Fuller’s father said of her when she was a girl —‘incedit regina’— may be said of the mature woman who writes under the name of George Eliot. She is a finely-shaped woman, and quite large, though not in the sense in which Hawthorne describes English female largeness. She is by no means corpulent, nor are there any suggestions of steaks and sirloins about her, but she is of large skeleton. She is not meager, either, but has the look of being made out of fine clay. She is blonde, with very light auburn hair; clear, serene, smiling eyes; beautiful teeth. She has also gracious and easy manners, with an undefinable air of unworldliness—of having been made for large and fine societies, but never entered them. In a word, she is a woman who, though not handsome, would personally satisfy her most ardent admirers.”
A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1864 (Miss Kate Field, I think), who met Mrs. Lewes in Italy, describes her thus:
