Lewes

“ The country around Lewes is hilly and rather devoid of trees. It is broken in many places by chalk bluffs, and the chalky nature of the soil was noticeable in the whiteness of the network of country roads. Many old houses are still standing in the town and one of these is pointed out as the residence of Anne of Cleves, one of the numerous wives of Henry VIII. Near the town and plainly visible from the tower is the battlefield where in 1624 the Battle of Lewes was fought between Henry VII and the barons, led by Simon de Montfort. Lewes appears to be an old, staid and unprogressive town. ”

“ On the other hand, Lewes, loyally as he effaced himself, could not but foster tendencies in her mind which were strong enough without his encouragement. He was a philosopher, imbued with the tenets of positivism; and she was naturally prone to be fascinated by abstract thought. Not that she was ever exactly original in philosophic speculation: the danger would have been less had she been so. But she hungered for philosophy, took the results proclaimed for absolute truth, and wove them into the fabric of her own work. ”

“ But, as they rode back to Lewes, the impetuous young soldiers beheld a sight very different from their triumphant anticipations. The field was scattered with the corpses of the Royalists, and the white-crossed troops of the Barons were closely gathered round the castle and priory of Lewes. In dismay, William and Guy de Lusignan turned their horses, and rode off to embark at Pevensey. Seven hundred men followed them, and Edward and Henry were left with the sole support of Roger Mortimer, a Welsh-border friend of the former, with his followers. ”

“ Lewes's humor, though fed from a deep perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk—full of matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was—there was the same pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those whose object was distinctively to learn from her, than to those who merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. ”

“ Fortunately the process is not so common as to constitute one of the dangers of life for the average human being! But in George Eliot's case I really believe the process was not deleterious. Her nature was at once stimulated and steadied by Lewes's boundless faith in her powers, and boundless admiration for their manifestation. Nor was it a case of sitting like an idol to be praised and incensed. Her own mental attitude towards Lewes was one of warm admiration. She thought most highly of his scientific attainments, whether well foundedly or mistakenly I cannot pretend to gauge with accuracy. ”

“ I do not think this exceeding sensibility of nature is often to be found in combination with a genuine mastery of the practical science of music. But Mrs. Lewes has mastered many sciences as well as literatures. Probably no other novel writer, since novel writing became a business, ever possessed one tithe of her scientific knowledge. Indeed, hardly anything is rarer than the union of the scientific and the literary or artistic temperaments. So rare is it, that the exceptional, the almost solitary instance of Goethe comes up at once, distinct and striking, to the mind. ”

“ The central thought presented by Lewes is, that "for us there is nothing but feeling, whose subjective side is sensations, perceptions, memories, reasonings, the ideal constructions of science and philosophy, emotions, pleasures, pains; whose objective side is motion, matter, force, cause, the absolute." The outcome of this theory is, it enables Lewes to believe that the inner and outer practically agree, that our feelings give a sufficiently correct picture of the universe. In reality, the two do not agree, and even "science is in no respect a plain transcript of reality;" ”

“ Lewes sends you his kind remembrances, and will not like you any the worse for cutting him up. He has had to perform that office for his own friends sometimes. I suppose phrenology is an open question, on which everybody has a right to speak his mind. Mr. Lewes, feeling the importance of the subject, desired to give it its due place in his "History of Philosophy," and, doing so, he must, of course, say what he believes to be the truth, not what other people believe to be the truth. If you will show where he is mistaken, you will be doing him a service as well as phrenology. ”

“ Lewes's works are of quite a different style. They have positive merit and value of their own, and they live. It was a characteristically audacious thing to attempt to cram the history of philosophy into a couple of medium-sized volumes, polishing off each philosopher in a few pages—draining him, plucking out the heart of his mystery and his system, and stowing him away in the glass jar designed to exhibit him to an edified class of students. But it must be avowed that Lewes's has been a marvellously clever and successful attempt. ”

“ The child must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish some sort of a test.
So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was puzzled, because he was beginning to doubt whether it were possible that the child could sustain a pose so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his mind for another hypothesis.
This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, was his thought; “and I don’t believe he does read,” was the inevitable rider. ”

“ Besides these separate volumes he is, as has been already stated, the author of a multitude of essays, reviews, criticisms, etc., in the periodical press.
Personally, Mr. Lewes is described as rather small in stature. His face gives no very clear indication of the mental power he unquestionably possesses. His health has always been infirm, and he looks older than he is. From his portrait, one might imagine Lewes to be a man accustomed to life out-of-doors, though he has always been a close student and a resident of London, or other large capitals. ”

“ Crashaw still hesitated for a moment. "I might, perhaps, come with you," he ventured.
"On no account," said Challis.
II
Gregory Lewes was astonished at the long absence of his chief; he was more astonished when his chief returned.
"I want you to come up with me to Pym, Lewes," said Challis; "one of my tenants has been confounding the rector of Stoke. It is a matter that must be attended to."
Lewes was a fair-haired, hard-working young man, with a bent for science in general that had not yet crystallised into any special study. ”

“ He came back to London in September—he made the return journey by steamer—and found his secretary still working at the monograph on the primitive peoples of Melanesia. [176]
Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis’s town house in Eaton Square, whither all the material had been removed two days after that momentous afternoon in the library of Challis Court.
“I have been wanting your help badly for some time, sir,” Lewes said on the evening of Challis’s return. “Are you proposing to take up the work again? If not....” Gregory Lewes thought he was wasting valuable time. ”

“ Lewes, I am thankful to say, has been getting more robust for the last two years, and is very bright and active. I think there is hardly any one left to whom he would so willingly have written or talked about the subjects which are filling his mind as that dear one who is gone from your side, but is perpetually present in your consciousness. To-day I have been reading the memorial article in Blackwood, and have been hoping that there is nothing in it which jars on your feeling. Everybody will think as I do—that the bits from your pen are worth all the rest. ”

“ We have certainly to pay for all our other happiness, which is a Benjamin's share, by many small bodily miseries. Mr. Lewes continues ailing, and I am keeping him company with headache. "Rejoice, O young man, in the days of thy youth," and keep a reserve of strength for the more evil days. Especially avoid breaking your neck in hunting. Mr. Lewes did once try horseback, some years ago, but found the exercise too violent for him. I think a Highland sheltie would be the suitable nag, only he is very fond of walking; and between that and lawn-tennis he tires himself sufficiently. ”

“ During those long hours much was stated by that small, thin voice which was utterly beyond the comprehension of the two listeners; indeed, it is doubtful whether even Challis understood a tithe of the theory that was actually expressed in words.
As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed, quelled, he was in the outcome impressed rather by the marvellous powers of memory exhibited than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman logic of the synthesis.
One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview with a mind predisposed to criticise, to destroy. ”

“ Lewes is guided in his exposition by theoretic antipathies. He is singularly tolerant of difference, and able to admire what is unlike himself.
He is busy now correcting the proofs of his second volume. I wonder whether you have headaches and are rickety as we are, or whether you have a glorious immunity from those ills of the flesh. Your husband's photograph looks worthy to represent one of those wondrous Greeks who wrote grand dramas at eighty or ninety. ”

“ My mother was in her last illness, and Mr. Lewes was constantly ailing, though none of us then thought that he would be taken first. But the sharing of a common anxiety contributed to make our friendship much more intimate. In our drives in the neighborhood of Witley, Mr. Lewes used sometimes to be suddenly seized with severe cramping pains. I think he was himself aware that something was far wrong, but the moment the pain ceased the extraordinary buoyancy of his spirits returned. Nothing but death could quench that bright flame. Even on his worst days he had always a good story to tell ”

“ Lewes's mind is of a class which, however varied its power, is not fairly described by the word "versatile." Versatility is a smaller kind of faculty, a dexterity of intellect and capacity—the property of a mind of the second order. If we want a perfect type and pattern of versatility, we may find it very close to the authoress of "Silas Marner," in the person of her husband, George Henry Lewes. What man of our day has done so many things and done them so well? ”

“ To suggest and to stimulate the mind, rather than to supply it with any complete system of knowledge, may be said to be Lewes’s service in philosophy. The exceptional rapidity and versatility of his intelligence seems to account at once for the freshness in his way of envisaging the subject-matter of philosophy and psychology, and for the want of satisfactory elaboration and of systematic co-ordination. ”

“ Lewes had been unhappily married years before to a woman who was still alive, and English law did not permit the divorce which he would have secured in America. Consequently the new union was not a legal marriage, and English public opinion was severe in its condemnation. In the actual result the sympathetic companionship of Mr. Lewes was of the greatest value to George Eliot and brought her much happiness ”

“ Lewes was invariably bright, clear, and eminently independent in his criticism. He had greater sympathy than most Englishmen with French canons of taste, disliked the clumsiness and obscurity of German literature, and thought that our national idolatry of Shakespeare had made us blind to the merits of the classical school. ”

“ Lewes saw that the person who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. ”

“ Metaphysic has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some other of his speculations. ”

“ Lewes is not beautiful. In her appearance there is nothing whatever to attract admiration. Hers is not even a face like that of Charlotte Cushman, which, at least, must make a deep impression, and seize at once the attention of the gazer. Nor does it seem, like that of Madame de Staël or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, informed and illuminated by the light of genius. Mrs. Lewes is what we in England call decidedly plain—what people in New York call homely ”

“ I have lost my young dislike to the spring, and am as glad of it as the birds and plants are. Mr. Lewes has read "Adam Bede," and is as dithyrambic about it as others appear to be, so I must refresh my soul with it now as well as with the spring-tide. Mr. Liggins I remember as a vision of my childhood—a tall, black-coated, genteel young clergyman-in-embryo.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th April, 1859.
Mr. Lewes is "making himself into four" in writing answers to advertisements and other exertions which [73] he generously takes on himself to save me. A model husband! ”

“ After spending the summer of 1878 in the pleasant retirement of Witley, Lewes and George Eliot returned to London. A severe cold taken by Lewes proved the forerunner of a serious disorder, and, after a short illness, this bright, many-sided, indefatigable thinker, passed away in his sixty-second year. He had frequently said to his friends that the most desirable end of a well-spent life was a painless death ”