What I Remember Part 17

Had our party consisted of men only, we should have been received in the convent, where there was a very handsome suite of rooms reserved for the purpose. But females could not enter the precincts of the cloister. The father in question very shortly made his appearance, a magnificent figure, whose long black beard flowing over his perfectly clean white robe made as picturesque a presentment of a friar as could be desired. He was extremely courteous, and seemed to desire nothing better than to talk _ad libitum_. But for my fellow travellers, rest after their broiling ride was the thing most urgently needed.

And this requirement brought us to the consideration of our accommodation for the night. The humble little _forestieria_ at Camaldoli was not built for any such purpose. It never, of course, entered into the heads of the builders that need could ever arise for receiving any save male guests. And for such, as I have said, a handsome suite of large rooms, both sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with huge fireplaces for the burning of colossal logs, is provided.

Ordinary brethren of the order would not be lodged there. The magnificence is reserved for a Cardinal (Gregory XVI. who had been a Camaldolese frequently came here), or a travelling Bishop and his suite, or a heretic English or American milord! But not for any daughter of Eve! And the makes.h.i.+ft room over a carpenter's shop, which is called the _forestieria_, has been devoted to the purpose only in consequence of the incomprehensible mania of female English heretics for visiting the disciples of St. Romuald. And there the food supplied from the convent can be brought to them. But for the night? I had warned my friends that they would have to occupy different quarters; and it now became necessary to introduce George Eliot to the place she was to pa.s.s the night in.

At the distance of about twenty minutes' walk above the convent, across a lovely but very steep extent of beautifully green turf, encircled by the surrounding forest, there is a cow-house, with an annexed lodging for the cowherd and his wife. And over the cow stable is--or was, for the monks have been driven away and all is altered now!--a bedchamber with three or four beds in it, which the toleration of the community has provided for the accommodation of the unaccountable female islanders. I have a.s.sisted in conveying parties of ladies up that steep gra.s.sy slope by the light of a full moon, when all the beds had to be somewhat more than fully occupied. But fortunately George Eliot had the whole chamber to herself--perhaps, however, not quite fortunately, for it was a very novel and not altogether rea.s.suring experience for her to be left absolutely alone for the night, to the protection of an almost entirely unintelligible cowherd and his wife! But there was no help for it! G.H. Lewes did not seem to be quite easy about it; but George Eliot did not appear to be troubled by the slightest alarm or misgiving. She seemed, indeed, to enjoy all the novelty and strangeness of the situation; and when she bade us good-night from the one little window of her chamber over the cows, as we turned to walk down the slope to our grand bedrooms at the convent, she said she should be sure to be ready when we came for her in the morning, as the cows would call her, if the cowherds failed to do so.

The following morning we were to ride up the mountain to the Sagro Eremo. Convent hours are early, and soon after the dawn we had convoyed our female companion down the hill to the little _forestieria_ for breakfast, where the _padre forestieraio_ gave us the best coffee we had had for many a day. George Eliot declared that she had had an exceptionally good night, and was delighted with the talk of the magnificently black-bearded father, who superintended our meal, while a lay brother waited on us.

The former was to start in a day or two on his triennial holiday, and he was much excited at the prospect of it. His _naf_ talk and quite childlike questions and speculations as to times and distances, and what could be done in a day, and the like, amused George Eliot much.

In reckoning up his available hours he deducted so much in each day for the due performance of his canonical duties. I remarked to him that he could read the prescribed service in the diligence, as I had often seen priests doing. "Secular priests no doubt!" he said, "but that would not suit one of _us!_"

Our ride up to the Sagro Eremo was a thing to be remembered! I had seen and done it all before; but I had not seen or done it in company with George Eliot. It was like doing it with a new pair of eyes, and freshly inspired mind! The way is long and steep, through magnificent forests, with every here and there a lovely enclosed lawn, and fugitive peeps over the distant country. On our way up we met a singular procession coming down.

It consisted of a low large cart drawn by two oxen, and attended by several lay brothers and peasants, in the centre of which was seated an enormously fat brother of the order, whose white-robed bust with immense flowing white beard, emerging from a quant.i.ty of red wraps and coverings, that concealed the lower part of his person, made an extraordinary appearance. He was being brought down from the Sagro Eremo to the superior comfort of the convent, because he was unwell.

At the Sagro Eremo--the sacred hermitage--is seen the operation of the Camaldolese rule in its original strictness and perfection. At the convent itself it is, or has become, much relaxed in many respects.

The Camaldolese, like other Carthusians, are properly _hermits_, that is to say, their life is not conventual, but eremitical. Each brother at the Sagro Eremo inhabits his own separately built cell, consisting of sleeping chamber, study, wood-room, and garden, all of microscopical dimensions. His food, exclusively vegetable, is pa.s.sed in to him by a little turntable made in the wall. There is a refectory, in which the members of the community eat in common on two or three festivals in the course of the year. On these occasions only is any speech or oral communication between the members permitted.

There is a library tolerably well furnished with historical as well as theological works. But it is evidently never used. Nor is there any sign that the little gardens are in any degree cultivated by the occupants of them. I remarked to George Eliot on the strangeness of this abstinence from both the two permitted occupations, which might seem to afford some alleviation of the awful solitude and monotony of the eremitical life. But she remarked that the facts as we saw them were just such as she should have expected to find!

The Sagro Eremo is inhabited by three cla.s.ses of inmates; firstly, by novices, who are not permitted to come down to the comparative luxury and comfort and milder climate of the convent till they have pa.s.sed three or four years at the Sagro Eremo. Secondly, by those who have been sent thither from the convent below as punishment for some misdoing. Thirdly, by those who remain there of their own free will, in the hope of meriting a higher and more distinguished reward for their austerities in a future life. One such was pointed out to us, who had never left the Eremo for more than fifty years, a tall, very gaunt, very meagre old man with white hair, hollow cheeks, and parchment skin, a nose like an eagle's beak, and deep-set burning eyes--as typical a figure, in its way, as the rosy mountain of a man whom we met travelling down in his ox cart.

Lewes was always anxious lest George Eliot should over-tire herself.

But she was insatiably interested both in the place and the denizens of it.

Then before supper at the _forestieria_ was ready, our friend the father _forestieraio_ insisted on showing us the growing crop of haricot beans, so celebrated for their excellence that some of them were annually sent to Pope Gregory the Sixteenth as long as he lived.

Then followed another night in the cow-house for George Eliot and for us in the convent, and the next morning we started with Antonio and his horses for La Vernia.

The ride thither from Camaldoli, though less difficult, is also less peculiar than that from Prato Vecchio to the latter monastery, at least, until La Vernia is nearly reached. The _penna_ (Cornish, Pen; c.u.mbrian, Penrith; Spanish, Pena) on which the monastery is built is one of the numerous isolated rocky points which have given their names to the Pennine Alps and Apennines. The Penna de la Vernia rises very steeply from the rolling ground below, and towers above the traveller with its pyramidal point in very suggestive fas.h.i.+on. The well-wooded sides of the conical hill are diversified by emergent rocks, and the plume of trees on the summit seems to suggest a Latin rather than a Celtic significance for the "Penna."

It is a long and tedious climb to the convent, but the picturesque beauty of the spot, the charm of the distant outlook, and above all the historical interest of the site, rewards the visitor's toil abundantly. There is a _forestieria_ here also, within the precincts of the convent, but not within the technical "cloister." It is simply a room in which visitors of either s.e.x may partake of such food as the poor Franciscans can furnish them, which is by no means such as the more well-to-do Carthusians of Camaldoli supply to their guests. Nor have the quarters set apart for the sleeping accommodation of male visitors within the cloister anything of the s.p.a.cious old-world grandeur of the strangers' suite of rooms at the latter monastery. The difficulty also of arranging for the night's lodging of a female is much greater at La Vernia. There is indeed a very fairly comfortable house, kept under the management of two sisters of the order of Saint Francis, expressly for the purpose of lodging lady pilgrims to the shrine. For in former days--scarcely now, I think--the wives of the Florentine aristocracy used to undertake a pilgrimage to La Vernia as a work of devotion. But this house is at the bottom of the long ascent--nearly an hour's severe climb from the convent--an arrangement which necessarily involves much additional fatigue to a lady visitor.

George Eliot writes to Miss Sara Hennell on the 19th of June, a letter inserted by Mr. Cross in his admirable biography of his wife--"I wish you could have shared the pleasures of our last expedition from Florence to the monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia. I think it was just the sort of thing you would have entered into with thorough zest." And she goes on to speak of La Vernia in a manner which seems to show that it was the latter establishment which most keenly interested and impressed her. She was in fact under the spell of the great and still potent personality of Saint Francis, which informs with his memory every detail of the buildings and rocks around you.

Each legend was full of interest for her. The alembic of her mind seemed to have the secret of distilling from traditions, which in their grossness the ordinary visitor turns from with a smile of contempt, the spiritual value they once possessed for ages of faith, or at least the poetry with which the simple belief of those ages has invested them. n.o.body could be more alive to every aspect of natural beauty than she showed herself during the whole of this memorable excursion. But at La Vernia the human interest over-rode the simply aesthetic one.

Her day was a most fatiguing one. And when Lewes and I wearily climbed the hill on foot, after escorting her to her sleeping quarters, he was not a little anxious lest on the morrow she should find herself unable for the ride which was to take us to the spot where a carriage was available for our return to Florence.

But it was not so. She slept well under the care of the Franciscan nuns, who managed to get her a cup of milkless coffee in the morning, and so save her from the necessity of again climbing the hill. A charming drive through the Casentino, or valley of the Upper Arno, showing us the aspect of a Tuscan valley very different from that of the Lower Arno, brought to an end an expedition which has always remained in my memory as one of the most delightful of my life.

I had much talk with George Eliot during the time--very short at Florence--when she was maturing her Italian novel, _Romola_. Of course, I knew that she was digesting the acquisitions of each day with a view to writing; but I had not the slightest idea of the period to which her inquiries were specially directed, or of the nature of the work intended. But when I read _Romola_, I was struck by the wonderful power of absorption manifested in every page of it. The rapidity with which she squeezed out the essence and significance of a most complex period of history, and a.s.similated the net results of its many-sided phases, was truly marvellous.

Nevertheless, in drawing the girl Romola, her subjectivity has overpowered her objectivity. Romola is not--could never have been--the product of the period and of the civilisation from which she is described as having issued. There is far too much of George Eliot in her. It was a period, it is true, in which female culture trod upon the heels of the male culture of the time perhaps more closely than it has ever done since. But let Vittoria Colonna be accepted, as probably she may be, as a fair exponent of the highest point to which that culture had reached, and an examination of the sonnets into which she has put her highest thoughts and aspirations together with a comparison of those with the mental calibre of Romola will, I think, support the view I have taken.

t.i.to, on the other hand, gives us with truly wonderful accuracy and vigour "the very form and pressure of the time." The pages which describe him read like a quintessential distillation of the Florentine story of the time and of the human results which it had availed to produce. The character of Savonarola, of course, remains, and must remain, a problem, despite all that has been done for the elucidation of it since _Romola_ was written. But her reading of it is most characteristically that which her own idiosyncrasy--so akin to it in its humanitarian aspects, so superior to it in its methods of considering man and his relations to the unseen--would lead one to expect.

In 1869-70, George Eliot and Mr. Lewes visited Italy for the fourth time. I had since the date of their former visit quitted my house in Florence, and established myself in a villa and small _podere_ at Ricorboli, a commune outside the Florentine Porta San Niccol. And there I had the great pleasure of receiving them under my roof, a.s.sisted in doing so by my present wife. Their visit was all too short a one--less than a week, I think.

But one knows a person with whom one has pa.s.sed even that short time under the same roof far better than can ever be the result of a very much longer acquaintances.h.i.+p during which one meets only in the ordinary intercourse of society. And the really intimate knowledge of her which I was thus enabled to obtain has left with me the abiding conviction that she was intellectually by far the most extraordinarily gifted person it has ever been my good fortune to meet. I do not insist much on the uniform and constant tender consideration for others, which was her habitual frame of mind, for I have known others of whom the same might have been said. It is true that it is easy for those in the enjoyment of that vigorous health, which renders mere living a pleasure, to be kindly; and that George Eliot was never betrayed by suffering, however protracted and severe, into the smallest manifestation of impatience or unkindly feeling. But neither is this trained excellence of charity matchless among women. What was truly, in my experience, matchless, was simply the power of her intelligence; the precision, the prompt.i.tude, the rapidity (though her manner was by no means rapid), the largeness of the field of knowledge, the compressed outcome of which she was at any moment ready to bring to bear on the topic in hand; the sureness and lucidity of her induction; the clearness of vision, to which muddle was as impossible and abhorrent as a vacuum is supposed to be to nature; and all this lighted up and gilded by an infinite sense of, and capacity for, humour,--this was what rendered her to me a marvel, and an object of inexhaustible study and admiration.

To me, though I never pa.s.sed half an hour in conversation with her without a renewed perception of the vastness of the distance which separated her intelligence from mine, she was a companion each minute of intercourse with whom was a delight. But I can easily understand that, despite her perfect readiness to place herself for the nonce on the intellectual level of those with whom she chanced to be brought in contact, her society may not have been agreeable to all. I remember a young lady--by no means a stupid or unintelligent one--telling me that being with George Eliot always gave her a pain in "her mental neck,"

just as an hour pa.s.sed in a picture gallery did to her physical neck.

She was fatigued by the constant att.i.tude of looking up. But had she not been an intelligent girl, she need not have constantly looked up.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that George Eliot's mental habits exacted such an att.i.tude from those she conversed with.

Another very prominent and notable characteristic of that most remarkable idiosyncrasy was the large and almost universal tolerance with which George Eliot regarded her fellow creatures. Often and often has her tone of mind reminded me of the French saying, "_Tout connaitre ce serait tout pardonner!_" I think that of all the human beings I have ever known or met George Eliot would have made the most admirable, the most perfect father confessor. I can conceive nothing more healing, more salutary to a stricken and darkened soul, than unrestricted confession to such a mind and such an intelligence as hers. Surely a Church with a whole priesthood of such confessors would produce a model world.

And with all this I am well persuaded that her mind was at that time in a condition of growth. Her outlook on the world could not have been said at that time to have been a happy one. And my subsequent acquaintance with her in after years led me to feel sure that this had become much modified. She once said to me at Florence that she wished she never had been born! I was deeply pained and shocked; but I am convinced that the utterance was the result, not of irritation and impatience caused by pain, but of the influence exercised on the tone of thought and power of thinking by bodily malady. I feel sure that she would not have given expression to such a sentiment when I and my wife were subsequently staying with her and Lewes at their lovely home in Surrey. She had by that time, I cannot but think, reached a brighter outlook and happier frame of mind.

We had as neighbours at Ricorboli, although on the opposite bank of the Arno, our old and very highly-valued friends, Mr. G.P. Marsh, the United States Minister, and his charming wife, to whom for the sake of both parties we were desirous of introducing our distinguished guests.

We thought it right to explain to Mrs. Marsh fully all that was not strictly normal in the relations.h.i.+p of George Eliot and G.H. Lewes before bringing them together, and were a.s.sured both by her and by her husband that they saw nothing in the circ.u.mstances which need deprive them of the pleasure of making the acquaintance of persons whom it would be so agreeable to them to know. The Marsh's were at that time giving rather large weekly receptions in the fine rooms of their villa, and our friends accompanied us to one of these. It was very easy to see that both ladies appreciated each other. There was a large gathering, mostly of Americans, and Lewes exerted himself to be agreeable and amusing--which he always was, when he wished to be, to a degree rarely surpa.s.sed.

He and I used to walk about the country together when "Polly" was indisposed for walking; and I found him an incomparable companion, whether a gay or a grave mood were uppermost. He was the best _raconteur_ I ever knew, full of anecdote, and with a delicious perception of humour. She also, as I have said--very needlessly to those who have read her books--had an exquisite feeling and appreciation of the humorous, abundantly sufficient if unsupported by other examples, to put Thackeray's dicta on the subject of woman's capacity for humour out of court. But George Eliot's sense of humour was different in quality rather than in degree from that which Lewes so abundantly possessed. And it was a curious and interesting study to observe the manifestation of the quality in both of them. It was not that the humour, which he felt and expressed, was less delicate in quality or less informed by deep human insight and the true _nihil-humanum-a-me-alienum-puto_ spirit than hers, but it was less wide and far-reaching in its purview of human feelings and pa.s.sions and interests; more often individual in its applicability, and less drawn from the depths of human nature as exhibited by types and cla.s.ses. And often they would cap each other with a mutual relations.h.i.+p similar to that between a rule of syntax and its example, sometimes the one coming first and sometimes the other.

I remember that during the happy days of this visit I was writing a novel, afterwards published under the t.i.tle of _A Siren_, and Lewes asked me to show him the ma.n.u.script, then nearly completed. Of course I was only too glad to have the advantage of his criticism. He was much struck by the story, but urged me to invert the order in which it was told. The main incident of the plot is a murder caused by jealousy, and I had begun by narrating the circ.u.mstances which led up to it in their natural sequence. He advised me to begin by bringing before the reader the murdered body of the victim, and then unfold the causes which had led to the crime. And I followed his advice.

The murder is represented as having been committed on a sleeping person by piercing the heart with a needle, and then artistically covering the almost imperceptible orifice of the wound with wax, in such sort as to render the discovery of the wound and the cause of death almost impossible even by professional eyes. And I may mention that the facts were related to me by a distinguished man of science at Florence, as having really occurred.

Perhaps, since I have been led to speak of this story of mine, I may be excused for recording an incident connected with it, which occurred some years subsequently at Rome, in the drawing-room of Mrs. Marsh.

The scene of the story is Ravenna. And Mrs. Marsh specially introduced me to a very charming young couple, the Count and Countess Pasolini of Ravenna, as the author of _A Siren_. They said they had been most anxious to know who could have written that book! They thought that no Englishman could have been resident at Ravenna without their having known him, or at least known _of_ him. And yet it was evident that a writer, who could photograph the life and society of Ravenna as it had been photographed in the book in question must have resided there and lived in the midst of it for some time. But I never was in Ravenna for a longer time than a week in my life.

It was many years after the visit of George Eliot and Mr. Lewes to my house at Ricorboli that I and my wife visited them at The Heights, Witley, in Surrey. I found that George Eliot had grown! She was evidently happier. There was the same specially quiet and one may say harmonious gentleness about her manner and her thought and her ways.

But her outlook on life seemed to be a brighter, a larger, and as I cannot doubt, a healthier one. She would no longer, I am well a.s.sured, have talked of regretting that she had been born! It would be to give an erroneous impression if I were to say that she seemed to be more in charity with all men, for a.s.suredly I never knew her otherwise. But, if the words may be used, as I think they may be understood, without irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator. The ways of G.o.d to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the futurity of the world was a more hopeful one. Of course optimism had with her to be long-sighted! But she seemed to have become reconciled to the certainty that he who stands on a lofty eminence must needs see long stretches of dusty road across the plains beneath him.

Nothing could be more enjoyable than the evenings pa.s.sed by the _partie carree_ consisting of herself and Lewes, and my wife and myself. I am afflicted by hardness of hearing, which shuts me out from many of the pleasures of society. And George Eliot had that excellency in woman, a low voice. Yet, partly no doubt by dint of an exertion which her kindness prompted, but in great measure from the perfection of her dainty articulation, I was able to hear her more perfectly than I generally hear anybody. One evening Mr. and Mrs. Du Maurier joined us. The Lewes's had a great regard for Mr. Du Maurier, and spoke to us in a most feeling way of the danger which had then recently threatened the eyesight of that admirable artist. We had music; and Mr. Du Maurier sang a drinking song, accompanying himself on the piano.

George Eliot had specially asked for this song, saying, I remember, "A good drinking song is the only form of intemperance I admire!"

I think also that Lewes seemed in higher spirits than when I had been with him at Florence. But this was no more than an additional testimony to the fact that _she_ was happier.

She also was, I take it, in better health, for we had some most delightful walks over the exceptionally beautiful country in the neighbourhood of their house, to a greater extent than she would, I think, have been capable of at Florence.

One day we made a most memorable excursion to visit Tennyson at Black Down. It was the first time I had ever seen him. He walked with us round his garden, and to a point finely overlooking the country below, charmingly varied by cultivated land, meadow and woodland. It was a magnificent day; but as I looked over the landscape I thought I understood why the woods, which one looks down on from a similar Italian height, are called _macchie_--stains, whereas our ordinarily more picturesque language knows no such term and no such image. In looking over a wide-spread Italian landscape one is struck by the accuracy and picturesque truth of the image; but it needs the sun and the light and the atmosphere of Italy to produce the contrast of light and shade which justifies the phrase.

Our friends were evidently _personae gratae_ at the court of the Laureate; and after our walk he gave us the exquisite treat of reading to us the just completed ma.n.u.script of _Rizpah_. And how he read it!

Everybody thinks that he has been impressed by that wonderful poem to the full extent of the effect that it is capable of producing. They would be astonished at the increase of weird terror which thrills the hearer of the poet's own recital of it.

He was very good-natured about it. It was explained to him by George Eliot that I should not be able to enjoy the reading unless I were close to him, so he placed me by his side. He detected me availing myself of that position to use my good eyes as well as my bad ears, and protested; but on my appeal _ad misrecordiam_, and a.s.surance that I should so enjoy the promised treat to infinitely greater effect, he allowed me to look over his shoulder as he read. After _Rizpah_ he read the _Northern Cobbler_ to us, also with wonderful effect. The difference between reading the printed lines and hearing them so read is truly that between looking on a black and white engraving and the coloured picture from which it has been taken. Another thing also struck me. The provincial dialect, which, when its peculiarities are indicated by letters, looks so uncouth as to be sometimes almost puzzling, seemed to produce no difficulty at all as he read it, though he in nowise mitigated it in the least. It seemed the absolutely natural and necessary presentation of the thoughts and emotions to be rendered. It was, in fact, a dramatic rendering of them of the highest order.

I remember with equal vividness hearing Lowell read some of his _Biglow Papers_ in the drawing-room of my valued friend Arthur Dexter, of Boston, when there were no others present save him and his mother and my wife and myself. And that also was a great treat; that also was the addition of colour to the black and white of the printed page. But the difference between reading and hearing was not so great as in the case of the Laureate.

When, full of the delight that had been afforded us, we were taking our leave of him, our host laid on us his strict injunctions to say no word to any one of what we had heard, adding with a smile that was half _naf_, half funning, and wholly comic, "The newspaper fellows, you know, would get hold of the story, and they would not do it as well!"

And then our visit to the Lewes's in their lovely home drew to an end, and we said our farewells, little thinking as we four stood in that porch, that we should never in this world look on their faces more.

The history of George Eliot's intellect is to a great extent legible in her books. But there are thousands of her readers in both hemispheres who would like to possess a more concrete image of her in their minds--an image which should give back the personal peculiarities of face, voice, and manner, that made up her outward form and semblance. I cannot pretend to the power of creating such an image; but I may record a few traits which will be set down at all events as truthfully as I can give them.

She was not, as the world in general is aware, a handsome, or even a personable woman. Her face was long; the eyes not large nor beautiful in colour--they were, I think, of a greyish blue--the hair, which she wore in old-fas.h.i.+oned braids coming low down on either side of her face, of a rather light brown. It was streaked with grey when last I saw her. Her figure was of middle height, large-boned and powerful.

Lewes often said that she inherited from her peasant ancestors a frame and const.i.tution originally very robust. Her head was finely formed, with a n.o.ble and well-balanced arch from brow to crown. The lips and mouth possessed a power of infinitely varied expression. George Lewes once said to me when I made some observation to the effect that she had a sweet face (I meant that the face expressed great sweetness), "You might say what a sweet hundred faces! I look at her sometimes in amazement. Her countenance is constantly changing." The said lips and mouth were distinctly sensuous in form and fulness.