Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (928 page)

One of her intimate friends says that “in every line of her face there was powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what otherwise might have been terror into fascination!” We are told that “an extraordinary delicacy pervaded her whole being. She seemed to live upon air, and the rest of her body was as light and fragile as her countenance and intellect were massive.” One of the results of this large brain and fragile body was, that she was never vigorous in health. Only her quiet, simple life, and avoidance of all excitement in regular work, enabled her to accomplish so much as she did. Her conversation was rich and attractive. She talked much as she wrote, was a good listener, never obtruded her opinions, and always had a noble moral purpose in her words.

An American lady has given an interesting account of her home and of her conversation. “No one,” says Mrs. Field, “who had ever seen her could mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men’s) covered with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman’s shoulders. But, as she rose up, her figure appeared of but medium height. She received us very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because very simple and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of free-masonry among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. ‘Come, sit by me on this sofa,’ she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy one feels the magnetism of a large mind informed by a true woman’s heart; then, as the soul shines through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can give the full expression of the eye any more than of the voice. Looking into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in a woman. It is a special charm of the most finely cultured English ladies. But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener, — so soft and low that one must almost bend to hear. You can imagine what it was thus to sit for an hour beside this gifted woman and hear talk of questions interesting to the women of England and America. But I should do her great injustice if I gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at display. There is no wish to shine. She is above that affectation of brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of herself, or even to hear the heartfelt praise of others. She does not engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has that delicate tact — which is one of the fine arts among women — to make others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with broad, free current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of the refined and highly cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her intellectual superiority, you naturally feel elevated into a higher sphere. The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility.”

Mrs. Lewes was in the habit for many years of receiving her friends on Sunday afternoons from two to six o’clock. These gatherings came to be among the most memorable features of London literary life. A large number of persons, both men and women, attended her receptions, and among them many who were well known to the scientific or literary world. Especially were young men of aspiring minds drawn hither and given a larger comprehension of life. She had no political or fashionable connections, says Mr. F.W.H. Myers, “but nearly all who were most eminent in art, science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her Sunday-afternoon receptions. There were many women, too, drawn often from among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes’s look and speech, and sometimes illumining with some fair young face a
salon
whose grave talk needed the grace which they could bestow. And there was sure to be a considerable admixture of men not as yet famous, — probably never to be so, — but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to ‘that hopeful interest which’ — to quote a letter of her own — ‘the elder mind, dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.’ It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful
bonhomie
, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of any social group. Mrs. Lewes’s manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best — to establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor — to utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the hearts of those who heard them. To some of her literary admirers, this serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely for intellectual refreshment. Mrs. Lewes’s humor, though fed from a deep perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk — full of matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was — there was the same pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those whose object was distinctively to
learn
from her, than to those who merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her, these mixed receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not move easily from one individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her, — had spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart, — she would suffer from almost morbid accesses of self-reproach.” A further idea of these conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul’s account. “When London was full,” he says, “the little drawing-room in St. John’s Wood was now and then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes even too great tolerance. But these afternoons had the highest pleasure when London was empty, or the day was wet, and only a few friends were present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to hear.”

At these gatherings the most noted of the English disciples of Comte were to be found, and among them Frederic Harrison, Prof. E.S. Beesley, Dr. Congrove, the director of the London Church of Humanity, and Prof. W.K. Clifford. The English positivists were represented by Herbert Spencer, Prof. T.H. Huxley and Moncure D. Conway. The realistic school of poets and artists came in the persons of its most representative men. Dante Rosetti and Millais, Tourguénief and Burne Jones, DuMaurier and Dr. Hueffner illustrated most of its phases. The great world of general literature sent Sir Arthur Helps, Sir Theodore Martin, Anthony Trollope, C.G. Leland, Justin McCarthy, Frederic Myers, Prof. Mark Pattison and many another. The rarer guests included Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It was no inconsiderable influence which could draw together such a company and hold it together for many years. Of the part played in these gatherings by the hosts, Miss Mathilde Blind has given an account. Lewes acted “as a social cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, diffused that general sense of ease and
abandon
so requisite to foster an harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a
raconteur
, and Thackeray, Trollope and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the stories which he would dramatize in the telling. One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot’s friends is that of the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its strongly marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of expression, especially softening the too prominent under lip and massive jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with gray, whose smooth bands made a kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her published works.”

Among the persons who gathered at The Priory on Sunday afternoons there came to be a considerable number of those who were Mrs. Lewes’s devoted disciples. They hung upon her words, they accepted her views of life, her philosophy became theirs. That she would have admitted such discipleship existed there is no reason to believe, and it is certain she did not attempt to bring it about or even desire it. So great, however, was her power of intellect, so noble her personal influence, it was impossible that ardent young natures could refrain from devotion to such genius and speedy acceptance of its teachings. The richness of her moral and intellectual nature aided largely in this heroine worship, but she impressed herself on other minds because she was so much an individual, because her personality was of a kind to command reverence and devotion. It was not merely young and impulsive natures who were thus attracted and inspired, for Edith Simcox says that “men and women, old friends and new, persons of her own age and of another generation, the married and the single, impulsive lovers and hard-headed philosophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might have passed for cynics, all classes alike yielded to the attractive force of this rare character, in which tenderness and strength were blended together, and as it were transfused with something that was all her own — the genius of sweet goodness.” Perhaps her influence was so great on those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent, while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, “had the unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles she held to be most ‘necessary to salvation.’ Where this sympathy existed, her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer, with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend.”

As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent characteristic of Mrs. Lewes’s mind than its great intellectual power. Her sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman’s own. She gave her sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other souls, — these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. “How strong was the current of her sympathy in the direction of all humble effort,” exclaims one of her friends, “how reluctantly she checked presumption! The most ordinary and uninteresting of her friends must feel that had they known nothing of her but her rapid insight into and quick response to their inmost feelings she would still have been a memorable personality to them. This sympathy was extended to the sorrows most unlike anything she could ever by any possibility have known — the failures of life obtained as large a share of her compassion as its sorrows. The wish to console and cheer was indeed rooted in the most vital part of her nature.” Another of her friends has said that “she possessed to a marvellous degree the divine gifts of charity, and of attracting moral outcasts to herself, whose devils she cast out, if I may be permitted the expression, by shutting her eyes to their existence. In her presence you felt wrapped round by an all-embracing atmosphere of sympathy and readiness to make the least of all your short comings, and the most of any good which might be in you. But great as was her personality, she shrank with horror from intruding it upon you, and, in general society, her exquisitely melodious voice was, unhappily for the outside circles, too seldom raised beyond the pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor which runs through George Eliot’s works there was comparatively little trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, joining heartily in any mirth which might be going on.”