Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1892-05-12

Special Correspondence OF Gazette and journal
BEDwoRrH, ENGLAND, April 23--It is moi
long ago that one of the noblest Of Ameri.
can women said to me:
II there is any earthly influence that
might repress the presumption, impudence
and immodcsty Of that rapidly-increasine
class OF my countrywomen who seem nos
sessed OF mad craze to unaex themselves
Tor the pitiable reward of temporary pub
lie recognition or notoriety, it would be q
genuine study of the genius of George
Eliot, coupled with a pilgrimage to the
localities upon which her everyday life as
maid and a woman left the grand i'm
press OF their personal worth.
This much of an object-lesson would be
lcarned--if such women are capable of
receiving grave and serious instructon-as
would also result from a like study of the
genius OF Harriet Martineau, the Cary
ssters, Rosa Bonheur, Dinah Mulock
Craik, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Charlotte Bronte, and all other women
who are to remain among the immortals /:
That where genius has been the original
gift Of woman. in the precise degree that
has been eventually achieved and accorded
mas that woman shrunk from offensive
exhibitions of her own personality and
importance. Another as impressive truth
would have logical revealment. Where
any woman charges upon the public with
demands for its attention and homage, in
: thesame degree of her insistence and clamor
Will ii, in time, be withheld and prove her
doom to merited oblivion"
However this may be, remembering
George Eliots work. which in It's hold
dpon the intellect and heart of all English
speaking people is instinctively grouped
with that of Scott and Shakespeare and
her grand, strong, plain face, which you
lnstinctively group with those of Dante,
PRONE, savonarola and List, you come to
the nlaacauf t,b aI,,.
1ull stature of person and genius with
something akin to the same indefinabe
FEELING of dreamful unreality touched
with reverence and almost hushed with
awe, as when you tread the quaint streets
of old Stratford, close to the shrine Of Inc
immortal bard of Avon.
Indeed the Shakespeare country is truly
George Eliot's land. Stratford, Warwick
bennington, Coventry and Nuneaton ali
lie in direct line from the southwest to
the northeast boundaries of Warwick
SHIRE. One OF the finest highways in Eng
land. elm-shaded for more than half its
length, connects them all. Eliots War
. wickshire was the Arden of Shakespeare.
The same Avon smiled back from its muir.
mnring waters upon them both. The same
billowy hills, gentle. slopes and sunny val
ieys gave both their inspiration and
imagery. Their hearts warmed to the same
peasnntry. In the subtle delineation of
these, Eliot was TO the early Victorian age,
at least in degree, what shakespeare Was
to the early Elizabethan. And Shakes
peare's birth place and grave at Stratford,
Eliots girlhood home.
1t lies on the olden highway between
coventry and Nuneaton. These towns are
but nine miles apart. Bedworth a sleepy
old pit village, is midway between; and
about half way from Bedworth to
Nuneaton, near Arbury Hall, the seat Of
the NaWHiputna Ia .rin t,,, Il
farm home and stealing, belonging to the
! great Arbury estates now as when GEORGE
Eliots MARY Ann Evans) baby eyes first
looked upon the great frs, cedars, Gins
and lines which shade this old and ample
stone structure. In this house of many
gables and tiny-paned bow windows
George Eliot lived from March. 1870, when
She was babe but four months old, until
March, 1871. when her family removed
from Grif to Folcshill, Coventry, period
of q years. These were the ii years in
which were nurtured and matured all
those bodily, heart and mental forces
which gave her the highest place in litera-
ture OF any woman that ever lived,
her father, Robert Evans, was tenant
OF NJ. FRANCIS Newdigate, at Kirk Hallem,
Derbyshire. On the death of old Sir
Roger Newdigate the Arbury estate in
Warwickshire came to Francis Newdigate
for life, and Robert Evans accompanied
him to Arbury as his tenant and agent.
BY first wife there had been two children.
Iheir mother died in 1909. Their father
married Christiana Pearson in 1913. Three
children were born of this union-Chris-
tiana, in 1914. Isaac, in 1916; and Mary
Ann George Elliott in 1919, at the South
Farm" Arbury, which had been given the
father temporarily. Cross, in his biog.
raphy Of George Eliot, transcribes from
an old diary OF the father where it had
been penned in his own handwriting:
NnVEAuRR
born at Arbury Farm (this was South Farm
Arbury) at O'Clock, this morning.
1t was st. Cecelia's day. It is also of
record that the child was baptized in the
ancient church of Chilvers Cotton, which
rIears its crumbling Norman tower over a
landscape that will strongly remind you
of the moors about Haworth, where the
sisters Bronte struggled nearly all their
lives in pathetic silence. This quaint old
pile midway between the Griff farm house
and Nuneaton, and the half dozen houses
Barton"
The three Evans children then. most
and longest associated with Griff were the
three born upon the Arbury estates
Christiana married surgeon named Clark
OF Meriden, Warwickshire, and died in
1888. George Eliot died in 1880. Isaac, as
learned after arrival here, who had re-
NAMED at Grih and succeeded the novel
lists father as its tenant and the Newoi-
gates agent suddenly died in his chair on
returning from service at Chilvers Cotton
Church, in October 1890.
His children, nephews and nieces of
George Eliot, are four in number IL is
an unpleasant but truthful statement that
while they command certain Difference
/ on account of relationship without
which their own small affairs would
never have reached the confines of their
little parish. they are unlovable and UNI
loved by the few of quality and the
thousands of lowly around them. They
are stern, cold, miserly money-grabbers.
all; extensively conscious of their radiated
Importance and snappishly churlish and
repellant to all who bring whole hearted
reverence to spot made luminous by the
presence of mighty soul.
One daughter, maiden lady OF severe
and awful aspect, was Isaac's housekeeper
for many years at Griff She now resides
at Bedworth, and the lowly Of the place
dread her austere visage and her cruel
platitudes, they freely confessed to me-
when her purse hand and gentle words
might relieve great suffering A brother
the Rev. Frederic Evans, is the present
rector of Bedworth. He performs his
canonical offices with mechanical accu-
racy and metallic soddenness; enjoys his
fat diving as though the Almighty had
arranged the parishes and population of
England with especial reference to the |
yicarious relations of the Evans family to |
HIS affairs: and has no heart or eyes for |
the poverty and suffering about him.
For Bedworth is pit village, with few |
insignificant and struggling manufactures. |
wages are at as low point as at any place |
in England, There is not half enough for |
half the year for half the folk to do. |
These clutch at any life sustaining labor |