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

Another interesting case of comparison was that between the original Zinsgroschen and a copy by an Italian painter, which hangs on the opposite wall of the cabinet. This is considered a fine copy, and would be a fine picture if one had never seen the original; but all the finest effects are gone in the copy.

The four large Correggios hanging together – the Nacht; the Madonna with St. Sebastian, of the smiling graceful character, with the little cherub riding astride a cloud; the Madonna with St. Hubert; and a third Madonna, very grave and sweet – painted when he was nineteen – remained with me very vividly. They are full of life, though the life is not of a high order; and I should have surmised, without any previous knowledge, that the painter was among the first masters of technique. The Magdalen is sweet in conception, but seems to have less than the usual merit of Correggio's pictures as to painting. A picture we delighted in extremely was one of Murillo's – St. Rodriguez, fatally wounded, receiving the Crown of Martyrdom. The attitude and expression are sublime, and strikingly distinguished from all other pictures of saints I have ever seen. He stands erect in his scarlet and white robes, with face upturned, the arms held simply downward, but the hands held open in a receptive attitude. The silly cupid-like angel holding the martyr's crown in the corner spoils all.

I did not half satisfy my appetite for the rich collection of Flemish and Dutch pictures here – for Teniers, Ryckart, Gerard Dow, Terburg, Mieris, and the rest. Rembrandt looks great here in his portraits, but I like none of the other pictures by him; the Ganymede is an offence. Guido is superlatively odious in his Christs, in agonized or ecstatic attitudes – much about the level of the accomplished London beggar. Dear, grand old Rubens does not show to great advantage, except in the charming half-length Diana returning from Hunting, the Love Garden, and the sketch of his Judgment of Paris.

The most popular Murillo, and apparently one of the most popular Madonnas in the gallery, is the simple, sad mother with her child, without the least divinity in it, suggesting a dead or sick father, and imperfect nourishment in a garret. In that light it is touching. A fellow-traveller in the railway to Leipzig told us he had seen this picture in 1848 with nine bullet holes in it! The firing from the hotel of the Stadt Rom bore directly on the Picture Gallery.

Veronese is imposing in one of the large rooms – the Adoration of the Magi, the Marriage at Cana, the Finding of Moses, etc., making grand masses of color on the lower part of the walls; but to me he is ignoble as a painter of human beings.

It was a charming life – our six weeks at Dresden. There were the open-air concerts at the Grosser Garten and the Brühl'sche Terrace; the Sommer Theater, where we saw our favorite comic actor Merbitz; the walks into the open country, with the grand stretch of sky all round; the Zouaves, with their wondrous make-ups as women; Räder, the humorous comedian at the Sink'sche Bad Theater; our quiet afternoons in our pleasant salon– all helping to make an agreeable fringe to the quiet working time.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th July, 1858.

Since I wrote to you last I have lived through a great deal of exquisite pleasure. First an attack of illness during our last week at Munich, which I reckon among my pleasures because I was nursed so tenderly. Then a fortnight's unspeakable journey to Salzburg, Ischl, Linz, Vienna, Prague, and finally Dresden, which is our last resting-place before returning to Richmond, where we hope to be at the beginning of September. Dresden is a proper climax; for all other art seems only a preparation for feeling the superiority of the Madonna di San Sisto the more. We go three days a week to the gallery, and every day – after looking at other pictures – we go to take a parting draught of delight at Titian's Zinsgroschen and the Einzige Madonna. In other respects I am particularly enjoying our residence here – we are so quiet, having determined to know no one and give ourselves up to work. We both feel a happy change in our health from leaving Munich, though I am reconciled to our long stay there by the fact that Mr. Lewes gained so much from his intercourse with the men of science there, especially Bischoff, Siebold, and Harless. I remembered your passion for autographs, and asked Liebig for his on your account. I was not sure that you would care enough about the handwriting of other luminaries; for there is such a thing as being European and yet obscure – a fixed star visible only from observatories.

You will be interested to hear that I saw Strauss at Munich. He came for a week's visit before we left. I had a quarter of an hour's chat with him alone, and was very agreeably impressed by him. He looked much more serene, and his face had a far sweeter expression, than when I saw him in that dumb way at Cologne. He speaks with very choice words, like a man strictly truthful in the use of language. Will you undertake to tell Mrs. Call from me that he begged me to give his kindest remembrances to her and to her father,[6 - Dr. Brabant.] of whom he spoke with much interest and regard as his earliest English friend? I dare not begin to write about other things or people that I have seen in these crowded weeks. They must wait till I have you by my side again, which I hope will happen some day.

Journal, 1858.

From Dresden, one showery day at the end of August, we set off to Leipzig, the first stage on our way home. Here we spent two nights; had a glimpse of the old town with its fine market; dined at Brockhaus's; saw the picture-gallery, carrying away a lasting delight in Calame's great landscapes and De Dreux's dogs, which are far better worth seeing than De la Roche's "Napoleon at Fontainebleau" – considered the glory of the gallery; went with Victor Carus to his museum and saw an Amphioxus; and finally spent the evening at an open-air concert in Carus's company. Early in the morning we set off by railway, and travelled night and day till we reached home on the 2d September.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Sept. 1858.

Will you not write to the author of "Thorndale" and express your sympathy? He is a very diffident man, who would be susceptible to that sort of fellowship; and one should give a gleam of happiness where it is possible. I shall write you nothing worth reading for the next three months, so here is an opportunity for you to satisfy a large appetite for generous deeds. You can write to me a great many times without getting anything worth having in return.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Oct. 1858.

Thanks for the verses on Buckle. I'm afraid I feel a malicious delight in them, for he is a writer who inspires me with a personal dislike; not to put too fine a point on it, he impresses me as an irreligious, conceited man.

Long ago I had offered to write about Newman, but gave it up again.

The second volume of "Adam Bede" had been sent to Blackwood on 7th September, the third had followed two months later, and there are the following entries in the Journal in November:

Journal, 1858.

Nov. 1.– I have begun Carlyle's "Life of Frederic the Great," and have also been thinking much of my own life to come. This is a moment of suspense, for I am awaiting Blackwood's opinion and proposals concerning "Adam Bede."

Nov. 4.– Received a letter from Blackwood containing warm praise of my third volume, and offering £800 for the copyright of "Adam Bede" for four years. I wrote to accept.

Nov. 10.– Wilkie Collins and Mr. Pigott came to dine with us after a walk by the river. I was pleased with Wilkie Collins – there is a sturdy uprightness about him that makes all opinion and all occupation respectable.

Nov. 16.– Wrote the last word of "Adam Bede" and sent it to Mr. Langford. Jubilate.

History of "Adam Bede."

The germ of "Adam Bede" was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my father's younger brother) – an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal – a very ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and she described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun to write the "Scenes of Clerical Life." He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story, with some points in my father's early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief dramatis personæ, and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of "Scenes," but afterwards, when several motives had induced me close these with "Janet's Repentance," I determined on making what we always called in our conversation "My Aunt's Story" the subject of a long novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857.

The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods – once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father's last residence, Foleshill.

The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father's early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede – only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and their mutual relations to Hetty —i. e., to the girl who commits child-murder – the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax towards which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah's ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader's interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.

The first volume was written at Richmond, and given to Blackwood in March. He expressed great admiration of its freshness and vividness, but seemed to hesitate about putting it in the Magazine, which was the form of publication he as well as myself had previously contemplated. He still wished to have it for the Magazine, but desired to know the course of the story. At present he saw nothing to prevent its reception in "Maga," but he would like to see more. I am uncertain whether his doubts rested solely on Hetty's relation to Arthur, or whether they were also directed towards the treatment of Methodism by the Church. I refused to tell my story beforehand, on the ground that I would not have it judged apart from my treatment, which alone determines the moral quality of art; and ultimately I proposed that the notion of publication in "Maga" should be given up, and that the novel should be published in three volumes at Christmas, if possible. He assented.

I began the second volume in the second week of my stay at Munich, about the middle of April. While we were at Munich George expressed his fear that Adam's part was too passive throughout the drama, and that it was important for him to be brought into more direct collision with Arthur. This doubt haunted me, and out of it grew the scene in the wood between Arthur and Adam; the fight came to me as a necessity one night at the Munich opera, when I was listening to "William Tell." Work was slow and interrupted at Munich, and when we left I had only written to the beginning of the dance on the Birthday Feast; but at Dresden I wrote uninterruptedly and with great enjoyment in the long, quiet mornings, and there I nearly finished the second volume – all, I think, but the last chapter, which I wrote here in the old room at Richmond in the first week of September, and then sent the MS. off to Blackwood. The opening of the third volume – Hetty's journey – was, I think, written more rapidly than the rest of the book, and was left without the slightest alteration of the first draught. Throughout the book I have altered little; and the only cases I think in which George suggested more than a verbal alteration, when I read the MS. aloud to him, were the first scene at the Farm, and the scene in the wood between Arthur and Adam, both of which he recommended me to "space out" a little, which I did.

When, on October 29, I had written to the end of the love-scene at the Farm between Adam and Dinah, I sent the MS. to Blackwood, since the remainder of the third volume could not affect the judgment passed on what had gone before. He wrote back in warm admiration, and offered me, on the part of the firm, £800 for four years' copyright. I accepted the offer. The last words of the third volume were written and despatched on their way to Edinburgh, November the 16th, and now on the last day of the same month I have written this slight history of my book. I love it very much, and am deeply thankful to have written it, whatever the public may say to it – a result which is still in darkness, for I have at present had only four sheets of the proof. The book would have been published at Christmas, or rather early in December, but that Bulwer's "What will he do with it?" was to be published by Blackwood at that time, and it was thought that this novel might interfere with mine.

The manuscript of "Adam Bede" bears the following inscription: "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life."

Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Nov. 1858.

I shall be much obliged if you will accept for me Tauchnitz's offer of £30 for the English reprint of "Clerical Scenes." And will you also be so good as to desire that Tauchnitz may register the book in Germany, as I understand that is the only security against its being translated without our knowledge; and I shudder at the idea of my books being turned into hideous German by an incompetent translator.

I return the proofs by to-day's post. The dialect must be toned down all through in correcting the proofs, for I found it impossible to keep it subdued enough in writing. I am aware that the spelling which represents a dialect perfectly well to those who know it by the ear, is likely to be unintelligible to others. I hope the sheets will come rapidly and regularly now, for I dislike lingering, hesitating processes.

Your praise of my ending was very warming and cheering to me in the foggy weather. I'm sure, if I have written well, your pleasant letters have had something to do with it. Can anything be done in America for "Adam Bede?" I suppose not – as my name is not known there.

Journal, 1858.

Nov. 25.– We had a visit from Mr. Bray, who told us much that interested us about Mr. Richard Congreve, and also his own affairs.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th Nov. 1858.

I am very grateful to you for sending me a few authentic words from your own self. They are unspeakably precious to me. I mean that quite literally, for there is no putting into words any feeling that has been of long growth within us. It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibres that knit us to the old. I have been thinking of you incessantly in the waking hours, and feel a growing hunger to know more precise details about you. I am of a too sordid and anxious disposition, prone to dwell almost exclusively on fears instead of hopes, and to lay in a larger stock of resignation than of any other form of confidence. But I try to extract some comfort this morning from my consciousness of this disposition, by thinking that nothing is ever so bad as my imagination paints it. And then I know there are incommunicable feelings within us capable of creating our best happiness at the very time others can see nothing but our troubles. And so I go on arguing with myself, and trying to live inside you and looking at things in all the lights I can fancy you seeing them in, for the sake of getting cheerful about you in spite of Coventry.

Letter to Charles Bray, Christmas Day, 1858.

The well-flavored mollusks came this morning. It was very kind of you; and if you remember how fond I am of oysters, your good-nature will have the more pleasure in furnishing my gourmandise with the treat. I have a childish delight in any little act of genuine friendliness towards us – and yet not childish, for how little we thought of people's goodness towards us when we were children. It takes a good deal of experience to tell one the rarity of a thoroughly disinterested kindness.

Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Dec. 1858.

I see with you entirely about the preface: indeed I had myself anticipated the very effects you predict. The deprecatory tone is not one I can ever take willingly, but I am conscious of a shrinking sort of pride which is likely to warp my judgment in many personal questions, and on that ground I distrusted my own opinion.

Mr. Lewes went to Vernon Hill yesterday for a few days' change of air, but before he went he said, "Ask Mr. Blackwood what he thinks of putting a mere advertisement at the beginning of the book to this effect: As the story of 'Adam Bede' will lose much of its effect if the development is foreseen, the author requests those critics who may honor him with a notice to abstain from telling the story." I write my note of interrogation accordingly "?"

Pray do not begin to read the second volume until it is all in print. There is necessarily a lull of interest in it to prepare for the crescendo. I am delighted that you like my Mrs. Poyser. I'm very sorry to part with her and some of my other characters – there seems to be so much more to be done with them. Mr. Lewes says she gets better and better as the book goes on; and I was certainly conscious of writing her dialogue with heightening gusto. Even in our imaginary worlds there is the sorrow of parting.

I hope the Christmas weather is as bright in your beautiful Edinburgh as it is here, and that you are enjoying all other Christmas pleasures too without disturbance.

I have not yet made up my mind what my next story is to be, but I must not lie fallow any longer when the new year is come.

Journal, 1858.

Dec. 25 (Christmas Day).– George and I spent this wet day very happily alone together. We are reading Scott's life in the evenings with much enjoyment. I am reading through Horace in this pause.

Dec. 31.– The last day of the dear old year, which has been full of expected and unexpected happiness. "Adam Bede" has been written, and the second volume is in type. The first number of George's "Physiology of Common Life" – a work in which he has had much happy occupation – is published to-day; and both his position as a scientific writer and his inward satisfaction in that part of his studies have been much heightened during the past year. Our double life is more and more blessed – more and more complete.

I think this chapter cannot more fitly conclude than with the following extract from Mr. G. H. Lewes's Journal, with which Mr. Charles Lewes has been good enough to furnish me: