 until, as months lengthen out to years, it 
 becomes clear that " Eppie, with her short, 
 toddling steps, must lead Father Silas a pretty 
 dance on any fine morning when circumstances 
 favoured mischief. . . He had wisely chosen 
 a broad strip of linen as a means of fastening 
 her to his loom when he was busy. . . Having 
 cut the linen strip in a manner jagged but 
 effectual, in two minutes she had run out at the 
 open door, where the sunshine was inviting 
 her, while poor Silas believed her to be a better 
 child than usual." 
 
 There is, in short, hardly any one of 
 George Eliot's tales in which this tender delight 
 in children is not manifested : nor are the little 
 creatures only included to heighten the effect of 
 a situation : they take a normal and relevant 
 part, just as in real life. And one is enabled to 
 guess what Marian Evans might once have 
 been, — the joyful mother, united at all points 
 with her little ones, — had she never become
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 George Eliot, the famous writer, courted, 
 adulated, flattered — but always with a secret 
 void in her deep and womanly heart. 
 
 After half-an-hour's reading of the Bible 
 the novelist turns to her correspondence, which 
 is voluminous, and entails considerable toil. 
 Constantly in communication as she is with so 
 many well-known folks and personal acquaint- 
 ances, she undertakes, according to the habit of 
 the time, letters of what might seem inordinate 
 and unnecessary length. And, strange to say, 
 they more than ever confirm the idea that she 
 is merely a medium for the production of her 
 imaginative work. For these private letters, 
 set down in her exquisite handwriting, with 
 hardly an error or erasure, are but poor com- 
 pared to her published writings — stilted, arti- 
 ficial, and monotonous in manner, with an air 
 of intending great things and coming extremely 
 short of them. They are almost tedious — and 
 compare most unfavourably with the impres- 
 siveness of her spoken words, which, uttered in 
 low, vibrating, musical tones, have thrilled so 
 many eager listeners. Yet undoubtedly she
 
 SILAS MARNER AT HIS LOOM. 
 
 He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen as a 
 means of fastening her to his loom when he was busy. 
 
 (Silas Maimer.)

 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 enjoys this part of her morning ; and it is with 
 a certain reluctance that she puts away these 
 more personal outpourings, and, lying back 
 in a comfortable chair, with a high support 
 to her feet, starts work upon a manuscript 
 placed upon her knees. " In this way," she 
 has just written to a friend, "I get advantage 
 from the longsightedness which involves the 
 early use of glasses. . . But it is vain to get 
 one's back and knees in the right attitude, if 
 one's mind is superannuated. Some time or 
 other, if death does not come to silence me, 
 there ought to be deliberate abstinence from 
 writing — self-judgment which decides that one 
 has no more to say." 
 
 This last phrase throws a suggestive light 
 upon the morbid self-introspection which hinders 
 her at the very outset of a new book and haunts 
 her throughout. The brooding tendency of her 
 mind, which bids her perpetually "look before 
 and after, and sigh for what is not " — yet 
 without any very definite notion of what might 
 be better worth having, is intensified by almost 
 constant ill-health : "I could have done much
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 more," she says, " if I had been well : but that 
 regret applies to most years of my life." And 
 a vague yearning towards something lost or 
 lacking is discernible in all she does, — whether 
 expressed in dim desire towards realms unattain- 
 able, as in the plaintive verses from the Spanish 
 Gypsy — 
 
 " Spring comes hither, 
 
 Buds the rose, 
 Roses wither, 
 
 Sweet spring goes. 
 Ojala, would she carry me ! 
 
 " Summer soars, 
 
 Wide-winged day 
 White light pours, 
 Flies away, 
 Ojala, would he carry me ! 
 
 " South winds blow, 
 
 Westward borne, 
 Onward go 
 
 Toward the morn, 
 Ojala, would they carry me !
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 " Sweet birds sing 
 
 O'er the graves, 
 Then take wing 
 
 O'er the waves, 
 Ojala, would they carry me ! " 
 
 — or in that characteristic sotto-voce burden of 
 sadness which underlies her finest achievements, 
 — that "pitying study of man, in the frame of 
 mind of one who is determined to make the 
 best of a bad business," that "subdued tone of 
 regret that the highest human endeavour is 
 destined to be baffled." These symptoms of 
 inherent pessimism are not, perhaps, so notice- 
 able in Adam Bede as elsewhere. She has 
 declared herself thankful to have written so 
 true a book as Adam Bede : and indeed, it con- 
 tains a wider diapason of emotion, besides a 
 happier realisation of the joy of life, than her 
 other volumes. No one can obliterate from 
 memory, once having read, the charming 
 picture of Hetty Sorrel, young, childish, and 
 coquettish, as she appears in the earlier 
 chapters— the scene in the dairy, for instance, 
 with Arthur Donnithorne, or that in the garden
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 among the currant bushes, when, given a rose 
 by the gigantic Adam, " Hetty took the rose 
 .... and with a sudden impulse of gaiety 
 she did what she had very often done before — 
 stuck the rose in her hair a little above the 
 left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's 
 face was slightly shadowed by reluctant dis- 
 approval." . . . 
 
 These delicate and enchanting little episodes 
 of country life throw into darker relief such 
 scenes — no less veracious — as that where the 
 betrayed and deserted Hetty, a poor little 
 butterfly with broken wings, contemplates an 
 end of herself in the wintry pool. " She set 
 down her basket, and then . . . sat still, looking 
 at the pool. . . There was no need to hurry — 
 there was all the night to drown herself in." 
 
 The priceless gift of sympathy, George 
 Eliot's chief claim to real greatness, is, in Adam 
 Bede, revealed at its fullest. "Creation," as 
 she has put it, "is the super-added life of the 
 intellect ; sympathy, all-embracing love, the
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 super-added moral life. . . Sympathy, the one 
 poor word which includes all our best insight 
 and all our best love." Assuredly in this 
 poignant sympathy lies the secret of her suc- 
 cess : for she contrives to enlist our own 
 most sympathetic feelings for every one of her 
 dramatis personae in turn. The fact that the 
 story of Hetty was a true one : that in Adam 
 Bede himself she was delineating her own father, 
 and in Dinah Morris her aunt, may have lent 
 additional strength of characterisation to George 
 Eliot's hand in this particular book. But sym- 
 pathy, it may be said, is her gospel of life : the 
 only gospel which her negative creed confesses. 
 For, although she has passed through the 
 Christian experience, and maintained through- 
 out her life a grave and reverent regard for it : 
 though the Imitation of Christ is her life-long 
 companion, — George Eliot is not a nominal or 
 professing Christian. Presumably, if obliged to 
 affix a label to her opinion, she would style 
 herself a Positivist. She feels a "yearning 
 affection towards the great religions of the 
 world which have reflected the struggles and 
 the needs of mankind." And she repudiates 
 the idea of having no beliefs of her own.
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ' ' I have too profound a conviction of the 
 efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the 
 spiritual blight that comes with no faith. . . 
 I care only to know if possible the last meaning 
 that lies in all religious doctrines from the 
 beginning till now." The true Christian ideal 
 she upholds as the noblest pattern that man can 
 follow. But of individual immortality she has 
 no hope : and this blank outlook towards the 
 eternal future throws a melancholy shadow 
 over every output of her mind. To her, "it is 
 a pang to witness the suffering of a fellow- 
 creature, and I feel his suffering the more 
 because he is mortal, because his life is so short, 
 and I would have it if possible filled with happi- 
 ness and not misery. In some minds the deep 
 pathos lying in the thought of human mortality 
 — that we are here for a little while and then 
 vanish away — that this earthly life is all that is 
 given to our loved ones, and to many suffering 
 fellowmen — lies nearer the fountains of moral 
 emotion than the conception of extended 
 existence." So that her sole residuum of what 
 once was a practical working Christianity, the 
 only religion which can be distinctly attributed 
 to this gifted but dissatisfied woman, is "the
 
 HETTY SORREL AT THE POOL. 
 
 She set down her basket and then . . . sat still, look- 
 ing at the pool. . . There was no need to hurry — 
 there was all the night to drown herself in. 
 
 (Adam Bede.)
 
 PJf
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 expression of the sense of human fellowship 
 with an influence strong enough to compel us to 
 live for others, even though it be beneath the 
 in-coming shadow of an endless night." 
 
 This "sense of human fellowship" runs 
 like a silver thread through Middlemarch, the 
 novel upon which she is now tentatively engaged. 
 It is the very key to the lovable mistakes and 
 noble loyalties of Dorothea, perhaps the best 
 portrait in all George Eliot's gallery of sweet 
 and noble women : the gallant little Mary 
 Garth is actuated by it throughout. You will 
 find it gleaming here and there with pleasant 
 lustre, across all those studies of English lower 
 middle-class life, and of Midland farmers and 
 tradesmen, which are "hardly surpassed in 
 English literature." It is, indeed, one may say, 
 the message of all George Eliot's authorship. 
 Excellent as her plots are, subtly drawn as her 
 abundant detail may be, they are subordinated 
 to the sense of human interdependence : for, 
 as she says, "The older the world gets, origi- 
 nality becomes less possible. Great subjects 
 are used up, and civilization tends evermore to
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 repress individual predominance, highly-wrought 
 agony, or ecstatic joy. But all the gentle 
 emotions will be ever new, ever wrought up 
 into more and more lovely combinations. . . . 
 No mind that has any real life is a mere echo of 
 emotion. If the perfect music comes occasion- 
 ally, as in music, it ought to harmonize. It is 
 like a diffusion or expansion of one's own life, 
 to be assured that its vibrations are repeated 
 in another." 
 
 About noon Mr. Lewes appears, solicitous 
 as to "Polly's" overdoing herself, and wishful, 
 according to his wont, to hear what she has 
 written this morning. Holding the MS. in her 
 thin, transparent, beautifully-shaped hands, and 
 giving it the full benefit of her rich voice and 
 exquisite elocution, she reads aloud to him some 
 forty or fifty pages. "The best work you 
 have yet done," he reassures her, catching her 
 anxious and expectant gaze as she awaits his 
 critical verdict. " You sometimes imagine," he 
 adds, "that you are falling off in power : but I 
 say you are mellowing and maturing. This
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Middlemarch strikes me as being the ripened, 
 perfected fruit of your genius." 
 
 Her face lights up with its grave smile, and 
 her blue eyes brighten. "Well, it ought to be !" 
 she answers. " I think this year's end finds me 
 enjoying existence more than ever I did before, 
 in spite of the loss of youth. Study is a keener 
 delight to me than ever. All knowledge, all 
 thought, all achievement, seems more precious 
 and enjoyable to me than ever it was before in 
 life. Besides, the world is so intensely 
 interesting ! " 
 
 "You have helped to make it so," says 
 Mr. Lewes rather grimly. " Some folks would 
 say exactly the reverse." 
 
 "It is a world of struggle and endeavour, 
 of course," she admits, "and we have had a 
 hard fight, up-hill, up-hill all the way. But 
 also we seem to have attained more than our 
 due share of happiness and prosperity : and I 
 should be vilely ungrateful if I did not attempt 
 to tender back something to life of all that it has 
 yielded me. I always want to feel that my
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 work is something,— however small, — which 
 wanted to be done in this world, and that I am 
 just the organ for that little bit of work." 
 
 "Little bit of work, indeed!" and he 
 kisses her lips into silence. The lunch-bell 
 rings, and they leave the study hand-in-hand. 
 He has been in his own study all morning, 
 hard at work upon abstruse and comparatively 
 unpopular books : for, as he cheerfully grumbles, 
 mere philosophy can never compete with fiction. 
 
 In the afternoon, after a short rest, George 
 Eliot goes round the garden and surveys with 
 mild regret the relics of departed summer. It 
 is strange how completely she, a countrywoman 
 born and bred, steeped in the provincialism 
 of the shires, has become acclimatized and 
 assimilated to London life. Occasionally she 
 longs for "a house with some shade and grass 
 close round it," of a different calibre from the 
 shade and grass of St. John's Wood ; but this 
 is a very transient longing : she is to all 
 intents and purposes a Londoner. And to 
 open-air nature in general, may be, she has no 
 very ardent attachment. Wonderfully as she
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 can paint it in a few strong lines or broad 
 washes, it is to the concrete human being, 
 rather than to the abstract landscape element in 
 a scene, that her main interest is attracted. 
 And although for animals she has a kindly eye, 
 and especially for horses and dogs, — there is a 
 canine favourite in nearly all her tales, treated 
 in a friendly, sympathetic manner, — yet they 
 play a very subordinate role in the unfolding of 
 the great human drama wrought out upon some 
 small provincial stage. 
 
 She goes indoors to her big double drawing- 
 room, entering by the long low window which 
 opens into the garden. The room is decorated 
 by Owen Jones, and all around upon the walls 
 hang Leighton's illustrations to Romola. In the 
 further part of it stands the grand piano, her 
 solace and chief joy, and she sits down for an 
 hour's good practice. George Eliot sets music 
 above all things : she has a passionate devotion 
 to it such as no words can express. About 
 eighteen of Beethoven's Sonatas, which she 
 performs with fine power and taste, are 
 included in her repertoire : and she specially
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 delights in Schubert's songs. When outworn 
 through the palpitation and excitement which 
 frequently accrue during the completion of a 
 novel, she seeks refuge and healing in waves of 
 lovely sound : and though she rarely plays 
 before visitors, she loves to hear great music 
 rendered by some of the many habitues of 
 her Sunday afternoons. Music is a potent 
 factor in many of her books, — it is always 
 alluded to with a peculiar pleasure : whether 
 Stephen and Lucy, in The Mill on the Floss, join 
 in the charming strains of " Graceful Consort," 
 — and the author observes that "the sense of 
 mutual fitness that springs from the two deep 
 notes fulfilling expectation just at the right 
 moment, between the notes of the silvery 
 soprano, from the peaceful accord of descending 
 
 thirds is likely to supersede any 
 
 immediate demand for less impassioned forms 
 of agreement," — or whether, as in the touching 
 pathos of Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, the little boy 
 and the grown man are spell-bound by the 
 heroine's sudden restoration to song. 
 
 " Ozzy, roaming about the room in quest 
 of a forbidden pleasure, came to the harpsichord,
 
 MAYNARD GILFIL HEARS CATERINA SINGING. 
 
 In a moment her fingers were wandering with their 
 old sweet method among the keys, and her soul was 
 floating in its true familiar element of delicious 
 sound. . . Maynard thanked God. 
 
 (Mr. GilfiVs Love Story.)

 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 and struck the handle of his whip on a deep 
 bass note. The vibration rushed through 
 Gaterina like an electric shock : it seemed as if 
 at that instant a new soul were entering into 
 her, and filling her with a deeper, more signi- 
 ficant life. She looked round, rose from the 
 sofa, and walked to the harpsichord. In a 
 moment her fingers were wandering with their 
 old sweet method among the keys, and her soul 
 was floating in its true familiar element of 
 delicious sound. . . Maynard thanked God. 
 An active power was reawakened, and must 
 make a new epoch in Caterina's recovery. 
 Presently there were low liquid notes blending 
 themselves with the harder tones of the instru- 
 ment, and gradually the pure voice swelled into 
 predominance." 
 
 "There are stores laid up in our human 
 nature," so George Eliot has written, "that 
 one's understanding can make no inventory 
 of" : and most opulent of these treasures is the 
 storehouse of perfect music. 
 
 Presently guests begin to arrive, — devotees 
 to her shrine. This is not the chief occasion
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of their advent, being a week-day : George 
 Eliot's Sunday-afternoon receptions are famous 
 throughout the length and breadth of London, 
 when, "sometimes preceded by a small and 
 early dinner with chosen friends," a continuous 
 flow of company sets in. All the choicest 
 artistic and literary spirits of the 'sixties are to 
 be encountered there : sometimes, as Frederic 
 Harrison has described these memorable meet- 
 ings, "the superb Frederic Leighton would 
 drop in, or the hearty Robert Browning, with 
 endless anecdotes and happy mots; George 
 Meredith, the inexhaustible, and the mitts 
 sapentia of Lecky ; the first Lord Acton, the 
 omnivorous student; the gentle irony of Charles 
 Bowen, and the second Lord Lytton, the cosmo- 
 politan courtier ; the jolly rattle of Anthony 
 Trollope ; the ever-welcome and genial Lord 
 Houghton ; Lord and Lady Amberley, in spite 
 of her mother's frowns ; that most thoughtful 
 of painters, Frederic Burton ; and that gentle, 
 modest, and cultured poet, Leicester Warren, 
 last Lord de Tabley. . . George du Maurier 
 would sing one of his exquisite comic French 
 songs, or G. Lewes and Edward Pigott would
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 act an impromptu charade, with witty dialogue 
 invented on the spur of the moment." 
 
 And yet George Eliot is " eminently not a 
 typical mistress of a salon : " it has always been 
 " difficult for her mentally, to move from one 
 person to another": she has seldom "found 
 the effort of entertaining compensated by the 
 gain." She has relied almost entirely upon the 
 admirable hospitality, brilliant wit and never- 
 failing kindness of Mr. Lewes to sustain the 
 burden — for burden she has often felt it — of 
 these immensely successful gatherings. The 
 versatility, vivacity and resource of Mr. Lewes, 
 who is "as good in a company of three as of 
 thirty," has supplied every social quality in 
 which Mrs. Lewes felt herself lacking. 
 
 But to-day she sits in her low arm-chair at 
 the left-hand side of the fire, and, looking up 
 with her grave yet cordial smile, receives some 
 welcome visitor, and beckons him to the chair 
 beside her. Bending her majestic head, after 
 her whole body, eagerly forward, she plunges 
 into animated conversation, exercising a
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 strange fascination over the hearer with her 
 low, deep, thrillingly tender tones, and with the 
 tremendous reserve power that one feels to be 
 latent behind her sympathetic sayings. "Ideas," 
 she has said, "are often poor guests: our 
 sun-filled eyes cannot discern them, they 
 pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot 
 make themselves felt. But sometimes they are 
 made flesh . . . they touch us with soft 
 responsive hands, they look at us with sad 
 sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; 
 they are clothed in a living human soul, with all 
 its conflicts, its faith and its love. Then their 
 presence is a power, then they shake us like a 
 passion, and we are drawn after them with 
 gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame " 
 (Janet's Repentance). Upon young men especi- 
 ally, she has a motherly, magnetic influence, 
 which at times assumes a half-divine effect : 
 they treasure up each sentence dropped from 
 her lips, each glance of her penetrating eyes. 
 As one of these has written down his recollec- 
 tions : " She appeared much greater than her 
 books. Her ability seemed to shrink beside 
 her moral grandeur. She was not only the best, 
 but the cleverest woman you had ever met.
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 You never dared to speak to her of her books : 
 her personality was so much more impressive 
 than its product." 
 
 Yet this magnificent personality is housed 
 in a weak and failing frame : and when the last 
 visitor has departed, the great authoress is 
 racked with a blinding headache, and shivering 
 with stone-cold feet. She takes a brisk turn 
 out-of-doors in the cool October starlight, well 
 muffled up, on Mr. Lewes' arm : the crisp and 
 pleasant night is full of healing power. Re- 
 freshed and invigorated, yet healthfully drowsy, 
 she returns home and sits down for a few 
 minutes' meditation before addressing herself 
 to sleep. "I should like," she murmurs with 
 half-closed eyes, " to take long doses of dolce 
 far niente, and be in no hurry about anything in 
 this 'varsal world. Do we not commit our- 
 selves to sleep and so resign all care for 
 ourselves every night — lay ourselves gently on 
 the bosom of nature and God ? " 
 
 She endeavours to put away all tired 
 attempts towards mental activity — yet, in spite
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of herself, her fancy obstinately insists on 
 recurring to those poems which have occupied 
 so much of her time and thought of late, — The 
 Spanish Gypsy, to wit, and Jubal. Hardly can 
 she be termed a poet in the highest sense ; she 
 is the poet made, not born ; her verse is con- 
 structed, not inspired ; it is deficient in fire, 
 passion, melody ; yet there is an amount of 
 " fundamental brain-work" about it which will 
 ensure its survival when more sensuously- 
 beautiful strains have perished. 
 
 She takes up from the bedside-table her 
 constant companion, the Imitation of Christ: 
 that "chronicle," as she has called it, "written 
 down by the hands that waited for the heart's 
 prompting ; a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, 
 trust and triumph, — not written on velvet 
 cushions to teach endurance to those who are 
 still treading with bleeding feet on the stones : 
 it remains a lasting record of human needs and 
 human consolations, it works miracles to this 
 day, turning bitter waters into sweetness, while 
 expensive sermons and records, newly issued, 
 leave all things as they were before." She
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 turns the well-worn leaves with loving rever- 
 ence, and the sublime ideal there upheld sinks 
 deep into her weary consciousness. "Let the 
 same mind be in you as was also in Christ Jesus." 
 " I believe," whispers the woman who cannot 
 profess or call herself a Christian, " the answer 
 to this will be uttered more and more fervently 
 among all posterities for evermore." And, 
 stretching out towards nebulous heights of 
 aspiration where she may yet attain to some 
 hint of that Divine Likeness, she hears her own 
 lines, running noble as the sweep and surge 
 of some wide river, — a current upon which she 
 drifts into the Debateable Lands this side of 
 profound oblivion. 
 
 " O, 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 with self. 
 
 May I reach 
 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony,
 
 A DAY WITH GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Enkindle generous ardour, 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." 
 
 Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd., 
 Bradford and I,ondon. 4883
 
 
 ^SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 001 405 898 6