He had the pleasure of visiting Stratford in her company and that of the Brays, going, as he said, "to see Shakespeare." Later they met again in London, where she played for him upon the piano, being unaware that his ear was what he described as "marble to such music."
The impression which she retained of him was in every way agreeable, while he expressed his opinion of her to Mr. Charles Bray in these words:
"That young lady has a calm, serious soul!"
Miss Evans' first literary work was a translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus, undertaken at the request of Mr. Charles Hennell, a brother of Mrs. Bray. This work had been first entrusted to the lady to whom he was engaged. She had accomplished about a fourth of it, and now wished to relinquish the task on account of her impending marriage. Miss Evans took it up and completed it, and received for her careful and accurate labor of three years the sum of twenty pounds.
After the death of her father she went abroad with the Brays, and remained for some time at Geneva for purposes of study. On her return to England she removed to London and boarded with Dr. Chapman, the editor of the Westminster Review. She assisted him for several years in the editorship of this periodical, although the articles, always anonymous, which she contributed to its pages are not very numerous. The most important among them are entitled: "Woman in France—Madame De Sable;" "Evangelical Teaching," "The Natural History of German Life," "German Wit" (on Heine), "Worldliness and Other Worldliness" (on Young and Cowper). Her literary work in London brought her into acquaintance with many eminent men, including Herbert Spencer, always her warm friend, and George Henry Lewes, whom she afterwards married.
It was Mr. Lewes who induced her to attempt fiction,
