George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy Part 5

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, April 17, '79.

MY DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that my mind has more than once gone out to you as one from whom I should like to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an acquaintance with my husband and taskworks.

I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his History of Philosophy, but what would I not have given if the volumes could have come a few days before his death; for his mind was perfectly clear, and he would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not know whether you enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness in which the suffering was comparatively mild.....

One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a ma.n.u.script of mine to the publishers. The book (not a story and not bulky) is to appear near the end of May, and as it contains some words I wanted to say about the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you.

I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is grevious--industry languis.h.i.+ng, and the best part of our nation indignant at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war (in South Africa).

I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on _The Study of Psychology_ will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow, and believe me

Yours with high regard, M.E. LEWES.

Writing to a friend soon after Lewes's death, who had also lost her husband, she said,--

There is but one refuge--the having much to do. Nothing can make the burden to be patiently borne, except the gradual adaptation of your soul to the new conditions.

The much to do she partly found in editing the uncompleted _Problems of Life and Mind_, and in establis.h.i.+ng a students.h.i.+p for original investigation in physiology, known as "The George Henry Lewes Students.h.i.+p."

Its value is about two hundred pounds, and it is open to both s.e.xes. These labors enabled her to do honor to one she had trusted through many years, whose name and fame she greatly revered, and to recover the even poise of her life. She carefully managed the business affairs he had left in her hands, and she provided for his children.

A year and a half after the death of Lewes, May 6, 1880, she was married at the church of St. George's, Hanover Square, to John Walter Cross, the senior partner in a London banking firm, whom she had first met in 1867, and who had been a greatly valued friend both to herself and Lewes. Though much younger than herself, he had many qualities to recommend him to her regard. A visit to the continent after this ceremony lasted for several months, a considerable portion of the time being spent in Venice. On their return to London in the autumn after spending a happy summer in Surrey, they went to live in the house of Mr. Cross at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The old habits of her life were taken up, her studies were resumed, a new novel was begun, her friends came as usual on Sunday afternoons, and many years of work seemed before her, for her health had greatly improved. On Friday, December 17, 1880, she attended the presentation of the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, in the original Greek, with the accompaniments of the ancient theatre, by the undergraduates of Balliol College, Oxford. She was very enthusiastic about this revival of ancient art, and planned to read anew all the Greek dramatists with her husband. The next day she attended a popular concert at St. James Hall, and listened with her usual intense interest. Sitting in a draught, she caught cold, but that evening she played through much of the music she had heard in the afternoon. The next day she was not so well as usual, yet she met her friends in the afternoon.

On Monday her larynx was slightly affected, and a physician was called, but no danger was apprehended. Yet her malady gained rapidly. On Tuesday night she was in a dangerous condition, and on Wednesday the pericardium was found to be seriously diseased. Towards midnight of that day, December 22, after a period of unconsciousness, she quietly pa.s.sed away. She was buried on the 29th, in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery, by the side of George Henry Lewes. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Dr.

Sadler, a radical Unitarian minister, who spoke of her great genius, and quoted her own words about a future life in the life of humanity. His address contained many references to her personal characteristics, such as could only come from an intimate friend. He said,--

"To those who are present it is given to think of the gentleness, and delicate womanly grace and charm, which were combined with 'that breadth of culture and universality of power which,' as one has expressed it, 'have made her known to all the world.' To those who are present it is given to know the diffidence and self-distrust which, notwithstanding all her public fame, needed individual sympathy and encouragement to prevent her from feeling too keenly how far the results of her labors fell below the standard she had set before her. To those who are present too it may be given--though there is so large a number to whom it is not given--to understand how a nature may be profoundly devout, and yet unable to accept a great deal of what is usually held as religious belief. No intellectual difficulties or uncertainties, no sense of mental incapacity to climb the heights of infinitude, could take from her the piety of the affections or 'the beliefs which were the mother-tongue of her soul.' I cannot doubt that she spoke out of the fulness of her own heart when she put into the lips of another the words, 'May not a man silence his awe or his love and take to finding reasons which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any reasons to be found!' How patiently she toiled to render her work in all its details as little imperfect as might be! How green she kept the remembrance of all those companions to whom she felt that she owed a moulding and elevating influence, especially in her old home, and of him who was its head, her father! How her heart glowed with a desire to help to make a heaven on earth, to be a 'cup of strength' to others, and when her own days on earth should have closed, to have a place among those

"'Immortal dead who still live on In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rect.i.tude; in scorn For miserable aims that end with sell; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.'

"How she thus yearned 'to join the choir invisible, whose music is the gladness of the world!' All this is known to those who had the privilege of being near her."

The address was preceded by a simple burial service, and was followed by a prayer, all being given in the chapel of the cemetery. The coffin, covered with the finest floral tributes, was then borne to the grave, where the burial service was completed, and was followed by a prayer and the benediction. Although the day was a disagreeable one and rain was falling, the chapel was crowded, and many not being able to gain admittance stood about the open grave. Beside her personal friends and her family there were present many persons noted for their literary or scientific attainments, On the lid of the coffin was this inscription:

MARY ANN CROSS.

("George Eliot") Born 22d Nov., 1819; died 22d Dec., 1880.

Quilla fonte Che spande di parlay si largo flume.

[Footnote: From Dante, and has been rendered into English thus:

That fountain Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech.]

The novel which had been begun was left a mere fragment, and in accordance with what it was thought would have been her wish, was destroyed by her family. Perhaps it was better that her dislike of unfinished work should be so respected.

VI.

LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES.

George Eliot was a painstaking, laborious writer. She did not proceed rapidly, so carefully did she elaborate her pages. Her subjects were thoroughly studied before the pen was taken in hand, patiently thought out, planned with much care, and all available helps secured that could be had.

She threw her whole life into her work, became a part of the scenes she was depicting; her life was absorbed until the work of writing became a painful process both to body and mind. "Her beautifully written ma.n.u.script," says her publisher, "free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her ill.u.s.trations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of Adam Bede and Stradivarius."

When a book was completed, so intense had been her application and the absorption of her life in her work, a period of despondency followed. When a correspondent praised _Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion of each of her works,--

Always after finis.h.i.+ng a book I have a period of despair that I can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to one's self to do it.

Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books.

She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of shunning criticism:

MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them.

Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my grat.i.tude. He has carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited in them. Some concluding pa.s.sages which he read aloud to me are such as I register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing.

Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an elder mind with a younger.

The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type both for men and women in the value it a.s.signs to that order of work which is called subordinate but becomes enn.o.bling by being finely done.

[Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations,

M.E. LEWES.

By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of things.

THE PRIORY, 21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73.

[Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.]

Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and a.s.sumes to itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent words:

I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing is s.h.i.+fting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining circ.u.mstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.

To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her dislike of ordinary criticism.

Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with the sense that they may get the best result from a book without necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief obstacle to true culture.

It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and c.u.mming. Even in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr.

Lecky did not pa.s.s gently through her hands when she reviewed his _Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were penetrating and severe.

For the same reason, she read few works of contemporary fiction, that her mind might not be bia.s.sed and that she might not be discouraged in her own work. Always busy with some special subject which absorbed all her time and strength, she could give little attention to contemporary literature. To one correspondent she wrote,--

My constant groan is, that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time.

The style adopted by George Eliot is for the most part fresh, vital and energetic. It is pure in form, rich in ill.u.s.trations, strong and expressive in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her didactic pa.s.sages, she is pure and n.o.ble in her sentiment, poetical and impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An abundance of pa.s.sion, delicate feeling and fine sensibility is expressed.

The critics have almost universally condemned the plots of George Eliot's novels for their want of unity. They tell us that the flow of events is often not orderly, while improbable scenes are introduced, superfluous incidents are common, the number of characters is too great, and the a.n.a.lysis of character impedes the unity of events. These objections are not always vital, and sometimes they are mere objections rather than genuine criticisms. Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in _Daniel Deronda_ being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in _The Spanish Gypsy_ seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In the middle of _Adam Bede_ are several chapters devoted to the birthday party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action.