Druce, Anna Bolling Buchanan (1841-1921)

Anna Druce was the younger sister of John Walter Cross, whom Eliot married in 1880, and Eliot had known her and her husband Albert for years before that wedding. Albert Druce was a rectifying distiller who built the house called Thornhill at Sevenoaks around 1870, and Eliot and Lewes were already writing to the Druces in 1874 and 1875. Anna and Albert were at Eliot's wedding on 6 May 1880, and that August Eliot and John stayed with them at Thornhill, playing lawn tennis and enjoying what Eliot called their green paradise. Eliot wrote warmly to Anna that autumn, thanking her for the visit and for a picture the Druces had given them for their drawing room. Their children included Nina, Elsie and Eliot, and Elsie later kept many of Eliot's letters, which is how several of them survive. Elsie later gave a silhouette portrait of Eliot to the National Portrait Gallery in memory of her uncle John Walter Cross in 1933.

George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org

To:
GE to Mr. and Mrs. Albert Druce, London, 1 January 1875
GE to Mrs. Albert Druce, Witley, 4 August 1880
GE to Mrs. Albert Druce, Witley, 20 August 1880
GE to Mrs. Albert Druce, Witley, 26 November 1880

From:
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Anna Bolling Buchanan Druce (1841-1921), Druce, Anna Bolling Buchanan (1841-1921), Social Network Gallery, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed November 11, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/97183