of having a famous author as a stepmother: “If you happen to have many letters, stamps from foreign countries, I shall be very glad if you send me them for my collection.”
As I sat in the library and looked through Thornie’s early letters, written in a surprisingly careful and elegant hand, I found myself utterly enchanted by this lively, mischievous boy. I also wondered if his letters horrified Eliot at least as much as they amused her. Eliot wrote to tell him that she and Lewes had acquired a dog, Pug; Thornie responded, “I am not afraid of him as a rival, as he is not very dangerous, but when I come home, if he still lives and is impudent, I warn you beforehand, that I shall shoot him through the head, which will make a very good end for the Biography of Pug Pugnose, Esq.”
He was bold and saw the possible advantages to be gained through triangulation. He asked her to pressure Lewes to give him a raise in his pocket money. He dared to inquire whether he and his brothers were to be included on a trip to Italy—a trip that Lewes and Eliot had planned to be very much à deux. “It is understood that we three imps should go with you, is it not?” Thornie wrote. Cost should not be an issue, he observed cheekily, “considering you are to get about 1,000,000 pounds for your next book.”
The imps did not go to Italy, though Lewes did send Thorniesome Italian stamps for his collection, a fact that makes me think irresistibly of the souvenirs sold in holiday resorts like the one I grew up in: “My Parents Went to ____ and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” For a year, Eliot corresponded with the Lewes boys without meeting them, though she knew the day was approaching when they would materialize. “At Easter our eldest boy will come home from school,” she wrote to a friend in December 1859, using what was always her preferred formulation: “our boys” rather than “my husband’s sons” or “my stepsons.” She said that it would “make a new epoch” in their domestic life, for until then she and Lewes had lived alone.
The prospect was daunting. For all her confident references to her theoretical family, she knew she did not know what she had got herself into, and she was anxious about the transformation of the abstract into the concrete. “I hope my heart will be large enough for all the love that is required of me,” she admitted.
Eliot’s heart was evidently large enough for Charles Lewes. “It is very sweet as one gets old to have some young life about one,” she wrote to a friend, after the two elder boys arrived at the Priory for the first time, in the summer of 1860. “He is quite a passionate musician, and we play Beethoven duets with increasing appetite every evening.” But her tolerance for having young life about her does not seem to have extended so easily to the ebullient Thornie, who was swiftly dispatched to Edinburgh to complete his education. From there, he continued to write to her, affectionately if sometimes slightly challengingly. He told her, upon his arrival, that he was “celebrated through Edinburgh and Leith” for his academic potential, “but please don’t be jealous of my reputation, it doesn’t equal yours yet.”
Whatever her private worries about the effect of boisterous boys upon her working and domestic life, Eliot seems to have inspired a real fondness in Thornie. He wrote her intimate, warm letters, at once confiding and ostentatious. He told of theatrical visits, flirtations, japes. He made her a present of a preserved chaffinch, with strict instructions that it was to be kept under a glass shade, “for it is a moral and physical impossibility that a
small
bird should not spoil in 2 months, if not covered by a shade.” He sent her copies of poems he had composed: “I have no doubt of producing something superfine,” he wrote. When in 1861 she sent him
Silas Marner,
the story of a reclusive, crabbed weaver redeemed by the unexpected adoption of a
As I sat in the library and looked through Thornie’s early letters, written in a surprisingly careful and elegant hand, I found myself utterly enchanted by this lively, mischievous boy. I also wondered if his letters horrified Eliot at least as much as they amused her. Eliot wrote to tell him that she and Lewes had acquired a dog, Pug; Thornie responded, “I am not afraid of him as a rival, as he is not very dangerous, but when I come home, if he still lives and is impudent, I warn you beforehand, that I shall shoot him through the head, which will make a very good end for the Biography of Pug Pugnose, Esq.”
He was bold and saw the possible advantages to be gained through triangulation. He asked her to pressure Lewes to give him a raise in his pocket money. He dared to inquire whether he and his brothers were to be included on a trip to Italy—a trip that Lewes and Eliot had planned to be very much à deux. “It is understood that we three imps should go with you, is it not?” Thornie wrote. Cost should not be an issue, he observed cheekily, “considering you are to get about 1,000,000 pounds for your next book.”
The imps did not go to Italy, though Lewes did send Thorniesome Italian stamps for his collection, a fact that makes me think irresistibly of the souvenirs sold in holiday resorts like the one I grew up in: “My Parents Went to ____ and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” For a year, Eliot corresponded with the Lewes boys without meeting them, though she knew the day was approaching when they would materialize. “At Easter our eldest boy will come home from school,” she wrote to a friend in December 1859, using what was always her preferred formulation: “our boys” rather than “my husband’s sons” or “my stepsons.” She said that it would “make a new epoch” in their domestic life, for until then she and Lewes had lived alone.
The prospect was daunting. For all her confident references to her theoretical family, she knew she did not know what she had got herself into, and she was anxious about the transformation of the abstract into the concrete. “I hope my heart will be large enough for all the love that is required of me,” she admitted.
Eliot’s heart was evidently large enough for Charles Lewes. “It is very sweet as one gets old to have some young life about one,” she wrote to a friend, after the two elder boys arrived at the Priory for the first time, in the summer of 1860. “He is quite a passionate musician, and we play Beethoven duets with increasing appetite every evening.” But her tolerance for having young life about her does not seem to have extended so easily to the ebullient Thornie, who was swiftly dispatched to Edinburgh to complete his education. From there, he continued to write to her, affectionately if sometimes slightly challengingly. He told her, upon his arrival, that he was “celebrated through Edinburgh and Leith” for his academic potential, “but please don’t be jealous of my reputation, it doesn’t equal yours yet.”
Whatever her private worries about the effect of boisterous boys upon her working and domestic life, Eliot seems to have inspired a real fondness in Thornie. He wrote her intimate, warm letters, at once confiding and ostentatious. He told of theatrical visits, flirtations, japes. He made her a present of a preserved chaffinch, with strict instructions that it was to be kept under a glass shade, “for it is a moral and physical impossibility that a
small
bird should not spoil in 2 months, if not covered by a shade.” He sent her copies of poems he had composed: “I have no doubt of producing something superfine,” he wrote. When in 1861 she sent him
Silas Marner,
the story of a reclusive, crabbed weaver redeemed by the unexpected adoption of a
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