The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-07-12
A NEW VIEW OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Not an Unselfish Woman and Not Absorb.
ingly Happy with Lewes.


Not an Unselfish Woman and Not Absorb.
ingly Happy with Lewes.
New York Mail aud Express
George Eliot has been much landed for her
kindness to Mr.. Lewes's children. No doubt she
was not bad step-mother-it is not to be SUM
posed that she was not humane woman. Bud
there IS no evidence that even after she became
a rich woman the Lewes boys enjoyed any ex
cept the cheapest advantages of education and
start IN life. They went to cheap school in
switzerland, where they usually remained all
during their acknowledgements n purgatory To
boys. None of them had university Quotations
Two Of them went out as farmers TO South
Africa, then much wilder country even than
now; and both died very young men from the
hardships there encountered Charles Lewes,
the remaining son, got small place in tbs post
Office. At this time George Eliot had been paid
more than thirty thousand pounds by her pub
fishers.
But the woman who could treat her only
sisters death as follows was not likely to be
very generous foster mother. She writes in her
journal: March 15 lS59.-Chrissey died this
morning" Chrissey was the sister she loved
most tenderly, having "a very special feeling
toward her." But on the next day. while her
sisters body yet lay unburied, she could continue
her Journal thus: March 16 --Blackwood writes
to say am popular author, as well as a great
author. They printed z, 900 of Adam Bede and
have disposed OF more than 1900, so that they
are thinking about second edition. A very
feeling letter from Froude this morning"
Il.
yet unbured sisters DEATH she writes to John
Blackwood this cheerful letter: ''The news you
have sent me is worth paying great deal of
pain for, past and future. 1t comes rather
strangely for me who lives in such unconscious
ness of what is going on IN the world. l am like
deaf person to whom some one has just shout
ed that the company around him have been pay
ing compliments for the last half hour Let the
rest come, you will yet be the first person out.
side of my own home who first gladdened me
about.Adam Bede, and my success will always
please me- the better that you will share the
pleasure"
Mr.. Cross wants US to Admire George Eliot on
the side of her affections. Judging from this last
extract, she certainly appears to compel admira-
| ton for her stoicsm.
That she was, however, always amiable to Mr.
| Lewes is very likely. 1t must be remembered
that when she was away from England with him
| she was not George Eliot-she Mary Ann
Evans. Mr.. Lewess previous matrimonial ex-
| perlence had not been such to inspire conf
! dence-and she had no legal hold on him what
ever. Suppose his conscience should awaken.
Suppose he should weary of her painness, her
| headaches, her mysteries, her years. What
| would have been her condition.? Did this appre-
| hension never visit her2 Then she was not
woman. But she made up her mind to make the
best of it. She adopted the role of the woman
supremacy happy, and if part of her words are to
be taken literally, we must believe that she
| basked IN bliss. Mr.. Cross says that only part
of her letters and journals are published.
| What secrets might not that other part revear
| Occasionally sentence is found in her letters
and journals which fatty contradicts the follow
ing description she usually gives of her domestic
life She writes in 1862: ''Have been reading
! IN my note book of past times, in which
recorded my maaise and despair But it is
impossible to me to believe that have ever been
| III so unpromsing and de sparing state as L
now feel" Again she writes: What h=rd work
| it seems to go on living sometimes! Blessed are
| the dead" Are these the words of blessed
union" with man whom she writes to her friends
hot chn Ax,1in ~ nf1Oy
that last dreary melancholy record, 'The impress
sions of Theophrastus Such" and try to reconcile
| that disappointed and soured screed with the
perfect happiness she so g!owingly described.
She was bound to rigid restriction in every
thing. Lewes would not let her, even in the
height of her fame go to any public place with
out him. as a letter to Mrs Congreve shows, in
which George Eliot after having accepted an
invitation to 60 with her to a concert, afterward
declines under Lewes's direction. For many
years she almost totally cut off from the
society of women, and however savage women
may be toward each other in their daily associa1
ton, to be debarred from the good of their own
sex is justly regarded as the casting into outer
darkness. George Eliot was no msanthrope
On the contrary she was full Of superficial at
tachments and PROPOSED deeper devotion to
her female friends that women usually feel for
each other. She often had gentlemens parties at
her house. Must it not have been burning NOR
LITIGATION to her that she could not have the wives
and sisters of these men also? 1t is true that
later on she formed associations even with arch
deacons widows fact she chronicles, but for
many years women looked askant at her; and no
woman, be she dolt or genius, be insensiblo
to this last and mosG terrible revenge of women
on each other. She writes in gloomy strain in
her Journal Immediately after her return to
England with Mr.. Lewes, and says bitterly:
This Germans are at least free from the bigotrY
Of eXclusiveness."
The time when by the death of his wife
Lewes could have married her. AS sho
careful to exact from everyone that she
should be called Mrs. Lewes a name to which
she had not the shadow of right it may seem
strange that she did not convert that fiction into
a fact. But it is not an uncommon thing in
human nature to be satisfied with a name with
out securing the reality. 1t would have been an
admission that she was not Mrs. Lewes before
Lewes himself was bound to be singular and the
unusual circumstances of their union" tickled a
personality that was nothing if
not grotesque. There is no hint
that a legal marriage was ever thought
of, but she evidently did not think a union"
with Alr Cross was enough because she was
married to him with BELL book and candle by a
pair Of clergymen. If anybody supposes that
George Eliots path with Mr. Lewes was all roses,
he must be strangely ignorant of the human
genius with mediocrity. Naturally pessimistic,
prone to doubt, and painfully sensitive, George
Eliot is hardly likely to have basked in sunshine
regarding this most complicated action of her
life. She buckled on the armor of self-defense,
| and so constantly iterated her phenomenal hap
plness that the very reiteration IS suspicious.
Judge BeIford's Dog.
| tel III TtaYc