Pen-portraits of literary women, vol. 2

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pen-portraits of literary women, Volume II (of 2), by Various

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PEN-PORTRAITS OF
LITERARY WOMEN

Harriet Martineau was born at Norwich, on the 12th of June, 1802. The Martineau family were descendants of Huguenot refugees. Harriet’s father, Thomas Martineau, was a Norwich manufacturer; Elizabeth Rankin was the maiden name of her mother, who is described as “a true Northumbrian woman.” Harriet was the sixth child in a family of eight. Her childhood was sickly, repressed, and unhappy. “My life has had no spring,” she wrote long afterwards. At eleven years of age she was sent to the school of a Mr. Perry, who laid a solid foundation for her education. About two years later Mr. Perry left Norwich, and Harriet’s education was then carried on at home under visiting masters. At fourteen she was sent to a Bristol boarding school, where she stayed fifteen months. After this, her keen appetite for knowledge led her to carry on her studies at home, despite much discouragement. Like other young women of that day, she was expected to “spend a frightful amount of time in sewing,” and at one period could only steal the hours for intellectual work from her sleep.

	PAGE.
Harriet Martineau,	11
Aurore Dudevant (George Sands),	59
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,	93
Margaret Fuller (Ossoli),	131
Charlotte Brontë,	179
Emily Brontë,
Marian Evans Cross (George Eliot),	245

She had begun to be deaf at eight years old, and at eighteen had almost entirely lost the sense of hearing. This was a bitter trial to her. In 1822, when she was twenty, an attachment arose between herself and a Mr. Worthington, a student for the Unitarian[Pg 12] ministry, and the friend of her brother (afterward Dr. James Martineau). Worthington was poor, and her family refused to sanction a formal engagement. Three years of waiting and suspense followed. In June, 1826, Thomas Martineau died. The financial crisis of the winter of 1825 had left him comparatively poor, and he could only provide in his will “a bare maintenance” for his wife and daughters. By this time Mr. Worthington had completed his studies, and obtained a position; and the Martineau family, under these altered conditions, permitted Harriet to enter into an engagement with him. The unfortunate young man, however, was seized with a brain fever, which left him mentally shattered, and toward the close of the year 1826 he died.

Harriet’s literary career had already begun with certain contributions to the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian magazine. In 1823 she had published, anonymously, a small volume of Devotional Exercises, and in 1826 a book of Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns. In the comparative poverty to which she was now reduced, she took up her pen with a will, but for some time with little result. She supplied anonymous short stories to a publisher named Houlston, and wrote for him a tale called Principle and Practice, and a sequel thereto. She contributed, without payment, to the Repository and wrote, on commission, a Life of Howard, for which she never received the remuneration promised.

In June, 1829, the old Norwich house, in which, after their father’s death, her brother Henry had remained a partner, became bankrupt. As Mrs. Martineau and her daughters had been dependent on the profits of the[Pg 13] factory for the payment of their small income, they were now left utterly without support. The other sisters became teachers; Harriet worked with her needle by day, and wrote by night. She continued her contributions to the Repository, for a compensation of £15 a year; and wrote for this periodical a story called The Hope of the Hebrews, which was so highly praised among the Unitarians that Mr. W. J. Fox, the editor, advised her to publish a volume of such stories. She did so, and it was moderately successful. She took part in a competition for three prizes offered by a Unitarian association “for the best essays designed to convert Roman Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans, respectively, to Unitarianism.” She won all three of the prizes, thus gaining twenty-five guineas, and much honor in the sect. In the same year, 1830, she wrote the long story, Five Years of Youth, and a volume called Traditions of Palestine.

All this work, done with wonderful perseverance, under great disadvantages, was presented to a limited public only, and has long since been forgotten. But in the autumn of the year 1831 she conceived the idea of presenting, in the shape of popular tales, the principles of political economy. She persisted in this idea, notwithstanding the steady refusal of the London publishers to have anything to do with the scheme; she went to London to push the matter personally; and at last succeeded in making an arrangement, on iron terms, with Mr. Charles Fox, the brother of the editor of the Repository. To the great surprise of this gentleman, and the calm satisfaction of the author, the first numbers of Illustrations of Political[Pg 14] Economy met with immediate and immense success. The first tale was published in February, 1832, and Harriet Martineau became famous at once.

In November she came to live in London. She was received as a lion in society, but abated no jot of her labor, producing every month a number of from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pages. On the completion of her Illustrations, two years after her coming to London, she travelled for two years in America, where she displayed, by her affiliation with the Abolitionists, no little moral courage. She returned to England in August, 1836, and turned her recent experiences to account in writing, during the next six months, a three-volume work called Society in America, for the first edition of which she received £900. This was followed by her Retrospect of Western Travel, which was sold for £600. She contributed to various magazines; produced in 1838 a work called How to Observe in Morals and Manners, and also some little books ordered by the Poor-Law Commissioners for a series of ‘Guides to Service.’

She began her novel, Deerbrook, in June, 1838, and visited Scotland in August and September. Deerbrook appeared in the spring. It is generally considered her weakest work.

At this time Mrs. Martineau, who was becoming blind, Harriet’s brother, Henry, and an invalid aunt, were all dependent upon Harriet for support. Her anxiety and over-work led to a serious illness. She started for a tour of the Continent after publishing Deerbrook, but on reaching Venice, became so ill that she was obliged to return to England. She was taken, in the autumn of 1839, to Tynemouth, where she remained[Pg 15] for the next five years under the care of her brother-in-law, a physician named Greenhow. This was a period of great suffering, but her intellectual activity was not suspended. The Hour and the Man, a historical romance, appeared in November, 1840; and early in 1841, The Playfellow, a series of children’s stories, containing the famous Crofton Boys; in 1843, Life in the Sick-Room, published anonymously, but generally recognized at once; and numerous stories and articles in aid of various causes. In 1841 she refused, on principle, Lord Melbourne’s offer of a pension of £150 per annum. In 1843 her friends presented her with a testimonial of £1,400.

In June of the following year she consented to try mesmeric treatment. In December she was so much better as to be enabled to leave Tynemouth. For the next ten years she enjoyed perfect health. With characteristic enthusiasm, she published the Athenæum, and subsequently in pamphlet form, six Letters on Mesmerism, detailing this wonderful cure. This open declaration of her faith in mesmerism led to a breach with Mr. Greenhow.

Miss Martineau now purchased land near Ambleside, and took lodgings in the village, during the winter of 1845-6, to superintend the building of a house according to her own plans. Here she wrote her Forest and Game Law Tales. In the spring she took possession of her home, called “The Knoll.” After writing a story for the young, The Billow and the Rock, she started with some friends for the East, in the autumn of 1846, returning in October, 1847. Her life at “The Knoll” was beneficent and busy. She engaged in farming, on a very small scale, and[Pg 16] wrote on the subject a book called Health, Husbandry and Handicraft.

In Eastern Life, Past and Present, published in 1848, Miss Martineau first allowed it to be seen that an important change had taken place in her opinions on theology. This was in some measure due to the influence of Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, with whom she became acquainted during her recovery from her long illness, and who remained her dearest friend until her death. Her next work was Household Education, followed, in 1850, by her important History of the Thirty Years’ Peace. In January, 1851, appeared Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, the joint production of herself and Mr. Atkinson. In this book her new opinions were distinctly stated. The work was received with horror by the orthodox press. An article on the subject in the Prospective Review, by Dr. James Martineau, caused a breach between the brother and sister.

Miss Martineau published soon after an introductory volume to the History of the Peace. In November, 1853, appeared her translation of Comte’s ‘Positive Philosophy.’ At this time she contributed frequently to periodicals. In the autumn of 1852 she visited Ireland, writing while there a series of letters to the Daily News, which were reprinted in a volume at the end of the year. In 1854 she prepared a Complete Guide to the Lakes.

Toward the end of this year her health failed. Early in 1855 it was the verdict of her physicians that she was suffering from enlargement and enfeeblement of the heart, and that her life would probably not be long. Under this impression her Autobiography was[Pg 17] rapidly written. She never left Ambleside again; but, contrary to expectation, lived on for twenty-one years. She continued to write leaders for the Daily News—to which she is said to have contributed in all over sixteen hundred political articles—and papers and pamphlets on various subjects of public interest. A volume of Sketches from Life was issued in 1856, and in 1859 appeared England and Her Soldiers, written in aid of the army work of Florence Nightingale.

In 1868 a number of Biographical Sketches, originally published in the Daily News, were collected in a volume. Before this time she had been obliged, by increasing illness, to lay aside her literary work. She had suffered a severe blow, in 1864, in the death of her niece, Maria, her faithful companion and nurse. Another niece, Jane, undertook to fill the vacant place. Miss, or rather Mrs. Martineau, as she preferred to be called in her later years, was calm and cheerful to the last. She died on the 27th of June, 1876. A tumor of slow growth was found to have been the real cause of death.

Probably no one ever lived of whom more varied opinions were entertained. One saw her as harsh, dry, and egotistical; another as tender, full of humor, self-sacrificing, carried away by noble enthusiasms. Wit had its fling at this singular figure. Hartley Coleridge said of her, aptly, that she was “a monomaniac about every thing.” “After all, she is a trump!” exclaims George Eliot. It is sufficiently certain that she was Quixotic, in a noble sense, and disinterested. In need, she refused a pension; she vaunted rather than suppressed unpopular opinions;[Pg 18] a descendant of the Huguenots, and herself without religion, she gallantly broke a lance with Charlotte Brontë for the Roman Catholics; and he must be prejudiced indeed who could refuse the tribute of admiration to her dogged, steady, soldier-like determination.

“Hail to the steadfast soul,
Which, unflinching and keen,
Wrought to erase from its depth
Mist and illusion and fear!
Hail to the spirit which dared
Trust its own thoughts, before yet
Echoed her back by the crowd!
Hail to the courage which gave
Voice to its creed, ere the creed
Won consecration from time!”[1]

Never was poor mortal cursed with a more beggarly nervous system. The long hours of indigestion by day and nightmare terrors are mournful to think of now.... Sometimes the dim light of the windows, in the night, seemed to advance till it pressed upon my eyeballs, and then the windows would seem to recede to an infinite distance. If I laid my hand under my head on the pillow, the hand seemed to vanish almost to a point, while the head grew as big as a mountain. Sometimes I was panic-struck at the head of the stairs, and was sure I could never get down; and I could never cross the yard to the garden without flying and panting, and fearing to look behind, because a wild beast was after me. The starlight sky was the worst; it was always[Pg 19] coming down, to stifle and crush me, and rest upon my head. I do not remember any dread of thieves or ghosts in particular; but things as I actually saw them were dreadful to me; and it now appears to me that I had scarcely any respite from the terror. My fear of persons was as great as any other.... Our house was in a narrow street; and all its windows, except two or three at the back, looked eastwards. It had no sun in the front rooms, except before breakfast in summer. One summer morning I went into the drawing-room, which was not much used in those days, and saw a sight which made me hide my face in a chair, and scream with terror. The drops of the lustres on the mantel-piece, on which the sun was shining, were somehow set in motion, and the prismatic colors danced vehemently on the walls. I thought they were alive—imps of some sort; and I never dared go into that room alone in the morning, from that time forward. I am afraid I must own that my heart has beat, all my life long, at the dancing of prismatic colors on the wall.

It is evident enough that my temper must have been very bad. It seems to me now that it was downright devilish, except for a placability which used to annoy me sadly. My temper might have been early made a thoroughly good one, by the slightest indulgence shown to my natural affections, and any rational dealing with my faults; but I was almost the youngest of a large family, and subject, not only to the rule of severity to which all were liable, but also to the rough and contemptuous treatment of the elder children, who meant no harm, but injured me irreparably. I had no self-respect, and an unbounded need of approbation[Pg 20] and affection. My capacity for jealousy was something frightful.... I tried for a long course of years—I should think from about eight to fourteen—to pass a single day without crying. I was a persevering child; and I know I tried hard, but I failed.

The first words of encouragement she ever received, came to her in the guise of severity. She was suffering from a fly having got into her eye. “Harriet,” said the mother, firmly grasping her for the operation, “I know that you have resolution, and you must stand still till I get it out.” Thus conjured, the startled, nervous little creature never stirred till the obstruction was removed. And was she, the trembling little one, “with cheeks pale as clay,” “flat white forehead, over which the hair grew low,” “eyes hollow,—eyes light, large, and full, generally red with crying,—a thoroughly scared face,”—was she, then, resolute? She ran to the great gateway, near the street, and beckoned to a playmate, to tell her what her mother had said. “Is that all you have made me come to hear?” It was the first encouraging word she had ever heard, and she could find no one with whom to share the new joy. Till now she had never thought herself worth anything whatever.

Maria Weston Chapman: ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’ (‘Autobiography,’ vol. ii.)

Intensely religious I certainly was from a very[Pg 21] early age. The religion was of a bad sort enough, as might be expected from the urgency of my needs; but I doubt whether I could have got through without it. I pampered my vain-glorious propensities by dreams of divine favor, to make up for my utter deficiency of self-respect; and I got rid of otherwise incessant remorse by a most convenient confession and repentance, which relieved my nerves without at all, I suspect, improving my conduct.... While I was afraid of everybody I saw, I was not in the least afraid of God.... The Sundays began to be marked days, and pleasantly marked, on the whole. I do not know why crocuses were particularly associated with Sunday at that time, but probably my mother might have walked in the garden with us some early spring Sunday. My idea of heaven was of a place gay with yellow and lilac crocuses. My love of gay colors was very strong.... The Octagon Chapel at Norwich [Unitarian], has some curious windows in the roof; not skylights, but letting in light indirectly. I used to sit staring up at those windows, and looking for angels to come for me and take me to heaven, in sight of all the congregation,—the end of the world being sure to happen while we were at chapel. I was thinking of this, and of the hymns, the whole of the time, it now seems to me. It was very shocking to me that I could not pray at chapel. I believe that I never did in my life. I prayed abundantly when I was alone, but it was impossible to do it in any other way, and the hypocrisy of appearing to do so was a long and sore trouble to me.

When I was seven years old, ... I was kept from chapel one Sunday afternoon by some ailment or other. When the house door closed behind the chapel-goers I looked at the books on the table. The ugliest-looking of them was turned down open, and my turning it up was one of the leading incidents of my life. That plain, clumsy, calf-bound volume was ‘Paradise Lost,’ and the common bluish paper, with its old-fashioned type, became as a scroll out of heaven to me. The first thing I saw was “Argument,” which I took to mean a dispute, and supposed to be stupid enough, but there was something about Satan cleaving Chaos which made me turn to the poetry; and my mental destiny was fixed for the next seven years. That volume was henceforth never to be found but by asking me for it, till a young acquaintance made me a present of a little Milton of my own. In a few months, I believe, there was hardly a line in ‘Paradise Lost’ that I could not have instantly turned to. I sent myself to sleep by repeating it; and when my curtains were drawn back in the morning, descriptions of heavenly light rushed into my memory. I think this must have been my first experience of moral relief through intellectual resource. I am sure I must have been somewhat happier from that time forward.... My beloved hour of the day was when the cloth was drawn, and I stole away from the dessert and read Shakespeare by firelight, in winter, in the drawing-room. My mother was kind enough to allow this breach of good family manners; and again, at a subsequent time, when I took to newspaper reading[Pg 23] very heartily. I have often thanked her for this forbearance since. Our newspaper was the Globe, in its best days, when, without ever mentioning Political Economy, it taught it, and viewed public affairs in its light.... I was all the while becoming a political economist without knowing it, and, at the same time, a sort of walking concordance of Milton and Shakespeare.

Her deafness, which was the most commonly known of her deficiencies of sensation, was not her earliest deprivation of a sense. She was never able to smell, that she could remember; and as smell and taste are intimately joined together, and a large part of what we believe to be flavor is really odor, it naturally followed that she was also nearly destitute of the sense of taste. Thus, two of the avenues by which the mind receives impressions from the outer world were closed to her all her life, and a third was also stopped before she reached womanhood.

Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1885.

She had no sense of taste whatever. “Once,” she told me, when I was expressing my pity for this deprivation of hers, “I tasted a leg of mutton, and it was delicious. I was going out, as it happened, that day, to dine, and, I am ashamed to say, that I looked forward to the pleasures of the table with considerable eagerness;[Pg 24] but nothing came of it—the gift was withdrawn as suddenly as it came.” The sense of smell was also denied her, as it was to Wordsworth; in his case, too, curiously enough, it was vouchsafed to him, she told me, upon one occasion only. “He once smelled a bean-field and thought it heaven.”

“I could make shirts and puddings,” she declares, “and iron, and mend, and get my bread by my needle, if necessary—as it was necessary, for a few months, before I won a better place and occupation with my pen.” During the winter which followed the failure of the old Norwich house she spent the entire daylight hours poring over fancy work, by which alone she could with certainty earn money. But she did not lay aside the sterner implement of labor for that bright little bread-winner, the needle. After dark she began a long day’s literary labor in her own room.

In a very short time, my two sisters at home and I began to feel the blessing of a wholly new freedom. I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing, and growing narrower every year;[Pg 25] whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated.

Every night that winter, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three, in the morning, obeying always the rule of the house of being present at the breakfast table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I was in such a state of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was obliged to walk to and fro in the room before I could put on paper the last line of a page, or the last half sentence of an essay or review. Yet I was very happy. The deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my faculties, and, not least, that of will, to overcome my obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of which I believed myself more or less worthy.

When Harriet called upon Mr. W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. Charles Fox had decided to say that he would not publish more than two numbers, unless a thousand copies of No. 1 were sold in the first fortnight!... Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet left his house, after receiving this unreasonable and discouraging ultimatum, she “set out to walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery” [i. e., to a house[Pg 26] attached to Whitbread’s establishment, where she was a guest]. “I could not afford to ride, more or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk at all. On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I became too giddy to stand without some support, and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to myself, as I stood with closed eyes, ‘My book will do yet.’” That very night she wrote the long, thoughtful, and collected preface to her work. After she had finished it she sat over the fire in her bedroom, in the deepest depression; she cried, with her feet on the fender, till four o’clock, and then she went to bed and cried there till six, when she fell asleep. But if any person supposes that because the feminine temperament finds a relief in tears, the fact argues weakness, they will be instructed by hearing that she was up by half-past eight, continuing her work, as firmly resolved as ever that it should be published.

To the best of my recollection, I waited ten days from the day of publication, before I had another line from the publisher. My mother, judging from his ill-humor, inferred that he had good news to tell: whereas I supposed the contrary. My mother was right; and I could now be amused at his last attempts to be discouraging, in the midst of splendid success. At the end of those ten days, he sent with his letter a copy of my first number, desiring me to make, with all speed, any corrections I might wish to make, as he had scarcely any copies left. He added that the demand led him[Pg 27] to propose that we should now print two thousand. A postscript informed me that since he wrote the above, he had found that we should want three thousand. A second postscript proposed four thousand, and a third, five thousand. The letter was worth having, now it had come. There was immense relief in this; but I remember nothing like intoxication—like any painful reaction whatever. I remember walking up and down the grass-plot in the garden (I think it was on the tenth of February), feeling that my cares were over. And so they were. I think I may date my release from pecuniary care from that tenth of February, 1832.

Her course in London was as follows: She wrote in the morning, rising, and making her own coffee, at seven, and going to work immediately after breakfast, until two. From two till four she saw visitors. Having an immense acquaintance, she declined undertaking to make morning calls; but people might call upon her any afternoon. She was charged with vanity about this arrangement; but, with the work on her hands and the competition for her company, she really could not do differently. Still, Sydney Smith suggested a better plan; he told her she should “hire a carriage and engage an inferior authoress to go round in it and drop the cards!” After any visitors left, she went out for her daily “duty walk,” and returned to glance over the newspapers, and to dress for dinner. Almost invariably she dined out, her host’s or some other friend’s carriage being commonly sent to fetch her.[Pg 28] One or two evening parties would conclude the day, unless the literary pressure was extreme, in which case she would sometimes write letters after returning home. During the whole time of writing her series, she was satisfied with from five to six hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, and though she was not a teetotaller, but drank wine at dinner, still she took no sort of stimulant to help her in her work.

Two or three days ago ... there came to call on us a Miss Martineau, whom you have, perhaps, often heard of in the Examiner. A hideous portrait was given of her in Fraser one month.[2] She is a notable literary woman of her day; has been travelling in America these two years, and is now come home to write a book about it. She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance; was full of talk, though, unhappily, deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. She must be some five-and-thirty. As she professes very “favorable sentiments” towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate her a little.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to his mother. ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude, M. A. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.

How well I remember the first sight of her, so long ago! We first saw her at church—Dr. Channing’s. It was a presence one did not speedily tire of looking on—most attractive and impressive; yet the features were plain, and only saved from seeming heavily moulded by her thinness. She was rather taller and more strongly made than most American ladies. Her complexion was neither fair nor sallow, nor yet of the pale, intellectual tone that is thought to belong to authorship. It was the hue of one severely tasked, but not with literary work. She had rich, brown, abundant hair, folded away in shining waves from the middle of a forehead totally unlike the flat one described by those who knew her as a child. It was now low over the eyes, like the Greek brows, and embossed rather than graven by the workings of thought. The eyes themselves were light and full, of a grayish greenish blue, varying in color with the time of day, or with the eye of the beholder—les yeux pers of the old French romance writers. They were steadily and quietly alert, as if constantly seeing something where another would have found nothing to notice. Her habitual expression was one of serene and self-sufficing dignity—the look of perfect and benevolent repose that comes to them whose long, unselfish struggle to wring its best from life has been crowned with complete victory. You might walk the livelong day, in any city streets, and not meet such a face of simple, cheerful strength, with so much light and sweetness in its play of feature.

It was while she was in the United States that the first portrait of her which I have seen was painted. She herself did not like it, calling the attitude melodramatic; but her sister Rachel, I am told, always declared that it was the only true portrait of Harriet that was ever taken. At this point, then, some idea of her person may be given. She was somewhat above the middle height, and at this time had a slender figure. The face in the portrait is oval; the forehead rather broad, as well as high, but not either to a remarkable degree. The most noticeable peculiarity of the face is found in a slight projection of the lower lip. The nose is straight, not at all turned up at the end, but yet with a definite tip to it. The eyes are a clear gray, with a calm, steadfast, yet sweet gaze; indeed, there is an appealing look in them. The hair is of so dark a brown as to appear nearly black. A tress of it (cut off twenty years later than this American visit, when it had turned snow-white), has been given to me; and I find the treasured relic to be of exceptionally fine texture—a sure sign of a delicate and sensitive nervous organization. Her hands and feet were small. She was certainly not beautiful; besides the slight projection of the lower lip, the face has the defect of the cheeks sloping in too much towards the chin. But she was not strikingly plain, either. The countenance in this picture has a look both of appealing sweetness and of strength in reserve; and one feels that with such beauty of expression, it could not fail to be attractive to those who looked upon it with sympathy.

Miss Martineau’s Book on America is out.... I have read it for the good authoress’s sake, whom I love much. She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! “God has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech,” say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their poet, and the best that could be said for them, too, was to be said. I admire this good lady’s integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us), the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, June, 1837. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883.

You cannot fancy what way he (Carlyle), is making with the fair intellects here! There is Harriet Martineau presents him with her ear-trumpet, with a pretty, blushing air of coquetry, which would almost convince me out of belief in her identity!

Jane W. Carlyle: Letter to John Sterling. ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh,’ edited by James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.

She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible, too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.

He [Southey] was speaking of Miss Martineau patiently, but without respect, describing her as “talking more glibly than any woman he had ever seen, and with such a notion of her own infallibility.”

When he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M—— having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, “Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.”

Frances Ann Kemble: ‘Records of Later Life.’ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882.

The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ said to me once, in his dry, humorous way, “Your friend, Miss Martineau, has been giving me the address in town where she gets all her ear-trumpets. Why, good heavens! what does she want of them? Does she mean to say that she ever wore one ear-trumpet out in all her life in listening to what anybody had to say?”

She was, no doubt, masterful in argument (which is probably all that he meant to imply), but I always found her very ready to listen, and especially to any tale of woe or hardship which it lay in her power to remedy. Her conversation, indeed, was by no means monologue, and rarely have I known a social companion more bright and cheery; but her talk, when not engaged in argument, was, which is unusual in a woman, very anecdotal. She had known more interesting and eminent persons than most men, and certainly than any woman, of her time; the immense range of her writings—political, religious, and social—had caused her to make acquaintances with people of the most different opinions, and of all ranks, while among the large circle of her personal acquaintance her motherly qualities, her gentleness, and (on delicate domestic questions), her good judgment, made her the confidante of many persons, especially young people; which enlarged her knowledge of human life to an extraordinary degree. I never knew a woman whose nature was more essentially womanly than that of Harriet Martineau, or one who was more misunderstood in that respect by the world at large.

On the sofa where I stretched myself, after my drive to Tynemouth, on the sixteenth of March, 1840, I lay for nearly five years, till obedience to a newly-discovered law of nature raised me up and sent me forth into the world again, for another ten years of strenuous work, and almost undisturbed peace and enjoyment of mind and heart.... During the whole of my illness, comforts and pleasures were lavishly supplied to me. Sydney Smith said that everybody who sent me game, fruit, and flowers, was sure of heaven, provided always that they punctually paid the dues of the Church of England. If so, many of my friends are safe. Among other memorials of that time, which are still preserved and prized, are drawings sent me by the Miss Nightingales, and an envelope-case (in daily use), from the hands of the immortal Florence. I was one of the sick to whom she first ministered, and it happened through my friendship with some of her family.... I did not think I could have wished so much for anything as I wished to see foliage. I had not seen a tree for above five years, except a scrubby little affair that stood above the haven at Tynemouth. An old friend sent me charming colored sketches of old trees in Sherwood Forest, and an artist who was an entire stranger to me, Mr. McIan, stayed away from a day’s excursion, at a friend’s house in the country, to paint me a breezy tree. For months the breezy tree was pinned up on the wall before me, sending many a breeze through my mind.... During many a summer evening, while I lay on my window-couch, and my guest of the day sat beside me, overlooking the purple sea, or[Pg 35] watching for the moon to rise up from it, like a planet growing into a sun, things were said, high and deep, which are fixed into my memory now, like stars in a dark firmament. Now a philosopher, now a poet, now a moralist, opened to me speculation, vision or conviction.

I have had a great pleasure, lately, in some correspondence with Miss Martineau, the noblest female intelligence between the seas,—“as sweet as spring, as ocean deep.” She is in a hopeless anguish of body, and serene triumph of spirit, with at once no hope and all hope.

Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne. ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.

Within one minute, the twilight and phosphoric lights appeared; and, in two or three more, a delicious sensation of ease spread through me—a cool comfort, before which all pain and distress gave way, oozing out, as it were, at the soles of my feet. During that hour, and almost the whole evening, I could no more help exclaiming with pleasure than a person in torture crying out with pain. I became hungry, and ate with relish for the first time for five years. There was no heat, oppression or sickness during the seance, nor any disorder afterwards. During the whole evening, instead of the lazy, hot ease of opiates, under which[Pg 36] pain is felt to lie in wait, I experienced something of the indescribable sensations of health, which I had quite lost and forgotten.

Harriet Martineau: Letters on Mesmerism, quoted by Mrs. Fenwick Miller in her ‘Harriet Martineau.’

Saw a brown-faced looking woman watching for the coach—thought I knew the face—looked out of window—it was Miss Martineau.... Walked with her to her newly built, or building house, a most commodious, beautifully-situated and desirable residence in all respects. I could not but look with wonder at the brown hue of health upon her face, and see her firm and almost manly stride as she walked along with me to Fox How, Dr. Arnold’s place.

W. C. Macready: Diary, 1846. ‘Macready’s Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters,’ edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1875.

Miss Martineau was here and is gone—to Norwich, after which to Egypt—broken into utter weariness, a mind reduced to these three elements: imbecility, dogmatism, and unlimited hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored by any creature.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London.’

On Wednesday, Mr. Henry Bright came over to dine. He visited Miss Martineau, at Ambleside, and[Pg 37] found her very entertaining, and in a very singular state of doctrine—for she now professes to believe and declare that there is no God and no future life! He says it is wholly impossible to argue with her, because she is so opinionative and dogmatical, and has such a peculiar advantage in putting down her ear-trumpet when she does not choose to hear any reply to her assertions. She has been making some beautiful designs for the windows of her brother’s church, in Liverpool, which are accepted and to be painted thereupon; but she is at enmity with her brother, and has no intercourse with him.

Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, viva voce, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of—in plain English—infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of[Pg 38] Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.”

Henry Bright: Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.

I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; i. e., that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith.

Harriet Martineau: Letter to Charlotte Brontë, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.

I think, contradictory as it may seem, she had the truest and deepest religious feeling I have ever known.... To the last, her religious feeling—in the sense of good working out of evil, of a Supreme Wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; the natural subordination of intellect to purposes[Pg 39] of good, even were these merely the small purposes of social or domestic life;—all this, which supposes something without ourselves, higher, and deeper, and better than ourselves, and more permanent, that is, eternal, was so strong in her—so strong that one could scarcely explain her (apparently only) losing sight of that Supreme Wisdom and Goodness in her later years.

Florence Nightingale: Letter to Maria Weston Chapman, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’

Her form and features were repellent; she was the Lady Oracle in all things, and from her throne, the sofa, pronounced verdicts from which there was no appeal. Hers was a hard nature: it had neither geniality, indulgence nor mercy. Always a physical sufferer, so deaf that a trumpet was constantly at her ear; plain of person—a drawback of which she could not have been unconscious—and awkward of form; she was entirely without the gifts that attract man to woman: even her friendships seem to have been cut out of stone; she may have excited admiration, indeed, but from the affections that render woman only a little lower than the angels she was entirely estranged.

I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed, but withal, she has so kind, cheerful and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties.[Pg 40] Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from calling herself old.... All her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is an Atheist; and thinks that the principle of life will become extinct when her body is laid in the grave! I will not think so, were it only for her own sake. What! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowering and fruiting forever!

The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that it should suit her own tastes.

It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands upon a small, rocky eminence—whence its name, “The Knoll.” There is enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in front of the windows, then there comes the descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre[Pg 41] of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it: “Come Light! Visit me!”

... Within, “The Knoll” is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest.... The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount the steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers’ approaches by the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel, so that the first intimation she would receive of their presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane.

Her principles and her practice went hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements, as in her life generally; and her kitchen was as airy, light and comfortable for her maids as her drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with a bookcase for a servants’ library. There lingers no small interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received such guests as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas Jerrold.... Climbing plants soon covered “The Knoll” on every side. The ivy kept it green through all the year; the porch was embowered in honeysuckle, clematis, passion-flower[Pg 42] and Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and other friends of note planted trees for Harriet below the terrace.

Her housekeeping was always well done. Her own hands, indeed, as well as her head, were employed in it on occasion. When in her home, she daily filled her lamp herself. She dusted her own books, too, invariably. Sometimes she did more. Soon after her establishment at the lakes ... a lady who greatly reverenced her for her writings, called upon her in her new home, accompanied by a gentleman friend. As the visitors approached the house by the carriage-drive, they saw some one perched on a set of kitchen steps, cleaning the drawing-room windows. It was the famous authoress herself! She calmly went for her trumpet, to listen to their business; and, when they had introduced themselves she asked them in, and entered into an interesting conversation on various literary topics. Before they left she explained, with evident amusement at having been caught at her housemaid’s duties, that the workmen had been long about the house; that this morning, when the dirty windows might for the first time be cleaned, one of her servants had gone off to marry a carpenter, and the other to see the ceremony; and so the mistress, tired of the dirt, had set to work to wash and polish the windows for herself.

She rose very early; not infrequently, in the winter, before daylight; and immediately set out for a good[Pg 43] long walk. Sometimes, I am told, she would appear at a farm-house, four miles off, before the cows were milked. The old post-mistress recollects how, when she was making up her early letter-bags, in the gray of the morning mists, Miss Martineau would come down with her large bundle of correspondence, and never failed to have a pleasant nod and smile, or a few kindly inquiries. “I always go out before it is quite light,” writes Miss Martineau to Mr. Atkinson ... “and in the fine mornings I go up to the hill behind the church—the Kirkstone road.... When the little shred of moon that is left, and the morning star, hang over Wansfell, among the amber clouds of the approaching sunrise, it is delicious.”... Returning home, she breakfasted at half-past seven; filled her lamp ready for the evening, and arranged all household matters; and by half-past eight was at her desk, where she worked undisturbed till two, the early dinner-time. These business hours were sacred, whether there were visitors in the house or not. After dinner, however, she devoted herself to guests, if there were any.

In winter evenings I light the lamp, and unroll my wool-work, and meditate or dream till the arrival of the newspaper tells me that the tea has stood long enough.... After tea, if there was news from the seat of war, I called in my maids, who brought down the great atlas, and studied the chances of the campaign with me.[Pg 44] Then there was an hour or two for Montaigne or Bacon, or Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or some dear old biography, or last new book from London—historical, moral, or political. Then, when the house and neighborhood were asleep, there was the half-hour on the terrace, or if the weather was too bad for that, in the porch, whence I seldom or never came in without a clear purpose for my next morning’s work. I believe that, but for my country life, much of the benefit and enjoyment of my travels, and also of my studies, would have been lost to me. On my terrace, there were two worlds extended bright before me, even when the midnight darkness hid from my bodily eyes all but the outlines of the solemn mountains that surround our valley on three sides, and the clear opening to the lake on the south. In the one of those two worlds, I saw now the magnificent coast of Massachusetts in autumn, or the flowery swamps of Louisiana, or the forests of Georgia in spring, or the Illinois prairie in summer; or the blue Nile, or the brown Sinai, or the gorgeous Petra, or the view of Damascus from the Salahiey; or the Grand Canal under a Venetian sunset, or the Black Forest in twilight, or Malta in the glare of noon, or the broad desert, stretching away under the stars, or the Red Sea, tossing its superb shells on shore, in the pale dawn. That is one world, all comprehended within my terrace wall, and coming up into the light at my call. The other, and finer scenery, is of that world, only beginning to be explored, of Science.

The coach brought me to Miss Martineau’s gate at[Pg 45] half-past six yesterday evening, and she was there, with a beaming face, to welcome me.... We have been trudging about, looking at cottages and enjoying the sight of the mountains, spite of the rain and mist.... Miss M. is charming in her own home—quite handsome from her animation and intelligence. She came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way this evening, telling me she was so glad she had got me here.

Many of the most interesting little stories in it [her ‘Autobiography’] about herself and others she had told me, ... when I was staying with her, and almost in the very same words. But they were all the better for being told in her silvery voice. She was a charming talker, and a perfect lady in her manners as a hostess.

Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.

In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height, “inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time, I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and motherly.

Aunt Charles read us a clever letter from Harriet Martineau, combining the smoker, the moralist, the political economist, the gossip, and the woman.

Caroline Fox: Journal (1849). ‘Memories of Old Friends.’ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882.

The degree of deafness, as I have said, varied; and she tried all sorts of remedies. No one who knew her would suspect her of anything “fast” or unfeminine, but under the advice of some scientific person, or another, she tried smoking.

I had the privilege of providing her privately with some very mild cigars, and many and many a summer night have we sat together for half an hour or so in her porch at “The Knoll,” smoking. If some of the good people, her neighbors, had known of that, it would, we agreed, have really given them something to talk about. She only tried this remedy, if I remember right, for a few months, but she fancied it had a beneficial effect upon her hearing. For my part, I enjoyed nothing so much as these evenings.

Sleepless nights were a source of great suffering to her in these latest years. Under medical advice, she tried smoking as a means of procuring better rest, with some success. She smoked usually through the chiboque, which she had brought home with her from the East, and which she had there learned to use, as she relates with her customary simplicity and directness in the appendix to ‘Eastern Life’:[Pg 47] “I found it good for my health,” she says there, “and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should not take their glass of sherry at home—an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the use of my chiboque for some weeks after my return, and then only left it off because of the inconvenience.” When health and comfort were to be promoted by it, she resumed it.

I am at Miss Martineau’s for a week. Her house is very pleasant, both within and without; arranged at all points with admirable neatness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself, she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone. I pass the morning in the drawing-room, she in her study. At two o’clock we meet, talk and walk till five—her dinner hour—spend the evening together, when she converses fluently and abundantly, and with the most complete frankness. I go to my own room soon after ten, and she sits up writing letters. She appears exhaustless in strength and spirits, and indefatigable in the faculty of labor. She is a great and good woman; of course not without peculiarities, but I have seen none as yet that annoy me. She is both hard and warm-hearted, abrupt and affectionate. I believe she is not at all conscious of her own absolutism. When I tell her of it, she denies the charge, warmly; then I laugh at her.

Charlotte Brontë: Letter in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’ London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857.

Owing to her keen intelligence, I found it difficult to realize her extreme deafness, and used often to address her when she was not prepared for it. She never lost her sense of the absurdity of this practice, and I can see the laughter in her kind eyes now, as she snatched up her trumpet. She loved a good-natured pleasantry, even at her own expense.... A ludicrous incident happened. I had got so well accustomed to her ear-trumpet that I began to look upon it as a part of herself. It was lying on the table, a good distance away from her, and having some remark to make to her, I inadvertently addressed it to the instrument, instead of her ear. Heavens, how we laughed! She had a very keen sense of fun, of which, however, she was quite unconscious.

Of my kind hostess, I cannot speak in terms too high. Without being able to share all her opinions—philosophical, political, or religious—I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency, and benevolence, and perseverance in her practice, such as win the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than which nothing can be more exemplary or noble. The government of her household is admirably administered; all she does is well done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest feminine occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under her rule, and yet she is not over-strict,[Pg 49] or too rigidly exacting; her servants and her poor neighbors love as well as respect her.

Charlotte Brontë: Letter in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’

Proud, I think she was, but not in the least vain; and the pride was rather the consciousness of power, and the unconscious sense, so to speak, of absolute rectitude and truthfulness.... The clear, quick apprehension of the nature and merits of a question was her strong point, and she never talked or wrote of what she did not understand, and saw at once how to make a difficult matter intelligible to others.

Henry G. Atkinson: Letter to Maria Weston Chapman, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’

Are not nearly all recent autobiographers egotists? A number of such works have appeared during the last ten years, and the position of the autobiographer has been in nearly every case the same,—namely, that God did a good thing when he made him; but that he should have made anybody else, and should have taken an interest in the other individual equal to that which he manifested in the autobiographer, is a proposition which he cannot bring himself for a moment to consider. Two books in which this view is conspicuous are the autobiographies of John Quincy Adams and Miss Harriet Martineau. Carlyle is a mild egotist beside these writers. Adams does not speak of himself as an individual, but as a cause which he has espoused. Of the two, Miss[Pg 50] Martineau is the more naïve. She is for arranging the world entirely from her own point of view. For instance, she attacked the late Lord Lytton, because he did not carry an ear-trumpet. Lord Lytton was deaf, and preferred not to carry an ear-trumpet. Miss Martineau was deaf also, and did carry one. She did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was very hard upon any one who was of a contrary opinion. Her heaven, had her belief permitted her to have one, would have been a place where they all sat round with ear-trumpets and derided the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

—— ——: ‘Zweibak: or, Notes of a Professional Exile,’ in The Century, February, 1886.

It is well known that a pension was offered to her by three Prime-ministers in succession—Earl Grey, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone—which, like Cæsar, she “did thrice refuse,” it being against her principles to burden the State with any such obligation. And yet she was entirely dependent upon that reed, the pen, for subsistence.

She had a liking for the occupation [needlework] and continued to do much of it all through her life. Many of her friends can show handsome pieces of fancy work done by her hands. Again and again she contributed to public objects by sending a piece of her own beautiful needlework to be sold for the benefit of a society’s funds. Not even in the busiest time of her literary life did she ever[Pg 51] entirely cease to exercise her skill in this feminine occupation. In fact, she made wool-work her artistic recreation.

A right of way was in dispute, at one time, through certain fields (a portion, I think, of Rydal Park), in the neighborhood of Ambleside, and the owner closed them to the public. Miss Martineau, though a philanthropist on a large scale, could also (which is not so common with that class) pick up a pin for freedom’s sake, and play the part of a village Hampden. When the rest of her neighbors shrank from this contest with the Lord of the Manor, she took up the cudgels for them, and “the little tyrant of those fields withstood.” She alone, not, indeed, “with bended bow and quiver full of arrows,” but with her ear-trumpet and umbrella, took her walk through the forbidden land, as usual. Whereupon the wicked lord (so runs the story, though I never heard it from her own lips) put a young bull into the field. He attacked the trespasser, or at all events prepared to attack her, but the indomitable lady faced him and stood her ground. She was quite capable of it, for she had the courage of her opinions, ... and, at all events, whether from astonishment at her presumption, or terror of the ear-trumpet (to which, of course, he had nothing to say), the bull in the end withdrew his opposition, and suffered her to pursue her way in peace. I wish I could add that she had the good-fortune of another patriotic lady, “to take the tax away,” but I am afraid the wicked lord succeeded in his designs. More than once,[Pg 52] however, I have had pointed out to me over the wall—for the bull was still there—the little eminence wherefrom, with no weapon but her ear-trumpet (for she had her umbrella over her head all the time to keep the sun off) this dauntless lady withstood the horrid foe.

I was pleased to find that, notwithstanding her heresies, the common people in Ambleside held her in gentle and kindly remembrance. She was a good neighbor, charitable to all, considerate toward the unlettered, never cynical or ill-tempered, always cheerful and happy as the roses and ivy of “The Knoll” she so much loved.

I wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past twenty; till authorship made me forget manner in matter, and gave freedom to my hand. After that I did very well, being praised by compositors for legibleness first, and in course of time for other qualities.... I found that it would not do to copy what I wrote, and discontinued the practice forever—thus saving an immense amount of time which, I humbly think, is wasted by other authors. There was no use in copying it. I did not alter; and if ever I did alter, I had to change back again; and I, once for all, committed myself to a single copy.... I have always used the same method in writing. I have always made sure of what I meant to say, and[Pg 53] then written it down without care or anxiety—glancing at it again only to see if any words were omitted or repeated, and not altering a single phrase in a whole work. I mention this because I think I perceive that great mischief arises from the notion that botching in the second place will compensate for carelessness in the first.... It has always been my practice to devote my best strength to my work, and the morning hours have therefore been sacred to it, from the beginning. I never pass a day without writing, and the writing is always done in the morning. I have seldom written anything more serious than letters by candlelight. [While at work on the ‘Political Economy Tales’] on an average I wrote twelve pages a day on large letter paper (quarto, I believe it is called), the page containing thirty-three lines.

The impending war [1853] rendered desirable an article on England’s Foreign Policy, for the Westminster Review, and I agreed to do it. I went to the editor’s house for the purpose.... On taking possession of my room there, and finding a capital desk on my table, with a singularly convenient slope, and of an admirable height for writing without fatigue, it struck me that during my whole course of literary labor, of nearly five-and-thirty years, it had never once occurred to me to provide myself with a proper, business-like desk. I had always written on blotting-paper, on a flat table, except when in a lazy mood, in winter, I had written as short-sighted people do (as Mrs. Somerville and “Currer Bell” always did), on a board, or something stiff, held in the left hand. I wrote a good deal of the ‘Political[Pg 54] Economy’ in that way, and with steel pens, ... but it was radically uncomfortable; and I have ever since written on a table, and with quill pens. Now I was to begin on a new and luxurious method—just, as it happened, at the close of my life’s work. Mr. Chapman obtained for me a first-rate Chancery-lane desk, with all manner of conveniences, and of a proper sanitary form; and, moreover, some French paper of various sizes, which has spoiled me for all other paper; ink to correspond; and a pen-maker, of French workmanship, suitable to eyes which were now feeling the effects of years and over-work.

I have seen the original manuscript of one of the ‘Political Economy Tales.’ The writing has evidently been done as rapidly as the hand could move; every word that will admit of it is contracted, to save time. “Socy.,” “opporty.,” “agst.,” “abt.,” “independce.,” these were amongst the abbreviations submitted to the printer’s intelligence; not to mention commoner and more simple words, such as “wh.,” “wd.,” and the like. The calligraphy, though very readable, has a somewhat slipshod look. Thus, there is every token of extremely rapid composition. Yet the corrections on the MS. are few and trifling; the structure of a sentence is never altered, and there are but seldom emendations of even principal words. The manuscript is written (in defiance of law and order), on both sides of the paper.

The fluctuations of mind which I underwent about[Pg 55] every number of my work, were as regular as the tides. I was fired with the first conception, and believed that I had found a treasure. Then, while at work, I alternately admired and despised what I wrote. When finished, I was in absolute despair; and then, when I saw it in print, I was surprised to see how well it looked.

What an exquisite little thing that is of Harriet Martineau’s—‘The Crofton Boys!’ I have had some delightful crying over it. There are two or three lines in it that would feed one’s soul for a month. Hugh’s mother says to him, speaking of people who have permanent sorrow, “They soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel—the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts.”

Marian Evans: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1845. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross.

How do you like it [Deerbrook]? people ask. To which there are serious answers returnable, but few so good as none.

The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very[Pg 56] courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; “a many-sounding” solitude which I often envy her. She writes unweariedly.... You saw her Toussaint l’Ouvertour; how she has made such a beautiful “black Washington” ... of a rough-handed, hard-hearted, semi-articulate, gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that ‘Sansculottism’ can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child’s heart,—and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children’s Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 21st February, 1841. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Haworth Churchyard, by Matthew Arnold.

[2] The portrait alluded to is probably the caricature by D. Maclise, representing Miss Martineau seated, with a cat perched upon her shoulder, before a cooking-stove.

Aurore Dupin was born in Paris, July 5, 1804. Her father, Maurice Dupin de Franceuil, was the son of an illegitimate daughter of Marshal Saxe. His wife, Sophie Delaborde, was “a child of the people.” The death of Captain Dupin, in 1808, left little Aurore “a bone of contention” between her plebeian mother and her patrician grandmother. Most of her youth was passed with the latter, at Nohant, in Berri. Her education was irregularly carried on under an old tutor named Deschatres. At thirteen, she was sent to the Convent des Anglaises, at Paris. Here a strong religious enthusiasm took possession of her; and she desired to become a nun. But, her grandmother having removed her from the convent, her lonely study of the works of philosophers and metaphysicians wrought a change, and she “became a Protestant without knowing it.” In 1821 the grandmother died. Aurore lived unhappily with her mother, a woman of violent temper (to whom she was nevertheless deeply attached), and this fact may have influenced her in accepting the hand of M. Casimir Dudevant, to whom she was married in 1822. The disparity in age was not great, M. Dudevant being twenty-seven; but the marriage[Pg 60] proved a most uncongenial one. In 1823, Aurore’s beloved son, Maurice, was born; in 1828, her daughter, Solange. In 1831 she made an arrangement with her husband by which she was free to spend every alternate three months, in Paris, working with her pen. He allowed her 3,000 francs a year. The education of the children was carefully provided for in their compact. And now Aurore’s career really began. In 1832 she published, under the pseudonym, “George Sand,” her first novel, Indiana. This created a sensation and established her fame. It was followed during her long life by Valentine, 1832,[3] Lélia, 1833, Jacques, 1834, Le Secrétaire intime, 1834, André, 1835, Leone Leoni, 1835, Simon, 1836, Mauprat, 1837, La Dernière Aldini, 1837, Les Maîtres Mosaïstes, 1837, Spiridion, 1840, Le Compagnon du Tour de France, 1840, Horace, 1842, Consuelo, 1842-1843, La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, 1843-4, Jeanne, 1844, Le Meunier d’ Angibault, 1845, La Mare au Diable, 1846, La Péché d’ M. Antoine, 1847, Lucrezia Floriani, 1847, La Petite Fadette, 1849, François le Champi, 1850, Le Château des Désertes, 1851, Les Maîtres Sonneurs, 1853, Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois Doré, 1858, Elle et Lui, 1859, L’ Homme de Neige, 1859, Constance Verrier, 1860, Jean de la Roche, 1860, Le Marquis de Villemer, 1861, Valvèdre, 1861, La Ville Noire, 1861, Mlle. La Quintinie, 1863, La Confession d’ une Jeune Fille, 1865, Cadio, 1868, Malgré tout, 1870, Pierre qui roule, 1870, Nanon, 1872, Contes d’ une Grand’ mère, 1873, and numerous other novels and tales; Cosima, 1840, Claudie, 1851, Le Mariage de Victorine, 1851, Le Pressoir, 1853,[Pg 61] Maître Favilla, 1855, and other plays; Letters d’ un Voyageur (written 1834-6), Un Hiver à Majorque, 1842, Histoire de ma Vie, 1854-5, Journal d’ un Voyageur pendant le Siège, 1872, Impressions et Souvenirs, 1873, and other records of experience.

In 1836, M. and Mme. Dudevant finally separated, and the latter was known henceforward as Mme. Sand. She had from this time full control of her children, to whom she was devoted. Her intimacy with Alfred de Musset, broken off after their journey to Italy, in 1834, is well known and variously commented upon. Chopin was also her ardent admirer.

She took to the end a deep interest in public affairs. The last years of her life were passed quietly at Nohant, where she died, June 8, 1876.

The brief remarks on George Sand, by Charlotte Brontë and Mrs. Browning, have interest, as the words of sister authors who (as well as George Eliot), are sometimes classed with her.

“The immense vibration of George Sand’s voice upon the ear of Europe,” says Mr. Arnold, “will not soon die away. Her passions and her errors have been abundantly talked of. She left them behind her, and men’s memory of her will leave them behind also. There will remain of her to mankind the sense of benefit and stimulus from the passage upon earth of that large and frank nature, of that large and pure utterance.... There will remain an admiring and ever-widening report of that great and ingenuous soul, simple, affectionate, without vanity, without pedantry, human, equitable, patient, kind.”

While I was yet very young, my mother commenced the cultivation of my intellectual faculties; my mind was neither particularly sluggish nor particularly active; left to itself it might have developed but slowly. I was rather backward in talking, but having once begun to speak I learned words very rapidly, and, when but four years old, I could read fluently. I was brought up with my cousin Clotilde. Our respective mothers taught us our prayers, and I recollect that I used to repeat mine by heart without a mistake, and also without having any idea of their meaning, except as regards the following words, which we were made to repeat when our little heads were laid upon the same pillow: “Mon Dieu, je vous donne mon cœur!” (My God, I give my heart to Thee!) I do not know why I understood those words better than the rest, for they are highly metaphysical; but certainly I did understand them, and it was the only part of my prayers that conveyed to me any idea either of God or myself....

My mother used to sing to me a rhyme on Christmas Eve; but as that only occurred once a year, I do not recollect it. What I have not forgotten is the absolute belief which I had in the descent down the chimney of Old Father Christmas, a good old man with a snowy beard, who, during the night, as the clock struck twelve, was to come and place in my little shoe a present which I should find upon awaking. Twelve o’clock at night! that mysterious hour unknown to children, and which is represented to them as the impossible limit to which they can keep awake! What incredible efforts did I not make to resist my tendency to sleep before the appearance of the little[Pg 63] old man! I felt anxious yet afraid to see him! But I could never keep awake long enough, and the following morning my first anxiety was to go and examine my shoe in the fire-place. What emotion did I not feel at sight of the white paper parcel! for Father Christmas was extremely clean in his ways, and never failed to carefully wrap up his offering. I used to jump out of bed and run barefooted to seize my treasure. It was never a very magnificent affair, for we were not wealthy! It used to be a little cake, an orange, or simply a nice rosy apple. But, nevertheless, it seemed so precious to me that I scarcely dared to eat it.

George Sand: ‘Histoire de ma Vie,’ quoted by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

There seems to have been little or no method about her early education. The study of her own language was neglected, and the time spent less profitably, she considered, in acquiring a smattering of Latin. She took to some studies with avidity, while others remained wholly distasteful to her. For mere head-work she cared little. Arithmetic she detested; versification no less. The dry technique in music was a stumbling block of which she was impatient. History and literature she enjoyed in whatever they offered that was romantic, heroic, or poetically suggestive. In her Nohant surroundings there was nothing to check, and much to stimulate, this dominant imaginative faculty.... Such a visionary life might have been most dangerous and mentally enervating had her organization been[Pg 64] less robust, and the tendency to reverie not been matched by lively external perception and plentiful physical activity. As it was, if at one moment she was in a cloud-land of her own, or poring over the stories of the Iliad, the classic mythologies, or Tasso’s Gerusalemme, the next would see her scouring the fields, ... playing practical jokes on the tutor, and extemporizing wild out-of-door games and dances with her village companions.

Of serious religious education she received none at all.... Her mother was pious in a primitive way, though holding aloof from priestly influences. The grandmother [was] a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Voltaire.... On both sides what was offered her to worship was too indefinite to satisfy her strong religious instincts.... She filled in the blank with her imagination, which was forthwith called upon to picture a being who should represent all perfections, human and divine; something that her heart could love, as well as her intelligence approve.

This ideal figure, for whom she devised the name Corambé, was to combine all the spiritual qualities of the Christian ideal with the earthly grace and beauty of the mythological deities of Greece. It is hardly too much to say that the Christianity which had been expressly left out in her teaching she invented for herself. She erected a woodland altar in the recesses of a thicket to this imaginary object of her adoration, and it is a characteristic trait that the sacrifices she chose to offer there were the release of birds and butterflies that had been taken prisoners—as a symbolical oblation most welcome to a[Pg 65] divinity whose essential attributes were infinite mercy and love.

Bertha Thomas: ‘George Sand.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883.

Her husband seems to have gradually neglected her, to satisfy his tastes as a sportsman. An excellent shot, a daring horseman, an indefatigable huntsman, he often left her at two and three in the morning to indulge in his favorite sport—hunting.

The young wife, delicate in health and ardent in her affection, deeply resented the frequent absence of her husband. She at first meekly remonstrated with M. Dudevant, who would then stay at home for a few days, soon again to disappear. Months and years thus elapsed. When not out hunting, M. Dudevant indulged in feasting with his friends, eating enormously and drinking more, ... and almost forsaking his wife for the pleasures of the field and the table.

Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort: Biographical Sketch, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I must inform you that in spite of my inertia, indifference, unsteadiness of purpose, the facility with which I forgive and forget sorrows and injury, I have just taken a rash and extreme resolution.... You are acquainted with my home life, you are able to judge whether it is tolerable. You, scores of times, wondered how I could display so much courage and equanimity when my pride was being constantly crushed. But there is a limit to everything.... There has been no[Pg 66] scandal. While looking for something in my husband’s desk, I simply found a parcel addressed to me. That parcel had a kind of solemn appearance which struck me. It bore the inscription: To be opened only at my death.

I could not find the patience to wait until I became a widow. With health like mine I cannot expect to survive anyone. At any rate, I supposed my husband dead, and felt rather anxious to know what he might think of me while still alive. The parcel being directed to me, I had a right to open it without being thought indiscreet, and, as my husband is in the full enjoyment of health, I could read his will without emotion.

Good heavens! what a will! Curses for me and nothing else! He had collected therein all his impulses of temper and ill-humor against me, all his reflections respecting my perverseness, all his feelings of contempt for my character. And that is what he had left me as a token of his affection! I fancied that I was dreaming, I who, until now, was obstinately shutting my eyes and refusing to see that I was scorned. The perusal of that will has at last aroused me from my slumber. I said to myself that to live with a man who feels neither esteem for nor confidence in his wife, would be equivalent to trying to revive a corpse. My mind was made up, and, I dare say so, irrevocably.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, December, 1830. ‘Letters of George Sand,’ translated by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort. London: Ward & Downey, 1886.

The beginning of her life in Paris was one of considerable[Pg 67] poverty and privation. She lived au cinquième in a lodging which cost her a yearly rent of £12; she had no servant, and got in her food from an eating-house close by for the sum of two francs a day. Her washing and needlework she did herself. Notwithstanding this rigid economy, it was impossible to keep within the limits of her husband’s allowance of £120 a year, especially as far as her dress was concerned. After some hesitation, therefore, she took the resolution, which caused so much scandal then and afterwards, of adopting male attire.

“My thin boots wore out in a few days,” she tells us in the autobiography. “I forgot to hold up my dress, and covered my petticoats with mud. My bonnets were spoilt one after another by the rain. I generally returned from the expeditions I took, dirty, weary, and cold. Whereas my young men acquaintances—some of whom had been the companions of my childhood in Berri—had none of these inconveniences to submit to. I therefore had a long gray cloth coat made, with a waistcoat and trousers to match. When the costume was completed by a gray felt hat and a loose woollen cravat, no one could have guessed that I was not a young student in my first year. My boots were my particular delight. I should like to have gone to bed with them. On their little iron heels I wandered from one end of Paris to the other; no one took any notice of me, or suspected my disguise.”

My husband has set down my private expenses at[Pg 68] 3,000 francs. You know that that is little for me, who like to give and cannot bear to receive. I therefore only purpose increasing my income from some other source. I have no ambition to be known, and shall not be. I shall not attract either the envy or the hatred of any one. Most writers, I know, lead lives of anguish and struggle; but those whose sole ambition is to earn a livelihood live in peaceable obscurity. It would ... be very odd if a paltry talent like mine could not withhold itself from the public gaze.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, February, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I am more than ever intent upon following a literary career. In spite of the repugnance which I sometimes experience, despite the days of idleness and fatigue which cause me to break off my work, in spite of the life, more than quiet, which I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence has an aim. I have a purpose in view, a task before me, and, if I may use the word, a passion. For the profession of writing is nothing else but a violent, indestructible passion. When it has once entered people’s heads it never leaves them.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

On the Quai St. Michel—a portion of the Seine embankment facing the towers of Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, and other picturesque monuments of[Pg 69] ancient Paris—she had now definitely installed herself in modest lodgings on the fifth story. Accepted and treated as a comrade by a little knot of fellow literati and colleagues on the Figaro, two of whom—Jules Sandeau and Félix Pyat—were from Berri, like herself; and with Delatouche, also a Berrichon, for their head-master, she served thus singularly her brief apprenticeship to literature and experience, sharing with the rest both their studies and their relaxations, dining with them at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians’ pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish the shop-keepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant’s literary ambition, he showed himself kindly disposed towards her and her young friends, and she gives some amusing instances that came under her notice of his oddities. Thus once, after a little Bohemian dinner at his lodgings in the Rue Cassini, he insisted on putting on a new and magnificent dressing-gown, of which he was exceedingly vain, to display to his guests, of whom Madame Dudevant was one; and not satisfied therewith, must needs go forth, thus accoutred, to light them on their walk home. All the way he continued to hold forth to them about four Arab horses, which he had not got yet, but meant to get soon, and of which, though he never got them at[Pg 70] all, he firmly believed himself to have been possessed for some time.

Bertha Thomas: ‘George Sand.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

I must live. For that purpose I am doing the meanest of work. I write articles for the Figaro. If you only knew what it is! But they pay seven francs for a column; besides which it enables me to eat and drink and even go to the play.... It affords me the opportunity of making most useful and amusing observations. When intending to write, people must see and know everything and laugh at everything. Ah, upon my word, there is nothing like an artist’s life. Our motto is liberty.

That is, however, a rather exaggerated boast. We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you ought to know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids; for, after all, that is his affair. We are but his working tools.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

The two young friends [Mme. Dudevant and Jules Sandeau] wrote a novel entitled ‘Rose et Blanche, ou la Comédienne et la Religieuse,’ which they sold for 400 francs.... But it was indispensable that the name of the author should be appended to the work. Madame Dudevant could not put her name to it for fear of a[Pg 71] scandal; as for Sandeau, he was afraid of incurring the reproaches of his family, which objected to his pursuing a literary career. The name Sandeau was curtailed, and ‘Rose et Blanche’ appeared under the signature of Jules Sand.

Shortly before the departure of Madame Dudevant for Nohant, where she was about to spend three months, it was arranged between herself and Sandeau that they should each contribute a portion of a novel, whose title was to be ‘Indiana.’

On her return to Paris our heroine called upon Sandeau in order to submit to him what she had done, and found that he had not yet written a single line of his allotted share of the work.

He began to read the work of his collaborator, but had not proceeded beyond a few lines when he gave vent to enthusiastic expressions.

“Not at all,” replied Sandeau; “I am too honest to rob you of your glory. My conscience would never fail to reproach me with such an action.”

The young man was firm in his decision; and, in spite of the protests of M. de Latouche, declined to alter it.

At last an idea struck the director of the Figaro. “You wrote ‘Rose et Blanche,’ and gave the name of its author as Jules Sand; Sand is, therefore, your common property. Madame needs only to select another[Pg 72] Christian name. Now, madame, to-day is St. George’s Day. Call yourself George Sand, and the difficulty is solved.” Madame Dudevant assented, and thus assumed a name upon which her genius conferred more imperishable titles of nobility than had been bestowed upon her either by birth or marriage.

Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort: Biographical Sketch, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

‘Rose et Blanche,’ though little noticed by the public, brought a publisher to the door, one Ernest Dupuy, with an order for another novel by the same authors. ‘Indiana’ was ready-written, and came in response to the demand. But as Sandeau had had no hand whatever in this composition, the signature had of course to be varied. The publisher wishing to connect the new novel with its predecessor, it was decided to alter the prefix only. She fixed on George, as representative of Berri, the land of husbandmen; and George Sand thus became the pseudonym of the author of ‘Indiana,’ a pseudonym whose origin imaginative critics have sought far afield.... Its assumption was to inaugurate a new era in her life.

George Sand was twenty-seven years of age at this time. Without being beautiful she was striking and sympathetic-looking. Sainte-Beuve thus describes his first interview with her: “I saw, as I entered the room, a young woman with expressive eyes and a fine open brow, surrounded by black hair, cut rather short. She was quiet and composed[Pg 73] in manner, speaking little herself, but listening attentively to all I had to say.”... Her features were large but regular, her eyes magnificent, and her face distinguished by an expression of strength and calm that was very remarkable.

You strongly suspect me of a love of pleasure, of a thirst for amusement and diversion, of which I am far from being possessed. I do not crave for society, the bustling of cities, theatres, dresses, or jewelry; you alone are mistaken respecting me; what I long for is liberty. Being alone in the streets, and saying to myself: “I shall dine at four or at seven, if I please. I shall pass through the Luxembourg Gardens instead of through the Champs Elysées on my way to the Tuileries, if I feel so inclined;” that is what amuses me a great deal more than the insipidity of men or the stiffness of drawing-rooms.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to her mother, May, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

Love of work is a great boon. I bless the memory of my grandmother for having compelled me to acquire the habit of it. That habit has become a faculty, which itself is for me a necessity. I have now reached such a point that I can, without injuring my health, work for thirteen hours in succession, although the average is from seven to eight hours a day, whether the work be difficult or easy. Work brings me plenty of money, and takes up much time which, had I nothing to do, would be devoted to melancholy[Pg 74] and depression of spirits, the natural consequences of my bilious temperament.

George Sand: Letter to M. Hippolyte Chatiron, March, 1834, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I am passionately fond of the country; I have, like yourself, all household tastes, home tastes; I love dogs, cats and children above all things.

George Sand: Letter to M. Jules Janin, February, 1857, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

Make haste then, and tell me that my family is ... in good health; and, above all, my little Maurice, the little rogue, whom, however, I love more than anything in this world, and but for whom there would be no happiness for me. Does he sleep and eat well? Is he cheerful? Is he quite well? Do not be too indulgent to him, and yet, as much as you can, make him fond of his studies. I know full well that that is no easy task. When I am with him to wipe his eyes, and see him fall asleep in his cot, I do not much mind; but afar, my weakness as a mother is roused, and I am only grieved when I think that he is perhaps crying over his lesson-book.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, November, 1829, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I ... long to go back to Berry; for I have children whom I love more than anything else. But for the hope of being some day more useful to them with the scribe’s pen than with the housewife’s needle, I should not part from them so long.

Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Charles Duvernet, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I am living here like a hermit. My apartment is so nice and warm; it is so light and quiet that I never care to leave it. But, on the other hand, I am all day long bothered with visitors, who are not all very entertaining. It is one of the drawbacks of my calling, and I am obliged to put up with them; but in the evening I shut myself up with my pen and ink, Solange, my piano, and my fire. In their midst I spend some very pleasant hours. The only sounds I hear are the notes of a harp, proceeding I know not whence, and the plashing of a jet of water which plays in the garden under my windows. It is most poetic. Do not laugh about it.... I must tell you that I am coining money. I receive proposals from all directions. I shall sell my next novel for 4,000 francs.

George Sand: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, December, 1832, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

She had taken apartments for herself in the interior of the city, in a little, low-built house, along the narrow, green, and yet limpid canal, close to the Ponte dei Barcaroli. “There,” she tells us, “alone all the afternoon, never going out except in the evening for a breath of air, working at night as well, to the song of the tame nightingales that people all Venetian balconies, I wrote Andre, Jacques, Mattea, and the first Lettres d’ un Voyageur.”

As regards my suit, I am still in statu quo. My husband has appealed against the decision of the court. I am still at La Châtre, staying with some friends, who[Pg 76] spoil me like a child five years old. I live in a suburb composed of terraces, built on a rocky slope; below is an admirably pretty valley. A garden of four square yards, full of roses, and a terrace just spacious enough to move in, do duty for a drawing-room, a study and a gallery. My bedroom is large enough; it is furnished with a bed adorned with curtains of red cotton stuff—a regular peasant’s bed, hard and flat, two straw-bottomed chairs, and a deal table. My window opens six feet above the terrace. Through the hedging of the orchard I come and go at night, without having to open any door, and thus to disturb anybody, whenever inclined for a stroll in my four square yards of flowers. I sometimes go alone for a ride at dusk. I return home at midnight. My cloak, my bark hat, and the melancholy trot of my steed, cause the people to take me in the dark for a peddler or for a farmer’s boy.

George Sand: Letter to the Countess d’ Agoult, May, 1836, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

We were delighted to meet in an old Carthusian convent a Spanish family whom political reasons had compelled to seek a hiding-place there, and who possessed a tolerably decent suite of peasant furniture. The refugees intended to pass over to France; we, therefore, bought the furniture for three times its value, and installed ourselves in the convent of Valdemosa: a poetical name, a poetical abode—charming scenery, grand and wild, with the sea bordering on the horizon, formidable heights around us, eagles pursuing their prey even into the orange groves of our garden, a path planted with[Pg 77] cypresses and winding its way from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the ravine; under our feet torrents, overhung by myrtles and palms.... We were unable to procure servants, because we were not Christians; and besides, nobody cared to wait upon a consumptive person.... We scarcely ever met a soul; nothing disturbed our occupations. After waiting for two months, and having to pay a duty of 300 francs, Chopin at last obtained his piano, and the vaults of the convent cells were enlivened by its melody. Maurice visibly improved every day in health and strength; as for me, I used to perform the duties of a tutor seven hours a day.... During one-half of the night I worked for myself. Chopin composed some of his masterpieces, and we were in hopes of swallowing our vexations by the aid of these compensating influences. But, owing to the elevated position of the convent, the climate eventually became unbearable. We were living in the midst of clouds, and for fifty days we were unable to descend to the valley. The roads had been changed into torrents, and we could no longer see the sun.

All that would have seemed very well to me if poor Chopin could have endured it.... While battering our rocks, the wind and the sea sang in a sublime tone. The immense and deserted cloisters were cracking overhead. Had I written there that part of Lélia which is enacted in a monastery, I could have made it better and more real. But my poor friend’s chest was daily growing worse. Fine weather did not return. A chambermaid whom I had brought with me from France, and who until then had resigned herself, thanks to a large salary, to do our cooking and[Pg 78] keep our rooms tidy, was beginning to consider her work too fatiguing. The moment had arrived when, having wielded the broom and boiled the saucepan myself, I too must have given way to fatigue; for, besides my tutor’s work, my literary pursuits, the continuous care demanded by the state of my patient, and the mortal anxiety he caused me, I was eaten up with rheumatism. In Majorca the use of chimneys is unknown. By paying an exorbitant price we succeeded in getting somebody to build a grotesque stove for us, a sort of iron caldron which gave us the headache and parched our chests. In spite of that, the humidity of the convent was such that our clothing grew mouldy on our backs.... We at last decided to go away, at whatever cost, although Chopin had not even strength enough to drag himself along.... We were obliged to travel three leagues along outlandish paths in a birlocho, that is to say, a wheelbarrow!

George Sand: Letter to M. François Rollinat, March, 1839, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

It seems to me but the other day that I saw her, yet it was in the August of 1846, more than thirty years ago. I saw her in her own Berry, at Nohant, where her childhood and youth were passed, where she returned to live after she became famous, where she died and has now her grave.... The château of Nohant, in which Madame Sand lived, is a plain house by the roadside, with a walled garden. Down in the meadows, not far off, flows the Indre, bordered by trees....

The mid-day breakfast at Nohant was not yet over when I reached the house, and I found a large party[Pg 79] assembled. I entered with some trepidation, ... but the simplicity of Madame Sand’s manner put me at ease in a moment. She named some of those present; amongst them were her son and daughter, the Maurice and Solange so familiar to us from her books, and Chopin with his wonderful eyes. There was at that time nothing astonishing in Madame Sand’s appearance. She was not in man’s clothes; she wore a sort of costume not impossible, I should think (although on these matters I speak with hesitation), to members of the fair sex at this hour amongst ourselves, as an out-of-door dress for the country or for Scotland. She made me sit by her and poured out for me the insipid and depressing beverage, boisson fade et mélancolique, as Balzac called it, for which English people are thought abroad to be always thirsting,—tea. She conversed of the country through which I had been wandering, of the Berry peasants and their mode of life, of Switzerland, whither I was going; she touched politely, by a few questions and remarks, upon England and things and persons English—upon Oxford and Cambridge, Byron, Bulwer. As she spoke her eyes, head, bearing, were all of them striking; but the main impression she made was an impression of what I have already mentioned,—of simplicity, frank, cordial simplicity. After breakfast she led the way into the garden, asked me a few kind questions about myself and my plans, gathered a flower or two and gave them to me, shook hands heartily at the gate, and I saw her no more.

Matthew Arnold: George Sand. ‘Mixed Essays,’ etc. New York; Macmillan & Co. 1883.

I went to see her at her house, Place d’ Orleans. I found it a handsome, modern residence.... The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume of a peasant, and, as Mme. Sand afterward told me, her god-daughter, whom she had brought from her province. She announced me as “Madame Salere,” and returned into the ante-room to tell me “Madame says she does not know you.” I began to think I was doomed to a rebuff, among the crowd who deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, “Ask if she has not received a letter from me.” As I spoke, Madame S. opened the door, and stood looking at me an instant. Our eyes met. I never shall forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame for her figure; she is large, but well-formed. She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the portraits, but much finer; the upper part of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower, strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish.... All these details I saw at a glance; but what fixed my attention was the expression of goodness, nobleness, and power, that pervaded the whole—the truly human heart and nature that shone in the eyes. As our eyes met, she said, “C’est vous,” and held out her hand. I took it, and went into her little study....[Pg 81] I stayed a good part of the day, and was very glad afterward, for I did not see her again, uninterrupted. Another day I was there, and saw her in her circle. Her daughter and another lady was present, and a number of gentlemen. Her position there was that of an intellectual woman and good friend,—the same as my own, in the circle of my acquaintance, as distinguished from my intimates. Her daughter is just about to be married. It is said, there is no congeniality between her and her mother; but for her son she seems to have much love, and he loves and admires her extremely. I understand he has a good and free character, without conspicuous talent.

Her way of talking is just like her writing—lively, picturesque, with an undertone of deep feeling, and the same skill in striking the nail on the head every now and then with a blow.

We did not talk at all of personal or private matters. I saw, as one sees in her writings, the want of an independent, interior life, but I did not feel it as a fault, there is so much in her of her kind. I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius.... I never liked a woman better.

I forgot to mention, that while talking, she does smoke all the time her little cigarette.

Margaret Fuller: Letter, 1847, in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,’ by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clark. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1874.

Villemer still goes splendidly. The principal journals, without exception, are even louder in their praise[Pg 82] than their humbler contemporaries.... The Odéon is taking 4,000 francs for seats booked in advance, and from 500 to 600 at the door every night. There is a string of carriages all day long, bringing people who come to book places, and another at night, besides a crowd at the doors.... The players are always recalled after each act. It is a splendid success, and, as it is supported only by the paying public, it is so unanimous and hearty that the actors say they have never seen anything like it.... Travellers who arrive in Paris, and who pass during the evening in front of the Odéon, pull up in a fright and ask if there is a revolution, if the republic is proclaimed.

If you wish to know my pecuniary position, it is easy to set forth. My accounts are not involved. I have earned about a million with my writings; I have not put by a single sou. I gave away every thing except 20,000 francs, which, two years ago, I invested, in order not to cause too much expense to my children if I should fall ill; and yet I am not sure that I shall be able to keep that little capital; for I may meet with people who may want it more urgently than I, and, should I be well enough to earn a little more, I will have to part with my savings.... If you should speak of my resources, you can say, with perfect truth, that I always lived from day to day from the fruits of my labor, and that I consider as ensuring most happiness[Pg 83] that way of arranging my life. I thus have no pecuniary anxiety, and I do not fear robbers.

George Sand: Letter to M. Louis Ulbach, November, 1869, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

At one of the great horticultural shows in Paris, ... moving about among the fruits and flowers, we saw a woman of the medium size, plainly and rather peculiarly dressed, and accompanied by a pale young man who resembled her so strongly that we at once pronounced them mother and son. The woman was in the autumn of life, the young man in the early summer. On her face the woman wore marks of care and time, a tired, disappointed look, such as they wear who, after hard climbing, have reached a height of fame, and find it uncompensating. There were remnants of beauty in the face, but they were only remnants. There were deep, gray eyes under brows too heavy for a woman, a head crowned with a considerable wealth of carelessly arranged hair just threaded with gray, and picturesquely draped with lace. There was the little stoop of the shoulders, that comes of the habit of thinking hard and writing steadily. Wherever this woman and her companion went, the spectators turned to look at them. The face and figure are clear-cut in my memory to-day, and there is nothing commonplace in it. You would have known that this was a distinguished person. It was a face with a soul behind it. The movements were those of a person accustomed to be looked at and accustomed to homage. One looked at this woman—almost an aged woman—and felt the magnetism of genius. We asked of a[Pg 84] by-stander who it was, and were told that it was George Sand and her son.

Paul Vevay: Quoted in ‘The Record of the Year.’ Published by G. W. Carleton, September, 1876.

I am but a good old woman, to whom people have attributed a ferocity of character altogether fantastical. I have also been accused of having proved unable to love with passion. It seems to me I have lived a life of tenderness, and that ought to have satisfied people.

Now, thank God, nothing except affection is expected from me; and those who are good enough to love me, in spite of the want of lustre in my life and the dulness of my wit, do not complain of me.

My disposition has remained inclined to gaiety; though devoid of initiative for amusing others, I am efficient in helping them to enjoy themselves.

I must possess some great defects, but, like every body else, mine do not strike me. I am also ignorant of the existence of any quality or virtue in me. I much pondered over truth, and when one is so engaged the sentiment of self vanishes more and more daily.

George Sand: Letter to M. Louis Ulbach, November, 1869, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

M. Plauchut, a literary friend and a visitor at Nohant, during the last decade of her lifetime, gives a picture of the order of her day; it is simplicity itself. Nine o’clock, in summer and in winter alike, was her hour of waking. Letters and newspapers would occupy her until noon, when she came down to join the family déjeûner. Afterwards she would stroll for an hour in the garden and the[Pg 85] wood, visiting and tending her favorite plants and flowers. At two o’clock she would come indoors to give a lesson to her grandchildren, in the library, or work there on her own account, undistracted by the romps around her. Dinner at six was followed by a short evening walk, after which she played with the children, or set them dancing indoors. She liked to sit at the piano, playing over to herself bits of music by her favorite Mozart, or old Spanish and Berrichon airs. After a game of dominoes or cards, she would still sit up so late, occupying herself with water-color painting or otherwise, that sometimes her son was obliged to take away the lights. These long evenings, the same writer bears witness, sometimes afforded rare opportunities of hearing Madame Sand talk of the events and the men of her time. In the absolute quiet of the country, among a small circle of responsive minds, she, so silent otherwise, became expansive. “Those who have never heard George Sand at such hours,” he concludes, “have never known her. She spoke well, with great elevation of ideas, charming eloquence, and a spirit of infinite indulgence.” When, at length, she retired, it was to write on until the morning hours, according to her old habit, only relinquished when her health made this imperative.

George Sand had none of the brilliancy and repartee in general conversation one would have expected, and as the years went on she became more silent and reserved. Her greatest happiness was to sit in her arm-chair, smoking[Pg 86] cigarettes. Often, when her friends thought she was absorbed in her own meditations, she would put in a word that proved she had been listening to everything. The word spoken, she would relapse again into silence.

It was only when she sat down to her desk that she became eloquent, and the expressions that halted on her lips rushed abundantly from her pen. Her characters grew beneath her hand, and she went on writing, with that perfect style which is like the rhythmic cadence of a great river—“large, calm, and regular.” George Sand worked all night long, after all her guests were in bed, sometimes remaining up until five o’clock in the morning. She generally sat down to the old bureau in the hall at Nohant, with pen, ink, and foolscap paper sewn together, and began, without notes or a settled scheme of any kind.

To-day, my sixty-eighth birthday, I will write to you. My health is perfect, in spite of a whooping cough, which, however, does not longer disturb my rest, since I daily plunge myself in a foaming, icy-cold little torrent, winding its way among the pebbles, the flowers, and the grass, under a delightful shade.... I walk all the way to the river, and, quite hot with perspiration, plunge myself in the icy-cold water. The doctor says I am mad; I let him talk and cure myself, whilst his patients nurse themselves and croak. I am like the grass in the fields—water and sun are all I require.

George Sand: Letter to M. Gustave Flaubert, 5th July, 1872, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I am still discharging the duties of assiduous and patient teacher, and I have little time left for professional writing, seeing that I spend the evening with my family, and can now no longer work after midnight; yet my being pinched for time acts like a stimulant upon me, and causes me to find much pleasure in hard work; it is to me like secretly relishing some forbidden fruit.

George Sand: Letter to M. Gustave Flaubert, December, 1875, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

There is for me but one creed and one refuge: faith in God and our own immortality. My secret is not new, but there is no other.

George Sand: Letter to Mlle. Leroyer de Chantepie, August, 1836, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

I see future and eternal life before me as a certainty; as a light in the glimmer of which every thing is only dimly seen; but that light is there, and that is all I wish for. I know full well that my Jeanne [her granddaughter] is not dead.... I know well that I shall meet her again, and that she will recognize me, even though she should not recollect or I either. She was part of my own self and that fact will always remain.

George Sand: Letter to M. Edouard Charton, February, 1855, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’

Up to her last hour she preserved consciousness[Pg 88] and lucidity. The words, “Ne touchez pas à la verdure,” among the last that fell from her lips, were understood by her children, who knew her wish that the trees should be undisturbed under which, in the village cemetery, she was soon to find a resting-place.

We have seen a photograph done of George Sand, shortly before she died. The face is massive, but lit up by the wonderful eyes, through which the soul still shines. An expression of tenderness and gentle philosophy hovers round the lips, and we feel almost as though they would break into a smile as we gaze. She became, latterly, like one of those grand old trees of her own “Vallée Noir,” lopped and maimed by the storms and struggles of life, but ever to the last putting forth tender shoots and expanding into fresh foliage, through which the soft winds of heaven whisper, making music in the ears of those weary wayfarers who pause to rest beneath their shade.

Though I never saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even ‘Consuelo,’ which is the best, or the best that I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence), yet she has a grasp of mind, which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect; she is sagacious and profound.... It is poetry, as I comprehend the word, which elevates[Pg 89] that masculine George Sand, and makes out of something coarse, something godlike.

Charlotte Brontë: Letters to G. H. Lewes, 1848, in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë’. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857.

George Sand is the greatest female genius the world ever saw—at least, since Sappho, who broke off a fragment of her soul to be guessed by, as creation did by its fossils. And George Sand, it is remarkable, precisely like her prototype, has suffered her senses to leaven her soul—to permeate it through and through, and make a sensual soul of it. She is a wonderful woman, and, I hope, rising into a purer atmosphere by the very strength of her wing.

Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Dates of publication in book form; see Catalogue Général de la Librairie Française.

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, the daughter of a wealthy West India merchant, was born at Hope End, near Ledbury, in 1809. The delicate, precocious child began rhyming at eight years old, and was encouraged by her proud and indulgent father. In 1826, at seventeen, she published her Essay on Mind, an imitation of Pope. She was an omnivorous reader, and early became a hard student of Greek. When she was twenty-four or five her family removed from Hope End to Sidmouth; thence to London. In 1835 she published a translation from Æschylos, Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems. The Prometheus was subsequently re-written.

In 1837, Miss Barrett’s health broke down. She was taken, by the advice of her physician, to Torquay. During her sojourn there her favorite brother was drowned; she had the horror of seeing his boat go down. She was utterly prostrated by this tragedy, and it was not until the following year that she could be removed to London.

A long period of invalidism ensued, during which, however, she continued her studies and literary work. The courage and noble cheerfulness displayed in her letters to Mr. Horne, written at this time, are most remarkable. In 1838 she published The Seraphim, and Other Poems; in 1839, The Romaunt of the Page, a volume of ballads. In 1842 she contributed to the London Athenæum some essays on the Greek-Christian[Pg 94] writers and the English poets. About 1841 she modernized portions of Chaucer’s poetry; Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Monckton Milnes, Horne and others engaging in the same work. Miss Barrett also wrote for Horne’s ‘New Spirit of the Age,’ part of the critique on Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt, and nearly all of the paper on Walter Savage Landor. In 1844, her health having in the meantime gradually improved somewhat, she collected her poems, placing at the head a new composition called A Drama of Exile, the fruit of her diligent study of the Hebrew Bible.

In 1846, despite the opposition of her father—to whom “a marriage which was to lift his fragile daughter from the couch to which she had been bound as a picture to its frame, must have seemed a rash experiment,”—Elizabeth Barrett was married to Robert Browning. They went at once to Italy, where, the milder climate proving favorable to Mrs. Browning’s health, they continued to reside for fifteen years. They were in the habit of spending their summers in Florence, where their son, Robert Barrett Browning, was born, and their winters in Rome; and occasionally they visited England. Under favorable conditions, Mrs. Browning now produced her greatest works. Casa Guidi Windows was published in 1851, the Sonnets from the Portuguese being included in the same volume. In 1856 Aurora Leigh appeared.

Poems before Congress were put forth in 1860. Her last poems, written in 1860 and ’61, were collected after her death, which took place at Florence on the 29th of June, 1861.

A strange and beautiful life—with its cloistered maidenhood, its pathetic wavering between Death and[Pg 95] Love, to fall at last into Love’s most gracious hands, its sequel of perfect wifehood. “She was like the insect that weaves itself a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is impelled to break through its covering, and come out a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth, and of passion in the splendor of its tawny dyes.”[4]

Browning’s ‘By the Fireside’ undoubtedly contains a sketch of her own fireside; we recognize at once the tiny figure of the woman

“Reading by firelight—that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.”

No line other than loving has ever been written of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But from all that friends and appreciative critics can say we must ever turn for the last touch to the “One Word More” of him who knew the “silent silver lights and darks undreamed-of” of his own “moon of poets.”

As to stories, my story amounts to the Knife-grinder’s, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good a story. Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in my thoughts. I wrote verses—as I dare say many have done who never wrote any poems—very early; at eight years old and earlier. But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a distinct object with me—an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not[Pg 96] make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and haunted me out of Pope’s Homer until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than of Moses the black pony. And thus my great “epic” of eleven or twelve years old, in four books, and called The Battle of Marathon, and of which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling me—is Pope’s Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar direction. The love of Pope’s Homer threw me into Pope on one side and into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek—and the influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards, as in my ‘Essay on Mind,’ a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented as worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual thinking and feeling—the bird pecks through the shell in it. With this, it has a pertness and pedantry, which did not even then belong to the character of the author, and which I regret now more than I do the literary defectiveness.

All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to me, except by books and my own thoughts; and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement happy in many ways, although the very peace of it troubles the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope, and Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some[Pg 97] of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and ate and drank Greek, and made my head ache with it. Do you know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman’s Vision? They seem to me my native hills; for, although I was born in the county of Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighborhood, and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful, beautiful hills, they are! And yet, not for the whole world’s beauty, would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its stalk.

From thence we went to Sidmouth for two years; and there I published my translation of Æschylus, which was written in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards—the only means of giving it a little warmth. The next removal was to London.... And then came the failure in my health, which never had been strong (at fifteen I nearly died), and the publication of The Seraphim, the only work I care to acknowledge, and then the enforced exile to Torquay, with prophecy in the fear, and grief, and reluctance of it—a dreadful dream of an exile, which gave a nightmare to my life forever, and robbed it of more than I can speak of here; do not speak of that anywhere. Do not speak of that, dear Mr. Horne; and for the rest, you see that there is nothing to say. It is “a blank, my lord.”

Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne, 1843. ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.

Among her friends at this time [1826] and for years afterward—in fact, until his death in 1848—was Hugh Stuart Boyd, favorably known by his translations from the Greek.... They read their favorite authors together, or, rather, the young student read to her old master, for he was blind. A reminiscence of the happy hours they passed together, communing with the mighty minds of old, may be found in Mrs. Browning’s beautiful poem, ‘Wine of Cyprus,’ dedicated to Mr. Boyd, to whom she was indebted for her knowledge of that dainty vintage.

“I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading
Swept the sheep-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ai’s and oi’s.”

R. H. Stoddard: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to Richard H. Horne.’

I have her ‘Essay on Mind,’ ... which, and the notes to it, contain allusions to books, as if known by everybody, which Henry Cary declared to me no young man of his day at Oxford had ever looked into.

She is a delightful young creature; shy and timid and modest.... She is so sweet and gentle, and so pretty, that one looks at her as if she were some bright flower.

Mary Russell Mitford: Letter to her Father, May, 1836. L’Estrange’s ‘Life of M. R. Mitford.’ London: R. Bentley & Sons, 1870.

My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago.[5] She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the Prometheus of Æschylus, the authoress of the ‘Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, ... I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that in spite of the difference of age, intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be—her own talk put upon paper.

The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel in the lungs, which did not heal.... After attending her for above a twelve-month at her father’s house in Wimpole Street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and in talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry.... Nearly a twelve-month had passed and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel, for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, but in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found.

This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling, that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be[Pg 101] removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home.

The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying.

Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know ... that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.

Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious, but darkened, chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often joyfully travelled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned the same evening, without entering another house); reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.

Mary Russell Mitford: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1852.

I read without principle. I have a sort of unity indeed, but it amalgamates instead of selecting—do you understand? When I had read the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Malachi, right through, and was never stopped by the Chaldee—and the Greek poets, and Plato, right through from end to end—I passed as thoroughly through the flood of all possible and impossible British and foreign novels and romances, with slices of metaphysics laid thick between the sorrows of the multitudinous Celestinas. It is only useful knowledge and the multiplication table I never tried hard at. And now—what now? Is this matter of exultation? Alas, no! Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from the romances? Certainly, no!—never, except in joke. It’s against my theories and ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by reading too much, and out of proportion to what we think. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as much—should have had stronger and better exercised faculties, and should stand higher in my own appreciation. The fact is, that the ne plus ultra of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Americans call “whittling.”

Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne, 1843. ‘Letters of E. B. Browning to R. H. Horne.’

Her letters ought to be published. In power, versatility, liveliness, and finesse; in perfect originality of glance, and vigor of grasp at every topic of the hour; in their enthusiastic preferences, prejudices, and inconsistencies, I have[Pg 103] never met with any, written by men or by women, more brilliant, spontaneous, and characteristic. This was her form of conversation.

Henry F. Chorley: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’ London: Bentley, 1873.

Her letters make Cowper’s poor. In a hurried note, whose hurry is evident in the handwriting, she drops ... incidental, but brilliant words—just as if the jewels in her rings, jarred by her rapid fingers, had been suddenly unset and fallen out on the paper.

No other handwriting is like hers; it is strong, legible, singularly un-English (that is, not a slanted or running hand), and more like a man’s than a woman’s.

Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’ New York: James Miller, 1862.

More of us, you will admit, do harm by groping along the pavement with blind hands for the beggar’s brass coin, than do folly by clutching at the stars from “the misty mountain-top.” And if the would-be star-catchers catch nothing, they keep at least clean fingers.

As to poetry, they are all sitting (in mistake), just now, upon Caucasus for Parnassus—and wondering why they don’t see the Muses!

It comes to this. If poetry, under any form, be exhaustible, Nature is; and if Nature be—we are near a blasphemy—I, for one, could not believe in the immortality of the soul.

I have never seen one more nobly simple, more entirely guiltless of the feminine propensity of talking for effect, more earnest in assertion, more gentle, yet pertinacious in difference, than she was. Like all whose early nurture has chiefly been books, she had a child’s curiosity regarding the life beyond her books, co-existing with opinions accepted as certainties concerning things of which (even with the intuition of genius), she could know little. She was at once forbearing and dogmatic, willing to accept differences, resolute to admit no argument; without any more practical knowledge of social life than a nun might have, when, after long years, she emerged from her cloister and her shroud.

I receive more dogmas, perhaps, than you do. I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ in the intensest sense—that He was God absolutely. But for the rest, I am very unorthodox about the spirit, the flesh, and the devil, and if you would not let me sit by you, a great many churchmen wouldn’t; in fact, churches, all of them, as at present constituted, seem too narrow and low to hold true Christianity in its proximate developments.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letter to Leigh Hunt. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1862.

May I say of myself that I hope there is nobody in the world with a stronger will and aspiration to escape from sectarianism in any sort or sense, when I have[Pg 105] eyes to discern it—and that the sectarianism of the National Churches, to which I do not belong, and of the dissenting bodies, to which I do, stand together before me on a pretty just level of detestation? Truth (as far as each thinker can apprehend), apprehended—and love, comprehending—make my idea—my hope of a church. But the Christianity of the world is apt to wander from Christ and the hope of Him.

You are my friend, I hope, but you do not on that account lose the faculty of judging me, or the right of judging me frankly. I do loathe the whole system of personal compliment, as a consequence of a personal interest, and I beseech you not to suffer yourself ever by any sort of kind impulse from within, or extraneous influence otherwise, to say or modify a word relating to me.... I set more price on your sincerity than on your praise, and consider it more closely connected with the quality called kindness.... Now, mind! your best compliment to me is the truth at all times, without reference to sex or friendship. I excuse the unbonneting.

What you say of a “poet’s duty” no one in the world can feel more deeply, in the verity of it, than myself. If I fail ultimately before the public—that is, before the people—for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me worth trying for—it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labor—where labor could do anything. I have worked at poetry; it has not[Pg 106] been with me revery, but art. As the physician and lawyer work at their several professions, so have I, and so do I, apply to mine. And this I say, only to put by any charge of carelessness which may rise up to the verge of your lips or thoughts.

With reference to the double rhyming, it has appeared to me to be employed with far less variety in our serious poetry than our language would admit of genially, and that the various employment of it would add another string to the lyre of our Terpander. It has appeared to me that the single rhymes, as usually employed, are scarcely as various as they might be, but that of the double rhymes the observation is still truer. A great deal of attention—far more than it would take to rhyme with conventional accuracy—have I given to the subject of rhymes, and have determined in cold blood to hazard some experiments. At the same time I should tell you, that scarcely one of the Pan rhymes [occurring in the poem of ‘The Dead Pan’] might not separately be justified by the analogy of received rhymes, although they have not themselves been received. Perhaps there is not so irregular a rhyme throughout the poem of Pan as the “fellow” and “prunella” of Pope the infallible. I maintain that my “islands” and “silence” is a regular rhyme in comparison.... A reader of Spanish poetry must be aware how soon the ear may be satisfied even by a recurring vowel. I mean to try it. At any rate, there are so few regular double rhymes in the English language that we must either admit some such[Pg 107] trial or eschew the double rhymes generally; and I, for one, am very fond of them, and believe them to have a power not yet drawn out to its length, and capable of development, in our lyrical poetry especially.

I take the courage and vanity to send to you a note which a poet [Note by R. H. Horne: Robert Browning, then personally unknown to Miss Barrett, although an intimate friend of my own], whom we both admire, wrote to a friend of mine, who lent him the MS. [of ‘The Dead Pan’]. Mark! No opinion was asked about the rhymes,—the satisfaction was altogether impulsive, from within. Send me the note back, and never tell anybody that I showed it to you—it would appear too vain. Also, I have no right to show it. It was sent to me as likely to please me, and pleased me so much and naturally on various accounts, ... that I begged to be allowed to keep it.

Suddenly, one day, as the product of one day’s work, she astonished her friends with the rhapsody of ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’... This poem had all the faultiness which one might expect of a hundred and three stanzas forced by green-house heat into full bloom in twelve hours; this too by a weak invalid lying on a sofa; but must we spoil the pretty story that the sweet ballad had all the merit of winning for its writer the hand of Robert Browning![Pg 108] Yet the story is only a fiction of the gossip-writers. Nor is it true that the poet with whom she was to mate was then known to her only by his little book of ‘Bells and Pomegranates.’ She had more than a stranger’s reasons for making the wooer of Lady Geraldine speak in this wise:

“At times a modern volume—Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt’s ballad-verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie,
Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which if cut deep down the middle,
Showed a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”

When I was ill at Tynemouth, a correspondence grew up between the then bed-ridden Elizabeth Barrett and myself; and a very intimate correspondence it became. In one of the later letters, in telling me how much better she was, and how grievously disappointed at being prevented going to Italy, she wrote of going out, of basking in the open sunshine, of doing this and that; “in short,” said she, finally, “there is no saying what foolish thing I may do.” The “foolish thing,” evidently in view in this passage, was marrying Robert Browning, and a truly wise act did the “foolish thing” turn out to be.

It was more like a fairy tale than anything in real life I have ever known, to read, one morning, in the papers, of her marriage with the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ and to learn, in the course of the day, that not only was she married, but that she was absolutely on her way to Italy. The energy and resolution implied were amazing on the part of one who had long, as her own poems tell us, resigned herself to lie down and die.

She is a small, delicate woman, with ringlets of dark hair, a pleasant, intelligent, and sensitive face, and a low, agreeable voice. She looks youthful and comely, and is very gentle and lady-like.... She is of that quickly appreciative and responsive order of women, with whom I can talk more freely than with any man; and she has, besides, her own originality, wherewith to help on conversation, though, I should say, not of a loquacious tendency. We ... talked of Miss Bacon; and I developed something of that lady’s theory respecting Shakespeare, greatly to the horror of Mrs. Browning.... On the whole, I like her the better for loving the man Shakespeare with a personal love. We talked, too, of Margaret Fuller, who spent her last night in Italy with the Brownings.... I like her very much.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.

Mrs. Browning is, in many respects, the correlative of her husband. As he is full of manly power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She has been a great sufferer from ill health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her person and manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a veil of long, brown locks; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words, like the flame of a dying candle over the wick.

I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire, enclosed in a shell of pearl. Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is, also, what is not so generally known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning, than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings, singly and separately, but to see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so complete as theirs, in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for, is cordial to behold and soothing to remember.

George Stillman Hillard: ‘Six Months in Italy.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1871.

She is little, hard-featured, with long, dark ringlets, a pale face, and plaintive voice—something very impressive in her dark eyes and her brow. Her general aspect puts me in mind[Pg 111] of Mignon—what Mignon might be in maturity and maternity.

Sara Coleridge: Letter in ‘Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge,’ edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874.

It is a pleasant story, told of the street-beggars who walk through Via Maggio, under the windows of Casa Guidi, that they always spoke of the English woman who lived in that house, not by her well-known English name, nor by any softer Italian word, but simply and touchingly as “The mother of the beautiful child.” This was pleasanter to that woman’s ears than to “hear the nations praising her far off.”

She was slight and fragile in appearance, with a pale, wasted face, shaded by masses of soft, chestnut curls, which fell on her cheeks, and serious eyes of bluish-gray. Her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul. This, at least, was the first impression: her personality, frail as it appeared, soon exercised its power, and it seemed a natural thing that she should have written ‘The Cry of the Children’ or ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’ I also understood how these two poets, so different, both intellectually and physically, should have found their complements in each other. The fortunate balance of their reciprocal qualities[Pg 112] makes them an exception to the rule that the inter-marriage of authors is unadvisable.

Bayard Taylor: ‘At Home and Abroad.’ (Second Series.) New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862.

Casa Guidi, which has been immortalized by Mrs. Browning’s genius, will be as dear to the Anglo-Saxon traveller as Milton’s Florentine residence has been heretofore.

Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture, and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining-room, covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room, filled with plaster casts and studies; and dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints, that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large book-cases, constructed of specimens of Florentine carving, selected by Mr. Browning, were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante’s grave profile, a cast of Keats’s face and brow, taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon (Mrs. Browning’s good friend and relative), little paintings of the boy[Pg 113] Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chair, and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair, near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books and newspapers, was always by her side.

—— ——: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861.

We went last evening, at eight o’clock, to see the Brownings; and after some search and enquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a palace in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, I could not see the exterior.... The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace we found a spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the ante-room to greet us, as did his little boy Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile and spirit-like,—not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like[Pg 114] his mother’s.... Mrs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most kindly,—a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet tenuity of voice.

She is a good and kind fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable confusion. I could not form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London, at Lord Houghton’s breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness.

We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening. There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel.... Browning[Pg 115] and his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning’s head. Browning, however, avowed his belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic, while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle word of expostulation.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1872.

It curiously happens that I first met Mrs. Browning at Rome in 1859, where and when Hawthorne also first made her acquaintance, I believe. I remember going through the Vatican with him, and the then ex-President Pierce, during my sojourn in Rome, in the spring of that year.

Though we both saw Mrs. Browning last in that year, my impressions are very distinct that her hair was of a dark-chestnut. It did not curl naturally; but, by one of those artifices of the toilet which all of her sex and some of mine understand, it was worn, as it has usually been painted, in side ringlets. Hawthorne’s constitutional propensity to take sombre views of things may account for the liberty he seems to have taken with Mrs. Browning’s hair.

Mrs. Browning’s conversation was most interesting. It was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently intermingled, with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quaint, graceful humor of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a tête-à-tête. Mrs. Browning never made an insignificant remark. All that she said was always worth hearing; a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point which, added to a matchless earnestness that was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends who were to be praised, which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning’s presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. Yourself, not herself, was always a pleasant subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy and yet more in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics, which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her thoughts, and, therefore, oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion, for with her everything was religion.

[Miss Mitford’s] description of twenty-five years[Pg 117] ago[6] is true, every word, of a photograph now lying on our table, copied from Macaire’s original, made at Havre in 1856, and which Robert Browning esteems a faithful likeness of his wife. The three-quarter length shows the comparative stature of the figure, which is here so delicate and diminutive that we can easily imagine how the story come to be told (although not true) that her husband drew this same portrait in ‘The Flight of the Duchess’ when he sketched

But the one striking feature of the picture is the intellectual and spiritual expression of the face and head; for here, borne up by pillars of curls on either side, is just such an arch as she saw in ‘The Vision of Poets’:

A photograph, taken in Rome only a month before she died, wears a not greatly changed expression, except in an added pallor to cheeks always pale; foretokening the near coming of the shadow of death.

Hers was not the beauty of feature; it was the loftier beauty of expression. Her slight figure seemed hardly large enough to contain the great heart that beat so fervently within, and the soul that expanded more and more as one year gave place to another. It was difficult to[Pg 118] believe that such a fairy hand could pen thoughts of such ponderous weight, or that such a still, small voice could utter them with equal force. But it was Mrs. Browning’s face upon which one loved to gaze—that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead.... Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul.

The resemblance between the Brownings, although many exist, are often more fancied than real. They did not revise each other’s writings. Neither knew what the other had been doing until it was done. ‘Aurora Leigh’ was two-thirds written before her husband saw a word of it. Nor did he know of the existence of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets’ till a considerable time after the marriage, when she showed them to him for the first time, and he, in his delight, persuaded her to put them in print. Otherwise they might never have been published; for with her characteristic modesty she at first thought them unworthy even of his reading, to say nothing of the whole world’s. She felt so doubtful of the merit of ‘Aurora Leigh’ that at one time she laid even that aside with the idea never to publish it.

Her method of writing was to seize the moment when the mood was upon her, and to fix her thought hurriedly on the nearest slip of paper. She was sensitive to interruption while composing, but was too shy to permit even her friends[Pg 119] to see her engaged at her work. When the servant announced a visitor, the busy poet suddenly hid her paper and pen, and received her guest as if in perfect leisure for the visit. Giving her mornings to the instruction of her little son, and holding herself ready after twelve o’clock to give welcome to any comer, it was a wonder to many how she could find the needed time to study or write.

She made many and marked changes in her poems in successive editions. These show her fastidious taste. She was never satisfied to let a stanza remain as it was. Most of these amendments are for the better, but some for the worse, as orators who correct their printed speeches sometimes spoil the best parts. In many cases she substituted not only new rhymes but new thoughts, turning the verses far out of their old channels; in others she struck out whole lines and passages as superfluous; in others she made fitter choice of single words, so adding vividness to the expression.

I am still too near ‘Aurora Leigh’ to be quite able to see it all; my wife used to write it, and lay it down to hear our child spell, or when a visitor came,—it was thrust under a cushion then. At Paris, a year ago last March, she gave me the first six books to read, I never having seen a line before. She then wrote the rest, and transcribed them in London, where I read them also. I wish, in one sense, that I had written and she had read it.

Robert Browning: Letter to Leigh Hunt. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son.

I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy—Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh.’ In many pages there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare. I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much poetry. I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good hearty draught of poetry again: the distemper had got into the vineyard that produced it. Here are indeed, even here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon what is sweet and strong.

Walter Savage Landor: Letter to J. Foster, 1857. ‘Walter Savage Landor: A Biography,’ by John Forster. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869.

We are reading ‘Aurora Leigh,’ for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind.

Marian Evans Lewes: Letter to Sara Hennell, 1857. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.

I am disposed to consider the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ as, if not the finest, a portion of the finest subjective poetry in our literature. Their form reminds us of an English prototype, and it is no sacrilege to say that their music is showered from a higher and purer atmosphere than that of the Swan of Avon. We need not enter upon cold comparison of their respective excellences; but Shakespeare’s personal poems were the overflow of his impetuous youth: his broader[Pg 121] vision, that took a world within its ken, was absolutely objective; while Mrs. Browning’s ‘Love Sonnets’ are the outpourings of a woman’s tenderest emotions, at an epoch when her art was most mature, and her whole nature exalted by a passion that to such a being comes but once and for all. Here, indeed, the singer rose to her height. Here she is absorbed in rapturous utterance, radiant and triumphant with her own joy. The mists have risen and her sight is clear. Her mouthing and affectation are forgotten, her lips cease to stammer, the lyrical spirit has full control. The sonnet, artificial in weaker hands, becomes swift with feeling, red with a “veined humanity,” the chosen vehicle of a royal woman’s vows. Graces, felicities, vigor, glory of speech, here are so crowded as to tread each upon the other’s sceptred pall. The first sonnet, equal to any in our tongue, is an overture containing the motive of the canticle; “not Death, but Love” had seized her unaware. The growth of this happiness, her worship of its bringer, her doubts of her own worthiness, are the theme of these poems. She is in a sweet and, to us, pathetic surprise at the delight which had at last fallen to her:

Never was man or minstrel so honored as her “most gracious singer of high poems.” In the tremor of her love she undervalued herself,—with all her feebleness of body, it was enough for any man to live within the atmosphere of such a soul! In fine, the ‘Portuguese Sonnets,’ whose title was a screen behind which the singer poured out her full heart, are the most exquisite[Pg 122] poetry hitherto written by a woman, and of themselves justify us in pronouncing their author the greatest of her sex.... An analogy with ‘In Memoriam’ may be derived from their arrangement and their presentation of a single analytic theme; but Tennyson’s poem, though exhibiting equal art, more subtile reasoning and comprehensive thought, is devoted to the analysis of philosophic grief, while the ‘Sonnets’ reveal to us that love which is the most ecstatic of human emotions and worth all other gifts in life.

It was my privilege to live for years near by, and in intimate intercourse with, the divinity of Casa Guidi, her whose genius has immortalized the walls as well as the windows of that antique palace; for a tablet has been inserted by the grateful Italians, whose cause she so eloquently espoused, in the grand entrance hall, recording her name, deeds, and long residence there, with the tribute of their thanks and love. Yet I had not known the Brownings personally, in the more intimate sense of acquaintanceship, till that blessed day, when in the balm of a June morning, we started together in an open carriage for Pratolino, taking with us a manservant, who carried the basket containing our picnic dinner, of which only four were to partake. A larger party would have spoiled the whole. A more timid nature was never joined to a bolder spirit than in Elizabeth Browning. She fairly shrunk from observation, and could not endure mixed company, though in her heart kind and sympathetic with all. Her timidity was both instinctive[Pg 123] and acquired; having been an invalid and student from her youth up, she had lived almost the life of a recluse; thus it shocked her to be brought face to face with inquisitive strangers, or the world in general. On this very account, and because her health so rarely permitted her to make excursions of any kind, she enjoyed, as the accustomed do not, and the unappreciative cannot, any unwonted liberty in nature’s realm, and doubly with a chosen few sympathetic companions, to whom she could freely express her thoughts and emotions. Like most finely strung beings, she spoke through a changeful countenance every change of feeling.

Never shall I forget how her face—the plain, mortal, beautiful in its immortal expression—lighted up to greet us as our carriage drove into the porte-cochere of Casa Guidi on that memorable morning. Simple as a child, the honest enjoyment which she anticipated in our excursion beamed through her countenance. Those large, dark, dreamy eyes—usually like deep wells of thought—sparkled with delight; while her adored Robert’s generous capacity for pleasure showed even a happier front than ordinary; reflecting her joy, as we turned into the street and out of the city gate towards Patrolino. The woman of usually many thoughts and few words grew a talker under the stimulus of open country air; while her husband, usually talkative, became the silent enjoyer of her vocal gladness, a pleasure too rarely afforded him to be interrupted. We, of choice, only talked enough to keep our improvisatrice in the humor of utterance.

Withdrawing a short distance, so that our mellowed[Pg 124] voices might not reach her, while lunch was being prepared under the trees, Robert Browning put on his talking-cap again and discoursed, to two delighted listeners, of her who slept. After expressing his joy at her enjoyment of the morning, the poet’s soul took fire by its own friction, and glowed with the brilliance of its theme. Knowing well that he was before fervent admirers of his wife, he did not fear to speak of her genius, which he did almost with awe, losing himself so entirely in her glory that one could see that he did not feel worthy to unloose her shoe-latchet, much less to call her his own. This led back to the birth of his first love for her, and then, without reserve, he told us the real story of that romance, “the course of” which “true love never did run smooth.” There have been several printed stories of the loves of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and we had read some of these; but as the poet’s own tale differed essentially from the others, and as the divine genius of the heroine has returned to its native heaven, whilst her life on earth now belongs to posterity, it cannot be a breach of confidence to let the truth be known.

Mr. Barrett, the father of Elizabeth, though himself a superior man, and capable of appreciating his gifted child, was, in some sense, an eccentric. He had an unaccountable aversion to the idea of “marrying off” any of his children. Having wealth, a sumptuous house, and being a widower, he had somehow made up his mind to keep them all about him. Elizabeth, the eldest, had been an invalid from her early youth, owing partly to the great shock which her exquisite nervous organization[Pg 125] received when she saw an idolized brother drown before her eyes, without having the power to save him. Grief at this event naturally threw her much within herself, while shattered health kept her confined for years to her room. There she thought, studied, wrote; and from her sick-chamber went forth the winged inspiration of her genius. These came into the heart of Robert Browning, nesting there, awakened love for “The Great Unknown,” and he sought her out. Finding that the invalid did not receive strangers, he wrote her a letter, intense with his desire to see her. She reluctantly consented to an interview. He flew to her apartment, was admitted by the nurse, in whose presence only could he see the deity at whose shrine he had long worshipped. But the golden opportunity was not to be lost; love became oblivious to any save the presence of the real of its ideal. Then and there Robert Browning poured out his impassioned soul into hers; though his tale of love seemed only an enthusiast’s dream. Infirmity had hitherto so hedged her about, that she deemed herself forever protected from all assaults of love. Indeed, she felt only injured that a fellow-poet should take advantage, as it were, of her indulgence in granting him an interview, and requested him to withdraw from her presence, not attempting any response to his proposal, which she could not believe in earnest. Of course he withdrew from her sight, but not to withdraw the offer of his heart and hand; au contraire, to repeat it by letter, and in such wise as to convince her how “dead in earnest” he was. Her own heart, touched already when she knew it not, was this time fain to listen, be convinced, and overcome. But here began the “tug of war.” As a filial daughter,[Pg 126] Elizabeth told her father of the poet’s love, of the poet’s love in return, and asked a parent’s blessing to crown their happiness. At first, incredulous of the strange story, he mocked her; but when the truth flashed on him, from the new fire in her eyes, he kindled with rage, and forbade her ever seeing or communicating with her lover again, on the penalty of disinheritance and banishment forever from a father’s love. This decision was founded on no dislike for Mr. Browning personally, or anything in him, or his family; it was simply arbitrary. But the new love was stronger than the old in her—it conquered. On wings it flew to her beloved, who had perched on her window, and thence bore her away from the fogs of England to a nest under Italian skies. The nightingale who had long sung in the dark, with “her breast against a thorne,” now changed into a lark—morning had come—singing for very joy, and at heaven’s gate, which has since opened to let her in.

The unnatural father kept his vow, and would never be reconciled to his daughter, of whom he was not worthy; though she ceased not her endearing efforts to find her way to his heart again; ever fearing that he, or she, might die without the bond of forgiveness having reunited them. Always cherishing an undiminished love for her only parent, this banishment from him wore on her, notwithstanding the rich compensation of such a husband’s devotion, and the new maternal love which their golden-haired boy awakened. What she feared came upon her. Her father died without leaving her even his pardon, and her feeble physique never quite recovered from the shock. Few witnessed the strong grief of that morally strong[Pg 127] woman. I saw her after her first wrestling with the angel of sorrow, and perceived that with the calm token of his blessing, still she dragged a maimed life.

Elizabeth C. Kinney: ‘A Day with the Brownings at Patrolino,’ in Scribner’s Magazine, now The Century, December, 1870.

A life of suffering ended in peace. A frail body, bearing the burden of too great a brain, broke at last under the weight. After six days’ illness, the shadows of the night fell upon her eyes for the last time, and half an hour after daybreak she beheld the Eternal Vision. Like the pilgrim in the dream, she saw the heavenly glory before passing through the gate. “It is beautiful!” she exclaimed, and died; sealing these last words upon her lips as the fittest inscription that could ever be written upon her life, her genius, and her memory. In the English burial-ground at Florence lie her ashes.

The memory and career of Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear to us like some beautiful ideal. Nothing is earthly, though all is human; a spirit is passing before our eyes, yet of like passions with ourselves, and encased in a frame so delicate that every fibre is alive with feeling and tremulous with radiant thought. Her genius certainly may be compared to those sensitive, palpitating flames, which harmonically rise and fall in response to every sound-vibration near them. Her whole being was rhythmic, and, in a time when art is largely valued for itself alone, her utterances were the expression of her inmost soul.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] ‘Victorian Poets,’ by E. C. Stedman.

[5] Miss Mitford writes in 1851.

[6] Mr. Tilton writes in 1862.

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born at Cambridgeport, Mass., May 23, 1810. She was the eldest child of Timothy Fuller, “a lawyer and a politician,” and Margaret Crane his wife. Her education was begun at home by her father, a somewhat severe teacher. In an autobiographical fragment she relates the influence upon her young mind of the study of the Latin language and of Roman history, and of her readings in Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière. Another formative influence was her romantic attachment to a beautiful and accomplished English lady who spent a few months in the neighborhood, and whose companionship lifted her, she says, “into just that atmosphere of European life to which I had before been tending.” When about thirteen years old, Margaret was sent to the boarding-school of the Misses Preston, in Groton, Mass., where she remained until 1825. It is stated that she was at one time a pupil in Dr. Park’s Boston school. That she was an indefatigable student, is shown by the record of her reading during the subsequent years passed at home. Her studies in German were especially deep.

In the spring of 1833, the family removed from Cambridge to Groton. Margaret was at this time much occupied in the tuition of the younger children. In 1835, she made the acquaintance of Miss Martineau,[Pg 132] then travelling in America. Margaret had in this year a severe illness, from which it was feared that she could not recover. In October, her father died of cholera. “This death,” says Mrs. Howe, “besides the sorrow and perplexity which followed it, brought to Margaret a disappointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfilment of her highest hopes.” It had been planned that she should visit Europe, making the voyage in the company of Miss Martineau and the Farrars. It now seemed to her a duty to remain with her mother, and “not to encroach upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sisters.” Her undeniable egotism only throws this act of self-sacrifice into higher relief.

In the autumn of 1836, she left Groton, to take a position in Mr. Alcott’s school, in Boston, at the same time teaching private classes. She worked hard this winter, giving instruction in German, Italian, Latin, and French, and reading with her pupils such books as ‘Faust’ and the ‘Divina Commedia.’ In the spring of 1837, she went to teach in the Greene Street school, Providence, a salary of $1,000 per annum being offered her. She remained there two years, doing valuable work, which added to her reputation; but Mr. Greeley, in his autobiography, states that she was not remunerated for her services.

In 1839, the Fuller family left Groton for Jamaica Plain, and in November of the same year returned to Cambridge. In this year was published Margaret’s translation of Eckerman’s ‘Conversations with Goethe.’ In 1840, she became the editor of The Dial, which she managed for two years, receiving $200 the first year, after which her salary was discontinued on account of[Pg 133] the lack of funds. She contributed to this periodical, besides various critical papers, the article on The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women, which was afterwards expanded into her Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

It was in the autumn of 1839 that Margaret began her famous Boston conversations, with a class of twenty-five. These classes were renewed in November of each year until 1844.

In 1841, she translated the ‘Letters of Gunderode and Bettine,’ but their publication does not appear to have been completed. In 1843, a trip to Lake Superior furnished her with material for her Summer on the Lakes, originally published in The Dial. A general impression exists that Miss Fuller connected herself with the Brook Farm experiment. It is an error; she was a visitor, not a resident, at Brook Farm.

In 1844, Margaret went to New York, to live with the Greeleys at Turtle Bay, becoming a constant contributor to the New York Tribune. In this year she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and the next, collected her Papers on Art and Literature in a volume.

On the 1st of August, 1846, Margaret Fuller sailed for Europe, in the company of her friends Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Spring, of Eagleswood, New Jersey. She went first to England, visited the Lake country, meeting Wordsworth and renewing her acquaintance with Harriet Martineau, travelled in Scotland, making the ascent of Ben Lomond with but one companion, and without a guide, an imprudence which cost her a night of dangerous exposure; returned to London, where she met[Pg 134] Joanna Baillie, the Carlyles, and Mazzini; and went thence to Paris. There she saw George Sand, Chopin, and Rachel. She proceeded to Lyons, to Avignon, “where she waded through the snow to visit the tomb of Laura,” and to Marseilles, whence she sailed for Genoa, going next to Naples and to Rome. It was during this first stay in Rome, in the spring of 1847, that she became acquainted with the Marquis Ossoli, an officer of the Civic Guard. She continued her travels, visiting Florence, Ravenna, Venice, Milan, the Italian Lakes, and Switzerland. She returned to Rome in October, 1847. In December she was married to Ossoli; but for reasons involving the security of his paternal inheritance, it was agreed that the marriage should be a secret. In the following May, Margaret left Rome for the summer, passing a month at Aquila, and the rest of the time, until November, at Rieti, where it was possible for her husband to visit her occasionally. In September, 1848, their son, “Angiolino,” was born. In November, Margaret found it necessary to go to Rome, “to be near her husband, and also in order to be able to carry on the literary work upon which depended not only her own support, but also that of her child.” The little Angelo was left in the care of his Italian nurse. His mother at first anticipated an absence of a month only. She indeed returned to Rieti for a week in December, but “circumstances were too strong for her, and she was forced to remain three months in Rome without seeing him,” lying awake at night, studying to end this cruel separation. She was again in Rieti in March, and in April returned to Rome. And now began the siege of Rome by the French, and the[Pg 135] mother, shut up in the city, saw her child no more until the summer.

Margaret took charge of one of the hospitals during the siege. To the writer, this period appears the noblest of her life. The formation of the strongest human ties had immeasurably deepened and softened her nature. She moved among the wounded and dying soldiers like the “Court Lady” of Mrs. Browning’s poem. She learned all the horror of wounds and death. She insisted on going with Ossoli to his post on the night when an attack was expected in that quarter; and meeting at the Angelus, they passed together to the supposed danger as to a religious service. During the days of suspense, Margaret made her secret known to her friends in Rome. As soon as the siege was ended, the father and mother hastened to Rieti, to find their child neglected and almost dying. They nursed him back to life and health, and the three passed together one happy winter in Florence, clouded only by pecuniary anxieties—for Ossoli had, by his patriotism, lost all. Margaret’s literary work at this time was a History of the Revolution in Italy, which perished with her.

Margaret, Ossoli, and the little Angelo sailed for America on May 17, 1850, in the barque Elizabeth, Captain Hasty. On the voyage the captain died of small-pox; Angelo took the disease, but recovered. On the morning of July 19th, the Elizabeth was wrecked in a sudden storm, striking on Fire Island beach. The sea never gave back Margaret and Ossoli. The baby Angelo was washed ashore, and lies buried at Mt. Auburn.

Margaret’s works, collected after her death, are in[Pg 136] four volumes: Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Art, Literature, and the Drama; Abroad and at Home, and Life Without and Life Within.

A remarkable estimate of Margaret, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published, among other extracts from his papers, by his son, has lately attracted much attention. The testimony of Hawthorne as to Margaret’s Italian life, of which he had no personal knowledge, has little value. But the conclusions of so keen a mind as to her character cannot be so easily dismissed; and this passage has been included among our extracts, that both sides of the shield may be seen. Certain of Hawthorne’s expressions go far to confirm the popular belief that Margaret’s character, as he saw it, furnished him with the hint or starting-point for his creation of Zenobia in ‘The Blithedale Romance.’

Lowell, in his stinging lines on Miranda, in ‘A Fable for Critics,’ speaks of her, “I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air,” and pronounces that “the whole of her being’s a capital I.” She is too often remembered thus, and only thus. Let us also picture her ministering in that “house of misery” where,—to quote lines written of another famous woman,—

“Slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.”

My father instructed me himself. The effect of this was so far good that, not passing through the hands of many ignorant and weak persons, as so many do at preparatory schools, I was put at once under discipline of considerable severity,[Pg 137] and, at the same time, had a more than ordinarily high standard presented to me. My father was a man of business, even in literature; he had been a high scholar at college, and was warmly attached to all he had learned there, both from the pleasure he had derived in the exercise of his faculties and the associated memories of success and good repute. He was, beside, well read in French literature, and in English, a Queen Anne’s man. He hoped to make me the heir of all he knew, and of as much more as the income of his profession enabled him to give me means of acquiring. At the very beginning, he made one great mistake, more common, it is to be hoped, in the last generation, than the warning of physiologists will permit it to be with the next. He thought to gain time by bringing forward the intellect as early as possible. Thus, I had tasks given me, as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage of reciting to him in the evening, after he returned from his office. As he was subject to many interruptions, I was often kept up till very late; and as he was a severe teacher, both from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings were kept on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus, frequently I was sent to bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature development of the brain, that made me a “youthful prodigy” by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and somnambulism, which, at the time, prevented the harmonious development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while, later, they induced continual headache,[Pg 138] weakness, and nervous affections of all kinds. As these again reacted on the brain, giving undue force to every thought and every feeling, there was finally produced a state of being both too active and too intense, which wasted my constitution.... No one understood this subject of health then. No one knew why this child, already kept up so late, was still unwilling to retire. My aunts cried out upon the “spoiled child, the most unreasonable child that ever was—if brother could but open his eyes to see it—who was never willing to go to bed.” They did not know that, so soon as the light was taken away, she seemed to see colossal faces advancing slowly towards her, the eyes dilating, and each feature swelling loathsomely as they come, till at last, when they were about to close upon her, she started up with a shriek which drove them away, but only to return when she lay down again.... No wonder the child arose and walked in her sleep, moaning all over the house, till once, when they heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what she had dreamed, her father sharply bid her “leave off thinking of such nonsense, or she would be crazy,” never knowing that he was himself the cause of all these horrors of the night.

I was taught Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily.

[My father] demanded accuracy and clearness in everything.... Trained to great dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that listen,[Pg 139] wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation and self-forgetfulness.

Ever memorable is the day on which I first took a volume of Shakespeare in my hand to read. It was on a Sunday. This day was particularly set apart in our house.... This Sunday—I was only eight years old—I took from the book-shelf a volume lettered Shakespeare. It was not the first time I had looked at it, but before I had been deterred from attempting to read, by the broken appearance along the page, and preferred smooth narrative. But this time I held in my hand ‘Romeo and Juliet’ long enough to get my eye fastened to the page. It was a cold winter afternoon. I took the book to the parlor fire, and had there been seated an hour or two, when my father looked up and asked what I was reading so intently. “Shakespeare,” replied the child, merely raising her eye from the page. “‘Shakespeare’! That won’t do; that’s no book for Sunday; go put it away and take another.” I went as I was bid, but took no other. Returning to my seat, the unfinished story, the personages to whom I was but just introduced, thronged and burnt my brain. I could not bear it long; such a lure it was impossible to resist. I went and brought the book again. There were several guests present, and I had got half through the play before I again attracted attention. “What is that child about that she doesn’t hear a[Pg 140] word that’s said to her?” quoth my aunt. “What are you reading?” said my father. “Shakespeare,” was again the reply, in a clear though somewhat impatient tone. “How?” said my father angrily; then, restraining himself before his guests, “Give me the book and go directly to bed.”

Our house, though comfortable, was very ugly, and in a neighborhood which I detested, every dwelling and its appurtenances having a mesquin and huddled look. I liked nothing about us except the tall graceful elms before the house, and the dear little garden behind. Our back-door opened on a high flight of steps, by which I went down to a green plot, much injured in my ambitious eyes by the presence of the pump and tool-house. This opened into a little garden, full of choice flowers and fruit trees, which was my mother’s delight and was carefully kept. Here I felt at home. A gate opened thence into the fields, a wooden gate made of boards, in a high unpainted board wall, and embowered in the clematis creeper. This gate I used to open to see the sunset heaven; beyond this black frame I did not step, for I liked to look at the deep gold behind it. How exquisitely happy I was in its beauty, and how I loved the silvery wreaths of my protecting vine! I never would pluck one of its flowers at that time, I was so jealous of its beauty, but often since I carry off wreaths of it from the wild wood, and it stands in nature to my mind as the emblem of domestic love.

Margaret Fuller: Autobiographical Romance published in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,’ by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1874.

My acquaintance with Margaret commenced in the year 1823, at Cambridge.... Margaret was then about thirteen,—a child in years, but so precocious in her mental and physical development, that she passed for eighteen or twenty. Agreeably to this estimate she had her place in society as a lady full-grown.

When I recall her personal appearance, as it was then and for ten or twelve years subsequent to this, I have the idea of a blooming girl of a florid complexion and vigorous health, with a tendency to robustness, of which she was painfully conscious, and which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to suppress or conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future suffering. With no pretensions to beauty then, or at any time, her face was one that attracted, that awakened a lively interest, that made one desirous of a nearer acquaintance. It was a face that fascinated, without satisfying. Never seen in repose, never allowing a steady perusal of its features, it baffled every attempt to judge the character by physiognomical induction. I said she had no pretentions to beauty. Yet she was not plain. She escaped the reproach of positive plainness, by her blonde and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her sparkling, dancing, busy eyes, though usually half closed from near-sightedness, shot piercing glances at those with whom she conversed, and, most of all, by the very peculiar and graceful carriage of her head and neck, which all who knew her will remember as the most characteristic trait in her personal appearance.

In conversation she had already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made much the same impression in society that she did in after years, with the exception that as she advanced in life, she learned to control that tendency to sarcasm,—that disposition to “quiz,”—which was then somewhat excessive. It frightened shy young people from her presence, and made her, for a while, notoriously unpopular with the ladies of her circle.

At first her unlikeness to her companions was uncomfortable both to her and to them. Her exuberant fancy demanded outlets which the restraints of boarding-school life would not allow. The unwonted excitement produced by contact with other young people vented itself in fantastic acts and freaks amusing but tormenting. The art of living with one’s kind had not formed a part of Margaret’s home education. Her nervous system had already, no doubt, been seriously disturbed by overwork.

Some plays were devised for the amusement of the pupils, and in these Margaret found herself entirely at home. In each of these the principal part was naturally assigned her, and the superiority in which she delighted was thus recognized. These very triumphs, however, in the end led to her first severe mortification, and in this wise:—

The use of rouge had been permitted to the girls on the occasion of the plays; but Margaret was not disposed, when these were over, to relinquish the privilege,[Pg 143] and continued daily to tinge her cheeks with artificial red. This freak suggested to her fellow-pupils an intended pleasantry, which awakened her powers of resentment to the utmost. Margaret came to the dinner-table, one day, to find on the cheeks of pupils and preceptress the crimson spot with which she had persisted in adorning her own. Suppressed laughter, in which even the servants joined, made her aware of the intended caricature. Deeply wounded, and viewing the somewhat personal joke in the light of an inflicted disgrace, Margaret’s pride did not forsake her. She summoned to her aid the fortitude which some of her Romans [Margaret’s love of Roman history is here alluded to] had shown in trying moments, and ate her dinner quietly without comment. When the meal was over she hastened to her own room, locked the door, and fell on the floor in convulsions. Here teachers and schoolfellows sorrowfully found her, and did their utmost to soothe her wounded feelings, and to efface by affectionate caresses the painful impression made by their inconsiderate fun.

Margaret recovered from this excitement, and took her place among her companions, but with an altered countenance and embittered heart. She had given up her gay freaks and amusing inventions, and devoted herself assiduously to her studies. But the offence which she had received rankled in her breast. As not one of her fellow-pupils had stood by her in her hour of need, she regarded them as all alike perfidious and ungrateful.... This morbid condition of mind led to a result still more unhappy. Masking her real resentment beneath a calm exterior, Margaret received the confidences of[Pg 144] her schoolfellows and used their unguarded speech to promote discord among them.... This state of things probably became unbearable. Its cause was inquired into and soon found. A tribunal was held, and before the whole school assembled, Margaret was accused of calumny and falsehood, and, alas! convicted of the same. “At first she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence, but when she found that she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron hearth, ... and was taken up senseless.”[7]

All present were, of course, greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic melancholy.... In the pain which she now felt, her former resentment against her schoolmates disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of being able to pass beyond it.... A single friend was able to reach the seat of Margaret’s distemper, and to turn the currents of her life once more into a healthful channel. This lady, a teacher in the school, ... with the tact of true affection, drew the young girl from the contemplation of her own failure.

Julia Ward Howe: ‘Margaret Fuller.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883.

She told me what danger she had been in from the training her father had given her, and the encouragement[Pg 145] to pedantry and rudeness which she derived from the circumstances of her youth. She told me that she was at nineteen the most intolerable girl that ever took a seat in a drawing-room. Her admirable candor, the philosophical way in which she took herself in hand, her genuine heart, her practical insight, and, no doubt, the natural influence of her attachment to myself, endeared her to me, while her powers, and her confidence in the use of them, led me to expect great things from her.

Margaret’s home at this time was in the mansion house formerly belonging to Judge Dana, a large, old-fashioned building, since taken down, standing about a quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges, on the main road to Boston. The house stood back from the road, on rising ground which overlooked an extensive landscape. It was always a pleasure to Margaret to look at the outlines of the distant hills beyond the river, and to have before her this extent of horizon and sky. In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father moved to the old Brattle place, a still more ancient edifice, with large, old-fashioned garden and stately rows of linden trees. Here Margaret enjoyed the garden walks, which took the place of the extensive view.

I call to mind seeing, at the “Commencements”[Pg 146] and “Exhibitions” of Harvard University, a girl, plain in appearance, but of dashing air, who was invariably the centre of a listening group, and kept their merry interest alive by sparkles of wit and incessant small talk.... About 1830 ... we often met in the social circles about Cambridge, and I began to observe her more nearly. At first her vivacity, decisive tone, downrightness and contempt of conventional standards, continued to repel. She appeared too intense in expression, action, emphasis, to be pleasing, and wanting in that retenue which we associate with delicate dignity. Occasionally, also, words flashed from her of such scathing satire, that prudence counselled the keeping at safe distance from a body so surcharged with electricity. Then again, there was an imperial—shall it be said imperious?—air, exacting deference to her judgments and loyalty to her behests, that prompted pride to retaliatory measures. She paid slight heed, moreover, to the trim palings of etiquette, but swept through the garden-beds and into the door-way of one’s confidence so cavalierly that a reserved person felt inclined to lock himself up in his sanctum. Finally, to the coolly-scanning eye, her friendship wore such a look of romantic exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism....

But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies, the profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just discrimination,[Pg 147] and, above all, her truthfulness. “Truth at all cost,” was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern, her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole attitude so alert.

I still remember the first half hour of Margaret’s conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness—a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids—the nasal tone of her voice—all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship.... I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody’s foibles. I remember that[Pg 148] she made me laugh more than I liked.... She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life.

This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits.... Her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following pictures.

She was the centre of a group very different from each other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being polarized by the strong attraction of her mind—all drawn toward herself. Some of her friends were young, gay, and beautiful; some old, sick, or studious. Some were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty, others slightly dull. But all, in order to be Margaret’s friends, must be capable of seeking something—capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! All that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her[Pg 149] knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images always apt and always ready. Even then she displayed almost the same marvellous gift of conversation, which afterwards dazzled all who knew her—with more, perhaps, of freedom, since she floated on the flood of our warm sympathies. Those who know Margaret only by her published writings, know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and at home.

She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all and to know her, was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England, seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it.... I am to add, that she gave herself to her friendships with an entireness not possible to any but a woman, with a depth possible to few women. Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report. There were also the ebbs and recoils from the other party—the mortal unequal to converse with an immortal—ingratitude, which was more truly incapacity,[Pg 150] the collapse of overstrained affections and powers. At all events, it is clear that Margaret, later, grew more strict, and values herself with her friends on having the tie now “redeemed from all search after Eros.”

Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous-sanguine; and the gray eye, rich brown hair, and light complexion, with the muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here was a sensitive, yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, firm for trial. She certainly had not beauty; yet the high arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a contraction of the eyelids almost to a point—a trick caught from near-sightedness—and then a sudden dilatation, till the iris seemed to emit flashes—an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly-magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each varying emotion; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its curves were swan-like in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant, it contracted, and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation yet abandon of Margaret’s attitude and look, were rarely[Pg 151] blended the fiery force of northern, and the soft languor of southern races.

With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, she would have disbursed nine-tenths of it in eager and well-directed efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery. And it is but fair to state that the liberality she evinced was fully paralleled by the liberality she experienced at the hands of others. Had she needed thousands, and made her wants known, she had friends who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think few persons, in their pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the better qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her nature.

Margaret at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger. She spoke, in the quietest manner, of the girls she had formed, the young men who owed everything to her, the fine companions she had long ago exhausted. In the coolest way she said to her friends, “I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”... I have heard[Pg 152] that from the beginning of her life, she idealized herself as a sovereign. She told —— she early saw herself to be intellectually superior to those around her, and that for years she dwelt upon the idea, until she believed that she was not her parents’ child, but an European princess confided to their care. She remembered that when a little girl, she was walking one day under the apple trees with such an air and step that her father pointed her out to her sister, saying, “Incedit regina.”

It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, “He appreciates me.” There was something of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no right channels.

Those who think of this accomplished woman as a mere bas bleu, a pedant, a solemn Minerva, should have heard the peals of laughter which her profuse and racy humor drew from old and young. The Easy Chair remembers stepping into Noah Gerrish’s West Roxbury omnibus one afternoon in Cornhill, in Boston, to drive out the nine miles to[Pg 153] Brook Farm. The only other passenger was Miss Fuller, then freshly returned from her “summer on the lakes,” and never was a long, jolting journey more lightened and shortened than by her witty and vivid sketches of life and character. Her quick and shrewd observation is shown in the book, but the book has none of the comedy of the croquis of persons which her sparkling humor threw off, and which she too enjoyed with the utmost hilarity, joining heartily in the laughter, which was only increased by her sympathy with the amusement of her auditor.

She was all her life-time the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle to give tension to her powers. A lady who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were assisting her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and crying, by perpetual brilliant sallies. There were other peculiarities of habit and power. When she turned her head on one side she alleged she had second sight, like St. Francis. These traits or predispositions made her a willing listener to all the uncertain science of mesmerism and its goblin brood, which have been rife in recent years.

It was soon evident that there was somewhat a little pagan about her; that she had some faith more or[Pg 154] less distinct in a fate, and in a guardian genius; that her fancy or her pride, had played with her religion. She had a taste for gems, ciphers, talismans, omens, coincidences, and birth-days. She had a special love for the planet Jupiter, and a belief that the month of September was inauspicious to her. She never forgot that her name, Margarita, signified a pearl.... She chose carbuncle for her own stone, and when a dear friend was to give her a gem, this was the one selected.... She was wont to put on her carbuncle, a bracelet or some selected gem, to write letters to certain friends. One of her friends she coupled with the onyx, another in a decided way with the amethyst.... Coincidences, good and bad, contretemps, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her.... She soon surrounded herself with a little mythology of her own.

She had a series of anniversaries, which she kept. Her seal-ring of the flying Mercury had its legend.

Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical; for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any story in language level to their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty, and often boisterously-expressed delight. She possessed marvellous powers of observation and[Pg 155] imitation, or mimicry; and had she been attracted to the stage, would have been the first actress America has produced, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the hearts of children, but it had its effects in increasing the fascinations of her genial nature and heart-felt joy in their society. To amuse and instruct was an achievement for which she would readily forego any personal object; and her intuitive perception of the toys, games, stories, rhymes, etc., best adapted to arrest and enchain their attention was unsurpassed.

She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and with her broad web of relations to so many fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been finally referred.

The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory, and I, who knew her intimately from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed for Europe, never saw her without surprise at her new powers.

My class is prosperous. I was so fortunate as to rouse, at once, the tone of simple earnestness, which can scarcely, when once awakened, cease to vibrate. All seem in a glow, and quite as receptive as I wish.... There are about twenty-five members, and every one, I believe, full of interest.... The first day’s topic was, the genealogy of heaven and earth; then the Will (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury); the second day’s, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception and transmission of divine law (Apollo); the terrene of inspiration, the impassioned abandonment of genius (Bacchus).

Of the thunderbolt, the caduceus, the ray, and the grape, having disposed as well as might be, we came to the wave, and the sea-shell it moulds to Beauty, and Love her parent and her child.

I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the meetings; and we may have pure honey of Hymettus to give you yet.

Margaret Fuller: Letter to R. W. Emerson, November, 1839, in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’

Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess; and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level for[Pg 157] others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and to make the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken.

—— ——: Communication quoted in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’

While she was living and moving in an ideal world, talking in private and discoursing in public about the most fanciful and shallow conceits which the transcendentalists took for philosophy, she looked down upon persons who acted instead of talking finely, and devoted their fortunes, their peace, their repose, and their very lives to the preservation of the principles of the republic. While Margaret Fuller and her adult pupils sat “gorgeously dressed,” talking about Mars and Venus, Plato and Goethe, and fancying themselves the elect of the earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties of the republic were running out as fast as they could go, at a breach which another sort of elect persons were devoting themselves to repair: and my complaint against the “gorgeous” pedants was that they regarded their preservers as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work as a less vital one than the pedantic orations which were spoiling a set of well-meaning women in a pitiable way.

Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism, or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury and a good appearance before the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both which I rejected and contemned, even in the most homœopathic dilutions; while, my general health being so sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits the causes of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she “declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take,” which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us.

This place is, to me, entirely charming; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly-settled parts of New York, but omnibuses and cars give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Harlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden filled with shrubs, large vines and trim box-borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees.... Passing through a wide hall, you come out upon a piazza, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers; and thence by a step or two, on a lawn, with picturesque masses of rocks, shrubs and trees, overlooking the East River.

Her earlier contributions to the Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation.[Pg 160] She could write only when in the vein; and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, or on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance “a day after the fair.”

Yesternight there came a bevy of Americans from Emerson, one Margaret Fuller, the chief figure of them, a strange, lilting, lean old maid, not nearly such a bore as I expected.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude. New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1884.

Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your sake and her own. A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in her writings.... Her dialect is very vernacular,—extremely exotic in the London climate.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to R. W. Emerson, December, 1846. ‘The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson’: Supplementary Letters. Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1886.

Margaret Fuller, who had been, in spite of certain mutual repulsions, an intimate acquaintance of mine in America, came to Ambleside.... I gave her and the excellent friends with whom she was travelling, the best welcome I could. My house was full: but I got lodgings for them, made them welcome as guests, and planned excursions for them. Her companions evidently enjoyed themselves; and Margaret Fuller as evidently did not, except when she could harangue the drawing-room party without the interruption of any other voice within its precincts. There were other persons present, at least as eminent as herself, to whom we wished to listen; but we were willing that all should have their turn: and I am sure I met her with every desire for friendly intercourse. She presently left off conversing with me, however; while I, as hostess, had to see that my other guests were entertained according to their various tastes. During our excursion in[Pg 162] Langdale she scarcely spoke to anybody, and not at all to me; and when we afterwards met in London, when I was setting off for the East, she treated me with the contemptuous benevolence which it was her wont to bestow on common place people. I was, therefore, not surprised when I became acquainted, presently after, with her own account of the matter. She told her friends that she had been bitterly disappointed in me. It had been a great object with her to see me, after my recovery by mesmerism, to enjoy the exaltation and spiritual development which she concluded I must have derived from my excursions in the spiritual world; but she had found me in no way altered by it; no one could have discovered that I had been mesmerised at all; and I was so thoroughly common place that she had no pleasure in intercourse with me.

Margaret is an excellent soul: in real regard with both of us here. Since she went, I have been reading some of her Papers in a new Book we have got; greatly superior to all I knew before; in fact the undeniable utterances (now first undeniable to me) of a true heroic mind;—altogether unique, so far as I know, among the Writing Women of this generation; rare enough, too, God knows, among the Writing Men. She is very narrow, sometimes; but she is truly high.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 2d March, 1847. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson,’ 1834-1872. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883.

During the month of November, 1847, we arrived in Rome, purposing to spend the winter there. At that time, Margaret was living in the house of the Marchesa ——, in the Corso, ultimo piano. Her rooms were pleasant and cheerful, with a certain air of elegance and refinement, but they had not a sunny exposure, that all-essential requisite for health, during the damp Roman winter. Margaret suffered from ill health this winter, and she afterwards attributed it mainly to the fact, that she had not the sun. As soon as she heard of our arrival, she stretched forth a friendly, cordial hand, and greeted us most warmly. She gave us great assistance in our search for convenient lodgings, and we were soon happily established near her. Our intercourse was henceforth most frequent and intimate, and knew no cloud nor coldness. Daily we were much with her, and daily we felt more sensible of the worth and value of our friend. To me she seemed so unlike what I had thought her to be in America, that I continually said, “How have I misjudged you; you are not at all such a person as I took you to be.” To this she replied, “I am not the same person, but in many respects another; my life has new channels now, and how thankful I am that I have been able to come out into larger interests—but, partly, you did not know me at home in the true light.” It was true, that I had not known her much personally, when in Boston; but through her friends, who were mine also, I had learned to think of her as a person on intellectual stilts, with a large share of arrogance, and little sweetness of temper. How unlike to this was she now! So delicate,[Pg 164] so simple, confiding and affectionate; with a true womanly heart and soul, sensitive and generous, and, what was to me a still greater surprise, possessed of so broad a charity, that she could cover with its mantle the faults and defects of all about her.

We soon became acquainted with the young Marquis Ossoli, and met him frequently at Margaret’s rooms. He appeared to be of a reserved and gentle nature, with quiet, gentleman-like manners, and there was something melancholy in the expression of his face, which made one desire to know more of him. In figure, he was tall, and of slender frame, with dark hair and eyes; we judged that he was about thirty years of age, possibly younger.

Our meeting was singular—fateful, I may say. Very soon he offered me his hand through life, but I never dreamed I should take it. I loved him, and felt very unhappy to leave him; but the connection seemed so every way unfit, I did not hesitate a moment. He, however, thought I should return to him, as I did. I acted upon a strong impulse, and could not analyze at all what passed in my mind. I neither rejoice nor grieve—for bad or for good, I acted out my character.

During the siege of Rome, I could not see my little boy. What I endured at that time, in various ways, not many would survive.... I went, every day, to wait, in the crowd, for letters about him. Often they did not come. I saw blood that had streamed[Pg 165] on the wall where Ossoli was. I have a piece of a bomb that burst close to him. I sought solace in tending the suffering men; but when I beheld the beautiful, fair young men bleeding to death, or mutilated for life, I felt the woe of all the mothers who had nursed each to that full flower, to see them thus cut down. I felt the consolation, too, for those youths died worthily.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli: Letter to her Sister, in ‘Memorials of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’

Margaret had ... the entire charge of one of the hospitals, and was the assistant of the Princess Belgioioso, in charge of “dei Pellegrini,” where, during the first day, they received seventy wounded men, French and Romans. Night and day, Margaret was occupied, and, with the princess, so ordered and disposed the hospitals, that their conduct was truly admirable. All the work was skilfully divided, so that there was no confusion or hurry, and, from the chaotic condition in which they had been left by the priests—who previously had charge of them—they brought them to a state of perfect regularity and discipline. Of money, they had very little, and they were obliged to give their time and thoughts, in its place. From the Americans in Rome, they raised a subscription for the aid of the wounded of either party; but, besides this, they had scarcely any means to use. I have walked through the wards with Margaret, and seen how comforting was her presence to the poor suffering men. “How long will the Signora stay?” “When[Pg 166] will the Signora come again?” they eagerly asked. For each one’s particular tastes she had a care: to one she carried books; to another she told the news of the day; and listened to another’s oft-repeated tale of wrongs, as the best sympathy she could give. They raised themselves up on their elbows, to get the last glimpse of her as she was going away.

He is not in any respect such a person as people in general would expect to find with me. He had no instructor except an old priest, who entirely neglected his education; and of all that is contained in books he is absolutely ignorant, and he has no enthusiasm of character. On the other hand, he has excellent practical sense; has been a judicious observer of all that passed before his eyes; has a nice sense of duty, which, in its unfailing, minute activity, may put most enthusiasts to shame; a very sweet temper, and great native refinement. His love for me has been unswerving and most tender.... Amid many ills and cares, we have had much joy together, in the sympathy with natural beauty—with our child—with all that is innocent and sweet.

I do not know whether he will always love me so well, for I am the elder, and the difference will become, in a few years, more perceptible than now. But life is so uncertain, and it is so necessary to take good things with their limitations, that I have not thought it worth while to calculate too curiously.

What shall I say of my child? All might seem[Pg 167] hyperbole, even to my dearest mother. In him I find satisfaction, for the first time, to the deep wants of my heart.... He is a fair child, with blue eyes and light hair; very affectionate, graceful, and sportive. He was baptized, in the Roman Catholic Church, by the name of Angelo Eugene Philip, for his father, grandfather, and my brother.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli: Letter to her mother, in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’

I passed about six weeks in the city of Florence, during the months of March and April, 1850. During the whole of that time Madame Ossoli was residing in a house at the corner of the Via della Misericordia and the Piazza Santa Maria Novelle. This house is one of those large, well-built, modern houses that show strangely in the streets of the stately Tuscan city. But if her rooms were less characteristically Italian, they were the more comfortable, and, though small, had a quiet, home-like air.... I saw her frequently at these rooms, where, surrounded by her books and papers, she used to devote her mornings to her literary labors. Once or twice I called in the morning, and found her quite immersed in manuscripts and journals. Her evenings were passed usually in the society of her friends, at her own rooms, or at theirs.... [Ossoli] seemed quite absorbed in his wife and child. I cannot remember ever to have found Madame Ossoli alone, on those evenings when she remained at home. Her husband was always with her. The picture of their room rises clearly on my memory. A small, square[Pg 168] room, sparingly, yet sufficiently furnished, with polished floor and frescoed ceiling, and, drawn up closely before the cheerful fire, an oval table, on which stood a monkish lamp of brass, with depending chains that support quaint classic cups for the olive oil. There, seated beside his wife, I was sure to find the Marchese, reading from some patriotic book, and dressed in the dark brown, red-corded coat of the Guardia Civica, which it was his melancholy pleasure to wear at home.

Why did she choose a merchant vessel from Leghorn? Why one which was destined to carry in its hold the heavy marble of Powers’s Greek Slave? She was warned against this, was uncertain in her own mind, and disturbed by presages of ill. But economy was very necessary to her at the moment. The vessel chosen, the barque Elizabeth, was new, strong and ably commanded. Margaret had seen and made friends with the captain, Hasty by name, and his wife. Horace Sumner [Charles Sumner’s youngest brother, of whom they had seen much in Florence during the winter], was to be their fellow-passenger, and a young Italian girl, Celeste Paolini, engaged to help in the care of the little boy. These considerations carried the day.

Just before leaving Florence, Margaret received letters, the tenor of which would have enabled her to remain longer in Italy. Ossoli remembered the warning of a fortune-teller, who in his childhood had told him to beware of the sea. Margaret wrote of omens which gave her[Pg 169] “a dark feeling.” She had “a vague expectation of some crisis,” she knows not what.... She prays fervently that she may not lose her boy at sea, “either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.”

These presentiments, strangely prophetic, returned upon Margaret with so much force that on the very day appointed for sailing, the 17th of May, she stood at bay before them for an hour, unable to decide whether she should go or stay. But she had appointed a general meeting with her family in July, and had positively engaged her passage in the barque. Fidelity to these engagements prevailed with her.... In spite of fears and omens, ... she went on board, and the voyage began in smooth tranquillity....

On Thursday, July 18th, the Elizabeth was off the Jersey coast, in thick weather, the wind blowing east of south. The former mate was now the captain. [Captain Hasty had died on the voyage.] Wishing to avoid the coast, he sailed east-north-east, thinking presently to take a pilot, and pass Sandy Hook by favor of the wind. At night he promised his passengers an early arrival in New York. They retired to rest in good spirits, having previously made all the usual preparations for going on shore.

By nine o’clock that evening the breeze had become a gale, by midnight a dangerous storm. The commander, casting the lead from time to time, was without apprehension, having, it is supposed, mistaken his locality, and miscalculated the speed of the vessel, which, under close-reefed sails, was nearing the sandbars of Long Island. Here, on Fire Island beach, she[Pg 170] struck, at four o’clock on the morning of July 19th. The main and mizzen masts were promptly cut away, but the heavy marble had broken through the hold, and the waters rushed in. The bow of the vessel stuck fast in the sand, her stern swung around, and she lay with her broadside exposed to the breakers, which swept over her with each returning rise—a wreck to be saved by no human power.

The passengers sprang from their berths, aroused by the dreadful shock, and guessing but too well its import. Then came the crash of the falling masts, the roar of the waves, as they shattered the cabin skylight and poured down into the cabin, extinguishing the lights. These features of the moment are related as recalled by Mrs. Hasty, sole survivor of the passengers.... The leeward side of the cabin was already under water, but its windward side still gave shelter, and here, for three hours, the passengers took refuge, their feet braced against the long table. The baby shrieked, as well he might, with the sudden fright, the noise and chill of the water. But his mother wrapped him as warmly as she could, and in her agony cradled him on her bosom and sang him to sleep. The girl Celeste was beside herself with terror; and here we find recorded a touching trait of Ossoli, who soothed her with encouraging words, and touched all hearts with his fervent prayer.... The crew had retired to the top-gallant forecastle, and the passengers, hearing nothing of them, supposed them to have left the ship. By seven o’clock it became evident that the cabin could not hold together much longer, and Mrs. Hasty, looking from the door for some way of escape,[Pg 171] saw a figure standing by the foremast, the space between being constantly swept by the waves. She tried in vain to make herself heard; but the mate, Davis, coming to the door of the forecastle, saw her and immediately ordered the men to go to her assistance. So great was the danger of doing this, that only two of the crew were willing to accompany him. The only refuge for the passengers was now in the forecastle, which, from its position and strength of construction, would be likely to resist longest the violence of the waves.

By great effort and coolness the mate and his two companions reached the cabin; and rescued all in it from the destruction so nearly impending.... From their new position, through the spray and rain they could see the shore, some hundreds of yards off. Men were seen on the beach, but there was nothing to indicate that an attempt would be made to save them. At nine o’clock it was thought that some one of the crew might possibly reach the shore by swimming, and, once there, make some effort to send them aid. Two of the sailors succeeded in doing this. Horace Sumner sprang after them, but sank unable to struggle with the waves. A last device was that of a plank, with handles of rope attached, upon which the passengers in turn might seat themselves, while a sailor, swimming behind, should guide their course. Mrs. Hasty, young and resolute, led the way in this experiment, the stout mate helping her, and landing her out of the very jaws of death.... Oh that Margaret had been willing that the same means should be employed to bring her and hers to land! Again and again, to the very last moment, she was urged to try this way of[Pg 172] escape, uncertain, but the only one.... The day wore on; the tide turned. The wreck would not outlast its return. The commanding officer made one last appeal to Margaret before leaving his post. To stay, he told her, was certain and speedy death, as the ship must soon break up. He promised to take her child with him, and to give Celeste, Ossoli, and herself each the aid of an able seaman. Margaret still refused to be parted from child or husband. The crew were then told to “save themselves,” and all but four jumped overboard.... By three o’clock in the afternoon the breaking-up was well in progress. Cabin and stern disappeared beneath the waves, and the forecastle filled with water. The little group now took refuge on the deck, and stood about the foremast. Three able-bodied seamen remained with them, and one old sailor homeward-bound for good and all. The deck now parted from the hull, and rose and fell with the sweep of the waves. The final crash must come in a few minutes. The steward now took Angelo in his arms, promising to save him or die. At this very moment the foremast fell, and with it disappeared the deck and those who stood on it. The steward and the child were washed ashore soon after, dead, though not yet cold.... Celeste and Ossoli held for a moment by the rigging, but were swept off by the next wave. Margaret, last seen at the foot of the mast, in her white night-dress, with her long hair hanging about her shoulders, is thought to have sunk at once.

How it might have been with her, if she had come[Pg 173] to Europe in 1836, I have often speculated. As it was, her life in Boston was little short of destructive. I need but refer to the memoir of her. In the most pedantic age of society in her own country, and in its most pedantic city, she who was just beginning to rise out of pedantic habits of thought and speech relapsed most grievously. She was not only completely spoiled in conversation and manners; she made false estimates of the objects and interests of human life. She was not content with pursuing, and inducing others to pursue, a metaphysical idealism, destructive of all genuine feeling and sound activity. She mocked at objects and efforts of a higher order than her own, and despised those who, like myself, could not adopt her scale of valuation. All this might have been spared, a world of mischief saved, and a world of good effected, if she had found her heart a dozen years sooner, and in America instead of Italy. It is the most grievous loss I have almost ever known in private history—the deferring of Margaret Fuller’s married life so long. The noble last period of her life is, happily, on record as well as the earlier. My friendship with her was in the interval between her first and second stages of pedantry and forwardness; and I saw her again under all the disadvantages of the confirmed bad manners and self-delusions which she brought from home. The ensuing period redeemed all; and I regard her American life as a reflexion more useful than agreeable, of the prevalent social spirit of her time and place; and the Italian life as the true revelation of the tender and[Pg 174] high-souled woman, who had till then been as curiously concealed from herself as from others.

Margaret Fuller was a person anxious to try all things, and fill up her experience in all directions; she had a strong and coarse nature which she had done her utmost to refine, with infinite pains; but of course it could only be superficially changed. The solution of the riddle lies in this direction, nor does one’s conscience revolt at the idea of thus solving it, for (at least, this is my own experience) Margaret has not left in the hearts and minds of those who knew her any deep witness of her integrity and purity. She was a great humbug—of course, with much talent and much moral reality, or else she could never have been so great a humbug. But she had stuck herself full of borrowed qualities, which she chose to provide herself with, but which had no root in her.

There never was such a tragedy as her whole story. The sadder and sterner, because so much of the ridiculous was mixed up with it, and because she could bear any thing better than to be ridiculous. It was such an awful joke, that she should have resolved—in all sincerity, no doubt—to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age. And to that end she set to work on her strong, heavy, unpliable, and, in many respects, defective and evil nature, and adorned it with a mosaic of admirable qualities, such as she chose to possess, putting in here a splendid talent and there a moral excellence, and polishing each separate piece, and the whole together, till it seemed to shine[Pg 175] afar and dazzle all who saw it. She took credit to herself for having been her own Redeemer, if not her own Creator; and indeed she is far more a work of art than any of Mozier’s statues. But she was not working on an inanimate substance, like marble or clay; there was something within her that she could not possibly come at, to re-create or refine it; and by and by this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all her labor in the twinkling of an eye. On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better for it; because she proved herself a very woman after all.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Extract from Roman Journal, in ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,’ a Biography, by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.

Poor Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and has many traits of the heroic in it, though it is wild as the prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a pre-determination to eat this big universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul. Her “mountain me” indeed: but her courage, too, is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense, à toute épreuve.

Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 7th May, 1852. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The quotation is from Margaret’s ‘Summer on the Lakes,’ where this story is related in the episode of ‘Mariana.’ Mrs. Howe’s condensed account has been given, though possibly inexact in one particular. Margaret does not describe the preceptress as having joined in the practical joke.

EMILY BRONTË.
(Ellis Bell.)

The story of the Brontës is essentially the story of a family; not of one member, not even of its two famous members. This has been felt by the biographers of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, who have pictured for us the whole group with a vividness which, paradoxical as it may seem, is more characteristic of fiction than of biography. These lonely lives were knit fast together; it is hard to separate an individual thread from the others. At least the story of the family must first be told.

The Reverend Patrick Brontë (formerly Prunty), and Maria Branwell, his wife, had six children: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte (born at Thornton, in the West Riding, April 21, 1816), Patrick Branwell, Emily (born at Thornton, in 1818), and Anne. In February, 1820, the Brontës removed to the famous parsonage of Haworth. In September, 1821, Mrs. Brontë died. The strange life of the motherless children, under the care of their aunt, Miss Branwell, is described in the following[Pg 180] extracts. In 1824, the four older girls were sent to the school for clergymen’s daughters, at Cowan’s Bridge, which Charlotte afterward raised to a bad eminence in Jane Eyre, under the name of Lowood Institution. A long account of this shamefully mismanaged school may be found in Miss Robinson’s ‘Emily Brontë.’ Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption in 1825; their deaths were doubtless hastened by exposure and want of proper nourishment. In the autumn of the same year Charlotte and Emily were taken from the Cowan’s Bridge school.

Miss Branwell taught the children at home for some time; in 1831, Charlotte was again sent to school—this time to Miss Wooler’s, at Roe Head, on the road from Leeds to Haddersfield. She remained at this school a year and a half, and on returning taught her sisters what she had learned. At Roe Head began her life-long friendship with Ellen Nussey. In 1835, Charlotte went to teach at Miss Wooler’s, and Emily also went as a pupil to Roe Head, but remained there only three months, when Anne took her place, afterward becoming a teacher in the school. All her life Emily was passionately attached to the dreary parsonage and the lonely moors, and became actually ill when forced to be absent from home. In September, 1836, she obtained a hard position as teacher in a large school near Halifax, which she was obliged to leave the following spring.

In the meantime Miss Wooler had removed to Dewsbury Moor. Anne Brontë continued teaching in her establishment until December, 1837; Charlotte, until the following summer, when her health obliged her to return to Haworth. In 1839 both obtained[Pg 181] positions as governess, Charlotte, however, leaving hers after a short time. Her second and more agreeable experience of this kind was in 1841, when she taught in a congenial family from March until Christmas. January, 1842, found all three sisters at home. It was now determined that Charlotte and Emily should spend six months in Brussels, at the Pensionnat of Monsieur and Madame Héger, preparatory to setting up a school for themselves—a plan which had long been discussed at the parsonage. Miss Branwell advanced the money for this undertaking, and the two sisters left home in February.

Their stay in Brussels was prolonged beyond expectation, on the proposal of Mme. Héger that they should spend the next term with her as pupil-teachers, Charlotte giving instruction in English, Emily in music. In October they were recalled to England by the news of Miss Branwell’s death. Anne being now in an excellent position, Emily volunteered to remain at home as housekeeper. Charlotte, acting on the advice of M. Héger, returned to Brussels in January, 1843, to complete her studies there; paying her way as before by teaching in the school, and receiving in addition a trifling salary.

About this time Patrick, or Branwell, Brontë, who, during an idle life about the village, had fallen into evil ways, and had recently been dismissed in disgrace from his situation as station-master at a small place on the line of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, obtained employment as tutor in the house where Anne was governess.

In January, 1844, Charlotte returned to Haworth, and the sisters endeavored to start the school of which[Pg 182] they had long been dreaming. It was a complete failure. They were unable to secure a single pupil; and by November the cherished plan was relinquished.

Charlotte and Emily lived down their failure together in the dreary parsonage. Their father was growing old, was losing his sight. Anne was out of health; they were troubled about Branwell. At last, in June, 1845, a great blow fell upon them. Their brother had engaged in an intrigue with his employer’s wife: he was discovered, denounced, sent home in shame; and from that time forth “thought of little but stunning or drowning his agony of mind” with drink or opium. The miserable state of things at Haworth for the next three years is almost inconceivable; yet it was out of this very field of nettles that the flower of immortality was plucked.

In May, 1846, a little volume of verse “by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell” was put forth, but failed as the school had failed. Meanwhile, in the winter of 1845-6 and the following spring, each of the three sisters had been at work upon a novel. Emily’s was Wuthering Heights, Anne’s, Agnes Grey, and Charlotte’s, The Professor. They were despatched to various publishers, at first together, afterwards singly. In August, 1846, Mr. Brontë underwent an operation for cataract at Manchester, Charlotte being his companion and nurse. The operation was successful. At the end of September father and daughter returned to Haworth. In August, 1847, Jane Eyre was completed and sent to Messrs. Smith & Elder as the work of “Currer Bell.” It was accepted, and was published in October. In December another publishing house brought out Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. Jane[Pg 183] Eyre almost immediately created a great sensation.

In the summer of 1848 a misunderstanding with their respective publishers led Charlotte and Anne to take a hurried journey to London, where they astonished Messrs. Smith & Elder with a call. They were very kindly received, and introduced to the friends of Mr. Smith as “the Miss Browns.”

In September, 1848, the unhappy Branwell died. Emily never left the house after the day of his funeral. A troublesome cough developed into consumption. After months of increasing weakness borne in a spirit of silent and stubborn resistance, in December, 1848, Emily Brontë followed her brother. Anne, always delicate, did not linger long behind them. In the ensuing spring she died at Scarborough, whither Charlotte and Miss Nussey had brought her but a few days before for the benefit of the sea air. Charlotte and her father were left alone together.

Shirley, began before Emily’s death, was published in October, 1849; and toward the end of the year Charlotte visited London. The mask of “Currer Bell” was dropped, and Miss Brontë made the acquaintance of Thackeray, Harriet Martineau and others. In June, 1850, she was again in London. This year she took a flying trip to Scotland. She was Miss Martineau’s guest at Ambleside in December. In this month appeared the second edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, which she had edited, writing a preface, and a biographical notice of Emily and Anne. In June, 1851, she again visited London. Early in 1853 Villette was published.

About this time the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, Mr.[Pg 184] Brontë’s assistant, asked Charlotte to be his wife. Her father was bitterly opposed to the marriage; the daughter obeyed him; and Mr. Nicholls left Haworth. It was not until 1854 that Mr. Brontë could be induced to give his consent. On June 29th of this year, Charlotte was married to Mr. Nicholls. They visited Ireland, and on their return took up a happy and useful life at Haworth. The future seemed full of promise, the only cloud upon it being Mr. Nicholls’ lack of sympathy with his wife’s literary pursuits. But the story so sad till now was to be soon and sadly ended. On the 31st of March, 1855, Charlotte died at Haworth.

“Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon!”

“She
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died.”

The village of Haworth stands, steep and gray, on the topmost side of an abrupt low hill. Such hills, more steep than high, are congregated round, circle beyond circle, to the utmost limit of the horizon. Not a wood, not a river. As far as eye can[Pg 185] reach these treeless hills, their sides cut into fields by gray walls of stone with here and there a gray stone village, and here and there a gray stone mill, present no other colors than the singular north-country brilliance of the green grass, and the blackish gray of the stone. Now and then a toppling, gurgling mill-beck gives life to the scene. But the real life, the only beauty of the country, is set on the top of all the hills, where moor joins moor from Yorkshire into Lancashire, a coiled chain of wild, free places. White with snow in winter, black at midsummer, it is only when spring dapples the dark heather-stems with the vivid green of the sprouting whortleberry bushes, only when in early autumn the moors are one humming mass of fragrant purple, that any beauty of tint lights up the scene. But there is always a charm in the moors for hardy and solitary spirits. Between them and heaven nothing dares to interpose. The shadows of the coursing clouds alter the aspect of the place a hundred times a day. A hundred little springs and streams well in its soil, making spots of vivid greenness round their rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying and singing there. Larks sing; cuckoos call; all the tribe of linnets and finches twitter in the bushes; plovers moan; wild ducks fly past; more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over the treeless and houseless moors. There in the spring you may take in your hands the weak, halting fledglings of the birds; rabbits and game multiply in the hollows. There in the autumn the crowds of bees, mad in the heather, send the sound of their humming down the village street. The winds, the[Pg 186] clouds, Nature and life, must be the friends of those who would love the moors.

A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’ (Famous Women Series). Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a crowded church-yard, and a small garden or court in front of the clergyman’s house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore, although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within the stone-wall, which keeps out the surrounding church-yard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-plot and a gravel walk. The house is of gray stone, two stories high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on the right (as the visitor stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the front door), belonging to Mr. Brontë’s study, the two on the left to the family sitting-room.... The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the village; and[Pg 187] the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full of upright tombstones.

Elizabeth C. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë,’ Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1857.

The interior of the now far-famed parsonage lacked drapery of all kinds. Mr. Brontë’s horror of fire forbade curtains to the windows. There was not much carpet anywhere except in the sitting-room and on the study floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand-stone, always beautifully clean, as everything else was about the house; the walls were not papered, but stained in a pretty dove-colored tint; hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-shelves in the study, but not many of these elsewhere.... A little later on, [Miss N. is writing of 1833], there was the addition of a piano.

The children’s father was a nervous, irritable, and violent man, who endowed them with a nervous organization easily disturbed, and an indomitable force of volition. The girls, at least, showed both these characteristics. Patrick Branwell must have been a weaker, more brilliant, more violent, less tenacious, less upright copy of his father; and seems to have suffered no modification from the patient and steadfast moral nature of his mother. She was the model that her daughters copied, in different degrees, both in character and in health. Passion and will their father gave them.... On both sides, the children got a Celtic strain; and this is a[Pg 188] matter of significance, meaning a predisposition to the superstition, imagination, and horror that is a strand in all their work. Their mother, Maria Branwell, was of a good, middle-class Cornish family, long established as merchants in Penzance. Their father was the son of an Irish peasant, Hugh Prunty, settled in the north of Ireland, but native to the south.

His talents were early recognized by Mr. Tighe, the rector of Drumgooland. This gentleman undertook part, at least, of the cost of his education, which was completed at St. John’s College, Cambridge. As to the change of name from Prunty to Brontë, many fantastic stories have been told. Among them is one which represents the Brontës as having derived their name from that of the Bronterres, an ancient Irish family with which they were connected. The connection may possibly have existed, but there is no doubt upon one point. The incumbent of Haworth in early life bore the name of Prunty, and it was not until very shortly before he left Ireland for England that he changed it at the request of his patron, Mr. Tighe, for the more euphonious appellation of Brontë.

He appears to have been a strange compound of good and evil. That he was not without some good is acknowledged by all who knew him. He had kindly feelings towards most people, and he delighted in the stern rectitude which distinguished many of his Yorkshire flock. When his daughter became famous, no one was better[Pg 189] pleased at the circumstance than he was. He cut out of every newspaper every scrap which referred to her; he was proud of her achievements, proud of her intellect, and jealous of her reputation. But throughout his whole life there was but one person with whom he had any real sympathy, and that person was himself. Passionate, self-willed, vain, habitually cold and distant in his demeanor towards those of his own household, he exhibited in a marked degree many of the characteristics which Charlotte Brontë afterwards sketched in the portrait of the Mr. Helstone of ‘Shirley.’... Among the many stories told of him by his children, there is one relating to the meek and gentle woman who was his wife.... Somebody had given Mrs. Brontë a very pretty dress, and her husband, who was as proud as he was self-willed, had taken offence at the gift. A word to his wife, who lived in habitual dread of her lordly master, would have secured all he wanted; but in his passionate determination that she should not wear the obnoxious garment, he deliberately cut it to pieces, and presented her with the tattered fragments. Even during his wife’s lifetime he formed the habit of taking his meals alone; he constantly carried loaded pistols in his pockets, and when excited he would fire these at the doors of the out-houses, so that the villagers were quite accustomed to the sound of pistol-shots at any hour of the day in their pastor’s house. It would be a mistake to suppose that violence was one of the weapons to which Mr. Brontë habitually resorted. However stern and peremptory might be his dealings with his wife (who soon left him to spend the remainder of his life in a dreary widowhood), his general policy was to secure[Pg 190] his end by craft rather than by force. A profound belief in his own superior wisdom was conspicuous among his characteristics, and he felt convinced that no one was too clever to be outwitted by his diplomacy. He had also an amazing persistency, which led him to pursue any course on which he had embarked with dogged determination. It happened in later years, when his strength was failing, and when at last he began to see his daughter in her true light, that he quarreled with her regarding the character of one of their friends [Mr. Nicholls]. The daughter, always dutiful and respectful, found that any effort to stem the torrent of his bitter and unjust wrath when he spoke of the friend who had offended him, was attended by consequences which were positively dangerous. The veins of his forehead swelled, his eyes glared, his voice shook, and she was fain to submit lest her father’s passion should prove fatal to him. But when, wounded beyond endurance by his violence and injustice, she withdrew for a few days from her home, and told her father she would receive no letters from him in which this friend’s name was mentioned, the old man’s cunning took the place of passion. He wrote long and affectionate letters to her on general subjects; but accompanying each letter was a little slip of paper, which professed to be a note from Charlotte’s dog, Flossy, to his “much-respected and beloved mistress,” in which the dog, declaring that he saw “a good deal of human nature that was hid from those who had the gift of language,” was made to repeat the attacks upon the obnoxious person which Mr. Brontë dared no longer to make in his own character.

The parson’s children were not allowed to associate[Pg 191] with their little neighbors in the hamlet; their aunt, who came to the parsonage after their mother’s death, had scarcely more sympathy with them than their father himself; their only friend was the rough but kindly servant Tabby, who pitied the bairns without understanding them.... So they grew up strange, lonely, old-fashioned children, with absolutely no knowledge of the world outside; so quiet and demure in their habits, that years afterward, when they had invited some of their Sunday scholars up to the parsonage, and wished to amuse them, they found that they had to ask the scholars to teach them how to play—they had never learned. Carefully secluded from the rest of the world, the little Brontë children found out fashions of their own in the way of amusement, and curious fashions they were. While they were still in the nursery, when the oldest of the family, Maria, was barely nine years old, and Charlotte, the third, was just six, they had begun to take a quaint interest in literature and politics. Heaven knows who it was who first told these wonderful pigmies of the great deeds of a Wellington or the crimes of a Bonaparte; but at an age when other children are generally busy with their bricks or their dolls, and when all life’s interests are confined for them within the walls of a nursery, these marvellous Brontës were discussing the life of the Great Duke, and maintaining the Tory cause as ardently as the oldest and sturdiest of the village politicians in the neighboring inn.

It may be well to bear in mind the frequency with which the critics have charged Charlotte Brontë with exaggerating the precocity of children. What[Pg 192] we know of the early days of the Brontës proves that what would have been exaggeration in any other person was in the case of Charlotte nothing but a truthful reproduction of her own experiences.

T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’ New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.

On their father’s shelves were few novels, and few books of poetry. The clergyman’s study necessarily boasted its works of divinity and reference; for the children there were only the wild romances of Southey, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish mother, and “some mad Methodist magazines full of miracles and apparitions and preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe ‘from the Dead to the Living’,” familiar to readers of ‘Shirley.’ To counterbalance all this romance and terror, the children had their interest in politics and Blackwood’s Magazine, “the most able periodical there is,” says thirteen-year-old Charlotte. They also saw John Bull, “a high Tory, very violent, the Leeds Mercury, Leeds Intelligencer, a most excellent Tory newspaper,” and thus became accomplished fanatics in all the burning questions of the day.

Miss Branwell took care that the girls should not lack more homely knowledge. Each took her share in the day’s work, and learned all details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cooking school. Emily took very kindly to even[Pg 193] the hardest housework; there she felt able and necessary.

There is a touching story of Charlotte at six years old which gives us some notion of the ideal life led by the forlorn little girl at this time, when, her two elder sisters having been sent to school, she found herself living at home, the eldest of the motherless brood. She had read ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ and had been fascinated, young as she was, by that wondrous allegory. Everything in it was to her true and real; her little heart had gone forth with Christian on his pilgrimage to the Golden City, her bright young mind had been fixed by the Bedford tinker’s description of the glories of the Celestial Place; and she made up her mind that she too would escape from the City of Destruction, and gain the haven towards which the weary spirits of every age have turned with eager longing. But where was this glittering city, with its streets of gold, its gates of pearl, its walls of precious stones, its stream of life and throne of light? Poor little girl! The only place which seemed to her to answer Bunyan’s description of the celestial town was one which she had heard the servants discussing with enthusiasm in the kitchen, and its name was Bradford! So to Bradford little Charlotte Brontë, escaping from that Haworth parsonage which she believed to be a doomed spot, set off one day in 1822. Ingenious persons may speculate if they please upon the sore disappointment which awaited her when, like older people, reaching the place which she had imagined to be heaven, she[Pg 194] found that it was only Bradford. But she never even reached her imaginary Golden City. When her tender feet had carried her a mile along the road, she came to a spot where overhanging trees made the highway dark and gloomy; she imagined that she had come to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and, fearing to go forward, was presently discovered by her nurse cowering by the road side.

I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the school-room, her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.

I can well imagine that the grave, serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found[Pg 195] herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called, (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned;” and in 1831 ... we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.

She never seemed to me the unattractive little person others designated her, but certainly she was at this time anything but pretty; even her good points were lost, her naturally beautiful hair of soft silky-brown being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight curls, showing features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness and want of complexion; she looked “dried in.” A dark, rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still more from her appearance; but let her wear what she might, or do what she would, she had ever the demeanor of a born gentlewoman; vulgarity was an element that never won the slightest affinity with her nature. Some of the elder girls, who had been years at school, thought her ignorant. This was true in one sense; ignorant she was indeed in the elementary education which is given in schools, but[Pg 196] she far surpassed her most advanced school-fellows in knowledge of what was passing in the world at large, and in the literature of her country. She knew a thousand things in these matters unknown to them.

Music she wished to acquire, for which she had both ear and taste, but her near-sightedness caused her to stoop so dreadfully in order to see her notes that she was dissuaded from persevering in the acquirement, especially as she had at this time an invincible objection to wearing glasses. Her very taper fingers, tipped with the most circular nails, did not seem very suited for instrumental execution; but when wielding the pen or the pencil, they appeared in the very office they were created for.

Her appetite was of the smallest; for years she had not tasted animal food; she had the greatest dislike to it; she always had something specially provided for her at our mid-day repast. Toward the close of the first half-year she was induced to take, little by little, meat gravy with vegetables, and in the second half-year she commenced taking a very small portion of animal food daily. She then grew a little bit plumper, looked younger and more animated, though she was never what is called lively at this period. She always seemed to feel that a deep responsibility rested upon her; that she was an object of expense to those at home, and that she must use every moment to attain her purpose for which she was sent to school, i.e., to fit herself for governess life. She had almost too much opportunity for her conscientious diligence. We were so little restricted in our doings, the industrious might accomplish[Pg 197] the appointed tasks of the day and enjoy a little leisure, but she chose in many things to do double lessons when not prevented by class arrangement or a companion.

She did not play or amuse herself when others did. When her companions were merry round the fire, or otherwise enjoying themselves during the twilight, which was always a precious time of relaxation, she would be kneeling close to the window occupied with her studies, and this would last so long that she was accused of seeing in the dark.

Ellen Nussey: Article on Charlotte Brontë, Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century.

Charlotte staid a year and a half at school, and returned in the July of 1832 to teach Emily and Anne what she had learned in her absence—French, English and Drawing was pretty nearly all the instruction she could give. Happily genius needs no curriculum. Nevertheless the sisters toiled to extract their utmost boon from such advantages as came within their range. Every morning from nine till half-past twelve they worked at their lessons; then they walked together over the moors, just coming into flower. The moors knew a different Emily to the quiet girl of fourteen who helped in the housework and learned her lessons so regularly at home. On the moors she was gay, frolicsome, almost wild. She would set the others laughing with her quaint, humorous sallies and genial ways. She was quite at home there, taking the fledgling birds in[Pg 198] her hands so softly that they were not afraid, and telling stories to them.

Emily Brontë had ... a lithesome, graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte’s, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz; and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes—kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you; she was too reserved. Their color might be said to be dark-gray, at other times dark-blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins—inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.

Ellen Nussey: Article on Charlotte Brontë, Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century.

All through her life her temperament was more than merely peculiar. She inherited not a little of her father’s eccentricity untempered by her father’s savoir faire. Her aversion to strangers has been already mentioned. When the curates, who formed the only society of Haworth, found their way to the parsonage, she avoided them as though they had brought the pestilence in their train. On the rare occasions when she went out into the world, she would sit absolutely silent in the company of those who were unfamiliar to her. So intense was this reserve that even in her own family, where alone she was at ease, something like dread was mingled with the affection felt towards her.

Her chief delight was to roam on the moors, followed by her dogs, to whom she would whistle in masculine fashion. Her heart, indeed, was given to the dumb creatures of the earth. She never forgave those who ill-treated them, nor trusted those whom they disliked. One is reminded of Shelley’s “Sensitive Plant” by some traits of Emily Brontë; like the lady of the poem, her tenderness and charity could reach even

“——the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.”

One instance of her remarkable personal courage is related in ‘Shirley,’ where she herself is sketched under the character of the heroine. It is her adventure with the mad dog which bit her at the door of the parsonage kitchen while she was offering it water. The brave girl took an iron from the fire, where it chanced to be heating, and immediately cauterized the wound on her arm, making a broad, deep scar, which was there until the day of her death. Not until many weeks after this did she tell her sisters what had happened. Passionately fond of her home among the hills, and of the rough Yorkshire people among whom she had been reared, she sickened and pined away when absent from Haworth. A strange, untamed and untamable character was hers; and none but her two sisters ever seem to have appreciated her remarkable merits.

In 1833 Emily was nearly fifteen, a tall, long-armed girl, full grown, elastic of tread; with a slight figure that looked queenly in her best dresses, but loose and boyish when she slouched over the moors whistling to her dogs, and taking long strides over the rough earth. A tall, thin, loose-jointed girl—not ugly, but with irregular features and a pallid, thick complexion. Her dark-brown hair was naturally beautiful, and in later days looked well loosely fastened with a tall comb at the back of her head; but in 1833 she wore it in an unbecoming tight curl and frizz. She had very beautiful eyes of hazel color.... She had an aquiline nose, a large expressive, prominent mouth. She talked little. No grace or style in dress belonged to Emily, but under her awkward clothes her natural movements had the lithe beauty of the wild creatures that she loved.... Never was a soul with a more passionate love of Mother Earth, of every weed and flower, of every bird, beast and insect that lived. She would have peopled the house with pets had not Miss Branwell kept her niece’s love of animals in due subjection. Only one dog was allowed, who was admitted into the parlor at stated hours, but out of doors Emily made friends with all the beasts and birds. She would come home carrying in her hands some young bird or rabbit, and softly talking to it as she came. “Ee, Miss Emily,” the young servant would say, “one would think the bird could understand you.” “I am sure it can,” Emily would answer. “Oh, I am sure it can.”

Two lives went on side by side in her heart, neither ever mingling with or interrupting the other. Practical housewife with capable hands, dreamer of strange[Pg 201] horrors: each self was independent of the companion to which it was linked by day and night. People in those days knew her but as she seemed—“t’ Vicar’s Emily”—a shy, awkward girl, never teaching in the Sunday-school like her sisters, never talking with the villagers like merry Branwell, but very good and hearty in helping the sick and distressed: not pretty in the village estimation—a “slinky lass,” no prim, trim little body like pretty Anne, nor with Charlotte Brontë’s taste in dress; just a clever lass with a spirit of her own. So the village judged her. At home they loved her with her strong feelings, untidy frocks, indomitable will and ready contempt for the commonplace; she was appreciated as a dear and necessary member of the household. Of Emily’s deeper self, her violent genius, neither friend nor neighbor dreamed in those days.

It was Charlotte’s visit to Brussels, first as pupil and afterwards as teacher in the school of Madame Héger, which was the turning-point in her life, which changed its currents, and gave to it a new purpose and a new meaning. Up to the moment of that visit she had been the simple, kindly, truthful Yorkshire girl, endowed with strange faculties, carried away at times by burning impulses, moved often by emotions the nature of which she could not fathom, but always hemmed in by her narrow experiences, her limited knowledge of life and the world. Until she went to Belgium, her sorest troubles had been associated with her dislike to the society of strangers, her heaviest burden had been the[Pg 202] necessity under which she lay of tasting that “cup of life as it is mixed for governesses,” which she detested so heartily. Under the belief that they could qualify themselves to keep a school of their own if they had once mastered the delicacies of the French and German languages, she and Emily set off for this sojourn in Brussels.

One may be forgiven for speculating as to her future lot had she accepted the offer of marriage she received in her early governess days, and settled down as the faithful wife of a sober English gentleman. In that case ‘Shirley’ perhaps might have been written, but ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette’ never. She learned much during her two years’ sojourn in the Belgian capital; but the greatest of all the lessons she mastered while there was that self-knowledge the taste of which is so bitter to the mouth, though so wholesome to the life.

The flower-market out of doors, with clove-pinks, tall Mary-lilies, and delicate roses d’amour, filling the quaint mediæval square before the beautiful old façade of the Hôtel de Ville; Sainte-Gudule, with its spires and arches; the Montagne de la Cour (almost as steep as Haworth Street), its windows ablaze at night with jewels; the little, lovely park, its great elms just coming into leaf, its statues just bursting from their winter sheaths of straw; the galleries of ancient pictures, their walls a sober glory of colors, blues, deep as a summer night, rich reds, brown-golds, most vivid greens. All this should have made an impression on the two home-keeping girls from Yorkshire; and Charlotte, indeed,[Pg 203] perceived something of its beauty and strangeness. But Emily, from a bitter sense of exile, from a natural narrowness of spirit, rebelled against it all as an insult to the memory of her home—she longed, hopelessly, uselessly, for Haworth. The two Brontës were very different to the Belgian school-girls in Madame Héger’s Pensionnat. They were, for one thing, ridiculously old to be at school—twenty-four and twenty-six—and they seemed to feel their position; their speech was strained and odd; all the “sceptical, wicked, immoral French novels, over forty of them, the best substitute for French conversation to be met with,” which the girls had toiled through with so much singleness of spirit, had not cured the broadness of their accent nor the artificial idioms of their Yorkshire French. Monsieur Héger, indeed, considered that they knew no French at all. Their manners, even among English people, were stiff and prim; the hearty, vulgar, genial expansion of their Belgian school-fellows must have made them seem as lifeless as marionettes. Their dress—Haworth had permitted itself to wonder at the uncouthness of those amazing leg-of-mutton sleeves (Emily’s pet whim in and out of fashion), at the ill-cut lankness of those skirts, clumsy enough on round little Charlotte, but a very caricature of mediævalism on Emily’s tall, thin, slender figure. They knew they were not in their element, and kept close together, rarely speaking. Yet, Monsieur Héger, patiently watching, felt the presence of a strange power under those uncouth exteriors. It was with the delight of a botanist discovering a rare plant in his garden, of a politician detecting a future statesman in his nursery, that he perceived the unusual faculty which lifted his[Pg 204] two English pupils above their school-fellows.... It was Emily who had the larger share of Monsieur Héger’s admiration.... He gave her credit for logical powers, for a capacity for argument unusual in a man, and rare, indeed, in a woman. She, not Charlotte, was the genius in his eyes, although he complained that her stubborn will rendered her deaf to all reason, when her own determination, or her own sense of right, was concerned.

That time in Brussels was wasted upon Emily. The trivial characters which Charlotte made immortal merely annoyed her. The new impressions which gave another scope to Charlotte’s vision were nothing to her. All that was grand, remarkable, passionate, under the surface of that conventional Pensionnat de Demoiselles, was invisible to Emily. Notwithstanding her genius she was very hard and narrow. Poor girl, she was sick for home.... Charlotte’s engrossment in her new life, her eagerness to please her master, was a contemptible weakness to the imbittered heart. She would laugh when she found her elder sister trying to arrange her homely gowns in the French taste, and stalk silently through the large school-rooms with a fierce satisfaction in her own ugly sleeves, in the Haworth cut of her skirts. She seldom spoke a word to any one; only sometimes she would argue with Monsieur Héger, perhaps secretly glad to have the chance of shocking Charlotte. If they went out to tea, she would sit still on her chair, answering “Yes,” and “No;” inert, miserable, with a heart full of tears. When her work was done she would walk in the Crossbowmen’s ancient garden, under the trees, leaning on her shorter sister’s arm, pale, silent—a tall, stooping[Pg 205] figure.... Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a favorite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of Hoffman left its impression on the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ She worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling school-girl became a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in grammar and literature, was a constant study.

Emily was alone in the gray house, save for her secluded father and old Tabby now over seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could be freer than her own; it was she that disposed, she too that performed most of the household work. She always got up first in the morning, and did the roughest part of the day’s labor before frail old Tabby came down; since kindness and thought for others were part of the nature of this unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household ironing and most of the cookery. She made the bread; and her bread was famous in Haworth for its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded the dough, she would glance now and then at an open book propped up before her. It was her German lesson. But not always did she study out of books; those who worked with her in that kitchen, young girls called in to help in stress of business, remember how she would keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and how, when the moment came that she could pause[Pg 206] in her cooking or her ironing, she would jot down some impatient thought and then resume her work. With these girls she was always friendly and hearty—“pleasant, sometimes quite jovial, like a boy,” “so genial and kind, a little masculine,” say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher’s boy or the baker’s man came to the kitchen door, she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlor till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. Not easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: “A deal of folk thout her th’ clever’st o’ them a’, hasumiver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn’t frame to let it aat.”

One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse, in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of a demonstrative character, nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her, could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed: it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery[Pg 207] I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.... Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily’s had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.... We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of ‘Currer,’ ‘Ellis,’ and ‘Acton Bell’; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because,——without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine,”—we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked on with prejudice.

Charlotte Brontë: Biographical Preface to ‘Wuthering Heights.’ London, 1850.

The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in their aunt’s life-time, of putting away their work at nine o’clock, and beginning their study, pacing up and down their sitting-room. At this time, they talked over the stories they were engaged upon, and described their plots. Once or twice a week, each read to the other what she had written, and heard what they had to say about it. Charlotte told me, that the remarks made had seldom any effect in inducing her to alter her work, so possessed was she with the feeling that she had described[Pg 208] reality; but the readings were of great and stirring interest to all, taking them out of the gnawing pressure of daily-recurring cares, and setting them in a free place. It was on one of these occasions that Charlotte determined to make her heroine plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon.

The three tales, ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Agnes Grey,’ and ‘The Professor,’ had tried their fate in vain together; at length they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still-continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation [for cataract]. But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, and failure upon failure daunted her no more than him. Not only did ‘The Professor’ return again to try his chance among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of care and depressing inquietude—in those gray, weary, uniform streets where all faces, save those of her kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her—there and then, did the brave genius begin ‘Jane Eyre.’

Those who remember that winter [of 1847] know how something like a ‘Jane Eyre’ fever raged among us. The story which had suddenly discovered a glory in uncomeliness, a grandeur in overmastering passion, moulded the fashion of the hour, and “Rochester airs” and “Jane[Pg 209] Eyre graces” became the rage. The book, and its fame and influence, travelled beyond the seas with a speed which in those days was marvellous. In sedate New England homes the history of the English governess was read with an avidity which was not surpassed in London itself, and within a few months of the publication of the novel it was famous throughout two continents. No such triumph has been achieved in our time by any other English author; nor can it be said, upon the whole, that many triumphs have been better merited. It happened that this anonymous story, bearing the unmistakable marks of an unpractised hand, was put before the world at the very moment when another great masterpiece of fiction was just beginning to gain the ear of the English public. But at the moment of publication ‘Jane Eyre’ swept past ‘Vanity Fair’ with a marvellous and impetuous speed which left Thackeray’s work in the distant background; and its unknown author in a few weeks gained a wider reputation than that which one of the master minds of the century had been engaged for long years in building up. The reaction from this exaggerated fame of course set in, and it was sharp and severe.

The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and disappointment by witnessing his.... Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the postman, meeting Mr. Brontë, as the latter was leaving the house, and[Pg 210] inquiring from the parson where one Currer Bell could be living, to which Mr. Brontë replied that there was no such person in the parish.... Now, however, when the demand for the work had assured success to ‘Jane Eyre,’ her sisters urged Charlotte to tell their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his study one afternoon after his early dinner, carrying with her a copy of the book, and one or two reviews, taking care to include a notice adverse to it. She informed me that something like the following conversation took place:

“My dear! you’ve never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name.”

“But, papa, I don’t think it will be a loss; no more will you, if you will let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it.”

So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father; and then, giving him the copy of ‘Jane Eyre’ that she intended for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea, he said, “Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?”

Shirley [is] a fancy likeness of Emily Brontë. Emily[Pg 211] Brontë, but under very different conditions. No longer poor, no longer thwarted, no longer acquainted with misery and menaced by untimely death; not thus, but as a loving sister would fain have seen her, beautiful, triumphant, the spoiled child of happy fortune. Yet in these altered circumstances Shirley keeps her likeness to Charlotte’s hard-working sister. Under the pathetic finery so lovingly bestowed, under the borrowed splendors of a thousand a year, a lovely face, an ancestral manor-house, we recognize our hardy and headstrong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the inefficacy of this masquerade of grandeur, so indifferent and unnecessary to her. Through these years we discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed and over-worked vicar’s daughter.... Shirley is indeed the exterior Emily, the Emily that was to be met and known thirty-five years ago, only a little polished, with the angles a little smoothed, by a sister’s anxious care. The nobler Emily, deeply suffering, brooding, pitying, creating, is only to be found in a stray word here and there, a chance memory, a happy answer, gathered from the pages of her work, and the loving remembrance of her friends. But to know how Emily Brontë looked, moved, sat and spoke, we still return to Shirley. A host of corroborating memories start up in turning the pages. Who but Emily was always accompanied by a “rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between a mastiff and a bull-dog”? It is familiar to us as Una’s lion.

Certainly “Captain Keeldar,” with her cavalier airs, her ready disdain, her love of independence, does bring[Pg 212] back with vivid brilliance the memory of our old acquaintance, “the Major,”[9]... We know her, too, by her kindness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made with her own hands for her servant’s friend, yet remembered visits of Martha’s little cousin to the kitchen, where Miss Emily would bring in her own chair for the ailing girl; anecdotes of her early rising through many years to do the hardest work, because the first servant was too old, and the second too young to get up so soon; and she, Emily, was so strong. A hundred little sacrifices, dearer to remember than Shirley’s open purse, awaken in our hearts and remind us that, after all, Emily was the nobler and more lovable heroine of the twain.... And Shirley’s love of picturesque and splendid raiment is not without an echo in our memories. It was Emily who, shopping in Bradford with Charlotte and her friend, chose a white stuff patterned with lilac thunder and lightning, to the scarcely concealed horror of her more sober companions.... She, too, had Shirley’s taste for the management of business.

The same tawny bull-dog, called “Tartar” in ‘Shirley,’ was “Keeper” in Haworth parsonage; a gift to Emily. With the gift came a warning. Keeper was faithful to the depths of his nature as long as he was with friends; but he who struck him with a stick or whip, roused the relentless nature of the brute, who flew at his throat forthwith, and held him there till one or the other was at the[Pg 213] point of death. Now Keeper’s household fault was this: He loved to steal up-stairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs on the comfortable beds, covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper’s was so objectionable, that Emily in reply to Tabby’s remonstrances, declared that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely that he would never offend again. In the gathering dusk of an autumn evening, Tabby came, half triumphantly, half tremblingly, but in great wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy voluptuousness. Charlotte saw Emily’s whitening face, and set mouth, but dared not speak to interfere: no one dared when Emily’s eyes glowed in that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so compressed into stone. She went up-stairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night. Down the stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the “scaft of his neck,” but growling low and savagely all the time. The watchers would fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily’s attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the enraged brute. She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the strangling clutch at her throat—her bare clenched fist struck against his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and in the language of the turf, she “punished him” till his eyes[Pg 214] were swelled up, and the half-blind, stupefied beast was led to his accustomed lair, to have his swelled head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself. The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he walked first among the mourners at her funeral; he slept moaning for nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced, dog fashion, after her death.

At last [Branwell] grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early, and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came up-stairs to sleep. Emily had gone on first into the little passage room where she still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell’s partly-opened door, saw a strange bright flare inside. “Oh, Emily!” she cried, “the house is on fire!”

Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She had remembered her father’s great horror of fire; it was the one dread of a brave man; he would have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his house. She came out silently and saw the flame; then, very white and determined, dashed from her room down stairs into the passage, where every night full pails of water stood. One in each hand she came up-stairs. Anne, Charlotte, the young servant, shrinking against the wall, huddled together in amazed horror—Emily went straight on and entered the blazing room. In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. Fortunately the flame had not reached the woodwork; drunken Branwell, turning in his bed, must have upset the light on to his[Pg 215] sheets, for they and the bed were all on fire, and he unconscious in the midst, when Emily went in, even as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that night no one remembers now.

I have seen Lewes.... I could not feel otherwise to him than half-sadly, half-tenderly—a queer word that last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewes’s face almost moves me to tears; it is so wonderfully like Emily—her eyes, her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead—even, at moments, the expression.

The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the creatures their supper. She got up,[Pg 216] walking slowly, holding out in her thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. But when she reached the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forward much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their last supper from her hands.

The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had been out to the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to the moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienated from life.

Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now—the tall, loose-jointed, “slinky” girl—her hair in its plenteous dark abundance was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it.... At last the servant came in: “Martha,” she said, “my comb’s down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.”

She finished her dressing, and came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering steps, down stairs into the little, bare parlor where Anne was working and Charlotte writing a letter. Emily took up some work and tried to sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered face, were ominous of the end. But still a little hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. “She grows daily weaker,” wrote Charlotte, on that memorable Tuesday morning; seeing surely no portent that this—this! was to be the last of the days and the hours of her weakness.

The morning grew on to noon, and Emily grew worse. She could no longer speak, but—gasping in a husky whisper—she said: “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now!” Alas, it was too late. The shortness of breath and rending pain increased; even Emily could no longer conceal them. Towards two o’clock her sisters begged her, in an agony, to let them put her to bed. “No, no,” she cried, tormented with the feverish restlessness that comes before the last, most quiet peace. She tried to rise, leaning with one hand upon the sofa. And thus the chord of life snapped. She was dead.

They buried her, a few days after, under the church pavement; under the slab of stone where the mother lay, and Maria and Elizabeth and Branwell.... And though no wind ever rustles over the grave on which no scented heather springs, nor any bilberry bears its sprigs of greenest leaves and purple fruit, she will not miss them now; she who wondered how any could imagine unquiet slumbers for them that sleep in the quiet earth.

“I am free to walk on the moors; but when I go out there alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heath, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry-leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read it.”

Wearied out by the vividness of her sorrowful recollections, she sought relief in long walks on the moors. A friend of hers gives an anecdote which may well come in here.

“They are mistaken in saying that she was too weak to roam the hills for the benefit of the air. I do not think any one, certainly not any woman in this locality, went so much on the moors as she did, when the weather permitted. Indeed, she was so much in the habit of doing so, that people, who live quite away on the edge of the common, knew her perfectly well. I remember on one occasion an old woman saw her at a little distance, and she called out ‘How! Miss Brontë! Hey yah (have you) seen aught o’ my cofe (calf)?’ Miss Brontë told her she could not say, for she did not know it. ‘Well!’ she said, ‘Yah know, it’s getting[Pg 219] up like nah (now), between a cah (cow) and a cofe—what we call a stirk, yah know, Miss Brontë; will yah turn it this way if yah happen to see’t, as yah’re going back, Miss Brontë; nah do, Miss Brontë.’”

A little lady in a black silk gown, whom I could not see at first for the dazzle in the room; she came up and shook hands with me at once.... She is (as she calls herself) undeveloped, thin, and more than half a head shorter than I am; soft brown hair, not very dark; eyes (very good and expressive, looking straight and open at you), of the same color as her hair; a large mouth; the forehead square, broad, and rather overhanging. She has a very sweet voice; rather hesitates in choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an effort admirable, and just befitting the occasion; there is nothing overstrained, but perfectly simple.

Miss Brontë put me in mind of her own ‘Jane Eyre.’ She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so quietly and noiselessly, just like a little bird, as Rochester called her, barring that all birds are joyous, and that joy can never have entered that house since it was first built.... There is something touching in the sight of that little creature entombed in such a place, and moving about herself like a spirit, especially when you think that the slight[Pg 220] still frame encloses a force of strong fiery life, which nothing has been able to freeze or extinguish.

I knocked at the door, and presently a tall, not uncourtly, but ancient and venerable man, with a gray head, and the most notable Milesian features, opened it, and smiling kindly upon me as I told my name, invited me in; and asking pardon for leaving me alone, vanished into a room on the right hand of the door, telling me he would ring for his daughter. The bell had hardly sounded before the door opened, and Miss Brontë stood before me. I was agreeably disappointed at her appearance. I had always heard that she was very plain and unprepossessing, with bashful manners. Instead of this, I found her exceedingly agreeable, from the first moment of her entrance to the last of the interview, and, instead of being plain, I thought her uncommonly attractive. She had the slightest, fairy-like figure, and very small hands and feet. Her head was superb, and her forehead broad and deep and square, appearing so more especially in her profile. Her eyes had, for me, a strange fascination, so weird, mystical, unfathomable they seemed; and this expression was deepened by a slight obliquity in them. She had over-worked herself, she said, and was tired, and her eyes were very weary and painful; all which was evident in her appearance; and I saw that the light was painful to her, although the room was darkened by the drawn blinds. She was dressed very simply, but neatly, and with taste.

George S. Phillips: ‘Visit to Charlotte Brontë.’ ‘The Ladies’ Repository,’ September, 1872.

A parcel arrived for me, enclosing a book, and a note which was examined as few notes ever are. The book was ‘Shirley’; and the note was from ‘Currer Bell.’ Here it is:

“Currer Bell offers a copy of ‘Shirley’ to Miss Martineau’s acceptance, in acknowledgment of the pleasure and profit he [she] has derived from her work. When C. B. first read ‘Deerbrook,’ he tasted a new and keen pleasure, and experienced a genuine benefit. In his mind, ‘Deerbrook’ ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas, and rectified his views of life.”

We examined this note to make out whether it was written by a man or a woman. The hand was a cramped and nervous one, which might belong to anybody who had written too much, or was in bad health, or who had been badly taught. The erased “she” seemed at first to settle the matter; but somebody suggested that the “she” might refer to me under a form of sentence which might easily have been changed in the penning. I had made up my mind, as I had repeatedly said, that a certain passage in ‘Jane Eyre,’ about sewing on brass rings, could have been written only by a woman or an upholsterer. I now addressed my reply externally to ‘Currer Bell, Esq.’ and began it “Madam.” [A second note from Currer Bell, expressing a wish to meet Miss Martineau, was answered by an invitation to tea.]

The footman would certainly announce this mysterious personage by his or her right name; and, as I[Pg 222] could not hear the announcement, I charged my cousins to take care that I was duly informed of it. Precisely as the time-piece struck six, a carriage stopped at the door; and after a minute of suspense, the footman announced “Miss Brogden”; whereupon my cousin informed me that it was Miss Brontë; for we had heard the name before, among others, in the way of conjecture. I thought her the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair) and her eyes blazed, as it seemed to me. She glanced quickly round; and my trumpet pointing me out, she held out her hand frankly and pleasantly. I introduced her, of course, to the family, and then came a moment which I had not anticipated. When she was seated by me on the sofa, she cast up at me such a look,—so loving, so appealing,—that, in connection with her deep mourning dress, and the knowledge that she was the sole survivor of her family, I could with utmost difficulty return her smile, or keep my composure. I should have been heartily glad to cry. We soon got on very well; and she appeared more at ease that evening than I ever saw her afterwards, except when we were alone.

Lewes was describing Currer Bell to me yesterday as a little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid. Yet what passion, what fire in her! Quite as much as in George Sand, only the clothing is less voluptuous.

George Eliot: Letter to Sara Hennell, 1853. ‘George Eliot’s Life as related in her Letters and[Pg 223] Journals,’ arranged and edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.

I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions.... She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely; but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me....

She was ... very small in figure—“stunted” was the word she applied to herself—but as her limbs[Pg 224] and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her. With soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description as they appeared to me in her later life. They were large and well shaped; their color a reddish-brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any human creature. As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork of whatever kind—writing, sewing, knitting—was so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves.

There is a little caricature sketched by herself lying before me as I write. In it all the more awkward of her physical points are ingeniously exaggerated. The prominent forehead bulges out in an aggressive manner, suggestive of hydrocephalus, the nose, “tip-tilted like the petal of a flower,” and the mouth are made unnecessarily large, while the little figure is clumsy and ungainly. But though she could never pretend to beauty, she had redeeming features, her eyes, hair, and massive forehead all being attractive points.

Mr. Nicholls asked me to step into the parlor and look at Charlotte’s portrait. It is the one from which the engraving in the ‘Life’ (Mrs. Gaskell’s) is made; but the latter does no justice to the picture, which Mr. Nicholls said was a perfect likeness of the original. I remarked that the engraving gives to the face, and especially to the eyes, a weird, sinister and unpleasant expression which did not appear in the portrait. He said he had observed it, and that nothing could be more unjust, for Charlotte’s eyes were as soft and affectionate in their expression as could possibly be conceived.

Account of an Interview with Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls, quoted by T. W. Reid.

Between the appearance of ‘Shirley’ and that of ‘Villette’ she came to me;—in December, 1850. Our intercourse then confirmed my deep impression of her[Pg 226] integrity, her noble conscientiousness about her vocation, and her consequent self-reliance in the moral conduct of her life. I saw at the same time tokens of a morbid condition of mind, in one or two directions;—much less than might have been expected, or than would have been seen in almost any one else under circumstances so unfavorable to health of body and mind as those in which she lived.

She was not only unspoiled by her sudden and prodigious fame, but obviously unspoilable. She was somewhat amazed by her fame, but oftener annoyed; at least when obliged to come out into the world to meet it, instead of its reaching her in her secluded home in the wilds of Yorkshire.

“I know,” she wrote, “that you will give me your thoughts upon my book, [‘Villette’] as frankly as if you spoke to some near relative whose good you preferred to her gratification. I wince under the pain of condemnation—like any other weak structure of flesh and blood; but I love, I honor, I kneel to Truth. Let her smite me on one cheek—good! the tears may spring to the eyes; but courage! There is the other side—hit again—hit sharply!” This was the genuine spirit of the woman. She might be weak for once; but her permanent temper was one of humility, candor, integrity and conscientiousness.

I had several opportunities of perceiving how this nervousness was ingrained in her constitution, and how acutely she suffered in striving to overcome it.[Pg 227] One evening we had, among other guests, two sisters who sang Scottish ballads exquisitely. Miss Brontë had been sitting quiet and constrained till they began “The Bonnie House of Airlie,” but the effect of that and “Carlisle Yetts,” which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the Piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose, and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see them the next morning, when they would sing as long as ever she liked; and she promised gladly and thankfully. But on reaching the house her courage failed. We walked some time up and down the street; she upbraiding herself all the while for folly, and trying to dwell on the sweet echoes in her memory, rather than on the thoughts of a third sister who would have to be faced if we went in. But it was of no use; and dreading lest this struggle with herself might bring on one of her trying headaches, I entered at last and made the best apology I could for her non-appearance.

There was another circumstance that came to my knowledge at this period which told secrets about the finely-strung frame. One night I was on the point of relating some dismal ghost story, just before bed-time. She shrank from hearing it, and confessed that she was superstitious, and prone at all times to the involuntary recurrence of any thoughts of ominous gloom which might have been suggested to her. She said that on first coming to us she had found a letter on her dressing-table from a[Pg 228] friend in Yorkshire, containing a story which had impressed her vividly ever since;—that it mingled with her dreams at night, and made her sleep restless and unrefreshing.

Neither Charlotte nor her sisters were naturally fond of children. The hieroglyphics of childhood were an unknown language to them, for they had never been much with those younger than themselves. I am inclined to think, too, that they had not the happy knack of imparting information, which seems to be a separate gift from the faculty of acquiring it.... The little Brontës had been brought up motherless; and from knowing nothing of the gaiety and sportiveness of childhood—from never having experienced caresses or fond attentions themselves—they were ignorant of the very nature of infancy, or how to call out its engaging qualities. Children were to them the troublesome necessities of humanity; they had never been drawn into contact with them in any other way. Years afterward, when Miss Brontë came to stay with us, she watched our little girls perpetually; and I could not persuade her that they were only average specimens of well brought up children. She was surprised and touched by any sign of thoughtfulness for others, of kindness to animals, or of unselfishness on their part; and constantly maintained that she was in the right, and I in the wrong, when we differed on the point of their unusual excellence.

My youngest little girl ... would steal her little hand into Miss Brontë’s scarcely larger one, and each took pleasure in this apparently unobserved caress. Yet once when I told Julia to take and show[Pg 229] her the way to some room in the house, Miss Brontë shrank back: “Do not bid her do anything for me,” she said; “it has been so sweet hitherto to have her rendering her little attentions spontaneously.”

As illustrating her feelings with regard to children, I may give what she says in [one] of her letters to me:

“Whenever I see Florence and Julia again, I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor, who views at a distance the fair personage to whom, in his clownish awe, he dare not risk a near approach. Such is the clearest idea I can give you of my feeling towards children I like, but to whom I am a stranger—and to what children am I not a stranger? They seem to me little wonders; their talk, their ways, are all matter of half-admiring, half-puzzled speculation.”

I remember many little particulars which Miss Brontë gave me, in answer to my inquiries respecting her mode of composition. She said, that it was not every day that she could write. Sometimes weeks or even months elapsed before she felt that she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written. Then, some morning, she would waken up, and the progress of her tale lay clear and bright before her, in distinct vision. When this was the case, all her care was to discharge her household and filial duties, so as to obtain leisure to sit down and write out the incidents and consequent thoughts, which were, in fact, more present to her mind at such times than her actual life itself. Notwithstanding this “possession,” ... those who survive, of her daily and household companions, are clear in their[Pg 230] testimony, that never was the claim of any duty, never was the call of another for help, neglected for an instant. It had been necessary to give Tabby—now nearly eighty years of age—the assistance of a girl. Tabby relinquished any of her work with jealous reluctance, and could not bear to be reminded, though ever so delicately, that the acuteness of her senses was dulled by age. Among other things, she reserved to herself the right of peeling the potatoes for dinner; but as she was growing blind, she often left in those black specks, which we in the North call the “eyes” of the potato. Miss Brontë was too dainty a housekeeper to put up with this; yet she could not bear to hurt the faithful old servant, by bidding the younger maiden go over the potatoes again, and so reminding Tabby that her work was less effectual than formerly. Accordingly, she would steal into the kitchen, and quietly carry off the bowl of vegetables, without Tabby’s being aware, and breaking off in the full flow of interest and inspiration, in her writing, carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes, and noiselessly carry them back to their place. This little proceeding may show how orderly and fully she accomplished her duties, even at those times when the possession was upon her.

Miss Brontë’s handwriting was exceedingly small, nervous, and poor, but quite legible. Her first manuscript was a very small square book, or folding of paper, from which she copied, with extreme care. She was as much surprised to find that I never copy at all, as I was at her imposing on herself so much toil which seems to me unnecessary.

Those who would understand Charlotte, even more than those who would understand Emily, should study the difference of tenderness between the touch that drew Shirley Keeldar and the touch that drew Lucy Snowe. This latter figure, as Mr. Wemyss Reid has observed with indisputable accuracy of insight, was, doubtless, if never meant to win liking or made to find favor in the general reader’s eyes, yet none the less evidently on that account the faithful likeness of Charlotte Brontë, studied from the life, and painted by her own hand with the sharp austere precision of a photograph rather than a portrait. But it is herself with the consolation and support of her genius withdrawn, with the strength of her spiritual arm immeasurably shortened, the cunning of her right hand comparatively cancelled; and this it is that makes the main undertone and ultimate result of the book somewhat mournfuller even than the literal record of her mournful and glorious life.

A. C. Swinburne: ‘A Note on Charlotte Brontë.’ London: Chatto & Windus, 1877.

We talked over the clear, bright fire; it is a cold country, and the fires were a pretty warm dancing light all over the house. The parlor has been evidently refurnished within the last few years, since Miss Brontë’s success has enabled her to have a little more money to spend. Everything fits into, and is in harmony with, the idea of a country parsonage, possessed by people of very moderate means. The prevailing color of the room is crimson, to make a warm setting for the cold, gray landscape without. There is her likeness by Richmond,[Pg 232] and an engraving from Laurence’s picture of Thackeray; and two recesses on each side of the high, narrow, old-fashioned mantel-piece, filled with books—books given to her, books she has bought, and which tell of her individual pursuits and tastes; not standard books.

She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw, and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals (“stippling,” don’t the artists call it?); ... till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing, but in so small a hand that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.

I soon observed that her habits of order were such that she could not go on with the conversation if a chair was out of its place; everything was arranged with delicate regularity.... I told her of ——’s admiration of ‘Shirley,’ which pleased her, for the character of ‘Shirley’ was meant for her sister Emily, about whom she is never tired of talking, nor I of listening. Emily must have been a remnant of the Titans—great-grand-daughter of the giants who used to inhabit the earth. One day Miss Brontë brought down a rough, common-looking oil painting, done by her brother, of herself—a little, rather prim-looking girl of eighteen—and[Pg 233] the two other sisters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, with cropped hair, and sad, dreamy-looking eyes.

In the sombre web of Charlotte’s existence there shone one thread of silver, all the brighter and more blessed for the contrast—it was the warm, steady, unfailing friendship of her school-fellow “E.” (Ellen Nussey). “Ma bien aimée, ma précieuse E., mon amie chère et chérie,” she calls her in one of her earlier letters. “If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do think we might live and love on till death, without being dependent on any third person for happiness.” “What am I compared to you?” she exclaims; “I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. I am a very coarse, commonplace wretch.” But the affection that overflowed in such loving extravagance was no passing sentiment. As life deepened and grew more and more intense—and fuller of pain—for each, the closer became their attachment, the more constantly Charlotte turned for sympathy and support to her faithful companion. In her, indeed, she found all the greater rest and refreshment because of the difference in their natures. Her individuality colors the Caroline Helstone of ‘Shirley.’

R. W. Gilder, in ‘The Old Cabinet,’ in Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century, May, 1871.

It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 29th of June (1854). Her two friends (Ellen Nussey and Miss Wooler) arrived at Haworth Parsonage[Pg 234] the day before; and the long summer afternoon and evening were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the morrow, and for her father’s comfort during her absence from home. When all was finished—the trunk packed, the morning’s breakfast arranged, the wedding-dress laid out—just at bed-time, Mr. Brontë announced his intention of stopping at home while the others went to church. What was to be done? Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the officiating clergyman, the bride and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, and Miss Wooler present. The prayer-book was referred to; and there it was seen that the rubric enjoins that the minister shall receive “the woman from her father’s or friend’s hands,” and that nothing is specified as to the sex of the “friend.” So Miss Wooler, ever kind in emergency, volunteered to give her old pupil away.... The news of the wedding had slipped abroad before the little party came out of church, and many old humble friends were there, seeing her look “like a snow-drop,” as they say. Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which might suggest the resemblance of the pale wintry flower.

There was not much time for literary labors during these happy months of married life. The wife, new to her duties, was engaged in mastering them with all the patience, self-suppression, and industry which had characterized her throughout her life. Her husband was now[Pg 235] her first thought; and he took the time which had formerly been devoted to reading, study, thought, and writing. But occasionally the pressure she was forced to put upon herself was very severe. Mr. Nicholls had never been attracted toward her by her literary fame: with literary effort he had no sympathy, and upon the whole he would rather that his wife should lay aside her pen entirely than that she should gain any fresh triumphs in the world of letters. So she submitted, and with cheerful courage repressed that “gift” which had been her solace in sorrows deep and many. Yet once the spell was too strong to be resisted, and she hastily wrote a few pages of a new story called ‘Emma,’ in which once more she proposed to deal with her favorite theme—the history of a friendless girl. One would fain have seen how she would have treated her subject, now that “the color of her thoughts” had been changed, and that a happy marriage had introduced her to a new phase of that life which she had studied so closely and so constantly. But it was not to be.

[Charlotte had been ill since January, 1855.] About the third week in March there was a change; a low wandering delirium came on; and in it she begged constantly for food and even for stimulants. She swallowed eagerly now; but it was too late. Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband’s woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer, that God would spare her. “Oh!” she whispered[Pg 236] forth, “I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.”

Early on Saturday morning, March 31st, the solemn tolling of Haworth church-bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate and alone in the old grey house.

[Emily] tells us what she saw; and what she saw and what she was incapable of seeing are equally characteristic. All the wildness of that moorland, all the secrets of those lonely farms, all the capabilities of the one tragedy of passion and weakness that touched her solitary life, she divined and appropriated: but not the life of the village at her feet, not the bustle of the mills, the riots, the sudden alternation of wealth and poverty, not the incessant rivalry of church and chapel; and while the West Riding has known the proto-type of nearly every person and nearly every place in ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Shirley,’ not a single character in ‘Wuthering Heights’ ever climbed the hills round Haworth.

Say that two foreigners have passed though Staffordshire, leaving us their reports of what they have seen. The first, going by day, will tell us of the hideous blackness of the country, but yet more, no doubt, of that awful, patient struggle of man with fire and darkness, of the grim courage of those unknown lives; and he would see what they toil for, women with little children in their arms; and he would notice the[Pg 237] blue sky beyond the smoke, doubly precious for such horrible environment. But the second traveller has journeyed through the night; neither squalor nor ugliness, neither sky nor children, has he seen, only a vast stretch of blackness shot through with flaming fires, or here and there burned to a dull red by heated furnaces; and before these, strange toilers, half naked, scarcely human, and red in the leaping flicker and gleam of the fire. The meaning of their work he could not see, but a fearful and impressive phantasmagoria of flame and blackness and fiery energies at work in the encompassing night. So differently did the black country of this world appear to Charlotte, clear-seeing and compassionate, and to Emily Brontë, a traveller through the shadows.

The habit of direct study from life which has given us, among its finest and most precious results, these two contrasted figures of Shirley Keeldar and Lucy Snowe, affords yet another point of contrast or distinction between the manner and motive of work respectively perceptible in the design of either sister. Emily Brontë, like William Blake, would probably have said, or at least would presumably have felt, that such study after the model was to her impossible—an attempt but too certain to diminish her imaginative insight and disable her creative hand; while Charlotte evidently never worked so well as when painting more or less directly from nature. Almost the only apparent exception, as far as we—the run of her readers—know, is the wonderful and incomparable figure of Rochester.... In most cases probably the[Pg 238] design begun by means of the camera was transferred for completion to the canvas. The likeness of Mr. Helstone to Mr. Brontë, for example, was thus at once enlarged and subdued, heightened and modified, by the skilful and noble instinct which kept it always within the gracious and natural bounds prescribed and maintained by the fine tact of filial respect.

The gift of which I would speak is that of a power to make us feel in every nerve, at every step forward which our imagination is compelled to take under the guidance of another’s, that thus and not otherwise, but in all things altogether even as we are told and shown, it was and it must have been with the human figures set before us in their action and their suffering; that thus and not otherwise they absolutely must and would have felt and thought and spoken under the proposed conditions. It is something for a writer to have achieved if he has made it worth our fancy’s while to consider by the light of imaginative reason whether the creatures of his own fancy would in actual fact and life have done as he has made them do or not; it is something, and by comparison it is much. But no definite terms of comparison will suffice to express how much more than this it is to have done what the youngest of capable readers must feel on first opening ‘Jane Eyre’ that the writer of its very first pages has shown herself competent to do.... Even in the best and greatest works of our best and greatest we do not find this one great good quality so innate, so immanent as in hers. At most we find the combination of event with character, the coincidence of[Pg 239] action with disposition, the coherence of consequences with emotions, to be rationally credible and acceptable to the natural sense of a reasonable faith. We rarely or never feel that, given the characters, the incidents become inevitable; that such passion must needs bring forth none other than such action, such emotions cannot choose but find their only issue in such events. And certainly we do not feel, what it seems to me the highest triumph of inspired intelligence and creative instinct to succeed in making us feel, that the main-spring of all, the central relation of the whole, “the very pulse of the machine,” has in it this occult inexplicable force of nature. But when Catherine Earnshaw says to Nelly Dean, “I am Heathcliff!” and when Jane Eyre answers Edward Rochester’s question, whether she feels in him the absolute sense of fitness and correspondence to herself which he feels himself in her, with the words which close and crown the history of their twin-born spirits—“to the finest fibre of my nature, sir,”—we feel to the finest fibre of our own that these are no mere words. On this ground at least it might for once be not unpardonable to borrow their standing reference or illustration from the comparative school of critics, ... and say, as was said on another score of Emily Brontë in particular by Sydney Dobell, that either sister in this single point “has done no less” than Shakespeare. As easily might we imagine a change of the mutual relations between the characters of Shakespeare as a corresponding revolution or reversal of conditions among theirs.

There was a dark unconscious instinct as of primitive nature-worship in the passionate great genius of[Pg 240] Emily Brontë, which found no corresponding quality in her sister’s.... It is possible that to take full delight in Emily Brontë’s book one must have something by natural inheritance of her instinct and something by earliest association of her love for the same special points of earth—the same lights and sounds and colors and odors, and sights and shapes of the same fierce free landscape of tenantless and fenceless moor; but however that may be, it was assuredly with no less justice of insight and accuracy of judgment than humility of self-knowledge and fidelity of love that Charlotte in her day of solitary fame assigned to her dead sister the crown of poetic honor which she has rightfully disclaimed for herself. Full of poetic quality as her own work is throughout, that quality is never condensed or crystallised into the proper and final form of verse. But the pure note of absolutely right expression for things inexpressible in full by prose at its highest point of adequacy—the formal inspiration of sound which at once reveals itself, and which can fully reveal itself by metrical embodiment alone, in the symphonies and antiphonies of regular word-music and definite instinctive modulation of corresponsive tones—this is what Emily had for her birthright as certainly as Charlotte had it not.... The final expression in verse of Emily’s passionate and inspired intelligence was to be uttered from lips already whitened though not yet chilled by the present shadow of unterrifying death. No last words of poet or hero or sage or saint were ever worthy of longer or more reverent remembrance than that appeal which is so far above and beyond a prayer ... at once fiery[Pg 241] and solemn, full alike of resignation and of rapture, as wholly stripped and cleared and lightened from all burdens and all bandages and all incrustations of creed as it is utterly pervaded and possessed by the sublime and irrefutable passion of belief.

I have read ‘Jane Eyre,’ and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.

I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading ‘Villette,’ a still more wonderful book than ‘Jane Eyre.’ There is something almost preternatural in its power.

Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist’s noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder[Pg 242] on the gloomy northern moors!... As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable, history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one among the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God—with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear!

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Haworth Churchyard.

[9] A name playfully applied to Emily by her sisters.

Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury Farm, in the parish of Chilvers Coton, on the 22nd of November, 1819. She was the third and youngest child of Robert Evans and his second wife Christiana Pearson. In 1820 the family removed to Griff House, on the Arbury estate, where Mary Ann’s happy childhood was passed. At five years of age she was sent with her sister to Miss Lathom’s boarding-school at Attleboro; in her eighth or ninth year, to Miss Wallington’s at Nuneaton, where Miss Lewis, the principal governess, and “an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman,” became her intimate friend, exercising great influence over her. In her thirteenth year she was transferred to the school of the Miss Franklins at Coventry. In the summer of 1836 Mrs. Evans died; in the following spring the elder sister, Christiana, was married; and thenceforward Mary Ann took entire charge of the Griff household, engaging in various studies and active charities at the same time. In March, 1841, Mr. Robert Evans and his daughter removed to a house on the Foleshill road, near Coventry; Griff being given up to Isaac, the brother, who had recently married. In this new neighborhood Miss Evans formed the friendship of several congenial people—notably[Pg 246] Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, and Miss Sara Hennell, a sister of the latter. The impressible young woman, who had till now held her eager nature “buckramed in formalities,” adopted the tone of her friends’ thought the more rapidly and easily because of the inevitable reaction from artificial restraints. She became an agnostic—though neither this nor any other single word fully explains her position.

In the spring of 1844 she took up the translation of Strauss’s ‘Life of Jesus,’ which had already been begun by Mrs. Charles Hennell. Miss Evans did not complete the work until April, 1846.

On the 31st of May, 1849, Mr. Robert Evans died, after a long illness. The Brays persuaded his daughter, who was worn out by anxiety and hard work, to accompany them in a trip to the Continent. At Geneva, where they arrived in July, she decided to remain a while, living at a pension, and carrying on various studies. In October she left the pension to board in the family of M. d’Albert Durade, an artist. He and his wife became her fast friends; M. Durade painted her portrait, and subsequently translated some of her works into French.

Miss Evans returned to England in March, 1850, and, after visiting her brother and sister, made her home at Rosehill with the Brays for more than a year, with occasional visits to London. At the end of September, 1851, she accepted the position of assistant editor of The Westminster Review, and went to board with the family of the publisher, Mr. Chapman, in the Strand. She now became acquainted with Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and other leading thinkers and writers. In 1854 was published her translation[Pg 247] of Feuerbach’s ‘Essence of Christianity,’ with her name (now written Marian Evans), on the title-page; this, Mr. Cross informs us, was the only time her real name ever appeared in connection with her work.

In July, 1854, Marian Evans consented to become the wife of George Henry Lewes, though a formal and legal marriage was impossible. They at once went abroad, where they remained until March, 1855; spending the greater part of the time at Weimar and Berlin. After their return to England they lived for over three years in lodgings at Richmond, both working hard, though the health of neither was good. Mrs. Lewes contributed at this time to The Leader and The Westminster Review. She also finished a translation of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics,’ which she had commenced abroad.

In September, 1856, she began, as an experiment, to write fiction. In November The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton was forwarded to the Blackwoods by Mr. Lewes as the work of a friend of his. It was published in Blackwood’s Magazine early in 1857, and fifty guineas paid for it. An arrangement was made by which “George Eliot” was to supply further Scenes from Clerical Life. Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story came next, followed by Janet’s Repentance. In December these stories were issued in a volume by the Blackwoods, and the author received £120 for the first edition.

Adam Bede, her first novel, was published in 1859. She received £800 for the copyright during four years. The book was received with enthusiasm. It was followed by The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Felix Holt (1866),[Pg 248] The Spanish Gypsy, a drama (1868), Middlemarch (1871-2), Poems, collected “1874,” Daniel Deronda (1876), and The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879). The short story called The Lifted Veil was published in Blackwood’s, July, 1859; Brother Jacob appeared in The Cornhill Magazine, July, 1864. Romola also made its appearance in The Cornhill, the publishers paying for it the sum of £7,000. £5,000 was received from the Blackwoods for Felix Holt; and the profits of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda were still greater.

In February, 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes removed to Holly Lodge, Wandsworth; in December, 1860, to 16 Blandford Square; and in November, 1863, to their permanent home, “The Priory,” 21 North Bank, Regent’s Park. They purchased in 1876 a country-house at Witley, near Godalming, Surrey. They were both fond of travelling, and the record of their many continental journeys is full of interest. It was their custom to leave town at once as soon as George Eliot had finished a book.

In November, 1878, occurred the death of Mr. Lewes. For some time George Eliot remained in seclusion, broken down by grief. She edited Mr. Lewes’ MSS., and established as a memorial the George Henry Lewes studentship at Cambridge.

In May, 1880, she was married to Mr. John Walter Cross, who had long been the dear friend of herself and Mr. Lewes. Her marriage created general surprise. It may best be understood by those who have become acquainted, through Mr. Cross’s delicate and conscientious work, ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ with the needs of her singularly sensitive nature.

Mr. and Mrs. Cross immediately left England for the Continent, returning in July to Witley. Mrs. Cross had a long illness in the autumn, which left her much weakened. On the 22d of December, 1880, she died at No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, having been confined to the house only four days.

Nor can any other words be so fit as these of her own—words wherein “the precious life-blood of a master spirit” is “embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

The road ascends through a deep cutting overhung by trees which cling to the rocky bank wherever they can find roothold, while festoons of ivy catch every ray of sunlight on their glossy leaves. Past the wood, green fields stretch away on the right of the road; and beyond them, through the branches of fir, elm, oak and birch-trees, a glint of red brick tells us we have reached our goal, for there stands Griff House.... It is a pleasant, substantial house, built of warm red brick, with old-fashioned, small-paned casement windows. The walls are almost hidden by creepers, a glorious old pear-tree, roses and jessamine, and over one end a tangle of luxuriant ivy. Across the smooth green lawn and its flower-beds an old stone vase covered with golden lichen made a[Pg 250] point of color beneath the silver stems of a great birch-tree. Outside the light iron fence a group of sheep were bleating below a gnarled and twisted oak. Behind them rose the rich purple-brown wood we had come through, and beyond the wood we caught glimpses of far-away blue distance, swelling uplands and wide-stretching valleys, with here and there a huge chimney sending up a column of black smoke or white puff of steam. On the house-roof pigeons were cooing forth their satisfaction at the sunshine. From the yew-tree close by, a concert of small chirping voices told that Spring was coming.... Within, the house is much in the same state as in the days of Mary Ann Evans’s girlhood. She went for a short time to school at Nuneaton, coming home from Saturday till Monday; but one week, in spite of her love of learning, the little maiden’s heart failed her, and when the time came to start for school she had disappeared. After hours of search, she was at last discovered hiding under the great four-post mahogany bed, which was shown us in its original place in the spare room.

The father was a remarkable man, and many of the leading traits in his character are to be found in Adam Bede and in Caleb Garth—although, of course, neither of these is a portrait.

His second wife was a woman with an unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd, practical person, with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Hers was an affectionate,[Pg 251] warm-hearted nature, and her children, on whom she cast “the benediction of her gaze,” were thoroughly attached to her. She came of a race of yeomen, and her social position was, therefore, rather better than her husband’s at the time of their marriage. Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in the “Mill on the Floss.” The little girl very early became possessed with the idea that she was going to be a personage in the world; and Mr. Charles Lewes has told me an anecdote which George Eliot related of herself as characteristic of this period of her childhood. When she was only four years old she recollected playing on the piano, of which she did not know one note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. This was the time when the love for her brother grew into the child’s affections. She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything he did. She was not, in these baby-days, in the least precocious in learning. In fact, her half-sister, Mrs. Houghton, who was some fourteen years her senior, told me that the child learned to read with some difficulty; but Mr. Isaac Evans says that this was not from any slowness in apprehension, but because she liked playing so much better. Mere sharpness, however, was not a characteristic of her mind. Hers was a large, slow-growing nature; and I think it is, at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant phenomenon about her. In her moral development she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that was most marked in her all through life, namely, the absolute need of[Pg 252] some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment or the keenest suffering, knowing “all the wealth and all the woe” of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive in the highest degree.

The sort of happiness that belongs to this budding-time of life, from the age of three to five, is apt to impress itself very strongly on the memory; and it is this period which is referred to in the Brother and Sister Sonnet, “But were another childhood’s world my share, I would be born a little sister there.”

J. W. Cross: ‘George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.

When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words of a neighbor, who occasionally called at Griff House, “a queer, three-cornered, awkward girl,” who sat in corners and shyly watched her elders, she was placed as boarder with the Misses Franklin at Coventry. This school, then in high repute throughout the neighborhood, was kept by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of unusual attainments and lady-like culture, although not without a certain taint of Johnsonian affectation. She seems to have thoroughly grounded Miss Evans in a sound English education, laying great stress in particular on the propriety of a precise and careful manner of speaking and reading. She herself always made a point of[Pg 253] expressing herself in studied sentences.... Miss Evans, in whose family a broad provincial dialect was spoken, soon acquired Miss Rebecca’s carefully elaborated speech, and, not content with that, she might be said to have created a new voice for herself. In later life every one who knew her was struck by the sweetness of her voice, and the finished construction of every sentence as it fell from her lips; for by that time the acquired habit had become second nature, and blended harmoniously with her entire personality. But in those early days the artificial effort at perfect propriety of expression was still perceptible, and produced an impression of affectation, perhaps reflecting that of her revered instructress.

Mathilde Blind: ‘George Eliot.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

At Miss Wallington’s the growing girl soon distinguished herself by an easy mastery of the usual school-learning of her years, and there, too, the religious side of her nature was developed to a remarkable degree. Miss Lewis was an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman, and exerted a strong influence on her young pupil, whom she found very sympathetically inclined.

In talking about those early days, my wife impressed on my mind the debt that she felt she owed to the Miss Franklins for their excellent instruction, and she had also the very highest respect for their moral qualities. With her chameleon-like nature she soon adopted their religious views with intense eagerness and conviction, although she never formally joined the Baptists or any other communion[Pg 254] than the Church of England. She at once, however, took a foremost place in the school, and became a leader of prayer-meetings among the girls. In addition to a sound English education the Miss Franklins managed to procure for their pupils excellent masters for French, German, and music; so that, looking to the lights of those times, the means of obtaining knowledge was very much above the average for girls. Her teachers, on their side, were very proud of their exceptionally gifted scholar; and years afterwards, when Miss Evans came with her father to live in Coventry, they introduced her to one of their friends, not only as a marvel of mental power, but also as a person “sure to get something up very soon in the way of clothing-club or other charitable undertaking.”

After Christiana’s marriage the entire charge of the Griff establishment devolved on Mary Ann, who became a most exemplary housewife, learned thoroughly everything that had to be done, and, with her innate desire for perfection, was never satisfied unless her department was administered in the very best manner that circumstances permitted. She spent a great deal of time in visiting the poor, organizing clothing-clubs, and other works of active charity. But over and above this, as will be seen from the following letters, she was always prosecuting an active intellectual life of her own. Mr. Brezzi, a well-known master of modern languages at Coventry, used to come over to Griff regularly to give her lessons in Italian and German. Mr. McEwen, also from Coventry, continued her lessons in music, and she got through a large amount of miscellaneous reading by herself. In the evening she was always in[Pg 255] the habit of playing to her father, who was very fond of music. But it requires no great effort of the imagination to conceive that this life, though full of interests of its own, and the source from whence the future novelist drew the most powerful and the most touching of her creations, was, as a matter of fact, very monotonous, very difficult, very discouraging. It could scarcely be otherwise to a young girl with a full, passionate nature and hungry intellect, shut up in a farm-house in the remote country. For there was no sympathetic human soul near with whom to exchange ideas on the intellectual and spiritual problems that were beginning to agitate her mind.

One of her chief beauties was in her large, finely shaped, feminine hands—but she once pointed out to a friend at Foleshill that one of them was broader across than the other, saying, with some pride, that it was due to the quantity of butter and cheese she had made during her housekeeping days at Griff.

As to the discipline our minds receive from the perusal of fictions, I can conceive none that is beneficial but may be attained by that of history. It is the merit of fictions to come within the orbit of probability: if unnatural they would no longer please. If it be said the mind must have relaxation, “Truth is strange—stranger than fiction.” When a person has exhausted the wonders of truth there is no other resort than[Pg 256] fiction: till then, I cannot imagine how the adventures of some phantom conjured up by fancy can be more entertaining than the transactions of real specimens of human nature, from which we may safely draw inferences.

We have had an oratorio at Coventry lately, Braham, Phillips, Mrs. Knyvett, and Mr. Shaw—the last, I think, I shall attend. I am not fitted to decide on the question of the propriety or lawfulness of such exhibitions of talent and so forth, because I have no soul for music. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” I am a tasteless person, but it would not cost me any regrets if the only music heard in our land were that of strict worship, nor can I think that a pleasure that involves the devotion of all the time and powers of an immortal being to the acquirement of an expertness in so useless (at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred) an accomplishment, can be quite pure or elevating in its tendency.

The above remarks on oratorio are the more surprising because, two years later, when Miss Evans went to the Birmingham festival, in September, 1840, previous to her brother’s marriage, she was affected to an extraordinary degree, so much so that Mrs. Isaac Evans—then Miss Rawlins—told me that the attention of people sitting near[Pg 257] was attracted by her hysterical sobbing. And in all her later life music was one of the chiefest delights to her, and especially oratorio.

Although I had known Mary Ann Evans as a child at her father’s house at Griff, our real acquaintance began in 1841, when after she came with her father to reside near Coventry, my sister, who lived next door to her, brought her to call upon us one morning, thinking, amongst other natural reasons for introducing her, that the influence of this superior young lady of Evangelical opinions might be beneficial to our heretical minds. She was then about one-and-twenty, and I can well recollect her appearance and modest demeanor as she sat down on a low ottoman by the window, and I had a sort of surprised feeling when she first spoke, at the measured, highly-cultivated mode of expression, so different from the usual tones of young persons from the country. We became friends at once. We soon found that her mind was already turning toward greater freedom of thought in religious opinion, that she had even bought for herself Hennell’s ‘Inquiry,’ and there was much mutual interest between the author and herself in their frequent meeting at our house.

Charles Bray: ‘Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life.’ London: Longmans & Co., 1885.

Mr. Bray, an enthusiastic believer in phrenology,[Pg 258] was so much struck with the grand proportions of her head that he took Marian Evans to London to have a cast taken. He thinks that, after that of Napoleon, her head showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person’s recorded.

If you go through the quaint old city of Coventry, with its glorious spires, its huge factories, its narrow, irregular streets of timbered houses, you reach at last the road leading to the village of Foleshill, a mile or so outside the limits of the borough. Dirty coal-wharves and smoke-grimed houses, last remnants of the town, gradually give place to scattered cottages, dropped here and there among fields and hedge-rows, smoke-grimed too, but still green in summer. Then on the right comes a little brook with a pathway through some posts beside it. Three tall poplars in a garden fence overshadow it; and through the trees behind, you catch a glimpse of two unpretending brown-stone, semi-detached houses, regular suburban villas, with the same carriage-drive winding up among the trees to each, the same grass-lawn with its beds of evergreens, the same little strips of garden at the back—a mournful attempt to combine town and country; as uninspiring a spot as one can well conceive. To the first of these houses in 1841 came Mr. Evans, when he left Griff; and with him his grave, soft-voiced daughter, Mary Ann, or, as she now called herself, Marian.... “How often have I seen that pale, thoughtful face wandering along the path by the little stream,” said one of her[Pg 259] early friends, as we turned into the gate.... Upstairs I was taken into a tiny room over the front door, with a plain square window. This was George Eliot’s little study. Here to the left on entering was her desk; and upon a bracket, in the corner between it and the window, stood an exquisite statuette of Christ, looking towards her. Here she lived among her books, which covered the walls. Here she worked with ardor in the new fields of thought which her friendship with the Brays opened to her.... Out of the study opened her bedroom, looking over the little villa garden with its carriage-drive under the shady trees. But three of these trees remain—a weeping lime, a venerable acacia, with the silvery sheen of a birch between them. In old days there were many more—so many, indeed, as to render the house gloomy in the extreme. But they served to shut off all the sight of the noisy road thirty yards away, though they could not shut off the sound of the busy coal-wharf farther on, whence foul and cruel words to horse and fellow-man floated up through the still summer air, and jarred painfully on that highly strung organization, as Miss Evans sat plunged in thought and work beside her window. It was one of the penalties of a nearer approach to the civilization she had so ardently longed for in her old country life at Griff. From the study you look on the exquisite spires of Coventry, or through the tree-stems on gently-swelling fields with their row of hedge-row elms against the sky.

Though not above the middle height Marian gave[Pg 260] people the impression of being much taller than she really was, her figure, although thin and slight, being well-poised and not without a certain sturdiness of make. She was never robust in health, being delicately strung, and of a highly nervous temperament. In youth the keen excitability of her nature often made her wayward and hysterical. In fact her extraordinary intellectual vigor did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a peculiarly feminine organization. There exists a colored sketch done by Mrs. Bray about this period, which gives one a glimpse of George Eliot in her girlhood. In those Foleshill days she had a quantity of soft pale-brown hair worn in ringlets. Her head was massive, her features powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman, yet having a certain delicacy of outline. A neutral tone of coloring did not help to relieve this general heaviness of structure, the complexion being pale but not fair. Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its frame-work. Her eyes, of a gray-blue, constantly varying in color, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out gray, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. So much was this the case, that a young lady who had once enjoyed an hour’s conversation with her, came away under its spell with the impression that she was beautiful, but afterwards, on seeing George Eliot again when she[Pg 261] was not talking, she could hardly believe her to be the same person. The charm of her nature disclosed itself in her manner and her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea in being “like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Æolian harp.” It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy.

It was impossible for such a nature as Miss Evans’s, in the enthusiasm of this first great change, to rest satisfied in compliance with the old forms, and she was so uneasy in an equivocal position that she determined to give up going to church. This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was a Churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter. Upon this, Miss Evans made up her mind to go into lodgings at Leamington, and to try to support herself by teaching.

The conclusion of the matter was that Mr. Evans withdrew his house from the agent’s hands, and his daughter went to stay at Griff, with Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Evans.

Miss Evans remained for about three weeks at Griff, at the end of which time, through the intervention of her brother, the Brays, and Miss Rebecca Franklin, the father was very glad to receive her again, and she resumed going to church as before....[Pg 262] In the last year of her life she told me that, although she did not think she had been to blame, few things had occasioned her more regret than this temporary collision with her father, which might, she thought, have been avoided with a little management.

As her friend said with loving pride, “She was the most devoted daughter for those nine years that it is possible to imagine.” Her father always spent three days in the week away from home; and those three days were Miss Evans’ holidays, given up to her work and her friends. But on the evenings he was at home, not the most tempting invitation in the world would induce her to leave him.

“If I am to keep my father’s house, I am going to do it thoroughly,” she would say. And thoroughly she did try to do her duty, even to the matter of cooking on certain occasions. A friend recalls a visit one afternoon, when she found Marian in comical distress over her failures. The cook was ill, and Miss Evans undertook to manufacture a batter-pudding. “And when it came to table, it broke. To think that the mistress could not even make a batter-pudding!”

Not only was Mr. Lewes’ previous family life irretrievably spoiled, but his home had been wholly broken up for nearly two years. In forming a judgment[Pg 263] on so momentous a question, it is, above all things, necessary to understand what was actually undertaken, what was actually achieved; and, in my opinion, this can best be arrived at, not from any outside statement or arguments, but by consideration of the whole tenor of the life which follows.

One thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by remembering how subtile and complex are the influences that mould opinion.... From the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except, indeed, that being happy in each other, we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that.

Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1855, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’

If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will out-weigh the small negative good that would have consisted[Pg 264] in my not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am—but least of all faulty where others most blame.

Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1857, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’

What a contrast the pair presented! He, pétillant d’esprit, as the French say, as brimful of life, geniality, and animation, as it was possible for any human being often oppressed with bodily ailments to be, ever able to shake off these for the sake of lively, engrossing talk, ever on the alert to discover intellectual qualities in others; she, grave, pensive, thoughtful, not disinclined for sportiveness and wit certainly, as ready as he to bring out the best in those around her, but equally devoid of his habitual gayety and lightheartedness, as was he of her own earnest mood. There was something irresistibly winning and attractive about Mr. Lewes. The heart warmed to him at once, he was so kindly, so ready to offer help or counsel, so pleased to be of use. George Eliot’s large-hearted, deep-souled benevolence took in all human kind, but could not so easily individualize. That commanding spirit, that loyal, much-tried nature, could not be expected to testify the same catholicity in personal likings as a man, who, despite his rare intellectual endowments and devotion to especial fields of learning, yet remained a man of the world.

Charles Lamb speaks somewhere of a woman’s[Pg 265] “divine plain face,” and perhaps the same criticism might be passed on George Eliot. The plainness vanished as soon as she smiled, and the tone of the voice was singularly sympathetic and harmonious. As to Mr. Lewes’ looks or personal appearance, one never thought of the matter at all. Small, spare, sallow, much bearded, with brilliant eyes, he could neither be called handsome nor ugly. Delightful he ever was, kindness itself, always on the look-out to serve and to amuse. For he knew—none better—the value of a smile.

With George Eliot acquaintance ripened slower into friendship. In spite of her warm human sympathies and the keenness of her desire to enter into the feelings of others, her manner at first awed, perhaps even repelled. It was so much more difficult for her than for Mr. Lewes to quit her own world of thought and speculation, and enter into that of the common joys and sorrows and aspirations of humanity. Yet few delighted more in gathering her friends together. “From my good father I learned the pleasure of being hospitable,” she once said to me with a glow of feeling. “He rejoiced ever to receive his friends, and to my eyes now the pleasure wears the shape of a duty.”

It is pleasant to record their love of the good and the beautiful in the least little thing—George Eliot’s rapture at the sight of an exquisite flower, Mr. Lewes’ delight in a bright happy child; also the keenness of their sympathy with common joys and sorrows, and the unbounded kindliness and pitifulness of their nature.

September, 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went further towards the actual writing of the novel than an introductory chapter describing a Staffordshire village and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about every thing 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 of a novel. My “introductory chapter” was pure description, though there were good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted—indeed, disbelieved in—my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try some time what I could do in fiction, and by and by, when we came back to England, and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my mental power would go towards the production of a novel, was strengthened. He began to say very positively, “You must try and write a story,” and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I[Pg 267] deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of which the title was ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton.’ I was soon wide awake again and told G. He said, “Oh, what a capital title!” and from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. George used to say, “It may be a failure—it may be that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps it may be just good enough to warrant your trying again.” Again, “You may write a chef d’œuvre at once—there’s no telling.” But his prevalent impression was, that though I could not write a poor novel, my effort would want the highest quality of fiction—dramatic presentation.... I did not begin my story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan of writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own observation of the clergy, and calling them ‘Scenes from Clerical Life,’ opening with ‘Amos Barton.’ He at once accepted the notion as a good one—fresh and striking; and about a week afterwards, when I read him the first part of ‘Amos,’ he had no longer any doubt about my ability to carry out the plan. The scene at Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had been doubtful about—it was clear I could write good dialogue. There still remained the question whether I could command any pathos; and[Pg 268] that was to be decided by the mode in which I treated Milly’s death. One night G. went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, “I think your pathos is better than your fun.”

I may mention that my wife told me the reason she fixed on this name [George Eliot] was that George was Mr. Lewes’ Christian name, and Eliot was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.

The germ of “Adam Bede” was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my father’s younger brother)—an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal—a very ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and she[Pg 269] described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun to write the “Scenes of Clerical Life.” He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story, with some points in my father’s early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief dramatis personæ, and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of “Scenes,” but afterward when several motives had induced me to close these with “Janet’s Repentance,” I determined on making what we always called in our conversation “My Aunt’s Story” the subject of a long novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857.

The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she[Pg 270] could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods—once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father’s last residence, Foleshill.

The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father’s early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede—only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and the mutual relation to Hetty—i. e., to the girl who commits child-murder—the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax toward which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader’s interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.

We must be careful not to found too much on suggestions of character in George Eliot’s books; and this must particularly be borne in mind in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ No doubt the early part of Maggie’s portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot’s own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life, but so mixed with fictitious elements and situations that it would be absolutely misleading to trust to it as a true history. The writing of ‘Romola’ ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, “I began it a young woman—I finished it an old woman.” She told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a “not herself,” which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this in regard to the scene in ‘Middlemarch’ between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond’s drawing-room. Then, abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. Of all the characters she had[Pg 272] attempted she found Rosamond’s the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of “possession” it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy.

George Eliot was the most careful and accurate among authors. Her beautifully written manuscript, free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second-hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work’s sake, which she makes a prominent characteristic of ‘Adam Bede,’ and ‘Stradivarius.’

The manuscript of ‘Adam Bede’ bears the following inscription: “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.”

“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March, 1860.”

“To the Husband whose perfect love has been the best source of her insight and strength, this manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer.”

The manuscript of ‘Felix Holt’ bears the following inscription: “From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love.”

The manuscript of ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear—every day dearer—Husband.”

“To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.”

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on thee—and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

As to the “great novel,” which remains to be[Pg 274] written, I must tell you that I never believe in future books.... Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The responsibility of the writer grows heavier and heavier—does it not?—as the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really needed contribution to the poetry of the world—I mean possible to oneself to do it.

I hardly ever read anything that is written about myself—indeed, never unless my husband expressly wishes me to do so by way of exception. I adopted this rule many years ago as a necessary preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying my power of writing....

I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the short-comings in my works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.

George Eliot: Letters, quoted by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in ‘Last Words from George Eliot,’ Harper’s Magazine, for March, 1882.

It was at Villino Trollope, [the Florentine residence[Pg 275] of Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope] that we first saw ... George Eliot. She is a woman of forty, perhaps, of large frame and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation, Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed a young girl who had just began to handle a pen, how frankly she related her own literary experience, and how gently she suggested advice. True genius is always allied to humility, and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as much as we had ever admired the writer. “For years,” said she to us, “I wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.”

Kate Field: ‘English Authors in Florence,’ The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1864.

I still seem to hear, as I first heard them, the low, earnest, deep, musical tones of her voice; I still seem to see the fine brows, with the abundant auburn-brown hair framing them, the long head, broadening at the back, the gray-blue eyes, constantly changing in expression, but always with a very loving, almost deprecating look at my mother, the finely-formed, thin, transparent hands, and a whole Wesen that seemed in complete harmony[Pg 276] with everything one expected to find in the author of ‘Romola.’

In the course of the year 1865, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes moved from 16 Blandford Square to the Priory, a commodious house in North Bank, St. John’s Wood, which has come to be intimately associated with the memory of George Eliot. Here in the pleasant dwelling-rooms decorated by Owen Jones might be met, at her Sunday afternoon receptions, some of the most eminent men in literature, art and science. For the rest, her life flowed on its even tenor, its routine being rigidly regulated. The morning till lunch time was invariably devoted to writing; in the afternoon she either went out for a quiet drive of about two hours, or she took a walk with Lewes in Regent’s Park. There the strange-looking couple—she with a certain weird, sibylline air, he not unlike some unkempt Polish refugee of vivacious manners—might be seen, swinging their arms as they hurried along at a pace as rapid and eager as their talk. Besides these walks, George Eliot’s chief recreation consisted in frequenting concerts and picture galleries. To music she was passionately devoted, hardly ever failing to attend the Saturday afternoon concerts at St. James’ Hall, besides frequenting various musical reunions.

Perhaps no one filling a large portion of the thoughts of the public in two hemispheres has ever[Pg 277] been so little known to the public at large. Always in delicate health, always living a student life, caring little for what is called general society, though taking a genial delight in that of her chosen friends, she very seldom appeared in public. She went to the houses of but a few, finding it less fatiguing to see her friends at home. Those who knew her by sight beyond her own immediate circle did so from seeing her take her quiet drives in Regent’s Park and the northern slopes of London, or from her attendance at those concerts where the best music of the day was to be heard.

Another favorite resort of George Eliot’s was the Zoölogical Gardens. She went there a great deal to study the animals, and was particularly fond of the “poor dear ratel” that used to turn somersaults. In fact her knowledge of and sympathy with animals was as remarkable as that which she showed for human nature. Thus she astonished a gentleman farmer by drawing attention to the fine points of his horses. Her intimate acquaintance with the dog comes out in a thousand touches in her novels, and her humorous appreciation of the little pigs led her to watch them attentively, and to pick out some particular favorite. In her country rambles, too, she was fond of turning over stones to inspect the minute insect life teeming in moist, dark places; and she was as interested as Lewes himself in the creatures, frogs, etc., he kept for scientific purposes, and which would[Pg 278] sometimes, like the frog in the fairy tale, surprise the household by suddenly making their entrance into the dining-room. Her liking for the “poor brutes,” as she called them, had its origin no doubt in the same source of profound pity which she feels for “the twists and cracks” of imperfect human beings.

When London was full, the little drawing-room in St. John’s Wood was now and then crowded to overflowing by 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 those afternoons had the highest pleasure when London was empty or the day 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.

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, 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 eye-lashes, 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.

The entertainment at the Priory 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 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[Pg 280] arrested by the massive 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 incoming-visitor sometimes 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. Early in the afternoon, with only one or two guests, the talk was always genial and delightful. But her talk, I think, was always most enjoyable à deux. Of evening entertainments there were very few. I think, after 1870, I remember some charming little dinners—never exceeding six persons; and one notable evening when the Poet Laureate read aloud ‘Maud,’ ‘The Northern Farmer,’ and parts of other poems. It was very interesting on this occasion to see the two most widely-known representatives of contemporary English literature sitting side by side.

Everything in her aspect was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply-lined face, the too-marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward[Pg 281] beauty would sometimes quite transform the external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal—all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice that best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a world of feeling that must remain untold.... And then again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not one to be soon forgotten. It had not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to whose child-like confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was the look (if I may use a Platonic phrase) of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy.

In her personal bearing George Eliot was seldom moved by the hurry which mars all dignity in action. Her commanding brows and deep, penetrating eyes were seconded by the sweet, restrained, impressive speech, which claimed something like an awed attention from strangers. But to those very near to her there was another side of her[Pg 282] nature, scarcely suspected by outside friends and acquaintances. No one could be more capable of enjoying and of communicating genuine, loving, hearty, uncontrollable laughter. It was a deep-seated wish, expressed in the poem of ‘Agatha’—“I would have young things merry.” And I remember, many years ago, at the time of our first acquaintance, how deeply it pained her when, in reply to a direct question, I was obliged to admit that, with all my admiration for her books, I found them, on the whole, profoundly sad. But sadness was certainly not the note of her intimate converse. For she had the distinctively feminine qualities which lend a rhythm to the movement of life. The quick sympathy that understands without words; the capacity for creating a complete atmosphere of loving interest; the detachment from outside influences; the delight in everything worthy—even the smallest thing—for its own sake; the readiness to receive as well as to give impressions; the disciplined mental habit which can hold in check and conquer the natural egoism of a massive, powerful personality; the versatility of mind; the varied accomplishments—these are characteristics to be found more highly developed among gifted women than among gifted men.

The face was one of a group of four, ... all of the same spiritual family, and with a curious interdependence of likeness. These four are Dante, Savonarola, Cardinal Newman and herself.... In the group of which George[Pg 283] Eliot was one, there is the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye.

We can hardly hope that posterity will ever know her from likenesses as those who had the honor of her acquaintance knew her in life. The two or three portraits that exist, though valuable, give but a very imperfect presentment. The mere shape of the head would be the despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain.

... Her face, instead of beauty, possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow.... Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea Brooke.... She talked as she wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same manner of linking events by analogy and inference.

The walls were covered with pictures. I remember Guido’s Aurora, Michael Angelo’s prophets, Raphael’s sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are friends of the house. A grand piano, open and covered with music, indicated recent and continual use.

Mrs. Annie Downs: ‘A Visit to George Eliot.’ The Congregationalist, May 28th, 1879.

No one 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 but of medium height. She received me 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 freemasonry 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 that one feels the magnetism of a large mind informed by a true woman’s heart; then, as the[Pg 285] 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 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.

... 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 heart-felt 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 a 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 feel naturally elevated into a higher sphere. The conversation of itself floats upward into[Pg 286] 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. Henry M. Field: ‘Home Sketches in France, and other Papers.’ New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1875.

Mr. Lewes and she were one day good-humoredly recounting the mistaken effusiveness of a too-sympathizing friend, who insisted on assuming that Mr. Casaubon was a portrait of Mr. Lewes, and on condoling with the sad experience which had taught the gifted authoress of ‘Middlemarch’ to depict that gloomy man. And there was indeed something ludicrous in the contrast between the dreary pedant of the novel and the gay self-content of the living savant who stood acting his vivid anecdotes before our eyes. “But from whom, then,” said a friend, turning to Mrs. Lewes, “did you draw Casaubon?” With a humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, nevertheless, she pointed to her own heart. She went on to say—and this we could well believe—that there was one character, that of Rosamond Vincy, which she had found it hard to sustain; such complacency of egoism being alien to her own habits of mind. But she laid no claim to any such natural magnanimity as could avert Casaubon’s temptations of jealous vanity, of bitter resentment. No trace of these faults was ever manifest in her conversation. But much of her[Pg 287] moral weight was derived from the impression which her friends received that she had not been by any means without her full share of faulty tendencies to begin with, but that she had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue—what Plato calls an iron sense of truth and right—to which others also, however faulty, by effort might attain.

She never tired of the lovely scenery about Witley, and the great expanse of view obtainable from the tops of the many hills. It was on one of her drives in that neighborhood that a characteristic conversation took place between her and one of the greatest English poets, whom she met as he was taking a walk. Even that short interval enabled them to get into somewhat deep conversation on evolution; and as the poet afterward related it to a companion on the same spot, he said, “Here was where I said good-bye to George Eliot; and as she went down the hill, I said, ‘Well, good-bye, you and your molecules,’ and she said to me, ‘I am quite content with my molecules.’” A trifling anecdote, perhaps, but to those who will read between the lines, not other than characteristic of both speakers.

We generally began our reading at Witley with some chapters of the Bible, which was a very precious and sacred book to her, not only from early associations, but also from the profound conviction of its importance in the development of the religious life of man. She particularly[Pg 288] enjoyed reading aloud some of the finest chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul’s Epistles. With a naturally rich, deep voice, rendered completely flexible by constant practice; with the keenest perception of the requirements of emphasis, and with the most subtile modulations of tone, her reading threw a glamour over indifferent writing, and gave to the greatest writings fresh meanings and beauty. The Bible and our elder English poets best suited the organ-like tones of her voice, which required, for their full effect, a certain solemnity and majesty of rhythm. Her reading of Milton was especially fine; and I shall never forget four great lines of the ‘Samson Agonistes’ to which it did perfect justice—

“But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.”

The delighted conviction of justice in the thought—the sense of perfect accord between thought, language, and rhythm—stimulated the voice of the reader to find the exactly right tone. Such reading requires for its perfection a rare union of intellectual, moral, and physical qualities. It cannot be imitated. It is an art, like singing—a personal possession that dies with the possessor, and leaves nothing behind except a memory.

Nothing was more remarkable in the last period of her life than her intense mental vitality, which failing health did not seem in the least to impair. She possessed in an eminent degree that[Pg 289] power which has led to success in so many directions—which is ascribed both to Newton and to Napoleon—of keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She would cease to read or to ponder when other duties called her, but never (as it seemed) because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to a picture-gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch of earnest interest, and outweary strong men.

Her memory held securely her great stores of reading. Even of light books her recollections were always crisp, definite, and vivid. On our way home from Venice, after my illness, we were reading French novels of Cherbuliez, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Droz, George Sand. Most of these books she had read years before, and I was astonished to find what clear-cut, accurate impressions had been retained, not only of all the principal characters, but also of all the subsidiary personages—even their names were generally remembered. But, on the other hand, her verbal memory was not always to be depended on. She never could trust herself to write a quotation without verifying it.

In foreign languages George Eliot had an experience more unusual among women than among men. With a complete literary and scholarly knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, she spoke all four languages with difficulty, though accurately and grammatically; but the mimetic power of catching intonation and accent was wanting. Greek and Latin she could read[Pg 290] with thorough delight to herself; and Hebrew was a favorite study to the end of her life. In her younger days, especially at Geneva, inspired by Professor de la Rive’s lectures, she had been greatly interested in mathematical studies. At one time she applied herself heartily and with keen enjoyment to geometry, and she thought that she might have attained to some excellence in that branch if she had been able to pursue it. In later days the map of the heavens lay constantly on her table at Witley, and she longed for deeper astronomical knowledge. She had a passion for the stars; and one of the things to which we looked forward on returning to London was a possible visit to Greenwich Observatory, as she had never looked through a great telescope of the first-class.

Her knowledge of wild-flowers gave a fresh interest each day to our walks in the Surrey lanes, as every hedgerow is full of wonders—to “those who know;” but she would, I think, have disclaimed for herself real botanical knowledge, except of an elementary sort.

This wide and varied culture was accompanied with an unaffected distrust of her own knowledge, with the sense of how little she really knew, compared with what it was possible for her to have known, in the world. Her standard was always abnormally high—it was the standard of an expert.

Her many-sidedness makes it exceedingly difficult to ascertain, either from her books or from the closest personal intimacy, what her exact relation was to any existing religious creed or to[Pg 291] any political party. Yet George Eliot’s was emphatically a religious mind. My own impression is that her whole soul was so imbued with, and her imagination was so fired by, the scientific spirit of the age—by the constant rapid development of ideas in the Western world—that she could not conceive that there was, as yet, any religious formula sufficient, nor any known political system likely to be final. She had great hope for the future, in the improvement of human nature by the gradual development of the affections and the sympathetic emotions, and “by the slow, stupendous teaching of the world’s events,” rather than by means of legislative enactments.

She was keenly anxious to redress injustices to women, and to raise their general status in the community. This, she thought, could be best effected by women improving their work—ceasing to be amateurs. But it was one of the most distinctly marked traits in her character that she particularly disliked everything generally associated with the idea of a “masculine woman.” She was, and as a woman she wished to be, above all things, feminine—“so delicate with her needle, and an admirable musician.”

George Eliot was deeply interested in the higher education of women, ... and was among the earliest contributors to Girton College.... The danger she was alive to in the system of collegiate education was the possible weakening of the bonds of family affection and family duties. In her view, the family life holds the roots of all that is best in our mortal lot; and she always felt that it is far too ruthlessly sacrificed in the[Pg 292] case of English men by their public school and university education, and that much more is such a result to be deprecated in the case of women. But, the absolute good being unattainable in our mixed condition of things, those women especially who are obliged to earn their own living must do their best with the opportunities at their command, as “they cannot live with posterity,” when a more perfect system may prevail. Therefore, George Eliot wished Godspeed to the women’s colleges. It was often in her mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is, that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for culture’s sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of producing at best a shrivelled branch.

In her general attitude toward life George Eliot was neither optimist nor pessimist. She held to the middle term, which she invented for herself, of “meliorist.” She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. She often thought it wisest not to raise too ambitious an ideal, especially for young people, but to impress on ordinary natures the immense possibilities of making a small home circle brighter and better. Few are born to do the great work of the world, but all are born to this. And to the natures capable of the larger effort the field of usefulness will constantly widen.

Arnold.—Mixed Essays, by Matthew Arnold. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1883. (Quoted on George Sand.)

Atlantic Monthly.—Anonymous Article on Mrs. Browning, September, 1881. English Authors in Florence, by Kate Field, December, 1864. (Quoted on George Eliot.)

Blind.—George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind (Famous Women Series). Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

Bray.—Phases of Opinion and Experience during a Long Life, by Charles Bray. London: Longmans & Co., 1885. (Quoted on George Eliot.)

Brontë.—Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, with biographical preface by Charlotte Brontë. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1850. (Quoted on Emily Brontë.)

Browning.—Letters to R. H. Horne, by E. B. Browning; with prefatory memoir by R. H. Stoddard. New York: James Miller, 1877. (Quoted also for H. Martineau and George Sand.)

——.—Last Poems, with memorial preface, by Theodore Tilton. New York: James Miller, 1862.

Century Magazine.—George Eliot, by F. W. H. Myers, November, 1881; George Eliot’s County, by Rose G. Kingsley, July, 1885; Zweibak, or Notes of a Professional Exile, February, 1886. (Quoted on Geo. Eliot and H. Martineau.)

Chorley.—Autobiography, Memoir and Letters, by Henry F. Chorley. London: Bentley, 1873. (Quoted on E. B. Browning.)

Congregationalist.—A Visit to George Eliot, by Mrs. Annie Downs, May 28th, 1879.

Coleridge.—Memoir and Letters, by Sara Coleridge, edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874. (Quoted on E. B. Browning.)

Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau and Margaret Fuller.)

Cross.—George Eliot’s Life, by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885. (Quoted also for H. Martineau, Charlotte Brontë and E. B. Browning.)

Emerson, R. W., Channing, W. H., and Clarke, J. F.—Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1874. (Quoted also for George Sand.)

Field.—Home Sketches in France, etc., by Mrs. H. M. Field. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1875. (Quoted on George Eliot.)

Forster.—Walter Savage Landor, a Biography, by John Forster. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869. (Quoted on E. B. Browning.)

Fox.—Memoirs of Old Friends, by Caroline Fox. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882. (Quoted on H. Martineau.)

Froude.—Thomas Carlyle: a History of his Life in London, by J. A. Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884. (Quoted on H. Martineau and Margaret Fuller.)

——.—Editor, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883. (Quoted on H. Martineau.)

Gaskell.—Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth C. Gaskell. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857. (Quoted also on H. Martineau and George Sand.)

Hall.—Retrospect of a Long Life, by S. C. Hall. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883. (Quoted on H. Martineau.)

Harper’s Magazine.—Article on the English Lakes, by Moncure D. Conway, January, 1881. (Quoted on H. Martineau.) George Eliot, by C. Kegan Paul, May, 1881. Last Words from George Eliot, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, March, 1882. Remarks on Margaret Fuller, by G. W. Curtis, in Easy Chair, March, 1882.

Hawthorne.—Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: a Biography, by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau and Margaret Fuller.)

Hawthorne.—Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Browning.)

——.—Passages from the French and Italian Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston:[Pg 296] James R. Osgood & Co., 1872. (Quoted on Mrs. Browning.)

Hillard.—Six Months in Italy, by George S. Hillard. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1871. (Quoted on Mrs. Browning.)

Howe.—Margaret Fuller, by Julia Ward Howe. (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

Hunt.—Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, edited by his son. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1862. (Quoted on Mrs. Browning.)

Kemble.—Records of Later Life, by Frances Ann Kemble. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau.)

Lady’s Repository.—A Visit to Charlotte Brontë, by George S. Phillips, September, 1872. New York: Nelson & Phillips.

Macready.—Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters, by W. C. Macready. Edited by Sir F. Pollock, Bart. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1875. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau.)

Martineau.—Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, with Memorial by Maria Weston Chapman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1887. (Quoted also on Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Fuller and Mrs. Browning.)

Mitford.—Recollections of a Literary Life, by Mary Russell Mitford. New York: Harper & Bros., 1852. (Quoted on Mrs. Browning.)

Miller.—Harriet Martineau, by Mrs. Fenwick Miller. (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1885.

Payn.—Some Literary Recollections, by James Payn.[Pg 297] New York: Harper & Bros., 1884. (Quoted on Harriet Martineau.)

Record of the Year.—(New York: G. W. Carleton.) September, 1876. Selection from Paul Vevay on George Sand.

Reid.—Charlotte Brontë, A Monograph, by T. Wemyss Reid. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.

Robinson.—Emily Brontë, by A. Mary F. Robinson. (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Robert Bros., 1883.

Scribner’s Monthly.—Charlotte Brontë, by Ellen Nussey; also Note in The Old Cabinet, by R. W. Gilder, 1871.

Swinburne.—A Note on Charlotte Brontë, by A. C. Swinburne. London: Chatto & Windus, 1877.

Stedman.—Victorian Poets, by E. C. Stedman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881. (Quoted on Mrs. Browning.)

Taylor.—At Home and Abroad, by Bayard Taylor. (Second Series.) New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862.

Temple Bar.—A Week with George Eliot, February, 1885. George Sand, April, 1885.

Thackeray.—Roundabout Papers, by William M. Thackeray. London: Chatto & Windus, 1863. (Quoted on Charlotte Brontë.)

Thomas.—George Sand, by Bertha Thomas. (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

Whittier.—Complete Poems, by John G. Whittier. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1873.

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PEN-PORTRAITS OF
LITERARY WOMEN

CONTENTS.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

FOOTNOTES:

AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).
(George Sand.)

FOOTNOTES:

ELIZABETH BARRETT (BROWNING).

FOOTNOTES:

MARGARET FULLER (OSSOLI).

FOOTNOTES:

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS.)
(Currer Bell.)

EMILY BRONTË.
(Ellis Bell.)

FOOTNOTES:

MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).
(George Eliot.)

LIST OF WORKS QUOTED IN VOL. II.

Transcriber’s Notes

PEN-PORTRAITS OFLITERARY WOMEN

CONTENTS.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

FOOTNOTES:

AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).(George Sand.)

FOOTNOTES:

ELIZABETH BARRETT (BROWNING).

FOOTNOTES:

MARGARET FULLER (OSSOLI).

FOOTNOTES:

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS.)(Currer Bell.)

EMILY BRONTË. (Ellis Bell.)

FOOTNOTES:

MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).(George Eliot.)

LIST OF WORKS QUOTED IN VOL. II.

Transcriber’s Notes

PEN-PORTRAITS OF
LITERARY WOMEN

AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).
(George Sand.)

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS.)
(Currer Bell.)

EMILY BRONTË.
(Ellis Bell.)

MARIAN EVANS (LEWES) (CROSS).
(George Eliot.)