the series is attributed by many to Bulwer, and that Thackeray thinks
highly of it. This was a pleasant fillip to me, who am just now ready
to be dispirited on the slightest pretext.
_May 21._--The other day we had a pleasant letter from Herbert
Spencer, saying that he had heard "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" discussed
by Baynes and Dallas, as well as previously by Pigott, all expressing
warm approval, and curiosity as to the author.
_May 26._--Received a pleasant letter from Blackwood, enclosing one
from Archer Gurney to the author of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story."
I subjoin this letter, as it is the first she received in her
character of a creative author, and it still bears a pencil
memorandum in her writing: "This letter he brought up to me
at Jersey after reading it, saying, with intense joy, 'Her
fame is beginning.'"
[Sidenote: Letter from Rev. Archer Gurney, to the author of "Mr.
Gilfil's Love-Story," 14th May, 1857.]
"BUCKINGHAM (BUCKS), _Thursday, 14th May, 1857_.
"Sir,--Will you consider it impertinent in a brother author
and old reviewer to address a few lines of earnest sympathy
and admiration to you, excited by the purity of your style,
originality of your thoughts, and absence of all vulgar
seeking for effect in those 'Scenes of Clerical Life' now
appearing in _Blackwood_? If I mistake not much, your muse of
invention is no hackneyed one, and your style is too peculiar
to allow of your being confounded with any of the already
well-known writers of the day. Your great and characteristic
charm is, to my mind, Nature. You frequently, indeed, express
what I may call brilliant ideas, but they always seem to come
unsought for, never, as in Lytton, for instance, to be
elaborated and placed in the most advantageous light. I
allude to such brief aphoristic sayings as 'Animals are such
agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no
criticisms'--'All with that brisk and cheerful air which a
sermon is often observed to produce when it is quite
finished.' By-the-bye. I am one of the cloth, and might take
exception to certain hints, perhaps, but these are dubious.
What I see plainly I admire honestly, and trust that more
good remains behind. Will you always remain equally natural?
That is the doubt. Will the fear of the critic, or the
public, or the literary world, which spoils almost every one,
never master you? Will you always write to please yourself,
and preserve the true independence which seems to mark a real
supremacy of intellect? But these questions are, I fear,
impertinent. I will conclude. Pardon this word of greeting
from one whom you may never see or know, and believe me your
earnest admirer,
ARCHER GURNEY.
"The Author of
'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story.'"
[Sidenote: Journal, 1857.]
_June._--Blackwood writes from London that he hears nothing but
approval of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." Lord Stanley, among other
people, had spoken to him about the "Clerical Scenes," at Bulwer's,
and was astonished to find Blackwood in the dark as to the author.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 2d June, 1857.]
I send you by the same post with this the first part of my third
story, which I hope will not disappoint you. The part is, I think,
rather longer than my parts have usually been, but it would have been
injurious to the effect of the story to pause earlier.
Pleasant letters like yours are the best possible stimulus to an
author's powers, and if I don't write better and better the fault will
certainly not lie in my editor, who seems to have been created in
pre-established harmony with the organization of a susceptible
contributor.
This island, too, with its grassy valleys and pretty, indented coast
is not at all a bad haunt for the Muses, if, as one may suppose, they
have dropped their too scanty classical attire, and appear in long
dresses and brown hats, like decent Christian women likely to inspire
"Clerical Scenes."
Moreover, having myself a slight zoological weakness, I am less
alarmed than most people at the society of a zoological maniac. So
that, altogether, your contributor is in promising circumstances, and
if he doesn't behave like an animal in good condition, is clearly
unworthy of his keep.
I am much gratified to have made the conquest of Professor Aytoun; but
with a parent's love for the depreciated child, I can't help standing
up for "Amos" as better than "Gilfil."
Lewes seems to have higher expectations from the third story than from
either of the preceding; but I can form no judgment myself until I
have quite finished a thing, and see it aloof from my actual self. I
can only go on writing what I feel, and waiting for the proof that I
have been able to make others feel.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th June, 1857.]
Richmond is _not_ fascinating in "the season" or through the summer.
It is hot, noisy, and haunted with Cockneys; but at other times we
love the Park with an increasing love, and we have such a kind, good
landlady there, that it always seems like going home when we return to
Park Shot. She writes to us: "I hope you will make your fortune--but
you must always live with me," which, considering that she gets less
out of us than other lodgers, is a proof of affection in a landlady.
Yes! we like our wandering life at present, and it is fructifying, and
brings us material in many ways; but we keep in perspective the idea
of a cottage among green fields and cows, where we mean to settle
down (after we have once been to Italy), and buy pots and kettles and
keep a dog. Wherever we are we work hard--and at work which brings
_present_ money; for we have too many depending on us to be
_dilettanti_ or idlers.
I wish it to be understood that I should never invite any one to come
and see me who did not ask for the invitation.
You wonder how my face has changed in the last three years. Doubtless
it is older and uglier, but it ought not to have a bad expression, for
I never have anything to call out my ill-humor or discontent, which
you know were always ready enough to come on slight call, and I have
everything to call out love and gratitude.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. John Cash (Miss Mary Sibree), 6th June,
1857.]
Your letter was very sweet to me. The sense of my deficiencies in the
past often presses on me with a discouraging weight, and to know that
any one can remember me lovingly, helps me to believe that there has
been some good to balance the evil. I like to think of you as a happy
wife and mother; and since Rosehill must have new tenants, I like to
think that you and yours are there rather than any one else, not only
because of my own confidence in your nature, but because our dear
friends love you so much as a neighbor. You know I can never feel
otherwise than sorry that they should not have ended their days in
that pretty home; but the inevitable regret is softened as much as
possible by the fact that the home has become yours.
It is very nice to hear that Mrs. Sibree can relish anything of my
writing. She was always a favorite with me; and I remember very
vividly many pleasant little conversations with her. Seventy-two! How
happy you are to have a dear, aged mother, whose heart you can
gladden.
I was a good deal touched by the letter your brother wrote to you
about accepting, or, rather, declining, more pupils. I feel sure that
his sensitive nature has its peculiar trials and struggles in this
strange life of ours, which some thick-skinned mortals take so easily.
I am very happy--happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the
perfect love and sympathy of a nature that stimulates my own to
healthful activity. I feel, too, that all the terrible pain I have
gone through in past years, partly from the defects of my own nature,
partly from outward things, has probably been a preparation for some
special work that I may do before I die. That is a blessed hope, to be
rejoiced in with trembling. But even if that hope should be
unfulfilled, I am contented to have lived and suffered for the sake of
what has already been. You see your kind letter has made me inclined
to talk about myself, but, as we do not often have any communication
with each other, I know it will be a gratification to your sympathetic
nature to have a few direct words from me that will assure you of my
moral well-being.
I hope your little ones are just like you--just as fair and
sweet-tempered.
[Sidenote: Journal, June, 1857.]
I sent off the first part of "Janet's Repentance," but to my
disappointment Blackwood did not like it so well--seemed to
misunderstand the characters, and to be doubtful about the treatment
of clerical matters. I wrote at once to beg him to give up printing
the story if he felt uncomfortable about it, and he immediately sent a
very anxious, cordial letter, saying the thought of putting a stop to
the series "gave him quite a turn:" he "did not meet with George
Eliots every day"--and so on.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 11th June, 1857.]
I am not much surprised and not at all hurt by your letter received
to-day with the proof. It is a great satisfaction--in fact, my only
satisfaction--that you should give me your judgment with perfect
frankness. I am able, I think, to enter into an editor's doubts and
difficulties, and to see my stories in some degree from your point of
view as well as my own. My answer is written after considering the
question as far as possible on all sides, and as I feel that I shall
not be able to make any other than _superficial_ alterations in the
proof, I will, first of all, say what I can in explanation of the
spirit and future course of the present story.
The collision in the drama is not at all between "bigoted
churchmanship" and evangelicalism, but between _ir_religion and
religion. Religion in this case happens to be represented by
evangelicalism; and the story, so far as regards the _persecution_, is
a real bit in the religious history of England, that happened about
eight-and-twenty years ago. I thought I had made it apparent in my
sketch of Milby feelings, on the advent of Mr. Tryan, that the
conflict lay between immorality and morality--irreligion and religion.
Mr. Tryan will carry the reader's sympathy. It is through him that
Janet is brought to repentance. Dempster's vices have their natural
evolution in deeper and deeper moral deterioration (though not without
softening touches), and death from intemperance. Everything is
softened from the fact, so far as art is permitted to soften and yet
to remain essentially true.
My sketches, both of Churchmen and Dissenters, with whom I am almost
equally acquainted, are drawn from close observation of them in real
life, and not at all from hearsay or from the descriptions of
novelists. If I were to undertake to alter language or character. I
should be attempting to represent some vague conception of what may
possibly exist in other people's minds, but has no existence in my
own. Such of your marginal objections as relate to a mere detail I can
meet without difficulty by alteration; but as an artist I should be
utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and
character. There is nothing to be done with the story, but either to
let Dempster and Janet and the rest be as I _see_ them, or to renounce
it as too painful. I am keenly alive at once to the scruples and
alarms an editor may feel, and to my own utter inability to write
under cramping influence, and on this double ground I should like you
to consider whether it will not be better to close the series for the
Magazine _now_. I dare say you will feel no difficulty about
publishing a volume containing the story of "Janet's Repentance," and
I shall accept that plan with no other feeling than that you have been
to me the most liberal and agreeable of editors, and are the man of
all others I would choose for a publisher.
My irony, so far as I understand myself, is not directed against
opinions--against any class of religious views--but against the vices
and weaknesses that belong to human nature in every sort of clothing.
But it is possible that I may not affect other minds as I intend and
wish to affect them, and you are a better judge than I can be of the
degree in which I may occasionally be offensive. I should like _not_
to be offensive--I should like to touch every heart among my readers
with nothing but loving humor, with tenderness, with belief in
goodness. But I may have failed in this case of "Janet," at least so
far as to have made you feel its publication in the Magazine a
disagreeable risk. If so, there will be no harm done by closing the
series with No. 2, as I have suggested. If, however, I take your
objections to be deeper than they really are--if you prefer inserting
the story in spite of your partial dissatisfaction, I shall, of
course, be happy to appear under "Maga's" wing still.
When I remember what have been the successes in fiction, even as
republications from "Maga," I can hardly believe that the public will
regard my pictures as exceptionally coarse. But in any case there are
too many prolific writers who devote themselves to the production of
pleasing pictures, to the exclusion of all disagreeable truths, for me
to desire to add to their number. In this respect, at least, I may
have some resemblance to Thackeray, though I am not conscious of being
in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to
think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do,
on the whole the most powerful of living novelists.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 8th June, 1857.]
I feel every day a greater disinclination for theories and arguments
about the origin of things in the presence of all this mystery and
beauty and pain and ugliness that floods one with conflicting
emotions.
We are reading "Aurora Leigh" for the third time, with more enjoyment
than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion
with a large as well as beautiful mind. It is in process of appearing
in a third edition, and no wonder.
If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the
side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that
would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others, and I
can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not
misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in
any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am--but
least of all faulty where others most blame.
On the 24th July the pleasant sojourn at Jersey came to an
end. The travellers returned to 8 Park Shot, Richmond, where
Miss Sara Hennell paid them a visit at the end of the month,
and Dr. and Mrs. Bodichon (_née_ Miss Barbara L. Smith) came
on the 4th of August. On the 12th August there is an entry in
the Journal, "Finished the 'Electra' of Sophocles, and began
Æschylus's 'Agamemnon,'" and then come the following letters:
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, Tuesday, 17th Aug. 1857.]
Lewes has just given me your letter of the 15th, with the accompanying
one from the Rev. W. P. Jones.
Mr. Tryan is not a portrait of any clergyman, living or dead. He is an
ideal character, but I hope probable enough to resemble more than one
evangelical clergyman of his day.
If Mr. Jones's deceased brother was like Mr. Tryan so much the better,
for in that case he was made of human nature's finer clay. I think you
will agree with me that there are few clergymen who would be
depreciated by an identification with Mr. Tryan. But I should rather
suppose that the old gentleman, misled by some similarity in outward
circumstances, is blind to the discrepancies which must exist where no
portrait was intended. As to the rest of my story, so far as its
elements were suggested by real persons, those persons have been, to
use good Mr. Jones's phrase, "long in eternity."
I think I told you that a persecution of the kind I have described
did actually take place, and belongs as much to the common store of
our religious history as the Gorham Controversy, or as Bishop
Blomfield's decision about wax candles. But I only know the _outline_
of the real persecution. The details have been filled in from my
imagination. I should consider it a fault which would cause me lasting
regret if I had used reality in any other than the legitimate way
common to all artists, who draw their materials from their observation
and experience. It would be a melancholy result of my fictions if I
gave _just_ cause of annoyance to any good and sensible person. But I
suppose there is no perfect safeguard against erroneous impressions or
a mistaken susceptibility. We are all apt to forget how little there
is about us that is unique, and how very strongly we resemble many
other insignificant people who have lived before us. I shouldn't
wonder if several nieces of pedantic maiden ladies saw a portrait of
their aunt in Miss Pratt, but I hope they will not think it necessary,
on that ground, to increase the already troublesome number of your
correspondents.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Aug. 1857.]
We went to see Rosa Bonheur's picture the other day. What power! That
is the way women should assert their rights. Writing is part of my
religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within. At
the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world
have been written with the hope of getting money for them.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Sept. 1857.]
Unless there be any strong reason to the contrary, I should like to
close the series with this story. According to my calculation, which,
however, may be an erroneous one, the three stories will make two good
volumes--_i.e._, good as to bulk.
I have a subject in my mind which will not come under the limitations
of the title "Clerical Life," and I am inclined to take a large canvas
for it and write a novel.
In case of my writing fiction for "Maga" again, I should like to be
considerably beforehand with my work, so that you can read a
thoroughly decisive portion before beginning to print.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Sept. 1857.]
The days are very peaceful--peacefully busy. One always feels a deeper
calm as autumn comes on. I should be satisfied to look forward to a
heaven made up of long autumn afternoon walks, quite delivered from
any necessity of giving a judgment on the woman question, or of
reading newspapers about Indian mutinies. I am so glad there are
thousands of good people in the world who have very decided opinions,
and are fond of working hard to enforce them. I like to feel and think
everything and do nothing, a pool of the "deep contemplative" kind.
Some people _do_ prosper--that is a comfort. The rest of us must fall
back on the beatitudes--"Blessed are the poor"--that is Luke's
version, you know, and it is really, on the whole, more comforting
than Matthew's. I'm afraid there are few of us who can appropriate the
blessings of the "poor in spirit."
We are reading one of the most wonderful books in French or any other
literature--Monteil's "Histoire des Français des divers États"--a
history written on an original plan. If you see any account of it,
read that account.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, Saturday, 17th Oct. 1857.]
I am very much gratified that my Janet has won your heart and kept up
your interest in her to the end.
My new story haunts me a good deal, and I shall set about it without
delay. It will be a country story--full of the breath of cows and the
scent of hay. But I shall not ask you to look at it till I have
written a volume or more, and then you will be able to judge whether
you will prefer printing it in the Magazine, or publishing it as a
separate novel when it is completed.
By the way, the sheets of the "Clerical Scenes" are not come, but I
shall not want to make any other than verbal and literal corrections,
so that it will hardly be necessary for me to go through the sheets
_and_ the proofs, which I must, of course, see.
I enclose a titlepage with a motto. But if you don't like the motto, I
give it up. I've not set my heart on it.
I leave the number of copies to be published, and the style of getting
up, entirely to your discretion. As to the terms, I wish to retain the
copyright, according to the stipulation made for me by Lewes when he
sent "Amos Barton;" and whatever you can afford to give me for the
first edition I shall prefer having as a definite payment rather than
as half profits.
You stated, in a letter about "Amos Barton," your willingness to
accede to either plan, so I have no hesitation in expressing my
wishes.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Oct. 1857.]
"Open to conviction," indeed! I should think so. I am open to
conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one
must be eaten and the other paid. These are my only prejudices.
I _was_ pleased with Mr. Call.[56] He is a man one really cares to
talk to--has thoughts, says what he means, and listens to what others
say. We should quite like to see him often. And I cannot tell you how
much I have felt Mrs. Call's graceful as well as kind behavior to me.
Some months ago, before the new edition of the "Biographical History
of Philosophy" came out, Mr. Lewes had a letter from a working-man at
Leicester, I think, who said that he and some fellow-students met
together, on a Sunday, to read the book aloud and discuss it. He had
marked some errors of the press and sent them to Mr. Lewes for his new
edition. Wasn't that pretty?
[Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 30th Oct. 1857.]
"Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails" is my gospel. There can
be no harm in preaching _that_ to women at any rate. But I should be
sorry to undertake any more specific enunciation of doctrine on a
question so entangled as the "woman question." The part of the
Epicurean gods is always an easy one; but because I prefer it so
strongly myself, I the more highly venerate those who are struggling
in the thick of the contest. "La carrière ouverte aux taléns," whether
the talents be feminine or masculine, I am quite confident is a right
maxim. Whether "La carrière ouverte à la Sottise" be equally just when
made equally universal, it would be too much like "taking sides" for
me to say.
There are only three entries in the journal for October.
[Sidenote: Journal, Oct. 1857.]
_Oct. 9._--Finished "Janet's Repentance." I had meant to carry on the
series, and especially I longed to tell the story of the "Clerical
Tutor," but my annoyance at Blackwood's want of sympathy in the first
part (although he came round to admiration at the third part)
determined me to close the series and republish them in two volumes.
_Oct. 22._--Began my new novel, "Adam Bede."
_Oct. 29._--Received a letter from Blackwood offering me £120 for the
first edition of "Scenes of Clerical Life."
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Oct. 1857.]
I am quite contented with the sum (£120) you offer me for the edition,
being thoroughly confident of your disposition to do the best you can
for me. I perceive your hope of success for the "Scenes" is not
strong, and you certainly have excellent means of knowing the
probabilities in such a case.
I am not aware that the motto has been used before, but if you suspect
it, we had better leave it out altogether. A stale motto would hardly
be an ornament to the titlepage.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1st Nov. 1857.]
How I wish I could get to you by some magic, and have one walk over
the hill with you again. Letters are poor things compared with five
minutes of looking and speaking, and one kiss. Nevertheless, I do like
to have a little letter now and then, though I don't for a moment ask
it if you have no spontaneous impulse to give it. I can't help losing
belief that people love me--the unbelief is in my nature, and no sort
of fork will drive it finally out. I can't help wondering that you can
think of _me_ in the past with much pleasure. It all seems so painful
to me--made up of blunders and selfishness--and it only comes back
upon me as a thing to be forgiven. That is honest, painful truth, and
not sentimentality. But I am thankful if others found more good than I
am able to remember.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Nov. 1857.]
It is pleasant to have the first sheet of one's proof--to see one's
paragraphs released from the tight-lacing of double columns, and
expanding themselves at their ease.
I perceive clearly the desirableness of the short number--for my
observation of literary affairs has gone far enough to convince me
that neither critical judgment nor practical experience can guarantee
any opinion as to rapidity of sale in the case of an unknown author;
and I shudder at the prospect of encumbering my publisher's
bookshelves.
My new story is in progress--slow progress at present. A little
sunshine of success would stimulate its growth, I dare say. Unhappily,
I am as impressionable as I am obstinate, and as much in need of
sympathy from my readers as I am incapable of bending myself to their
tastes. But if I can only find a public as cordial and agreeable in
its treatment of me as my editor, I shall have nothing to wish. Even
my thin skin will be comfortable then. The page is not a shabby one,
after all; but I fear the fact of two volumes instead of three is a
fatal feature in my style in the eyes of librarians.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Nov. 1857.]
One is glad to have one's book (_à propos_ of review of Lewes's
"History of Philosophy") spoken well of by papers of good circulation,
because it is possible, though not certain, that such praise may help
the sale; but otherwise it is hardly worth while to trouble one's self
about newspaper reviews, unless they point out some error, or present
that very rare phenomenon, a true appreciation, which is the most
delicious form in which sympathy can reach one. So much sectarian
feeling usually arises in discussions on the subject of phrenology
that I confess the associations of the word are not agreeable to me.
The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant;
and I am often in danger of secreting that sort of venom.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 15th Nov. 1857.]
It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then, when one is not near
enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand. It is an
old weakness of mine to have no faith in affection that does not
express itself; and when friends take no notice of me for a long while
I generally settle down into the belief that they have become
indifferent or have begun to dislike me. That is not the best mental
constitution; but it might be worse--for I don't feel obliged to
dislike _them_ in consequence. I, for one, ought not to complain if
people think worse of me than I deserve, for I have very often reason
to be ashamed of my thoughts about others. They almost always turn out
to be better than I expected--fuller of kindness towards me at least.
In the fundamental doctrine of your book (the philosophy of
necessity)--that mind presents itself under the same conditions of
invariableness of antecedent and consequent as all other phenomena
(the only difference being that the true antecedent and consequent are
proportionately difficult to discover as the phenomena are more
complex)--I think you know that I agree. And every one who knows what
science means must also agree with you that there can be no social
science without the admission of that doctrine. I dislike extremely a
passage in which you appear to consider the disregard of individuals
as a lofty condition of mind. My own experience and development deepen
every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the
degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual
joy. The fact that in the scheme of things we see a constant and
tremendous sacrifice of individuals, is, it seems to me, only one of
the many proofs that urge upon us our total inability to find in our
own natures a key to the Divine mystery. I could more readily turn
Christian, and worship Jesus again, than embrace a Theism which
professes to explain the proceedings of God. But I don't feel at all
wise in these matters. I have a few strong impressions which serve me
for my own support and guidance, but do not in the least qualify me to
speak as a theorist.
Mr. Lewes sends you his kind remembrances, and will not like you any
the worse for cutting him up. He has had to perform that office for
his own friends sometimes. I suppose phrenology is an open question,
on which everybody has a right to speak his mind. Mr. Lewes, feeling
the importance of the subject, desired to give it its due place in his
"History of Philosophy," and, doing so, he must, of course, say what
_he_ believes to be the truth, not what other people believe to be the
truth. If you will show where he is mistaken, you will be doing him a
service as well as phrenology. His arguments may be bad; but I will
answer for him that he has not been guilty of any intentional
unfairness. With regard to their system, phrenologists seem to me to
be animated by the same sort of spirit as that of religious
dogmatists, and especially in this--that in proportion as a man
approximates to their opinions without identifying himself with them,
they think him offensive and contemptible. It is amusing to read from
the opposite side complaints against Mr. Lewes for giving too high a
position to phrenology, and a confident opinion that "phrenologists,
by their ridiculous pretensions, merit all the contempt that has been
thrown on them." Thus doctors differ! But I am much less interested in
crusades for or against phrenology than in your happiness at Ivy
Cottage.[57] Happiness means all sorts of love and good feeling; and
that is the best result that can ever come out of science. Do you
know Buckle's "History of Civilization"? I think you would find it a
suggestive book.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 24th Nov. 1857.]
Anniversaries are sad things--to one who has lived long and done
little. Herbert Spencer dined with us the other day--looks well, and
is brimful of clever talk as usual. His volume of "Essays" is to come
out soon. He is just now on a crusade against the notion of "species."
We are reading Harriet Martineau's history with edification, and
otherwise feeding our souls, which flourish very well, notwithstanding
November weather.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1857.]
_Nov. 28._--A glorious day, still autumnal and not wintry. We have had
a delicious walk in the Park, and I think the coloring of the scenery
is more beautiful than ever. Many of the oaks are still thickly
covered with leaves of a rich yellow-brown; the elms, golden
sometimes, still with lingering patches of green. On our way to the
Park the view from Richmond hill had a delicate blue mist over it,
that seemed to hang like a veil before the sober brownish-yellow of
the distant elms. As we came home, the sun was setting on a fog-bank,
and we saw him sink into that purple ocean--the orange and gold
passing into green above the fog-bank, the gold and orange reflected
in the river in more sombre tints. The other day, as we were coming
home through the Park, after having walked under a sombre, heavily
clouded sky, the western sun shone out from under the curtain, and lit
up the trees and grass, thrown into relief on a background of dark
purple cloud. Then, as we advanced towards the Richmond end of the
Park, the level, reddening rays shone on the dry fern and the distant
oaks, and threw a crimson light on them. I have especially enjoyed
this autumn, the delicious greenness of the turf, in contrast with
the red and yellow of the dying leaves.
_Dec. 6_ (_Sunday_).--Finished the "Agamemnon" to-day. In the evenings
of late we have been reading Harriet Martineau's "Sketch of the
British Empire in India," and are now following it up with Macaulay's
articles on Clive and Hastings. We have lately read Harriet
Martineau's Introduction to the "History of the Peace."
_Dec. 8._--I am reading "Die Familie," by Riehl, forming the third
volume of the series, the two first of which, "Land und Volk" and "Die
Bürgerliche Gesellschaft," I reviewed for the _Westminster_.
A letter from Blackwood to-day tells us that Major Blackwood, during
his brother's absence in England, having some reasons, not specified,
for being more hopeful about the "Clerical Scenes," resolved to
publish 1000 instead of 750; and in consequence of this Blackwood
promises to pay me an additional £60 when 750 shall have been sold
off. He reports that an elderly clergyman has written to him to say
that "Janet's Repentance" is exquisite--another vote to register along
with that of Mrs. Nutt's rector, who "cried over the story like a
child."
_Dec. 10._--Major Blackwood called--an unaffected, agreeable man. It
was evident to us, when he had only been in the room a few minutes,
that he knew I was George Eliot.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 11th Dec. 1857.]
Lewes has read to me your last kind letter, and I am not insensible to
the "practical cheerer" it contains. But I rejoice with trembling at
the additional 250, lest you should have to repent of them.
I have certainly had a good deal of encouragement to believe that
there are many minds, both of the more cultured sort and of the
common novel-reading class, likely to be touched by my stories; but
the word "many" is very elastic, and often shrinks frightfully when
measured by a financial standard.
When one remembers how long it was before Charles Lamb's Essays were
known familiarly to any but the elect few, the very strongest
assurance of merit or originality--supposing one so happy as to have
that assurance--could hardly do more than give the hope of _ultimate_
recognition.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Dec. 1857.]
Our affairs are very prosperous just now, making sunshine in a shady,
or, rather, in a foggy place. It is a great happiness to me that Mr.
Lewes gets more and more of the recognition he deserves; pleasant
letters and speeches have been very numerous lately, especially about
his "Sea-side Studies," which have appeared in _Blackwood_, and are
soon to appear--very much improved and enlarged--in a separate volume.
Dear Carlyle writes, _à propos_ of his "Friedrich:" "I have had such a
fourteen months as was never appointed me before in this
world--sorrow, darkness, and disgust my daily companions; and no
outlook visible, except getting a detestable business turned off, or
else being driven mad by it." That is his exaggerated way of speaking;
and writing is always painful to him. Do you know he is sixty-two! I
fear this will be his last book. Tell Mr. Bray I am reading a book of
Riehl's, "The Family," forming the sequel to his other volumes. He
will be pleased to hear that so good a writer agrees with him on
several points about the occupations of women. The book is a good one;
and if I were in the way of writing articles, I should write one on
it. There is so much to read, and the days are so short! I get more
hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger.
Time is like the Sibylline leaves, getting more precious the less
there remains of it. That, I believe, is the correct allusion for a
fine writer to make on the occasion.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1857.]
I give up the motto, because it struck you as having been used before;
and though I copied it into my note-book when I was re-reading
"Amelia" a few months ago, it is one of those obvious quotations which
never _appear_ fresh, though they may actually be made for the first
time.
I shall be curious to know the result of the subscription.
There are a few persons to whom I should like a copy of the volume to
be sent, and I enclose a list of them.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1857.]
_Dec. 17._--Read my new story to G. this evening as far as the end of
the third chapter. He praised it highly. I have finished "Die
Familie," by Riehl--a delightful book. I am in the "Choephoræ" now. In
the evenings we are reading "History of the Thirty Years' Peace" and
Béranger. Thoroughly disappointed in Béranger.
_Dec. 19_ (_Saturday_).--Alone this evening with very thankful, solemn
thoughts--feeling the great and unhoped-for blessings that have been
given me in life. This last year, especially, has been marked by
inward progress and outward advantages. In the spring George's
"History of Philosophy" appeared in the new edition; his "Sea-side
Studies" have been written with much enjoyment, and met with much
admiration, and now they are on the verge of being published with
bright prospects. Blackwood has also accepted his "Physiology of
Common Life;" the "Goethe" has passed into its third German edition;
and, best of all, G.'s head is well. I have written the "Scenes of
Clerical Life"--my first book; and though we are uncertain still
whether it will be a success as a separate publication, I have had
much sympathy from my readers in _Blackwood_, and feel a deep
satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps
remain, like a primrose root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten
human hearts in years to come.
[Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 23d Dec. 1857.]
Buckle's is a book full of suggestive material, though there are some
strangely unphilosophic opinions mixed with its hardy philosophy. For
example, he holds that there is no such thing as _race_ or _hereditary
transmission_ of qualities! (I should tell you, at the same time, that
he is a necessitarian and a physiological-psychologist.) It is only by
such negations as these that he can find his way to the position which
he maintains at great length--that the progress of mankind is
dependent entirely on the progress of knowledge, and that there has
been no intrinsically moral advance. However, he presents that side of
the subject which has, perhaps, been least adequately dwelt on.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1857.]
_Dec. 25_ (_Christmas Day_).--George and I spent this lovely day
together--lovely as a clear spring day. We could see Hampstead from
the Park so distinctly that it seemed to have suddenly come nearer to
us. We ate our turkey together in a happy _solitude à deux_.
_Dec. 31_ (_the last night of 1857_).--The dear old year is gone with
all its _Weben_ and _Streben_. Yet not gone either; for what I have
suffered and enjoyed in it remains to me an everlasting possession
while my soul's life remains. This time last year I was alone, as I am
now, and dear George was at Vernon Hill. I was writing the
introduction to "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." What a world of thoughts
and feelings since then! My life has deepened unspeakably during the
last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual
enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more
solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any
former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened too; the
blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. I have had some
severe suffering this year from anxiety about my sister, and what will
probably be a final separation from her--there has been no other real
trouble. Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think
the long, sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle
age. Our prospects are very bright too. I am writing my new novel. G.
is full of his "Physiology of Common Life." He has just finished
editing Johnston, for which he is to have 100 guineas, and we have
both encouragement to think that our books just coming out, "Sea-side
Studies" and "Scenes of Clerical Life," will be well received. So
good-bye, dear 1857! May I be able to look back on 1858 with an equal
consciousness of advancement in work and in heart.
_SUMMARY._
MARCH, 1855, TO DECEMBER, 1857.
Return to England--Dover--Bayswater--East Sheen--Books
read--Articles written--Letters to Miss Hennell--"Life of
Goethe"--Froude's article on
Spinoza--Article-writing--"Cumming"--8 Park Shot,
Richmond--Letter to Charles Bray--Effect of article on
Cumming--Letter to Miss Hennell--Reading on
Physiology--Article on Heine--Review for _Leader_,
etc.--Books read--Visit to Mrs. Clarke at Attleboro--Sale of
"Life of Goethe"--"Shaving of Shagpat"--Spinoza's "Ethics,"
translation finished--The _Saturday
Review_--Ruskin--Alison--Harriet Martineau--Women's
earnings--Articles and reviews--Wishes not to be known as
translator of the "Ethics"--Article on Young begun--Visit to
Ilfracombe--Description--Zoophyte hunting--Finished articles
on Young and Riehl--Naturalistic experience--Delightful
walks--Rev. Mr. Tugwell--Devonshire lanes and
springs--Tendency to scientific
accuracy--Sunsets--Cocklewomen at Swansea--Letters to Miss
Hennell and Mrs. Peter Taylor--Tenby--Zoology--Thoreau's
"Walden"--Feeling strong in mind and body--Barbara Leigh
Smith comes to Tenby--George Eliot anxious to begin her
fiction-writing--Mr. E. F. S. Pigott--Return to Richmond--Mr.
Lewes takes his boys to Hofwyl--George Eliot writes article
on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"--"How I came to write
fiction"--Correspondence between Mr. Lewes and Mr. John
Blackwood about MS. of "Amos Barton"--"Mr. Gilfil's
Love-Story" begun--Books read--Letter from John Blackwood to
the author of "Amos Barton," sending copy of the January,
1857, number of the Magazine and fifty
guineas--Reply--Blackwood's admiration--Albert Smith's
appreciation--Letters to Blackwood--Name of George Eliot
assumed--Dutch school in art--Artistic bent--Letter to Miss
Hennell--Intolerance--Letter to John Blackwood on Mr. Swayne
comparing writing to Goldsmith's--Letter to Miss Hennell on
essay "Christianity and Infidelity"--Letter to
Blackwood--Caterina and the dagger scene--Trip to Penzance
and the Scilly Isles--Description of St. Mary's--Mr. Moyle,
the surgeon--Social Life--Letter to Mrs. Bray, anxiety about
sister--Letter to Miss Sara Hennell--"Life of Charlotte
Brontë"--Letter to Isaac P. Evans--Mrs. Clarke's
illness--Letter to Blackwood--Conclusions of
stories--Jersey--Description of Gorey--Delightful
walks--Reading Draper's "Physiology"--Miss Catlow and Dr.
Thomson on wild-flowers--"Life of George Stephenson"--Letter
to Miss Hennell--Life in Jersey--Liggins appears on the
scene--"Janet's Repentance"--Series attributed to
Bulwer--Thackeray thinks highly of it--Letter from Herbert
Spencer about "Mr. Gilfil"--Letter from Archer Gurney--Lord
Stanley thinks highly of the "Scenes"--Letter to Blackwood,
with First Part of "Janet's Repentance"--Letter to Mrs.
Bray--Richmond--Expression of face--Letter to Mrs. John
Cash--Happiness in her life and hope in her work--Chilled by
Blackwood's want of enthusiasm about "Janet"--Letter to John
Blackwood on "Janet"--Letter to Miss Sarah Hennell--"Aurora
Leigh"--Return to Richmond--Letter to John Blackwood on
"Janet"--Letters to Miss Hennell--Rosa Bonheur--Thought not
action--Mr. and Mrs. Call--Letter to John Blackwood--Haunted
by new story--Letter to Charles Bray--"The Woman
Question"--Close of "Clerical Scenes" series--"Adam Bede"
begun--Receives £120 for first edition of "Scenes of Clerical
Life"--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Unbelief in people's love--Letter
to John Blackwood--Sheets of "Clerical Scenes"--Letter to
Miss Hennell--Newspaper criticism--Letter to Charles
Bray--"The Philosophy of Necessity"--Sympathy with
individuals--Objection to Theism--Phrenology--Happiness the
best result that can ever come out of science--Letters to
Miss Hennell--Reading Riehl's "The Family"--Hunger for
Knowledge--Buckle's "History of Civilization"--Autumn days at
Richmond--Reading the "Agamemnon"--Harriett Martineau's
"Sketch of the British Empire in India"--Macaulay's essays on
Clive and Hastings--Major Blackwood calls and suspects
identity of George Eliot--Reading the "Choephoræ"--"History
of the Thirty Years' Peace," and Béranger--Thankfulness in
reviewing experience of 1857.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] G. writes that this sonnet is Barnwell's.--[Note written later.]
[50] "Land und Volk."
[51] Mr. Edward Smyth Pigott, who remained to the end of their lives a
very close and much valued friend of Mr. Lewes and George Eliot.
[52] By Thoreau.
[53] About the article on Riehl's book, "The Natural History of German
Life."
[54] "Baillie Prize Essay on Christianity and Infidelity: an
Exposition of the Arguments on both Sides." By Miss Sara Hennell.
[55] "Mill on the Floss," chap. iii. book iv. Bob Jakin.
[56] Mr. W. M. W. Call, author of "Reverberations and other Poems,"
who married Mr. Charles Hennell's widow--formerly Miss Brabant. As
will be seen from the subsequent correspondence, Mr. and Mrs. Call
remained among the Lewes's warm friends to the end, and Mr. Call is
the author of an interesting paper on George Eliot in the _Westminster
Review_ of July, 1881.
[57] The Brays' new house at Coventry.
APPENDIX.
As this volume is going through the press, I have to thank Mrs. John
Cash of Coventry for the following valuable additional information in
regard to the important subject of Miss Evans's change of religious
belief in 1841-42, and for her further general recollections of the
Coventry period of George Eliot's life:
I was sixteen years of age in 1841; and, as I have already stated, my
first remembrance of Miss Evans is of her call on my father and
mother, with their friend and neighbor Mrs. Pears, when in
conversation she gave expression to her great appreciation of the
writings of Isaac Taylor. The controversy raised by the "Tracts for
the Times," which gave occasion for the publication of Mr. Taylor's
"Ancient Christianity," being now remote, I give the following extract
from a footnote in Trench's "Notes on the Parables," to show the
influence such a work as Mr. Taylor's would be likely to exercise on
the mind of one who esteemed its author; and also the feeling it
excited against an eminently religious man, by revelations which he
desired and believed would serve the cause of New Testament
Christianity. The note is on the "Tares." The quotation, containing
the reference, is from Menken:
"Many so-called Church historians (_authors of 'Ancient Christianity'
and the like_), ignorant of the purpose and of the hidden glory of the
Church, have their pleasure in the Tares, and imagine themselves
wonderfully wise and useful when out of Church history (which ought to
be the history of the Light and the Truth) they have made a shameful
history of error and wickedness."
It was upon her first or second interview with my mother that Miss
Evans told her how shocked she had been by the apparent union of
religious feeling with a low sense of morality among the people in the
district she visited, who were mostly Methodists. She gave as an
instance the case of a woman who, when a falsehood was clearly brought
home to her by her visitors, said, "She did not feel that she had
grieved the Spirit much." Now those readers of the letters to Miss
Lewis who are acquainted with modern Evangelicalism, even in its
"after-glow," especially as it was presented to the world by Church of
England teaching and practice, will recognize its characteristics in
the moral scrupulousness, the sense of obligation on the part of
Christians to avoid the very appearance of evil, the practical piety,
which those letters reveal.
Mrs. Evans (Miss Lewis tells me) was a very serious, earnest-minded
woman, anxiously concerned for the moral and religious training of her
children: glad to place them under the care of such persons as the
Misses Franklin, to whose school a mother of a different order
objected, on the ground that "it was where that saint Mary Ann Evans
had been."
It is natural then that, early awed by and attracted towards beliefs
cherished by the best persons she had known, and advocated in the best
books she had read, the mind of Miss Evans should have been stirred by
exhibitions of a _theoretic_ severance of religion from morality,
whether presented among the disciples of "Ancient Christianity" or by
the subjects of its modern revivals: it is probable that she may
thereby have been led, as others have been, to a reconsideration of
the creeds of Christendom, and to further inquiry concerning their
origin.
On the same grounds it is likely that the presentation of social
virtues, apart from evangelical motives, would impress her; and I have
authority for stating that to the inquiry of a friend in after-years,
as to what influence she attributed the first unsettlement of her
orthodox views, she quickly made answer: "Oh, Walter Scott's." Now I
well remember her speaking to me of Robert Hall's confession that he
had been made unhappy for a week by the reading of Miss Edgeworth's
Tales, in which useful, good, and pleasant lives are lived with no
reference to religious hopes and fears; and her drawing my attention
to the real greatness of mind and sincerity of faith which this candid
confession betokened. Such remarks, I think, throw light upon the
_way_ in which her own evangelical belief had been affected by works
in which its dogmas are not enforced as necessary springs of virtuous
action.
I give these scattered reminiscences, in evidence of the
half-unconscious preparation (of which Mr. Cross speaks) for a change
which was, in my judgment, more gradual in its development, as well as
deeper in its character, than might be inferred from the record of its
abrupt following upon Miss Evans's introduction to Mr. Hennell's
"Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity."
The evening's discussion with my father, to which I have referred in
my previous communication in the "Life," is now vividly present to my
mind. There was not only on her part a vehemence of tone, startling
in one so quiet, but a crudeness in her objections, an absence of
proposed solution of difficulties, which partly distressed and partly
pleased me (siding as I did mentally with my father), and which was in
strange contrast to the satisfied calm which marked her subsequent
treatment of religious differences.
Upon my father's using an argument (common enough in those days) drawn
from the present condition of the Jews as a fulfilment of prophecy,
and saying, "If I were tempted to doubt the truth of the Bible, I
should only have to look at a Jew to confirm my faith in it." "Don't
talk to me of the Jews!" Miss Evans retorted, in an irritated tone;
"to think that they were deluded into expectations of a temporal
deliverer, and then punished because they couldn't understand that it
was a spiritual deliverer that was intended!" To something that
followed from her, intimating the claim of creatures upon their
Creator, my father objected, "But we have no claim upon God." "No
claim upon God!" she reiterated indignantly; "we have the strongest
possible claim upon him."
I regret that I can recall nothing more of a conversation carried on
for more than two hours; but I vividly remember how deeply Miss Evans
was moved, and how, as she stood against the mantelpiece during the
last part of the time, her delicate fingers, in which she held a small
piece of muslin on which she was at work, trembled with her agitation.
The impression allowed to remain upon the minds of her friends, for
some time after she had made declaration of her heresies, was of her
being in a troubled, unsettled state. So great were her simplicity
and candor in acknowledging this, and so apparent was her earnest
desire for truth, that no hesitation was felt in asking her to receive
visits from persons of different persuasions, who were judged
competent to bring forward the best arguments in favor of orthodox
doctrines. One of these was a Baptist minister, introduced to her by
Miss Franklin; he was said to be well read in divinity, and I remember
him as an original and interesting preacher. After an interview with
Miss Evans, meeting my father, he said: "That young lady must have had
the devil at her elbow to suggest her doubts, for there was not a book
that I recommended to her in support of Christian evidences that she
had not read."
Mr. Watts, one of the professors at Spring Hill College (Independent),
Birmingham, a colleague of Mr. Henry Rogers, author of the "Eclipse of
Faith," and who had himself studied at the Hallé University, and
enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Tholück, was requested (I think by my
mother) to call on Miss Evans. His acquaintance with German
Rationalism (rare in England in those days) qualified him to enter
into, and it was hoped to meet, difficulties raised by a critical
study of the New Testament. After his first or second interview, my
brother remembers his observing with emphasis, "_She_ has gone into
the question;" and I can recall a reference made by him at a later
date in my hearing to Miss Evans's discontent with her own
solutions--or rather with her own standpoint at that time. This
discontent, he said, "was so far satisfactory." Doubtless it gave him
hope of the reconversion of one who had, as he told my mother,
awakened deep interest in his own mind, as much by the earnestness
which characterized her inquiries as by her exceptional attainments.
From letters that passed between my brother and myself during his
residence in Germany, I give the following extracts referring to this
period.
The first is from one of mine, dated September 2, 1842:
"In my father's absence we (my mother and I) called on Miss Evans. She
now takes up a different position. Her views are not altogether
altered, but she says it would be extreme arrogance in so young a
person to suppose she had obtained _yet_ any just ideas of truth. She
had been reading Dr. Tholück's reply to Strauss's 'Life of Jesus,' but
said Mr. Watts had advised her _not_ to read his 'Guido and Julius.'"
In answer to this my brother says, in a letter dated Hallé, September
26, 1842, "You have given, doubtless, a very accurate account of Miss
Evans's mode of stating her present sentiments. Mr. Watts's reason for
advising that Dr. Tholück's 'Guido and Julius' be not read is,
perhaps, that the reasoning is not satisfactory."
In another letter, addressed to my brother at Hallé, and dated October
28, 1842, I tell him: "Last week mother and I spent an evening with
Miss Evans. She seemed more settled in her views than ever, and rests
her objections to Christianity on this ground, that Calvinism is
Christianity, and, this granted, that it is a religion based on pure
selfishness. She occupied, however, a great part of the time in
pleading for works of imagination, maintaining that they perform an
office for the mind which nothing else can. On the mention of
Shakespeare, she praised him with her characteristic ardor, was
shocked at the idea that mother should disapprove the perusal of his
writings, and quite distressed lest, through her influence, I should
be prevented from reading them. She could be content were she allowed
no other book than Shakespeare; and in educating a child, this would
be the first book she would place in its hands.
"She seems to have read a great deal of Italian literature, and speaks
with rapture of Metastasio's novels. She has lent me 'Le mie Prigioni'
di Silvio Pellico, in his own tongue, as a book to begin with. She
says there is a prevailing but very mistaken idea that Italian is an
easy language, though she is exceedingly delighted with it. If at any
time I wish to begin German, she would very much like to give me some
instruction."
In addition to the above relating to Shakespeare, I recall the protest
that my mother's objection to his plays (my mother _had_ been an
ardent lover of "the play"), on the ground that there were things in
them that offended her, was as reasonable as the objection to walk in
a beautiful garden, "because toads and weeds are to be found in it."
In a letter dated March 6, 1843, I write to my brother: "Your request
that you may be informed as to the precise nature of Miss Evans's
philosophical views I shall find it very difficult to comply with,
inasmuch as on our last interview she did not express herself so fully
on this subject as formerly; indeed, I believe she is not now so
desirous of controversy. She however appeared, to me at least, to have
rather changed her ground on some points. For instance, she said she
considered Jesus Christ as the embodiment of perfect love, and seemed
to be leaning slightly to the doctrines of Carlyle and Emerson when
she remarked that she considered the Bible a revelation in a certain
sense, as she considered herself a revelation of the mind of Deity,
etc. She was very anxious to know if you had heard Schelling."
In a letter addressed to my brother at Spring Hill College, and dated
October 28, 1844, I find this reference to Dr. Harris, who had been
preaching a charity sermon in a chapel at Foleshill:
"Miss Evans has just been reproaching me for not informing her of Dr.
Harris's preaching, which she would have given anything to hear, as
she says his 'Great Teacher' left more delightful impressions on her
mind than anything she ever read, and is, she thinks, the best book
that could be written by a man holding his principles."
In the same letter I mention a second lesson in German given me by
Miss Evans. In one written some time before, I tell my brother of her
kind proposal, but add that my parents object "on account of her
dangerous sentiments." She had, however, since called at our house one
morning to renew it: and I well remember how eagerly I watched my
mother, looking so affectionately at Miss Evans, and saying quietly,
"You know, with your superior intellect, I cannot help fearing you
might influence Mary, though you might not intend to do so. But," she
went on to say, "her father does not agree with me: he does not see
any danger, and thinks we ought not to refuse, as it is so very kind
of you to be willing to take the trouble--and we know it would be a
great advantage to her to learn German; for she will probably have to
earn her living by teaching." Seeing at a glance how matters stood,
Miss Evans turned round quickly to me, and said, "Come on Saturday at
three o'clock, and bring what books you have."
So I went, and began "Don Carlos," continuing to go, with some
intervals occasioned by absence, pretty regularly on Saturday
afternoons, for nearly two years; but it was not until the end of the
second year, when I received Miss Evans's suggestion that the lessons
were no longer necessary, and should be discontinued, that I fully
realized what this companionship had been to me. The loss was like the
loss of sunshine.
No promise had been given that my religious belief should be
undisturbed, nor was any needed. Interest was turned aside from
Calvinism and Arminianism, which at an early age had engaged my
attention, towards manifestations of nobility of character, and
sympathy with human struggles and sufferings under varied conditions.
The character of the "Marquis von Posa" (in "Don Carlos") roused an
enthusiasm for heroism and virtue, which it was delightful to express
to one who so fully shared it. Placing together one day the works of
Schiller, which were in two or three volumes, Miss Evans said, "Oh, if
_I_ had given these to the world, how happy I should be!"
It must have been to confirm myself in my traditional faith by
confession of it, that I once took upon myself to say to her how sure
I was that there could be no true morality without evangelical belief.
"Oh, it is so, is it?" she said, with the kindest smile, and nothing
further passed. From time to time, however, her reverence and
affection for the character of Christ and the Apostle Paul, and her
sympathy with genuine religious feeling, were very clear to me.
Expressing one day her horror of a crowd, she said, "I never would
press through one, unless it were to see a second Jesus." The words
startled me--the conception of Jesus Christ in my mind being so little
associated with a human form; but they impressed me with a certain
reality of feeling which I contrasted, as I did Miss Evans's abiding
interest in great principles, with the somewhat factitious and
occasional as well as fitful affection and concern manifest in many
whom I looked up to as "converted" people.
Once only do I remember such contrast being made by herself. She
attended the service at the opening of a new church at Foleshill, with
her father, and remarked to me the next day that, looking at the gayly
dressed people, she could not help thinking how much easier life would
be to her, and how much better she should stand in the estimation of
her neighbors, if only she could take things as they did, be satisfied
with outside pleasures, and conform to the popular beliefs without any
reflection or examination. Once, too, after being in the company of
educated persons "professing and calling themselves Christians," she
commented to me on the _tone_ of conversation, often frivolous,
sometimes ill-natured, that seemed yet to excite in no one any sense
of impropriety.
It must have been in those early days that she spoke to me of a visit
from one of her uncles in Derbyshire, a Wesleyan, and how much she had
enjoyed talking with him, finding she could enter into his feelings so
much better than she had done in past times, when her views seemed
more in accordance with his own, but were really less so.
Among other books, I remember the "Life of Dr. Arnold" interested her
deeply. Speaking of it to me one morning, she referred to a
conversation she had had with a friend the evening before, and said
they had agreed that it was a great good for such men to remain within
the pale of orthodoxy, that so they might draw from the old doctrines
the best that was to be got from them.
Of criticisms on German books read with Miss Evans, I recall one or
two. In the "Robbers," she criticised the attempt to enhance the
horror of the situation of the abandoned father, by details of
physical wretchedness, as a mistake in Art. "Wallenstein" she ranked
higher from an intellectual point of view than any other work of
Schiller's. The talk of the soldiers in the "Lager" she pointed out to
me as "just what it would be." On my faint response, "I suppose it
is!" she returned, "No, you do not _suppose_--we _know_ these things;"
and then gave me a specimen of what might be a navvy's talk--"The sort
of thing such people say, is, 'I'll break off your arm, and bloody
your face with the stump.'"
Mrs. Bray tells the following incident, as showing her quick
perception of excellence from a new and unknown source. "We were
sitting," Mrs. Bray says, "one summer afternoon on the lawn at
Rosehill, July, 1850, when Marian came running to us from the house
with the _Leader_ newspaper in her hand. 'Here is a new poet come into
the world!' she exclaimed, and sitting down with us she read from the
_Leader_ the poem called 'Hymn,' signed M., and ending with the fine
stanza:
"'When I have passed a nobler life in sorrow;
Have seen rude masses grow to fulgent spheres;
Seen how To-day is father of To-morrow,
And how the Ages justify the Years,
I praise Thee, God.'
"The 'Hymn' is now reprinted in Mr. W. M. W. Call's volume of
collected poems, called 'Golden Histories.'"
Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy" was not so popular as his other works,
but Miss Evans was deeply moved by it. Putting it into my hands one
morning, she said, "There, read it--_you_ will care for it."
The "Life of Jean Paul Richter," published in the Catholic Series (in
which the head of Christ, by De la Roche, so dear to her, figures as a
vignette), was read and talked of with great interest, as was his
"Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," translated by the late Mr. Edward
Noel of Hampstead. Choice little bits of humor from the latter she
greatly enjoyed.
Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," I think Miss
Evans gave to me. I know it interested her, as did Emerson's "Essays."
On his visit to Coventry, we could not, unfortunately, accept Mr.
Bray's kind invitation to meet him at Rosehill; but after he had left,
Miss Evans soon came up kindly to give us her impressions of him while
they were fresh in her memory. She told us he had asked her what had
first awakened her to deep reflection, and when she answered,
"Rousseau's Confessions," he remarked that this was very interesting,
inasmuch as Carlyle had told him that very book had had the same
effect upon his mind. As _I_ heard Emerson's remark after his
interviews with Miss Evans, it was, "That young lady has a calm, clear
spirit." Intercourse, it will be seen, was kept up with my family,
otherwise than through the lessons, by calls, and in little gatherings
of friends in evenings, when we were favored to hear Miss Evans sing.
Her voice was not strong, and I think she preferred playing on the
piano; but her low notes were effective, and there was always an
elevation in the rendering.
As I knew Miss Evans, no one escaped her notice. In her treatment of
servants, for instance, she was most considerate. "They come to me,"
she used to say, "with all their troubles," as indeed did her friends
generally--sometimes, she would confess, to an extent that quite
oppressed her. When any object of charity came under her notice, and
power to help was within her reach, she was very prompt in rendering
it. Our servant's brother or sister, or both of them, died, leaving
children dependent on friends themselves poor. Miss Evans at once
offered to provide clothing and school-fees for one of these, a
chubby-faced little girl four or five years of age. Unexpectedly,
however, an aunt at a distance proposed to adopt the child. I
recollect taking her to say good-bye to her would-be benefactress, and
can see her now, standing still and subdued in her black frock and
cape, with Miss Evans kneeling down by her, and saying, after giving
her some money, "Then I suppose there is nothing else we can do for
her."
My husband's mother, who was a member of the Society of Friends,
established, with the help of her daughters and a few others
interested, an Industrial Home for girls about the age of fourteen. It
was in the year 1843, and was, therefore, one of the first
institutions of the kind in England. The model was taken from
something of the same order attempted by a young girl in France. The
girls were, as far as practicable, to maintain themselves, working
under conditions of comfort and protection more attainable than in
their own homes. The idea was new; the Home could not be started
without funds, and my mother undertook to collect for it in her own
neighborhood. In a letter to me, written at this time, she tells me
she is "not doing much to help dear Mrs. Cash," there being "a
prejudice against the scheme;" but adds, "This morning Miss Evans
called, and brought me two guineas from her father." I tell of this as
one among many indications of Miss Evans's ever-growing zeal to serve
humanity in a broader way, motived, as _she_ felt, by a higher aim
than what she termed "desire to save one's soul by making up coarse
flannel for the poor."
In these broad views--in this desire to bring her less advantaged
neighbors nearer to her own level, to meet them on common ground, to
raise them above the liability to eleemosynary charity--she had Mr.
Bray's full sympathy. To me she dwelt frequently upon his genuine
benevolence, upon his ways of advancing the interests of the working
men, as being, in her judgment, wise and good. She visited
periodically, in turn with Mrs. Bray, myself, and a few others, an
infant school which Mr. Bray had helped to start; and although this
sort of work was so little suited to her, yet so much did she feel the
duty of living for others, especially the less privileged, that one
morning she came to Mrs. Bray, expressing strongly her desire to help
in _any_ work that could be given her. The only thing that could be
thought of was the illustration of some lessons in Natural History, on
sheets of cardboard, needed then, when prints of the kind were not to
be procured for schools. The class of animals to be illustrated by
Mrs. Bray on the sheet taken by Miss Evans was the "Rodentiæ," and at
the top a squirrel was to figure, the which she undertook to draw.
This I have seen, half-finished--a witness to the willing mind; proof
that its proper work lay otherwhere. Lectures at the Mechanics'
Institute were matters of great interest to Miss Evans; and I remember
the pleasure given her by the performance of the music of "Comus,"
with lecture by Professor Taylor, at our old St. Mary's Hall. In that
hall, too, we heard the first lecture on total abstinence that I
remember to have heard in Coventry, though of "Temperance Societies"
we knew something. The lecturer was the Rev. Mr. Spencer, a clergyman
at Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, and uncle of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
Miss Evans was present at the lecture, with Mr. Bray, who told me
afterwards he had some difficulty in restraining her from going up, as
soon as the lecture was over, to take the pledge, he thought, without
due consideration. "I felt," she said, speaking to me afterwards of
the lecturer, "that he had got hold of a power for good that was of
incalculable worth."
I need scarcely say that I received, along with lessons in German,
some "rules and lessons for life" from Miss Evans. One of the first
was an injunction to be accurate, enforced with the warning that the
tendency is to grow less and less so as we get older. The other was
tolerance. How well I can remember the remonstrance, "My dear child,
the great lesson of life is tolerance." In the proverb, "Live and let
live," she saw a principle involved, harder to act upon, she would
say, than the maxims of benevolence--I think, because bringing less
credit with it.
The reading of dramas and romances naturally gives rise to discussion
of their main theme. In treating of love and marriage, Miss Evans's
feeling was so fine as to satisfy a young girl in her teens, with her
impossible ideals. The conception of the union of two persons by so
close a tie as marriage, without a previous union of minds as well as
hearts, was to her dreadful. "How terrible it must be," she once said
to me, "to find one's self tied to a being whose limitations you could
see, and must know were such as to prevent your ever being
understood!" She thought that though in England marriages were not
professedly "arrangés," they were so too often practically: young
people being brought together, and receiving intimations that mutual
interest was desired and expected, were apt to drift into connections
on grounds not strong enough for the wear and tear of life; and this,
too, among the middle as well as in the higher classes. After speaking
of these and other facts, of how things were and would be, in spite of
likelihood to the contrary, she would end by saying, playfully, "Now,
remember I tell you this, and I am sixty!"
She thought the stringency of laws rendering the marriage-tie (at that
date) irrevocable, practically worked injuriously; the effect being
"that many wives took far less pains to please their husbands in
behavior and appearance, because they knew their own position to be
invulnerable." And at a later time she spoke of marriages on the
Continent, where separations did not necessarily involve discredit, as
being very frequently far happier.
One claim, as she regarded it, from equals to each other was this, the
right to hear from the aggrieved, "You have ill-treated me; do you not
see your conduct is not fair, looked at from my side?" Such frankness
would, she said, bring about good understanding better than reticent
endurance. Her own filial piety was sufficiently manifest; but of the
converse obligation, that of the claim of child upon parent, she was
wont to speak thus strongly. "There may be," she would say, "conduct
on the part of a parent which should exonerate his child from further
obligation to him; but there cannot be action conceivable which should
absolve the parent from obligation to serve his child, seeing that for
that child's existence he is himself responsible." I did not at the
time see the connection between this view and the change of a
fundamental nature marked by Miss Evans's earlier contention for our
"claim on God." The bearing of the above on orthodox religion I did
not see. Some time ago, however, I came across this reflection, made
by a clergyman of the Broad Church school--that since the _claims_ of
children had, in the plea for schools, been based on the
responsibility of parents towards them, a higher principle had been
maintained on the platform than was preached from the pulpit, as the
basis of the popular theology.
In my previous communication in the "Life" I have already made mention
of Miss Evans's sympathy with me in my own religious difficulties; and
my obligations to her were deepened by her seconding my resolve to
acknowledge how much of the traditional belief had fallen away from me
and left a simpler faith. In this I found her best help when, as time
passed on, my brother saw he could not conscientiously continue in the
calling he had chosen. As, however, his heresies were not considered
fatal, and he was esteemed by the professors and students of his
college, there was for some time hesitation. In this predicament I
wrote to him, a little favoring compromise. My mother also wrote. I
took the letters to Miss Evans before posting them. She read mine
first, with no remark, and then began my mother's, reading until she
came upon these words--"In the meantime, let me entreat you not to
utter any sentiments, either in the pulpit or in conversation, that
you do not believe to be strictly true;" on which she said, turning to
me, "Look, this is the important point, what your mother says here,"
and I immediately put my own letter into the fire. "What are you
doing?" she quickly said; and when I answered, "You are right--my
mother's letter is to the point, and that only need go," she nodded
assent, and, keeping it, sent it enclosed with a few lines from
herself.
I knew what I had done and so did she: the giving up of the ministry
to a young man without other resources was no light matter; and as I
rose to go she said, "These are the tragedies for which the world
cares so little, but which are so much to me."
More than twenty years elapsed before I had again the privilege of
seeing George Eliot, and that on one occasion only, after her final
settlement in London. It touched me deeply to find how much she had
retained of her kind interest in all that concerned me and mine, and I
remarked on this to Mr. Lewes, who came to the door with my daughter
and myself at parting. "Wonderful sympathy," I said. "Is it not?" said
he; and when I added, inquiringly, "The power lies there?"
"Unquestionably it does," was his answer; "she forgets nothing that
has ever come within the curl of her eyelash; above all, she forgets
no one who has ever spoken to her one kind word."
END OF VOL. I.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious typographical errors were repaired.
Duplicate sidenotes (repeated at the top of continuation pages) were
deleted.
Latin-1 file: _underscores_ enclose italicized content.
P. 99 "[Greek: tho pascha]" and p. 139 "[Greek: nenikekas
Galilaie]"--for the actual Greek script see the html version of this
volume.
End of Project Gutenberg's George Eliot's Life, Vol. I (of 3), by George Eliot