Kitobni o'qish: «George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 3 (of 3)»
CHAPTER XIV
The new year of 1867 opens with the description of the journey to Spain
Letter to Madame Bodichon, Jan. 1867, from Bordeaux.
We prolonged our stay in Paris in order to see Madame Mohl, who was very good to us; invited the Scherers and other interesting people to meet us at dinner on the 29th, and tempted us to stay and breakfast with her on the 31st, by promising to invite Renan, which she did successfully, and so procured us a bit of experience that we were glad to have, over and above the pleasure of seeing a little more of herself and M. Mohl. I like them both, and wish there were a chance of knowing them better. We paid for our pleasure by being obliged to walk in the rain (from the impossibility of getting a carriage) all the way from the Rue de Rivoli – where a charitable German printer, who had taken us up in his fiacre, was obliged to set us down – to the Hôtel du Helder, through streets literally jammed with carriages and omnibuses, carrying people who were doing the severe social duties of the last day in the year. The rain it raineth every day, with the exception of yesterday; we can't travel away from it, apparently. But we start in desperation for Bayonne in half an hour.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Jan. 1867, from Biarritz.
Snow on the ground here, too – more, we are told, than has been seen here for fifteen years before. But it has been obliging enough to fall in the night, and the sky is glorious this morning, as it was yesterday. Sunday was the one exception since the 6th, when we arrived here to a state of weather which has allowed us to be out of doors the greater part of our daylight. We think it curious that, among the many persons who have talked to us about Biarritz, the Brownings alone have ever spoken of its natural beauties; yet these are transcendent. We agree that the sea never seemed so magnificent to us before, though we have seen the Atlantic breaking on the rocks at Ilfracombe and on the great granite walls of the Scilly Isles. In the southern division of the bay we see the sun set over the Pyrenees; and in the northern we have two splendid stretches of sand, one with huge fragments of dark rock scattered about for the waves to leap over, the other an unbroken level, firm to the feet, where the hindmost line of wave sends up its spray on the horizon like a suddenly rising cloud. This part of the bay is worthily called the Chambre de l'Amour; and we have its beauties all to ourselves, which, alas! in this stage of the world, one can't help feeling to be an advantage. The few families and bachelors who are here (chiefly English) scarcely ever come across our path. The days pass so rapidly, we can hardly believe in their number when we come to count them. After breakfast we both read the "Politique" – George one volume and I another – interrupting each other continually with questions and remarks. That morning study keeps me in a state of enthusiasm through the day – a moral glow, which is a sort of milieu subjectif for the sublime sea and sky. Mr. Lewes is converted to the warmest admiration of the chapter on language in the third volume, which about three years ago he thought slightly of. I think the first chapter of the fourth volume is among the finest of all, and the most finely written. My gratitude increases continually for the illumination Comte has contributed to my life. But we both of us study with a sense of having still much to learn and to understand. About ten or half-past ten we go out for our morning walk; and then, while we plunge about in the sand or march along the cliff, George draws out a book and tries my paces in Spanish, demanding a quick-as-light translation of nouns and phrases. Presently I retort upon him, and prove that it is easier to ask than to answer. We find this system of vivâ-voce mutual instruction so successful that we are disgusted with ourselves for not having used it before through all our many years of companionship; and we are making projects for giving new interest to Regent's Park by pursuing all sorts of studies in the same way there. We seldom come indoors till one o'clock, and we turn out again at three, often remaining to see the sunset. One other thing I have been reading here which I must tell you of. It is a series of three papers by Saveney, in the Revue des Deux Mondes of last year, on "La Physique Moderne," an excellent summary, giving a glimpse of the great vista opened in that region. I think you would like to read them when you are strong enough for that sort of exertion.
We stayed three days in Paris, and passed our time very agreeably. The first day we dined with Madame Mohl, who had kindly invited Professor Scherer and his wife, Jules Simon, Lomenie, Lavergne, "and others" to meet us. That was on the Saturday, and she tempted us to stay the following Monday by saying she would invite Renan to breakfast with us. Renan's appearance is something between the Catholic priest and the dissenting minister. His manners are very amiable, his talk pleasant, but not distinguished. We are entertaining great projects as to our further journeying. It will be best for you to address Poste Restante, Barcelona.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Feb. 1867.
Are you astonished to see our whereabouts? We left Biarritz for San Sebastian, where we stayed three days; and both there and all our way to Barcelona our life has been a succession of delights. We have had perfect weather, blue skies, and a warm sun. We travelled from San Sebastian to Saragossa, where we passed two nights; then to Lerida for one night, and yesterday to Barcelona. You know the scenery from San Sebastian to Alsasua, through the lower Pyrenees, because it lies on the way to Burgos and Madrid. At Alsasua we turned off through Navarre into Aragon, seeing famous Pampeluna, looking as beautiful as it did ages ago among the grand hills. At Saragossa the scene was thoroughly changed; all through Aragon, as far as we could see, I should think the country resembles the highlands of Central Spain. There is the most striking effect of hills, flanking the plain of Saragossa, I ever saw. They are of palish clay, washed by the rains into undulating forms, and some slight herbage upon them makes the shadows of an exquisite blue.
These hills accompanied us in the distance all the way through Aragon, the snowy mountains topping them in the far distance. The land is all pale brown, the numerous towns and villages just match the land, and so do the sheepfolds, built of mud or stone. The herbage is all of an ashy green. Perhaps if I had been in Africa I should say, as you do, that the country reminded me of Africa; as it is, I think of all I have read about the East. The men who look on while others work at Saragossa also seem to belong to the East, with a great striped blanket wrapped grandly round them, and a kerchief tied about their hair. But though Aragon was held by the Moors longer than any part of Northern Spain, the features and skins of the people seem to me to bear less traces of the mixture there must have been than one would fairly expect. Saragossa has a grand character still, in spite of the stucco with which the people have daubed the beautiful small brick of which the houses are built. Here and there one sees a house left undesecrated by stucco; and all of them have the fluted tiles and the broad eaves beautifully ornamented. Again, one side of the old cathedral still shows the exquisite inlaid work which, in the façade, has been overlaid hideously. Gradually, as we left Aragon and entered Catalonia, the face of the country changed, and we had almost every sort of beauty in succession; last of all, between Monserrat and Barcelona, a perfect garden, with the richest red soil – blossoms on the plum and cherry trees, aloes thick in the hedges. At present we are waiting for the Spanish hardships to begin. Even at Lerida, a place scarcely at all affected by foreign travellers, we were perfectly comfortable – and such sights! The people scattered on the brown slopes of rough earth round the fortress – the women knitting, etc., the men playing at cards, one wonderful, gaudily dressed group; another of handsome gypsies. We are actually going by steam-boat to Alicante, and from Alicante to Malaga. Then we mean to see Granada, Cordova, and Seville. We shall only stay here a few days – if this weather continues.
Letter to Frederic Harrison, 18th Feb. 1867, from Granada.
Your kind letter, written on the 5th, reached me here this morning. I had not heard of the criticism in the Edinburgh. Mr. Lewes read the article, but did not tell me of the reviewer's legal wisdom, thinking that it would only vex me to no purpose. However, I had felt sure that something of that sort must have appeared in one review article or another. I am heartily glad and grateful that you have helped justice in general, as well as justice to me in particular, by getting the vindication written for the Pall Mall. It was the best possible measure to adopt. Since we left Barcelona, a fortnight ago, we have seen no English papers, so that we have been in the dark as to English news.
Were you not surprised to hear that we had come so far? The journey from San Sebastian by Saragossa and Lerida turned out to be so easy and delightful that we ceased to tremble, and determined to carry out our project of going by steamer to Alicante and Malaga. You cannot do better than follow our example; I mean, so far as coming to Spain is concerned. Believe none of the fictions that bookmakers get printed about the horrors of Spanish hotels and cookery, or the hardships of Spanish travel – still less about the rudeness of Spaniards. It is true that we have not yet endured the long railway journeys through Central Spain, but wherever we have been hitherto we have found nothing formidable, even for our rickety bodies.
We came hither from Malaga in the berlina (coupé) of the diligence, and have assured ourselves that Mr. Blackburne's description of a supposed hen-roost, overturned in the Alameda at Malaga, which proved to be the Granada diligence, is an invention. The vehicle is comfortable enough, and the road is perfect; and at the end of it we have found ourselves in one of the loveliest scenes on earth.
We shall remain here till the 23d, and then go to Cordova first, to Seville next, and finally to Madrid, making our way homeward from thence by easy stages. We expect to be in the smoky haze of London again soon after the middle of March, if not before.
I wish I could believe that you were all having anything like the clear skies and warm sun which have cheered our journeying for the last month. At Alicante we walked among the palm-trees with their golden fruit hanging in rich clusters, and felt a more delightful warmth than that of an English summer. Last night we walked out and saw the towers of the Alhambra, the wide Vega, and the snowy mountains, by the brilliant moonlight. You see, we are getting a great deal of pleasure, but we are not working, as you seem charitably to imagine. We tire ourselves, but only with seeing or going to see unforgetable things. You will say that we ought to work to better purpose when we get home. Amen. But just now we read nothing but Spanish novels – and not much of those. We said good-bye to philosophy and science when we packed up our trunks at Biarritz.
Please keep some friendship warm for us, that we may not be too much chilled by the English weather when we get back.
Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Feb. 1867.
We are both heartily rejoiced that we came to Spain. It was a great longing of mine, for, three years ago, I began to interest myself in Spanish history and literature, and have had a work lying by me, partly written, the subject of which is connected with Spain. Whether I shall ever bring it to maturity so as to satisfy myself sufficiently to print it is a question not settled; but it is a work very near my heart. We have had perfect weather ever since the 27th of January – magnificent skies and a summer sun. At Alicante, walking among the palm-trees, with the bare brown rocks and brown houses in the background, we fancied ourselves in the tropics; and a gentleman who travelled with us assured us that the aspect of the country closely resembled Aden, on the Red Sea. Here, at Granada, of course, it is much colder, but the sun shines uninterruptedly; and in the middle of the day, to stand in the sunshine against a wall, reminds me of my sensations at Florence in the beginning of June. The aspect of Granada as we first approached it was a slight disappointment to me, but the beauty of its position can hardly be surpassed. To stand on one of the towers of the Alhambra and see the sun set behind the dark mountains of Loja, and send its after-glow on the white summits of the Sierra Nevada, while the lovely Vega spreads below, ready to yield all things pleasant to the eye and good for food, is worth a very long, long journey. We shall start to-morrow evening for Cordova; then we shall go to Seville, back to Cordova, and on to Madrid.
During our short stay in Paris we went a little into society, and saw, among other people who interested us, Professor Scherer, of whom you know something. He charmed me greatly. He is a Genevese, you know, and does not talk in ready-made epigrams, like a clever Frenchman, but with well-chosen, moderate words, intended to express what he really thinks and feels. He is highly cultivated; and his wife, who was with him, is an Englishwoman of refined, simple manners.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 10th Mch. 1867, from Biarritz.
At Biarritz again, you see, after our long, delightful journey, in which we have made a great loop all round the east and through the centre of Spain. Mr. Lewes says he thinks he never enjoyed a journey so much, and you will see him so changed – so much plumper and ruddier – that if pity has entered much into your regard for him he will be in danger of losing something by his bodily prosperity. We crowned our pleasures in Spain with the sight of the pictures in the Madrid gallery. The skies were as blue at Madrid as they had been through the previous part of our journeying, but the air was bitterly cold; and naughty officials receive money for warming the museum, but find other uses for the money. I caught a severe cold the last day of our visit, and, after an uncomfortable day and night's railway journey, arrived at Biarritz, only fit for bed and coddling.
Journal, 1867.
March 16.– This evening we got home after a journey to the south of Spain. I go to my poem and the construction of two prose works – if possible.
Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Mch. 1867.
We got home on Saturday evening, after as fine a passage from Calais to Dover as we ever had, even in summer. Your letter was among the pleasant things that smiled at me on my return, and helped to reconcile me to the rather rude transition from summer to winter which we have made in our journey from Biarritz. This morning it is snowing hard and the wind is roaring – a sufficiently sharp contrast to the hot sun, the dust, and the mosquitoes of Seville.
We have had a glorious journey. The skies alone, both night and day, were worth travelling all the way to see. We went to Cordova and Seville, but we feared the cold of the central lands in the north, and resisted the temptation to see Toledo, or anything else than the Madrid pictures, which are transcendent.
Among the letters awaiting me was one from an American travelling in Europe, who gives me the history of a copy of "Felix Holt," which, he says, has been read by no end of people, and is now on its way through Ireland, "where he found many friends anxious but unable to get it." It seems people nowadays economize in nothing but books. I found also the letter of a "Conveyancer" in the Pall Mall, justifying the law of "Felix Holt" in answer to the Edinburgh reviewer. I did not know, before I was told of this letter in reply, that the Edinburgh reviewer had found fault with my law.
Journal, 1867.
March 21.– Received from Blackwood a check for £2166 13s. 4d., being the second instalment of £1666 13s. 4d. towards the £5000 for "Felix Holt," together with £500 as the first instalment of £1000 for ten years' copyright of the cheap edition of my novels.
Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Mch. 1867.
Your letters, with the valuable enclosure of a check for £2166 13s. 4d., have come to me this morning, and I am much obliged to you for your punctual attention.
I long to see a specimen of the cheap edition of the novels. As to the illustrations, I have adjusted my hopes so as to save myself from any great shock. When I remember my own childish happiness in a frightfully illustrated copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," I can believe that illustration may be a great good relatively, and that my own present liking has no weight in the question.
I fancy that the placarding at railway stations is an effective measure, for Ruskin was never more mistaken than in asserting that people have no spare time to observe anything in such places. I am a very poor reader of advertisements, but even I am forced to get them unpleasantly by heart at the stations.
It is rather a vexatious kind of tribute when people write, as my American correspondent did, to tell me of one paper-covered American copy of "Felix Holt" brought to Europe and serving for so many readers that it was in danger of being worn away under their hands. He, good man, finds it easy "to urge greater circulation by means of cheap sale," having "found so many friends in Ireland anxious but unable to obtain the book." I suppose putting it in a yellow cover with figures on it, reminding one of the outside of a show, and charging a shilling for it, is what we are expected to do for the good of mankind. Even then I fear it would hardly bear the rivalry of "The Pretty Milliner," or of "The Horrible Secret."
The work connected with Spain is not a romance. It is – prepare your fortitude – it is – a poem. I conceived the plot, and wrote nearly the whole as a drama in 1864. Mr. Lewes advised me to put it by for a time and take it up again, with a view to recasting it. He thinks hopefully of it. I need not tell you that I am not hopeful, but I am quite sure the subject is fine. It is not historic, but has merely historic connections. The plot was wrought out entirely as an incorporation of my own ideas. Of course, if it is ever finished to my satisfaction, it is not a work for us to get money by, but Mr. Lewes urges and insists that it shall be done. I have also my private projects about an English novel, but I am afraid of speaking as if I could depend on myself; at present I am rather dizzy, and not settled down to home habits of regular occupation.
I understand that the conveyancer who wrote to the Pall Mall is an excellent lawyer in his department, and the lecturer on Real Property at the Law Institution.
If a reviewer ever checked himself by considering that a writer whom he thinks worth praising would take some pains to know the truth about a matter which is the very hinge of said writer's story, review articles would cut a shrunken figure.
Journal, 1867.
May 5.– We went to Bouverie Street to hear the first of a course of lectures on Positivism, delivered by Dr. Congreve. There were present seventy-five people, chiefly men.
May 11.– We had Mr. and Mrs. Call to dine with us, and an evening party afterwards.
May 12.– We went to hear Dr. Congreve's second lecture. The morning was thoroughly wet; the audience smaller, but still good.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th May, 1867.
Yesterday we went to the second of a course of lectures which Dr. Congreve is delivering on Positivism in Bouverie Street. At the first lecture on the 5th there was a considerable audience – about seventy-five, chiefly men – of various ranks, from lords and M.P.'s downwards, or upwards, for what is called social distinction seems to be in a shifting condition just now. Yesterday the wet weather doubtless helped to reduce the audience; still it was good. Curiosity brings some, interest in the subject others, and the rest go with the wish to express adhesion more or less thorough.
I am afraid you have ceased to care much about pictures, else I should wish that you could see the Exhibition of Historical Portraits at Kensington. It is really worth a little fatigue to see the English of past generations in their habit as they lived – especially when Gainsborough and Sir Joshua are the painters. But even Sir Godfrey Kneller delights me occasionally with a finely conceived portrait carefully painted. There is an unforgetable portrait of Newton by him.
Journal, 1867.
May 27.– Went with G. to the Academy Exhibition.
May 29.– Went to the Exhibition of French Pictures – very agreeable and interesting.
Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 30th May, 1867.
I do sympathize with you most emphatically in the desire to see women socially elevated – educated equally with men, and secured as far as possible, along with every other breathing creature, from suffering the exercise of any unrighteous power. That is a broader ground of sympathy than agreement as to the amount and kind of result that may be hoped for from a particular measure. But on this special point I am far from thinking myself an oracle, and on the whole I am inclined to hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament. I thought Mill's speech sober and judicious from his point of view – Karslake's an abomination.
À propos of what you say about Mr. Congreve, I think you have mistaken his, or rather Comte's, position. There is no denial of an unknown cause, but only a denial that such a conception is the proper basis of a practical religion. It seems to me pre-eminently desirable that we should learn not to make our personal comfort a standard of truth.
Journal, 1867.
June 1 (Saturday). – Wrote up to the moment when Fedalma appears in the Plaça.
June 5.– Blackwood dined with us, and I read to him my poem down to page 56. He showed great delight.
June 26.– We went to Niton for a fortnight, returning July 10.
July 16.– Received £2166 13s. 4d. from Blackwood, being the final instalment for "Felix Holt," and (£500) copyright for ten years.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th July, 1867.
Again we take flight! To North Germany this time, and chiefly to Dresden, where we shall be accessible through the Poste Restante. I am ashamed of saying anything about our health – we are both "objects" for compassion or contempt, according to the disposition of the subject who may contemplate us.
Mr. Beesley (I think it was he) sent us Dr. Congreve's pamphlet last night, and I read it aloud to George. We both felt a cordial satisfaction in it. We have been a good deal beset by little engagements with friends and acquaintances lately, and these, with the preparations for our journey, have been rather too much for me. Mr. Lewes is acting on the advice of Sir Henry Holland in giving up zoologizing for the present, because it obliges him to hang down his head. That is the reason we go inland, and not to the coast, as I think I hinted to you that we expected to do.
You are sympathetic enough to be glad to hear that we have had thoroughly cheerful and satisfactory letters from both our boys in Natal. They are established in their purchased farm, and are very happy together in their work. Impossible for mortals to have less trouble than we. I should have written to you earlier this week – for we start to-morrow – but that I have been laid prostrate with crushing headache one half of my time, and always going out or seeing some one the other half.
Farewell, dear. Don't write unless you have a real desire to gossip with me a little about yourself and our mutual friends. You know I always like to have news of you, but I shall not think it unkind – I shall only think you have other things to do – if you are silent.
Journal, 1867.
July 29.– We went to Dover this evening as the start on a journey into Germany (North).
Oct. 1.– We returned home after revisiting the scenes of cherished memories – Ilmenau, Dresden, and Berlin. Of new places we have seen Wetzlar, Cassel, Eisenach, and Hanover. At Ilmenau I wrote Fedalma's soliloquy after her scene with Silva, and the following dialogue between her and Juan. At Dresden I rewrote the whole scene between her and Zarca.
Oct. 9.– Reading "Los Judios en Espâna," Percy's "Reliques," "Isis," occasionally aloud.
Oct. 10.– Reading the "Iliad," Book III. Finished "Los Judios en Espâna," a wretchedly poor book.
Oct. 11.– Began again Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella."
Oct. 19.– George returned last evening from a walking expedition in Surrey with Mr. Spencer.
This entry is an interesting one to me, as it fixes the date of the first acquaintance with my family. Mr. Herbert Spencer was an old friend of ours, and in the course of their walk he and Mr. Lewes happened to pass through Weybridge, where my mother at that time lived. They came to dinner. Mr. Lewes, with his wonderful social powers, charmed all, and they passed a delightful evening. I was myself in America at the time, where I was in business as a banker at New York. My eldest sister had just then published a little volume of poems,1 which was kindly received by the press. On the invitation of Mr. Lewes she went shortly afterwards to see George Eliot, then in the zenith of her fame; nor did she ever forget the affectionate manner in which the great author greeted her. This was the beginning of a close friendship between the families, which lasted, and increased in intimacy, to the end. Mr. Spencer, in writing to tell me that it was he who first made Mr. Lewes acquainted with George Eliot, adds, "You will perhaps be struck by the curious coincidence that it was also by me that Lewes was introduced to your family at Weybridge and remoter issues entailed."
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Oct. 1867.
Before I got your letter I was about to write to you and direct your attention to an article in the forthcoming (October) number of the Quarterly Review, on the Talmud. You really must go out of your way to read it. It is written by one of the greatest Oriental scholars, the man among living men who probably knows the most about the Talmud; and you will appreciate the pregnancy of the article. There are also beautiful, soul-cheering things selected for quotation.
Journal, 1867.
Oct. 31.– I have now inserted all that I think of for the first part of the "Spanish Gypsy." On Monday I wrote three new Lyrics. I have also rewritten the first scenes in the gypsy camp, to the end of the dialogue between Juan and Fedalma. But I have determined to make the commencement of the second part continue the picture of what goes forward in Bedmar.
Nov. 1.– Began this morning Part II. "Silva was marching homeward," etc.
Letter to John Blackwood, 9th Nov. 1867.
About putting Fedalma in type. There would be advantages, but also disadvantages; and on these latter I wish to consult you. I have more than three thousand lines ready in the order I wish them to stand in, and it would be good to have them in print to read them critically. Defects reveal themselves more fully in type, and emendations might be more conveniently made on proofs, since I have given up the idea of copying the MS. as a whole. On the other hand, could the thing be kept private when it had once been in the printing-office? And I particularly wish not to have it set afloat, for various reasons. Among others, I want to keep myself free from all inducements to premature publication; I mean, publication before I have given my work as much revision as I can hope to give it while my mind is still nursing it. Beyond this, delay would be useless. The theory of laying by poems for nine years may be a fine one, but it could not answer for me to apply it. I could no more live through one of my books a second time than I can live through last year again. But I like to keep checks on myself, and not to create external temptations to do what I should think foolish in another. If you thought it possible to secure us against the oozing out of proofs and gossip, the other objections would be less important. One difficulty is, that in my MS. I have frequently two readings of the same passage, and, being uncertain which of them is preferable, I wish them both to stand for future decision. But perhaps this might be managed in proof. The length of the poem is at present uncertain, but I feel so strongly what Mr. Lewes insists on, namely, the evil of making it too long, that I shall set it before me as a duty not to make it more than nine thousand lines, and shall be glad if it turns out a little shorter.
Will you think over the whole question? I am sure your mind will supply any prudential considerations that I may have omitted.
I am vexed by the non-success of the serial edition of the works. It is not, Heaven knows, that I read my own books or am puffed up about them, but I have been of late quite astonished by the strengthening testimonies that have happened to come to me of people who care about every one of my books, and continue to read them – especially young men, who are just the class I care most to influence. But what sort of data can one safely go upon with regard to the success of editions?
"Felix Holt" is immensely tempted by your suggestion,2 but George Eliot is severely admonished by his domestic critic not to scatter his energies.
Mr. Lewes sends his best regards. He is in high spirits about the poem.
Journal, 1867.
Nov. 22.– Began an "Address to the Working Men, by Felix Holt," at Blackwood's repeated request.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1867.
Yes, indeed – when I do not reciprocate "chaos is come again." I was quite sure your letter would come, and was grateful beforehand.
There is a scheme on foot for a Woman's College, or, rather, University, to be built between London and Cambridge, and to be in connection with the Cambridge University, sharing its professors, examinations, and degrees! Si muove.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st Dec. (?) 1867.
I have written to Miss Davies to ask her to come to see me on Tuesday.
I am much occupied just now, but the better education of women is one of the objects about which I have no doubt, and shall rejoice if this idea of a college can be carried out.
I see Miss Julia Smith's beautiful handwriting, and am glad to think of her as your guardian angel.
The author of the glorious article on the Talmud is "that bright little man" Mr. Deutsch – a very dear, delightful creature.
Journal, 1867.
Dec. 4.– Sent off the MS. of the "Address" to Edinburgh.
Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Dec. 1867.
I agree with you about the phrase "Masters of the country."3 I wrote that part twice, and originally I distinctly said that the epithet was false. Afterwards I left that out, preferring to make a stronger argumentum ad hominem, in case any workman believed himself a future master.
I think it will be better for you to write a preliminary note, washing your hands of any over-trenchant statements on the part of the well-meaning Radical. I much prefer that you should do so.
Whatever you agree with will have the advantage of not coming from one who can be suspected of being a special pleader.
What you say about Fedalma is very cheering. But I am chiefly anxious about the road still untravelled – the road I have still zurück zu legen.
Mr. Lewes has to request several proofs of Fedalma, to facilitate revision. But I will leave him to say how many. We shall keep them strictly to ourselves, you may be sure, so that three or four will be enough – one for him, one for me, and one for the resolution of our differences.
Letter to John Blackwood 12th Dec. 1867.
I am very grateful to you for your generous words about my work. That you not only feel so much sympathy, but are moved to express it so fully, is a real help to me.
I am very glad to have had the revise of the "Address." I feel the danger of not being understood. Perhaps, by a good deal longer consideration and gradual shaping, I might have put the ideas into a more concrete, easy form.
Mr. Lewes read the proof of the poem all through to himself for the first time last night, and expressed great satisfaction in the impression it produced. Your suggestion of having it put into type is a benefit for which we have reason to be obliged to you.
I cannot help saying again that it is a strong cordial to me to have such letters as yours, and to know that I have such a first reader as you.
Journal, 1867.
Dec. 21.– Finished reading "Averroës and Averroisme" and "Les Médicins Juifs." Reading "First Principles."
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Dec. 1867.
Our Christmas will be very quiet. On the 27th Mr. Lewes means to start on a solitary journey to Bonn, and perhaps to Würzburg, for anatomical purposes. I don't mean that he is going to offer himself as an anatomical subject, but that he wants to get answers to some questions bearing on the functions of the nerves. It is a bad time for him to travel in, but he hopes to be at home again in ten days or a fortnight, and I hope the run will do him good rather than harm.
Journal, 1867.
Dec. 25.– George and I dined happily alone; he better for weeks than he has been all the summer before; I more ailing than usual, but with much mental consolation, part of it being the delight he expresses in my poem, of which the first part is now in print.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1867.
Thanks for the pretty remembrance. You were not unthought of before it came. Now, however, I rouse all my courage under the thick fog to tell you my inward wish – which is that the new year, as it travels on towards its old age, may bring you many satisfactions undisturbed by bodily ailment.
Mr. Lewes is going to-morrow on an unprecedented expedition – a rapid run to Bonn, to make some anatomical researches with Professor Schutze there. If he needs more than he can get at Bonn, he may go to Heidelberg and Würzburg. But in any case he will not take more than a fortnight.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Dec. 1867.
Public questions which, by a sad process of reduction, become piteous private questions, hang cloudily over all prospects. The state of Europe, the threat of a general war, the starvation of multitudes – one can't help thinking of these things at one's breakfast. Nevertheless, there is much enjoyment going on, and abundance of rosy children's parties.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Dec. 1867.
It is very good and sweet of you to propose to come round for me on Sunday, and I shall cherish particularly the remembrance of that kindness. But, on our reading your letter, Mr. Lewes objected, on grounds which I think just, to my going to any public manifestation without him, since his absence could not be divined by outsiders.
I am companioned by dyspepsia, and feel life a struggle under the leaden sky. Mme. Bodichon writes that in Sussex the air is cold and clear, and the woods and lanes dressed in wintry loveliness of fresh, grassy patches, mingled with the soft grays and browns of the trees and hedges. Mr. Harrison shed the agreeable light of his kind eyes on me yesterday for a brief space; but I hope I was more endurable to my visitors than to myself, else I think they will not come again. I object strongly to myself, as a bundle of unpleasant sensations with a palpitating heart and awkward manners. Impossible to imagine the large charity I have for people who detest me. But don't you be one of them.
Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Dec. 1867.
I am much obliged to you for your handsome check, and still more gratified that the "Address" has been a satisfaction to you.
I am very glad to hear of your projected visit to town, and shall hope to have a good batch of MS. for you to carry back. Mr. Lewes is in an unprecedented state of delight with the poem, now that he is reading it with close care. He says he is astonished that he can't find more faults. He is especially pleased with the sense of variety it gives; and this testimony is worth the more because he urged me to put the poem by (in 1865) on the ground of monotony. He is really exultant about it now, and after what you have said to me I know this will please you.
Hearty wishes that the coming year may bring you much good, and that the "Spanish Gypsy" may contribute a little to that end.
SUMMARY
January, 1867, to December, 1867
Letter to Madame Bodichon from Bordeaux – Madame Mohl – Scherer – Renan – Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Biarritz – Delight in Comte's "Politique" – Gratitude to him for illumination – Learning Spanish – Papers in the Revue des Deux Mondes, by Saveney – Letter to Madame Bodichon from Barcelona – Description of scenery – Pampeluna – Saragossa – Lerida – Letter to F. Harrison from Granada – The vindication of the law in "Felix Holt" – Spanish travelling – Letter to John Blackwood from Granada – Alicante – Granada – Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Biarritz – Delight of the journey – Madrid pictures – Return to the Priory – Letter to John Blackwood – "Felix Holt" – Cheap edition of novels – "Spanish Gypsy" – Dr. Congreve's Lectures on Positivism – Letter to Miss Hennell – Historical Portraits at South Kensington – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Women's claims – Comte's position – Fortnight's Visit to the Isle of Wight – Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve – Two months' visit to North Germany – Return to England – Reading on Spanish subjects – Mr. Lewes and Mr. Spencer at Weybridge – Acquaintance with Mrs. Cross and family – Letter to Miss Hennell – Deutsch's article on the Talmud – Letter to Blackwood about putting "Spanish Gypsy" in type – "Address to Workingmen, by Felix Holt" – Letter to Miss Hennell – Girton College – Letter to Madame Bodichon – The higher education of women – Letter to John Blackwood on the "Address" – Christmas day at the Priory – Letter to Miss Hennell – Visit of Mr. Lewes to Bonn – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – Depression – Letter to John Blackwood – Mr. Lewes on "Spanish Gypsy."
CHAPTER XV
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 9th Jan. 1868.
There is a good genius presiding over your gifts – they are so felicitous. You always give me something of which I have felt the want beforehand, and can use continually. It is eminently so with my pretty mittens; there was no little appendage I wanted more; and they are just as warm at the wrist as I could have wished them to be – warming, too, as a mark of affection at a time when all cheering things are doubly welcome.
Mr. Lewes came home last night, and you may imagine that I am glad. Between the bad weather, bad health, and solitude, I have been so far unlike the wicked that I have not flourished like the green bay-tree. To make amends, he – Mr. Lewes, not the wicked – has had a brilliant time, gained great instruction, and seen some admirable men, who have received him warmly.
I go out of doors very little, but I shall open the drawer and look at my mittens on the days when I don't put them on.
Journal, 1868.
Jan.– Engaged in writing Part III. of "Spanish Gypsy."
Feb. 27.– Returned last evening from a very pleasant visit to Cambridge.4 I am still only at p. 5 of Part IV., having had a wretched month of malaise.
March 1.– Finished Guillemin on the "Heavens," and the 4th Book of the "Iliad." I shall now read Grote.
March 6.– Reading Lubbock's "Prehistoric Ages."
March 8.– Saturday concert. Joachim and Piatti, with Schubert's Ottett.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th Mch. 1868.
We go to-morrow morning to Torquay for a month, and I can't bear to go without saying a word of farewell to you. How sadly little we have seen each other this winter! It will not be so any more, I hope, will it?
We are both much in need of the change, for Mr. Lewes has got rather out of sorts again lately. When we come back I shall ask you to come and look at us before the bloom is off. I should like to know how you all are; but you have been so little inspired for note-writing lately that I am afraid to ask you to send me a line to the post-office at Torquay. I really deserve nothing of my friends at present.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Mch. 1868.
I don't know whether you have ever seen Torquay. It is pretty, but not comparable to Ilfracombe; and, like all other easily accessible sea-places, it is sadly spoiled by wealth and fashion, which leave no secluded walks, and tattoo all the hills with ugly patterns of roads and villa gardens. Our selfishness does not adapt itself well to these on-comings of the millennium.
I am reading about savages and semi-savages, and think that our religious oracles would do well to study savage ideas by a method of comparison with their own. Also, I am studying that semi-savage poem, the "Iliad." How enviable it is to be a classic. When a verse in the "Iliad" bears six different meanings, and nobody knows which is the right, a commentator finds this equivocalness in itself admirable!
Letter to John Blackwood, end of Mch. 1868.
Mr. Lewes quite agrees with you, that it is desirable to announce the poem. His suggestion is, that it should be simply announced as "a poem" first, and then a little later as "The Spanish Gypsy," in order to give a new detail for observation in the second announcement. I chose the title, "The Spanish Gypsy," a long time ago, because it is a little in the fashion of the elder dramatists, with whom I have perhaps more cousinship than with recent poets. Fedalma might be mistaken for an Italian name, which would create a definite expectation of a mistaken kind, and is, on other grounds, less to my taste than "The Spanish Gypsy."
This place is becoming a little London, or London suburb. Everywhere houses and streets are being built, and Babbacombe will soon be joined to Torquay.
I almost envy you the excitement of golf, which helps the fresh air to exhilarate, and gives variety of exercise. Walking can never be so good as a game – if one loves the game. But when a friend of Mr. Lewes's urges him angrily to play rackets for his health, the prospect seems dreary.
We are afraid of being entangled in excursion trains, or crowds of Easter holiday-makers, in Easter week, and may possibly be driven back next Wednesday. But we are loath to have our stay so curtailed.
Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards, and pities all of us who are less interested in ganglionic cells. He is in a state of beatitude about the poem.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th April, 1868.
We find a few retired walks, and are the less discontented because the weather is perfect. I hope you are sharing the delights of sunshine and moonlight. There are no waves here, as you know; but under such skies as we are having, sameness is so beautiful that we find no fault, and there is a particular hill at Babbacombe of the richest Spanish red. On the whole, we are glad we came here, having avoided all trouble in journeying and settling. But we should not come again without special call, for in a few years all the hills will be parts of a London suburb.
How glorious this weather is for the hard workers who are looking forward to their Easter holiday! But for ourselves, we are rather afraid of the railway stations in holiday time. Certainly, we are ill prepared for what Tennyson calls the "To-be," and it is good that we shall soon pass from this objective existence.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th April, 1868.
I think Ruskin has not been encouraged about women by his many and persistent attempts to teach them. He seems to have found them wanting in real scientific interest – bent on sentimentalizing in everything.
What I should like to be sure of, as a result of higher education for women – a result that will come to pass over my grave – is their recognition of the great amount of social unproductive labor which needs to be done by women, and which is now either not done at all or done wretchedly. No good can come to women, more than to any class of male mortals, while each aims at doing the highest kind of work, which ought rather to be held in sanctity as what only the few can do well. I believe, and I want it to be well shown, that a more thorough education will tend to do away with the odious vulgarity of our notions about functions and employment, and to propagate the true gospel, that the deepest disgrace is to insist on doing work for which we are unfit – to do work of any sort badly. There are many points of this kind that want being urged, but they do not come well from me.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th April, 1868.
Your letter came just at the right time to greet us. Thanks for that pretty remembrance. We are glad to be at home again with our home comforts around us, though we became deeply in love with Torquay in the daily heightening of spring beauties, and the glory of perpetual blue skies. The eight hours' journey (one hour more than we paid for) was rather disturbing; and, I think, Mr. Lewes has got more zoological experience than health from our month's delight – but a delight it really has been to us to have perfect quiet with the red hills, the sunshine, and the sea.
I shall be absorbed for the next fortnight, so that I cannot allow myself the sort of pleasure you kindly project for us; and when May begins, I want you to come and stay a night with us. I shall be ready by and by for such holiday-making, and you must be good to me. Will you give Dr. Congreve my thanks for his pamphlet, which I read at Torquay with great interest? All protests tell, however slowly and imperceptibly, and a protest against the doctrine that England is to keep Ireland under all conditions was what I had wished to be made. But in this matter he will have much more important concurrence than mine. I am bearing much in mind the great task of the translation. When it is completed we shall be able and glad to do what we were not able to do in the case of the "Discours Préliminaire," namely, to take our share, if we may, in the expenses of publication.
Journal, 1868.
April 16.– Returned home, bringing Book IV. finished.
April 18.– Went with Mr. Pigott to see Holman Hunt's great picture, Isabella and the Pot of Basil.
Letter to John Blackwood, 21st April, 1868.
I send you by to-day's post the MS. of Book IV., that it may be at hand whenever there is opportunity for getting it into print, and letting me have it in that form for correction. It is desirable to get as forward as we can, in case of the Americans asking for delay after their reception of the sheets – if they venture to make any arrangement. I shall send the MS. of Book V. (the last) as soon as headache will permit, but that is an uncertain limit. We returned from Torquay on the 16th, leaving the glorious weather behind us. We were more in love with the place on a better acquaintance: the weather, and the spring buds, and the choirs of birds, made it seem more of a paradise to us every day.
The poem will be less tragic than I threatened: Mr. Lewes has prevailed on me to return to my original conception, and give up the additional development, which I determined on subsequently. The poem is rather shorter in consequence. Don't you think that my artistic deference and pliability deserve that it should also be better in consequence? I now end it as I determined to end it when I first conceived the story.
Journal, 1868.
April 25.– Finished the last dialogue between Silva and Fedalma. Mr. and Mrs. Burne Jones dined with us.
April 29.– Finished "The Spanish Gypsy."
Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Aug. 1868.
I send you by to-day's post the conclusion of the poem in MS., and the eighteen sheets of revise. The last book is brief, but I may truly use the old epigram – that it would have taken less time to make it longer. It is a great bore that the name of my heroine is wrongly spelled in all the earlier sheets. It is a fresh proof of the fallibility of our impressions as to our own doings, that I would have confidently affirmed the name to be spelled Fedalma (as it ought to be) in my manuscript. Yet I suppose I should have affirmed falsely, for the i occurs in the slips constantly.
As I shall not see these paged sheets again, will you charitably assure me that the alterations are safely made?
Among my wife's papers were four or five pages of MS. headed, "Notes on the Spanish Gypsy and Tragedy in General." There is no evidence as to the date at which this fragment was written, and it seems to have been left unfinished. But there was evidently some care to preserve it; and as I think she would not have objected to its presentation, I give it here exactly as it stands. It completes the history of the poem.
Notes on "The Spanish Gypsy."
The subject of "The Spanish Gypsy" was originally suggested to me by a picture which hangs in the Scuola di' San Rocco at Venice, over the door of the large Sala containing Tintoretto's frescoes. It is an Annunciation, said to be by Titian. Of course I had seen numerous pictures of this subject before; and the subject had always attracted me. But in this my second visit to the Scuola di' San Rocco, this small picture of Titian's, pointed out to me for the first time, brought a new train of thought. It occurred to me that here was a great dramatic motive of the same class as those used by the Greek dramatists, yet specifically differing from them. A young maiden, believing herself to be on the eve of the chief event of her life – marriage – about to share in the ordinary lot of womanhood, full of young hope, has suddenly announced to her that she is chosen to fulfil a great destiny, entailing a terribly different experience from that of ordinary womanhood. She is chosen, not by any momentary arbitrariness, but as a result of foregoing hereditary conditions: she obeys. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Here, I thought, is a subject grander than that of Iphigenia, and it has never been used. I came home with this in my mind, meaning to give the motive a clothing in some suitable set of historical and local conditions. My reflections brought me nothing that would serve me except that moment in Spanish history when the struggle with the Moors was attaining its climax, and when there was the gypsy race present under such conditions as would enable me to get my heroine and the hereditary claim on her among the gypsies. I required the opposition of race to give the need for renouncing the expectation of marriage. I could not use the Jews or the Moors, because the facts of their history were too conspicuously opposed to the working-out of my catastrophe. Meanwhile the subject had become more and more pregnant to me. I saw it might be taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the general human lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions; for even in cases of just antagonism to the narrow view of hereditary claims, the whole background of the particular struggle is made up of our inherited nature. Suppose for a moment that our conduct at great epochs was determined entirely by reflection, without the immediate intervention of feeling, which supersedes reflection, our determination as to the right would consist in an adjustment of our individual needs to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to our natural constitution, partly as sharers of life with our fellow-beings. Tragedy consists in the terrible difficulty of this adjustment —
"The dire strife of poor Humanity's afflicted will,
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
Looking at individual lots, I seemed to see in each the same story, wrought out with more or less of tragedy, and I determined the elements of my drama under the influence of these ideas.
In order to judge properly of the dramatic structure it must not be considered first in the light of doctrinal symbolism, but in the light of a tragedy representing some grand collision in the human lot. And it must be judged accordingly. A good tragic subject must represent a possible, sufficiently probable, not a common, action; and to be really tragic, it must represent irreparable collision between the individual and the general (in differing degrees of generality). It is the individual with whom we sympathize, and the general of which we recognize the irresistible power. The truth of this test will be seen by applying it to the greatest tragedies. The collision of Greek tragedy is often that between hereditary, entailed Nemesis and the peculiar individual lot, awakening our sympathy, of the particular man or woman whom the Nemesis is shown to grasp with terrific force. Sometimes, as in the Oresteia, there is the clashing of two irreconcilable requirements, two duties, as we should say in these times. The murder of the father must be avenged by the murder of the mother, which must again be avenged. These two tragic relations of the individual and general, and of two irreconcilable "oughts," may be – will be – seen to be almost always combined. The Greeks were not taking an artificial, entirely erroneous standpoint in their art – a standpoint which disappeared altogether with their religion and their art. They had the same essential elements of life presented to them as we have, and their art symbolized these in grand schematic forms. The Prometheus represents the ineffectual struggle to redeem the small and miserable race of man, against the stronger adverse ordinances that govern the frame of things with a triumphant power. Coming to modern tragedies, what is it that makes Othello a great tragic subject? A story simply of a jealous husband is elevated into a most pathetic tragedy by the hereditary conditions of Othello's lot, which give him a subjective ground for distrust. Faust, Rigoletto (Le Roi s'Amuse), Brutus. It might be a reasonable ground of objection against the whole structure of "The Spanish Gypsy" if it were shown that the action is outrageously improbable – lying outside all that can be congruously conceived of human actions. It is not a reasonable ground of objection that they would have done better to act otherwise, any more than it is a reasonable objection against the Iphigenia that Agamemnon would have done better not to sacrifice his daughter.
As renunciations coming under the same great class, take the renunciation of marriage, where marriage cannot take place without entailing misery on the children.
A tragedy has not to expound why the individual must give way to the general; it has to show that it is compelled to give way; the tragedy consisting in the struggle involved, and often in the entirely calamitous issue in spite of a grand submission. Silva presents the tragedy of entire rebellion; Fedalma of a grand submission, which is rendered vain by the effects of Silva's rebellion. Zarca, the struggle for a great end, rendered vain by the surrounding conditions of life.
Now, what is the fact about our individual lots? A woman, say, finds herself on the earth with an inherited organization; she may be lame, she may inherit a disease, or what is tantamount to a disease; she may be a negress, or have other marks of race repulsive in the community where she is born, etc. One may go on for a long while without reaching the limits of the commonest inherited misfortunes. It is almost a mockery to say to such human beings, "Seek your own happiness." The utmost approach to well-being that can be made in such a case is through large resignation and acceptance of the inevitable, with as much effort to overcome any disadvantage as good sense will show to be attended with a likelihood of success. Any one may say, that is the dictate of mere rational reflection. But calm can, in hardly any human organism, be attained by rational reflection. Happily, we are not left to that. Love, pity, constituting sympathy, and generous joy with regard to the lot of our fellow-men comes in – has been growing since the beginning – enormously enhanced by wider vision of results, by an imagination actively interested in the lot of mankind generally; and these feelings become piety —i. e., loving, willing submission and heroic Promethean effort towards high possibilities, which may result from our individual life.
There is really no moral "sanction" but this inward impulse. The will of God is the same thing as the will of other men, compelling us to work and avoid what they have seen to be harmful to social existence. Disjoined from any perceived good, the divine will is simply so much as we have ascertained of the facts of existence which compel obedience at our peril. Any other notion comes from the supposition of arbitrary revelation.
That favorite view, expressed so often in Clough's poems, of doing duty in blindness as to the result, is likely to deepen the substitution of egoistic yearnings for really moral impulses. We cannot be utterly blind to the results of duty, since that cannot be duty which is not already judged to be for human good. To say the contrary is to say that mankind have reached no inductions as to what is for their good or evil.
The art which leaves the soul in despair is laming to the soul, and is denounced by the healthy sentiment of an active community. The consolatory elements in "The Spanish Gypsy" are derived from two convictions or sentiments which so conspicuously pervade it that they may be said to be its very warp, on which the whole action is woven. These are: (1) The importance of individual deeds. (2) The all-sufficiency of the soul's passions in determining sympathetic action.
In Silva is presented the claim of fidelity to social pledges. In Fedalma the claim constituted by an hereditary lot less consciously shared.
With regard to the supremacy of love: if it were a fact without exception that man or woman never did renounce the joys of love, there could never have sprung up a notion that such renunciation could present itself as a duty. If no parents had ever cared for their children, how could parental affection have been reckoned among the elements of life? But what are the facts in relation to this matter? Will any one say that faithfulness to the marriage tie has never been regarded as a duty, in spite of the presence of the profoundest passion experienced after marriage? Is Guinivere's conduct the type of duty?
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 7th May, 1868.
Yes, I am at rest now – only a few pages of revise to look at more. My chief excitement and pleasure in the work are over: for when I have once written anything, and it is gone out of my power, I think of it as little as possible. Next to the doing of the thing, of course, Mr. Lewes's delight in it is the cream of all sympathy, though I care enough about the sympathy of others to be very grateful for any they give me. Don't you imagine how the people who consider writing simply as a money-getting profession will despise me for choosing a work by which I could only get hundreds, where for a novel I could get thousands? I cannot help asking you to admire what my husband is, compared with many possible husbands – I mean, in urging me to produce a poem rather than anything in a worldly sense more profitable. I expect a good deal of disgust to be felt towards me in many quarters for doing what was not looked for from me, and becoming unreadable to many who have hitherto found me readable and debatable. Religion and novels every ignorant person feels competent to give an opinion upon, but en fait de poésie, a large number of them "only read Shakespeare." But enough of that.
Letter to Frederic Harrison, 25th May, 1868.
Before we set off to Germany I want to tell you that a copy of "The Spanish Gypsy" will be sent to you. If there had been time before our going away I should have written on the fly-leaf that it was offered by the author "in grateful remembrance." For I especially desire that you should understand my reasons for asking you to accept the book to be retrospective and not prospective.
And I am going out of reach of all letters, so that you are free from any need to write to me, and may let the book lie till you like to open it.
CHAPTER XVI
Journal, 1869.
Jan. 1.– I have set myself many tasks for the year – I wonder how many will be accomplished? – a novel called "Middlemarch," a long poem on Timoleon, and several minor poems.
Jan. 23.– Since I wrote last I have finished a little poem on old Agatha. But the last week or two I have been so disturbed in health that no work prospers. I have made a little way in constructing my new tale; have been reading a little on philology; have finished the 24th Book of the "Iliad," the 1st Book of the "Faery Queene," Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things, in Mrs. Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" and "Volpone," and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading, besides the first four cantos of "Don Juan." But the last two or three days I have seemed to live under a leaden pressure – all movement, mental or bodily, is grievous to me. In the evening read aloud Bright's fourth speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the Spectator some interesting facts about loss of memory and "double life." In the Revue des Cours, a lecture by Sir W. Thomson, of Edinburgh, on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis.
Jan. 27.– The last two days I have been writing a rhymed poem on Boccaccio's story of "Lisa." Aloud I have read Bright's speeches, and "I Promessi Sposi." To myself I have read Mommsen's "Rome."
Feb. 6.– We went to the third concert. Madame Schumann played finely in Mendelssohn's quintet, and a trio of Beethoven's. As a solo she played the sonata in D minor. In the evening I read aloud a short speech of Bright's on Ireland, delivered twenty years ago, in which he insists that nothing will be a remedy for the woes of that country unless the Church Establishment be annulled: after the lapse of twenty years the measure is going to be adopted. Then I read aloud a bit of the "Promessi Sposi," and afterwards the Spectator, in which there is a deservedly high appreciation of Lowell's poems.
Feb. 14.– Finished the poem from Boccaccio. We had rather a numerous gathering of friends to-day, and among the rest came Browning, who talked and quoted admirably à propos of versification. The Rector of Lincoln thinks the French have the most perfect system of versification in these modern times!
Feb. 15.– I prepared and sent off "How Lisa Loved the King" to Edinburgh.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Feb. 1869.
I have looked back to the verses in Browning's poem about Elisha, and I find no mystery in them. The foregoing context for three pages describes that function of genius which revivifies the past. Man, says Browning (I am writing from recollection of his general meaning), cannot create, but he can restore: the poet gives forth of his own spirit, and reanimates the forms that lie breathless. His use of Elisha's story is manifestly symbolical, as his mention of Faust is – the illustration which he abandons the moment before to take up that of the Hebrew seer. I presume you did not read the context yourself, but only had the two concluding verses pointed out or quoted to you by your friends. It is one of the afflictions of authorship to know that the brains which should be used in understanding a book are wasted in discussing the hastiest misconceptions about it; and I am sure you will sympathize enough in this affliction to set any one right, when you can, about this quotation from Browning.
Journal, 1869.
Feb. 20.– A glorious concert: Hallé, Joachim, and Piatti winding up with Schubert's trio.
Feb. 21.– Mr. Deutsch and Mrs. Pattison lunched with us – he in farewell before going to the East. A rather pleasant gathering of friends afterwards.
Feb. 24.– I am reading about plants, and Helmholtz on music. A new idea of a poem came to me yesterday.
March 3.– We started on our fourth visit to Italy, viâ France and the Cornice.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1869, from Paris.
I found your letter at Florence on our arrival there (on the 23d); but until now bodily ease and leisure enough to write to you have never happened to me in the same moments. Our long journey since we left home on the 3d March, seen from a point of view which, happily, no one shares with me, has been a history of ailments. In shunning the English March, we found one quite as disagreeable, without the mitigation of home comforts; and though we went even as far as Naples in search of warmth, we never found it until we settled in Rome, at the beginning of April. Here we had many days of unbroken sunshine, and enjoyed what we were never able to enjoy during our month's stay in 1860 – the many glorious views of the city and the mountains. The chief novelty to us in our long route has been the sight of Assisi and Ravenna; the rest has been a revisiting of scenes already in our memories; and to most of them we have probably said our last good-bye. Enough of us and our travels. The only remarkable thing people can tell of their doings in these days is that they have stayed at home.
The Fortnightly lay uncut at Mr. Trollope's, and Mr. Lewes had nothing more pressing to do than to cut it open at the reply to Professor Huxley.6 He presently came to me, and said it was excellent. It delighted him the more because he had just before, at Rome, alighted on the Pall Mall account of the article, which falsely represented it as entirely apologetic. At the first spare moment I plunged into an easy-chair, and read, with thorough satisfaction in the admirable temper and the force of the reply. We intend to start for Calais this evening; and as the rain prevents us from doing anything agreeable out of doors, I have nothing to hinder me from sitting, with my knees up to my chin, and scribbling, now that I am become a little sounder in head and in body generally than beautiful Italy allowed me to be. As beautiful as ever – more beautiful – it has looked to me on this last visit; and it is the fault of my physique if it did not agree with me. Pray offer my warmest sympathy to Dr. Congreve in the anxieties of his difficult task. What hard work it seems to go on living sometimes! Blessed are the dead.
Journal, 1869.
May 5.– We reached home after our nine weeks' absence. In that time we have been through France to Marseilles, along the Cornice to Spezia, then to Pisa, Florence, Naples, Rome, Assisi, Perugia, Florence again, Ravenna, Bologna, Verona; across the Brenner Pass to Munich; then to Paris viâ Strasburg. In such a journey there was necessarily much interest both in renewing old memories and recording new; but I never had such continuous bad health in travelling as I have had during these nine weeks. On our arrival at home I found a delightful letter from Mrs. H. B. Stowe, whom I have never seen, addressing me as her "dear friend."
It was during this journey that I, for the first time, saw my future wife, at Rome. My eldest sister had married Mr. W. H. Bullock (now Mr. W. H. Hall), of Six-Mile-Bottom, Cambridgeshire, and they were on their wedding journey at Rome when they happened to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewes by chance in the Pamfili Doria Gardens. They saw a good deal of one another, and when I arrived, with my mother and another sister, we went by invitation to call at the Hôtel Minerva, where Mr. Lewes had found rooms on their first arrival in Rome. I have a very vivid recollection of George Eliot sitting on a sofa with my mother by her side, entirely engrossed with her. Mr. Lewes entertained my sister and me on the other side of the room. But I was very anxious to hear also the conversation on the sofa, as I was better acquainted with George Eliot's books than with any other literature. And through the dimness of these fifteen years, and all that has happened in them, I still seem to hear, as I first heard them, the low, earnest, deep, musical tones of her voice; I still seem to see the fine brows, with the abundant auburn-brown hair framing them, the long head, broadening at the back, the gray-blue eyes, constantly changing in expression, but always with a very loving, almost deprecating, look at my mother, the finely-formed, thin, transparent hands, and a whole Wesen that seemed in complete harmony with everything one expected to find in the author of "Romola." The next day Mr. and Mrs. Lewes went on to Assisi and we to Naples, and we did not meet again till the following August at Weybridge.
Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 8th May, 1869.
I value very highly the warrant to call you friend which your letter has given me. It lay awaiting me on our return, the other night, from a nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost wish that you could have a momentary vision of the discouragement – nay, paralyzing despondency – in which many days of my writing life have been passed, in order that you might fully understand the good I find in such sympathy as yours – in such an assurance as you give me that my work has been worth doing. But I will not dwell on any mental sickness of mine. The best joy your words give me is the sense of that sweet, generous feeling in you which dictated them, and I shall always be the richer because you have in this way made me know you better. I must tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman came through a letter of yours, and charmed me very much. The letter was addressed to Mrs. Follen; and one morning when I called on her in London (how many years ago!7) she was kind enough to read it to me because it contained a little history of your life, and a sketch of your domestic circumstances. I remember thinking that it was very kind of you to write that long letter in reply to the inquiries of one who was personally unknown to you; and looking back with my present experience I think it was still kinder than it then appeared. For at that time you must have been much oppressed with the immediate results of your fame. I remember, too, that you wrote of your husband as one who was richer in Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as the ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar interest to me, I have rarely had your image in my mind without the accompanying image (more or less erroneous) of such a scholar by your side. I shall welcome the fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes. In the meantime let me assure you that whoever else gave you that description of my husband's "History of Philosophy" – namely, "that it was to solve and settle all things" – he himself never saw it in that light. The work has been greatly altered, as well as enlarged, in three successive editions; and his mind is so far from being a captive to his own written words that he is now engaged in physiological and psychological researches which are leading him to issues at variance in some important respects with the views expressed in some of his published works. He is one of the few human beings I have known who will often, in the heat of an argument, see, and straightway confess, that he is in the wrong, instead of trying to shift his ground or use any other device of vanity.
I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as to the obstacles your new book may find here from its thorough American character. Most readers who are likely to be really influenced by writing above the common order will find that special aspect an added reason for interest and study, and I dare say you have long seen, as I am beginning to see with new clearness, that if a book which has any sort of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular, widely circulated book, its power over the social mind for any good is, after all, due to its reception by a few appreciative natures, and is the slow result of radiation from that narrow circle. I mean, that you can affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may affect a few more, but that no exquisite book tells properly and directly on a multitude, however largely it may be spread by type and paper. Witness the things the multitude will say about it, if one is so unhappy as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not write this cynically, but in pure sadness and pity. Both travelling abroad, and staying at home among our English sights and sports, one must continually feel how slowly the centuries work towards the moral good of men. And that thought lies very close to what you say as to your wonder or conjecture concerning my religious point of view. I believe that religion, too, has to be modified – "developed," according to the dominant phrase – and that a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must express less care for personal consolation, and a more deeply-awing sense of responsibility to man, springing from sympathy with that which of all things is most certainly known to us, the difficulty of the human lot. I do not find my temple in Pantheism, which, whatever might be its value speculatively, could not yield a practical religion, since it is an attempt to look at the universe from the outside of our relations to it (that universe) as human beings. As healthy, sane human beings, we must love and hate – love what is good for mankind, hate what is evil for mankind. For years of my youth I dwelt in dreams of a pantheistic sort, falsely supposing that I was enlarging my sympathy. But I have travelled far away from that time. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary, and, when one writes on wide subjects, are liable to create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I have little anxiety of that kind in writing to you, dear friend and fellow-laborer, for you have had longer experience than I as a writer, and fuller experience as a woman, since you have borne children and known the mother's history from the beginning. I trust your quick and long-taught mind as an interpreter little liable to mistake me.
When you say, "We live in an orange grove and are planting many more," and when I think that you must have abundant family love to cheer you, it seems to me that you must have a paradise about you. But no list of circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless, I must believe that the joyous, tender humor of your books clings about your more immediate life, and makes some of that sunshine for yourself which you have given to us.
I see the advertisement of "Old Town Folk," and shall eagerly expect it.
That and every other new link between us will be reverentially valued.
Journal, 1869.
May 8 (Saturday). – Poor Thornie arrived from Natal, sadly wasted by suffering.
May 24.– Sold "Agatha" to Fields & Osgood, for the Atlantic Monthly, for £300.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 26th May, 1869.
That "disturbance" in my favorite work, with which you and Dr. Congreve are good enough to sympathize, is unhappily greater now than it has been for years before. Our poor Thornie came back to us about seventeen days ago. We can never rejoice enough that we were already at home, seeing that we held it impossible for him to set out on his voyage until at least six weeks later than he did. Since he arrived our lives have been chiefly absorbed by cares for him; and though we now have a nurse to attend on him constantly, we spend several hours of the day by his side. There is joy in the midst of our trouble, from the tenderness towards the sufferer being altogether unchecked by anything unlovable in him. Thornie's disposition seems to have become sweeter than ever with the added six years; and there is nothing that we discern in his character or habits to cause us grief. Enough of our troubles. I gather from your welcome letter, received this morning, that there is a good deal of enjoyment for you in your temporary home, in spite of bad weather and faceache, which I hope will have passed away when you read this.
Mr. Beesley8 wrote to me to tell me of his engagement, and on Sunday we had the pleasure of shaking him by the hand and seeing him look very happy. His is one of a group of prospective marriages which we have had announced to us since we came home. Besides Mr. Harrison's, there is Dr. Allbut's, our charming friend at Leeds. I told Mr. Beesley that I thought myself magnanimous in really rejoicing at the engagements of men friends, because, of course, they will be comparatively indifferent to their old intimates.
Dear Madame Bodichon is a precious help to us. She comes twice a week to sit with Thornie, and she is wonderfully clever in talking to young people. One finds out those who have real practical sympathy in times of trouble.
Letter to Frederic Harrison, 9th June, 1869.
Your letter has fulfilled two wishes of mine. It shows me that you keep me in your kind thoughts, and that you are very happy. I had been told by our friends, the Nortons, of your engagement, but I knew nothing more than that bare fact, and your letter gives me more of a picture. A very pretty picture – for I like to think of your love having grown imperceptibly along with sweet family affections. I do heartily share in your happiness, for however space and time may keep us asunder, you will never to my mind be lost in the distance, but will hold a place of marked and valued interest quite apart from those more public hopes about you which I shall not cease to cherish.
Both Mr. Lewes and I shall be delighted to see you any evening. I imagine that when you are obliged to stay in town the evening will be the easiest time for you to get out to us. Any time after eight you will find us thoroughly glad to shake hands with you. Do come when you can.
Journal, 1869.
July 3.– Finished my reading in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's "L'homme qui rit;" also the Frau von Hillern's novel, "Ein Arzt der Seele." This week G. and I have been to Sevenoaks, but were driven home again by the cold winds and cloudy skies. "Sonnets on Childhood" – five – finished.
July 10.– I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, in answer to a second letter of hers, accompanied by one from her husband.
Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 11th July, 1869.
I hoped before this to have seen our friend, Mrs. Fields, on her return from Scotland, and to have begged her to send you word of a domestic affliction which has prevented me from writing to you since I received your and your husband's valued letters. Immediately on our return from Italy, Mr. Lewes's second son, a fine young man of five-and-twenty, returned to us from Natal, wasted by suffering from a long-standing spinal injury. This was on the 8th of May, and since then we have both been absorbed in our duties to this poor child, and have felt our own health and nervous energy insufficient for our needful activity of body and mind. He is at present no better, and we look forward to a long trial. Nothing but a trouble so great as this would have prevented me from writing again to you, not only to thank you and Professor Stowe for your letters, but also to tell you that I have received and read "Old Town Folks." I think few of your many readers can have felt more interest than I have felt in that picture of an elder generation; for my interest in it has a double root – one, in my own love for our old-fashioned provincial life, which had its affinities with a contemporary life, even all across the Atlantic, and of which I have gathered glimpses in different phases, from my father and mother, with their relations; the other is, my experimental acquaintance with some shades of Calvinistic orthodoxy. I think your way of presenting the religious convictions which are not your own, except by indirect fellowship, is a triumph of insight and true tolerance. A thorough comprehension of the mixed moral influence shed on society by dogmatic systems is rare even among writers, and one misses it altogether in English drawing-room talk. I thank you sincerely for the gift (in every sense) of this book, which, I can see, has been a labor of love.
Both Mr. Lewes and I are deeply interested in the indications which the Professor gives of his peculiar psychological experience, and we should feel it a great privilege to learn much more of it from his lips. It is a rare thing to have such an opportunity of studying exceptional experience in the testimony of a truthful and in every way distinguished mind. He will, I am sure, accept the brief thanks which I can give in this letter, for all that he has generously written to me. He says, "I have had no connection with any of the modern movements, except as father confessor;" and I can well believe that he must be peculiarly sensitive to the repulsive aspects which those movements present. Your view as to the cause of that "great wave of spiritualism" which is rushing over America – namely, that it is a sort of Rachel-cry of bereavement towards the invisible existence of the loved ones, is deeply affecting. But so far as "spiritualism" (by which I mean, of course, spirit-communication, by rapping, guidance of the pencil, etc.) has come within reach of my judgment on our side of the water, it has appeared to me either as degrading folly, imbecile in the estimate of evidence, or else as impudent imposture. So far as my observation and experience have hitherto gone, it has even seemed to me an impiety to withdraw from the more assured methods of studying the open secret of the universe any large amount of attention to alleged manifestations which are so defiled by low adventurers and their palpable trickeries, so hopelessly involved in all the doubtfulness of individual testimonies as to phenomena witnessed, which testimonies are no more true objectively because they are honest subjectively, than the Ptolemaic system is true because it seemed to Tycho Brahé a better explanation of the heavenly movements than the Copernican. This is a brief statement of my position on the subject, which your letter shows me to have an aspect much more compulsory on serious attention in America than I can perceive it to have in England. I should not be as simply truthful as my deep respect for you demands, if I did not tell you exactly what is my mental attitude in relation to the phenomena in question. But whatever you print on the subject and will send me I shall read with attention, and the idea you give me of the hold which spiritualism has gained on the public mind in the United States is already a fact of historic importance.
Forgive me, dear friend, if I write in the scantiest manner, unworthily responding to letters which have touched me profoundly. You have known so much of life, both in its more external trials and in the peculiar struggles of a nature which is made twofold in its demands by the yearnings of the author as well as of the woman, that I can count on your indulgence and power of understanding my present inability to correspond by letter.
May I add my kind remembrances to your daughter to the high regard which I offer to your husband?
Journal, 1869.
July 14.– Returned from Hatfield, after two days' stay.
July 15.– Began Nisard's "History of French Literature" – Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Philippe de Comines, Villers.
July 16.– Read the articles Phœnicia and Carthage in "Ancient Geography." Looked into Jewitt's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Littérature du Midi" for Roman de la Rose; and ran through the first chapter about the formation of the Romance languages. Read about Thallogens and Acrogens in the "Vegetable World." Read Drayton's "Nymphidia" – a charming poem – a few pages of his "Polyolbion." Re-read Grote, v. – vii., on Sicilian affairs, down to rise of Dionysius.
July 18.– Miss Nannie Smith came, after a long absence from England; Professor Masson and Dr. Bastian, Madame Bodichon, and Dr. Payne. Some conversation about Saint-Simonism, à propos of the meeting on Woman's Suffrage the day before, M. Arles Dufour being uneasy because Mill did not in his speech recognize what women owed to Saint-Simonism.
July 19.– Writing an introduction to "Middlemarch." I have just re-read the 15th Idyll of Theocritus, and have written three more sonnets. My head uneasy. We went in the afternoon to the old water-colors, finding that the exhibition was to close at the end of the week. Burne-Jones's Circe and St. George affected me, by their colors, more than any of the other pictures – they are poems. In the evening read Nisard on Rabelais and Marot.
July 22.– Read Reybaud's book on "Les Réformateurs Modernes." In the afternoon Mrs. P. Taylor came and saw Thornie, who has been more uneasy this week, and unwilling to move or come out on the lawn.
July 23.– Read Theocritus, Id. 16. Meditated characters for "Middlemarch." Mrs. F. Malleson came.
July 24.– Still not quite well and clear-headed, so that little progress is made. I read aloud Fourier and Owen, and thought of writing something about Utopists.
July 25.– Read Plato's "Republic" in various parts. After lunch Miss Nannie Smith, Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Deutsch. In the evening I read Nisard, and Littré on Comte.
Aug. 1.– Since last Sunday I have had an uncomfortable week from mental and bodily disturbance. I have finished eleven sonnets on "Brother and Sister," read Littré, Nisard, part of 22d Idyll of Theocritus, Sainte-Beuve, aloud to G. two evenings. Monday evening looked through Dickson's "Fallacies of the Faculty." On Tuesday afternoon we went to the British Museum to see a new bronze, and I was enchanted with some fragments of glass in the Slade collection, with dyes of sunset in them. Yesterday, sitting in Thornie's room, I read through all Shakespeare's "Sonnets." Poor Thornie has had a miserably unsatisfactory week, making no progress. After lunch came Miss N. Smith and Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones, and Mr. Sanderson.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 1st Aug. 1869.
My last words to you might appear to imply something laughably opposed to my real meaning. "Think of me only as an example" meant – an example to be avoided. It was an allusion in my mind to the servant-girl who, being arrested for theft, said to her fellow-servant, "Take example by me, Sally." With the usual caprice of language, we say. "Make an example of her," in that sense of holding up for a warning, which the poor girl and I intended.
Journal, 1869.
Aug. 2.– Began "Middlemarch" (the Vincy and Featherstone parts).
Aug. 5.– Thornie during the last two or three days gives much more hopeful signs: has been much more lively, with more regular appetite and quieter nights. This morning I finished the first chapter of "Middlemarch." I am reading Renouard's "History of Medicine."
Aug. 31.– We went to Weybridge, walked on St. George's Hill, and lunched with Mrs. Cross and her family.
This visit to Weybridge is a very memorable one to me, because there my own first intimacy with George Eliot began, and the bonds with my family were knitted very much closer. Mr. and Mrs. Bullock were staying with us; and my sister, who had some gift for music, had set one or two of the songs from the "Spanish Gypsy." She sang one of them – "On through the woods, the pillared pines" – and it affected George Eliot deeply. She moved quickly to the piano, and kissed Mrs. Bullock very warmly, in her tears. Mr. and Mrs. Lewes were in deep trouble owing to the illness of Thornton Lewes; we were also in much anxiety as to the approaching confinement of my sister with her first child; and I was on the eve of departure for America. Sympathetic feelings were strong enough to overleap the barrier (often hard to pass) which separates acquaintanceship from friendship. A day did the work of years. Our visitors had come to the house as acquaintances, they left it as lifelong friends. And the sequel of that day greatly intensified the intimacy. For within a month my sister had died in childbirth, and her death called forth one of the most beautiful of George Eliot's letters. A month later Thornton Lewes died.
Journal, 1869.
Sept. 1.– I meditated characters and conditions for "Middlemarch," which stands still in the beginning of chapter iii.
Sept. 2.– We spent the morning in Hatfield Park, arriving at home again at half-past three.
Sept. 10.– I have achieved little during the last week, except reading on medical subjects – Encyclopædia about the "Medical Colleges," "Cullen's Life," Russell's "Heroes of Medicine," etc. I have also read Aristophanes' "Ecclesiazusœ," and "Macbeth."
Sept. 11.– I do not feel very confident that I can make anything satisfactory of "Middlemarch." I have need to remember that other things which have been accomplished by me were begun under the same cloud. G. has been reading "Romola" again, and expresses profound admiration. This is encouraging.
Sept. 15.– George and I went to Sevenoaks for a couple of nights, and had some delicious walks.
Sept. 21.– Finished studying again Bekker's "Charikles." I am reading Mandeville's Travels. As to my work, im Stiche gerathen. Mrs. Congreve and Miss Bury came; and I asked Mrs. Congreve to get me some information about provincial hospitals, which is necessary to my imagining the conditions of my hero.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Sept. 1869.
As to the Byron subject, nothing can outweigh to my mind the heavy social injury of familiarizing young minds with the desecration of family ties. The discussion of the subject in newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets is simply odious to me, and I think it a pestilence likely to leave very ugly marks. One trembles to think how easily that moral wealth may be lost which it has been the work of ages to produce in the refinement and differencing of the affectionate relations. As to the high-flown stuff which is being reproduced about Byron and his poetry, I am utterly out of sympathy with it. He seems to me the most vulgar-minded genius that ever produced a great effect in literature.
Journal, 1869.
Sept. 22.– We went down to Watford for a change.
Sept. 24.– Returned home this morning because of the unpromising weather. It is worth while to record my great depression of spirits, that I may remember one more resurrection from the pit of melancholy. And yet what love is given to me! What abundance of good I possess! All my circumstances are blessed; and the defect is only in my own organism. Courage and effort!
CHAPTER XVII
Journal, 1873.
Jan. 1.– At the beginning of December the eighth and last book of "Middlemarch" was published, the three final numbers having been published monthly. No former book of mine has been received with more enthusiasm – not even "Adam Bede;" and I have received many deeply affecting assurances of its influence for good on individual minds. Hardly anything could have happened to me which I could regard as a greater blessing than the growth of my spiritual existence when my bodily existence is decaying. The merely egoistic satisfactions of fame are easily nullified by toothache, and that has made my chief consciousness for the last week. This morning, when I was in pain, and taking a melancholy breakfast in bed, some sweet-natured creature sent a beautiful bouquet to the door for me, bound round with the written wish that "Every year may be happier and happier, and that God's blessing may ever abide with the immortal author of 'Silas Marner.'" Happily my dear husband is well, and able to enjoy these things for me. That he rejoices in them is my most distinct personal pleasure in such tributes.
Letter to John Blackwood, 3d Jan. 1873.
It was very pleasant to have your greeting on the New Year, though I was keeping its advent in melancholy guise. I am relieved now from the neuralgic part of my ailment, and am able to write something of the hearty response I feel to your good wishes.
We both hope that the coming year may continue to you all the family joys which must make the core of your happiness, without underrating golf and good contributors to "Maga." Health has to be presupposed as the vehicle of all other good, and in this respect you may be possibly better off in '73 than in '72, for I think you have had several invalidings within the last twelve months.
Mr. Langford wrote yesterday that he knew of an article on "Middlemarch" being in preparation for the Times, which certainly was never before so slow in noticing a book of mine. Whether such an article will affect the sale favorably seems eminently uncertain, and can only complicate Mr. Simpson's problem.
We have been glad to welcome our good friend, Mr. Anthony Trollope, after his long absence. He is wonderfully full of life and energy, and will soon bring out his two thick volumes on Australian colonies.
My friendly Dutch publishers lately sent us a handsome row of volumes – George Eliot's "Romantische Werke," with an introduction, in which comparisons are safely shrouded for me in the haze of Dutch, so that if they are disadvantageous, I am not pained.
Please give my best wishes for the coming year to Mr. William Blackwood.
Letter to Mrs. Cross, 4th Jan. 1873.
At last I break my silence, and thank you for your kind care about me. I am able to enjoy my reading at the corner of my study fire, and am at that unpitiable stage of illness which is counterbalanced by extra petting. I have been fearing that you too may be undergoing some malaise of a kindred sort, and I should like to be assured that you have quite got through the troubles which threatened you.
How good you have all been to me, and what a disappointing investment of affection I have turned out! But those evening drives, which perhaps encouraged the faceache, have left me a treasure of picture and poetry in my memory quite worth paying for, and in these days all prices are high.
The new year began very prettily for me at half-past eight in the morning with a beautiful bouquet, left by an unknown at our door, and an inscription asking that "God's blessing might ever abide with the immortal author of 'Silas Marner.'"
Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1873.
I am much pleased with the color and the lettering of the guinea edition, and the thinner paper makes it delightfully handy. Let us hope that some people still want to read it, since a friend of ours, in one short railway bit to and fro, saw two persons reading the paper-covered numbers. Now is the moment when a notice in the Times might possibly give a perceptible impulse.
Kohn, of Berlin, has written to ask us to allow him to reprint the "Spanish Gypsy" for £50, and we have consented. Some Dresdener, who has translated poems of Tennyson's, asked leave to translate the "Spanish Gypsy" in 1870, but I have not heard of his translation appearing.
The rain this morning is welcome, in exchange for the snow, which in London has none of its country charms left to it. Among my books, which comfort me in the absence of sunshine, is a copy of the "Handy Royal Atlas" which Mr. Lewes has got for me. The glorious index is all the more appreciable by me, because I am tormented with German historical atlases which have no index, and are covered with names swarming like ants on every map.
The catalogue coming in the other day renewed my longing for the cheap edition of Lockhart's novels, though I have some compunction in teasing your busy mind with my small begging. I should like to take them into the country, where our days are always longer for reading.
I have a love for Lockhart because of Scott's Life, which seems to me a perfect biography. How different from another we know of!
Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Feb. 1873.
After your kind words I will confess that I should very much like to have the "Manual of Geography" by Mackay, and Bayne's "Port Royal Logic."
À propos of the "Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea:
"Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers, save the growing heritage
That makes completer manhood."
But it will be well to put the story in harness with some other productions of mine, and not send it forth in its dismal loneliness. There are many things in it which I would willingly say over again, and I shall never put them in any other form. But we must wait a little. The question is not in the least one of money, but of care for the best effect of writing, which often depends on circumstances, much as pictures depend on light and juxtaposition.
I am looking forward with interest to "Kenelm Chillingly," and thinking what a blessed lot it is to die on just finishing a book, if it could be a good one. I mean, it is blessed only to quit activity when one quits life.
Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st Mch. 1873.
If I had been quite sure of your address I should have written to you even before receiving your dear letter, over which I have been crying this morning. The prompting to write to you came from my having ten days ago read your Memoir – brief yet full – of the precious last months before the parting. Mrs. P. Taylor brought me her copy as a loan. But may I not beg to have a copy of my own? It is to me an invaluable bit of writing; the inspiration of a great sorrow, born of a great love, has made it perfect; and ever since I read it I have felt a strengthening companionship from it. You will perhaps think it strange when I tell you that I have been more cheerful since I read the record of his sweet, mild heroism, which threw emphasis on every blessing left in his waning life, and was silent over its pangs. I have even ventured to lend this copy, which is not my own, to a young married woman of whom I am very fond, because I think it is an unforgetable picture of that union which is the ideal of marriage, and which I desire young people to have in their minds as a goal.
It is a comfort in thinking of you that you have two lovable young creatures with you. I have found quite a new interest in young people since I have been conscious that I am getting older; and if all personal joy were to go from me as it has gone from you, I could perhaps find some energy from that interest, and try to teach the young. I wish, dear friend, it were possible to convey to you the sense I have of a great good in being permitted to know of your happiness, and of having some communion with the sorrow which is its shadow. Your words have a consecration for me, and my husband shares my feeling. He sends his love along with mine. He sobbed with something which is a sort of grief better worth having than any trivial gladness, as he read the printed record of your love. He, too, is capable of that supreme, self-merging love.
Letter to John Blackwood, 14th Mch. 1873.
This is good news about the guinea edition, but I emphatically agree with you that it will be well to be cautious in further printing. I wish you could see a letter I had from California the other day, apparently from a young fellow, and beginning, "Oh, you dear lady! I who have been a Fred Vincy ever so long … have played vagabond and ninny ever since I knew the meaning of such terms," etc., etc.
I am sorry to infer, from what you say about being recommended to go to a German bath, that you have been out of health lately. There really is a good deal of curative virtue in the air, waters, and exercise one gets at such places, and if the boredom were not strong enough to counteract the better influences, it would be worth while to endure.
That phrase of Miss Stuart's – "fall flat on the world" – is worth remembering. I should think it is not likely to prove prophetic, if she is at all like her cousin, whose fair, piquant face remains very vividly before me. The older one gets, the more one delights in these young things, rejoicing in their joys.
The ministerial crisis interests me, though it does not bring me any practical need for thinking of it, as it does to you. I wish there were some solid, philosophical Conservative to take the reins – one who knows the true functions of stability in human affairs, and, as the psalm says, "Would also practice what he knows."
Letter to Edward Burne-Jones, 20th Mch. 1873.
I suppose my hesitation about writing to you to tell you of a debt I feel towards you is all vanity. If you did not know me, you might think a great deal more of my judgment than it is worth, and I should feel bold in that possibility. But when judgment is understood to mean simply one's own impression of delight, one ought not to shrink from making one's small offering of burnt clay because others can give gold statues.
It would be narrowness to suppose that an artist can only care for the impressions of those who know the methods of his art as well as feel its effects. Art works for all whom it can touch. And I want in gratitude to tell you that your work makes life larger and more beautiful to me. I mean that historical life of all the world, in which our little personal share often seems a mere standing-room from which we can look all round, and chiefly backward. Perhaps the work has a strain of special sadness in it – perhaps a deeper sense of the tremendous outer forces which urge us, than of the inner impulse towards heroic struggle and achievement – but the sadness is so inwrought with pure, elevating sensibility to all that is sweet and beautiful in the story of man and in the face of the earth that it can no more be found fault with than the sadness of mid-day, when Pan is touchy, like the rest of us. Don't you agree with me that much superfluous stuff is written on all sides about purpose in art? A nasty mind makes nasty art, whether for art or any other sake; and a meagre mind will bring forth what is meagre. And some effect in determining other minds there must be, according to the degree of nobleness or meanness in the selection made by the artist's soul.
Your work impresses me with the happy sense of noble selection and of power determined by refined sympathy. That is why I wanted to thank you in writing, since lip-homage has fallen into disrepute.
I cannot help liking to tell you a sign that my delight must have taken a little bit of the same curve as yours. Looking, à propos of your picture, into the "Iphigenia in Aulis," to read the chorus you know of, I found my blue pencil-marks made seven years ago (and gone into that forgetfulness which makes my mind seem very large and empty) – blue pencil-marks made against the dance – loving Kithara and the footsteps of the muses and the nereids dancing on the shining sands. I was pleased to see that my mind had been touched in a dumb way by what has touched yours to fine utterance.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 15th April, 1873
Welcome back to Europe! What a comfort to see your handwriting dated from San Remo – to think that Dr. Congreve's anxieties about your voyage are at an end, and that you are once more in the post which is more specially and permanently yours! Mr. Lewes finds fault with your letter for not telling enough; but the mere fact of your safety seems to fill it quite full for me, and I can think of no drawbacks – not even of the cold, which I hope is by this time passing away for you, as it is for us. You must be so rich in memories that we and our small ordinary news must appear very flat to you, but we will submit to be a little despised by you if only we can have you with us again. I have never lost the impression of Dr. Congreve's look when he paid us his farewell visit, and spoke of his anxiety about your voyage, fearing that you had started too late; and that impression gives me all the keener sympathy with the repose I trust he is feeling. About ourselves I have only good news to tell. We are happier than ever, and have no troubles. We are searching for a country-house to go to at the end of May or earlier. I long for the perfect peace and freedom of the country again. The hours seem to stretch themselves there, and to hold twice as much thought as one can get into them in town, where acquaintances and small claims inevitably multiply.
Imagine us nearly as we were when we last saw you – only a little older – with unchanged affection for you and undimmed interest in whatever befalls you. Do not tax yourself to write unless you feel a pleasure in that imperfect sort of communication. I will try not to fear evil if you are silent, but you know that I am glad to have something more than hope to feed on.
Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 25th April, 1873.
It was a cordial to me this morning to learn that you have the project of going with your young friend to Cambridge at the end of the autumn. I could not have thought of anything better to wish for on your behalf than that you should have the consciousness of helping a younger life. I know, dear friend, that so far as you directly are concerned with this life the remainder of it can only be patience and resignation. But we are not shut up within our individual life, and it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite, intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.
I am very much interested in the fact of young women studying at Cambridge, and I have lately seen a charming specimen of the pupils at Hitchin – a very modest, lovely girl, who distinguished herself in the last examination. One is anxious that, in the beginning of a higher education for women – the immediate value of which is chiefly the social recognition of its desirableness – the students should be favorable subjects for experiment, girls or young women whose natures are large and rich enough not to be used up in their efforts after knowledge.
Mr. Lewes is very well and goes on working joyously. Proofs come in slowly, but he is far from being ready with all the manuscript which will be needed for his preliminary volume – the material, which has long been gathered, requiring revision and suggesting additions.
Do think it a privilege to have that fine physique of yours instead of a headachy, dyspeptic frame such as many women drag through life. Even in irremediable sorrow it is a sort of blasphemy against one's suffering fellow-beings to think lightly of any good which they would be thankful for in exchange for something they have to bear.
Journal, 1873.
May 19.– We paid a visit to Cambridge at the invitation of Mr. Frederick Myers, and I enjoyed greatly talking with him and some others of the "Trinity Men." In the evenings we went to see the boat-race, and then returned to supper and talk – the first evening with Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney; the second, with young Balfour, young Lyttelton, Mr. Jackson, and Edmund Gurney again. Mrs. and Miss Huth were also our companions during the visit. On the Tuesday morning we breakfasted at Mr. Henry Sidgwick's with Mr. Jebb, Mr. W. G. Clark, Mr. Myers, and Mrs. and Miss Huth.
May 22.– We went to the French play at the Princess's and saw Plessy and Desclée in "Les Idées de Madame Aubray." I am just finishing again Aristotle's "Poetics," which I first read in 1856.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 25th May, 1873.
Our plans have been upset by the impossibility of finding a house in the country that is suitable to us, and weariness of being deluded into journeys of investigation by fanciful advertisements has inclined Mr. Lewes for the present to say that we will go abroad. Still, I have nothing to tell that is absolutely settled, and I must ask you, when you return, to send a note to this house. If I am in England it will be forwarded to me, and you will get a prompt answer. If I am silent you will conclude that I am gone abroad. I think it is at the end of June that you are to come home?
Here we have been wearing furs and velvet, and having fires all through the past week, chiefly occupied by Mr. Lewes and me in a visit to Cambridge. We were invited ostensibly to see the boat-race, but the real pleasure of the visit consisted in talking with a hopeful group of Trinity young men. On Monday we had a clear, cold day, more like the fine weather of mid-winter than any tradition of May time. I hope that you have had no such revisiting of winter at San Remo. How much we should enjoy having you with us to narrate everything that has happened to you in the last eventful half year! I shall feel the loss of this, as an immediate prospect, to be the greatest disadvantage in our going abroad next month – if we go.
Your last news of Emily and of "baby's teeth" is cheerful. "Baby's teeth" is a phrase that enters much into our life just now. Little Blanche had a sad struggle with her first little bit of ivory, but she has been blooming again since, and is altogether a ravishing child. To-day we have had a large collection of visitors, and I have the usual Sunday evening condition of brain. But letters are so constantly coming and claiming my time to answer them, that I get fidgety lest I should neglect to write to you; and I was determined not to let another day pass without letting you have a proof that I think of you. When I am silent please believe that the silence is due to feebleness of body, which narrows my available time. Mr. Lewes often talks of you, and will value any word from you about yourself as much as I shall.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 2d June, 1873.
Thanks for sending me word of poor Miss Rebecca Franklin's death. It touches me deeply. She was always particularly good and affectionate to me, and I had much happiness in her as my teacher.
In September a house near Chislehurst will be open to us – a house which we think of ultimately making our sole home, turning our backs on London. But we shall be allowed to have it, furnished, for a year on trial.
Journal, 1873.
June.– In the beginning of June we paid a visit to Mr. Jowett at Oxford, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell, then newly married. We stayed from Saturday to Monday, and I was introduced to many persons of interest. Professor T. Green, Max Müller, Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Mr. Wordsworth, the grandson of the poet, who had spent some time in India, and a host of others.
June 23.– Started for the Continent. Fontainebleau, Plombières, etc.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 9th Aug. 1873.
I feel myself guilty that I have allowed the vicissitudes of travelling to hinder me from writing to you, for the chance that a letter from me might be welcome to you in what I have been imagining as the first weeks of your return to England and the house in Mecklenburgh Square. I am sure that I should not have been guilty in this way if I had been at any time able to say where you should send me an answer which I could call for at a Poste Restante. But we have been invariably uncertain as to the length of our stay in any one place and as to our subsequent route; and I confess that I shrink from writing a letter full of my own doings, without the prospect of getting some news in return. I am usually in a state of fear rather than of hope about my absent friends; and I dread lest a letter written in ignorance about them should be ill-timed. But at last all fears have become weaker than the uneasy sense that I have omitted to send you a sign of your loved presence in my thoughts, and that you may have lost a gleam of pleasure through my omission.
We left home on the 23d of June, with a sketch of a journey in our minds, which included Grenoble, the Grande Chartreuse, Aix-les-Bains, Chambéry, and Geneva. The last place I wished to get to, because my friend Mme. d'Albert is not likely to live much longer, and I thought that I should like to see her once more. But during a short stay at Fontainebleau I began to feel that lengthy railway journeys were too formidable for us old, weak creatures, and, moreover, that July and August were not the best months for those southern regions. We were both shattered, and needed quiet rather than the excitement of seeing friends and acquaintances – an excitement of which we had been having too much at home – so we turned aside by easy stages to the Vosges, and spent about three weeks at Plombières and Luxeuil. We shall carry home many pleasant memories of our journey – of Fontainebleau, for example, which I had never seen before. Then of the Vosges, where we count on going again. Erckmann-Chatrian's books had been an introduction to the lovely region; and several of them were our companions there. But what small experiences these are compared with yours; and how we long for the time when you will be seated with us at our country-house (Blackbrook, near Bromley, is the name of the house), and tell us as much as you can think of about this long year in which we have been deprived of you. If you receive this letter in time to write me a line, which would reach me by the 15th, I shall be most grateful if you will give me that undeserved indulgence.
Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Aug. 1873.
On our return yesterday from our nine-weeks' absence I found a letter from Mr. Main, in which he shows some anxiety that I should write you the "formal sanction" you justly require before admitting extracts from "Middlemarch" in the new edition of the "Sayings." I have no objection, if you see none, to such an enlargement of the volume, and I satisfy our good Mr. Main's promptitude by writing the needed consent at once.
We used our plan of travel as "a good thing to wander from," and went to no single place (except Fontainebleau) to which we had beforehand projected going.
Our most fortunate wandering was to the Vosges – to Plombières and Luxeuil – which have made us in love with the mode of life at the Eaux of France, as greatly preferable to the ways of the German Bad.
We happened to be at Nancy just as the Germans were beginning to quit it, and we saw good store of tricolores and paper lanterns ready in the shop windows for those who wished to buy the signs of national rejoicing. I can imagine that, as a Prussian lady told us, the Germans themselves were not at all rejoiced to leave that pretty town for "les bords de la Spree," where, in French dialogue, all Germans are supposed to live.
Journal, 1873.
Sept. 4.– Went to Blackbrook, near Bickley.
Letter to Mrs. Cross, 17th Sept. 1873.
Thanks, dear friend, for the difficult exertion you gave to the telling of what I so much wished to know – the details of the trouble21 which you have all had to go through either directly or sympathetically. But I will not dwell now on what it cost you, I fear, too much pain to recall so as to give me the vivid impressions I felt in reading your letter. The great practical result of such trouble is to make us all more tender to each other; this is a world in which we must pay heavy prices for love, as you know by experience much deeper than mine.
I will gossip a little about ourselves now. We gave up our intention of going far southward, fearing the fatigue of long railway journeys, and the heat (which hardly ever came) of July and August in the region we had thought of visiting. So, after staying a very enjoyable time at Fontainebleau, we went to the Vosges, and at Plombières and Luxeuil we should have felt ourselves in paradise if it had not been for a sad deafness of George's, which kept us uneasy and made us hurry to that undesirable place, Frankfort, in order to consult Spiess. At Frankfort the nearest bath was the also undesirable Homburg; so we spent or wasted a fortnight there, winning little but the joy of getting away again. The journey home, which we took very easily, was interesting – through Metz, Verdun, Rheims, and Amiens.
As to our house, spite of beautiful lawn, tall trees, fine kitchen-garden, and good, invigorating air, we have already made up our minds that it will not do for our home. Still, we have many things to enjoy, but we shall not probably remain here longer than to the end of October.
My motherly love to all such young ones as may be around you. I do not disturb George in order to ask for messages from him, being sure that his love goes with mine.
Letter to John Blackwood, 19th Sept. 1873.
I quite assent to your proposal that there should be a new edition of "Middlemarch" in one volume, at 7s. 6d.– to be prepared at once, but not published too precipitately.
I like your project of an illustration; and the financial arrangements you mention are quite acceptable to me.
For one reason especially I am delighted that the book is going to be reprinted – namely, that I can see the proof-sheets and make corrections. Pray give orders that the sheets be sent to me. I should like the binding to be of a rich, sober color, with very plain Roman lettering. It might be called a "revised edition."
Thanks for the extract from Mr. Collins's letter. I did not know that there was really a Lowick, in a Midland county too. Mr. Collins has my gratitude for feeling some regard towards Mr. Casaubon, in whose life I lived with much sympathy.
When I was at Oxford, in May, two ladies came up to me after dinner: one said, "How could you let Dorothea marry that Casaubon?" The other, "Oh, I understand her doing that, but why did you let her marry the other fellow, whom I cannot bear?" Thus two "ardent admirers" wished that the book had been quite different from what it is.
I wonder whether you have abandoned – as you seemed to agree that it would be wise to do – the project of bringing out my other books in a cheaper form than the present 3s. 6d., which, if it were not for the blemish of the figure illustrations, would be as pretty an edition as could be, and perhaps as cheap as my public requires. Somehow, the cheap books that crowd the stalls are always those which look as if they were issued from Pandemonium.
Letter to Mrs. Cross, 11th Oct. 1873.
I am rather ashamed of our grumblings. We are really enjoying the country, and have more than our share of everything. George has happy mornings at his desk now, and we have fine bracing air to walk in – air which I take in as a sort of nectar. We like the bits of scenery round us better and better as we get them by heart in our walks and drives. The house, with all its defects, is very pretty, and more delightfully secluded, without being remote from the conveniences of the world, than any place we have before thought of as a possible residence for us.
I am glad that you have been seeing the Cowper Temples. My knowledge of them has not gone beyond dining with them at Mrs. Tollemache's, and afterwards having a good conversational call from them, but they both struck me very agreeably.
Mr. Henry Sidgwick is a chief favorite of mine – one of whom his friends at Cambridge say that they always expect him to act according to a higher standard than they think of attributing to any other chief man, or of imposing on themselves. "Though we kept our own fellowships without believing more than he did," one of them said to me, "we should have felt that Henry Sidgwick had fallen short if he had not renounced his."
Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 12th Oct. 1873.
Our plan is not to give up our London house, but to have a country place as a retreat. We want a good house in a lovely country, away from rows of villas, but within easy reach of all conveniences. This seems an immodest requirement in a world where one good is hardly to be got without renunciation of another. You perceive that we are getting very old and fastidious.
I like to interpret your enjoyment of Brighton and its evening skies as a proof that you flourish there physically. All things are to be endured and counted even as a fuller life, with a body free from pain and depressing sensations of weakness; but illness is a partial death, and makes the world dim to us.
We have no great strength to boast of; but we are so unspeakably happy in all other respects that we cannot grumble at this tax on us as elderly mortals.
Our little Blanche grows in grace, and her parents have great delight in her – Charles being quite as fond a father as if he had beforehand been an idolizer of babies.
Letter to J. W. Cross, Sunday, 20th Oct. 1873.
The chances of conversation were against my being quite clear to you yesterday as to the cases in which it seems to me that conformity is the higher rule. What happened to be said or not said is of no consequence in any other light than that of my anxiety not to appear what I should hate to be– which is surely not an ignoble, egoistic anxiety, but belongs to the worship of the Best.
Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Nov. 1875.
Your enjoyment of the proofs cheers me greatly; and pray thank Mrs. Blackwood for her valuable hints on equine matters. I have not only the satisfaction of using those hints, I allow myself the inference that where there is no criticism on like points I have made no mistake.
I should be much obliged to Mr. Simpson – whom I am glad that Gwendolen has captivated – if he would rate the printers a little about their want of spacing. I am anxious that my poor heroes and heroines should have all the advantage that paper and print can give them.
It will perhaps be a little comfort to you to know that poor Gwen is spiritually saved, but "so as by fire." Don't you see the process already beginning? I have no doubt you do, for you are a wide-awake reader.
But what a climate to expect good writing in! Skating in the morning and splashy roads in the afternoon is just typical of the alternation from frigid to flaccid in the author's bodily system, likely to give a corresponding variety to the style.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1875.
I got my head from under the pressure of other matters, like a frog from under the water, to send you my November greeting. My silence through the rest of the months makes you esteem me the more, I hope, seeing that you yourself hate letter-writing – a remarkable exception to the rule that people like doing what they can do well, if one can call that a rule of which the reverse seems more frequent – namely, that they like doing what they do ill.
We stayed till nearly the end of September at the house we had taken in Hertfordshire. After that we went into Wales for a fortnight, and were under umbrellas nearly the whole time.
I wonder if you all remember an old governess of mine who used to visit me at Foleshill – a Miss Lewis? I have found her out. She is living at Leamington, very poor as well as old, but cheerful, and so delighted to be remembered with gratitude. How very old we are all getting! But I hope you don't mind it any more than I do. One sees so many contemporaries that one is well in the fashion. The approach of parting is the bitterness of age.
Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1875.
Your letter is an agreeable tonic, very much needed, for that wretched hinderance of a cold last week has trailed after it a series of headaches worse than itself. An additional impression, like Mr. Langford's, of the two volumes is really valuable, as a sign that I have not so far failed in relation to a variety of readers. But you know that in one sense I count nothing done as long as anything remains to do; and it always seems to me that the worst difficulty is still to come. In the sanest, soberest judgment, however, I think the third volume (which I have not yet finished) would be regarded as the difficult bridge. I will not send you any more MS. until I can send the whole of vol. iii.
We think that Mr. Simpson has conducted our Australian business admirably. Remembering that but for his judgment and consequent activity we might have got no publication at all in that quarter, we may well be content with £200.
Mr. Lewes has not got the Life of Heine, and will be much pleased and obliged by your gift.
Major Lockhart's lively letter gives one a longing for the fresh, breezy life and fine scenery it conjures up. You must let me know when there is a book of his, because when I have done my own I shall like to read something else by him. I got much pleasure out of the two books I did read. But when I am writing, or only thinking of writing, fiction of my own, I cannot risk the reading of other English fiction. I was obliged to tell Anthony Trollope so when he sent me the first part of his "Prime Minister," though this must seem sadly ungracious to those who don't share my susceptibilities.
Apparently there are wild reports about the subject-matter of "Deronda" – among the rest, that it represents French life! But that is hardly more ridiculous than the supposition that after refusing to go to America, I should undertake to describe society there! It is wonderful how "Middlemarch" keeps afloat in people's minds. Somebody told me that Mr. Henry Sidgwick said it was a bold thing to write another book after "Middlemarch," and we must prepare ourselves for the incalculableness of the public reception in the first instance. I think I have heard you say that the chief result of your ample experience has been to convince you of that incalculableness.
What a blow for Miss Thackeray – the death of that sister to whom she was so closely bound in affection.
Journal, 1875.
Dec. 25.– After our return from Wales in October I grew better and wrote with some success. For the last three weeks, however, I have been suffering from a cold and its effects so as to be unable to make any progress. Meanwhile the two first volumes of "Daniel Deronda" are in print, and the first book is to be published on February 1st. I have thought very poorly of it myself throughout, but George and the Blackwoods are full of satisfaction in it. Each part as I see it before me im werden seems less likely to be anything else than a failure; but I see on looking back this morning – Christmas Day – that I really was in worse health and suffered equal depression about "Romola;" and, so far as I have recorded, the same thing seems to be true of "Middlemarch."
I have finished the fifth book, but am not far on in the sixth, as I hoped to have been; the oppression under which I have been laboring having positively suspended my power of writing anything that I could feel satisfaction in.
SUMMARY
JANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875
Reception of "Middlemarch" – Letter to John Blackwood – Mr. Anthony Trollope – Dutch translation of George Eliot's novels – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Evening drives at Weybridge – Letter to John Blackwood – German reprint of "Spanish Gypsy" – "The Lifted Veil" – "Kenelm Chillingly" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on her Memoir of her husband – Pleasure in young life – Letter to John Blackwood – Want of a Conservative leader – Letter to Mr. Burne-Jones – The function of art – Purpose in art – "Iphigenia in Aulis" – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – Welcoming her home – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on women at Cambridge – Visit to Mr. Frederic Myers at Cambridge – Meets Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Lyttelton, and Mrs. and Miss Huth – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Death of Miss Rebecca Franklin – Visit to the Master of Balliol – Meets Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell – Professor Green – Max Müller – Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge – Nine-weeks' trip to the Continent – Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Homburg – Fontainebleau, Plombières, and Luxeuil – Two months' stay at Bickley – Letter to Mrs. Cross on journey abroad and Blackbrook – Letter to John Blackwood – New edition of "Middlemarch" – A real Lowick in a Midland county – Cheap editions – Letter to Mrs. Cross on the pleasures of the country and on Mr. Henry Sidgwick – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – House in the country – Letter to J. W. Cross on conformity – Letter to John Blackwood – Interruptions of town life – Simmering towards another book – Berlin reading "Middlemarch" – Ashantee war – Letter to Madame Bodichon – The George Howards – John Stuart Mill's Autobiography – Letter to Mrs. Cross on Christmas invitation – Dr. Andrew Clark – Letter to Mrs. Bray on stupidity of readers – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Retrospect of 1873 – Sales of "Middlemarch" and "Spanish Gypsy" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – "Plain living and high thinking" – Letter to John Blackwood – Conservative reaction – Cheaper edition of novels – Lord Lytton's "Fables" – Dickens's Life and biography in general – Letter to John Blackwood – Volume of poems – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Motives for children – Letter to Miss Hennell – Francis Newman – George Dawson – "The Legend of Jubal and other Poems" published – "Symposium" written – Letter to Miss Mary Cross thanking her for a vase – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Delight in country – Letter to John Blackwood – Threatened restoration of the empire in France – "Brewing" "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on Mrs. Nassau Senior's report – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on consolations in loss – Letter to Madame Bodichon – No disposition to melancholy – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The serious view of life – Letter to John Blackwood – Justifications for writing – Dean Liddell – Letter to Mrs. Stowe – Goethe's mysticism – Letter to Miss Hennell – Visit to Six-Mile Bottom – Paris and the Ardennes – Bank of England and Woolwich Arsenal – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The idea of God an exaltation of human goodness – Vision of others' needs – Ground of moral action – Need of altruism – The power of the will – Difficulties of thought – Sales of books – Retrospect of 1874 – Letter to Francis Otter on his engagement – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Note-writing – Home for girls – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Value of early religious experience – Limitations of scientists – Letter to John Blackwood – Kinglake's "Crimea" – Discipline of war – "Rasselas" – Miss Thackeray – Anthony Trollope – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Desire to know the difficulties of others – Companion in the struggle of thought – Mr. Spencer's teaching – The value of poets – Emotion blending with thought – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – Her memoir – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The world of light and speech – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Rickmansworth – Letter to F. Harrison asking for consultation – Letter to J. W. Cross – "The Elms" – Depression – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The Brewing interest – Conciliation of necessitarianism with will – Innate ideas – Death of Herbert Lewes – Trip to Wales – Letter to John Blackwood – Not satisfied with "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Mode of publication of books – Letter to John Blackwood – Gwendolen – Letter to Miss Hennell – Miss Lewis – Letter to John Blackwood – Impressions of "Deronda" – Major Lockhart – Depression about "Deronda."
CHAPTER XVIII
Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1876.
We have just come in from Weybridge, but are going to take refuge there again on Monday for a few days more of fresh air and long, breezy afternoon walks. Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending me the cheering account of sales.
Mr. Lewes has not heard any complaints of not understanding Gwendolen, but a strong partisanship for and against her. My correspondence about the misquotation of Tennyson has quieted itself since the fifth letter. But one gentleman has written me a very pretty note, taxing me with having wanted insight into the technicalities of Newmarket, when I made Lush say, "I will take odds." He judges that I should have written, "I will lay odds." On the other hand, another expert contends that the case is one in which Lush would be more likely to say, "I will take odds." What do you think? I told my correspondent that I had a dread of being righteously pelted with mistakes that would make a cairn above me – a monument and a warning to people who write novels without being omniscient and infallible.
Mr. Lewes is agitating himself over a fifth reading of revise, Book VI., and says he finds it more interesting than on any former reading. It is agreeable to have a home criticism of this kind! But I am deep in the fourth volume, and cannot any longer care about what is past and done for – the passion of the moment is as much as I can live in.
We had beautiful skies with our cold, and only now and then a snow shower. It is grievous to read of the suffering elsewhere from floods.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 30th March, 1876.
I am well pleased that "Deronda" touches you. I wanted you to prefer the chapter about Mirah's finding, and I hope you will also like her history in Part III., which has just been published.
We want very much to get away, but I fear we shall hardly be able to start till the end of May. At present we think of the Maritime Alps as a destination for the warm summer – if we have such a season this year; but we shall wander a little on our way thither, and not feel bound to accomplish anything in particular. Meanwhile we are hearing some nice music occasionally, and we are going to see Tennyson's play, which is to be given on the 15th. The occasion will be very interesting, and I should be very sorry to miss it.
We have been getting a little refreshment from two flights between Sundays to Weybridge. But we have had the good a little drained from us by going out to dinner two days in succession. At Sir James Paget's I was much interested to find that a gentle-looking, clear-eyed, neatly-made man was Sir Garnet Wolseley; and I had some talk with him, which quite confirmed the impression of him as one of those men who have a power of command by dint of their sweet temper, calm demeanor, and unswerving resolution. The next subject that has filled our chat lately has been the Blue Book on Vivisection, which you would like to look into. There is a great deal of matter for reflection in the evidence on the subject, and some good points have been lately put in print, and conversation that I should like to tell you of if I had time. Professor Clifford told us the other Sunday that Huxley complained of his sufferings from "the profligate lying of virtuous women."
Journal, 1876.
April 12.– On February 1st began the publication of "Deronda," and the interest of the public, strong from the first, appears to have increased with Book III. The day before yesterday I sent off Book VII. The success of the work at present is greater than that of "Middlemarch" up to the corresponding point of publication. What will be the feeling of the public as the story advances I am entirely doubtful. The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody. I am in rather better health – having, perhaps, profited by some eight days' change at Weybridge.
Letter to John Blackwood, 18th April, 1876.
Your sympathetic letter is a welcome support to me in the rather depressed condition which has come upon me from the effect, I imagine, of a chill taken in the sudden change from mildness to renewed winter. You can understand how trying it is to have a week of incompetence at the present stage of affairs. I am rather concerned to see that the part is nearly a sheet smaller than any of the other parts. But Books V. and VI. are proportionately thick. It seemed inadmissible to add anything after the scene with Gwendolen; and to stick anything in not necessary to development between the foregoing chapters is a form of "matter in the wrong place" particularly repulsive to my authorship's sensibility.
People tell us that the book is enormously discussed, and I must share with you rather a neat coincidence which pleased us last week. Perhaps you saw what Mr. Lewes told me of – namely, that [a critic] opined that the scenes between Lush and Grandcourt were not vraisemblable– were of the imperious feminine, not the masculine, character. Just afterwards Mr. Lewes was chatting with a friend who, without having read the [criticism] or having the subject in the least led up to by Mr. Lewes, said that he had been at Lady Waldegraves', where the subject of discussion had been "Deronda;" and Bernal Osborne, delivering himself on the book, said that the very best parts were the scenes between Grandcourt and Lush. Don't you think that Bernal Osborne has seen more of the Grandcourt and Lush life than that critic has seen? But several men of experience have put their fingers on those scenes as having surprising verisimilitude; and I naturally was peculiarly anxious about such testimony, where my construction was founded on a less direct knowledge.
We are rather vexed, now it is too late, that I did not carry out a sort of incipient intention to expunge a motto from Walt Whitman which I inserted in Book IV. Of course the whole is irrevocable by this time; but I should have otherwise thought it worth while to have a new page, not because the motto itself is objectionable to me – it was one of the finer things which had clung to me from among his writings – but because, since I quote so few poets, my selection of a motto from Walt Whitman might be taken as a sign of a special admiration, which I am very far from feeling. How imperfectly one's mind acts in proof-reading! Mr. Lewes had taken up Book IV. yesterday to re-read it for his pleasure merely; and though he had read it several times before, he never till yesterday made a remark against taking a motto from Walt Whitman. I, again, had continually had an appetency towards removing the motto, and had never carried it out – perhaps from that sort of flaccidity which comes over me about what has been done, when I am occupied with what is being done.
People in their eagerness about my characters are quite angry, it appears, when their own expectations are not fulfilled – angry, for example, that Gwendolen accepts Grandcourt, etc., etc.
One reader is sure that Mirah is going to die very soon, and, I suppose, will be disgusted at her remaining alive. Such are the reproaches to which I make myself liable. However, that you seem to share Mr. Lewes's strong feeling of Book VII. being no falling off in intensity makes me brave. Only endings are inevitably the least satisfactory part of any work in which there is any merit of development.
I forgot to say that the "tephillin" are the small leather bands or phylacteries, inscribed with supremely sacred words, which the Jew binds on his arms and head during prayer.
Any periphrasis which would be generally intelligible would be undramatic; and I don't much like explanatory foot-notes in a poem or story. But I must consider what I can do to remedy the unintelligibility.
The printers have sadly spoiled the beautiful Greek name Kalonymos, which was the name of a celebrated family of scholarly Jews, transplanted from Italy into Germany in mediæval times. But my writing was in fault.
Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 6th May, 1876.
Your letter was one of the best cordials I could have. Is there anything that cheers and strengthens more than the sense of another's worth and tenderness? And it was that sense that your letter stirred in me, not only by the words of fellowship and encouragement you give directly to me, but by all you tell me of your own feeling under your late painful experience. I had felt it long since I had heard of your and the Professor's well being; but I need not say one word to you of the reasons why I am not active towards my distant friends except in thought. I do think of them, and have a tenacious memory of every little sign they have given me. Please offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am ruthlessly proud that I kept him out of his bed. I hope that both you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children. My cares for them are nearly at an end, and in a few weeks we expect to set out on a Continental journey, as the sort of relaxation which carries one most thoroughly away from studies and social claims. You rightly divine that I am a little overdone, but my fatigue is due not to any excess of work so much as to the vicissitudes of our long winter, which have affected me severely as they have done all delicate people. It is true that some nervous wear, such as you know well, from the excitement of writing, may have made me more susceptible to knife-like winds and sudden chills.
Though you tenderly forbade me to write in answer to your letter, I like to do it in these minutes when I happen to be free, lest hinderances should come in the indefinite future. I am the happier for thinking that you will have had this little bit of a letter to assure you that the sweet rain of your affection did not fall on a sandy place.
I make a delightful picture of your life in your orange-grove – taken care of by dear daughters. Climate enters into my life with an influence the reverse of what I like to think of in yours. Sunlight and sweet air make a new creature of me. But we cannot bear now to exile ourselves from our own country, which holds the roots of our moral and social life. One fears to become selfish and emotionally withered by living abroad, and giving up the numerous connections with fellow countrymen and women whom one can further a little towards both public and private good.
I wonder whether you ever suffered much from false writing (about your biography and motives) in the newspapers. I dare say that pro-slavery prints did not spare you. But I should be glad to think that there was less impudent romancing about you as a citoyenne of the States than there appears to be about me as a stranger. But it is difficult for us English, who have not spent any time in the United States, to know the rank that is given to the various newspapers; and we may make the mistake of giving emphasis to some American journalism which is with you as unknown to respectable minds as any low-class newspaper with us.
When we come back from our journeying, I shall be interesting myself in the MS. and proofs of my husband's third volume of his Problems, which will then go to press, and shall plunge myself into the mysteries of our nervous tissue as the Professor has been doing into the mysteries of the Middle Ages. I have a cousinship with him in that taste – but how to find space in one's life for all the subjects that solicit one? My studies have lately kept me away from the track of my husband's researches, and I feel behindhand in my wifely sympathies. You know the pleasure of such interchange – husband and wife each keeping to their own work, but loving to have cognizance of the other's course.
God bless you, dear friend. Beg the Professor to accept my affectionate respect, and believe me always yours with love.
Journal, 1876.
June 3.– Book V. published a week ago. Growing interest in the public, and growing sale, which has from the beginning exceeded that of "Middlemarch;" the Jewish part apparently creating strong interest.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 3d June, 1876.
The useful "companion," which your loving care has had marked with my initials, will go with me, and be a constant sign of the giver's precious affection, which you have expressed in words such as I most value.
Even success needs its consolations. Wide effects are rarely other than superficial, and would breed a miserable scepticism about one's work if it were not now and then for an earnest assurance such as you give me that there are lives in which the work has done something "to strengthen the good and mitigate the evil."
I am pursued to the last with some bodily trouble – this week it has been sore throat. But I am emerging, and you may think of me next week as raising my "Ebenezer."
Love and blessings to you all.
The manuscript of "Daniel Deronda" bears the following inscription:
"To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes.
"Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
*****
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on thee – and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
Journal, 1876.
June 10.– We set off on our journey, intending to go to San Martino Lantosc in the Maritime Alps. But I was ill at Aix, where the heat had become oppressive, and we turned northwards after making a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes – stayed a few days at Lausanne, then at Vevey, where again I was ill; then by Berne and Zurich to Ragatz, where we were both set up sufficiently to enjoy our life. After Ragatz to Heidelberg, the Klönthal, Schaffhausen, St. Blasien in the Black Forest, and then home by Strasburg, Nancy, and Amiens, arriving September 1.
Letter to John Blackwood, 6th July, 1876, from Ragatz.
After much travelling we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight, I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us – filled with various scenes and various ailments – but to you, I dare say, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell.
On our arriving at Aix the effect of railway travelling and heat on me warned us to renounce our project of going to the Maritime Alps and to turn northward; so after resting at Aix we went to Chambéry, just to make a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes, and then set our faces northward, staying at beautiful Lausanne and Vevey for a week, and then coming on by easy stages to this nook in the mountains. In spite of illness we have had much enjoyment of the lovely scenery we have been dwelling in ever since we entered Savoy, where one gets what I most delight in – the combination of rich, well-cultivated land, friendly to man, and the grand outline and atmospheric effect of mountains near and distant.
This place seems to be one of the quietest baths possible. Such fashion as there is, is of a German, unimposing kind; and the King of Saxony, who is at the twin hotel with this, is, I imagine, a much quieter kind of eminence than a London stock-broker. At present the company seems to be almost exclusively Swiss and German, but all the appliances for living and carrying on the "cure" are thoroughly generous and agreeable. We rose at five this morning, drank our glasses of warm water, and walked till a quarter to seven, then breakfasted; and from half-past eight to eleven walked to Bad Pfeffers and back again, along a magnificent ravine where the Tamine boils down beneath a tremendous wall of rock, and where it is interesting to see the electric telegraph leaping from the summit, crossing the gulf, and then quietly running by the roadside till it leaps upward again to the opposite summit.
You may consider us as generally ill-informed, and as ready to make much of a little news as any old provincial folk in the days when the stage-coach brought a single London paper to the village Crown or Red Lion. We have known that Servia has declared war against Turkey, and that Harriet Martineau is dead as well as George Sand.
Our weather has been uniformly splendid since we left Paris, with the exception of some storms, which have conveniently laid the dust.
Letter to John Blackwood, 2d Sept. 1876.
We reached home only last night, and had scarcely taken our much-needed dinner before a parcel was brought in which proved to be "Daniel Deronda" in the four bound volumes, and various letters with other "missiles" – as an acquaintance of mine once quite naively called his own favors to his correspondents – which have at present only gone to swell a heap that I mean to make acquaintance with very slowly. Mr. Lewes, however, is more eager than I, and he has just brought up to me a letter which has certainly gratified me more than anything else of the sort I ever received. It is from Dr. Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi here, expressing his "warm appreciation of the fidelity with which some of the best traits of the Jewish character have been depicted by" etc., etc. I think this will gratify you.
We are both the better for our journey, and I consider myself in as good case as I can ever reasonably expect. We can't be made young again, and must not be surprised that infirmities recur in spite of mineral waters and air 3000 feet above the sea-level. After Ragatz, we stayed at Stachelberg and Klönthal – two lovely places, where an English face is seldom seen. Another delicious spot, where the air is fit for the gods of Epicurus, is St. Blasien, in the Schwarzwald, where also we saw no English or American visitors, except such as übernachten there and pass on. We have done exploits in walking, usually taking four or five hours of it daily.
I hope that you and yours have kept well and have enjoyed the heat rather than suffered from it. I confess myself glad to think that this planet has not become hopelessly chilly. Draughts and chills are my enemies, and but for them I should hardly ever be ailing.
The four volumes look very handsome on the outside. Please thank Mr. William Blackwood for many kind notes he wrote me in the days of MS. and proofs – not one of which I ever answered or took notice of except for my own behoof.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th Sept. 1876.
We got home again last Friday, much strengthened by our journey, notwithstanding vicissitudes. I suppose you will not be in town for ages to come, but I let you know that I am here in case you have anything to say to me by letter – about "objects."
After leaving Ragatz we still kept in eastern Switzerland, in high valleys unvisited by the English; and in our homeward line of travel we paused in the Schwarzwald at St. Blasien, which is a Luft-kur, all green hills and pines, with their tops as still as if it were the abode of the gods.
But imagine how we enjoy being at home again in our own chairs, with the familiar faces giving us smiles which are not expecting change in franc pieces!
We are both pretty well, but of course not cured of all infirmities. Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years. Still we are thoroughly lively and "spry."
I hope that the hot summer has passed agreeably for you and not been unfavorable to your health or comfort. Of course a little news of you will be welcome, even if you don't particularly want to say anything to me.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Oct. 1876.
My blessing on you for your sweet letter, which I count among the blessings given to me. Yes. Women can do much for the other women (and men) to come. My impression of the good there is in all unselfish efforts is continually strengthened. Doubtless many a ship is drowned on expeditions of discovery or rescue, and precious freights lie buried. But there was the good of manning and furnishing the ship with a great purpose before it set out.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 15th Oct. 1878.
The days pass by without my finding time to tell you what I want to tell you – how delighted I was to have a good account of you. But every bright day, and we have had many such, has made me think the more of you, and hope that you were drawing in strength from the clear, sweet air. I miss so much the hope that I used always to have of seeing you in London and talking over everything just as we used to do – in the way that will never exactly come with any one else. How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends! The new are comparatively foreigners, with whom one's talk is hemmed in by mutual ignorance. The one cannot express, the other cannot divine.
We are intensely happy in our bit of country, as happy as the cloudy aspect of public affairs will allow any one who cares for them to be, with the daily reading of the Times.
A neighbor of ours was reciting to me yesterday some delicious bits of dialogue with a quaint Surrey woman; e. g., "O ma'am, what I have gone through with my husband! He is so uneddicated – he never had a tail-coat in his life!"
Letter to John Blackwood, 23d Nov. 1878, from the Priory.
When Mr. Lewes sent you my MS.34 the other morning he was in that state of exhilarated activity which often comes with the sense of ease after an attack of illness which had been very painful. In the afternoon he imprudently drove out, and undertook, with his usual eagerness, to get through numerous details of business, over-fatigued himself, and took cold. The effect has been a sad amount of suffering from feverishness and headache, and I have been in deep anxiety, am still very unhappy, and only comforted by Sir James Paget's assurances that the actual trouble will be soon allayed.
I have been telling the patient about your letter and suggestion that he should send a form of slip as advertisement for the Magazine. He says – and the answer seems to have been a matter of premeditation with him – that it will be better not to announce the book in this way at once – "the Americans and Germans will be down on us." I cannot question him further at present, but I have no doubt he has been thinking about the matter, and we must not cross his wish in any way.
I have thought that a good form of advertisement, to save people from disappointment in a book of mine not being a story, would be to print the list of contents, which, with the title, would give all but the very stupid a notion to what form of writing the work belongs. But this is a later consideration. I am glad you were pleased with the opening.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday evening, 24th Nov. 1878.
For the last week I have been in deep trouble. Mr. Lewes has been alarmingly ill. To-day Sir James Paget and Dr. Quain pronounce him in all respects better, and I am for the first time comforted. You will not wonder now at my silence. Thanks for your affectionate remembrances.
Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Nov. 1878.
Mr. Lewes continues sadly ill, and I am absorbed in nursing him. When he wrote about Parliament meeting, he was thinking that it would be called together at the usual time – perhaps February. The book can be deferred without mischief. I wish to add a good deal, but, of course, I can finish nothing now, until Mr. Lewes is better. The doctors pronounced him in every respect better yesterday, and he had a quiet night, but since five o'clock this morning he has had a recurrence of trouble. You can feel for him and me, having so lately known what severe illness is.
Mr. Lewes died on the 28th November, 1878.
SUMMARY
MARCH, 1876, TO NOVEMBER, 1878
Letter to John Blackwood – Visit to Weybridge – "Daniel Deronda" – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – Meets Sir Garnet Wolseley – Vivisection – Letter to John Blackwood – Public discussion of "Deronda" – Motto from Walt Whitman – Inscription on the MS. of "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Stowe – Thanks for sympathy – Drawbacks to going too much abroad – Mr. Lewes's "Problems" – Letter to J. W. Cross on the effect of her writing – Three-months' trip to Continent – Letter to John Blackwood – Visit to Chambéry and Les Charmettes – Lausanne and Vevey – Ragatz – Return to London – Letter to John Blackwood – Dr. Hermann Adler – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – St. Blasien – Women's work – Visit to Six-Mile Bottom – Meets Turguenieff – Jewish appreciation of "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – Mrs. Ruck – Letter to Mrs. Stowe – Jewish element in "Deronda" – Letter to Miss Hennell – Miss Martineau's "Autobiography," and biography in general – Resignation – Gratitude of Jews for "Deronda" – Purchase of house at Witley, near Godalming – Dr. Hermann Adler's lectures on "Daniel Deronda" – Application to translate "Romola" into Italian – Christmas at Weybridge – Opening of year 1877 – Letter to James Sully – The word "meliorism" – Letter to John Blackwood – Illustrations of cheap editions – "Romola" – Letter to William Allingham – Warwickshire dialect – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Harriet Martineau's "Autobiography" – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – Holmes and Mrs. Vernon Lushington playing – Letter to Miss Hennell – Mrs. Chapman on Harriet Martineau – Mrs. Stowe and the Byron case – Letter to Professor Kaufmann – Gratitude for his estimate of "Deronda" – Letter to F. Harrison – Sympathy incentive to production – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – Miss Thackeray's marriage – Letter to W. Allingham on his poems – Letter to Professor Kaufmann – Translation of his article by Mr. Ferrier – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Reference to Stradivarius – Pity and fairness – Letter to J. W. Cross – Appreciation of Tennyson's poems and dramas – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Improvement in health at Witley – Proposal to write on Shakespeare for "Men of Letters" series – Letter to Miss Hennell – Gain of health and strength at Witley – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – Christmas plans – Farewell to Journal and to year 1877 – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – State of France – London University opening degrees to women – Reading Green's "History of the English People" and Lecky – The phonograph – Letter to John Blackwood – "Pascal" – "La Bruyère" – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones on the "Two Grenadiers" – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Meeting with Crown Prince and Princess of Germany at Mr. Goschen's – Visit to Oxford to the Master of Balliol – Letter to John Blackwood – Indian story of Lord Lytton's – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Function the æsthetic not the doctrinal teacher – Letter to John Blackwood – Mr. Lewes's ill-health – Letter to William Blackwood – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones complaining of health – Letter to J. W. Cross – Mr. Lewes's continued illness – Life at Witley – Effect of receptions at the Priory – Description of receptions – Letter to John Blackwood – Complaining of health – Letter to Mme. Bodichon – Delight in old friends – Letters to John Blackwood – MS. of "Theophrastus Such" – Mr. Lewes's last illness – Postponement of publication of "Theophrastus" – Mr. Lewes's death.
CHAPTER XIX
For many weeks after Mr. Lewes's death, George Eliot saw no one except Mr. Charles Lewes, and the very few persons she was obliged to receive on necessary business. She read no letters, and wrote none, but at once began to occupy herself busily with Mr. Lewes's unfinished MSS., in which work Mr. Charles Lewes was able to assist her in the arrangement. The only entry in her diary on the 1st January, 1879, is "Here I and sorrow sit." At the end of two months this desolation had told terribly on her health and spirits; and on the last day of January she was greatly comforted by a visit from Sir James Paget – a friend for whom she had always had the highest and most cordial regard during the many years she had known him. Meantime she had begun to write a few short notes, and she mentions in her journal of 2d January, "A kind letter from Professor Michael Foster, of Cambridge, offering to help me on any physiological point;" and on the 19th January, "Ruminating on the founding of some educational instrumentality as a memorial to be called by his name." There are the following letters in January and February.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 7th Jan. 1879.
I bless you for all your goodness to me, but I am a bruised creature, and shrink even from the tenderest touch. As soon as I feel able to see anybody I will see you. Please give my love to Bessie35 and thank her for me – I mean, for her sweet letter. I was a long while before I read any letters, but tell her I shall read hers again and again.
Letter to John Blackwood, 13th Jan. 1879.
It was a long while before I read any letters, and as yet I have written none, except such as business required of me. You will believe that this has not been for want of gratitude to all my friends for their goodness to me. I can trust to your understanding of a sorrow which has broken my life. I write now because I ought not to allow any disproportionate expense to be incurred about my printed sheets.
To me, now, the writing seems all trivial stuff, but since he wished it to be printed, and you seem to concur, I will correct the sheets (if you will send me the remainder) gradually as I am able, and they can be struck off and laid by for a future time. I submit this proposition to your judgment, not knowing what may be most expedient for your printing-office.
Thank you for all your kind words.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 22d Jan. 1879.
Sometime, if I live, I shall be able to see you – perhaps sooner than any one else – but not yet. Life seems to get harder instead of easier.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 30th Jan. 1879.
When I said "sometime" I meant still a distant time. I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake. So I try to keep up my strength, and I work as much as I can to save my mind from imbecility. But that is all at present. I can go through anything that is mere business. But what used to be joy is joy no longer, and what is pain is easier because he has not to bear it.
I bless my friends for all their goodness to me. Please say so to all of them that you know, especially Mr. Hall. Tell him I have read his letter again and again.
If you feel prompted to say anything, write it to me.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 4th Feb. 1879.
Do not believe that your love is lost upon me, dear. I bless you for all your goodness to me, and keep every sign of it in my memory.
I have been rather ill lately, but my head is clearer this morning. The world's winter is going, I hope, but my everlasting winter has set in. You know that and will be patient with me.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th Feb. 1879.
Bless you for your loving thought. But for all reasons, bodily and mental, I am unable to move. I am entirely occupied with his manuscripts, and must be on this spot among all the books. Then, I am in a very ailing condition of body – cannot count on myself from day to day – and am not fit to undertake any sort of journey. I have never yet been outside the gate. Even if I were otherwise able, I could not bear to go out of sight of the things he used and looked on.
Bless you once more. If I could go away with anybody I could go away with you.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 7th Feb. 1879.
I do need your affection. Every sign of care for me from the beings I respect and love is a help to me. In a week or two I think I shall want to see you. Sometimes, even now, I have a longing, but it is immediately counteracted by a fear. The perpetual mourner – the grief that can never be healed – is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning – a new acquaintance with grief.
Letter to J. W. Cross, Saturday, 22d Feb. 1879.
If you happen to be at liberty to-morrow, or the following Friday, or to-morrow week, I hope I shall be well enough to see you. Let me know which day.
On Sunday, the 23d February, I saw her for the first time, and there is the following letter next day.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 24th Feb. 1879.
A transient absence of mind yesterday made me speak as if it were possible for me to entertain your thoughtful, kind proposal that I should move to Weybridge for a short time. But I cannot leave this house for the next two months – if for no other reason, I should be chained here by the need of having all the books I want to refer to.
Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1879.
Pray do not announce "Theophrastus" in any way. It would be intolerable to my feelings to have a book of my writing brought out for a long while to come. What I wish to do is, to correct the sheets thoroughly, and then have them struck off and laid by till the time of publication comes. One reason which prompted me to set about the proofs – in addition to my scruples about occupying the type – was that I was feeling so ill, I thought there was no time to be lost in getting done everything which no one else would do if I left it undone. But I am getting better, I think; and my doctors say there is nothing the matter with me to urge more haste than the common uncertainty of life urges on us all.
There is a great movement now among the Jews towards colonizing Palestine, and bringing out the resources of the soil. Probably Mr. Oliphant is interested in the work, and will find his experience in the West not without applicability in the East.
It is a satisfaction to you, I hope, that your son is about to be initiated in George Street. I trust he will one day carry on the good traditions of the name "John Blackwood."
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th Mch. 1879.
Your letter, which tells me that you are benefiting by the clear, sunny air, is very welcome. Yes, here too the weather is more merciful, and I drive out most days. I am better bodily, but I never feel thoroughly comfortable in that material sense, and I am incredibly thin. As to my mind, I am full of occupation, but the sorrow deepens down instead of diminishing. I mean to go to Witley in a few months, that I may look again on the spots that he enjoyed, and that we enjoyed together, but I cannot tell beforehand whether I shall care to go again afterwards.
Everybody is very kind to me, and by and by I shall begin to see a few intimate friends. I can do or go through anything that is business or duty, but time and strength seem lacking for everything else. You must excuse my weakness, remembering that for nearly twenty-five years I have been used to find my happiness in his. I can find it nowhere else. But we can live and be helpful without happiness, and I have had more than myriads who were and are better fitted for it.
I am really very busy, and have been sadly delayed by want of health. One project I have entered on is to found a studentship, which will be called after his name. I am getting help from experienced men.
Letter to John Blackwood, 5th Mch. 1879.
I send the corrected sheets of "Theophrastus," and shall be much obliged if you will order a complete revise to be sent me before they are struck off. Whenever the book is published (I cannot contemplate its appearing before June, and if that is a bad time it must stand over till the autumn season) I beg you kindly to write for me a notice, to be printed on the fly-leaf, that the MS. was placed in your hands last November, or simply last year.
I think you will enter into my feeling when I say that to create a notion on the part of the public of my having been occupied in writing "Theophrastus" would be repugnant to me. And I shrink from putting myself forward in any way.
I hope you are benefiting by the milder weather. I drive out a little now, but you must be prepared to see me a much changed creature. I think I should hardly know myself.
Journal, 1879.
March 8.– Gertrude36 and the children came to tea.
March 9.– Mr. Henry Sidgwick came to discuss the plan of the studentship.
March 13.– Professor Michael Foster came to discuss the studentship, and we arrived at a satisfactory clearness as to the conditions. He mentioned as men whom he thought of as suitable trustees, Huxley, Pye Smith, Thiselton Dyer, Francis Balfour, and Henry Sidgwick.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 20th Mch. 1879.
Dear Friend, – When you have time to come to me about six o'clock I shall love to see you.
Journal, 1879.
March 22.– Mrs. Congreve came again. Mrs. Burne-Jones came.
Letter to William Blackwood, 25th Mch. 1879.
I am so dissatisfied with "Theophrastus" on reading the revise that I have proposed to suppress it in this original form, and regenerate it whenever – if ever – I recover the power to do so. You see the cruel weather has travelled after you. It makes one feel every grievance more grievously in some respects, though to me the sunshine is in one sense sadder.
Journal, 1879.
March 30.– Mr. Bowen (now Lord Justice Bowen) came, Mr. Spencer, and J.
Letter to John Blackwood, 5th April, 1879.
After weighing what you have said, I agree to the publication of "Theophrastus" in May. If you had at all suspected that the book would injure my influence, you would not have wished me to give it forth in its present form, and in the uncertainty of one's inner and outer life it is not well to depend on future capabilities. There are some things in it which I want to get said, and if the book turned out to be effective in proportion to my other things, the form would lend itself to a "second series" – supposing I lived and kept my faculties.
As to the price for the right of translating, you will judge. If you will kindly undertake these negotiations for me, I shall be thankful. And pray remember that I don't want the book to be translated, so that it will be well to wait for the application, and to ask a sufficient sum to put the publisher on his guard as to the selection of a translator. But, of course, this little book cannot be paid for according to the difficulty of translation.
You see, I have been so used to have all trouble spared me that I am ready to cast it on any willing shoulders. But I am obliged now to think of business in many ways.
I am so glad to know that Mrs. Blackwood has the comfort of a good report about you from the doctors. Perhaps it may seem to you the wrong order of sympathy to be glad for your sake in the second place.
Journal, 1879.
April 8.– Mrs. Stuart came.
Mrs. Stuart was a devoted friend whose acquaintance had been formed some years before through the presentation of some beautiful wood-carving which she had executed as an offering to George Eliot.
Letter to Frederic Harrison, 8th April, 1879.
Dear Friends, – Will you come to see me some day? I am always in from my drive and at liberty by half-past four. Please do not say to any one that I am receiving visitors generally. Though I have been so long without making any sign, my heart has been continually moved with gratitude towards you.
Letter to Madame Bodichon, 8th April, 1879.
Your letter was very welcome this morning, for I do not like to be very long without having some picture of you, and your words of affection are always sweet.
The studentship I mention is to supply an income to a young man who is qualified and eager to carry on physiological research, and would not otherwise have the means of doing so. Mr. H. Sidgwick, Michael Foster, and other men of kindred mind are helping me in settling the scheme. I have been determined in my choice of the studentship by the idea of what would be a sort of prolongation of his life. That there should always, in consequence of his having lived, be a young man working in the way he would have liked to work, is a memorial of him that comes nearest my feeling. It is to be at Cambridge to begin with, and we thought at first of affiliating it to the university; but now the notion is that it will be well to keep it free, so that the trustees may move it where and when they will. But the scheme is not yet drafted.
I am going to bring out one of "The Problems" in a separate volume at the beginning of May, and am now correcting the proofs.
My going to Witley is an experiment. I don't know how I shall bear being there, but I hope there will be nothing to hinder my having you there if you will undertake the troublous journey for my sake.
Letter to John Blackwood, 9th April, 1879.
I enclose the proof of title-page and motto. Whether the motto (which is singularly apt and good) should be on the title-page or fly-leaf I leave you to judge. Certainly, everybody who does not read Latin will be offended by its claiming notice, and will consider that only the deepest-dyed pedantry could have found the motive for it. But I will not leave it out altogether.
I have had such various letters from time to time, asking me to reprint or write essays, that, perhaps, some of the public will not be disappointed that the volume is not a story. But that must be as it may; and if you think the acceptance dubious, it is much the better plan not to stereotype.
What energy there is in Mr. Kinglake in spite of the somewhat shattered health that his Wesen gives one the impression of! Among incidents of war that one can dwell on with anything like gladness, that account of the rescue of the colors at Isandlana is memorable, is it not?
I go out every day, drive beyond the ranks of hideous houses in the Kilburn outskirts, and get to lanes where I can walk, in perfect privacy, among the fields and budding hedgerows.
I hope Mr. Julian Sturgis will take care of his writing and do something lasting. He seems to me to have a strain above the common in him; and he is not writing for his bread, or even his butter. I don't know why I say this just now, except that I had it in my mind to say long ago, and it has just come upper-most as I was thinking of the Magazine.
Letter to Professor Kaufmann, 17th April, 1879.
Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that my mind had, more than once, gone out to you as one from whom I should like to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an acquaintance with my husband and his works.
I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his "History of Philosophy;" but what would I not have given if the volumes could have come, even only a few days, before his death! For his mind was perfectly clear, and he would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective.
I do not know whether you will enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness, in which the suffering was comparatively mild.
One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of mine to the publishers. The book (not a story, and not bulky) is to appear near the end of May, and, as it contains some words I wanted to say about the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you.
I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is grievous – industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war in South Africa.
I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on "The Study of Psychology" will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 22d April, 1879.
I am in dreadful need of your counsel. Pray come to me when you can – morning, afternoon, or evening.
From this time forward I saw George Eliot constantly. My mother had died in the beginning of the previous December, a week after Mr. Lewes; and, as my life had been very much bound up with hers, I was trying to find some fresh interest in taking up a new pursuit. Knowing very little Italian, I began Dante's "Inferno" with Carlyle's translation. The first time I saw George Eliot afterwards, she asked me what I was doing, and, when I told her, exclaimed, "Oh, I must read that with you." And so it was. In the following twelve months we read through the "Inferno" and the "Purgatorio" together; not in a dilettante way, but with minute and careful examination of the construction of every sentence. The prodigious stimulus of such a teacher (cotanto maestro) made the reading a real labor of love. Her sympathetic delight in stimulating my newly awakened enthusiasm for Dante did something to distract her mind from sorrowful memories. The divine poet took us into a new world. It was a renovation of life. At the end of May I induced her to play on the piano at Witley for the first time; and she played regularly after that whenever I was there, which was generally once or twice a week, as I was living at Weybridge, within easy distance.
Besides Dante, we read at this time a great many of Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries," and much of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth. But I am anticipating. We will return to the correspondence in its order.
Letter to John Blackwood, 22d April, 1879.
When I shall be able to get to Witley is altogether uncertain. The cold winds make one less hungry for the country, but still it will be a relief to me, in some respects, to get away from town. I am much stronger than I was, and am again finding interest in this wonderful life of ours. But I am obliged to keep my doors closed against all but the few until I go away. You, however, I shall hope to see. I am founding a studentship of Physiology, to be called "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." It will be placed, in the first instance, at Cambridge, where there is the best physiological school in the kingdom. But the trustees (with my consent during my life) will have the power of moving it where they judge best. This idea, which I early conceived, has been a great stay to me. But I have plenty to think of, plenty of creatures depending on me, to make my time seem of some value. And there are so many in the world who have to live without any great enjoyment.
Journal, 1879.
April 26.– Mr. and Mrs. Hall came.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d May, 1879.
If you can come to me next week for a parting word, will you try to learn beforehand whether and when your husband can give me half an hour at the end of his working-day? I should like to see him before I go, which I hope to do soon after the 13th.
Journal, 1879.
May 6.– Mr. and Mrs. Call, Eleanor and Florence (Cross) came.
May 8.– Mr. Burne-Jones came.
May 10.– Edith Simcox and Mr. Pigott came.
May 13.– Dr. Andrew Clark came and gave me important suggestions about the studentship.
May 21.– Saw Mr. Anthony Trollope.
May 22.– Came down to Witley – lovely mild day.
Letter to James Sully, 28th May, 1879.
Mr. Lewes always wrote the dramatic criticisms in the Leader, and for a year or two he occasionally wrote such criticisms in the Pall Mall. Of the latter, the chief were reprinted in the little book on "Actors, and the Art of Acting." What was written in the Fortnightly (1865-66) is marked by signature. The most characteristic contributions to the Cornhill (1864-65) were "The Mental Condition of Babies," "Dangers and Delights of Tobacco," "Was Nero a Monster?" "Shakespeare in France," and "Miseries of a Dramatic Author."
But after 1866 his contributions to any periodical were very scanty – confined to a few articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, one on "The Reign of Law," in the Fortnightly, and the series on Darwin, now incorporated in "The Physical Basis of Mind." After these, his sole contributions were an article on Dickens (1872), two on "Spiritualism" and "Mesmerism" (1876), and one on "The Dread and Dislike of Science" (1878).
Charles, I think, mentioned to you my desire that you should do me the valuable service of looking over the proofs of the remaining volume of "Problems," and you were so generous as to express your willingness to undertake that labor. The printing will not begin till after the 16th – Dr. Michael Foster, who has also kindly offered to help me in the same way, not being sufficiently at leisure till after that date.
I have been rather ill again lately, but am hoping to benefit by the country quietude. You, too, I am sorry to hear, are not over strong. This will make your loan of mind and eyesight all the more appreciated by me.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d June, 1879.
Your letter, full of details – just the sort of letter I like to have – has been among my comforts in these last damp, chill days. The first week I was not well, and had a troublesome attack of pain, but I am better, and try to make life interesting by always having something to do.
I am wishing Margaret many happy returns of this day, and am making a picture of you all keeping the little fête. A young birthday, when the young creature is promising, is really a happy time; one can hope reasonably; and the elder ones may be content that gladness has passed onward from them into newer vessels. I should like to see the blue-eyed maid with her bangles on her arms.
Please give my love to all and sundry who make any sign of love for me; and any amount you like is ready for you to draw upon.
Letter to Frederic Harrison, 10th June, 1879.
I am greatly obliged to you for sending me the paper you are to read to-day; and I appreciate it the more highly because your diligence is in contrast with the general sluggishness of readers about any but idle reading. It is melancholy enough that to most of our polite readers the social factor in psychology would be a dull subject; for it is certainly no conceit of ours which pronounces it to be the supremely interesting element in the thinking of our time.
I confess the word factor has always been distasteful to me as the name for the grandest of forces. If it were only mathematical I should not mind, but it has many other associated flavors which spoil it for me.
