1880 DEATH OF GEORGE ELIOT 287 



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 confi- 

 dence 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 officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to 

 bestow 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 in 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 to 

 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. 



