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Born in 1819 in rural Warwickshire, George Eliot was a towering figure in Victorian literature known for her detailed portraits of English life. Christened Mary Ann Evans, she adopted her male pen name to ensure her works were judged by their merit rather than her gender; her novels, such as Middlemarch and Silas Marner, are regarded as masterpieces. Six manuscript volumes of Eliot’s diaries and journals have survived, stretching from 1854, the year she became romantically linked to George Henry Lewes, to her death in 1880. The following entry came in 1857, as autumn’s end approached.
The Diary Entry
Nov. 28.—A glorious day, still autumnal and not wintry. We have had a delicious walk in the Park, and I think the colouring of the scenery is more beautiful than ever. Many of the oaks are still thickly covered with leaves of a rich yellow-brown; the elms, golden sometimes, still with lingering patches of green. On our way to the Park the view from Richmond hill had a delicate blue mist over it, that seemed to hang like a veil before the sober brownish-yellow of the distant elms. As we came home, the sun was setting on a fog-bank, and we saw him sink into that purple ocean—the orange and gold passing into green above the fog-bank, the gold and orange reflected in the river in more sombre tints. The other day, as we were coming home through the Park, after having walked under a sombre, heavily clouded sky, the western sun shone out from under the curtain, and lit up the trees and grass, thrown into relief on a background of dark purple cloud. Then, as we advanced towards the Richmond end of the Park, the level, reddening rays shone on the dry fern and the distant oaks, and threw a crimson light on them. I have especially enjoyed this autumn, the delicious greenness of the turf, in contrast with the red and yellow of the dying leaves.
Further Reading
George Eliot’s surviving diaries and journals now live at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. Some can be seen on their website. Parts of those journals have appeared in books over the years, beginning with George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals, Arranged and Edited by her Husband, J. W. Cross, first published in 1885. In 1997, they were published in full for the first time, in The Journals of George Eliot.
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