We had seen many monasteries in our travels, but only one
nunnery, and that was at York; so convent life did not seem to have been
very popular in the North country, the chorus of a young lady's song of
the period perhaps furnishing the reason why:
[Illustration: "GEORGE ELLIOT."]
Then I won't be a Nun,
And I shan't be a Nun;
I'm so fond of pleasure
That I _cannot_ be a Nun.
The nuns had of course disappeared and long since been forgotten, but
other women had risen to take their places in the minds and memories of
the people of Nuneaton, foremost amongst whom was Mary Ann Evans, who
was born about the year 1820 at the South Farm, Arbury, whither her
father, belonging to the Newdegate family, had removed from Derbyshire
to take charge of some property in Warwickshire. "George Eliot" has been
described as "the greatest woman writer in English literature," and as
many of her novels related mainly to persons and places between Nuneaton
and Coventry, that district had been named by the Nuneaton people "The
Country of George Eliot." _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was published in
1858, and _The Mill on the Floss_ in 1860, and although the characters
and places are more difficult to locate than those in _Adam Bede_, the
"Bull Hotel" at Nuneaton has been identified as the "Red Lion" in her
novel, where Mr.
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