George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3)

Letter to Charles Bray, June, 1848

I have read "Jane Eyre," and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.

About the beginning of July Miss Evans and her father returned to Coventry; and the 13th July was a memorable day, as Emerson came to visit the Brays, and she went with them to Stratford. All she says herself about it is in this note.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, July, 1848

I have seen Emerson – the first man I have ever seen. But you have seen still more of him, so I need not tell you what he is. I shall leave Cara to tell how the day – the Emerson day – was spent, for I have a swimming head from hanging over the desk to write business letters for father. Have you seen the review of Strauss's pamphlet in the Edinburgh? The title is "Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren, oder Julian der Abtrünnige" – a sort of erudite satire on the King of Prussia; but the reviewer pronounces it to have a permanent value quite apart from this fugitive interest. The "Romantiker," or Romanticist, is one who, in literature, in the arts, in religion or politics, endeavors to revive the dead past. Julian was a romanticist in wishing to restore the Greek religion and its spirit, when mankind had entered on the new development. But you have very likely seen the review. I must copy one passage, translated from the conclusion of Strauss's pamphlet, lest you should not have met with it. "Christian writers have disfigured the death-scene of Julian. They have represented him as furious, blaspheming, despairing, and in his despair exclaiming, Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! – 'νενίκηκας Γαλιλαῖε.' This phrase, though false as history, has a truth in it. It contains a prophecy – to us a consoling prophecy – and it is this: Every Julian —i. e., every great and powerful man – who would attempt to resuscitate a state of society which has died, will infallibly be vanquished by the Galilean – for the Galilean is nothing less than the genius of the future!"

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1848

Father's tongue has just given utterance to a thought which has been very visibly radiating from his eager eyes for some minutes. "I thought you were going on with the book." I can only bless you for those two notes, which have emanated from you like so much ambrosial scent from roses and lavender. Not less am I grateful for the Carlyle eulogium.[24 - On Emerson.] I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love another. More anon – this from my doleful prison of stupidity and barrenness, with a yawning trapdoor ready to let me down into utter fatuity. But I can even yet feel the omnipotence of a glorious chord. Poor pebble as I am, left entangled among slimy weeds, I can yet hear from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoice that it is there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less unworthy of the polishing.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of 1848

Thank you for a sight of our blessed St. Francis's[25 - Francis Newman.] letter. There is no imaginable moment in which the thought of such a being could be an intrusion. His soul is a blessed yea. There is a sort of blasphemy in that proverbial phrase, "Too good to be true." The highest inspiration of the purest, noblest human soul, is the nearest expression of the truth. Those extinct volcanoes of one's spiritual life – those eruptions of the intellect and the passions which have scattered the lava of doubt and negation over our early faith – are only a glorious Himalayan chain, beneath which new valleys of undreamed richness and beauty will spread themselves. Shall we poor earthworms have sublimer thoughts than the universe, of which we are poor chips – mere effluvia of mind – shall we have sublimer thoughts than that universe can furnish out into reality? I am living unspeakable moments, and can write no more.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1849

I think of you perpetually, but my thoughts are all aqueous; they will not crystallize – they are as fleeting as ripples on the sea. I am suffering perhaps as acutely as ever I did in my life. Breathe a wish that I may gather strength – the fragrance of your wish will reach me somehow.

The next letter is to Mrs. Houghton, who, it will be remembered, was the only daughter by Mr. Evans's first marriage. Miss Evans had more intellectual sympathy with this half-sister Fanny than with any of the other members of her family, and it is a pity that more of the letters to her have not been preserved.

Letter to Mrs. Houghton, Sunday evening, 1849

I have been holding a court of conscience, and I cannot enjoy my Sunday's music without restoring harmony, without entering a protest against that superficial soul of mine which is perpetually contradicting and belying the true inner soul. I am in that mood which, in another age of the world, would have led me to put on sackcloth and pour ashes on my head, when I call to mind the sins of my tongue – my animadversions on the faults of others, as if I thought myself to be something when I am nothing. When shall I attain to the true spirit of love which Paul has taught for all the ages? I want no one to excuse me, dear Fanny; I only want to remove the shadow of my miserable words and deeds from before the divine image of truth and goodness, which I would have all beings worship. I need the Jesuits' discipline of silence, and though my "evil speaking" issues from the intellectual point of view rather than the moral – though there may be gall in the thought while there is honey in the feeling, yet the evil speaking is wrong. We may satirize character and qualities in the abstract without injury to our moral nature, but persons hardly ever. Poor hints and sketches of souls as we are – with some slight, transient vision of the perfect and the true – we had need help each other to gaze at the blessed heavens instead of peering into each other's eyes to find out the motes there.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday morning, 4th Feb. 1849

I have not touched the piano for nearly two months until this morning, when, father being better, I was determined to play a mass before the piano is utterly out of tune again. Write, asking for nothing again, like a true disciple of Jesus. I am still feeling rather shattered in brain and limbs; but do not suppose that I lack inward peace and strength. My body is the defaulter —consciously so. I triumph over all things in the spirit, but the flesh is weak, and disgraces itself by headaches and backaches. I am delighted to find that you mention Macaulay, because that is an indication that Mr. Hennell has been reading him. I thought of Mr. H. all through the book, as the only person I could be quite sure would enjoy it as much as I did myself. I did not know if it would interest you: tell me more explicitly that it does. Think of Babylon being unearthed in spite of the prophecies? Truly we are looking before and after, "au jour d'aujourd'hui," as Monsieur Bricolin says. Send me the criticism of Jacques the morn's morning – only beware there are not too many blasphemies against my divinity.

Paint soap-bubbles – and never fear but I will find a meaning, though very likely not your meaning. Paint the Crucifixion in a bubble – after Turner – and then the Resurrection: I see them now.

There has been a vulgar man sitting by while I have been writing, and I have been saying parenthetical bits of civility to him to help out poor father in his conversation, so I have not been quite sure what I have been saying to you. I have woful aches which take up half my nervous strength.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Feb. 1849

My life is a perpetual nightmare, and always haunted by something to be done, which I have never the time, or, rather, the energy, to do. Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious, and I, alas! am not one of them. I have sat down in desperation this evening, though dear father is very uneasy, and his moans distract me, just to tell you that you have full absolution for your criticism, which I do not reckon of the impertinent order. I wish you thoroughly to understand that the writers who have most profoundly influenced me – who have rolled away the waters from their bed, raised new mountains and spread delicious valleys for me – are not in the least oracles to me. It is just possible that I may not embrace one of their opinions; that I may wish my life to be shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance, it would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to stun me with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, and government are miserably erroneous – that he was guilty of some of the worst bassesses that have degraded civilized man. I might admit all this: and it would be not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions; which has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me; and this not by teaching me any new belief. It is simply that the rushing mighty wind of his inspiration has so quickened my faculties that I have been able to shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously dwelt as dim Ahnungen in my soul; the fire of his genius has so fused together old thoughts and prejudices that I have been ready to make new combinations.

It is thus with George Sand. I should never dream of going to her writings as a moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree with her about marriage or not – whether I think the design of her plot correct, or that she had no precise design at all, but began to write as the spirit moved her, and trusted to Providence for the catastrophe, which I think the more probable case. It is sufficient for me, as a reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that "great power of God manifested in her," that I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results, and (I must say, in spite of your judgment) some of the moral instincts and their tendencies, with such truthfulness, such nicety of discrimination, such tragic power, and, withal, such loving, gentle humor, that one might live a century with nothing but one's own dull faculties, and not know so much as those six pages will suggest. The psychological anatomy of Jacques and Fernande in the early days of their marriage seems quite preternaturally true – I mean that her power of describing it is preternatural. Fernande and Jacques are merely the feminine and the masculine nature, and their early married life an every-day tragedy; but I will not dilate on the book or on your criticism, for I am so sleepy that I should write nothing but bêtises. I have at last the most delightful "De imitatione Christi," with quaint woodcuts. One breathes a cool air as of cloisters in the book – it makes one long to be a saint for a few months. Verily its piety has its foundations in the depth of the divine-human soul.

In March Miss Evans wrote a short notice of the "Nemesis of Faith" for the Coventry Herald, in which she says:

"We are sure that its author is a bright, particular star, though he sometimes leaves us in doubt whether he be not a fallen 'son of the morning.'"

The paper was sent to Mr. Froude, and on 23d March Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell: "Last night at dusk M. A. came running in in high glee with a most charming note from Froude, naïvely and prettily requesting her to reveal herself. He says he recognized her hand in the review in the Coventry Herald, and if she thinks him a fallen star she might help him to rise, but he 'believes he has only been dipped in the Styx, and is not much the worse for the bath.' Poor girl, I am so pleased she should have this little episode in her dull life."

The next letter again refers to Mr. Froude's books.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Wednesday, April, 1849

Tell me not that I am a mere prater – that feeling never talks. I will talk, and caress, and look lovingly, until death makes me as stony as the Gorgon-like heads of all the judicious people I know. What is anything worth until it is uttered? Is not the universe one great utterance? Utterance there must be in word or deed to make life of any worth. Every true pentecost is a gift of utterance. Life is too short and opportunities too meagre for many deeds – besides, the best friendships are precisely those where there is no possibility of material helpfulness – and I would take no deeds as an adequate compensation for the frigid, glassy eye and hard, indifferent tones of one's very solid and sensible and conscientious friend. You will wonder of what this is à propos– only of a little bitterness in my own soul just at this moment, and not of anything between you and me. I have nothing to tell you, for all the "haps" of my life are so indifferent. I spin my existence so entirely out of myself that there is a sad want of proper names in my conversation, and I am becoming a greater bore than ever. It is a consciousness of this that has kept me from writing to you. My letters would be a sort of hermit's diary. I have so liked the thought of your enjoying the "Nemesis of Faith." I quote Keats's sonnet, à propos of that book. It has made me feel —

"Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez – when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

You must read "The Shadows of the Clouds." It produces a sort of palpitation that one hardly knows whether to call wretched or delightful. I cannot take up the book again, though wanting very much to read it more closely. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is blessed to think that a sort of transubstantiation is possible by which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's greatness, beauty, or bliss is one's own. And let us sing a Magnificat when we are conscious that this power of expansion and sympathy is growing, just in proportion as the individual satisfactions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but it is worth while to be so, for the sake of the living soul – the breath of God within us. You see I can do nothing but scribble my own prosy stuff – such chopped straw as my soul is foddered on. I am translating the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" of Spinoza, and seem to want the only friend that knows how to praise or blame. How exquisite is the satisfaction of feeling that another mind than your own sees precisely where and what is the difficulty – and can exactly appreciate the success with which it is overcome. One knows —sed longo intervallo– the full meaning of the "fit audience though few." How an artist must hate the noodles that stare at his picture, with a vague notion that it is a clever thing to be able to paint.

Letter to Mrs. Pears, 10th May, 1849

I know it will gladden your heart to hear that father spoke of you the other day with affection and gratitude. He remembers you as one who helped to strengthen that beautiful spirit of resignation which has never left him through his long trial. His mind is as clear and rational as ever, notwithstanding his feebleness, and he gives me a thousand little proofs that he understands my affection and responds to it. These are very precious moments to me; my chair by father's bedside is a very blessed seat to me. My delight in the idea that you are being benefited after all, prevents me from regretting you, though you are just the friend that would complete my comfort. Every addition to your power of enjoying life is an expansion of mine. I partake of your ebb and flow. I am going to my post now. I have just snatched an interval to let you know that, though you have taken away a part of yourself from me, neither you nor any one else can take the whole.

It will have been seen from these late letters, that the last few months of her father's illness had been a terrible strain on his daughter's health and spirits. She did all the nursing herself, and Mrs. Congreve (who was then Miss Bury, daughter of the doctor who was attending Mr. Evans – and who, it will be seen, subsequently became perhaps the most intimate and the closest of George Eliot's friends) tells me that her father told her at the time that he never saw a patient more admirably and thoroughly cared for. The translating was a great relief when she could get to it. Under date of 19th April, 1849, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell, "M. A. is happy now with this Spinoza to do: she says it is such a rest for her mind."

The next letter to Rosehill pathetically describes how the end came at last to Mr. Evans's sufferings:

Letter to the Brays, half-past nine, Wednesday morning, 31st May, 1849

Dear friends, Mr. Bury told us last night that he thought father would not last till morning. I sat by him with my hand in his till four o'clock, and he then became quieter and has had some comfortable sleep. He is obviously weaker this morning, and has been for the last two or three days so painfully reduced that I dread to think what his dear frame may become before life gives way. My brother slept here last night, and will be here again to-night. What shall I be without my father? It will seem as if a part of my moral nature were gone. I write when I can, but I do not know whether my letter will do to send this evening.

P.S.– Father is very, very much weaker this evening.

Mr. Evans died during that night, 31st May, 1849.

SUMMARY

MAY, 1846, TO MAY, 1849

Visit to Mrs. Hennell at Hackney – Letters to Mrs. Bray – Strauss translation published – Visit to Dover with father – Classical books wanted – Pleasure in Strauss's letter – Brays suspect novel-writing – Letters to Miss Sara Hennell – Good spirits – Wicksteed's review of the Strauss translation – Reading Foster's life – Visit to Griff – Child's view of God (à propos of Miss Hennell's "Heliados") – Visit to London – "Elijah" – Likes London less – The Sibree family and Mrs. John Cash's reminiscences – Letter to Miss Mary Sibree – Letters to Miss Sara Hennell – Mental depression – Opinion of Charles Hennell's "Inquiry" – Visit to the Isle of Wight with father – Admiration of Richardson – Blanco White – Delight in George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur" – Letters to Mr. John Sibree – Opinion of Mrs. Hannah More's letters – "Tancred," "Coningsby," and "Sybil" – D'Israeli's theory of races – Gentile nature kicks against superiority of Jews – Bows only to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry – Superiority of music among the arts – Relation of religion to art – Thorwaldsen's Christ – Admiration of Roberts and Creswick – The intellect and moral nature restrain the passions and senses – Mr. Dawson the lecturer – Satisfaction in French Revolution of '48 – The men of the barricade bowing to the image of Christ – Difference between French and English working-classes – The need of utterance – Sympathy with Mr. Sibree in religious difficulties – Longing for a high attic in Geneva – Letters to Miss Sara Hennell – Views on correspondence – Mental depression – Father's illness – Father better – Goes with him to St. Leonard's – Letter to Charles Bray – Depression to be overcome by thought and love – Admiration of Louis Blanc – Recovery from depression – "Jane Eyre" – Return to Coventry – Meets Emerson – Strauss's pamphlet on Julian the Apostate – Carlyle's eulogium on Emerson – Francis Newman – Suffering from depression – Letter to Mrs. Houghton – Self-condemnation for evil speaking – Letters to Miss Hennell – Macaulay's History – On the influence of George Sand's and Rousseau's writing – Writes review of the "Nemesis of Faith" for the Coventry Herald– Opinion of the "Nemesis" and the "Shadows of the Clouds" – Translating Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" – Letter to Mrs. Pears – The consolations of nursing – Strain of father's illness – Father's death.

CHAPTER IV

It fortunately happened that the Brays had planned a trip to the Continent for this month of June, 1849, and Miss Evans, being left desolate by the death of her father, accepted their invitation to join them. On the 11th June they started, going by way of Paris, Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Milan, Como, Lago Maggiore, Martigny, and Chamounix, arriving at Geneva in the third week of July. Here Miss Evans determined to remain for some months, the Brays returning home. Before they went, however, they helped her to settle herself comfortably en pension, and, as will be seen from the following letters, the next eight months were quietly and peacefully happy. The pension selected in the first instance was the Campagne Plongeon, which stands on a slight eminence a few hundred yards back from the road on the route d'Hermance, some ten minutes' walk from the Hôtel Métropole. From the Hôtel National on the Quai de Mont Blanc one catches a pleasant glimpse of it nestling among its trees. A good-sized, gleaming white house, with a centre, and gables at each side, a flight of steps leading from the middle window to the ground. A meadow in front, nicely planted, slopes charmingly down to the blue lake, and behind the house, on the left-hand side, there is an avenue of remarkably fine chestnut-trees, whence there is a magnificent view of the Jura mountains on the opposite side of the lake. The road to Geneva is very beautiful, by the lake-side, bordered with plane-trees. It was a delightful, soothing change after the long illness and the painful death of her father – after the monotonous dulness, too, of an English provincial town like Coventry, where there is little beauty of any sort to gladden the soul. In the first months following a great loss it is good to be alone for a time – alone, especially amidst beautiful scenes – and alone in the sense of being removed from habitual associations, but yet constantly in the society of new acquaintances, who are sufficiently interesting, but not too intimate. The Swiss correspondence which follows is chiefly addressed to the Brays collectively, and describes the life minutely.

Letter to the Brays, 27th July, 1840

About my comfort here, I find no disagreeables, and have every physical comfort that I care about. The family seems well-ordered and happy. I have made another friend, too – an elderly English lady, a Mrs. Locke, who used to live at Ryde – a pretty old lady with plenty of shrewdness and knowledge of the world. She began to say very kind things to me in rather a waspish tone yesterday morning at breakfast. I liked her better at dinner and tea, and to-day we are quite confidential. I only hope she will stay; she is just the sort of person I shall like to have to speak to – not at all "congenial," but with a character of her own. The going down to tea bores me, and I shall get out of it as soon as I can, unless I can manage to have the newspapers to read. The American lady embroiders slippers – the mamma looks on and does nothing. The marquis and his friends play at whist; the old ladies sew; and madame says things so true that they are insufferable. She is obliged to talk to all, and cap their niaiseries with some suitable observation. She has been very kind and motherly to me. I like her better every time I see her. I have quiet and comfort – what more can I want to make me a healthy, reasonable being once more? I will never go near a friend again until I can bring joy and peace in my heart and in my face – but remember that friendship will be easy then.

Letter to the Brays, 5th Aug. 1849

I hope my imagination paints truly when it shows me all of you seated with beaming faces round the tea-table at Rosehill. I shall be yearning to know that things as well as people are smiling on you; but I am sure you will not let me wait for news of you longer than is necessary. My life here would be delightful if we could always keep the same set of people; but, alas! I fear one generation will go and another come so fast that I shall not care to become acquainted with any of them. My good Mrs. Locke is not going, that is one comfort. She is quite a mother to me – helps me to buy my candles and do all my shopping – takes care of me at dinner, and quite rejoices when she sees me enjoy conversation or anything else. The St. Germains are delightful people – the marquise really seems to me the most charming person I ever saw, with kindness enough to make the ultra-politeness of her manners quite genuine. She is very good to me, and says of me, "Je m'interesse vivement à mademoiselle." The marquis is the most well-bred, harmless of men. He talks very little – every sentence seems a terrible gestation, and comes forth fortissimo; but he generally bestows one on me, and seems especially to enjoy my poor tunes (mind you, all these trivialities are to satisfy your vanity, not mine – because you are beginning to be ashamed of having loved me). The gray-headed gentleman got quite fond of talking philosophy with me before he went; but, alas! he and a very agreeable young man who was with him are gone to Aix les Bains. The young German is the Baron de H – . I should think he is not more than two or three and twenty, very good-natured, but a most determined enemy to all gallantry. I fancy he is a Communist; but he seems to have been joked about his opinions by madame and the rest until he has determined to keep a proud silence on such matters. He has begun to talk to me, and I think we should become good friends; but he, too, is gone on an expedition to Monte Rosa. He is expecting his brother to join him here on his return, but I fear they will not stay long. The gouvernante is a German, with a moral region that would rejoice Mr. Bray's eyes. Poor soul, she is in a land of strangers, and often seems to feel her loneliness. Her situation is a very difficult one; and "die Angst," she says, often brings on a pain at her heart. Madame is a woman of some reading and considerable talent – very fond of politics, a devourer of the journals, with an opinion ready for you on any subject whatever. It will be a serious loss to her to part with the St. Germain family. I fear that they will not stay longer than this month. I should be quite indifferent to the world that comes or goes if once I had my boxes with all my books. Last Sunday I went with madame to a small church near Plongeon, and I could easily have fancied myself in an Independent chapel at home. The spirit of the sermon was not a whit more elevated than that of our friend Dr. Harris; the text, "What shall I do to be saved?" the answer of Jesus being blinked as usual.

To-day I have been to hear one of the most celebrated preachers, M. Meunier. His sermon was really eloquent – all written down, but delivered with so much energy and feeling that you never thought of the book. It is curious to notice how patriotism —dévouement à la patrie– is put in the sermons as the first of virtues, even before devotion to the Church. We never hear of it in England after we leave school. The good marquis goes with his family and servants, all nicely dressed, to the Catholic Church. They are a most orderly set of people: there is nothing but their language and their geniality and politeness to distinguish them from one of the best of our English aristocratic families. I am perfectly comfortable; every one is kind to me and seems to like me. Your kind hearts will rejoice at this, I know. Only remember that I am just as much interested in all that happens to you at Rosehill as you are in what happens to me at Plongeon. Pray that the motto of Geneva may become mine – "Post tenebras lux."

Letter to the Brays, 20th Aug. 1849