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Transcriber's Note:

This is Volume I of a three volume set:

  Volume I--Unknown
  Volume II--Famous
  Volume III--Sunset

A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III.

Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers
other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their
content is placed in block quotes.

Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text.

       *       *       *       *       *




GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE

VOL. I.--UNKNOWN


"OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY"


[Illustration: Portrait of George Eliot. Etched by M. Rajon.]




            GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE
  _as related in her Letters and Journals_

     ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND
                J. W. CROSS

             WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

         IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME I


                 NEW YORK
     HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE




GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS.

_LIBRARY EDITION._

     ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.

     ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.

     ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated.
     12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.


PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage
prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the
price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper
& Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_.




PREFACE.


With the materials in my hands I have endeavored to form an
_autobiography_ (if the term may be permitted) of George Eliot. The
life has been allowed to write itself in extracts from her letters and
journals. Free from the obtrusion of any mind but her own, this method
serves, I think, better than any other open to me, to show the
development of her intellect and character.

In dealing with the correspondence I have been influenced by the
desire to make known the woman, as well as the author, through the
presentation of her daily life.

On the intellectual side there remains little to be learned by those
who already know George Eliot's books. In the twenty volumes which she
wrote and published in her lifetime will be found her best and ripest
thoughts. The letters now published throw light on another side of her
nature--not less important, but hitherto unknown to the public--the
side of the affections.

The intimate life was the core of the root from which sprung the
fairest flowers of her inspiration. Fame came to her late in life,
and, when it presented itself, was so weighted with the sense of
responsibility that it was in truth a rose with many thorns, for
George Eliot had the temperament that shrinks from the position of a
public character. The belief in the wide, and I may add in the
beneficent, effect of her writing was no doubt the highest happiness,
the reward of the artist which she greatly cherished: but the joys of
the hearthside, the delight in the love of her friends, were the
supreme pleasures in her life.

By arranging all the letters and journals so as to form one connected
whole, keeping the order of their dates, and with the least possible
interruption of comment, I have endeavored to combine a narrative of
day-to-day life, with the play of light and shade which only letters,
written in various moods, can give, and without which no portrait can
be a good likeness. I do not know that the particular method in which
I have treated the letters has ever been adopted before. Each letter
has been pruned of everything that seemed to me irrelevant to my
purpose--of everything that I thought my wife would have wished to be
omitted. Every sentence that remains adds, in my judgment, something
(however small it may be) to the means of forming a conclusion about
her character. I ought perhaps to say a word of apology for what may
appear to be undue detail of travelling experiences; but I hope that
to many readers these will be interesting, as reflected through George
Eliot's mind. The remarks on works of art are only meant to be records
of impressions. She would have deprecated for herself the attitude of
an art critic.

Excepting a slight introductory sketch of the girlhood, up to the time
when letters became available, and a few words here and there to
elucidate the correspondence, I have confined myself to the work of
selection and arrangement.

I have refrained almost entirely from quoting remembered sayings by
George Eliot, because it is difficult to be certain of complete
accuracy, and everything depends upon accuracy. Recollections of
conversation are seldom to be implicitly trusted in the absence of
notes made at the time. The value of spoken words depends, too, so
much upon the _tone_, and on the circumstances which gave rise to
their utterance, that they often mislead as much as they enlighten,
when, in the process of repetition, they have taken color from another
mind. "All interpretations depend upon the interpreter