Relationship With George Eliot
Lewes met writer Marian Evans, later to be famous as George Eliot, in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes and Agnes Jervis had agreed to have an open marriage, and in addition to the three children they had together, Agnes had also had several children by other men. Since Lewes was named on the birth certificate as the father of one of these children despite knowing this to be false, and was therefore considered complicit in adultery, he was not able to divorce Agnes. In July 1854 Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research.
The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon as Evans and Lewes were now effectively married, with Evans calling herself Marian Evans Lewes, and referring to Lewes as her husband. It was not unusual for men in Victorian society to have affairs; Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engels and Wilkie Collins had committed relationships with women they were not married to, though more discreetly than Lewes. What was scandalous was the Leweses' open admission of the relationship.
Of his three sons only one, Charles Lewes, survived him; he became a London county councillor.
Read more about this topic: George Henry Lewes
Famous quotes containing the words george eliot, relationship with, relationship, george and/or eliot:
“All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn’t brotherly—who lived mostly under his parents’ roof ... who advocated one day’s work and six days “off” as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown ... is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Harvey: Oh, you kids these days, I’m telling you. You think the only relationship a man and a woman can have is a romantic one.
Gil: That sure is what we think. You got something better?
Harvey: Oh, romance is very nice. A good thing for youngsters like you, but Helene and I have found something we think is more appropriate to our stage of life—companionship.
Gil: Companionship? I’ve got a flea-bitten old hound at home who’ll give me that.”
—Tom Waldman (d. 1985)
“Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them.”
—17th century English proverb, collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)
“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)