The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-05-08
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these, Eliot was to the early Victorian age.
at least In degree, what Shakespeare was
TO the early EliZabethan. And Shaks-
peares birthplace and grave at Stratford
are not thirty miles distant from George
Eliot's 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 Nunea-
ton, near Arbury hall, the seat of the New
dlgates, Is Crif, a fine old English farm
home and stealing belonging to the great
Arbury estates now as when George Eliot's
(MaryAnn Evans baby eyes first looked
upon the great frs, cedars, elms 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, 1890, when she was a
babe but 4 months old. until March,
lS41, when her family removed from Griff
to Foleshill, Coventry, period Of twenty
one years. These were the twenty-one
years In which were nurtured and matured
all those bodily, heart and mental forces
which gave her the highest place in liters-
ture of any woman that ever lived
! Her father, Robert Evans, was tenant
of Francis Newdigate, at Kirk Haliem,
Derbyshire. On the death of old Sir Roger
Newdigate the Arbury estate in Warwick
shire came to Francis Newdigate fer life,
and Robert Evans accompanied him to
Arbury as his tenant and agent. By a first
wife there bad been two children Their
mother died in 1909. Their father married
ChrisUiana Pearson in 1918. Three children
were born of this union-Christiana in
1914 Isaac in 1916. and Mary Ann George
Eliot in 1919, at the "South Farm" Arbury,
which had been given the father tenn,
porarily. Cross. In his biography Of George
Eliot, TRANSCRIPTS from an old diary of the
father where 1t had been penned in his own
handwriting
NOV. %, 1919 Mary Ann Evans was
born at Arbury Farm this was South
Farm Arburyl at 5 o'clock this morning"
Ii was ST. Cecilia's day. 1t is also of
record that the child was baptized In the
ancient church Of Chlvers Cotton, which
rears its crumbllng 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 mid
way between the Grif farm house and
Nuneaton, and the half dozen houses under
its caves, is the Shepperton of Amos Bar
ton"
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 Meri-
den, Warwickshire, and died ia 1859.
George Eliot died in $780, Isaac, as |
learned after arrival here, who had re-
NAMED at Griff and succeeded the novel;
est's father as its tenant and the Newdigates'
agent. suddenly died in his chair on return
ing from service at Chilvers Cotton church,
in October, 1890.
His children. nephews and nieces of
George Eliot, are four in number. 1t is an
unpleasant but truthful statement that
while they command certain Difference on
account of a relationship without which
their own small affairs would never have
reached the confines of their little parish,
they are uulovable and unloved 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