Open Arms

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with the same
scorn. Lord Acton had said that she was greater than Dante; Herbert Spencer exempted her novels, as if they were
not novels, when he banned all fiction from the London Library. She was the pride and paragon of her sex.
Moreover, her private record was not more alluring than her public. Asked to describe an afternoon at the Priory,
the story-teller always imitated that the memory of those serious Sunday afternoons had come to tickle his sense of
humour. He had been so much alarmed by the grave lady in her low chair; he had been so anxious to say the
intelligent thing. Certainly, the talk had been very serious, as a note in the fine clear hand of the great novelist bore
witness. It was dated Monday morning, and she accused herself of having spoken without due forethought of
Marivaux when she meant another; but not doubt, she said, her listener had already supplied the correction. Still,
the memory of talking about Marivaux to George Eliot on a Sunday afternoon ...

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how very much others affect our lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect upon
others.’ Jealousy treasured, committed to memory, one can imagine recalling the scene, repeating the words, thirty
years later and suddenly, for the first time, bursting into laughter.

In all these records one feels that the recorder, even when he was in the actual presence, kept his distance and kept
his head, and never read the novels in later years with the light of a vivid, or puzzling, or beautiful personality
dazzling in his eyes. In fiction, where so much of personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack; and
her critics, who have been, of course, ...

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