My Life in Middlemarch (34 page)

At the National Portrait Gallery in London, I am indebted to Tim Moreton, Clementine Hampshire, Alexandra Ault, Kristina Macdonald, and Eleanor Macnair. Ali Wells, keeper of Collections (Social History and Natural History) at the Herbert Art
Gallery & Museum in Coventry, gave generously of her time, as did Catherine Nisbet and Janine Fox at the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery. At the Grolier Club, in New York, where I read the Sotheby’s catalog for the 1923 auction of Gertrude Lewes’s estate, I am grateful for the assistance of Meghan Read Constantinou; thanks go to Sarah Funke Butler for pointing me there.

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the
Prelude
, I cite Virginia’s Woolf’s article about George Eliot that appeared in the
Times Literary Supplement
(November 1919); it is reprinted in
A Century of George Eliot Criticism,
edited by Gordon S. Haight (University Paperbacks, 1966). Accounts of visits to the Priory, and of encounters with George Eliot, by Elizabeth M. Bruce, Charles Eliot Norton, William Hale White, and Sophia Lucy Clifford are taken from K. K. Collins’s
George Eliot: Interviews and Recollections.
Fascinating images of the Priory, as well as other locations and individuals important to George Eliot’s story, can be found in
George Eliot
by Marghanita Laski (Thames and Hudson, 1987). After my encounter with George Eliot’s notebook I learned more of its history from
George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” Notebooks: A Transcription,
edited by John Clark Pratt and Victor A. Neufeldt (University of California Press, 1979).

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chapter 1
, “Miss Brooke,” I am indebted to the scholarship of Jerome Beaty, who in
“Middlemarch” from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot’s Creative Method
(University of Illinois Press, 1960) described the process by which Eliot constructed
Middlemarch.
Mathilde Blind’s
George Eliot
(Roberts Brothers,
1889) proved a fascinating source of firsthand accounts of George Eliot as a child; other recollections of George Eliot’s school days, several of them anonymously published in contemporary periodicals, have been collected by Collins. As of this writing, George Eliot’s desk is no longer on display at the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery; it was stolen in 2012. Nina Auerbach’s suggestive comments about Dorothea are in an essay, “Dorothea’s Lost Dog,” which appears in
“Middlemarch” in the 21st Century,
edited by Karen Chase (Oxford University Press, 2006). George Eliot’s notebook in which she wrote out her scheme for
Middlemarch,
known as
Quarry for “Middlemarch,”
is in the Houghton Library at Harvard.

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chapter 2
, “Old and Young,” I relied upon Hermione Lee’s
Virginia Woolf
(Vintage Books, 1999) for my characterization of Woolf’s early years; the quotation from Vanessa Bell’s memoir,
Notes on Virginia’s Childhood,
is taken from Lee’s book. Leslie Stephen’s essay appeared in the
Cornhill Magazine
(February 1881) and is reprinted in Haight’s
A Century of George Eliot Criticism.
My understanding of Coventry’s nineteenth-century history is gleaned from Benjamin Poole’s
The History of Coventry
(D. Lewin, 1852). I referred to
A Dictionary of British Place-Names
by A. D. Mills (Oxford University Press, 2011), and am grateful to Paul Cavill, of the University of Nottingham, for his further insight into English place-names. Emily Davies’s letters are excerpted by Collins.

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chapter 3
, I draw upon George Henry Lewes’s diary, excerpted in Haight’s
The George Eliot Letters.
In Rosemary Ashton’s
G. H. Lewes: A Life
(Clarendon Press, 1991) I read about Lewes’s first marriage; I also referred to David Williams’s
Mr. George Eliot: A Biography of George Henry Lewes
(Franklin Watts, 1983). Nancy Henry’s
The Life of George Eliot
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) provides a fascinating reexamination of the circumstances surrounding Lewes’s separation from Agnes. Ruby V. Redinger’s
George Eliot: The Emergent Self
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1975) offers interesting analysis of the family dynamics between the Evans children. In
The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction
(Cornell, 1994), Rosemarie Bodenheimer devotes a chapter to George Eliot’s stepsons; her insights have helped me develop my own. Thornie’s portrait is reprinted in Arthur Paterson’s
George Eliot’s Family Life and Letters
(Houghton Mifflin, 1928).
Natal: A History and Description of the Colony
by Henry Brooks (L. Reeve, 1876) was illuminating. Marie Sanderson’s letter to George Eliot is in Haight’s edition. Collins cites Charles Lewes’s defense of George Eliot in a letter to the
Times,
December 27, 1902.

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chapter 4
, the anecdote about the archbishop of Dublin concealing
Middlemarch
in his hat is from a letter written by Lewes that appears in Haight’s
The George Eliot Letters.
The
Spectator
review published June 1, 1872, is reprinted in
George Eliot and Her Readers: A Selection of Contemporary Reviews,
edited by Laurence Lerner and John Holmstrom (Bodley Head, 1966). Rosemary Ashton’s
142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London
(Jonathan Cape, 2007) gave me insight into George Eliot’s London
milieu. George Eliot’s review of Thomas Carlyle’s
Life of Sterling
appears in Pinney’s edition of her essays; one of her biographers, Frederick R. Karl, notes the consonance between Eliot’s theory of biography and the practice of fiction in his
George Eliot: Voice of a Century
(Norton, 1995). Bessie Rayner Parkes’s comment about George Eliot’s angelic wings appears in Haight, and I am grateful to Girton College, Cambridge, for permission to reprint it. Letters from Alphonse D’Albert Durade’s haggling over the price of his father’s portrait of George Eliot are preserved in the archive at the National Portrait Gallery. Anne Fremantle’s
George Eliot
(Duckworth, 1933) provides a perspective upon Eliot’s reputation eighty years ago; Brenda Maddox’s
George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife
(HarperPress, 2009) does the same thing for our own time. Henry James’s letter to his father is excerpted in Collins, as are the observations of Sara Jane Lippincott, who wrote under the pseudonym Grace Greenwood, of Ivan Turgenev, as reported by Sofia Kovalevskaya, and of Elizabeth Malleson. For a fascinating account of an attempt to identify George Eliot’s painter suitor, see
Those of Us Who Loved Her: The Men in George Eliot’s Life
by Kathleen Adams (George Eliot Fellowship, 1993). Bessie Rayner Parkes’s essay, “Dorothea Casaubon and George Eliot,” first appeared in the
Contemporary Review
in 1894. I draw upon Herbert Spencer’s
Social Statics
(D. Appleton, 1865) and
An Autobiography
(D. Appleton, 1904). Spencer’s letter to Youmans is excerpted by Haight. Barbara Hardy offers a particularly sensitive and sympathetic reading of Spencer’s motives and actions in
George Eliot: A Critic’s Biography.
Henry James’s review of
Middlemarch
was published in the
Galaxy,
March 1873, and is reprinted in
The Art
of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction,
edited by William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin (University of Chicago Press, 1986). I have drawn upon
Home Life with Herbert Spencer; By Two
(J. W. Arrowsmith, 1910).

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chapter 5
, I cite J. Hillis Miller’s essay from
George Eliot,
edited by Harold Bloom (Chelsea House Publishers, 1985). I have quoted from an essay “The Building of Oxford Covered Market,” by Malcolm Graham, published in
Oxoniensia,
vol. 44, 1979. William Wordsworth’s recollection is in Collins. For the life of Francis Pattison I have drawn upon Betty Askwith’s biography,
Lady Dilke
(Chatto and Windus, 1969). Lady Dilke’s published stories,
The Shrine of Death and Other Stories
(George Routledge and Sons, 1886), make for fascinating reading. Lord Dilke’s memoir of his wife appears in
The Book of the Spiritual Life
by Lady Dilke (E. P. Dutton, 1905). For my understanding of Mark Pattison I read his
Memoirs
(Macmillan, 1885) and drew upon H. S. Jones’s biography,
Intellect and Character in Victorian England: Mark Pattison and the Invention of the Don
(Cambridge University Press, 2007). Dilke’s unpublished memoirs are cited by Askwith, among others. Haight’s 1974 essay, “Poor Mr. Casaubon,” appears in his volume
George Eliot’s Originals and Contemporaries
(University of Michigan Press, 1992). Sparrow’s lectures were published as
Mark Pattison and the Idea of a University
(Cambridge University Press, 1967). A. D. Nuttall’s
Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination
was published in 2003 by Yale University Press. V. S. Pritchett’s essay
on George Eliot appears in
A Man of Letters: Selected Essays
(Random House, 1985). Mary Augusta Ward’s recollection appears in Collins.

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chapter 6
, I cite
The Diary of Alice James,
edited by Leon Edel (Northeastern University Press, 1999). Elizabeth Hardwick’s essay is in
A View of My Own: Essays on Literature and Society
(Ecco Press, 1982). “How I came to write Fiction” was not published in Eliot’s lifetime; Cross excerpted it, and it appears in full in
The Journals of George Eliot.
Blanche Colton Williams’s biography is
George Eliot
(Macmillan, 1936). Remarks by Eliza Lynn Linton and Margaret Fuller appear in Collins. I cite Joel Harvey Linsley’s 1828 publication,
Lectures on the Relations and Duties of the Middle Aged.
Lord David Cecil’s characterization of Ladislaw is quoted in Haight’s
George Eliot’s Originals and Contemporaries;
Leslie Stephen’s appears in
George Eliot
(Macmillan, 1902), a volume in the ill-named English Men of Letters series. James’s comments appear in his
Galaxy
review. David Trotter’s essay appears in
“Middlemarch” in the 21st Century.
Several of Eliot’s biographers have noted the parallels between Ladislaw and Lewes, including Ina Taylor in
A Woman of Contradictions: The Life of George Eliot
(William Morrow, 1989) and Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, who in their
Marian Evans & George Eliot
(Oxford University Press, 1952) call Ladislaw “that unfortunate blend of Shelley and Lewes.” Annie Fields is quoted in Collins, as is the anonymous curtain-twitcher. Phyllis Rose’s
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
(Vintage Books, 1984) remains an exemplary work of sympathetic scholarship and has informed all my thinking about
Victorian marriage and not-quite marriage. Robert Lowell’s poem is reprinted in
Essays in Appreciation
by Christopher Ricks (Oxford University Press, 1996). George Eliot’s translation of Feuerbach is quoted in
George Eliot: A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings, and Philosophy
by George Willis Cooke (Houghton Mifflin, 1895). Eliza Lynn Linton’s
My Literary Life
was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1899. John G. Lord’s essay on Eliot appeared in his
Beacon Lights of History: Great Women
(Fords, Howard and Hulbert, 1886). Barbara Bodichon’s letter is in Haight’s
The George Eliot Letters,
as is Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s. Research into George Eliot’s foreign travels has been done by Kathleen McCormack in
George Eliot in Society: Travels Abroad and Sundays at the Priory
(Ohio State University Press, 2013).

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chapter 7
,
“The Mill on the Floss”: In Half the Time
(Phoenix, 2007) seems mercifully to be out of print. I referred to Michael Holroyd’s
Lytton Strachey: The New Biography
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995). Benjamin Jowett’s notes on Eliot appear in Collins.
The Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone
were published by Macmillan in 1905; his review of Cross’s
Life of George Eliot
appeared in the
Nineteenth Century,
vol. 17, 1885. Disparaging summations of George Eliot appear in William Ernest Henley’s
Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation
(Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890). George Saintsbury’s observations appear in his
Corrected Impressions: Essays on Victorian Writers
(Dodd, Mead, 1895). Edmund Gosse’s essay appears in his
Aspects and Impressions
(Cassell, 1922). Bessie Rayner Parkes’s comments come from “Dorothea Casaubon and George Eliot”; for a fascinating early critique of
Eliot’s underachieving heroines, see Abba Goold Woolson’s
George Eliot and Her Heroines
(Harper and Brothers, 1886). Leah Price writes about the practice of excerpting George Eliot’s wisdom in “George Eliot and the Production of Consumers,” an excellent chapter in
The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel: From Richardson to George Eliot
(Cambridge University Press, 2000).