George Eliot's Plainness

Nature had disguised Oeorge Eliot's apparently stoical yet really vehement and sensitlve spirit and her soaring genius in a homely and insigniñcant form, says Locker-Lampson in his reminiscences. Her countenance was equine - she was rather like a horse, and her head had been lntended for a niuch. larger body - she was not a tall woman. She wore her hair in not pleasing outof-fashion loops, coming down on either side of her face, so hidlng her ears, and her garments concealed her outllne they gave her a walst llke a milestone. You will see her at her very best in the portrait by Sir Frederic Burton. To my mind George Eliot was a plaln woman. She had a measured way of converslng, restrained, but impressive. "When I happened to cali she was nearly always seated in the chimney corner on a low chair, and she bent forward when she spoke. As she often discussed abstract subjects she mlght have been thought pedantic, espeeially as her language was sprinkled with a scientiflc terminolc&y: but I do not think she was a bit of a pedant. Then, though she had a very gentle volee and manner there was every now and then just a suspicion of meek satire in her talk. Her sentences unwound themselves very neatly and compleiely, leaving the impression of past reflectlon and present readiness; she spoke exceedingly well, but not with all the simplicity and verve, the happy abandon of certain practiced women of the world; however, it was in a way that was far more lnteresting. "I have been told she was most agreeable en tete-a-tete; that when surrounded by admlrers she was apt to become oratorical - a different woman. She dld not strike me as witty or markedly humorous; she was too much in earnest; she spoke as if with a sense of responslbillty, and one cannot be exactly captivating when one is doing that. She was a good listener."