A Memoir of George Eliot

Sophia Kovalevskaia, then, was in London in December 1880. The physical possibility of her third encounter with Eliot exists. In respect to the particular revelations of the last meeting, some days before Eliot’s death, we never can know for certain—but the pithiness of the questions is worthy of Kovalevskaia; the profundity and ambiguity of the answers do equal justice to Eliot.

—М. Н. В.

The Life of George Eliot from her Letters and Excerpts from her Diary, published last year, was of great interest to all readers of this marvelous writer; and, despite its high price, the first edition was sold out in a few weeks in England. The firm of Tauchnitz, which the English publishers hate so much, lost no time in using its right to republish all the important works of English literature gratis so that George Eliot’s correspondence has already reached Russian readers in this form. For many, however, this book was somewhat disappointing, despite the curiosity aroused by the personal life of great people, particularly the private life of a “famous” woman.

Previous biographies have already revealed certain facts about Eliot’s life which are strange and curious from a psychological point of view but have no echo or explanation in any of her novels. Many hailed this edition of her correspondence in the hope that even if no new events emerged, still the letters might throw some light on her inner world, attitudes, and motives. These expectations have not been justified, nor could they be. This correspondence, published by Mr. Cross, her second husband, only five years after her death, contains selected and carefully scrutinized letters, seemingly excluding anything of a personal or intimate character. It could not be otherwise, given the circumstances.

Throughout this voluminous correspondence George Eliot speaks about everything except herself. The letters could hardly serve as biographical material, at least those now published, for just as in her novels, she never shows or explains herself. To know her, the reader must seek her out, divine her from the slightest hints, catch each passing observation, and even then only the reader with certain sympathetic reverberations would be likely to create a sharp image; otherwise, she herself, and many of her actions and decisions, will remain enigmatic and unclear.

The correspondence will be most interesting, I think, for those who knew this wonderful woman personally. As I am among that happy number, reading the letters reminded me of some of our conversations and of George Eliot herself, with her soft, fluid, sympathetic voice, her somewhat ornate, slightly “bookish” manner of expression, and her idiosyncratic way of plunging fully into the subject of conversation. All this was so vivid for me that I feel compelled to speak about her and to describe our acquaintance.

I met George Eliot at the beginning of the 1870s. [The meeting took place 3 October 1869.—M. H. B.] At this time I had just begun to study mathematics with Professor Weierstrasse, the eminent scholar at Berlin, and during an autumn holiday at the University went to London for a few weeks. I had scarcely any acquaintances or connections with the literary world at that time, with the exception of Mr. Ralston, also a friend of the Leweses. He was one of the directors of the British Museum and one of the few Englishmen who knew the Russian language and Russian literature. His stories about George Eliot, and some details of her private life, strengthened the enthusiasm I already felt for her works, and piqued my desire to meet her personally. Unfortunately, my friend was not in London when I arrived, and finally, after much vacillation, I decided to write to George Eliot and say that I wanted very much to meet her. She answered immediately with a very kind letter, stating that she had heard of me from an English mathematician whom I had met by chance at a lecture at Heidelberg University, and that she would like to make my acquaintance. She named a time when I would find her and Mr. Lewes at home and we might talk undisturbed for several hours.

Of course, I did not fail to take advantage of the invitation. At this time Mr. Lewes and George Eliot occupied a small house in John Wood’s Road, a very pretty section of London, rich in private gardens. A young chambermaid, crisp and stiff, as are all English chambermaids, ushered me into a reasonably spacious living room, furnished rather smartly but without any pretense at originality; in its triteness a rather typical salon in a “proper” English home.

Mr. Lewes and George Eliot were waiting and came forward warmly to meet me. I must confess that when I first saw George Eliot I had a somewhat desperate hope that I was mistaken, that this was not she but somebody else, so old and unattractive did she appear, and so unlike what I had imagined. I had never seen her portrait; Mr. Ralston, in speaking of her, had indicated that she was not at all pretty, but that she had beautiful eyes and hair and that she was altogether uncommonly sympathetic.

However imperceptibly, I had composed a very definite and distinct image of the ideal George Eliot in my own imagination. Alas, it was suddenly clear that the image in no way resembled the reality. A small lean figure with a disproportionately large, heavy head, a mouth with huge protruding “English” teeth, a nose which, though straight and beautifully outlined, was too massive for a feminine face, some kind of old-fashioned strange coiffure, a black dress of light sheer cloth exposing the thinness and boniness of her neck which even more sharply underlined the sickly, yellowish tinge of the face—this is what, to my horror, appeared in that first minute. I was still overcome by confusion when George Eliot came towards me and spoke in her soft, beautiful, velvety voice. The first sounds of this voice reconciled me to reality and returned to me my George Eliot, the one who lived in my imagination. Never in my life have I heard a softer, more “enchanting” voice. When I read the famous words of Othello about Desdemona’s voice, I can’t help remembering George Eliot’s.

She seated me on a small sofa next to her and immediately a sincere, easy conversation started as if we had been acquainted for a long time. I cannot now recall what we talked about at our first meeting; I cannot say whether what she said was clever or original, but I know that within a half hour I was completely captivated by her charm, felt that I loved her very much, and was convinced that the real George Eliot was ten times better and more beautiful than the imagined one.

I am absolutely incapable of describing or explaining the special, indisputable quality which captivated everyone who approached her. It would be impossible to convey it to someone who had not experienced it; but, truly, anyone who has known George Eliot closely would confirm my words. Turgenev, who, as we know, was a great admirer and connoisseur of female beauty once said to me about George Eliot: “I know that she is not attractive, but when I am with her I do not see this.” He also said that George Eliot was the first woman who made him understand that it was possible to fall madly in love with a woman who was decidedly not pretty. As for myself, whenever I saw her after some time, I was invariably struck by her appearance and said to myself, “No, she is ugly, indeed,” but within a half hour I would be once more amazed that I could have found her so.

All who knew George Eliot remember the special charm and pleasure of conversation with her, although I have rarely heard anyone recall her saying anything especially deep, original, or witty. She never uttered so-called “bons mots.” She was a poor narrator and did not do well in general conversation, rarely participating in it. She possessed, however, the great art of drawing a person into conversation: not only did she grasp and divine a person’s thought, but seemed to suggest ideas unconsciously as if guiding the course of his thinking. “I never feel myself so clever and profound as when I am talking with George Eliot,” one of our common friends once said to me, and I must acknowledge experiencing the same thing frequently. Perhaps it was precisely this ability to arouse in her interlocutor this ease of thought and satisfaction with self that was the chief secret of her fascination.

As for Mr. Lewes, he was a lively, spare man, one of those whose age is very difficult to determine, old-looking at twenty, young at fifty. The notorious English reticence and sedateness were little in evidence in this lively person, who seemingly could not sit in one place quietly for a minute, whose eyes and hands moved to supplement his words, and whose every nerve in his plain, shrivelled face jumped. Though plain, Lewes had that so-called clever ugliness which one can get used to. He talked willingly and much; he loved to tell stories and was witty on occasion; his conversation was altogether interesting and original and revealed great erudition. With a certain childish curiosity he asked if his wife’s and his own work were valued in Russia and went into near raptures when I told him how popular his book The Physiology of Everyday Life was there. I told him, in fact, that any young woman who reads or even just adorns her desk with his book is known as a modern and advanced person. On hearing this he broke into genuine jolly and open-hearted laughter, although he was obviously disappointed when I told him that I had not read his novel Raktorp.

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lewes and George Eliot. She, reserved and sensitive to the point of illness at all dissonance, living in a self-created world, capable of blunders and mistakes in any encounter with reality; he, on the other hand, giving himself completely to the moment at hand, insistent on intense activity, with a most astonishing capacity to seize the most varied things with his mind and, without any evident difficulty, to skip from one subject to the other, popularizing the most abstract concepts and giving them substance and palpable form. It is difficult to conceive of two more individual and gifted natures so different from one another. No doubt it was this very opposition which favored the development of each of their talents.

Lewes, with a certain naive exaggeration, loved to dwell on the superiority of George Eliot and her unquestionable influence on him. Doubtless those very qualities alien to her and evident in Lewes’s shortcomings stimulated, so to say, George Eliot’s talent. She was one of those creatures whose sensitivity and critical attitude reached the point of morbidity, to the ruin of any creativity. Had she tied herself to a man more like herself, both would have been threatened with the danger of turning inward, of not expressing themselves at all from fear of vulgarizing their inner thoughts. But for the psychologist, it would be interesting to know how these two opposite natures worked out their relationship in private life. Passionate, but not entirely free of an inclination toward sentimentality and vagueness, Eliot could not have helped suffering from the ease, volatility, sometimes superficiality of Lewes’s nature; he, for his part, must surely have been often dismayed by the moral pressure she unconsciously laid on him.

Altogether, the whole history of Lewes and George Eliot presents an extremely interesting psychological study.

George Eliot, Miss Evans, came from a modest but honorable family of the English petty bourgeoisie, that is from a most conservative, narrow-minded moral sphere which exists, probably, in every country. She was educated and lived in this environment, if not without inner protest, at least without resolute efforts to break away from it, until she was thirty-two, that is until the time when life was considered almost finished for a woman. Perhaps she might never have left it had not the death of her father, the disintegration of the family, and the necessity of earning her own living forced her out. Against this background, having started her literary career writing critical articles for the Westminster Review, Miss Evans met Lewes and began an affair with this man who was not even divorced from his wife. First they were friends, comrades in professional work, able to laugh and talk without restraint, to go to the theatre, to spend an evening after work. Lewes even presented himself as a kind of chaperone to Miss Evans in her lonely London life, and it was in this light that their friends looked upon their relationship. It never entered anyone’s head that it might be otherwise. But suddenly the relationship changed.

To the general horror and surprise, she went abroad with Lewes, began to live openly and publicly with him, declaring herself his wife despite the existence of the other legitimate Mrs. Lewes who, though she had abandoned the family, was still his legal wife. George Eliot thus decided on a step which immediately and irrevocably cut her off from her past and forever excluded her from the ranks of “proper” ladies. This fact by itself would seem neither unusual nor curious in Russia today, so that in order to judge its psychological importance, it must be remembered that all this took place thirty-five years ago in England, that country where social opinion rules mercilessly and severely, punishing with godlike force anyone who dares defy its peremptory, unalterable decrees.

Still more strange, the more closely one studies the character of George Eliot as revealed in her works, the more difficult it becomes to comprehend and understand her psychological motivation. The first thing to come to mind is passion. When passion enters the picture any contradiction becomes natural, any inconsistency logical. The all-suppressing, all-absorbing importance of the given moment darkens and blocks out the past and future; all further explanation becomes superfluous.

In the case of Georges Sand, for example, a reader of her novels or biography, after some involuntary amazement about certain facts of her life, would find nothing surprising. Everything appears understandable and natural in the face of the intensity and unbridled feeling that overwhelmed her whole being and pushed aside customary considerations at certain times. But George Eliot presents a very different situation. This very unreasoning, illogical passion is alien to her nature, at least as judged by her own works. Their basic tone, and recurring motif, is the deep, heartfelt recognition of the unity of humanity’s goals; the unimportance of the individual who attempts to break the chain; and the importance of anyone who submits actions and desires to the common will and shares the common life. When reading Eliot’s novels it is difficult to imagine her as one who might have experienced that stupefying passion which can change a whole life and make a complete break with everything in the past. Knowledge that her own life could be so described could not be ignored by such a mercilessly honest observer of life and herself. Such knowledge would destroy the strongly reasoned, integral, somewhat stern harmony, the essence of her world view, and the vital meaning of her work.

One more circumstance points to the fact that George Eliot consciously decided to unite her life with Lewes’s and that all her actions were clear to her. There is no indication at all in any of her novels of a situation in the least resembling her own. At first this might seem strange and paradoxical, but it is undoubtedly true. She clearly felt no need to explain what appeared unexpected and strange. And if ordinary people feel no such need, no compulsion to explain to others, all the more natural for a writer whose trade or profession it is to get at the contradictory or mysterious in human nature.

Take the case of Georges Sand and Alfred de Musset. Their romance, which could be called a chain of contradictions, or sequence of surprises, even for themselves, arose as if in defiance of any logic. All his life de Musset had laughed at women writers, feared them more than fire, and, instead, glorified a romantic type of blonde who lived for the moment, recognizing no laws except those of her own fantasy. She, for her part, scorned nervous, flabby rakes; her ideal was a man of austere character whose titanic passions were subordinate to an iron will. Fate brought them together and, as if playing a joke, forced them to fall in love. Despite nobility, sensitivity, and refinement of feelings, their short-lived love is full of incongruities which would have stopped even the tough and corrupted; despite that and perhaps because their story was so absurd, honoring neither, they felt compelled to broadcast everything at once to the whole world. What led them to do this was certainly not just the desire to reestablish their reputation, to justify themselves before others. They should have understood that doing that would deceive no one. The best course would have been silence, that would at least have prevented gossip. The most important thing for them was to clarify for themselves their “unexpected” action and, above all, they were unable to write about anything else. Everything else in the world became insignificant, the only important thing was that fever which had suddenly seized them, unsettling their outlook.

George Eliot presents the reverse picture. Although nowhere do her novels provide a situation in the least reminiscent of her own, she is one of those writers whose inspiration is derived from observing other people, so that even if her heroines are not drawn from her own life, attentive study wil reveal traces of her thoughts and feelings. Her own childhood, for example, appears in details in The Mill on the Floss. Her own impetuosity, lack of self-confidence, continuous disappointment with reality are echoed in Dorothea in Middlemarch. Even those little piques to her vanity suffered in her youth because of her plain appearance are not hard to guess at in her novels. But the most important step of her life was left out completely. This has one explanation: she had not the slightest need to justify nor explain it, so simple and inevitable did it appear to her. This actually happens often in life: from the outside something appears terribly complex, requiring boundless courage and decisiveness, but for the one involved, it is so simple and natural that nothing needs to be said about it.

English society was, of course, indignant at the step George Eliot took, and from the beginning decided to ignore her completely. Although in time she succeeded in overcoming, to a certain degree, even English prejudices, and earned a very visible place in London society, there were people who never forgave her exceptional position, and her self-esteem sometimes suffered painful blows. Snubs from so-called London “high-life” were understandable, and I think she might have been reconciled to them; but she could hardly remain indifferent to such attitudes from the educated, and from representatives of free thought, in England. Outstanding scholars and writers meeting the Leweses on the Continent courted them and valued their society, but on returning to London broke off contact. Others visited them gladly but never dared to bring their wives and daughters. All this saddened George Eliot. But all these petty snubs to her self-esteem were richly compensated by the limitless devotion and widespread reverence which she succeeded in inspiring in the wide circle of their closest friends. Actually, few women have had the happiness of such a deep, exclusive, and continuous attachment as she.

The Leweses led a rather solitary life; their Sundays when, from two to five, they received their acquaintances, became more and more known and better attended as the literary fame of the hostess grew. The flower of English scholarly and literary society increasingly gathered, yet all the same these afternoons never lost their quality of intimacy and ease, and even the most modest guest felt comfortable. Anyone who had the opportunity to be present at one of these receptions must retain a pleasant memory.

The contrasting characters of George Eliot and Lewes were sharply evident when they were receiving guests. Lewes paced the floor the whole time, going from one guest to another, gesticulating, speaking with pleasure and interest to each one, his whole face radiating delight when he saw that conversation flowed vividly and the guests were enjoying themselves. George Eliot never abandoned her customary composure. In her usual place, lost in the large Voltaire armchair, protected from the light by a dark lampshade, she usually devoted herself to one guest at a time, as if oblivious to the fact that she was hostess of the salon. If the conversation interested her she was unaware of the coming of new guests, and suddenly would be surprised when her glance fell on some new face which had already greeted her half an hour before.

One of the very faithful guests of these Sunday receptions, indeed one of George Eliot’s devoted friends, was Herbert Spencer. I had the opportunity of meeting him there in the most unusual way. It was one of the Sundays after my first visit to George Eliot. Twelve people had already gathered in her living room, a mixed group as I remember: a young lord just returned from a long journey in a little-known country, several musicians and painters, two or three people without a definite specialty. Among these was only one other woman, the very young wife of one of the painters. Among “proper” ladies few dared to appear in George Eliot’s drawing room. Mr. Lewes introduced me to each newcomer and usually told me something of each that might be of interest.

I had already been there some time when an elderly man with grey whiskers and a typical English face entered. No one spoke his name, but George Eliot went to him immediately saying, “How glad I am that you have come today. I can present to you the living refutation of your theory—a woman mathematician. Permit me to present my friend. I must warn you,” she said to me, still not uttering his name, “that he denies the very possibility of the existence of a woman mathematician. He admits that from time to time a woman might appear who equals the average level of men in intellectual capacity, but he argues that an equal woman always directs her intellect and insight to the analysis of her friends’ lives and never would chain herself to pure abstraction. Try to dissuade him.”

The old gentleman sat next to me, looking at me with some curiosity. I had no idea who he was; nothing in his manner was imposing. The conversation turned to the eternally changeless theme of the rights and capacities of women, and whether it would be harmful or useful for mankind if a large number of women were to study science. He made some half-ironical observations, chiefly to stimulate my objections. At that time I was not yet twenty years old and had spent the few years which separated me from childhood in continuous battle with my family, defending my right to devote myself to my beloved studies. Small wonder that I argued the “woman’s question” with the enthusiastic fervor of a neophyte, abandoning all timidity to break a lance in a just cause. I had no idea with whom I was arguing, and George Eliot did all in her power to incite me in the discussion. Carried away, I quickly forgot the surroundings and did not even notice that the rest of the company gradually fell silent, listening with curiosity to our conversation, which became more and more lively.

Our duel went on for three-quarters of an hour until George Eliot decided to put an end to it. “You have defended our common concern with such courage,” she said to me, “and if my friend Herbert Spencer is not yet persuaded, then I am afraid that he must be judged incorrigible.” Only then did I realize who my antagonist had been. I was amazed at my daring.

At the end of my holidays I returned to Berlin, and during the next few years I did not meet George Eliot. Our relations were confined to an exchange of greetings through common acquaintances. But, in November 1880, I had the opportunity to be in London again. This time I was reluctant to renew my acquaintance with the famous writer; I put off visiting her from day to day until I learned that she knew of my presence through common acquaintances and would be offended if I did not call on her.

My hesitation at the thought of seeing George Eliot again stemmed from the many changes that had taken place in her life. Lewes was dead, and within a year of his passing, friends and readers of Eliot were astonished by the news of her second marriage to the thirty-year-old Mr. Cross (Eliot was then sixty). [Cross was forty, twenty years younger than George Eliot.—M. H. B.] This news made me very sad, since I could not reconcile myself to the necessity either of destroying my idol or even of moving her down a few rungs on the pedestal of greatness. I was afraid to see Eliot in her new situation, put off as I was by the thought of a sixty-year-old woman marrying a man half her age. It was indeed not easy to accept this and be reconciled to it.

I do not intend to try to explain this strange event, even less to try to justify such marriages, but I have to wonder. As soon as I saw them together I understood why friends of George Eliot had so quickly and fully accepted this union, finding nothing either dreadful or shocking in it. They both seemed so sincere, so simply and clearly happy, that there was no longer anything unnatural in the situation. True happiness is instinctively recognizable, with its absence of vanity and consciousness of others’ views. To imitate happiness, to play the role of a happy person is very difficult. True happiness, which kills any vanity and finds satisfaction in itself, unembarrassed by others’ mockery, is so rare and enviable that one should bow before it, no matter how strange, unaccustomed, or unusual the form in which it appears. George Eliot and her second husband were happy in just this way. Many went to them convinced that they would observe something strange, abnormal, ugly, funny, but after a few hours in the company of these two sweet people, in serious, warm conversation in an atmosphere of happiness and sincere affection, they went away with quite different feelings, even with secret envy that these kind, happy people had arranged their lives so well.

George Eliot had changed very little in these seven years since our first meeting. [A note in the Russian edition reads “not seven but eleven years.”—M. H. B.]

As before, she was lean, plain, with a sickly, kind, serious face, thoughtful, radiant eyes, and a remarkably pleasant voice. She appeared even younger than before, although she clearly had not the slightest wish to look younger, no anxiety or care about her appearance. She did not at all resemble that “old woman in love” so often depicted when people speak about marriages with such an age disparity.

As for Mr. Cross, he was at that time a very handsome young man of about thirty, a pure Anglo-Saxon type, tall, well-built, muscular, with light auburn, softly-curling hair, regular fine features, and a marvelous English complexion. Most striking were his hazel eyes, remarkably kind, open, and loving, like those of a large Newfoundland dog. His mouth, whose fine contours and nervous twitch of the lips rather suggested a feminine face, somehow contradicted his otherwise completely healthy, open appearance. Mr. Cross gave the impression of a very sincere person, extremely sensitive to beauty, but lacking the capacity to fulfill his ideal, or to express himself in words; incapable of giving tangible form to his ideals, but capable of recognizing the ability in others. He came from a good family, and as he possessed independent means, George Eliot eventually bequeathed her estate entirely to the children of Lewes’s first marriage. Cross’s mother and sisters not only did not oppose his marriage to George Eliot but welcomed her into the family with open arms. I have been told by people close to them that Mr. Cross had fallen in love with George Eliot when, as a boy, he met her for the very first time, and in the course of the following ten years was faithful to his love.

After her marriage, George Eliot moved to a different house. The room in which she now received me was wonderfully cosy, as though intended for quiet, intimate conversations. Half study, half library, with some soft, very comfortable armchairs and many books and prints on the table, on shelves hanging on every bit of free wall space—this room was incomparably more suitable to her than the formal, rather banal salon in which I had first met her. She told me that this was their favorite room in the house, and that she and her husband spent their whole day here reading, working, or talking. Indeed, they gave the impression of two good friends with common tastes, habits, and occupations, where the younger completely admires the older.

Our conversation touched on literature in general and then turned to George Eliot’s work. She told me that each time she begins to publish a new novel she is beseiged with masses of letters from people unknown to her; some give advice on how to develop the plot, on how to resolve various complex situations; others assure her that they recognize themselves and their acquaintances among her heroes and heroines. “For example,” she said, “when I published Middlemarch, three young women paid me the compliment of suggesting that I had divined their most secret thoughts and put them into the mouth of my Dorothea. I asked each of these interesting ladies to send me her photograph. Alas, how little they resembled, at least in appearance, the heroine as I had imagined her myself. There was also a happy father who assured me that I must have met his two daughters somewhere, otherwise I could not have described the egotistical Rosamund with such truth and precision.”

I pointed out to George Eliot that I was always struck by one characteristic feature in her novels: all her heroes and heroines die at an appropriate time, just at the very moment when the psychological intrigue is becoming complex, reaching the point of maximum tension. When the reader wants to know how life will unravel the consequences of this or that action, a sudden death unties the knot. Take The Mill on the Floss, for example. It is easy to understand how at the moment of rapture, of an unconscious craving for self-sacrifice, Maggie could renounce her own happiness and love in order to save the love and happiness of her cousin. It is easiest to sacrifice oneself when overpowered, stunned by great, unexpected happiness. At that moment suffering seems very remote, very illusory, so distant from reality; nevertheless, the idea of sacrifice is entirely possible. But will Maggie be faithful to this self-flagellation when the moment of ecstasy is followed by an inevitable period of reaction and weakening? Will she stand up to it over weeks, months, years of lonely existence, abandoned by all with nothing in sight to relieve this monotony? When the sacrifice actually takes tangible form, when she sees that she succeeded in rejecting her lover, and, when, in turn, she experiences the pangs of jealousy, will she not be possessed by a mad, uncontrollable desire for happiness; will she not repent of her sacrifice and wish at any price to turn back the past?

And, if she endures, and remains true to her self-sacrifice, what will become of her after such a terrible experience, beyond all human strength? I want to see Maggie after the battle, I want to know whether self-sacrifice actually ennobles, or if a person cannot overcome passion except at the cost of ruining everything alive and human in his soul. What comes out of the battle? A victor who is not a living human being but some kind of fanatic, just as unfeeling towards his own suffering as towards the happiness and suffering of others? This is what interests me in this novel, these are the questions I want answered. Instead, there is a flood, a great dark wave carrying both Maggie and her brother away, resolving all their doubts, putting an end to their battle, bringing them eternal reconciliation.

In the other novels this is repeated. The insupportable Mr. Casaubon dies in Middlemarch before poor, exalted Dorothea has lost her youth, freshness, and beauty serving that fruitless, unnecessary cause to which she had chained herself in impulsive self-sacrifice. What would it have been like, for example, if he had lived for twenty years longer and died when Dorothea had no strength left, no possibility of experiencing happiness herself or making another happy, with only enough vitality to lament her wasted life?

In Daniel Deronda, again the same story: Gwendolen’s husband drowns in a simple rowboat at the moment when their married life has become impossible and when the reader waits with interest and curiosity to see how George Eliot will extricate her poor heroine from the miserable situation her pettiness and vanity have lured her into. Lo and behold, death appears as a common conciliator and resolver of all knots entangled by human passions.

All this I said to George Eliot. She listened to me very seriously and then responded. “In what you say there is an element of truth; I will ask you only one question. Have you not noticed that in life this is the way it really happens? I personally cannot refrain from the conviction that death is more logical than is usually thought. When in life the situation becomes strained beyond measure, when there is no exit anywhere, when the most sacred obligations contradict one another, then death appears; and, suddenly, it opens new paths which no one had thought of before; it reconciles what had seemed irreconcilable. Many times it has happened that faith in death has given me the courage to live.”

I often recalled this conversation with George Eliot. It was destined to be one of the last, as two weeks later, after only a few hours of illness, totally unexpectedly, she died. Death truly justified her faith. It came for her as unexpectedly as for her heroines, and just at the moment when she had to resolve a difficult, perhaps impossible task. She had had enough courage to put herself in a position more difficult and unusual than that of any of her heroines. Uniting her fate to the life of a man half her age, she had embarked on a very risky experiment. They were both very happy, but would that happiness continue? Would her talent always blind him to the difference in age? Would the husband’s deference to his wife’s talent replace some other, more natural attachment for him? Such are the daring questions George Eliot had put to fate. Who can say now what answer life would have given. But death came in time, dealt mercifully and tenderly with the poor woman, took her suddenly, without forcing her to suffer at the moment of complete, unexpected, belated happiness.

I am often reminded of these words: “Faith in death gave me the courage to live.”