Hale White and George Eliot

Hale White and George Eliot IWilfred H. Stone High among the great Victorians who have profited from the investigations of twentiethcentury scholars is George Eliot. Thanks largely to the work of Professor Gordon S. Haight, in publishing John Chapman's Diaries for 1851 and 1860 and editing George Eliot's Letters, we have for the first time since the appearance of Cross's Life the materials for a major reassessment of her life and work. Cross, the lOVing husband and censor, bowdlerized her letters and tailored his comments to show us a deeply moralistic, intellectually over-freighted woman. In leaving this impression he was not, of course, entirely mistaken; but recent scholarship has allowed us a less partial view of her early years, when she was simply Marian Evans and had neither earned nor felt the need of a pseudonym. Although this new light does not quite reveal the intellectual sibyl of the Cross legend emerging as a nymph, it does permit us to see her as a flesh-and-blood woman whose charms were sufficient to attract the passionate devotion of men and to arouse the hostility and jealousy of other women. We are now reminded that she dwelt for many years in the suburbs of Bohemia, and that the fascination she exerted on such men as Dr. Brabant, John Chapman, and Herbert Spencer-as well as Cross and Lewes-was not solely intellectual. But there were some who protested against Cross's estimate at the time the book first appeared, who raised small voices on behalf of a George Eliot Cross never knew or chose not to remember. One of these critics was William Hale White ("Mark Rutherford"), a man uniquely equipped to submit a revised estimate. Before either he or Marian Evans had acquired pseudonyms, they were, between 1852 and 1853, associates in John Chapman's publishing house and boarders in his establishment at 142 Strand. During that brief span of time she touched his life in several memorable ways. In George Eliot's Letters or in Cross's 437 43~ WILFRED H. STONE Life we get no mention whatever of Hale White's name, and there is small doubt that he did not figure large in her busy life. But the written records of her shy worshipper are filled with memories and praise. He had initially been attracted by qualities quite alien to those advertised hy Cross: As I had the honour of living in the same house, 142, Strand, with George Eliot for about two years, between 1851 and 1854,2 I may perhaps be allowed to correct an impression which Mr. Cross's book may possibly produce on its readers. To put it very briefly, I think he has made her too "respectable." She was really one of the most sceptical, unusual creatures I ever knew, and it was this side of her character which to me was the most attractive. ... I can see her now, with her hair over her shoulders, the easy chair half sideways to the fire, her feet over the arms, and a proof in her hands, in that dark room at the back of No. 142, and I confess I hardly recognize her in the pages of Mr. Cross's--on many accounts-most interesting volumes.1 Though our concern here is with Hale White's record of this association , we cannot adequately appreciate it without some reminder of the nature of Chapman's establishment. 142 Strand was at once Chapman 's home, a boarding house, and a publishing office. The stream of guests and callers was constant, and throughout the 1850's Chapmanwith the aid of his over-worked wife and his housekeeper, Elisabeth Tilley-served as host to nearly all the liberal thinkers and writers of that generation. George Henry Lewes, James Anthony Froude, John Stuart Mill, James and Harriet Martineau, Theodore Parker, Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Emerson, and possibly Karl Marx were just a few of the more prominent people who crossed his threshold, shared his dinners , or appeared at his regular "Wednesday evenings." Many of his guests were writers for the Benthamite Westminster Review, which Chapman edited, or were authors of books published under Chapman's...