y for August,
1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several
hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs.
Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had
long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in
the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think
what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans
replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to
tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all
down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at
Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her
hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which
seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night
before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter,
'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and
that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The
sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of
Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that
George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that
she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive
statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid
mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in
regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not
sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's
declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was
perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their
statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless
new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought
to be regarded as substantially an original creation.

That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that
of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs.
Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being
the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring,
Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam
Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans