George Eliot | Page 5

he was always tenderly considerate of 'the little wench,' as he called her. But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on at the same time." Her experiences at this period have been made use of in more than one of her characters. The dairy scenes in Adam Bede are so perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of butter and cheese making.
In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, one mile from Coventry. A pleasant house and surroundings made the new home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious. The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which she eagerly improved. Books were more accessible, though her own library was a good one.
She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as gave her the most thorough results of culture. She took up Latin and Greek with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar with the classic literatures. French, German and Italian were read in all the master-pieces of those languages. The Old Testament was also studied in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music. During several years of quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that accurate and wide-reaching knowledge which was so notable a feature of her life and work. It was a careful, systematic knowledge she acquired, such as entitled her to rank as an educated person in the fullest sense. Her painstaking thoroughness, and her energetic application, were as remarkable at this time as in later years. Her knowledge was mainly self-acquired, but it was in no sense superficial. It is difficult to see in what way it could have been improved, even if the universities had been open to her.
Her life and her studies at Coventry have been well described by one who knew her. We are told that "in this somewhat more populous neighborhood she soon became known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, as a most devoted daughter and the excellent manager of her father's household. There was perhaps little at first sight which betokened genius in that quiet gentle-mannered girl, with pale grave face, naturally pensive in expression: and ordinary acquaintances regarded her chiefly for the kindness and sympathy that were never wanting to any. But to those with whom, by some unspoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive gray eyes would light up with intense meaning and humor, and the low, sweet voice, with its peculiar mannerism of speaking--which by the way wore off in after years--would give utterance to thoughts so rich and singular that converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made speech with other people seem flat and common. Miss Evans was an exemplification of the fact that a great genius is not an exceptional, capricious product of nature, but a thing of slow, laborious growth, the fruit of industry and the general culture of the faculties. At Foleshill, with ample means and leisure, her real education began. She acquired French, German and Italian from Signor Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from the social world about her."
Marian Evans early showed an unusual interest in religious subjects. Her parents belonged to the Established Church, while other members of the family were zealous Methodists. Religion was a subject which occupied much of their attention, and several of them were engaged in one way and another in its inculcation. Marian was an attentive listener to the sermons preached in the parish church, and at the age of twelve was teaching in a Sunday school held in a cottage near her father's house. Up to the age of eighteen she was a most devoted believer in Christianity, and her zeal was so great that Evangelicalism came to represent her mode of thought and feeling. She was a somewhat rigid Calvinist and full of pious enthusiasm. After her removal to Coventry, where her reading was of a wider range and her circle of friends increased, doubts gradually