LITTLE JOURNEYS mortification of having to do so. ¶ Darwin is buried in 4 Marlborough Place, Dec. 27, 1880. My dear Spencer-Your telegram which reached me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inasmuch as I had just been talking to Morley, and agreeing with him that the proposal for a funeral in Westminster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should attend George Eliot to her grave. It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with less provocation), with the raking up of past histories, about which the opinion even of those who have least the desire or the right to be pharisaical is strongly divided, and which had better be forgotten. With respect to putting pressure on the Dean of Westminster, I have to consider that he has some confidence in me, and before asking him to do something for which he is pretty sure to be violently assailed, I have to ask myself whether I really think it a right thing for a man in his position to do. Now I cannot say I do. However much I may lament the circumstance, Westminster Abbey is a Christian Church and not a Pantheon, and the Dean thereof is LITTLE officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to bestow JOURNEYS exceptional Christian honours by this burial in the Abbey. George Eliot is known not only as a great writer, but as a person whose life and opinions were in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma. How am I to tell the Dean that I think he ought to read over the body of a person who did not repent of what the Church considers mortal sin, a service not one solitary proposition of which she would have accepted for truth while she was alive? How am I to urge him to do that which, if I were in his place, I should most emphatically refuse to do? You tell me that Mrs. Cross wished for the funeral in the Abbey. While I desire to entertain the greatest respect for her wishes, I am very sorry to hear it. I do not understand the feeling which could create such a desire on any personal grounds, save those of affection, and the natural yearning to be near, even in death, those whom we have loved. And on public grounds the wish is still less intelligible to me. One cannot eat one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, if they are to be so called, which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters. Thus, however I look at the proposal, it seems to me to be a profound mistake, and I can have nothing to do with it. I shall be deeply grieved if this resolution is ascribed to any other motives than those which I have set forth at greater length than I intended. Your Favorite Immortal P EOPLE who think and feel have a favorite author, com poser, painter or orator, and to have this Ideal One enshrined in a beautiful book is indeed most pleasing; and to make a volume that will answer this purpose has been the fond aim of The Roycrofters. The De Luxe Little Journeys come nearest to our ideas, and we want you to know it. ¶ As a token of respect and esteem, as an appreciation of a duty beautifully performed & as a birthday, wedding or anniversary present, our De Luxe Little Journeys are very popular among the Discerning. The size is just right, the price is right, too. ENGLISH AUTHORS Tennyson, Morris, Burns, Milton, Johnson, Macaulay, GREAT MUSICIANS Wagner, Paganini, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Beethoven, Handel, Verdi, Schumann, Brahms. EMINENT ARTISTS Raphael, Leonardo, Botticelli, Thorwaldsen, Gainsborough, Velasquez, Corot, Correggio, Bellini, Cellini, Abbey, Whistler. EMINENT ORATORS Pericles, Antony, Savonarola, Luther, Burke, Pitt, GREAT PHILOSOPHERS Socrates, Seneca, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, On Roycroft Water-Mark Paper, Hand Illumined, Bound Little Journeys Dept., The Roycrofters |