George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Journal, 1859.

May 3.– I had a letter from Mrs. Richard Congreve, telling me of her safe arrival, with her husband and sister,⁷ at Dieppe. This new friend, whom I have gained by coming to Wandsworth, is the chief charm of the place to me. Her friendship has the same date as the success of "Adam Bede" – two good things in my lot that ought to have made me less sad than I have been in this house.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1859.

Your letter came yesterday at tea-time, and made the evening happier than usual. We had thought of you not a little as we listened to the howling winds, especially as the terrible wrecks off the Irish coast had filled our imaginations disagreeably. Now I can make a charming picture of you all on the beach, except that I am obliged to fancy your face looking still too languid after all your exertion and sleeplessness. I remember the said face with peculiar vividness, which is very pleasant to me. "Rough" has been the daily companion of our walks, and wins on our affections, as other fellow mortals do, by a mixture of weaknesses and virtues – the weaknesses consisting chiefly in a tendency to become invisible every ten minutes, and in a forgetfulness of reproof, which, I fear, is the usual accompaniment of meekness under it. All this is good discipline for us selfish solitaries, who have been used to stroll along, thinking of nothing but ourselves.

We walked through your garden to-day, and I gathered a bit of your sweetbrier, of which I am at this moment enjoying the scent as it stands on my desk. I am enjoying, too, another sort of sweetness, which I also owe to you – of that subtle, haunting kind which is most like the scent of my favorite plants – the belief that you do really care for me across the seas there, and will associate me continually with your home. Faith is not easy to me, nevertheless I believe everything you say and write.

Write to me as often as you can – that is, as often as you feel any prompting to do so. You were a dear presence to me, and will be a precious thought to me all through your absence.

Journal, 1859.

May 4.– To-day came a letter from Barbara Bodichon, full of joy in my success, in the certainty that "Adam Bede" was mine, though she had not read more than extracts in reviews. This is the first delight in the book as mine, over and above the fact that the book is good.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th May, 1859.

God bless you, dearest Barbara, for your love and sympathy. You are the first friend who has given any symptom of knowing me – the first heart that has recognized me in a book which has come from my heart of hearts. But keep the secret solemnly till I give you leave to tell it; and give way to no impulses of triumphant affection. You have sense enough to know how important the incognito has been, and we are anxious to keep it up a few months longer. Curiously enough my old Coventry friends, who have certainly read the Westminster and the Times, and have probably by this time read the book itself, have given no sign of recognition. But a certain Mr. Liggins, whom rumor has fixed on as the author of my books, and whom they have believed in, has probably screened me from their vision. I am a very blessed woman, am I not, to have all this reason for being glad that I have lived? I have had no time of exultation; on the contrary, these last months have been sadder than usual to me, and I have thought more of the future and the much work that remains to be done in life than of anything that has been achieved. But I think your letter to-day gave me more joy – more heart-glow – than all the letters or reviews or other testimonies of success that have come to me since the evenings when I read aloud my manuscript to my dear, dear husband, and he laughed and cried alternately, and then rushed to me to kiss me. He is the prime blessing that has made all the rest possible to me, giving me a response to everything I have written – a response that I could confide in, as a proof that I had not mistaken my work.

Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th May, 1859.

You must not think me too soft-hearted when I tell you that it would make me uneasy to leave Mr. Anders without an assurance that his apology is accepted. "Who with repentance is not satisfied," etc.; that doctrine is bad for the sinning, but good for those sinned against. Will you oblige me by allowing a clerk to write something to this effect in the name of the firm? – "We are requested by George Eliot to state, in reply to your letter of the 16th, that he accepts your assurance that the publication of your letter to the reviewer of 'Adam Bede' in the Times was unintentional on your part."

Yes, I am assured now that "Adam Bede" was worth writing – worth living through long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past, but not at faith in the future.

A friend in Algiers⁸ has found me out – "will go to the stake on the assertion that I wrote 'Adam Bede'" – simply on the evidence of a few extracts. So far as I know, this is the first case of detection on purely internal evidence. But the secret is safe in that quarter.

I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again during some visit that you will pay to town before very long. It would do me good to have you shake me by the hand as the ascertained George Eliot.

Journal, 1859.

May 9.– We had a delicious drive to Dulwich, and back by Sydenham. We stayed an hour in the gallery at Dulwich, and I satisfied myself that the St. Sebastian is no exception to the usual "petty prettiness" of Guido's conceptions. The Cuyp glowing in the evening sun, the Spanish beggar boys of Murillo, and Gainsborough's portrait of Mrs. Sheridan and her sister, are the gems of the gallery. But better than the pictures was the fresh greenth of the spring – the chestnuts just on the verge of their flowering beauty, the bright leaves of the limes, the rich yellow-brown of the oaks, the meadows full of buttercups. We saw for the first time Clapham Common, Streatham Common, and Tooting Common – the two last like parks rather than commons.

May 19.– A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an acknowledgment of "Adam Bede's" success.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th May, 1859.

Mrs. Congreve is a sweet woman, and I feel that I have acquired a friend in her – after recently declaring that we would never have any friends again, only acquaintances.

Letter to John Blackwood, 21st May, 1859.

Thank you: first, for acting with that fine integrity which makes part of my faith in you; secondly, for the material sign of that integrity. I don't know which of those two things I care for most – that people should act nobly towards me, or that I should get honest money. I certainly care a great deal for the money, as I suppose all anxious minds do that love independence and have been brought up to think debt and begging the two deepest dishonors short of crime.

I look forward with quite eager expectation to seeing you – we have so much to say. Pray give us the first day at your command. The excursion, as you may imagine, is not ardently longed for in this weather, but when "merry May" is quite gone, we may surely hope for some sunshine; and then I have a pet project of rambling along by the banks of a river, not without artistic as well as hygienic purposes.

Pray bring me all the Liggins Correspondence. I have an amusing letter or two to show you – one from a gentleman who has sent me his works; happily the only instance of the kind. For, as Charles Lamb complains, it is always the people whose books don't sell who are anxious to send them to one, with their "foolish autographs" inside.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st May, 1859.

We don't think of going to the festival, not for want of power to enjoy Handel – there are few things that I care for more in the way of music than his choruses, performed by a grand orchestra – but because we are neither of us fit to encounter the physical exertion and inconveniences. It is a cruel thing the difficulty and dearness of getting any music in England – concerted music, which is the only music I care for much now. At Dresden we could have thoroughly enjoyable instrumental music every evening for two-pence; and I owed so many thoughts and inspirations of feeling to that stimulus.

Journal, 1859.

May 27.– Blackwood came to dine with us on his arrival in London, and we had much talk. A day or two before he had sent me a letter from Professor Aytoun, saying that he had neglected his work to read the first volume of "Adam Bede;" and he actually sent the other two volumes out of the house to save himself from temptation. Blackwood brought with him a correspondence he has had with various people about Liggins, beginning with Mr. Bracebridge, who will have it that Liggins is the author of "Adam Bede" in spite of all denials.

June 5.– Blackwood came, and we concocted two letters to send to the Times, in order to put a stop to the Liggins affair.

Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th June, 1859.

The "Liggins business" does annoy me, because it subjects you and Mr. John Blackwood to the reception of insulting letters, and the trouble of writing contradictions. Otherwise, the whole affair is really a subject for a Molière comedy – "The Wise Men of Warwickshire," who might supersede "The Wise Men of Gotham."

The letter you sent me was a very pleasant one from Mrs. Gaskell, saying that since she came up to town she has had the compliment paid her of being suspected to have written "Adam Bede." "I have hitherto denied it; but really, I think, that as you want to keep your real name a secret, it would be very pleasant for me to blush acquiescence. Will you give me leave?"

I hope the inaccuracy with which she writes my name is not characteristic of a genius for fiction, though I once heard a German account for the bad spelling in Goethe's early letters by saying that it was "genial" – their word for whatever is characteristic of genius.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 8th June, 1859.

I was glad you wrote to me from Avignon of all the places you have visited, because Avignon is one of my most vivid remembrances from out the dimness of ten years ago. Lucerne would be a strange region to me but for Calame's pictures. Through them I have a vision of it, but of course when I see it 'twill be another Luzern. Mr. Lewes obstinately nurses the project of carrying me thither with him, and depositing me within reach of you while he goes to Hofwyl. But at present I say "No." We have been waiting and waiting for the skies to let us take a few days' ramble by the river, but now I fear we must give it up till all the freshness of young summer is gone. July and August are the two months I care least about for leafy scenery.

However, we are kept at home this month partly by pleasures: the Handel Festival, for which we have indulged ourselves with tickets, and the sight of old friends – Mrs. Bodichon among the rest, and for her we hope to use your kind loan of a bedroom. We are both of us in much better condition than when you said good-bye to us, and I have many other sources of gladness just now – so I mean to make myself disagreeable no longer by caring about petty troubles. If one could but order cheerfulness from the druggist's! or even a few doses of coldness and distrust, to prevent one from foolish confidence in one's fellow-mortals!

I want to get rid of this house – cut cables and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you. But you are worth paying a price for.

There! I have written about nothing but ourselves this time! You do the same, and then I think I will promise … not to write again, but to ask you to go on writing to me without an answer.

How cool and idle you are this morning! I am warm and busy, but always, at all temperatures, yours affectionately.

Journal, 1859.

June 20.– We went to the Crystal Palace to hear the "Messiah," and dined afterwards with the Brays and Sara Hennell. I told them I was the author of "Adam Bede" and "Clerical Scenes," and they seemed overwhelmed with surprise. This experience has enlightened me a good deal as to the ignorance in which we all live of each other.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 24th June, 1859.

There is always an after sadness belonging to brief and interrupted intercourse between friends – the sadness of feeling that the blundering efforts we have made towards mutual understanding have only made a new veil between us – still more, the sadness of feeling that some pain may have been given which separation makes a permanent memory. We are quite unable to represent ourselves truly. Why should we complain that our friends see a false image? I say this because I am feeling painfully this morning that, instead of helping you when you brought before me a matter so deeply interesting to you, I have only blundered, and that I have blundered, as most of us do, from too much egoism and too little sympathy. If my mind had been more open to receive impressions, instead of being in over-haste to give them, I should more readily have seen what your object was in giving me that portion of your MS., and we might have gone through the necessary part of it on Tuesday. It seems no use to write this now, and yet I can't help wanting to assure you that if I am too imperfect to do and feel the right thing at the right moment, I am not without the slower sympathy that becomes all the stronger from a sense of previous mistake.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 27th June, 1859.

I am told peremptorily that I am to go to Switzerland next month, but now I have read your letter, I can't help thinking more of your illness than of the pleasure in prospect – according to my foolish nature, which is always prone to live in past pain.

We shall not arrive at Lucerne till the 12th, at the earliest, I imagine, so I hope we are secured from the danger of alighting precisely on the days of your absence. That would be cruel, for I shall only be left at Lucerne for three days. You must positively have nothing more interesting to do than to talk to me and let me look at you. Tell your sister I shall be all ears and eyes and no tongue, so she will find me the most amiable of conversers.

I think it must be that the sunshine makes your absence more conspicuous, for this place certainly becomes drearier to me as the summer advances. The dusty roads are all longer, and the shade is farther off. No more now about anything – except that Mr. Lewes commands me to say he has just read the "Roman Empire of the West" with much interest, and is going now to flesh his teeth in the "Politique" (Auguste Comte's).

Letter to the Brays, Monday evening, end of June, 1859.

"Dear Friends, – All three of you – thanks for your packet of heartfelt kindness. That is the best of your kindness – there is no sham in it. It was inevitable to me to have that outburst when I saw you for a little while after the long silence, and felt that I must tell you then or be forestalled, and leave you to gather the truth amidst an inextricable mixture of falsehood. But I feel that the influence of talking about my books, even to you and Mrs. Bodichon, has been so bad to me that I should like to be able to keep silence concerning them for evermore. If people were to buzz round me with their remarks, or compliments, I should lose the repose of mind and truthfulness of production without which no good, healthy books can be written. Talking about my books, I find, has much the same malign effect on me as talking of my feelings or my religion.

"I should think Sara's version of my brother's words concerning 'Adam Bede' is the correct one —'that there are things in it about my father' (i. e., being interpreted, things my father told us about his early life), not 'portrait' of my father. There is not a single portrait in the book, nor will there be in any future book of mine. There are portraits in the 'Clerical Scenes;' but that was my first bit of art, and my hand was not well in. I did not know so well how to manipulate my materials. As soon as the Liggins falsehood is annihilated, of course there will be twenty new ones in its place; and one of the first will be that I was not the sole author. The only safe thing for my mind's health is to shut my ears and go on with my work.

Letter to Charles Bray, 5th July, 1859.

"Thanks for your letters. They have given me one pleasure – that of knowing that Mr. Liggins has not been greatly culpable – though Mr. Bracebridge's statement, that only 'some small sums' have been collected, does not accord with what has been written to Mr. Blackwood from other counties. But 'O, I am sick!' Take no more trouble about me – and let every one believe – as they will, in spite of your kind efforts —what they like to believe. I can't tell you how much melancholy it causes me that people are, for the most part, so incapable of comprehending the state of mind which cares for that which is essentially human in all forms of belief, and desires to exhibit it under all forms with loving truthfulness. Freethinkers are scarcely wider than the orthodox in this matter – they all want to see themselves and their own opinions held up as the true and the lovely. On the same ground that an idle woman, with flirtations and flounces, likes to read a French novel, because she can imagine herself the heroine, grave people, with opinions, like the most admirable character in a novel to be their mouth-piece. If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally. I have had heart-cutting experience that opinions are a poor cement between human souls: and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is, that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring, human creatures.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th July, 1859.

"We shall not start till Saturday, and shall not reach Lucerne till the evening of the 11th. There is a project of our returning through Holland, but the attractions of Lucerne are sure to keep us there as long as possible. We have given up Zurich in spite of Moleschott and science. The other day I said to Mr. Lewes, 'Every now and then it comes across me, like the recollection of some precious little store laid by, that there is Mrs. Congreve in the world.' That is how people talk of you in your absence."

Journal, 1859.

July 9.– We started for Switzerland. Spent a delightful day in Paris. To the Louvre first, where we looked chiefly at the Marriage at Cana, by Paul Veronese. This picture, the greatest I have seen of his, converted me to high admiration of him.

July 12.– Arrived at Lucerne in the evening. Glad to make a home at the charming Schweizerhof on the banks of the Lake. G. went to call on the Congreves, and in the afternoon Mrs. Congreve came to chat with us. In the evening we had a boat on the Lake.

July 13.– G. set off for Hofwyl at five o'clock, and the three next days were passed by me in quiet chat with the Congreves and quiet resting on my own sofa.

July 19.– Spent the morning in Bâle, chiefly under the chestnut-trees, near the Cathedral, I reading aloud Flourens's sketch of Cuvier's labors. In the afternoon to Paris.

July 21.– Holly Lodge, Wandsworth. Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters from Blackwood; nothing to annoy us. Before we set off we had heard the excellent news that the fourth edition of "Adam Bede" (5000) had all been sold in a fortnight. The fifth edition appeared last week.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 23d July, 1859.

We reached here last evening, and though I was a good deal overdone in getting to Lucerne, I have borne the equally rapid journey back without headache – a proof that I am strengthened. I had three quiet days of talk with the Congreves at Lucerne, while Mr. Lewes went to Hofwyl. Mrs. Congreve is one of those women of whom there are few – rich in intelligence, without pretension, and quivering with sensibility, yet calm and quiet in her manners.

Letter to John Blackwood, 23d July, 1859.

I thank you for your offer about the money for "Adam," but I have intentions of stern thrift, and mean to want as little as possible. When "Maggie" is done, and I have a month or two of leisure, I should like to transfer our present house, into which we were driven by haste and economy, to some one who likes houses full of eyes all round him. I long for a house with some shade and grass close round it – I don't care how rough – and the sight of Swiss houses has heightened my longing. But at present I say Avaunt to all desires.

While I think of it, let me beg of you to mention to the superintendent of your printing-office, that in case of another reprint of "Adam," I beg the word "sperrit" (for "spirit") may be particularly attended to. Adam never said "speerit," as he is made to do in the cheaper edition, at least in one place – his speech at the birthday dinner. This is a small matter, but it is a point I care about.

Words fail me about the not impossible Pug, for some compunction at having mentioned my unreasonable wish will mingle itself paradoxically with the hope that it may be fulfilled.

I hope we shall have other interviews to remember this time next year, and that you will find me without aggravated symptoms of the "author's malady" – a determination of talk to my own books, which I was alarmingly conscious of when you and the Major were here. After all, I fear authors must submit to be something of monsters – not quite simple, healthy human beings; but I will keep my monstrosity within bounds if possible.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th July, 1859.

The things you tell me are just such as I need to know – I mean about the help my book is to the people who read it. The weight of my future life – the self-questioning whether my nature will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of personal duty and intellectual production, presses upon me almost continually in a way that prevents me even from tasting the quiet joy I might have in the work done. Buoyancy and exultation, I fancy, are out of the question when one has lived so long as I have. But I am the better for every word of encouragement, and am helped over many days by such a note as yours. I often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make me! I feel no regret that the fame, as such, brings no pleasure; but it is a grief to me that I do not constantly feel strong in thankfulness that my past life has vindicated its uses and given me reason for gladness that such an unpromising woman-child was born into the world. I ought not to care about small annoyances, and it is chiefly egoism that makes them annoyances. I had quite an enthusiastic letter from Herbert Spencer the other day about "Adam Bede." He says he feels the better for reading it – really words to be treasured up. I can't bear the idea of appearing further in the papers. And there is no one now except people who would not be convinced, though one rose from the dead, to whom any statement apropos of Liggins would be otherwise than superfluous. I dare say some "investigator" of the Bracebridge order will arise after I am dead and revive the story – and perhaps posterity will believe in Liggins. Why not? A man a little while ago wrote a pamphlet to prove that the Waverley novels were chiefly written, not by Walter Scott, but by Thomas Scott and his wife Elizabeth. The main evidence being that several people thought Thomas cleverer than Walter, and that in the list of the Canadian regiment of Scots to which Thomas belonged many of the names of the Waverley novels occurred – among the rest Monk– and in "Woodstock" there is a General Monk! The writer expected to get a great reputation by his pamphlet, and I think it might have suggested to Mr. B. his style of critical and historical inference. I must tell you, in confidence, that Dickens has written to me the noblest, most touching words about "Adam" – not hyperbolical compliments, but expressions of deep feeling. He says the reading made an epoch in his life.

Letter to John Blackwood, 30th July, 1859.

Pug is come! come to fill up the void left by false and narrow-hearted friends. I see already that he is without envy, hatred, or malice – that he will betray no secrets, and feel neither pain at my success nor pleasure in my chagrin. I hope the photograph does justice to his physiognomy. It is expressive: full of gentleness and affection, and radiant with intelligence when there is a savory morsel in question – a hopeful indication of his mental capacity. I distrust all intellectual pretension that announces itself by obtuseness of palate!

I wish you could see him in his best pose– when I have arrested him in a violent career of carpet-scratching, and he looks at me with fore-legs very wide apart, trying to penetrate the deep mystery of this arbitrary, not to say capricious, prohibition. He is snoring by my side at this moment, with a serene promise of remaining quiet for any length of time; he couldn't behave better if he had been expressly educated for me. I am too lazy a lover of dogs and all earthly things to like them when they give me much trouble, preferring to describe the pleasure other people have in taking trouble.

Alas! the shadow that tracks all earthly good – the possibility of loss. One may lose one's faculties, which will not always fetch a high price; how much more a Pug worth unmentionable sums – a Pug which some generous-hearted personage in some other corner of Great Britain than Edinburgh may even now be sending emissaries after, being bent on paying the kindest, most delicate attention to a sensitive mortal not sufficiently reticent of wishes.

All I can say of that generous-hearted personage No. 2 is, that I wish he may get – somebody else's Pug, not mine. And all I will say of the sensitive, insufficiently reticent mortal No. 2 is, that I hope he may be as pleased and as grateful as George Eliot.

Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 30th July, 1859.

I look forward to playing duets with you as one of my future pleasures; and if I am able to go on working, I hope we shall afford to have a fine grand-piano. I have none of Mozart's Symphonies, so that you can be guided in your choice of them entirely by your own taste. I know Beethoven's Sonata in E flat well; it is a very charming one, and I shall like to hear you play it. That is one of my luxuries – to sit still and hear some one playing my favorite music; so that you may able sure you will find willing ears to listen to the fruits of your industrious practising.

There are ladies in the world, not a few, who play the violin, and I wish I were one of them, for then we could play together sonatas for the piano and violin, which make a charming combination. The violin gives that keen edge of tone which the piano wants.

I like to know that you were gratified by getting a watch so much sooner than you expected; and it was the greater satisfaction to me to send it you, because you had earned it by making good use of these precious years at Hofwyl. It is a great comfort to your father and me to think of that, for we, with our old grave heads, can't help talking very often of the need our boys will have for all sorts of good qualities and habits in making their way through this difficult life. It is a world, you perceive, in which cross-bows will be launisch sometimes, and frustrate the skill of excellent marksmen – how much more of lazy bunglers?

The first volume of the "Physiology of Common Life" is just published, and it is a great pleasure to see so much of your father's hard work successfully finished. He has been giving a great deal of labor to the numbers on the physiology of the nervous system, which are to appear in the course of two or three months, and he has enjoyed the labor in spite of the drawback of imperfect health, which obliges him very often to leave the desk with a hot and aching head. It is quite my worst trouble that he has so much of this discomfort to bear; and we must all try and make everything else as pleasant to him as we can, to make up for it.

Tell Thornton he shall have the book he asks for, if possible – I mean the book of moths and butterflies; and tell Bertie I expect to hear about the wonderful things he has done with his pocket-knife. Tell him he is equipped well enough to become king of a desert island with that pocket-knife of his; and if, as I think I remember, it has a corkscrew attached, he would certainly have more implements than he would need in that romantic position.

We shall hope to hear a great deal of your journey, with all its haps and mishaps. The mishaps are just as pleasant as the haps when they are past – that is one comfort for tormented travellers.

You are an excellent correspondent, so I do not fear you will flag in writing to me; and remember, you are always giving a pleasure when you write to me.

Journal, 1859.

Aug. 11.– Received a letter from an American – Mr. J. C. Evans – asking me to write a story for an American periodical. Answered that I could not write one for less than £1000, since, in order to do it, I must suspend my actual work.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 11th Aug. 1859.

I do wish much to see more of human life: how can one see enough in the short years one has to stay in the world? But I meant that at present my mind works with the most freedom and the keenest sense of poetry in my remotest past, and there are many strata to be worked through before I can begin to use, artistically, any material I may gather in the present. Curiously enough, apropos of your remark about "Adam Bede," there is much less "out of my own life" in that book —i. e., the materials are much more a combination from imperfectly known and widely sundered elements than the "Clerical Scenes." I'm so glad you have enjoyed these – so thankful for the words you write me.