Transcriber's Note:
This is Volume II of a three volume set:
Volume I--Unknown
Volume II--Famous
Volume III--Sunset
A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III.
Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers
other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their
content is placed in block quotes.
Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text.
* * * * *
GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE
VOL. II.--FAMOUS
"OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY"
[Illustration: Portrait of George Eliot. Engraved by G. J. Stodart.]
GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE
_as related in her Letters and Journals_
ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND
J. W. CROSS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME II
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS.
_LIBRARY EDITION._
ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.
ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.
ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated. 12mo,
Cloth, $1.25.
THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage
prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the
price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper
& Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER VIII.
JANUARY, 1858, TO DECEMBER, 1858.
Success of "Scenes of Clerical Life"--"Adam Bede" Page 1
CHAPTER IX.
JANUARY, 1859, TO MARCH, 1860.
"The Mill on the Floss" 58
CHAPTER X.
MARCH TO JUNE, 1860.
First Journey to Italy 120
CHAPTER XI.
JULY, 1860, TO DECEMBER, 1861.
"Silas Marner"--"Romola" begun 185
CHAPTER XII.
JANUARY, 1862, TO DECEMBER, 1865.
"Romola"--"Felix Holt" 238
CHAPTER XIII.
JANUARY, 1866, TO DECEMBER, 1866.
Tour in Holland and on the Rhine 303
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II.
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Engraved by G. J. Stodart _Frontispiece._
THE PRIORY--DRAWING-ROOM _To face p._ 266
FAC-SIMILE OF GEORGE ELIOT'S HAND-WRITING " 280
GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE.
CHAPTER VIII.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Jan. 2._--George has returned this evening from a week's visit to
Vernon Hill. On coming up-stairs he said, "I have some very pretty
news for you--something in my pocket." I was at a loss to conjecture,
and thought confusedly of possible opinions from admiring readers,
when he drew the _Times_ from his pocket--to-day's number, containing
a review of the "Scenes of Clerical Life." He had happened to ask a
gentleman in the railway carriage, coming up to London, to allow him
to look at the _Times_, and felt quite agitated and tremulous when his
eyes alighted on the review. Finding he had time to go into town
before the train started, he bought a copy there. It is a highly
favorable notice, and, as far as it goes, appreciatory.
When G. went into town he called at Nutt's, and Mrs. Nutt said to him,
"I think you don't know our curate. _He_ says the author of 'Clerical
Scenes' is a High Churchman; for though Mr. Tryan is said to be Low
Church, his feelings and _actions_ are those of a High Churchman."
(The curate himself being of course High Church.) There were some
pleasant scraps of admiration also gathered for me at Vernon Hill.
Doyle happening to mention the treatment of children in the stories,
Helps said, "Oh, he is a great writer!"
I wonder how I shall feel about these little details ten years hence,
if I am alive. At present I value them as grounds for hoping that my
writing may succeed, and so give value to my life; as indications that
I can touch the hearts of my fellow-men, and so sprinkle some precious
grain as the result of the long years in which I have been inert and
suffering. But at present fear and trembling still predominate over
hope.
_Jan. 5._--To-day the "Clerical Scenes" came in their two-volume
dress, looking very handsome.
_Jan. 8._--News of the subscription--580, with a probable addition of
25 for Longmans. Mudie has taken 350. When we used to talk of the
probable subscription, G. always said, "I dare say it will be 250!"
(The final number subscribed for was 650.)
I ordered copies to be sent to the following persons: Froude, Dickens,
Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, Faraday, the author of "Companions of my
Solitude," Albert Smith, Mrs. Carlyle.
On the 20th of January I received the following letter from Dickens:
[Sidenote: Letter from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, 17th Jan.
1858.]
"TAVISTOCK HOUSE, LONDON, _Monday, 17th Jan. 1858_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I have been so strongly affected by the two
first tales in the book you have had the kindness to send me,
through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you will excuse my
writing to you to express my admiration of their
extraordinary merit. The exquisite truth and delicacy, both
of the humor and the pathos of these stories, I have never
seen the like of; and they have impressed me in a manner that
I should find it very difficult to describe to you, if I had
the impertinence to try.
"In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the creator
of the Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, and the sad
love-story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) bound to adopt the
name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can
suggest no better one: but I should have been strongly
disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address
the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me
such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the
assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me
even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no
man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so
like a woman since the world began.
"You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to fathom
your secret. I mention the point as one of great interest to
me--not of mere curiosity. If it should ever suit your
convenience and inclination to show me the face of the man,
or woman, who has written so charmingly, it will be a very
memorable occasion to me. If otherwise, I shall always hold
that impalpable personage in loving attachment and respect,
and shall yield myself up to all future utterances from the
same source, with a perfect confidence in their making me
wiser and better.--Your obliged and faithful servant and
admirer,
"CHARLES DICKENS.
"GEORGE ELIOT, ESQ."
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Jan. 21._--To-day came the following letter from Froude:
[Sidenote: Letter from J. A. Froude to George Eliot, 17th Jan. 1858.]
"NORTHDOWN HOUSE, BIDEFORD, _17th Jan. 1858_.
"DEAR SIR,--I do not know when I have experienced a more
pleasant surprise than when, on opening a book parcel two
mornings ago, I found it to contain 'Scenes of Clerical
Life,' 'From the author.' I do not often see _Blackwood_; but
in accidental glances I had made acquaintance with 'Janet's
Repentance,' and had found there something extremely
different from general magazine stories. When I read the
advertisement of the republication, I intended fully, at my
leisure, to look at the companions of the story which had so
much struck me, and now I find myself sought out by the
person whose workmanship I had admired, for the special
present of it.
"You would not, I imagine, care much for flattering speeches,
and to go into detail about the book would carry me farther
than at present there is occasion to go. I can only thank you
most sincerely for the delight which it has given me; and
both I myself, and my wife, trust that the acquaintance which
we seem to have made with you through your writings may
improve into something more tangible. I do not know whether I
am addressing a young man or an old--a clergyman or a layman.
Perhaps, if you answer this note, you may give us some
information about yourself. But at any rate, should business
or pleasure bring you into this part of the world, pray
believe that you will find a warm welcome if you will accept
our hospitality.--Once more, with my best thanks, believe me,
faithfully yours,
J. A. FROUDE."
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 17th Jan. 1858.]
I have long ceased to feel any sympathy with mere antagonism and
destruction; and all crudity of expression marks, I think, a
deficiency in subtlety of thought as well as in breadth of moral and
poetic feeling. Mr. William Smith, the author of "Thorndale," is an
old acquaintance of Mr. Lewes's. I should say an old _friend_, only I
don't like the too ready use of that word. Mr. Lewes admires and
esteems him very highly. He is a very accomplished man--a bachelor,
with a small independent income; used to write very effective articles
on miscellaneous subjects in _Blackwood_. I shall like to know what
you think of "Thorndale." I don't know whether you look out for
Ruskin's books whenever they appear. His little book on the "Political
Economy of Art" contains some magnificent passages, mixed up with
stupendous specimens of arrogant absurdity on some economical points.
But I venerate him as one of the great teachers of the day. The grand
doctrines of truth and sincerity in art, and the nobleness and
solemnity of our human life, which he teaches with the inspiration of
a Hebrew prophet, must be stirring up young minds in a promising way.
The two last volumes of "Modern Painters" contain, I think, some of
the finest writing of the age. He is strongly akin to the sublimest
part of Wordsworth--whom, by-the-bye, we are reading with fresh
admiration for his beauties and tolerance for his faults. Our present
plans are: to remain here till about the end of March, then to go to
Munich, which I long to see. We shall live there several months,
seeing the wonderful galleries in leisure moments. Our living here is
so much more expensive than living abroad that we save more than the
expenses of our journeying; and as our work can be as well done there
as here for some months, we lay in much more capital, in the shape of
knowledge and experience, by going abroad.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Jan. 18._--I have begun the "Eumenides," having finished the
"Choephoræ." We are reading Wordsworth in the evening. At least G. is
reading him to me. I am still reading aloud Miss Martineau's History.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Jan. 1858.]
I am sure you will be interested in Dickens's letter, which I enclose,
begging you to return it as soon as you can, and not to allow any one
besides yourself and Major Blackwood to share in the knowledge of its
contents. There can be no harm, of course, in every one's knowing that
Dickens admires the "Scenes," but I should not like any more specific
allusion made to the words of a private letter. There can hardly be
any climax of approbation for me after this; and I am so deeply moved
by the finely felt and finely expressed sympathy of the letter, that
the iron mask of my _incognito_ seems quite painful in forbidding me
to tell Dickens how thoroughly his generous impulse has been
appreciated. If you should have an opportunity of conveying this
feeling of mine to him in any way, you would oblige me by doing so.
By-the-bye, you probably remember sending me, some months ago, a
letter from the Rev. Archer Gurney--a very warm, simple-spoken
letter--praising me for qualities which I most of all care to be
praised for. I should like to send him a copy of the "Scenes," since I
could make no acknowledgment of his letter in any other way. I don't
know his address, but perhaps Mr. Langford would be good enough to
look it out in the Clergy List.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Jan. 23._--There appeared a well-written and enthusiastic article on
"Clerical Scenes" in the _Statesman_. We hear there was a poor
article in the _Globe_--of feebly written praise--the previous week,
but beyond this we have not yet heard of any notices from the press.
_Jan. 26._--Came a very pleasant letter from Mrs. Carlyle, thanking
the author of "Clerical Scenes" for the present of his book, praising
it very highly, and saying that her husband had promised to read it
when released from his mountain of history.
[Sidenote: Letter from Mrs. Carlyle to George Eliot, 21st Jan. 1858.]
"5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, _21st Jan. 1858_.
"DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for a surprise, a pleasure,
and a--consolation (!) all in one book! And I do thank you
most sincerely. I cannot divine what inspired the good
thought to send _me_ your book; since (if the name on the
title-page be your real name) it could not have been personal
regard; there has never been a George Eliot among my friends
or acquaintance. But neither, I am sure, could _you_ divine
the circumstances under which I should read the book, and the
particular benefit it should confer on me! I read it--at
least the first volume--during one of the most (physically)
wretched nights of my life--sitting up in bed, unable to get
a wink of sleep for fever and sore throat--and it helped me
through that dreary night as well--better than the most
sympathetic helpful friend watching by my bedside could have
done!
"You will believe that the book needed to be something more
than a 'new novel' for me; that I _could_ at my years, and
after so much reading, read it in positive torment, and be
beguiled by it of the torment! that it needed to be the one
sort of book, however named, that still takes hold of me,
and that grows rarer every year--a _human_ book--written out
of the heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an
author--full of tenderness and pathos, without a scrap of
sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of earnestness
without twaddle--a book that makes one _feel friends_ at once
and for always with the man or woman who wrote it!
"In guessing at why you gave me this good gift, I have
thought amongst other things, 'Oh, perhaps it was a delicate
way of presenting the novel to my husband, he being over head
and ears in _history_.' If that was it, I compliment you on
your _tact_! for my husband is much likelier to read the
'Scenes' on _my_ responsibility than on a venture of his
own--though, as a general rule, never opening a novel, he has
engaged to read this one whenever he has some leisure from
his present task.
"I hope to know some day if the person I am addressing bears
any resemblance in external things to the idea I have
conceived of him in my mind--a man of middle age, with a
wife, from whom he has got those beautiful _feminine_ touches
in his book--a good many children, and a dog that he has as
much fondness for as I have for my little Nero! For the
rest--not just a clergyman, but brother or first cousin to a
clergyman! How ridiculous all this _may_ read beside the
reality. Anyhow--I honestly confess I am very curious about
you, and look forward with what Mr. Carlyle would call 'a
good, healthy, genuine desire' to shaking hands with you some
day.--In the meanwhile, I remain, your obliged
JANE W. CARLYLE."
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Jan. 30._--Received a letter from Faraday, thanking me very
gracefully for the present of the "Scenes." Blackwood mentions, in
enclosing this letter, that Simpkin & Marshall have sent for twelve
additional copies--the first sign of a move since the subscription.
The other night we looked into the life of Charlotte Brontë, to see
how long it was before "Jane Eyre" came into demand at the libraries,
and we found it was not until six weeks after publication. It is just
three weeks now since I heard news of the subscription for my book.
[Sidenote: Letter from M. Faraday to George Eliot, 28th Jan. 1858.]
"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _28th Jan. 1858_.
"SIR,--I cannot resist the pleasure of thanking you for what
I esteem a great kindness: the present of your thoughts
embodied in the two volumes you have sent me. They have been,
and will be again, a very pleasant relief from mental
occupation among my own pursuits. Such rest I find at times
not merely agreeable, but essential.--Again thanking you, I
beg to remain, your very obliged servant,
M. FARADAY.
"GEORGE ELIOT, Esq., &c., &c."
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Feb. 3._--Gave up Miss Martineau's History last night, after reading
some hundred pages in the second volume. She has a sentimental,
rhetorical style in this history which is fatiguing and not
instructive. But her history of the Reform movement is very
interesting.
_Feb. 4._--Yesterday brought the discouraging news, that though the
book is much talked of, it moves very slowly. Finished the
"Eumenides." Bessie Parkes has written asking me to contribute to the
_Englishwoman's Journal_--a new monthly which, she says, "We are
beginning with £1000, and great social interest."
_Feb. 16._--To-day G. went into the City and saw Langford, for the
sake of getting the latest news about our two books--his "Sea-side
Studies" having been well launched about a fortnight or ten days ago,
with a subscription of 800. He brought home good news. The "Clerical
Scenes" are moving off at a moderate but steady pace. Langford
remarked, that while the press had been uniformly favorable, not one
_critical_ notice had appeared. G. went to Parker's in the evening,
and gathered a little gossip on the subject. Savage, author of the
"Falcon Family," and now editor of the _Examiner_, said he was reading
the "Scenes"--had read some of them already in _Blackwood_--but was
now reading the volume. "G. Eliot was a writer of great merit." A
barrister named Smythe said he had seen "the Bishop" reading them the
other day. As a set-off against this, Mrs. Schlesinger "Couldn't bear
the book." She is a regular novel reader; but hers is the first
unfavorable opinion we have had.
_Feb. 26._--We went into town for the sake of seeing Mr. and Mrs.
Call, and having our photographs taken by Mayall.
_Feb. 28._--Mr. John Blackwood called on us, having come to London for
a few days only. He talked a good deal about the "Clerical Scenes" and
George Eliot, and at last asked, "Well, am I to see George Eliot this
time?" G. said, "Do you wish to see him?" "As he likes--I wish it to
be quite spontaneous." I left the room, and G. following me a moment,
I told him he might reveal me. Blackwood was kind, came back when he
found he was too late for the train, and said he would come to
Richmond again. He came on the following Friday and chatted very
pleasantly--told us that Thackeray spoke highly of the "Scenes," and
said _they were not written by a woman_. Mrs. Blackwood is _sure_ they
are not written by a woman. Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist, too, is
confident on the same side. I gave Blackwood the MS. of my new novel,
to the end of the second scene in the wood. He opened it, read the
first page, and smiling, said, "This will do." We walked with him to
Kew, and had a good deal of talk. Found, among other things, that he
had lived two years in Italy when he was a youth, and that he admires
Miss Austen.
Since I wrote these last notes several encouraging fragments of news
about the "Scenes" have come to my ears--especially that Mrs. Owen
Jones and her husband--two very different people--are equally
enthusiastic about the book. But both have detected the woman.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d March, 1858.]
Perhaps we may go to Dresden, perhaps not: we leave room for the
_imprévu_, which Louis Blanc found so sadly wanting in Mr. Morgan's
millennial village. You are among the exceptional people who say
pleasant things to their friends, and don't feel a too exclusive
satisfaction in their misfortunes. We like to hear of your interest in
Mr. Lewes's books--at least, _I_ am very voracious of such details. I
keep the pretty letters that are written to him; and we have had some
really important ones from the scientific big-wigs about the "Sea-side
Studies." The reception of the book in that quarter has been quite
beyond our expectations. Eight hundred copies were sold at once. There
is a great deal of close hard work in the book, and every one who
knows what scientific work is necessarily perceives this; happily
many have been generous enough to express their recognition in a
hearty way.
I enter so deeply into everything you say about your mother. To me
that old, old popular truism, "We can never have but one mother," has
worlds of meaning in it, and I think with more sympathy of the
satisfaction you feel in at last being allowed to wait on her than I
should of anything else you could tell me. I wish we saw more of that
sweet human piety that feels tenderly and reverently towards the aged.
[_Apropos_ of some incapable woman's writing she adds.] There is
something more piteous almost than soapless poverty in this
application of feminine incapacity to literature. We spent a very
pleasant couple of hours with Mr. and Mrs. Call last Friday. It was
worth a journey on a cold dusty day to see two faces beaming kindness
and happiness.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th March, 1858.]
I enclose a letter which will interest you. It is affecting to see how
difficult a matter it often is for the men who would most profit by a
book to purchase it, or even get a reading of it, while stupid Jopling
of Reading or elsewhere thinks nothing of giving a guinea for a work
which he will simply put on his shelves.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, March, 1858.]
When do you bring out your new poem? I presume you are already in the
sixth canto. It is true you never told me you intended to write a
poem, nor have I heard any one say so who was likely to know.
Nevertheless I have quite as active an imagination as you, and I don't
see why I shouldn't suppose you are writing a poem as well as you
suppose that I am writing a novel. Seriously, I wish you would not set
rumors afloat about me. They are injurious. Several people, who seem
to derive their notions from Ivy Cottage,[1] have spoken to me of a
supposed novel I was going to bring out. Such things are damaging to
me.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 31st March, 1858.]
Thanks for your disclaimer. It shows me that you take a right view of
the subject. There is no undertaking more fruitful of absurd mistakes
than that of "guessing" at authorship; and as I have never
communicated to any one so much as an _intention_ of a literary kind,
there can be none but imaginary data for such guesses. If I withhold
anything from my friends which it would gratify them to know, you will
believe, I hope, that I have good reasons for doing so, and I am sure
those friends will understand me when I ask them to further my
object--which is not a whim but a question of solid interest--by
complete silence. I can't afford to indulge either in vanity or
sentimentality about my work. I have only a trembling anxiety to do
what is in itself worth doing, and by that honest means to win very
necessary profit of a temporal kind. "There is nothing hidden that
shall not be revealed" in due time. But till that time comes--till I
tell you myself, "This is the work of my hand and brain"--don't
believe anything on the subject. There is no one who is in the least
likely to know what I can, could, should, or would write.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_April 1, 1858._--Received a letter from Blackwood containing warm
praise of "Adam Bede," but wanting to know the rest of the story in
outline before deciding whether it should go in the Magazine. I wrote
in reply refusing to tell him the story.
On Wednesday evening, April 7th, we set off on our journey to Munich,
and now we are comfortably settled in our lodgings, where we hope to
remain three months at least. I sit down in my first leisure moments
to write a few recollections of our journey, or rather of our
twenty-four hours' stay at Nürnberg; for the rest of our journey was
mere endurance of railway and steamboat in cold and sombre weather,
often rainy. I ought to except our way from Frankfort to Nürnberg,
which lay for some distance--until we came to Bamberg--through a
beautifully varied country. Our view both of Würzburg and Bamberg, as
we hastily snatched it from our railway carriage, was very
striking--great old buildings, crowning heights that rise up boldly
from the plain in which stand the main part of the towns. From Bamberg
to Nürnberg the way lay through a wide rich plain sprinkled with
towns. We had left all the hills behind us. At Bamberg we were joined
in our carriage by a pleasant-looking elderly couple, who spoke to
each other and looked so affectionately that we said directly, "Shall
we be so when we are old?" It was very pretty to see them hold each
other's gloved hands for a minute like lovers. As soon as we had
settled ourselves in our inn at Nürnberg--the Baierische Hof--we went
out to get a general view of the town. Happily it was not raining,
though there was no sun to light up the roof and windows.
[Sidenote: Journal, April, 1858.]
How often I had thought I should like to see Nürnberg, and had
pictured to myself narrow streets with dark quaint gables! The reality
was not at all like my picture, but it was ten times better. No sombre
coloring, except the old churches: all was bright and varied, each
_façade_ having a different color--delicate green, or buff, or pink,
or lilac--every now and then set off by the neighborhood of a rich
reddish brown. And the roofs always gave warmth of color with their
bright red or rich purple tiles. Every house differed from its
neighbor, and had a physiognomy of its own, though a beautiful family
likeness ran through them all, as if the burghers of that old city
were of one heart and one soul, loving the same delightful outlines,
and cherishing the same daily habits of simple ease and enjoyment in
their balcony-windows when the day's work was done.
The balcony window is the secondary charm of the Nürnberg houses; it
would be the principal charm of any houses that had not the Nürnberg
roofs and gables. It is usually in the centre of the building, on the
first floor, and is ornamented with carved stone or wood, which
supports it after the fashion of a bracket. In several of these
windows we saw pretty family groups--young fair heads of girls or of
little children, with now and then an older head surmounting them. One
can fancy that these windows are the pet places for family joys--that
papa seats himself there when he comes home from the warehouse, and
the little ones cluster round him in no time. But the glory of the
Nürnberg houses is the roofs, which are no blank surface of mere
tiling, but are alive with lights and shadows, cast by varied and
beautiful lines of windows and pinnacles and arched openings. The
plainest roof in Nürnberg has its little windows lifting themselves up
like eyelids, and almost everywhere one sees the pretty hexagonal
tiles. But the better houses have a central, open sort of pavilion in
the roof, with a pinnacle surmounted by a weathercock. This pavilion
has usually a beautifully carved arched opening in front, set off by
the dark background which is left by the absence of glass. One
fancies the old Nürnbergers must have gone up to these pavilions to
smoke in the summer and autumn days. There is usually a brood of small
windows round this central ornament, often elegantly arched and
carved. A wonderful sight it makes to see a series of such roofs
surmounting the tall, delicate-colored houses. They are always
high-pitched, of course, and the color of the tiles was usually of a
bright red. I think one of the most charming vistas we saw was the
Adler-Gasse, on the St. Lorenz side of the town. Sometimes, instead of
the high-pitched roof, with its pavilion and windows, there is a
richly ornamented gable fronting the street; and still more frequently
we get the gables at right angles with the street at a break in the
line of houses.
Coming back from the Burg we met a detachment of soldiers, with their
band playing, followed by a stream of listening people; and then we
reached the market-place, just at the point where stands "The
Beautiful Fountain"--an exquisite bit of florid Gothic which has been
restored in perfect conformity with the original. Right before us
stood the Frauen-Kirche, with its fine and unusual _façade_, the chief
beauty being a central chapel used as the choir, and added by Adam
Krafft. It is something of the shape of a mitre, and forms a beautiful
gradation of ascent towards the summit of _façade_. We heard the organ
and were tempted to enter, for this is the one Catholic Church in
Nürnberg. The delicious sound of the organ and voices drew us farther
and farther in among the standing people, and we stayed there I don't
know how long, till the music ceased. How the music warmed one's
heart! I loved the good people about me, even to the soldier who stood
with his back to us, giving us a full view of his close-cropped head,
with its pale yellowish hair standing up in bristles on the crown, as
if his hat had acted like a forcing-pot. Then there was a little baby
in a close-fitting cap on its little round head, looking round with
bright black eyes as it sucked its bit of bread. Such a funny little
complete face--rich brown complexion and miniature Roman nose. And
then its mother lifted it up that it might see the rose-decked altar,
where the priests were standing. How music, that stirs all one's
devout emotions, blends everything into harmony--makes one feel part
of one whole which one loves all alike, losing the sense of a separate
self. Nothing could be more wretched as art than the painted St.
Veronica opposite me, holding out the sad face on her miraculous
handkerchief. Yet it touched me deeply; and the thought of the Man of
Sorrows seemed a very close thing--not a faint hearsay.
We saw Albert Dürer's statue by Rauch, and Albert Dürer's house--a
striking bit of old building, rich dark-brown, with a truncated gable
and two wooden galleries running along the gable end. My best wishes
and thanks to the artists who keep it in repair and use it for their
meetings. The vistas from the bridges across the muddy Pegnitz, which
runs through the town, are all quaint and picturesque; and it was here
that we saw some of the _shabbiest_-looking houses--almost the only
houses that carried any suggestion of poverty, and even here it was
doubtful. The town has an air of cleanliness and well-being, and one
longs to call one of those balconied apartments one's own home, with
their flower-pots, clean glass, clean curtains, and transparencies
turning their white backs to the street. It is pleasant to think there
is such a place in the world where many people pass peaceful lives.
On arriving at Munich, after much rambling, we found an advertisement
of "Zwei elegant möblirte Zimmer," No. 15 Luitpold Strasse; and to our
immense satisfaction found something that looked like cleanliness and
comfort. The bargain was soon made--twenty florins per month. So here
we came last Tuesday, the 13th April. We have been taking sips of the
Glyptothek and the two Pinacotheks in the morning, not having settled
to work yet. Last night we went to the opera--Fra Diavolo--at the
Hof-Theatre. The theatre ugly, the singing bad. Still, the orchestra
was good, and the charming music made itself felt in spite of German
throats. On Sunday, the 11th, we went to the Pinacothek, straight into
the glorious Rubens Saal. Delighted afresh in the picture of "Samson
and Delilah," both for the painting and character of the figures.
Delilah, a magnificent blonde, seated in a chair, with a transparent
white garment slightly covering her body, and a rich red piece of
drapery round her legs, leans forward, with one hand resting on her
thigh, the other, holding the cunning shears, resting on the chair--a
posture which shows to perfection the full, round, living arms. She
turns her head aside to look with sly triumph at Samson--a tawny
giant, his legs caught in the red drapery, shorn of his long locks,
furious with the consciousness that the Philistines are upon him, and
that this time he cannot shake them off. Above the group of malicious
faces and grappling arms a hand holds a flaming torch. Behind Delilah,
and grasping her arm, leans forward an old woman, with hard features
full of exultation.
This picture, comparatively small in size, hangs beside the "Last
Judgment," and in the corresponding space, on the other side of the
same picture, hangs the sublime "Crucifixion." Jesus alone, hanging
dead on the Cross, darkness over the whole earth. One can desire
nothing in this picture--the grand, sweet calm of the dead face, calm
and satisfied amidst all the traces of anguish, the real, livid flesh,
the thorough mastery with which the whole form is rendered, and the
isolation of the supreme sufferer, make a picture that haunts one like
a remembrance of a friend's death-bed.
_April 12 (Monday)._--After reading Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich
and Overbeck on Greek art, we turned out into the delicious sunshine
to walk in the Theresien Wiese, and have our first look at the
colossal "Bavaria," the greatest work of Schwanthaler. Delightful it
was to get away from the houses into this breezy meadow, where we
heard the larks singing above us. The sun was still too high in the
west for us to look with comfort at the statue, except right in front
of it, where it eclipsed the sun; and this front view is the only
satisfactory one. The outline made by the head and arm on a side view
is almost painfully ugly. But in front, looking up to the beautiful,
calm face, the impression it produces is sublime. I have never seen
anything, even in ancient sculpture, of a more awful beauty than this
dark, colossal head, looking out from a background of pure, pale-blue
sky. We mounted the platform to have a view of her back, and then
walking forward, looked to our right hand and saw the snow-covered
Alps! Sight more to me than all the art in Munich, though I love the
_art_ nevertheless. The great, wide-stretching earth and the
all-embracing sky--the birthright of us all--are what I care most to
look at. And I feel intensely the new beauty of the sky here. The blue
is so exquisitely clear, and the wide streets give one such a broad
canopy of sky. I felt more inspirited by our walk to the Theresien
Platz than by any pleasure we have had in Munich.
_April 16._--On Wednesday we walked to the Theresien Wiese to look at
the "Bavaria" by sunset, but a shower came on and drove us to take
refuge in a pretty house built near the Ruhmeshalle, whereby we were
gainers, for we saw a charming family group: a mother with her three
children--the eldest a boy with his book, the second a three-year-old
maiden, the third a sweet baby-girl of a year and a half; two dogs,
one a mixture of the setter and pointer, the other a turn-spit; and a
relation or servant ironing. The baby cried at the sight of G. in
beard and spectacles, but kept her eyes turning towards him from her
mother's lap, every now and then seeming to have overcome her fears,
and then bursting out crying anew. At last she got down and lifted the
table-cloth to peep at his legs, as if to see the monster's nether
parts.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 17th April, 1858.]
We have been just to take a sip at the two Pinacotheks and at the
Glyptothek. At present the Rubens Saal is what I most long to return
to. Rubens gives me more pleasure than any other painter, whether that
is right or wrong. To be sure, I have not seen so many pictures, and
pictures of so high a rank, by any other great master. I feel sure
that when I have seen as much of Raphael I shall like him better; but
at present Rubens, more than any one else, makes me feel that painting
is a great art, and that he was a great artist. His are such real,
breathing men and women, moved by passions, not mincing and
grimacing, and posing in mere aping of passion! What a grand,
glowing, forceful thing life looks in his pictures--the men such
grand-bearded, grappling beings, fit to do the work of the world; the
women such real mothers. We stayed at Nürnberg only twenty-four hours,
and I felt sad to leave it so soon. A pity the place became
Protestant, so that there is only one Catholic church where one can go
in and out as one would. We turned into the famous St. Sebald's for a
minute, where a Protestant clergyman was reading in a cold, formal way
under the grand Gothic arches. Then we went to the Catholic church,
the Frauen-Kirche, where the organ and voices were giving forth a
glorious mass; and we stood with a feeling of brotherhood among the
standing congregation till the last note of the organ had died out.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_April 23._--Not being well enough to write, we determined to spend
our morning at the Glyptothek and Pinacothek. A glorious morning--all
sunshine and blue sky. We went to the Glyptothek first, and delighted
ourselves anew with the "Sleeping Faun," the "Satyr and Bacchus," and
the "Laughing Faun" (Fauno colla Macchia). Looked at the two young
satyrs reposing with the pipe in their hands--one of them charming in
the boyish, good-humored beauty of the face, but both wanting finish
in the limbs, which look almost as if they could be produced by a
turning-machine. But the conception of this often-repeated figure is
charming: it would make a garden seem more peaceful in the sunshine.
Looked at the old Silenus too, which is excellent. I delight in these
figures, full of droll animation, flinging some nature, in its broad
freedom, in the eyes of small-mouthed, mincing narrowness.
We went into the modern Saal also, glancing on our way at the
Cornelius frescoes, which seem to me stiff and hideous. An Adonis, by
Thorwaldsen, is very beautiful.
Then to the Pinacothek, where we looked at Albert Dürer's portrait
again, and many other pictures, among which I admired a group by
Jordaens: "A satyr eating, while a peasant shows him that he can blow
hot and cold at the same time;" the old grandmother nursing the child,
the father with the key in his hand, with which he has been amusing
baby, looking curiously at the satyr, the handsome wife, still more
eager in her curiosity, the quiet cow, the little boy, the dog and
cat--all are charmingly conceived.
_April 24._--As we were reading this afternoon Herr Oldenbourg came
in, invited us to go to his house on Tuesday, and chatted pleasantly
for an hour. He talked of Kaulbach, whom he has known very intimately,
being the publisher of the "Reineke Fuchs." The picture of the "Hunnen
Schlacht" was the first of Kaulbach's on a great scale. It created a
sensation, and the critics began to call it a "Weltgeschichtliches
Bild." Since then Kaulbach has been seduced into the complex,
wearisome, symbolical style, which makes the frescoes at Berlin
enormous puzzles.
When we had just returned from our drive in the Englische Garten,
Bodenstedt pleasantly surprised us by presenting himself. He is a
charming man, and promises to be a delightful acquaintance for us in
this strange town. He chatted pleasantly with us for half an hour,
telling us that he is writing a work, in five volumes, on the
"Contemporaries of Shakspeare," and indicating the nature of his
treatment of the Shakspearian drama--which is historical and
analytical. Presently he proposed that we should adjourn to his house
and have tea with him; and so we turned out all together in the bright
moonlight, and enjoyed his pleasant chat until ten o'clock. His wife
was not at home, but we were admitted to see the three sleeping
children--one a baby about a year and a half old, a lovely waxen
thing. He gave the same account of Kaulbach as we had heard from
Oldenbourg; spoke of Genelli as superior in genius, though he has not
the fortune to be recognized; recited some of Hermann Lingg's poetry,
and spoke enthusiastically of its merits. There was not a word of
detraction about any one--nothing to jar on one's impression of him as
a refined, noble-hearted man.
_April 27._--This has been a red-letter day. In the morning Professor
Wagner took us over his "Petrifacten Sammlung," giving us interesting
explanations; and before we left him we were joined by Professor
Martius, an animated, clever man, who talked admirably, and invited us
to his house. Then we went to Kaulbach's studio, talked with him, and
saw with especial interest the picture he is preparing as a present to
the New Museum. In the evening, after walking in the Theresien Wiese,
we went to Herr Oldenbourg's, and met Liebig the chemist, Geibel and
Heyse the poets, and Carrière, the author of a work on the
Reformation. Liebig is charming, with well-cut features, a low, quiet
voice, and gentle manners. It was touching to see his hands, the nails
black from the roots, the skin all grimed.
Heyse is like a painter's poet, ideally beautiful; rather brilliant in
his talk, and altogether pleasing. Geibel is a man of rather coarse
texture, with a voice like a kettledrum, and a steady determination to
deliver his opinions on every subject that turned up. But there was a
good deal of ability in his remarks.
_April 30._--After calling on Frau Oldenbourg, and then at Professor
Bodenstedt's, where we played with his charming children for ten
minutes, we went to the theatre to hear Prince Radziwill's music to
the "Faust." I admired especially the earlier part, the Easter morning
song of the spirits, the Beggar's song, and other things, until after
the scene in Auerbach's cellar, which is set with much humor and
fancy. But the scene between Faust and Marguerite is bad--"Meine Ruh
ist hin" quite pitiable, and the "König im Thule" not good. Gretchen's
second song, in which she implores help of the Schmerzensreiche,
touched me a good deal.
_May 1._--In the afternoon Bodenstedt called, and we agreed to spend
the evening at his house--a delightful evening. Professor Löher,
author of "Die Deutschen in America," and another much younger
_Gelehrter_, whose name I did not seize, were there.
_May 2._--Still rainy and cold. We went to the Pinacothek, and looked
at the old pictures in the first and second Saal. There are some very
bad and some fine ones by Albert Dürer: of the latter, a full length
figure of the Apostle Paul, with the head of Mark beside him, in a
listening attitude, is the one that most remains with me. There is a
very striking "Adoration of the Magi," by Johannes van Eyck, with much
merit in the coloring, perspective, and figures. Also, "Christ
carrying his Cross," by Albert Dürer, is striking. "A woman raised
from the dead by the imposition of the Cross" is a very elaborate
composition, by Böhms, in which the faces are of first-rate
excellence.
In the evening we went to the opera and saw the "Nord Stern."
_May 10._--Since Wednesday I have had a wretched cold and cough, and
been otherwise ill, but I have had several pleasures nevertheless. On
Friday, Bodenstedt called with Baron Schack to take us to Genelli's,
the artist of whose powers Bodenstedt had spoken to us with
enthusiastic admiration. The result to us was nothing but
disappointment; the sketches he showed us seemed to us quite destitute
of any striking merit. On Sunday we dined with Liebig, and spent the
evening at Bodenstedt's, where we met Professor Bluntschli, the
jurist, a very intelligent and agreeable man, and Melchior Meyr, a
maker of novels and tragedies, otherwise an ineffectual personage.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th May, 1858.]
Our life here is very agreeable--full of pleasant novelty, although we
take things quietly and observe our working hours just as if we were
at Richmond. People are so kind to us that we feel already quite at
home, sip _baierisch Bier_ with great tolerance, and talk bad German
with more and more _aplomb_. The place, you know, swarms with
professors of all sorts--all _gründlich_, of course, and one or two of
them great. There is no one we are more charmed with than Liebig. Mr.
Lewes had no letter to him--we merely met him at an evening party; yet
he has been particularly kind to us, and seems to have taken a
benevolent liking to me. We dined with him and his family yesterday,
and saw how men of European celebrity may put up with greasy cooking
in private life. He lives in very good German style, however; has a
handsome suite of apartments, and makes a greater figure than most of
the professors. His manners are charming--easy, graceful, benignant,
and all the more conspicuous because he is so quiet and low spoken
among the loud talkers here. He looks best in his laboratory, with his
velvet cap on, holding little phials in his hand, and talking of
Kreatine and Kreatinine in the same easy way that well-bred ladies
talk scandal. He is one of the professors who has been called here by
the present king--Max--who seems to be a really sensible man among
kings; gets up at five o'clock in the morning to study, and every
Saturday evening has a gathering of the first men in science and
literature, that he may benefit by their opinions on important
subjects. At this _Tafel-rund_ every man is required to say honestly
what he thinks; every one may contradict every one else; and if the
king suspects any one of a polite insincerity, the too polished man is
invited no more. Liebig, the three poets--Geibel, Heyse, and
Bodenstedt--and Professor Löher, a writer of considerable mark, are
always at the _Tafel-rund_ as an understood part of their functions;
the rest are invited according to the king's direction. Bodenstedt is
one of our best friends here--enormously instructed, after the fashion
of Germans, but not at all stupid with it.
We were at the Siebolds' last night to meet a party of celebrities,
and, what was better, to see the prettiest little picture of married
life--the great comparative anatomist (Siebold) seated at the piano in
his spectacles playing the difficult accompaniments to Schubert's
songs, while his little round-faced wife sang them with much taste and
feeling. They are not young. Siebold is gray, and probably more than
fifty; his wife perhaps nearly forty; and it is all the prettier to
see their admiration of each other. She said to Mr. Lewes, when he
was speaking of her husband, "Ja, er ist ein netter Mann, nicht
wahr?"[2]
We take the art in very small draughts at present--the German hours
being difficult to adjust to our occupations. We are obliged to dine
at _one!_ and of course when we are well enough must work till then.
Two hours afterwards all the great public exhibitions are closed,
except the churches. I _cannot_ admire much of the modern German art.
It is for the most part elaborate lifelessness. Kaulbach's great
compositions are huge charades; and I have seen nothing of his equal
to his own "Reineke Fuchs." It is an unspeakable relief, after staring
at one of his pictures--the "Destruction of Jerusalem," for example,
which is a regular child's puzzle of symbolism--to sweep it all out of
one's mind--which is very easily done, for nothing grasps you in
it--and call up in your imagination a little Gerard Dow that you have
seen hanging in a corner of one of the cabinets. We have been to his
_atelier_, and he has given us a proof of his "Irrenhaus,"[3] a
strange sketch, which he made years ago--very terrible and powerful.
He is certainly a man of great faculty, but is, I imagine, carried out
of his true path by the ambition to produce "Weltgeschichtliche
Bilder," which the German critics may go into raptures about. His
"Battle of the Huns," which is the most impressive of all his great
pictures, was the first of the series. He painted it simply under the
inspiration of the grand myth about the spirits of the dead warriors
rising and carrying on the battle in the air. Straightway the German
critics began to smoke furiously that vile tobacco which they call
_æsthetik_, declared it a "Weltgeschichtliches Bild," and ever since
Kaulbach has been concocting these pictures in which, instead of
taking a single moment of reality and trusting to the infinite
symbolism that belongs to all nature, he attempts to give you at one
view a succession of events--each represented by some group which may
mean "Whichever you please, my little dear."
I must tell you something else which interested me greatly, as the
first example of the kind that has come under my observation. Among
the awful mysterious names, hitherto known only as marginal references
whom we have learned to clothe with ordinary flesh and blood, is
Professor Martius (Spix and Martius), now an old man, and rich after
the manner of being rich in Germany. He has a very sweet wife--one of
those women who remain pretty and graceful in old age--and a family of
three daughters and one son, all more than grown up. I learned that
she is Catholic, that her daughters are Catholic, and her husband and
son Protestant--the children having been so brought up according to
the German law in cases of mixed marriage. I can't tell you how
interesting it was to me to hear her tell of her experience in
bringing up her son conscientiously as a Protestant, and then to hear
her and her daughters speak of the exemplary priests who had shown
them such tender fatherly care when they were in trouble. They are the
most harmonious, affectionate family we have seen; and one delights in
such a triumph of human goodness over the formal logic of theorists.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_May 13._--Geibel came and brought me the two volumes of his poems,
and stayed chatting for an hour. We spent the evening quietly at
home.
_May 14._--After writing, we went for an hour to the Pinacothek, and
looked at some of the Flemish pictures. In the afternoon we called at
Liebig's, and he went a long walk with us--the long chain of snowy
mountains in the hazy distance. After supper I read Geibel's "Junius
Lieder."
_May 15._--Read the 18th chapter of "Adam Bede" to G. He was much
pleased with it. Then we walked in the Englische Garten, and heard the
band, and saw the Germans drinking their beer. The park was lovely.
_May 16._--We were to have gone to Grosshesselohe with the Siebolds,
and went to Frühstück with them at 12, as a preliminary. Bodenstedt
was there to accompany us. But heavy rain came on, and we spent the
time till 5 o'clock in talking, hearing music, and listening to
Bodenstedt's "Epic on the destruction of Novgorod." About seven,
Liebig came to us and asked us to spend the evening at his house. We
went and found Voelderndorff, Bischoff and his wife, and Carrière and
Frau.
_May 20._--As I had a feeble head this morning, we gave up the time to
seeing pictures, and went to the _Neue Pinacothek_. A "Lady with
Fruit, followed by three Children," pleased us more than ever. It is
by Wichmann. The two interiors of Westminster Abbey by Ainmueller
admirable. Unable to admire Rothmann's Greek Landscapes, which have a
room to themselves. Ditto Kaulbach's "Zerstörung von Jerusalem."
We went for the first time to see the collection of porcelain
paintings, and had really a rich treat. Many of them are admirable
copies of great pictures. The sweet "Madonna and Child," in Raphael's
early manner; a "Holy Family," also in the early manner, with a
Madonna the exact type of the St. Catherine; and a "Holy Family" in
the later manner, something like the Madonna Delia Sedia, are all
admirably copied. So are two of Andrea del Sarto's--full of tenderness
and calm piety.
_May 23._--Through the cold wind and white dust we went to the
Jesuits' Church to hear the music. It is a fine church in the
Renaissance style, the vista terminating with the great altar very
fine, with all the crowd of human beings covering the floor. Numbers
of men!
In the evening we went to Bodenstedt's, and saw his wife for the first
time--a delicate creature who sang us some charming Bavarian
_Volkslieder_. On Monday we spent the evening at Löher's--Baumgarten,
_ein junger Historiker_, Oldenbourg, and the Bodenstedts meeting us.
Delicious _Mai-trank_, made by putting the fresh _Waldmeister_--a
cruciferous plant with a small white flower, something like Lady's
Bedstraw--into mild wine, together with sugar, and occasionally other
things.
_May 26._--This evening I have read aloud "Adam Bede," chapter xx. We
have begun Ludwig's "Zwischen Himmel und Erde."
_May 27._--We called on the Siebolds to-day, then walked in the
Theresien Wiese, and saw the mountains gloriously. Spent the evening
at Prof. Martius's, where Frau Erdl played Beethoven's Andante and the
Moonlight Sonata admirably.
_May 28._--We heard from Blackwood this morning. Good news in general,
but the sale of our books not progressing at present.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th May, 1858.]
It is invariably the case that when people discover certain points of
coincidence in a fiction with facts that happen to have come to their
knowledge, they believe themselves able to furnish a key to the whole.
That is amusing enough to the author, who knows from what widely
sundered portions of experience--from what a combination of subtle,
shadowy suggestions, with certain actual objects and events, his story
has been formed. It would be a very difficult thing for me to furnish
a key to my stories myself. But where there is no exact memory of the
past, any story with a few remembered points of character or of
incident may pass for a history.
We pay for our sight of the snowy mountains here by the most
capricious of climates. English weather is steadfast compared with
Munich weather. You go to dinner here in summer and come away from it
in winter. You are languid among trees and feathery grass at one end
of the town, and are shivering in a hurricane of dust at the other.
This inconvenience of climate, with the impossibility of dining (well)
at any other hour than one o'clock is not friendly to the
stomach--that great seat of the imagination. And I shall never advise
an author to come to Munich except _ad interim_. The great Saal, full
of Rubens's pictures, is worth studying; and two or three precious
bits of sculpture, and the sky on a fine day, always puts one in a
good temper--it is so deliciously clear and blue, making even the
ugliest buildings look beautiful by the light it casts on them.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_May 30._--We heard "William Tell"--a great enjoyment to me.
_June 1._--To Grosshesselohe with a party. Siebold and his wife, Prof.
Löher, Fräulein von List, Fräulein Thiersch, Frau von Schaden and her
pretty daughter. It was very pretty to see Siebold's delight in
nature--the Libellulæ, the Blindworm, the crimson and black Cicadæ,
the Orchidæ. The strange whim of Schwanthaler's--the Burg von
Schwaneck--was our destination.
_June 10._--For the last week my work has been rather scanty owing to
bodily ailments. I am at the end of chapter xxi., and am this morning
going to begin chapter xxii. In the interim our chief pleasure had
been a trip to Starnberg by ourselves.
_June 13._--This morning at last free from headache, and able to
write. I am entering on my history of the birthday with some fear and
trembling. This evening we walked, between eight and half-past nine,
in the Wiese, looking towards Nymphenburg. The light delicious--the
west glowing; the faint crescent moon and Venus pale above it; the
larks filling the air with their songs, which seemed only a little way
above the ground.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th June, 1858.]
Words are very clumsy things. I like less and less to handle my
friends' sacred feelings with them. For even those who call themselves
intimate know very little about each other--hardly ever know just
_how_ a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at
sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises. And so I
feel I have no right to say that I know _how_ the loss of your
mother--"the only person who ever leaned on you"--affects you. I only
know that it must make a deeply-felt crisis in your life, and I know
that the better from having felt a great deal about my own mother and
father, and from having the keenest remembrance of all that
experience. But for this very reason I know that I can't measure what
the event is to you; and if I were near you I should only kiss you and
say nothing. People talk of the feelings dying out as one gets older;
but at present my experience is just the contrary. All the serious
relations of life become so much more real to me--pleasure seems so
slight a thing, and sorrow and duty and endurance so great. I find the
least bit of real human life touch me in a way it never did when I was
younger.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_June 17._--This evening G. left me to set out on his journey to
Hofwyl to see his boys.
_June 18._--Went with the Siebolds to Nymphenburg; called at Professor
Knapp's, and saw Liebig's sister, Frau Knapp--a charming,
gentle-mannered woman, with splendid dark eyes.
_June 22._--Tired of loneliness, I went to the Frau von Siebold,
chatted with her over tea, and then heard some music.
_June 23._--My kind little friend (Frau von Siebold) brought me a
lovely bouquet of roses this morning, and invited me to go with them
in the evening to the theatre to see the new comedy, the "Drei
Candidaten," which I did: a miserably poor affair.
_June 24._--G. came in the evening, at 10 o'clock--after I had
suffered a great deal in thinking of the possibilities that might
prevent him from coming.
_June 25._--This morning I have read to G. all I have written during
his absence, and he approves it more than I expected.
_July 7._--This morning we left Munich, setting out in the rain to
Rosenheim by railway. The previous day we dined, and sat a few hours
with the dear, charming Siebolds, and parted from them with
regret--glad to leave Munich, but not to leave the friends who had
been so kind to us. For a week before I had been ill--almost a luxury,
because of the love that tended me. But the general languor and sense
of depression produced by Munich air and way of life was no luxury,
and I was glad to say a last good-bye to the quaint pepper-boxes of
the Frauen-Kirche.
[Sidenote: Munich to Dresden, 1858.]
At the Rosenheim station we got into the longest of omnibuses, which
took us to the _Gasthof_, where we were to dine and lunch, and then
mount into the _Stell-wagen_, which would carry us to Prien, on the
borders of the Chiem See. Rosenheim is a considerable and rather
quaint-looking town, interrupted by orchards and characterized in a
passing glance by the piazzas that are seen everywhere fronting the
shops. It has a grand view of the mountains, still a long way off. The
afternoon was cloudy, with intermittent rain, and did not set off the
landscape. Nevertheless, I had much enjoyment in this four or five
hours' journey to Prien. The little villages, with picturesque, wide
gables, projecting roofs, and wooden galleries--with abundant
orchards--with felled trunks of trees and stacks of fir-wood, telling
of the near neighborhood of the forest--were what I liked best in this
ride.
We had no sooner entered the steamboat to cross the Chiem See than it
began to rain heavily, and I kept below, only peeping now and then at
the mountains and the green islands, with their monasteries. From the
opposite bank of the See we had a grand view of the mountains, all
dark purple under the clouded sky. Before us was a point where the
nearer mountains opened and allowed us a view of their more distant
brethren receding in a fainter and fainter blue--a marsh in the
foreground, where the wild-ducks were flying. Our drive from this end
of the lake to Traunstein was lovely--through fertile, cultivated
land, everywhere married to bits of forest. The green meadow or the
golden corn sloped upward towards pine woods, or the bushy greenness
seemed to run with wild freedom far out into long promontories among
the ripening crops. Here and there the country had the aspect of a
grand park from the beautiful intermingling of wood and field, without
any line of fence.
Then came the red sunset, and it was dark when we entered Traunstein,
where we had to pass the night. Among our companions in the day's
journey had been a long-faced, cloaked, slow and solemn man, whom
George called the author of "Eugene Aram," and I Don Quixote, he was
so given to serious remonstrance with the vices he met on the road. We
had been constantly deceived in the length of our stages--on the
principle, possibly, of keeping up our spirits. The next morning there
was the same tenderness shown about the starting of the _Stell-wagen_:
at first it was to start at seven, then at half-past, then when
another _Wagen_ came with its cargo of passengers. This was too much
for Don Quixote; and when the stout, red-faced _Wirth_ had given him
still another answer about the time of starting, he began, in slow and
monotonous indignation, "Warum lügen sie so? Sie werden machen dass
kein Mensch diesen Weg kommen wird,"[4] etc. Whereupon the _Wirth_
looked red-faced, stout, and unwashed as before, without any
perceptible expression of face supervening.
The next morning the weather looked doubtful, and so we gave up
going to the König See for that day, determining to ramble on the
Mönchsberg and enjoy the beauties of Salzburg instead. The morning
brightened as the sun ascended, and we had a delicious ramble on the
Mönchsberg--looking down on the lovely, peaceful plain, below the
grand old Untersberg, where the sleeping Kaiser awaits his
resurrection in that "good time coming;" watching the white mist
floating along the sides of the dark mountains, and wandering under
the shadow of the plantation, where the ground was green with
luxuriant hawkweed, as at Nymphenburg, near Munich. The outline of the
castle and its rock is remarkably fine, and reminded us of Gorey in
Jersey. But we had a still finer view of it when we drove out to
Aigen. On our way thither we had sight of the Watzmann, the highest
mountain in Bavarian Tyrol--emerging from behind the great shoulder of
the Untersberg. It was the only mountain within sight that had snow on
its summit. Once at Aigen, and descended from our carriage, we had a
delicious walk, up and up, along a road of continual steps, by the
course of the mountain-stream, which fell in a series of cascades over
great heaps of bowlders; then back again, by a round-about way, to our
vehicle and home, enjoying the sight of old Watzmann again, and the
grand mass of Salzburg Castle on its sloping rock.
We encountered a _table-d'hôte_ acquaintance who had been to
Berchtesgaden and the König See, driven through the salt-mine, and had
had altogether a perfect expedition on this day, when we had not had
the courage to set off. Never mind! we had enjoyed our day.
We thought it wisest the next morning to renounce the König See, and
pursue our way to Ischl by the _Stell-wagen_. We were fortunate enough
to secure two places in the _coupé_, and I enjoyed greatly the quiet
outlook, from my comfortable corner, on the changing landscape--green
valley and hill and mountain; here and there a picturesque Tyrolese
village, and once or twice a fine lake.
The greatest charm of charming Ischl is the crystal Traun, surely the
purest of streams. Away again early the next morning in the _coupé_ of
the _Stell-wagen_, through a country more and more beautiful--high,
woody mountains sloping steeply down to narrow, fertile, green
valleys, the road winding amongst them so as to show a perpetual
variety of graceful outlines where the sloping mountains met in the
distance before us. As we approached the Gmunden See the masses became
grander and more rocky, and the valley opened wider. It was Sunday,
and when we left the _Stell-wagen_ we found quite a crowd in Sunday
clothes standing round the place of embarkation for the steamboat that
was to take us along the lake. Gmunden is another pretty place at the
head of the lake, but apart from this one advantage inferior to Ischl.
We got on to the slowest of railways here, getting down at the station
near the falls of the Traun, where we dined at the pleasant inn, and
fed our eyes on the clear river again hurrying over the rocks. Behind
the great fall there is a sort of inner chamber, where the water
rushes perpetually over a stone altar. At the station, as we waited
for the train, it began to rain, and the good-natured looking woman
asked us to take shelter in her little station-house--a single room
not more than eight feet square, where she lived with her husband and
two little girls all the year round. The good couple looked more
contented than half the well-lodged people in the world. He used to be
a _drozchky_ driver; and after that life of uncertain gains, which had
many days quite penniless and therefore dinnerless, he found his
present position quite a pleasant lot.
On to Linz, when the train came, gradually losing sight of the
Tyrolean mountains and entering the great plain of the Danube. Our
voyage the next day in the steamboat was unfortunate: we had incessant
rain till we had passed all the finest parts of the banks. But when we
had landed, the sun shone out brilliantly, and so our entrance into
Vienna, through the long suburb, with perpetual shops and odd names
(Prschka, for example, which a German in our omnibus thought not at
all remarkable for consonants!) was quite cheerful. We made our way
through the city and across the bridge to the Weissen Ross, which was
full; so we went to the Drei Rosen, which received us. The sunshine
was transient; it began to rain again when we went out to look at St.
Stephen's, but the delight of seeing that glorious building could not
be marred by a little rain. The tower of this church is worth going to
Vienna to see.
The aspect of the city is that of an inferior Paris; the shops have an
elegance that one sees nowhere else in Germany; the streets are clean,
the houses tall and stately. The next morning we had a view of the
town from the Belvedere Terrace; St. Stephen's sending its exquisite
tower aloft from among an almost level forest of houses and
inconspicuous churches. It is a magnificent collection of pictures at
the Belvedere; but we were so unfortunate as only to be able to see
them once, the gallery being shut up on the Wednesday; and so, many
pictures have faded from my memory, even of those which I had time to
distinguish. Titian's Danae was one that delighted us; besides this I
remember Giorgione's Lucrezia Borgia, with the cruel, cruel eyes; the
remarkable head of Christ; a proud Italian face in a red garment, I
think by Correggio; and two heads by Denner, the most wonderful of all
his wonderful heads that I have seen. There is an Ecce Homo by Titian
which is thought highly of, and is splendid in composition and color,
but the Christ is abject, the Pontius Pilate vulgar: amazing that they
could have been painted by the same man who conceived and executed the
Christo della Moneta! There are huge Veroneses, too, splendid and
interesting.
The Liechtenstein collection we saw twice, and that remains with me
much more distinctly--the room full of Rubens's history of Decius,
more magnificent even than he usually is in color; then his glorious
Assumption of the Virgin, and opposite to it the portraits of his two
boys; the portrait of his lovely wife going to the bath with brown
drapery round her; and the fine portraits by Vandyke, especially the
pale, delicate face of Wallenstein, with blue eyes and pale auburn
locks.
Another great pleasure we had at Vienna--next after the sight of St.
Stephen's and the pictures--was a visit to Hyrtl, the anatomist, who
showed us some of his wonderful preparations, showing the vascular and
nervous systems in the lungs, liver, kidneys, and intestinal canal of
various animals. He told us the deeply interesting story of the loss
of his fortune in the Vienna revolution of '48. He was compelled by
the revolutionists to attend on the wounded for three days' running.
When at last he came to his house to change his clothes he found
nothing but four bare walls! His fortune in Government bonds was
burned along with the house, as well as all his precious collection
of anatomical preparations, etc. He told us that since that great
shock his nerves have been so susceptible that he sheds tears at the
most trifling events, and has a depression of spirits which often
keeps him silent for days. He only received a very slight sum from
Government in compensation for his loss.
One evening we strolled in the Volksgarten and saw the "Theseus
killing the Centaur," by Canova, which stands in a temple built for
its reception. But the garden to be best remembered by us was that at
Schönbrunn, a labyrinth of stately avenues with their terminal
fountains. We amused ourselves for some time with the menagerie here,
the lions especially, who lay in dignified sleepiness till the
approach of feeding-time made them open eager eyes and pace
impatiently about their dens.
We set off from Vienna in the evening with a family of Wallachians as
our companions, one of whom, an elderly man, could speak no German,
and began to address G. in Wallachian, as if that were the common
language of all the earth. We managed to sleep enough for a night's
rest, in spite of intense heat and our cramped positions, and arrived
in very good condition at Prague in the fine morning.
Out we went after breakfast, that we might see as much as possible of
the grand old city in one day; and our morning was occupied chiefly in
walking about and getting views of striking exteriors. The most
interesting things we saw were the Jewish burial-ground (the Alter
Friedhof) and the old synagogue. The Friedhof is unique--with a wild
growth of grass and shrubs and trees, and a multitude of quaint tombs
in all sorts of positions, looking like the fragments of a great
building, or as if they had been shaken by an earthquake. We saw a
lovely dark-eyed Jewish child here, which we were glad to kiss in all
its dirt. Then came the sombre old synagogue, with its smoked groins,
and lamp forever burning. An intelligent Jew was our _cicerone_, and
read us some Hebrew out of the precious old book of the law.
After dinner we took a carriage and went across the wonderful bridge
of St. Jean Nepomuck, with its avenue of statues, towards the
Radschin--an ugly, straight-lined building, but grand in effect from
its magnificent site, on the summit of an eminence crowded with old,
massive buildings. The view from this eminence is one of the most
impressive in the world--perhaps as much from one's associations with
Prague as from its visible grandeur and antiquity. The cathedral close
to the Radschin is a melancholy object on the outside--left with
unfinished sides like scars. The interior is rich, but sadly confused
in its ornamentation, like so many of the grand old churches--hideous
altars of bastard style disgracing exquisite Gothic columns--cruellest
of all in St. Stephen's at Vienna!
We got our view from a _Damen Stift_[5] (for ladies of family),
founded by Maria Theresa, whose blond beauty looked down on us from a
striking portrait. Close in front of us, sloping downwards, was a
pleasant orchard; then came the river, with its long, long bridge and
grand gateway; then the sober-colored city, with its surrounding plain
and distant hills. In the evening we went to the theatre--a shabby,
ugly building--and heard Spohr's Jessonda.
[Sidenote: Dresden, 1858.]
The next morning early by railway to Dresden--a charming journey, for
it took us right through the Saxon Switzerland, with its castellated
rocks and firs. At four o'clock we were dining comfortably at the
Hotel de Pologne, and the next morning (Sunday) we secured our
lodgings--a whole apartment of six rooms, all to ourselves, for 18_s._
per week! By nine o'clock we were established in our new home, where
we were to enjoy six weeks' quiet work, undisturbed by visits and
visitors. And so we did. We were as happy as princes--are not--George
writing at the far corner of the great _salon_, I at my _Schrank_ in
my own private room, with closed doors. Here I wrote the latter half
of the second volume of "Adam Bede" in the long mornings that our
early hours--rising at six o'clock--secured us. Three mornings in the
week we went to the Picture Gallery from twelve till one. The first
day we went was a Sunday, when there is always a crowd in the Madonna
Cabinet. I sat down on the sofa opposite the picture for an instant,
but a sort of awe, as if I were suddenly in the living presence of
some glorious being, made my heart swell too much for me to remain
comfortably, and we hurried out of the room. On subsequent mornings we
always came in, the last minutes of our stay, to look at this
sublimest picture, and while the others, except the Christo della
Moneta and Holbein's Madonna, lost much of their first interest, this
became harder and harder to leave. Holbein's Madonna is very
exquisite--a divinely gentle, golden haired blonde, with eyes cast
down, in an attitude of unconscious, easy grace--the loveliest of all
the Madonnas in the Dresden Gallery except the Sistine. By the side
of it is a wonderful portrait by Holbein, which I especially enjoyed
looking at. It represents nothing more lofty than a plain, weighty man
of business, a goldsmith; but the eminently fine painting brings out
all the weighty, calm, good sense that lies in a first-rate character
of that order.
We looked at the Zinsgroschen (Titian's), too, every day, and after
that at the great painter's Venus, fit for its purity and sacred
loveliness to hang in a temple with Madonnas. Palma's Venus, which
hangs near, was an excellent foil, because it is pretty and pure in
itself; but beside the Titian it is common and unmeaning.
Another interesting case of comparison was that between the original
Zinsgroschen and a copy by an Italian painter, which hangs on the
opposite wall of the cabinet. This is considered a fine copy, and
would be a fine picture if one had never seen the original; but all
the finest effects are gone in the copy.
The four large Correggios hanging together--the _Nacht_; the Madonna
with St. Sebastian, of the smiling graceful character, with the little
cherub riding astride a cloud; the Madonna with St. Hubert; and a
third Madonna, very grave and sweet--painted when he was
nineteen--remained with me very vividly. They are full of life, though
the life is not of a high order; and I should have surmised, without
any previous knowledge, that the painter was among the first masters
of _technique_. The Magdalen is sweet in conception, but seems to have
less than the usual merit of Correggio's pictures as to painting. A
picture we delighted in extremely was one of Murillo's--St. Rodriguez,
fatally wounded, receiving the Crown of Martyrdom. The attitude and
expression are sublime, and strikingly distinguished from all other
pictures of saints I have ever seen. He stands erect in his scarlet
and white robes, with face upturned, the arms held simply downward,
but the hands held open in a receptive attitude. The silly cupid-like
angel holding the martyr's crown in the corner spoils all.
I did not half satisfy my appetite for the rich collection of Flemish
and Dutch pictures here--for Teniers, Ryckart, Gerard Dow, Terburg,
Mieris, and the rest. Rembrandt looks great here in his portraits, but
I like none of the other pictures by him; the Ganymede is an offence.
Guido is superlatively odious in his Christs, in agonized or ecstatic
attitudes--much about the level of the accomplished London beggar.
Dear, grand old Rubens does not show to great advantage, except in the
charming half-length Diana returning from Hunting, the Love Garden,
and the sketch of his Judgment of Paris.
The most popular Murillo, and apparently one of the most popular
Madonnas in the gallery, is the simple, sad mother with her child,
without the least divinity in it, suggesting a dead or sick father,
and imperfect nourishment in a garret. In that light it is touching. A
fellow-traveller in the railway to Leipzig told us he had seen this
picture in 1848 with nine bullet holes in it! The firing from the
hotel of the Stadt Rom bore directly on the Picture Gallery.
Veronese is imposing in one of the large rooms--the Adoration of the
Magi, the Marriage at Cana, the Finding of Moses, etc., making grand
masses of color on the lower part of the walls; but to me he is
ignoble as a painter of human beings.
It was a charming life--our six weeks at Dresden. There were the
open-air concerts at the Grosser Garten and the Brühl'sche Terrace;
the Sommer Theater, where we saw our favorite comic actor Merbitz; the
walks into the open country, with the grand stretch of sky all round;
the Zouaves, with their wondrous make-ups as women; Räder, the
humorous comedian at the Sink'sche Bad Theater; our quiet afternoons
in our pleasant _salon_--all helping to make an agreeable fringe to
the quiet working time.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th July, 1858.]
Since I wrote to you last I have lived through a great deal of
exquisite pleasure. First an attack of illness during our last week at
Munich, which I reckon among my pleasures because I was nursed so
tenderly. Then a fortnight's unspeakable journey to Salzburg, Ischl,
Linz, Vienna, Prague, and finally Dresden, which is our last
resting-place before returning to Richmond, where we hope to be at the
beginning of September. Dresden is a proper climax; for all other art
seems only a preparation for feeling the superiority of the Madonna di
San Sisto the more. We go three days a week to the gallery, and every
day--after looking at other pictures--we go to take a parting draught
of delight at Titian's Zinsgroschen and the _Einzige_ Madonna. In
other respects I am particularly enjoying our residence here--we are
so quiet, having determined to know no one and give ourselves up to
work. We both feel a happy change in our health from leaving Munich,
though I am reconciled to our long stay there by the fact that Mr.
Lewes gained so much from his intercourse with the men of science
there, especially Bischoff, Siebold, and Harless. I remembered your
passion for autographs, and asked Liebig for his on your account. I
was not sure that you would care enough about the handwriting of
other luminaries; for there is such a thing as being European and yet
obscure--a fixed star visible only from observatories.
You will be interested to hear that I saw Strauss at Munich. He came
for a week's visit before we left. I had a quarter of an hour's chat
with him alone, and was very agreeably impressed by him. He looked
much more serene, and his face had a far sweeter expression, than when
I saw him in that dumb way at Cologne. He speaks with very choice
words, like a man strictly truthful in the use of language. Will you
undertake to tell Mrs. Call from me that he begged me to give his
kindest remembrances to her and to her father,[6] of whom he spoke
with much interest and regard as his earliest English friend? I dare
not begin to write about other things or people that I have seen in
these crowded weeks. They must wait till I have you by my side again,
which I hope will happen some day.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
From Dresden, one showery day at the end of August, we set off to
Leipzig, the first stage on our way home. Here we spent two nights; had
a glimpse of the old town with its fine market; dined at Brockhaus's;
saw the picture-gallery, carrying away a lasting delight in Calame's
great landscapes and De Dreux's dogs, which are far better worth seeing
than De la Roche's "Napoleon at Fontainebleau"--considered the glory of
the gallery; went with Victor Carus to his museum and saw an Amphioxus;
and finally spent the evening at an open-air concert in Carus's
company. Early in the morning we set off by railway, and travelled
night and day till we reached home on the 2d September.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Sept. 1858.]
Will you not write to the author of "Thorndale" and express your
sympathy? He is a very diffident man, who would be susceptible to that
sort of fellowship; and one should give a gleam of happiness where it
is possible. I shall write you nothing worth reading for the next
three months, so here is an opportunity for you to satisfy a large
appetite for generous deeds. You can write to me a great many times
without getting anything worth having in return.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Oct. 1858.]
Thanks for the verses on Buckle. I'm afraid I feel a malicious delight
in them, for he is a writer who inspires me with a personal dislike;
not to put too fine a point on it, he impresses me as an irreligious,
conceited man.
Long ago I had offered to write about Newman, but gave it up again.
The second volume of "Adam Bede" had been sent to Blackwood
on 7th September, the third had followed two months later,
and there are the following entries in the Journal in
November:
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Nov. 1._--I have begun Carlyle's "Life of Frederic the Great," and
have also been thinking much of my own life to come. This is a moment
of suspense, for I am awaiting Blackwood's opinion and proposals
concerning "Adam Bede."
_Nov. 4._--Received a letter from Blackwood containing warm praise of
my third volume, and offering £800 for the copyright of "Adam Bede"
for four years. I wrote to accept.
_Nov. 10._--Wilkie Collins and Mr. Pigott came to dine with us after a
walk by the river. I was pleased with Wilkie Collins--there is a
sturdy uprightness about him that makes all opinion and all occupation
respectable.
_Nov. 16._--Wrote the last word of "Adam Bede" and sent it to Mr.
Langford. _Jubilate._
[Sidenote: History of "Adam Bede."]
The germ of "Adam Bede" was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt
Samuel (the wife of my father's younger brother)--an anecdote from her
own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her
visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to
her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal--a very
ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how
she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor
creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt
afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and
she described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers
was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by
my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the
impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I
never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something
prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun
to write the "Scenes of Clerical Life." He remarked that the scene in
the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards
began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my
aunt in one story, with some points in my father's early life and
character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the
unhappy girl one of the chief _dramatis personæ_, and connect her with
the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of
"Scenes," but afterwards, when several motives had induced me close
these with "Janet's Repentance," I determined on making what we always
called in our conversation "My Aunt's Story" the subject of a long
novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857.
The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but
Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed
woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement
in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her,
being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had
become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she
had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when
she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and
out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of
her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could
talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those
usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter
periods--once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once
at my father's last residence, Foleshill.
The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were
suggested by my father's early life; but Adam is not my father any
more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in
Adam Bede--only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new
combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had
determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of
Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and their mutual relations
to Hetty--_i.e._, to the girl who commits child-murder--the scene in
the prison being, of course, the climax towards which I worked.
Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual
relations. Dinah's ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George,
when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so
delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the
reader's interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the
principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from
the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.
The first volume was written at Richmond, and given to Blackwood in
March. He expressed great admiration of its freshness and vividness,
but seemed to hesitate about putting it in the Magazine, which was the
form of publication he as well as myself had previously contemplated.
He still _wished_ to have it for the Magazine, but desired to know the
course of the story. At _present_ he saw nothing to prevent its
reception in "Maga," but he would like to see more. I am uncertain
whether his doubts rested solely on Hetty's relation to Arthur, or
whether they were also directed towards the treatment of Methodism by
the Church. I refused to tell my story beforehand, on the ground that
I would not have it judged apart from my _treatment_, which alone
determines the moral quality of art; and ultimately I proposed that
the notion of publication in "Maga" should be given up, and that the
novel should be published in three volumes at Christmas, if possible.
He assented.
I began the second volume in the second week of my stay at Munich,
about the middle of April. While we were at Munich George expressed
his fear that Adam's part was too passive throughout the drama, and
that it was important for him to be brought into more direct collision
with Arthur. This doubt haunted me, and out of it grew the scene in
the wood between Arthur and Adam; the fight came to me as a
_necessity_ one night at the Munich opera, when I was listening to
"William Tell." Work was slow and interrupted at Munich, and when we
left I had only written to the beginning of the dance on the Birthday
Feast; but at Dresden I wrote uninterruptedly and with great enjoyment
in the long, quiet mornings, and there I nearly finished the second
volume--all, I think, but the last chapter, which I wrote here in the
old room at Richmond in the first week of September, and then sent the
MS. off to Blackwood. The opening of the third volume--Hetty's
journey--was, I think, written more rapidly than the rest of the book,
and was left without the slightest alteration of the first draught.
Throughout the book I have altered little; and the only cases I think
in which George suggested more than a verbal alteration, when I read
the MS. aloud to him, were the first scene at the Farm, and the scene
in the wood between Arthur and Adam, both of which he recommended me
to "space out" a little, which I did.
When, on October 29, I had written to the end of the love-scene at the
Farm between Adam and Dinah, I sent the MS. to Blackwood, since the
remainder of the third volume could not affect the judgment passed on
what had gone before. He wrote back in warm admiration, and offered
me, on the part of the firm, £800 for four years' copyright. I
accepted the offer. The last words of the third volume were written
and despatched on their way to Edinburgh, November the 16th, and now
on the last day of the same month I have written this slight history
of my book. I love it very much, and am deeply thankful to have
written it, whatever the public may say to it--a result which is
still in darkness, for I have at present had only four sheets of the
proof. The book would have been published at Christmas, or rather
early in December, but that Bulwer's "What will he do with it?" was to
be published by Blackwood at that time, and it was thought that this
novel might interfere with mine.
The manuscript of "Adam Bede" bears the following
inscription: "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give
the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for
the happiness which his love has conferred on my life."
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Nov. 1858.]
I shall be much obliged if you will accept for me Tauchnitz's offer of
£30 for the English reprint of "Clerical Scenes." And will you also be
so good as to desire that Tauchnitz may register the book in Germany,
as I understand that is the only security against its being translated
without our knowledge; and I shudder at the idea of my books being
turned into hideous German by an incompetent translator.
I return the proofs by to-day's post. The dialect must be toned down
all through in correcting the proofs, for I found it impossible to
keep it subdued enough in writing. I am aware that the spelling which
represents a dialect perfectly well to those who know it by the ear,
is likely to be unintelligible to others. I hope the sheets will come
rapidly and regularly now, for I dislike lingering, hesitating
processes.
Your praise of my ending was very warming and cheering to me in the
foggy weather. I'm sure, if I have written well, your pleasant letters
have had something to do with it. Can anything be done in America for
"Adam Bede?" I suppose not--as my name is not known there.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Nov. 25._--We had a visit from Mr. Bray, who told us much that
interested us about Mr. Richard Congreve, and also his own affairs.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th Nov. 1858.]
I am very grateful to you for sending me a few authentic words from
your own self. They are unspeakably precious to me. I mean that quite
literally, for there is no putting into words any feeling that has
been of long growth within us. It is easy to say how we love _new_
friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all
the fibres that knit us to the old. I have been thinking of you
incessantly in the waking hours, and feel a growing hunger to know
more precise details about you. I am of a too sordid and anxious
disposition, prone to dwell almost exclusively on fears instead of
hopes, and to lay in a larger stock of resignation than of any other
form of confidence. But I try to extract some comfort this morning
from my consciousness of this disposition, by thinking that nothing is
ever so bad as my imagination paints it. And then I know there are
incommunicable feelings within us capable of creating our best
happiness at the very time others can see nothing but our troubles.
And so I go on arguing with myself, and trying to live inside _you_
and looking at things in all the lights I can fancy you seeing them
in, for the sake of getting cheerful about you in spite of Coventry.
[Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, Christmas Day, 1858.]
The well-flavored mollusks came this morning. It was very kind of you;
and if you remember how fond I am of oysters, your good-nature will
have the more pleasure in furnishing my _gourmandise_ with the treat.
I have a childish delight in any little act of genuine friendliness
towards us--and yet not childish, for how little we thought of
people's goodness towards us when we were children. It takes a good
deal of experience to tell one the rarity of a thoroughly
disinterested kindness.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Dec. 1858.]
I see with you entirely about the preface: indeed I had myself
anticipated the very effects you predict. The deprecatory tone is not
one I can ever take willingly, but I am conscious of a shrinking sort
of pride which is likely to warp my judgment in many personal
questions, and on that ground I distrusted my own opinion.
Mr. Lewes went to Vernon Hill yesterday for a few days' change of air,
but before he went he said, "Ask Mr. Blackwood what he thinks of
putting a mere advertisement at the beginning of the book to this
effect: As the story of 'Adam Bede' will lose much of its effect if
the development is foreseen, the author requests those critics who may
honor him with a notice to abstain from telling the story." I write my
note of interrogation accordingly "?"
Pray do not begin to read the second volume until it is all in print.
There is necessarily a lull of interest in it to prepare for the
crescendo. I am delighted that you like my Mrs. Poyser. I'm very sorry
to part with her and some of my other characters--there seems to be so
much more to be done with them. Mr. Lewes says she gets better and
better as the book goes on; and I was certainly conscious of writing
her dialogue with heightening gusto. Even in our imaginary worlds
there is the sorrow of parting.
I hope the Christmas weather is as bright in your beautiful Edinburgh
as it is here, and that you are enjoying all other Christmas pleasures
too without disturbance.
I have not yet made up my mind what my next story is to be, but I
must not lie fallow any longer when the new year is come.
[Sidenote: Journal, 1858.]
_Dec. 25 (Christmas Day)._--George and I spent this wet day very
happily alone together. We are reading Scott's life in the evenings
with much enjoyment. I am reading through Horace in this pause.
_Dec. 31._--The last day of the dear old year, which has been full of
expected and unexpected happiness. "Adam Bede" has been written, and
the second volume is in type. The first number of George's "Physiology
of Common Life"--a work in which he has had much happy occupation--is
published to-day; and both his position as a scientific writer and his
inward satisfaction in that part of his studies have been much
heightened during the past year. Our double life is more and more
blessed--more and more complete.
I think this chapter cannot more fitly conclude than with the
following extract from Mr. G. H. Lewes's Journal, with which
Mr. Charles Lewes has been good enough to furnish me:
_Jan. 28, 1859._--Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet
Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we
chatted with him on matters personal and philosophical. I owe
him a debt of gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the
brightest ray in a very dreary, _wasted_ period of my life. I
have given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to
mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The
stimulus of his intellect, especially during our long walks,
roused my energy once more and revived my dormant love of
science. His intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and
it was only the stimulus of a _theory_ which could then have
induced me to work. I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt.
It was through him that I learned to know Marian--to know her
was to love her--and since then my life has been a new birth.
To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God
bless her!
_SUMMARY._
JANUARY, 1858, TO DECEMBER, 1858.
_Times_ reviews "Scenes of Clerical Life"--Helps's
opinion--Subscription to the "Scenes"--Letter from Dickens,
18th Jan. 1858--Letter from Froude, 17th Jan.--Letter to
Miss Hennell--Mr. Wm. Smith, author of
"Thorndale"--Ruskin--Reading the "Eumenides" and
Wordsworth--Letter to John Blackwood on Dickens's
Letter--Letter from Mrs. Carlyle--Letter from
Faraday--"Clerical Scenes" moving--John Blackwood calls, and
George Eliot reveals herself--Takes MS. of first part of
"Adam Bede"--Letters to Charles Bray on reports of
authorship--Visit to Germany--Description of Nürnberg--The
Frauen-Kirche--Effect of the music--Albert Dürer's
house--Munich--Lodgings--Pinacothek--Rubens--Crucifixion--Theresien
Wiese--Schwanthaler's "Bavaria"--The Alps--Letter to Miss
Hennell--Contrast between Catholic and Protestant
worship--Glyptothek--Pictures--Statues--Cornelius
frescoes--Herr Oldenburg--Kaulbach--Bodenstedt--Professor
Wagner--Martius--Liebig--Geibel--Heyse--Carrière--Prince
Radziwill's "Faust"--Professor Löher--Baron
Schack--Genelli--Professor Bluntschli--Letter to Miss
Hennell--Description of Munich life--Kaulbach's pictures--The
Siebolds--The Neue Pinacothek--Pictures and porcelain
painting--Mme. Bodenstedt--Letter to Blackwood--Combinations
of artist in writing--Hears "William Tell"--Expedition to
Grosshesselohe--Progress with "Adam Bede"--Letter to Miss
Hennell on death of her mother--Mr. Lewes goes to
Hofwyl--Frau Knapp--Mr. Lewes returns--Leave Munich for
Traunstein--Salzburg--Ischl--Linz--By Danube to Vienna--St.
Stephen's--Belvedere pictures--Liechtenstein
collection--Hyrtl the anatomist--Prague--Jewish burial-ground
and the old synagogue--To Dresden--Latter half of second
volume of "Adam Bede" written--First impression of Sistine
Madonna--The Tribute money--Holbein's Madonna--The
Correggios--Dutch school--Murillo--Letter to Miss
Hennell--Description of life at Dresden--Health
improved--Mention of Strauss at Munich--Dresden to
Leipzig--Home to Richmond--Letter to Miss Hennell--Opinion of
Buckle--Blackwood offers £800 for "Adam Bede"--Wilkie Collins
and Mr. Pigott--History of "Adam Bede"--Letter to Charles
Bray--Disinterested kindness--Letter to Blackwood suggesting
preface to "Adam Bede"--Reading Scott's Life and
Horace--Review of year--Extract from G. H. Lewes's Journal.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Brays' new house.
[2] He is really a charming man, is he not?
[3] Picture of interior of a Lunatic Asylum.
[4] "Why do you tell such lies? The result of it will be that no one
will travel this way."
[5] Charitable Institution for Ladies.
[6] Dr. Brabant.