Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1883-07-22
women ana Lleernr, Fame.

London Athen1um. Women of this kind
lime n%sturerl should, for their own happi-
ness, never enter the literary arena. To the
very Finest natures literary fame can give but
small pleasures. Assuredly George E lot
was far from being a happy woman with all
her fame aud all her intellectual triumphs
And, perhaps, the cause is simpler than
might be supposed. It is not literary fame
that can satisfy The warnings in a womau's
heart. "Mais, rosst de quion MEASURE que sous
ees sne belle ct agreeable fue, aiauez-uoxs pas hoste
fetre 81 sasantsf" wrote Queen CHRISTIANS
to Mile. LIE Fevre, when that learned French
woman sent the queen a copy of her edition
of CoAlmachus. And without saying that
the final cause of q woman is that she should
be loved by a man, this at least must be
said, that to a woman the need of mans love
is SO pressing a need that no success
and no triumph will really bring sati.-
faction to her heart which do not
minister, or seem TO minister, to that need.
Either this need is exhibited in such
a pathetic ~yearning for masculine support as
George Eliot discloses in the volume before
US, and as even 80 strong q woman as George
Sand disclosed in that cry of hers in the
Leares dun Voyageur. "Ab, mol ] was not
horn to be a poet; I was born TO love; it is
the misfortune of my destiny, it is the love
for others which have made me a wanderer
and an artist !" and as Mime. de Stael dis
closed when she declared that she would
willingly barter all her fame for a little
beauty; or else it is seen in such heroic and
self-conscious defiance of woman's chains aud
the demands of sex as We see in Emily
Bronte. When adam Bede appeared
there was mucn discussion as to the sex of
the novelist. The present writer never doubl-
ed that the author of that great novel was a
woman, and also a plain woman, when he
came upon this %well.known PASSAGE:
There are faces which nature charges
with a meaning and pathos not belonging to
the simple hum an soul that hutters beneath
them, but speaking the joys and sorrows OF
foregone generations; eyes that tell of deep
love which doubtless has been and is some
where, but not paired with these eyes-per-
haps paired With pale eyes that can say moth
ing, just a. a natural language may be in
stinct with poetry untelt by The lips that Use
it,"
If Nine. de Stael felt how cruel are the
conditions of sex upon q woman, how much
mora keenly did George Eliot feel i'll Be-
hind those "pale eyes" of hers, behind fea-
lures elongated TO almost an equine type,
there lived a Datur whose sfectiouateues
was as deep and far.resching as it's intelli-
geoce. There is no more painful spectacle
rhan that OF a woman made self-conscious
by the plsinness which ;sol ated her in her
childhood. Perhaps even George E,ior-
intellectual difidence (for exceeding diff
dent she was, Notwithstanding all her doc
trinairs ways) has a subtle connection with
this great fact of her childhood. The plain.
meas, or rather the oaucherie, of Emily
Bronte simply aroused in her a sentimeu ut Of
heroic a%ntagonism; that of George Eliol
.-aIoL L.. l,-zHio TL.1 =. L-z--L ----.
nently forward in the following extract from
one of her letters.
"As to the great novel which remains to
be written, 1 must tell you that I never be-
lieve in future books. y Always sf-
ter finishing a book l have a period OF de-
spair that l can never again produce any
thing worth giving to the world. The re-
sPonsicility of the writer grows heavier and
heavier-does it pot3-as the world grows
older, and the voices of the dead more nu-
merous. 1t is difficult TO believe, until the
germ of some new work grows into impe-
rious activity within one, that il is possible
to make a really needed contribution to the
poetry of the world-I mean possible to
oneself to do it,"
Many people seem to have the romantic
idea that there is a kind of guardian angel
of bene6cent fate attending genius to see that
il fulflls its mission. In order TO realize the
fallacy of this-in order to see that, given
the natural potentialities, there are still
needed circumstances to allow these poten-
~tialities to exercise themselves-we have only
to ask what would have been the result If
Chatterton or Keats had lived twenty years
longer, what would nave been the position of
Milton or Scott had either died twenty years
earlier, and what would nave been the rela-
tive positions of Shakespeare and Marlowe
had Shakespeare died at Marlowe's age, or
had Marlowe lived to be S~hakespeare's? G.,
b. Lewes's greatest work was inducing George
Eliot to try her hand at prose fcnop, if Miss
Blinds anecdote is authentic.