George Eliot (80 page)

Solmar, Henriette von, 221, 222

Spencer, Herbert, 93, 157, 159, 186–8, 191, 201, 202, 208, 228, 242, 244, 286, 307–8, 310, 355, 357, 378, 403, 415, 447–8, 458, 461, 464, 469, 470, 481, 482

model for Theophrastus Such [
Impressions of Theophrastus Such
], 467

relationship with, 163–76

Spencer, Revd Thomas, 164, 172

Spinoza, Benedict de, 95, 96, 118, 133, 192, 222, 226, 227, 237, 444, 460

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 393

Stahr, Adolf, 222

Stanley, Arthur, 396–7, 482–3

Stanley, Lady Augusta, 396–7

Stanley sisters, 380

Stephen, Leslie, 441–2

Stevenson Harrison, Eliza,
see
Lewes, Eliza

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 393, 425, 429, 452

Strand, The, stay at, 150–83

Strauss, David Friedrich, 90, 98, 99, 100, 211, 219, 274

GE’s translation, 6, 95–100, 109, 111, 118, 120, 137, 148, 153, 160, 165, 184, 205, 224, 226, 247, 394, 424

Stuart, Elma, 405–6, 431–2, 434, 435, 437, 464, 474, 478, 481, 484

Stuart, Roland, 434

Taylor, Clementia, 355–6, 368–70, 473–4, 476

Taylor, Isaac, 64

Taylor, Peter, 355

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 399, 412, 457, 461

Tennyson, Lady, 399

Tennyson, Mrs Lionel, 473

Terborch, Gerard, 275

Teresa of Avila, St, 7, 422

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 157, 197, 258, 262, 346, 347, 402, 426, 430

Tieck, Ludwig, 197

Tilley, Elisabeth, 140–41, 144–52, 169, 184

Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de, 197

Tomlinson, Elizabeth,
see
Evans, Elizabeth

Trollope, Anthony, 5, 332, 335, 343, 348, 350–52, 357, 367, 382, 402, 412, 426, 461

Trollope, Anthony, Mrs, 358

Trollope, Tom, 202, 341, 343, 357

Tugwell, George, 243, 265

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 398, 457, 461

Tyndall, John, 483

Unitarianism, 64–5, 66, 72, 101, 153, 155, 158, 162, 182, 215, 225

Vallière, Madame de, 125

Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August, 221

Vehse, Eduard, 226

Venice, stay in, 4, 334, 381, 475, 477–80

Victoria (Vicky), Princess, 4, 397

Victoria, Queen, 1–4, 7, 108, 212, 288, 357, 361, 394, 397, 427

Victorian age:

characteristics of, 2, 3, 6–8, 426, 485

end of, 485, 486

Villino Trollope, 364, 414

Vinet, Alexandre Rodolphe, 94–7, 99, 150

Vivian,
see
Lewes, George Henry

Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de, 133

Wagner, Richard, 220, 391

Wallington, Mrs, 28, 29, 33

Wallington, Nancy,
see
Buchanan, Nancy

Wandsworth, 5, 293–5, 298–300, 309, 313, 315, 332, 355, 381

Ward, Mrs Humphry, Mary Augusta (née Arnold), 400

Warwickshire, 1, 9, 14, 28, 43, 92, 110, 117, 119, 134, 142, 162, 181, 219, 244, 252, 258, 268, 286, 292, 293, 301, 308, 314, 354, 387, 442

Watteau, Antoine, 264

Watts, Francis, 75, 89, 93, 94, 103, 105, 107, 150

Weimar, Duke of, 219

Weimar, stay in, 210–20

Wesley, John, 30, 283

Westminster Review
, 116, 138, 145–59, 163, 177, 182, 224, 249–50, 424

Whewell, William, 242

White, William Hale (Mark Rutherford), 136, 157, 485

Wicksteed, Charles, 100

Wilberforce, William, 45–6

Williams, John, 46

Willim, Elizabeth (née Ashweek,
later
Lewes), 339, 386, 412, 416, 437

[GHL’s mother], 189

Willim, John, 189, 339, 386

Witley, ‘The Heights’, 439–40, 457, 469, 480

Wollstonecraft, Mary (Mrs Godwin), 441

Woolf, Virginia, 484

Woolner, Thomas, 378

Wordsworth, William, 9, 49, 53–4, 62, 338–9

Young, Edward, 46, 258, 308

Several times during the writing of this book I feared that I had turned into Edward Casaubon, the fastidious blocked cleric from
Middlemarch
who has been working for far too long on the ‘Key to All Mythologies’. But unlike Casaubon, I did eventually start – and finish – writing and need to thank the many people and institutions who helped me along the way.

Anyone working on George Eliot bears a huge debt to Gordon Haight, the Yale academic who spent his life collecting her letters into nine immaculately edited volumes, as well as producing the excellent biography of 1968. Other Eliot scholars whose work has been particularly helpful include Rosemary Ashton and Ruby Redinger.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Warwickshire County Record Office and the Nuneaton Library all allowed me generous access to their manuscript holdings, from which I am very grateful to be permitted to quote. Thanks especially to Jonathan Ouvry, George Henry Lewes’s great-great-grandson, for allowing me to cite the unpublished journals of Eliot and Lewes held at Yale. I am also grateful for the help I received from the British Library, the London Library and London University Library.

George Eliot called John Blackwood ‘the best of publishers’. I could say the same of Christopher Potter at Fourth Estate, to whom I am very grateful for commissioning this book. My editor Katie Owen provided exactly that blend of insight and enthusiasm which authors fantasise about during the long, dark days of composition. Thanks go too to Ilsa Yardley for her immaculate
copy-editing and to Leo Hollis for taking on the picture research. And, of course, I am indebted to Rachel Calder at the Tessa Sayle Agency for first putting me and Eliot together. More personally, I’d like to thank Karen Merrin for her friendship and my brother, Dr Michael Hughes of Liverpool University, for hours of phone support, not to mention a crash course in German philosophy. But my greatest debt is to my parents who have never, in all the years I have spent writing about the nineteenth century, hinted that there might be easier ways to make a living.

Kathryn Hughes

London, June 1998

Kathryn Hughes was educated at Oxford University and holds a PhD in Victorian Studies. She is a visiting lecturer in nineteenth-century literature and history at several British universities and reviews regularly for the
Daily Telegraph
, the
Literary Review
and the
New Statesman
. She is the author of
The Victorian Governess
.

‘Sparkling … a psychological drama which is both acute and compelling and a joy to read.’
Spectator

‘Magnificent.’
Independent
, Books of the Year

‘No earlier biographer has succeeded so well in giving Eliot a social and historical context; Hughes is acutely aware of the importance of location to the development of ideas.’
Sunday Times
, Books of the Year

‘Earlier biographers worshipped as at a shrine; Hughes is invitingly familiar, and permits us to see Eliot in the raw … She provides us with a redefinition of the art as well as the life, and explains why George Eliot’s novels ultimately offered her readers more than just the diversions of fiction.’
Independent on Sunday

‘This biography adds significantly to our understanding of the greatest novelist in the English language.’
Mail on Sunday

‘Kathryn Hughes brings a rare blend of scholarly and psychological insight to the period.’
Observer

‘Brilliantly accessible.’
Birmingham Post

‘Kathryn Hughes has an eye for dramatic tension and the wit not to overcrowd her account.
George Eliot: The Last Victorian
is an engagingly good read, a popular but intelligent insight into a woman who stands head and shoulders above almost all other Victorian novelists in the perception and realism of her material.’
Scotland on Sunday

‘Consistently interesting, with a sharp psychological angle.’

Literary Review

‘Illuminating … Skilfully relating the life experiences to the writing, Hughes tells … Eliot’s story with gusto and scholarly perception.’

Daily Mail

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by
Fourth Estate Limited
6 Salem Road
London W2 4BU

Copyright © Kathryn Hughes 1998

The right of Kathryn Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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