The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-05-15


science to Her Relations with
Another WOman,s Husband.
Correspondence The St. Paul Globe
PHILADELPHIA, May 12.-NeXt in
interest to the books an eminent au-
thor writes is the personality Of the
great individual whose thoughts live
after the famous one has returned to
the original dust. Having seen a great
histrionic parsonage on the stage, most
people are seized with a burning curl
osity to see how the same individual
being looks in ordinary life, Invested
of Elizabethan or George III costumal
grandeur, and invested with the COM
paratively quiet dress of the nineteenth
century. The qualification of this Curl
osity is usually disappointing. Great
authors are like great actors; apart
from the environment that has made
them famous they are for the most part
ordinary mortals enough, wearing ordi-
! nary clothes, thinking ordinary
thoughts and saying no very extraor-
binary things when they favor others
with their conversation
OF all the famous novelist:;, George
Eliot, or Miss Jane Porter, TO give her
her right name, was the most unro-
mantle both in appearance and man
ners. One of her closest friends saws
of George Eliot:
L once saw Miss Jane Porter, and
she stands yet in mind as kind of
ghost from the tomb-a living monolith
OF prehistoric times She lived in q
small house in a by-street of the then
somewhat remote suburb of BaysWater.
She may have been short; to my mag
lnation she was tall and gaunt and
formidable. She was dressed in rusty
black, and wore over her head some
kind of a black drapery-not a. lace
veil nor gauze scarf, but a kind Of
head-cloth of heavy material that made
her infinitely funereal Her face was
pale and pinched as if with pain, but
hef eyes were bright and piercing Her
manner was formal, her voice unsym-
palmetto, her conversation precise. She
was in bad health, poor lady. and
fancy in not too aff1uent circumstances.
for her whole surroundings were
meager and shabby. Not long after T
was taken to see her, she passed into
her rest, and left the world which she
believed she had done so much to ele-
waite by her novels. Women who wrote
were few and far between, and to those
who had gained any applause at all the
echo Of their fame filled their own ears
with oVerpowering music, and trans
lated their humanity into something
half divine.
GEORGE ELIOT.
ut was at John Chapman's that I
first met George. Eliot-then Marian
Evans-she having adopted neither her
pseudonym nor her style and title Of
George Lewes' wife. Confession is good
for the SOUL they say, and I will can
didly confess my short-sighted preju-
dlceS with respect to this-to be-cel-
ebrated person. These were her unde-
veloped, as we'll as her insurgent DAYS
She was known to be learned, indus
tnous thoughtful, noteworthy, but she
was not yet the great genius of her
age nor philosopher bracketed with
Plato and Kant, nor was her person
ality held to be superior to the law
| OF the land, nor was she recognized as
conventional gentlewoman-in those
days, indeed, she was emphatically not
that! She was essentially underlined
and provincial, and I, in the swaddling
clothes Of early education and pre-
| possession as l was, saw more Of the
provincial than the genius, and was
repealed by the uniformed manner
| rather than attracted by the learning.
She held her hands and arms kanga-
roo fashion, was badly dressed had
an unwashed. unkempt, unbrushed
| look altogether, and she assumed a
tone of superiority over me which I
was not then aware was warranted by
her undoubted leadership. From first
| to last she put up my mental bristles.
so that I rejected then and there what
| might have become a closer acquaint-
ance had 1 not been so blind and so
ventional graces.
LAS l was never an habituee of John
Chapman's famous evenings, and knew
him and his wife best when they lived
out Of London, and before they took
their Strand house, / saw but little of
Marian Evans till after her flight with
George Leyes. When they returned
home I called on them by their Joint
request They were in lodgings in St.
Johns Wood, and the aureole of their
new love was around them. There
was none Of the pretense of a sane
toned union which came afterward-
none Of the somewhat pretentious as
sumption of superior morality which
was born of her success. She was
frank, genial, natural and brimful 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
grandeur of bearing which she had not
had when I first knew her. Then my
heart warmed to her with mingled love
and admiration, and I paid her the
CHI dnCoruQd T fo1
periority, and acknowledged it with
enthusiasm.
SUCCESS SPOILED HER.
Had she always remained on this
level she would have been the grand
est woman of this or any age. But
success and adulation spoiled her, and
destroyed all simplicity, all sincerity OF
character. She grew to be artificial,
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 mar
riage while living as the wife of a mar
ried mantle self-reliant law breaker
and the eager postulant for the recog-
milton granted only to the covenanted--
she lost every trace of that finer free
OCiii diio WLiOiS-AiCoA lCoiiVoo WDiCIl uttQ
been SO remarkable in the beginning Of
her connection with Lewes.- She was
made woman-not in the French
sense-but made by self manipulation
as one makes a statue or a vase. 1
have never known any one who SEEM
ed to me so purely artificial as George
Eliot. She took a fine type for imita-
tien. but the result was not flesh and
blood woman. Not a line of spontane-
tty was left in her, not an impulse be-
x,oY, oh of SOLE cnicS,l,