George Eliot in Society George Eliot in Society Travels Abroad and Sundays at the Priory Kathleen McCormack The Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCormack, Kathleen, 1944– George Eliot in society : travels abroad and Sundays at the Priory / Kathleen McCormack. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1211-0 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9313-3 (cd) 1. Eliot, George, 1819–1880. 2. Novelists, English—19th century—Biography. I. Title. PR4681.M34 2013 823'.8—dc23 [B] 2012036644 Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Granjon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Michael and Andrea Rose and Lily with love CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Big “S” 1 CHAPTER 2 Travels Abroad: Taking the Waters 37 CHAPTER 3 Months of Sundays 57 CHAPTER 4 Between Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda: Singers, Lovers, and Others 79 CHAPTER 5 The Salons, the Spas, and Daniel Deronda 111 CHAPTER 6 John Cross and the Last Spa 137 Appendix The Leweses’ Travels Abroad: A Chronology 155 Bibliography 157 Index 168 IllustRatioNS Chapter 1 1. George Eliot. Portrait by Frederic Burton 5 2. George Henry Lewes. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 11 3. Frederic Burton. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 13 4. Herbert Spencer. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 24 5. Charles Lee Lewes. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 25 6. Barbara Bodichon. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 26 7. The Priory, exterior. From photo by Cassell & Co., Lim. 27 8. The Priory drawing room. From J. W. Cross’s George Eliot’s Life in Letters 29 Chapter 2 9. Baden Baden. Author’s collection 39 Chapter 4 10. George Du Maurier. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery London 84 11. “The Two Thrones.” Punch, 7 June 1879 86 ix x Illustrations Chapter 5 12. Lady Castletown. Portrait by G. F. Watts 112 13. The Elisabethenbrunnen, Kurpark, Bad Homburg 114 Chapter 6 14. Bad Wildbad, the Bad Hotel on the Kurplatz 147 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS he society (less extensive than George Eliot’s, though only a touch less illustrious), both personal and professional, which I T have kept during the years I’ve been writing this book, has con- tributed much to its completion. On the professional side, I would like to thank my institution’s President Mark Rosenberg, always reliable for his dedication to the university and for a good-humored response to an e-mail. Provost Douglas Wartzok, Dean Kenneth Furton, and Associate Dean Nicol Rae have gratified me through taking generous and much appreci- ated notice of uninterrupted effort. James M. Sutton, Chair of the Depart- ment of English, provided singularly welcome fairness, as well as financial support for travels to collections and conferences. Among George Eliot specialists, Nancy Henry deserves hearty thanks for her constant accessibility and reliability as she drew on her formidable expertise concerning the life and works of George Eliot. Bill Baker’s inter- est and readiness to help and advise remains indispensable to myself as to every George Eliot scholar. To Dinah Birch and Kathryn Hughes, I offer thanks for timely help when urgently needed and also to George Griffith for sharing materials on several occasions. Finally, no Victorianist can do without thanking Patrick Leary, founder and list owner of the VICTORIA listserv, ever vigilant, always good-natured, and impeccably scholarly. I am also grateful to him for his permission to include excerpts from his person- ally transcribed diaries of Shirley Brooks in chapter 4. At Florida International University, I am perennially thankful for the integrity and interest in my work shown by Faculty Senate President Tom Breslin, as well as to FIU founding faculty member Darden Asbury Pyron, xi xii Acknowledgments who has for more than three decades offered encouragement, inspiration, and amusement in the face of daunting circumstances. With Meri-Jane Rochelson and Tometro Hopkins, at once good friends and invaluable colleagues, I have worked happily and productively side by side for more than twenty-five years. I could not do without them. I have also welcomed the congenial professionalism and intellectual companionship of Lynne Barrett, Ken Rogerson, Dan Guernsey, Marilyn Hoder-Salmon, Lauren Christos, and others too many to name. With office staff Marta Lee and Térèse Campbell, day-to-day matters in the Biscayne Bay English Depart- ment invariably receive instant attention and quick resolution, while they create a workplace atmosphere that remains ever tranquil, industrious, pleasant, and tolerant of eccentricities. Institutions and organizations which have helped my research either materially or in spirit include the collections (the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the British Library in Lon- don) where I conducted the majority of my work. Thanks as well to J. E. Flower, editor of the Journal of European Studies for permission to reprint parts of the article, “George Eliot: Poetry, Fiction, and European Spas,” which appeared in March 2010. I thank guest editor Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi for soliciting my work for placement among the illustrious contributors to the special 2011 number of George Eliot–George Henry Lewes Studies: The Cultural Place of George Eliot’s Poetry, as well as for the plenitude and originality of the essays it contains. In 2009 the FIU Faculty Senate Honors and Awards Committee created a high point in my life to spur me on: the University Faculty Research Award. More personally, I cannot omit Mary Free, who, in 2003, performed a miracle so potent that I can never thank her enough. FIU graduates Brenda Silva and Alicia Carazo, whose success in their fields of authorship and law have rewarded pedagogical efforts of years ago, are grown into friends in whose good will I have eternal confidence. The memories which I cherish of George Valcarce and Richard Fantina, though full of regret at their loss, sustain my belief in the continued existence on this earth, how- ever too briefly, of genuinely good people. Among family members, thanks to my mother Regina McCormack who continues to inspire us all with her courage and independence of thought and action. I cannot overrate the happiness I gain from my beloved son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Andrea Gilbert. For Rose and Lily Gilbert, I declare my ineradicable love and the hope that, as they grow into women, we can share our lives in ever more meaningful ways. ABBREViatioNS GEL George Eliot Letters GHLL The Letters of George Henry Lewes GHLJ Diaries and Journals of George Henry Lewes H&J The Journals of George Eliot JWC George Eliot’s Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction The Big “S” Social acceptance could hardly go further. —Gordon Haight I light up every Sunday to see my friends but go out smokily, like a lamp out of order, on Monday. —George Eliot Letters, 1 January 1874 n June of 1877, freshly arrived in Surrey for their first summer at a country home of their own, George Eliot and George Henry I Lewes delighted in their new “property” (GEL 6:386). Lewes, writing to John Walter Cross, describes it as “more ravishing than we fan- cied it—especially in this splendid weather—and the walks and drives are so much better than Society! (With a big S)” (GEL 6:386). In addition to his satisfaction with the Heights, Lewes’s letter affirms that he and George Eliot had by this time acquired a group of friends and acquaintances of such stature that they regarded themselves as moving in Society—with the capital letter. Having outlived and overlived the period of social ostracism that followed their non-marital union in 1854, they now mixed comfort- ably, not albeit at the most elite (royal) levels, but nevertheless in an exclu- sive urban and international circle. This progression from ostracism through celebrity occurred partly at the Leweses’ own well-attended gatherings, famously known as Sundays at the Priory. From the time that George Eliot and Lewes began cohabit- ing, through his death in 1878, their social life reflected the most extreme contradictions: from social exclusion directed at their legally non-marital status in their earlier years together, through the 1870s, when they enjoyed a program of frequent social events—concerts, opera, dinners, weekends, 1 2 Chapter 1 recitals, excursions, and salons—crowded with many of the most impor- tant and respected of Victorian contemporaries. George Eliot’s fiction reflects this gradual but extreme change, as the social level of her central characters rises from the simple rural folk of Adam Bede through the lords and ladies of Daniel Deronda. Ever since the mid-to-late 1860s, when George Eliot’s novels had firmly established her as one of England’s most successful novelists—and with only Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and Impressions of Theophrastus Such left to write—the Leweses had been dividing their years into three (not necessarily contiguous) seasons, which consisted of their winter res- idence in London at the Priory, their travels abroad, and their summer leases, usually in Surrey. Of the three locations, only the last offered respite from their active social lives. Abroad, they often encountered well-to-do friends and acquaintances from their London circle.