Books: Mr. Chapman's Ladies

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John Chapman was one of them. He adapted himself to the change with the philosophic abandon of a publisher who sees himself on the verge of losing a valuable author. Besides, Chapman had another "boarder." This time it was Florence Nightingale's cousin, Barbara Leigh Smith —one of the "tabooed" Smiths, so called because the parents, being progressive thinkers, were in the habit of having children out of wedlock.

Soon George Eliot began to publish her novels serially—not in the Westminster Review. Spurred on by enlightened self-interest, Chapman soon snooped so successfully that he discovered who George Eliot was. Wrote Lewes to Chapman: ". . . [Mrs. Lewes] authorizes me to state, as distinctly as language can do so, that she is not the author of Adam Bede." Chapman's only reply seems to have been to ask if he might republish some of George Eliot's old articles in the Westminster Review. Lewes said No, wrote in his diary: "Squashed that idea."

Meanwhile, Chapman had decided to become a doctor. In London he treated diabetes, paralysis, epilepsy, cholera with hot & cold water bags. Later he moved to Paris, continued to edit the Westminster Review. In 1894 he died, is buried near George Eliot. He had been molding advanced British opinion for 43 years.