Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, London, 29 January 1869
Title
Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, London, 29 January 1869
Title
Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, London, 29 January 1869
Sender
Charles Eliot Norton
Recipient
M
Date(s)
- 1869-01-29
Place
London
Letter Content
Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, London, 29 January 1869
Text: Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, 2 vols., London, Constable and Co. Ltd., Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913, I, 316-319.
London, January 29, 1869.
We met Lewes at Oxford last Summer, and as soon as we came to London he came to see us, and asked us to come and see his wife, saying that she never made calls herself, but was always at home on Sunday afternoons. She is an object of great interest and great curiosity to society here. She is not received in general society, and the women who visit her are either so 'e9mancip'e9e as not to mind what the world says about them, or have no social position to maintain. Lewes dines out a good deal, and some of the men with whom he dines go without their wives to his house on Sundays. No one whom I have heard speak, speaks in other than terms of respect of Mrs. Lewes, but the common feeling is that it will not do for society to condone so flagrant a breach as hers of a convention and a sentiment (to use no stronger terms) on which morality greatly relies for support. I suspect society is right in this. . . .
After a while, as Susan did not call, an invitation came for her and me to lunch, and this we very readily accepted. The Leweses live in the St. John's Wood district, not far from Regent's Park. Their house, called The Priory is a little, square, two-story dwelling standing in a half garden, surrounded with one of those high brick walls of which one grows so impatient in England.
Lewes received us at the door with characteristic animation; he looks and moves like an old-fashioned French barber or dancing-master, very ugly, very vivacious, very entertaining. You expect to see him take up his fiddle and begin to play. His talk is much more French than English in its liveliness and in the grimace and gesture with which it is accompanied, -- all the action of his mind is rapid, and it is so full that it seems to be running over. "Oh, if you like to hear stories," he said one day, "I can tell you stories for twelve hours on end."
It is just the same if you like to hear science, or philosophy. His acquirements are very wide, wider, perhaps, than deep, but the men who know most on special subjects speak with respect of his attainments. I have heard both Darwin and Sir Charles Lyell speak very highly of the thoroughness of his knowledge in their departments. In fact his talents seem equal to anything. But he is not a man who wins more than a moderate liking from you. He has the vanity of a Frenchman; his moral perceptions are not acute and he consequently often fails in social tact and taste. He has what it is hard to call a vulgar air, but at least there is something in his air which reminds you of vulgarity.
He took us into the pleasant cheerful drawing-rooms which occupy one side of the house, where Mrs. Lewes received us very pleasantly, -- and we soon had lunch, the only other person present being his eldest and married son. Lunch was set in the study, a cheerful room like the others, lined with well-filled bookshelves, save over the fire-place where hung a staring likeness and odious, vulgarizing portrait of Mrs. Lewes. Indeed all the works of art in the house bore witness to the want of delicate artistic feeling, or good culture on the part of the occupants, with the single exception, so far as I observed, of the common lithograph of Titian's "Christ of the Tribute Money." The walls of the drawing-room in which we sat after lunch were adorned with proof impressions (possibly the original drawings, I am not sure) of the illustrations to "Romola."
The portrait of Mrs. Lewes reminded me, not by its own merit, of Couture's drawing of George Sand, 15 -- and there is a strong likeness to this drawing in her own face. The head and face are hardly as noble as George Sand's, but the lines are almost as strong and masculine; the cheeks are almost as heavy, and the hair is dressed in a similar style, but the eyes are not so deep, and there is less suggestion of possible beauty and possible sensuality in the general contour and in the expression. Indeed one rarely sees a plainer woman; dull complexion, dull eye, heavy features. For the greater part of two or three hours she and I talked together with little intermission. Her talk was by no means brilliant. She said not one memorable thing, but it was the talk of a person of strong mind who had thought much and who felt deeply, and consequently it was more than commonly interesting. Her manner was too intense, she leans over to you till her face is close to yours, and speaks in very low and eager tones; nor is her manner perfectly simple. It is a little that, or it suggests that, of a woman who feels herself to be of mark and is accustomed, as she is, to the adoring flattery of a coterie of not undistinguished admirers. In the course of the afternoon three or four men came in, -- the only one whom I knew was Professor Beesly. We came away just before sunset. . . . Every one who knows Mrs. Lewes well seems attached to her, and those who know speak in the warmest terms of her relations to her husband and his family, -- of her good sense and her goodness.
Text: Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, 2 vols., London, Constable and Co. Ltd., Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913, I, 316-319.
London, January 29, 1869.
We met Lewes at Oxford last Summer, and as soon as we came to London he came to see us, and asked us to come and see his wife, saying that she never made calls herself, but was always at home on Sunday afternoons. She is an object of great interest and great curiosity to society here. She is not received in general society, and the women who visit her are either so 'e9mancip'e9e as not to mind what the world says about them, or have no social position to maintain. Lewes dines out a good deal, and some of the men with whom he dines go without their wives to his house on Sundays. No one whom I have heard speak, speaks in other than terms of respect of Mrs. Lewes, but the common feeling is that it will not do for society to condone so flagrant a breach as hers of a convention and a sentiment (to use no stronger terms) on which morality greatly relies for support. I suspect society is right in this. . . .
After a while, as Susan did not call, an invitation came for her and me to lunch, and this we very readily accepted. The Leweses live in the St. John's Wood district, not far from Regent's Park. Their house, called The Priory is a little, square, two-story dwelling standing in a half garden, surrounded with one of those high brick walls of which one grows so impatient in England.
Lewes received us at the door with characteristic animation; he looks and moves like an old-fashioned French barber or dancing-master, very ugly, very vivacious, very entertaining. You expect to see him take up his fiddle and begin to play. His talk is much more French than English in its liveliness and in the grimace and gesture with which it is accompanied, -- all the action of his mind is rapid, and it is so full that it seems to be running over. "Oh, if you like to hear stories," he said one day, "I can tell you stories for twelve hours on end."
It is just the same if you like to hear science, or philosophy. His acquirements are very wide, wider, perhaps, than deep, but the men who know most on special subjects speak with respect of his attainments. I have heard both Darwin and Sir Charles Lyell speak very highly of the thoroughness of his knowledge in their departments. In fact his talents seem equal to anything. But he is not a man who wins more than a moderate liking from you. He has the vanity of a Frenchman; his moral perceptions are not acute and he consequently often fails in social tact and taste. He has what it is hard to call a vulgar air, but at least there is something in his air which reminds you of vulgarity.
He took us into the pleasant cheerful drawing-rooms which occupy one side of the house, where Mrs. Lewes received us very pleasantly, -- and we soon had lunch, the only other person present being his eldest and married son. Lunch was set in the study, a cheerful room like the others, lined with well-filled bookshelves, save over the fire-place where hung a staring likeness and odious, vulgarizing portrait of Mrs. Lewes. Indeed all the works of art in the house bore witness to the want of delicate artistic feeling, or good culture on the part of the occupants, with the single exception, so far as I observed, of the common lithograph of Titian's "Christ of the Tribute Money." The walls of the drawing-room in which we sat after lunch were adorned with proof impressions (possibly the original drawings, I am not sure) of the illustrations to "Romola."
The portrait of Mrs. Lewes reminded me, not by its own merit, of Couture's drawing of George Sand, 15 -- and there is a strong likeness to this drawing in her own face. The head and face are hardly as noble as George Sand's, but the lines are almost as strong and masculine; the cheeks are almost as heavy, and the hair is dressed in a similar style, but the eyes are not so deep, and there is less suggestion of possible beauty and possible sensuality in the general contour and in the expression. Indeed one rarely sees a plainer woman; dull complexion, dull eye, heavy features. For the greater part of two or three hours she and I talked together with little intermission. Her talk was by no means brilliant. She said not one memorable thing, but it was the talk of a person of strong mind who had thought much and who felt deeply, and consequently it was more than commonly interesting. Her manner was too intense, she leans over to you till her face is close to yours, and speaks in very low and eager tones; nor is her manner perfectly simple. It is a little that, or it suggests that, of a woman who feels herself to be of mark and is accustomed, as she is, to the adoring flattery of a coterie of not undistinguished admirers. In the course of the afternoon three or four men came in, -- the only one whom I knew was Professor Beesly. We came away just before sunset. . . . Every one who knows Mrs. Lewes well seems attached to her, and those who know speak in the warmest terms of her relations to her husband and his family, -- of her good sense and her goodness.
Citation
Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, London, 29 January 1869, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91746