George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3)
TextAfter Miss Brabant's marriage to Mr. Charles Hennell, Miss Evans went to stay for a week or two with Dr. Brabant at Devizes, and some time about the beginning of January, 1844, the proposition was made for the transfer of the translation of Strauss from Mrs. Charles Hennell. At the end of April, 1844, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans is "working away at Strauss six pages a day," and the next letter from Miss Evans refers to the beginning of the undertaking.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday, May, 1844
To begin with business, I send you on the other side the translations you wished (Strauss), but they are perhaps no improvements on what you had done. I shall be very glad to learn from you the particulars as to the mode of publication – who are the parties that will find the funds, and whether the manuscripts are to be put into the hands of any one when complete, or whether they are to go directly from me to the publishers? I was very foolish not to imagine about these things in the first instance, but ways and means are always afterthoughts with me.
You will soon be settled and enjoying the blessed spring and summer time. I hope you are looking forward to it with as much delight as I. One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one! Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown. Witness colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts, to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity in the sky, who was angry when I wanted too much plumcake. Then the sorrows of older persons, which children see but cannot understand, are worse than all. All this to prove that we are happier than when we were seven years old, and that we shall be happier when we are forty than we are now, which I call a comfortable doctrine, and one worth trying to believe! I am sitting with father, who every now and then jerks off my attention to the history of Queen Elizabeth, which he is reading.
On the 1st July, 1844, there was another little trip with the Brays to the Cumberland lakes, this time returning by Manchester and Liverpool; and on reaching home, about the beginning of August, there is the following letter:
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, Aug. 1844
Can I have the remaining volumes of Strauss, excepting any part that you may choose to keep for your own use? If you could also send me such parts of the introduction and first section as you wish me to look over, I should like to despatch that business at intervals, when I am not inspired for more thorough labor. Thank you for the encouragement you sent me. I only need it when my head is weak and I am unable to do much. Then I sicken at the idea of having Strauss in my head and on my hands for a lustrum, instead of saying good-bye to him in a year. When I can work fast I am never weary, nor do I regret either that the work has been begun or that I have undertaken it. I am only inclined to vow that I will never translate again, if I live to correct the sheets for Strauss. My first page is 257.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 31st Oct. 1844
Pray tell Mrs. C. Hennell that no apology was needed for the very good translation she has sent me. I shall be glad to avail myself of it to the last word, for I am thoroughly tired of my own garb for Strauss's thoughts. I hope the introduction, etc., will be ready by the end of November, when I hope to have put the last words to the first volume. I am awfully afraid of my own translation, and I want you to come and comfort me. I am relapsing into heathen darkness about everything but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "Heaven has sent leanness into my soul" – for reviling them, I suppose. This lovely autumn! Have you enjoyed its long shadows and fresh breezes?
Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of 1844
I do not think it was kind to Strauss (I knew he was handsome) to tell him that a young lady was translating his book. I am sure he must have some twinges of alarm to think he was dependent on that most contemptible specimen of the human being for his English reputation. By the way, I never said that the Canons of the Council of Nice, or the Confession of Augsburg, or even the Thirty-nine Articles, are suggestive of poetry. I imagine no dogmas can be. But surely Christianity, with its Hebrew retrospect and millennial hopes, the heroism and divine sorrow of its founder, and all its glorious army of martyrs, might supply, and has supplied, a strong impulse not only to poetry, but to all the Fine Arts. Mr. Pears is coming home from Malvern to-night, and the children are coming to tea with me, so that I have to make haste with my afternoon matters. Beautiful little Susan has been blowing bubbles, and looking like an angel at sport. I am quite happy, only sometimes feeling "the weight of all this unintelligible world."
Letter to Mrs. Bray, Sunday, beginning of 1845
Your books are come for the school, and I have covered them – at least those that I think you will like for the children; two or three are quite for grown-up people. What an exquisite little thing that is of Harriet Martineau's – "The Crofton Boys"! I have had some delightful crying over it. There are two or three lines in it that would feed one's soul for a month. Hugh's mother says to him, speaking of people who have permanent sorrow, "They soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel – the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts." I received "Sybil" yesterday quite safely. I am not utterly disgusted with D'Israeli. The man hath good veins, as Bacon would say, but there is not enough blood in them.
The 17th April this year was an interesting day, as Miss Evans went with the Brays to Atherstone Hall, and met Harriet Martineau for the first time. It will be seen that in later years there was considerable intimacy between them.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th April, 1845
If you think any of my future manuscript too untidy for the printer, only mark it to that effect, and I will rewrite it, for I do not mind that mechanical work; and my conscience is rather uneasy lest the illegibility of my hand should increase materially the expense of the publication. Do not be alarmed because I am not well just now: I shall be better very soon, and I am not really disgusted with Strauss. I only fancy so sometimes, as I do with all earthly things.
In June Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "looks all the better of her London trip. I never saw her so blooming and buoyant;" but the two next letters show a relapse.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of June, (?) 1845
Glad am I that some one can enjoy Strauss! The million certainly will not, and I have ceased to sit down to him with any relish. I should work much better if I had some proof-sheets coming in to assure me that my soul-stupefying labor is not in vain. I am more grateful to you than I can tell you for taking the trouble you do. If it had not been for your interest and encouragement I should have been almost in despair by this time.
And again, a little later:
I begin utterly to despair that Strauss will ever be published, unless I can imitate the Rev. Mr. Davis, and print it myself. At the very best, if we go on according to the rate of procedure hitherto, the book will not be published within the next two years. This seems dolorous enough to me, whose only real satisfaction just now is some hope that I am not sowing the wind. It is very laughable that I should be irritated about a thing in itself so trifling as a translation, but it is the very triviality of the thing that makes delays provoking. The difficulties that attend a really grand undertaking are to be borne, but things should run smoothly and fast when they are not important enough to demand the sacrifice of one's whole soul. The second volume is quite ready. The last few sections were written under anything but favorable circumstances. They are not Strauss's best thoughts, nor are they put into his translator's best language; but I have not courage to imitate Gibbon – put my work in the fire and begin again.
In July, 1845, there seems to have arisen some difficulty in getting in the cash subscriptions for the publication. Mr. Charles Hennell and Mr. Joseph Parkes, however, exerted themselves in the matter, and £300 was collected, and the following letter shows the relief it was to Miss Evans:
Letter to Charles Hennell, Friday evening, July, 1845
Thank you for sending me the good news so soon, and for sympathizing in my need of encouragement. I have all I want now, and shall go forward on buoyant wing. I am glad for the work's sake, glad for your sake, and glad for "the honorable gentleman's" sake, that matters have turned out so well. Pray think no more of my pens, ink, and paper. I would gladly give much more towards the work than these and my English, if I could do so consistently with duty.
The book now got into the hands of the printers, as will be seen from the next letter:
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Aug. 1845
I have just been looking over some of the revise, and reading again your sweet letter to me from Hastings, and an impulse of gratitude and love will not let me rest without writing you a little note, though my hand has almost done its possible for the day under this intense heat. You do not guess how much pleasure it gives me to look over your pencillings, they prove so clearly that you have really entered into the meaning of every sentence, and it always gives one satisfaction to see the evidence of brain-work. I am quite indebted to you for your care, and I feel greatly the advantage of having a friend to undertake the office of critic. There is one word I must mention – Azazel is the word put in the original of the Old Testament for the scapegoat: now I imagine there is some dubiousness about the meaning, and that Strauss would not think it right to translate scapegoat, because, from the tenor of his sentence, he appears to include Azazel with the evil demons. I wonder if it be supposed by any one that Azazel is in any way a distinct being from the goat. I know no Hebrew scholar, and have access to no Hebrew lexicon. Have you asked Mr. Hennell about it?
Your letter describes what I have felt rather than what I feel. It seems as if my affections were quietly sinking down to temperate, and I every day seem more and more to value thought rather than feeling. I do not think this is man's best estate, but it is better than what I have sometimes known.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday evening, autumn of 1845
I am not ashamed to confess that I should like to be idle with you for a little while, more than anything else I can think of just now. But, alas! leathery brain must work at leathery Strauss for a short time before my butterfly days come. O, how I shall spread my wings then! Anent the Greek, it would produce very dreadful cold perspirations indeed in me, if there were anything amounting to a serious error, but this, I trust, there will not be. You must really expect me, if not to sleep and snore aliquando, at least to nod in the course of some thousand pages. I should like you to be deliberate over the Schluss Abhandlung. It is the only part on which I have bestowed much pains, for the difficulty was piquing, not piquant.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, no date, 1845
I am never pained when I think Strauss right; but in many cases I think him wrong, as every man must be in working out into detail an idea which has general truth, but is only one element in a perfect theory – not a perfect theory in itself.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th Sept. 1845
I am delighted with the proof. The type and everything else are just what I wished. To see the first sheet is the next best thing to seeing the last, which I hope we shall all have done this time next year. There is a very misty vision of a trip to the Highlands haunting us in this quarter. The vision would be much pleasanter if Sara were one of the images in it. You would surely go if we went, and then the thing would be perfect. I long to see you, for you are becoming a sort of transfigured existence, a mere ideal to me, and I have nothing to tell me of your real flesh-and-blood self but sundry very useful little pencil-marks, and a scrap of Mrs. Bray's notes now and then. So, if you would have me bear in my memory your own self, and not some aerial creation that I call by your name, you must make your appearance.
In October "the misty vision" took palpable shape, and the Brays, Miss Hennell, and Miss Evans had a delightful fortnight in Scotland, visiting Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, The Trossachs, Stirling, Edinburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford. They were away from the 14th to the 28th, and on returning to Coventry Strauss was taken up again. Miss Hennell was reading the translation, and aiding with suggestions and corrections. The next letter to her seems to be dated in November.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Nov. 1845
Please to tell Mr. Hennell that "habits of thought" is not a translation of the word particularismus. This does not mean national idiosyncrasy, but is a word which characterizes that idiosyncrasy. If he decidedly objects to particularism, ask him to be so good as substitute exclusiveness, though there is a shade of meaning in particularismus which even that does not express. It was because the word could only be translated by a circumlocution that I ventured to Anglicize it.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Tuesday morning, Dec. (?) 1845
I have been idle, and have not done a stroke to the prefaces, but they shall be sent as soon as possible. Thanks for the copy of the Latin preface and letter. They are in preconceived harmony with my ideas of the appropriate.
I will leave the titlepage to you and Mr. Hennell. Thanks for the news in your last extra Blatt. I am glad to find that the theological organs are beginning to deal with philosophy, but I can hardly imagine your writer to be a friend with a false cognizance on his shield. These dear orthodox people talk so simply sometimes that one cannot help fancying them satirists of their own doctrines and fears, though they mean manfully to fight against the enemy. I should like if possible to throw the emphasis on critically in the titlepage. Strauss means it to be so: and yet I do not know how we can put anything better than what you say.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1845
I send you to-day the conclusion of the chapter you are reading, and, unless you find anything of importance to be rectified, you need not return this to me, but may forward the whole to the printer as soon as you have read it. I am not altogether satisfied with the use of the word sacrament as applied specifically to the Abendmahl. It seems like a vulgarism to say the sacrament for one thing, and for another it does not seem aboriginal enough in the life of Jesus; but I know of no other word that can be substituted. I have altered passover to paschal mealtho pascha, but τὸ πάσχα is used in the New Testament of the eating of the lamb par excellence. You remember, in the title of the first section in the Schluss– which I had been so careless as to omit – the expression is "Nothwendiger Uebergang der Kritik in das Dogma." Now, dogmatism will not do, as that would represent Dogmatismus. "Dogmatik" is the idea, I believe —i. e., positive theology. Is it allowable to say dogmatics, think you? I do not understand how the want of manuscript can be so pressing, as I have only had one proof for the last fortnight. It seems quite dispiriting to me now not to see the proofs regularly. I have had a miserable week of headache, but am better now, and ready for work, to which I must go.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Jan. 1846
I do pity you, with the drunken Christmas workmen keeping you in this uncomfortable interregnum. But do not go distraught; the spring will really come and the birds – many having had to fly across the Atlantic, which is farther than you have to go to establish yourself. I could easily give the meaning of the Hebrew word in question, as I know where to borrow a lexicon. But observe, there are two Hebrew words untranslated in this proof. I do not think it will do to give the English in one place and not in another, where there is no reason for such a distinction, and there is not here, for the note in this proof sounds just as fee-fo-fum-ish as the other without any translation. I could not alter the "troublesome," because it is the nearest usable adjective for schwierig, which stands in the German. I am tired of inevitable importants, and cannot bear to put them when they do not represent the German.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Jan. 1846
I have been sadly occupied for the last ten days. My father has been ill, and has required much attention, and my own head was very middling for some days, so that I send you but a poor cargo of new manuscript. Indeed, on looking through the last quire of paper this morning for the purpose of putting in the Greek, it seemed all very poor to me, but the subject is by no means inspiring, and no muse would condescend to visit such an uncertain votary as I have been for the last week or so. How is it that I have only had one proof this week? You know we are five hundred pages in advance of the printer, so you need not be dreadfully alarmed. I have been so pleased to hear some of your letters read to me, but, alas! I can reflect no pleasure at this moment, for I have a woful pain and am in a desperate hurry.
On 14th February, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans "says she is Strauss-sick – it makes her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of the Christ-image19 and picture make her endure it. Moreover, as her work advances nearer its public appearance, she grows dreadfully nervous. Poor thing, I do pity her sometimes, with her pale, sickly face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father. This illness of his has tried her so much, for all the time she had for rest and fresh air she had to read to him. Nevertheless, she looks very happy and satisfied sometimes in her work."
And about the end of February there is the following letter from Miss Evans:
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Feb. 1846
Health and greeting, my Achates, in this veritable spring month. I shall send you a parcel on Monday with sixty-four new pages of German for your intellectual man. The next parcel, which will be the last, I shall send on the Monday following, and when you have read to the end, you may, if you think it desirable, send the whole to me. Your dull ass does not mend his pace for beating; but he does mend it when he finds out that he is near his journey's end, and makes you wonder how he could pretend to find all the previous drawing so hard for him. I plead guilty to having set off in a regular scamper: but be lenient and do not scold me if you find all sorts of carelessnesses in these last hundred pages.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Feb. 1846
I have been guilty of the most unpardonable piece of carelessness, for which I am stretched on a rack of anxiety and mortification. In the proof that came on Thursday I unwittingly drew out a quarter sheet with the blotting-paper, and did not discover the mistake until Saturday morning, when about to correct the last proof. Surely the printer would discover the absence of the four pages and wait for them – otherwise I would rather have lost one of my fingers, or all the hair from my head, than have committed such a faux pas. For there were three very awkward blunders to be corrected. All this vexation makes a cold and headache doubly intolerable, and I am in a most purgatorial state on this "good Sunday." I shall send the proofs, with the unfortunate quarter sheet and an explanation, to-night to Mr. Chapman, and prithee do thou inquire and see that the right thing is done. The tears are streaming from my smarting eyes – so farewell.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846
I wish we could get the book out in May – why not? I suppose the binding could not be all got through – the printing and writing I should think might be managed in time. Shouldn't I like to fleet the time away with thee as they did in the Golden Age – after all our toils to lie reclined on the hills (spiritually), like gods together, careless of mankind. Sooth to speak, idleness, and idleness with thee, is just the most tempting mirage you could raise before my mind's eye – I say mirage, because I am determined from henceforth to believe in no substantiality for future time, but to live in and love the present – of which I have done too little. Still, the thought of being with you in your own home will attract me to that future; for without all controversy I love thee and miss thee.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846
My soul kisses thee, dear Sara, in gratitude for those dewy thoughts of thine in this morning's note. My poor adust soul wants such refreshment. Continue to do me good – hoping for nothing again. I have had my sister with me all day – an interruption, alas! I cannot write more, but I should not be happy to let the day pass without saying one word to thee.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846
The last hundred pages have certainly been totally uninteresting to me, considered as matter for translation. Strauss has inevitably anticipated in the earlier part of his work all the principles and many of the details of his criticism, and he seems fagged himself. Mais courage! the neck of the difficulty is broken, and there is really very little to be done now. If one's head would but keep in anything like thinking and writing order! Mine has robbed me of half the last fortnight; but I am a little better now, and am saying to myself Frisch zu! The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are, at all events, better than the bursting asunder of Judas. I am afraid I have not made this dull part of Strauss even as tolerable as it might be, for both body and mind have recoiled from it. Thank you, dearest, for all your love and patience for me and with me. I have nothing on earth to complain of but subjective maladies. Father is pretty well, and I have not a single excuse for discontent through the livelong day.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Mch. 1846
As I believe that even your kindness cannot overcome your sincerity, I will cast aside my fear that your wish to see me in your own home is rather a plan for my enjoyment than for yours. I believe it would be an unmixed pleasure to me to be your visitor, and one that I would choose among a whole bouquet of agreeable possibilities; so I will indulge myself, and accept the good that the heavens and you offer me. I am miserably in want of you to stir up my soul and make it shake its wings, and begin some kind of flight after something good and noble, for I am in a grovelling, slothful condition, and you are the only friend I possess who has an animating influence over me. I have written to Mr. Hennell anent the titlepage, and have voted for critically examined, from an entire conviction of its preferableness.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, beginning of April, 1846
See what it is to have a person en rapport with you, that knows all your thoughts without the trouble of communication! I am especially grateful to you for restoring the "therefore" to its right place. I was about to write to you to get you to remonstrate about this and the "dispassionate calmness," which I did not at all like; but I thought you had corrected the prefaces, as the marks against the Latin looked like yours, so I determined to indulge my laissez-faire inclinations, for I hate stickling and debating unless it be for something really important. I do really like reading our Strauss – he is so klar und ideenvoll; but I do not know one person who is likely to read the book through – do you? Next week we will be merry and sad, wise and nonsensical, devout and wicked, together.
On 19th April, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans is "as happy as you may imagine at her work being done. She means to come and read Shakespeare through to us as her first enjoyment." And again, on 27th April, that she "is delighted beyond measure with Strauss's elegant preface. It is just what she likes. And what a nice letter too! The Latin is quite beyond me, but the letter shows how neatly he can express himself."
SUMMARY
MARCH, 1841, TO APRIL, 1846
Foleshill – New friends – Mrs. Pears – Coventry life and engagements – Letters to Miss Lewis – Brother's marriage – Mental depression – Reading Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System" – Makes acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bray – Reads Charles Hennell's book, "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity" – Effect of this book – Gives up going to church – Family difficulties – Letters to Mrs. Pears – Visit to Griff – Returns to Foleshill and resumes going to church – Acquaintance with Miss Sara Hennell, and development of friendship with her and Mr. and Mrs. Bray – Letters to Miss Sara Hennell describing mental characteristics – Attitude towards immortality – Death of Miss Mary Hennell – Excursion with the Brays, Mr. Charles Hennell, and Miss Hennell to Stratford and Malvern, and to Tenby with same party and Miss Brabant – Meets Robert Owen – Studies German and music with Mrs. Bray – Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, with important declaration of opinion in regard to conformity – Mr. Charles Hennell's marriage – Stay with Dr. Brabant at Devizes – Arrangement for translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu" – Excursion with Brays to the Cumberland lakes, returning by Manchester and Liverpool – Weary of Strauss – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Poetry of Christianity – Admiration of Harriet Martineau's "The Crofton Boys" – Trip to London – Despair about publication of Strauss – Subscription of £300 for the work – In better heart – Minutiæ of Strauss translation – Pains taken with the Schluss Abhandlung– Opinion of Strauss's work – The book in print – Trip to the Highlands – Strauss difficulties – Miss Hennell reads the translation and makes suggestions – Suffering from headaches and "Strauss-sick" – The last MS. of the translation sent to Miss Hennell – Joy at finishing – Delighted with Strauss's Preface.