A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this boarding-school has given these reminiscences of Marian’s life there:  “She learned everything with ease,” says this person, “but was passionately devoted to music, and became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist.  Her masters always brought the most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage.  She was keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, frequently saying that she was not pleased with a single feature of her face or figure.  She was not especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon was her intellectual power that we all thought her capable of any effort; and so great was the charm of her conversation, that there was continual strife among the girls as to which of them should walk with her.  The teachers had to settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical succession.”

Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued her studies at home.  The year following, her mother died; and this event, as she afterwards said, first made her acquainted with “the unspeakable grief of a last parting.”  Soon after, her older sister and her brother were married and left home.  She alone remained with her father, and was for several years his housekeeper.  “He offered to get a housekeeper,” says Miss Blind, “as not the house only, but farm matters had to be looked after, and he was always tenderly considerate of ‘the little wench,’ as he called her.  But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on at the same time.”  Her experiences at this period have been made use of in more than one of her characters.  The dairy scenes in Adam Bede are so perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of butter and cheese making.

In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, one mile from Coventry.  A pleasant house and surroundings made the new home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious.  The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which she eagerly improved.  Books were more accessible, though her own library was a good one.

She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as gave her the most thorough results of culture.  She took up Latin and Greek with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar with the classic literatures.  French, German and Italian were read in all the master-pieces of those languages.  The Old Testament was also studied in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music.  During several years of quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that