THE 
 TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
' ' It is too possible that to some of my readers 
 Methodism may mean nothing more than low- 
 pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, 
 sponging preachers and hypocritical jargon ele- 
 ments, which are regarded as an exhaustive 
 analysis of Methodism in many fashionable 
 quarters. 
 
 '' That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend 
 that Seth and Dinah were anything else but 
 Methodists, not indeed of that modern type 
 which reads quarterly reviews and attends in 
 chapels with pillared porticoes; but of a very 
 old-fashioned kind. They believed in present 
 miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in reve- 
 lations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, 
 and sought for Divine guidance by opening the 
 liible at hazard ; having a literal way of inter- 
 preting the Scriptures, which is not at all 
 sanctioned by approved commentators; and it 
 is impossible for me to represent their diction as 
 correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still — if 
 I have read religious history aright — faith, hope 
 and charity have not always been found in a 
 direct ratio with a sensibility to the three con- 
 cords ; and it is possible, thank Heaven ! to have 
 very erroneous theories and very sublime 
 feelings." 
 
 George Eliot in Adam Brdc, 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY T 
 
 OF 
 
 / 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 
 I'rora a painting by M. D'Albert Duraclc. 
 
THE TRUE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 IN RELATION TO *«ADAM BEDE/' GIVING THE 
 
 REAL LIFE HISTORY OF THE MORE 
 
 PROMINENT CHARACTERS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MOTTRAM 
 
 {Grand Nephenv of Adam and Seth Bede and Cousin to the Author) 
 
 WITH EIGHTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Mainly front Photographs by Allan P. Mottram, B.Sc.y and 
 Vernon H. Mottram. B.A. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1906 
 
American Edition Published October /j, igo6 
 
 r'rn^ 
 
 mi 
 

 DEDICATION 
 
 To the fond mother through whom six sons and three 
 daughters shared direct descent from Thias and 
 Lisbeth Bede ; and held near kinship with Adam Bede , 
 Seth Bede, and George Ehot — in grateful memory of 
 her self-sacrificing love to us all, of her prayerl for us 
 as children, her life-long service of husband, home and 
 family, and of her holy life and beautiful death in 
 association with the church she loved so well from 
 youth to old age — this volume is affectionately inscribed 
 by one who more and more feels that though his 
 mother may be dead to all the world , she is never dead 
 to him. 
 
 161581 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 In the pages of a written book, he who writes and they 
 who read are brought into intellectual companionship 
 for the time being. I deem it, therefore, desirable 
 that the reader should be taken into the writer's^ 
 confidence as to the inception and growth of his book, 
 and this is what I propose to do in the preface I am 
 now writing. 
 
 Many years ago, on one of my visits to the farm- 
 house in Staffordshire, where my mother was still 
 living in the dear old home, she startled me by asking : 
 " William, have you read my cousin's book?" " What 
 book, mother?" said I in return, to which she replied 
 *' Adam Bede." I had to confess that though I had 
 heard of the book I had not read it. In truth, my own 
 busy life in the west, as pastor of a church and Tem- 
 perance reformer, left me but little time for miscel- 
 laneous reading. Moreover, I think I should have 
 accorded in feeling with that saying of George Eliot, 
 which declares : ' ' For my own spiritual good I need 
 all other sort of reading, more than I need fiction." 
 Nevertheless, learning from the lips of my mother that 
 the prototype of Adam Bede was my mother's uncle 
 Kobert, and that Seth Bede represented her uncle 
 Samuel, while the real Dinah Morris was none other 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 than the aunt whose praises I had heard from my 
 mother's Kps hundreds of times, naturally I made 
 haste to possess and read the volume. 
 
 Partly to please my mother, and partly to gratify my 
 own desires, I began to visit several of her 
 relations in Ashbourne, Wirksworth, Nottingham, 
 Sheffield and Warwickshire, and was kindly received 
 in the home of the authoress herself. I also collected 
 all the facts I could discover relating to the real life of 
 members of the Bede family, and gathered multitudes 
 of books and papers which in any way concerned their 
 history. I had no intention of using my material for 
 any public purpose, further than to entertain a drawing 
 room party, or to instruct the young people of my own 
 charge. In the autumn of 1887 I w^as called to the 
 metropolis as described on page 30 of this volume. 
 The church there referred to was situated in Borougli 
 Eoad, Southwark, and the Lambeth Baths mission, 
 which attracted five thousand attendances every w^eek, 
 was held in a huge swimming bath, situated in a street 
 usually designated the New Cut. I was pastor of the 
 church and superintendent of the mission. The meet- 
 ings of the latter commenced each October and closed 
 in the following April, the bath only being required for 
 sw^imming during the summer months. Nowhere in 
 the metropolis could there be found more poverty- 
 stricken districts than West Southwark and North 
 Lambeth. The needs of the people pressed on me 
 as a nightmare. My lecture, entitled : " An Evening 
 with Adam Bede " was an expedient to raise funds for 
 their relief. Never can I forget the joy it brought to 
 my heart to be able thus to help my suffering fellow- 
 creatures. Success was immediate, and it continued as 
 long as I was able to carry on the mission. Eelief dis- 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 tribution is a difficult and perplexing business. I fear 
 my administration was not scientific. Discrimination 
 is difficult in dealing with a crowd. In presence of 
 semi-starvation, accentuated one dismal winter by long 
 continued frost and snow, the laws of political economy 
 stand at a discount. In such circumstances, you make 
 no account whether the applicant be Protestant or 
 Catholic, Churchman or Dissenter, Conservative, Radi- 
 cal, or Socialist. When a fellow-creature stands before 
 you hungry and cold, you cannot refuse help though 
 you may be conscious that the recipient has been free 
 with the Decalogue , or has brought on his starvation by 
 the love of strong drink. It is an exquisite delight to 
 me now to remember those past nine .years of service , 
 and to think of the part Dinah Morris had with me in 
 this beneficent administration among the sick, the 
 workless multitude, the widows and the children. 
 Dinah's prototype was always caring for the poor. 
 The soul of my lecture was the real Dinah , and I have 
 ever felt that to minister to the needy that saintly 
 woman would be willing to walk the earth once more. 
 Since I gave up my London mission the lecture has 
 been delivered in many parts of the country as 
 well as in the metropolitan area. On one of these oc- 
 casions a valued friend heard it and at once importuned 
 me to write a series of articles based upon the lecture 
 for insertion in the Leisure Hour. These began to 
 appear in November, 1902. Since their publication I 
 have been urged, in requests from all points of the com- 
 pass, to collect the magazine articles and publish them 
 in a separate volume. They consisted of twelve chap- 
 ters dealing with the real life story of Adam Bede, 
 Seth Bede, Mrs. Poyser and Dinah Morris. To the 
 Leisure Hour articles four new chapters are now 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 added, dealing with matters relating to George Eliot 
 herself. Notwithstanding the floods of luminous bio- 
 graphy on the life of this great woman something 
 further needs to be said. 
 
 Especially is this true with regard to her marriage 
 with Mr. George H. Lewes. On the subject of this 
 union there is much misunderstanding, and there are 
 many exaggerated judgments. Admirers of her 
 works are confronted with harsh indictments as to 
 the errors of her life. They are even adjured, while 
 enjoying her fiction, to bewail her dangerous lapses 
 from ways of purity and righteousness. While profit- 
 ing by her ethics they are warned to loathe her 
 example. All this is entirely due to her alliance with 
 Mr. Lewes. Apart from this union George Eliot's 
 life was not only blameless but beneficent in a high 
 degree, and her character is entirely stainless. A 
 plain statement of the simple facts of her first mar- 
 riage is now fully due. With my strong conviction 
 of her position as a great ethical and spiritual force in 
 the world, I cannot but feel how desirable it is that 
 her conduct should be set in the clearest light possible. 
 Erom George Eliot's own moral standpoint her life 
 needs no vindication, it vindicates itself. On the 
 morality of George Eliot's union with Mr. Lewes 
 opinions may differ, even as our moral standards vary. 
 On every conceivable ground, however, it is better 
 that the specific facts should be set forth, so that each 
 reader may have a reliable basis whereon to ground 
 his judgment. The admirers and students of George 
 Eliot are to be counted by the million. They are 
 in all the walks of life from the loftiest to the lowliest. 
 It is my earnest desire that the materials for a true 
 verdict should be placed within reach of all those who 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 may wish to consider them. This is what I have 
 attempted to do in Chapter XV., and I hope that 
 neither the sacred memory of George Ehot nor the 
 interests of her readers will suffer in consequence. I 
 have written under the compelling influence of duty, 
 with the feeling that I could do no other. 
 
 I have written nothing on the painful episode re- 
 lating to Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty Sorrel be- 
 cause, other than the tragic case of Mary Voce, so 
 totally dissimilar, I know of nothing in real life that 
 corresponds to this part of our author's fiction. So far 
 as I know, with any clear perception, this portion of 
 Adam Bede is a creation of the novelist for purposes 
 of literary art, and is probably the most artificial part 
 of her story. 
 
 The pictures in this volume are mostly reproductions 
 of photographs taken by my sons, a few are from 
 other sources, permission having been sought where 
 copyright was concerned. 
 
 Such as it is, my reader, this book awaits your kind 
 and indulgent perusal. It claims no literary preten- 
 sions, and is, doubtless, laden with many imperfec- 
 tions. It comes, however, with the writer's honest 
 desire to interest you in its contents and to communi- 
 cate to you some of the good he has found in compiling 
 the volume. 
 
 In the delivery of my lecture, as well as in the 
 preparation of the book founded upon it, the contem- 
 plation of the several characters in their own native 
 reality, as collated w^ith their presentment in fiction, has 
 been a spiritual blessing marvellously enriching my own 
 itmer life. Especially is this the case with that truly 
 remarkable woman — Dinah Morris. I would that I 
 could impart some of that rich blessing to all these 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 who do me the honour of reading what I have written. 
 Well will it be for you, dear reader, and for me, if 
 we may be enabled to serve our generation as well and 
 faithfully as Adam Bede and Mrs. Poyser, Seth Bede 
 and Dinah Morris — and I will add George Eliot — 
 served theirs. 
 
 William Mottram. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. — The Evolution of George Eliot ... 3 
 
 The Name — George Eliot a prodigy — Her anrestrj- — Schooldays— Home 
 Duties— Work and studies— Coventry and London. 
 
 CHAPTER II.— The Home of the Bedes a Hundred Years 
 
 Ago 13 
 
 The River Dove— Norbury — The church and churchyard— The Maskerys— 
 Bartle Massey- Roston Common — Thias and Lisbeth Bede and Family — 
 The Sunday at Home— The day-school— Village life — Recollections. 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Adam Bede a Fiction Founded on Fact— 
 
 The Sources from which the Facts were Derived. . 32 
 
 Identification of the originals— Geography of Adam Ikde — Stoniton — 
 Wearw Hitils — Ashbourne to Wirksworth— The dialect — Local allusions — 
 The Germ of Adam Bede. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. — The Real Life-Story of Adam Bede . 52 
 
 Robert E\ans, the prototype — EUastone, the Hayslope of the novel — 
 Wootton Hall— Colonel Francis Parker Xevvdegate- Adam lode's 
 marriage at EUastone— Kirk Hallam — Arbury Park — Griff House- 
 Stewardship -Adam Bede's letters — Reminiscence from Mr. Isaac Evans— 
 An Honest Man. 
 
 CHAPTER v.— All about Mrs. Poyser . . . .71 
 
 Griff House Farm and Dairy— Mrs. Poyser, George EHot's mother— George 
 Eliot, a Dairywoman— Her accomplishments — Her earnest religious life — 
 Mrs. Peyser's discourse to Mr. Donnithorne— Griff, a County Council 
 Dairy School. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. — Haytime at the Hall Farm and the 
 
 Harvest Supper ........ 88 
 
 George Eliot's passion for truthful portrayals— George Eliot and the facts 
 of village life — Her sympathy — Haytime a Hundred years ago— Home- 
 spun — Pewter dinner services — Machinery in the Hayfields — Burdened 
 Molly — Our judgment of accidents varied by the consideration as to 
 whether they happen to ourselves or to other people -The Harvest Supper — 
 Rencontre of wits, Mrs. Poyser versus Bartle Massey. 
 
 XV 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. — Setii Bede's Account of Himself . .10^ 
 
 Rural religion at the close of the Eighteenth Century— Coming of tlie 
 Methodists to Snelstone — Seth's conversion — Joins the Methodists — Tragic 
 death of his rlass-leader — Seth Bede becomes a class-leader and local 
 preacher — Differing church connections of members of the same Family- 
 Delightful labours — "Seth Bede bores me." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. — Dinah Morris Preaching on the Green 
 AT Hayslope ^ ... 123 
 
 Ellastone, the Hayslope of Adam Bede — The parish — Dinah Morris re- 
 membered as preaching at Ellastone — Did George Eliot know of this? — 
 Letter of George Eliot to Seth Bede concerning Dinali Morris— Dinah 
 Morris at Ashbourne— Donnithome Arms Inn— Mr. Adam Chadwick of 
 Matlock and Dmah Morris — 'Ihe picture of Dinah preaching on Hayslope 
 Green in Osborne House. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. — The Autobiography of Dinah Morris . 145 
 
 " Public Ministry of various Holy Women" by Rev. Z. Taft— Rev. J. 
 Wesley and Female Evangelism— The Methodist Conference on the 
 Ministry of \Vomen--Mr. Taft's collection of examples — Dinah Morris's 
 reasons for her autobiographical sketch—Her birth at Newbold — 
 Marvellous account of her mother's death — ' Unaccountable impressions" — 
 'Ihe frail motherless child. 
 
 CHAPTER X. — Din.\h Morris, from Babyhood to Womanhood 162 
 
 The loss of a good mother — Religious influences in childhood— Dinah 
 Morris leaves her father's house — Domestic service in Derby — .\ lace 
 mender at Nottingham — Searching for happiness — The first great Methodist 
 Secession, I vgy — Beck Barn and Dinah Morris — A saint-life begun— Jeanie 
 Deans and Dinah Morris. 
 
 CHAPTER XI.— DiNWii Morris : Life and Work in Nottingham 179 
 
 The Rev. Wm. Bramwell in Nottingham— Dinah Morris joins the Church— 
 Her change of attire— Her habits of secret prayer— Entire sanctification— 
 Struggles and triumphs — 'I he scourge of typhus fever in Nottingham — The 
 Lent Assizes, 1802 — Condemnation of Mary Voce for murder — State of the 
 laws — Dinah Morris in the convict's cell — Triumph on the scaffold — 
 '■ Glory to God, Glory ! Glory " ! 
 
 CHAPTER XII. — Din.\h Morris, the Mission Preacher, 
 
 Wooed and Won by Seth Bede 199 
 
 The liallad on the case of Mary Voce — Mission work in Derby, Tutbury, 
 Burton-on-Trent, and other places— Results and hindrances — Return to 
 Nottingham— At .Ashbourne, 1802— Seth Bede hears Dinah preach in 
 Ashbourne— His impression en the preaching-Marriage of Seth Bede and 
 Dinah Morris — The dual account ol the marriage. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII.— Hoi.Y W\^rk of a Wedded Pair . . 218 
 
 Discrepancy between fiction and fact as to the marriage of Dinah Morris- 
 Question and answer in the Methodist Conferf nee — " Should women be 
 permitted to preach among us" ?— Dinah's efforts at Snelstone, Roston, 
 Ellastone and other places -.\ glad revival -Removal to Derbv— Visits 
 bv Hugh Bourne, founder of the Primitive Methodist Connexion — The 
 Preacher's plan of the Derby Circuit — Seth Bede an inventor and part 
 proprietor of a factory at Wirksworth— Sunday in Seth Bede's Home— 
 .'\bounding labours. 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP'l'EI^ XIV. — Life's Labour followed by Sabbatic 
 
 Kest and Peace 241 
 
 Incidents in the life of Dinali Morris — Dreams and visions — Preaching at 
 Ikixton and acute rheumatism — George Eliot and Dinah Morris in Wirks- 
 worth— Se[)aration for a while from the Wesleyan Church — -The Arminian 
 Methodists — Dinah Morris and Mrs. Elizabeth Fry — Lady Lucy Smith— 
 The death-bed scene — Destruction of letters — Command concerning 
 monument — Visit of two strangers to the death-chamber — Dinah Morris's 
 imperishable monument — What was it made her the woman she became ? 
 
 CHAPTER XV. — The Marriage Union of George H. Lewes 
 
 WITH Mary Ann Kvans 262 
 
 George Eliot a great teacher — Her popularity — Theories concerning her 
 life and teachings — Opinions of Professor Francis W. Newman — The 
 Christian World — Truth — Lewes and his former marriage — How it was 
 dissolved — Marriage and Divorce Laws — Was there a marriage ceremony 
 on the Continent ? — Happy results of the union for a quarter of a century. 
 
 CHAPTER XVL— The Religion of George Eliot . . 283 
 
 The loss of faith — George Eliot's revolt— Sfraiici Magazine, 1903 — 
 Gentleman's Magazine, 1887 — T. P's. Weekly —George Eliot a religious 
 soul— Spiritual influences of George Eliot's childhood— Religious influences 
 of Schools and Church — George Eliot a Calvinist — A low state of health, 
 mental depression — Mr. Charles Hennell's Book— Causes of the change — 
 The British Weekly on George Eliot's knowledge of religious experience — 
 Her attitude to religious faith — Quotation from the late Mr. F. W. H. 
 Myers — The religious message conveyed in George Eliot's writings — 
 Thomas k Kempis' "Imitation of Christ" — Love for the Scriptures — " I wish 
 I could believe as you believe " — *' Where lies the difficulty " — " O happy 
 Zieten " ! 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 Portrait of George Eliot (from a 
 painting by M. D'Albert Durade) 
 
 George Eliol's Birthplace 
 The Dame's School, Griff . 
 George Eliot's Second School . 
 Interior of George Eliot's School 
 Copy of Entr>- of Marriage of Robert 
 Evans and Harriet I'oynton 
 
 Entrance to Dovedale 
 Norbury Church 
 Ancient Manor House, Norbury 
 Norbury Church : Interior . 
 Birthplace of Robert Evans 
 Grave of George and Marj' Evans 
 The Doveholes in Dovedale 
 Tissington Spires, Dovedale 
 Lion's Head Rock, Dovedale 
 A Staffordshire Stile . 
 
 Elizabethan Grammar School, Ash 
 bourne 
 
 House in EUastone 
 
 Wootton Hall . 
 
 Wootton Lodge . 
 
 West Hallam Hall, Derbyshire 
 
 Farmhouse, Kirk Hallam . 
 
 The Tiny Church at Kirk Hallam 
 
 Walk Farmhouse 
 
 Griff House, Griff 
 
 Chilvers Coton Church, Nuneaton 
 
 Tomb in Chilvers Coton of Christiana 
 Evans .... 
 
 H 
 17 
 19 
 21 
 
 23 
 
 26 
 
 33 
 
 37 
 40 
 
 43 
 
 47 
 53 
 55 
 57 
 59 
 61 
 
 6? 
 65 
 73 
 77 
 
 Reverse side of Tomb, showing 
 
 Memorial of Robert Evans . 81 
 
 Premises at Griff House, used by Mrs. 
 
 Evans as a Dairy ... 83 
 
 Farm Buildings, Griff House . . 86 
 
 The Sawmill and Builder's Yard at 
 
 Norbury 91 
 
 Gravestone of Samuel Green . . 96 
 
 School adjoining Bartle Massey's 
 
 House, near Norbury . . .107 
 
 Portrait of Robert Evans . . . 109 
 
 Wesleyan Cha[)el, Roston . . . 112 
 
 Thorntree Farm, Snelbtone . . 115 
 
 Farmhouse at Snelstone . . . 117 
 
 Page from Samuel Evans' Class liook 119 
 
 General View of Ellastone . . 125 
 
 Wesleyan Chapel, Ellastone . . 127 
 
 The Vicarage, Ellastone . . . 129 
 
 Parish Church of St. Peter . . 131 
 
 Chad Cranage's Forge . . • '35 
 
 Weaver Hills (Binton Hills) . . 137 
 
 Bromley Davenport Arms . . . 141 
 
 Rev. Zechariah Taft and Mrs. Taft . 146 
 
 Mrs. Susannah Wesley . . . 149 
 
 The Round House at Worthington . 151 
 
 Church at Worthington . . -153 
 
 Wesleyan Chapel, Griffy Dam . . 156 
 
 General View of Griffy Dam . . 159 
 
 Bonnet worn by Elizabeth Evans . 163 
 
 Elizabeth Evans (.^unt of George Eliot) 165 
 
 Extract from a letter from Robert 
 
 Evans to Samuel Evans . .167 
 
 XIX 
 
XX 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Extract from a letter from Elizabet 
 Evans to one of her daughters 
 
 h 
 • 173 
 
 The Rev. William Ikamwell . 
 
 . 180 
 
 County Hall and Assize Courts, Not 
 tingham .... 
 
 • 183 
 
 Grand Jury Room, Nottingham 
 
 . 186 
 
 Crown Court, Nottingham 
 
 . :89 
 
 Gallows Hill, Nottingham 
 
 • 193 
 
 Ham Hall, Ham, Staffs. 
 
 • 197 
 
 St. Mary's Church. Nottingham . 
 
 200 
 
 Town Gaol in Nottingham , 
 
 202 
 
 Table made by Samuel Evans , 
 
 205 
 
 Ham Cross 
 
 209 
 
 Ham Church Rock, Dovedale . 
 
 211 
 
 Parish Church, Ashbourne . 
 
 214 
 
 Old Wesleyan Chapel, Ashbourne . 
 
 216 
 
 Preachers* Plan 
 
 219 
 
 Harlem Tape Works 
 
 223 
 
 House of Sanmel and Elizabeth Evans 
 Old Wesleyan Chapel, Cromford 
 Plan of Cromford Wesleyan Circuit 
 The Arkwright Mills, Cromford 
 Bede Memorial Chapel, Wirksworth 
 Memorial Tablet to Dinah Morris 
 Parish Church. Wirksworth 
 
 House of Mr. Samuel Evans, Junr. 
 
 Arminian Methodist Preacher's Plan 
 
 Samuel Green's Timber Yard 
 
 George Green, of Waterhouses . 
 
 Leigh House, Waterhouses 
 
 Portrait of George Henrj' Lewes 
 
 Portrait of George Eliot . 
 
 Tomb of George Eliot's Brother 
 
 Astley Castle and Moat 
 
 I'AGE. 
 225 
 227 
 231 
 235 
 238 
 24D 
 
 243 
 
 247 
 
 257 
 260 
 263 
 277 
 287 
 291 
 
OF THE "^ X 
 
 l^N/VERSITY I 
 
 OF 
 
OF THE "^ 
 
 DIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE 
 TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 "Without a genius learning soars in vain; 
 And without learning genius sinks again ; 
 Their force united crowns the sprightly reign." 
 
 Elphinston. 
 
 Let us think a moment about the name George EHot. 
 As we write them there is music in the words. They 
 bring to our thought a series of vohimes which are 
 crammed full of wisdom, richly laden with philosophy, 
 brimming over with humour, melting in tender pathos, 
 lighted up with fine characters, bristling with dramatic 
 incidents, and each with its message to the world. 
 The name is most familiar. It has come to be, indeed, 
 a part of the mental farniture of mankind and stirs 
 grateful emotion in many climes. This familiar name 
 has a touch of romance in it. The husband's Christian 
 name was George. He was, to her, ever the most de- 
 lightful companion, the most cherished friend. That 
 was enough. The devotion of the lover settled the 
 first member of the author's nom de plume. Caprice 
 of will decided the other. Thus the name George Eliot 
 
 3 
 
4 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 is merely an author's chosen alias, and nothing more. 
 Simple as it is, it represents an amazing reality, and 
 stands for a world-wide inheritance of intellectual 
 power. 
 
 George Eliot is a prodigy ; there is no better word 
 for it. She is, indeed, if one may use another term, 
 a commanding phenomenon, as well as a prodigy. 
 For, consider the facts. Philosophy, literature, criti- 
 cism, have been far enough removed from any of her 
 kith and kin, heretofore. Her forbears had no pre- 
 tensions" to science or art. They were respectable 
 country folk, and nothing more. Their education was 
 slight, their intellectual equipment meagre, their 
 literary ambitions nil. Honest and self-respecting 
 tradesmen or farmers, or both, freeholders of their 
 country, above want, but with no superfluity of money ; 
 they were contented with their lot, doing their daily 
 duty with faithfulness, making no figure in a public 
 way, nor desiring to do so. Such was the family from 
 which George Eliot sprang. True, her father was, in 
 his way, a remarkable man. A stalwart, of giant 
 strength, self-reliant, energetic and practical. Had he 
 continued in life as a builder he would have distin- 
 guished himself in that capacity. He did afterwards 
 win wide distinctions as an estate agent and steward. 
 But of literary pretensions, he had none. I have seen 
 letters which he wrote in his later years of leisured ease, 
 and I am sure the atrocious spelling would have 
 shocked his old schoolmaster, Bartle Massey. The 
 home of the author's youth was a fine old farm house, 
 a scene of ceaseless industry, the mother just as busy 
 indoors as the father in his office and on his farm. 
 Two admirable characters and worthy citizens w^ere 
 they, but neither of them in the least degree likely to 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF GEORGE ELIOT 5 
 
 be the parent of this exceptional woman. Miss 
 Betham Edwards, who knew her well, writes of her 
 as "a sovereign nature " and " an august intellect." 
 There was in the family of George P^liot's father a 
 dim imcertain tradition of a superior position in earlier 
 generations. How often did I hear from her aunt, 
 who was my grandmother, of a family of some wealth. 
 
 THE DAME S SCHOOL, GRIFF. GEORGE EI.IOT S FIRST SCHOOL. 
 
 bearing the Welsh name of Evans, who formerly re- 
 sided in the county of Flint, of four brothers, members 
 of this family, who lived in troublous times, left their 
 ancestral home and somehow came to be tradesmen 
 and farmers in a remote part of Derbyshire. There is 
 also a Xorthop Hall, in Flintshire, with traditions of 
 such a family. But though the heads of this house 
 bore the honours of knighthood, even they have left 
 
6 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 us no memorials in literature, science or art, and are 
 all but forgotten now. Some of their descendants 
 have become wealthy manufacturers or builders, some 
 of them have been bankers, some professional men or 
 clergymen, some members of Parliament, but among 
 them all there is only one who has manifested the 
 subtle power of genius, and that one is George Ehot. 
 
 " Time, place and action may with pain be wrought, 
 But genius must be born and never can be taught." 
 
 A geyius is a rare thing, and appears among men 
 according to no known law. " The proportion of 
 genius to vulgar," says Lavater, " is like one to a mil- 
 lion ; but genius without tyranny, without pretension, 
 is like one to ten millions." This rare thing, wher- 
 ever it is given is of greatest price. Saints and 
 geniuses are always rare. 
 
 "A genius can't be forced, nor can 
 You make an ape an alderman." 
 
 In this respect, as in others, the wind bloweth where 
 it listeth. George Eliot was undoubtedly a genius 
 born. She stood, with a few others, on her Olympian 
 height but, in very deed, almost alone. There have 
 not been many Shakespeares, not many Bacons, not 
 many Miltons or Carlyles, and, in truth, there is but 
 one George Eliot. The possession of rare intellectual 
 powers was early discovered in the child. True, it 
 has been said of her that there w^as nothing extraordin- 
 ary about her in her first school days. She was not at 
 that time, we are told, an infant prodigy. But let us 
 ask what sort of a school was the first that was open to 
 her? It w^as a poor old-fashioned dame school, in a low 
 cottage just outside Griff gates, and at five years of 
 age she left it to go to a boarding school. Poor little 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 child ! I can but pity her. 
 in the cold rooms. How 
 lar experiences at school, 
 century there was a 
 consideration for the 
 children in schools, 
 that her suffering from 
 
 She recollected shivering 
 
 well I remember simi- 
 In the first half of the last 
 sore lack of humane 
 
 physical comfort of 
 George Eliot believed 
 
 a chill atmosphere at 
 
 
 ^^Bk J 
 
 Im 
 
 Hi 
 
 ^^^^^^^b^^^^^^l 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT S SECOND SCHOOL, XUXEATOX. 
 
 school was the beginning of a low state of health which 
 haunted her through life. She also suffered from a 
 keen susceptibility to terror at night, which I can very 
 well believe, because I had to suffer in the same way. 
 The dread of the supernatural was always with us. 
 Her father believed in apparitions, she tells us. Ghost 
 stories, mostly founded on tragedies, were part of the 
 common dread and the common belief. Many a chill 
 
8 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 winter night have I lain in the darkness with terrors 
 of unreal things haunting me, because of recitals I had 
 to hear at our own fireside. Everyone who came as 
 a neighbour seemed to have his own ghost-story, and 
 some of those I used to hear were told by relations of 
 George Eliot. 
 
 Until she was eight or nine she remained at the 
 Attleboro boarding school, not always getting to her 
 much loved home, even for the week ends. Alas for 
 the diffident, shrinking child of eight or nine, under 
 such circumstances. The children of genius do not al- 
 ways have an easy time of it prior to their development, 
 and so it was with George Eliot. As early as this the 
 father had become very proud of the astonishing and 
 growling intelligence of his young daughter. At nine she 
 comes under a teacher at Nuneaton, whose influence 
 was life-long. This was Miss Lewis, who was a tutor 
 in the school of a Miss Wallington. I have met persons 
 who were taught along with George Eliot in this 
 academy. Here she learned with the greatest facihty. 
 The imprig^sion one gathers of her in these early days, 
 up to twelve years of age, is that of an old-fashioned 
 child, spoken of by her schoolmates at Attleboro, who 
 were much older than herself, as "the little 
 mother," and regarded by the whole circle at home as 
 by no means an ordinary girl. At the age of twelve 
 she was sent to a boarding school in Coventry. Here 
 she came in contact with two remarkable women, the 
 Misses Franklin, the daughters of a Baptist minister, 
 who kept a school for young ladies. The fact that she 
 was sent to this establishment is proof to me that in 
 the father's thought she had established herself as one 
 who should have the best education which he could 
 supply. Here, as is proper for a genius, she was al- 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 wa)^s in the first rank, and became a chief favourite 
 among the pupils. Here also, her school-fellows al- 
 ways felt that she was immeasurably their superior. 
 She was the show-girl of the academy, which, with her 
 extreme sensitiveness, occasioned her a good deal of 
 mental sufl'ering. The five years spent in the school 
 of the Misses Franklin were happy, formative years, 
 
 
 INTERIOR OF GEORGE ELIOT S SCHOOL, NUXEATOX. 
 
 which left blessed memories on the heart of George 
 Eliot, and came to be reproduced in one of her novels. 
 School finished, her self-education began. As a mat- 
 ter of course she had now to take her place as a daugh- 
 ter in the home. 
 
 There is every evidence that she accepted her new^ 
 position and her home duties with submission and 
 alacrity. She took her share of the farm-house toil 
 
10 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 and acquitted herself with becoming industry and de- 
 votion. The mother was one of the best of housewives, 
 but by this time her health had become extremely feeble 
 and George Eliot had to take no slight share in house- 
 hold work. The mother dies when her youngest 
 daughter is sixteen years old. A year later the 
 next elder sister marries, and she has full charge of 
 the establishment. She is housekeeper at Griff and 
 dairywoman as well. Here was sufficient to tax the 
 energies of any person, but George Eliot found time for 
 other things. All the while she was rapidly advancing 
 her own education. She had learned professors coming 
 over from Coventry w^eek by week , from w^hom she took 
 lessons in German, Spanish, Italian, and music. She 
 taught herself Greek, made some incursions into He- 
 brew, and engaged in serious studies in literature. Her 
 thirst for knowledge was insatiable and her delight in 
 study unbounded. Then followed eight years of resi- 
 dence in a suburb of Coventry as house-keeper to her 
 father. Here, as never before, the gates of knowledge 
 opened before her. She found new intellectual 
 companionships and advanced into the wide realms of 
 thought. It was here she commenced her literary 
 career. At the beginning of this period she was twenty- 
 one years old and at its close, with the death of her 
 father in 1849, she w^as a woman of twenty-nine. 
 After a brief residence abroad we find her settling in 
 London. She resided with the family of Dr. Chap- 
 man in the Strand. He was editor in chief of the 
 Westminster Review, and she his assistant editor. She 
 has now entered on her career as one of the foremost 
 literary women of her time. We next turn to a con- 
 sideration of the real life story of some of her characters 
 in the family novel of Adam Bede. 
 

 
 
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CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE HOME OF THE BEDES A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 
 
 *' O, my beloved Nymph, fair Dove, 
 Princess of rivers, how I love 
 Upon thy flowery banks to lie, 
 And view thy silvery stream, 
 When gilded by a summer beam. 
 And in it all thy wanton joy. 
 Playing at liberty." — Charles Cotton. 
 
 Not more than three miles from Buxton there stands 
 a rugged mountain height called Axe Edge. It rises 
 to an altitude of nearly two thousand feet, occupies a 
 portion of three counties, and pours out from its flinty 
 sides four pellucid rivers. One of these is the winding, 
 rapid stream on whose flowery banks Charles Cotton 
 loved to lie in the summer sunshine, on which he built 
 his picturesque fishing house now standing at Beresford 
 Dale, near Hartington, and where he and his friend 
 Izaak Walton, the famous classical angler, held higfh 
 converse as fishermen more than two hundred years 
 ago. The river Dove is indeed supremely fair, and the 
 scenery on its banks is romantic and inspiring. 
 
 Dovedale, extending for three miles on its course of 
 forty-five miles, is a deep, rocky, limestone gorge; 
 through which the Dove swiftly flows , falling over plea- 
 sant cascades. Issuing from the confines of Dovedale, 
 the river flows through rich alluvial pastures and by 
 fruitful dairy farms. Along its banks the trains of 
 
 13 
 
14 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 the Ashbourne branch of the North Staffordshire Rail- 
 way smoothly glide, to reach the Churnet Valley line 
 at Eocester Junction. The second station en route is 
 Norbury. During its whole course the Dove divides 
 the two counties of Derby and Stafford, and Norbury is 
 on the Derbyshire side of the stream. 
 
 ENTRANCE TO DOVEDALE (tHE EAGLEDALE OF ADAM BEDe) 
 SHOWING THORPE CLOUD ON THE RIGHT. 
 
 The parish has never had more than four hundred 
 inhabitants, and the greater portion have always re- 
 sided in the hamlet of Roston and in the straggling dis- 
 trict called Eoston Common. Standing on a low ridge 
 above the rail and the river is the parish church, con- 
 cerning which the well-known antiquary, Mr. J. C. 
 Cox, says : "The church of St. Mary is of peculiar and 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 15 
 
 exceptional interest. It consists of a chancel, nave, 
 north aisle, and tower between two chapels on the 
 south side of the nave. The chief glory of this church 
 is its old stained and painted glass. There are not 
 six parish churches in England that have so extensive 
 a display." Directly in front of the church are the 
 simple memorials in stone of several of the persons who 
 will be mentioned in this history. How calm and 
 peaceful is the scene — 
 
 *' But let me lie in a quiet spot, 
 
 With the green turf o'er my head, 
 Far from the city's busy hum, 
 The worldling's heavy tread." 
 
 Close by the churchyard is an ancient manor-house, 
 formerly the residence of the FitzHerberts of S winner- 
 ton. Our concern with it is that a hundred years ago 
 it was occupied by a farmer of the name of Maskery, 
 and you will find that name given in Adam Bede. A 
 rising slope leads us to Roston Common. Bj^ the way- 
 side is a disused schoolroom, which is said to occupy 
 the site of a former school wherein Bartle Ma&sey was 
 the school-master a hundred ^-ears ago. This is a 
 name familiar to the reader of Adam Bede. Let him 
 not imagine that it is a name of mere fiction. The 
 person it represents was real enough to several genera- 
 tions' of schoolboys and girls in the parish of Norbury, 
 several of whom, to my knowledge, retained a vivid 
 recollection of the tough hazel wielded by the veritable 
 Bartle Massey. 
 
 A short distance in the same direction brings us to 
 Boston Common, where there is a lonely house, 
 standing on the left-hand side of the road, di- 
 vided now into two comfortable cottages. At the time 
 treated of in Adam Bede these formed one dwelling, 
 
16 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 which, together with a garden and orchard, the work- 
 shop at the south end and eight acres of meadow and 
 pasture land, were the property of one George Evans, 
 who resided there with his wife Mary and their family 
 of five sons and three daughters. One might wonder 
 how a family with a name so distinctively Welsh 
 should in those days be found in this remote part of 
 Derbyshire. It has been discovered by one Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel Evans, a member of the Eoston family, 
 descended from the brother of George Evans, that 
 three centuries ago there was a " Thomas Evans de 
 Korthop, in the County of Flint, Argent " ; and that 
 from this ancient Welsh knight these later Evanses 
 have sprung. The Evanses would seem to have dis- 
 appeared from Elintshire in the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century, and towards its close the name occurs 
 in the Norbury register. 
 
 In the seventeenth century great national commo- 
 tions took place. There was the Eevolution under 
 Charles I., the Commonwealth under Cromwell, and 
 the Restoration under Charles II. It is manifest that 
 during those troublous times the fortunes of the Evans 
 family had seriously declined, for one of the descen- 
 dants of the Welsh knight of Northop appears as a 
 humble resident of Norbury, with a significant appel- 
 lation attached to his name by the clergyman who kept 
 the parish register. Three times over he is described 
 as " Joseph Evans, a traveller," and the word travel- 
 ler as used then was equivalent to our use of the w^ord 
 tramp. 
 
 Another hundred years have gone their round, and 
 we come upon another descendant of the ancient 
 knight in the person of the George Evans mentioned 
 previously, who is a freeholder of the county of Derby, 
 
z 4i 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 
 
 19 
 
 and an honest and respectable tradesman. The owner- 
 ship of the small estate which was his a hundred years 
 ago, has descended in the line of his family, an es- 
 teemed lady, his great-granddaughter, being the pro- 
 prietor now. In his lifetime, the rural home was a 
 scene of busy, strenuous toil. Although lonely and 
 remote there were situated around it, at varying dis- 
 
 
 
 ,j^4 
 
 
 
 — L^-MaH^SteiiL^B 
 
 ^^^^^^^. 
 
 IE 
 
 
 ANCIENT MANOR HOUSE, NORBURY; HOME OF THE MASKERY FAMILY. 
 
 tances, a number of farm-houses and cottages, and it 
 was wdthin reach of villages and hamlets, where the 
 useful handicraft of the father and his sons was in con- 
 stant requisition. 
 
 George Evans was the carpenter and builder for the 
 
20 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 whole locality. His "brow was wet with honest 
 sweat," while his good wife, Mary, was a woman of 
 household thrift and motherly activity. Every one 
 of the five sons was taught his father's trade after pas- 
 sing the scant curriculum of Bartle Massey's schocl. 
 The demands of labour w^ere constant and severe. The 
 eight hours' days of toil was not even dreamed of as 
 yet. In the summer time eighteen hours would be 
 nearer the mark. There was, however, one blessed 
 safeguard, the Sunday was in reality a day of rest. 
 
 In these restless times people weary themselves on 
 Sundays in pursuing their pleasures. It was not so 
 then. For all classes of toilers the Sunday meant 
 Sabbath rest in reality. In the forenoon the family 
 of George Evans invariably went to church. Then 
 followed at mid-day that important event, the 
 Sunday dinner. It was the repast of the week. 
 The father always laid great stress on the Sunday 
 dinner. This cheerful function ended, the whole 
 of the Sunday afternoon was spent in a family 
 Sunday school, long before Sunday schools had 
 been instituted in that neighbourhood. The boys and 
 girls, instructed by the father, practised reading and 
 writing, spelling and ciphering, and they were cate- 
 chised on their school work, and encouraged in the way 
 of siiTiple elementary learning, and so the Sabbath wore 
 on and was really a dehght to all the family. 
 
 " We thank Thee, Lord, for one day 
 
 To look Heaven in the face; 
 The poor have only Sunday ; " 
 
 The sweeter is the grace. 
 'Tis then they make the music 
 
 That sings their week away ; 
 O, there's a sweetness infinite 
 
 In the workman's Sabbath day." 
 
NORBURY CHURCH : IXTERIOR. 
 
\. OF f, ^/^ 
 
 CALiFO^ 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 
 
 23 
 
 Hard toil on week-days, sweet rest on Sundays, a 
 family life wholesome, if not refined, a home where the 
 parents exhibited to their children an example of 
 reverence, integrity, uprightness and industry, and 
 where the children grew up healthy, self-respecting, 
 honest and virtuous, worthy citizens, honourable men 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT EVANS (ADAM BEUE.) 
 " . . . .he entered the house and glanced into tlie room on the left-hand 
 which was used as a workshop." Adam Bede, Chap. iv. 
 
 and women. Such was the family of George and 
 Mary Evans, and it is family life like this which con- 
 stitutes the stamina and builds up the strength of a 
 puissant and progressive nation. 
 
 In turn, every one of the boys was taken from school 
 at a too early age, to be inducted into the mysteries of 
 the father's handicraft. There was no scruple then 
 
24 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 in putting lads to work in their tender years. It had 
 always been so. There were no Elementary Educa- 
 tion Acts to restrain the father's liberty for the child- 
 ren's good ; no set number of standards in the three 
 K's to be got over, and no fixed age to be attained be- 
 fore a boy could be employed in labour, as is the case 
 now. There were, however, plenty of fresh air, an 
 abundance of homely, substantial food, and the care 
 and love of devoted parents. 
 
 Less than half a mile away was the school of Bartle 
 Massey. One of the earliest names I remember to 
 have heard outside the circle of our own family names, 
 is that of Bartle Massey. Yet how far the picture of 
 the quaint old man drawn for us in Adam Bede is true 
 to life, or how^ far it is meant to be so, I cannot say. 
 The recollections I have of the statements made to me 
 concerning him are that he w^as universally regarded 
 as a clever schoolmaster, that he had a great reputa- 
 tion for bringing his pupils forward quickly, that he 
 exercised a severe discipline , had an erratic temper and 
 cherished an impatient contempt for dull scholars, w^ho 
 generall}^ had a poor time with him. Some of his 
 pupils had to walk many miles each day to attend his 
 school, because schools were scarce and his was popu- 
 lar ; his school fees w^ere sixpence per week for the tui- 
 tion of each child, and he usually collected his fees by 
 sending in his bill at Christmas, except in the case cf 
 a few scholars who paid their fees weekly. 
 
 The reputation of the schoolmaster extended far and 
 near. The curriculum, though limited, w^as of practi- 
 cal value. Strict attention was paid to reading and 
 spelling. The reading lessons consisted of such as 
 were contained in various educational compilations cf 
 which that very useful, but now obsolete, school-book 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES £5 
 
 Mavor's Beading and Spelling Book may be taken as 
 an example, supplemented by that "well of English 
 undefiled," the Authorised Version of the Old and 
 Kew Testaments. Spelling \Yas inculcated by the com- 
 mittal to memory of long columns of words arranged 
 according to the number of their syllables, without any 
 hint, in most cases, as to what might be their meaning. 
 Pupils in writing had copies set them by the master, 
 or, as they advanced in the art, copies were handed to 
 them for imitation, done in copper-plate. Arithmetic 
 was taught after the manner of Walkinghame's Tutor's 
 Assistant, and included not only the common elemen- 
 tary rules, but vulgar and decimal fractions, square 
 and cube root, duodecimals, mensuration of superfices, 
 and book-keeping. There were only the very feeblest at- 
 tempts at teaching grammar, geography, or history. I 
 believe it is quite true that Bartle Massey did try to in- 
 duce his pupils to carry on their studies by means of an 
 evening school, and it is probable that his complainings 
 that so few of his old scholars availed themselves of 
 the advantages he offered them are genuine enough. 
 
 Books were few, periodicals unknown, and news- 
 papers very scanty. In Chapter XIX. of Adam Bede 
 there is an inventory of the books the hero of the story 
 had read over and above the volumes used in his scant 
 education. Brief as is the list, I know well that it 
 would far exceed the reading of the great bulk of Adam 
 Bede's compeers. Here it is : " The Bible, includ- 
 ing the apocryphal books.; Poor Bichard's Almanack; 
 Taylor's Holy Livirig and Dijing ; The Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress with Bunyan's Life and Hohj War ; a great deal 
 of Bailey's Dictionary ; Valentine and Orson, and part 
 of a History of Bahijlon, which Bartle Massey had lent 
 him." 
 
26 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Markets and fairs, club-feasts and parish wakes, 
 Christmas time, Easter and Whitsuntide varied the 
 monotony of village life. 
 
 GRAVE OF GEORGE AND MARY EVANS (THIAS AND EISBETH BEDE). 
 
 Ashbourne was the market town, while Uttoxeter, 
 Derby, Cheadle and Leek were not far oft'. My own 
 native home lay just across the Weaver Hills, at 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 27 
 
 Waterhouses in the parish of Waterfall, where I was 
 born in 1836. 
 
 On my mother and grandmother's side I am a direct 
 descendant of George and Mary Evans, and it is among 
 the Evans' household we must look for several of the 
 characters mentioned in George Eliot's story of Adam 
 Bede. Thus George and Mary Evans may be taken 
 as typical of " Thias " and " Lisbeth Bede " ; Eobert 
 Evans is undoubtedly the original who suggested Adam 
 Bede. Samuel Evans, the youngest son, was cer- 
 tainly the prototype of Seth Bede. George Eliot 
 (Mary Ann Evans) was the daughter of Adam Bede 
 and the granddaughter of Thias and Lisbeth. It will 
 thus occur to the reader that in portraying Adam Bede 
 our author w^as thinking of her own father, and had 
 the very best reasons for the statement concerning her 
 hero, that he had a dash of Celtic blood in his veins. 
 This statement was literally true. My relation to the 
 Evans family arises from my descent from Ann Evans, 
 the daughter of Thias and Lisbeth, the sister of Adam 
 and Seth — my dearly-beloved grandmother. Thus, 
 it will be seen, I write of things I have known from 
 infancy. The most sacred associations cluster around 
 the story I am about to tell, and the obligation to tell 
 it comes to me bound up with the tenderest family 
 ties — 
 
 " There was a time when I was very small, 
 When my whole frame was but an ell in height. 
 Sweetly, as I recall it, tears will fall, 
 And therefore I recall it with delight." 
 
 In those days, so long gone by, I drank in memories 
 of Adam and Seth Bede and Dinah Morris w4th an 
 avidity I can never forget. Adam Bede and Dinah 
 Morris died when I was thirteen years of age, and Seth 
 
28 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Bede died nine years later. Of course, the main facts 
 on which the story was based were known to me long 
 before the book had ever been thouirht of, even by 
 its author, for they were common family property. My 
 mother and grandmother never wearied of telling me 
 those facts, and it is on them the story is avowedly 
 founded. 
 
 My ears never wearied of my mother's recitals con- 
 cerning her two choice family saints — Seth Bede and 
 Dinah Morris. Concerning the first of these I was 
 told of his conversion to God as a very young man, his 
 union with the Methodists, his patience and persever- 
 ance in spite of the jeers of companions in toil and 
 the scornful raillery of brothers at home. I had also 
 been told of his pathetic prayers by his mother's death- 
 bed, of his long and faithful labours as a devoted class- 
 leader and local preacher, and his marked usefulness as 
 a visitor to the sick and dying. And how can I ever 
 tell of the many unparalleled virtues attributed to 
 Dinah Morris, of her heroic efforts to do good, her con- 
 stant visitations of the afflicted, her preachings indoors 
 and out for many years, and of a chain of events asso- 
 ciated with her simple faith and consecrated zeal which 
 were reported to me as nothing less than truly miracu- 
 lous? 
 
 The early Methodists were firm believers in the 
 miraculous, even as their great founder John Wesley 
 himself was. To my young imagination Dinah Morris 
 appeared to have moved in an atmosphere of super- 
 natural influences during the greater portion of her life. 
 All this was related to me as being associated with a 
 character of singular sweetness, unaffected piety, rapt 
 adoration and exceptional power in prayer. There 
 were neither fanaticism, Pharisaism, nor selfishness in 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 29 
 
 Dinah as she was presented to my young heart, which 
 drank in these recitals with silent wonder and stored 
 them away in the chambers of memory; and so, from 
 very early years Dinah Morris came into my life as a 
 familiar acquaintance, dear to my mother by close per- 
 sonal acquaintance and devoted family affection, and 
 consequently dear to me. 
 
 In 1849 her death transfigured her for us all, and was 
 the theme of much conversation in our home. This 
 event occurred in Stony shire, and it was all so serene 
 and heavenly. Everything about her had a warm 
 glow of supernatural interest. She was my mother's 
 revered family saint, a woman of transcendent spiri- 
 tuality, a character almost ethereal; one who had in 
 very deed walked with God, and was not because God 
 had taken her. Then she lingered with us in a mystic 
 aureola of heavenly glory, far off from us now in the 
 world unseen. But lo, eleven years after her decease 
 she truly rose from the dead. In that time her own 
 beloved niece and my mother's first cousin had most 
 strangely developed from the clinging girl whom Dinah 
 ]^Iorris had know^n and loved in her youth, and 
 early womanhood, into an author of lofty genius. ' It 
 was this gifted niece who revealed the saintly aunt to 
 a wondering world, transfigured indeed, and clothed 
 in white robes of angelic beauty. 
 
 In the story of Adam Bede, Dinah Morris became my 
 idealistic companion for many a year. Various little 
 commissions I had to execute for my aged mother con- 
 cerning Dinah's children and other relations, and after 
 her death, in 1887, Dinah came, by the force of circum- 
 stances, into closer relations with me. In that year, 
 on the sudden decease of the Rev. G. M. Murphy, I 
 was unexpectedly called upon to leave my happy work 
 
30 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 in Bristol to take charge of the church of which Mr. 
 Murphy had been pastor, and of the great mission 
 which he had created at Lambeth Baths. Here I 
 w^as constantly appalled by the slow starvation I saw 
 going on around me, especially in times of general dis- 
 tress. All my public funds and private cash had gone 
 to purchase supplies for these famishing people. Then 
 I thought of Dinah Morris, and she became the princi- 
 pal theme of a lecture given to raise funds for the poor. 
 Hundreds of pounds came to me, romances of charity 
 happened, and many troubled souls were made to sing 
 for joy. 
 
 In process of time failure of physical strength 
 and nervous energy forced me out from this distress- 
 ful but most blessed w^ork in London, w^hen I was 
 called to a wider service, in which my health has 
 been completely restored, in a sphere w^hich gives me 
 frequent change of air and calls me to travel over Eng- 
 land and Wales as lecturer, preacher and missioner. 
 Again and again have I been asked to give my lecture 
 entitled "An Evening with Adam Bede." In that 
 lecture, as in the fiction, Dinah is the central figure, 
 not merely the Dinah as painted by George Eliot, but 
 the real woman herself as I have come to know her, 
 and she has truly dwelt with me, a perpetual charm 
 and an abiding inspiration. 
 
 There is nothing in this w^orld so supremely attrac- 
 tive as holiness. Let it but be presented in association 
 with Christ-like sympathy and practical beneficence, 
 and arrayed in such dress holiness commands the world. 
 In these pages it will be my valued privilege to pre- 
 sent the real Dinah Morris to my readers after this 
 fashion, which was in fact, her own true life. In 
 them I may have something to say concerning Thias and 
 
THE HOME OF THE BEDES 31 
 
 Lisbeth, Adam and Seth Bede. I may be able to re- 
 late something of interest also about Mrs. Poyser, but 
 the principal charm in my story must centre in the 
 strange experiences and remarkable incidents of the 
 life of Dinah Morris. 
 
CHAPTEB JIT 
 
 ADAM BEDE A FICTION FOUNDED ON FACT — THE 
 SOURCES FROM WHICH THE FACTS WERE DERIVED 
 
 ''Long, long be my heart with such memories filled! 
 Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled : 
 You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, 
 But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 
 
 Moore. 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have named the family from 
 whose living circle several of the prominent characters 
 in Adam Becle were taken by its author. I have also 
 indicated the part of the country where they spent their 
 life — as to the parents, to life's close, and as to the 
 sons till they were full grown men. I propose now to 
 show how the story of Adam Bede adapts itself to the 
 geography of this locality, how it agrees also w^ith 
 its dialect and fits in with the social conditions there at 
 the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the 
 nineteenth centuries, which are the times dealt with 
 in the story of Adam. Bede. I will, however, first fore- 
 warn the reader that he must not expect to find in this 
 work of fiction exact biography, correct history, accu- 
 rate geography, or even full dialect. These things are 
 not promised to us, and we have no right to expect 
 them, since it was no part of the author's purpose to 
 furnish them. Her aim w^as entirely different. There- 
 
 32 
 
/ ^ OF THE >. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 califopi^' 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 35 
 
 fore, in judging of her work, it is important to bear in 
 mind the old maxim — 
 
 " In every work regard the author's end. 
 Since none can compass more than they intend." 
 
 Many of George E Hot's statements in fiction have 
 been seized upon by a certain class of writers and as- 
 serted as facts of real life, when, in reality, they were 
 nothing of the kind. Thus, with the best intentions, 
 fact and fiction have been so blended as to produce mis- 
 leading and erroneous impressions. When reading a 
 work of fiction we have, perhaps, no inherent right to 
 inquire concerning the originals whom the author had 
 in mind when constructing his plot and working out 
 his details. Why not take the book as you find it, a work 
 of literary craftsmanship, and so enjoy it and accept its 
 lessons without troubling yourself as to the author's 
 originals? That is his secret — not yours. This, I 
 am sure, would be the feeling of many writers of fic- 
 tion, and among them George Eliot. Indeed, it is not 
 difiicult to discover a tinge of irritation in respect of 
 the earlier attempts to identify her characters. And 
 yet, in spite of ourselves, the question will force it- 
 self upon us while reading fiction : — How much of this 
 is real? and how much is the product of pure imagina- 
 tion? In the case of Adam Bede, there were weighty 
 reasons why its author should deprecate attempts at 
 identification. Among others, there was this : that 
 similar attempts with regard to Scenes from Clerical 
 Life had occasioned considerable annoyance. There 
 were other reasons it is not necessary to name. There 
 is, however, no need of reticence now, and in the course 
 of years the authoress herself allowed several acknow^- 
 ledgments to be wrung from her which help us to a 
 just conclusion. 
 
 i 
 
36 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 The Geography, the characters and dialect of Adam 
 Bede are in the main taken from Derbyshire and Staf- 
 fordshire, but for all that Warwickshire has in all these 
 respects crept into the story, as might have been antici- 
 pated. It should be remembered in passing, that in 
 writing her novel George Eliot did not consider her- 
 self bound to exact description. When Holman Hunt 
 had conceived the idea of his great painting, the 
 Shadow of Death, he is said to have resided in Nazar- 
 eth for four years, at great sacrifice to himself, in order 
 that all the settings of his picture might be accurate in 
 detail and true to locality. Even our author, w^hen 
 preparing to WTite her historical novel, Romola, por- 
 traying the country and the times of the great monk 
 Savonarola, found it necessary to reside for a while in 
 Florence and to make large use, at great cost to her- 
 self in time and labour, as w^ell as money, of its archi- 
 tecture, its paintings, its libraries and antiquities, to 
 enable her accurately to construct her entrancing story. 
 Even then her success was not so complete as her critics 
 could have desired. 
 
 In writing Adam Bede the case was different. All 
 the materials came from sources much nearer home. 
 Her father's oft-repeated tale of his early life, together 
 with the absorbing and captivating recitals of a beloved 
 aunt , formed the ground-work of the book ; while such 
 geographical description as was required was already 
 familiar to her eye by several visits to the undoubted 
 scene of the story. These visits commenced when the 
 author was only seven years of age , and they continued 
 till she was a full-grown woman. 
 
 In Adam Bede we have frequent mention of the 
 county town of Stoniton. The book itself supplies the 
 evidence as to what county town is meant by this refer- 
 
TISSIXGTON SPIRES. DOVEDAI.E (eAGLEDALE.) 
 
r:p:iwY~^ 
 
 / V^ OF -T"! 
 
 ut*\\^ 
 
 RS\-r^ 
 
 of 
 
 CAL^fO^ 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 39 
 
 ence. In Chapter XXII. we have related to us the 
 gathering of the birthday party to celebrate the com- 
 ing of age of Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire, 
 and Martin Poyser, the senior, is made to say — " I 
 remember Jacob Taft walking fifty miles after the 
 Scotch raybels, when they turned back from Stoniton." 
 One need hardly remark that the rebellion here alluded 
 to is none other than that of 1745, led by the Young 
 Pretender ; or that it w^as from the town of Derby that 
 the "raybels" began their inglorious retreat. Stoniton 
 is thus identified to a certainty. 
 
 There is another veiled reference to Derby. In Chap- 
 ter XLIII. we read : " The place fitted up that day as 
 a court of justice was a grand old hall now destroyed by 
 fire." It suffices to say that the town hall of Derby 
 was so destroyed in 1841. Nottingham was the place 
 where the prototype of Hetty Sorrel was tried and con- 
 demned. Our author fixes the venue in Derby. 
 
 We have another sign of locality in the questions and 
 answers which passed between Adam and Hetty, con- 
 cerning Eagledale, Chapter XX. Hetty is longing to 
 know more about the place whither her secret lover, 
 Arthur Donnithorne, has gone fishing. "Have j^ou 
 ever been to Eagledale?" she asks. "Yes," replies 
 Adam, " ten years ago, w4ien I was a lad. It's a won- 
 derful sight, rocks and caves such as you never saw in 
 your life. I never had a right notion o' rocks till I 
 went there. There's nothing but a bit of a inn where 
 he's gone to fish." To anyone knowing these parts 
 there could be no manner of doubt that this description 
 relates to Dovedale and to the Izaak Walton Hotel, 
 which stands on an elevation near the Ham end of the 
 dale. The inn of Adam Bede's time was simply a 
 farm-house with a licence attached to it ; it has now 
 
40 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 swollen into a comfortable hotel, dear to the hearts of 
 anglers. 
 
 lion's head rock, dovedale (eagledale). 
 
 Another distinctive geographical feature is the Bin- 
 ton Hills, described in Chapter II. : " High up against 
 the horizon were the huge, conical masses of hill, 
 
 I 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 41 
 
 like giant mounds, intended to fortify this region of 
 corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of 
 the north." Here is an apt description of the Weaver 
 Hills, occupying the northern side of the parish of Ella- 
 stone. Another may be quoted from a minor poet — 
 
 " See how majestic Weaver's brow 
 Swells from each broken scene below, 
 O'er the wide vales he bends sublime, 
 And triumphs in his polar clime." 
 
 The Eoyal Engineers in making the Ordnance Sur- 
 veys have found Weaver an 'admirable Station, one 
 thousand two hundred feet high, and commanding a 
 magnificent prospect on every side. It was on the 
 highest mound of Weaver that Mr. A. L. W^agge be- 
 gan those meteorological observations which he has 
 continued at the charges of the Government on the top 
 of Ben Nevis. Weaver is an imposing feature of the 
 district, conspicuous for many miles around. 
 
 In Ada'tn Bede we have mention made of Oakbourne 
 and the Buxton coach. Take out the prefix " Oak " 
 and substitute " Ash," and you have the name of the 
 town of Ashbourne, well known to Adam Bede as well 
 as to George Eliot. The coaches between the two 
 towns would be a reality in the days when the daugrh- 
 ter was driven over the district by her father in his gig, 
 and, doubtless, she saw them wdth her own eyes. The 
 agreement of geographical names is at least suggestive, 
 as between Norbury and Norburne, Ellastone and 
 Treddlestone, Eocester and Bosseter, Ashbourne and 
 Oakbourne, Warslow and Warson, Boston and Brox- 
 ton. Here is, at least, a marked coincidence of sound, 
 while it must be acknowledged that in other things the 
 likeness does not hold good. 
 
42 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 We have frequent contrasts in Adam Bede of two 
 tracts of country which are contiguous to each other. 
 We read of " that grim outskirt of Stonyshire," where- 
 with Dinah Morris stands associated ; " a bleak treeless 
 region, intersected by lines of cold, grey stone." This 
 is contrasted wdth " that rich undulating district cf 
 Loamshire," where Mrs. Poyser had her home. Mrs. 
 Poyser, speaking of this grim outskirt, suggests that 
 the inhabitants thereof " live on the naked hills like 
 poultry a-scratching on a gravel bank." All this has 
 its counterpart in the country where Adam Bede spent 
 his early life, and over which he drove his wonderful 
 daughter more than once. The high bleak country 
 may be said to lie betw^een Ashbourne and Wirksvvorth, 
 and its tapering peaks are plainly visible from the top 
 of Weaver, or from the gentle height on which Norbury 
 church stands. 
 
 I will only mention one other geographical identifica- 
 tion. To a native who has travelled it is most conclu- 
 sive. In Chapter III. Seth is walking with Dinah, 
 and is earnestly pressing upon her his matrimonial suit. 
 " They had reached one of those narrow passes be- 
 tw^een two tall stones wdiich performed the office of a 
 stile in Loamshire." I can well understand how a 
 person brought up amidst rural surroundings in W^ar- 
 wickshire would wonder at the construction of a Staf- 
 fordshire stile. The description is as precise as lan- 
 guage can make it. And yet, in spite of our several 
 identifications, w^hich, in themselves, are unmistakable, 
 I am fully persuaded that some stray bits of Warwick- 
 shire scenery have stolen into the narrative. 
 
 The dialect of Adam Bede tells a similar tale. It is 
 not the dialect of Warwickshire, though words and 
 phrases which are provincialisms there have been im- 
 
A STAFFORDSHIRE STILE. 
 
 " Those very narrow |)asses between two tall stones which performed the office 
 of a stile in Loamsiiire." Adam Bede. 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 45 
 
 ported into it ; it is intended to be, and in the main is, 
 representative of the common speech which prevailed 
 in the district where Adam Bede's early days w^ere 
 spent. Dialect is a most difficult matter with any 
 author, and we happen to know that George Eliot set 
 much store by that of Adam Bede. When Lord 
 Lytton pointed out to her what he considered two de- 
 fects in the book — the dialect and Adam's marriage 
 with Dinah , she said to her friends , " I would rather 
 have my teeth drawn than part with either." She 
 took special pains in her dealings wdth her publishers to 
 have the provincialisms of her book correctly presented. 
 It so happens that the Staffordshire dialect was familiar 
 to me from infancy. My first residence away from this 
 county was in Warwickshire, where I became familiar 
 with the provincialisms of that county also. This en- 
 titles me to say that as in the geography, so in the dia- 
 lect, a mixture from Warwickshire has crept in. In 
 this matter we are helped by a suggestion from Miss 
 Blind. She informs her readers in her book on George 
 Eliot, that in the family of Adam Bede at Griff, " a 
 broad provincial dialect was spoken." I have no 
 doubt that this is true, and that the dialect was not 
 only broad, but mixed also. The dialect of the book 
 likewise, as of the home is a mixture. This I could 
 conclusively prove were it necessary. 
 
 Local allusions are traceable in other particulars. 
 The ordinary breakfast, we learn, in the home at Hay- 
 slope w^as a first course of oatmeal porridge, and a 
 second of toasted oatcake served hot. I can quite be- 
 lieve this, only I am of opinion that good w^holesome 
 milk would be served with, the porridge, fresh butter 
 or home-made lard would be spread on the oatcake, or 
 a dish of toasted cheese set beside it. The oatmeal 
 
46 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 would be grown in the parish and ground at Xorbury 
 mill. Fresh meat and wheaten bread, we are told, 
 were delicacies to the people of Haj^slope in the times 
 of Adam Bede. Wheat was but little grown north of 
 the Trent, and to purchase it was a privilege reserved 
 to the well-to-do, since its cost was often four times as 
 much as it is in these later days. The diet might be 
 monotonous, but it had in it the elements of vitality 
 and force, and there was reared on it a race of strong 
 and vigorous men, of which Adam and Seth Bede were 
 fine examples. The physical force of the men of 
 Derbyshire has passed into an ancient proverb — 
 
 "Derbyshire born, Derbyshire bred. 
 Strong in the arms, weak in the head." 
 
 About the latter characteristic I will say nothing, but 
 anyone visiting the charming county will find it 
 peopled by a race of sturdy Saxon folk. 
 
 The parish wakes would loom large in the thoughts 
 of the people of Norbury and Ellastone, and these fes- 
 tivities are several times alluded to in Adam Bede. 
 Originally established as religious commemorations, 
 they had degenerated into scenes of irreligious riot. 
 Here our identifications must cease. ]f others were 
 needed, the book would supply them in great abun- 
 dance. Let us, however, complete our statement by 
 turning to the account our author has given of the 
 origin of her book in several scattered references. And, 
 first of all , we are not surprised to discover that George 
 Eliot's earliest attempt at fiction was descriptive of a 
 Staffordshire village, although it never got beyond its 
 first chapter and was never published. We also learn 
 that somewhat late in hfe she made this acknowledg- 
 ment concerning Adam Bede : " There are things in it 
 
^ OF THE 
 
 Of • 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 49 
 
 about my father, i.e., being interpreted, things my 
 father told us concerning his early life." This it was 
 that possessed the mind of the father in his old age, 
 and we learn that, in the eight years of his comparative 
 retirement, when his beloved daughter was his devoted 
 house-keeper and daily companion, his conversation 
 with her often ran back to the past, which was quite 
 natural — 
 
 "When time, that steals our years away, 
 Shall steal our pleasures too, 
 The memory of the past will stay. 
 And halt" our joys renew." 
 
 These happy conversations, however, form only one 
 portion of the primal suggestions from which Adajii 
 Bede sprang. Its author says : " The germ of Adam 
 Bede was an anecdote told me by my Methodist aunt 
 Samuel." " The incident lay on my mind for years, 
 till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could 
 fructify." " The character of Dinah grew out of my 
 recollections of my aunt." " I was very fond of her. 
 She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her 
 of my inward life, which was closely shut up from those 
 usually round me." 
 
 These extracts introduce the relative who, after her 
 own immediate friends at home, filled the largest space 
 in the warm affections of George Eliot in the earlier 
 years of her life. In 1839, she writes to this beloved 
 aunt (Dinah Morris), in prospect of a visit to her in 
 Wirksworth, which afterwards took place : " I have a 
 faint hope that the pleasure and profit I have felt in 
 your society may be repeated this summer ; there is no 
 place I would sooner visit than Wirksworth, or the in- 
 habitants of which have a stronger hold on my affec- 
 tions." This was not her only visit. Even as a child 
 5 
 
50 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 of seven she had been driven by her father over the 
 whole region covered by the fiction, and this experience 
 was repeated later on. The bleak hills w^ere familiar 
 to her own eyes. Ellastone and Ashbourne were well 
 known to her. She mentions her visit to the fine 
 parish church at the latter place, tells us of the wonders 
 of Alton Tow^ers, of Lichfield, its cathedral and monu- 
 ments; of Uttoxeter, and other scenes of interest. 
 Neither the father nor his daughter could have the 
 faintest notion of the use that George Eliot would one 
 day make of the material she gathered in so natural 
 and simple a w^ay from her father and her aunt. 
 
 One other visit to the aunt has been described to me 
 by four persons who met her on that occasion. It 
 was a more leisurely visit than those she had made in 
 company with her father. This time she stayed with 
 her cousin Samuel Evans the younger, who was a dra- 
 per and velvet manufacturer in Wirksworth. Her 
 aunt and herself spent much time together. She occu- 
 pied some hours in writing down the aunt's experiences 
 from her own lips, and was hardly ever seen in Wirks- 
 w^orth without a notebook and pencil in her hand. 
 
 I know that doubt has been thrown on the note-book 
 account, as being unlike the author, but a recent writer 
 who knew her well during her earlier life in London, 
 declares that it was her habit in those days to carry her 
 note-book and pencil with her continually. 
 
 I have lingered on these details because we thus see 
 George Eliot, all unconscious of their future use, 
 gathering the materials which, touched by the hand of 
 her genius, were afterwards to be reproduced in such 
 form as to command the admiration of the world. How 
 many comedies, how many tragedies, how many start- 
 ling and entertaining dramas are doomed to lie 
 
ADAM BEDE FOUNDED ON FACT 51 
 
 dormant and cold in the history of many a 
 family, because there is no skilled hand to draw 
 forth the latent fire, no literary artist to gather 
 up the fragments and construct the story. To 
 us, how instructive it is in the case of Adam 
 Bede, that not only does the aged father, released from 
 the bonds of active toil, fondly dwell on the simple 
 facts of his own early life, in conversation with his be- 
 loved daughter — but even the daughter herself, after 
 having acquired fame as a skilled literary artist, cannot 
 refrain from going over that past again and again ; first, 
 in dealing with Mr. Hackitt, then in delineating Adam 
 Bede, and finally in portraying Caleb Garth. 
 
 Furthermore, many competent critics have affirmed 
 that in George Eliot's great career, her freest, 
 most useful, and most abiding work is that wherein she 
 has so copiously drawn upon her own experiences and 
 her capacious memory. She was thankful, she said, 
 to have written so true a book as Adam Bede. By 
 this one work she has made myriads of readers her life- 
 long debtors, she has conferred a rich blessing on mil- 
 lions of mankind, she has happily distilled for us sweet 
 roses of memory, and we may thankfully say that the 
 fragrance of the precious flowers is round about the 
 book for evermore. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 
 
 " I ask not of his lineage, 
 
 I ask not of his name — 
 If manliness be in his heart, 
 
 He noble birth may claim ; 
 
 The palace or the hovel. 
 
 Where first his life began, 
 I ask not of ; but answer this — 
 
 Is he an honest man?" 
 
 The person whom we know as Adam Bede, in real life 
 was known as Eobert Evans. His career began its 
 course in the home we have described, standing on Ecs- 
 ton Common. He w^as the fourth son of George and 
 Mary Evans, and was born in 1773. In those days 
 the common was a breezy spot, with wide open spaces 
 all around. Only the name of a common remains to- 
 day. In 1824 it was enclosed and appropriated. The 
 house stood by the wayside, with the workshop, the 
 timber-stacks and the saw pit at the south end. In 
 Adam Bede we read of another workshop at Hayslope, 
 where Mr. Jonathan Burge was the proprietor, and 
 Adam and Seth Bede were employed as journeymen. 
 
 We may as well dismiss the idea of a Mr. Jonathan 
 Burge from our minds. He and his workshop are a 
 creation of the literary artist to fill up the plan of lier 
 story. Mary Burge need not excite one whit of either 
 
 52 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 53 
 
 our admiration or compassion. She is purely a child 
 of the magician's wand. She was ideally required, and 
 she came. She has served her purpose as a foil to 
 other characters, therefore we may as well dispense 
 with her. 
 It was in the father's workshop that Adam Bede first 
 
 HOUSE IN ELLASTOXE (hAYSLOPE). 
 
 Home of Robert Evans (Adam Bede) and subsequently of William Evans, Senr., and 
 William Evans, Junr., the famous builders. 
 
 plied his craft. The business was of an inclusive kind. 
 A considerable part of its range was to manufacture 
 implements and appliances, carts and wagons, for the 
 use of farmers. Iron was not employed then for ploughs 
 and harrows as it is to-day. Hand labour had not 
 been displaced by machinery, as is the case now. 
 Hence, a considerable variety of tools had to be made 
 
54 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 locally. The village carpenter also manufactured the 
 greater portion of the useful household furniture re- 
 quired by his neighbours ; he was the coffin-maker and 
 undertaker for the whole locality, and if new houses, 
 cow^-sheds, barns or stables were required, he would 
 undertake their erection. 
 
 It w^as in this homely and useful industry that Adam 
 Bede commenced his successful career. He was 
 schooled to hard work from the beginning. There is 
 no doubt he w^as a favourite pupil of Bartle Massey. 
 Neither is there any doubt that he was the most hope- 
 ful of the five sons of his father, although only the 
 fourth. The eldest brother was a generous good- 
 hearted fellow, but the bhghting and paralysing temp- 
 tation of strong drink fastened its cruel fangs on him 
 in early manhood. In consequence of this evil he did 
 not make the best of his life, and w^as the only one of 
 the brothers who did not survive to old age. 
 
 Adam Bede made his first independent venture in 
 life by setting up in business for himself in the village 
 of Ellastone, the next adjoining parish to Norbury, 
 only divided from it by the river Dove. Ellastone 
 afforded a more eligible situation for business and 
 is a much larger parish. I do not think the young 
 artisan had at this time any ambition beyond that of 
 being a hard-w^orking, energetic carpenter and builder. 
 Out of his father's workshop he stepped into one of his 
 own, still in friendly relations with the old home and 
 the old business, which went on for some years under 
 the superintendence of the father, assisted by others of 
 the sons. 
 
 Eventually, the establishment of Boston Common 
 was broken up and its interests concentrated at Ella- 
 stone, where the old gentleman died at the age of 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 53 
 
 ninety years, a.d. 1830. How Adam Bede came to 
 give up his prosperous business in Ellastone is a story 
 quite easy to telL In the parish there is a picturesque 
 gentleman's seat called Wootton Hall. It is situated 
 on the southern slope of Weaver Hill close to the ham- 
 
 WOOTTOX HALL (dONNITHORNE CHASE). 
 
 The seat of the Bromley Davenports, occupied by Francis Newdegate, Esq. 
 (Donnithome) at the beginning of last century. 
 
 let of Wootton. Concerning this small place there is 
 a couplet which says : 
 
 " Wootton under Weaver, 
 Where God comes never !" 
 
 I have heard it said that, if the statement expressed 
 in this couplet had been really true, a much greater 
 
56 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 number of persons would have made it their abode than 
 Wootton has ever contained, which is hkely enough to 
 be a true statement, since from the tenor of their Uves 
 it w^ould appear there are many who would wish to get 
 away from God, were it only possible to do so. I 
 imagine that the author of the couplet, which is at 
 least two centuries old, held a view^ of Wootton which 
 w^as not intended to be complimentary to its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 I have often thought that this little hamlet may have 
 been in the author's mind when she wrote of Hay- 
 slope. It has many things in its favour, though, 
 doubtless, Ellastone must retain the preference. 
 Wootton has the distinction of giving a name to two 
 romantic country seats, the other being the family 
 abode of the Unwins, and is called Wootton Lodge. 
 This building is a castellated mansion, said to have 
 been designed by Inigo Jones. The scenery around it 
 has inexpressible charm, and it is melancholy to reflect 
 that the noble house is dismantled now% owning to the 
 vagaries of its present owner, the well-known litigant, 
 Mrs. Cathcart, whom I well remember as a Miss 
 Unwin, and an heiress, many years ago. The scaffold 
 poles on the roof of the house will show^ that the 
 builders are now engaged in works of restoration. 
 
 In my early days Wootton Hall was both owned and 
 occupied by the Eev. Walter Davenport Bromley, an 
 eccentric and wealthy clergyman. By purchase he 
 greatly extended the estate, and spent large sums of 
 money in reclaiming and developing a wide tract of 
 land on Weaver Hills ; bringing it into cultivation and 
 erecting upon it fences, farm-houses and out-buildings, 
 raising plantations here and there, and so parcelling 
 out into farms an expanse which had been mostly an 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 57 
 
 unproductive waste, covered with thorns, gorse and 
 bracken. Well do I remember standing at the front 
 door of my father's house when a boy, to watch in the 
 evenings the blazing fires which continued for months 
 
 WOOTTOX LODGE, THE COUNTRY SEAT OF THE UXWINS. 
 
 full in our view, whereby the low brushwood on Weaver 
 was consumed to ashes preparatory to the cultivation 
 of the soil. 
 
 Little did I think in those days that my eldest sister, 
 then a young child at home, would spend the whole 
 of her married years as a veritable ^Irs. Poyser in real 
 life, the cheerful and busy wife of an old schoolmate 
 of mine, Mr. Jas. W^heeldon, who has in the process of 
 years become the senior tenant-farmer on the Wootton 
 estate, and has occupied in succession tw^o of the farms 
 
58 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT .» 
 
 reclaimed by the enterprise of the Eev. Walter 
 Davenport Bromley. As far as I know, this gentleman 
 was the only proprietor who, during the last century, 
 occupied Wootton Hall for any length of time. Its 
 usual fate has been to be let to a tenant, and it was 
 so let in the days of Adam Bede. 
 
 The necessities of the case would seem to make this 
 hall an indispensable part of the belongings of the 
 author's story. It should be the " Donnithorne 
 Chase " we read of, if there be any agreement at all 
 between the biography and geography of the fiction. 
 On this point there has been much speculation. Some 
 writers are of opinion that Arbury Hall, in Warwick- 
 shire, is the real prototype of Donnithorne Chase; 
 others affirm that Calwich Abbey, near Ellastone, the 
 residence of the Buncombes, has that distinction. I 
 think the latter has been mentioned because of the sug- 
 gestion conveyed in the name that it has some time 
 or other been the home of a religious fraternity, which 
 is quite true, and is true also of Arbury. But I am 
 of opinion, weighing all the circumstances of the case, 
 that Wootton Hall is the true original of the Donni- 
 thorne Chase. 
 
 It was the squire of Wootton Hall who lifted Adam 
 Bede out of his native surroundings and gave to his life 
 an entirely new direction. This was one Francis 
 Parker Newdegate, a scion of the Newdegates of West 
 Hallam Hall, near Ilkeston, and also a relative of the 
 Newdegates of Arbury Hall and Astley Castle in War- 
 wickshire. This gentleman occupied Wootton Hall 
 for some years prior to his succeeding to the extensive 
 estates which afterwards fell to his lot both in Derby- 
 shire and W^arwickshire , and of which he was the 
 owner till death deprived him in 1835. It was during 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 59 
 
 Mr. Newdegate's residence at Wootton that he made 
 the acquaintance of Adam Bede. 
 
 At first the clever young artisan was employed in his 
 regular handicraft, which appears to have given lively 
 satisfaction. He also formed an acquaintance with one 
 Harriet Poynton, who was a highly-esteemed and ccn- 
 
 WEST HALLAM HALL, DERBYSHIRE ; SEAT OF THE XEWDEGATES. 
 
 fidential servant in the Xewdegate family, and wdio 
 ultimately became his first wife. 
 
 I was engaged to lecture in the Parish Schoolroom 
 at Ellastone, in February, 1904, with the vicar as my 
 chairman. I had written to that gentleman, sug- 
 
60 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 gesting that he might, in all probability, find in his 
 parish register the record of the marriage of Eobert 
 Evans (Adam Bede) with this same Harriet Poynton. 
 The vicar brought the register to the meeting, and, 
 having found the record named, read it aloud to the 
 hearers. Here is a copy of it : 
 
 "Robert Evans of this parish Bachelor and Harriet Poyn- 
 ton of this parish Spinster, were married in this church by 
 Banns this 27th day of May, 1801, By me. John Webb, 
 Curate. 
 
 This marriage was solemnised between us 
 
 Robert Evans 
 Harriet Poynton 
 in the presence of Thomas Nicklin 
 
 Ann Alcock." 
 
 Some of Adam Bede's relatives imbibed the notion 
 that this union had not a little to do with his speedy 
 promotion. Be this as it may, the advancement was 
 sufficiently remarkable and was eminently satisfactory 
 to both parties. It is evident that Adam Bede's first 
 wife was a person much valued by the Newdegates, 
 inasmuch as one of the New^degate tablets in the chan- 
 cel of Astley Church bears her name and records the 
 fact that she was for ' ' many years the friend and 
 servant of the family at Arbury." 
 
 It is also manifest that Adam Bede himself won and 
 retained the entire confidence of the Newdegates of 
 more than one generation. When Mr. Francis Parker 
 Newdegate became the owner of the West Hallam 
 estate, he resolved to have Adam Bede as his estate 
 manager and steward. In view of this appointment 
 the business at Ellastone was transferred to his brother 
 Thomas, while he himself, in addition to exercising the 
 functions of stew^ard, became a farmer also, residing 
 at Kirk Hallam. 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY Oh ADAM BEDE 
 
 61 
 
 The death of Sir Eoger Newdegate, M.P., in 1806, 
 wrought another change in the fortunes of Adam Bede. 
 His patron now succeeded to the Arbury Hall and 
 Astley Castle estate, the baronetcy becoming extinct, 
 This estate was much more important than that at 
 West Hal lam, and was at once placed under the 
 
 FARMHOUSE, KIRK HALI.AM, 
 
 Where Robert Kvans (Adam Rede) lived from 1S02 till 1806. 
 
 management of Adam Bede. The farm he had oc- 
 cupied at Kirk Hallam was now^ transferred to his 
 brother Thomas, with a sub-agency, and the business 
 at Ellastone passed to their brother William, in whose 
 hands, and those of his son, it rose to great distinction. 
 In Warwickshire, the newly-appointed steward be- 
 came a farmer, even as he had been at Kirk Hallam. 
 
62 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 For a period of fourteen years he occupied Arbury 
 Farm, close to Arbury Park. Here the first Mrs. Evans 
 died, in 1809, leaving two children, Eobert and Frances 
 Lucy. My aunt Harriett was named after this good 
 woman, and my mother after her only daughter. 
 
 In 1813 the second marriage occurred ; three children 
 were born of this union, of whom " George Eliot " was 
 the youngest, her birth happening in December, 1819. 
 The next year Arbury Farm w^as given up and Griff 
 House, with the farm attached to it, became the abode 
 of the family for the remaining portion of Adam , 
 Bede's business career. It is a spacious dwelling, 
 pleasantly situated by the side of the road from \ 
 Nuneaton to Coventry, and embosomed among shrubs | 
 and trees. Everything now prospered with Adam ; 
 Bede. His dairying business was well managed by his ' 
 thrifty and capable wife, and he himself became an , 
 acknowledged authority in the management of estates i 
 for many miles around. One landowner after j 
 another engaged his services, until he became chief •■ 
 steward to Lord Aylesford, Lord Lifford, Mr. Bromley i 
 Davenport, and other proprietors. Besides this, he i 
 was in large request as consulting steward, arbitrator ! 
 and valuer. With his familiar horse and gig he t 
 
 covered many thousands of miles every year. , 
 
 As a stew^ard he seems to have been both wuse and \ 
 just, but to the thriftless and incapable he could be 
 relentless and firm. If tenants w^ere in difficulties, but : 
 exhibited worthy traits of character, he would be j 
 patient and helpful, and while retaining the confidence \ 
 of all his clients, he was also respected and trusted by 
 the tenantry. He was a staunch churchman and a < 
 steadfast Tory, who believed with an unwavering faith 
 in the existing institutions both in Church and State, \ 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF xVDAM BEDE 
 
 63 
 
 and was not quick to see why others should be dissatis- 
 fied with a social order which gave him so much com- 
 placency. That they were dissatisfied was not to 
 their credit; still, he was too tolerant and too busy to 
 
 
 
 
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 J,^^ 
 
 
 
 
 A,-J 
 
 '■ *^ 
 
 
 B."V»- 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 
 
 sl 
 
 
 
 ijb ^ 
 
 N 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 ^^^^^E. Mm 
 
 m 
 
 (hi 
 
 ^Bi 
 
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 ^^^^^^^^^^^S^S^^^^ 
 
 9. 
 
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 ^^^^E^B 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE TINY CHURCH AT KIRK HALLAM, OPPOSITE TO THE FARM OCCUPIED 
 BY ROBERT EVANS (aDAM BEDE). 
 
 interfere with them for their religious or political 
 views ; nevertheless, it could be seen that such persons 
 did not rank high in his judgment. 
 
 The presentation of Adam Bede in the novel only 
 relates to the Derbyshire and Staffordshire days, while 
 
64 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 in Mr. Hackit and Caleb Garth we have the steward' 
 farmer of later life. The author guards us against the 
 supposition that Adam Bede is an exact portrayal of 
 her father, and we are bound to accept her unquestion- 
 able authority. Nevertheless, it is pointed out by her 
 personal friends, Mr. Oscar Browning and Sir LesHe 
 Stephen, that much more of her experiences in real 
 life crept into her stories than she was fully conscious 
 of or would even allow. All who knew the Eobert 
 Evans of real life and his prosperous and useful career 
 would acknowledge that his portrayal in Adam Bede 
 is just such an one as might have been suggested by 
 the author's close knowledge of her own father. 
 
 And w^hat is it that we have before us in the portrait 
 of Adam? I make no hesitation whatever in saying 
 that we have here the finest description of a workman 
 which literature has ever produced. To have painted 
 for us such a character amid such surroundings and 
 such issues, the authoress has become a world-benefac- 
 tress. What a manly man is Adam Bede ! Doubtless, 
 he has his faults. He is imperious, impatient and 
 somewhat austere in his judgments at times, but in the 
 inner soul of him how tender he is, how truthful, how 
 independent, how magnanimous, how real, how re- 
 verent and godly. How well worthy of his place as 
 bass singer in Norbury Church choir is this real Adam 
 Bede. There is no festering mould of weakness any- 
 where, none of that "moral see-saiv " which, in 
 Arthur Donnithorne, was the cause of irresolution and 
 mischief. This is a rare character. You find in Adam 
 not an atom of pretence, cant, or humbug. Here is a 
 man true to himself, and has not our great poet told 
 us that he who is true to himself can never be fal^t^ 
 to any other man? He loves work; to him it is ik i 
 

THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 67 
 
 sent as a curse, but is taken as it is — a real blessing 
 both to the worker himself and the world he helps and 
 adorns. He will be just, whether to employers or em- 
 ployed, and he will ever do all his work as consciously 
 under the Great Taskmaster's eye. How pleasant is 
 the picture of him breaking the concert of the tools in 
 the workshop at Hayslope by singing in manly sonorous 
 tones : 
 
 " Let all thy converse be sincere, 
 Thy conscience as the noonday clear : 
 For God's all-seeing eye surveys 
 Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways." 
 
 1 When the work for the day is all done the same noble 
 strain fills his soul and employs his voice as he plods 
 his way homeward. You have here a man who hates 
 with burning hatred all that is mean and contemptible , 
 despises all shams, and has honestly deserved all the 
 success he has won in the world. It does us good to 
 contemplate the picture of such a model of a man 
 as this. 
 
 Two brief extracts from letters written by Adam 
 Bede to his brother Seth , when both were advancing in 
 years, w^ill serve to show on what excellent terms the 
 brothers were to the last, and will help to confirm the 
 view of Adam portrayed for us by his gifted daughter. 
 They were both dated from Foleshill, the home of re- 
 tirement, near Coventry. They will also show that 
 even in his days of age and leisure he was fre- 
 quently engaged as consulting steward for some of his 
 old employers, to whom he still alludes as his masters. 
 
 " I am very thankful that my health is pretty good, and I 
 am happy with my masters, and go on very pleasantly with all 
 of them, but I feel my strength failing me in some degree this 
 last year. I cannot walk so much as I wish to do, as I like 
 
68 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 walking so much better than riding when I go over farms. T 
 am glad to hear that my brother William is better [Mr. Wm. 
 Evans, senr., of Ellastone] ; he is, I believe, going into his 7oth 
 year and I am in my 71st. We must not expect to continue 
 here many more years, but we must be like good soldiers. 
 When the word of command is given I hope we shall be both 
 ready and willing to obey the call, and leave all these good 
 things provided for us here which we enjoy so much, and which 
 I am very thankful for as well for my family as for myself, as 
 I have been blessed in this world more than I ever expected to 
 be. Mary Ann (George Eliot) is very well, and sends her love 
 to you. I am glad to hear that your wife [Dinah Morris] 
 holds pretty well. Give my best respects and love to her, and 
 accept the same yourself from 
 
 ''Your loving brother, 
 
 ''R. Evans." 
 
 This letter is written " September 22nd, 1843," and 
 there is a later one under date of " May 27th, 1844." 
 In this the writer makes a statement which one could 
 appropriately associate with the Adam Bede we know 
 in literature. 
 
 " I hope your health will continue good so that you can per- 
 form your duties. It is a happy thing that you have not to 
 keep the accounts, as you are getting older every day. Look- 
 ing after the workmen is a pleasure to me ; I had rather do it 
 than not. Those who have been industrious and have led an 
 active life will never be so happy out of business, though they 
 could afford it." 
 
 There speaks the old, practical, common-sense Adam 
 Bede. 
 
 One story told me by the youngest son and successor 
 in the estate agency of the real Adam Bede I will here 
 relate. It was my pleasure to dine with this gentle- 
 man (Mr. Isaac Pearson Evans) in the Inns of Court 
 Hotel, in Holborn, in the month of October, 1890. 
 He was then a fine, hale-looking man, upright in 
 stature, fresh in complexion, positive in speech, with 
 
 i 
 
THE REAL LIFE STORY OF ADAM BEDE 69 
 
 the strongly-marked characteristics of the Evans 
 family. You could always trace in the Evanses, as I 
 knew them, a certain self-respecting dignity, definite- 
 ness of opinion, a good degree of confidence in their 
 own judgment, strong common-sense, strict regard for 
 truth, sterling uprightness, deep-toned reverence, and 
 supreme respect for that which is proper and respect- 
 able. At the time of our interview, Mr. Evans was over 
 seventy years of age, and had not been very w^ell. 
 Still, to look at him, one would have thought that there 
 might be in store for him several years of useful 
 activity before the end came. He told me, however, 
 that of late the feeling had come over him that his 
 active work was nearly, if not quite, done. I re- 
 minded him of the old age of many of our mutual re- 
 lations, and said I could see no reason why he should 
 not attain a similar age. His only reply was, with a 
 deep-drawn sigh, to say that he had the feeling it was 
 not to be so. Within four days of this interview he 
 was summoned hence by sudden death ! 
 
 It w^as not for this solemn intimation that I intro- 
 duced Mr. Evans' name in this connexion, but to re- 
 late an anecdote he told me, illustrative of the charac- 
 ter of his father, the original Adam Bede. He said 
 that one day tow^ards the end of his life his father re- 
 ferred to the moderate estate he w^ould leave behind 
 him. He said it would not be found to be a large 
 amount, that many men placed in his circumstances 
 would have grown very rich, hut that he had always 
 made it his first aim in life to do the best he could for 
 all the clients who had employed him. What a differ- 
 ent world it would be if all were equally true to their 
 trusts ! 
 
 I think this picture of the real Adam Bede, from the 
 
70 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 lips of his son, may fitly close our account of his 
 worthy life. Does it not agree perfectly with the 
 finished presentation of him given us by his gifted 
 daughter in her noble book? and does it not discover 
 to us the lofty ideals of an honest man? Is it not also 
 a true saying about an honest man given to us by 
 Alexander Pope — and such as he describes, in truth, 
 was Adam Bede always : 
 
 "A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God." 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 
 
 "Though long the wanderer may depart, 
 
 And far his footsteps roam, 
 He clasps the closer to his heart 
 
 The image of his home. 
 To that loved land, where'er he goes, 
 
 His tenderest thoughts are cast, 
 And dearer still through absence grows 
 
 The memory of the past." — Burns. 
 
 In our endeavour to trace the original of Mrs. Poyser 
 we must needs concern ourselves with the household at 
 Griff, for it is thitherward our eyes must be turned 
 if we would pursue her identity. I used to think that 
 the Hall farm must be sought for in Staffordshire ; I 
 am now quite clear that Griff House affords us the 
 scene where the prototype of Mrs. Poyser actually lived 
 and reigned as the presiding genius of the place. This 
 harmonises with the view expressed in a former chapter 
 that the geography and dialect of Adam Bede are a 
 cross between Staffordshire and Warwickshire. On 
 many grounds I am persuaded that in writing of the 
 Hall Farm George Eliot had Griff House in her mind, 
 and that in delineating for our instruction and diversion 
 the dehghtful character of Mrs. Poyser she took as her 
 original no other person than her ow^n mother. We 
 have seen that Adam Bede was a farmer at Griff as 
 
 71 
 
72 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 well as steward of the estate to which the farm be- 
 longed. It is a little disconcerting perhaps to find that 
 the same actual person should supply the lines of sug- 
 gestion for two characters in the same story, but then 
 we have to remember that it is fiction that is given us 
 in the book, and according to its laws this is by no 
 means impossible. It may be noted also that, in his 
 daughter's fiction, Adam Bede has two acknowledged 
 aliases, viz., Mr. Hackit and Caleb Garth, and that 
 Mrs. Poyser has at least one in the person of Mrs. 
 Hackit, who cared so pityingly for the amiable Milly 
 Barton. 
 
 When Adam Bede was written George Eliot was for 
 ever separated from her old Warwickshire home, yet 
 her literary record shows how closely its memories 
 clung to her, and how her genius continued to w^ork 
 among the fond recollections gathered there. In her 
 works of fiction her relatives turn up again 
 and again, as witness the three separate 
 stories in Scenes from Clerical Life, in 
 Adam Bede, in The Mill on the Floss, and in Middle- 
 march. These all deal with her cherished memories of 
 the past, and in every one of them her loved relations 
 are among the originals. Let us not be surprised, 
 therefore, if the remembrances of the past as relating 
 to her father and mother supplied to her prolific genius 
 the slender framework of suggestion, out of which were 
 evolved the fine characters of Martin and Mrs. Poyser, 
 as well as of other attractive personalities in the 
 author's several stories. 
 
 We may now turn to the noble farm-house at Griff, 
 and regard it as the undoubted scene of Mrs. Poyser's 
 skilful management as wife, mother, mistress of 
 the household and dairy woman. In those days 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 75 
 
 farm labour was not all wrought out of doors as 
 is mostly the case now. This country did not 
 then import its chief supplies of cheese and 
 bacon from the United States and the Dominion 
 of Canada, nor were our great and ever-growing towns 
 supplied with fresh butter from Denmark, Holland, 
 Normandy and Lombardy. Hard as the men toiled 
 out of doors, the women worked as laboriously indoors 
 in the constant drudgery of dairy manufactures, added 
 to ordinary domestic industry. To produce from the 
 milk of kine good, sound, well-flavoured cheese, and 
 choice, sweet butter, is not an easy thing to do. There 
 are delicate processes to be gone through which re- 
 quire no ordinary degree of forethought, judgment, and 
 skill ; wdiile unremitting care and labour are certainly 
 entailed. " I've made one quarter o' th' rent and 
 saved another quarter," says Mrs. Poyser in her 
 stormy remonstrance with Mr. Donnithorne. How 
 true a picture is involved in those w^ords, and how often 
 have I heard precisely similar expressions among the 
 busy housewives and skilful dairywomen of Stafford- 
 shire and Derbyshire. Often the farmer has had to 
 look to the product of the cheese-room for the supply 
 of his rent, to say nothing of rates, taxes, and wages. 
 Hence, how all-important is the manufacture carried 
 on in the dairy from day to day under the vigilant eye 
 and by the careful hands of the farmer's wife. The 
 modern factory system and the sale of milk to supply 
 the needs of the great towns have changed all this, and 
 what appears singular is that foreign-made dairy pro- 
 ducts seem to command readier sale than those still 
 manufactured from the fair pastures of old England. 
 In the days of Adam Bede it was not so, and, indoors 
 and out, farming required constant toil, as witness the 
 
76 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 distich I remember from the time I was a boy, though 
 I confess I did not very well like it then : 
 
 " Man to the plough, 
 Wife to the sow, 
 Boy to the flail, 
 Girl to the pail, 
 
 And your gains will be netted: — 
 But man Tallyho, 
 Miss, piano. 
 
 Boy, Greek and Latin, 
 Wife, silk and satin, 
 And you'll soon be gazetted." 
 
 There was not the slightest danger of any 
 catastrophe of this kind under the smart regime of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Poyser. Quite as strongly as Adam Bede 
 himself, this excellent farmer's wife and skilled dairy- 
 woman believed in the wholesome discipline of labour, 
 and practised in their highest degree of perfection the 
 salutary duties of household management. There is 
 no doubt that all this may be applied to our author's 
 mother, and, for several years, to the author herself. 
 If we blend in one the characters of Mrs. Hackit in 
 Amos Barton (Scenes from Clerical Life) and Mrs. 
 Poyser in Adam Bede, we may w^ell gather what 
 George Eliot's mother really was. Indeed, Miss 
 Blind feels so confident on this point that she traces 
 to inheritance from the mother George Eliot's pointed 
 speech, racy humour, and marvellous powers of obser- 
 vation. After her mother's death in 1836, and the 
 marriage of the elder sister in 1837, our author be- 
 came herself the busy housekeeper and skilful dairy- 
 woman at Griff for the space of four years. Surely it 
 is a suggestive picture — the future writer of Adam 
 Bede, Middlemarch, Romola, and Daniel Deronda 
 toiling in this capacity. I wonder if in the United 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 
 
 77 
 
 Kingdom there could have been found another dairy- 
 woman who was at the same time proficient in the 
 Latin, Greek, French, and German languages, was 
 studying Spanish and Italian under a master, receiv- 
 ing weekly music lessons, reading a variety of secular 
 
 CHILVERS COTON CHURCH, NUNEATON 
 (The Shepperton Church of Scenes from Clerical Life). 
 
 and sacred literature, and pursuing at the same time 
 an earnest Christian life in which you find from a letter 
 of hers belonging to this period that one of the 
 cherished aspirations of her heart finds expression in 
 the words, "May I seek to be sanctified wholly!" 
 How suggestive is all this. There rests upon this 
 young woman the care of the household and the 
 
7S THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 management of the dairy, she toils continually with 
 her hands ; so that in later life she has to explain to her 
 literary friends that her right hand remained larger 
 than her left from the labour of making cheese 
 and butter, and yet, though still in her teens, 
 she finds time for these varied intellectual pur- 
 suits ! I imagine that such an experience stands 
 quite alone, and is worthy of our serious con- 
 templation. The father's responsibilities are ex- 
 ceptionally heavy. Each day he starts on his 
 business rounds in his familiar gig, his capable 
 daughter attending to the various interests indoors, 
 as her mother had done before her. She was able also 
 to receive visitors, for it w^as at this period that her 
 aunt Dinah Morris w^as brought hither from Wirks- 
 worth by her father for needed rest and change. She 
 also finds time to accompany him on some of his busi- 
 ness drives, which stretched over wide districts of the 
 surrounding country. To him she was a dear com- 
 panion and choice treasure. How he must often have 
 wondered that his daughter should live this high in- 
 tellectual life amidst such surroundings, to which none 
 of his name, nor he himself had ever before aspired. 
 Some of her biographers hint that she scarcely ever 
 appears to have been a girl at all, but attained the 
 gravity and the mind of a woman at a surprisingly 
 early age. 
 
 All this will now prepare us to realise how well she 
 was equipped to construct for us, out of the record 
 of her own varied experiences, the precise and idyllic 
 picture she has given us of that realm of sweetness and 
 purity where Mrs. Poyser, the dairy woman, bears un- 
 questioned rule. None but a dairywoman herself 
 could have pictured such a dairy. Not a member of 
 
^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 ALL ABOUTUlES.^,^(gp^ 79 
 
 the family who knew the original, or has heard by 
 family tradition of her capable management , her clock- 
 work exactitude, her clever tongue, her real kindness, 
 together with her genuine devotion as wife and 
 mother, would ever doubt as to what person was in 
 her mind when George Eliot drew her fascinating por- 
 trait of Mrs Poyser. From such relatives I have had 
 most positive testimony to this effect. Nevertheless, 
 even here w^e must heed George Eliot's warning that 
 we are not to look into her work for family portraits. 
 The mother's life and character as known to the daugh- 
 ter suggested but the mere skeleton — that is all. And 
 yet, has it not been said, and may there not be a good 
 deal of truth in the saying, that biography is fiction 
 and fiction biography? In this case, though there is 
 a considerable proportion of biography in our author's 
 work, yet the clever utterances of Mrs. Poyser are 
 all the author's own. She had no repertory of spark- 
 ling witticisms or pithy proverbs to be drawn upon 
 at pleasure. Even those famous sayings, famihar in 
 our mouths as household words, came to the author 
 while writing, fresh from her own mint. What a 
 wonderful mint that was, for it has yielded a priceless 
 store of flashing humour, by the possession of which the 
 literary world is all the richer and merrier. " Steam 
 and progress have made the world less youthful and 
 joyous than it was then," said the famous James 
 Nasmyth, inventor of the steam-hammer, when writing 
 of the days of the Battle of Waterloo. The Eev. E. D. 
 Maurice, preaching on the Christmas Day of 1837, 
 said : ** It seems to me the general opinion that people 
 are not so merry on this day as they used to be." Of 
 our own times all this may be said with greater em- 
 phasis. In spite of all our modern advantages— the 
 
80 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 increase of knowledge, the spread of literature, the 
 multiplication of the conveniences and comforts of 
 modern life, the outflow of w^ealth and luxury, the vast 
 enlargement of our existence on this planet — there 
 
 TOMB IN CHILVERS COTOX OF CHRISTIANA EVANS, SECOND WIFE 
 OF ROBERT EVANS AND THE ORIGINAL OF MRS. POYSER. 
 
 would seem to have been rather a diminution than an 
 increase of human cheerfulness. Mrs. Poyser comes to 
 us with a fresh breeze of innocent merriment and a 
 pleasant ripple of wholesome laughter. She is like 
 some of Dickens' most famous characters — en- 
 tirely irresistible, and the world's grey sky 
 is brightened somewhat by the advent of a 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 
 
 81 
 
 literary portrait of such unquestionable power and 
 mirth-provoking charm. 
 
 Sir Leslie Stephen says that Mrs. Poyser is among 
 the immortals, and one may add that the world is none 
 
 REVERSE SIDE OF TOMB, SHOWING MEMORIAL OF ROBERT EVAN'S 
 (ADAM BEDE). 
 
 the worse for having so bright a character enshrined in 
 its treasured literature. 
 
 It is not my purpose to quote a large number cf her 
 famous sayings, but I must be allowed to give some 
 of them for the sake of the lessons they convey, and 
 the facts of life which they illustrate. Under the keen , 
 incisive humour there is a hard substratum of fact, and 
 7 
 
82 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 often a world of meaning. The inimitable remon- 
 strance with an estate landlord who, with all his 
 studied politeness, cannot be induced to spend money 
 on the farm-buildings to keep them in decent repair, 
 but shows the readiest alacrity in raising the rents of 
 the tenantry, may have little application in respect of 
 the realities of the Hall Farm, but too often in the 
 relations of landlord and tenant that application has 
 been all too pointedly and painfully true. The old 
 squire has come to the farm-house to propose to Mr. 
 Martin Poyser the surrender of the most desirable of 
 his arable land to accommodate Mr. Thurle, to whom 
 he proposes to let the adjoining farm. Now, anyone 
 acquainted with the processes of farming as it was 
 under the Corn Laws, and who remembers the re- 
 strictions imposed by landlords in tortuous legal 
 agreements, will realise that the profit of a farm 
 greatly depended upon the right balance between the 
 dairying and arable lands on the holding. Mrs. 
 
 Poyser clearly perceives that the landlord's proposed 
 changes will not only increase the amount of labour in 
 her own department, but will wrest from the farm 
 those fields which, under Mr. Poyser' s careful tillage, 
 yield wheat from w^hich is ground the flour that sup- 
 plies their wholesome home-made bread, oats from 
 which is made the oat-cake for the kitchen table, 
 where the farm-labourers and hired servants were fed 
 in those days, and various corn for feeding-stuffs used 
 for horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, turkeys, and 
 geese. The arable land also produced turnips, cab- 
 bage, and clover, which were valued helps in feeding 
 the stock, and Mrs. Poyser is quick to discern that the 
 change proposed by the landlord will dislocate every- 
 thing on the farm, and work to their serious disad- \ 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 
 
 83 
 
 vantage. When the landlord came to the Hall Farm 
 to submit his proposals to Mr. Martin Poyser he ob- 
 tained much more than he bargained for. He first 
 walked the round of the dairy and cheese-room, ad- 
 miring everything he saw, and bestowing playful and 
 flattering compliments on Mrs. Poyser in his progress 
 
 PREMISES AT GRIFF HOUSE, USED BY MRS. EVAXS (mRS. POYSER) 
 AS DAIRY. 
 
 through the apartments. That lady, however, is in no 
 mood to be flattered. Now, Mr. Poyser, it should 
 be said, is in many respects an exceptionally wise man, 
 as well as a good farmer, for he has a good wife, and 
 he knows it, while there are many equally good men 
 who also have good wives but do not seem to know it, 
 which is much to be regretted, and it really makes a 
 great difference. Here is another token of Mr. Poyser's 
 
84 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT I 
 
 wisdom. He has opinions of his own which on occasion 
 he can express, as we discover at the birthday feast, 
 slowly and deliberately, but he is frequently made to 
 realise that his wife is a woman with opinions w^hich 
 she well knows how to utter without any circumlocu- 
 tion whatever. Hence, when a new occasion arises, 
 he is slow to venture on expressing his own views 
 until he has first ascertained what his keen-witted wife 
 thinks about the matter. How often have I known 
 husbands go plunging headlong into trouble from 
 which they might have saved themselves had they but 
 condescended to act on the judgment arrived at by the 
 shrewd, keen instincts of a sensible wife, When, in 
 the case before us, the husband, according to his 
 custom, referred the landlord's proposal to his irate 
 spouse, little did he think of the avalanche which 
 would be let loose on the landlord's devoted head. 
 The truth is Mrs. Poyser had long been waiting for 
 the opportunity which had now come to her, she had 
 even prepared little speeches for the coveted occasion, 
 and now that it had actually come she resolved to make 
 the most of it. I have known village squires who were 
 very much of the tone and temper of Mr. Donni- 
 thorne, but the pity was there was no Mrs. Poyser, 
 with keen mother wit, and clever, rasping tongue, to 
 characterise their selfish dealing with their tenants in 
 a manner appropriate to the circumstances. Let us i 
 hope that, if the Mrs. Poysers are rare, the landlords \ 
 such as she castigates are rare also. From a lengthy ■ 
 conversation I take for quotation Mrs. Poyser's biting : 
 speech in answer to the landlord's proposal for the 
 surrender of the arable land. 
 
 "Then, sir, if I may speak — as, for all I'm a woman, and 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 85 
 
 there's folks as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an* 
 look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to 
 speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save another 
 quarter — I say if Mr, Thurle's so ready to take farms under 
 you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if he 
 likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't^ — wi' 
 the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the 
 steps by dozens — and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice 
 gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we 
 lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive — as it's a mercy 
 they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if 
 there's another tenant besides Poyser as 'ud put up wi' never 
 having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down — and not 
 then, on'y wi' begging and praying, and having to pay half — 
 and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets 
 enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money 
 into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to 
 lead such a life here as that : a maggot must be born i' 
 rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from 
 my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following the old 
 Squire beyond the door — for after the first moments of stunned 
 surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with 
 a smile, had walked out towards his pony. But it was im- 
 possible for him to get away immediately, for John was walk- 
 ing the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance 
 from the causeway when his master beckoned. 
 
 "You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go 
 spinnin' underhand ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've 
 got Old Harry to your friend, though nobody else is, but I 
 tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be abused and 
 made money on by them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for 
 want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm the only 
 one as speaks my mind there's plenty o' th' same way o' think- 
 ing i' this parish and the next to't,for your name's no better than 
 a brimstone match in everybody's nose — if it isna two-three old 
 folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' 
 flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' think- 
 ing it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the 
 smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'." 
 
 This pungent remonstrance by Mrs. Poyser was not 
 made more delectable to the old squire from the con- 
 
86 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 sideration that Molly and Nancy and Tim were 
 grinning in front of him, and that probably old John 
 the groom was grinning behind him. He rides away 
 from the farm with the ringing sarcasms of the 
 farmer's wife resounding in his ears; w^hile she, re- 
 
 4 
 
 ^ARM 
 
 BUILDINGS, GRIFF HOUSE. 
 
 lieved in mind because of her fierce discharge of fire- 
 works, returns to the house to rejoin her husband. It 
 is in the very blood of the country-bred farmer to have 
 a reverent fear of his landlord, and it is not to be 
 wondered at that Mr. Poyser should feel alarmed and 
 uneasy as to the consequences which would most likely 
 follow from Mrs. Poyser's caustic and unmerciful 
 
ALL ABOUT MRS. POYSER 87 
 
 attack on the old squire. He expresses his appre- 
 hensions and uneasiness in the laconic sentence : 
 " Thee'st done it now !" To this Mrs. Poyser replies : 
 
 '' Yes, I know I've done it; but I've had my say out, and I 
 shall be the easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' 
 living, if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your 
 mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent say- 
 ing what I think, if I live to be as old as th' Squire ; and 
 there's little likelihoods — for it seems as if them as aren't 
 wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th' other 
 world." 
 
 The old home at Griff, fair and pleasant to look upon, 
 is likely to remain, as all would wish it to re- 
 main, a lively scene of dairying work for many years 
 to come ; for it is now a County Council Dairy School , 
 and many young maidens go there regularly to learn 
 the art and mystery of dairy operations on those same 
 premises with w^hich the memory of Mrs. Poyser is in- 
 dissolubly linked, and where the immortal George 
 Eliot was also a skilful maker of fine Leicester cheese 
 and sweet, w^holesome butter. 
 
CHAPTEK VI 
 
 HAYTIME AT THE HALL FAEM AND THE 
 HARVEST SUPPER 
 
 " The morn was blithe and gay, 
 And the fields flower-foam ; 
 'Tis the end of the day, 
 
 And the last load home." — Tennyson. 
 
 Perhaps no one ever wrought in literature with a 
 heavier sense of responsibihty than George EHot. 
 There was no haste, no slap-dash, no straining after 
 effect. Everything was carefully considered, arranged 
 in orderly manner, well digested, natural, and well- 
 expressed. Every book had its message, and every 
 scene described was duly adjusted to the reality. At 
 the back of all fiction which is w^orth the writing, there 
 lie the awful realities of human life. A great writer 
 of fiction has the seer's gift, can penetrate beneath the 
 surface of things, can divine motives and portray char- 
 acter. He has also the dramatic faculty, he has wit, 
 humour and pathos, he is the skilled interpreter of 
 character and life. The function of the novelist, in 
 its highest sense, is one of the greatest. It is to her 
 honour that George Eliot accepted her astonishing 
 gifts in the consciousness of the solemn responsibility 
 they entailed upon her. She took her calling serious- 
 ly, always distrusting herself, always desponding of the 
 
 88 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 89 
 
 future, always doubting her power to accomplish any- 
 thing until it was done. Her conscientiousness in the 
 discharge of her high calling is conspicuous in all her 
 works. Accuracy of perception, faithfulness in de- 
 lineation, the demand for a picture true in all its de- 
 tails, were considerations ever present to her thoughts. 
 To secure these things she spared herself no pains, 
 shrank from no enquiry, and ransacked every available 
 source of information. I think her most laboured 
 book was Romola. This lay outside her ow^n experi- 
 ences. To qualify herself for the task of writing it 
 she made a special tour to Florence, explored its archi- 
 tecture, ransacked its libraries, searched its picture gal- 
 leries, hunted up old books at shops and stalls, making 
 notes to guide her pen in what is undoubtedly one of 
 the greatest historical fictions. The same conscien- 
 tious care was shewn in the rendering of the legal bear- 
 ings of the Transome estates in Felix Holt, as related 
 to her story in that book. For the sake of accuracy in 
 this matter she took the opinion of an able barrister. 
 Such scrupulous caution is manifest in all her work. 
 Test it anywhere, and you wdll find that her delinea- 
 tions accord well with the local customs, manners, 
 habits and folk-lore of the people or places of whom she 
 writes. 
 
 Farm life has never been so vividly depicted as by 
 George Eliot, and the life of the country in general— 
 the village life of England — has never been so fully 
 portrayed. The poet Crabbe, in an earlier generation, 
 and with much minuteness of detail, had given a series 
 of pictures of rural life as he saw it in his day, 
 but George Eliot is par excellence the true de- 
 lineator of country life as she saw it, and in 
 this walk of literature has found no equal. The 
 
90 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 late Lord Acton said of her : ' ' No writer ever lived 
 who had anything like her power of manifold, but dis- 
 interested and impartial sympathy. If Sophocles or 
 Cervantes had lived in the light of our culture, if 
 Dante had prospered like Manzoni, George Eliot might 
 have had a rival. George Eliot seemed to me capable 
 not only of reading the diverse hearts of men, but of 
 creeping into their skin, watching the world through 
 their eyes, feeling their latent back-ground of convic- 
 tion, discerning theory and habit, influence of thought 
 and knowledge, of life and descent, and having ob- 
 tained this experience, recovering her indepen- 
 dence, stripping off the borrowed shell, and exposing 
 scientifically and indifferently the soul of a Vestal or 
 Crusader, an Anabaptist, an Inquisitor, a Dervish, a 
 Nihihst, or a Cavalier, without attraction, preference, 
 or caricature." This witness is true. 
 
 Another great gift she had was sympathy with the 
 toiling, struggling multitude. It is this gift joined to 
 those so eloquently portrayed by Lord Acton which 
 lends such pathos to her work, a quality which 
 has been felt by all who have read Adam Bede, 
 The Mill on the Floss, or Silas Marner, not to 
 mention others of her books. She shews us, as no 
 other writer has done, what tragedy, pathos and hu- 
 mour may be lying in the experience of a human soul 
 " that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that 
 speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." George 
 Eliot in some of her essays had taught that reformers 
 must needs familiarise the imagination with the real 
 condition of the people, their wants, their trials ami 
 their sufferings. These are precisely the qualities 
 exhibited in George Eliot's novels. She was endowed 
 with an extraordinary power of portraying the wants 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 
 
 91 
 
 the miseries, and the aspirations of the comaxion people. 
 When such powers are turned upon the small commu- 
 nity in a country place like Hayslope, there is no won- 
 der that a picture is drawn which has already become 
 immortal. No part of the country changes so slowly 
 
 THE SAWMILL AND BUILDER S YARD AT NORBURY. 
 
 This business has been developed from that started by Robert Evans (Adam Bade) 
 at Ellastone (Hayslope). 
 
 as does your rural Hayslope. But, stationary as such 
 places are, as compared with other districts, even 
 there many things are different from what they were 
 in the days of Parson Irwine and Mrs. Poyser. The 
 incoming of railways has changed most things. Milk 
 goes largely to the great tow^ns now instead of being 
 converted into cheese and butter as it used to be before 
 
92 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 leaving the farm premises. The growth of the great 
 towns, and the spread of manufactures and commercial 
 industry, have attracted the labourers from the country 
 villages to crowd the urban centres. Our Hay slope 
 farmers would be badly off indeed if work had to be 
 done in the fashion prevailing in the times of Martin 
 Poyser. 
 
 Let us first see how accurate is George Eliot's 
 picture of the appointments of a farm-house as it was 
 in these olden times. In Chapter XIX. of Adam 
 Bede we see Mrs. Poyser laying the cloth for supper. 
 ' * A cloth made of home-spun linen — none of your 
 bleached shop-rag, but good home-spun that w^ould last 
 for two generations." A modern reader would not 
 be likely to discern the reality that lurks in an utter- 
 ance like that. The same remark applies to sundry 
 references in the Mill on the Floss. Poor Mrs. Tulli- 
 ver, after the unfortunate law-suit, is looking over her 
 store of linen cloths, which must now be sold from 
 the family to help to pay her husband's debts, she is 
 bemoaning her sad fate in conversation with her son 
 Tom, and ruefully says : ** To think o' these cloths as 
 I spun myself, and Job Haxey wove 'em." Later on 
 Mrs. Tulliver's sister, Mrs. Pullet, contemplates part- 
 ing with some of her fondly cherished linen to appear 
 on the tables at Dorlcote Mill, when young Tom Tulli- 
 ver has won the place back for the family, and says to 
 Mrs. Tulliver, his mother: "It's poor work dividing 
 one's linen before one dies. I niver thought to have | 
 done that, Bessy, when you and me chose the double 
 diamont, the first flax iver we'd spun, and the Lord 
 knows where yours is gone." Behind these stray re- 
 ferences there is a world of meaning to one who re- 
 members country life more than sixty years ago. The 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 93 
 
 spinning wheel was an institution in every farm-house. 
 My mother did not use it because factories had grown' 
 up, and sheets, blankets, counterpanes, and even 
 worsted for our stockings was already being pro- 
 duced by machinery, and so the spinning wheel 
 and cottage hand loom were fast disappearing 
 when I was a boy. Nevertheless, the worsted 
 was still spun by my aged grandmother, who thought 
 the times were becoming degenerate because the 
 younger women did not now sit at the spinning wheel 
 as their elders had done before them. In my 
 own case, the bed-tick on which I slept, the blankets, 
 sheets and counterpane which covered me, and the 
 tester head-piece and curtains which closed me in all 
 around at night, as though shut up in a tent, were all 
 hand-spun and hand-woven. The village weaver was 
 an institution in those days. In the farm houses the 
 busy spinning wheel made its merry racket each day, 
 and the yarns so spun were wrought into cloths by the 
 cottage weaver. So true to life are these references 
 in our author's fictions. In Adam Bede we read of 
 the "bright pewter plates and spoons and cans," in 
 Mrs. Po3^ser's kitchen. Here is another true touch 
 of the literary artist. How well I remember the old 
 oaken dresser in many a farm-house. There you would 
 see whole dinner services in bright pewter. Even after 
 Staffordshire earthenware had taken the place of the 
 shiny pewter for all ordinary use, you would see care- 
 fully preserved on the dresser shelves the graded sizes 
 of pewter dishes to hold the joints of meat, and the 
 soup plates and shallow plates for the use of the guests 
 and the family at table. I have partaken of many a 
 fine joint of beef served to the table upon a huge pew- 
 ter dish in the times of old. I have a tender place in 
 
94 THE TRUE STORY OF .GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 my memory for the ancient dresser and its polished 
 array of radiant pewter. 
 
 There is another historic touch which tells of 
 things as they were long ago. In Adam Bede, 
 Chapter XIX. we are told of hay time at the hall farm, 
 and we read that " the master and servants ate their 
 supper not far off each other.''' There was much 
 more of such communism in those times than obtains 
 to-day. The workers frequently took their rations at 
 the farmer's table. In nothing is there a more marked 
 change than in the various processes of the harvest- 
 fields. I sometimes think that the greater portion of 
 the romance of the haymaking has disappeared. It 
 is very marked in Adam Bede. Here is a picture of 
 an annual reality as it relates to the hayfield. " All 
 hands were to be out in the meadow as soon as the 
 dew had risen ; the wives and daughters did double 
 work in every farm-house that the maids might give 
 their help in tossing the hay ; and w^hen Adam was 
 marching along the lanes with his basket of tools over 
 his shoulder, he caught the sound of jocose talk and 
 ringing laughter from behind the hedges." There 
 are some fine touches in this picture and the whole de- 
 scription is true to life. The hay-making: was a time 
 of most genuine enthusiasm and merry-heartedness. 
 Our author tells us that men's muscles move better 
 when their souls are making merry music, and that 
 their merriment mingles prettily with other joyous 
 sounds of nature. Machinery has modified all this 
 very considerably. And, doubtless, it is well; for 
 with the exodus to the towns of so much of the bone 
 and muscle of the country districts, our harvests could 
 not be garnered now without resort to machinery. Yet 
 with what pleasantness do I recall the recollections of 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 95 
 
 hay-time when I was a boy. How well I remember 
 seeing my own father, the leader of seven mowers, in 
 one of our fine meadows, when probably I would be 
 six years old. All kept time in their swathes, stroke 
 by stroke, the sw^ish and rhythm of the sweeps were 
 pleasant to listen to, and have left their distinct mem- 
 ory after all these years. I suppose there is music in 
 the click of the mowing machine, but it can never be so 
 romantic to me as the sound of seven mowers all at 
 once slMcrpening their scythes, and then, in unison, 
 cutting dt5ii\^n the grass. A gang of tedders would fol- 
 low the mow^ers, and what with the succeeding pro- 
 cesses of turning, breakinfr. rowing, making into cocks 
 and shaking out again, the grass had no rest until it 
 was converted into sweet-smelling hay. Then the 
 barns were filled and the stacks rose high amid much 
 rejoicing. The joy of hay-making would sometimes 
 be interrupted by spells of showery weather, which 
 diminished the value of the product and increased the 
 cost of gathering it in. 
 
 In the twentieth chapter of Adam Bede there is a 
 lively picture of an evening visit to the Hall 
 Farm by Adam in the hay- time, his heart full of 
 projects foi the future when his life is blent in 
 matrimony, as he hopes it will be one day, with 
 the life of Hetty Sorrell. The house is deserted 
 it seems, for Mrs. Poyser is in the dairy where she and 
 Nancy are crushing the curd of the first evening 
 cheese, while Hetty and Totty are in the garden 
 gathering currants. Soon the hay-makers return from 
 the meadow^ and the "house-place" is no longer si- 
 lent. Nothing in Adam Bede is more true to life than 
 the scene here depicted. The supper is laid, and 
 Molly goes down to draw beer for the thirsty harvest- 
 
96 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 ers, and after a while reappears " carrying a large jug, 
 two small mugs, and four drinking cans." The sight 
 of the girl so laden elicited a sharp reproof from Mrs. 
 
 GRAVESTONE IN NORUURY CHURCHYARD OF SAMUEL GREEN, 
 SON-IN-LAW OF GEORGE EVANS (tHIAS BEDE). 
 
 Poyser, which, joined to the loud reverberations of 
 thunder and the accidental loosening of Molly's apron, 
 caused a sad fall, and the poor girl lay sprawling in a 
 pool of beer. Now a much more severe scolding 
 from the mistress falls upon her dull ears, and 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 97 
 
 Molly begins to cry, as Mrs. Poyser bewails her pre- 
 cious crockery and scolds Molly for her awkwardness. 
 '^ Ah," she says, " you'll do no good crying and mak- 
 ing more wet to wipe up. It's all your own wilful- 
 ness, as I tell you, for there's no call to break any- 
 thing if they'll only go the right w^ay to work. But 
 wooden folks had need ha' w^ooden things to handle. 
 And here must I take the brown and white jug, as it's 
 niver been used three times this year, and go down i' 
 the cellar myself, and belike catch my death and be 
 laid up with inflammation." As she lays hands on 
 that precious jug a shock is administered to Mrs. Poy- 
 ser, her jug falls to the ground minus spout and handle. 
 And now^ we see in the smart sophistry of Mrs. Poy- 
 ser, how^ our judgment of accidents may be varied by 
 the consideration as to whether they happen to our- 
 selves or to other people. We saw where the fault lay 
 when poor wooden Molly broke the pitcher — how quick- 
 ly the judgment is varied now that Mrs. Poyser has 
 sustained a similar mishap. " Did ever anybody see 
 the like?" she says. " The jugs are bewitched, I 
 think. It's them nasty glazed handles, they slip o'er 
 the finger like a snail." 
 
 " Why thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face," said 
 Mr. Poyser. 
 
 "It's all very fine to look on and grin," rejoined 
 Mrs. Poyser, "but there's times when the crockery 
 seems alive and flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's 
 like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What 
 is to be broke will be broke, for I niver dropped a thing 
 i' my life for want o' holding it, else I should never 
 ha' kept the crockery all these years as I bought at my 
 wedding." ]Mrs. Poyser has ceased to scold poor 
 Molly, she exhibits no consciousness of her undue cen- 
 8 
 
98 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 sure in respect of the servant, and her indulgent par- 
 tiahty in her judgment on herself. Hetty appears on 
 the scene and makes a diversion, raising a merry laugh 
 in which all heartily join save Mrs. Poyser, who, under 
 cover of the prevailing amusement, glides out into the 
 back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the 
 great pewter measure , which had some chance of being 
 free from bewitchment. The ale soon appears on the 
 table and Adam Bede has to give his opinion of the 
 new tap, which, we are told, could not be otherwise 
 than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser. Here we have 
 indicated another custom of the olden time — the far- 
 mers brewing their own ale for the harvest season, in- 
 stead of ordering it from the brewer. The whole 
 scene is full of suggestion. It is electric at every point. 
 Nothing seems wanting to the perfect picture. Three 
 things are conspicuous in it. There is first a wonder- 
 fully comprehensive presentation of farm life in the 
 days of Adam Bede ; there is a scene charged full to 
 the brim with piquant humour, and there is a moral 
 lesson we all of us need to learn. 
 
 Later on in the story of Adam Bede we find a 
 graphic description of a harvest supper. The Harvest 
 Home is an old institution in the days of merry Eng- 
 land. I do not think it is so common as it used to be. 
 Probably the custom of a harvest thanksgiving service 
 at the church has taken the place largely of the old 
 Harvest Home at each separate farm. The ancient 
 institution had about it an air of great familiarity : 
 for the time distinctions were levelled, employer and 
 employed feasted together and all were merry in com- 
 mon joy. The last load from the harvest fields was 
 brought to the stack-yard in triumph, there was even 
 some ceremony in its progress with minstrelsy and 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 99 
 
 (lancing. In the evening the harvest supper is laid, 
 the farmer, his family and friends all gather at thc' 
 table, while a place is found for everyone who has con- 
 tributed to the harvest toil. 
 
 " Well on, brave boys, to your lord's hearth 
 Glitt'ring with fire, where, for your mirth. 
 You shall see first the lord and cheefe 
 Foundation of your feast, fat beefe : 
 With upper stories, mutton, veale, 
 And bacon, which makes full the meale, 
 AVith sev'ral dishes standing by, 
 As here a custard, there a pie. 
 And there all tempting frumentie. 
 And for to make the merrie cheere 
 If smirking wine be wanting here 
 There's that which drowns all care — strong beere." 
 
 All this is true, and much more also, in respect of 
 the Harvest Home supper described in the fifty-third 
 chapter of Adam Bede. With our modern experiences 
 we may question the virtues of strong " beere," but 
 the poet wrote in days of long ago. Our hero, as he 
 was going homewards after a day's honest toil, hears 
 the Harvest Home chant rising and sinking like a 
 wave. The evening is beautiful, the sun is declining 
 to the west, and Adam falls to moralising thus : " It's 
 wonderful how that sound goes to one's heart, almost 
 like a funeral bell, for all it tells of the joyfullest time 
 of the year, and the time when men are mostly the 
 thankfullest. I suppose it's a bit hard to think any- 
 thing 's over and gone in our lives, and there's a parting 
 at the root of all our joys." 
 
 When Adam reaches the Hall Farm the supper has 
 commenced, but a place has been kept for him as an 
 expected guest. His old schoolmaster, too, Bartle Mas- 
 sey, is there, and Mr. Craig as well. The labourers. 
 
100 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 too, are honoured guests along with these friendly 
 neighbours. For once they have a recognised place of 
 equality and friendship with those above them in the 
 social scale, and they are prepared to enjoy their feast 
 to the full. One of the noblest passages the hand of 
 George Eliot ever penned occurs in her description of 
 the company at this feast. She tells of one of the 
 farm workmen who had begun his career on the farm 
 as a boy by scaring birds, and had grown old in its 
 service. After her sketch of the old thatcher's pecu- 
 liarities she writes : "I am not ashamed of com- 
 memorating old Kester ; you and I are indebted to the 
 hard hands of such men— hands that have long ago 
 mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily 
 making the best they could of the earth's fruits, and 
 receiving the smallest share as their own wages." 
 This sentence is characteristic of George Eliot. She 
 looks into the soul of things and in her ^eart keenly 
 realises the noble services and hard lot of the toilers 
 among the poor. The bountiful supper is despatched, 
 the cloth is removed, and then our author lets us see 
 the bacchanalian part of the proceedings. She evi- 
 dently thinks this portion of the feast open to serious 
 objection, but then she interjects the thought that we 
 have no power to reform our forefathers. The harvest 
 supper comes down to us from time immemorial, and 
 the song for such occasions is also ancient. There are 
 several versions extant. Of the one employed at the 
 Hall Farm feast George Eliot gives us three stanzas. 
 There is not much to be said for the poetry or the 
 rhyme. Probably that did not matter. There was, at 
 least for the time being, a considerable amount of good 
 feeling. The harvest song, we are told, was sung 
 " decidedly forte " : 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 101 
 
 Here's a health unto our master, 
 
 The founder of the feast ; 
 Here's a health unto our master / 
 
 And to our mistress ! ; 
 
 When the chorus is reached after the third quatrain, 
 the shepherd's can is filled with ale, and he must 
 empty it without spilling before the chorus has ceased, 
 under the penalty of drinking a second portion. The 
 same process is gone through with each worker in turn, 
 and we are told that one of them spilled a portion of 
 his allowance in order that there might be inflicted up- 
 on him the penalty of imbibing a second. The chorus 
 reads thus : 
 
 Then drink, boys, drink ! 
 
 And see ye do not spill, 
 For if ye do, ye shall drink two, 
 
 For 'tis your master's will. 
 
 I have found elsewhere a somewhat better version of 
 the old harvest song, which runs as follows : 
 
 Here's a health to our master, 
 
 The lord of the feast ; 
 God bless his endeavours, 
 
 And send him increase ! 
 May prosper his crops, boys. 
 
 And we reap next year ; 
 Here's our master's good health, boys. 
 
 Come, drink off your beer ! 
 Now harvest is ended, 
 
 And supper is past ; 
 Here's our mistress's health, boys. 
 
 Come, drink a full glass. 
 For she's a good woman, 
 
 Provides us good cheer, 
 Here's your mistress's good health, boys, 
 
 Come, drink off your beer. 
 
 In some future generation the historical antiquary 
 will find in Adam Bede a repertory of information on 
 
102 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT I 
 
 the manners and customs of village life in the early 
 years of the nineteenth century, which will stand him 
 in good stead. He will there find a faithful record of 
 a condition of things which has already passed away. 
 He wall discover that no painter or poet, no ballad- 
 maker nor historian has left on record so complete and 
 life-like a picture as the writer of this story. I have 
 read it many times over, alw^ays with deepening won- 
 der at its comprehensiveness, minuteness, freshness 
 and force. When I consider for a moment how I 
 should have fared with such a task, I am astonished 
 beyond measure at the power of a mind which could 
 follow out into so much detail, with such unfaiUng 
 accuracy, the drama of daily life in a village com- 
 munity and invest the common-place, humdrum exis- 
 tence of men and women there, with such undying 
 charm, and unflagging interest. It is only the loftiest 
 genius which could perform such a miracle. It is, 
 perhaps, not particularly edifying to read of 
 the roystering festivities of the harvest sup- 
 per. Bartle Massey retires from the room 
 during the loud, musical chorus, lest the un- 
 harmonious shout should split his ears. But even that 
 supper, ordinary as it may appear, has associated with 
 it outbursts of satire, wit, pleasantry and humour 
 which would render any conceivable scene immortal. 
 There is one rencontre on this memorable occasion, be- I 
 tween Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser, recording corus- 
 cations of wit, which cannot but astonish and delight 
 the most stolid reader. Here, it is diamond cut dia- 
 mond, but at least one may say that Mrs. Poyser does 
 not come off second best. Bartle Massey, the caustic 
 critic of women, has for a wonder been saying some- 
 thing rather kindly of one exceptional woman— Dinah i 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 103 
 
 Morris, and this is how he excuses himself for this 
 amiable weakness : "I meant her voice, man — I meant 
 her voice, that was all, I can bear to hear her speak 
 without w^anting to put wool in my ears. As for other 
 things, I daresay she's like the rest of the women, 
 thinks two and two 'ull come to make five, if she 
 cries and bothers enough about it." 
 
 " Ay, ay " ! said Mrs. Poyser " one 'ud think, an' 
 hear some folks talk, as the men war cute enough to 
 count the corns in a bag o' w^heat wi' only smelling at 
 it. They can see through a barn door, they can. Per- 
 haps that's the reason they can see so little o' this side 
 on't." 
 
 "Ah!" said Bartle, sneeringly, "the women are 
 quick enough, they're quick enough. They know the 
 rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man 
 what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself." 
 
 "Like enough," said Mrs. Poyser, "for the men 
 are mostly so slow their thoughts o' err an 'em, an' they 
 can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking 
 top while a man gets his tongue ready, an' when he 
 oats wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be 
 made on't. It's dead chicks take the longest 
 
 hatching. Howiver, I'm not denying the women are 
 foohsh : God Almighty made 'em to match the men." 
 
 "Match!" said Bartle, "ay, as vinegar matches 
 one's teeth. If a man says a word his wife '11 match 
 it with a contradiction, if he's a mind for hot meat his 
 wife'll match it with cold bacon, if he laughs she'll 
 match him with whimpering. She's such a match as 
 the horse-fly is to the horse, she's got the right venom 
 to sting him with, the right venom to sting him with." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, " I know what the men 
 like — a poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the pictur 
 
104 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, and say 
 thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know 
 what end she stood uppermost till her husband told 
 her." 
 
 Here Mr. Poyser joins in the conversation, and after 
 another satirical speech by Bartle Massev. appeals to 
 his wife, saying : " What dost say to that?" 
 
 " Say!" answered Mrs. Poyser with dangerous fire 
 kindling in her eye. " why, I say as some folks' tongues 
 are like the clocks as run on striking, not to tell you 
 the time o' day, but because there's summat wrong i' 
 their own insides." 
 
 This is the climax of the sparkling dialogue, which 
 it might not have been, but for a boisterous outburst 
 of inharmonious melody among the workmen, followed 
 by the song : " Three Merry Mowers," lustily sung by 
 Tim. 
 
 We would have to travel very far before we found 
 more pungent wit than that which we discover in 
 Chapter LIII. of Adam Bede. It also enables us to 
 recall rural life in a generation which has long since 
 passed away. I do not marvel at Sir Leslie's judg- 
 ment that this wonderful story placed George Eliot in 
 the first rank of Victorian novelists, and that Mrs. 
 Poyser became at once one of the immortals, taking 
 rank with Sam Weller as "one of the irresistible 
 humorists." Nor do I quite wonder at the enthusiasm 
 with which Miss Betham-Edwards speaks of the 
 author. She says of George Eliot " that on account 
 of her great gifts and despite her numerous adorers, 
 she always seemed to me alone, sadly, almost sub- 
 limel)'^ alone." In view of this great book I think we 
 may heartily endorse the judgment of another com- 
 petent critic who says : " What Dickens was to the 
 
HAYTIME AT THE HALL FARM 305 
 
 crowd George Eliot has been to the elect. An earnest 
 and serious moral and spiritual enthusiast, the most 
 cultivated of scholars, the most conscientious of artists, 
 with an almost terrible sense of responsibility en- 
 trusted to her in these gifts, she raised pure fiction to a 
 higher plane than it had ever aspired to before, and if 
 her influence has been more or less esoteric, it has been 
 of incalculable importance to art and life." Of Adam 
 Bede, that keen and competent critic, the late Mr. K. 
 H. Hutton, said that it was a wonderful book, always 
 likely to remain George Eliot's most popular book. 
 This judgment seems to be in the way of fulfilment. 
 Henry Morley says of her books in general that they 
 will cloud no true faith, and are works of rare genius. 
 Surely their tendency is 
 
 " To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, 
 To raise the genius and to mend the heart ; 
 To make mankind in conscious virtue hold. 
 Live o'er each scene and be what they behold." 
 
CHAPTEK VII 
 
 SETH BEDE's account OF HIMSELF 
 
 ' ' I need a cleansing change within : 
 My life must once again begin ; 
 New hope I need and youth renewed. 
 And more than human fortitude ; 
 New faith, new love and strength to cast 
 Away the fetters of the past." 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Let us turn our thoughts once more to the old house 
 at Eoston Common, with the workshop at the south 
 end, the house where Adam Bede was born in 1773 and 
 Seth Bede four years later. Let us think of Seth as 
 now eighteen years old, and as having, like his elder 
 brothers, passed through Bartle Massey's academy and 
 as now far advanced in the practice of his father's 
 laborious calling. By this time the eldest son had 
 left the paternal home and gone to live in Rocester. 
 The second son, William, has fixed his abode in Castle 
 Donnington. Thomas, Robert (Adam Bede), and 
 Samuel (Seth Bede) are still at home. The father is 
 now sixty years of age, and the bulk of the business 
 falls on his capable sons, of whom he was very proud. 
 Sometimes he was twitted with the superior workman- 
 ship of his sons, and his reply was: "Who taught 
 them?" Seth was said to have been the spoiled son 
 
 106 
 
SETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 107 
 
 of his mother, but his sister, my grandmother, used to 
 say that so far from his being spoiled by his mother, 
 he was her true instructor and comforter in her last 
 illness. The family gravestone shows that she died in 
 1803. By this time a great change had taken place in 
 the life of Seth Bede. He shall tell the story in his 
 
 SCHOOL ADJOINING BA.RTLE MASSEY S HOUSE, NEAR NORBURY AND 
 ROSTON COMMON. 
 " Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a common 
 which was divided by the road to Treddlestone." 
 
 own words. I have an autobiography which was wTit- 
 ten at his dictation when he was an old man. There 
 is in it a preface entirely characteristic of the humility 
 which always distinguished Seth Bede. 
 
 " At the request of my dear children and friends I consent 
 for a short sketch of my life to be put into writing, although 
 I do not know what can be said, only that, after all, I am an 
 
108 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 unprofitable servant, I can speak largely on the goodness of 
 God to me and of His mercies and deliverances through my 
 past life, but — 
 
 ' I loathe myself when God I see, 
 
 And into nothing fall ; 
 Content if Thou exalted be, 
 
 And Christ be all in all.' " 
 
 Humility, gentleness, and patience were conspicuous 
 qualities in the character of Seth Eede. He says— 
 
 " I was born at Roston in the parish of Norbury, Derbyshire. 
 and by trade I am a joiner. I attended the church regularly 
 along with the rest of the family ; 1 was very dark and ignor- 
 ant as regards divine truths, which was not to be wondered at. 
 for our parish minister was not an evangelical one, but was 
 fond of hunting, shooting, playing at cards and the like plea- 
 sures of a worldly nature, shocking to say." 
 
 Let me pause here to acknowledge with deep thank- 
 fulness to God the marked change in the piety and zeal 
 of the country clergy during the more than one hun- 
 dred years which have elapsed since Seth Bede was 
 eighteen years old. The hunting parson has not en- 
 tirely died out, and yet he is all but extinct. Still he 
 was common enough in Seth Bede's early days, and, 
 indeed, in mine also. One of the entertaining sights 
 which frequently broke the monotony of village life 
 when I was a boy was the periodical appearance of 
 the hounds followed by a company of mounted men 
 dressed in red jackets, and among them one or more 
 clergymen. The late Lord Bishop of Liverpool, in a 
 very noble book, entitled Christian Leaders of the Last 
 Century (the eighteenth) gives a faithful picture of the 
 clergy of the period. Speaking of the persecutions 
 inflicted on that true servant of God, William Grim- 
 shaw, vicar of Ha worth, and friend of Wesley, for his 
 evangelistic zeal in Yorkshire, he says : 
 
ROBERT EVANS (ADAM BEDE). 
 From a miniature in the possession of his Grandson. 
 
) 
 
OF THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 SETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HTMSEnF 111 
 
 ** There is something revolting in the idea of a holy and zeal- 
 t ous minister of the Church of England being persecuted for 
 overstepping the bounds of ecclesiastical etiquette, while hun- 
 dreds of clergymen were let alone and undisturbed whose lives 
 and doctrines were beneath contempt. All over England 
 country livings were often filled by hunting, shooting, gamb- 
 ling, drinking, card-playing, swearing, ignorant clergymen, 
 who cared neither for law nor gospel, and utterly neglected 
 their parishes. When they did preach they either preached to 
 empty benches, or else the hungry sheep looked up and were 
 not fed. And yet these men lived under their own vine and 
 fig trees, enjoying great quietness, untouched by bishops, eat- 
 ing the fat of the land and calling themselves the true sup- 
 porters of the Church." 
 
 This exactly agrees with what Seth Bede tells us of 
 the condition of things in his native Derb3^shire. As 
 he has told us of his spiritual darkness, we will now let 
 him relate to us the manner of his awakening. 
 
 " When I was eighteen I heard of a travelling preacher, Mr. 
 William Hicks, who preached at Snelstone. Methodists were 
 not looked upon in those days as they are now — they were 
 considered fanatical enthusiasts. My curiosity was very much 
 aroused, hearing that Mr. Hicks preached and prayed without 
 a book ; which I considered a very marvellous thing. I felt 
 determined to go and hear him. I went, and while he was 
 praying the first time conviction seized me. I was in great 
 distress of mind, the weight of my sins was more than I could 
 bear. I thought I was the worst and vilest sinner in the 
 place, and so exceedingly ignorant was I, that I could not 
 imagine what was the matter with me. I might take up the 
 language of the Psalmist and say * I was as a beast before 
 Thee.' When Mr. Hicks began to preach I thought someone 
 must have told him my state, as every word was meant for me. 
 I continued in that state of mind six weeks; the anguish of 
 soul I endured in that time was only known to God and my- 
 self. At the end of six weeks I was praying alone in my room 
 before I went to work. The Lord in great mercy broke in 
 upon my soul, pardoned my sins and made me happy in His 
 love. I felt peace and joy through believing." 
 
 It is worth while to pause here and ask ourselves by 
 what influence this extraordinary revolution was 
 
112 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 brought about? Under the ministration cf an extem- 
 pore prayer, offered by a stranger whom he had never 
 seen before, all in a moment there comes to the soul 
 of this simple country youth a self revelation which 
 
 WESLEYAN CHAPEL, ROSTOX, XORBURY. 
 Referred to in Samuel Evans' (Seth Bede) memoirs. 
 
 startles and appals him. Outwardly no one could have 
 been more orderly in conduct than he^ 
 
 "A son that never did amiss, 
 
 That never shamed his mother's kiss, 
 Or crossed her fondest prayer." 
 
 Yet now he feels himself the vilest sinner in the 
 place. What is it that has wrought this sudden 
 
SETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 113 
 
 change? He has been drawn to the place by curiosity, 
 gripped by instantaneous spiritual force which he can 
 by no means account for, and yet it has completely 
 mastered him. It was not logic, for no proposition 
 had been advanced; it was not persuasion, for the 
 messenger had not begun to plead. True he had 
 heard the strains of a hymn before he had listened to 
 the prayer, but what of that? He had heard singing 
 often enough at the parish church without being per- 
 turbed by it, and even on this occasion the singing 
 seems to have made slight impression. The prayer, 
 however, arrested him, and then the sermon transfixed 
 him. All things are different now. The placid and 
 contented Seth, so dear to his devoted mother, is 
 plunged into poignant and self -reproaching distress. 
 The anxious mother can come to no other conclusion 
 than that her darling son has gone mad. As for him, 
 a piercing searchlight has been turned on his inner 
 life, and there is a new and vivid revelation of himself. 
 His own artless description reminds me cf what St. 
 Augustine has said of himself in his Confessions : 
 " Thou, Lord, while he (Pontitianus) was speaking, 
 didst turn me round tow^ards myself, taking me from 
 behind my back where he had placed me, unwilling to 
 observe myself ; and setting me before my face that I 
 might see how foul I was, how crooked and defiled, 
 ! bespotted and ulcerous. I beheld and stood aghast ; 
 I and whither to flee from myself I found not." 
 1 But, sudden as had been the keen dart of conviction 
 I in Seth Bede's case, equally sudden was the inflowing 
 ! of joy. Every day he rises early to go to his work, 
 but earlier still for his morning cry to God out of the 
 : sorrows of a troubled mind. " Then," says he, " the 
 light broke in upon my soul." Whence this visitation 
 i 9 
 
114 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 came he never had a doubt. To him it was all divine. 
 
 Seth Bede had the full realisation of that for which 
 poor Hartley Coleridge prayed in the lines at the head 
 of this chapter. There was in intensest reality a new 
 beginning of life. There was first that astounding 
 revelation of himself to himself, which had so bitterly 
 confounded and distressed him, and then there was 
 that still small voice that spoke to him early in the 
 morning, by which he was assured of cleansing and 
 peace. 
 
 Into the closest relationship with God has Seth Bede 
 now consciously entered, and for him it is the begin- 
 ning of a new and happy life. At Snelstone which 
 was the next village to Norbury and Boston Common, 
 there lived a well-to-do farmer of the name of Beres- 
 ford. This gentleman was a Methodist class-leader 
 and local preacher, and had built a preaching-room on 
 his own premises. Seth Bede writes of him as " a 
 very precious man of God." To him Seth went and 
 related his new experiences, and was at once received 
 into the Methodist Society. Four years passed by, 
 and there came another development. These were 
 evidently years of spiritual growth, steady progress, ■ 
 and deepening joy to the young convert — 
 
 " I met with Mr. Beresford four years, and only missed once 
 in the time, although the meeting-place was a mile from Bos- 
 ton, where I lived. I often had to go four miles to work, and ; 
 then after that a mile to my class. Very often since I have i 
 wished that my members had evinced the same love for their ; 
 class that I did for mine." 
 
 It was manifestly very exhilarating for the aged , 
 
 Seth to look back on the early years of his spiritual pil- ; 
 
 grimage, and the memory of Mr. Beresford, after the \ 
 
 lapse of sixty years, was to him both fragrant and \ 
 
SETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 115 
 
 inspiring. But a tragic event severed the connection 
 of the leader and his disciple. Mr. Beresford was one 
 day thrown from his horse, the neck was dislocated, 
 and the good man died. Not, however, before he had 
 time to send for Seth Bede, who was astonished to be- 
 
 THORXTREE FARM, SXELSTOXE. 
 Home of Mrs. Gough, niece of Samuel Evans (Setfi Bede). Mrs. Gougli is claimed 
 by some as the original of Mrs. Poyser. 
 
 hold with what calm peace and holy triumph his dying 
 class-leader could meet the unexpected death which 
 had so abruptly overtaken him. When the country 
 was ringing with slanders concerning the Methodists, 
 their great founder claimed for them this characteris- 
 tic : " They die well." Nothing could be more true, 
 but in reality it was because they had learned to live 
 well. And so it was that Mr. Beresford could meet 
 
116 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 his awfully sudden death with such rapturous assur- 
 ance and holy peace. The untoward event neverthe- 
 less was one of keen sorrow to Seth Bede. What 
 could be more natural than that he should unbosom his 
 grief to his former pastor, the Eev. W. Hicks, now 
 removed to the Burton-on Trent circuit? This good 
 minister replied that it might be that God had taken 
 away the first to establish the second. Indeed, this 
 is what came of it, for Seth, at the age of twenty-tw^o, 
 was chosen leader of the class, and appointed a local 
 preacher in the place of Mr. Beresford, and I am en- 
 titled to say also that for the long period of fifty-nine 
 years he was one of the most laborious, self-sacri- 
 ficing and consecrated class-leaders and local preachers 
 that the great Methodist denomination has ever num- 
 bered in its ranks. His autobiography tells us of keen 
 spiritual struggles, wrestlings of deep agony, and as- 
 suring triumphs of spiritual power ; of rising at three 
 or four o'clock in the morning for reading, study and 
 prayer, of dreams and visions in the night, and of souls 
 quickened to a new life by his efforts, w^hich appar- 
 ently is the sanction and reward of his toil. 
 
 It was, however, not all plain sailing. There were 
 two elder brothers still at home, and the following ex- 
 tract wilt show how they regarded the irregularities of 
 Seth: 
 
 " My elder brothers Robert and Thomas teased me. They 
 told me I made blunders both in preaching and prayer, and 
 that I had more zeal than knowledge. I dare say I had. They 
 were High Church in their sympathies and despised the 
 Methodists, and tried hard to argue, to baffle and confound 
 me. I betook myself to prayer, the Lord enlightened my 
 understanding ; I became familiar with Scripture, and was able 
 to give every man a reason for the hope that was in me. My 
 brothers and I often talked about these things in after life 
 when we occasionally met together." 
 
SETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 117 
 
 That simple touch concerning the conversations in 
 after years is beautifully suggestive. They all lived to 
 be old men. I happen to know that though life had 
 sundered them apart for many years, yet they did 
 occasionally meet, and were exceedingly united and 
 happy with each other. Of this we are sure, Seth 
 
 FARMHOUSE AT SNELSTOXK, COXTAINIXG A PORTION' OF THE WALLS 
 OF A DISMANTLED WESLEYAX CHAPEL. 
 
 Mentioned by Samuel and Elizabeth Evans (Seth Be le and Dinah Morris) in 
 their memoirs. 
 
 never repented his early choice, and I have good rea- 
 son to believe that all the brothers had come to realise 
 that for him it was the best he could have made. In- 
 dependently of chm'ch relationships, all the brothers— 
 my own grandmother also, as their sister— were really 
 proud of the consistent piety, simple faith and self- 
 
118 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 sacrificing goodness of Seth Bede, long years before 
 any individual had conceived that his fragrant memory 
 would one day be embalmed in the pages of immortal 
 fiction. What is it that decides the different beliefs of 
 children all brought up under the same influences at 
 home? Here, in a remote hamlet in Derbyshire, are 
 five sons, all of them trained to attend the parish 
 church, to recite the Church Catechism, to reverence 
 the clergyman, to go forward for confirmation, and to 
 start life as reverent Churchmen. The first died 
 early, but not before he had become a convert of the 
 •Methodists; the second became a Baptist; the third 
 and fourth remained to the end of life staunch Church- 
 imen, while the youngest son, to the close of a long 
 (career, was a devoted Methodist. All were good men, 
 and, in spite of religious differences, maintained to 
 old age true fraternal friendship and unbroken family 
 ^ unity. The Methodist cause at Snelstone has fared 
 •ill. From Mr. Beresford's room it migrated to a 
 ■chapel, which was built for it, to which a burial 
 Aground was attached. In process of years the cause 
 'declined, and the responsible trustee sold the building 
 and the graveyard to the village squire. Some few 
 of the bodies interred there were taken up and re- 
 interred in the parish churchyard, but there is 
 now no mark to indicate a burial ground, al- 
 though many bodies remain in their original graves, 
 and among them that of George, the eldest son of 
 George and Mary Evans (Thias and Lisbeth Bede). 
 One devout old woman, who was a member there, still 
 survives. She heard it said that the chief authority 
 of the village gave it to be understood that there must 
 be no more preaching in Snelstone. That view has 
 been confirmed by other testimony. She remembers 
 

JSETH BEDE'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 121 
 
 well the visits of Dinah Morris to Snelstone when she 
 herself was a servant to Mrs. Gongh, a farmer's wife, 
 said hy some writers to have been the prototype of 
 Mrs. Poyser. This lady w^as a cousin of George Eliot. 
 The servant w^ent to Ella stone to hear Dinah Morris 
 preach while she was visiting Mrs. Gough, the chapel 
 at Snelstone being by this time converted into a farm- 
 house. I am sorry that the Society of Methodists 
 which Seth Bede first joined has ceased to exist, while 
 the other he mentions as existing at Boston still sur- 
 vives. He writes about them with loving enthusiasm 
 in his old age : 
 
 " I was sure I was in my right place, for the Lord gave mo 
 souls for my hire and seals for my ministry. I found it very 
 profitable to read the Word of God upon my knees. The Lord 
 was very pitiful and kind. He enlightened my understanding. 
 Very shortly I was entered on full plan Avith the rest of my 
 brethren. I am now nearly eighty, and my name is still on 
 the preaching plan. I can say: 'Hitherto the Lord hath 
 helped me.' I feel thankful to God that I can preach a full 
 and free salvation to a lost and ruined race. O, how free it 
 is, and how reasonable its terms if people would but give up 
 their sins and make their calling and election sure. I was 
 very fond of the people I laboured amongst at Roston and 
 Snelstone. We were all of one heart and soul, which is very 
 delightful. W^ould to God it were always so !" 
 
 All this while Seth Bede was toiling at his calling 
 of carpenter and joiner. We have Adam's own clear 
 testimony of his industry and capacity as a workman ; 
 his labours are exacting and his hours long, yet he finds 
 time to study well his Bible, his Concordance and 
 Bible dictionary ; he ministers to the needs of many, 
 and is a helper of their joy. I can scarcely imagine any 
 experience in life happier than Seth's. With good 
 health and abounding strength for labour, a life fired 
 with hijyh enthusiasm, talents consecrated to Christian 
 
122 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 service, the humble joiner is one of the happiest of 
 men. His sphere is Hmited, I know, his advantages 
 for acquiring knowledge are but few; nevertheless, he 
 has learned early in his career the true secret of rest, 
 and his life is one of the purest content and the 
 sweetest satisfaction even to its closing hours. 
 
 A recent biographer of George Eliot has said : " Seth 
 Bede bores me." But then, he only knows the Seth 
 Bede of fiction, where Seth is continually subordinated 
 to Adam, if not more or less sacrificed. The sup- 
 posed needs of dramatic presentation modified the re- 
 lative positions of the two brothers, and in this way 
 Seth has been overshadowed. In these chapters we 
 are telling a real-life story, and in this narration Seth 
 will appear as one of the truest and strongest of men. 
 On my last visit to Wirks worth a gentleman remarked 
 to me : "1 consider Seth Bede was one of the best 
 benefactors our town has ever had. He brought a 
 new industry into the parish which has flourished for 
 the greater part of a century and given employment to 
 many hundreds of persons, and is flourishing to-day." 
 This is a true witness. Its justification will appear as 
 we proceed with our recital. Meanwhile, we must 
 turn aside from Seth for awhile to deal with Dinah 
 Morris. To me this character is the principal charm 
 in the novel of Adam Bede. 
 
CHAPTEE Vni 
 
 DINAH MORRIS PREACHING ON THE GREEN AT 
 HAYSLOPE 
 
 " She taught us how to live; 
 With blameless life girt round with sanctity, 
 Lowly in heart, in soul and purpose high. 
 
 Sweet lessons did she give 
 Of faith, of love, of hope; for all that shone 
 Brightest in Christian lives, she made her own." 
 
 Burleigh. 
 
 Few of the pictures presented in fiction more indelibly 
 impress themselves on the reader's mind than the 
 preaching of Dinah Morris on Hay slope Green. The 
 scene is so picturesque, with just a dash of the mar- 
 vellous thrown in ; the youth and sex of the preacher, 
 the calm of the summer evening, the gathering of the 
 simple villagers, the stranger listening on horseback 
 spellbound by the preaching — all these join to produce 
 a situation which cannot well be forgotten. One can 
 almost hear the solemn tones of the hymn rising on 
 the evening air, and we seem to watch the mounted 
 traveller as he goes forward on his way. 
 
 I have conversed with many hundreds of the readers 
 of Adam Bede, and, without exception, I find that the 
 scene delineated in Chapter II. has been remembered 
 with striking vividness. It is to this narrative we 
 must turn in introducing Dinah Morris. 
 
 123 
 
124 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 In a general way, but without finding exact corres- 
 pondence in every particular, we may take it that the 
 village of Ellastone answers to the Hayslope of the 
 novel. The traveller on horseback, with portmanteau 
 strapped behind him, may well be supposed to have 
 approached the village by the steep incline which 
 marks the arrival from Ashbourne, and as he drew 
 near, he may have caught a glimpse of Wootton Hal! 
 on his right, in the midst of hanging woods far up the 
 valley, he may have lingered to gaze on the fair picture, 
 and he may have passed on his way after the preaching 
 down the gentle slope on hi« journey to Eocester and 
 Uttoxeter. 
 
 The Ellastone of 1799 was not very different from 
 the Ellastone of the twentieth century. A few ne\^ 
 houses have been built, thatched roofs have given 
 place to Staffordshire tiles, the roads are much im-i 
 proved, but the place, always beautiful, remains much 
 as it was a hundred years ago. It stands in the midst 
 of a pleasantly diversified landscape, in which there are 
 blended green pastures, rich meadows, furrowed corn- 
 fields, fruitful orchards, and shady plantations; witr 
 Weaver Hills standing sentinel on the north, "to 
 guard this region of corn and grass " from the hungry 
 winds which blow^ from that quarter ; w^hile the valley 
 of the Dove, with the low hills of the Derbyshire 
 border at Norbury and Eoston, bound the vision to 
 the south. 
 
 The village of Ellastone has other literary and art 
 associations than those of Adam Bede, for Jean 
 Jaques Eousseau resided for a year at Wootton Hall ; 
 George Frederick Handel composed part of his 
 great Oratorio, The Messiah, at Calwich Abbey : and 
 Archbishop Sheldon was born in the parish. 
 
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 DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT HAYSLOPE 127 
 
 EUastone is a wide parish of more than seven thou- 
 sand acres, and includes the five townships of Calwich, 
 Prestwood, Eamsor, Stanton, and Wootton, con- 
 taining together a population of twelve hundred souls. 
 The Parish Church of St. Peter occupies a prominent 
 position on rising ground, and the vicarage commands 
 delightful views across the valley to the wooded heights 
 
 WESLEYAX CHAPEL, ELI.ASTOXE (hAYSLOPE). 
 
 of Derbyshire. A painter residing here would find 
 around him charming landscapes for his canvas, and in 
 the picturesque valleys of both the Churnet and the 
 Dove he would discover varying scenes of choicest 
 beauty. Alas, the village green has long since dis- 
 appeared. I doubt not that it once occupied the 
 ground opposite the Bromley Arms Inn. I can trace 
 
128 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 the old boundary of it in part, while traditions of it 
 linger among the villagers. One could have wished 
 that the green and the maple tree which figure in the 
 novel had been allowed to remain, but like some other 
 things — the parish stocks and the parish pound, for 
 example — they are not as they were. 
 
 The question for us to consider is w^hether Dinah 
 Morris did preach at Ella stone or not. On this point ] 
 can furnish the very best testimony. On one of my! 
 journeys to Staffordshire my mother informed me of a 
 retired builder residing at Ashbourne, who had heard 
 Dinah Morris preach on the green at Ellastone. Mr. 
 Phillips was a hale old man, a good Methodist, with a 
 clear brain and a lively memory. I had a pleasant 
 interview with him. His description of the scene was 
 vivid and telling. He recalled it with sparkling en- 
 thusiasm. When he heard the preaching he was a 
 youthful apprentice in the building-yard originated in 
 P'llastone by Adam Bede. Dinah's preaching pro- 
 duced an impression on his mind w^hich it was* delight- 
 ful for him to recall. His eyes moistened and his 
 voice mellowed as I asked hi'm the question : "Do 
 you remember her as a woman w^ho preached with re- 
 markable power?" The ready and energetic reply 
 was : " I felt the power in my own soul, and never 
 can forget it. It penetrated me through and through. 
 I shall bless God to all eternity that I ever heard her 
 voice." 
 
 There is other testimony as well. It is found in the 
 autobiography of Seth Bede. He tells of a series of 
 meetings in the open-air during a summer period. 
 Then came the autumn chills and rains. One Sunday 
 evening Dinah was preaching while a shower of rain 
 was falling. The meeting was held in the immediate 
 
DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT HAYSLOPE 129 
 
 vicinity of the inn, a statement agreeing with other 
 evidence as to the site of the green. The Methodists 
 did not think the landlord likely to be favourable to- 
 wards their meetings, but certainty he must have been 
 a kind-hearted man, for he surprised and delighted 
 them by walking across the read to their gathering to 
 
 THE VICARAGE, ELLASTOXE (hAYSLOPE) 
 
 make them an offer of the use of his spacious club- 
 room, where the meetings were continued for the 
 winter season. 
 
 Another question, however, remains. Were these 
 facts about the preaching of Dinah Morris at Ellastone 
 known to George Eliot? About this I have not a 
 doubt. Of course, there were other places, and, in- 
 
 10 
 
130 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 deed, many of them, where Dinah preached in the: 
 open-air. But, to begin with, George EHot knew 
 Ellastone well. She tells of her visits to her father's; 
 brother William at this place, of whom she speaks as: 
 a rich builder. I have already referred to her visit to 
 Wirksworth, and of a long afternoon spent in the 
 parlour of her cousin, Mrs. Walker, writing down from 
 the lips of her aunt, Dinah Morris, the account of her 
 preaching experiences. 
 
 Mrs. W^alker told me very definitely of the saying of 
 the latter : "I have been giving to your cousin an 
 account of my preaching in the open air at Ellastone, 
 and she wants to write it all down." The tete-a-tete 
 of the two, on that occasion, occupied a period of threes 
 hours. It has an important bearing on the preaching 
 at Hay slope. I do not wish my readers to suppose; 
 that all the incidents related of the preaching there are; 
 to be taken as historical. That would be to allow no 
 play for the imagination of the author. It is quitcj 
 enough to know that she was aware of this ministra- 
 tion on the part of Dinah, and this being taken as 
 established, we may realise for ourselves that it was 
 hers, as a writer of fiction, to clothe the bare incident 
 with the drapery appropriate to its dramatic presenta- 
 tion , and thus we owe it to her rare genius for realisti<3 
 description that we have this fascinating scene which 
 has become so famous in literary craftsmanship. 
 
 The attitude of mind and heart of the writer at the 
 time when she came into close contact with Dinali 
 Morris is sufficiently attested to enable us to reahse it 
 very clearly. She was then a devout and earnest 
 Christian woman, full of faith and good w^orks. An 
 extract from one of her letters to Seth Bede will re- 
 veal all this to us more fully than any words of mine. 
 
CHURCH OF ST. PETER, EI.LASTONE (hAYSLOPE), 
 
DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT HAYSLOPE 13;^ 
 
 She is writing of Dinah INIorris at a time when the 
 beloved aunt lay dangerously ill at Wirksw^orth. The 
 letter reveals a decided Christian experience and an 
 exultant spiritual faith. A recent WTiter on George 
 Eliot with keen penetration has stated that when she 
 appeared as a novelist the multitude of her readers per- 
 ceived at once that she knew the secrets of the spiritual 
 life. The religion of the heart, says this very com- 
 petent critic, cannot be feigned. This is the great 
 peculiarity of George Eliot's position. Whatever may 
 have been her ultimate fate, she was assuredly of 
 those who were once enHghtened, who tasted of the 
 heavenly gift and the powders of the world to come. 
 All this is substantiated to the full by the choice 
 extract I am about to give. It is dated : 
 
 Griff Bouse, Aug. 10, 1840. 
 My dear Uncle, 
 
 " Remembering the apostle's declaration that to be 
 absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, I cannot, 
 for her own sake, regret that my dear aunt is so very near the 
 brink of Jordan. I would only pray that her Heavenly Father 
 may, out of His tender consideration for His creatures who 
 are but dust, lighten the weight of bodilv suflFering as far as 
 may consist with His designs of mercy to the soul. Give my 
 dear aunt, if she be able to receive it, an assurance from me 
 of my affection for her, and tell her I humbly resolve in the 
 strength of the Lord to seek His face evermore, that we may 
 sing together a new song before the throne. For you, my 
 dear uncle, both my father and myself truly feel, and I have 
 endeavoured to pray that you may be powerfully sustained 
 under a trial that will indeed bereave you of one who has 
 been as the apple of your eye; but is it not to this end, 
 that God may be all in all with you, and that having no 
 earthly prop you may walk entirely by faith? I doubt not, my 
 dear uncle, that you will evidence the possession of what be- 
 longs only to the Christian — joy in tribulation — and that you 
 will thus glorify the God of Israel even in the fires. Truly 
 the commandments of God are not grievous, for the Apostle 
 
134 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 sums them up bj' a ' Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say 
 rejoice ' ; and though this may seem a great difficulty when the. 
 lieart is bowed down and rent in twain by the loss of our 
 earthly gourds, in reality that is the very time when we can 
 best relish the waters that make glad the city of God. ' Trials 
 make the promise sweet ' — such promises as these : ' To him 
 that overcometh will I grant to sit on mv throne.' ' Th'> 
 Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall feed them.' 
 ' And God shall wipe all tears away from their eyes.' " 
 
 When George Eliot wrote this letter she was twenty 
 years of age. She was in the midst of her busy life 
 as housekeeper and dairy woman at Griff, she was pur- 
 suing her ardent intellectual studies, and engaging in 
 active Christian work among the poor people around 
 her. Before the aunt died, the blight of her faith 
 had come to her, and- she tells us there was mutual 
 pain in their last interview. 
 
 After this illness Dinah Morris lived another nine 
 years. It was in this period that I first heard of 
 George Eliot. We, in Staffordshire , were told of her 
 refusal to accompany her father to church, of her un- 
 belief in the credibility of the Christian revelation, of 
 the instrumentality of people who were Unitarians in 
 bringing about this change, and, quite naturally, we 
 thought hard things of a daughter who could give such 
 agonising pain to so indulgent a father and so good a 
 man as Adam Bede ; and we did not think kindly 
 of the people called Unitarians who could have suc- 
 ceeded in bringing about such a result. I am bound 
 to say that, so far as I know, every one of her relations 
 in Staffordshire and Derbyshire would be entirely out 
 of harmony with George Eliot's surrender of faith, 
 and, as I well remember, greatly marvelled that it 
 should have taken place. 1 am sure it was a poignant 
 
DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT HAYSLOPE 135 
 
 grief to her aunt, Dinah Morris, who died in the same 
 year that Adam Bede died, and also to Seth Bede, who 
 hved nine years longer. But the intercourse with 
 Wirksworth had now ceased , and she never visited her 
 friends in that region again. Still, we can see from 
 her book that she had not lost her warm affection for 
 
 CHAD cranage's FORGE (RECENTLY DEMOLISHEDj. 
 
 her aunt, for the portrait of Dinah, which was cer- 
 tainly suggested to her mind by the knowledge of her 
 aunt, while wrought with consummate skill, is also 
 done with warm affection and keen sympathy. 
 
 In the Ellastone preaching scene Dinah is intro- 
 duced as a young unmarried woman from Stonyshire, 
 visiting her relations at the Hall Farm, whose visit 
 
136 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 the local Methodists took advantage of to arrange for 
 the preaching on the green. This, however, is at 
 variance with what actually occurred. The visitation 
 of relatives may be removed from our consideration. 
 She had no local connections whatever, but was in- 
 duced to come over by Seth Bede, exclusively for the 
 purposes of the preaching. Nevertheless, since Dinah 
 did preach, as a young woman from Nottingham, in 
 the town of Ashbourne, and was heard there by Seth 
 Bede, it is most probable that her first appearance at 
 Ellastone synchronised with her first visit to Ash- 
 bourne. Afterwards it was not as an unmarried 
 spinster that Dinah preached there, but as a bride of 
 some thirty years of age. The services on the village 
 green, to which Seth Bede alludes as being continued 
 all one summer season, and then transferred to the 
 club-room, occurred after the preacher had come to 
 reside at Norbury as a married w^oman. 
 
 We must not forget that, in reading Adam. Bede, 
 we are dealing with a work of fiction, and therefore 
 the writer is entitled to present her narrative to us 
 according to the demands of her literary art, and we 
 have no ground of complaint that she has done so. 
 Anyhow, the preaching did happen, Dinah Morris was 
 the preacher, and she told the story of it to George 
 Eliot in the summer of 1837, during one of her visits 
 to Wirksw^orth. 
 
 The main features of the place as mentioned in the 
 story are plainly visible to-day. We know where the 
 village green w^as situated, the churchyard gates men- 
 tioned in the novel are close at hand, the Donnithorne 
 Arms Inn is exactly opposite, and the club-room al- 
 luded to by Seth Bede is a long and spacious apartment 
 for public gatherings extending over the stables of the 
 
or Th'F ' 
 OF 
 
DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT HAYSLOPE 139 
 
 inn, as is often the case with village inns of the olden 
 time. The blacksmith's smithy, where we are told 
 Chad Cranage stood gossiping with his neighbom^s, is 
 just round the corner, in ruins now, because a more 
 modern structure has taken its place. There is no 
 maple tree to-day, whatever may have been the case 
 a hundred years ago. 
 
 Speaking of the club-room, Seth Bede snys : " We 
 held meetings there for some time ; now they have a 
 comfortable chapel and a promising society, supplied 
 by the Uttoxeter preachers. Praise the Lord for all 
 His goodness." The little chapel stands with gabled 
 front, facing the turnpike road, within sight of the 
 spot where Dinah held her preaching. It has minis- 
 tered to the spiritual needs of several generations of 
 Methodists in Ellastone, and must ever be associated 
 with the name of Dinah Morris. 
 
 Sir Leslie Stephen, in his recently published book 
 on George Eliot, somewhat discounts the value of the 
 portrait given us of Dinah in Adam Bede, because she 
 is too good for him. He thinks perfect characters in 
 fiction have a tendency to be insipid. This reminds 
 me of the Johnsonian anecdote in which we are told of 
 a lady hostess who boasted to the great doctor that she 
 and her husband had lived together thirt3^-eight years, 
 I think it was, without a quarrel. She expected com- 
 mendation for such virtue, and was startled by the 
 brusque answer: " ]\[adam, how insipid!" It is a 
 trifle sad when angelic goodness in a woman, whether 
 in fiction or in real life, is set down for insipidity. 
 " She is a little too good," says Sir Leslie, " not only 
 for Seth, but for this world, and I have a difficulty in 
 obeying the summons to fall upon my knees and wor- 
 ship." Of course, this relates to the Dinah of fiction 
 
140 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 merely. The real Dinah had no illusions about het 
 native goodness, but alwa3^s cherished the most 
 humbling views of herself ; she sought no homage: 
 while she lived, and took all the means within hen 
 power to secure that none should be given to her 
 memory when she was dead. But, at least, we may 
 produce here some extracts wTitten by one w^ho knew 
 the living prototype of Dinah Morris for many years. 
 Mr. Adam Chadw^ick, a banker of Matlock Bath, said 
 to me : 
 
 *' The world does not yet know the real excellence of Dinah 
 Morris. She far exceeded the presentation of her goodness 
 in Adam Bede. I knew her intimately from my youth up 
 till the time of her death, and I must sav that she was the 
 most perfect character I have ever known. I have committed 
 to writing my recollections of her ; and, if I live long enough, 
 I am resolved that the world shall know of her romantic 
 career and of her beneficent labours in this district as long 
 us strength and life were given to her." 
 
 The wish of this gentleman was not fulfilled. Very 
 suddenly he was called hence, but his papers have 
 been courteously handed to me, and will be freely 
 drawn upon in the course of this history. Among 
 other things he gives us Dinah Morris's dying con- 
 fession, which show^s that she, at least, did not think 
 herself the "perfect character" Sir Leslie Stephen 
 good-humouredly dissents from. It is most ex- 
 pressive : 
 
 "I do not repent of anything I have done in trying to 
 snatch sinners from a burning hell, only that I have not at 
 all times acted wisely ; that I have not had more zeal and 
 more love. When I take a view of my past life I see that in 
 the best and most devoted part of it I have been an un- 
 profitable servant ; and that there has not been a day in 
 which I might not have done something more, something 
 
I— a 
 
140 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 merely. The real Dinah had no illusions about her 
 native goodness, but always cherished the most 
 humbling views of herself ; she sought no homage 
 while she lived, and took all the means within her 
 power to secure that none should be given to her 
 memory when she was dead. But, at least, w^e may 
 produce here some extracts written by one w^ho knew 
 the living prototype of Dinah Morris for many years. 
 Mr. Adam Chadwdck, a banker of Matlock Bath, said 
 to me : 
 
 " The world does not yet know the real excellence of Dinah 
 Morris. She far exceeded the presentation of her goodness 
 in Adam Bede. I knew her intimately from my youth up 
 till the time of her death, and I must sav that she was the 
 most perfect character I have ever known. I have committed 
 to writing my recollections of her ; and, if I live long enough, 
 1 am resolved that the world shall know of her romantic 
 career and of her beneficent labours in this district as long 
 as strength and life were given to her." 
 
 The wish of this gentleman was not fulfilled. Very 
 suddenly he was called hence, but his papers have 
 been courteously handed to me, and will be freely 
 drawn upon in the course of this history. Among 
 other things he gives us Dinah Morris's dying con- 
 fession, which show^s that she, at least, did not think 
 herself the "perfect character" Sir Leslie Stephen 
 good-humouredly dissents from. It is most ex- 
 pressive : 
 
 "I do not repent of anything I have done in trying to 
 snatch sinners from a burning hell, only that I have not at 
 all times acted wisely ; that I have not had more zeal and 
 more love. When I take a view of my past life I see that in 
 the best and most devoted part of it I have been an un- 
 profitable servant; and that there has not been a day in 
 which I might not have done something more, something 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
 OF J 
 
OF "-M-:. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 DINAH MORRIS PREACHING AT'^^^S^ioPE 143 
 
 better for God. I have ever needed, I need now more than 
 ever, and for ever, the atoning blood. Christ is all in all 
 to me; and His favour, His approbation and smile, the aim, 
 the end, the blessedness of my life." 
 
 In this confession we have the very essence of the 
 experience of Dinah Morris, as she was in real life. 
 A lowly dependence on Christ and burning zeal for 
 His glory were the moving forces in her character, and 
 service for others only ceased with life itself. After 
 Dinah's death Mr. Chadwick broke into verse and his 
 glowing picture of this saintly woman sprang, I know, 
 from his heart. Here is an extract from the poem 
 referring to Dinah Morris : 
 
 "There needs no marble to record her name, 
 Engraved on human hearts, her deathless fame ; 
 Though deep among our hills her ashes lie, 
 The memory of her labours cannot die ; 
 Voiced down to ages will her history be, 
 A record of good works with sanctity. 
 
 All knew her labours here for many years. 
 Her prayers, her sacrifice, her pleading tears ; 
 With spirit fired from God's great altar high, 
 For God to live, for human souls to die. 
 
 The words of Dinah, in our market-place. 
 Are told to millions of the human race. 
 And millions yet unborn will tell the tale 
 Of Dinah's labours in the Wirksworth Vale." 
 
 These lines record the impression produced on the 
 mind of a man of business who knew Dinah well and 
 survived her many years, whose mother was a devoted 
 member of one of her classes, and who grew^ up to 
 manhood himself under the shadow of her influence. 
 While these articles have been passing through the 
 
146 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 show that she was quite as popular and as much be- 
 loved as her husband, and there was a considerable 
 uneasiness in the minds of Mr. Taft's contemporaries; 
 in the ministry, including some of the leading minis- 
 ters of the Methodist Conference, in regard to the 
 toleration allow^ed her in her public ministry among 
 
 REV. ZECHARIAH TAFT, AUTHOR OF " I.IVES OF HOLY WOMEN, 
 AND MRS. TAFT, A FAMOUS LADY PREACHER. 
 
 the Methodist people. It was well known that the 
 Rev. J. Wesley had authorised, under what he desig- 
 nated an extraordinary call, the public ministration 
 of several godly women known to him , who had shown 
 exceptional ability and devotion in the blessed work 
 of winning souls. At first he would seem to have 
 been doubtful, but experience led him to the common- 
 sense conclusion : " God owns women in the con- 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 
 
 " He the simplest thoughts instils, 
 He the mildest rules imparts, 
 Arms with power the weakest wills, 
 Fills with joy the saddest hearts." 
 
 For a fund of interesting and authentic information 
 on the Hfe and experiences of Dinah Morris we must 
 needs turn to a somewhat rare book, first published in 
 1825, repubhshed later, but long since out of print. 
 It bears a ponderous title : " Biographical Sketches 
 of the lives and Public Ministry of various Holy 
 Women, whose Eminent Usefulness and Successful 
 Labours in the Church of Christ have entitled them 
 to be enrolled among the great Benefactors of Man- 
 kind : in which are included several Letters from the 
 Eev. J. Wesley, never before published. By Z. Taft. 
 (The profits will be devoted to charitable purposes.) " 
 The volume thus quaintly introduced contains 323 
 pages, and gives particulars of the lives and ministry 
 of forty-five preachers who were women. The history 
 of the origin of the book is somewhat peculiar. The 
 author, a godly Wesleyan minister, had for his wife a 
 lady of considerable fame in her day, who was not only 
 a devout and exemplary Christian, but an attractive 
 and powerful preacher. The accounts we have of her 
 
 11 145 
 
148 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 the pulpit in any circumstances. The great man 
 also insinuated that Mr. Taft's employment of his wife 
 as a preacher was a tacit confession of his conscious- 
 ness of his own insufficiency for the ministry. In spite 
 of all this, however, the preaching still went on. 
 Among Mrs. Taft's converts were some who became 
 leading lights in the Methodist firmament. 
 
 Of all the pulpit and platform orators of his day, 
 none were more powerful or famous than the Eev. 
 Eobert Newton, D.D. Of the local preachers of 
 
 Methodism, no one was ever more gifted than the 
 Yorkshire farmer, Mr. William Dawson, who really 
 became a consummate orator, attracting crowds every- 
 where. The Eev. Thomas Jackson was the recog- 
 nised head of a clan of Methodist preachers of that 
 name, he was also a voluminous author and a vener- 
 ated President of the Conference. All these were the 
 spiritual fruits of the public ministry of Mrs. Taft, to- 
 gether with another of the presidents, and large num- 
 bers of equally godly persons who did not attain 
 to such lofty eminence. This fruitful ministry, as 
 modest as it was effective, could not be suppressed. 
 But, in the Conference of 1833, complaint was n:ade 
 of it, and there was a good deal of scolding. Dr. 
 Bunting alluded with some scorn to the asterisks on 
 certain preachers' plans, which represented not only 
 the appointments of Mrs. Taft, but these of Dinah 
 Morris as well. 
 
 In the controversy that was waged over the preach- 
 ing of Mrs. Taft, one holy and venerated man- 
 President of the Conference two years after Mr. 
 Wesley's death— the Eev. John Pawson— boldly stood 
 up in defence of her preaching, and recommended her 
 employment for special services. Still, prejudice ran 
 
MRS. SUSANNAH WESLEY. 
 
 Wife of tl;e Vicar of Epworth, the first of the Methoc'ist Lac'.y Preachers. 
 
 From a painting by J. W. L. Forster. 
 
^j3l^>^^< V 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 151 
 
 high, many official Methodists were opposed, and so 
 Mr. Taft pubhshed his book, as he tells his readers, 
 ' ' to offer a little encouragement to female preachers 
 in general " ; and, as anyone can see, to put the case 
 of these preachers in as favourable a light as possible, 
 
 -.. 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 V 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 
 7 ^ _ Nu^^Ei 
 
 ^^^L 
 
 ,# 
 
 Hi 
 
 
 
 InH^I 
 
 ■HHHUliMl 
 
 
 THE ROUND HOUSE AT WORTHIXilTOX, LEICESTERSHIRE. 
 
 both on Scriptural grounds, and also on the plea of 
 manifest success in the conversion of souls. He cites 
 with pride the manifold examples of the showing forth 
 through the instrumentality of consecrated women of 
 that abiding miracle of Christianity— the changed 
 hearts and lives of sinful men and women. The 
 answer of the blind man, whom our Lord healed in 
 Jerusalem, naturally comes to mind : " Why herein is 
 
152 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence He 
 is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes." So Mr. Taft 
 appears to say : Here are hundreds of converts won 
 to the Church by the preaching of women, and yet you 
 in your rigid zeal would forbid them. The argument 
 from Scripture is not all on one side. You have mis- 
 understood Paul, and by your narrow interpretations 
 of the Word, would limit the workings of the Holy 
 Spirit and fight against God. This, in a few words, is 
 the point of view of the introduction to Mr. Taft's 
 book, and this is the argument running through all his 
 sketches. 
 
 The first deals with that wonderful woman, Mrs. 
 Susannah Wesley. The second relates to another 
 truly great woman, the saintly wife of the Eev. John 
 Fletcher, vicar of Madeley. The public ministry of 
 both these wives of beneficed clergymen was un- 
 doubtedly irregular, but, as is shown in Mr. Taft's 
 memoirs, it was a ministry of great spiritual power 
 and blessed fruitfulness to many people. In the selec- 
 tion of his examples of female usefulness in preaching 
 Mr. Taft was eminently catholic. They were not all 
 Methodists by any means. Some were taken from the 
 Society of Friends, some from the Congregationahsts, 
 and one was a titled Kussian lady, the Baroness de 
 Krudener. Of this devoted woman we are told that 
 in her self-denying zeal she prosecuted evangelistic 
 labours in her own country, in France and in Switzer- 
 land, that she was most beneticient in the employment 
 of her large fortune, but that, like the women 
 preachers in England, she was everywhere opposed by 
 officials in the churches, who thought that such exer- 
 cises were an infraction of ecclesiastical order and a 
 breach of apostolic discipline. The sketch of the 
 
 M. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 153 
 
 Baroness is the sixteenth in Mr. Taft's collection, and 
 that of Dinah Morris is the seventeenth. The whole 
 volume ^lows with the fires of intense zeal and fervent 
 piety. The style is often rugged and homely, but no 
 one can read the book without feeling the sublime 
 reality of the lives it presents to us, and without 
 
 CHURCH AT WORTHINGTOX, 
 Where Elizabeth Tomlinson (Dinah Morris) was christened. 
 
 gammg new impressions of the immense possibilities 
 to be realised by giving unfettered freedom to the work 
 of the God-inspired female evangelist. 
 
 In the account of Dinah Morris, the subject is 
 allowed to tell her own story, which she does in 
 thirteen closely-printed pages. She had been lon^s^ 
 known to the compiler. Indeed, in that very incident 
 in the aunt's life which became, according to George 
 
154 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Eliot, the germ of Adam Bede, Mr. Taft was, as we 
 shall see, brought into very close relation with 
 Dinah Morris. For several years he was her 
 minister in Nottingham. More than twenty years after 
 this, his book was published, and he winds up his 
 sketch of her after this fashion : " I might have detain- 
 ed the reader, and that very profitably, w^ith a larger 
 portion of the labours and experience of this pious and 
 useful woman, and I might have stated from my own 
 personal knowledge, and from other sources, which her 
 modesty and humility would not allow her to record, 
 many interesting facts showing that she has been and 
 now is a person whom the Lord delights to honour." 
 
 I think I know what Mr. Taft meant by his in- 
 teresting and striking facts. Throughout the life of 
 Dinah Morris there runs a vein of the miraculous. In- 
 deed, more or less, this element manifests itself in 
 well-nigh all the sketches contained in his book. 
 
 One might well inquire whether George Eliot knew 
 this quaint old volume. I cannot speak with assurance 
 on this point, but I am^ certain that it w^as well known 
 in the Evans family : it was immensely prized by my 
 grandmother and my mother, w^ho handed it to me, 
 and, judging from probabilities, I have no doubt 
 George Eliot knew it well, and that it has coloured her 
 portrait of Dinah Morris. I feel certain that one of 
 the early copies would find its way to Griff House while 
 George Eliot w^as yet an inquiring and wondering 
 child. At all events, the book is positive proof that 
 the aunt, on whom George Eliot has conferred a bene- 
 ficent immortality, was famous in the eyes of many 
 thousands of Methodist people long before Adam Bede 
 had taken shape in her mind. 
 
 Our recital concerning the book will serve to show 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 155 
 
 how the sketch suppHed by Mr. Taft will assist us in 
 pursuing the life-story of the real Dinah Morris. We 
 have solid ground to go upon, and our narrative will be 
 found to be full of interest. 
 
 In Dinah Morris's autobiographical statement the 
 first note struck is one of blended duty and humility : 
 
 " For a long time I have felt it more or less my duty to 
 write a short account of my unprofitable hfe, but it is with 
 great difficulty I make a beginning. However, in the fear of 
 the Lord, and, I trust, with a single eye to His glory I at 
 last submit to take up my pen. I was born at Newbold, in 
 Leicestershire, in the year of our Lord 1776." 
 
 The place here named is a township of the parish of 
 Worthington, four and a half miles north of Ashby de 
 la Zouch. It is a quiet rural spot in the midst of an 
 undulating pastoral country, where, until recent years, 
 agriculture was almost the only employment. Xow 
 there are large brickyards in the parish, and coal mines 
 in the neighbourhood. The church of St. Matthew is 
 a plain old-fashioned structure, formerly a chapel-of- 
 ease to the parish of Bredon-on-the-Hill. At 
 Worthington there is an interesting relic of former 
 days in the shape of a round-house or lock-up. 
 Formerly no considerable parish w^as thought to be 
 complete without its round-house, its stocks, and its 
 whipping-post. Sometimes the lock-up was styled the 
 blind-house, because it was built without windows. 
 Such is the one at Worthington. It is a quaint struc- 
 ture, appearing, at a distance, like a low, tapering 
 pedestal, and has very narrow accommodations. It 
 was a place for the temporary detention of prisoners, 
 but, like all other such places, has long been disused. 
 Very few of them have been allowed to remain. 
 Modern improvements have dealt rudely with old in- 
 
153 
 
 THE TRUE STOEY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 stitutions. In times which I can well remember many, 
 small boroughs had their jail and treadmill, and one 
 can scarcely wish them back again. We can hardly 
 congratulate ourselves on our freedom from crime, as: 
 a whole, but if, in addition to educating our young 
 
 WESLEYAX CHAPEL, GRIFFY DAM. 
 
 people, the manifest determination to lessen the temp- 
 tations to indulgence in strong drink should take effect . 
 as appearances seem to promise, we may confidently 
 anticipate a marked diminution of crime in the near 
 future. 
 
 At the distance of a short walk from Worthington 
 and Newbold, across a pleasant vale and water-brook, 
 there is situated the hamlet of Griffy Dam, or as it 
 undoubtedly was named, originally, Griffith's Dam. 
 Iq this hamlet there is a good-sized, old-fashiontd 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 157 
 
 Wesleyan chapel, with a considerable graveyard 
 attached to it, in which Dinah Morris's father 
 was interred in virtue of his own request. In this very 
 chapel she heard sermons when only seven or eight 
 years old which she never forgot, and in her auto- 
 biography mentioned the texts on which they were 
 founded. In after life she always declared that even 
 at that early period God was speaking to her young 
 heart. Her father, she tells us, was a sincere church- 
 man, who was extremely moral and upright, who 
 loathed every kind of untruthfulness and dishonesty, 
 and strove to train his children according to the hght 
 that w^as in him, but fell short, as she thought, of a per- 
 sonal religious experience. In later years paralysis 
 overtook him, when he received visits from the friends 
 at the chapel, and even had prayer meetings in his 
 own house. It was in consequence of this that he de- 
 sired interment in the chapel burial-ground. His 
 daughter cherished every hope in the father's spiritual 
 condition in his later years, as she had every reason to 
 do. The mother w^as one of those awakened souls who 
 walked truly according to the things she knew, longed 
 earnestly for a light she had not found, and yearned 
 in spirit for an assurance which only came to her 
 almost with her dying breath. Both father and mother 
 were worthy people, children of toil, simple, godly. 
 Christian village residents, peaceful and orderly in all 
 their ways. The father's .name was Thomas Tomlin- 
 son — the mother was suddenly snatched away while 
 her baby was still in its first year. In his reminis- 
 cences of Dinah Morris, gathered mostly from her 
 own lips, Mr. Chadwick tells us that the mother, 
 conscious of approaching death, committed her darling 
 babe to her God, and solemnly devoted her to His 
 
158 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 service. The recital of the events of the mother's 
 death deeply influenced her whole life. From tender 
 years she was told that she was God's child, and be- 
 longed to Him by the holy consecration of a dying 
 mother's prayers. 
 
 A singular occurrence is mentioned in her account of 
 the mother's death, related with much brevity and 
 modesty, as became Dinah Morris. I have, however, 
 heard some amphfications of that account from family 
 sources which enable me to fill up the outlines of the 
 narrative. We are, then, to suppose the dying woman 
 rapidly approaching her end, with a deep yearning in 
 her soul for spiritual manifestations she had not re- 
 ceived. There was no one about her who could im- 
 part the instruction for which she was longing. She 
 seems to have been more or less shut out from contact 
 with outward things by approaching dissolution when 
 an unexpected visitor arrived. Thomas Tomlinson 
 had a cousin living at a distance of some miles, who 
 was a devoted Methodist. On the day of Mrs. Tom- 
 linson's decease this cousin had an irresistible impres- 
 sion that he must go and visit his friends at Xewbold, 
 although he knew of no reason why he should do so, 
 as he had received no tidings of the illness of his 
 relative. He obeyed this unaccountable impression, 
 and found her in extremis. Nevertheless, he tenderly 
 addressed her in the blessed language of the old, old 
 story, and she revived on hearing it, received it with 
 glad thanksgiving, saying: "The Lord Jesus Christ 
 has sent you here to show me the way of salvation." 
 It was then she was able to devote her child to the 
 service of Heaven, and shortly afterwards died in 
 peace. The story of the mother's death was often re- 
 lated by Dinah Morris to her chosen friends, among 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 159 
 
 others to my mother. She believed that the impres- 
 sion so mysteriously fixed in the mind of the cousin to 
 visit the home at Newbold was a divine intimation, as 
 surely as was the vision which prepared the Apostle 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF GRIFFV DAM, WORTHIXGTOX. 
 
 Peter to carry the blessed evangel to Cornelius and 
 his household at Ctesarea. 
 
 She also believed in miraculous impressions in 
 general, including dreams and visions, which had come 
 to her, to be her guide and comfort in various exi- 
 gencies of her life and ministrations. Many narratives 
 of such things were suppressed by her on the ground 
 that they would be misunderstood, and therefore would 
 not tend to edification. To herself they w^ere all in- 
 tensely real, hence the supernatural manifestation, as 
 she believed it, in the case of her mother, was but the 
 
160 THE TEDE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 I 
 first of a chain of Providences which extended through 
 
 the whole of her hfe. All through this set of memoirs 
 by Mr. Taft, there runs this consciousness of direct 
 personal touch with things unseen. Clairvoyance, 
 Telepathy, and Ps3^chic research have made it less pos- 
 sible in these modern days to be altogether unbelieving 
 as to the existence of supernatural phenomena. On 
 the spiritual side we appear to be surrounded by a 
 world of mystery, miracle and w^onder. Surely there 
 is a rebound from the hard materiahsm of a genera- 
 tion ago. The early Methodists had no hesitation in 
 accepting manifestations of the marvellous. Their 
 great leader, one of the mightiest of men, firmly be- 
 lieved that the life we live in the flesh is encompassed 
 about by spiritual existences, whose presence is not 
 ordinarily recognised by our bodily senses. How well 
 I remember his " Signs from the Invisible World," 
 which I read when I was a boy. The weird stories 
 fastened on my imagination, and haunted me for many 
 a year, until every hedge-row and hill-side was peopled 
 by apparitions. That feeling has long since been 
 shaken off, but in these later days of life one has come 
 to be more and more conscious of the near touch of 
 unseen powers. 
 
 Concerning unaccountable impressions of the mind 
 which have had an important bearing on after events 
 there have been many authenticated examples. One of 
 the most striking out of many I have met with is 
 related of a gentleman who was a member of the 
 Society of Friends. The story is given on the author- 
 ity of a former Prebendary of Hereford. It tells how 
 that one Thomas Waring, of Leominster, had an im- ; 
 pression that he must set off immediately to the town 
 of Ross, which was thirty miles away. He tried to get 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DINAH MORRIS 161 
 
 rid of the impression without effect, and having 
 ordered the saddHng of his horse, started out on his 
 long journey at four o'clock of the afternoon. It was 
 late when he reached Eoss, but seeing a light in an 
 upper room of a house he felt constrained to knock at 
 the door, and waited long for admittance. At last a 
 young woman appeared and asked what he pleased to 
 want. He told her he did not know, but if she would 
 listen to what he had to say perhaps she might explain 
 it. She invited him in ; he told his story to her, con- 
 cluding with the words : " And having told thee this, 
 I can only repeat that I do not know for what I am 
 come." The young woman burst into tears, and then 
 said : " Sir, I can tell you for w^hat you are come, for 
 I was gone into that upper room with the intention of 
 putting an end to my life, which has become very 
 miserable. Nothing would have prevented me from 
 committing suicide had you not come. God has sent 
 you. I now see that I am not altogether forsaken or 
 abandoned by Him." 
 
 The account of the impression on this good old 
 Quaker's mind closely resembles that which led Dinah 
 ]^Iorris's relative to visit her dying mother. Well 
 might the father's story influence the child's 
 wondering thoughts. 
 
 None could know what should be the future of that 
 frail, motherless child. But at least w^e may conclude 
 that the loving-kindness of the Heavenly Shepherd re- 
 vived the spirit of the departing mother, as we know it 
 shed through life a radiant light on the offspring she 
 loved so well. Truly the mother's dying prayer to God 
 was answered, and her babe was in reality given to be 
 His child for ever. 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 DINAH MORRIS, FROM BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 
 
 ''The baby has no skies 
 
 But mother's eyes, 
 
 Nor any God above 
 
 But mother's love. 
 His angel sees the Father's face, 
 But he the mother's, full of grace ; 
 And yet the heavenly kingdom is 
 
 Of such as this." — John iS. Tabb. 
 
 The infant, Elizabeth Tomlinson — the future Dinah 
 Morris — was only given to dwell one short year in the 
 restful heaven of a mother's love. The loss of the 
 mother coloured all her memories of childhood : 
 " What I have suffered through the loss of my dear 
 mother can only be explained in eternity, but the 
 L/ord's ways are in the whirlwind, and what we know 
 not now we shall know hereafter." Much is veiled 
 under that pious sentiment. She is reticent and does 
 not care to say more, still there is no difficulty in 
 understanding what was in her mind. Her father 
 married a second time, and the stress and strain of life 
 in those hard times and in that village home were 
 heav}^ enough to bear. As to the outward circum- 
 stances of the child we find scarcely a mention , but her 
 inner life stands full}^ revealed to us. Putting to- 
 gether the reminiscences gathered by Mr. A. Chadwick 
 and the words of the autobiography, we may conclude 
 that the father took his little girl with him 
 to the parish church betimes, and set before 
 
BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 
 
 163 
 
 her a good example. His Methodist cousin 
 ■also cared for the spiritual training of the 
 child, and it was the seed sown at the services in 
 the Griffy Dam Wesleyan Chapel which took root in 
 the young heart. Her recollections were very clear 
 
 ONE OF THE LAST WORN OF ELIZABETH EVANS* (dLNAH MORRIS") BONNETS. 
 
 as to the impressions wrought on her mind, even as 
 early as her seventh year and onward. In her auto- 
 biography she actually recalls sermons she heard at 
 that period, and states the topics on w^hich the dis- 
 courses were founded. It is not difficult to imagine 
 the innocent maiden of seven, with eyes intent and a 
 look of sublime wonder on her face, as the preacher 
 
164 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 expounded from the thrilling, parable of the rich man 
 and Lazarns the terrors of an eternity without love 
 and the dread future for every soul who has lived in 
 this world for nothing beyond the sensual gratification 
 of carnal appetites. The sermon, though not intended 
 by the preacher for this captivated little one, has found 
 lodgement in her soul for ever. It was well for the 
 young child that another side of the future life was 
 proclaimed in her hearing. " For here have w^e no 
 continuing city, but we seek one to come " (Heb. 
 xiii. 14), formed the theme of another discourse she 
 remembered quite well, more pleasing, one would 
 think, if not more fascinating, than the other. 0, 
 preachers of the eighteenth century, in that Methodist 
 chapel in the hamlet of Griffy Dam, you toiled wearily 
 enough in your work in that country congregation. 
 You sighed with intensity of desire for the people's 
 welfare and went away with agonised disappointment 
 sometimes, because so little had been accomplished. 
 At the listlessness of many of your hearers you were 
 pained, but you never noticed the fixed gaze of the 
 little maiden who was all intent in wondering at your 
 words, nor did you realise that you had sown deep 
 down in the fruitful soil of her spiritual nature potent 
 seeds which were one day to bear fruit in a beautiful 
 life and help to fertilise a barren world. Even of 
 preaching it ma}^ often be said : 
 
 *' Oh, many a shaft at random sent 
 Finds mark the archer little meant." 
 
 Notwithstanding her tender age the child has her 
 speculations concerning preaching. Telling us of what 
 she felt to be the work of the Divine Spirit in her 
 heart, she says : 
 
BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 
 
 165 
 
 " He blessed me with clear light concerning the nature of 
 preaching. I saw that reading was not preaching. I thought 
 I could read a sermon and yet I could not preach, and that 
 it was not the way that God intended that men should preach 
 the Gospel. I was powerfully impressed with a sense of the 
 shortness of time and the awful consequences of dying in sin." 
 
 ELIZABETH EVANS (DINAH MOKRISj AUNT OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 We find that, though so young in years, these serious 
 convictions never wore away till the great crisis in her 
 spiritual life had come. I have noticed that in the 
 
166 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 lives of good men and holy women, spiritual exercises 
 are not at all unusual in tender years. It is a touching 
 picture Dinah Morris draws for us, and one that sug- 
 gests the reflection that teachers and preachers can 
 hardly be too much concerned for the patient instruc- 
 tion of the little ones. There are j^earnings in their 
 young hearts of which we are but faintly conscious. 
 We do not, any of us, fully realise the possibilities of 
 child-life, and hence we too frequently fail to render 
 that real help our youthful charge requires at our 
 hands. 
 
 " The Lord continued to strive with mo and to keep mo 
 from falling into many grievous sins which were both evil and 
 bitter. I used to say my prayers and strictly examine myself 
 by the law of Moses every night. I always felt myself con- 
 demned from these words : ' Thou shalt not take the name of 
 the Lord thy God in vain.' I saw that he who offendeth in 
 one point is guilty of all. These words were most powerfully 
 impressed on my mind : ' Cursed is everyone that continuetli 
 not in all things that are written in the book of the law to 
 do them,' and what to do I knew not. I wept and prayed and 
 tried to find the living way, though I was lost and confused, 
 dark and blind. Oh, how I longed for instruction, but had 
 no one to take me by the hand, or, I believe, at that time, 
 I should have been brought to the knowledge of the truth. 
 Oh, how I prayed the publican's prayer : ' God be merciful to 
 me a sinner !' I had some faint views of Christ coming into 
 the world to save sinners, but how I was to be saved by Him 
 I could not tell. I wandered in the dark, sinning and 
 repenting for a long time." 
 
 The dawning of spiritual truth on the young mind 
 is a deep psychological mystery. Here we have a little 
 girl growing up amidst the blooming of flowers and the 
 singing of birds in the country. She is without any 
 special instruction suited to the mind of a child. At 
 this very time Robert Eaikes is but just commencing 
 
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 --■'-'"^ ""-nf •" • 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM ROBERT EVAXS (aDAM BEDE) TO 
 SAMUEL EVAXS (SETH BEDE.) 
 
>^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF / 
 
BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 169 
 
 his experiment of teaching the idle youth of the city 
 of Gloucester in a Sunday School, and it was long, 
 long years before such institutions had found their way 
 into the country districts of Leicestershire , and yet the 
 infant mind of this rural cottager is revolving high 
 truths of revelation, drinking in spiritual instruction 
 from the pulpit, examining and condemning herself 
 by the word of God, and only falls short of personal 
 application of the pardoning grace of the Saviour be- 
 cause, as she declared years afterwards, there was no 
 one to teach her how to make that application in her 
 own case. 
 
 These early experiences of Dinah Morris, as recorded 
 by Mr. Taft, do not stand alone in the sketches he 
 has drawn for us. He lets us see how Mrs. Susannah 
 Wesley and Mrs. Fletcher of Madeley had similar 
 mental exercises in childhood. His sketches are neces- 
 sarily fragmentary — in some cases especially so — but 
 where particulars are given we find often recurring 
 testimony of as clear and vivid rehgious impression im- 
 parted in childhood as could ever be received at any 
 subsequent period of life. In some cases Mr. Taft 
 selects his examples from amongst the members of the 
 Society of Friends, and finds this feature strongly 
 marked in them, but in others, with very imperfect 
 instruction, it is precisely the same. Two instances 
 are given wherein spiritual yearnings were felt and 
 deep impressions made on the heart at as early an age as 
 four years, and never afterwards effaced as long as life 
 endured. Many of these holy women, I am sure, could 
 have exclaimed with the still remembered authoress, 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Eowe : " My infant hands were early 
 lifted up to Thee, and I soon learned to acknowledge 
 the God of my fathers." Christian biography teems 
 
170 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 with examples of a clear divine call, while as yet the 
 heart was tender. Records of the lives of the saints of 
 the old time furnish many instructive examples. 
 Legends of patristic literature are crowded with them, 
 behind which there must be much that is real. Let 
 me give a collection of the names of men, taken almost 
 at random, wlcio have attained to distinction, whose re- 
 ligious experience dates back to the days of early child- 
 hood. Among them are Dr. Jonathan Edwards, David 
 Brainerd, Count Zinzendorf, George Whitfield, Dr. 
 Isaac Watts, Dr. Philip Doddridge, John Foster, 
 Albert Bengel, etc. From w^hat has been witnessed of 
 children in every Christian country one can see that a 
 powerful book might be written revealing the vast 
 possibilities and the beautiful reality of Christian child- 
 hood. From such a volume those who have to deal 
 with children might learn much hopefulness in 
 their task. 
 
 In Mr. Taft's sketch of Dinah Morris there are no 
 other details of her childhood than those here given. 
 As to education there were only the scant elements 
 and these imperfectly taught. Newbold has now its 
 fairly equipped schools, maintained for the most part 
 at the charges of the State. It has its trained instruc- 
 tors also. Books were scant then, school attendance 
 fitful; Elizabeth was the eldest child, the pressure on 
 the home was severe, and at fourteen years of age she 
 had to take her place among the ranks of the workers, 
 that she might earn her own livelihood by becoming a 
 domestic servant. In this she recognised a gracious 
 Providence. 
 
 " I believe the hand of God has been upon me all the days 
 of my life. I believe the Lord directed me to leave my father's 
 
BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 171 
 
 house when I was little more than fourteen years old. I lived 
 at Derby about seven years with a family that knew very 
 little more about religion than myself. We had plenty of 
 prayer-books and saying of prayers, but very little heart-felt 
 religion." 
 
 To her apprehension vital godHness began with a de- 
 finite personal experience, including confession of sin 
 in the presence of the Lord, faith in the atoning mercy 
 of the Redeemer, regeneration by a mysterious divine 
 energy, and a definite consecration of body, soul and 
 spirit to the living God. This it was that she secretly 
 longed for, but knew not how to find, in spite of the 
 powerful strivings in childhood. She intimates that 
 her privileges in Derby were not such as to lead her in- 
 to the experiences she coveted, but there came a change 
 when she was nearing her twenty-first year. She bade 
 farewell to domestic service and became a lace-mender 
 in the town of Nottingham. Probably this trade defini- 
 tion will convey no definite idea to the reader's 
 mind. Lace-mending is an important process in lace 
 manufacture. The fragile threads from which 
 the material is woven frequently give way 
 while a piece is passing through the looms, or 
 in the process of dressing, therefore each piece of lace 
 must needs go from the machine to the lace-mender to 
 have the pattern restored where it is broken and the 
 piece made perfect. The women employed in this 
 skilled industry are as smart a^d clever a set of female 
 artisans as are anywhere to be found. Here Dinah 
 iMorris graduated in the industry, but her mind was not 
 at rest. Her privileges were enlarged, and her hfe 
 more free, yet circumstances seemed to conspire to 
 keep her back from the prize she coveted above all 
 others. 
 
172 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 " I loved the Methodists, and always believed that if ever 
 I was religious I should be one, but 1 had no acquaintance 
 with any of them. The tears I have shed on this account are 
 known only to the Lord. I had now left service, and was at 
 liberty to serve God, but I had reasoned for a few weeks with 
 the enemy of my soul. I thought I never was happy, but I 
 would be if possible. I sometimes went to the giddy dance, 
 sometimes to card-playing, shameful to tell after such re- 
 peated convictions for sin, but I could not find what I sought 
 for — happiness. I only grew more and more miserable." 
 
 "There is in man," says George Eliot, "a higher aim 
 than love of happiness : he can do without happiness, 
 and instead thereof find blessedness." It is a strange 
 paradox, and yet true, when we say that they who chase 
 after happiness never find it, but to them who take 
 their cross and pursue the paths of duty and service'' 
 happiness comes without the seeking. Dinah Morris's i 
 search for happiness in the diversions of the giddy | 
 dance and the fascinating card-table did not last long. , 
 The thirst of her soul could not be slaked in any such 
 pursuits, but she was soon to find true blessedness. 
 On the Easter Tuesday in 1797 she went to a place 
 called Beck Barn to hear preaching by a Wesleyan 
 minister who had recently returned from Newfound- i 
 land — the Rev. George Smith. The mention of this \ 
 preaching place in Nottingham calls to mind the first i 
 great Methodist secession. " Our people were turned i 
 out of their chapel through Kilham's division," wrote \ 
 Dinah Morris. The fact was that the secession occurred j 
 through the rejection by the Conference of a petition 
 to allow the Methodist people to have the sacraments 
 administered in all their places of worship by their own 
 ministers instead of, as in Wesley's days, going for 
 them to the ministry of the established church, and 
 through the expulsion of the chief mover — the Rev. 
 
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 ''. ^,/. 
 
 >'-'- ,.,./... 1 yy., . ^/,,^ /,..,, ,,,... ^ ., ^ 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM ELIZABETH EVANS (dIXAH MORRIS) 
 TO OXE OF HER DAUGHTERS AWAY FROM HOME. 
 
V- OF THE 
 
OF . _ / 
 BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOC^P^^"^ 175 
 
 k 
 
 Alexander Ivilham. Wesley's idea of his Denomina- 
 tion was that of a Society within the established 
 church. Kilham desired to precipitate the inevitable 
 movement which was to separate the one from the 
 other and to constitute the great Methodist body as a 
 distinctive, self-contained Christian community. Pro- 
 bably his methods were not altogether gracious and 
 gentle, he went ahead of his contemporaries, desiring 
 to make a pace which the Conference leaders depre- 
 cated ; he committed himself to a course which seemed 
 an infraction of the laws of the Conference brother- 
 hood, and was therefore expelled. Thus arose the 
 Methodist New Connexion. In those days the Hock- 
 ley Chapel was the only one possessed by the Wes- 
 leyans in the town of Nottingham. It was legally 
 Tested in a body of trustees, the major portion of whom 
 sympathised with the seceders, and therefore took over 
 the chapel with them. The secession not only deprived 
 the Wesleyan body of its sanctuary, but carried away 
 more than three hundred of its members. In reality 
 the Society was rent in twain. 
 
 Since 1797 several other divisions have occurred in 
 the Methodist body, but if one may judge by recent 
 •events, the wave of secession has now expended its 
 force, and the spirit of reunion has begun to assert it- 
 self. This is witnessed by the amalgamation of the 
 separated branches into one great Methodist Church 
 in British America and Australasia, and by efforts in 
 the same direction at home. The same wholesome 
 tendency is witnessed among the greater denominations 
 of Presbyterians in Scotland. In that quarter seces- 
 sion has formerly been rife enough. I have read of a 
 Scotch nobleman whose butler was a Presbyterian 
 ^Ider. One day he said to the butler, " I say, Sandy, 
 
I 
 
 176 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 you belong to the split, don't you?" " No, my lord 
 I belong to the split of the splitted split," was the 
 immediate answer. In a case like this secession has 
 travelled far, but w^e have fallen on happier times. Per- 
 chance the lesson has been learned that it is the devil 
 who most profits by the quarrels of the saints. 
 
 The room called Beck Barn was but a temporary 
 meeting-place waiting the erection of a permanent 
 structure, an event which really happened in the fol- 
 lowing year, and on the same site there stands to-day 
 a fine old Methodist sanctuary, loved by several genera- 
 tions of Nottingham Wesleyans — the Halifax Place 
 chapel. To Beck Barn then Dinah Morris went, on 
 Easter Tuesday, 1797, and from what she tells 
 us of the service we may gather that it was one 
 of revivalistic fervour and long continuance. The 
 Kev. George Smith w^as the preacher. She says 
 that there was a great w^ork among the people, 
 many cried out for mercy, while the workers were fully 
 employed in pleading with the penitents and praying 
 on their behalf. Often they broke into song as one 
 and another declared their trust in pardoning grace, 
 expressing their glad emotions on this account in the 
 majestic strains of Bishop Ken's doxology. Dinah 
 Morris seems to have thought that a lively scene like 
 this required some explanation, hence she says — 
 
 " I saw no confusion m the matter. I concluded that sin- 
 ners were repenting of their sins, as I ought to do, and the 
 people of God were so anxious for them to be saved, and these 
 things caused them to rejoice. I longed for repentance more 
 than ever I did for anything in my life, but I felt great 
 hardness of heart. While I was looking to Christ the mighty 
 power of' God fell upon me in an instant. I fell to the ground 
 like one dead. I believe I lost my senses for a season, but 
 when I recovered I was trembling ayd weeping most bitterly. 
 It pleased the Lord in about two hours to speak peace to my 
 
BABYHOOD TO WOMANHOOD 177 
 
 soul. I arose from my knees and praised God for that 
 opportunity." 
 
 In this account we have portrayed not only a case 
 of mental and spiritual crisis, but of physical pheno- 
 mena as well. Such phenomena frequently occur in 
 the history of religious awakenings. Under the preach- 
 ing alike of the fervid Whitfield or the logical Wesley, 
 the strongest men were seen to fall stricken to the 
 ground one after another. At first there was perplexity 
 and debate as to whence these phenomena came, but 
 after due inquiry with the commonsense and willing- 
 ness to learn which usually distinguished him, John 
 Wesley wrote : ' ' From this time I hope we shall allow 
 God to carry on His own work in His own way." 
 Doubtless there is some danger in these abnormal 
 manifestations. Hysteria and catalepsy have been said 
 to accoant for them, but only very partially, there is 
 an element of mystery left which we are not able to ex- 
 plain. Anyhow, they are but physical and accidental, 
 and experience has shown that, while the physical 
 phenomena pass away without any ill effects, the spiri- 
 tual blessing remains. So with Dinah Morris. That 
 blessed Easter Tuesday witnessed the beginning of a 
 new experience, the entrance of a new life. The dying 
 mother's prayer for her feeble infant child was now to 
 have its gracious answer. 
 
 How helpless is the little babe so early deprived of 
 its mother, as Dinah Morris w^as, but now the 
 child has grown to maturity, and, in her consecrated 
 womanhood, the fond petition of the mother is to meet 
 its complete and eternal fulfilment. In that make- 
 shift sanctuary — Beck Barn — the book called Adam 
 Bede was really born, for assuredly Dinah Morris gave 
 to her niece, George Eliot, the living germ from which 
 13 
 
178 THE TEUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 it sprang, and the real Dinah !Morris, the woman of 
 unconquerable sympathy, unbounded hope and unfail- 
 ing love, received her true spiritual birth in that un- 
 consecrated structure — Beck Barn. In that simple 
 building a saint life was born, as pure, as sweet, and as 
 true as ever adorned the soul of a human being. One 
 cannot read such a book as Mr. Taft's nor can we open 
 our eyes to what is taking place in our own times, 
 without feeling that the age of saints has not yet passed 
 away, while among the truest and the best of saints 
 there have ever been a number of consecrated women. 
 The women of the Reformation were quite as noble and 
 heroic as the men. The Puritan women shed a lustre 
 on their age. The Methodist revival abounded in 
 consecrated womanhood. Our own age has been 
 blessed with fine examples too,.in whose fragrant wortli 
 there has been no monopoly by any denomination of 
 Christians. Dinah Morris, in her day, combined in 
 her own person and character many of the graces attri- ^ i 
 buted to these godly women, and in real life truly won ^ j 
 for herself the queenly place her niece has accorded to 
 her in fiction. The gravestone of Helen Walker in 
 Scotland bears an inscription dictated by Sir Walter 
 Scott. Those readers of Scott who remember the im- 
 mortal Jeanie Deans will understand its force. It 
 says : *' This humble individual practised in real life 
 the virtues with which fiction has invested the imagin- 
 ary character of Jeanie Deans." It will be our privi- 
 lege henceforth to show that Elizabeth Tomlinson, 
 known now as Dinah Morris, practised in daily life 
 all the womanly and Christly virtues with which fiction 
 in its turn has invested her, and, indeed, many more 
 which are not recorded in fiction, but are nevertheless 
 written in memorials that cannot die. 
 
CHAPTEK XI 
 
 DINAH MORRIS— LIFE AND WORK IN NOTTINGHAM 
 
 " Saints lived not in the past alone. 
 But thread to-day the unheeding street ; 
 And stairs, to sin and famine known 
 Sing with the welcome of their feet ; 
 The den they enter grows a shrine, 
 The grimy sash an oriel burns. 
 Their cup of water warms like wine, 
 Their speech is filled from heavenly urns." 
 
 Adapted from Lowell. 
 
 Can there be a more interesting study than the develop- 
 ment of a young Christian soul under the highest and 
 holiest influences ? In tracing the real story of Dinah 
 Morris, this is the theme which invites contemplation, 
 and it runs along lines of close association with the 
 ministry and worship of Hahfax Place Chapel, Notting- 
 ham. 
 
 In 1797 the Wesleyans in that town were limited to 
 the poor accommodation of Beck Barn. A site for a 
 new sanctuary was procured in 1798, and Hahfax Place 
 Chapel was forthwith erected. At this juncture a truly 
 great minister came upon the scene, one of the faithful 
 and mighty itinerants whom Wesley sent into the 
 ministry. These were men of great spiritual power, 
 dauntless courage, stern self-denial and consecrated de- 
 
 179 
 
180 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 votion. Their faith and zeal were unbounded and 
 their labours strenuous and untiring. They suffered 
 severe hardships and endured revojting cruelties, but, 
 in spite of all these things, they went from conquering 
 to conquer. One of the mightiest of them all was 
 William Bramwell, the superintendent minister in 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM BRAMWELL 
 
 Nottingham from 1798 to 1801. His course there was 
 one continuous triumph. He found distraction and 
 controversy, with which he resolved not to meddle. 
 His mission was to preach spiritual truths, win souls, 
 train godly workers, and lead the Christian flock into 
 the sure attainment of holy character. So well did he 
 
DINAH MORRIS-LIFE AND WORK 181 
 
 succeed, that after a period of sore spiritual anguish 
 and eager wresthngs, all things were changed. His 
 helpers were loyal fellow-workers and his triumph was 
 complete. It was said of him, " There was no pause 
 in his labours. Early and late he was at w^ork ; al- 
 most every moment he was found practising some part 
 of his duties, whether obligatory or self-imposed : now 
 fasting, watching, meditating, praymg in private ; then 
 visiting, exhorting, comforting in families; and again 
 pleading or preaching in public." During his last 
 year in Nottingham there was terrible social disorder 
 and abounding public distress. That he might give 
 the more help to the starving people he rigorously re- 
 duced the supplies of himself and his household to the 
 lowest possible limit, even to a degree w^hich involved 
 some danger to health, but philanthropy was his master 
 passion. Happily, we of this generation can scarcely 
 realise the hard necessities of those distressful times. 
 Good, sound wheat can now be purchased at thirty 
 shillings per quarter — in those days it was rarely less 
 than four pounds per quarter, and occasionally reached 
 the famine price of seven or eight pounds. Wages at 
 best w^ere low and semi-starvation prevailed. In spite 
 of all obstacles, the loss of three hundred members by 
 the prevailing secession had been balanced by new 
 gains in the first year of Mr. Bramwell's pastorate ; in 
 the second the new accessions were still more numer- 
 ous, and at the end of his term there was a reinforce- 
 ment of over one thousand souls. The ministry of this 
 devoted man had great charm for Dinah Morris, and 
 helped to form the character she afterwards bore. She 
 repeatedly mentions him in her chapter of autobio- 
 graphy, and in her first reference styles him, " that 
 man of God, Mr. Bramwell." His prayers, his preach- 
 
182 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 ing and his life were an abiding influence to the end of 
 her days. 
 
 We must now turn to her memoirs to mark the 
 several stages of her spiritual development, and a few 
 brief extracts will show her decision of character, 
 grow^th in experience, and her introduction to private 
 Christian work and public ministry. The first of these 
 relates to her union with the Methodist Church. Prior 
 to the Easter Tuesday of 1797, w^e find her lamenting 
 her lack of acquaintance with the Methodist people, 
 but after her experiences of that night, she speedily 
 remedied this inconvenience. 
 
 '' Our dear friends omitted inviting me to a class, which 
 might have proved hurtful if the Lord had not blessed me with 
 courage, for I know not one Methodist in the town ; but 1 
 asked a young woman if she knew where any Methodists lived - 
 she said her father was one. I went and spoke to him con- 
 cerning the society, he invited me to go with him to the class, 
 I went without any hesitation, and felt it both my privilege 
 and my duty." 
 
 Here we perceive marked decision of character in cir- 
 cumstances none too favourable. If lonesome young 
 inquirers would overcome natural shyness as she did, 
 it would facilitate their spiritual growth and usefulness, 
 as it did hers. The position she now assumed was that 
 of the unw;avering disciple. Every forward step gives 
 evidence of this fact. Her days of weeping for lack 
 of opportunities were over, her days of consecration had 
 come. She writes : 
 
 " I had entirely done with the pleasures of the world and 
 with all my old companions. I saw it my duty to leave off all 
 my superfluities in dress; hence, I pulled off all my bunches, 
 cut off my curls, left off all my lace, and in this I found an 
 unspeakable pleasure. I saw I could make a better use of my 
 tim^ and money than to follow the fashions of a vain world." 
 
.A.i 
 
 CAUFOg:^' 
 
DINAH MORRIS-LIFE AND WORK 185 
 
 The course she now followed with regard to her dress 
 was one which, doubtless, for a young woman of 
 twenty-one, would be considered extreme. The lace- 
 menders of Xottingham are a smart well-dressed and 
 respectable body of female artisans, and it was to this 
 class she belonged. I am not sure that the temptations 
 to display in the matter of dress were not more potent 
 a hundred years ago than they are to-day. I have dis- 
 tinct recollection of ball and wedding dresses exhibited 
 to my admiring eyes when I was very young. These 
 pertained to the times of Dinah Morris, and were worn 
 by women who were her relations and mine, but if such 
 styles, colours and patterns were worn now, we should 
 vote them loud and gaudy. It seems to me that there 
 has been' distinct improvement in styles, patterns, 
 colours and fabrics, but Dinah Morris, after her decided 
 manner, settled her fashions for herself, once for all. 
 She adopted the Quakeress attire, which is by no means 
 inartistic. Her public garb consisted of a black dress, 
 a white shawl, a neat muslin cap, and a lofty coal- 
 scuttle bonnet. Her modes never changed, and some 
 choice relics of her clothing are cherished by her de- 
 scendants to this day. I well remember some other 
 Methodist woman who wore the Quaker habit as a 
 protest against the vanities of the time. Dinah Morris 
 took this position as to dress to mark her surrender of 
 that worldly living in which for awhile she had vainly 
 striven to find happiness. 
 
 She now formed regular habits of piety. Seasons 
 of secret prayer became a daily rapture. The Scrip- 
 tures were her special delight. "Oh, the precious 
 seasons I experienced in these exercises I ' ' She finds 
 it still inspiring, after many years, to dwell in thought 
 
183 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 upon those early experiences. In this age cf whirl 
 and hurry there is special danger lest secret meditation 
 and prayer should be crowded out of our lives , and de- 
 votional reading of the Scriptures be grievously neglec- 
 ted. After the arrival of Mr. Bramwell in Notting- 
 ham, her mind became exercised about other matters. 
 One peculiarity of his teaching was, that in conse- 
 
 ■(^.-^^JIP^^-^ 
 
 L " 
 
 HiM|iiHH^JHHM , 9pilj ' a»&A. 
 
 
 • ii-i^-" " '.^g^^^r^ 
 
 GRAXD JURY ROOM, COUNTY HALL, NOTTINGHAM. 
 
 quence of its spiritual bond of union w^ith the risen and 
 glorified Redeemer , the believing soul may be so filled 
 with the Holy Spirit as to be raised into moral purity, 
 and may feel so sublimated in motive as to cherish no 
 feeling in the heart contrary to the love of God. This 
 attainment was set forth under the terms of sanctifica- 
 tion and perfect love. Mr. Bramwell insisted that all 
 Christians should press onward to attain this higher 
 
DINAH MORRIS-LIFE AISD WORK 187 
 
 life. It appears that Dinah Morris had prolonged men- 
 tal anguish concerning the attainment of holiness, and 
 at last this conclusion is reached : 
 
 " After many struggles, thousands of tears and much prayer 
 with fastings, I did enter into glorious libertj'. I could trulv 
 say, ' I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, 
 but Christ liveth in me.' Oh, the blessed deadness to the 
 world and everything in the world and the creature I cannot 
 describe. I began to act a little in prayer-meetings, to visit 
 the sick, and to do anything the Lord set me about." 
 
 The visitation of the sick in those days entailed 
 serious risks in Nottinghapi, because, for lack of sanita- 
 tion, fearful epidemics preyailed. The scourge of typhus 
 fever, now almost unknown, was then a dreadful visi- 
 tant. Dinah Morris caught the infection through 
 ministering to a stricken family, and was very ill with 
 the fever. In her ardour of spiritual enthusiasm she 
 scorned to send for a doctor. " I thought when Christ 
 was applied unto in the days of His flesh by any one, 
 for anything , either for body or soul , He did for them 
 whatever they had need of ; and, while I was looking to 
 Him and exercising my faith upon Him, I most power- 
 fully felt these words applied to my mind : ' And He 
 came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and 
 immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto 
 them.' I felt in the twinkling of an eye that the fever 
 was gone, all my pain had ceased, and I was quite re- 
 stored to health. Glory be to God." In a state of 
 ! convalescence she at once made a journe}^ to Derby, 
 and there engaged in various exercises — such as deliver- 
 ing exhortations in prayer-meetings and leading society 
 classes. Never did she doubt the unseen power of 
 the invisible God had healed her of her fever, and the 
 incident was one of the means which led her to engage 
 
188 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 in public exercises. Her reverend pastor, Mr. Bram- 
 well, always encouraged female evangelism. On 
 several occasions he invited women helpers to share 
 with him the work of winning souls and promoting re- 
 vivals. In this way he brought Miss Barrett, who 
 afterwards became Mrs. Zechariah Taft, to assist him 
 in Nottingham. One day when preaching in Halifax 
 Place Chapel he said :"Why are there not more women 
 preachers? Because they are not faithful to their call." 
 Here w^as a new view of possible duty, which, in the 
 case of Dinah Morris, led to the most intense exercises 
 of mind. " The love of God was as a fire shut up in 
 my bones, and the thoughts of the blessed work of 
 bringing souls to Christ drank up my spirits, so that I 
 knew not how to live !" The visit to Derby was an 
 occasion of public exercises in prayer-meetings, but an- 
 other startling event followed, which precipitated her 
 further career in witnessing for Christ. At the Lent 
 assizes in Nottingham in the year 1802, Sir Richard 
 Graham condemned eleven persons to capital punish- 
 ment. The law and its administration were then most 
 barbarous. These culprits were not all sentenced for 
 murder, because crimes against property were then 
 punishable by death. One poor boy, ten years old, 
 not in Nottingham, however, stole a silk handkerchief 
 valued at four shillings, and w^as hung for the offence. 
 A man in London had been arrested by His Majesty's 
 press-gang and carried off to the war, leaving his wife 
 and three children uncared for, and in a state of starva- 
 tion. Passing by a draper's shop in Ludgate Hill, the 
 poor woman seized a roll of coarse calico-cloth valued at 
 seven shillings and sixpence. She did not succeed in 
 carrying it away from the premises, nevertheless she 
 was promptly arrested, flung into prison, tried for her! 
 
^ or THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY \ 
 
 OF ' 
 
DINAH MORRIS-LIFE AND WORK 191 
 
 life , condemned and hung ! She was drawn in a cart 
 to the place of execution with her baby at her breast. 
 Originally the law enjoined the punishment of death 
 for any theft of property of whatsoever value. In 1802 
 the stolen goods must be of the minimum value of half- 
 a-crown. The Lord Stanhope of those days brought a 
 Bill into the House of Lords proposing to raise the 
 minimum to five shillings, but another peer, Lord 
 Wynford, resisted it successfully jIs a revolutionary 
 measure, declaring that if it should pass into law the 
 people of England would no longer be able to sleep in 
 their beds and nobody's property would be safe. ^lany 
 years passed before these cruel laws were repealed. 
 
 There was, however, at this Nottingham assize, one 
 case of child murder. The perpetrator was Mary Voce, 
 a girl of only nineteen years, although married to a 
 bricklayer and the mother of two children. In the 
 Nottingham public journals of the day it was said that 
 she was given to irregularities of life which led her hus- 
 band to forsake her, and, being left with two young 
 children , she administered poison to the younger of the 
 two, was arraigned before judge and jury, and sen- 
 tenced to be hung. Her case excited much compassion. 
 She was impassive and obdurate at her trial, but she 
 was so forsaken and helpless, that, in spite of her sin, 
 her forlorn condition moved the hearts of the Methodist 
 people of the Halifax Place Chapel, so they consulted 
 with each other as to what could be done to save her 
 soul. It is at least a relief to know that in those re- 
 lentless times, when the hangman was so busy, not 
 only Methodist Christians, but others also, were accus- 
 tomed to concern themselves deeply for the spiritual 
 welfare of condemned persons prior to their execution. 
 In this case, action had to be very alert, for Mary Voce 
 
192 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 was convicted on a Friday evening and sentenced to be 
 hung on the following. Monday morning. In those 
 days vengeance w^as not only stern, but swift also. By 
 the detention of the judge in the town beyond the usual 
 time, the convict obtained a respite of twenty-four 
 hours' duration — a period most precious to her and mo- 
 mentous in the history of Dinah Morris. It would 
 seem that on Saturday, the day after the sentence, 
 the prison authorities were approached, and permission 
 obtained for tw^o women of the Methodist flock to have 
 free access to Mary Voce, and to stay with her in the 
 condemned cell day and night till the hour of her exe- 
 cution. 
 
 One of the two selected for this mission was Dinah 
 Morris. She and her companion made the best possible 
 use of the brief time which was available, and spent 
 practically the w^hole of it with the young, wayw^ard 
 soul. It would appear from a collation of two or three 
 independent narratives, that both Sunday and Monday 
 nights and the day intervening were spent in the 
 prison. There was a period of deep mournfulness and 
 spiritual agony before light broke on the gloom. Dinah 
 Morris, wdth her tender, sympathetic spirit, seems to 
 have felt the most exquisite anguish during the first 
 night. In spite of all that these gracious sisters of the 
 lost soul could do, she seems to have remained callous 
 for many hours. How they would exhort, and instruct, 
 and sing and pray, w^e can readily imagine. It was 
 not, however, till the beginning of the second night's 
 watch that relenting came. Some of the Methodists 
 outside the gaol felt as deeply for the spiritual welfare 
 of Mary Voce as the two who were inside. One John 
 Clark was so thoroughly agonised in spirit, that he 
 vowed neither to eat food nor to sleep until he had ob- 
 
14 
 
DINAH MORRIS-LIFE AND WORK 195 
 
 tained assurance in prayer that this poor woman would 
 be saved. Such assurance was, as he beheved, vouch- 
 safed to him about two o'clock of the Monday morning, 
 and in the evening of the same day he made a visit to 
 the prison to join in the exercises there. Mr. Taft also 
 — I presume the Mr. Taft we have heard of before — 
 came on the like errand. There was hope now, for 
 relenting had already begun, a full confession was 
 made, one hour was spent in joint intercessions for 
 mercy ; instructions , exhortations and encouragements 
 were mingled with the petitions, and then " the Lord 
 in mercy spoke peace to her soul. She cried out : ' Oh. 
 how^ happy I am ! The Lord has pardoned all my sins 
 and I shall go to heaven.' She never lost the evidence 
 for one moment, but always rejoiced in the hope of 
 glory." 
 
 The closing scene is easy to follow in Dinah Morris's 
 narrative, and also from that which is still pre- 
 served as having been taken from the journals 
 of the time. The hours went quickly on, re- 
 lieved of their sombre dread by the inward change 
 experienced by the repentant and rejoicing con- 
 vict. Early in the morning there came to the 
 condemned cell the Sheriff for Nottingham, accom- 
 panied by the Governor of the gaol attended by several 
 warders, and followed by the executioner. Very 
 quickly the sentence is read over in her hearing, and its 
 justice confessed. The hangman ties a rope round her 
 neck, which she assists him in adjustinef. Then she 
 is handcuffed and pinioned. A cart is waiting at the 
 gaol door, into which she is quickly hoisted. A plank 
 spans the vehicle, on which she is seated, wuth Dinah 
 Morris on one side and her companion, Miss Richards, 
 on the other. It is a mile and a quarter, we are told, 
 
196 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 to the place of execution. All the dreary way there is 
 prayer and praise. An unparalleled crowd throngs the 
 thoroughfares. One hundred Methodists form a pro- 
 cession and sing hymns all the way. Passing up Mans- 
 field Eoad the procession halts at Gallows Hill, situated 
 on an elevated corner of Sherwood Forest. There 
 stood the grim scaffold on which hundreds of convicts 
 had been done to death. From its transverse beam, 
 another piece of rope was swaying in the air. The 
 cart was drawn under it and the ropes tied together. 
 Some of the death tragedies enacted here were horrible 
 in the extreme. There was horror enough in this case 
 truly, with thousands gazing on the scene ; but how 
 was it relieved from the darker side of its gloom by the 
 calm self-possession and radiant, spiritual joy of the 
 poor young creature who had made her artless confes- 
 sion and now witnessed to all who could hear her voice , 
 her deep sense of sin, her certainty of full and free for- 
 giveness, and her confident hope of heaven. There 
 was no rescue, although in Adam Bede the last moment 
 brings one. Here, however, in real life, nothing of 
 the kind takes place. The cart is drawn forward and 
 the body of Mary Voce is left suspended from the beam. 
 But with her last breath she cried : ' ' Glory to God , 
 glory, glory !" 
 
ILAM HALL, ILAM. STAFFS. 
 
 Formerly the residenre of the late Rt. Hon. R. W. Hanbury. 
 
 Built for Mr. Jesse Watts Russell, J.P., by Mr. Win. Evans, of EUastone. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DINAH MORRIS— THE MISSION-PREACHER WOOED 
 AND WON BY SETH BEDE 
 
 " Is there call for a loving servant, 
 A messenger swift for Thee, 
 A bearer of glad, good tidings? 
 Here am I, Lord; send me." 
 
 About the trial, conversion, and execution, of the 
 convict, Mary Voce, a ballad was published, which is 
 preserved in the Nottingham Date Book. Though it 
 has no literary merit and is but doggerel, I think it is 
 worthy of being re-published because it affords inde- 
 pendent testimony to the accuracy of the story told in 
 Dinah ^Morris's autobiography, and is an evidence of 
 the deep interest excited by the case of Mary Voce 
 among the Methodist people in Nottingham. The 
 Date Book is a vivid historic chronicle of passing 
 events and is often most graphic in its narratives. It 
 gives a good deal of space to the many executions at 
 Gallows Hill, and among the rest to that of Mary 
 Voce. It expresses warm commendation of the bold 
 and beneficent efforts to benefit the culprit which were 
 made by ^Nliss Eichards, Dinah Morris and ethers. 
 The pcem begins with her emergence from the town 
 gaol and then portrays the execution : — 
 
 199 
 
200 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 " When Mary from the prison came, 
 A crowd had gathered round ; 
 But she was not dismayed, for now 
 Her heart true peace had found. 
 
 Made happy in the love of God, 
 
 Calmly she took her leave; 
 Jesus had eased her of her load, 
 
 She now disdained to grieve. 
 
 ST. MARY S CHURCH, NOTTIXGHAM. 
 
 Her quickened soul so joyful was, 
 So nerved by heavenly hope, 
 
 So eager for the awful change, 
 She helped to fix the rope ! 
 
 Nor did she dread the thought to die, 
 
 When she was led away ; 
 Her heavenly looks did testify 
 It was a joyful day. 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 201 
 
 How eager were those pious souls, 
 
 Who did on her attend, 
 To point her to the Lamb of God, 
 
 The sinner's only Friend. 
 
 Ah, how they mourned for her distress 
 
 With pity tried and true ; 
 Their weak endeavours God did bles« 
 
 And owned their labours too. 
 
 All in a moment, as they prayed, 
 Her rapt'rous voice exclaimed: 
 * O, what has Jesus done for meP 
 My soul Ho has reclaimed. 
 
 He breaks my chains and sets me free, 
 
 God does His love impart ; 
 My load of guilt is gone, I feel 
 
 The pardon on my heart.' 
 
 When to the fatal tree arrived, 
 'Mary, we're here,' said one; 
 ' Well, bless the Lord,' she then replied 
 In a triumphant tone. 
 
 Then to the standers-by she said, 
 ' I pray you warning take ; 
 Although I hang upon this tree, 
 Jesus, my soul will take.' 
 
 And when the fatal cap was drawn, 
 
 She must no longer stay : 
 ' Glory, glory,' still she cried, 
 
 And then was launched away." 
 
 "Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? Glory, 
 glory be to Jesus." 
 
 Of the thousands who gazed at the execution of Mary 
 Voce, it would never occur to any of them that the 
 scene enacted before their eyes, related by one of the 
 actors in the tragedy, would fasten upon the plastic 
 genius of a great author and take its place in one of 
 the finest fictions ever given to the world. Let 
 
202 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 it be remembered, however, that Mary Voce is 
 entirely different from Hetty Sorrel. Between the 
 one and the other there is little semblance. The 
 dread experiences of Mary Voce supply but the barest 
 outline of suggestion— that is all. The vain, fas- 
 cinating farmer's niece, Hetty, moves in quite another 
 
 TOWN- GAOL IN NOTTIXGHAM, IN WHICH MARY VOCE (hETTY 
 
 sorrel) was incarcerated. 
 
 plane and is of entirely different mould. The tragedy 
 of the former was but the peg on which the story of th(3 
 latter w^as hung, nevertheless, it is Mary Voce, and in 
 all likelihood another unnamed person, w^ho served to 
 
 i 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 203 
 
 suggest to the author her character of Hetty Sorrel. 
 Be this as it may, the experiences won in the prison 
 and at the execution had a most potent influence on 
 the mind of Dinah Morris. This she sets before us 
 in emphatic and simple language : — 
 
 " At this awful spot (Gallows Hill) I lost a great deal of the 
 fear of man, which, to me, had been a great hindrance for a 
 long time. I felt that if God would send me to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth I would go, and at intervals felt I could 
 embrace a martyr's flames. Oh ! this burning love of God, 
 what will it not endure? I could not think I had an enemy in 
 the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation, that if they 
 had smote me on the one cheek I could have turned to them 
 the other also. I lived 
 
 ' The life of Heaven above. 
 All the life of glorious love.' 
 
 I seemed to myself to live betwixt heaven and earth. I was 
 not in heaven because of my body, nor upon earth because of 
 my soul ; earth was a scale* to heaven, and all I tasted was 
 God. I could pray without ceasing and in everything give 
 thanks. If I wanted to know anything, I only had to a?k and 
 it was given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the 
 public street, or at my work, or in my private room, I had con- 
 tinual intercourse with my God, and many, I think I may 
 say hundreds, of times. He shone upon his Word, and showed 
 me the meaning thereof so as to furnish mo with sufficient 
 matter to speak to poor sinners for a suitable length of time." 
 
 A good deal came to be made of Dinah Morris's ex- 
 periences in the prison cell and at the gallows-tree. 
 On the day of the execution Halifax Place Chapel was 
 crowded for special service. The superintendent 
 minister, Mr. Kane, preached to the people, and Mr. 
 Taft, the second minister, who had taken some part in 
 the prison ministrations, gave a narrative illustrating 
 
 * A series of steps, a means of ascending. 
 
204 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 the work of Divine grace on the mind of the doomed 
 sufferer. Dinah Morris's name got abroad among the 
 Methodists, and an invitation was brought to her to 
 go to Tutbury, for the purpose of relating her experi- 
 ences and conducting reHgious services. The spirit in 
 which she entered on this mission was truly 
 apostohc. Some friends had brought the 
 
 letter of invitation to her at the Halifax 
 Place love-feast, whereupon she determined to 
 accept it. "I clearly saw that my time was come, 
 and that I must go, not conferring with flesh and 
 blood. I fixed the time to be there, and a local 
 preacher published it for me to speak. What I felt 
 that day I can never describe, I could neither sit nor 
 stand, the worth of souls was so laid upon me. I be- 
 lieve I felt something of the passion of my blessed 
 Lord, but He supported me. I likewise saw in the 
 night-seasons the places I must speak in, the roads to 
 some of those places, the people I must speak to, and 
 the things on which I must stand, together w^ith the 
 opposition I must meet with." This kind of second 
 sight accompanied her through life. There are many 
 incidents narrated concerning her inward foreshadow- 
 ing of things which were to happen to her. She had 
 a kind of prophetic vision of events relating to her 
 work which is well attested, and we need not suppose 
 that such experiences are peculiar to Dinah Morris. 
 With some finely-wrought souls there are mystic 
 powers which carry them into a realm above the com- 
 monplace experiences of life, and there may be in all of 
 us possibilities of mental impression which we have 
 scarcely fathomed as yet. There lies within and around 
 us a spiritual universe of mystery and wonder whirl 
 we have not fully explored. Dinah Morris was now; 
 
 11 
 
^ 
 
 I 
 
 TABLE MADE BY SAMUEL EVANS (SETH BEDe) NEARLY A CENTURY AGO. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UIMIVER - 
 
 /FCKiN.- 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 207 
 
 living in a sphere of profound and ecstatic feeling. 
 Her spiritual exercises were of the most exalted 
 character, and the invitation to Tutbury served to in- 
 tensify them. It was in a whirl of rapturous excite- 
 ment she started on her way. She halted at Derby to 
 visit her Methodist friends there. To this place she 
 had travelled by coach, for there were no railways 
 then. Here she had new manifestations. Of one 
 of them she says : " I retired again (for prayer) and 
 how long I continued I do not know, but the Lord was 
 pleased to show me His glory in such a manner as He 
 had never done before. The room was filled with 
 angels and my soul with the glory of God. I felt 
 
 ' The speechless awe that dares not move, 
 And all the silent heaven of love.' 
 
 I went on my way rejoicing to the place appointed." 
 
 Doubtless this place would be Tutbury. It would 
 seem that the invitation which had been sent to her 
 did not emanate from the official authorities in the 
 Burton-on-Trent Circuit, to which Tutbury belonged, 
 nor had it been endorsed by them, and even from the 
 first there was opposition. The young minister and 
 the Circuit Steward busied themselves to hinder her 
 work. They did not wholly succeed, but they con- 
 trived to raise a tempest, to excite suspicion and 
 generate antipathy. Four months were spent in this 
 evangelistic mission. Dinah Morris was fjladly wel- 
 comed by the simple-hearted Methodist folk in many 
 places of the Burton Circuit, but was everywhere pur- 
 sued by the disaffected officials. Her meetings were 
 held in chapels, farmhouses, cottages, and often in the 
 open air. " Many were brought to the Lord in the 
 Burton Circuit who nobly stood by their Master's 
 
iJ08 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 cause, and some have fallen asleep in Jesus, among 
 whom you may find a Mr. John Ordish, in the July 
 Magazine, 1822. Those were blessed days. I can 
 scarcely think of them without weeping.'* But the 
 opposition at last prevailed. With some strait-laced 
 persons the best of work must be discounted if it be 
 not done after their preconceived pattern. There is 
 good evidence that the people she had laboured among 
 would gladly have retained her, but the Circuit was 
 being embroiled and she meekly returned, smarting in 
 spirit, to her daily occupation as a lace-mender, and 
 was cordially welcomed by her employers. 
 
 There were well-to-do friends who offered her shelter 
 and comfort, if she w^ould only tarry with them. One 
 family, in which a home was offered, resided in the 
 familiar hamlet of Griffy Dam. Another home w^as set 
 before her which was situated in the Leek Circuit, in 
 Staffordshire, showing that her fame had already 
 travelled far. Here a Mr. Gould, of Brown Hill, was 
 her would-be host. On examining a Brief History of 
 the Rise and Progress of Methodism in the Leek Cir- 
 cuit, by the Kev. J. B. Dyson, I found the name of 
 this same Mr. E. Gould, of Brown Hill, and discovered 
 that he was a farmer in the parish of Warslow, that he 
 was a devoted Methodist, and cherished a church in his 
 own house. Dinah Morris would not accept these 
 offers of gratuitous hospitality. She was too self-re- 
 liant and independent to admit of such a thing — 
 hence her return to Nottingham. She shall speak for 
 herself : 
 
 " I had a great desire to go to the heathen and preach to 
 them the unsearchable riches of Christ. And if I had had a 
 suflBcient fortune I certainly should have gone ; but I had not, 
 and that was the hindrance, as I disliked nothing so much as 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 20^ 
 
 living upon the people. I used to work at my mending of lace 
 till two or three o'clock in the morning, that I might be fur- 
 nished with money and clothes that I might not be a burden to 
 anyone. This I did with great pleasure. I had one of the best 
 places in the town. I had very good wages and could earn 
 
 I LAM CROSS. 
 Monument to Mrs. Watts Hussell 
 
 lo 
 
210 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 fourteen or fifteen shillings a week, and did not, as some may- 
 have supposed, go out for loaves and fishes, nor for a husband. 
 as I then believed I should never be married to anyone. No, 
 Christ was 'all the world to me.' " 
 
 Soon after the Tutbury episode she received an invi- 
 tation to preach in Ashbourne — probably in the summer 
 of 1802. To her and Seth Bede this was a memor- 
 able visit. It is at this time we find Dinah Morris 
 introduced to the district with which her life was 
 thenceforward to be so closely associated. For travel- 
 lers Ashbourne is the gate of Dovedale. Its magni- 
 ficent parish church is called the cathedral of the 
 Peak. George Eliot says it is one of the finest parish 
 churches in the country. It is a stately sanctuary, 
 chaste and beautiful. Easily reached from Ashbourne, 
 and, close by the entrance to Dovedale, there is one of 
 the most charming and picturesque villages in Eng- 
 land. Its name is Ham. In the newspapers it has 
 recently come into notice, because it was there that the 
 late Mr. E. W. Hanbury, M.P., had his country seat, 
 and there, after his lamented death in London, his 
 body was conveyed to its burial. 
 
 ;Ilam Hall was built for its former proprietor, Mr. 
 Jesse Watts Eussell, J. P., by one William Evans, a 
 nephew of Adam Bede, who succeeded to the business 
 of builder, which the uncle had originated in Ellastone. 
 The hall is a fine piece of work and occupies a romantic 
 situation. The estate attached to it includes one side 
 of Dovedale. Among its rock scenery is the collection 
 of The Twelve Apostles, and the perpendicular block, 
 draped with ivy, which goes by the name of Dovedale 
 Church. There is a cross and fountain in the village 
 erected to the memory of Mrs. Watts Russell, a 
 lady who, in a more exalted sphere of lif(», 
 
ILAM CHURCH ROCK, OR ' DOVEDALE CHURCH,' DOVEDALE. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 213 
 
 cherir,hed the philanthropic sympathies which 
 were so marked a feature in the hfe of 
 Dinah Morris. How well I recollect the lamen- 
 tations of the whole country-side over her early 
 decease. Her husband caused the cool, clear water, 
 taken from springs in the limestone rocks of the over- 
 shadowing hill, to be conveyed to a fountain in the 
 centre of the village, over which a pure Gothic monu- 
 ment was erected as her memorial. The sparkling 
 liquid bubbles up in never-failing supply, and here is 
 the lady's epitaph : 
 
 " Free as for all these crystal waters flow, 
 Her gentle eyes would weep for others' woe ; 
 Dried is that fount, but long may this endure, 
 To be a well of comfort to the poor." 
 
 It is quite probable that, during her first visit to 
 Ashbourne, Dinah Morris preached at Ellastone, as 
 portrayed in Adam Bede, and that this visit was the 
 occasion of the preaching on the village green at Hay- 
 slope. It is likely that she also ministered at Snel- 
 stone, but it is quite certain that she conducted services 
 at Ashbourne and attracted large congregations. The 
 old Methodist Chapel, as I remember it sixty years 
 ago, is now a seed warehouse, and there is a modern 
 church in another part of the town where the 
 Methodists of these days assemble. The associations 
 of the old building are still very sacred, and it was in 
 connection with the church which for many years had 
 its home therein, that Dinah Morris commenced her 
 blessed labours in these parts. Wirksworth, and the 
 villages surrounding it, the scene of life-long labours, 
 lies just over the hills, a few miles away. It was at 
 Ashbourne that Seth Bede's heart was won, as he him- 
 
214 THE TRUE STOllY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Keif shall tell us. "The members of my class (at Snels- 
 stone) invited me to go to Ashbourne to hear a very 
 pious female, Elizabeth Tomlinson (Dinah Morris), of 
 Nottingham. Truly it may be said of her that she was 
 a burning and shining light. She preached with great 
 
 PARISH CHURCH, ASHBOURXE (oAKEOURNE). 
 
 power and unction to a very large congregation. Her 
 doctrine was clear and good , and her piety unrivalled ; 
 simplicity, love and meekness w^ere blended in her, and 
 her whole heart was in her work. She was made 
 instrumental in the conversion of many we know, but 
 the mornino[ of the resurrection will reveal more." 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 215 
 
 We are compelled to believe that the visit of Dinah 
 was protracted, and that Seth had more than one 
 opportunity to see, to wonder and admire. We may 
 feel sure that it was not with him, as Eobert Burns 
 confesses it was in his case, with regard to another 
 young lady : 
 
 " In preachin' time sae meek she stan's, 
 Sae saintly and sae bonnie, O ; 
 I canna get a glimpse o' grace, 
 For stealing looks at Nannie, 0." 
 
 Seth missed no spiritual grace in his manly passion 
 for Dinah, and their controversy about marrying was 
 the only one they ever had. Her primary notion was 
 that she should give herself unreservedly to Christian 
 service, w^hich was her controlling passion. It was no 
 part of her life-plan to be encumbered with family ties. 
 She thought she had, like some other women she knew^ 
 a loftier call. In answer to all this Seth was able to 
 plead the grave hindrances w^hich had impeded her 
 mission in the Burton Circuit. To Dinah Morris this 
 had been a bitter experience. Seth was in full sym- 
 pathy with her heavenly call. He would stand be- 
 tween her gentle soul and the chill blast of official op- 
 position. He would be her brave knight, her chival- 
 rous Greatheart, her glad fellow-worker in all Christian 
 service. He could toil for their joint livelihood at his 
 ow^n smart handicraft as a carpenter and joiner, and 
 she could have full liberty to preach the gospel and 
 win souls. In one of my. journeys to Wirksworth I 
 was show^n a table actually made by Seth Bede, a little 
 later than this period of his history, and it is still 
 strong and beautiful, now carried off to the north of 
 England by a Derbyshire young lady as part of her 
 
216 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 marriage portion. Dinah at last gave heed to Seth's 
 plea, though not without some misgivings, and he 
 himself shall tell the story of their union : 
 
 "When I was twenty-six we were united in holy matrimony 
 at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. I found her a help-meet 
 in spiritual things as well as in temporal matters, and she very 
 often stirred up the gift of God within me. She did me good 
 and not evil all the days of her life. She laboured more abun- 
 
 OLD WESLEYAX CHAPEL, ASHBOURNE (oAKBOURNE). 
 
 dantly than I, and held up my hands very often in the good 
 work. Wherever she went she preached the glad tidings to 
 sinners, ever ready to do her Master's will. Indeed, it was her 
 meat and drink. She never neglected her domestic duties, she 
 was clever and industrious, a good wife, and an exceeding 
 tender-hearted mother. I very much regret that her holy and 
 valuable life was not printed, as her gifts and graces were 
 great and extraordinary." 
 
 This is Seth Bede's view of it after their marriage 
 
DINAH MORRIS WOOED BY SETH BEDE 217 
 
 had subsisted in unbroken charity for forty-six years, 
 and after nine years of widowerhood ; and we have 
 Dinah Morris's view also, after twenty -two years of 
 their united Ufe. She says : 
 
 *' I could not see my way to marry, and only eternity can 
 clear up this point to me ; however, I am fully persuaded that 
 I could not have had a more suitable companion, as he loved 
 the Lord's blessed work from his heart, and did not only 
 preach himself, hut made every way he possibly could for vie. 
 Blessed be the Lord, I felt the very day I married, as though I 
 married not ; I was able to pursue my way, and at every con- 
 venient opportunity to speak in the name of the Lord. I met 
 with very little persecution or opposition when I had a friend 
 to plead my cause. The work of God broke out, and we had 
 most powerful times." 
 
 Never was there more (perfect oneness between 
 wedded souls than between Seth Bede and Dinah 
 Morris. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 
 
 " So many gods, so many creeds, 
 
 So many paths that wind and wind, 
 While just the art of being kind 
 Is all this sad world needs." 
 
 It seems necessary to make some mention of the mani- 
 fest discrepancy between fiction and fact as to the mar- 
 riage of Dinah Morris. In real hfe Seth was the happy 
 bridegroom — not Adam ; while in Adam Bede we have 
 the unfolding of a story which is clean contrary. How 
 is this? Well, first of all, our book does not profess 
 to give us a veritable history. It purports to be fiction 
 and nothing else. The discrepancy is simply a matter 
 of art. Adam Bede was produced under the affection- 
 ate censorship of one of the keenest literary critics of 
 the time. He read the sheets as they came from the 
 writer's hand. As the novel was approaching its 
 concluding chapters his criticism was, that during the 
 earlier portion Adam stood in the forefront, but now 
 had receded into the background of the picture, while 
 Dinah Morris had come to the fore. In order to re- 
 store Adam to prominence as the author's proper hero, 
 he mast needs be wedded to the gentle Dinah, who 
 had become the undoubted heroine. Accordingly this 
 was done. A moment's reflection will show that this 
 
 218 
 
^:br^^ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 .'FORM\iV 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 221 
 
 reversal of fact does violence to the narrative. Some 
 of the most competent critics are of opinion that it does 
 violence also to the truer canons of literary art, and is 
 a blot on the story. Since situations in fiction are too 
 readily accepted as historical fact, some injustice has 
 been done both to Seth and Dinah. It has been as- 
 serted that, in her real history, Dinah Morris, after her 
 early years of Methodist ardour and enthusiasm, settled 
 dovi^n to a quiet life as tl^e wife of Adam, and even- 
 tually abandoned her preaching altogether. In the 
 novel, too, we take farewell of Seth as the humble 
 lodger in the married home of the woman whom he 
 had introduced into the family, had loved with his 
 whole heart and soul, and meekly surrendered to his 
 more imperious brother, while he tamely accepts the 
 position of hobby-horse to the young Adam, who 
 equally, with others, tyrannises over the passive and 
 yielding Seth. All this is contrary to fact. 
 
 While these chapters have been going through the 
 press, an able writer, commenting on them, has first 
 assumed that the facts of Dinah's marriage agreed with 
 the fiction, and has then based his judgment on that 
 supposition. Hence, it cannot be too emphatically 
 asserted that, in actual life Adam never sought the 
 hand of Dinah at all, but had been married to his first 
 wife, Harriet Poynton, some time before Dinah had 
 become known to the family. Whatever may be told 
 us in fiction, I am well assured that the real Adam was 
 never in the least degree likely to yield himself the vic- 
 tim of a passion for any woman who accepted the role 
 of a preaching evangelist. Even thus, though we may 
 regret the situation created for us, we have no ground 
 for complaint. In the selection of our book we bar- 
 gained for fiction, and this is the thing we have got. 
 
222 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 In this case, however, the fiction has created such wide 
 and deep interest that for many years past all manner 
 of efforts have been made to ferret out the facts. Per- 
 haps no novel has ever given rise to a greater number 
 of efforts of this character. They are practically num- 
 berless. Probably in no such case have a larger num- 
 ber of inaccurate statements appeared in print. We 
 shall find that Dinah did not cease her evangelistic 
 labours after her marriage, while Seth, on his part, 
 was faithful to his promise to foster and promote her 
 God-blessed ministry. This was not altogether an easy 
 thing to do. Methodism has always looked for godly 
 submission on the part of its adherents. Just as 
 Dinah's preaching gifts had come into prominence, the 
 Wesleyan Conference promulgated a judgment which 
 was strongly antagonistic to female preaching. This 
 was in the year 1803. The minute recorded was speci- 
 fic and discouraging. It is stated in the form of ques- 
 tion and answer. " Should women be permitted to 
 preach among us? We are of opinion in general that 
 they ought not." Eeasons are hereto alleged, one 
 being that a vast majority of the Methodist people were 
 opposed to the practice, and another that it w^as not re- 
 quired. " But if any w^oman among us think she 
 has an extraordinary call from God to speak in public 
 (and we are sure that it must be an extraordinary call 
 that can authorise it), we are of the opinion she should, 
 in general, address her own sex, and those only, and 
 upon this condition alone should any woman be per- 
 mitted to preach in any part of our Connexion." 
 
 Following this deliverance there is a set of stringent 
 regulations, under which alone could this carefully 
 circumscribed ministry be exercised. In the face of 
 this minute of the Conference it required both courage 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 
 
 223 
 
 and judgment on the part of Seth Bede, as a loyal 
 Methodist, to make arrangements continually for the 
 exercise of her preaching powers by his gifted and 
 zealous wife — Dinah Morris. The Conference placed 
 
 \^ '^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 
 
 
 ' S^Hp^p 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 HARLEM TAPE WORKS, MILLHOLSES, WIRKSWORTH, FOUNDED BY 
 
 SAMUEL EVAXS (SETH BEDE) 1814. 
 
 " It's a bleak and barr3n country there." Adam Bide, Chap. iii. 
 
 upon such ministry as hers the stamp of irregularity. 
 Nevertheless that ministry went on. When she can:e 
 to the parish of Norbury it would appear that the 
 Methodist flock at Snelstone received her with warm 
 affection. Meetings were held at Boston as well, and 
 soon they extended their efforts to Ellastone and other 
 places. 
 
224 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 It is very pleasing to read in Seth Bede's account of 
 his life of the remarkable interest which followed the 
 labours of his devoted wife on her settlement at Nor- 
 bury. She has also described it in glowing and grate- 
 ful terms : ** We had most powerful times, many were 
 brought into peace, and I believe the whole village had 
 a powerful call. We had access to several fresh places, 
 and societies were formed. We could bear them re- 
 cord that they would have plucked out their eyes and 
 would have given them to us. We were with them in 
 weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in fast- 
 ings too , of which I am not ashamed to speak. ' ' Know- 
 ing, as I do from infancy, the spirit, conversation and 
 method of the life depicted in this paragraph , I have no 
 difificulty in realising how incessant or how exhaust- 
 ing was the voluntary toil in which Seth Bede and 
 Dinah Morris engaged in his native parish of Norbury 
 and in the places round about. Wherever she came 
 she immediately identified herself with the ignorant, 
 the needy, the sinful and afflicted. The sick she made 
 her charge and the needy her friends. She sought out 
 both the suffering and the lost, and spared herself 
 neither toil nor sacrifice in her efforts to do them good. 
 It was not an occasional spasm of sympathy, it was life- 
 long devotion. The simple, honest villagers had 
 never seen it after that fashion, and their warm hearts 
 responded, as human spirits always will, to the gentle 
 touch of tender, Christ-like love. 
 
 To the picture of their labours in this neighbourhood, 
 drawn for us by Dinah Morris, there is a companion 
 sketch in the autobiography of Seth Bede. His ac- 
 count was written long years after the event, but even 
 at eighty years of age his thankful soul recalled its 
 memory with glowing gladness and fervent praise. 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 
 
 225 
 
 " We had not been married long before a blessed work 
 broke out at Roston and Snelstone. The holy fire ran 
 through our class-meetings and prayer-meetings — 
 seven or eight would find peace at every meeting. I 
 
 HOUSE OF SAMUEL AND ELIZABETH EVANS (SETH BEDE AND DINAH 
 morris) AT MILLHOUSES. WIRKSWORTH. 
 
 " It was a thatche:l cottage outside the town, a little way from the niill — an 
 old cottage standing sideways towards the road, with a little bit of potato-ground 
 before it." Adam Bede, Chap, xxxviii. 
 
 well remember one man, an overseer of the poor. He 
 was so powerfully wrought upon and got so happy that 
 he called out in the meeting : ' What is Love ? What 
 is Love? ' He could neither sit, stand, nor kneel, he 
 was so filled with the love of God. He kept his piety, 
 and afterwards died a very happy death. They were 
 16 
 
^26 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 a very loving, united people, and would have done 
 anything for us." 
 
 But Seth Bede must needs leave Norbury. There 
 was more scope for energy in a brisk and flourishing 
 town like Derby than amidst the rustic surroundings 
 in his native place. To the great sorrow of his Methodist 
 friends they had to say farewell. It was a tender and 
 pathetic parting, and rent warm hearts on either side. 
 The husband, however, felt that the time had new 
 come for him to enter into business on his own account, 
 and therefore to Derby they went. In this town, for 
 the next seven years — from 1807 to 1814 — Seth Bede 
 pursued his calling as carpenter and builder. 
 
 Here the same course of Christian toil w^as followed 
 both by husband and wife as had been practised in the 
 neighbourhood of Norbury. Beyond this fact, I have 
 but few particulars of their labours in the Derby Cir- 
 cuit. A friend, however, who has written very ably 
 in the Methodist Recorder about Derby Methodism 
 has lent me a plan of the Circuit for the half-year end- 
 ing in October, 1809. In this plan, contrary to the 
 usual custom, the places are numbered instead of the 
 preachers, and the appointments follow the preachers' 
 names. Here a full share of engagements is allotted 
 to " S. Evans." In the majority of cases it would be 
 understood that, in his appointments, two preachers 
 would appear instead of one. We have an interesting 
 and an independent testimony to the power and use- 
 fulness of this consecrated pair at the time of their resi- 
 dence in Derby by one of the shrewdest observers of 
 those days— the Eev. Hugh Bourne, the founder of the 
 Primitive Methodist Connexion. In his jounrals he 
 records how that the husband and wife came over from 
 Derby and joined him in some mission services in the 
 
^^^^ 
 
 THF. OLD WESLEYAX CHAPEL, CkOMFORD. 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 229 
 
 hamlet of Wootton. His standard of spiritual attain- 
 ments was exceedingly high, nevertheless he shows 
 himself to be both amazed and gratified at the mighty 
 power which accompanied the united ministrations of 
 Seth Bede and Dinah Morris. Here are the terms he 
 uses concerning them : " Sunday, June 25th, 1809. T 
 led the class in the morning at Wootton. We were 
 informed that Betsy Evans, Samuel Evans's wife, from 
 Derby, would speak at Wootton in the afternoon. Her 
 husband also is a local preacher. She began about two 
 o'clock — her voice was low and hoarse at first, from 
 having preached so much the week past ; but she got 
 well into the power. She appears to be very clear in 
 spiritual doctrines and ever ready in scripture, and 
 speaks full in the Spirit. From the little I saw of her 
 she appears to be as fully devoted to God as any woman 
 I ever met with. O, Lord, help her, and establish 
 her ! Her husband also spoke. He appears to be an 
 excellent man. O, my Father, bless and keep him." 
 
 So powerful an impression was made on Hugh 
 Bourne's mind, that when, on a journey to see his re- 
 latives in May, 1810, he had occasion to pass through 
 Derby, he called on the Evans', both going and return- 
 ing. Two entries concerning this visit are recorded 
 in his journal. Monday 19th : " I came to Derby and 
 called on Samuel Evans ; his wife is earnest." Wed- 
 nesday, 21st : ** I came to Derby and had some conver- 
 sation with Mr. Samuel Evans and his wife. He is an 
 earnest man. She has been, and is, an extraordinary 
 woman ; she has been very near Ann Cutler's experi- 
 ence ; but she met with great persecution especially 
 from the Rev. J. E. I was much instructed by her 
 conversation." I remember Hugh Bourne quite well, 
 and heard him preach on several occasions. Full jus- 
 
230 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 tice has never been done to this extraordinary charac- 
 ter. For Christian simpHcity of Hfe, unconquerable 
 perseverance, dogged zeal, self-sacrificing labour, sub- 
 lime courage and heroic endurance as a revival evan- 
 gelist, he has seldom been equalled in the annals of the 
 Church of God. It is therefore all the more interesting 
 to me that such an one should have been so deeply im- 
 pressed by the spiritual power and holy conversation of 
 Seth Bede and Dinah Morris. In his estimation, 
 Dinah was a rare spiritual phenomenon and a woman 
 of exceeding power. 
 
 It was in Derby that Dinah Morris made the ac- 
 quaintance of that truly great w^oman Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Fry, and of the lady philanthropist known as Lady 
 Lucy Smith. 
 
 After seven years' residence in Derby there was 
 another change. Seth Bede invented a power loom 
 for the weaving of sundry wares, such as braids, tapes, 
 and laces, which heretofore had been only wrought by 
 hand. Along with two partners he now became pro- 
 prietor of a factory, which, happily, is going still, and 
 has been several times extended. The question was 
 as to where the manufactory should be planted. 
 Through conducting special services there, both Seth 
 and Dinah had become acquainted with the ancient and 
 romantically situated town of Wirksworth. They had 
 formed affectionate relations with the Methodist 
 people of the neighbourhood, and as there was an 
 eligible mill, with water power, ready for their occupa- 
 tion at Millhouses about half a mile outside the town, 
 to Wirksworth they came ; the place being chosen on 
 spiritual considerations as well as temporal. From 
 this time onward Wirksworth was the centre of the life 
 and work of this devoted pair. The factory is for ever 
 
OP THE "^^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 233 
 
 associated with their history. The thatched house of 
 six rooms, just across the Derby road, was the home of 
 such Hfe as was rarely seen in any family. Its parti- 
 culars were first revealed to me by my own mother, 
 who had often been a visitor there, by the two daugh- 
 ters of these devoted souls, and by several of their ser- 
 vants and workpeople. Imagine the sacredness and 
 blessedness of Sunday in that peaceful home. Every 
 preparation has been made beforehand for its due ob- 
 servance. One of these is rare indeed. Look in at 
 the parlour table on the Saturday night. There you 
 will find volumes of sacred learning arranged in order 
 for use on the morrow. Among them are copies of 
 the Holy Scriptures, Wesley's Hymns, a Bible Dic- 
 tionary, Cruden's Concordance, and in great leather- 
 bound volumes there are Benson's and Clarke's Com- 
 mentaries. Here was the apparatus for Sunday 
 morning selection and study. The seance would often 
 commence as early as four in the morning. A cup 
 of refreshing tea was first partaken and then the study 
 commenced. Portions of Scripture were selected and 
 modes of treatment discussed. The great commen- 
 taries were pondered, and God's blessing invoked on 
 the various exercises of the day. As seven o'clock 
 approaches you see neighbours coming to the house 
 for a class-meeting. This Christian home is a Bethel 
 indeed.^ At eight o'clock the family assembles for 
 worship and breakfast. At nine there is a second 
 class-meeting. At ten the children of the neighbour- 
 hood come into the factory to be taught in a Sunday 
 School by Seth Bede and several helpers. As for 
 Dinah Morris, she, at this hour, walks to Wirkswortli 
 to meet another class. The morning duties over, the 
 family assembles for the mid-day meal at twelve o'clock. 
 
234 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 With all this activity care is taken that there shall 
 also be, of set purpose, a httle time set apart for private 
 communion with God. The afternoon brings with it 
 new engagements. I have before me a plan of the 
 Cromford Circuit for 1820, lent me by a kind friend 
 whose uncle was one of the preachers " on trial." In 
 this case the places occupy the first column, and the 
 preachers have their several numbers for convenient 
 reference. '* S. Evans " stands as No. 7, and to him 
 are allotted engagements for twenty-one out of the 
 twenty-six Sundays displayed on the plan. This was 
 a very large share of the work for a local preacher. Nor 
 was this all. Engagements were often made to take 
 services where fresh ground could be broken. All this 
 involved much walking to and fro. The early after- 
 noon w^ould see the happy itinerants on their way to 
 Cromford, Bonsall, Crich, Tansley, Middleton, or some 
 other place in the Circuit. Seth Bede tells us that his 
 beloved never complained of either the distances, the 
 weather, or the roads, but laboured on with gladness 
 and good cheer till strength failed her and her mission 
 was fulfilled. And yet, how far this was from being 
 the whole of her labours will never on earth be told. 
 Weekly worship w^as held in the factory in the masters' 
 time, at which he or she or other helpers preached to 
 the workers. 
 
 Besides all this public service, the whole countryside 
 shared the blessedness of Dinah's private ministrations. 
 From the various classes were raised up preachers of 
 the Gospel and missionaries of the Cress. One day 
 in each week she devoted to the visitation of her mem- 
 bers in three several classes. Cromford, over the 
 Stonnis Eocks, where the brown gritstone is thrown up 
 bodily in the midst of surrounding limestone, was one 
 
^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
HOLY WORK OF A WEDDED PAIR 237 
 
 of the places at which she frequently preached. The 
 old chapel is still a prominent feature in the landscape. 
 One aged worshipper remains who remembers Dinah's 
 preaching quite distinctly. Arkwright's Mills, under 
 another name, are still a picturesque variant in a ro- 
 mantic setting, and are mentioned in Adam Bede. 
 Millhouses, Miller's Green, Gorsey Bank, Bole Hill 
 and Wirksworth were the scenes of her care and efforts , 
 which were really unceasing. As a sick visitor her 
 gentle tact and spiritual feeling made her pre- 
 eminently useful. Sorrow and suffering w^ere lightened 
 at her approach, and divine praises waited on her foot- 
 steps and kindled in her path. Often she was nurse as 
 well as sick visitor, and instances are freely given of 
 her taking her place beside the weary sufferer and 
 watching the whole night long. In holiest yearning 
 her compassionate heart ever turned to the wretched 
 and the lost, and if any poor young soul had been led 
 astray, Dinah Morris would lovingly seek her out and 
 earnestly strive to lead her to the only place for the 
 sinful soul — the feet of Jesus. Her many ways of 
 doing good cannot now be told. For more than thirty 
 years she pursued her course in Wirksworth and its 
 neighbourhood. For evermore has she linked her 
 name with this picturesque and quaint old town. It 
 is a blessed history. I do not wonder that one build- 
 ing stands there to-day as a " Bede Memorial Chapel, 
 erected to the glory of God, and in memory of Eliza- 
 beth Evans, immortalised as Dinah Morris," nor do I 
 wonder that in the Wesleyan Ebenezer Chapel there is 
 a white marble tablet which may be left to tell its story 
 in this volume. God grant that many women who 
 read these pages may be stirred up to follow Dinah's 
 example in using time, talent and energy in imparting 
 
238 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 blessing to multitudes, and in winning high reward in 
 the kingdom of heaven. The marble tablet credits 
 Dinah Morris with seventy-four years ; I can only 
 make them to number seventy-three. 
 
 BEDE MEMORIAL CHAPEL, WIRKSVVORTH (sNOWFIELd). 
 " Tlie town lay, grim, stony, unsheltered up the side of a steep hill." 
 
 Adam Bede, Chap, xxxviii. 
 

 
 ERECTED BY NUMEROUS FRIENDS 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 ELIZABETH EVANS, 
 
 KMOWM TO THE WORLD AS "DINAH BEDCV 
 
 WHO DURINCMANY YEARS PROCLAIMED ALIKE IN THE 
 
 OfEN-AIR.THC SANCTUARY. AND rROM MOUSE TO MOUSE , 
 
 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. . 
 
 SHE DIED IN THE LORD MOV. 9. 1849. 
 
 ACED 74 YEARS. 
 
 AND OF SAMUEL EVANS. HER HUSBAND. 
 
 WHO WAS ALSO A FAITHrUL LOCAL PREACHER 
 
 AND CLASS LEADER. IN THE 
 
 METHODIST SOCIETV. 
 
 HE riNiSHEO HIS EARTHLY COURSE 
 
 DECEMBER 8. 1858. ACED 81 YEARS! 
 
 
 
 MEMORIAL TABLET TO DINAH MORRIS IN EBEXEZER WESLEYAX CIIAPEI. 
 WIRKSWORTH (sXOWFIELD). 
 
CHAPTEK XIV 
 life's labour followed by sabbatic rest and 
 
 PEACE 
 
 "Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way 
 That loads from darkness to the perfect day — 
 From darkness and from sorrow of the night 
 To morning that comes singing over the sea ! 
 Through love to light!" 
 
 ' ' In the course of these last twenty years I have many 
 times been brought apparently nigh unto death, inso- 
 much that my dear friends have stood expecting me to 
 die. At all such times I have been visited with a 
 manifestation of the divine approbation concerning 
 these things (her public ministry), but what grieves me 
 most is that I have had so little zeal and love, and 
 that I have not been more useful and holy." 
 
 In these solemn words does Dinah Morris close her 
 autobiography, as written in 18'2o. They well repre- 
 sent the whole spirit of her gracious life. How many 
 incidents have those who knew her related to me, set- 
 ting forth her genuine self-denial, intense loving-kind- 
 ness and brave daring in the prosecution of her work. 
 Here is one related by Mr. A. Chadwick. When but 
 a boy he and a schoolfellow, foi one day only, played 
 truant. Toward the evening a mighty storm arose. 
 The thunders shook the earlh. while the lightnings. 
 
 17 ^41 
 
^42 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 flamed in the sky. The two boys were near to the 
 house which sheltered Dinah Morris. She called them 
 in to take refuge with her. Both of them shook with 
 solemn dread and cow^ered around her knees. Instantly 
 she became their comforter, spoke soothing words and 
 implored Heaven's blessing. With a hand on each 
 prostrate head she sang in a clear and sympathetic 
 voice : 
 
 ''The God that rules on high. 
 
 That thunders when He please ; 
 That rides upon the stormy sky, 
 
 And manages the seas : 
 This awful God is ours, 
 
 Our Father and our Love ; 
 He will send down His heavenly powers 
 
 To carry us above." 
 
 I think this incident forms a pretty little idyll and is 
 worthy of record here. 
 
 Old Benjamin Poyser, in 1881, gave me a story of 
 Dinah, indicative of shrewd, practical wisdom com- 
 bined with strong human feeling. Poyser was a work- 
 man at the factory and was making love to the servant 
 at the factory house. " Benjamin," she said, " if you 
 
 and wish to talk to each other I have no objection , 
 
 and you are always w^elcome to a yard of the hearth- 
 stone. Don't walk in the lanes after dark, and don't 
 use your Sundays for courtship. You are always 
 
 welcome to come and see in the kitchen." This 
 
 courtship led to a happy life union. Poyser remem- 
 bered Seth Bede opening the factory at Millhouses, and 
 himself became a worker at nine years of age ! He 
 said Seth Bede was one of a thousand for forgiving 
 injuries. If one had done him a wrong he would go 
 out of his way to do such person a kindness. If men 
 

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 ^jr£:i^^^^^^^a| 
 
 
 
 Hi 
 
 PARISH CHURCH, WIRKSWORTH (SNOWFIELD). 
 
 (Snowfield) that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at." 
 
 Mrs. Poyser, Chap. xliv. 
 
>^^^-' 
 
 OP 
 
 ■r\>-^ 
 
 .Jt^ 
 
II EST AND PEACE 245 
 
 had animosity one to another he would ^o and reason 
 with them, and so make peace. The mill-pond and 
 feeder contained fine Derbyshire trout. Every Whit- 
 suntide the water was run out and many fish captured. 
 The w^orkmen w^ere always invited to bring their 
 baskets and share in the catch. Seth Bede also was a 
 diligent visitor of the sick as well as his wife, and when 
 no longer able to go forth on his preaching excursions 
 this exercise found him delightful employment. 
 Friends interested in his house-to-house mission assis- 
 ted him in supplying the material necessities of the 
 poor, and so calmly and usefully life lengthened to its 
 close. It was a beautiful and blessed life. 
 
 Dinah had dreams and visions, intuitions and im- 
 pressions of a preternatural kind. She moved in a 
 world of spiritual influences all her own. A lady I 
 met with in Buxton revived the recollection of a story 
 my mother had told me when a boy. In one of her 
 dreams Dinah imagined herself preaching in a place 
 which was strange to her. She saw the building, and 
 marked the features and even the dresses of many of 
 the hearers. A sweet spring of bright, sparkling w^ater 
 appeared to her view, from which a stream issued, and, 
 wherever the w^aters came, the country was covered 
 with green and flowers. Immediately after two men 
 came from a mining village to implore her to go and 
 hold special services there because of the spiritual 
 dearth and drunkenness that prevailed. She con- 
 sented and fixed the time for the services. The distance 
 was too far to walk, and she was driven to and fro by 
 Isaac Walker, one of the factory men, who was him- 
 self an acceptable local preacher. Immediately on be- 
 holding the scene of her labours the dream recurred to 
 her, and on entering the building she saw in actual 
 
246 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 vision the very faces she had looked upon in her dream. 
 The happy augury of the waters was graciously ful- 
 filled in the impartation of spiritual blessing, for, be- 
 fore the day's services had closed, a deep movement 
 had commenced which extended as the days went on. 
 She had to go again and again, and several adjoining 
 villages were touched by the revival. 
 
 Another incident was narrated by my Buxton friend. 
 Dinah Morris was ill of acute rheumatism and was so 
 prostrate that she could not turn herself on her bed. 
 But the time was at hand for the fulfilment of an en- 
 gagement to conduct special services at Bakewell. She 
 was deeply distressed at the thought of her incapacity, 
 and wrestled with God all night in earnest prayer. 
 She obtained from the Lord Himself, as she believed, 
 the power to go and fulfil her mission. Nothing could 
 now restrain her. Her faith conquered her infirmity. 
 She was again entrusted to the care of the faithful 
 Isaac Walker, conducted two services with great spiri- 
 tual power, and on the return journey was not spared a 
 downpour which drenched her to the skin. Neverthe- 
 less, it was her proud boast that no injury resulted from 
 this bold venture, and the rheumatic fever had departed 
 for ever. How real to her sensitive feeling was the 
 living God, and how near ! How transcendent was 
 the power of prayer ! available at all times and in all 
 exigencies. 
 
 My Buxton friend had very clear recollections of the 
 extended visit paid to Wirks worth by George Eliot, 
 mentioned in an earlier chapter. She repeatedly saw 
 the aunt and niece, arm-in-arm, walking across the 
 market-place to call on Mrs. Walker, Dinah Morris's 
 daughter. She knew well of the long seance in Mrs. 
 Walker's parlour, when George Eliot wrote down the 
 
HOISE OF MR SAMUEL EVANS, JUNR., IN' THE MARKET PLACE, 
 WIRKSWORTH (sXOWFIELD'J AT WHICH GEORGE ELIOT WAS RECEIVED 
 AS A GUEST. 
 
 "... the brethren and sisters at Snowfield who are favoured with very little of this 
 world's pood : where the trees are few, so that a child might count them, and tliere's very 
 hard living for the poor in the winter." Adam Bede, Chap ii. 
 
V^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
JIEST AND PEACE^^^klT-i : 249 
 
 account related to her of the aunt's strange experiences. 
 On the occasion of this visit she was the ^uest of her 
 cousin ]\Ir. Samuel Evans, (the son of Seth Bede 
 and Dinah Morris) who was a manufacturer of 
 silk velvet and the proprietor of a draper's shop in the 
 Wirksworth market-place. From this house every 
 afternoon George Eliot found her way to Miller's 
 Green, where Seth Bede and Dinah Morris were then 
 residing. My informant could never have the slightest 
 doubt as to how Dinah Morris came to be the heroine 
 of Adam Bede. 
 
 One episode in the career of Seth and Dinah I do not 
 like to dwell upon— their separation for several years 
 from the Wesleyan Church. This event, which I can- 
 not but regret, arose from the position in the denomina- 
 tion to which the female evangelist had been relegated, 
 which had all along been a very sore point. Doubtless, 
 the superintendent minister in each circuit had con- 
 siderable discretion in the matter. Some of them in- 
 terpreted the minute of 1803 more rigidly than others. 
 Some still allowed the preaching, even in mixed con- 
 gregations. Nevertheless, the fact that Mrs. Taft and 
 Dinah Morris had been tolerated as preachers became 
 an occasion of reproach and rebuke in the Conference, 
 two of the highest personages in that assembly 
 having taken up a very hostile attitude. The 
 relation of Dinah Morris with her superintendent 
 pastors would appear to have been most cordial. 
 Still, female evangelism was all but proscribed, 
 and this became a burden both to herself and 
 her husband. In Derby there arose, through a 
 split, a branch of Methodism which never extended far. 
 nor did it attain to any great dimensions. This people 
 called themselves " Arminian Methodists," they were 
 
250 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 also known as the Derby Faith. They allowed full 
 privileges to women preachers. Seth Bede and Dinah 
 Morris united themselves to this secession, not because 
 she was refused liberty to use her talents among 
 the Methodist people, but because a stigma attached 
 to woman's ministry, and she would not continue to 
 use her privilege while others of her sex were for- 
 bidden. For this reason the painful separation took 
 place and continued for some years. I have before me 
 a letter written to our friends in 1836 in the name of 
 two female evangelists who were Arminian Methodists, 
 and it is characterised by the same rapturous zeal 
 which marked the life of Dinah Morris. It was writ- 
 ten after a visit paid to Wirksworth. It would seem 
 that Dinah Morris had full liberty of prophesying 
 among the Arminian Methodists without any reserva- 
 tion whatever. There is an Arminian Methodist 
 Preachers' Plan of the Derby Circuit extant, on which 
 the name of " Evans, Wirksworth," appears. To 
 which of the Evanses this relates one can hardly tell. 
 Wirksworth was not one of the places in the Derby Cir- 
 cuit, or probably we should find that both names had 
 been included. Probably, " Evans, Wirksworth," 
 meant that Seth Bede was an auxiliary preacher of the 
 Derby Circuit, having separate appointments on a plan 
 which included Wirksw^orth. At all events, a building 
 is pointed out at Warmbrook, in the town, which was 
 for some years the Arminian Methodist Chapel. There 
 Dinah Morris frequently preached, and there are those 
 yet living who repeatedly heard her ministrations 
 therein. It is now a wheelwright's w^orkshop. In the 
 course of only a few years the Wirksworth Arminian 
 Methodists, as well as the body generally, were united 
 with an offshoot of the Wesleyan Body called ** The 
 
L 
 
 ARMINIAN METHODIST PREACHERS PLAN. 
 
REST AND PEACE 263 
 
 Methodist Association," which was originated in 1835, 
 principally by one Dr. Warren, concerning the found- 
 ing of Methodist Colleges. This denomination, later 
 on, combined with the Methodist Reformers of 1849 to 
 form the United Methodist Free Churches. Before 
 this took place, however, Seth Bede and Dinah Morris 
 had found their way back into the old moorings, and 
 both of them died in communion with the Wesleyan 
 Methodist Church. 
 
 Her death was transcendently beautiful. It requires 
 the pen of a George Eliot to do justice to it. For some 
 three or four years her public ministrations had ceased 
 for sheer lack of physical strength. Indeed, she was 
 now over seventy years of age, and had toiled with un- 
 remitting energy for nearly half a century. Dr. 
 Chalmers said that he wished fof a sabbatic close to his 
 life, just such as was given to his mother. This was 
 ranted Dinah Morris. How well I remember my 
 mother describing to us what she saw at her death-bed. 
 When the enthusiasms of active labour had ceased a 
 sabbatic rest followed, and then came the end. There 
 was no apparent disease, only a gradual fading away, 
 with a spiritual experience little short of heaven itself. 
 Long before this time she had attracted the attention 
 of some of the great ones of the earth. A Mr. Foster, 
 who knew her, a member of the Society of Friends, 
 had reported her good works to that marvellous woman 
 of kindred spirit, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. This devoted 
 philanthropic worker made a pilgrimage to Derbyshire 
 that she might hold communion with Dinah iMorris in 
 person. This visit led to loving correspondence, ex- 
 tending over several years. There was also one Lady 
 Lucy Smith, a well-known Christian philanthropist, 
 who also sought her out, delighted in her fellowship, 
 
 to 
 
254 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 and in like manner established a correspondence 
 with her. 
 
 The end came in 1849. As it approached she mani- 
 fested her resolute determination that all the material 
 which any biographer might found memoirs upon 
 should be ruthlessly destroyed. Her desire w^as that 
 
 SAMUEL GREEN S TIMBER YARD, WATERHOUSES. 
 Great Grandson of George Evans (Thlas Bede.) 
 
 no word should be spoken or written in praise of the 
 creature. Hence, with stern command she had several 
 bundles of letters consumed before her eyes. There 
 was one such bundle from Mrs. Fry, another from 
 Lady Lucy Smith, another from sundry admiring 
 friends, but all had to be destroyed. Another com- 
 mand was given. Her children were assembled around 
 her bed when she commanded that no memorial should 
 be erected about her grave, and that they should use 
 
REST AND PEACE 255 
 
 their money for service to the living rather than in 
 raising memorials to the dead. When she was laid in 
 her coffin two gentlemen , strangers to the town , begged 
 that they nii^ht be allowed to take a last look at her 
 face. Thirty years previously they had gone to a ser- 
 vice which she had conducted for the purpose of 
 turning it to ridicule. While so engaged their minds 
 were arrested, and they who came to sport remained to 
 pray. There, in the presence of the dead, they to- 
 gether praised God for what she had been as a preacher 
 of the gospel of love, and for the blessed life which 
 they had found through her instrumentality. 
 / I remember well my mother's description of Seth 
 Eede's consolation and submission in a bereavement 
 which took away from him one who, as George Eliot 
 had said , had been as the light of his eyes for so long a 
 period. On her account he said he could not shed one 
 tear. He could only bless God for all she had been to 
 him these forty-six years, and for all that she had been 
 'to' so many others. Concerning her promotion and 
 exaltation in the presence of her Lord , he could not en- 
 tertain one moment's doubt. Her joy was fulfilled in 
 beholding the glory of the Redeemer, and he was as 
 sure of a speedy re-union with her as he was of her 
 perfected bliss in Paradise. I was only a boy at the 
 time, but I remember how the experiences of both 
 Seth and Dinah struck me as a remarkable triumph of 
 faith. Her body was laid to rest in the old church- 
 yard at Wlrksworth, the whereabouts has been pointed 
 out to me, but the precise grave no man knoweth, for 
 the register of this time is said to have been lost, and 
 there is no monument. And yet, in a way of which 
 she cannot have had the faintest conception, a monu- 
 ment, has been raised to her beloved memory, more 
 
 Jafe<=W- 
 
256 .THE T 
 
 STORY 
 
 U] 
 
 iW creed,! 
 eri;ifiai 
 e redl 
 Morril 
 s of menu 
 eif eyes \i 
 inspi 
 
 enduring tli.|^Durni 
 
 whiteafc marble 
 
 cunniag skill 
 
 monument ciiicums 
 
 stricted to 
 
 earth ,\ and 
 
 Dinah 
 
 but th 
 
 with th 
 
 moiste 
 
 with 
 
 the fape 
 
 Wftit M'as 1 
 woman the beca 
 education, nap^e 
 great cjiffl^etJfal ch 
 a scuipture^*^ 
 thaHquilding 
 aMa"^{^^l to be 
 ?or thaH^tpoSi 
 decline 
 that eve 
 in a remo 
 tude, the 
 in the mi 
 artists fr 
 he wroiwit 
 clinibi^s)o^'l 
 Yi^iiv^^^jny eac 
 isual, an 
 ^ed on a face h 
 the face of a wo 
 life. She had 
 away, and he h 
 
 T 
 
 tORGEFlELIOT 
 
 'e than the 
 
 it by the 
 
 \o well, a 
 
 and re- 
 
 ?ad in|wert mrt of the 
 
 re worm'silie^Bjiterature. 
 
 in 1849, 
 
 pleads 
 
 fcvard , 
 
 'ir l»iLts 
 
 Ity anclhope 
 
 ie her tl^e might] 
 ffty birth, superiorj 
 d position. In tl 
 Q, Norway, theurG n 
 L)le history^/wWi 
 ' ^?ame 
 
 fictioi 
 
 ^s theJi 
 
 tears"^ 
 
 w^as 
 nor e; 
 
 ■i^h 
 
 hi^ request 
 and IVp was an artist, 
 te^lallot^d l:^im a block 
 where\m ihtrt high lati- 
 upon it oHnng six weeks 
 In those weejts, however, 
 ds nia'^)e seen copying the work 
 ullv iho ohLman accepted his task, 
 tvn^^t'ach morning, and 
 n.^^^M^yie did not come 
 idv^^^^H^^^ open eyes 
 elV d n^^H|^^^I t 
 a twnin he n^A^W^^^^rly 
 im,^kt\death hl^^^tcnecPHer 
 lerish^Bue fond in^0^11 these 
 
 \ 
 
GEORGE GREEN, OF WATERHOUSES. 
 A carpenter and builder, grandson of George Evans (Thias Bede.J 
 
 18 
 
 01 
 
 XAa^^ 
 
 
 "<, .t'^y^-Xc^ 
 
 ^JLtH/^o.-^^^ ,?i^^;.^.^:^'«--«^--^ 
 
^ Q^ THE 
 
REST AND PEACE 259 
 
 years. He knew himself to be a dying man, he knew 
 also that his art would be buried with him in the 
 grave, he was therefore resolved that the last work 
 of his hand should be to carve the features of the 
 woman so dear to his heart in speaking stone. When 
 the attention of the chief architect had been called to 
 the circumstance he gathered the other artists around 
 him and said: "Gentlemen, do you see that face? 
 That is the finest piece of work in this cathedral, and 
 it is the work of love." 
 
 That is, in one w^ord, the power which gave us Dinah 
 Morris. Her whole nature was possessed, refined and 
 etherealised by divine love. She has become what she 
 is now in the world simply by the power of love. What 
 wonders would that same love work in us if only we 
 were surrendered to its transforming power ! Seth 
 Bede had his sabbatic years, even as Dinah had, de- 
 parting hence in the fulness of peace in 1858, just as 
 Adam Bede was preparing to astonish the literary 
 world. A saintlier soul than he, and a holier and 
 happier pair than these two, I know^ not where to find. 
 George Eliot has enriched the spiritual life of the race 
 by her portrayal of these characters; and, as she was 
 thankful to have written so true a book, so may all be 
 thankful to have such fine treasure made over to us in 
 its pages. Those who in any degree belong to the 
 stock of the Bedes, may be thankful for their share in 
 a family history which bears such fruit in its branches. 
 The book is a vital and entrancing poem which shows 
 how from lowly surroundings a light may shine forth 
 which shall irradiate the world. The Bedes, originally 
 were carpenters and builders, and some of their des- 
 cendants still, even to the fifth generation, follow the 
 same occupation. The photograph on page 254 
 
260 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT ' 
 
 gives a view of premises which were the property 
 as well as the home of my grandmother, the sister of 
 Adam and Seth Bede. In the house here represented, 
 I heard, sixty years ago, many stories of Thias and 
 
 LEIGH HOUSE, WATERHOUSES. 
 
 Lisbeth Bede, Adam and Seth, with other members of 
 the Evans family. For more than a century it has 
 been the centre of a building trade, and is to thiF 
 day occupied by a relative of mine, who is, like myself. 
 a great-grandson .of Thias Bede the carpenter. It i^ 
 situated at Waterhouses, just over the Weaver HillB 
 from Ellastone (Hayslope). The home of my youth 
 
 « 
 
REST AND PEACE 261 
 
 the happy, loving home of my father and mother, and 
 to this day the home of my beloved brother is just 
 across the turnpike road, and is pictured on the 
 opposite page. With these views of scenes so near 
 and dear to my heart, I close this series of articles on 
 The True Storv of Seth Bede and Dinah Morris. 
 
CHAPTEE XV 
 
 THE MARRIAGE UNION OF GEORGE H. LEWES WITH 
 MARY ANN EVANS (GEORGE ELIOT) 
 
 " Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved, 
 And woman's triumph is a lover saved." — Lamb, 
 
 The reputation of a great teacher is of importance to 
 the whole community. George Eliot is surely one of 
 these. In Hterature, for a generation, she has been a 
 preacher of world-wide influence. In every one of her 
 books she not only preaches to us in propria persona, 
 but has also the faculty of making her characters 
 preach. Take for example her story of Adam Bede, 
 confessedly founded on family reminiscences. Here 
 we make acquaintance with several characters who, 
 in their way are very effective preachers. The hero of 
 the book favours us with many a homily. In the work 
 shop at Hayslope Adam preaches to his fellow-work 
 men of the dignity of labour. To Arthur Donni 
 thorne he discourses on the need of a strong, firm will 
 in the conduct of life, as contrasted with the moral 
 dangers attendant on the flabby condition of moral 
 see-saw : 
 
 :| 
 
 ii 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 
 
 _ Reproduced from an Engraving presented by Mr. G. H. Lewes to his friend, Robert 
 Browning, now in the possession of Mr. (}. J. Hojyoake. 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 265 
 
 ** I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, 
 as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and 
 trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad 
 workmanship — you never see the end o' th' mischief it'll do. 
 And it's a poor lookout to come into the world to make your 
 fellow creatures worse oflF instead o' better." 
 
 This is only one of Adam's sensible manly sermons. 
 Dinah Morris is another of the preachers. Her sermon 
 preached on the green at Hayslope. setting forth the 
 pitying compassion and tender love of God towards the 
 sinful and the poor is one of the finest specimens of 
 pleading pathos and yearning compassion to be found 
 in literature. Mrs. Poyser is a preacher of another 
 sort — quaint, droll, pungent, and severe — but a 
 preacher all the same, whose homely talks, so full of 
 merriment and wit are nevertheless charged with 
 serious purpose and sparkle wdth gems of practical 
 wisdom. 
 
 On every page she has written George Eliot 
 shows herself a shrewd and searching preacher, whose 
 audience is secure for ages and whose prelections have 
 found their way into the leading languages of mankind. 
 An impression is afloat that her popularity has waned. 
 If this be so, how does it happen that twenty years 
 after her decease, on the expiration of copyright in 
 some of her books, new editions continue to issue from 
 the press? How is it that everything concerning 
 George Eliot's personality and her work is read with 
 undiminished avidity? In August, 1902, there was 
 issued a "George Eliot" number of The Bookmaifi. 
 In a comparatively few days the w^hole edition was sold 
 out and many would-be purchasers failed to procure 
 copies. In November of the same year, there appeared 
 the first number of a very popular journal, T.P.'s 
 Weekly. The paper came with a chorus of universal 
 
266 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 favour. No one seemed surprised that its first article 
 should have been The Tragedy of George Eliot by T.P. 
 himself. If the premises of the article had been un- 
 assailable its conclusions would have been irresistible. 
 There is, however, as I venture to think, another side 
 to the tragedy. T.P. was not to be wholly blamed if 
 he did not see all of that other side. He had a bio- 
 graphy of George Eliot before him, constructed for the 
 most part out of her own diaries and letters, and upon 
 these carefully edited documents he framed his own 
 theory and drew his conclusions. All this is legitimate 
 enough. The writer of George Eliot's biography, her 
 surviving husband, Mr. J. W. Cross, was influenced 
 by high and chivalrous motives in introducing with so 
 much self-restraint his narrative of the union of George 
 H. Lewes and George Eliot. Twenty-four years have 
 now flown by since the lady died. Her books main- 
 tain a potent influence over the thoughts and lives of 
 men. The teachers of religion study them and make 
 quotations from them. Four separate biographies of 
 the author, besides numerous biographic sketches, have 
 been given to the world. Unnumbered essays on her 
 teachings and her philosophy have appeared in reviews, 
 newspapers, magazines. No author is more written 
 about than George Eliot. And, withal, there remains 
 the impression of tragedy in her life, of rebellion 
 against the laws of society, and of a private life of sin 
 altogether opposed to the teaching of her pen. From 
 every point of view the case is serious. Here is a 
 public teacher of universal fame and a dark shadow 
 projecting itself on her memory, so that the eloquent 
 T.P. sums up the matter thus : 
 
 "George Eliot's heart and George Eliot s life were in con- 
 stant, though perhaps silent and unheard, conflict, that her 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 267 
 
 message to the world is that her precept and not her example 
 must be followed; in other words, her works are her penance 
 and atonement." 
 
 This, however, is far from being all that must needs 
 be stated. It has come to be a fashion in some quar- 
 ters to set George Eliot in the pillory as proof of the 
 moral blindness and spiritual obliquity which are con- 
 sequent on disbelief in the inspiration and authority of 
 holy scripture. I am myself a satisfied believer, but 
 we need be sure that w^e are quite just in our judgment 
 of those who, through intellectual difficulties, have re- 
 jected the faith which we hold dear. I have found 
 as fine a sense of honour and as lofty a morality among 
 some of these as are to be seen in the most strictly orth- 
 odox circles. In setting down the beliefs of Agnostics 
 as a cause of immorality we should be supremely careful 
 of our facts to begin with. In a periodical of two years 
 ago I read a very confident article which held up 
 George Eliot as a fearful warning of the tendency of 
 unbelief to produce immoral life. Had the author 
 known all the facts of the case I think he would have 
 modified his harsh judgment. In the case of a more 
 ambitious effort the same remarks apply. Two years 
 after the appearance of The Life of George Eliot by 
 her husband, the Eev. W. L. Watkinson wrote a 
 volume entitled : The Influence of Scepticism on 
 Character, in which George Eliot is exhibited as one of 
 the dreadful examples. The following quotations will 
 show the spirit and power of the attack : 
 
 " It was with this all important institution (marriage) that 
 
 George Eliot trifled, and by consenting to live with a man 
 
 whose wife was still alive she lent her vast influence to the 
 
 lowering in the national mind of the sense of marital obligar 
 
 'tion which involves the happiness and dignity of millions." 
 
268 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 " The two chosen representatives of the superior morality set 
 aside truth for a lie, preferred their own will and pleasure to 
 purity and justice, and exalted their lawless fancy above a 
 palpable public duty, and lived together in adultery." 
 
 ** This was the disgrace of her life and the condemnation of 
 her philosophy." 
 
 " The wronged wife in the background always makes herself 
 felt ; the torn veil is on the floor no matter what gaieties may 
 be going on, and one is conscious of a sickening sensation all 
 through the history." 
 
 All this is scathing and severe. On the basis of the 
 statements of George Eliot's biographers I am not sure 
 that it is altogether unjust. Hence my feeling that 
 the time has come for a freer and fuller statement than 
 has yet been made public. The case is even more 
 serious from another point of view. The Editor of 
 the Revietv of Revietvs told us, some years ago, that 
 the selfish corrupters of female innocence were plead- 
 ing the example of this great woman as an excuse for 
 their own misdoings, and that women were discarding 
 their marital obligations towards their husbands and 
 their homes, excusing themselves for their unlawful 
 connections, and calling it " living a la George Eliot." 
 Thus, the matter becomes more and more urgent. 
 All this was foreseen long years ago. One learned 
 gentleman known to me for many years, a scholar of 
 fine attainments, a man of lofty principles and pure 
 morality, to whom all the parties and all the facts were 
 intimately known, spoke to me on several occasions 
 with hot indignation of what he deemed to be the mis- 
 taken pohcy of withholding the simple statement of 
 the actual facts involved in the story. He judged that 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 269 
 
 a deplorable injury to public morality had been the 
 consequence of this error. The authority to whom 
 I refer is the late Professor Francis W. Newman. His 
 recollections were clear as crystal and his mind acute 
 and penetrating. This gentleman as he became known 
 to her stood exceedingly high in the esteem of George 
 Eliot. At a very early period of her literary career 
 she wrote of him thus : 
 
 " Thank you for a sight of our blessed St. Francis's letter. 
 There is no imaginable moment in which the thought of such 
 a being could be an intrusion. His soul is a blessed i/ctz." 
 
 " He is a pure, noble being, and it is good only to look at 
 such." 
 
 Professor Newman did not stand alone in the judg- 
 ment I have chronicled. About the same time the 
 Christian World, in a powerful and searching leader, 
 said : 
 
 *' There seems to be a kind of falsity in avoiding a discussion 
 of what was one of the main and central facts of Ler 
 existence." 
 
 " In the first place, one or two very important facts are 
 undisputed ; in the second place, the public have a right to 
 press the relatives of George Eliot for further information." 
 
 *' It is fair neither to the present nor to succeeding genera- 
 tions that an unsolved problem should be left to become in- 
 soluble. We are checked by the absence of evidence as to Mr. 
 Lewes' s relations with his wife. A divorce, we may safely take 
 for granted, was not obtainable by him. But we do not know 
 whether the conduct ho had experienced from his wife had 
 been insufferably cruel and outrageous, or whether she aban- 
 doned him without being ill-treated." 
 
 " Among the many guesses the public have been left to make 
 
270 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 a frequent one has been that the real Mrs. Lewes was an 
 incurable maniac." 
 
 " George Eliot preached the doctrine of renunciation — the 
 doctrine of self-sacrifice — the doctrine of breaking the neck 
 of inclination, though stiff as steel, under the foot of duty : but 
 it was not given to her to give a transcendent example of this 
 Christian virtue in her own life." 
 
 The paper, anonymously written, from which these 
 extracts are taken is a fine example of what a leading 
 article in a Christian weekly should be, and its positions 
 are unassailable. 
 
 Our old friend Truth, in reviewing George Eliot's 
 biography hit the mark by saying : 
 
 *' The editor has been discreet to indiscretion, and by 
 seeming to slip past it with averted face has led you to think 
 the business worse than it was." 
 
 That is the exact position of affairs. Can the pre- 
 cious memory of George Eliot be cleared of any portion 
 of the darkness of this dense cloud? I think it can. 
 Let us see. We must imagine ourselves back in the 
 forties, and must think of a fast set of 
 young people living in the West End who 
 maintain very close relations, are free in 
 their manners, roystering in their conversation, 
 jovial in their meetings, and bent on having a good 
 time. There was among them a tendency to deride 
 religion, to disregard the sanctity of the Sunday, and 
 to make their Sunday a day of merriment. The pre- 
 vailing spirit of the circle was Hedonism, they had 
 voted themselves superior to the old ideals, and, both 
 in ethics and philosophy, claimed to be a party of ad- 
 vanced thought. Let it be noted, however, that 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWIS 271 
 
 George Eliot was never one of this party. While it 
 was indulging its audacious freedom she was safe 
 within the close restraints of her old Warwickshire 
 home. The break-up of this merry circle was inevi- 
 table from the first, and w^hen it came it was sad 
 enough, as described to me by Professor Newman. 
 Two of its most prominent members were George 
 H. Lewes and a bosom friend of his who shall be name- 
 less here. In a general way this friend is snoken of 
 with kindly memories apart from this sorrowful busi- 
 ness by some who knew him well. Lewes and he 
 were the closest of companions for years, co-workers 
 in literature as w^ell as intimate in social life. Both 
 were married men and their young and beautiful wives 
 were members of this advanced circle of social friends. 
 One who frequently met with the party wrote of Mrs. 
 Lewes as : 
 
 ''Agnes, George Lewes's wife, that pretty rosebud-like 
 woman." 
 
 Alas, it w^as discovered in course of time, that 
 this fascinating creature had forsaken her husband, her 
 home, and her three sons, to live apart under the pro- 
 tection of her husband's chosen friend. Friends inter- 
 vened, the husband forgave her and she went back 
 again. A second time she abandoned all for the more 
 attractive company of her paramour. This time she 
 made it clear that her separation was final, and that 
 her marital treason had been long continued and very 
 desperate. Doubtless such a denouement as this 
 might be regarded as the natural consequence of the 
 prevailing ideas and the free habits of this select circle. 
 But, at least, our history shows that there was no 
 injured woman in the background. She herself never 
 
272 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 entertained any grievance on that score. In after 
 years she was amply provided for by the persons who 
 are supposed to have injured her. In the exercise of 
 her own inchnations she had chosen her position. 
 It is manifest, therefore, that such an one could 
 have no claim as an injured person. If 
 anyone were injured it must have been the 
 husband to w^hom she proved false, ^ the boys 
 whom she deprived of the blessed dowser of a mother's 
 love, and that other woman, her social companion and 
 friend, w^ith w^hose lawful husband she formed her illicit 
 connection. It is somewhat strange that she out- 
 lived all the parties concerned. Against Lewes it 
 is alleged that his ideas had been lax and his life 
 Bohemian. Certainly, he was in mental rebellion 
 against orthodox creeds and not over much in love 
 with the prevailing social economy. But the con- 
 duct of his wife w^as most flagrant. What man is 
 there among us who would not consider himself free 
 of such a wife? What just law of God or man 
 would hold a husband indissolubly bound to her? 
 All this happened before George Eliot came upon 
 the scene, indeed, before she had ever met with 
 Lewes. When she did arrive she was a mature 
 woman of thirty years of age.. She had come to 
 live in the Strand in the house of Dr. Chapman, 
 editor of the Westminster Review. George Eliot 
 was the assistant editor. George H. Lewes was one 
 of the contributors, and was thus brought into con- 
 tact with the sub-editor. Her first impressions of 
 him were decidedly unfavourable. Then she dis- 
 covered that under his flippant and jovial exterior 
 there was serious purpose and moral earnestness. 
 Mutual affection developed. Then came the ques- 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 27:^ 
 
 tion : Shall they marry? There was, however, the 
 legal barrier of Lewes' former marriage. There 
 was a strong and deep affection, but there could not 
 be a legal union. Lewes proposed that they should 
 be a law unto themselves and she at length con- 
 sented. She first carefully considered whether in 
 doing this thing she would be violating the rights of 
 any sister woman, and concluded that no such charge 
 could lie at her door. Under what forms then could 
 the union desired by the parties be brought about? 
 To such as hold that matrimony is one of the seven 
 sacraments governed by canon law under the authority 
 of a visible head of the church, there could be no mar- 
 riage except by dispensation of His Holiness the Pope. 
 But even they will allow^ that a considerable number 
 of questionable alliances have obtained official sanc- 
 tion after this fashion. British authority had long 
 since repudiated the canon law as interpreted by the 
 Eoman ecclesiastics, but had provided its own loop- 
 hole, nevertheless. By this process very wealthy 
 persons might find relief after long delay and at 
 enormous cost. The man who wished to be released 
 from an adulterous wife had first to establish a case 
 of criminal conversation in the Court of Queen's 
 Bench, he must then proceed to the Court of Arches 
 to get his former marriage annulled, and finally he 
 must go to the two Houses of Parliament to procure, 
 a special Act to enable him to marry again. By this 
 time he would be a poorer man to the tune of several 
 thousands of pounds. Neither the one nor the other 
 of these methods of relief was open to Mr. Lewes 
 and, indeed, the first could not have been available 
 without the last. In any case he could not have 
 found the money, and she was dependent on an 
 
274 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 annual income which did not more than suffice for her' 
 wants. One can easily imagine how the matter would 
 be viewed by the wilful pair. A criticism by George 
 Eliot, before she knew her future husband, affords 
 some intimation that even at this early date her views 
 on marriage were not altogether of the conventional 
 order. She was writing her opinion of Jane Eyre 
 in relation to Rochester and said : \ 
 
 '' All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a 
 somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which 
 chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass." 
 
 I am sure that both parties would agree that the 
 law which still bound Lewes to his recreant wife and 
 made divorce a luxury for very rich persons, was a 
 law to be disobeyed. Be it remembered that at this 
 time there was no Divorce Court in existence. Few 
 persons were better acquainted with the New Testa- 
 ment than George Eliot. Hence, she w^ould know 
 that in the teaching of Christ as to the indissolubility 
 of the marriage tie an exception is made in the case 
 of "fornication." Most likely she would also know 
 that so great an authority as John Milton, relying on 
 his own independent research as well as upon the 
 opinion of some of the most learned legal 
 jurists and Christian fathers, regarded the 
 word employed by our Lord as being of 
 wider signification than is generally under- 
 stood, including in its scope much more than sexual 
 unfaithfulness. The ethics of Christ then most cer- 
 tainly did not disallow divorce in cases where there 
 was fornication. In his recent discourses on the 
 Sermon on the Mount the Lord Bishop of Birmingham , 
 ^Dr. Gore), admits that this is the teaching of Jesus, 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 275 
 
 and even pleads for an alteration of the laws of the 
 established church to bring them into harmony with 
 that teaching. In the case before lis fornication was 
 known and avowed. It was flagrant in the extreme. 
 And yet, such was the state of the law as to tie the 
 husband to the unfaithful wiie as long as life should 
 last. Such law was oppressive, irrational and unjust. 
 I am not arguing in favour of the course which was 
 taken by this doting pair of human lovers. My point 
 is that the precise circumstances should be stated. 
 Then let the several schools of thought form their 
 own judgment on the facts as they occurred. We 
 have reached the point at which the lovers determined 
 to blend their lives in wedded union. A lawful 
 marriage is to them impossible, and with the full 
 knowledge of the position they were about to assume 
 they boldly faced the consequences and sent round 
 intimations to their friends to the effect that they 
 must henceforth be known as husband and wife. This 
 was a painful sorrow to all her relations and a great 
 consternation to her literary and social friends. There 
 was speedily a journey to the Continent of Europe, 
 and whether a form of marriage was gone through 
 there as I have heard asserted by one very near to 
 George Eliot and much beloved by her, or not, the 
 union was in this country entirely wanting in legal 
 sanction. 
 
 I know that one of George Eliot's biographers de- 
 clares in plain terms that no such marriage ceremony 
 took place. lam not prepared with evidence to refute 
 his testimony, but will, nevertheless, relate what 
 happened to me in November, 1904. I was driven to 
 a charming home in Cornwall where there was made 
 to me a communication of more than ordinary interest 
 
276 THE TEUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 and one that I least expected. The presence of a 
 numerous supply of choice books indicated literary 
 tastes, and my intercourse with the lady of the house 
 revealed on her part fine conversational powers and 
 high mental culture. She informed me that she was 
 cousin to Mrs. Cash, of Coventry, the friend and pupil 
 of George Eliot ; that she had often conversed with her 
 cousin about George Eliot ; and especially concerning 
 the marriage with George H. Lewes ; that she had 
 repeatedly heard Mrs. Cash declare that George Eliot 
 had told her more than once that the legality of her 
 marriage with Mr. Lewes was purely a matter of geo- 
 graphy, that while it was illegal in England it was 
 legal in Germany w^here a marriage ceremony had 
 actually been performed. Even if such a ceremony 
 did take place abroad it was utterly wanting in the 
 sanction of law at home. 
 
 For many grave reasons such a marriage at its 
 best must be ever most undesirable. Doubtless, 
 irregular unions of this sort are more or less perilous 
 to society. To take up such a position must entail 
 unhappy consequences. Eor a great teacher and pro- 
 found genius like George Eliot to have done this was, 
 to say the least, unfortunate. One can never cease 
 to deplore it both for her own sake and in the interests 
 of society at large. A considerable share of the 
 blame, however, must attach to the defective state of 
 the laws. There is not a line to be quoted from 
 either of the parties to show that the conscience of 
 either of them was for one moment uneasy with re- 
 gard to their union. On the contrary, there is ample 
 proof that she always considered it one of the chief 
 blessings that had been given to her. The dedications 
 to her several books, so expressive and sincere, are 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 From Sir Frederick W. Burton's Drawing (1865) in the National Portrait Gallerv 
 Reproduced by kind permission of Henry B. Burton, Esq. 
 
MARRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 279 
 
 unquestionably proof of that. After Mr. Lewes' de- 
 cease the writer received from George Ehot a touching 
 and plaintive letter showing how deeply she felt her 
 bereavement. It was the great surging sorrow of 
 her life. As for Lewes, it w^as impossible to be in 
 his company without perceiving his adoring affection 
 and honest pride in the rare woman who had conferred 
 on him and his sons the great blessedness of being a 
 true wife to him and gentle mother to them. Her 
 chief biographer tells us that this irregular union of 
 hers must be judged by its results. Following this 
 rule we may fearlessly assert that to all the parties 
 concerned the issues were exceptionally happy. The 
 husband found a true help-meet in his w^ife, while she 
 ever considered his tender and watchful love one of 
 her chiefest blessings ; the sons obtained an affection- 
 ate, solicitous and helpful mother, who made their 
 domestic happiness and their promotion in life one 
 of her chief concerns. 1 have read most enthusiastic 
 expressions of their gratitude. 
 
 One of these was given in the " Times " not very 
 long ago. A lady friend of the late Mr. Charles Lewes, 
 the eldest son of Mr. G. H. Lewes, reports a conversa- 
 tion she had with Mr. Charles Lewes only a very little 
 while prior to his lamented decease in Egypt. She 
 made bold to ask whether it was true that G. H. Lewes 
 left his family owing to the influence of George Eliot? 
 "It is a wicked falsehood " was his answer. '* My 
 mother had left my father before he and George Eliot 
 had ever met each other. George Eliot found a ruined 
 hfe and she made it into a beautiful life. She found 
 us poor little motherless boys, and what she did for us 
 no one on earth will ever know. I am the son of the 
 woman whom people say w^as wronged by George Eliot. 
 
280 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 I have told you the real truth of the matter and you 
 have my authority to repeat it wherever and whenever 
 such a statement is made in your presence." 
 
 With regard to Mr. G. H. Lewies it must be con- 
 ceded that he fulfilled to perfection the duties of a 
 fond and faithful husband. It was given to the de- 
 voted pair to dwell together in the gentle amenities 
 of a mutually helpful union for nearly a quarter of a 
 century. Nothing occurred to mar the happiness 
 they enjoyed in each other's society till death rent 
 them in twain. There can be no doubt that George 
 H. Lewes w^as the very person to nurture and en- 
 courage the literary genius of George Eliot. It was 
 he w^ho most thoroughly appreciated her miscellane- 
 ous writings and divined the secret, undiscovered by 
 herself, that she possessed a capacity for the highest 
 fiction. George Henry Lewes discovered George 
 Eliot. It was his admiring and imperative saying 
 ' ' You must try and WTite a story ' ' that started her 
 on her great career in the world of letters. He was 
 himself a keen and facile critic. He had for her 
 literary talent the most exalted admiration, and she 
 reposed in his judgment the serenest confidence. She 
 was diffident, and often despaired of her own powers 
 to accomplish anything. She needed someone who 
 could appreciate her great gifts, and on whom slje could 
 implicitly lean. Years earlier she had written of her 
 " ivy-like instincts." Hence the world is very much 
 indebted to G. H. Lewes for the long series of books 
 which bear the name of George Eliot. It was he 
 who set her forward in the track in which she won 
 such brilliant fame, and as far as we are able to judge 
 it appears to be probable that but for the encourage- 
 ment which he so lovingly contributed, her great 
 
Mx\RRIAGE WITH GEORGE H. LEWES 281 
 
 career would have been impossible to her. On the 
 other hand, the effect of his union with George Eliot 
 has been spoken of as the redemption of George H. 
 Lewes. There is truth in that statement. Irregu- 
 lar as the union confessedly was, and therefore in an 
 important sense to be deplored, yet considering its 
 results it is not too much to say : 
 
 " 'Twas so decreed, 'twas part of Nature's plan. 
 And all in vain we strive her works to scan ; 
 Each soul had found its true affinity. 
 
 She was his woman named, he pre-ordained her man." 
 
 George Eliot's ideal, as expressed in her own choice 
 words, was realised for a quarter of a century, in her 
 marriage union with Geo. H. Lewes : 
 
 ''What greater thing is there for two human souls than to 
 feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in 
 all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minis- 
 ter to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in 
 silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last 
 parting." 
 
 Even so was it in the marriage in question. 
 
 But I pause. My role is not that of the advocate, 
 but that of an honest narrator of facts. Professor 
 Newman's earnest voice still sounds in my ears. I 
 feel the force of his judgment that the plain facts 
 should be narrated. I have hoped that others would 
 discharge this duty, and so fulfil the purpose my social 
 leader and friend. Professor Newman, deemed to be 
 so necessary. For me the shadows of the day are 
 swiftly lengthening, and 1 feel a marked satisfaction 
 in putting upon record this statement of a most im- 
 portant history. I fondly hope that it may place in 
 a clearer light facts which have produced a most pain- 
 
282 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 ful impression on many serious minds and that it will 
 be a relief to thousands of the sincere admirers of a 
 great writer. It is a service I am thankful to have 
 done before the day has sunk too low. 
 
CHAPTEK XVI 
 
 THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 " I have a life with Christ to live, 
 
 But ere I live it, must I wait 
 Till learning can clear answer give 
 
 Of this and that book's date? 
 I have a life in Christ to live, 
 
 I have a death in Christ to die ; 
 But must 1 wait till science give 
 
 All doubts a full reply? 
 No, rather while the sea of doubt 
 Is raging wildly round about. 
 Questioning of life and death and sin, 
 Let me but creep within 
 Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet. 
 Take but the lowest seat, 
 And hear Thy awful voice repeat, 
 In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet, 
 
 ' Come unto Me and rest ; 
 Believe Me, and be blest.' " 
 
 Professor Sharp. 
 
 Our Scotch divine has here expressed for us the 
 true attitude of faith in relation to the dark question- 
 ings and the searching criticisms of modern unbelief. 
 The poem is too lengthy for a motto, but it har- 
 monises so completely with my own inner feeling that 
 I cannot resist the temptation of placing it at the head 
 of the present chapter. For myself, I rest in the 
 clear vision of a satisfied, adoring faith. There was 
 a period when I tumbled for a while in a sea of doubt. 
 
 283 
 
284 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 That, however, is long ago. I have now a realm of 
 inner consciousness, all my ow^n, in which certainty 
 abides with me, and voices from unseen spheres are 
 melodious in my ears. I introduce this confession of 
 restful, hallowing faith because I have much to say of 
 doubt and unbelief, in this chapter, and w^ould first 
 make my own position clear. It is that of a 
 single-minded believer w^hose soul is filled with 
 rapturous joy, and whose w^hole life is musical with 
 praise. All the more do I sympathise with such as 
 have never known, or any who have unfortunately 
 lost, the firm anchorage of a steadfast faith. Un- 
 fortunately, did I say? I deem it unfortunate, indeed, 
 to be bereft of the adoring heaven of faith. To me, 
 a life without faith appears to be a life maimed and 
 incomplete. I cannot but lament its absence in 
 any human creature as a deprivation and a mis- 
 fortune. I cannot but deplore much that happened 
 in the religious history of George Eliot. My first 
 intelligence of her was with regard to her religious 
 rebellion against the creed of her beloved father. 
 
 Eesiding in Staffordshire, back in the forties, War- 
 wickshire was, to us, a region far away. There 
 we knew that our relative , the original of Adam 
 Bede, resided in prosperity and comfort. We knew 
 that he was a person valued for his worth and highly 
 esteemed by a circle of aristocratic landowners, who 
 profited by his services. Occasionally we saw him in 
 Staffordshire, for there were funerals of our mutual 
 relatives at Ellastone and Waterhouses, and there 
 were other occasions when he came as a visiter 
 to the scenes of his early life. We knew 
 that he was now residing in the neighbourhood of 
 Coventry in semi-retirement, and that his youngest 
 
THE KELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 285 
 
 daughter (George Eliot) was keeping house for him 
 there. All at once we were shocked to learn that the 
 daughter had turned rebel to her father's religion, and 
 we deemed this a daring and revolting deed. We 
 regarded him as an exceptional man. To us he was 
 a model of uprightness, devoutness, capacity and suc- 
 cess. " My brother Eobert " was a phrase pro- 
 nounced by my grandmother w4th the largest satisfac- 
 tion and with fond sisterly pride. " Uncle Eobert " 
 was a title of honour with my own dear mother, who 
 was named after his eldest daughter. And to learn that 
 his youngest daughter, Mary Ann, not j^et known as 
 George Eliot, had renounced her father's rehgion, 
 had refused any longer to accompany him to church, 
 and was altogether in a state of mental rebellion 
 against his faith, did not exalt that young lady in our 
 esteem. We could do no other than think of her as 
 an undutiful child, who, in her religious revolt, had 
 shown both folly and ingratitude. " Infidel " was a 
 name of blackest omen to us up there, and the term 
 " Unitarian," which I then for the first time heard, 
 was only one shade less objectionable. My mother's 
 horror of infidel books I can never forget. To us it was 
 unaccountable, on any rational considerations, that 
 the daughter of Adam Bede should have assumed the 
 character of an unbeliever, and should have quarrelled 
 with and separated from so good a father on the 
 grounds of religious faith. We knew that the dis- 
 pute had been outwardly healed, that she had resumed 
 her attendances at church out of deference to her 
 father's desire, but we could do no other than think of 
 the future George Eliot as a person whose declension 
 from right w^ays was to be mourned over, and whose 
 delinquency was of an aggravated kind. This would be 
 
286 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 about sixty years ago. Of course, in our insular narrow- 
 ness, our views as to the heinous conduct of our relative 
 were grossly exaggerated, but not more incorrect than 
 some opinions about her which are current to-day. In 
 the Strand Magazine for 1903, there is an article en- 
 titled : "Three-score Years and Ten." It purports to be 
 a conversation between an aged member of an old Eng- 
 lish family and his grandson, the heir to his title and 
 estates. The old gentleman is instructing his suc- 
 cessor on the state of things in England when he was 
 a young man. 
 
 " Not that the peerage is immaculate to-day. Only that the 
 nobility flaunted their vice, whereas now they discreetly con- 
 ceal it among their own set." 
 
 "What has caused the difference, grandfather?" 
 
 " Women, my boy. The women of my young days were 
 sweet, good and alluring. But they were not well educated. 
 They could be protected and pampered, or be ill-treated and 
 neglected. But they were never on an equal footing with 
 men. Much of the emancipation was due to the Queen, a 
 good deal to George Eliot, who wrote in reprobation of what 
 she had herself done — a thing you will hear of later in life.'''' 
 
 The words I have placed in itahcs represent 
 opinions of George Eliot which largely prevail. These 
 criticisms are not altogether of a recent date. Id 
 the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1887, Mr. Fer- 
 rars Fenton writes of George Eliot as a " backslider ' 
 who was a source of pain and shame to her family 
 "It struck me," says this writer, "that she wrote 
 out of the anguish of her secret heart, at the impossi- 
 bility of ever undoing the wrong to her mind, soul and 
 honour, her self-will and strong passions had plunged 
 her into. She seems to have been always looking,' 
 back on the pure life of the village with a longing re- 
 
TOMB OF GEORGE ELIOT's BROTHER, ISAAC EVANS, CHII.VERS COTOX 
 
 CHIRCHYARD 
 
 (Tom Tulliver of The Mill on the Floss.) 
 

THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 289 
 
 morse and despair such as Eve might have looked back 
 with to the Eden she had quitted, and to which she 
 knew there was no return." 
 
 In hke manner, the first article in T.P.'s Weekly 
 was a slashing and sensational leader by T.P. himself, 
 in which he boldl}^ asserted that George Eliot's w^orks 
 are to be accepted from her as a penance and atone- 
 ment for her breach of morality and law. In the 
 Strand she is said to have written in reproba- 
 tion of what she herself had done. This is a charge of 
 grave inconsistency if not of downright hypocrisy. 
 I have no hesitation in saying that all such conclu- 
 sions are as wide as possible from the mark. There 
 is nothing, I am sure, that George Eliot would more 
 earnestly have deprecated than that suspicions like 
 these should attach to her name, or that deductions so 
 compromising should be drawn from her writings, 
 both alike injurious to the cause of morality and re- 
 ligion. All through life she was a reverent and 
 deeply religious soul, in spite of her agnosticism. To 
 charge her with conscious and wilful immorality is an 
 outrage. To profess to do her honour by insinuating 
 that her conduct and her teachings were at variance is 
 to degrade her memory. Np more conscientious 
 woman ever lived. In the preceding chapter I have set 
 down the facts as to her marriage relation with George 
 H. Lewes. It is on this union that the unfavourable 
 judgments passed upon her are wholly based. With 
 the knowledge of this in his mind, a learned 
 canon of the Established Church denounced George 
 Eliot, in my hearing, as an immoral and aban- 
 doned woman. And yet, in reality, there was 
 no act of George Eliot's life which she re- 
 garded as more truly moral and upright than this 
 
 20 ♦ 
 
290 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 union. In it she accepted the responsibilities of a 
 true wife and a vicarious mother, and all the parties 
 concerned most gratefully testified that she fulfilled 
 such duties to perfection. .The husband's pride in 
 her and devotion to her were beautiful to behold. His 
 son, after her decease, defended her against every 
 aspersion, and blessed her memory. It is quite time 
 that the severe moral judgments I have complained of 
 should be revised. Surely the day is coming when 
 such harsh condemnations and groundless speculations 
 and guesses should for ever cease. In every respect 
 they are unwarrantable, and therefore injurious. In 
 relation to her first marriage union, whether it were 
 right or wrong in the judgment of others, the con- 
 science of George Eliot held both herself and her hus- 
 band entirely blameless. 
 
 In outlining the religious life of this great woman, 
 it is important to dwell upon the spiritual influences of 
 her childhood. Naturally one looks first at her home 
 and family. The father was a devout churchman, and 
 w^e learn that he was one of those thorough-going Con- 
 formists who accepted the Church as the true and pro- 
 per expression of the nation's religious life. He saw 
 no need for questionings or doubts. His brother Seth 
 Bede tells us in his memoirs that Adam was, even 
 in early years, a high churchman. Of course, this 
 designation had altogether a different meaning prior 
 to the Tractarian movement. In this case it meant 
 no more than such an attachment to the Established 
 Church as shut out any kind of leanings to any other 
 communion, accepted the church system as authorita- 
 tive and divine. His daughter tells us that Adam 
 Bede, her father, thought but little of such persons as 
 did not agree with him in this respect. Here you 
 

I 
 
 ,X3R-AJ^ 
 
 THE ^^ 
 
 UKllVERSITY m 
 
THE REMGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 293 
 
 have the picture of a good man with a rigid ecclesias- 
 tical system, and a set of ideas wholly lacking in elas- 
 ticity and breadth. If anyone will consider the 
 revelations in ** The Mill on the Floss " concerning 
 the Dodson family, he will see how the religious feel- 
 ings on the mother's side harmonised with those of 
 the father. 
 
 " The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever 
 was customary and respectable; it was necessary to be bap- 
 tised, else one could not be buried in the churchyard, and to 
 take the sacrament before death as a security against more 
 dimly understood perils ; but it was of actual necessity to have 
 the proper pall-bearers and well-cured hams at one's funeral, 
 and to leave an unimpeachable will." 
 
 There can be no doubt that, by the Dodson 's, 
 George Eliot intended her mother's family. It may 
 be an insoluble mystery why such a mind as that of 
 George Eliot should issue from such a parent stock, 
 but being there, one might conclude that it would not 
 for long be bound within the cramped confines of the 
 religious life of the home. .Schools had also a very 
 potent religious influence on the mind of George Eliot. 
 In the one she attended at Nuneaton, one of the 
 teachers, Miss Lewis, was a very devout Christian 
 woman to whom her pupil became deeply attached. 
 She was an evangelical church woman. The teaching 
 at the parish church was also evangelical, with a de- 
 cided Calvinistic tendency. At this early age there 
 came a definite religious experience and a full accept- 
 ance of the Calvinistic system. The change to the 
 Misses Franklin's school at Coventry only accentuated 
 these influences. Here she became a leader in ex- 
 ercises of religion among the girls. Influenced by re- 
 ligious ideas she became a parish worker on leaving 
 
294 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 school, and was in every way a model of Christian life 
 and activity up to the time of becoming a resident in 
 Coventry in 1841, when she had attained the age of 
 twenty-one years. Her life was lived apart. This 
 she strongly felt at this time, and expressed herself 
 thus : 
 
 " I have no one who enters into my pleasures, or my griefs: 
 no one with whom I can pour out my soul ; no one with the 
 same yearnings, the same temptations, the same delights as 
 myself." 
 
 How her mind evolved the social question on its 
 religious side we may see by another extract : 
 
 " The prevalence of misery and want in this boasted nation 
 of prosperity and glory is appalling, and really seems to call us 
 away from mental luxury. O, to be doing some little towards 
 the regeneration of this groaning, travailing creation ! I am 
 supine and stupid — overfed with favors — while the haggard 
 looks and piercing glance of want and conscious hopelessness 
 are to be seen in the streets." 
 
 One other extract will show^ the depth and intensity 
 of George Eliot's spiritual life at this time. It w^as 
 written concerning her engagement in household 
 duties, just prior to the break-up of the dear old home 
 at Griff : 
 
 *' I have had much of this kind of occupation lately, and I 
 grieve to say I have not gone through it so cheerfully as the 
 character of a Christian, who professes to do all, even the 
 most trifling, duty, as the Lord demands." 
 
 The Christian ideal here is very high, the introspec- 
 tion and consequent self -judgment are searching and 
 severe. Two things stand out at this period. A low 
 state of physical health recalling the chills of the 
 Attleborough boarding-school, and a constant com- 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 295 
 
 plaint of her low attainments in the Christian calling. 
 In these quotations we may see the ground prepared 
 and ready for that kind of development w^hich came 
 with such amazing rapidity after the removal to 
 Coventry? Miss Sibree, a daughter of the late Eev. 
 John Sibree, a well-known Congregational minister 
 at Coventry, a pupil, and one of her correspondents, 
 gives another glance at the inner life of George Eliot 
 at this time. This shows that her view^ of the claims 
 of evangelical piety compelling her, she at one time 
 sacrificed the cultivation of her intellect and even re- 
 linquished a proper regard to personal appearance. 
 " I used to go about like an owl, to the great disgust 
 of my brother, and I would have denied him what I 
 now see to have been quite lawful amusements." Do 
 we not see here a young soul strung up to too high a 
 pitch? She had her sincere speculations too. She 
 was earnestly bent '* to shape this anomalous English 
 Christian life of ours into some consistency with the 
 spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament." 
 The piety of George Eliot up to 1842 was deeply 
 genuine, without a doubt it was intensely practical 
 and all engrossing, but it may be questioned whether 
 it w^as natural and healthy. Very rapidly the change 
 came. Being introduced into friendship with a very 
 intellectual circle in Coventry, whose freedom in re- 
 ligious thought was linked to great personal attractive- 
 ness and moral goodness, she began to read and study 
 a book wTitten by one of the circle entitled : " An 
 enquiry concerning the origin of Christianity." In 
 this book the author entirely rejects the supernatural 
 and miraculous origin of the religion of Christ, and 
 accounts for it on other grounds. The book brought 
 with it an instantaneous revolution. From the de- 
 
296 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 vout believer, George Eliot at one great bound swung 
 round to the position of an agnostic. But it was 
 against Calvinistic dogma that she revolted. She 
 said : 
 
 " Calvinism is Christianity, and that granted, it is a religion 
 of pure selfishness." 
 
 There are few Christian teachers to-day w^ho would 
 allow that " Calvinism is Christianity." Even if it 
 were so, however, the history of religion in Europe 
 the last three hundred years w^ould show that the 
 Calvinian creed has done great things and has pro- 
 duced much that does not square with '* pure selfish- 
 ness." But the die was cast, and George Eliot never 
 regained her faith. In the change, however, from 
 Calvinism and evangelicalism to doubt she was per- 
 fectly honest and sincere. Nor when she had ceased 
 to hold the Christian faith did she cease to be religious. 
 Is there no such thing as a practical adherence to the 
 spiritual life apart from intellectual dogmas? Is 
 there no going forth of the light which lighteth every 
 one that cometh into the world beyond the circle of 
 the professed adherents of the church of the Saviour? 
 Very few enlightened believers in these days would 
 answer these questions in the negative. Even in 
 the bosom of the Church of Christ itself there has been 
 a silent revolution. The old Calvinism is all but 
 gone. In the case of the fine old Independent minis- 
 ter portrayed in Felix Holt, it was already relaxing its 
 grip. The Eev. Kufus Lyon, we are told, theological 
 as he was, and given to " sectarian phraseology," and, 
 moreover, an " old-fashioned Puritan," had neverthe- 
 less felt the broadening process. He says : 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 297 
 
 " I would not wantonly grasp at ease of mind through an 
 arbitrary choice of doctrine, yet, I cannot but believe that 
 the merits of the Divine Sacrifice are wider than our utmost 
 charity. I once believed otherwise — but not now, not now." 
 
 The congregation in the chapel yard at Treby 
 Magna had given signs of some uneasiness on account 
 of this broadening of the minister's doctrinal views, a 
 fact which indicates a tolerably wide movement that 
 has travelled far since the days of Rufus Lyon. How 
 well I remember a recital to me by a popular Baptist 
 minister some forty-five years ago. He was a prolific 
 author as well as a powerful preacher. He told us 
 how that he had been the minister, in his earliest 
 pastorate, of a strict communion Baptist church, 
 that he had even believed in the reprobation of little 
 children, and had preached that horrible doctrine from 
 the pulpit as a part of the divine revelation. Then, 
 his own little boy of eight years of age lay dead before 
 his eyes. Now the love of the father's heart came 
 into conflict with the rigorous logic of the preacher's 
 inhuman creed. When he came to contemplate the 
 possibility of the eternal reprobation of his ow^n dead 
 child, his whole nature rebelled against such doctrine 
 and he was comforted. Naturally, his preaching was 
 modified, and his congregation took alarm, as did that 
 of Rufus Lyon. This led to a separation, to services 
 for awhile in the town hall, then to the erection of 
 the largest Nonconformist church in the district, 
 which is, to this day, a centre of vigorous life and 
 energy. 
 
 I cannot but think that warped and narrow 
 ecclesiastical and doctrinal views, which are in them- 
 selves no necessary part of the Christian system, have 
 far too often been an occasion of stumbling, and have 
 
298 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 hastened the revolt to unbeHef of an order of minds 
 which were naturally of a superior cast, and only 
 longed for a larger intellectual freedom. Many of us 
 remember both as advocate and judge, the late silver- 
 tongued Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. He tells us 
 that he once confessed to the saintly John Keble that 
 he was sorely perplexed on the question of Inspiration. 
 The answer he received was that " most of the men 
 who had difficulties on that subject were too wicked to 
 be reasoned with." I do not think that any dogmatic 
 utterance could be farther from the truth or more 
 unfortunate. Who is there among us, having known 
 any large number of persons inclined to agnosticism, 
 who has not found with them a lofty sense of honour, 
 strict regard and sacred homage for truth, combined 
 w^ith a life upright and altruistic? Perchance it may 
 be that the shortcomings of Christians, their palpable 
 worldliness and inconsistency have alienated many 
 upright minds from the Christian faith. At the great 
 mission to the working classes carried on some forty 
 years in the Lambeth Baths, I used to meet with 
 many of the most influential secularists and socialists 
 of the day. The oft-repeated argument against 
 Christianity was not against the morality, the ethics, 
 or even the divine authority of Jesus, but against the 
 faulty morality, the low ideals, the w^orldly-minded- 
 ness, the injustice and selfish rapacity of many pro- 
 fessing Christians. One had to say that even the 
 best of us were but imperfect Christians. Just as 
 some natives have said to Englishmen abroad, having 
 first read our Bible : " You are not according to your 
 book," so, alas, with many of us, striving to be like 
 our Lord, we fall lamentably short of our ideal. How 
 often has this been a cause of stumbling. Statements 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 299 
 
 by Froude and Lecky prove that a too confident dog- 
 matism makes sceptics, as in the case of the Oxford 
 movement. The leaders virtually demanded: "Be- 
 lieve this or nothing." Many courageous minds, we 
 are told, took them instantly at their word, and be- 
 came unbelievers. I think that rampant superstition 
 and lifeless orthodoxy are accountable for much un- 
 belief, while the modern tendency to materialism and 
 pessimism operate in the same direction. Whatever 
 the causes might have been which brought about the 
 loss of faith in the case of George Eliot, its bright and 
 holy joy was never recovered. Thirty eight years 
 followed, years of strenuous literary labour and high 
 philosophic thought, but with no return of faith in the 
 true and proper sense of the word. I cannot but 
 regard this as a great calamity to herself, and to the 
 world at large. But in her darkest hour of unbelief 
 I am of opinion that George Eliot was much more 
 Christian than she knew, and that the influence of her 
 past Christian experience was never entirely lost. 
 There is a luminous passage on this point in the 
 British Weekly of June 5th, 1902. The able writer 
 says : 
 
 *' When George Eliot appeared as a novelist, the multitudes 
 of her readers perceived at once that she knew the secrets of 
 the Spiritual life. No one can get up Christianity so as to 
 deceive a Christian. Theology, of course, may be got up. But 
 the religion of the heart cannot be feigned. This is the great 
 
 peculiarity of George Eliot's position The fact that she 
 
 had passed through the Christian experience, and maintained 
 throughout her life a grave and reverent regard for it, power- 
 fully contributed to her popularity and her influence. ... So 
 far as her writings go, she appears to accept in full the ethics 
 of Christianity. Perhaps the most important passage in her 
 letters bearing on this point is the following : ' My soul 
 heartily responds to your rejoicing that society is attaining a 
 
300 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's exhortation : Let 
 the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. I 
 l)elieve the amen to this will be uttered more and more fer- 
 vently among all posterities for evermore.' " 
 
 It is thus both instructive and gratifying to note the 
 attitude she assumed towards religion. It is really a 
 most interesting study. In the works of George Eliot 
 which remain as an active and abiding force in the 
 world's literary thought, who ever found a sentence 
 written in antagonism to religion? Too well she 
 knew what the loss of faith entailed. Her own say- 
 ings are her witness here. Mr. John Morley, M.P., 
 in an article in Macmillan's Magazine, says that after 
 her revolt from the creeds of her youth and before 
 she was thirty years old, her rehgious and moral sym- 
 pathy with the historical life of man had become the 
 new seed of a positive faith and a semi-conservative 
 ■creed. This assertion is borne out by several declara- 
 tions of George Eliot herself. Take the following : 
 
 " Pray don't ask me ever again not to rob a man of his 
 religious belief, as if you thought my mind tended to such 
 robbery. I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that 
 lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes 
 with no faith, to have any negative propagandism in me. In 
 fact, I have very little sympathy with Freethinkers as a class, 
 and have lost all interest in mere antagonism to religious doc- 
 trines. I care only to know, if possible, the last meaning that 
 lies in all religious doctrines from the beginning till now." 
 
 This is not the attitude of a blatant and aggressive 
 unbeliever, but the expression of a truly reverent soul. 
 Even as early as 1859, writing to her Genevan friend 
 IM. D' Albert, she states that she had abandoned the 
 •old spirit of antagonism which had possessed her ten 
 jears before. She now sympathises with any faith 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 301 
 
 in which human sorrow and human longing for purity 
 have expressed themselves. She thinks, too, that 
 Christianity is the highest expression of rehgious sen- 
 timent that has yet found its place in the history of 
 mankind, and has the profoundest interest in the 
 inward hfe of sincere Christians in all ages. 
 
 And yet we are not to think of her as anything but 
 an unbeliever. We cannot but remember with keen 
 interest and mental pain that despairing utterance re- 
 vealed to us by the late Mr. F. W. H. Myers in the 
 Century Magazine of November, 1881. I present it 
 in the author's ow^n w^ords : 
 
 " I remember how, at Cambridge, I walked with her once in 
 the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May ; 
 and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her 
 text the three words which have been used so often as the in- 
 spiring trumpet calls of men — the words God, Immortality, 
 Dutj' — pronounced with terrible earnestness how inconceivable 
 was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how im- 
 perative and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, have sterner 
 accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecom- 
 pensing Law. I listened, and night fell ; her grave, majestic 
 countenance turned to me like a sibyl's in the gloom ; it was 
 as though she withdrew from my grasp one by one the two 
 scrolls of promise and left me the third scroll only, awful with 
 inevitable fates. And when we stood at length and parted, 
 amid that columnar circuit of the forest trees, beneath the last 
 twilight of starless skies, I seemed to be gazing like Titus at 
 Jerusalem on vacant seats and empty halls — on a sanctuary 
 with no presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a 
 God." 
 
 For such a state of mind I have my own simile. T 
 have often visited that w^eird yet lovely ruin, the 
 picturesque Tintern Abbey. Awed by its fallen 
 grandeur I have thought of it roofed and pinnacled 
 
302 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 and filled with crowds of eager worshippers. I have 
 heard the organ peahng among the now silent arches, 
 and earth answering to heaven in strains of music and 
 song. The soul bereft of faith is like the dismantled 
 abbey. Its songs of triumph have ceased. Its strains 
 of music are stilled, the harp hangs silent on the wil- 
 lows, and the sacred minstrelsy sounds no more. Hope 
 has fled and gloom and despondency have usurped its 
 place. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, George Eliot 
 had a tendency to a low state of physical health from 
 her childhood onward, and to more or less mental 
 despondency, so much so that I should not wonder if 
 there were some subtle connection between these 
 things and her sombre unbelief. But, while her 
 friend, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, lifts the veil that we may 
 see how far the heaven of the soul had become clouded 
 over with doubt, he also helps us to understand how it 
 is that this dismal unbelief does not shut out the 
 possibility of another form of religious life which is 
 very real and very potent, though wanting in joyous 
 iaitli. Later in life, through the influence of psycho- 
 logical investigation, Mr. Myers came to a very definite 
 belief in an unseen world of living realities and says : 
 "If it had not been for this, in a hundred years no 
 one would have believed in the spiritual realm at all. 
 But because of it, and as the result of it, in twenty- 
 five years no reputable man of science will question 
 the fact of the resurrection of Jesus." Had George 
 Eliot lived a few years longer, perhaps she also might 
 have seen re-erected for her the stately temple of 
 faith. 
 
 So far, however, as one can see, the words of Zang- 
 will express her attitude to the last, on the side of the 
 intellect, at least : 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 303 
 
 " The nymphs are gone, the fairies flown. 
 The olden presence is unknown, 
 The ancient gods for ever fled, 
 The stars are silent overhead ; 
 The music of the spheres is still, 
 The night is dark, the wind is chill ; 
 The later gods have followed Pan ; 
 And man is left alone with man." 
 
 Can there be a religion, then? Yes, says ]\Ir. 
 Myers, and this is the rehgion of George Eliot. He 
 shall describe it for us. She lacked, he says, " some 
 aroma of hope, some fehcity of virtue," but, neverthe- 
 less she worked out practically " The expansion of 
 the sense of human fellowship into an influence strong 
 enough to compel us to live for others, even though it 
 be beneath the on-coming shadow of an endless 
 night." The urgent and obvious motives of well- 
 doing with her were " our love and pity for our fellow- 
 men." One might naturally ask where do these hi^h 
 qualities find sach fall and beneficent flow as in th^ 
 life of Jesus of Nazareth? But though faith be not 
 there, there is religion, beautiful and blessed, and 
 while not the highest, yet influenced by the Christ 
 more than she knew. 
 
 There is a little book written under very pathetic 
 
 circumstances, as its author was consciousl}^ slipping 
 
 down to death while he wrote it, which helps us to 
 
 gauge the religious message of George Eliot's works. 
 
 This book received the imprimatur of the great 
 
 author's approval, as no other criticism of her works 
 
 had done. Its theory received her own endorsement. 
 
 The author had penetrated her secret. The principle 
 
 which he lays down is this : 
 
 " That the highest life of man only begins when he begins to 
 accept and to bear the Cross; and that the conscious pursuit 
 
304 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 of happiness as his highest aim tends inevitably to enslave him. 
 Even those who read novels more thoughtfully may be startled to 
 find George Eliot put forward as the representative of this 
 higher-toned fiction with which she has laboured to set before 
 us the Christian and therefore the onlv exhaustively true ideal 
 of life." 
 
 "Yet, from the first," says our author, " this thought 
 and the specific purpose of this teaching have never 
 been absent from the writer's mind ; that it may be de- 
 fined as the central aim of all her works ; and that it 
 gathers in force, condensation, and power throughout 
 the series." The writer then traces his central idea 
 through all George Eliot's works, and finds it variously 
 illustrated in every one of them. Herein is a singular 
 compensation for the surrender of faith. This ex- 
 plains why George Eliot's name is so often heard, and 
 worthily so, in so many of our Christian pulpits. In 
 this way, rejecting the theories of inspiration for her- 
 self, she has become an inspired teacher to others. 
 The beautiful divining of this deceased writer has 
 given me a new light on much of George Eliot's work, 
 and exhibits an infinitely nobler purpose than the 
 penance and atonement theory of "T.P." 
 
 It is interesting now to remember that that truly 
 wonderful mediaeval book, the Imitation of Christ was, 
 along with the Scriptures, her life-long companion. 
 In the portrait of Maggie Tulliver, which George Ehot 
 allows grew out of her own early life there is an 
 account of how Bob Jakins brings to Maggie a collec- 
 tion of books for her entertainment in trouble, and the 
 Imitation is one of them. Some searching quotations 
 are given, and we are allowed to see what a hold this 
 singular book obtained on the soul of the enquiring 
 Maggie. Even so was it with George Eliot herself, 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 305 
 
 and it is not without interest to know, on the testi- 
 mony of Mr. F. W. H. Myers, that when she lay dead, 
 on the httle table beside her bed there was found 
 the familiar volume The Imitation of Christ, the last 
 book her eyes had glanced upon. Not long prior to 
 his decease the first husband, finding his wife poring 
 over her small-print Bible, bought for her daily use, 
 to relieve her failing vision, a volume of the Scriptures 
 with larger print. The second husband lets us see 
 how she loved her Bible to the end. He tells us that 
 each day after breakfast it was their custom to read it 
 together, and enhghtens us on the organ tones of her 
 voice as she audibly rendered chapters from the pro- 
 phecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, w^hich were portions 
 specially favoured, together with the epistles of St. 
 Paul. In spite of her unrelieved agnosticism, George 
 Eliot was a better practical Christian than many of 
 us who have never known the night of doubt at all. 
 How can I do better than quote here a poem taken 
 from Harper's Magazine, entitled " George Eliot. 
 Her Jury." 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 HER JURY. 
 
 A LILY rooted in a sacred soil, 
 
 Arrayed with those who neither spin nor toil ; 
 
 Dinah, the preacher, through the purple air, 
 
 Forever in her gentle evening prayer 
 
 Shall plead for Her — what ear too deaf to hear? — 
 
 "As if she spoke to someone very near." 
 
 And he of storied Florence, whose great heart 
 Broke for its human error ; wrapped apart, 
 And scorching in the swift, prophetic flamo. 
 Of passion for late holiness, and shame 
 
 21 
 
306 THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Than untried glory grander, gladder, higher — 
 Deathless, for Her, he "testifies by fire." 
 
 A statue fair and firm on marble feet, 
 
 AVomanhood's woman, Dorothea, sweet 
 
 As strength, and strong as tenderness, to make 
 
 A ''struggle with the dark" for white light's sake. 
 
 Immortal stands, unanswered speaks. Shall they. 
 
 Of Her great hand the moulded, breathing clay, 
 
 Her fit, select, and proud survivors be? — 
 
 Possess the life eternal, and not She? 
 
 The latest intimation of the tenor of George E Hot's 
 behef which has come to me is one that has not 
 hitherto appeared in print. It pertains to the last few 
 months of her life. To a dear relation, of whom she 
 was justly proud, she said : "I wish I could believe 
 as you believe." The question was asked : " What is 
 the difficulty?" The answer followed : " Only the 
 miraculous." How this brings to mind the pregnant 
 saying of the sceptical King of Prussia, Frederick II. : 
 " O, happy Zieten, how I wish I could believe it!" 
 Surely, in such a state of mind, however unconquer- 
 able the intellectual difficulties may be, the individual 
 is not far from the Kingdom of God. j 
 
 And now, may I go back a moment to the poem 
 by Principal Sharp ? Is there anything in the dates of 
 canonical books or the doubts unresolved by science 
 to keep us from the life we are called to live in Christ, 
 the work there is given us to do for Him and the 
 death in Him we have to die? Verily, no. It is not 
 much that doubt can do for us. Goethe is reported to 
 have said to one who was always imparting his 
 doubts : " If you are certain of anything tell it to me. 
 I have doubts enough of my own." Both the church 
 and the world want faith rather than doubt, and faith 
 
THE RELIGION OF GEORGE ELIOT 307 
 
 will always justify itself in the life and experience of 
 truly intelligent souls. To them the voice from 
 heaven will be a living experience, radiant with lasting 
 peace : 
 
 " Come unto Me and rest, 
 Believe Me and be blest." 
 
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