which is one way for a young writer to get attention. I lived alone, in a tiny rental apartment in downtown Manhattan, where I had hardly any furniture beyond a futon bed that I only occasionally folded up into a couch. I didn’t even have bookshelves, and my books, hundreds of them, were stacked against a wall in precarious piles, their orange and black and gray spines abutting each other like bricks in an uneven wall that has been foolishly and irrevocably constructed without foundations. Alone in that apartment after a long day at the magazine’s offices I often dwelled on the responsibility I was close to assuming, wondering if I had come far enough from childhood to open myself to a child.
I could recall nothing in the books ranged against the wall that seemed to speak directly to my situation, and I longed for the simplicity of direct comparison.
Middlemarch
had a lot to say about falling in love; it even had something to say about falling in love with a learned scholar much older than oneself, not that I saw my own love affair in that unflattering light. But it had nothing, I thought, to tell me about falling in love with someone who came with such prior emotional commitments and practical obligations. I didn’t understand how to navigate this paradigm, and
Middlemarch
didn’t seem to give me any answers—not, at least, beyond the alternative of escaping into a different kind of love affair, one with a figure more like Ladislaw, who has his own legal complications (a codicil to Casaubon’s will means Dorothea forfeits her fortune if she marries him) but does not come trailing a custody agreement.
I often dreamed about the daughter. She became part of my life without my being any part of hers; and it was difficult to beinvisible to her when she was so vivid to me. Circumstances demanded maturity of me, and I strove to be as grown-up as was required; and yet circumstances also conspired to make me feel as if I were the one who was young and powerless. Eventually, I did meet her, and when that day arrived I discovered that she was smaller than she had become in my imagination: a little human animal with soft nut-brown hair and bright eyes and an open expression. Eventually, too, I came to love her—not out of a sense of responsibility, nor out of love for her father, but for her, in herself, her sweet nature and good humor and irresistible intelligence. In all my imaginings about what it would mean to have her in my life, I had forgotten to include the prospect of joy.
I SETTLED into the peaceful, sunlit reading room at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, opened a file, and began paging through the lightweight sheets of writing paper fit for the international mail. These were letters written by Thornton Lewes, including the first he ever wrote to Eliot in August 1859. “For the first time do I seize the pen to begin a correspondence which is to be lasting,” it begins, with kinetic flourish. His father had traveled to Hofwyl that summer to tell his sons, finally, that he was separated from Agnes, and that they had a new mother: the celebrated author of
Adam Bede,
which had been published to great acclaim that year. “They were less distressed than I had anticipated and were delighted to hear about Marian,” Lewes wrote in his journal.
However distressed or delighted the boys really were when out of the wishful sight of their father, Thornie’s letters to Eliot brim with an affection ready to be spent on a likely object. “We receivedyour letter at St. Moriz in the canton of the Grisons, some three hours walk from Italy,” Thornie wrote in that first letter, which was a response to an introductory one from her. “You can imagine how glad we were to get it, as being the first from you. It put a touch to our happiness on the journey.” He told her that both he and Charles liked
Adam Bede
very much, Lewes having brought them a copy when he visited. And he clearly had conceived of one bonus
I could recall nothing in the books ranged against the wall that seemed to speak directly to my situation, and I longed for the simplicity of direct comparison.
Middlemarch
had a lot to say about falling in love; it even had something to say about falling in love with a learned scholar much older than oneself, not that I saw my own love affair in that unflattering light. But it had nothing, I thought, to tell me about falling in love with someone who came with such prior emotional commitments and practical obligations. I didn’t understand how to navigate this paradigm, and
Middlemarch
didn’t seem to give me any answers—not, at least, beyond the alternative of escaping into a different kind of love affair, one with a figure more like Ladislaw, who has his own legal complications (a codicil to Casaubon’s will means Dorothea forfeits her fortune if she marries him) but does not come trailing a custody agreement.
I often dreamed about the daughter. She became part of my life without my being any part of hers; and it was difficult to beinvisible to her when she was so vivid to me. Circumstances demanded maturity of me, and I strove to be as grown-up as was required; and yet circumstances also conspired to make me feel as if I were the one who was young and powerless. Eventually, I did meet her, and when that day arrived I discovered that she was smaller than she had become in my imagination: a little human animal with soft nut-brown hair and bright eyes and an open expression. Eventually, too, I came to love her—not out of a sense of responsibility, nor out of love for her father, but for her, in herself, her sweet nature and good humor and irresistible intelligence. In all my imaginings about what it would mean to have her in my life, I had forgotten to include the prospect of joy.
I SETTLED into the peaceful, sunlit reading room at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, opened a file, and began paging through the lightweight sheets of writing paper fit for the international mail. These were letters written by Thornton Lewes, including the first he ever wrote to Eliot in August 1859. “For the first time do I seize the pen to begin a correspondence which is to be lasting,” it begins, with kinetic flourish. His father had traveled to Hofwyl that summer to tell his sons, finally, that he was separated from Agnes, and that they had a new mother: the celebrated author of
Adam Bede,
which had been published to great acclaim that year. “They were less distressed than I had anticipated and were delighted to hear about Marian,” Lewes wrote in his journal.
However distressed or delighted the boys really were when out of the wishful sight of their father, Thornie’s letters to Eliot brim with an affection ready to be spent on a likely object. “We receivedyour letter at St. Moriz in the canton of the Grisons, some three hours walk from Italy,” Thornie wrote in that first letter, which was a response to an introductory one from her. “You can imagine how glad we were to get it, as being the first from you. It put a touch to our happiness on the journey.” He told her that both he and Charles liked
Adam Bede
very much, Lewes having brought them a copy when he visited. And he clearly had conceived of one bonus
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