Here it was that George Eliot told us of her admiration and deep
regard, her affection, for Mrs. Stowe. Her reverence and love were
expressed with such tremulous sincerity that the speaker won our
hearts by her love for our friend. Many letters had already passed
between Mrs. Stowe and herself, and she confided to us her amusement
at a fancy Mrs. Stowe had taken that Casaubon, in "Middlemarch," was
drawn from the character of Mr. Lewes. Mrs. Stowe took it so entirely
for granted in her letters that it was impossible to dispossess her
mind of the illusion. Evidently it was the source of much harmless
household amusement at St. John's Wood. I find in Mrs. Stowe's letters
some pleasant allusions to this correspondence. She writes: "We were
all full of George Eliot when your note came, as I had received a
beautiful letter from her in answer to one I wrote from Florida. She
is a noble, true woman; and if anybody doesn't see it, so much the
worse for _them_, and not her." In a note written about that time
Mrs. Stowe says she is "coming to Boston, and will bring George
Eliot's letters with her that we may read them together;" but that
pleasant plan was only one of the imagination, and was never carried
out.
Her own letter to Mrs. Lewes, written from Florida in March, 1876, may
be considered one of the most beautiful and interesting pieces of
writing she ever achieved.
Although this letter is accessible in a life of Mrs.
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