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

Jan. 28, 1859.– Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we chatted with him on matters personal and philosophical. I owe him a debt of gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the brightest ray in a very dreary, wasted period of my life. I have given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The stimulus of his intellect, especially during our long walks, roused my energy once more and revived my dormant love of science. His intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and it was only the stimulus of a theory which could then have induced me to work. I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him that I learned to know Marian – to know her was to love her – and since then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!

SUMMARY

JANUARY, 1858, TO DECEMBER, 1858

Times reviews "Scenes of Clerical Life" – Helps's opinion – Subscription to the "Scenes" – Letter from Dickens, 18th Jan. 1858 – Letter from Froude, 17th Jan. – Letter to Miss Hennell – Mr. Wm. Smith, author of "Thorndale" – Ruskin – Reading the "Eumenides" and Wordsworth – Letter to John Blackwood on Dickens's Letter – Letter from Mrs. Carlyle – Letter from Faraday – "Clerical Scenes" moving – John Blackwood calls, and George Eliot reveals herself – Takes MS. of first part of "Adam Bede" – Letters to Charles Bray on reports of authorship – Visit to Germany – Description of Nürnberg – The Frauen-Kirche – Effect of the music – Albert Dürer's house – Munich – Lodgings – Pinacothek – Rubens – Crucifixion – Theresien Wiese – Schwanthaler's "Bavaria" – The Alps – Letter to Miss Hennell – Contrast between Catholic and Protestant worship – Glyptothek – Pictures – Statues – Cornelius frescoes – Herr Oldenburg – Kaulbach – Bodenstedt – Professor Wagner – Martius – Liebig – Geibel – Heyse – Carrière – Prince Radziwill's "Faust" – Professor Löher – Baron Schack – Genelli – Professor Bluntschli – Letter to Miss Hennell – Description of Munich life – Kaulbach's pictures – The Siebolds – The Neue Pinacothek – Pictures and porcelain painting – Mme. Bodenstedt – Letter to Blackwood – Combinations of artist in writing – Hears "William Tell" – Expedition to Grosshesselohe – Progress with "Adam Bede" – Letter to Miss Hennell on death of her mother – Mr. Lewes goes to Hofwyl – Frau Knapp – Mr. Lewes returns – Leave Munich for Traunstein – Salzburg – Ischl – Linz – By Danube to Vienna – St. Stephen's – Belvedere pictures – Liechtenstein collection – Hyrtl the anatomist – Prague – Jewish burial-ground and the old synagogue – To Dresden – Latter half of second volume of "Adam Bede" written – First impression of Sistine Madonna – The Tribute money – Holbein's Madonna – The Correggios – Dutch school – Murillo – Letter to Miss Hennell – Description of life at Dresden – Health improved – Mention of Strauss at Munich – Dresden to Leipzig – Home to Richmond – Letter to Miss Hennell – Opinion of Buckle – Blackwood offers £800 for "Adam Bede" – Wilkie Collins and Mr. Pigott – History of "Adam Bede" – Letter to Charles Bray – Disinterested kindness – Letter to Blackwood suggesting preface to "Adam Bede" – Reading Scott's Life and Horace – Review of year – Extract from G. H. Lewes's Journal.

CHAPTER IX

Journal, 1859.

Jan. 12.– We went into town to-day and looked in the "Annual Register" for cases of inundation. Letter from Blackwood to-day, speaking of renewed delight in "Adam Bede," and proposing 1st Feb. as the day of publication. Read the article in yesterday's Times on George's "Sea-side Studies" – highly gratifying. We are still reading Scott's life with great interest; and G. is reading to me Michelet's book "De l'Amour."

Jan. 15.– I corrected the last sheets of "Adam Bede," and we afterwards walked to Wimbledon to see our new house, which we have taken for seven years. I hired the servant – another bit of business done: and then we had a delightful walk across Wimbledon Common and through Richmond Park homeward. The air was clear and cold – the sky magnificent.

Jan. 31.– Received a check for £400 from Blackwood, being the first instalment of the payment for four years' copyright of "Adam Bede." To-morrow the book is to be subscribed, and Blackwood writes very pleasantly – confident of its "great success." Afterwards we went into town, paid money into the bank, and ordered part of our china and glass towards house-keeping.

Letter to John Blackwood, 31st Jan. 1859.

Enclosed is the formal acknowledgment, bearing my signature, and with it let me beg you to accept my thanks —not formal but heartfelt – for the generous way in which you have all along helped me with words and with deeds.

The impression "Adam Bede" has made on you and Major Blackwood – of whom I have always been pleased to think as concurring with your views – is my best encouragement, and counterbalances, in some degree, the depressing influences to which I am peculiarly sensitive. I perceive that I have not the characteristics of the "popular author," and yet I am much in need of the warmly expressed sympathy which only popularity can win.

A good subscription would be cheering, but I can understand that it is not decisive of success or non-success. Thank you for promising to let me know about it as soon as possible.

Journal, 1859.

Feb. 6.– Yesterday we went to take possession of Holly Lodge, Wandsworth, which is to be our dwelling, we expect, for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh bright day – I will accept the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the subscription to "Adam Bede," which was published on the 1st: 730 copies, Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms —i. e., ten per cent. on the sale price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood told me the first ab extra opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what I most desired. A cabinet-maker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had read the sheets, and declared that the writer must have been brought up to the business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop.

Feb. 12.– Received a cheering letter from Blackwood, saying that he finds "Adam Bede" making just the impression he had anticipated among his own friends and connections, and enclosing a parcel from Dr. John Brown "to the author of 'Adam Bede.'" The parcel contained "Rab and his Friends," with an inscription.

Letter to John Blackwood, 13th Feb. 1859.

Will you tell Dr. John Brown that when I read an account of "Rab and his Friends" in a newspaper, I wished I had the story to read at full length; and I thought to myself the writer of "Rab" would perhaps like "Adam Bede."

When you have told him this, he will understand the peculiar pleasure I had on opening the little parcel with "Rab" inside, and a kind word from Rab's friend. I have read the story twice – once aloud, and once to myself, very slowly, that I might dwell on the pictures of Rab and Ailie, and carry them about with me more distinctly. I will not say any commonplace words of admiration about what has touched me so deeply; there is no adjective of that sort left undefiled by the newspapers. The writer of "Rab" knows that I must love the grim old mastiff with the short tail and the long dewlaps – that I must have felt present at the scenes of Ailie's last trial.

Thanks for your cheering letter. I will be hopeful – if I can.

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

You have the art of writing just the sort of letters I care for – sincere letters, like your own talk. We are tolerably settled now, except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more of vulgar indulgences in it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well ventilated rooms, and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from palaces – Crystal or otherwise – with an orchard behind me full of old trees, and rough grass and hedge-row paths among the endless fields where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing drivel for dishonest money. In the mean time the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancements, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

Pretty Arabella Goddard we heard play at Berlin – play the very things you heard as a bonne bouche at the last – none the less delightful from being so unlike the piano playing of Liszt and Clara Schumann, whom we had heard at Weimar – both great, and one the greatest.

Thank you for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labors, or live to go on working? Sometimes, when I read of the death of some great, sensitive human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and yet, along with that, such deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature is gone forever into darkness, and we can never know that our love and reverence can reach him, that I seem to have gone through a personal sorrow when I shut the book and go to bed. I felt in that way the other night when I finished the life of Scott aloud to Mr. Lewes. He had never read the book before, and has been deeply stirred by the picture of Scott's character, his energy and steady work, his grand fortitude under calamity, and the spirit of strict honor to which he sacrificed his declining life. He loves Scott as well as I do.

We have met a pleasant-faced, bright-glancing man, whom we set down to be worthy of the name, Richard Congreve. I am curious to see if our Ahnung will be verified.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th Feb. 1859.

One word of gratitude to you first before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest, disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow. I need hardly tell you what I want, you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. I wish I were not an anxious, fidgety wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an anxiety soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness – such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me. Since I wrote this, I have just had a letter from my sister Chrissey – ill in bed, consumptive – regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart.

Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Feb. 1859.

Mrs. Carlyle's ardent letter will interest and amuse you. I reckon it among my best triumphs that she found herself "in charity with the whole human race" when she laid the book down. I want the philosopher himself to read it, because the pre-philosophic period – the childhood and poetry of his life – lay among the furrowed fields and pious peasantry. If he could be urged to read a novel! I should like, if possible, to give him the same sort of pleasure he has given me in the early chapters of "Sartor," where he describes little Diogenes eating his porridge on the wall in sight of the sunset, and gaining deep wisdom from the contemplation of the pigs and other "higher animals" of Entepfuhl.

Your critic was not unjustly severe on the "Mirage Philosophy" – and I confess the "Life of Frederic" was a painful book to me in many respects; and yet I shrink, perhaps superstitiously, from any written or spoken word which is as strong as my inward criticism.

I needed your letter very much – for when one lives apart from the world, with no opportunity of observing the effect of books except through the newspapers, one is in danger of sinking into the foolish belief that the day is past for the recognition of genuine, truthful writing, in spite of recent experience that the newspapers are no criterion at all. One such opinion as Mr. Caird's outweighs a great deal of damnatory praise from ignorant journalists.

It is a wretched weakness of my nature to be so strongly affected by these things; and yet how is it possible to put one's best heart and soul into a book and be hardened to the result – be indifferent to the proof whether or not one has really a vocation to speak to one's fellow-men in that way? Of course one's vanity is at work; but the main anxiety is something entirely distinct from vanity.

You see I mean you to understand that my feelings are very respectable, and such as it will be virtuous in you to gratify with the same zeal as you have always shown. The packet of newspaper notices is not come yet. I will take care to return it when it has come.

The best news from London hitherto is that Mr. Dallas is an enthusiastic admirer of Adam. I ought to except Mr. Langford's reported opinion, which is that of a person who has a voice of his own, and is not a mere echo.

Otherwise, Edinburgh has sent me much more encouraging breezes than any that have come from the sweet South. I wonder if all your other authors are as greedy and exacting as I am. If so, I hope they appreciate your attention as much. Will you oblige me by writing a line to Mrs. Carlyle for me. I don't like to leave her second letter (she wrote a very kind one about the "Clerical Scenes") without any sort of notice. Will you tell her that the sort of effect she declares herself to have felt from "Adam Bede" is just what I desire to produce – gentle thoughts and happy remembrances; and I thank her heartily for telling me, so warmly and generously, what she has felt. That is not a pretty message: revise it for me, pray, for I am weary and ailing, and thinking of a sister who is slowly dying.

Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1859.

The folio of notices duly came, and are returned by to-day's post. The friend at my elbow ran through them for me, and read aloud some specimens to me, some of them ludicrous enough. The Edinburgh Courant has the ring of sincere enjoyment in its tone; and the writer there makes himself so amiable to me that I am sorry he has fallen into the mistake of supposing that Mrs. Poyser's original sayings are remembered proverbs! I have no stock of proverbs in my memory; and there is not one thing put into Mrs. Poyser's mouth that is not fresh from my own mint. Please to correct that mistake if any one makes it in your hearing.

I have not ventured to look into the folio myself; but I learn that there are certain threatening marks, in ink, by the side of such stock sentences as "best novel of the season," or "best novel we have read for a long time," from such authorities as the Sun, or Morning Star, or other orb of the newspaper firmament – as if these sentences were to be selected for reprint in the form of advertisement. I shudder at the suggestion. Am I taking a liberty in entreating you to keep a sharp watch over the advertisements, that no hackneyed puffing phrase of this kind may be tacked to my book? One sees them garnishing every other advertisement of trash: surely no being "above the rank of an idiot" can have his inclination coerced by them? and it would gall me, as much as any trifle could, to see my book recommended by an authority who doesn't know how to write decent English. I believe that your taste and judgment will concur with mine in the conviction that no quotations of this vulgar kind can do credit to a book; and that unless something looking like the real opinion of a tolerably educated writer, in a respectable journal, can be given, it would be better to abstain from "opinions of the press" altogether. I shall be grateful to you if you will save me from the results of any agency but your own – or at least of any agency that is not under your rigid criticism in this matter.

Pardon me if I am overstepping the author's limits in this expression of my feelings. I confide in your ready comprehension of the irritable class you have to deal with.

Journal, 1859.

Feb. 26.– Laudatory reviews of "Adam Bede" in the Athenæum, Saturday, and Literary Gazette. The Saturday criticism is characteristic: Dinah is not mentioned!

The other day I received the following letter, which I copy, because I have sent the original away:

Letter from E. Hall to George Eliot.

"To the Author of 'Adam Bede,'

"Chester Road, Sunderland

"Dear Sir, – I got the other day a hasty read of your 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and since that a glance at your 'Adam Bede,' and was delighted more than I can express; but being a poor man, and having enough to do to make 'ends meet,' I am unable to get a read of your inimitable books.

"Forgive, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it. I felt so different when I shut your books, even though it was but a kind of 'hop-skip-and-jump' read.

"I feel so strongly in this matter that I am determined to risk being thought rude and officious, and write to you.

"Many of my working brethren feel as I do, and I express their wish as well as my own. Again asking your forgiveness for intruding myself upon you, I remain, with profoundest respect, yours, etc.,

    "E. Hall."