George Eliot

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To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and his affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe Spencer a debt of gratitude. It was through him that I learned to know Marian,--to know her was to love her, and since then, my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!"

Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory of the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the Cross family used every means to win her away from her sorrow.

Mr. Cross' mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting. They read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind of love, the honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.

"I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet."

Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half after Mr. Lewes' death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self.... To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure." Having passed through a severe illness, she wrote to a friend: "I have been cared for by something much better than angelic tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection that has chosen to watch over me."

She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the happiness instead of me."

On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily. George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars for woman's higher education at Girton College, and helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was proud to be remembered.