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As one reads of the wonderful effect of her soothing presence, as one sees the terrified youth becoming quiet and subdued, clinging wistfully to the spiritual strength of this frail woman, and catching at the end not only her spirit of calm submission, but even something of her exaltation, one is irresistibly reminded of another scene George Eliot's marvellous description in "Adam Bede" of Dinah's ministry to Hetty in the prison.
This disappointment helps to give rise to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable save as George Eliot's phrase throws light upon it. He thinks that he insults women by these perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility.
Oliphant says that George Eliot's life impelled her to make an involuntary confession "How have I been handicapped in life? Should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a mental green-house and taken care of? I have always had to think of other people and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them.
About 1830 Bulwer was in his early successes; about 1840 Dickens was the rage of his day; about 1850 Thackeray had taken his high grade; and it was about 1860 that George Eliot's power appeared.
She liked his blunt, clever face, the half-ugly likeness of his father's with its jutting eyebrows and jutting chin, its fine grave mouth and greenish-brown eyes; mouth and eyes that had once been so kind and were now so queer. Eliot's face made her keep on wondering what it was doing. She had to look at it. One day, when she was looking, their eyes met.
Anne was the one thing necessary to him beside his work, necessary as a living part of himself. She could only not come before his work because Eliot's work came before himself and his own happiness. When he went down every other week-end to Wyck-on-the-Hill he knew that it was to see Anne. His mother knew it too. "I wish Eliot would marry," she said. "Why?" said Anne.
Both during and after her schooldays George Eliot's history was that of a mind continually out-growing its conditions. She became an excellent housewife and a devoted daughter, but her nature was too large for so cramped a life. 'You may try, she writes in Daniel Deronda, 'but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
When Darcy, in finally confessing his faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice though not in theory," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the Brontës' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's.
So his characters seldom speak naturally, as George Eliot's do; they are more like Browning's characters in packing a whole paragraph into a single sentence or an exclamation. On account of his enigmatic style and his psychology, Meredith will never be popular; but by thoughtful men and women he will probably be ranked among our greatest writers of fiction.
But perhaps, when she was Eliot's wife... Eliot was generous ... he would not think twice about paying twelve hundred pounds to give happiness to the woman he loved to purchase peace of mind for her. And she would economise in her own personal expenses and so try to balance matters.
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