The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-03-07
INTELLEcr AND beauty.
Examples Showing that One Person Is Seldom
Endowed with Eoth Gifts.

Baltimore News.
biography by her husband, Mr.. Cross, prove 8
great shock to those who had not before seen q
counterfeit presentment Of the famous novelist,
although they were really issued some years ago.
just after her death. 1t would seem a sort or
inconsistency that there should exist any spice
of vanity in the composition of so exalted a spirit,
and yet she certainly was not without tnat
womanly weakness and charm, for. after all, charm
it is. She knew too well how plain she was-so
plain that the first sight of the face to those who
have never before met with 1t is a shock. There
is something almost painful in the surprise.
1t was the consciousness of her LONELINESS
which made her so jealousy guard the Few pct
ures that existed of her in the sanctity or her
household. AS the best of friends are in danger
of being persuaded into the treachery of allow
ing such things to be copied. it is not known
tnat she ever gave one away. The curiosity TO
see how George Eliot looked was intense, and
as great as that which existed about her iden-
THY when she first began to write. Artists en-
deavored to make thumb-nail sketches of her by
stealth IN public places. and about ten years
ago. or a little less, something of the kind APP
peared IN one of the periodicals. But it was O
highly ideallzed face, and not like any of those
which are now presented upon authority.
As a critic in a Western paper remarks, there
is no doubt that George Eliot had a passionate
longing for personal beauty and for physical ats
Effectiveness, the earnest force of which is found
IN every woman's nature, and yet she never
was the least bit pretty, or even approaching it
In the face, as it is shown at thirty, there is q
sort of melancholy in the expression, which Is
not displeasing, and which seems to tell n touch
ing story of the loneliness of her life; but not in
a single line or hneament is there a suggestion
of beauty. In the older portraits, particularly
the last, taken at fifty seven, there iS a rugged
LONELINESS that, as the writer already spoken of
remarks, in stern power the craggy
profile of a massive mountain peak.
This suggests the fact, often observed, that
very intellectual women are nearly always plain.
and the question once more of the connection be-
tween the mind and the face. And, after all,
would not the most gifted woman be willing to
exchange her intellectual supremacy for beauty2
Madame de Stael is credited with saying that She
would have readily exchanged fifty years OF
genius for a reign of ten as the possessor of the
handsomest face of her time, the sense of power
being so much greater. The superiority of mind
affects at least only a few, while beauty conquers
all.
Madame. de Stael was extremely homely. even
ugly, and Lord Byron relates that she was some
times, to her indignation, mistaken for a man.
On the whole, Judging from the pictures, she,
was palmer than George Eliot, at least in early
life. There was something coarser in her conn
tenance, and there was a certain coarseness In
her manner, a masculine freedom, while George
Eliot was to- the last gentle aud timid.
Madame Daeier was very plain, as the wit
nesses of her time relate. Madame de Sc
vigne was at least not pretty. The portrait Of
George Sand in her later life shows a
strong masculine countenance. although in
youth she must have possessed some sort of per-
sOnal attraction, as she had q great many lovers,
some of whom the world knows. Margaret
Fuller, according to Hawthorne. as we'll as 9TH
ers, was in no way good-looking. There waa
with her, as with others, the fatal manliness Of
visage. Of Charlotte Bronte, some who met her
in youth thought her rather pretty, but this WAS
far from the general verdict. Mrs, Browning is
pronounced by her friends to have been very
lovely, . but this may have had partial reference
to her character. The face in the portrait is, at
least, far from unpleasing. There is refinement
and delicacy, and what the gushing might term
''soul."
Truly beautiful, intellectual women have been
but few, and the most charming of them all we
may suppose was Madame Recamier. She had
every grace of mind and person, and qualities of
fascination so supreme that she reigned with no
one near the throne for fifty years. 1t would not
be correct, however, to rank ner intellectually
with De Stael. or Sand, or George Eliot.
The absence of beauty, however, did not pre-
vent marriage in any one of these instances. So
that after all if marriage is, as some have said,
the be all and end-all of woman's existence, the
absence of beauty made no great difference.
" hen George Eliot became tho wife of Dir.
Cross she was more than sixty years Of age.