The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-07-03
GEORGE EL1OT's PERSONALITY.
1t Was Pleasing Only at One Period
of Her Life.
Richmond Dispatch.

Richmond Dispatch.
OF all the famous novelists George Eliot
was the most unromantic, both In appear
ance and manners. One of her closest
friends says of her:
ut was at John Chapman's that I first
met George Eliot-then Marian Evans hay-
ing adopted neither her pseudonym nor her
style and title of George Lewess wife. Con-
fession is good for the SOUL they say, and
preJudiceS with respect to tnis-to be-cele-
brated person. These were her undeveloped,
as well as her insurgent days. She was
known to be learned, Industrious, thought
full, noteworthy, but she was not yet the
great genius of her age, nor a philosopher,
bracketed with Plato and Kant, nor was her
personality held to be superior to the law Of
the land, nor was she recognized as a con-
ventional gentlewoman-in those days, in
deed, she was emphatically not that.
She was essentially underbred and pro-
vincial, and 1, in the swaddling clothes of
early education and prepossession as was,
saw more of the provincial than the genius
and was repealed by the uniformed manner
rather than that attracted by the learning
She held her hands and arms kangaroo
fashion; was badly dressed; had an UNI
washed, unkelnpt, unbrushed look altogeth-
er, and she assumed tone of superiority
over me which I was not then aware was
warranted by her undoubted leadership
LAS was never an habitue of John Chap
mans famous evenings and knew him and
his wife best when they lived out of Lon
house, / saw but little of Marian Evans,
till after her flight with George Lewes.
l.
by their joint request. They were in lodg-
ings in st. Johns Wood and the aureole of
their new love was around them. There
was none of the pretense of sanctioned
union, which came afterward-none of the
somewhat pretentious assumption of superb
or morality which was born of her success
She was frank, genial, natural and brin-
full Of happiness. The consciousness that
she had finally made her choice and cast
the die which determined her fate gave her
a nobility of expression and a grandeur of
bearing which she had not had when first
knew her Then my heart warmed to her
with mingled love and admiration, and /
paid her the homage she deserved. / felt
her superiority and acknowledged 1t with
enthusiasm.
Had she always remained on this level
she would have been the grandest woman
of this or any age. But success and adula-
ton spoiled her and destroyed all simplicity
all sincerity of character. She grew to be
artificial, posee, pretentious, unreal. She
lived an unreal life all through, both men
tally and socially, and in her endeavor to
harmonic two irreconcilables-to be at once
conventional and insurgent-the upholder of
the sanctity of marriage while living as the
wife of a married mantle self-reiant law
breaker and the eager postulant for the rec
ignition granted only TO the covenanted-
she lost every trace of that finer freedom
and whole heartedness which had been SO
remarkable in the beginning of her connec-
ton with Lewes. She was made woman
manipulation, as one makes a statue or a
seemed TO me so purely artificial as George