INTRODUCTION I. SKETCH OF MEREDITH'S LIFE George Meredith, born February 12, 1828, at Portsmouth, England, was the only child of Augustus Armstrong Meredith,1 a naval outfitter, and his first wife, Jane Eliza Macnamara, the father being of Welsh, the mother of Irish, extraction. After her death (when the son was five years old), the father remarried, and emigrated to Capetown, eventually returning to spend the last ten years of his life at Southsea, where he died (1876) at the age of seventy-five. Generally reticent concerning his early life, Meredith spoke seldom, and not without reluctance, of his father; his paternal grandfather, Melchizedek, and grandmother, Anne, appear as 'the Great Mel' and his wife at the opening of Evan Harrington. According to the novelist, his mother was said to have been 'handsome, refined, and witty'; and he adds: 'I think that there must have been some 1 The father was christened Gustave Urmston, and the name was later changed to Augustus Armstrong. |