CHAPTER XVII.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.'"

[Sidenote: 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!

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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."

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1873.]

_Sept. 4._--Went to Blackbrook, near Bickley.

[Sidenote: 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

trouble[21] 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.

[Sidenote: 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 7_s._ 6_d._--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 3_s._ 6_d._, 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.

[Sidenote: 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."

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

All the great religions of the world, historically considered, are

rightly the objects of deep reverence and sympathy--they are the

record of spiritual struggles, which are the types of our own. This is

to me pre-eminently true of Hebrewism and Christianity, on which my

own youth was nourished. And in this sense I have no antagonism

towards any religious belief, but a strong outflow of sympathy. Every

community met to worship the highest Good (which is understood to be

expressed by God) carries me along in its main current; and if there

were not reasons against my following such an inclination, I should go

to church or chapel constantly for the sake of the delightful emotions

of fellowship which come over me in religious assemblies--the very

nature of such assemblies being the recognition of a binding belief or

spiritual law, which is to lift us into willing obedience and save us

from the slavery of unregulated passion or impulse. And with regard to

other people, it seems to me that those who have no definite

conviction which constitutes a protesting faith may often more

beneficially cherish the good within them and be better members of

society by a conformity, based on the recognized good in the public

belief, than by a nonconformity which has nothing but negatives to

utter. _Not_, of course, if the conformity would be accompanied by a

consciousness of hypocrisy. That is a question for the individual

conscience to settle. But there is enough to be said on the different

points of view from which conformity may be regarded to hinder a ready

judgment against those who continue to conform after ceasing to

believe, in the ordinary sense. But with the utmost largeness of

allowance for the difficulty of deciding in special cases, it must

remain true that the highest lot is to have definite beliefs about

which you feel that "necessity is laid upon you" to declare them, as

something better which you are bound to try and give to those who have

the worse.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 5th Nov. 1873.]

It was a cheerful accompaniment to breakfast this morning to have a

letter from you, with the pretty picture you suggested of Miss

Blackwood's first ball. I am glad that I have seen the "little

fairy," so as to be able to imagine her.

We are both the better for the delicious air and quiet of the country.

We, too, like you, were sorry to quit the woods and fields for the

comparatively disturbed life which even we are obliged to lead in

town. Letters requesting interviews can no longer be made void by

one's absence; and I am much afflicted by these interruptions, which

break up the day without any adequate result of good to any mortal. In

the country the days have broad spaces, and the very stillness seems

to give a delightful roominess to the hours.

Is it not wonderful that the world can absorb so much "Middlemarch" at

a guinea the copy? I shall be glad to hear particulars, which, I

imagine, will lead to the conclusion that the time is coming for the

preparation of a 7_s._ 6_d._ edition. I am not fond of reading proofs,

but I am anxious to correct the sheets of this edition, both in

relation to mistakes already standing, and to prevent the accumulation

of others in the reprinting.

I am slowly simmering towards another big book; but people seem so

bent on giving supremacy to "Middlemarch" that they are sure not to

like any future book so well. I had a letter from Mr. Bancroft (the

American ambassador at Berlin) the other day, in which he says that

everybody in Berlin reads "Middlemarch." He had to buy two copies for

his house; and he found the rector of the university, a stupendous

mathematician, occupied with it in the solid part of the day. I am

entertaining you in this graceful way about myself because you will be

interested to know what are the chances for our literature abroad.

That Ashantee business seems to me hideous. What is more murderous

than stupidity? To have a husband gone on such an expedition is a

trial that passes my imagination of what it is possible to endure in

the way of anxiety.

We are looking forward to the "Inkerman" volume as something for me to

read aloud.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 11th Nov. 1873.]

During the latter part of our stay at Blackbrook we had become very

fond of the neighborhood. The walks and drives round us were

delightfully varied--commons, wooded lanes, wide pastures--and we felt

regretfully that we were hardly likely to find again a country-house

so secluded in a well-inhabited region.

We have seen few people at present. The George Howards are come from a

delicious, lonely _séjour_ in a tower of Bamborough Castle!--and he

has brought many sketches home. That lodging would suit you, wouldn't

it? A castle on a rock washed by the sea seems to me just a paradise

for you.

We have been reading John Mill's "Autobiography," like the rest of the

world. The account of his early education and the presentation of his

father are admirable; but there are some pages in the latter half that

one would have liked to be different.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 6th Dec. 1873.]

Our wish to see you after all the long months since June, added to

your affectionate invitation, triumphs over our disinclination to

move. So, unless something should occur to make the arrangement

inconvenient to you, we will join the dear party on your hearth in the

afternoon of the 24th, and stay with you till the 26th.

Notwithstanding my trust in your words, I feel a lingering uneasiness

lest we should be excluding some one else from enjoying Christmas with

you.

J.'s friend, Dr. Andrew Clark, has been prescribing for Mr.

Lewes--ordering him to renounce the coffee which has been a chief

charm of life to him, but being otherwise mild in his prohibitions.

I hear with much comfort that you are better, and have recovered your

usual activity. Please keep well till Christmas, and then love and pet

me a little, for that is always very sweet.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 22d Dec. 1873.]

In writing any careful presentation of human feelings, you must count

on that infinite stupidity of readers who are always substituting

their crammed notions of what ought to be felt for any attempt to

recall truly what they themselves have felt under like circumstances.

We are going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our friends

at Weybridge.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 28th Dec. 1873.]

We have been spending our Christmas in the country, and it is only on

my return that I got your kind note, with its pretty symbols of

remembrance. Such little signs are very sweet, coming from those whom

one loves well in spite of long separation. I am very glad to have

seen you in your new home, and to be able to imagine you among your

household treasures--especially to imagine both you and your husband

in enjoyable health. We have been invalidish lately, and have put

ourselves under the discipline of Dr. Andrew Clark, who is not one of

the "three meat-meals and alcohol" physicians, but rather one of those

who try to starve out dyspepsia.

We both send our kind regards to Mr. Taylor, and hope that he may

remain robust for his parliamentary campaign. Life, I trust, will deal

gently with you in future, dear friend, and give you years of peace

after your period of anxiety and of parting from old places and

habits.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1874.]

_Jan. 1._--The happy old year, in which we have had constant enjoyment

of life, notwithstanding much bodily _malaise_, is gone from us

forever. More than in any former year of my life love has been poured

forth to me from distant hearts, and in our home we have had that

finish to domestic comfort which only faithful, kind servants can

give. Our children are prosperous and happy--Charles evidently growing

in mental efficiency; we have abundant wealth for more than our actual

needs; and our unspeakable joy in each other has no other alloy than

the sense that it must one day end in parting. My dear husband has a

store of present and prospective good in the long work which is likely

to stretch through the remaining years of his intellectual activity;

and there have not been wanting signs that what he has already

published is being appreciated rightly by capable persons. He is

thinner than ever, but still he shows wonderful elasticity and nervous

energy. I have been for a month rendered almost helpless for

intellectual work by constant headache, but am getting a little more

freedom. Nothing is wanting to my blessings but the uninterrupted

power of work. For as to all my unchangeable imperfections I have

resigned myself.

_Jan. 17._--I received this morning, from Blackwood, the account of

"Middlemarch" and of "The Spanish Gypsy" for 1873. Of the guinea

edition of "Middlemarch," published in the spring, 2434 copies have

been sold. Of "The Spanish Gypsy" 292 copies have been sold during

1873, and the remaining copies are only 197. Thus, out of 4470 which

have been printed, 4273 have been distributed.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 12th Feb. 1874.]

We have received the volume--your kind and valuable gift--and I have

read it aloud with Mr. Lewes, all except the later pages, which we

both feel too much to bear reading them in common. You have given a

deeply interesting and, we think, instructive picture, and Mr. Lewes

has expressed his wish that it had not been restricted to a private

circulation. But I understand your shrinking from indiscriminate

publicity, at least in the first instance. Perhaps, if many judges on

whom you rely concur with Mr. Lewes, you will be induced to extend the

possible benefit of the volume. I care so much for the demonstration

of an intense joy in life on the basis of "plain living and high

thinking" in this time of more and more eager scrambling after wealth

and show. And then there are exquisite bits which you have rescued

from that darkness to which his self-depreciation condemned them. I

think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called

"Christian Resignation;" and Mr. Lewes, when I read it aloud, at once

exclaimed, "How very fine--read it again!" I am also much impressed

with the wise mingling of moderation with sympathy in that passage,

given in a note, from the article on Greg's "Political Essays."

What must have been the effort which the writing cost you I can--not

fully, but almost--imagine. But believe, dear friend, that in our

judgment you have not poured out these recollections in a cry of

anguish all in vain. I feel roused and admonished by what you have

told, and if I--then others.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 20th Feb. 1874.]

I imagined you absorbed by the political crisis, like the rest of the

world except the Lord Chief-justice, who must naturally have felt his

summing-up deserving of more attention. I, who am no believer in

salvation by ballot, am rather tickled that the first experiment with

it has turned against its adherents.

I have been making what will almost certainly be my last corrections

of the "Spanish Gypsy," and that causes me to look forward with

special satisfaction to the probable exhaustion of the present

edition. The corrections chiefly concern the quantity of the word

Zincálo, which ought to be Zíncalo; but there are some other

emendations; and, altogether, they make a difference to more than

seventy pages. But it would still be worth while to retain the

stereotypes, replacing simply the amended pages, there being about 400

in the whole book. I am sadly vexed that I did not think of having

these corrections ready for the German reprint.

I have been compunctious lately about my having sprinkled cold water

on the proposal suggested by Mr. Simpson, of bringing out my novels in

a cheaper way--on thinner paper and without illustrations. The

compunction was roused by my happening, in looking at old records, to

alight on some letters, one especially, written by a working-man, a

certain E. Hall,[22] more than ten years ago, begging me to bring out

my books in a form cheap enough to let a poor man more easily "get a

read of them." Hence, if you and Mr. Simpson see good to revive the

design in question, I am perfectly in accord.

You did send me a copy of Lord Lytton's "Fables"--many thanks for

doing so. Mr. Lewes had seen several of them in manuscript, and

thought well of their merits. I am reading them gradually. They are

full of graceful fancies and charming verse. So far as cleverness goes

it seems to me he can do almost anything; and the leanings of his mind

are towards the best things. The want I feel is of more definiteness

and more weight. The two stanzas to his wife, placed before "Far and

Near," are perfect.

I think I have never written to you since I wanted to tell you that I

admired very much the just spirit in which the notice of Mill's

"Autobiography" was written in the Magazine. Poor Dickens's latter

years wear a melancholy aspect, do they not? But some of the extracts

from his letters in the last volume have surprisingly more freshness

and naturalness of humor than any of the letters earlier given. Still,

something should be done by dispassionate criticism towards the reform

of our national habits in the matter of literary biography. Is it not

odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk is raked, and every

insignificant memorandum which he never meant for the public is

printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle to re-read his

books? "He gave the people of his best. His worst he kept, his best he

gave;" but there is a certain set, not a small one, who are titillated

by the worst and indifferent to the best. I think this fashion is a

disgrace to us all. It is something like the uncovering of the dead

Byron's club-foot.

Mr. Lewes is in a more flourishing condition than usual, having been

helped by Dr. Andrew Clark, who ministers to all the brain-workers. I

have been ill lately: weeks of _malaise_ having found their climax in

lumbar-neuralgia, or something of that sort, which gave fits of pain

severe enough to deserve even a finer name.

My writing has not been stimulated as Scott's was under circumstances

of a like sort, and I have nothing to tell you securely.

Please give an expression of my well-founded sympathy to Mr. William

Blackwood. My experience feelingly convinces me of the hardship there

must be in his. I trust I shall hear of the lameness as a departed

evil.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Mch. 1874.]

I send you by this post a small collection of my poems, which Mr.

Lewes wishes me to get published in May.

Such of them as have been already printed in a fugitive form have been

received with many signs of sympathy, and every one of those I now

send you represents an idea which I care for strongly, and wish to

propagate as far as I can. Else I should forbid myself from adding to

the mountainous heap of poetical collections.

The form of volume I have in my eye is a delightful duodecimo edition

of Keats's poems (without the "Endymion") published during his life:

just the volume to slip in the pocket. Mine will be the least bit

thicker.

I should like a darkish green cover, with Roman lettering. But you

will consider the physique and price of the book, and kindly let me

know your thoughts.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 25th Mch. 1874.]

I fear the fatal fact about your story[23] is the absence of God and

hell. "My dear madam, you have not presented motives to the children!"

It is really hideous to find that those who sit in the scribes' seats

have got no further than the appeal to selfishness, which they call

God. The old Talmudists were better teachers. They make Rachel

remonstrate with God for his hardness, and remind him that she was

kinder to her sister Leah than he to his people--thus correcting the

traditional God by human sympathy. However, we must put up with our

contemporaries, since we can neither live with our ancestors nor with

posterity.

It is cheering to see the programme of your new society. There

certainly is an awakening of conscience about animals in general as

our fellow-creatures--even the vogue of Balaam's ass is in that sense

a good sign. A lady wrote to me the other day that when she went to

church in the island of Sark the sermon turned on that remonstrant

hero or heroine.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Mch. 1874.]

I can imagine how great an encouragement you feel from the enthusiasm

generously expressed in Mr. C.'s letter. It is always an admirable

impulse to express deeply felt admiration, but it is also possible

that you have some grateful readers who do not write to you. I have

heard men whose greatest delight is literature, say that they should

never dream of writing to an author on the ground of his books alone.

Poor Mr. Francis Newman must be aged now and rather weary of the world

and explanations of the world. He can hardly be expected to take in

much novelty. I have a sort of affectionate sadness in thinking of the

interest which, in far-off days, I felt in his "Soul" and "Phases of

Faith," and of the awe I had of him as a lecturer on mathematics at

the Ladies' College. How much work he has done in the world which has

left no deep, conspicuous mark, but has probably entered beneficially

into many lives!

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d April, 1874.]

How glorious this opening spring is! At this moment even London is so

beautiful that I come home filled with the Park landscapes, and see

them as a background to all my thoughts. Your account of Mr. George

Dawson is rather melancholy. I remember him only as a bright,

vigorous, young man--such as perhaps his sons are now. I imagine it is

his fortune, or, rather, misfortune, to have talked too much and too

early about the greatest things.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 11th May, 1874.]

I could not dwell on your sweet gift[24] yesterday--I should perhaps

have begun to cry, which would not have been _convenable_ in a

hostess. For I have been in a suffering, depressed condition lately,

so your good, loving deed has come just at the right time--when I need

the helpfulness that love brings me--and my heart turns to you with

grateful blessing this Monday morning.

I have been looking at the little paintings with a treble delight,

because they were done for _me_, because you chose for them subjects

of my "making," and because they are done with a promising charm of

execution (which Mr. Lewes feels as well as I). It gives me special

gladness that you have this sort of work before you. Some skill or

other with the hands is needful for the completeness of the life, and

makes a bridge over times of doubt and despondency.

Perhaps it will please you to know that nineteen years ago, when Mr.

Lewes and I were looking at a print of Goethe's statue by Ritzchl,

which stands on a pedestal ornamented with _bassi relievi_ of his

characters, I said (little believing that my wish would ever be

fulfilled), "How I should like to be surrounded with creatures of my

own making!" And yesterday, when I was looking at your gift, that

little incident recurred to me. Your love seemed to have made me a

miniature pedestal.

I was comforted yesterday that you and J. had at least the pleasure of

hearing Bice Trollope sing, to make some amends for the long, cold

journey. Please do not any of you, forget that we shall only be three

weeks more in this corner of the world, and that we want to see you as

often as you care to come.

Best love to all, the mother being chief among the all.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1874.]

_May 19._--This month has been published a volume of my poems--"Legend

of Jubal, and other Poems." On the 1st of June we go into the country

to the cottage, Earlswood Common, for four months, and I hope there to

get deep shafts sunk in my prose book. My health has been a wretched

drag on me during this last half-year. I have lately written "a

symposium."

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 14th June, 1874.]

I have so much trust in your love for us that I feel sure you will

like to know of our happiness in the secure peace of the country, and

the good we already experience in soul and body from the sweet breezes

over hill and common, the delicious silence, and the unbroken spaces

of the day. Just now the chill east wind has brought a little check to

our pleasure in our long afternoon drives; and I could wish that Canon

Kingsley and his fellow-worshippers of that harsh divinity could have

it reserved entirely for themselves as a tribal god.

We think the neighborhood so lovely that I must beg you to tell J. we

are in danger of settling here unless he makes haste to find us a

house in your "country-side"--a house with undeniable charms, on high

ground, in a strictly rural neighborhood (water and gas laid on,

nevertheless), to be vacant precisely this autumn!

My philosopher is writing away with double _verve_ in a projecting

window, where he can see a beautiful green slope crowned and studded

with large trees. I, too, have an agreeable corner in another room.

Our house has the essentials of comfort, and we have reason to be

contented with it.

I confess that my chief motive for writing about ourselves is to earn

some news of you, which will not be denied me by one or other of the

dear pairs of hands always ready to do us a kindness.

Our Sunday is really a Sabbath now--a day of thorough peace. But I

shall get hungry for a sight of some of the Sunday visitors before the

end of September.

I include all your family in a spiritual embrace, and am always yours

lovingly.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 16th June, 1874.]

We are revelling in the peace of the country, and have no drawback to

our delight except the cold winds, which have forced us to put on

winter clothing for the last four or five days.

Our wide common is very breezy, and the wind makes mournful music

round our walls. But I should think it is not possible to find a much

healthier region than this round Reigate and Redhill; and it is

prettier than half the places one crosses the Channel to see. We have

been hunting about for a permanent country home in the neighborhood,

but no house is so difficult to get as one which has at once seclusion

and convenience of position, which is neither of the suburban-villa

style nor of the grand hall and castle dimensions.

The restoration of the empire (in France), which is a threatening

possibility, seems to me a degrading issue. In the restoration of the

monarchy I should have found something to rejoice at, but the

traditions of the empire, both first and second, seem to my sentiment

bad. Some form of military despotism must be, as you say, the only

solution where no one political party knows how to behave itself. The

American pattern is certainly being accepted as to senatorial manners.

I dare say you have been to Knebworth and talked over French matters

with Lord Lytton. We are grieved to hear from him but a poor account

of sweet Lady Lytton's health and spirits. She is to me one of the

most charming types of womanliness, and I long for her to have all a

woman's best blessings.

The good news about the small remainder of "Jubal" is very welcome,

and I will write at once to Mr. Simpson to send him my two or three

corrections, and my wishes about the new edition. The price of the

book will well bear a thicker and a handsomely tinted paper,

especially now it has proved movable; and I felt so much the

difference to the eye and touch of the copies on rich tinted paper,

that I was much vexed with myself for having contributed to the shabby

appearance of the current edition by suggesting the thin Keats volume

as a model. People have become used to more luxurious editions; and I

confess to the weakness of being affected by paper and type in

something of the same subtile way I am affected by the odor of a room.

Many thanks for Lord Neaves's pleasant little book, which is a capital

example of your happily planned publication.

I came down here half poisoned by the French theatre, but I am

flourishing now, and am brewing my future big book with more or less

(generally less) belief in the quality of the liquor which will be

drawn off. The secured peacefulness and the pure air of the country

make our time of double worth; and we mean to give no invitations to

London friends desirous of change. We are selfishly bent on dual

solitude.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st July, 1874.]

I am so glad to know from your kind letter that you are interesting

yourself, with Madame Belloc, in the poor workhouse girls. You see my

only social work is to rejoice in the labors of others, while I live

in luxurious remoteness from all turmoil. Of course you have seen

Mrs. Senior's report. I read it, and thought it very wise, very

valuable in many ways, and since then she has sent me word how much

she has been worried about it by (as I imagine) obstructive officials.

We are revelling in our country peacefulness, in spite of the chills

and rain, driving about every day that the weather will allow, and

finding in each drive new beauties of this loveliest part of a lovely

country. We are looking out for a house in this neighborhood as a

permanent retreat; not with the idea of giving up our London house, at

least for some years, but simply of having a place to which we may

come for about six months of the year, and perhaps finally shrink into

altogether.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st July, 1874.]

Only the day before your letter came to me I had been saying, "I

wonder how our dear Mrs. William Smith is?" so that your impulse to

write to me satisfied a need of mine. I cannot help rejoicing that you

are in the midst of lovely scenery again, for I had had a presentiment

that Cambridge was antipathetic to you; and, indeed, I could not have

imagined that you would be in the right place there but for the

promised helpfulness of your presence to a young friend.

You tell me much that is interesting. Your picture of Mr. and Mrs.

Stirling, and what you say of the reasons why one may wish even for

the anguish of being _left_ for the sake of waiting on the beloved one

to the end--all that goes to my heart of hearts. It is what I think of

almost daily. For death seems to me now a close, real experience, like

the approach of autumn or winter, and I am glad to find that advancing

life brings this power of imagining the nearness of death I never had

till of late years. I remember all you told me of your niece's

expected marriage, and your joy in the husband who has chosen her. It

is wealth you have--that of several sweet nieces to whom being with

you is a happiness. You can feel some sympathy in their cheerfulness,

even though sorrow is always your only private good--can you not, dear

friend?--and the time is short at the utmost. The blessed reunion, if

it may come, must be patiently waited for; and such good as you can do

others, by loving looks and words, must seem to you like a closer

companionship with the gentleness and benignity which you justly

worshipped while it was visibly present, and still more, perhaps, now

it is veiled, and is a memory stronger than vision of outward things.

We are revelling in the sweet peace of the country, and shall remain

here till the end of September.

Mr. Lewes sends his affectionate remembrances with mine. I am

scribbling while he holds my bed-candle, so pray forgive any

incoherency.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th July, 1874.]

I have two questions to ask of your benevolence. First, was there not

some village near Stonehenge where you stayed the night, nearer to

Stonehenge than Amesbury? Secondly, do you know anything specific

about Holmwood _Common_ as a place of residence? It is ravishingly

beautiful; is it in its higher part thoroughly unobjectionable as a

site for a dwelling?

It seems that they have been having the heat of Tophet in London,

whereas we have never had more than agreeable sunniness, this common

being almost always breezy. And the country around us must, I think,

be the loveliest of its undulating, woody kind in all England.

I remember, when we were driving together last, something was said

about my disposition to melancholy. I ought to have said then, but did

not, that I am no longer one of those whom Dante found in hell border

because they had been sad under the blessed sunlight.[25] I am

uniformly cheerful now--feeling the preciousness of these moments, in

which I still possess love and thought.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d Aug. 1874.]

It was sweet of you to write me that nice long letter. I was athirst

for some news of you. Life, as you say, is a big thing. No wonder

there comes a season when we cease to look round and say, "How shall I

enjoy?" but, as in a country which has been visited by the sword,

pestilence, and famine, think only how we shall help the wounded, and

how find seed for the next harvest--how till the earth and make a

little time of gladness for those who are being born without their own

asking. I am so glad of what you say about the Latin. Go on conquering

and to conquer a little kingdom for yourself there.

We are, as usual, getting more than our share of peace and other good,

except in the matter of warmth and sunshine. Our common is a sort of

ball-room for the winds, and on the warmest days we have had here we

have found them at their music and dancing. They roar round the

corners of our house in a wintry fashion, while the sun is shining on

the brown grass.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 8th Aug. 1874.]

Thanks for sending me the good news. The sale of "Middlemarch" is

wonderful "out of all whooping," and, considered as manifesting the

impression made by the book, is more valuable than any amount of

immediate distribution. I suppose there will be a new edition of the

"Spanish Gypsy" wanted by Christmas; and I have a carefully corrected

copy by me, containing my final alterations, to which I desire to

have the stereotyped plates adjusted.

As to confidence in the work to be done I am somewhat in the condition

suggested to Armgart, "How will you bear the poise of eminence with

dread of falling?" And the other day, having a bad headache, I did

what I have sometimes done before at intervals of five or six

years--looked into three or four novels to see what the world was

reading. The effect was paralyzing, and certainly justifies me in that

abstinence from novel-reading which, I fear, makes me seem

supercilious or churlish to the many persons who send me their books,

or ask me about their friends' books. To be delivered from all doubts

as to one's justification in writing at this stage of the world, one

should have either a plentiful faith in one's own exceptionalness, or

a plentiful lack of money. Tennyson said to me, "Everybody writes so

well now;" and if the lace is only machine-made, it still pushes out

the hand-made, which has differences only for a fine, fastidious

appreciation. To write indifferently after having written well--that

is, from a true, individual store which makes a special

contribution--is like an eminent clergyman spoiling his reputation by

lapses, and neutralizing all the good he did before. However, this is

superfluous stuff to write to you. It is only a sample of the way in

which depression works upon me. I am not the less grateful for all the

encouragement I get.

I saw handsome Dean Liddell at Oxford. He is really a grand figure.

They accuse him of being obstructive to much-needed reforms. For my

own part I am thankful to him for his share in "Liddell and Scott" and

his capital little Roman History. _À propos_ of books and St. Andrews,

I have read aloud to Mr. Lewes Professor Flint's volume, and we have

both been much pleased with its conscientious presentation and

thorough effort at fairness.

We have enjoyed the country, as we always do; but we have been, for

our constitutions, a little unfortunate in the choice of a spot which

is the windiest of the windy. That heat which we have read and heard

of has hardly been at all felt by us; and we have both suffered a

little from chills. You will perceive from my letter I am just now

possessed by an evil spirit in the form of headache; but on the whole

I am much the stronger for the peace and the delicious air, which I

take in as a conscious addition to the good of living.

We have been near buying a little country hermitage on Holmwood

Common--a grand spot, with a view hard to match in our flat land. But

we have been frightened away by its windiness. I rather envy Major

Lockhart and the rest of the golfian enthusiasts; to have a seductive

idleness which is really a healthy activity is invaluable to people

who have desk-work.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 11th Nov. 1874.]

I feel rather disgraced by the fact that I received your last kind

letter nearly two months ago. But a brief note of mine, written

immediately on hearing of you from Mrs. Fields, must have crossed

yours and the Professor's kind letters to me; and I hope it proved to

you that I love you in my heart.

We were in the country then, but soon afterwards we set out on a

six-weeks' journey, and we are but just settled in our winter home.

Those unspeakable troubles in which I necessarily felt more for _you_

than for any one else concerned, are, I trust, well at an end, and you

are enjoying a time of peace. It was like your own sympathetic energy

to be able, even while the storm was yet hanging in your sky, to

write to me about my husband's books. Will you not agree with me that

there is one comprehensive Church whose fellowship consists in the

desire to purify and ennoble human life, and where the best members of

all narrower Churches may call themselves brother and sister in spite

of differences? I am writing to your dear husband as well as to you,

and in answer to his question about Goethe, I must say, for my part,

that I think he had a strain of mysticism in his soul--of so much

mysticism as I think inevitably belongs to a full, poetic nature--I

mean the delighted bathing of the soul in emotions which overpass the

outlines of definite thought. I should take the "Imitation" as a type

(it is one which your husband also mentions), but perhaps I might

differ from him in my attempt to interpret the unchangeable and

universal meanings of that great book.

Mr. Lewes, however, who has a better right than I to a conclusion

about Goethe, thinks that he entered into the experience of the

mystic--as in the confessions of the _Schöne Seele_--simply by force

of his sympathetic genius, and that his personal individual bent was

towards the clear and plastic exclusively. Do not imagine that Mr.

Lewes is guided in his exposition by theoretic antipathies. He is

singularly tolerant of difference, and able to admire what is unlike

himself.

He is busy now correcting the proofs of his second volume. I wonder

whether you have headaches and are rickety as we are, or whether you

have a glorious immunity from those ills of the flesh. Your husband's

photograph looks worthy to represent one of those wondrous Greeks who

wrote grand dramas at eighty or ninety.

I am decidedly among the correspondents who may exercise their

friends in the virtue of giving and hoping for nothing again.

Otherwise I am unprofitable. Yet believe me, dear friend, I am always

with lively memories of you, yours affectionately.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1874.]

We have spent this year in much happiness, and are sorry to part with

it. From the beginning of June to the end of September we had a house

in Surrey, and enjoyed delicious quiet with daily walks and drives in

the lovely scenery round Reigate and Dorking. October we spent in a

country visit to friends (Six-Mile Bottom) and in a journey to Paris,

and through the Ardennes homeward, finishing off our travels by some

excursions in our own country, which we are ready to say we will never

quit again--it is so much better worth knowing than most places one

travels abroad to see. We make ourselves amends for being in London by

going to museums to see the wonderful works of men; and the other day

I was taken over the Bank of England and to Woolwich Arsenal--getting

object-lessons in my old age, you perceive. Mr. Lewes is half through

the proof-correcting of his second volume; and it will be matter of

rejoicing when the other half is done, for we both hate

proof-correcting (do you?)--the writing always seems worse than it

really is when one reads it in patches, looking out for mistakes.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 10th

Dec. 1874.]

My books have for their main bearing a conclusion the opposite of that

in which your studies seem to have painfully imprisoned you--a

conclusion without which I could not have cared to write any

representation of human life--namely, that the fellowship between man

and man which has been the principle of development, social and moral,

is not dependent on conceptions of what is not man: and that the idea

of God, so far as it has been a high spiritual influence, is the ideal

of a goodness entirely human (_i.e._, an exaltation of the human).

Have you quite fairly represented yourself in saying that you have

ceased to pity your suffering fellow-men, because you can no longer

think of them as individualities of immortal duration, in some other

state of existence than this of which you know the pains and the

pleasures?--that you feel less for them now you regard them as more

miserable? And, on a closer examination of your feelings, should you

find that you had lost all sense of quality in actions, all

possibility of admiration that yearns to imitate, all keen sense of

what is cruel and injurious, all belief that your conduct (and

therefore the conduct of others) can have any difference of effect on

the well-being of those immediately about you (and therefore on those

afar off), whether you carelessly follow your selfish moods, or

encourage that vision of others' needs which is the source of justice,

tenderness, sympathy in the fullest sense--I cannot believe that your

strong intellect will continue to see, in the conditions of man's

appearance on this planet, a destructive relation to your sympathy.

This seems to me equivalent to saying that you care no longer for

color, now you know the laws of the spectrum.

As to the necessary combinations through which life is manifested, and

which seem to present themselves to you as a hideous fatalism, which

ought logically to petrify your volition, have they, _in fact_, any

such influence on your ordinary course of action in the primary

affairs of your existence as a human, social, domestic creature? And

if they don't hinder you from taking measures for a bath, without

which you know that you cannot secure the delicate cleanliness which

is your second nature, why should they hinder you from a line of

resolve in a higher strain of duty to your ideal, both for yourself

and others? But the consideration of molecular physics is not the

direct ground of human love and moral action any more than it is the

direct means of composing a noble picture or of enjoying great music.

One might as well hope to dissect one's own body and be merry in doing

it, as take molecular physics (in which you must banish from your

field of view what is specifically human) to be your dominant guide,

your determiner of motives, in what is solely human. That every study

has its bearing on every other is true; but pain and relief, love and

sorrow, have their peculiar history, which make an experience and

knowledge over and above the swing of atoms.

The teaching you quote as George Sand's would, I think, deserve to be

called nonsensical if it did not deserve to be called wicked. What

sort of "culture of the intellect" is that which, instead of widening

the mind to a fuller and fuller response to all the elements of our

existence, isolates it in a moral stupidity?--which flatters egoism

with the possibility that a complex and refined human society can

continue, wherein relations have no sacredness beyond the inclination

of changing moods?--or figures to itself an æsthetic human life that

one may compare to that of the fabled grasshoppers who were once men,

but having heard the song of the Muses could do nothing but sing, and

starved themselves so till they died and had a fit resurrection as

grasshoppers? "And this," says Socrates, "was the return the Muses

made them."

With regard to the pains and limitations of one's personal lot, I

suppose there is not a single man or woman who has not more or less

need of that stoical resignation which is often a hidden heroism, or

who, in considering his or her past history, is not aware that it has

been cruelly affected by the ignorant or selfish action of some

fellow-being in a more or less close relation of life. And to my mind

there can be no stronger motive than this perception, to an energetic

effort that the lives nearest to us shall not suffer in a like manner

from _us_.

The progress of the world--which you say can only come at the right

time--can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of

the individual beings who compose the world; and that we can say to

ourselves with effect, "There is an order of considerations which I

will keep myself continually in mind of, so that they may continually

be the prompters of certain feelings and actions," seems to me as

undeniable as that we can resolve to study the Semitic languages and

apply to an Oriental scholar to give us daily lessons. What would your

keen wit say to a young man who alleged the physical basis of nervous

action as a reason why he could not possibly take that course?

As to duration and the way in which it affects your view of the human

history, what is really the difference to your imagination between

infinitude and billions when you have to consider the value of human

experience? Will you say that, since your life has a term of

threescore years and ten, it was really a matter of indifference

whether you were a cripple with a wretched skin disease, or an active

creature with a mind at large for the enjoyment of knowledge, and with

a nature which has attracted others to you?

Difficulties of thought--acceptance of what is, without full

comprehension--belong to every system of thinking. The question is to

find the least incomplete.

When I wrote the first page of this letter I thought I was going to

say that I had not courage to enter on the momentous points you had

touched on in the hasty, brief form of a letter. But I have been led

on sentence after sentence--not, I fear, with any inspiration beyond

that of my anxiety. You will at least pardon any ill-advised things I

may have written on the prompting of the moment.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1875.]

_Jan. 13._--Here is a great gap since I last made a record. But the

time has been filled full of happiness. A second edition of "Jubal"

was published in August; and the fourth edition of the "Spanish Gypsy"

is all sold. This morning I received a copy of the fifth edition. The

amount of copies sold of "Middlemarch" up to 31st December is between

nineteen and twenty thousand.

Yesterday I also received the good news that the engagement between

Emily Cross and Mr. Otter is settled.

The last year has been crowded with proofs of affection for me and of

value for what work I have been able to do. This makes the best motive

or encouragement to do more; but, as usual, I am suffering much from

doubt as to the worth of what I am doing, and fear lest I may not be

able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and

not a mere addition to the heap of books. I am now just beginning the

part about "Deronda," at page 234.

[Sidenote: Letter to Francis Otter, 13th (?) Jan. 1875.]

Your letter was a deeply felt pleasure to me last night; and I have

one from Emily this morning, which makes my joy in the prospect of

your union as thorough as it could well be. I could not wish either

her words or yours to be in the least different. Long ago, when I had

no notion that the event was probable, my too hasty imagination had

prefigured it and longed for it. To say this is to say something of

the high regard with which all I have known of you has impressed

me--for I hold our sweet Emily worthy of one who may be reckoned among

the best. The possibility of a constantly growing blessedness in

marriage is to me the very basis of good in our mortal life; and the

believing hope that you and she will experience that blessedness seems

to enrich me for the coming years. I shall count it among my

strengthening thoughts that you both think of me with affection, and

care for my sympathy. Mr. Lewes shares in all the feelings I express,

and we are rejoicing together.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 15th Jan. 1875.]

Please never wonder at my silence, or believe that I bear you in any

the less lively remembrance because I do not write to you.

Writing notes is the _crux_ of my life. It often interferes with my

morning hours (before 1 o'clock), which is the only time I have for

quiet work. For certain letters are unavoidable demands, and though my

kind husband writes them for me whenever he can, they are not all to

be done by proxy.

That glorious bit of work of yours about the Home for Girls[26] is

delightful to hear of. Hardly anything is more wanted, I imagine, than

homes for girls in various employments--or, rather, for unmarried

women of all ages.

I heard also the other day that your name was among those of the

ladies interested in the beginning of a union among the bookbinding

women, which one would like to succeed and spread.

I hope, from your ability to work so well, that you are in perfect

health yourself. Our friend Barbara, too, looks literally the pink of

well-being, and cheers one's soul by her interest in all worthy

things.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 30th

Jan. 1875.]

I should urge you to consider your early religious experience as a

portion of valid knowledge, and to cherish its emotional results in

relation to objects and ideas which are either substitutes or

metamorphoses of the earlier. And I think we must not take every great

physicist--or other "ist"--for an apostle, but be ready to suspect him

of some crudity concerning relations that lie outside his special

studies, if his exposition strands us on results that seem to stultify

the most ardent, massive experience of mankind, and hem up the best

part of our feelings in stagnation.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Feb. 1875.]

Last night I finished reading aloud to Mr. Lewes the "Inkerman"

volume, and we both thank you heartily for the valuable present. It is

an admirable piece of writing; such pure, lucid English is what one

rarely gets to read. The masterly marshalling of the material is

certainly in contrast with the movements described. To my non-military

mind the Inkerman affair seems nothing but a brave blundering into

victory. Great traits of valor--Homeric movements--but also a powerful

lack of brains in the form of generalship. I cannot see that the

ordering up of the two 18-pounder guns was a vast mental effort,

unless the weight of the guns is to be counted in the order as well as

in the execution. But the grand fact of the thousands beaten by the

hundreds remains under all interpretation. Why the Russians, in their

multitudinous mass, should have chosen to retreat into Sebastopol,

moving at their leisure, and carrying off all their artillery, seems a

mystery in spite of General Dannenberg's memorable answer to

Mentschikoff.

There are some splendid movements in the story--the tradition of the

"Minden Yell," the "Men, remember Albuera," and the officer of the

77th advancing with, "Then I will go myself," with what followed, are

favorite bits of mine. My mind is in the anomalous condition of hating

war and loving its discipline, which has been an incalculable

contribution to the sentiment of duty.

I have not troubled myself to read any reviews of the book. My eye

caught one in which the author's style was accused of affectation. But

I have long learned to apply to reviewers an aphorism which tickled me

in my childhood--"There must be some such to be some of all sorts."

Pray tell Mr. Simpson that I was much pleased with the new dress of

the "Spanish Gypsy."

The first part of "Giannetto" raised my interest, but I was

disappointed in the unravelling of the plot. It seems to me neither

really nor ideally satisfactory. But it is a long while since I read a

story newer than "Rasselas," which I re-read two years ago, with a

desire to renew my childish delight in it, when it was one of my

best-loved companions. So I am a bad judge of comparative merits among

popular writers. I am obliged to fast from fiction, and fasting is

known sometimes to weaken the stomach. I ought to except Miss

Thackeray's stories--which I cannot resist when they come near me--and

bits of Mr. Trollope, for affection's sake. You would not wonder

at my fasting, if you knew how deplorably uncalled-for and

"everything-that-it-should-not-be" my own fiction seems to me in times

of inward and outward fog--like this morning, when the light is dim on

my paper.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 11th

Feb. 1875.]

_Do_ send me the papers you have written--I mean as a help and

instruction to me. I need very much to know how ideas lie in other

minds than my own, that I may not miss their difficulties while I am

urging only what satisfies myself. I shall be deeply interested in

knowing exactly what you wrote at that particular stage. Please

remember that I don't consider myself a teacher, but a companion in

the struggle of thought. What can consulting physicians do without

pathological knowledge? and the more they have of it, the less

absolute--the more tentative--are their procedures.

You will see by the _Fortnightly_, which you have not read, that Mr.

Spencer is very anxious to vindicate himself from neglect of the

logical necessity that the evolution of the abstraction "society" is

dependent on the modified action of the units; indeed, he is very

sensitive on the point of being supposed to teach an enervating

fatalism.

Consider what the human mind _en masse_ would have been if there had

been no such combination of elements in it as has produced poets. All

the philosophers and _savants_ would not have sufficed to supply that

deficiency. And how can the life of nations be understood without the

inward light of poetry--that is, of emotion blending with thought?

But the beginning and object of my letter must be the end--please send

me your papers.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 10th May, 1875.]

We cannot believe that there is reason to fear any painful

observations on the publication of the memoir in one volume with

"Gravenhurst" and the essays. The memoir is written with exquisite

judgment and feeling; and without estimating too highly the taste and

carefulness of journalists in their ordinary treatment of books, I

think that we may count on their not being impressed otherwise than

respectfully and sympathetically with the character of your dear

husband's work, and with the sketch of his pure, elevated life. I

would also urge you to rely on the fact that Mr. Blackwood thinks the

publication desirable, as a guarantee that it will not prove

injudicious in relation to the outer world--I mean, the world beyond

the circle of your husband's especial friends and admirers. I am

grieved to hear of your poor eyes having been condemned to an inaction

which, I fear, may have sadly increased the vividness of that inward

seeing, already painfully strong in you. There has been, I trust,

always some sympathetic young companionship to help you--some sweet

voice to read aloud to you, or to talk of those better things in human

lots which enable us to look at the good of life a little apart from

our own particular sorrow.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 11th May, 1875.]

The doctors have decided that there is nothing very grave the matter

with me: and I am now so much better that we even think it possible I

may go to see Salvini, in the Gladiator, to-morrow evening. This is to

let you know that there is no reason against your coming, with or

without Margaret, at the usual time on Friday.

Your words of affection in the note you sent me are very dear to my

remembrance. I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I

am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm

of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of

light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very

dear.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 14th May, 1875.]

You are right--there is no time, but only the sense of not having

time; especially when, instead of filling the days with useful

exertion, as you do, one wastes them in being ill, as I have been

doing of late. However, I am better now, and will not grumble. Thanks

for all the dear words in your letter. Be sure I treasure the memory

of your faithful friendship, which goes back--you know how far.

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 1st June, 1875.]

If you could, some day this week or the beginning of next, allow me

half an hour's quiet _tête-à-tête_, I should be very much obliged by

such a kindness.

The trivial questions I want to put could hardly be shapen in a letter

so as to govern an answer that would satisfy my need. And I trust that

the interview will hardly be more troublesome to you than writing.

I hope, when you learn the pettiness of my difficulties, you will not

be indignant, like a great doctor called in to the favorite cat.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 9th Aug. 1875, from

Rickmansworth.]

We admire our bit of Hertfordshire greatly; but I should be glad of

more breezy common land and far-reaching outlooks. For fertility,

wealth of grand trees, parks, mansions, and charming bits of stream

and canal, our neighborhood can hardly be excelled. And our house is a

good old red-brick Georgian place, with a nice bit of garden and

meadow and river at the back. Perhaps we are too much in the valley,

and have too large a share of mist, which often lies white on our

meadows in the early evening. But who has not had too much moisture in

this calamitously wet, cold summer?

Mr. Lewes is very busy, but not in zoologizing. We reserve that for

October, when we mean to go to the coast for a few weeks. It is a long

while since I walked on broad sands and watched the receding tide; and

I look forward agreeably to a renewal of that old pleasure.

I am not particularly flourishing in this pretty region, probably

owing to the low barometer. The air has been continually muggy, and

has lain on one's head like a thick turban.

[Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 14th Aug. 1875.]

What a comfort that you are at home again and well![27] The sense of

your nearness had been so long missing to us that we had begun to take

up with life as inevitably a little less cheerful than we remembered

it to have been formerly, without thinking of restoration.

My box is quite dear to me, and shall be used for stamps, as you

recommend, unless I find another use that will lead me to open it and

think of you the oftener. It is very precious to me that you bore me

in your mind, and took that trouble to give me pleasure--in which you

have succeeded.

Our house here is rather a fine old brick Georgian place, with a

lovely bit of landscape; but I think we have suffered the more from

the rainy, close weather, because we are in a valley, and can see the

mists lie in a thick, white stratum on our meadows. Mr. Lewes has

been, on the whole, flourishing and enjoying--writing away with vigor,

and making a discovery or theory at the rate of one per diem.

Of me you must expect no good. I have been in a piteous state of

debility in body and depression in mind. My book seems to me so

unlikely ever to be finished in a way that will make it worth giving

to the world, that it is a kind of glass in which I behold my

infirmities.

That expedition on the Thames would be a great delight, if it were

possible to us. But our arrangements forbid it. Our loving thanks to

Mr. Druce, as well as to you, for reviving the thought. We are to

remain here till the 23d of September; then to fly through town, or

at least only perch there for a night or so, and then go down to the

coast, while the servants clean our house. We expect that Bournemouth

will be our destination.

Let us have news of you all again soon. Let us comfort each other

while it is day, for the night cometh.

I hope this change of weather, in which we are glorying both for the

country's sake and our own, will not make Weybridge too warm for Mrs.

Cross.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby, 19th Aug. 1875.]

I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as

much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on

with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. Please

take it as a proof of special feeling that I declined answering your

kind inquiries by proxy.

This corner of Hertfordshire is as pretty as it can be of the kind.

There are really rural bits at every turn. But for my particular taste

I prefer such a region as that round Haslemere--with wide, furzy

commons and a grander horizon. Also I prefer a country where I don't

make bad blood by having to see one public house to every six

dwellings--which is literally the case in many spots around us. My

gall rises at the rich brewers in Parliament and out of it, who plant

these poison shops for the sake of their million-making trade, while

probably their families are figuring somewhere as refined

philanthropists or devout Evangelicals and Ritualists.

You perceive from this that I am dyspeptic and disposed to melancholy

views. In fact, I have not been flourishing, but I am getting a little

better; grateful thanks that you will care to know it. On the whole

the sins of brewers, with their drugged ale and devil's traps,

depress me less than my own inefficiency. But every fresh morning is

an opportunity that one can look forward to for exerting one's will. I

shall not be satisfied with your philosophy till you have conciliated

necessitarianism--I hate the ugly word--with the practice of willing

strongly, willing to will strongly, and so on, that being what you

certainly can do and have done about a great many things in life,

whence it is clear that there is nothing in truth to hinder you from

it--except, you will say, the absence of a motive. But that absence I

don't believe in in your case--only in the case of empty, barren

souls.

Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate

ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition--_i.e._,

direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof, as necessary

starting-points for thought.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1875.]

_Oct. 10._--On the 15th June, we went to a house we had taken at

Rickmansworth. Here, in the end of July, we received the news that our

dear Bertie had died on June 29th. Our stay at Rickmansworth, though

otherwise peaceful, was not marked by any great improvement in health

from the change to country instead of town--rather the contrary. We

left on 23d September, and then set off on a journey into Wales, which

was altogether unfortunate on account of the excessive rain.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 10th Oct. 1875.]

I behaved rather shabbily in not thanking you otherwise than by proxy

for the kind letter you sent me to Rickmansworth, but I had a bad time

down there, and did less of everything than I desired. Last night we

returned from our trip--a very lively word for a journey made in the

worst weather; and since I am, on the whole, the better for a

succession of small discomforts in hotels, and struggling walks taken

under an umbrella, I have no excuse for not writing a line to my

neglected correspondents.

You will laugh at our nervous caution in depositing our MSS. at the

Union Bank before we set out. We could have borne to hear that our

house had been burned down, provided no lives were lost, and our

unprinted matter, our _oeuvres inédites_, were safe out of it.

About _my_ unprinted matter, Mr. Lewes thinks it will not be well to

publish the first part till February. The four first monthly parts are

ready for travelling now. It will be well to begin the printing in

good time, so that I may not be hurried with the proofs; and I must

beg Mr. Simpson to judge for me in that matter with kind carefulness.

I can't say that I am at all satisfied with the book, or that I have a

comfortable sense of doing in it what I want to do; but Mr. Lewes _is_

satisfied with it, and insists that since he is as anxious as possible

for it to be fine, I ought to accept his impressions as trustworthy.

So I resign myself.

I read aloud the "Abode of Snow" at Rickmansworth, to our mutual

delight; and we are both very much obliged to you for the handsome

present. But what an amazing creature is this Andrew Wilson to have

kept pluck for such travelling while his body was miserably ailing!

One would have said that he had more than the average spirit of hardy

men to have persevered even in good health after a little taste of the

difficulties he describes.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 20th Oct. 1875.]

The arrangements as to the publication of my next book are already

determined on. Ever since "Adam Bede" appeared I have been continually

having proposals from the proprietors or editors of periodicals, but

I have always declined them, except in the case of "Romola," which

appeared in the _Cornhill_, and was allowed to take up a varying and

unusual number of pages. I have the strongest objection to cutting up

my work into little bits; and there is no motive to it on my part,

since I have a large enough public already. But, even apart from that

objection, it would not now be worth the while of any magazine or

journal to give me a sum such as my books yield in separate

publication. I had £7000 for "Romola," but the mode in which

"Middlemarch" was issued brings in a still larger sum. I ought to say,

however, that the question is not entirely one of money with me: if I

could gain _more_ by splitting my writing into small parts, I would

not do it, because the effect would be injurious as a matter of art.

So much detail I trouble you with to save misapprehension.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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."

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Death of Mrs. Cross's sister of cholera, at Salzburg.

[22] See _ante_, p. 66.

[23] "Paul Bradley."

[24] A vase with paintings from "Romola" on tiles.

[25]

"Tristi fummo

Nell'aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra."

_Inferno_, cant. vii. 121, 122.

[26] Bessborough Gardens.

[27] I had been abroad for six weeks.