George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3)

When one remembers how long it was before Charles Lamb's Essays were known familiarly to any but the elect few, the very strongest assurance of merit or originality – supposing one so happy as to have that assurance – could hardly do more than give the hope of ultimate recognition.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Dec. 1857

Our affairs are very prosperous just now, making sunshine in a shady, or, rather, in a foggy place. It is a great happiness to me that Mr. Lewes gets more and more of the recognition he deserves; pleasant letters and speeches have been very numerous lately, especially about his "Sea-side Studies," which have appeared in Blackwood, and are soon to appear – very much improved and enlarged – in a separate volume. Dear Carlyle writes, à propos of his "Friedrich: " "I have had such a fourteen months as was never appointed me before in this world – sorrow, darkness, and disgust my daily companions; and no outlook visible, except getting a detestable business turned off, or else being driven mad by it." That is his exaggerated way of speaking; and writing is always painful to him. Do you know he is sixty-two! I fear this will be his last book. Tell Mr. Bray I am reading a book of Riehl's, "The Family," forming the sequel to his other volumes. He will be pleased to hear that so good a writer agrees with him on several points about the occupations of women. The book is a good one; and if I were in the way of writing articles, I should write one on it. There is so much to read, and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger. Time is like the Sibylline leaves, getting more precious the less there remains of it. That, I believe, is the correct allusion for a fine writer to make on the occasion.

Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1857

I give up the motto, because it struck you as having been used before; and though I copied it into my note-book when I was re-reading "Amelia" a few months ago, it is one of those obvious quotations which never appear fresh, though they may actually be made for the first time.

I shall be curious to know the result of the subscription.

There are a few persons to whom I should like a copy of the volume to be sent, and I enclose a list of them.

Journal, 1857

Dec. 17.– Read my new story to G. this evening as far as the end of the third chapter. He praised it highly. I have finished "Die Familie," by Riehl – a delightful book. I am in the "Choephoræ" now. In the evenings we are reading "History of the Thirty Years' Peace" and Béranger. Thoroughly disappointed in Béranger.

Dec. 19 (Saturday). – Alone this evening with very thankful, solemn thoughts – feeling the great and unhoped-for blessings that have been given me in life. This last year, especially, has been marked by inward progress and outward advantages. In the spring George's "History of Philosophy" appeared in the new edition; his "Sea-side Studies" have been written with much enjoyment, and met with much admiration, and now they are on the verge of being published with bright prospects. Blackwood has also accepted his "Physiology of Common Life;" the "Goethe" has passed into its third German edition; and, best of all, G.'s head is well. I have written the "Scenes of Clerical Life" – my first book; and though we are uncertain still whether it will be a success as a separate publication, I have had much sympathy from my readers in Blackwood, and feel a deep satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come.

Letter to the Brays, 23d Dec. 1857

Buckle's is a book full of suggestive material, though there are some strangely unphilosophic opinions mixed with its hardy philosophy. For example, he holds that there is no such thing as race or hereditary transmission of qualities! (I should tell you, at the same time, that he is a necessitarian and a physiological-psychologist.) It is only by such negations as these that he can find his way to the position which he maintains at great length – that the progress of mankind is dependent entirely on the progress of knowledge, and that there has been no intrinsically moral advance. However, he presents that side of the subject which has, perhaps, been least adequately dwelt on.

Journal, 1857

Dec. 25 (Christmas Day). – George and I spent this lovely day together – lovely as a clear spring day. We could see Hampstead from the Park so distinctly that it seemed to have suddenly come nearer to us. We ate our turkey together in a happy solitude à deux.

Dec. 31 (the last night of 1857). – The dear old year is gone with all its Weben and Streben. Yet not gone either; for what I have suffered and enjoyed in it remains to me an everlasting possession while my soul's life remains. This time last year I was alone, as I am now, and dear George was at Vernon Hill. I was writing the introduction to "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." What a world of thoughts and feelings since then! My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened too; the blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. I have had some severe suffering this year from anxiety about my sister, and what will probably be a final separation from her – there has been no other real trouble. Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long, sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age. Our prospects are very bright too. I am writing my new novel. G. is full of his "Physiology of Common Life." He has just finished editing Johnston, for which he is to have 100 guineas, and we have both encouragement to think that our books just coming out, "Sea-side Studies" and "Scenes of Clerical Life," will be well received. So good-bye, dear 1857! May I be able to look back on 1858 with an equal consciousness of advancement in work and in heart.

SUMMARY

MARCH, 1855, TO DECEMBER, 1857

Return to England – Dover – Bayswater – East Sheen – Books read – Articles written – Letters to Miss Hennell – "Life of Goethe" – Froude's article on Spinoza – Article-writing – "Cumming" – 8 Park Shot, Richmond – Letter to Charles Bray – Effect of article on Cumming – Letter to Miss Hennell – Reading on Physiology – Article on Heine – Review for Leader, etc. – Books read – Visit to Mrs. Clarke at Attleboro – Sale of "Life of Goethe" – "Shaving of Shagpat" – Spinoza's "Ethics," translation finished – The Saturday Review– Ruskin – Alison – Harriet Martineau – Women's earnings – Articles and reviews – Wishes not to be known as translator of the "Ethics" – Article on Young begun – Visit to Ilfracombe – Description – Zoophyte hunting – Finished articles on Young and Riehl – Naturalistic experience – Delightful walks – Rev. Mr. Tugwell – Devonshire lanes and springs – Tendency to scientific accuracy – Sunsets – Cocklewomen at Swansea – Letters to Miss Hennell and Mrs. Peter Taylor – Tenby – Zoology – Thoreau's "Walden" – Feeling strong in mind and body – Barbara Leigh Smith comes to Tenby – George Eliot anxious to begin her fiction-writing – Mr. E. F. S. Pigott – Return to Richmond – Mr. Lewes takes his boys to Hofwyl – George Eliot writes article on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" – "How I came to write fiction" – Correspondence between Mr. Lewes and Mr. John Blackwood about MS. of "Amos Barton" – "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" begun – Books read – Letter from John Blackwood to the author of "Amos Barton," sending copy of the January, 1857, number of the Magazine and fifty guineas – Reply – Blackwood's admiration – Albert Smith's appreciation – Letters to Blackwood – Name of George Eliot assumed – Dutch school in art – Artistic bent – Letter to Miss Hennell – Intolerance – Letter to John Blackwood on Mr. Swayne comparing writing to Goldsmith's – Letter to Miss Hennell on essay "Christianity and Infidelity" – Letter to Blackwood – Caterina and the dagger scene – Trip to Penzance and the Scilly Isles – Description of St. Mary's – Mr. Moyle, the surgeon – Social Life – Letter to Mrs. Bray, anxiety about sister – Letter to Miss Sara Hennell – "Life of Charlotte Brontë" – Letter to Isaac P. Evans – Mrs. Clarke's illness – Letter to Blackwood – Conclusions of stories – Jersey – Description of Gorey – Delightful walks – Reading Draper's "Physiology" – Miss Catlow and Dr. Thomson on wild-flowers – "Life of George Stephenson" – Letter to Miss Hennell – Life in Jersey – Liggins appears on the scene – "Janet's Repentance" – Series attributed to Bulwer – Thackeray thinks highly of it – Letter from Herbert Spencer about "Mr. Gilfil" – Letter from Archer Gurney – Lord Stanley thinks highly of the "Scenes" – Letter to Blackwood, with First Part of "Janet's Repentance" – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Richmond – Expression of face – Letter to Mrs. John Cash – Happiness in her life and hope in her work – Chilled by Blackwood's want of enthusiasm about "Janet" – Letter to John Blackwood on "Janet" – Letter to Miss Sarah Hennell – "Aurora Leigh" – Return to Richmond – Letter to John Blackwood on "Janet" – Letters to Miss Hennell – Rosa Bonheur – Thought not action – Mr. and Mrs. Call – Letter to John Blackwood – Haunted by new story – Letter to Charles Bray – "The Woman Question" – Close of "Clerical Scenes" series – "Adam Bede" begun – Receives £120 for first edition of "Scenes of Clerical Life" – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Unbelief in people's love – Letter to John Blackwood – Sheets of "Clerical Scenes" – Letter to Miss Hennell – Newspaper criticism – Letter to Charles Bray – "The Philosophy of Necessity" – Sympathy with individuals – Objection to Theism – Phrenology – Happiness the best result that can ever come out of science – Letters to Miss Hennell – Reading Riehl's "The Family" – Hunger for Knowledge – Buckle's "History of Civilization" – Autumn days at Richmond – Reading the "Agamemnon" – Harriett Martineau's "Sketch of the British Empire in India" – Macaulay's essays on Clive and Hastings – Major Blackwood calls and suspects identity of George Eliot – Reading the "Choephoræ" – "History of the Thirty Years' Peace," and Béranger – Thankfulness in reviewing experience of 1857.

 

APPENDIX

As this volume is going through the press, I have to thank Mrs. John Cash of Coventry for the following valuable additional information in regard to the important subject of Miss Evans's change of religious belief in 1841-42, and for her further general recollections of the Coventry period of George Eliot's life:

I was sixteen years of age in 1841; and, as I have already stated, my first remembrance of Miss Evans is of her call on my father and mother, with their friend and neighbor Mrs. Pears, when in conversation she gave expression to her great appreciation of the writings of Isaac Taylor. The controversy raised by the "Tracts for the Times," which gave occasion for the publication of Mr. Taylor's "Ancient Christianity," being now remote, I give the following extract from a footnote in Trench's "Notes on the Parables," to show the influence such a work as Mr. Taylor's would be likely to exercise on the mind of one who esteemed its author; and also the feeling it excited against an eminently religious man, by revelations which he desired and believed would serve the cause of New Testament Christianity. The note is on the "Tares." The quotation, containing the reference, is from Menken:

"Many so-called Church historians (authors of 'Ancient Christianity' and the like), ignorant of the purpose and of the hidden glory of the Church, have their pleasure in the Tares, and imagine themselves wonderfully wise and useful when out of Church history (which ought to be the history of the Light and the Truth) they have made a shameful history of error and wickedness."

It was upon her first or second interview with my mother that Miss Evans told her how shocked she had been by the apparent union of religious feeling with a low sense of morality among the people in the district she visited, who were mostly Methodists. She gave as an instance the case of a woman who, when a falsehood was clearly brought home to her by her visitors, said, "She did not feel that she had grieved the Spirit much." Now those readers of the letters to Miss Lewis who are acquainted with modern Evangelicalism, even in its "after-glow," especially as it was presented to the world by Church of England teaching and practice, will recognize its characteristics in the moral scrupulousness, the sense of obligation on the part of Christians to avoid the very appearance of evil, the practical piety, which those letters reveal.

Mrs. Evans (Miss Lewis tells me) was a very serious, earnest-minded woman, anxiously concerned for the moral and religious training of her children: glad to place them under the care of such persons as the Misses Franklin, to whose school a mother of a different order objected, on the ground that "it was where that saint Mary Ann Evans had been."

It is natural then that, early awed by and attracted towards beliefs cherished by the best persons she had known, and advocated in the best books she had read, the mind of Miss Evans should have been stirred by exhibitions of a theoretic severance of religion from morality, whether presented among the disciples of "Ancient Christianity" or by the subjects of its modern revivals: it is probable that she may thereby have been led, as others have been, to a reconsideration of the creeds of Christendom, and to further inquiry concerning their origin.

On the same grounds it is likely that the presentation of social virtues, apart from evangelical motives, would impress her; and I have authority for stating that to the inquiry of a friend in after-years, as to what influence she attributed the first unsettlement of her orthodox views, she quickly made answer: "Oh, Walter Scott's." Now I well remember her speaking to me of Robert Hall's confession that he had been made unhappy for a week by the reading of Miss Edgeworth's Tales, in which useful, good, and pleasant lives are lived with no reference to religious hopes and fears; and her drawing my attention to the real greatness of mind and sincerity of faith which this candid confession betokened. Such remarks, I think, throw light upon the way in which her own evangelical belief had been affected by works in which its dogmas are not enforced as necessary springs of virtuous action.

I give these scattered reminiscences, in evidence of the half-unconscious preparation (of which Mr. Cross speaks) for a change which was, in my judgment, more gradual in its development, as well as deeper in its character, than might be inferred from the record of its abrupt following upon Miss Evans's introduction to Mr. Hennell's "Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity."

The evening's discussion with my father, to which I have referred in my previous communication in the "Life," is now vividly present to my mind. There was not only on her part a vehemence of tone, startling in one so quiet, but a crudeness in her objections, an absence of proposed solution of difficulties, which partly distressed and partly pleased me (siding as I did mentally with my father), and which was in strange contrast to the satisfied calm which marked her subsequent treatment of religious differences.

Upon my father's using an argument (common enough in those days) drawn from the present condition of the Jews as a fulfilment of prophecy, and saying, "If I were tempted to doubt the truth of the Bible, I should only have to look at a Jew to confirm my faith in it." "Don't talk to me of the Jews!" Miss Evans retorted, in an irritated tone; "to think that they were deluded into expectations of a temporal deliverer, and then punished because they couldn't understand that it was a spiritual deliverer that was intended!" To something that followed from her, intimating the claim of creatures upon their Creator, my father objected, "But we have no claim upon God." "No claim upon God!" she reiterated indignantly; "we have the strongest possible claim upon him."

I regret that I can recall nothing more of a conversation carried on for more than two hours; but I vividly remember how deeply Miss Evans was moved, and how, as she stood against the mantelpiece during the last part of the time, her delicate fingers, in which she held a small piece of muslin on which she was at work, trembled with her agitation.

The impression allowed to remain upon the minds of her friends, for some time after she had made declaration of her heresies, was of her being in a troubled, unsettled state. So great were her simplicity and candor in acknowledging this, and so apparent was her earnest desire for truth, that no hesitation was felt in asking her to receive visits from persons of different persuasions, who were judged competent to bring forward the best arguments in favor of orthodox doctrines. One of these was a Baptist minister, introduced to her by Miss Franklin; he was said to be well read in divinity, and I remember him as an original and interesting preacher. After an interview with Miss Evans, meeting my father, he said: "That young lady must have had the devil at her elbow to suggest her doubts, for there was not a book that I recommended to her in support of Christian evidences that she had not read."

Mr. Watts, one of the professors at Spring Hill College (Independent), Birmingham, a colleague of Mr. Henry Rogers, author of the "Eclipse of Faith," and who had himself studied at the Hallé University, and enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Tholück, was requested (I think by my mother) to call on Miss Evans. His acquaintance with German Rationalism (rare in England in those days) qualified him to enter into, and it was hoped to meet, difficulties raised by a critical study of the New Testament. After his first or second interview, my brother remembers his observing with emphasis, "She has gone into the question;" and I can recall a reference made by him at a later date in my hearing to Miss Evans's discontent with her own solutions – or rather with her own standpoint at that time. This discontent, he said, "was so far satisfactory." Doubtless it gave him hope of the reconversion of one who had, as he told my mother, awakened deep interest in his own mind, as much by the earnestness which characterized her inquiries as by her exceptional attainments.

From letters that passed between my brother and myself during his residence in Germany, I give the following extracts referring to this period.

The first is from one of mine, dated September 2, 1842:

"In my father's absence we (my mother and I) called on Miss Evans. She now takes up a different position. Her views are not altogether altered, but she says it would be extreme arrogance in so young a person to suppose she had obtained yet any just ideas of truth. She had been reading Dr. Tholück's reply to Strauss's 'Life of Jesus,' but said Mr. Watts had advised her not to read his 'Guido and Julius.'"

In answer to this my brother says, in a letter dated Hallé, September 26, 1842, "You have given, doubtless, a very accurate account of Miss Evans's mode of stating her present sentiments. Mr. Watts's reason for advising that Dr. Tholück's 'Guido and Julius' be not read is, perhaps, that the reasoning is not satisfactory."

In another letter, addressed to my brother at Hallé, and dated October 28, 1842, I tell him: "Last week mother and I spent an evening with Miss Evans. She seemed more settled in her views than ever, and rests her objections to Christianity on this ground, that Calvinism is Christianity, and, this granted, that it is a religion based on pure selfishness. She occupied, however, a great part of the time in pleading for works of imagination, maintaining that they perform an office for the mind which nothing else can. On the mention of Shakespeare, she praised him with her characteristic ardor, was shocked at the idea that mother should disapprove the perusal of his writings, and quite distressed lest, through her influence, I should be prevented from reading them. She could be content were she allowed no other book than Shakespeare; and in educating a child, this would be the first book she would place in its hands.

"She seems to have read a great deal of Italian literature, and speaks with rapture of Metastasio's novels. She has lent me 'Le mie Prigioni' di Silvio Pellico, in his own tongue, as a book to begin with. She says there is a prevailing but very mistaken idea that Italian is an easy language, though she is exceedingly delighted with it. If at any time I wish to begin German, she would very much like to give me some instruction."

In addition to the above relating to Shakespeare, I recall the protest that my mother's objection to his plays (my mother had been an ardent lover of "the play"), on the ground that there were things in them that offended her, was as reasonable as the objection to walk in a beautiful garden, "because toads and weeds are to be found in it."

In a letter dated March 6, 1843, I write to my brother: "Your request that you may be informed as to the precise nature of Miss Evans's philosophical views I shall find it very difficult to comply with, inasmuch as on our last interview she did not express herself so fully on this subject as formerly; indeed, I believe she is not now so desirous of controversy. She however appeared, to me at least, to have rather changed her ground on some points. For instance, she said she considered Jesus Christ as the embodiment of perfect love, and seemed to be leaning slightly to the doctrines of Carlyle and Emerson when she remarked that she considered the Bible a revelation in a certain sense, as she considered herself a revelation of the mind of Deity, etc. She was very anxious to know if you had heard Schelling."

In a letter addressed to my brother at Spring Hill College, and dated October 28, 1844, I find this reference to Dr. Harris, who had been preaching a charity sermon in a chapel at Foleshill:

"Miss Evans has just been reproaching me for not informing her of Dr. Harris's preaching, which she would have given anything to hear, as she says his 'Great Teacher' left more delightful impressions on her mind than anything she ever read, and is, she thinks, the best book that could be written by a man holding his principles."

In the same letter I mention a second lesson in German given me by Miss Evans. In one written some time before, I tell my brother of her kind proposal, but add that my parents object "on account of her dangerous sentiments." She had, however, since called at our house one morning to renew it: and I well remember how eagerly I watched my mother, looking so affectionately at Miss Evans, and saying quietly, "You know, with your superior intellect, I cannot help fearing you might influence Mary, though you might not intend to do so. But," she went on to say, "her father does not agree with me: he does not see any danger, and thinks we ought not to refuse, as it is so very kind of you to be willing to take the trouble – and we know it would be a great advantage to her to learn German; for she will probably have to earn her living by teaching." Seeing at a glance how matters stood, Miss Evans turned round quickly to me, and said, "Come on Saturday at three o'clock, and bring what books you have."

So I went, and began "Don Carlos," continuing to go, with some intervals occasioned by absence, pretty regularly on Saturday afternoons, for nearly two years; but it was not until the end of the second year, when I received Miss Evans's suggestion that the lessons were no longer necessary, and should be discontinued, that I fully realized what this companionship had been to me. The loss was like the loss of sunshine.

No promise had been given that my religious belief should be undisturbed, nor was any needed. Interest was turned aside from Calvinism and Arminianism, which at an early age had engaged my attention, towards manifestations of nobility of character, and sympathy with human struggles and sufferings under varied conditions. The character of the "Marquis von Posa" (in "Don Carlos") roused an enthusiasm for heroism and virtue, which it was delightful to express to one who so fully shared it. Placing together one day the works of Schiller, which were in two or three volumes, Miss Evans said, "Oh, if I had given these to the world, how happy I should be!"

It must have been to confirm myself in my traditional faith by confession of it, that I once took upon myself to say to her how sure I was that there could be no true morality without evangelical belief. "Oh, it is so, is it?" she said, with the kindest smile, and nothing further passed. From time to time, however, her reverence and affection for the character of Christ and the Apostle Paul, and her sympathy with genuine religious feeling, were very clear to me. Expressing one day her horror of a crowd, she said, "I never would press through one, unless it were to see a second Jesus." The words startled me – the conception of Jesus Christ in my mind being so little associated with a human form; but they impressed me with a certain reality of feeling which I contrasted, as I did Miss Evans's abiding interest in great principles, with the somewhat factitious and occasional as well as fitful affection and concern manifest in many whom I looked up to as "converted" people.

Once only do I remember such contrast being made by herself. She attended the service at the opening of a new church at Foleshill, with her father, and remarked to me the next day that, looking at the gayly dressed people, she could not help thinking how much easier life would be to her, and how much better she should stand in the estimation of her neighbors, if only she could take things as they did, be satisfied with outside pleasures, and conform to the popular beliefs without any reflection or examination. Once, too, after being in the company of educated persons "professing and calling themselves Christians," she commented to me on the tone of conversation, often frivolous, sometimes ill-natured, that seemed yet to excite in no one any sense of impropriety.

It must have been in those early days that she spoke to me of a visit from one of her uncles in Derbyshire, a Wesleyan, and how much she had enjoyed talking with him, finding she could enter into his feelings so much better than she had done in past times, when her views seemed more in accordance with his own, but were really less so.

Among other books, I remember the "Life of Dr. Arnold" interested her deeply. Speaking of it to me one morning, she referred to a conversation she had had with a friend the evening before, and said they had agreed that it was a great good for such men to remain within the pale of orthodoxy, that so they might draw from the old doctrines the best that was to be got from them.

Of criticisms on German books read with Miss Evans, I recall one or two. In the "Robbers," she criticised the attempt to enhance the horror of the situation of the abandoned father, by details of physical wretchedness, as a mistake in Art. "Wallenstein" she ranked higher from an intellectual point of view than any other work of Schiller's. The talk of the soldiers in the "Lager" she pointed out to me as "just what it would be." On my faint response, "I suppose it is!" she returned, "No, you do not suppose– we know these things;" and then gave me a specimen of what might be a navvy's talk – "The sort of thing such people say, is, 'I'll break off your arm, and bloody your face with the stump.'"

Mrs. Bray tells the following incident, as showing her quick perception of excellence from a new and unknown source. "We were sitting," Mrs. Bray says, "one summer afternoon on the lawn at Rosehill, July, 1850, when Marian came running to us from the house with the Leader newspaper in her hand. 'Here is a new poet come into the world!' she exclaimed, and sitting down with us she read from the Leader the poem called 'Hymn,' signed M., and ending with the fine stanza:

 
"'When I have passed a nobler life in sorrow;
Have seen rude masses grow to fulgent spheres;
Seen how To-day is father of To-morrow,
And how the Ages justify the Years,
I praise Thee, God.'
 

"The 'Hymn' is now reprinted in Mr. W. M. W. Call's volume of collected poems, called 'Golden Histories.'"

Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy" was not so popular as his other works, but Miss Evans was deeply moved by it. Putting it into my hands one morning, she said, "There, read it —you will care for it."

The "Life of Jean Paul Richter," published in the Catholic Series (in which the head of Christ, by De la Roche, so dear to her, figures as a vignette), was read and talked of with great interest, as was his "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," translated by the late Mr. Edward Noel of Hampstead. Choice little bits of humor from the latter she greatly enjoyed.

Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," I think Miss Evans gave to me. I know it interested her, as did Emerson's "Essays." On his visit to Coventry, we could not, unfortunately, accept Mr. Bray's kind invitation to meet him at Rosehill; but after he had left, Miss Evans soon came up kindly to give us her impressions of him while they were fresh in her memory. She told us he had asked her what had first awakened her to deep reflection, and when she answered, "Rousseau's Confessions," he remarked that this was very interesting, inasmuch as Carlyle had told him that very book had had the same effect upon his mind. As I heard Emerson's remark after his interviews with Miss Evans, it was, "That young lady has a calm, clear spirit." Intercourse, it will be seen, was kept up with my family, otherwise than through the lessons, by calls, and in little gatherings of friends in evenings, when we were favored to hear Miss Evans sing. Her voice was not strong, and I think she preferred playing on the piano; but her low notes were effective, and there was always an elevation in the rendering.