George Eliot | Page 4

and they must part, but day by day, In lines that thwart like portly
spiders ran, They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.
Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a
precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook
to acquire in the way of knowledge.
She was first sent, with her brother Isaac, to a free school in the village
of Griff. Among her mates was William Jacques, the original of Bob
Jakins in The Mill on the Floss. When seven years old she went to a
girls' school at Nuneaton. Her schoolmates describe her as being then a
"quiet, reserved girl, with strongly lined, almost masculine features,
and a profusion of light hair worn in curls round her head." The
abundance of her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once

cut it off, as Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight."
"One of her school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she
sat down to the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge
of music she had already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an
ease which excited wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very
rarely in the sports of her companions, and her diffidence and shrinking
sensibility prevented her from forming any close friendship among her
school-fellows. When she stood up in the class, her features, heavy in
repose, were lighted by eager excitement, which found further vent in
nervous movements of her hands. At this school Marian was well
taught in English, with drawing, music, and some little French."
Leaving this school at the age of twelve, she went to that of the Misses
Franklin in Coventry, a large town a few miles distant. To the careful
training received there she was much indebted, and in after years often
spoke of it with the heartiest appreciation. One of her friends, Edith
Simcox, has given an account of this school and of Marian's studies
there. "Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards the
railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-fashioned
five-windowed, Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-shaped
cornice over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it, and near
adjoining a quaint brick and timber building, with an oriel window
thrown out upon oak pillars. Between forty and fifty years ago,
Methodist ladies kept the school, and the name of 'little mamma,' given
by her school-fellows, is a proof that already something was to be seen
of the maternal air which characterized her in later years, and perhaps
more especially in intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were
in vogue among the girls, following the example of their elders; and
while taking, no doubt, a leading part in them, she used to suffer much
self-reproach about her coldness and inability to be carried away with
the same enthusiasm as others. At the same time, nothing was farther
from her nature than any sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce
with avidity upon any approach to argumentative theology within her
reach, carrying Paley's Evidences up to her bedroom, and devouring it
as she lay upon the floor alone."
During the three years Marian attended this school she held aloof from

the other pupils, was grave and womanly in her deportment. She
acquired Miss Rebecca Franklin's slow and precise method of speaking,
and to her diligent training owed her life-long habit of giving a finished
completeness to all her sentences. It seems that her imagination was
alive at this time, and being slowly cultivated. She was in the habit of
scribbling verses in her books and elsewhere.
A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this
boarding-school has given these reminiscences of Marian's life there:
"She learned everything with ease," says this person, "but was
passionately devoted to music, and became thoroughly accomplished as
a pianist. Her masters always brought the most difficult solos for her to
play in public, and everywhere said she might make a performer equal
to any then upon the concert stage. She was keenly susceptible to what
she thought her lack of personal beauty, frequently saying that she was
not pleased with a single feature of her face or figure. She was not
especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon was her intellectual
power that we all thought her capable of any effort; and so great was
the charm of her conversation, that there was continual strife among the
girls as to which of them should walk with her. The teachers had to
settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical succession."
Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued
her studies at home. The year following, her mother died;