Lyon, Rev. Rufus

The ardent minister of the Independent Chapel in Treby Magna, and Esther Lyon's reputed father, a man of many lovable oddities and much nobility of character. "He was walking about now, with his hands clasped behind him, an attitude in which his body seemed to bear about the same proportion to his head as the lower part of a stone Hermes bears to the carven image that crowns it. His face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that fell from his bald crown and hung about his neck retained much of its original auburn tint, and his large, brown, short-sighted eyes were still clear and bright. At the first glance, every one thought him a very odd-looking rusty old man; the free-school boys often hooted after him and called him "Revelations"; and to many respectable church people old Lyon's little legs and large head seemed to make Dissent additionally preposterous. But he was too shortsighted to notice those who tittered at him-too absent from the world of small facts and petty impulses in which titterers live." "Once in his life he had been blinded, deafened, hurried along by rebellious impulse ; he had gone astray after his own desires, and had let the fire die out on the altar ; and as the true penitent, hating his self-besotted error, asks from all coming life duty instead of joy, and service instead of ease, so Rufus was perpetually on the watch lest he should ever again postpone to some private affection a great public opportunity which to him was equivalent to a command." Twenty-two years before the opening of the story Rufus Lyon was an eloquent and successful minister of a large Independent Chapel, when Annette Ledru came suddenly into his life. The death of her husband, Maurice Christian Bycliffe, had left her penniless in a strange land, and Mr. Lyon took her and her baby into his home, in spite of the criticism of his congregation, fell deeply in love with her, and gave up his high calling to watch over her and her child. After a time the grateful Annette married him and when she died, three years later, he returned to the ministry, and brought up the baby, Esther, as his own daughter. At the opening of the story he is leading, in humble surroundings, a life of wrapt absorption in his work and loving devotion to Esther, who still believes herself his daughter. When events make him believe that she should no longer be kept in ignorance of her parentage he tells her the full story and leaves her free to decide whether or not she will claim the inheritance and rank to which she is apparently entitled. The original of Rufus Lyon was the Reverend Francis Franklin, a Baptist minister, who for fifty-four years, from 1799 until his death in 1852, was pastor of the Cow Lane Chapel, in Coventry. Mr. Franklin was the father of the Misses Franklin, whose school in Coventry George Eliot attended, and the character of Rufus Lyon is said by those who remembered him, to be a faithful portrait. (See Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol. 1, pp. 24-5; Negri, George Eliot, vol. 2, p. 62; also article in Our Times, June, 1881.)

<em>Felix Holt, the Radical</em>

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