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

That expedition on the Thames would be a great delight, if it were possible to us. But our arrangements forbid it. Our loving thanks to Mr. Druce, as well as to you, for reviving the thought. We are to remain here till the 23d of September; then to fly through town, or at least only perch there for a night or so, and then go down to the coast, while the servants clean our house. We expect that Bournemouth will be our destination.

Let us have news of you all again soon. Let us comfort each other while it is day, for the night cometh.

I hope this change of weather, in which we are glorying both for the country's sake and our own, will not make Weybridge too warm for Mrs. Cross.

Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby, 19th Aug. 1875.

I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. Please take it as a proof of special feeling that I declined answering your kind inquiries by proxy.

This corner of Hertfordshire is as pretty as it can be of the kind. There are really rural bits at every turn. But for my particular taste I prefer such a region as that round Haslemere – with wide, furzy commons and a grander horizon. Also I prefer a country where I don't make bad blood by having to see one public house to every six dwellings – which is literally the case in many spots around us. My gall rises at the rich brewers in Parliament and out of it, who plant these poison shops for the sake of their million-making trade, while probably their families are figuring somewhere as refined philanthropists or devout Evangelicals and Ritualists.

You perceive from this that I am dyspeptic and disposed to melancholy views. In fact, I have not been flourishing, but I am getting a little better; grateful thanks that you will care to know it. On the whole the sins of brewers, with their drugged ale and devil's traps, depress me less than my own inefficiency. But every fresh morning is an opportunity that one can look forward to for exerting one's will. I shall not be satisfied with your philosophy till you have conciliated necessitarianism – I hate the ugly word – with the practice of willing strongly, willing to will strongly, and so on, that being what you certainly can do and have done about a great many things in life, whence it is clear that there is nothing in truth to hinder you from it – except, you will say, the absence of a motive. But that absence I don't believe in in your case – only in the case of empty, barren souls.

Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition —i. e., direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof, as necessary starting-points for thought.

Journal, 1875.

Oct. 10.– On the 15th June, we went to a house we had taken at Rickmansworth. Here, in the end of July, we received the news that our dear Bertie had died on June 29th. Our stay at Rickmansworth, though otherwise peaceful, was not marked by any great improvement in health from the change to country instead of town – rather the contrary. We left on 23d September, and then set off on a journey into Wales, which was altogether unfortunate on account of the excessive rain.

Letter to John Blackwood, 10th Oct. 1875.

I behaved rather shabbily in not thanking you otherwise than by proxy for the kind letter you sent me to Rickmansworth, but I had a bad time down there, and did less of everything than I desired. Last night we returned from our trip – a very lively word for a journey made in the worst weather; and since I am, on the whole, the better for a succession of small discomforts in hotels, and struggling walks taken under an umbrella, I have no excuse for not writing a line to my neglected correspondents.

You will laugh at our nervous caution in depositing our MSS. at the Union Bank before we set out. We could have borne to hear that our house had been burned down, provided no lives were lost, and our unprinted matter, our œuvres inédites, were safe out of it.

About my unprinted matter, Mr. Lewes thinks it will not be well to publish the first part till February. The four first monthly parts are ready for travelling now. It will be well to begin the printing in good time, so that I may not be hurried with the proofs; and I must beg Mr. Simpson to judge for me in that matter with kind carefulness.

I can't say that I am at all satisfied with the book, or that I have a comfortable sense of doing in it what I want to do; but Mr. Lewes is satisfied with it, and insists that since he is as anxious as possible for it to be fine, I ought to accept his impressions as trustworthy. So I resign myself.

I read aloud the "Abode of Snow" at Rickmansworth, to our mutual delight; and we are both very much obliged to you for the handsome present. But what an amazing creature is this Andrew Wilson to have kept pluck for such travelling while his body was miserably ailing! One would have said that he had more than the average spirit of hardy men to have persevered even in good health after a little taste of the difficulties he describes.

Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 20th Oct. 1875.

The arrangements as to the publication of my next book are already determined on. Ever since "Adam Bede" appeared I have been continually having proposals from the proprietors or editors of periodicals, but I have always declined them, except in the case of "Romola," which appeared in the Cornhill, and was allowed to take up a varying and unusual number of pages. I have the strongest objection to cutting up my work into little bits; and there is no motive to it on my part, since I have a large enough public already. But, even apart from that objection, it would not now be worth the while of any magazine or journal to give me a sum such as my books yield in separate publication. I had £7000 for "Romola," but the mode in which "Middlemarch" was issued brings in a still larger sum. I ought to say, however, that the question is not entirely one of money with me: if I could gain more by splitting my writing into small parts, I would not do it, because the effect would be injurious as a matter of art. So much detail I trouble you with to save misapprehension.

Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Nov. 1875.

Your enjoyment of the proofs cheers me greatly; and pray thank Mrs. Blackwood for her valuable hints on equine matters. I have not only the satisfaction of using those hints, I allow myself the inference that where there is no criticism on like points I have made no mistake.

I should be much obliged to Mr. Simpson – whom I am glad that Gwendolen has captivated – if he would rate the printers a little about their want of spacing. I am anxious that my poor heroes and heroines should have all the advantage that paper and print can give them.

It will perhaps be a little comfort to you to know that poor Gwen is spiritually saved, but "so as by fire." Don't you see the process already beginning? I have no doubt you do, for you are a wide-awake reader.

But what a climate to expect good writing in! Skating in the morning and splashy roads in the afternoon is just typical of the alternation from frigid to flaccid in the author's bodily system, likely to give a corresponding variety to the style.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1875.

I got my head from under the pressure of other matters, like a frog from under the water, to send you my November greeting. My silence through the rest of the months makes you esteem me the more, I hope, seeing that you yourself hate letter-writing – a remarkable exception to the rule that people like doing what they can do well, if one can call that a rule of which the reverse seems more frequent – namely, that they like doing what they do ill.

We stayed till nearly the end of September at the house we had taken in Hertfordshire. After that we went into Wales for a fortnight, and were under umbrellas nearly the whole time.

I wonder if you all remember an old governess of mine who used to visit me at Foleshill – a Miss Lewis? I have found her out. She is living at Leamington, very poor as well as old, but cheerful, and so delighted to be remembered with gratitude. How very old we are all getting! But I hope you don't mind it any more than I do. One sees so many contemporaries that one is well in the fashion. The approach of parting is the bitterness of age.

Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1875.

Your letter is an agreeable tonic, very much needed, for that wretched hinderance of a cold last week has trailed after it a series of headaches worse than itself. An additional impression, like Mr. Langford's, of the two volumes is really valuable, as a sign that I have not so far failed in relation to a variety of readers. But you know that in one sense I count nothing done as long as anything remains to do; and it always seems to me that the worst difficulty is still to come. In the sanest, soberest judgment, however, I think the third volume (which I have not yet finished) would be regarded as the difficult bridge. I will not send you any more MS. until I can send the whole of vol. iii.

We think that Mr. Simpson has conducted our Australian business admirably. Remembering that but for his judgment and consequent activity we might have got no publication at all in that quarter, we may well be content with £200.

Mr. Lewes has not got the Life of Heine, and will be much pleased and obliged by your gift.

Major Lockhart's lively letter gives one a longing for the fresh, breezy life and fine scenery it conjures up. You must let me know when there is a book of his, because when I have done my own I shall like to read something else by him. I got much pleasure out of the two books I did read. But when I am writing, or only thinking of writing, fiction of my own, I cannot risk the reading of other English fiction. I was obliged to tell Anthony Trollope so when he sent me the first part of his "Prime Minister," though this must seem sadly ungracious to those who don't share my susceptibilities.

Apparently there are wild reports about the subject-matter of "Deronda" – among the rest, that it represents French life! But that is hardly more ridiculous than the supposition that after refusing to go to America, I should undertake to describe society there! It is wonderful how "Middlemarch" keeps afloat in people's minds. Somebody told me that Mr. Henry Sidgwick said it was a bold thing to write another book after "Middlemarch," and we must prepare ourselves for the incalculableness of the public reception in the first instance. I think I have heard you say that the chief result of your ample experience has been to convince you of that incalculableness.

What a blow for Miss Thackeray – the death of that sister to whom she was so closely bound in affection.

Journal, 1875.

Dec. 25.– After our return from Wales in October I grew better and wrote with some success. For the last three weeks, however, I have been suffering from a cold and its effects so as to be unable to make any progress. Meanwhile the two first volumes of "Daniel Deronda" are in print, and the first book is to be published on February 1st. I have thought very poorly of it myself throughout, but George and the Blackwoods are full of satisfaction in it. Each part as I see it before me im werden seems less likely to be anything else than a failure; but I see on looking back this morning – Christmas Day – that I really was in worse health and suffered equal depression about "Romola;" and, so far as I have recorded, the same thing seems to be true of "Middlemarch."

I have finished the fifth book, but am not far on in the sixth, as I hoped to have been; the oppression under which I have been laboring having positively suspended my power of writing anything that I could feel satisfaction in.

SUMMARYJANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875

Reception of "Middlemarch" – Letter to John Blackwood – Mr. Anthony Trollope – Dutch translation of George Eliot's novels – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Evening drives at Weybridge – Letter to John Blackwood – German reprint of "Spanish Gypsy" – "The Lifted Veil" – "Kenelm Chillingly" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on her Memoir of her husband – Pleasure in young life – Letter to John Blackwood – Want of a Conservative leader – Letter to Mr. Burne-Jones – The function of art – Purpose in art – "Iphigenia in Aulis" – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – Welcoming her home – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on women at Cambridge – Visit to Mr. Frederic Myers at Cambridge – Meets Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Lyttelton, and Mrs. and Miss Huth – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Death of Miss Rebecca Franklin – Visit to the Master of Balliol – Meets Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell – Professor Green – Max Müller – Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge – Nine-weeks' trip to the Continent – Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Homburg – Fontainebleau, Plombières, and Luxeuil – Two months' stay at Bickley – Letter to Mrs. Cross on journey abroad and Blackbrook – Letter to John Blackwood – New edition of "Middlemarch" – A real Lowick in a Midland county – Cheap editions – Letter to Mrs. Cross on the pleasures of the country and on Mr. Henry Sidgwick – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – House in the country – Letter to J. W. Cross on conformity – Letter to John Blackwood – Interruptions of town life – Simmering towards another book – Berlin reading "Middlemarch" – Ashantee war – Letter to Madame Bodichon – The George Howards – John Stuart Mill's Autobiography – Letter to Mrs. Cross on Christmas invitation – Dr. Andrew Clark – Letter to Mrs. Bray on stupidity of readers – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Retrospect of 1873 – Sales of "Middlemarch" and "Spanish Gypsy" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – "Plain living and high thinking" – Letter to John Blackwood – Conservative reaction – Cheaper edition of novels – Lord Lytton's "Fables" – Dickens's Life and biography in general – Letter to John Blackwood – Volume of poems – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Motives for children – Letter to Miss Hennell – Francis Newman – George Dawson – "The Legend of Jubal and other Poems" published – "Symposium" written – Letter to Miss Mary Cross thanking her for a vase – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Delight in country – Letter to John Blackwood – Threatened restoration of the empire in France – "Brewing" "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on Mrs. Nassau Senior's report – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on consolations in loss – Letter to Madame Bodichon – No disposition to melancholy – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The serious view of life – Letter to John Blackwood – Justifications for writing – Dean Liddell – Letter to Mrs. Stowe – Goethe's mysticism – Letter to Miss Hennell – Visit to Six-Mile Bottom – Paris and the Ardennes – Bank of England and Woolwich Arsenal – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The idea of God an exaltation of human goodness – Vision of others' needs – Ground of moral action – Need of altruism – The power of the will – Difficulties of thought – Sales of books – Retrospect of 1874 – Letter to Francis Otter on his engagement – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Note-writing – Home for girls – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Value of early religious experience – Limitations of scientists – Letter to John Blackwood – Kinglake's "Crimea" – Discipline of war – "Rasselas" – Miss Thackeray – Anthony Trollope – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Desire to know the difficulties of others – Companion in the struggle of thought – Mr. Spencer's teaching – The value of poets – Emotion blending with thought – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – Her memoir – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The world of light and speech – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Rickmansworth – Letter to F. Harrison asking for consultation – Letter to J. W. Cross – "The Elms" – Depression – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The Brewing interest – Conciliation of necessitarianism with will – Innate ideas – Death of Herbert Lewes – Trip to Wales – Letter to John Blackwood – Not satisfied with "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Mode of publication of books – Letter to John Blackwood – Gwendolen – Letter to Miss Hennell – Miss Lewis – Letter to John Blackwood – Impressions of "Deronda" – Major Lockhart – Depression about "Deronda."

CHAPTER XVIII

Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1876.

We have just come in from Weybridge, but are going to take refuge there again on Monday for a few days more of fresh air and long, breezy afternoon walks. Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending me the cheering account of sales.

Mr. Lewes has not heard any complaints of not understanding Gwendolen, but a strong partisanship for and against her. My correspondence about the misquotation of Tennyson has quieted itself since the fifth letter. But one gentleman has written me a very pretty note, taxing me with having wanted insight into the technicalities of Newmarket, when I made Lush say, "I will take odds." He judges that I should have written, "I will lay odds." On the other hand, another expert contends that the case is one in which Lush would be more likely to say, "I will take odds." What do you think? I told my correspondent that I had a dread of being righteously pelted with mistakes that would make a cairn above me – a monument and a warning to people who write novels without being omniscient and infallible.

Mr. Lewes is agitating himself over a fifth reading of revise, Book VI., and says he finds it more interesting than on any former reading. It is agreeable to have a home criticism of this kind! But I am deep in the fourth volume, and cannot any longer care about what is past and done for – the passion of the moment is as much as I can live in.

We had beautiful skies with our cold, and only now and then a snow shower. It is grievous to read of the suffering elsewhere from floods.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 30th March, 1876.

I am well pleased that "Deronda" touches you. I wanted you to prefer the chapter about Mirah's finding, and I hope you will also like her history in Part III., which has just been published.

We want very much to get away, but I fear we shall hardly be able to start till the end of May. At present we think of the Maritime Alps as a destination for the warm summer – if we have such a season this year; but we shall wander a little on our way thither, and not feel bound to accomplish anything in particular. Meanwhile we are hearing some nice music occasionally, and we are going to see Tennyson's play, which is to be given on the 15th. The occasion will be very interesting, and I should be very sorry to miss it.

We have been getting a little refreshment from two flights between Sundays to Weybridge. But we have had the good a little drained from us by going out to dinner two days in succession. At Sir James Paget's I was much interested to find that a gentle-looking, clear-eyed, neatly-made man was Sir Garnet Wolseley; and I had some talk with him, which quite confirmed the impression of him as one of those men who have a power of command by dint of their sweet temper, calm demeanor, and unswerving resolution. The next subject that has filled our chat lately has been the Blue Book on Vivisection, which you would like to look into. There is a great deal of matter for reflection in the evidence on the subject, and some good points have been lately put in print, and conversation that I should like to tell you of if I had time. Professor Clifford told us the other Sunday that Huxley complained of his sufferings from "the profligate lying of virtuous women."

Journal, 1876.

April 12.– On February 1st began the publication of "Deronda," and the interest of the public, strong from the first, appears to have increased with Book III. The day before yesterday I sent off Book VII. The success of the work at present is greater than that of "Middlemarch" up to the corresponding point of publication. What will be the feeling of the public as the story advances I am entirely doubtful. The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody. I am in rather better health – having, perhaps, profited by some eight days' change at Weybridge.

Letter to John Blackwood, 18th April, 1876.

Your sympathetic letter is a welcome support to me in the rather depressed condition which has come upon me from the effect, I imagine, of a chill taken in the sudden change from mildness to renewed winter. You can understand how trying it is to have a week of incompetence at the present stage of affairs. I am rather concerned to see that the part is nearly a sheet smaller than any of the other parts. But Books V. and VI. are proportionately thick. It seemed inadmissible to add anything after the scene with Gwendolen; and to stick anything in not necessary to development between the foregoing chapters is a form of "matter in the wrong place" particularly repulsive to my authorship's sensibility.

People tell us that the book is enormously discussed, and I must share with you rather a neat coincidence which pleased us last week. Perhaps you saw what Mr. Lewes told me of – namely, that [a critic] opined that the scenes between Lush and Grandcourt were not vraisemblable– were of the imperious feminine, not the masculine, character. Just afterwards Mr. Lewes was chatting with a friend who, without having read the [criticism] or having the subject in the least led up to by Mr. Lewes, said that he had been at Lady Waldegraves', where the subject of discussion had been "Deronda;" and Bernal Osborne, delivering himself on the book, said that the very best parts were the scenes between Grandcourt and Lush. Don't you think that Bernal Osborne has seen more of the Grandcourt and Lush life than that critic has seen? But several men of experience have put their fingers on those scenes as having surprising verisimilitude; and I naturally was peculiarly anxious about such testimony, where my construction was founded on a less direct knowledge.

We are rather vexed, now it is too late, that I did not carry out a sort of incipient intention to expunge a motto from Walt Whitman which I inserted in Book IV. Of course the whole is irrevocable by this time; but I should have otherwise thought it worth while to have a new page, not because the motto itself is objectionable to me – it was one of the finer things which had clung to me from among his writings – but because, since I quote so few poets, my selection of a motto from Walt Whitman might be taken as a sign of a special admiration, which I am very far from feeling. How imperfectly one's mind acts in proof-reading! Mr. Lewes had taken up Book IV. yesterday to re-read it for his pleasure merely; and though he had read it several times before, he never till yesterday made a remark against taking a motto from Walt Whitman. I, again, had continually had an appetency towards removing the motto, and had never carried it out – perhaps from that sort of flaccidity which comes over me about what has been done, when I am occupied with what is being done.

People in their eagerness about my characters are quite angry, it appears, when their own expectations are not fulfilled – angry, for example, that Gwendolen accepts Grandcourt, etc., etc.

One reader is sure that Mirah is going to die very soon, and, I suppose, will be disgusted at her remaining alive. Such are the reproaches to which I make myself liable. However, that you seem to share Mr. Lewes's strong feeling of Book VII. being no falling off in intensity makes me brave. Only endings are inevitably the least satisfactory part of any work in which there is any merit of development.

I forgot to say that the "tephillin" are the small leather bands or phylacteries, inscribed with supremely sacred words, which the Jew binds on his arms and head during prayer.

Any periphrasis which would be generally intelligible would be undramatic; and I don't much like explanatory foot-notes in a poem or story. But I must consider what I can do to remedy the unintelligibility.

The printers have sadly spoiled the beautiful Greek name Kalonymos, which was the name of a celebrated family of scholarly Jews, transplanted from Italy into Germany in mediæval times. But my writing was in fault.

Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 6th May, 1876.

Your letter was one of the best cordials I could have. Is there anything that cheers and strengthens more than the sense of another's worth and tenderness? And it was that sense that your letter stirred in me, not only by the words of fellowship and encouragement you give directly to me, but by all you tell me of your own feeling under your late painful experience. I had felt it long since I had heard of your and the Professor's well being; but I need not say one word to you of the reasons why I am not active towards my distant friends except in thought. I do think of them, and have a tenacious memory of every little sign they have given me. Please offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am ruthlessly proud that I kept him out of his bed. I hope that both you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children. My cares for them are nearly at an end, and in a few weeks we expect to set out on a Continental journey, as the sort of relaxation which carries one most thoroughly away from studies and social claims. You rightly divine that I am a little overdone, but my fatigue is due not to any excess of work so much as to the vicissitudes of our long winter, which have affected me severely as they have done all delicate people. It is true that some nervous wear, such as you know well, from the excitement of writing, may have made me more susceptible to knife-like winds and sudden chills.