It was streaked with grey when last I
saw her. Her figure was of middle height, large-boned and powerful.
Lewes often said that she inherited from her peasant ancestors a frame
and constitution originally very robust. Her head was finely formed,
with a noble and well-balanced arch from brow to crown. The lips and
mouth possessed a power of infinitely varied expression. George Lewes
once said to me when I made some observation to the effect that she
had a sweet face (I meant that the face expressed great sweetness),
"You might say what a sweet hundred faces! I look at her sometimes in
amazement. Her countenance is constantly changing." The said lips and
mouth were distinctly sensuous in form and fulness.
She has been compared to the portraits of Savonarola (who was
frightful) and of Dante (who though stern and bitter-looking, was
handsome). _Something_ there was of both faces in George Eliot's
physiognomy. Lewes told us in her presence, of the exclamation uttered
suddenly by some one to whom she was pointed out at a place of public
entertainment--I believe it was at a Monday Popular Concert in St.
James's Hall. "That," said a bystander, "is George Eliot." The
gentleman to whom she was thus indicated gave one swift, searching
look and exclaimed _sotto voce_, "Dante's aunt!" Lewes thought this
happy, and he recognised the kind of likeness that was meant to the
great singer of the _Divine Comedy_.
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