After having met Miss Evans several times, Mr. Lewes saw the calm depths of her mind and he asked her to correct proofs for him.  She did so and discovered that there was merit in his work.  She corrected more proofs, and when a woman begins to assist a man the danger-line is being approached.  Close observers noted that a change was coming over the bohemian Lewes.  He had his whiskers trimmed, his hair was combed, and the bright yellow necktie had been discarded for a clean one of modest brown, and, sometimes, his boots were blacked.  In July, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, Mr. Chapman received a letter from his sub-editor resigning her position, and Miss Evans notified some of her closest friends that hereafter she wished to be considered the wife of Mr. Lewes.  She was then in her thirty-sixth year.

The couple disappeared, having gone to Germany.

Many people were shocked.  Some said, “We knew it all the time,” and when Herbert Spencer was informed of the fact he exclaimed, “Goodness me!” and said—­nothing.

After six months spent at Weimar and other literary centers, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes returned to England and began housekeeping at Richmond.  Any one who views their old quarters there will see how very plainly and economically they were forced to live.  But they worked hard, and at this time the future novelist’s desire seemed only to assist her husband.  That she developed the manly side of his nature none can deny.  They were very happy, these two, as they wrote, and copied, and studied, and toiled.

Three years passed, and Mrs. Lewes wrote to a friend: 

“I am very happy; happy with the greatest happiness that life can give—­the complete sympathy and affection of a man whose mind stimulates mine and keeps up in me a wholesome activity.”

Mr. Lewes knew the greatness of his helpmeet.  She herself did not.  He urged her to write a story; she hesitated, and at last attempted it.  They read the first chapter together and cried over it.  Then she wrote more and always read her husband the chapters as they were turned off.  He corrected, encouraged, and found a publisher.  But why should I tell about it here?  It’s all in the “Britannica”—­how the gentle beauty and sympathetic insight of her work touched the hearts of great and lowly alike, and of how riches began flowing in upon her.  For one book she received forty thousand dollars, and her income after fortune smiled upon her was never less than ten thousand dollars a year.

Lewes was her secretary, her protector, her slave and her inspiration.  He kept at bay the public that would steal her time, and put out of her reach, at her request, all reviews, good or bad, and shielded her from the interviewer, the curiosity-seeker, and the greedy financier.

The reason why she at first wrote under a nom de plume is plain.  To the great, wallowing world she was neither Miss Evans nor Mrs. Lewes, so she dropped both names as far as title-pages were concerned and used a man’s name instead—­hoping better to elude the pack.