Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1898-05-15
SOME GREAT AUTHORS
UNWRITTEN CHAPTERS IN THE
HISTORY OF POPULAR BOOKS.
HOW FAMOUS THOUGHTS WERE BORN
The Unattractive Personality of
George EIfot-Pitiful Side of Guy
de Maupassant's Life-"Ships That
Pass in the Night"

Next in interest TO the books an emil
nent author writes is the personality OF
the great individual whose thoughts live
after the famous one has returned to the
original dust. Having seen great his
trionic parsonage on the stage, most peo-
pie are seized with burning curiosity
TO see how the same individual being
looks in ordinary life. Invested Of Eliza
bethian, or George Ill, costumaI
grandeur, and invested with the COM
paratively quiet dress OF the nineteenth
century. The qualification Of this Gu
riosity is usually disappointing. Great
authors are like great actors; apart from
the environment that has made them IA
nous they are for the mos: part ordi-
nary mortals enough, wearing ordinary
clothes, thinking ordinary thoughts, and
saying no very extraordinary things when
they favor others with their converse
ton.
OF all the famous novelists, George
Eliot or Miss Jane Porter, TO give her
her right name, was the most unroman-
tic, both in appearance ana manners.
One of her closest friends say OF George
Eliot:
FUNERAL GEORGE ELIOT.
II once saw Miss Jane Porter, and she
stands yet in mind as a kind OF ghost
from the tomb-a living monolith Of pre-
historic times She lived in small
house in a by-street of the then some
what remote suburb of Bayswater. she
NAV have been short: TO my imagination
I'D md a
She was dressed In rusty black. and
wore over her head some kind OF black
drapery-not a lace yell nor gauze scarf.
but kind Of head-cloth OF heavy mate
rial that made her infinitely funereal Her
face was pale, and pinched as If with
pain, but her eyes were bright and pierre
ing. Her manner was formal, her voice
unsympathetic her conversation precise.
She was in bad health, poor lady, and
fancy in not too aftiuent circumstances,
for her whole surroundings were meagre
and shabby. Not long after / was taken
to see her she passed into her rest, and
left the world, which she believed she
had done so much TO elevate by her
novels. Women who wrote were then few
and far between; and TO those who had
gained any applause at all the echo or
their fame filled their own ears with
ONcIpOWcIllS HuSiC, tidhSAdNCu l4ASAA
humanity into something half divine
1T was at John Chapman's that ! first
met George Eliot-then Marian Evans.
having adopted neither her pseudonym
nor her style and title Of George Lewes's
wife. Confession is good for the soul.
they say. and / will candidly confess my
short-sighted prejudces with respect TO
this-to be-celebrated person. These were
her undeveloped, as well as her insurgent
DAYS. She was known to be learned, in
dustrious, thoughtful. 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 conventional
gentlewoman--in those days, indeed. she
was emphatically not that! She was es-
sentially underbred and provincial. and
/. in the swaddling clothes OF early edu-
cation and prepossession as I was. saw
more Of the provincial than the genius.
and was repealed by the uniformed man
ner rather than that attracted by the
learning. She held her hands and arms