Letter: Casaubon's original

Sir: I support R. W. Burgess's objection (letter, 10 February) to invented bedroom scenes in Middlemarch - perhaps the only false note.

Casaubon was supposed to be based on Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College and friend of the Victorian novelist, Mrs Humphry Ward. In A Writer's Recollections Mrs Ward describes an Oxford 'Sunday supper' in 1870: George Eliot sat at 'the Rector's right hand', and spoke little. G. H. Lewes carried on a lively conversation with Mrs Pattison, a vivacious 'blond-cendree', but, like Dorothea, younger than her husband.

Mary Ward denies that Pattison was the model for Casaubon - a 'legend' based on the age difference and his sometimes acid manner. But the choice of name is interesting: Middlemarch appeared in 1871-2; in 1875 Pattison published a life of Isaac Casaubon, who edited late classical writers and, like Pattison, had trouble finding a church that suited his views. Isaac, his son Meric, and Pattison were no ineffectual scholars, but all three may have tinged the name for George Eliot.

Yours faithfully,

ANNABELLA KITSON

London, W2