The completion of the translation of Strauss is another
milestone passed in the life journey of George Eliot, and the
comparatively buoyant tone of the letters immediately
following makes us feel that the galled neck is out of the
yoke for a time. In May, Mrs. Bray had gone away from home
for a visit, and the next letter is addressed to her.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Sunday (probably about 6th May),
1846.]
Do not stay any longer than is necessary to do you good, lest I should
lose the pleasure of loving you, for my affections are always the
warmest when my friends are within an attainable distance. I think I
can manage to keep respectably warm towards you for three weeks
without seeing you, but I cannot promise more. Tell Mr. Bray I am
getting too amiable for this world, and Mr. Donovan's wizard hand
would detect a slight corrugation of the skin on my organs 5 and
6;[20] they are so totally without exercise. I had a lecture from Mr.
Pears on Friday, as well as a sermon this morning, so you need be in
no alarm for my moral health. Do you never think of those Caribs who,
by dint of flattening their foreheads, can manage to see
perpendicularly above them without so much as lifting their heads?
There are some good people who remind me of them. They see everything
so clearly and with so little trouble, but at the price of sad
self-mutilation.
On the 26th May Miss Evans went to pay a visit to Mrs. and
Miss Hennell at Hackney, and she writes from there to Mrs.
Bray, who was expected to join them in London.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of May, 1846.]
I cannot deny that I am very happy without you, but perhaps I shall be
happier with you, so do not fail to try the experiment. We have been
to town only once, and are saving all our strength to "rake" with you;
but we are as ignorant as Primitive Methodists about any of the
amusements that are going. Please to come in a very mischievous,
unconscientious, theatre-loving humor. Everybody I see is very kind to
me, and therefore I think them all very charming; and, having
everything I want, I feel very humble and self-denying. It is only
rather too great a bore to have to write to my friends when I am half
asleep, and I have not yet reached that pitch of amiability that makes
such magnanimity easy. Don't bring us any bad news or any pains, but
only nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.
They stayed in London till the 5th June, and on the 15th of
that month the translation of Strauss was published. On the
2d July Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "is
going to Dover with her father, for a fortnight." In passing
through Dover on our way to the Continent, in 1880, after our
marriage, we visited the house they stayed at in 1846, and my
wife then told me that she had suffered a great deal there,
as her father's health began to show signs of breaking up. On
returning to Coventry there is the following letter referring
to Wicksteed's review of the translation of Strauss, which
was advertised for the forthcoming number of the _Prospective
Review_.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Thursday, Aug. (?) 1846.]
Do you think it worth my while to buy the _Prospective_ for the sake
of Wicksteed's review--is there anything new in it? Do you know if Mr.
Chapman has any unusual facilities for obtaining cheap classics? Such
things are to be got handsome and second-hand in London--if one knew
but the way. I want to complete Xenophon's works. I have the
"Anabasis," and I might, perhaps, get a nice edition of the
"Memorabilia" and "Cyropædia" in a cheaper way than by ordering them
directly from our own bookseller. I have been reading the "Fawn of
Sertorius."[21] I think you would like it, though the many would not.
It is pure, chaste, and classic, beyond any attempt at fiction I ever
read. If it be Bulwer's, he has been undergoing a gradual
transfiguration, and is now ready to be exalted into the assembly of
the saints. The professor's (Strauss's) letter, transmitted through
you, gave me infinite consolation, more especially the apt and
pregnant quotation from Berosus. Precious those little hidden lakelets
of knowledge in the high mountains, far removed from the vulgar eye,
only visited by the soaring birds of love.
On 25th September, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell
that Miss Evans "looks very brilliant just now. We fancy she
must be writing her novel;" and then come the following
letters, written in October and November:
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Oct. 1846.]
All the world is bathed in glory and beauty to me now, and thou
sharest in the radiance. Tell me whether I live for you as you do for
me, and tell me how gods and men are treating you. You must send me a
scrap every month--only a scrap with a dozen words in it, just to
prevent me from starving on faith alone--of which you know I have the
minimum of endowment. I am sinning against my daddy by yielding to the
strong impulse I felt to write to you, for he looks at me as if he
wanted me to read to him.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Oct. 1846.]
I do not know whether I can get up any steam again on the subject of
Quinet; but I will try--when Cara comes back, however, for she has run
away with "Christianity" into Devonshire, and I must have the book as
a springing-board. When does the _Prospective_ come out?
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Nov. 1846.]
The review of Strauss contains some very just remarks, though, on the
whole, I think it shallow, and in many cases unfair. The praise it
gives to the translation is just what I should have wished; indeed, I
cannot imagine anything more gratifying in the way of laudation. Is it
not droll that Wicksteed should have chosen one of my interpolations,
or rather paraphrases, to dilate on. The expression "granite," applied
to the sayings of Jesus, is nowhere used by Strauss, but is an
impudent addition of mine to eke out his metaphor. Did you notice the
review of Foster's Life?[22] I am reading the Life, and thinking all
the time how you would like it. It is deeply interesting to study the
life of a genius under circumstances amid which genius is so seldom to
be found. Some of the thoughts in his journal are perfect gems.
The words of the reviewer of the Strauss translation in the
_Prospective_ are worth preserving: "A faithful, elegant, and
scholarlike translation. Whoever reads these volumes without
any reference to the German must be pleased with the easy,
perspicuous, idiomatic, and harmonious force of the English
style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning
to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for
word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence. In
preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the
difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way
of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of
the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and
clearness of style which imparts to the volumes before us the
air and spirit of an original. Though the translator never
obtrudes himself upon the reader with any notes or comments
of his own, yet he is evidently a man who has a familiar
knowledge of the whole subject; and if the work be the joint
production of several hands, moving in concert, the passages
of a specially scholastic character, at least, have received
their version from a discerning and well-informed theologian.
Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which
he writes for the English edition, that, as far as he has
examined it, the translation is 'et accurata et perspicua.'"
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Nov. 1846.]
Many things, both outward and inward, have concurred to make this
November far happier than the last. One's thoughts
"Are widened with the process of the suns;"
and if one is rather doubtful whether one is really wiser or better,
it is some comfort to know that the desire to be so is more pure and
dominant. I have been thinking of that most beautiful passage in
Luke's Gospel--the appearance of Jesus to the disciples at Emmaus. How
universal in its significance! The soul that has hopelessly followed
its Jesus--its impersonation of the highest and best--all in
despondency; its thoughts all refuted, its dreams all dissipated. Then
comes another Jesus--another, but the same--the same highest and best,
only chastened--crucified instead of triumphant--and the soul learns
that this is the true way to conquest and glory. And then there is the
burning of the heart, which assures that "this was the Lord!"--that
this is the inspiration from above, the true comforter that leads unto
truth. But I am not become a Methodist, dear Sara; on the contrary, if
I am pious one day, you may be sure I was very wicked the day before,
and shall be so again the next.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Dec. 1846.]
I have been at Griff for the last week, or I should have written
before. I thank you most heartily for sending me "Heliados"--first,
because I admire it greatly in itself; and, secondly, because it is a
pretty proof that I am not dissociated from your most hallowed
thoughts. As yet I have read it only once, but I promise myself to
read it again and again. I shall not show it to any one, for I hate
"friendly criticism," as much for you as for myself; but you have a
better spirit than I, and when you come I will render "Heliados" up to
you, that others may have the pleasure of reading it.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Feb. 1847.]
Lying in bed this morning, grievously tormented, your "Heliados"
visited me and revealed itself to me more completely than it had ever
done before. How true that "it is only when all portions of an
individual nature, or all members of society, move forward
harmoniously together that religious progress is calm and beneficial!"
I imagine the sorrowful amaze of a child who had been dwelling with
delight on the idea that the stars were the pavement of heaven's
court, and that there above them sat the kind but holy God, looking
like a venerable Father who would smile on his good little ones--when
it was cruelly told, before its mind had substance enough to bear such
tension, that the sky was not real, that the stars were worlds, and
that even the sun could not be God's dwelling, because there were
many, many suns. These ideas would introduce atheism into the child's
mind, instead of assisting it to form a nobler conception of God (of
course I am supposing the bare information given, and left to the
child to work upon); whereas the idea it previously had of God was
perfectly adapted to its intellectual condition, and formed to the
child as perfect an embodiment of the all-good, all-wise, and
all-powerful as the most enlightened philosopher ever formed to
himself.
On 21st April Miss Evans went to London with the Brays, and,
among other things, heard "Elijah" at Exeter Hall. On
returning to Coventry she writes:
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th April, 1847.]
I did so long to see you after hearing "Elijah," just to exchange an
exclamation of delight. Last night I had a perfect treat, too, in "I
Puritani." Castellar was admirable as Elvira, and Gardoni as a seraph.
N.B.--I liked the Babel less--another sign of age.
Mention has already been made of Miss Mary Sibree (now Mrs.
John Cash of Coventry), and as the following genial letter is
addressed to her, it gives an opportunity for mentioning here
that Miss Evans had a high regard for all the members of the
Sibree family. At the end of this year (1847) and the
beginning of 1848 there will be found an interesting
correspondence with Miss Sibree's brother, Mr. John Sibree,
who, in 1849, published a translation of Hegel's "Lectures
on the Philosophy of History," and in 1880 a volume of poems
entitled "Fancy, and other Rhymes." The subjoined extract
from a communication from Mrs. Cash will show upon what terms
Miss Evans was with the family:
"It was in the early part of the year 1841 that Miss Franklin
came to see my mother at our house on the Foleshill
road--about a mile and a half from Coventry--to tell her, as
a piece of most interesting news, that an old pupil, of whom
she herself and her sister Rebecca had always been very
proud, was coming at the Lady-Day quarter to live at a house
on the same road--within five minutes' walk of ours. This was
Miss Evans, then twenty-one years of age. Miss Franklin dwelt
with much pride on Miss Evans's mental power, on her skill in
music, etc.; but the great recommendation to my mother's
interest was the zeal for others which had marked her earnest
piety at school, where she had induced the girls to come
together for prayer, and which had led her to visit the poor
most diligently in the cottages round her own home. Many
years after, an old nurse of mine told me that these poor
people had said, after her removal, 'We shall never have
another Mary Ann Evans.'
"My mother was asked to second and help her in work of this
kind. 'She will be sure to get something up very soon,' was
the last remark I can recall; and on her first visit to us I
well remember she told us of a club for clothing, set going
by herself and her neighbor Mrs. Pears, in a district to
which she said 'the euphonious name of the Pudding-Pits had
been given.' It was not until the winter of 1841, or early
in 1842, that my mother first received (not from Miss Evans's
own lips, but through a mutual friend) the information that a
total change had taken place in this gifted woman's mind with
respect to the evangelical religion, which she had evidently
believed in up to the time of her coming to Coventry, and for
which, she once told me, she had at one time sacrificed the
cultivation of her intellect, and a proper regard to personal
appearance. 'I used,' she said, 'to go about like an owl, to
the great disgust of my brother; and I would have denied him
what I now see to have been quite lawful amusements.' My
mother's grief, on hearing of this change in one whom she had
begun to love, was very great; but she thought argument and
expostulation might do much, and I well remember a long
evening devoted to it, but no more of the subject-matter than
her indignant refusal to blame the Jews for not seeing in a
merely spiritual Deliverer a fulfilment of promises of a
temporal one; and a still more emphatic protest against my
father's assertion that we had no claim on God. To Miss
Evans's affectionate and pathetic speech to my mother, 'Now,
Mrs. Sibree, you won't care to have anything more to do with
me,' my mother rejoined, 'On the contrary, I shall feel more
interested in you than ever.' But it was very evident at this
time that she stood in no _need_ of sympathizing friends;
that the desire for congenial society, as well as for books
and larger opportunities for culture, which had led her most
eagerly to seek a removal from Griff to a home near Coventry,
had been met beyond her highest expectations. In Mr. and Mrs.
Bray, and in the Hennell family, she had found friends who
called forth her interest and stimulated her powers in no
common degree. This was traceable even in externals--in the
changed tone of voice and manner--from formality to a
geniality which opened my heart to her, and made the next
five years the most important epoch in my life. She gave me
(as yet in my teens) weekly lessons in German, speaking
freely on all subjects, but with no attempt to directly
unsettle my evangelical beliefs, confining herself in these
matters to a steady protest against the claim of the
Evangelicals to an exclusive possession of higher motives to
morality--or even to religion. Speaking to my mother of her
dearest friend, Mrs. Bray, she said, 'She is the most
religious person I know.' Of Mr. Charles Hennell, in whose
writings she had great interest, she said, 'He is a perfect
model of manly excellence.'
"On one occasion, at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill, roused by
a remark of his on the beneficial influence exercised by
evangelical beliefs on the moral feelings, she said
energetically, 'I say it now, and I say it once for all, that
I am influenced in my own conduct at the present time by far
higher considerations, and by a nobler idea of duty, than I
ever was while I held the evangelical beliefs.' When, at
length, after my brother's year's residence at the Hallé
University (in 1842-43), my own mind having been much
exercised in the matter of religion, I felt the moral
difficulties press heavily on my conscience, and my whole
heart was necessarily poured out to my 'guide, philosopher,
and friend,' the steady turning of my attention from
theoretical questions to a confession of my own want of
thoroughness in arithmetic, which I pretended to teach; and
the request that I would specially give attention to this
study and get my conscience clear about it, and that I would
not come to her again until my views of religion were also
clear, is too characteristic of Miss Evans, as I knew her
during those years, and too much in harmony with the moral
teaching of George Eliot, to be omitted in reminiscences by
one to whom that wholesome advice proved a turning-point in
life. Two things more I cannot omit to mention: one, the
heightened sense given to me by her of the duty of making
conversation profitable, and, in general, of using time for
serious purposes--of the positive immorality of frittering it
away in ill-natured or in poor, profitless talk; another, the
debt (so frequently acknowledged by Miss Evans to me) which
she owed, during the years of her life with her father, to
the intercourse she enjoyed with her friends at Rosehill. Mr.
and Mrs. Bray and Miss Hennell, with their friends, were
_her_ world; and on my saying to her once, as we closed the
garden-door together, that we seemed to be entering a
paradise, she said, 'I do indeed feel that I shut the world
out when I shut that door.' It is consoling to me now to feel
that in her terrible suffering through her father's illness
and death, which were most trying to witness, she had such
alleviations."
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Sibree, 10th May, 1847.]
It is worth while to forget a friend for a week or ten days, just for
the sake of the agreeable kind of startle it gives one to be reminded
that one has such a treasure in reserve--the same sort of pleasure, I
suppose, that a poor body feels who happens to lay his hand on an
undreamed-of sixpence which had sunk to a corner of his pocket. When
Mr. Sibree brought me your parcel, I had been to London for a week;
and having been full of Mendelssohn oratorios and Italian operas, I
had just this kind of delightful surprise when I saw your note and the
beautiful purse. Not that I mean to compare you to a sixpence; you are
a bright, golden sovereign to me, with edges all unrubbed, fit to
remind a poor, tarnished, bruised piece, like me, that there are ever
fresh and more perfect coinages of human nature forthcoming. I am very
proud of my purse--first, because I have long had to be ashamed of
drawing my old one out of my pocket; and, secondly, because it is a
sort of symbol of your love for me--and who is not proud to be loved?
For there is a beautiful kind of pride at which no one need frown--I
may call it a sort of impersonal pride--a thrill of exultation at all
that is good and lovely and joyous as a possession of our human
nature.
I am glad to think of all your pleasure among friends new and old.
Mrs. D----'s mother is, I dare say, a valuable person; but do not, I
beseech thee, go to old people as oracles on matters which date any
later than their thirty-fifth year. Only trust them, if they are good,
in those practical rules which are the common property of long
experience. If they are governed by one special idea which
circumstances or their own mental bias have caused them to grasp with
peculiar firmness, and to work up into original forms, make yourself
master of their thoughts and convictions, the residuum of all that
long travail which poor mortals have to encounter in their threescore
years and ten, but do not trust their application of their gathered
wisdom; for however just old people may be their _principles_ of
judgment, they are often wrong in their application of them, from an
imperfect or unjust conception of the matter to be judged. Love and
cherish and venerate the old; but never imagine that a worn-out,
dried-up organization can be so rich in inspiration as one which is
full fraught with life and energy. I am not talking like one who is
superlatively jealous for the rights of the old; yet such I am, I
assure thee. I heard Mendelssohn's new oratorio, "Elijah," when I was
in London. It has been performed four times in Exeter Hall to as large
an audience as the building would hold--Mendelssohn himself the
conductor. It is a glorious production, and altogether I look upon it
as a kind of sacramental purification of Exeter Hall, and a
proclamation of indulgence for all that is to be perpetrated there
during this month of May. This is a piece of impiety which you may
expect from a lady who has been guanoing her mind with French novels.
This is the impertinent expression of D'Israeli, who, writing himself
much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen, can do
nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into
reading his "Tancred" than speak superciliously of all other men and
things--an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one
would expect. But _au fond_, dear Mary, I have no impiety in my mind
at this moment, and my soul heartily responds to your rejoicing that
society is attaining a more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's
exhortation--"Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus." I believe the Amen to this will be uttered more and more
fervently, "Among all posterities for evermore."
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th June, 1847.]
Ask me not why I have never written all this weary time. I can only
answer, "All things are full of labor--man cannot utter it"--_et seq._
See the first chapter of Ecclesiastes for my experience.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Sept. 1847.]
I have read the "Inquiry" again with more than interest--with delight
and high admiration. My present impression from it far surpasses the
one I had retained from my two readings about five years ago. With the
exception of a few expressions which seem too little discriminating in
the introductory sketch, there is nothing in its whole tone, from
beginning to end, that jars on my moral sense; and apart from any
opinion of the book as an explanation of the existence of Christianity
and the Christian documents, I am sure that no one, fit to read it at
all, could read it without being intellectually and morally
stronger--the reasoning is so close, the induction so clever, the
style so clear, vigorous, and pointed, and the animus so candid and
even generous. Mr. Hennell ought to be one of the happiest of men that
he has done such a life's work. I am sure if I had written such a book
I should be invulnerable to all the arrows of all spiteful gods and
goddesses. I should say, "None of these things move me, neither count
I my life dear unto myself," seeing that I have delivered such a
message of God to men. The book is full of _wit_, to me. It gives me
that exquisite kind of laughter which comes from the gratification of
the reasoning faculties. For instance: "If some of those who were
actually at the mountain doubted whether they saw Jesus or not, we may
reasonably doubt whether he was to be seen at all there: especially as
the words attributed to him do not seem at all likely to have been
said, from the disciples paying no attention to them." "The disciples
considered her (Mary Magdalene's) words idle tales, and believed them
not." We have thus their example for considering her testimony alone
as insufficient, and for seeking further evidence. To say "Jewish
philosopher" seems almost like saying a round square; yet those two
words appear to me the truest description of Jesus. I think the
"Inquiry" furnishes the utmost that can be done towards obtaining a
_real_ view of the life and character of Jesus, by rejecting as little
as possible from the Gospels. I confess that I should call many things
"shining ether," to which Mr. Hennell allows the solid angularity of
facts; but I think he has thoroughly worked out the problem--subtract
from the New Testament the miraculous and highly improbable, and what
will be the remainder?
At the end of September Miss Evans and her father went for a
little trip to the Isle of Wight, and on their return there
is the following letter:
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Oct. 1847.]
I heartily wish you had been with me to see all the beauties which
have gladdened my soul and made me feel that this earth is as good a
heaven as I ought to dream of. I have a much greater respect for the
Isle of Wight, now I have seen it, than when I knew it only by
report--a compliment which one can seldom very sincerely pay to things
and people that one has heard puffed and bepraised. I do long for you
to see Alum Bay. Fancy a very high precipice, the strata upheaved
perpendicularly in rainbow-like streaks of the brightest maize,
violet, pink, blue, red, brown, and brilliant white, worn by the
weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep blue sky above, and the
glorious sea below. It seems an enchanted land, where the earth is of
more delicate, refined materials than this dingy planet of ours is
wrought out of. You might fancy the strata formed of the compressed
pollen of flowers, or powder from bright insects. You can think of
nothing but Calypsos, or Prosperos and Ariels, and such-like beings.
I find one very great spiritual good attendant on a quiet, meditative
journey among fresh scenes. I seem to have removed to a distance from
myself when I am away from the petty circumstances that make up my
ordinary environment. I can take myself up by the ears and inspect
myself, like any other queer monster on a small scale. I have had many
thoughts, especially on a subject that I should like to work out--"The
superiority of the consolations of philosophy to those of (so-called)
religion." Do you stare?
Thank you for putting me on reading Sir Charles Grandison. I have read
five volumes, and am only vexed that I have not the two last on my
table at this moment, that I might have them for my _convives_. I had
no idea that Richardson was worth so much. I have had more pleasure
from him than from all the Swedish novels together. The morality is
perfect--there is nothing for the new lights to correct.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Nov. 1847.]
How do you like "Lelia," of which you have never spoken one word? I am
provoked with you for being in the least pleased with "Tancred;" but
if you have found out any lofty meaning in it, or any true picturing
of life, tell it me, and I will recant. I have found two new readers
of Strauss. One, a lady at Leamington, who is also reading the
"Inquiry," but likes Strauss better! The other is a gentleman here in
Coventry; he says "it is most clever and ingenious, and that no one
whose faith rests only on the _common_ foundation can withstand it." I
think he may safely say that his faith rests on an _un_common
foundation. The book will certainly give him a lift in the right
direction, from its critical, logical character--just the opposite of
his own. I was interested the other day in talking to a young lady who
lives in a nest of clergymen, her brothers, but not of the evangelical
school. She had been reading Blanco White's life, and seems to have
had her spirit stirred within her, as every one's must be who reads
the book with any power of appreciation. She is unable to account to
herself for the results at which Blanco White arrived with his
earnestness and love of truth; and she asked me if I had come to the
same conclusions.
I think "Live and teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and
learn." We must teach either for good or evil; and if we use our
inward light as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and
trim it well, our teaching must, in the end, be for good. We are
growing old together--are we not? I am growing happier too. I am
amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel as a sort of
allegory. All those monstrous, "rombustical" beasts with their
horns--the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things, and the
little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars, seem like
my passions and vain fancies, which are to be knocked down one after
the other, until all is subdued into a universal kingdom over which
the Ancient of Days presides--the spirit of love--the Catholicism of
the Universe--if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase. It _has_
a meaning for my sage noddle.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1848.]
I am reading George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur" with great delight,
and hoping that they will some time do you as much good as they do me.
In the meantime, I think the short letter about "Lelia" will interest
you. It has a very deep meaning to my apprehension. You can send back
the pages when you have duly digested them. I once said of you that
yours was a sort of alkali nature which would detect the slightest acid
of falsehood. You began to phiz-z-z directly it approached you. I want
you as a test. I now begin to see the necessity of the arrangement (a
bad word) that love should determine people's fate while they are
young. It is so impossible to admire--"_s'enthousiasmer_" of--an
_individual_ as one gets older.
Here follows the interesting correspondence, referred to
before, with Mr. John Sibree:
[Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, beginning of 1848.]
Begin your letter by abusing me, according to my example. There is
nothing like a little gunpowder for a damp chimney; and an explosion
of that sort will set the fire of your ideas burning to admiration. I
hate bashfulness and modesties, as Sir Hugh Evans would say; and I
warn you that I shall make no apologies, though, from my habit of
writing only to people who, rather than have nothing from me, will
tolerate nothings, I shall be very apt to forget that you are not one
of those amiably silly individuals. I must write to you _more meo_,
without taking pains or laboring to be _spirituelle_ when Heaven never
meant me to be so; and it is your own fault if you bear with my
letters a moment after they become an infliction. I am glad you detest
Mrs. Hannah More's letters. I like neither her letters, nor her books,
nor her character. She was that most disagreeable of all monsters, a
blue-stocking--a monster that can only exist in a miserably false
state of society, in which a woman with but a smattering of learning
or philosophy is classed along with singing mice and card-playing
pigs. It is some time since I read "Tancred," so that I have no very
vivid recollection of its details; but I thought it very "thin," and
inferior in the working up to "Coningsby" and "Sybil." Young
Englandism is almost as remote from my sympathies as Jacobitism, as
far as its force is concerned, though I love and respect it as an
effort on behalf of the people. D'Israeli is unquestionably an able
man, and I always enjoy his tirades against liberal principles as
opposed to popular principles--the name by which he distinguishes his
own. As to his theory of races, it has not a leg to stand on, and can
only be buoyed up by such windy eloquence as--You chubby-faced,
squabby-nosed Europeans owe your commerce, your arts, your religion,
to the Hebrews--nay, the Hebrews lead your armies: in proof of which
he can tell us that Massena, a second-rate general of Napoleon's, was
a Jew, whose real name was Manasseh. Extermination up to a certain
point seems to be the law for the inferior races--for the rest fusion,
both for physical and moral ends. It appears to me that the law by
which privileged classes degenerate, from continual intermarriage,
must act on a larger scale in deteriorating whole races. The nations
have been always kept apart until they have sufficiently developed
their idiosyncrasies, and then some great revolutionary force has been
called into action, by which the genius of a particular nation becomes
a portion of the common mind of humanity. Looking at the matter
æsthetically, our idea of beauty is never formed on the
characteristics of a single race. I confess the types of the pure
races, however handsome, always impress me disagreeably; there is an
undefined feeling that I am looking not at _man_, but at a specimen of
an order under Cuvier's class Bimana. The negroes certainly puzzle me.
All the other races seem plainly destined to extermination, not
excepting even the Hebrew Caucasian. But the negroes are too
important, physiologically and geographically, for one to think of
their extermination; while the repulsion between them and the other
races seems too strong for fusion to take place to any great extent.
On one point I heartily agree with D'Israeli as to the superiority of
the Oriental races--their clothes are beautiful and their manners are
agreeable. Did you not think the picture of the Barroni family
interesting? I should like to know who are the originals. The
fellowship of race, to which D'Israeli so exultingly refers the
munificence of Sidonia, is so evidently an inferior impulse, which
must ultimately be superseded, that I wonder even he, Jew as he is,
dares to boast of it. My Gentile nature kicks most resolutely against
any assumption of superiority in the Jews, and is almost ready to echo
Voltaire's vituperation. I bow to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry, but
much of their early mythology, and almost all their history, is
utterly revolting. Their stock has produced a Moses and a Jesus; but
Moses was impregnated with Egyptian philosophy, and Jesus is venerated
and adored by us only for that wherein he transcended or resisted
Judaism. The very exaltation of their idea of a national deity into a
spiritual monotheism seems to have been borrowed from the other
Oriental tribes. Everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade.
And do you really think that sculpture and painting are to die out of
the world? If that be so, let another deluge come as quickly as
possible, that a new race of Glums and Gowries may take possession of
this melancholy earth. I agree with you as to the inherent superiority
of music--as that questionable woman, the Countess Hahn-Hahn, says
painting and sculpture are but an idealizing of our actual existence.
Music arches over this existence with another and a diviner. Amen,
too, to that _ideenvoll_ observation of Hegel's. "We hardly know what
it is to feel for human misery until we have heard a shriek; and a
more perfect hell might be made out of sound than out of any
preparation of fire and brimstone." When the tones of our voice have
betrayed peevishness or harshness, we seem to be doubly haunted by the
ghost of our sin; we are doubly conscious that we have been untrue to
our part in the great Handel chorus. But I cannot assent to the notion
that music is to supersede the other arts, or that the highest minds
must necessarily aspire to a sort of Milton blindness, in which the
_tiefste der Sinne_ is to be a substitute for all the rest. I cannot
recognize the truth of all that is said about the necessity of
religious fervor to high art. I am sceptical as to the real existence
of such fervor in any of the greatest artists. Artistic power seems to
me to resemble dramatic power--to be an intimate perception of the
varied states of which the human mind is susceptible, with ability to
give them out anew in intensified expression. It is true that the
older the world gets originality becomes less possible. Great subjects
are used up, and civilization tends evermore to repress individual
predominance, highly wrought agony, or ecstatic joy. But all the
gentler emotions will be ever new, ever wrought up into more and more
lovely combinations, and genius will probably take their direction.
Have you ever seen a head of Christ taken from a statue, by
Thorwaldsen, of Christ scourged? If not, I think it would almost
satisfy you. There is another work of his, said to be very sublime,
of the Archangel waiting for the command to sound the last trumpet.
Yet Thorwaldsen came at the fag end of time.
I am afraid you despise landscape painting; but to me even the works
of our own Stanfield, and Roberts, and Creswick bring a whole world of
thought and bliss--"a sense of something far more deeply interfused."
The ocean and the sky and the everlasting hills are spirit to me, and
they will never be robbed of their sublimity.
[Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, beginning of 1848.]
I have tired myself with trying to write cleverly, _invitâ Minervâ_,
and having in vain endeavored to refresh myself by turning over
Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies, and still queerer judgments
on them, it is a happy thought of mine that I have a virtuous reason
for spending my _ennui_ on you.
I send you a stanza I picked up the other day in George Sand's
"Lettres d'un Voyageur," which is almost the ultimatum of human wisdom
on the question of human sorrow.
"Le bonheur et le malheur,
Nous viennent du même auteur,
Voilà la _ressemblance_.
Le bonheur nous rend heureux,
Et le malheur malheureux,
Voilà la différence."
Ah, here comes a cup of coffee to console me! When I have taken it I
will tell you what George Sand says: "Sais tu bien que tout est dit
devant Dieu et devant les hommes quand l'homme infortuné demande
compte de ses maux et qu'il obtient cette réponse? Qu'y a-t-il de
plus? Rien." But I am not a mocking pen, and if I were talking to you
instead of writing, you would detect some falsity in the ring of my
voice. Alas! the atrabiliar patient you describe is first cousin to
me in my very worst moods, but I have a profound faith that the
serpent's head will be bruised. This conscious kind of false life that
is ever and anon endeavoring to form itself within us and eat away our
true life, will be overcome by continued accession of vitality, by our
perpetual increase in "quantity of existence," as Foster calls it.
Creation is the superadded life of the intellect; sympathy,
all-embracing love, the superadded moral life. These given more and
more abundantly, I feel that all the demons, which are but my own
egotism mopping and mowing and gibbering, would vanish away, and there
would be no place for them,
"For every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath."
Evils, even sorrows, are they not all negations? Thus matter is in a
perpetual state of decomposition; superadd the principle of life, and
the tendency to decomposition is overcome. Add to this consciousness,
and there is a power of self-amelioration. The passions and senses
decompose, so to speak. The intellect, by its analytic power,
restrains the fury with which they rush to their own destruction; the
moral nature purifies, beautifies, and at length transmutes them. But
to whom am I talking? You know far more _sur ce chapitre_ than I.
Every one talks of himself or herself to me, and I beg you will follow
every one's example in this one thing only. Individuals are precious
to me in proportion as they unfold to me their intimate selves. I have
just had lent me the journal of a person who died some years ago. When
I was less venerable I should have felt the reading of such a thing
insupportable; now it interests me, though it is the simplest record
of events and feelings.
Mary says she has told you about Mr. Dawson and his lecture--miserably
crude and mystifying in some parts, but with a few fine passages. He
is a very delightful man, but not (at least so say my impressions) a
great man. How difficult it is to be great in this world, where there
is a tariff for spiritualities as well as for beeves and cheese and
tallow. It is scarcely possible for a man simply to give out his true
inspiration--the real, profound conviction which he has won by hard
wrestling, or the few-and-far-between pearls of imagination; he must
go on talking or writing by rote, or he must starve. Would it not be
better to take to tent-making with Paul, or to spectacle-making with
Spinoza?
[Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, Feb. 1848.]
Write and tell you that I join you in your happiness about the French
Revolution? Very fine, my good friend. If I made you wait for a letter
as long as you do me, our little _échantillon_ of a millennium would
be over, Satan would be let loose again, and I should have to share
your humiliation instead of your triumph.
Nevertheless I absolve you, for the sole merit of thinking rightly
(that is, of course, just as I do) about _la grande nation_ and its
doings. You and Carlyle (have you seen his article in last week's
_Examiner_?) are the only two people who feel just as I would have
them--who can glory in what is actually great and beautiful without
putting forth any cold reservations and incredulities to save their
credit for wisdom. I am all the more delighted with your enthusiasm
because I didn't expect it. I feared that you lacked revolutionary
ardor. But no--you are just as _sans-culottish_ and rash as I would
have you. You are not one of those sages whose reason keeps so tight
a rein on their emotions that they are too constantly occupied in
calculating consequences to rejoice in any great manifestation of the
forces that underlie our every-day existence. I should have written a
soprano to your jubilate the very next day, but that, lest I should be
exalted above measure, a messenger of Satan was sent in the form of a
headache, and directly on the back of that a face-ache, so that I have
been a mere victim of sensations, memories, and visions for the last
week. I am even now, as you may imagine, in a very shattered,
limbo-like mental condition.
I thought we had fallen on such evil days that we were to see no
really great movement; that ours was what St. Simon calls a purely
critical epoch, not at all an organic one; but I begin to be glad of
my date. I would consent, however, to have a year clipped off my life
for the sake of witnessing such a scene as that of the men of the
barricades bowing to the image of Christ, "who first taught fraternity
to men." One trembles to look into every fresh newspaper lest there
should be something to mar the picture; but hitherto even the scoffing
newspaper critics have been compelled into a tone of genuine respect
for the French people and the Provisional Government. Lamartine can
act a poem if he cannot write one of the very first order. I hope that
beautiful face given to him in the pictorial newspaper is really his;
it is worthy of an aureole. I am chiefly anxious about Albert, the
operative, but his picture is not to be seen. I have little patience
with people who can find time to pity Louis Philippe and his
moustachioed sons. Certainly our decayed monarchs should be pensioned
off; we should have a hospital for them, or a sort of zoological
garden, where these worn-out humbugs may be preserved. It is but
justice that we should keep them, since we have spoiled them for any
honest trade. Let them sit on soft cushions, and have their dinner
regularly, but, for Heaven's sake, preserve me from sentimentalizing
over a pampered old man when the earth has its millions of unfed souls
and bodies. Surely he is not so Ahab-like as to wish that the
revolution had been deferred till his son's days: and I think that the
shades of the Stuarts would have some reason to complain if the
Bourbons, who are so little better than they, had been allowed to
reign much longer.
I should have no hope of good from any imitative movement at home. Our
working classes are eminently inferior to the mass of the French
people. In France the _mind_ of the people is highly electrified; they
are full of ideas on social subjects; they really desire social
_reform_--not merely an acting out of Sancho Panza's favorite proverb,
"Yesterday for you, to-day for me." The revolutionary animus extended
over the whole nation, and embraced the rural population--not merely,
as with us, the artisans of the towns. Here there is so much larger a
proportion of selfish radicalism and unsatisfied brute sensuality (in
the agricultural and mining districts especially) than of perception
or desire of justice that a revolutionary movement would be simply
destructive, not constructive. Besides, it would be put down. Our
military have no notion of "fraternizing." They have the same sort of
inveteracy as dogs have for the ill-dressed _canaille_. They are as
mere a brute force as a battering-ram; and the aristocracy have got
firm hold of them. And there is nothing in our constitution to
obstruct the slow progress of _political_ reform. This is all we are
fit for at present. The social reform which may prepare us for great
changes is more and more the object of effort both in Parliament and
out of it. But we English are slow crawlers. The sympathy in Ireland
seems at present only of the water-toast kind. The Glasgow riots are
more serious; but one cannot believe in a Scotch Reign of Terror in
these days. I should not be sorry to hear that the Italians had risen
_en masse_, and chased the odious Austrians out of beautiful Lombardy.
But this they could hardly do without help, and that involves another
European war.
Concerning the "tent-making," there is much more to be said, but am I
to adopt your rule and never speak of what I suppose we agree about?
It is necessary to me, not simply to _be_ but to _utter_, and I
require utterance of my friends. What is it to me that I think the
same thoughts? I think them in a somewhat different fashion. No mind
that has any _real_ life is a mere echo of another. If the perfect
unison comes occasionally, as in music, it enhances the harmonies. It
is like a diffusion or expansion of one's own life to be assured that
its vibrations are repeated in another, and words are the media of
those vibrations. Is not the universe itself a perpetual utterance of
the one Being? So I say again, utter, utter, utter, and it will be a
deed of mercy twice blessed, for I shall be a safety-valve for your
communicativeness and prevent it from splitting honest people's brains
who don't understand you; and, moreover, it will be fraught with
ghostly comfort to me.
[Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, Sunday evening, later in 1848.]
I might make a very plausible excuse for not acknowledging your kind
note earlier by telling you that I have been both a nurse and invalid;
but, to be thoroughly ingenuous, I must confess that all this would
not have been enough to prevent my writing but for my chronic disease
of utter idleness. I have heard and thought of you with great
interest, however. You have my hearty and not inexperienced sympathy;
for, to speak in the style of Jonathan Oldbuck, I am _haud ignara
mali_. I have gone through a trial of the same genus as yours, though
rather differing in species. I sincerely rejoice in the step you have
taken; it is an absolutely necessary condition for any true
development of your nature. It was impossible to think of your career
with hope, while you tacitly subscribed to the miserable _etiquette_
(it deserves no better or more spiritual name) of sectarianism. Only
persevere; be true, firm, and loving; not too anxious about immediate
usefulness to others--that can only be a result of justice to
yourself. Study mental hygiene. Take long doses of _dolce far niente_,
and be in no great hurry about anything in this 'varsal world! Do we
not commit ourselves to sleep, and so resign all care for ourselves
every night; lay ourselves gently on the bosom of Nature or God? A
beautiful reproach to the spirit of some religionists and ultra good
people.
I like the notion of your going to Germany, as good in every way, for
yourself, body and mind, and for all others. Oh, the bliss of having a
very high attic in a romantic Continental town, such as Geneva, far
away from morning callers, dinners, and decencies, and then to pause
for a year and think _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, and then
to return to life, and work for poor stricken humanity, and never
think of self again![23]
I am writing nearly in the dark, with the post-boy waiting. I fear I
shall not be at home when you come home, but surely I shall see you
before you leave England. However that may be, I shall utter a genuine
_Lebewohl_.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Feb. 1848.]
In my view there are but two kinds of _regular_ correspondence
possible--one of simple affection, which gives a picture of all the
details, painful and pleasurable, that a loving heart pines after, and
this we carry on through the medium of Cara; or one purely moral and
intellectual, carried on for the sake of ghostly edification, in which
each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on all
sorts of subjects, in order to send a weekly or fortnightly packet, as
so much duty and self-castigation. I have always been given to
understand that such Lady-Jane-Grey-like works were your abhorrence.
However, let me know what you _would_ like--what would make you
continue to hold me in loving remembrance or convince you that you are
a bright evergreen in my garden of pleasant plants. Behold me ready to
tear off my right hand or pluck out my right eye (metaphorically, of
course--I speak to an experienced exegetist, _comme dirait notre_
Strauss), or write reams of letters full of interesting falsehoods or
very dull truths. We have always concluded that our correspondence
should be of the _third_ possible kind--one of impulse, which is
necessarily irregular as the Northern Lights.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th April, 1848.]
I am a miserable wretch, with aching limbs and sinking spirits, but
still alive enough to feel the kindness of your last note. I
thoroughly enjoyed your delight in Emerson. I should have liked to see
you sitting by him "with awful eye," for once in your life feeling all
the bliss of veneration. I am quite uncertain about our movements.
Dear father gets on very slowly, if at all. You will understand the
impossibility of my forming any plans for my own pleasure. Rest is
the only thing I can think of with pleasure now.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th April, 1848.]
Dear father is so decidedly progressing towards recovery that I am
full of quiet joy--a gentle dawning light after the moonlight of
sorrow. I have found already some of the "sweet uses" that belong only
to what is called trouble, which is, after all, only a deepened gaze
into life, like the sight of the darker blue and the thickening host
of stars when the hazy effect of twilight is gone--as our dear Blanco
White said of death. I shall have less time than I have had at my own
disposal, probably; but I feel prepared to accept life, nay, lovingly
to embrace it, in any form in which it shall present itself.
Some time in May Mr. Evans and his daughter went to St.
Leonard's, and remained there till near the end of June. His
mortal illness had now taken hold of him, and this was a
depressing time, both for him and for her, as will be seen
from the following letters:
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, May, 1848.]
Your words of affection seem to make this earthly atmosphere sit less
heavily on my shoulders, and in gratitude I must send you my thanks
before I begin to read of Henry Gow and Fair Catharine for father's
delectation. In truth, I have found it somewhat difficult to live for
the last week--conscious all the time that the only additions to my
lot worth having must be more strength to love in my own nature; but
perhaps this very consciousness has an irritating rather than a
soothing effect. I have a fit of sensitiveness upon me, which, after
all, is but egotism and mental idleness. The enthusiasm without which
one cannot even pour out breakfast well (at least _I_ cannot) has
forsaken me. You may laugh, and wonder when my enthusiasm has
displayed itself, but that will only prove that you are no seer. I can
never live long without it in some form or other. I possess my soul in
patience for a time, believing that this dark, damp vault in which I
am groping will soon come to an end, and the fresh, green earth and
the bright sky be all the more precious to me. But for the present my
address is Grief Castle, on the River of Gloom, in the Valley of
Dolor. I was amused to find that Castle Campbell in Scotland was
called so. Truly for many seasons in my life I should have been an
appropriate denizen of such a place; but I have faith that unless I am
destined to insanity, I shall never again abide long in that same
castle. I heartily say Amen to your dictum about the cheerfulness of
"large moral regions." Where _thought_ and _love_ are active--thought
the formative power, love the vitalizing--there can be no sadness.
They are in themselves a more intense and extended participation of a
divine existence. As they grow, the highest species of faith grows
too, and all things are possible. I don't know why I should prose in
this way to you. But I wanted to thank you for your note, and all this
selfish grumbling was at my pen's end. And now I have no time to
redeem myself. We shall not stay long away from home, I feel sure.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 31st May, 1848.]
Father has done wonders in the way of walking and eating--for him--but
he makes not the slightest attempt to amuse himself, so that I
scarcely feel easy in following my own bent even for an hour. I have
told you everything now, except that I look amiable in spite of a
strong tendency to look black, and speak gently, though with a strong
propensity to be snappish. Pity me, ye happier spirits that look
amiable and speak gently because ye _are_ amiable and gentle.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 4th June, 1848.]
Alas for the fate of poor mortals, which condemns them to wake up some
fine morning and find all the poetry in which their world was bathed
only the evening before utterly gone!--the hard, angular world of
chairs and tables and looking-glasses staring at them in all its naked
prose! It is so in all the stages of life; the poetry of girlhood
goes, the poetry of love and marriage, the poetry of maternity, and at
last the very poetry of duty forsakes us for a season, and we see
ourselves, and all about us, as nothing more than miserable
agglomerations of atoms--poor tentative efforts of the _Natur Princip_
to mould a personality. This is the state of prostration, the
self-abnegation, through which the soul must go, and to which perhaps
it must again and again return, that its poetry or religion, which is
the same thing, may be a real, ever-flowing river, fresh from the
windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep--not an
artificial basin, with grotto-work and gold-fish. I feel a sort of
madness growing upon me, just the opposite of the delirium which makes
people fancy that their bodies are filling the room. It seems to me as
if I were shrinking into that mathematical abstraction, a point. But I
am wasting this "good Sunday morning" in grumblings.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 8th June, 1848.]
Poor Louis Blanc! The newspapers make me melancholy; but shame upon me
that I say "poor." The day will come when there will be a temple of
white marble, where sweet incense and anthems shall rise to the memory
of every man and woman who has had a deep _Ahnung_--a presentiment, a
yearning, or a clear vision--of the time when this miserable reign of
Mammon shall end; when men shall be no longer "like the fishes of the
sea," society no more like a face one half of which--the side of
profession, of lip-faith--is fair and God-like; the other half--the
side of deeds and institutions--with a hard, old, wrinkled skin
puckered into the sneer of a Mephistopheles. I worship the man who has
written as the climax of his appeal against society, "L'inegalité des
talents _doit aboutir_ non à l'inegalité des retributions mais à
l'inegalité des devoirs." You will wonder what has wrought me up into
this fury. It is the loathsome fawning, the transparent hypocrisy, the
systematic giving as little as possible for as much as possible that
one meets with here at every turn. I feel that society is training men
and women for hell.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d June, 1848.]
All creatures about to moult, or to cast off an old skin, or enter on
any new metamorphosis, have sickly feelings. It was so with me. But
now I am set free from the irritating, worn-out integument. I am
entering on a new period of my life, which makes me look back on the
past as something incredibly poor and contemptible. I am enjoying
repose, strength, and ardor in a greater degree than I have ever
known, and yet I never felt my own insignificance and imperfection so
completely. My heart bleeds for dear father's pains, but it is blessed
to be at hand to give the soothing word and act needed. I should not
have written this description of myself but that I felt your
affectionate letter demanded some I-ism, which, after all, is often
humility rather than pride. Paris, poor Paris--alas! alas!
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, June, 1848.]
I have read "Jane Eyre," and shall be glad to know what you admire in
it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a
somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man
soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book _is_
interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like
the heroes and heroines of police reports.
About the beginning of July Miss Evans and her father
returned to Coventry; and the 13th July was a memorable day,
as Emerson came to visit the Brays, and she went with them to
Stratford. All she says herself about it is in this note.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, July, 1848.]
I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen. But you have
seen still more of him, so I need not tell you what he is. I shall
leave Cara to tell how the day--the Emerson day--was spent, for I have
a swimming head from hanging over the desk to write business letters
for father. Have you seen the review of Strauss's pamphlet in the
_Edinburgh_? The title is "Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren,
oder Julian der Abtrünnige"--a sort of erudite satire on the King of
Prussia; but the reviewer pronounces it to have a permanent value
quite apart from this fugitive interest. The "Romantiker," or
Romanticist, is one who, in literature, in the arts, in religion or
politics, endeavors to revive the dead past. Julian was a romanticist
in wishing to restore the Greek religion and its spirit, when mankind
had entered on the new development. But you have very likely seen the
review. I must copy one passage, translated from the conclusion of
Strauss's pamphlet, lest you should not have met with it. "Christian
writers have disfigured the death-scene of Julian. They have
represented him as furious, blaspheming, despairing, and in his
despair exclaiming, _Thou_ hast conquered, O Galilean!--'[Greek:
nenikekas Galilaie].' This phrase, though false as history, has a
truth in it. It contains a prophecy--to us a consoling prophecy--and
it is this: Every Julian--_i.e._, every great and powerful man--who
would attempt to resuscitate a state of society which has died, will
infallibly be vanquished by the Galilean--for the Galilean is nothing
less than the genius of the future!"
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1848.]
Father's tongue has just given utterance to a thought which has been
very visibly radiating from his eager eyes for some minutes. "I
thought you were going on with the book." I can only bless you for
those two notes, which have emanated from you like so much ambrosial
scent from roses and lavender. Not less am I grateful for the Carlyle
eulogium.[24] I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is
a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love
another. More anon--this from my doleful prison of stupidity and
barrenness, with a yawning trapdoor ready to let me down into utter
fatuity. But I can even yet feel the omnipotence of a glorious chord.
Poor pebble as I am, left entangled among slimy weeds, I can yet hear
from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoice that it is
there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less unworthy of the
polishing.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of 1848.]
Thank you for a sight of our blessed St. Francis's[25] letter. There
is no imaginable moment in which the thought of such a being could be
an intrusion. His soul is a blessed _yea_. There is a sort of
blasphemy in that proverbial phrase, "Too good to be true." The
highest inspiration of the purest, noblest human soul, is the nearest
expression of the truth. Those extinct volcanoes of one's spiritual
life--those eruptions of the intellect and the passions which have
scattered the lava of doubt and negation over our early faith--are
only a glorious Himalayan chain, beneath which new valleys of
undreamed richness and beauty will spread themselves. Shall we poor
earthworms have sublimer thoughts than the universe, of which we are
poor chips--mere effluvia of mind--shall we have sublimer thoughts
than that universe can furnish out into reality? I am living
unspeakable moments, and can write no more.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1849.]
I think of you perpetually, but my thoughts are all aqueous; they will
not crystallize--they are as fleeting as ripples on the sea. I am
suffering perhaps as acutely as ever I did in my life. Breathe a wish
that I may gather strength--the fragrance of your wish will reach me
somehow.
The next letter is to Mrs. Houghton, who, it will be
remembered, was the only daughter by Mr. Evans's first
marriage. Miss Evans had more intellectual sympathy with this
half-sister Fanny than with any of the other members of her
family, and it is a pity that more of the letters to her have
not been preserved.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, Sunday evening, 1849.]
I have been holding a court of conscience, and I cannot enjoy my
Sunday's music without restoring harmony, without entering a protest
against that superficial soul of mine which is perpetually
contradicting and belying the true inner soul. I am in that mood
which, in another age of the world, would have led me to put on
sackcloth and pour ashes on my head, when I call to mind the sins of
my tongue--my animadversions on the faults of others, as if I thought
myself to be something when I am nothing. When shall I attain to the
true spirit of love which Paul has taught for all the ages? I want no
one to excuse me, dear Fanny; I only want to remove the shadow of my
miserable words and deeds from before the divine image of truth and
goodness, which I would have all beings worship. I need the Jesuits'
discipline of silence, and though my "evil speaking" issues from the
intellectual point of view rather than the moral--though there may be
gall in the thought while there is honey in the feeling, yet the evil
speaking is wrong. We may satirize character and qualities in the
abstract without injury to our moral nature, but persons hardly ever.
Poor hints and sketches of souls as we are--with some slight,
transient vision of the perfect and the true--we had need help each
other to gaze at the blessed heavens instead of peering into each
other's eyes to find out the motes there.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday morning, 4th Feb. 1849.]
I have not touched the piano for nearly two months until this morning,
when, father being better, I was determined to play a mass before the
piano is utterly out of tune again. _Write, asking for nothing again_,
like a true disciple of Jesus. I am still feeling rather shattered in
brain and limbs; but do not suppose that I lack inward peace and
strength. My body is the defaulter--_consciously_ so. I triumph over
all things in the spirit, but the flesh is weak, and disgraces itself
by headaches and backaches. I am delighted to find that you mention
Macaulay, because that is an indication that Mr. Hennell has been
reading him. I thought of Mr. H. all through the book, as the only
person I could be quite sure would enjoy it as much as I did myself. I
did not know if it would interest you: tell me more explicitly that it
does. Think of Babylon being unearthed in spite of the prophecies?
Truly we are looking before and after, "au jour d'aujourd'hui," as
Monsieur Bricolin says. Send me the criticism of Jacques the morn's
morning--only beware there are not too many blasphemies against my
divinity.
Paint soap-bubbles--and never fear but I will find _a_ meaning, though
very likely not your meaning. Paint the Crucifixion in a bubble--after
Turner--and then the Resurrection: I see them now.
There has been a vulgar man sitting by while I have been writing, and
I have been saying parenthetical bits of civility to him to help out
poor father in his conversation, so I have not been quite sure what I
have been saying to you. I have woful aches which take up half my
nervous strength.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Feb. 1849.]
My life is a perpetual nightmare, and always haunted by something to
be done, which I have never the time, or, rather, the energy, to do.
Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious, and I, alas! am not
one of them. I have sat down in desperation this evening, though dear
father is very uneasy, and his moans distract me, just to tell you
that you have full absolution for your criticism, which I do not
reckon of the impertinent order. I wish you thoroughly to understand
that the writers who have most profoundly influenced me--who have
rolled away the waters from their bed, raised new mountains and spread
delicious valleys for me--are not in the least oracles to me. It is
just possible that I may not embrace one of their opinions; that I may
wish my life to be shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance,
it would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to stun me
with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, and government
are miserably erroneous--that he was guilty of some of the worst
_bassesses_ that have degraded civilized man. I might admit all this:
and it would be not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that
electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has
awakened me to new perceptions; which has made man and nature a fresh
world of thought and feeling to me; and this not by teaching me any
new belief. It is simply that the rushing mighty wind of his
inspiration has so quickened my faculties that I have been able to
shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously dwelt as
dim _Ahnungen_ in my soul; the fire of his genius has so fused
together old thoughts and prejudices that I have been ready to make
new combinations.
It is thus with George Sand. I should never dream of going to her
writings as a moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree
with her about marriage or not--whether I think the design of her plot
correct, or that she had no precise design at all, but began to write
as the spirit moved her, and trusted to Providence for the
catastrophe, which I think the more probable case. It is sufficient
for me, as a reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that
"great power of God manifested in her," that I cannot read six pages
of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human
passion and its results, and (I must say, in spite of your judgment)
some of the moral instincts and their tendencies, with such
truthfulness, such nicety of discrimination, such tragic power, and,
withal, such loving, gentle humor, that one might live a century with
nothing but one's own dull faculties, and not know so much as those
six pages will suggest. The psychological anatomy of Jacques and
Fernande in the early days of their marriage seems quite
preternaturally true--I mean that her power of describing it is
preternatural. Fernande and Jacques are merely the feminine and the
masculine nature, and their early married life an every-day tragedy;
but I will not dilate on the book or on your criticism, for I am so
sleepy that I should write nothing but _bêtises_. I have at last the
most delightful "De imitatione Christi," with quaint woodcuts. One
breathes a cool air as of cloisters in the book--it makes one long to
be a saint for a few months. Verily its piety has its foundations in
the depth of the divine-human soul.
In March Miss Evans wrote a short notice of the "Nemesis of
Faith" for the _Coventry Herald_, in which she says:
"We are sure that its author is a bright, particular star, though he
sometimes leaves us in doubt whether he be not a fallen 'son of the
morning.'"
The paper was sent to Mr. Froude, and on 23d March Mrs. Bray
writes to Miss Hennell: "Last night at dusk M. A. came
running in in high glee with a most charming note from
Froude, naïvely and prettily requesting her to reveal
herself. He says he recognized her hand in the review in the
_Coventry Herald_, and if she thinks him a fallen star she
might help him to rise, but he 'believes he has only been
dipped in the Styx, and is not much the worse for the bath.'
Poor girl, I am so pleased she should have this little
episode in her dull life."
The next letter again refers to Mr. Froude's books.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Wednesday, April, 1849.]
Tell me not that I am a mere prater--that feeling never talks. I will
talk, and caress, and look lovingly, until death makes me as stony as
the Gorgon-like heads of all the judicious people I know. What is
anything worth until it is uttered? Is not the universe one great
utterance? Utterance there must be in word or deed to make life of any
worth. Every true pentecost is a gift of utterance. Life is too short
and opportunities too meagre for many deeds--besides, the best
friendships are precisely those where there is no possibility of
material helpfulness--and I would take no deeds as an adequate
compensation for the frigid, glassy eye and hard, indifferent tones
of one's very solid and sensible and conscientious friend. You will
wonder of what this is _à propos_--only of a little bitterness in my
own soul just at this moment, and not of anything between you and me.
I have nothing to tell you, for all the "haps" of my life are so
indifferent. I spin my existence so entirely out of myself that there
is a sad want of proper names in my conversation, and I am becoming a
greater bore than ever. It is a consciousness of this that has kept me
from writing to you. My letters would be a sort of hermit's diary. I
have so liked the thought of your enjoying the "Nemesis of Faith." I
quote Keats's sonnet, _à propos_ of that book. It has made me feel--
"Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez--when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
You must read "The Shadows of the Clouds." It produces a sort of
palpitation that one hardly knows whether to call wretched or
delightful. I cannot take up the book again, though wanting very much
to read it more closely. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is
blessed to think that a sort of transubstantiation is possible by
which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's
greatness, beauty, or bliss is one's own. And let us sing a
_Magnificat_ when we are conscious that this power of expansion and
sympathy is growing, just in proportion as the individual
satisfactions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but
it is worth while to be so, for the sake of the living soul--the
breath of God within us. You see I can do nothing but scribble my own
prosy stuff--such chopped straw as my soul is foddered on. I am
translating the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" of Spinoza, and seem
to want the only friend that knows how to praise or blame. How
exquisite is the satisfaction of feeling that another mind than your
own sees precisely where and what is the difficulty--and can exactly
appreciate the success with which it is overcome. One knows--_sed
longo intervallo_--the full meaning of the "fit audience though few."
How an artist must hate the noodles that stare at his picture, with a
vague notion that it _is_ a clever thing to be able to paint.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Pears, 10th May, 1849.]
I know it will gladden your heart to hear that father spoke of you the
other day with affection and gratitude. He remembers you as one who
helped to strengthen that beautiful spirit of resignation which has
never left him through his long trial. His mind is as clear and
rational as ever, notwithstanding his feebleness, and he gives me a
thousand little proofs that he understands my affection and responds
to it. These are very precious moments to me; my chair by father's
bedside is a very blessed seat to me. My delight in the idea that you
are being benefited after all, prevents me from regretting you, though
you are just the friend that would complete my comfort. Every addition
to your power of enjoying life is an expansion of mine. I partake of
your ebb and flow. I am going to my post now. I have just snatched an
interval to let you know that, though you have taken away a part of
yourself from me, neither you nor any one else can take the whole.
It will have been seen from these late letters, that the last
few months of her father's illness had been a terrible strain
on his daughter's health and spirits. She did all the nursing
herself, and Mrs. Congreve (who was then Miss Bury, daughter
of the doctor who was attending Mr. Evans--and who, it will
be seen, subsequently became perhaps the most intimate and
the closest of George Eliot's friends) tells me that her
father told her at the time that he never saw a patient more
admirably and thoroughly cared for. The translating was a
great relief when she could get to it. Under date of 19th
April, 1849, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell, "M. A. is
happy now with this Spinoza to do: she says it is such a rest
for her mind."
The next letter to Rosehill pathetically describes how the
end came at last to Mr. Evans's sufferings:
[Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, half-past nine, Wednesday morning, 31st
May, 1849.]
Dear friends, Mr. Bury told us last night that he thought father would
not last till morning. I sat by him with my hand in his till four
o'clock, and he then became quieter and has had some comfortable
sleep. He is obviously weaker this morning, and has been for the last
two or three days so painfully reduced that I dread to think what his
dear frame may become before life gives way. My brother slept here
last night, and will be here again to-night. What shall I be without
my father? It will seem as if a part of my moral nature were gone. I
write when I can, but I do not know whether my letter will do to send
this evening.
_P.S._--Father is very, very much weaker this evening.
Mr. Evans died during that night, 31st May, 1849.
[Illustration: Portrait of Mr. Robert Evans.]
_SUMMARY._
MAY, 1846, TO MAY, 1849.
Visit to Mrs. Hennell at Hackney--Letters to Mrs.
Bray--Strauss translation published--Visit to Dover with
father--Classical books wanted--Pleasure in Strauss's
letter--Brays suspect novel-writing--Letters to Miss Sara
Hennell--Good spirits--Wicksteed's review of the Strauss
translation--Reading Foster's life--Visit to Griff--Child's
view of God (_à propos_ of Miss Hennell's "Heliados")--Visit
to London--"Elijah"--Likes London less--The Sibree family and
Mrs. John Cash's reminiscences--Letter to Miss Mary
Sibree--Letters to Miss Sara Hennell--Mental
depression--Opinion of Charles Hennell's "Inquiry"--Visit to
the Isle of Wight with father--Admiration of
Richardson--Blanco White--Delight in George Sand's "Lettres
d'un Voyageur"--Letters to Mr. John Sibree--Opinion of Mrs.
Hannah More's letters--"Tancred," "Coningsby," and
"Sybil"--D'Israeli's theory of races--Gentile nature kicks
against superiority of Jews--Bows only to the supremacy of
Hebrew poetry--Superiority of music among the arts--Relation
of religion to art--Thorwaldsen's Christ--Admiration of
Roberts and Creswick--The intellect and moral nature restrain
the passions and senses--Mr. Dawson the
lecturer--Satisfaction in French Revolution of '48--The men
of the barricade bowing to the image of Christ--Difference
between French and English working-classes--The need of
utterance--Sympathy with Mr. Sibree in religious
difficulties--Longing for a high attic in Geneva--Letters to
Miss Sara Hennell--Views on correspondence--Mental
depression--Father's illness--Father better--Goes with him to
St. Leonard's--Letter to Charles Bray--Depression to be
overcome by thought and love--Admiration of Louis
Blanc--Recovery from depression--"Jane Eyre"--Return to
Coventry--Meets Emerson--Strauss's pamphlet on Julian the
Apostate--Carlyle's eulogium on Emerson--Francis
Newman--Suffering from depression--Letter to Mrs.
Houghton--Self-condemnation for evil speaking--Letters to
Miss Hennell--Macaulay's History--On the influence of George
Sand's and Rousseau's writing--Writes review of the "Nemesis
of Faith" for the _Coventry Herald_--Opinion of the "Nemesis"
and the "Shadows of the Clouds"--Translating Spinoza's
"Tractatus Theologico-Politicus"--Letter to Mrs. Pears--The
consolations of nursing--Strain of father's illness--Father's
death.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Organs of Combativeness.
[21] Afterwards acknowledged by the author, Robert Landor (brother of
Walter Savage Landor), who also wrote the "Fountain of Arethusa," etc.
[22] John Foster, Baptist minister, born 1770, died 1843.
[23] An _Ahnung_--a presentiment--of her own future.
[24] On Emerson.
[25] Francis Newman.