Cross, Mrs. Mary Ann Evans

Mrs. Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), an English novelist, best known by her pen name of George Eliot. She was born in a "small, low-roofed farmhouse" in Warwickshire, only thirty miles from Shakespeare's home at Stratford. Her mother was a woman of intelligence and force of character. Her father, Robert Evans, who had learned the trade of carpenter and builder, was a surveyor, as well as a farmer; and was land agent also to Sir Roger Newgate. He was a high-minded sort of man, whose practical judgment and experience won him a reputation throughout a wide neighborhood. Marian, as she was called among her friends, was the youngest child. Soon after her birth the family removed to a larger home, Griff House, on the same property. This was the family residence for twenty years. Marian was sent to a nearby boarding school at an early age, and thirteen to another school at Coventry. She was a reader from her earliest childhood, but was not particularly fond of her lessons, until she reached the age of twelve; when she developed a desire for knowledge and a marked ability in its acquisition. At Coventry she came under religious influences which tended to deepen her natural seriousness and conscientiousness.

When she was sixteen Marian's mother died, and she became her father's housekeeper. We might expect to find in the future novelist a dreamy, unpractical sort of girl, who would prove an indifferent housekeeper. On the contrary, she was neat, quick, and energetic--a good cook and a skillful needlewoman. Household duties did not hinder her from continuing her studies. This she was able to do more satisfactorily when, in 1841, her brother brought a wife to the old house, and father and daughter took up their abode in a new home near Coventry. Here she had several tutors. Her favorite studies were music and foreign languages, including French, German, Italian, Greek, and Latin. Hebrew she studied alone. Her reading covered a wide field.

Marian became intimate about this time with Charles Bray, his wife, Caroline Hennell, and her brother, Charles Hennell. These people were freethinkers, and were influential in leading Miss Evans to a decided change in her religious views. Strauss, a German theologian, completed the work these friends had begun. Miss Evans was occupied for two years in translating his Life of Jesus into English. In this work Strauss attempts to prove that the narratives of the New Testament are almost wholly mythical. In 1849 Mr. Evans died. Marian went abroad for a time and, on her return, visited London, living as a boarder in the house of John Chapman, editor of the Westminster Review. This association led to her accepting a position as assistant to Mr. Chapman, with which her literary career really began. Her special work for some time consisted of reviews of contemporary literature.

Miss Evans was at this time a delightful companion. She was musical, playing more than tolerably well; she was a charming conversationalist; and she was the most learned woman in England. Among other literary persons, she became acquainted with George H. Lewes. Her affiliation with him has been regarded as the one doubtful step in her life. It is but just to state that no one questions Miss Evans' conscientiousness. Mr. Lewes had been deserted by his wife. The technicalities of the English law made a divorce impossible. Miss Evans went to live with him, and, until his death, remained his faithful wife, and a loyal and devoted mother to his deserted children. Whatever may be said of the abstract morality of this step, two effects must be noted. It has injured her influence which, in every other respect, has been on the side of the highest type of morality. On the other hand, Mr. Lewes' influence on her literary career was most beneficial; so much so, in fact, that it is questionable whether, without it, her greatest work would have been produced.

Her first writing in the line of fiction was at his suggestion. The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton, the first story in her Scenes of Clerical Life, was sent to Blackwood's Magazine over the pseudonym of George Eliot, by which name the author was destined to be known henceforth. The other stories in the series soon followed. In 1859 Adam Bede was published. This work at once placed George Eliot's name with those of England's greatest novelists, Dickens and Thackeray. Other novels were produced in rapid succession. A complete list of her writings is as follows:

The identity of George Eliot had been kept a secret from the reading public, and even from the editor of Blackwood's, until after the publication of Adam Bede. The credit of the stories being given to another, who was either unable or unwilling to set people right in the matter, made it necessary for the author to disclose herself. In 1878 Mr. Lewes died. A year and a half later, Mrs. Lewes married John Walter Cross, a London banker some twenty years her junior. Her death occurred quite suddenly in 1880.

George Eliot's life was externally quiet and uneventful. Her inner life, we can scarcely doubt, was sufficiently exciting. Life itself was a serious matter with her. Her views of life, her religion, her friendships, her human relations,--all stirred her profoundly. Personally, she was a rather small, homely woman, with a large, strong-featured, yet gentle face. Frederick Myers speaks of "her grave, majestic countenance." She was quiet, almost timid in bearing, with a refined, sympathetic voice, a quickness and clearness of thought, and a gift of expression which made her society unusually fascinating. She was by nature of a religious temperament; but so logical of mind that faith without sight was almost an impossibility. Reared in the Church of England, she was converted, at the age when most susceptible to religious impressions, to the views of the "Dissenters," as the Methodists and Baptists were called. Conscientious in her views to an extreme, but coming under the influence of skepticism before her character was formed or her intellectual powers fully developed, it would seem that the agnostic views to which she adhered throughout life were inevitable. She showed, however, a profound respect for all religious feeling and belief in others. No other writer of fiction has treated religion with greater respect, delicacy, and appreciation of truth in different forms. In Adam Bede, Methodism; in Romola, Catholicism; in Daniel Deronda, Judaism--in all she makes clear that to her the religious emotion,--not the religious creed,--is the real and vital truth.

Mr. Cross, her husband and biographer, says of her that "she showed from her earliest years the trait that was most marked in her through life,--namely the absolute need of some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all." Knowing this trait of her nature, her life story is made clearer. In her earliest childhood she had her brother Isaac. The story of the childhood of Tom and Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss is said to be a true picture of the early years of Isaac and Marian Evans. Then she had her father. Just before his death she wrote, "What shall I be without my father? It will seem as if a part of my moral nature were gone." Again she leaned upon Mr. Lewes and found in him the human sympathy and support she craved. Her marriage to Mr. Cross so soon after her first husband's death came as a shock to many of her friends. But her nature demanded this human companionship and would not be denied.

In intellectual power George Eliot is often regarded as masculine, so virile were her reasoning faculties; so vigorous and free from prejudice her judgments; so philosophic the general trend of her thought. In character she was essentially feminine, affectionate, proud, sensitive; easily moved to tears or laughter; intense in her enjoyments and sorrows. To this union of the masculine and feminine is due much of her power as a writer of fiction.

George Eliot's novels are divided usually into two groups. The first four in the list are based on circumstances coming under the author's own observation during her early life in Warwickshire. The other and later novels belong to the second class, and are based upon certain special studies. Romola, one of the world's great novels, is a picture of Florentine life during the fifteenth century. The material for Felix Holt, which is a claim for political equality, was obtained from files of old newspapers. For Middlemarch, a rather tedious picture of life, although literary critics often call it her greatest work, studies were made of medical treatises and medical colleges. In Daniel Deronda, a study of Judaism, the treatment accorded the Jew by the Christian furnishes the theme.

There is a diversity of opinion as to which of George Eliot's novels should be regarded as the greatest. Silas Marner is the favorite usually with young people. It is the simplest, and yet the most perfect in execution. Adam Bede has attracted, doubtless, the largest number of readers. Romola, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda,--each is defended for first place by a band of admirers.

George Eliot as a novelist is placed frequently ahead of both Dickens and Thackeray. Judged by the standards of the modern critic this is perhaps just. She shows a greater power in the analysis and development of character than either. She is more accurate, and is possessed of wider and more varied culture. Above all, her insight into the spiritual life of men and women surpasses that of any other novelist. Judged, however, by the standards of the average reader of novels, George Eliot's philosophy is too somber, especially in her later novels; her analysis of character becomes too minute,--the story is almost lost in psychological problems. Thackeray is more amusing; Dickens leaves the reader happier. From first to last, however, George Eliot's novels present the highest moral standards. They teach the sovereignty of duty; the rewards of unflagging endeavor; the heroism of commonplace, everyday life, where selfish motives are lost sight of for the universal good.

MARY BLANCHARD MURPHY.

SAYINGS.

It is hard to be wise on an empty stomach.

It's easy finding reasons why other people should be patient.

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

When Death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Th' young men nooadeys, th're poor squashy things,--the' looks weel enoof, but the' woon't wear, the' woon't wear.

Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of individual minds. Agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

My books are deeply serious things to me, and come out of all the painful discipline, all the most hardly learnt lessons of my past life.

The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is, that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring, human creatures.

SAID OF GEORGE ELIOT.

Her conversation was deeply sympathetic, but grave and solemn, illumined by happy phrases and by thrilling tenderness, but not by humor. Although her features were heavy and not well proportioned, all was forgotten when that majestic head bent slowly down, and the eyes were lit up with a penetrating and lively gaze. She appeared much greater than her books. Her ability seemed to shrink beside her moral grandeur.--Oscar Browning.

A large intelligence was her dominant characteristic. However keenly she might feel, she could always see more keenly still. She not only had the creative imagination which brought forth these children of her brain; she had the piercing gift of analysis as well. So that more than any other English novelist, when her characters were once born, she had the power of probing to the quick all their secret impulses and springs of action.

In a word, the difference between Dickens's and George Eliot's powers is here typified: Dickens tends toward the satiric or destructive view of the old times; George Eliot, with an even more burning intolerance of the essential evil, takes on the other hand the loving or constructive view. It is for this reason that George Eliot's work, as a whole, is so much finer than some of Dickens's. The great artist never can work in haste, never in malice, never in even the sub-acid, satiric mood of Thackeray: in love, and love only, can great work, work that not only pulls down but builds up, be done; it is love, and love only, that is truly constructive in art.--Sidney Lanier.

George Eliot shows man what he may be, in terms of what he is.--Sidney Lanier.