DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

Address at Celebration for Kathleen and Bill Adams

Authors

Jonathan Ouvry

Date of this Version

2008

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 39 (2008)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know of the existence of the George Eliot Fellowship until 1980, which was of course the great year of the stone-laying in Westminster Abbey. I can't remember how it came to be known that one of George Henry Lewes's great-great-grandsons just happened, conveniently, to have an office next door to the Abbey, but then I suppose that that is one of the many secrets of Kathleen's success in her role as Secretary of the Fellowship - she was very good at finding out useful connections and unlikely information in the highways and byways of George Eliotdom. I also can't remember whether it was Kathleen or I who suggested that I should have a pre- (or was it post-?) stone-laying gathering in the boardroom, but it turned out to be a wonderful occasion, to be repeated over nearly twenty years on the annual wreath-laying days before my retirement ended my ability to lay on tea parties at the Sanctuary.

For Marjorle and me that was the start of a friendship with Kathleen and Bill that has lasted so far for twenty-eight years, has enhanced enormously our knowledge of and love for the work of George Eliot, introduced us to many lovely and interesting people involved with the Fellowship, including all of you here today (and I should say in parentheses here that it is a tremendous pleasure, and privilege, to be here in this amazing room again so soon after the last occasion) and involved us in so many interesting and unusual events and occasions during the course of those twenty-eight years. (I should say, again in parentheses, that one of the outcomes of reading George Eliot is that it does equip one to deal in very long sentences, not infrequently incorporating equally long parenthetical interpolations!)

In 1984, which for me was far from the doom-laden year of George Orwell, since that was the year when Marjorie and I were married and moved into the house where we still live, I was surprised to be asked by Kathleen whether I would like to become President of the Fellowship in succession to Tenniel Evans, on the grounds merely of direct descent from George Henry Lewes. Of course I was delighted to accept the honour, thinking that there would perhaps be a three year term of office, but here I still am, twenty-four years later. No short-termism in the George Eliot Fellowship!