George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 3 (of 3)

All the great religions of the world, historically considered, are rightly the objects of deep reverence and sympathy – they are the record of spiritual struggles, which are the types of our own. This is to me pre-eminently true of Hebrewism and Christianity, on which my own youth was nourished. And in this sense I have no antagonism towards any religious belief, but a strong outflow of sympathy. Every community met to worship the highest Good (which is understood to be expressed by God) carries me along in its main current; and if there were not reasons against my following such an inclination, I should go to church or chapel constantly for the sake of the delightful emotions of fellowship which come over me in religious assemblies – the very nature of such assemblies being the recognition of a binding belief or spiritual law, which is to lift us into willing obedience and save us from the slavery of unregulated passion or impulse. And with regard to other people, it seems to me that those who have no definite conviction which constitutes a protesting faith may often more beneficially cherish the good within them and be better members of society by a conformity, based on the recognized good in the public belief, than by a nonconformity which has nothing but negatives to utter. Not, of course, if the conformity would be accompanied by a consciousness of hypocrisy. That is a question for the individual conscience to settle. But there is enough to be said on the different points of view from which conformity may be regarded to hinder a ready judgment against those who continue to conform after ceasing to believe, in the ordinary sense. But with the utmost largeness of allowance for the difficulty of deciding in special cases, it must remain true that the highest lot is to have definite beliefs about which you feel that "necessity is laid upon you" to declare them, as something better which you are bound to try and give to those who have the worse.

Letter to John Blackwood, 5th Nov. 1873.

It was a cheerful accompaniment to breakfast this morning to have a letter from you, with the pretty picture you suggested of Miss Blackwood's first ball. I am glad that I have seen the "little fairy," so as to be able to imagine her.

We are both the better for the delicious air and quiet of the country. We, too, like you, were sorry to quit the woods and fields for the comparatively disturbed life which even we are obliged to lead in town. Letters requesting interviews can no longer be made void by one's absence; and I am much afflicted by these interruptions, which break up the day without any adequate result of good to any mortal. In the country the days have broad spaces, and the very stillness seems to give a delightful roominess to the hours.

Is it not wonderful that the world can absorb so much "Middlemarch" at a guinea the copy? I shall be glad to hear particulars, which, I imagine, will lead to the conclusion that the time is coming for the preparation of a 7s. 6d. edition. I am not fond of reading proofs, but I am anxious to correct the sheets of this edition, both in relation to mistakes already standing, and to prevent the accumulation of others in the reprinting.

I am slowly simmering towards another big book; but people seem so bent on giving supremacy to "Middlemarch" that they are sure not to like any future book so well. I had a letter from Mr. Bancroft (the American ambassador at Berlin) the other day, in which he says that everybody in Berlin reads "Middlemarch." He had to buy two copies for his house; and he found the rector of the university, a stupendous mathematician, occupied with it in the solid part of the day. I am entertaining you in this graceful way about myself because you will be interested to know what are the chances for our literature abroad.

That Ashantee business seems to me hideous. What is more murderous than stupidity? To have a husband gone on such an expedition is a trial that passes my imagination of what it is possible to endure in the way of anxiety.

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

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 11th Nov. 1873.

During the latter part of our stay at Blackbrook we had become very fond of the neighborhood. The walks and drives round us were delightfully varied – commons, wooded lanes, wide pastures – and we felt regretfully that we were hardly likely to find again a country-house so secluded in a well-inhabited region.

We have seen few people at present. The George Howards are come from a delicious, lonely séjour in a tower of Bamborough Castle! – and he has brought many sketches home. That lodging would suit you, wouldn't it? A castle on a rock washed by the sea seems to me just a paradise for you.

We have been reading John Mill's "Autobiography," like the rest of the world. The account of his early education and the presentation of his father are admirable; but there are some pages in the latter half that one would have liked to be different.

Letter to Mrs. Cross, 6th Dec. 1873.

Our wish to see you after all the long months since June, added to your affectionate invitation, triumphs over our disinclination to move. So, unless something should occur to make the arrangement inconvenient to you, we will join the dear party on your hearth in the afternoon of the 24th, and stay with you till the 26th.

Notwithstanding my trust in your words, I feel a lingering uneasiness lest we should be excluding some one else from enjoying Christmas with you.

J.'s friend, Dr. Andrew Clark, has been prescribing for Mr. Lewes – ordering him to renounce the coffee which has been a chief charm of life to him, but being otherwise mild in his prohibitions.

I hear with much comfort that you are better, and have recovered your usual activity. Please keep well till Christmas, and then love and pet me a little, for that is always very sweet.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 22d Dec. 1873.

In writing any careful presentation of human feelings, you must count on that infinite stupidity of readers who are always substituting their crammed notions of what ought to be felt for any attempt to recall truly what they themselves have felt under like circumstances. We are going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our friends at Weybridge.

Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 28th Dec. 1873.

We have been spending our Christmas in the country, and it is only on my return that I got your kind note, with its pretty symbols of remembrance. Such little signs are very sweet, coming from those whom one loves well in spite of long separation. I am very glad to have seen you in your new home, and to be able to imagine you among your household treasures – especially to imagine both you and your husband in enjoyable health. We have been invalidish lately, and have put ourselves under the discipline of Dr. Andrew Clark, who is not one of the "three meat-meals and alcohol" physicians, but rather one of those who try to starve out dyspepsia.

We both send our kind regards to Mr. Taylor, and hope that he may remain robust for his parliamentary campaign. Life, I trust, will deal gently with you in future, dear friend, and give you years of peace after your period of anxiety and of parting from old places and habits.

Journal, 1874.

Jan. 1.– The happy old year, in which we have had constant enjoyment of life, notwithstanding much bodily malaise, is gone from us forever. More than in any former year of my life love has been poured forth to me from distant hearts, and in our home we have had that finish to domestic comfort which only faithful, kind servants can give. Our children are prosperous and happy – Charles evidently growing in mental efficiency; we have abundant wealth for more than our actual needs; and our unspeakable joy in each other has no other alloy than the sense that it must one day end in parting. My dear husband has a store of present and prospective good in the long work which is likely to stretch through the remaining years of his intellectual activity; and there have not been wanting signs that what he has already published is being appreciated rightly by capable persons. He is thinner than ever, but still he shows wonderful elasticity and nervous energy. I have been for a month rendered almost helpless for intellectual work by constant headache, but am getting a little more freedom. Nothing is wanting to my blessings but the uninterrupted power of work. For as to all my unchangeable imperfections I have resigned myself.

Jan. 17.– I received this morning, from Blackwood, the account of "Middlemarch" and of "The Spanish Gypsy" for 1873. Of the guinea edition of "Middlemarch," published in the spring, 2434 copies have been sold. Of "The Spanish Gypsy" 292 copies have been sold during 1873, and the remaining copies are only 197. Thus, out of 4470 which have been printed, 4273 have been distributed.

Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 12th Feb. 1874.

We have received the volume – your kind and valuable gift – and I have read it aloud with Mr. Lewes, all except the later pages, which we both feel too much to bear reading them in common. You have given a deeply interesting and, we think, instructive picture, and Mr. Lewes has expressed his wish that it had not been restricted to a private circulation. But I understand your shrinking from indiscriminate publicity, at least in the first instance. Perhaps, if many judges on whom you rely concur with Mr. Lewes, you will be induced to extend the possible benefit of the volume. I care so much for the demonstration of an intense joy in life on the basis of "plain living and high thinking" in this time of more and more eager scrambling after wealth and show. And then there are exquisite bits which you have rescued from that darkness to which his self-depreciation condemned them. I think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called "Christian Resignation;" and Mr. Lewes, when I read it aloud, at once exclaimed, "How very fine – read it again!" I am also much impressed with the wise mingling of moderation with sympathy in that passage, given in a note, from the article on Greg's "Political Essays."

What must have been the effort which the writing cost you I can – not fully, but almost – imagine. But believe, dear friend, that in our judgment you have not poured out these recollections in a cry of anguish all in vain. I feel roused and admonished by what you have told, and if I – then others.

Letter to John Blackwood, 20th Feb. 1874.

I imagined you absorbed by the political crisis, like the rest of the world except the Lord Chief-justice, who must naturally have felt his summing-up deserving of more attention. I, who am no believer in salvation by ballot, am rather tickled that the first experiment with it has turned against its adherents.

I have been making what will almost certainly be my last corrections of the "Spanish Gypsy," and that causes me to look forward with special satisfaction to the probable exhaustion of the present edition. The corrections chiefly concern the quantity of the word Zincálo, which ought to be Zíncalo; but there are some other emendations; and, altogether, they make a difference to more than seventy pages. But it would still be worth while to retain the stereotypes, replacing simply the amended pages, there being about 400 in the whole book. I am sadly vexed that I did not think of having these corrections ready for the German reprint.

I have been compunctious lately about my having sprinkled cold water on the proposal suggested by Mr. Simpson, of bringing out my novels in a cheaper way – on thinner paper and without illustrations. The compunction was roused by my happening, in looking at old records, to alight on some letters, one especially, written by a working-man, a certain E. Hall,²² more than ten years ago, begging me to bring out my books in a form cheap enough to let a poor man more easily "get a read of them." Hence, if you and Mr. Simpson see good to revive the design in question, I am perfectly in accord.

You did send me a copy of Lord Lytton's "Fables" – many thanks for doing so. Mr. Lewes had seen several of them in manuscript, and thought well of their merits. I am reading them gradually. They are full of graceful fancies and charming verse. So far as cleverness goes it seems to me he can do almost anything; and the leanings of his mind are towards the best things. The want I feel is of more definiteness and more weight. The two stanzas to his wife, placed before "Far and Near," are perfect.

I think I have never written to you since I wanted to tell you that I admired very much the just spirit in which the notice of Mill's "Autobiography" was written in the Magazine. Poor Dickens's latter years wear a melancholy aspect, do they not? But some of the extracts from his letters in the last volume have surprisingly more freshness and naturalness of humor than any of the letters earlier given. Still, something should be done by dispassionate criticism towards the reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography. Is it not odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk is raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant for the public is printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle to re-read his books? "He gave the people of his best. His worst he kept, his best he gave;" but there is a certain set, not a small one, who are titillated by the worst and indifferent to the best. I think this fashion is a disgrace to us all. It is something like the uncovering of the dead Byron's club-foot.

Mr. Lewes is in a more flourishing condition than usual, having been helped by Dr. Andrew Clark, who ministers to all the brain-workers. I have been ill lately: weeks of malaise having found their climax in lumbar-neuralgia, or something of that sort, which gave fits of pain severe enough to deserve even a finer name.

My writing has not been stimulated as Scott's was under circumstances of a like sort, and I have nothing to tell you securely.

Please give an expression of my well-founded sympathy to Mr. William Blackwood. My experience feelingly convinces me of the hardship there must be in his. I trust I shall hear of the lameness as a departed evil.

Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Mch. 1874.

I send you by this post a small collection of my poems, which Mr. Lewes wishes me to get published in May.

Such of them as have been already printed in a fugitive form have been received with many signs of sympathy, and every one of those I now send you represents an idea which I care for strongly, and wish to propagate as far as I can. Else I should forbid myself from adding to the mountainous heap of poetical collections.

The form of volume I have in my eye is a delightful duodecimo edition of Keats's poems (without the "Endymion") published during his life: just the volume to slip in the pocket. Mine will be the least bit thicker.

I should like a darkish green cover, with Roman lettering. But you will consider the physique and price of the book, and kindly let me know your thoughts.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 25th Mch. 1874.

I fear the fatal fact about your story²³ is the absence of God and hell. "My dear madam, you have not presented motives to the children!" It is really hideous to find that those who sit in the scribes' seats have got no further than the appeal to selfishness, which they call God. The old Talmudists were better teachers. They make Rachel remonstrate with God for his hardness, and remind him that she was kinder to her sister Leah than he to his people – thus correcting the traditional God by human sympathy. However, we must put up with our contemporaries, since we can neither live with our ancestors nor with posterity.

It is cheering to see the programme of your new society. There certainly is an awakening of conscience about animals in general as our fellow-creatures – even the vogue of Balaam's ass is in that sense a good sign. A lady wrote to me the other day that when she went to church in the island of Sark the sermon turned on that remonstrant hero or heroine.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Mch. 1874.

I can imagine how great an encouragement you feel from the enthusiasm generously expressed in Mr. C.'s letter. It is always an admirable impulse to express deeply felt admiration, but it is also possible that you have some grateful readers who do not write to you. I have heard men whose greatest delight is literature, say that they should never dream of writing to an author on the ground of his books alone.

Poor Mr. Francis Newman must be aged now and rather weary of the world and explanations of the world. He can hardly be expected to take in much novelty. I have a sort of affectionate sadness in thinking of the interest which, in far-off days, I felt in his "Soul" and "Phases of Faith," and of the awe I had of him as a lecturer on mathematics at the Ladies' College. How much work he has done in the world which has left no deep, conspicuous mark, but has probably entered beneficially into many lives!

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d April, 1874.

How glorious this opening spring is! At this moment even London is so beautiful that I come home filled with the Park landscapes, and see them as a background to all my thoughts. Your account of Mr. George Dawson is rather melancholy. I remember him only as a bright, vigorous, young man – such as perhaps his sons are now. I imagine it is his fortune, or, rather, misfortune, to have talked too much and too early about the greatest things.

Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 11th May, 1874.

I could not dwell on your sweet gift²⁴ yesterday – I should perhaps have begun to cry, which would not have been convenable in a hostess. For I have been in a suffering, depressed condition lately, so your good, loving deed has come just at the right time – when I need the helpfulness that love brings me – and my heart turns to you with grateful blessing this Monday morning.

I have been looking at the little paintings with a treble delight, because they were done for me, because you chose for them subjects of my "making," and because they are done with a promising charm of execution (which Mr. Lewes feels as well as I). It gives me special gladness that you have this sort of work before you. Some skill or other with the hands is needful for the completeness of the life, and makes a bridge over times of doubt and despondency.

Perhaps it will please you to know that nineteen years ago, when Mr. Lewes and I were looking at a print of Goethe's statue by Ritzchl, which stands on a pedestal ornamented with bassi relievi of his characters, I said (little believing that my wish would ever be fulfilled), "How I should like to be surrounded with creatures of my own making!" And yesterday, when I was looking at your gift, that little incident recurred to me. Your love seemed to have made me a miniature pedestal.

I was comforted yesterday that you and J. had at least the pleasure of hearing Bice Trollope sing, to make some amends for the long, cold journey. Please do not any of you, forget that we shall only be three weeks more in this corner of the world, and that we want to see you as often as you care to come.

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

Journal, 1874.

May 19.– This month has been published a volume of my poems – "Legend of Jubal, and other Poems." On the 1st of June we go into the country to the cottage, Earlswood Common, for four months, and I hope there to get deep shafts sunk in my prose book. My health has been a wretched drag on me during this last half-year. I have lately written "a symposium."

Letter to Mrs. Cross, 14th June, 1874.

I have so much trust in your love for us that I feel sure you will like to know of our happiness in the secure peace of the country, and the good we already experience in soul and body from the sweet breezes over hill and common, the delicious silence, and the unbroken spaces of the day. Just now the chill east wind has brought a little check to our pleasure in our long afternoon drives; and I could wish that Canon Kingsley and his fellow-worshippers of that harsh divinity could have it reserved entirely for themselves as a tribal god.

We think the neighborhood so lovely that I must beg you to tell J. we are in danger of settling here unless he makes haste to find us a house in your "country-side" – a house with undeniable charms, on high ground, in a strictly rural neighborhood (water and gas laid on, nevertheless), to be vacant precisely this autumn!

My philosopher is writing away with double verve in a projecting window, where he can see a beautiful green slope crowned and studded with large trees. I, too, have an agreeable corner in another room. Our house has the essentials of comfort, and we have reason to be contented with it.

I confess that my chief motive for writing about ourselves is to earn some news of you, which will not be denied me by one or other of the dear pairs of hands always ready to do us a kindness.

Our Sunday is really a Sabbath now – a day of thorough peace. But I shall get hungry for a sight of some of the Sunday visitors before the end of September.

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

Letter to John Blackwood, 16th June, 1874.

We are revelling in the peace of the country, and have no drawback to our delight except the cold winds, which have forced us to put on winter clothing for the last four or five days.

Our wide common is very breezy, and the wind makes mournful music round our walls. But I should think it is not possible to find a much healthier region than this round Reigate and Redhill; and it is prettier than half the places one crosses the Channel to see. We have been hunting about for a permanent country home in the neighborhood, but no house is so difficult to get as one which has at once seclusion and convenience of position, which is neither of the suburban-villa style nor of the grand hall and castle dimensions.

The restoration of the empire (in France), which is a threatening possibility, seems to me a degrading issue. In the restoration of the monarchy I should have found something to rejoice at, but the traditions of the empire, both first and second, seem to my sentiment bad. Some form of military despotism must be, as you say, the only solution where no one political party knows how to behave itself. The American pattern is certainly being accepted as to senatorial manners. I dare say you have been to Knebworth and talked over French matters with Lord Lytton. We are grieved to hear from him but a poor account of sweet Lady Lytton's health and spirits. She is to me one of the most charming types of womanliness, and I long for her to have all a woman's best blessings.

The good news about the small remainder of "Jubal" is very welcome, and I will write at once to Mr. Simpson to send him my two or three corrections, and my wishes about the new edition. The price of the book will well bear a thicker and a handsomely tinted paper, especially now it has proved movable; and I felt so much the difference to the eye and touch of the copies on rich tinted paper, that I was much vexed with myself for having contributed to the shabby appearance of the current edition by suggesting the thin Keats volume as a model. People have become used to more luxurious editions; and I confess to the weakness of being affected by paper and type in something of the same subtile way I am affected by the odor of a room.

Many thanks for Lord Neaves's pleasant little book, which is a capital example of your happily planned publication.

I came down here half poisoned by the French theatre, but I am flourishing now, and am brewing my future big book with more or less (generally less) belief in the quality of the liquor which will be drawn off. The secured peacefulness and the pure air of the country make our time of double worth; and we mean to give no invitations to London friends desirous of change. We are selfishly bent on dual solitude.

Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st July, 1874.

I am so glad to know from your kind letter that you are interesting yourself, with Madame Belloc, in the poor workhouse girls. You see my only social work is to rejoice in the labors of others, while I live in luxurious remoteness from all turmoil. Of course you have seen Mrs. Senior's report. I read it, and thought it very wise, very valuable in many ways, and since then she has sent me word how much she has been worried about it by (as I imagine) obstructive officials.

We are revelling in our country peacefulness, in spite of the chills and rain, driving about every day that the weather will allow, and finding in each drive new beauties of this loveliest part of a lovely country. We are looking out for a house in this neighborhood as a permanent retreat; not with the idea of giving up our London house, at least for some years, but simply of having a place to which we may come for about six months of the year, and perhaps finally shrink into altogether.

Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st July, 1874.

Only the day before your letter came to me I had been saying, "I wonder how our dear Mrs. William Smith is?" so that your impulse to write to me satisfied a need of mine. I cannot help rejoicing that you are in the midst of lovely scenery again, for I had had a presentiment that Cambridge was antipathetic to you; and, indeed, I could not have imagined that you would be in the right place there but for the promised helpfulness of your presence to a young friend.

You tell me much that is interesting. Your picture of Mr. and Mrs. Stirling, and what you say of the reasons why one may wish even for the anguish of being left for the sake of waiting on the beloved one to the end – all that goes to my heart of hearts. It is what I think of almost daily. For death seems to me now a close, real experience, like the approach of autumn or winter, and I am glad to find that advancing life brings this power of imagining the nearness of death I never had till of late years. I remember all you told me of your niece's expected marriage, and your joy in the husband who has chosen her. It is wealth you have – that of several sweet nieces to whom being with you is a happiness. You can feel some sympathy in their cheerfulness, even though sorrow is always your only private good – can you not, dear friend? – and the time is short at the utmost. The blessed reunion, if it may come, must be patiently waited for; and such good as you can do others, by loving looks and words, must seem to you like a closer companionship with the gentleness and benignity which you justly worshipped while it was visibly present, and still more, perhaps, now it is veiled, and is a memory stronger than vision of outward things. We are revelling in the sweet peace of the country, and shall remain here till the end of September.

Mr. Lewes sends his affectionate remembrances with mine. I am scribbling while he holds my bed-candle, so pray forgive any incoherency.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th July, 1874.

I have two questions to ask of your benevolence. First, was there not some village near Stonehenge where you stayed the night, nearer to Stonehenge than Amesbury? Secondly, do you know anything specific about Holmwood Common as a place of residence? It is ravishingly beautiful; is it in its higher part thoroughly unobjectionable as a site for a dwelling?

It seems that they have been having the heat of Tophet in London, whereas we have never had more than agreeable sunniness, this common being almost always breezy. And the country around us must, I think, be the loveliest of its undulating, woody kind in all England.

I remember, when we were driving together last, something was said about my disposition to melancholy. I ought to have said then, but did not, that I am no longer one of those whom Dante found in hell border because they had been sad under the blessed sunlight.²⁵ I am uniformly cheerful now – feeling the preciousness of these moments, in which I still possess love and thought.

Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d Aug. 1874.

It was sweet of you to write me that nice long letter. I was athirst for some news of you. Life, as you say, is a big thing. No wonder there comes a season when we cease to look round and say, "How shall I enjoy?" but, as in a country which has been visited by the sword, pestilence, and famine, think only how we shall help the wounded, and how find seed for the next harvest – how till the earth and make a little time of gladness for those who are being born without their own asking. I am so glad of what you say about the Latin. Go on conquering and to conquer a little kingdom for yourself there.

We are, as usual, getting more than our share of peace and other good, except in the matter of warmth and sunshine. Our common is a sort of ball-room for the winds, and on the warmest days we have had here we have found them at their music and dancing. They roar round the corners of our house in a wintry fashion, while the sun is shining on the brown grass.

Letter to John Blackwood, 8th Aug. 1874.

Thanks for sending me the good news. The sale of "Middlemarch" is wonderful "out of all whooping," and, considered as manifesting the impression made by the book, is more valuable than any amount of immediate distribution. I suppose there will be a new edition of the "Spanish Gypsy" wanted by Christmas; and I have a carefully corrected copy by me, containing my final alterations, to which I desire to have the stereotyped plates adjusted.

As to confidence in the work to be done I am somewhat in the condition suggested to Armgart, "How will you bear the poise of eminence with dread of falling?" And the other day, having a bad headache, I did what I have sometimes done before at intervals of five or six years – looked into three or four novels to see what the world was reading. The effect was paralyzing, and certainly justifies me in that abstinence from novel-reading which, I fear, makes me seem supercilious or churlish to the many persons who send me their books, or ask me about their friends' books. To be delivered from all doubts as to one's justification in writing at this stage of the world, one should have either a plentiful faith in one's own exceptionalness, or a plentiful lack of money. Tennyson said to me, "Everybody writes so well now;" and if the lace is only machine-made, it still pushes out the hand-made, which has differences only for a fine, fastidious appreciation. To write indifferently after having written well – that is, from a true, individual store which makes a special contribution – is like an eminent clergyman spoiling his reputation by lapses, and neutralizing all the good he did before. However, this is superfluous stuff to write to you. It is only a sample of the way in which depression works upon me. I am not the less grateful for all the encouragement I get.