In 1854 she resigned her position on the _Westminster_, and went with Mr. Lewes to Germany, forming a union which thousands who love her must regard as the great mistake of a very great life.
Mr. Lewes was collecting materials for his _Life of Goethe_. This took them to Goethe"s home at Weimar. "By the side of the bed," she says, "stands a stuffed chair where he used to sit and read while he drank his coffee in the morning. It was not until very late in his life that he adopted the luxury of an armchair. From the other side of the study one enters the library, which is fitted up in a very make-shift fashion, with rough deal shelves, and bits of paper, with Philosophy, History, etc., written on them, to mark the cla.s.sification of the books. Among such memorials one breathes deeply, and the tears rush to one"s eyes."
George Eliot met Liszt, and "for the first time in her life beheld real inspiration,--for the first time heard the true tones of the piano." Rauch, the great sculptor, called upon them, and "won our hearts by his beautiful person and the benignant and intelligent charm of his conversation."
Both writers were hard at work. George Eliot was writing an article on _Weimar_ for _Fraser_, on _c.u.mming_ for _Westminster_, and translating Spinoza"s _Ethics_. No name was signed to these productions, as it would not do to have it known that a woman wrote them. The education of most women was so meagre that the articles would have been considered of little value. Happily Girton and Newnham colleges are changing this estimate of the s.e.x. Women do not like to be regarded as inferior; then they must educate themselves as thoroughly as the best men are educated.
Mr. Lewes was not well. "This is a terrible trial to us poor scribblers," she writes, "to whom health is money, as well as all other things worth having." They had but one sitting-room between them, and the scratching of another pen so affected her nerves, as to drive her nearly wild. Pecuniarily, life was a harder struggle than ever, for there were four more mouths to be fed,--Mr. Lewes" three sons and their mother.
"Our life is intensely occupied, and the days are far too short,"
she writes. They were reading in every spare moment, twelve plays of Shakespeare, Goethe"s works, _Wilhelm Meister, Gotz von Berlichingen, Hermann and Dorothea, Iphigenia, Wanderjahre, Italianische Reise_, and others; Heine"s poems; Lessing"s _Laoc.o.o.n_ and _Nathan the Wise_; Macaulay"s _History of England_; Moore"s _Life of Sheridan_; Brougham"s _Lives of Men of Letters_; White"s _History of Selborne_; Whewell"s _History of Inductive Sciences_; Boswell; Carpenter"s _Comparative Physiology_; Jones" _Animal Kingdom_; Alison"s _History of Europe_; Kahnis" _History of German Protestantism_; Schrader"s _German Mythology_; Kingsley"s _Greek Heroes_; and the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in the original. She says, "If you want delightful reading, get Lowell"s _My Study Windows_, and read the essays called _My Garden Acquaintances_ and _Winter_." No wonder they were busy.
On their return from Germany they went to the sea-sh.o.r.e, that Mr.
Lewes might perfect his _Sea-side Studies_. George Eliot entered heartily into the work. "We were immensely excited," she says, "by the discovery of this little red mesembryanthemum. It was a _crescendo_ of delight when we found a "strawberry," and a _fortissimo_ when I, for the first time, saw the pale, fawn-colored tentacles of an _Anthea cereus_ viciously waving like little serpents in a low-tide pool."
They read here Gosse"s _Rambles on the Devonshire Coast_, Edward"s _Zoology_, Harvey"s sea-side book, and other scientific works.
And now at thirty-seven George Eliot was to begin her creative work.
Mr. Lewes had often said to her, "You have wit, description, and philosophy--those go a good way towards the production of a novel."
"It had always been a vague dream of mine," she says, "that sometime or other I might write a novel ... but I never went further toward the actual writing than an introductory chapter, describing a Staffordshire village, and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years pa.s.sed on I lost any hope that. I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about everything else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts."
After she had written a portion of _Amos Barton_ in her _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she read it to Mr. Lewes, who told her that now he was sure she could write good dialogue, but not as yet sure about her pathos. One evening, in his absence, she wrote the scene describing Milly"s death, and read it to Mr. Lewes, on his return. "We both cried over it," she says, "and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, "I think your pathos is better than your fun!""
Mr. Lewes sent the story to Blackwood, with the signature of "George Eliot,"--the first name chosen because it was his own name, and the last because it pleased her fancy. Mr. Lewes wrote that this story by a friend of his, showed, according to his judgment, "such humor, pathos, vivid presentation, and nice observation as have not been exhibited, in this style, since the _Vicar of Wakefield_."
Mr. John Blackwood accepted the story, but made some comments which discouraged the author from trying another. Mr. Lewes wrote him the effects of his words, which he hastened to withdraw, as there was so much to be said in praise that he really desired more stories from the same pen, and sent her a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.
This was evidently soothing, as _Mr. Gilfil"s Love Story_ and _Janet"s Repentance_ were at once written. Much interest began to be expressed about the author. Some said Bulwer wrote the sketches. Thackeray praised them, and Arthur Helps said, "He is a great writer." Copies of the stories bound together, with the t.i.tle _Scenes of Clerical Life_, were sent to Froude, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Faraday. d.i.c.kens praised the humor and the pathos, and thought the author was a woman.
Jane Welch Carlyle thought it "a _human_ book, written out of the heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an author, full of tenderness and pathos, without a sc.r.a.p of sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes one feel friends at once and for always with the man or woman who wrote it." She guessed the author was "a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom he has got those beautiful _feminine_ touches in his book, a good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness for as I have for my little Nero."
Mr. Lewes was delighted, and said, "Her fame is beginning." George Eliot was growing happier, for her nature had been somewhat despondent. She used to say, "Expecting disappointments is the only form of hope with which I am familiar." She said, "I feel a deep satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose-root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come." ""Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails" is my gospel," she would say. "Writing is part of my religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within.
At the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world have been written with the hope of getting money for them."
"My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties."
For _Scenes of Clerical Life_ she received six hundred dollars for the first edition, and much more after her other books appeared.
And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind, _Adam Bede_, the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her aunt, Elizabeth Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant girl had murdered her child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, stayed with her all night, praying with her, and at last she burst into tears and confessed her crime.
Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.
When the first pages of _Adam Bede_ were shown to Mr. Blackwood, he said, "That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich, Dresden, and Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the book in this time. When it was finished, she wrote on the ma.n.u.script, _Jubilate_. "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life."
For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright for four years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were talking about it. John Murray said there had never been such a book.
Charles Reade said, putting his finger on Lisbeth"s account of her coming home with her husband from their marriage, "the finest thing since Shakespeare." A workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton said, in the House of Commons: "As the farmer"s wife says in _Adam Bede_, "It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different."" This of course greatly helped to popularize the book.
To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest grat.i.tude. They were able now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once.
The poverty and the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make me.... I am a.s.sured now that _Adam Bede_ was worth writing,--worth living through those long years to write. But now it seems impossible that I shall ever write anything so good and true again." Up to this time the world did not know who George Eliot was; but as a man by the name of Liggins laid claim to the authorship, and tried to borrow money for his needs because Blackwood would not pay him, the real name of the author had to be divulged.
Five thousand copies of _Adam Bede_ were sold the first two weeks, and sixteen thousand the first year. So excellent was the sale that Mr.
Blackwood sent her four thousand dollars in addition to the first four. The work was soon translated into French, German, and Hungarian.
Mr. Lewes" _Physiology of Common Life_ was now published, but it brought little pecuniary return.
The reading was carried on as usual by the two students. The _Life of George Stephenson_; the _Electra_ of Sophocles; the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, Harriet Martineau"s _British Empire in India_; and _History of the Thirty Years" Peace_; Beranger, _Modern Painters_, containing some of the finest writing of the age; Overbech on Greek art; Anna Mary Howitt"s book on Munich; Carlyle"s _Life of Frederick the Great_; Darwin"s _Origin of Species_; Emerson"s _Man the Reformer_, "which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning"; Buckle"s _History of Civilization_; Plato and Aristotle.
An American publisher now offered her six thousand dollars for a book, but she was obliged to decline, for she was writing the _Mill on the Floss_, in 1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars for the first edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers fifteen hundred dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz paid her five hundred for the German reprint.
She said: "I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas." They went at once to Italy, where they spent several months in Florence, Venice, and Rome.
In the former city she made her studies for her great novel, _Romola_.
She read Sismondi"s _History of the Italian Republics_, Tenneman"s _History of Philosophy_, T.A. Trollope"s _Beata_, Hallam on the _Study of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, Gibbon on the _Revival of Greek Learning_, Burlamachi"s _Life of Savonarola_; also Villari"s life of the great preacher, Mrs. Jameson"s _Sacred and Legendary Art_, Machiavelli"s works, Petrarch"s Letters, _Casa Guidi Windows_, Buhle"s _History of Modern Philosophy_, Story"s _Roba di Roma_, Liddell"s _Rome_, Gibbon, Mosheim, and one might almost say the whole range of Italian literature in the original. Of Mommsen"s _History of Rome_ she said, "It is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it without the deepest stirrings."
The study necessary to make one familiar with fifteenth century times was almost limitless. No wonder she told Mr. Cross, years afterward, "I began _Romola_ a young woman, I finished it an old woman"; but that, with _Adam Bede_ and _Middlemarch_, will be her monument. "What courage and patience," she says, "are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!" "In authorship I hold carelessness to be a mortal sin." "I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write _Romola_."
For this one book, on which she spent a year and a half, _Cornhill Magazine_ paid her the small fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars.
She purchased a pleasant home, "The Priory," Regent"s Park, where she made her friends welcome, though she never made calls upon any, for lack of time. She had found, like Victor Hugo, that time is a very precious thing for those who wish to succeed in life. Browning, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer often came to dine.
Says Mr. Cross, in his admirable life: "The entertainment was frequently varied by music when any good performer happened to be present. I think, however, that the majority of visitors delighted chiefly to come for the chance of a few words with George Eliot alone. When the drawing-room door of the Priory opened, a first glance revealed her always in the same low arm-chair on the left-hand side of the fire. On entering, a visitor"s eye was at once arrested by the ma.s.sive head. The abundant hair, streaked with gray now, was draped with lace, arranged mantilla fashion, coming to a point at the top of the forehead. If she were engaged in conversation, her body was usually bent forward with eager, anxious desire to get as close as possible to the person with whom she talked. She had a great dislike to raising her voice, and often became so wholly absorbed in conversation that the announcement of an in-coming visitor failed to attract her attention; but the moment the eyes were lifted up, and recognized a friend, they smiled a rare welcome--sincere, cordial, grave--a welcome that was felt to come straight from the heart, not graduated according to any social distinction."
After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political economy, _Felix Holt_ was written, in 1866, and for this she received from Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.
Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of her books, which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for rest.
In 1868 she published her long poem, _The Spanish Gypsy_, reading Spanish literature carefully, and finally pa.s.sing some time in Spain, that she might be the better able to make a lasting work. Had she given her life to poetry, doubtless she would have been a great poet.
_Silas Marner_, written before _Romola_, in 1861, had been well received, and _Middlemarch_, in 1872, made a great sensation. It was translated into several languages. George Bancroft wrote her from Berlin that everybody was reading it. For this she received a much larger sum than the thirty-five thousand which she was paid for _Romola_.
A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of pleasure grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and flowers about her house. "Sunlight and sweet air," she said, "make a new creature of me." _Daniel Deronda_ followed in 1876, for which, it is said, she read nearly a thousand volumes. Whether this be true or not, the list of books given in her life, of her reading in these later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for any who desire real knowledge.
At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few friends like the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady Holland. Both were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor health. Finally, after a ten days" illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.
To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and his affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe Spencer a debt of grat.i.tude. It was through him that I learned to know Marian,--to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. G.o.d bless her!"
Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either s.e.x, in memory of the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.
Mr. Cross" mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting.
They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.
"I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one"s mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet."
Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half after Mr. Lewes" death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self.... To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure." Having pa.s.sed through a severe illness, she wrote to a friend: "I have been cared for by something much better than angelic tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection that has chosen to watch over me."
She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the happiness instead of me."
On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily.
George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars for woman"s higher education at Girton College, and helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was proud to be remembered.
She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul"s Epistles. Then they read Max Muller"s works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever was best in English, French, and German literature. Milton she called her demiG.o.d. Her husband says she had "a limitless persistency in application." Her health was better, and she gave promise of doing more great work. When urged to write her autobiography, she said, half sighing and half smiling: "The only thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I suffered from, of ever being able to achieve anything. No one could ever have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler."
Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to see _Agamemnon_ performed in Greek by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St.