At The Grave of George Eliot

Authors

Amy Clampitt

Date of this Version

1986

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 18 (1987)

Comments

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

Abstract

Laid in unconsecrated Eround, a scandal

still-note how good Gerard Hopkins

recoiled from what a queer, awkward girl,

frail-shouldered, massive, rickety,

volcanic" out of an unconsecrated

attachment, a marriage that was

no marriage (one would have added,

till opprobrium intervened, but

something better), to a pockmarked

lightweight of a drama critic, saw blossom:

this domestic improbability, this

moonftower. They were happy.

Happiness: that-as it always has been-was

the scandal. As for the unembarrassed

pursuit of same, run giddily

amok, by now, among the lit-up

purlieus of a game show (died

of a conniption, beaming), time

spared her that, though not the cold shoulder,

the raw east wind, fog, the roar that issues

from the other side of silence; not headache,

kidney stone, the ravages of cancer-or

of grief foreseen, met with, engulfed by,

just barely lived through.

Nature (she'd written; year before) repairs

her ravages, but not all. The hills

underneath their green vestures bear

the marks of past rending. Johnny Cross,

younger by two decades, a banker,

athletic, handsome, read Dante with her,

fell in love; repeatedly, distressingly

spoke of marriage, was at last accepted.