George Eliot as Historian: The Case of Mr. Crewe and Hugh Hughes

Authors

David Paterson

Date of this Version

2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 41 (2010)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

Historians look for as many different sources of evidence as they can to describe and interpret the past. How far is fiction a valid source? Great fiction may reveal great truths but is this only in a general sense? George Eliot herself seems to suggest above that reliance on 'descriptions of novelists' may be a perilous route to an accurate portrait: but what about relying on descriptions of those in her own books? Despite one specific denial, some of her 'portraits of clergymen' contain valuable historical elements.

An examination of one part of Scenes of Clerical Life shows George Eliot's analysis of one character in particular, 'Old Mr. Crewe the curate', as having specific value for the historian. Crewe is a character in Janet's Repentance, the third section of Scenes, her first major work of fiction published in 1857 but set nearly thirty years earlier. Crewe's appearances are brief. He is merely described and not given any dialogue or significant action; but a great novelist like Eliot will take trouble in getting her minor characters right and she succeeds brilliantly here. Like so many figures in this book Crewe is based on a real person, the Reverend Hugh Hughes. George Eliot's brief description of Crewe confirms our limited historical knowledge of Hughes. It also adds to what can be found out about him from other sources. Eliot brings Hughes alive, albeit unflatteringly; she is fascinatingly accurate in her assessment.

In Janet's Repentance 'Old Mr. Crewe' holds the same positions as Hugh Hughes did in actuality: he was described as curate of 'Milby' Church, in reality the Nuneaton Parish Church of St Nicolas, and also Master of the local Grammar School, the one in Nuneaton endowed in the time of King Edward VI. Scattered around the early parts of Eliot's tale are numerous references to Crewe which reveal matters concerning his work and his character. If applied to his real-life equivalent, Hughes, one looks with awe at the accuracy of the novelist's portrayal of this character. It is largely based on what the nine to eleven-year-old George Eliot both observed with her own eyes of Hughes, and heard from others, when she was a pupil at Nancy Wallington's school in Church Street, Nuneaton, and Hughes was nearing the end of his life and career just up the end of that road. Their paths overlap around 1828-1830 when George Eliot would have attended the Church and seen Hughes in action. Her acute memories, critical without being malicious, are recalled to devastating effect in the book. Of course a novelist can choose to exaggerate or radically re-create for artistic effect and not be historically accurate; but this does not seem to happen with Eliot's writing in this case.