As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution; and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among the rest, the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass. In her account of the prison scenes, I remember no word she uttered--I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently--till time had placed in my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of "Adam Bede."
I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night with my father in the Wirksworth cottage sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me--when my father and I were living at Foleshill; then there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how entirely her individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seemed to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers and speeches were copied--when they were written with hot tears, as they surged up in my own mind!
As to my indebtedness to facts of local and personal history of a small kind, connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts, and have made use of for my picture, were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk about old times.