Early Essays by George Eliot
EARLY ESSAYS BY
GEORGE ELIOT
WHEN a sort of haziness comes over the mind, making one feel weary of articulated or written signs of ideas, does not the notion of a less laborious mode of communication, of a perception approaching more nearly to intuition seem attractive! Nathless, I love words: they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind. Without them in our present condition our intellectual strength would have no implements."
George Eliot (1841).
EARLY ESSAYS BY
GEORGE ELIOT
Privately Printed 1919
Only 220 copies printed : this is No..
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Editor's Note | 7 |
| From the Note-book of an Eccentric | 15 |
| How to avoid Disappointment | 25 |
| The Wisdom of the Child | 31 |
| A Little Fable with a great Moral | 37 |
| Hints on Snubbing | 43 |
| Chronology | 53 |
| Index | 69 |
EDITOR'S NOTE
AT the time of George Eliot's death, or perhaps a few years later, the manuscript which is here printed was placed in my hands for publication. Ever since then it has lain among forgotten papers, and now, in order to prevent the total loss of a literary treasure—for such I deem it—I am accepting the responsibility of printing a few copies.
There exists, I am aware, a very pardonable weakness on the part of celebrated authors—or their relatives—which takes the form of a desire to remove all traces of the scaffolding by which the summit of fame has been attained. The first fruits of literary genius are often interred in order that the reading public may concentrate its attention upon a masterpiece; and whenever this principle of action is modified it is rather to exhibit a partiality for overripe, rather than for immature, productions.
The student of literature, however, has other views: for him it is of prime importance to trace the development of literary power, whether manifested in verse or prose; and I believe I am doing such students no small service in putting within their reach a few examples of George Eliot's earliest work. She was already twenty-seven at the time the following papers were written, and at this age Charles Dickens (only seven years her senior) had published the "Boz" Sketches, the "Pickwick" papers, and Nicholas Nickleby; but George Eliot's genius matured very slowly, and thus her first efforts in literature possess a peculiar interest.
The author of Adam Bede, it will be remembered, went with her father to Coventry in 1841, and there continued to live for eight years. During this period we know that she occupied her leisure in translating Strauss's Life of Jesus, which was published anonymously. Then her father died, and she travelled on the continent, returning to Coventry to stay for a year with the Brays at Rosehill. In 1851 she met George Henry Lewes, and was living with him at Richmond, Surrey, when Amos Barton was written in September, 1856. This was George Eliot's first acknowledged work in fiction, but there can be little doubt her correspondence would show that she had indulged in original composition for fifteen years at least. Of this period of literary activity, however, we know practically nothing, for Mr. Cross's theory of the art of biography is thus explained by himself:
I do not know that the particular method in which I have treated the letters has ever been adopted before. Each letter has been pruned of everything that seemed to me irrelevant to my purpose of everything that I thought my wife would have wished to be omitted.
It is evident, then, that Mr. Cross, in writing the Life of George Eliot, had no intention of consulting the interests of students of literature, nor the views of bibliographers; he even suppressed all mention of the "Brother and Sister" Sonnets; and yet he overlooked a detail from which a clue may be easily picked up. A letter written on September 25th, 1846, by Mrs. Bray to Miss Hennell, says:
Miss Evans looks very brilliant just now. We fancy she must be writing her novel.
What was this novel? That we shall never know; but it is morally certain that George Eliot, in the autumn of 1846, was experimenting in literature, fashioning her style, and the papers now presented to students, who will at once trace therein the 'prentice hand of our geatest woman writer, all date from this period.
The resuscitation to-day of a few of George Eliot's early writings is, perhaps, not inopportune; firstly, as the Editor's tribute to her genius on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of her birthday; and, secondly, as the answer of her devotees to a question sometimes put:
What is the position which George Eliot holds in the regard of the present generation of English readers? Does she continue to assert her sway as firmly and surely as do her two greatest companions in the hierarchy of Victorian fiction?
The reception given to the present volume will go some way towards determining this question. And as an anonymous critic recently said:
It remains true to-day, as The Times said in 1880, when George Eliot's name was added to our national necrology, that
In the whole range of English literature, there are not more than three or four names which deserve to be placed before hers. In the annals of the world probably no woman equalled her, certainly none surpassed her, in that greatness which defies definition and which we call genius.
FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN ECCENTRIC
From the Note-book of an Eccentric
A WEEK ago, I stood sole mourner at the grave of my friend Macarthy. He lies in a village churchyard;—not one of those peaceful green plots which seem to speak well for the influence of the bishop's blessing, in which there is some spreading chestnut or yew of age immemorial, that seems to say to the world-weary, "Come and rest under my shadow." No. The churchyard in which Macarthy lies looks not like a Gottes-acker, but a vicar's acre, the profits of which (including the grazing of half-a-dozen sheep) go to eke out the curate's yearly hundred, upon which he supports, or rather diets, the gentility of his wife and ten children. It is a thoroughfare for a materialized population, too entirely preoccupied with the needs of the living to retain an Old Mortality's affectionate care for tomb-stones and epitaphs, or to offer to the graves that terrified veneration which hurries past them after sun-set. They are in the strong grasp of giant Hunger, and fear no shadows. Not one of this plodding generation will long remember Macarthy, "the sick gentleman that lodged at widow Crowe's," and when the grass is green and long upon his grave, it will seem to say of him as truly as of others—"I cover the forgotten." But it is not so, Macarthy. With me thou wilt still live: my thoughts will seem to be all spoken to thee, my actions all performed in thy presence; for ours was a love passing the love of women.
My friend was one of whom the world proved itself not worthy, for it never made a true estimate of him. His soul was a lyre of exquisite structure, but men knew not how to play on it: it was a bird endowed with rich and varied notes, which it was ready to bestow on human hearers; but their coarse fondling or brutal harshness scared it away, and the poor bird ceased to sing, save in the depths of the forest or the silence of night. To those who saw only the splendour of his genius, and the nobility of his sentiments, his childhood and youth seemed to promise a brilliant career; but any who were capable of a more discriminating estimate and refined analysis of his character, must have had a foreboding that it contained elements which would too probably operate as non-conductors, interposed between his highly charged mind and the negatively electrified souls around him. The quality on which a good prophet would have pronounced my friend's fate to hang, was one which will be held to have placed him not above, but simply out of, the sphere of his fellow men. It was a morbid sensitiveness in his feeling of the beautiful, which I can compare to nothing but those alleged states of mesmeric lucidity, in which the patient obtains an unenviable cognizance of irregularities, happily imperceptible to us in the ordinary state of our consciousness.
His ideal was not, as with most men, an enshrined object of worship, but a beautiful shadow which was ever floating before him, importunately presenting itself as a twin object with all realities, whether external or mental, and turning all their charms into mockery. He moved among the things of this earth like a lapidarian among false gems, which fetch high prices and admiration from others, but to him are mere counterfeits. He seemed to have a preternaturally sharpened vision, which saw knots and blemishes, where all was smoothness to others. The unsightly condition of the masses—their dreary ignorance, the conventional distortion of human nature in upper classes—the absence of artistic harmony and beauty in the details of outward existence, were with him not merely themes for cold philosophy, indignant philippics, or pointed satire; but positively painful elements in his experience, sharp iron entering into his soul. Had his nature been less noble, his benevolence less God-like, he would have been a misanthropist, all compact of bitter sarcasm, and therefore no poet. As it was, he was a humourist—one who sported with all the forms of human life, as if they were so many May-day mummings, uncouth, monstrous disguises of poor human nature, which has not discovered its dignity. While he laughed at the follies of men, he wept over their sorrows; and while his wit lashed them as with a whip of scorpions, there was a stream of feeling in the deep caverns of his soul, which was all the time murmuring, "Would that I could die for thee, thou poor humanity!"
From the age of twenty, I never knew him to form a particular predilection for any individual, or admit any new intimacy. He seemed to have learned by experience that his sensibility was too acute for special friendship—that his sympathy with mankind was that of a being of analogous, rather than of identical race. Even animals, which usually attract those who are cut off by any material or immaterial barrier from their own kind, seemed to have a repulsion for him. He was their zealous protector, it is true, and I have known him walk back a hundred yards to give a consolatory pat on the head to an ugly cur, which he thought he had repulsed too unkindly; though all the while feeling the direst aversion to the ill-favoured brute. He seemed, indeed, to shrink from all organized existences. He was an ardent lover of Nature, but it was in her grand inorganic forms—the blue sky, the stars, the clouds, the sea, mountains, rocks, and rivers—in which she seems pregnant with some sublimer birth than the living races of this globe. He would lie on the grass gazing at the setting sun with a look of intense yearning which might have belonged to a banished Uriel. The roaring of the wind would produce in him an enthusiastic excitement, a spiritual intoxication. He felt a delight in the destructive power of the elements, which seemed to be in singular conflict with his angelic pity: had he been a witness of an earthquake, a city on fire, or the eruption of a volcano, I know not which would have predominated in him, bleeding compassion for the sufferers, or wild ecstacy at the triumphant fury of the forces of nature.
Such in part was Macarthy; and it is no wonder that before he had well attained manhood, he renounced all attempts at any profession, which must have made him one of the weary labourers in the treadmill of society. He thought the fetters of comparative poverty less heavy than those of wealth, and determined to content himself with his small hereditary property. This he considerably reduced by travelling in foreign countries, and by gifts which for him were lavish, so that when, at the age of forty, he sought his native village, in the belief that he was near his end, his means of support were contracted to the merest pittance. I was his earliest friend, and though we had been long separated, our hearts had been too closely entwined while their affections were yet young and tender, to have ever lost the loving bias by which they had formed one stem. He sent for me, implying that I was to receive his last wishes.
I found him in a poor little dwelling, the occupant of a widow's spare room. His emaciated figure confirmed the idea expressed in his letter, that it would not be much longer animated by that bright spirit which now gleamed with augmented intensity from his deep-set eyes, as if glowing at the prospect of deliverance from its captivity. When we had talked long and earnestly together, he pointed to a large trunk filled with manuscripts. "When I am dead," he said, "take these as the only memorial I have to give, and use them as you will." I refused to leave my friend until he was committed to his mother earth; and it then became my most interesting employment to examine the papers which contained the best history and image of his mind. I have found the results of profound thought and widely extended research-productions, some of which have been carefully meditated, others apparently thrown off with the rapidity of inspiration; but in all of them there is a strange mixture of wisdom and whimsicality, of sublime conception and stinging caricature, of deep melancholy and wild merriment. No publisher would venture to offer such caviare to the general; and my friend's writings are not old and musty enough to fall within the scheme of any publishing club, so that the bulk of them will probably be their own tomb.
Meanwhile, among his other manuscripts, I have discovered three thick little volumes, which were successively carried in his pocket for the purpose of noting down casual thoughts, sketches of character, and scenes out of the common; in short, as receptacles of what would probably have evaporated in conversation had my friend been in the habit of companionship. From these fragmentary stores I shall now and then give a selection in some modest nook of an unpretending journal—not to the world, far be so ambitious an aspiration from me—but to the half-dozen readers who can be attracted by unsophisticated thought and feeling, even though it be presented to them in the corner of the weekly newspaper of their own petty town.
HOW TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
How to avoid Disappointment
ONE of my favourite lounges in Paris is the studio of an artist, who tolerates my presence on the score of a slight service which I happened to render him some years ago, and which he magnifies into a lasting claim on his gratitude. I soon acquire an almost passionate interest in the progress of a noble picture. I love to think how the perfect whole exists in the imagination of the artist before his pencil has marked the canvas—to observe how every minute stroke, every dismal-looking layer of colour conduces to the ultimate effect, and how completely the creative genius which has conceived the result can calculate the necessary means. I love to watch the artist's eye, so wrapt and unworldly in its glance, scrupulously attentive to the details of his actual labour, yet keeping ever in view the idea which that labour is to fulfil. I say to myself—this is an image of what our life should be—a series of efforts directed to the production of a contemplated whole, just as every stroke of the artist's pencil has a purpose bearing on the conception which he retains in his mind's eye. We should all be painting our picture, whether it be a home scene after Wilkie, a Paul preaching at Athens, or a Brutus passing sentence on his son. We should all have a purpose in life as perfectly recognised and definite as the painter's idea of his subject. "Indisputably," says your man of the world, "I have never for a moment swerved from the determination to make myself rich and respectable. I chose my wife with that object; I send my sons to the University, I give dinners, I go to balls, I go to church—all that I may be 'respectable.' Am not I a man of purpose?" Then there is the man of public spirit, who has devoted his life to some pet project, which is to be the grand catholicon for all the diseases of society. He has travelled, he has lectured, he has canvassed, he has moved heaven and earth, has become the victim of a fixed idea, and died disappointed.
Doubtless such men as these have a distinct purpose in life, but they are not the men of whom my artist reminds me—who seem to me to be painting a picture. The kind of purpose which makes life resemble a work of art in its isolated majesty or loveliness is not the attempt to satisfy that inconvenient troop of wants which metamorphose themselves like the sprites of an enchantress, so that no sooner have we provided food for the linnet's beak than a huge lion's maw gapes upon us. It is to live, not for our friends, not for those hostages to fortune, wives and children; not for any individual, any specific form; but for something which, while it dwells in these, has an existence beyond them. It is to live for the good, the true, the beautiful, which outlive every generation and are all-pervading as the light which vibrates from the remotest nebula to our own sun. The spirit which has ascertained its true relation to these can never be an orphan: it has its home in the eternal mind, from which neither things present nor to come can separate it. You may infallibly discern the man who lives thus. His eye has not that restless, irresolute glance which tells of no purpose beyond the present hour: it looks as you might imagine the eye of Numa to have looked after an interview with Egeria; the earnest attention and veneration with which it gazed on the divine instructress still lingering in its expression.
Such a man is not like the parasitic plants which crawl ignobly or climb aspiringly, just as accident has disposed the objects around them. He has a course of his own, like our forest trees, a fixed form of growth which defies and hurls down the stones and mortar with which society attempts to bind him in. He loves individuals, he labours for specific objects, but only as transient forms of the abiding reality which he seeks; so that if the individual pass away, if the object be frustrated, his love and his labour are not essentially disappointed.
I said one day to my artist, when he was ardently engaged on a favourite picture, "Adolphe, has your love of art ever been tested by any great misfortune?" He replied, "I have suffered—I am suffering under a great calamity; not the blighting of ambition, not the loss of any loved one, but a far more withering sorrow; I have ceased to love the being whom I once believed that I must love while life lasted. I have cherished what I thought was a bright amethyst, and I have seen it losing its lustre day by day till I can no longer delude myself into a belief that it is not valueless. But you see," said he, turning to me and smiling, "I love my pictures still; I should not like to die till I have worked up my chosen subjects."
Who would not have some purpose in life as independent in its value as art is to the artist?
THE WISDOM OF THE CHILD
The Wisdom of the Child
IT may not be an original idea, but never mind, if it be a true one, that the proper result of intellectual cultivation is to restore the mind to that state of wonder and interest with which it looks on everything in childhood. Thus Jean Jacques Rousseau, couched on the grass by the side of a plant that he might examine its structure and appearance at his ease, would have seemed to a little child so like itself in taste and feeling that it would have lain down by him, in full confidence of entire sympathy between them in spite of his wizard-like, Armenian attire.
But I will extend the parallel, and say that true wisdom, which implies a moral as well as an intellectual result, consists in a return to that purity and simplicity which characterize early youth when its intuitions have not been perverted. It is, indeed, a similarity with a difference; for the wonder of a child at the material world is the effect of novelty, its simplicity and purity of ignorance; while the wonder of the wise man is the result of knowledge disclosing mystery, the simplicity and purity of his moral principles, the result of wide experience and hardly-attained self-conflict. A truce to your philosophers whose elevation above their fellow-beings consists in their ability to laugh at the ties which bind women and children, who have looked just so far into the principles of ethics as to be able to disconcert a simple soul that talks of vice and virtue as realities. The child which abstains from eating plums because grandmamma forbade is their superior in wisdom: it exercises faith and obedience to law—two of the most ennobling attributes of humanity which these philosophers have cast off. I have little more respect for those who have reached the stage of enlightenment in which virtue is another name for prudence, who give their sanction to a system of morals as they do to a system of police—to prevent inconvenience to themselves, and to society as a necessary adjunct of themselves—who would change their morals with their climate, and become lords of a harem in a country where such a position would be a title to respect, instead of infamy.
The true philosopher knows what these men know, but he knows something more. He, too, has "broken through the barriers of the heavens," but it has been with a more powerful telescope than theirs. He gathers his rule of conduct, not from the suggestions of appetite, not from the dictates of expediency, but from the indications of man's highest destiny, to be found in those faculties of his nature which may be justly said to be more than human, since they might belong to conditions of being far less limited than those of man. Self-renunciation, submission to law, trust, benignity, ingenuousness, rectitude—these are the qualities we delight most to witness in the child, and these are the qualities which most dignify the man.
The true philosopher, then, constructs his moral code with a view to preserve these sentiments in that state of unsullied purity and freedom of exercise which he loves to see in a child. If he were to admit that all things were lawful to him, he would add, "I will not be thought under the power of any; I will not circumscribe or bring into bondage the action of any one of my highest endowments." He feels that in submitting to the restraint of a self-imposed law, he would be presenting humanity in its grandest aspect. But it is only the highest human state at which he aims—not anything superhuman. He seeks exercise for all the minor feelings—nay, he holds that these are the only nest in which the everaspiring eagle, Nature, can be properly fledged and winged; but he baptizes and hallows them all with the chrism of the diviner soul within him, and regulates their indulgence by his consciousness of the degree in which they encourage or repress the impulses of his moral sentiments. He would be neither an angel, an anchorite, nor a saint; but a man in the most complete and lofty meaning of the name—a man to whom the "child is father," perhaps in more senses than the poet thought, and who is no degenerate offspring, but a development of all the features impressed on that heaven-born parent.
A LITTLE FABLE WITH A GREAT MORAL
A Little Fable with a
Great Moral
IN very early times indeed, when no maidens had looking-glasses, except the mermaidens, there lived in a deep valley two beautiful hamadryads. Now, the hamadryads are a race of nymphs that inhabit the forests. Whenever a little acorn, or a beech nut, or any other seed of a forest tree begins to sprout, a little hamadryad is born, and grows up and lives and dies with the tree. So you see the hamadryads, the daughters of trees, live far longer than the daughters of men—some of them even a thousand years; still they do at last get old, and faded, and shrivelled.
Now, the two hamadryads of whom I spoke lived in a forest by the side of a clear lake, and they loved better than anything to go down to the brink of the lake and look into the mirror of waters; but not for the same reason. Idione loved to look into the lake because she saw herself there; she would sit on the bank, weaving leaves and flowers in her silken hair, and smiling at her own image all the day long, and if the pretty water-lilies or any other plants began to spread themselves on the surface below her, and spoil her mirror, she would tear them up in anger. But Hieria cared not to look at herself in the lake; she only cared about watching the heavens as they were reflected in its bosom—the foamy clouds on the clear blue by day, and the moon and the stars by night. She did not mind that the water-lilies grew below her, for she was always looking farther off, into the deep part of the lake; she only thought the lilies pretty, and loved them.
So, in the course of time, these two hamadryads grew old, and Idione began to be angry with the lake, and to hate it because it no longer gave back a pleasant image of herself, and she would carry little stones to the margin and dash them into the lake for vengeance; but she only tired herself, and did not hurt the lake. And as she was frowning and looking spiteful all the day, the lake only went on giving her an uglier and uglier picture of herself, till at last she ran away from it into the hollow of her tree, and sat there lonely and sad till she died. But Hieria grew old without finding it out, for she never looked for herself in the lake—only as, in the centuries she had lived, some of the thick forests had been cleared away from the earth, and men had begun to build and to plough, the sky was less often obscured by vapours, so that the lake was more and more beautiful to her, and she loved better and better the water-lilies that grew below her. Until one morning, after she had been watching the stars in the lake, she went home to her tree, and lying down, she fell into a gentle sleep, and dreamed that she had left her mouldering tree, and had been carried up to live in a star, from which she could still look down on her lake that she had loved so long. And while she was dreaming this, men came and cut down her tree, and Hieria died without knowing that she had become old.
HINTS ON SNUBBING
Hints on Snubbing
IT has been sagely said that men reasoned before Aristotle was born; that animals used their limbs before anatomy was heard of; and that fingers were very efficient prehensile instruments long before the invention of forks; which ingenious observations are meant to illustrate the fact that nature is beforehand with art and science. So the faculty of snubbing has been in exercise ever since the days of Cain and Abel, though the great intellect which is to trace out the laws by which its phenomena are governed, and lay down rules for the development of all its hidden resources, has not yet arisen. There have, indeed, been examples of snubbing genius, and it is in the nature of genius to transcend all rules—rather, to furnish the type on which all rules are framed; nevertheless, it is undeniable that for snubbing to attain its complete scope and potency as a moral agent it must be reduced to an art accessible to the less intuitive mind of the many. A few crude suggestions towards this important end may not be unfruitful in the soil of some active intellect.
Hobbes defined laughter to be the product of a triumphant feeling of superiority: substitute snubbing for laughter and you have a more just definition. The idea of snubbing presupposes inferiority in the snubbed. You can no more snub your betters than you can patronize them; on the contrary, toadyism towards superiors is the invariable attendant on a large endowment of the snubbing faculty. Toadyism, in fact, is the beautiful concavity which corresponds to the snubbing convexity: the angular posture of Baillie MacWheeble's body is a perfect illustration.
Snubbing is a generic term, comprehending many species; as the snub monarchical, the snub political, the snub social, the snub religious, and the snub domestic. Each of these varieties has its different and appropriate kind of language, from the delicate modifications of voice, the refined nuances of demeanour, the degrees of temperature indicated in the glance—which belong to the higher, branches—down to those coarser manifestations of the snub social and domestic familiarly known as the cut direct, tipping the cold shoulder, snapping off the nose and the like. The monarchical species of snubbing is doubtless an interesting subject of investigation, but the urgent wants of society point rather to the social, political, religious, and domestic species. We throw out a few hints on these, as mere finger-posts to the rich mines below:
1. All men of a thousand a year, who can occasionally afford to give champagne at their dinner parties, may feel authorized to snub any poorer genius of less magnitude than Dickens, especially if he live in the same town or neighbourhood, as in that case he can by no means be made available as a lion to be served up to the company with the soups and venison.
2. Men of great or small wit who have established a reputation as diners-out, may give additional zest to their condiments and wine by snubbing any humbler aspirant to the applause of the company. Let them take Johnson as their model in this department.
3. Editors of country newspapers who feel themselves and their cause in a precarious condition, and who, therefore, as Paley said of himself, cannot afford to keep a conscience, may find a forlorn hope in snubbing. Let them choose for a victim any individual who presumes to avow an opinion in opposition to their own—and, what is more, to act upon it. We assure the dullest poor fellow of an editor that he may put down such an upstart, and utterly ruin him in the esteem of the majority by keeping a stock of epithets, like so many little missles, to be hurled at him on every favourable occasion: such, for instance, as pseudo-philosopher, man of crotchets, infantine dreamer, etc. No matter how stale the epithets may be, paucity of invention is no disadvantage here, since the oftener a nickname is repeated the better it will tell. Do we not know that two-thirds of mankind are influenced, not by facts or principles, but by associations about as appropriate as the connection between a bright summer's day and roast pig in the mind of the ingenious Mrs. Nickleby?
4. Any who have been elevated in society, whether by a migration from the thoroughfare of Gudgeon Street to the more genteel locality of the Olympian Villas, or by a still more brilliant transit, must not neglect the precious opportunity of snubbing their former familiars. We refer them to Shakespeare's Falconbridge:
"Good den, Sir Richard,—God a' mercy, fellow:
And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter:
For new-made honour doth forget men's names,
Tis too respective and too sociable,
For your conversion."
5. Ladies who go to parties with the hope of being the belles of the evening, must on no account venture to snub any whose pretensions threaten to eclipse their own. This would look like envy. They must rather behave to such with a sweet, condescending blandness, as if unconscious of the danger of rivalry. They may, however, repay themselves by snubbing the plain and ill-dressed; nay, if they can manage to secure a brisk flirtation for the evening with any one of the gentlemen tolerably well to pass, they may even produce a very good effect by snubbing the remainder.
6. But the chief empire of feminine talent lies in the snub religious. Anacreon tells us that nature has given weapons of defence to all creatures—horns to bulls, hoofs to horses, etc., understanding to man, and to woman beauty. But this is mere poet's flummery; he should have said bigotry, which is the far more generic attribute. All ladies of decidedly orthodox sentiments and serious habits, who, in short, form the public for whom young clergymen print volumes of sermons which may be compared to that popular specific, treacle and brimstone—all such ladies, we say, may snub any man not marriageable, and any woman not an heiress, though as full of talents or of good works as a Sir Philip Sidney or a John Howard, if he or she be suspected of diverging in opinion from that standard of truth which is lodged in the brain of the Rev. Amylatus Stultus, who keeps the key of these same ladies' consciences. But let everyone beware of snubbing on religious grounds in quarters where there is wealth, or fashion, or influence. In such cases all aberrations from the standard are to be regarded as amiable eccentricities, which do not warrant an uncharitable construction. On the whole it must be admitted that the snub religious is a most valuable agent in society, resembling those compensating contrivances by which nature makes up for the loss of one organ by an extraordinary development of the functions of another. Now that we have no Star-Chamber, Pillory, Test Act, etc., what would become of society without this admirable refinement on the rougher measures of our ancestors? Do we not appeal to a stronger element in the minds of suspected heretics by silently putting a chalk hieroglyphic on their backs, than by hauling them off to prison or to Smithfield?
7. As regards the snub domestic, gentlemen should by no means neglect one of the grand privileges of conjugal life, an unlimited power of snubbing their wives. Indeed, this may be said to be a sort of safety-valve for the masculine faculty of snubbing which, as men are somewhat amenable for its exercise and cannot, like women and priests, snub with impunity, might lead to no end of duels and horse-whippings, and thus reduce society to a horribly internecine state.
8. Ladies may take reprisals for their endurance in this matter on such small deer as their governesses, servants, and such old maids of their acquaintance as are not useful in sewing or taking care of the children.
9. The servants, again, may snub the shoe-black or the vendor of hareskins. The shoe-black may snub the dog and cat in a variety of ingenious ways, and doubtless the beautiful chain, if we could trace it, descends to the lowest grades of existence. We have no warrant, however, to suppose that a faculty for snubbing is given to any other races than the terrestrial, since we have express authority for the fact that the archangel Michael, on a very remarkable occasion, abstained from snubbing the devil.
CHRONOLOGY
Chronology
1819 Nov. 22, Mary Ann Evans born at Arbury Farm, Chilvers Colon, Warwickshire.
1820 Robert Evans, agent to the Newdigates and other local landowners, moves to Griff (a house on the Arbury estate, 2 miles from Bedworth) the home of "George Eliot" for 21 years.
1832 To Miss Franklin's school at Coventry.
1836 Mother dies; home duties at Griff; studies continued under masters for Italian, German and music.
1838 First visit to London.
1840 (aged 21 ) Poem published in Christian Observer, signed "M. A. E."
Aunt tells the story which became the germ of "Adam Bede."
1841 Removed to Foleshill Road, about 1½ miles from Coventry, and met the Brays and the Hennells, who lived at Rosehill, Coventry.
1843 Met Robert Owen and Harriet Martineau at the Brays'.
1844 Translated Strauss's "Life of Jesus."
1845 Spent a fortnight in Scotland.
1846 "Life of Jesus" published by subscription.
1847 To London with the Brays; to Isle of Wight with father.
1848 To St. Leonards with father; reading "Jane Eyre"; met Emerson.
1849 Father died; began to translate the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" of Spinoza; wrote short notice for Coventry Herald of Froude's "Nemesis of Faith"; went to Geneva for 9 months.
1850 (aged 31) Portrait painted at Geneva by M. d'Albert Durade.
Returned to Rosehill for 16 months.
1851 Reviewed Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" for the Westminster Review.
Boarded with the Chapmans at 142 Strand, and acted as assistant editor of the Westminster Review. Met in that capacity Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Robert Browning, James and Harriet Martineau, Mazzini, Greg, J. S. Mill, Francis W. Newman, G. H. Lewes, and other leaders of thought.
1852 Met Madame Bodichon (née Barbara Smith) and Florence Nightingale.
1853 Lodged at 21 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park Square.
"The Idea of a Future Life," by Marian Evans, advertised to appear in Chapman's Quarterly Series: not published.
1854 Translation of Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity" published; her own name (Marian Evans) now used for the first and only time on a title page.
To Weimar and Berlin with G. H. Lewes; writing and reading, visiting, theatre-going and opera-going.
Translating Spinoza.
1855 Returning from Germany, settled with Lewes at East Sheen, and later at 8 Park Street, Richmond.
Article on Weimar for Fraser's Magazine; articles for the Leader; article on Cumming for the Westminster Review.
1856 Articles for the Saturday Review, then just started; reviewed Meredith's "Shaving of Shagpat."
To Ilfracombe and Tenby.
Began to write fiction, and in six weeks finished "Amos Barton" for Blackwood's Magazine, who paid 50 guineas for the story.
"Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" begun on Christmas Day.
Reviewed Griswold's "American Poets."
Articles for the Leader and the Westminster Review.
Article on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists."
Spinoza about to be published by Mr. Charles Bray, and George Eliot writes: "I particularly wish not to be known as the translator of the 'Ethics.'"
1857 To Plymouth, Penzance, Scilly Isles and Jersey, where the Epilogue to "Mr. Gilfils Love Story" was finished, and "Janet's Repentance" was begun.
Oct. 22, "Adam Bede" begun.
1858 The Blackwood stories republished in two volumes as "Scenes of Clerical Life," and reviewed in The Times January 2.
Dickens wrote: "If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began."
Thackeray said: "They were not written by a woman."
To Munich to see the picture galleries, etc., and to finish "Adam Bede."
To Ischl, Vienna, Prague and Dresden.
Blackwood offers £800 for 4 years' lease of the copyright of "Adam Bede," of which the last word was written November 16.
Tauchnitz reprints "Scenes of Clerical Life."
1859 House taken at Southfields, Wandsworth (Holly Lodge).
2090 copies of " ADAM BEDE " printed as 1st edition and 750 as 2nd edition.
Finished a story, "The Lifted Veil."
Began "The Tullivers" ["Mill on the Floss"].
Alteration of "Adam Bede" for the 12S. edition.
Blackwood makes up the payment for "Adam Bede " to £1,200.
To Paris, Lucerne and Basle.
4th and 5th editions of "Adam Bede" issued.
2nd edition of "Scenes of Clerical Life" published.
To Conway, Lichfield and Weymouth.
To Lincolnshire.
October 16, finished the first volume of "Sister Maggie" ["Mill on the Floss"].
Newby, a publisher, advertises "Adam Bede, Junior."
1,600 copies of "Adam Bede " sold in one year.
Blackwood offers £2,000 for an edition of 4,000 copies at 31s. 6d. of "Mill on the Floss."
1860 (aged 41) Harper's, of New York, offer £300 for the American rights and Tauchnitz offers £200 for the continental edition of "The Mill on the Floss."
"Adam Bede " translated into Hungarian.
German translation of " Adam Bede " by Dr. Frese.
"Mill on the Floss" finished on March 21.
To Turin, Genoa, Leghorn, Rome, Naples, Florence, Bologna, Padua, Venice, Milan and Berne.
"Mill on the Floss" issued April 4: 6,500 sold.
"Adam Bede" translated into French by M. d'Albert.
Sits for portrait to Laurence.
Removed to 10 Harewood Square.
Wrote "Mr. David Faux, Confectioner " ("Brother Jacob").
"Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe" begun.
Removed to 16 Blandford Square.
1861 "Silas Marner" finished March 10.
To Florence through France.
Trip to Malvern.
Corrected first volume of "Adam Bede" for the new edition.
Corrected all books for a new and cheaper edition.
Began " Romola," Oct. 7.
1862 Again began "Romola."
To Dorking, Englefield Green and Littlehampton.
George Smith offers £7,000 for "Romola" to appear first in the Cornhill Magazine.
1863 "Romola" finished June 9.
To the Isle of Wight and Worthing.
Removed to The Priory, 21 North Bank, Regent's Park.
1864 Sat to Sir Frederic Burton for portrait, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery.
To Scotland.
To Italy for 7 weeks.
To Harrogate and Scarborough.
Began a drama in verse ["The Spanish Gypsy"]
1865 Poem on a subject previously treated in prose, "My Vegetarian Friend."
To Paris.
Finished poem on Utopias.
Articles for the Pall Mall Gazette on "A Word for the Germans" and on the "Logic of Servants."
Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on "Futile Lying."
Began a novel, "Felix Holt," March 29.
Article for the Fortnightly Review on "Rationalism."
To Normandy and Brittany for a month.
1866 To Tunbridge Wells.
Blackwood offers £5,000 for "Felix Holt," finished May 31.
To Brussels, Holland and Schwalbach.
"The Spanish Gypsy" recommenced in a new form.
To Tunbridge Wells.
A tour in Spain.
1867 To North Germany for 2 months.
"The Spanish Gypsy" continued at Dresden.
Wrote three new lyrics.
Wrote "An Address to the Working Men" for Blackwood's Magazine.
1868 To Torquay.
Finished "The Spanish Gypsy," April 29.
Trip to Baden, Petersthal, Basle, etc.
To Yorkshire.
"The Spanish Gypsy" corrected for 3rd edition in December.
To Sheffield and Matlock.
Cheap (3s. 6d.) edition of the novels published.
1869 Wrote "A little poem on old Agatha."
Rhymed poem on Boccaccio's story of Lisa ["How Lisa loved the King"] for Blackwood. To France, Italy and Germany for 9 weeks. At Rome met Mr. Cross, a New York banker, whom she married in 1880.
Sold "Agatha" to Fields and Osgood for £300 on May 24.
Sonnets on Childhood (5) finished, July 3.
Writing introduction to "Middlemarch," July 19.
Finished 11 sonnets on "Brother and Sister."
Printed for private circulation "Brother and Sister, Sonnets by Marian Lewes." Began "Middlemarch," Aug. 2.
To Weybridge on a visit to the Cross family.
Began "The Legend of Jubal," Oct. 5.
1870 (aged 51) To Berlin and Vienna for two months.
Finished "The Legend of Jubal," Jan. 13, for the May number of Macmillan's Magazine.
To Oxford, Cromer, Harrogate, Whitby.
Began dramatic poem, "Armgart."
To Limpsfield, "our favourite Surrey retreat."
Began story, "Miss Brooke," Dec. 2.
1871 To Ryde, Shottermill, Weybridge. First part of "Middlemarch" published Dec. 1.
1872 Alexander Main's book, "Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings, in prose and verse, selected from the Works of George Eliot," published Jan. 1.
Finished 4th part (2nd volume) of "Middlemarch," Jan. 29.
2nd part of "Middlemarch" published in February.
"Miss Brooke" reviewed in a German literary magazine," which will be good for Asher's edition."
"Middlemarch" to be translated into French by M. Landolphe.
"Middlemarch" in German, published by Franz Duncker.
Kohn publishes in Germany an English reprint of "Middlemarch."
Harper's pay £1,200 for American edition of "Middlemarch."
To Redhill in June.
To Homburg for 6 weeks.
"Middlemarch" published in 4 volumes at 42s.
1873 Dutch edition of George Eliot's "Romantische Werke."
Kohn of Berlin pays £50 to reprint "The Spanish Gypsy."
"The Lifted Veil" not to be reprinted at present, Feb. 28.
To Cambridge and Oxford.
To the Continent for 9 weeks.
To Blackbrook, near Bromley.
Revising "Middlemarch" for 7s. 6d. edition.
1874 Correcting "The Spanish Gypsy" for reprinting.
Sends "a small collection of poems" to Blackwood.
"The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems," published in May.
To Earlswood Common, Surrey.
To Paris and the Ardennes.
Over 19,000 copies of "Middlemarch" sold up to Dec. 31.
2nd edition of "Jubal" and 5th edition of "The Spanish Gypsy" issued.
1875 To Rickmansworth.
To Wales.
First two volumes of "Daniel Deronda" in type.
24,577 copies of "Middlemarch" sold to Dec., 1875.
1876 To Weybridge. Publication of "Daniel Deronda" begun Feb. 1.
To Aix, Lausanne, Berne, Ragatz.
To Cambridgeshire (Six Mile Bottom).
Bought "The Heights," Witley, near Godalming.
"Romola" translated into Italian by Signor Aquarone.
1877 "The Lifted Veil" and "Brother Jacob" to be added to the volume containing "Silas Marner."
Prof. Kaufmann, Principal of the Jewish Theological Seminary at Pesth writes a study of "Daniel Deronda," which Blackwood has translated into English.
Cabinet edition of " Works " prepared.
1878 To Oxford.
Publication begun of the "Works" in 20 volumes.
"Theophrastus Such" to Blackwood in November.
George Henry Lewes died Nov. 22.
1879 Resolved to suppress "Theophrastus" in original form (March 22), but assents to publication "as there are some things in it which I want to get said."
Founded a studentship of Physiology, to be called The George Henry Lewes Studentship, of the value of 200 a year.
To Witley.
"The Ethics of George Eliot's Works," by J. C. Brown, published. 3rd edition of "Theophrastus Such" called for. John Blackwood died Oct. 29. 1880 (aged 61) Married Mr. J. W. Cross on May 6, at St. George's, Hanover Square.
To Paris, Milan, Verona, Venice.
To Sevenoaks, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire.
To Brighton.
Removed to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (Dec. 3).
Died December 22.
Buried in Highgate Cemetery, Dec. 29.
1884 "Essays and Leaves from a Note-book" [edited by C. L. Lewes], published by Blackwood and Sons.
1885 Blackwood published "George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals, arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross." INDEX
INDEX
"ADAM BEDE, Junior," 57
Adam Bede, 57
Address to the Working Men, 60
Agatha, 60
Amos Barton, 8, 55
Anacreon, 47
Animals, the love of, 18
Anniversary tribute, an, 10
Aristotle, 43
Armgart, 61
Art and the Artist, 28
Asher's Editions, 62
BIOGRAPHY, the art of, 8
Blackwood's Magazine, 60
Boccaccio's Story of Lisa, 60
Bray family, the, 8, 9
Brother and Sister (Sonnets), 9, 61
Brother Jacob, 58, 63
Brutus, 26
Burton, Sir Frederick, 59
CAIN AND ABEL, 43
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 64
Childhood, 31
"Christian Observer," the, 53
Churchyard, a village, 15
Continental travel, 54-64
"Cornhill Magazine," 58
Coventry, life at, 8, 53
"Coventry Herald," 54
Cross, J. W., 60, 64, 65
Cut Direct, the, 4
DANIEL DERONDA, 63, 64
Dickens, Charles, 8, 45
Disappointment, how to avoid, 25
Duels, the cure for, 48
"E (M.A.)" in Christian Observer, 53
Envy at Evening Parties, 46
Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book, 65
Essence of Christianity (translation), 55
"Ethics of George Eliot's Works," 64
Evans, Marian, 54, 55
,, Mary Ann, 53
,,Robert, 8, 53
FALCONBRIDGE'S SPEECH IN SHAKS., K. John Act i, Sc. i., 46
"Father to the Man," 34
Feelings, the minor, 33
Felix Holt, 59
Feuerbach translated, 55
Fields and Osgood, publishers, 60
Fingers before Forks, 43
"Fortnightly Review," 14, 59
"Fraser's Magazine," 55
Froude, J. A., reviewed, 54
GOTTES-ACKER, 15
Gymnasium of the Mind, the, 2
HAREM, LORDS OF A, 32
Hamadryads, 37
Harper's American Editions, 57, 62
Hennell, Miss, 9
Hobbes, his definition of laughter, 43
Howard, John, 47
IDEAS AND THEIR SIGNS, 2
Idea of a Future Life, the, 54
Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 64
JESUS, THE LIFE OF (translated), 54
Johnsonian Snub, the, 45
KAUFMANN, PROF., on Daniel Deronda, 63
Kohn's Berlin Editions, 62
LAKE, A MIRROR FOR NYMPHS, 37
Lapidarian, a, 17
"Leader," the, 55
Legend of Jubal, 63 Lewes, George Henry, 8, 64
Lewes, George Henry, Studentship of Physiology, 64
Lewes, C. L., 65
Life and pictures, 26
Lifted Veil, the, 57, 62, 63
London residences, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 64
"MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE," 61
"M.A.E." in Christian Observer, 53
Main, Alexander, a Glasgow bookseller, 61
Marriage to J. W. Cross, 64
Masses, unsightly condition of the, 17
May-day mummings, 18
Men of purpose, 26
Meredith, George, reviewed, 55
Mesmeric lucidity, 17
Michael the Archangel, 49
Middlemarch, 61
Mill on the Floss, the, 57
Miss Brooke, 61
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, 55
My Vegetarian Friend, 59
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 59
Nature-worship, 19
Nickleby, the ingenious Mrs., 46
Nicknames, 46
Numa and Egeria, 27
"OLD MORTALITY," 15
PALEY AND HIS CONSCIENCE, 45
"Pall Mall Gazette," the, 59
Paris, artistic, 25
Paul at Athens, 26
Philosophers, true and false, 32
Pillory, the, 48
Portraits, 54, 58, 59
Provincial newspapers, 21
Publishing-club, a, 21
Purpose in life, 28
REFINEMENT OF TORTURE, 48
Respectability, 26
Richmond, home at, 8
Romola, 58
Rousseau, the Botanist, 31
"SATURDAY REVIEW," 55
Scenes of Clerical Life, 56
Shakespeare quoted, 46
Shoe-black, a, 49
Sidney, Sir Philip, 47
Silas Marner, 58, 63
Smithfield martyrs, 48
Smith, George, the publisher, 58
Snubbing, many species of, 44
Society, the treadmill of, 19
Soul of Macarthy, the, 16
Spanish Gypsy, the, 60
Spell of George Eliot, 10
Spinoza translated, 54, 56
Star Chamber, the, 48
Strauss' Life of Jesus, 8
TAUCHNITZ EDITIONS, 56,57
Test Act, the, 48
Thackeray, W. M., 56
Translations into Dutch, 62; French, 58, 62; German, 57, 62; Hungarian, 57; Italian, 63
Trees, daughters of the, 37
URIEL, A BANISHED, 19
Utopias (a Poem), 59
VICTORIAN FICTION, 10
"WESTMINSTER REVIEW," 54
Wilkie, the artist, 26
"Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings of George Eliot," 61
Wisdom, the truest, 31
Words as implements, 2