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

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

Author: George Eliot

Editor: J. W. Cross


        
Release date: June 29, 2013 [eBook #43045]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE, AS RELATED IN HER LETTERS AND JOURNALS. VOL. 3 (OF 3) ***

Transcriber's Note:

This is Volume III of a three volume set:

  Volume I--Unknown
  Volume II--Famous
  Volume III--Sunset

A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III.

Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers
other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their
content is placed in block quotes.

Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text.

       *       *       *       *       *




GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE

VOL. III.--SUNSET


"OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY"


[Illustration: No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.]




            GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE
  _as related in her Letters and Journals_

     ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND
                J. W. CROSS

             WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

        IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME III


                 NEW YORK
      HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE




GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS.

_LIBRARY EDITION._

     ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.

     ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50.

     ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated.
     12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.

     THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25.


PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage
prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the
price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper
& Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_.




CONTENTS OF VOL. III.


     CHAPTER XIV.
     JANUARY, 1867, TO DECEMBER, 1867.

       Tour in Spain                                      Page  1


     CHAPTER XV.
     JANUARY, 1868, TO DECEMBER, 1868.

       "The Spanish Gypsy"                                     24


     CHAPTER XVI.
     JANUARY, 1869, TO DECEMBER, 1872.

       Poems--"Middlemarch"                                    55


     CHAPTER XVII.
     JANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875.

       "Brewing," "Deronda"                                   138


     CHAPTER XVIII.
     MARCH, 1876, TO NOVEMBER, 1878.

       "Daniel Deronda"--Illness and Death of Mr. Lewes       197


     CHAPTER XIX.
     JANUARY, 1879, TO 22D DECEMBER, 1880.

       "Theophrastus Such"--Marriage with Mr. Cross--Death    249




ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. III.

     NO. 4 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA                   _Frontispiece._

     THE HEIGHTS, WITLEY.
     From a Sketch by Mrs. Allingham            _To face p. 216._




GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE.




CHAPTER XIV.


    The new year of 1867 opens with the description of the journey
    to Spain.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Jan. 1867, from Bordeaux.]

We prolonged our stay in Paris in order to see Madame Mohl, who was
very good to us; invited the Scherers and other interesting people to
meet us at dinner on the 29th, and tempted us to stay and breakfast
with her on the 31st, by promising to invite Renan, which she did
successfully, and so procured us a bit of experience that we were glad
to have, over and above the pleasure of seeing a little more of
herself and M. Mohl. I like them both, and wish there were a chance of
knowing them better. We paid for our pleasure by being obliged to walk
in the rain (from the impossibility of getting a carriage) all the way
from the Rue de Rivoli--where a charitable German printer, who had
taken us up in his _fiacre_, was obliged to set us down--to the Hôtel
du Helder, through streets literally jammed with carriages and
omnibuses, carrying people who were doing the severe social duties of
the last day in the year. The rain it raineth every day, with the
exception of yesterday; we can't travel away from it, apparently. But
we start in desperation for Bayonne in half an hour.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Jan. 1867, from Biarritz.]

Snow on the ground here, too--more, we are told, than has been seen
here for fifteen years before. But it has been obliging enough to
fall in the night, and the sky is glorious this morning, as it was
yesterday. Sunday was the one exception since the 6th, when we arrived
here to a state of weather which has allowed us to be out of doors the
greater part of our daylight. We think it curious that, among the many
persons who have talked to us about Biarritz, the Brownings alone have
ever spoken of its natural beauties; yet these are transcendent. We
agree that the sea never seemed so magnificent to us before, though we
have seen the Atlantic breaking on the rocks at Ilfracombe and on the
great granite walls of the Scilly Isles. In the southern division of
the bay we see the sun set over the Pyrenees; and in the northern we
have two splendid stretches of sand, one with huge fragments of dark
rock scattered about for the waves to leap over, the other an unbroken
level, firm to the feet, where the hindmost line of wave sends up its
spray on the horizon like a suddenly rising cloud. This part of the
bay is worthily called the Chambre de l'Amour; and we have its
beauties all to ourselves, which, alas! in this stage of the world,
one can't help feeling to be an advantage. The few families and
bachelors who are here (chiefly English) scarcely ever come across our
path. The days pass so rapidly, we can hardly believe in their number
when we come to count them. After breakfast we both read the
"Politique"--George one volume and I another--interrupting each other
continually with questions and remarks. That morning study keeps me in
a state of enthusiasm through the day--a moral glow, which is a sort
of _milieu subjectif_ for the sublime sea and sky. Mr. Lewes is
converted to the warmest admiration of the chapter on language in the
third volume, which about three years ago he thought slightly of. I
think the first chapter of the fourth volume is among the finest of
all, and the most finely written. My gratitude increases continually
for the illumination Comte has contributed to my life. But we both of
us study with a sense of having still much to learn and to understand.
About ten or half-past ten we go out for our morning walk; and then,
while we plunge about in the sand or march along the cliff, George
draws out a book and tries my paces in Spanish, demanding a
quick-as-light translation of nouns and phrases. Presently I retort
upon him, and prove that it is easier to ask than to answer. We find
this system of _vivâ-voce_ mutual instruction so successful that we
are disgusted with ourselves for not having used it before through all
our many years of companionship; and we are making projects for giving
new interest to Regent's Park by pursuing all sorts of studies in the
same way there. We seldom come indoors till one o'clock, and we turn
out again at three, often remaining to see the sunset. One other thing
I have been reading here which I must tell you of. It is a series of
three papers by Saveney, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of last year,
on "La Physique Moderne," an excellent summary, giving a glimpse of
the great vista opened in that region. I think you would like to read
them when you are strong enough for that sort of exertion.

We stayed three days in Paris, and passed our time very agreeably. The
first day we dined with Madame Mohl, who had kindly invited Professor
Scherer and his wife, Jules Simon, Lomenie, Lavergne, "and others" to
meet us. That was on the Saturday, and she tempted us to stay the
following Monday by saying she would invite Renan to breakfast with
us. Renan's appearance is something between the Catholic priest and
the dissenting minister. His manners are very amiable, his talk
pleasant, but not distinguished. We are entertaining great projects as
to our further journeying. It will be best for you to address _Poste
Restante_, Barcelona.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Feb. 1867.]

Are you astonished to see our whereabouts? We left Biarritz for San
Sebastian, where we stayed three days; and both there and all our way
to Barcelona our life has been a succession of delights. We have had
perfect weather, blue skies, and a warm sun. We travelled from San
Sebastian to Saragossa, where we passed two nights; then to Lerida for
one night, and yesterday to Barcelona. You know the scenery from San
Sebastian to Alsasua, through the lower Pyrenees, because it lies on
the way to Burgos and Madrid. At Alsasua we turned off through Navarre
into Aragon, seeing famous Pampeluna, looking as beautiful as it did
ages ago among the grand hills. At Saragossa the scene was thoroughly
changed; all through Aragon, as far as we could see, I should think
the country resembles the highlands of Central Spain. There is the
most striking effect of hills, flanking the plain of Saragossa, I ever
saw. They are of palish clay, washed by the rains into undulating
forms, and some slight herbage upon them makes the shadows of an
exquisite blue.

These hills accompanied us in the distance all the way through Aragon,
the snowy mountains topping them in the far distance. The land is all
pale brown, the numerous towns and villages just match the land, and
so do the sheepfolds, built of mud or stone. The herbage is all of an
ashy green. Perhaps if I had been in Africa I should say, as you do,
that the country reminded me of Africa; as it is, I think of all I
have read about the East. The men who look on while others work at
Saragossa also seem to belong to the East, with a great striped
blanket wrapped grandly round them, and a kerchief tied about their
hair. But though Aragon was held by the Moors longer than any part of
Northern Spain, the features and skins of the people seem to me to
bear less traces of the mixture there must have been than one would
fairly expect. Saragossa has a grand character still, in spite of the
stucco with which the people have daubed the beautiful small brick of
which the houses are built. Here and there one sees a house left
undesecrated by stucco; and all of them have the fluted tiles and the
broad eaves beautifully ornamented. Again, one side of the old
cathedral still shows the exquisite inlaid work which, in the
_façade_, has been overlaid hideously. Gradually, as we left Aragon
and entered Catalonia, the face of the country changed, and we had
almost every sort of beauty in succession; last of all, between
Monserrat and Barcelona, a perfect garden, with the richest red
soil--blossoms on the plum and cherry trees, aloes thick in the
hedges. At present we are waiting for the Spanish hardships to begin.
Even at Lerida, a place scarcely at all affected by foreign
travellers, we were perfectly comfortable--and such sights! The people
scattered on the brown slopes of rough earth round the fortress--the
women knitting, etc., the men playing at cards, one wonderful, gaudily
dressed group; another of handsome gypsies. We are actually going by
steam-boat to Alicante, and from Alicante to Malaga. Then we mean to
see Granada, Cordova, and Seville. We shall only stay here a few
days--if this weather continues.

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 18th Feb. 1867, from Granada.]

Your kind letter, written on the 5th, reached me here this morning. I
had not heard of the criticism in the _Edinburgh_. Mr. Lewes read the
article, but did not tell me of the reviewer's legal wisdom, thinking
that it would only vex me to no purpose. However, I had felt sure that
something of that sort must have appeared in one review article or
another. I am heartily glad and grateful that you have helped justice
in general, as well as justice to me in particular, by getting the
vindication written for the _Pall Mall_. It was the best possible
measure to adopt. Since we left Barcelona, a fortnight ago, we have
seen no English papers, so that we have been in the dark as to English
news.

Were you not surprised to hear that we had come so far? The journey
from San Sebastian by Saragossa and Lerida turned out to be so easy
and delightful that we ceased to tremble, and determined to carry out
our project of going by steamer to Alicante and Malaga. You cannot do
better than follow our example; I mean, so far as coming to Spain is
concerned. Believe none of the fictions that bookmakers get printed
about the horrors of Spanish hotels and cookery, or the hardships of
Spanish travel--still less about the rudeness of Spaniards. It is true
that we have not yet endured the long railway journeys through Central
Spain, but wherever we have been hitherto we have found nothing
formidable, even for our rickety bodies.

We came hither from Malaga in the _berlina (coupé)_ of the diligence,
and have assured ourselves that Mr. Blackburne's description of a
supposed hen-roost, overturned in the Alameda at Malaga, which proved
to be the Granada diligence, is an invention. The vehicle is
comfortable enough, and the road is perfect; and at the end of it we
have found ourselves in one of the loveliest scenes on earth.

We shall remain here till the 23d, and then go to Cordova first, to
Seville next, and finally to Madrid, making our way homeward from
thence by easy stages. We expect to be in the smoky haze of London
again soon after the middle of March, if not before.

I wish I could believe that you were all having anything like the
clear skies and warm sun which have cheered our journeying for the
last month. At Alicante we walked among the palm-trees with their
golden fruit hanging in rich clusters, and felt a more delightful
warmth than that of an English summer. Last night we walked out and
saw the towers of the Alhambra, the wide Vega, and the snowy
mountains, by the brilliant moonlight. You see, we are getting a great
deal of pleasure, but we are not working, as you seem charitably to
imagine. We tire ourselves, but only with seeing or going to see
unforgetable things. You will say that we ought to work to better
purpose when we get home. Amen. But just now we read nothing but
Spanish novels--and not much of those. We said good-bye to philosophy
and science when we packed up our trunks at Biarritz.

Please keep some friendship warm for us, that we may not be too much
chilled by the English weather when we get back.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Feb. 1867.]

We are both heartily rejoiced that we came to Spain. It was a great
longing of mine, for, three years ago, I began to interest myself in
Spanish history and literature, and have had a work lying by me,
partly written, the subject of which is connected with Spain. Whether
I shall ever bring it to maturity so as to satisfy myself sufficiently
to print it is a question not settled; but it is a work very near my
heart. We have had perfect weather ever since the 27th of
January--magnificent skies and a summer sun. At Alicante, walking
among the palm-trees, with the bare brown rocks and brown houses in
the background, we fancied ourselves in the tropics; and a gentleman
who travelled with us assured us that the aspect of the country
closely resembled Aden, on the Red Sea. Here, at Granada, of course,
it is much colder, but the sun shines uninterruptedly; and in the
middle of the day, to stand in the sunshine against a wall, reminds me
of my sensations at Florence in the beginning of June. The aspect of
Granada as we first approached it was a slight disappointment to me,
but the beauty of its position can hardly be surpassed. To stand on
one of the towers of the Alhambra and see the sun set behind the dark
mountains of Loja, and send its after-glow on the white summits of the
Sierra Nevada, while the lovely Vega spreads below, ready to yield all
things pleasant to the eye and good for food, is worth a very long,
long journey. We shall start to-morrow evening for Cordova; then we
shall go to Seville, back to Cordova, and on to Madrid.

During our short stay in Paris we went a little into society, and saw,
among other people who interested us, Professor Scherer, of whom you
know something. He charmed me greatly. He is a Genevese, you know, and
does not talk in ready-made epigrams, like a clever Frenchman, but
with well-chosen, moderate words, intended to express what he really
thinks and feels. He is highly cultivated; and his wife, who was with
him, is an Englishwoman of refined, simple manners.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 10th Mch. 1867, from Biarritz.]

At Biarritz again, you see, after our long, delightful journey, in
which we have made a great loop all round the east and through the
centre of Spain. Mr. Lewes says he thinks he never enjoyed a journey
so much, and you will see him so changed--so much plumper and
ruddier--that if pity has entered much into your regard for him he
will be in danger of losing something by his bodily prosperity. We
crowned our pleasures in Spain with the sight of the pictures in the
Madrid gallery. The skies were as blue at Madrid as they had been
through the previous part of our journeying, but the air was bitterly
cold; and naughty officials receive money for warming the museum, but
find other uses for the money. I caught a severe cold the last day of
our visit, and, after an uncomfortable day and night's railway
journey, arrived at Biarritz, only fit for bed and coddling.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_March 16._--This evening we got home after a journey to the south of
Spain. I go to my poem and the construction of two prose works--if
possible.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Mch. 1867.]

We got home on Saturday evening, after as fine a passage from Calais
to Dover as we ever had, even in summer. Your letter was among the
pleasant things that smiled at me on my return, and helped to
reconcile me to the rather rude transition from summer to winter which
we have made in our journey from Biarritz. This morning it is snowing
hard and the wind is roaring--a sufficiently sharp contrast to the hot
sun, the dust, and the mosquitoes of Seville.

We have had a glorious journey. The skies alone, both night and day,
were worth travelling all the way to see. We went to Cordova and
Seville, but we feared the cold of the central lands in the north, and
resisted the temptation to see Toledo, or anything else than the
Madrid pictures, which are transcendent.

Among the letters awaiting me was one from an American travelling in
Europe, who gives me the history of a copy of "Felix Holt," which, he
says, has been read by no end of people, and is now on its way through
Ireland, "where he found many friends anxious but unable to get it."
It seems people nowadays economize in nothing but books. I found also
the letter of a "Conveyancer" in the _Pall Mall_, justifying the law
of "Felix Holt" in answer to the _Edinburgh_ reviewer. I did not know,
before I was told of this letter in reply, that the _Edinburgh_
reviewer had found fault with my law.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_March 21._--Received from Blackwood a check for £2166 13_s._ 4_d._,
being the second instalment of £1666 13_s._ 4_d._ towards the £5000
for "Felix Holt," together with £500 as the first instalment of £1000
for ten years' copyright of the cheap edition of my novels.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Mch. 1867.]

Your letters, with the valuable enclosure of a check for £2166 13_s._
4_d._, have come to me this morning, and I am much obliged to you for
your punctual attention.

I long to see a specimen of the cheap edition of the novels. As to the
illustrations, I have adjusted my hopes so as to save myself from any
great shock. When I remember my own childish happiness in a
frightfully illustrated copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," I can
believe that illustration may be a great good relatively, and that my
own present liking has no weight in the question.

I fancy that the placarding at railway stations is an effective
measure, for Ruskin was never more mistaken than in asserting that
people have no spare time to observe anything in such places. I am a
very poor reader of advertisements, but even I am forced to get them
unpleasantly by heart at the stations.

It is rather a vexatious kind of tribute when people write, as my
American correspondent did, to tell me of one paper-covered American
copy of "Felix Holt" brought to Europe and serving for so many readers
that it was in danger of being worn away under their hands. He, good
man, finds it easy "to urge greater circulation by means of cheap
sale," having "found so many friends in Ireland anxious but unable to
obtain the book." I suppose putting it in a yellow cover with figures
on it, reminding one of the outside of a show, and charging a shilling
for it, is what we are expected to do for the good of mankind. Even
then I fear it would hardly bear the rivalry of "The Pretty Milliner,"
or of "The Horrible Secret."

The work connected with Spain is not a romance. It is--prepare your
fortitude--it is--a poem. I conceived the plot, and wrote nearly the
whole as a drama in 1864. Mr. Lewes advised me to put it by for a time
and take it up again, with a view to recasting it. He thinks hopefully
of it. I need not tell you that I am _not_ hopeful, but I am quite
sure the subject is fine. It is not historic, but has merely historic
connections. The plot was wrought out entirely as an incorporation of
my own ideas. Of course, if it is ever finished to my satisfaction, it
is not a work for us to get money by, but Mr. Lewes urges and insists
that it shall be done. I have also my private projects about an
English novel, but I am afraid of speaking as if I could depend on
myself; at present I am rather dizzy, and not settled down to home
habits of regular occupation.

I understand that the conveyancer who wrote to the _Pall Mall_ is an
excellent lawyer in his department, and the lecturer on Real Property
at the Law Institution.

If a reviewer ever checked himself by considering that a writer whom
he thinks worth praising would take some pains to know the truth about
a matter which is the very hinge of said writer's story, review
articles would cut a shrunken figure.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_May 5._--We went to Bouverie Street to hear the first of a course of
lectures on Positivism, delivered by Dr. Congreve. There were present
seventy-five people, chiefly men.

_May 11._--We had Mr. and Mrs. Call to dine with us, and an evening
party afterwards.

_May 12._--We went to hear Dr. Congreve's second lecture. The morning
was thoroughly wet; the audience smaller, but still good.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th May, 1867.]

Yesterday we went to the second of a course of lectures which Dr.
Congreve is delivering on Positivism in Bouverie Street. At the first
lecture on the 5th there was a considerable audience--about
seventy-five, chiefly men--of various ranks, from lords and M.P.'s
downwards, or upwards, for what is called social distinction seems to
be in a shifting condition just now. Yesterday the wet weather
doubtless helped to reduce the audience; still it was good. Curiosity
brings some, interest in the subject others, and the rest go with the
wish to express adhesion more or less thorough.

I am afraid you have ceased to care much about pictures, else I should
wish that you could see the Exhibition of Historical Portraits at
Kensington. It is really worth a little fatigue to see the English of
past generations in their habit as they lived--especially when
Gainsborough and Sir Joshua are the painters. But even Sir Godfrey
Kneller delights me occasionally with a finely conceived portrait
carefully painted. There is an unforgetable portrait of Newton by
him.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_May 27._--Went with G. to the Academy Exhibition.

_May 29._--Went to the Exhibition of French Pictures--very agreeable
and interesting.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 30th May, 1867.]

I do sympathize with you most emphatically in the desire to see women
socially elevated--educated equally with men, and secured as far as
possible, along with every other breathing creature, from suffering
the exercise of any unrighteous power. That is a broader ground of
sympathy than agreement as to the amount and kind of result that may
be hoped for from a particular measure. But on this special point I am
far from thinking myself an oracle, and on the whole I am inclined to
hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims
before Parliament. I thought Mill's speech sober and judicious from
his point of view--Karslake's an abomination.

_À propos_ of what you say about Mr. Congreve, I think you have
mistaken his, or rather Comte's, position. There is no denial of an
unknown cause, but only a denial that such a conception is the proper
basis of a practical religion. It seems to me pre-eminently desirable
that we should learn not to make our personal comfort a standard of
truth.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_June 1_ (Saturday).--Wrote up to the moment when Fedalma appears in
the Plaça.

_June 5._--Blackwood dined with us, and I read to him my poem down to
page 56. He showed great delight.

_June 26._--We went to Niton for a fortnight, returning July 10.

_July 16._--Received £2166 13_s._ 4_d._ from Blackwood, being the
final instalment for "Felix Holt," and (£500) copyright for ten
years.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th July, 1867.]

Again we take flight! To North Germany this time, and chiefly to
Dresden, where we shall be accessible through the _Poste Restante_. I
am ashamed of saying anything about our health--we are both "objects"
for compassion or contempt, according to the disposition of the
subject who may contemplate us.

Mr. Beesley (I think it was he) sent us Dr. Congreve's pamphlet last
night, and I read it aloud to George. We both felt a cordial
satisfaction in it. We have been a good deal beset by little
engagements with friends and acquaintances lately, and these, with the
preparations for our journey, have been rather too much for me. Mr.
Lewes is acting on the advice of Sir Henry Holland in giving up
zoologizing for the present, because it obliges him to hang down his
head. That is the reason we go inland, and not to the coast, as I
think I hinted to you that we expected to do.

You are sympathetic enough to be glad to hear that we have had
thoroughly cheerful and satisfactory letters from both our boys in
Natal. They are established in their purchased farm, and are very
happy together in their work. Impossible for mortals to have less
trouble than we. I should have written to you earlier this week--for
we start to-morrow--but that I have been laid prostrate with crushing
headache one half of my time, and always going out or seeing some one
the other half.

Farewell, dear. Don't write unless you have a real desire to gossip
with me a little about yourself and our mutual friends. You know I
always like to have news of you, but I shall not think it unkind--I
shall only think you have other things to do--if you are silent.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_July 29._--We went to Dover this evening as the start on a journey
into Germany (North).

_Oct. 1._--We returned home after revisiting the scenes of cherished
memories--Ilmenau, Dresden, and Berlin. Of new places we have seen
Wetzlar, Cassel, Eisenach, and Hanover. At Ilmenau I wrote Fedalma's
soliloquy after her scene with Silva, and the following dialogue
between her and Juan. At Dresden I rewrote the whole scene between her
and Zarca.

_Oct. 9._--Reading "Los Judios en Espâna," Percy's "Reliques," "Isis,"
occasionally aloud.

_Oct. 10._--Reading the "Iliad," Book III. Finished "Los Judios en
Espâna," a wretchedly poor book.

_Oct. 11._--Began again Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella."

_Oct. 19._--George returned last evening from a walking expedition in
Surrey with Mr. Spencer.

     This entry is an interesting one to me, as it fixes the date
     of the first acquaintance with my family. Mr. Herbert Spencer
     was an old friend of ours, and in the course of their walk he
     and Mr. Lewes happened to pass through Weybridge, where my
     mother at that time lived. They came to dinner. Mr. Lewes,
     with his wonderful social powers, charmed all, and they
     passed a delightful evening. I was myself in America at the
     time, where I was in business as a banker at New York. My
     eldest sister had just then published a little volume of
     poems,[1] which was kindly received by the press. On the
     invitation of Mr. Lewes she went shortly afterwards to see
     George Eliot, then in the zenith of her fame; nor did she
     ever forget the affectionate manner in which the great author
     greeted her. This was the beginning of a close friendship
     between the families, which lasted, and increased in
     intimacy, to the end. Mr. Spencer, in writing to tell me that
     it was he who first made Mr. Lewes acquainted with George
     Eliot, adds, "You will perhaps be struck by the curious
     coincidence that it was also by me that Lewes was introduced
     to your family at Weybridge and remoter issues entailed."

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Oct. 1867.]

Before I got your letter I was about to write to you and direct your
attention to an article in the forthcoming (October) number of the
_Quarterly Review_, on the Talmud. You really must go out of your way
to read it. It is written by one of the greatest Oriental scholars,
the man among living men who probably knows the most about the Talmud;
and you will appreciate the pregnancy of the article. There are also
beautiful, soul-cheering things selected for quotation.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_Oct. 31._--I have now inserted all that I think of for the first part
of the "Spanish Gypsy." On Monday I wrote three new Lyrics. I have
also rewritten the first scenes in the gypsy camp, to the end of the
dialogue between Juan and Fedalma. But I have determined to make the
commencement of the second part continue the picture of what goes
forward in Bedmar.

_Nov. 1._--Began this morning Part II. "Silva was marching homeward,"
etc.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 9th Nov. 1867.]

About putting Fedalma in type. There would be advantages, but also
disadvantages; and on these latter I wish to consult you. I have more
than three thousand lines ready in the order I wish them to stand in,
and it would be good to have them in print to read them critically.
Defects reveal themselves more fully in type, and emendations might be
more conveniently made on proofs, since I have given up the idea of
copying the MS. as a whole. On the other hand, _could the thing be
kept private when it had once been in the printing-office_? And I
particularly wish not to have it set afloat, for various reasons.
Among others, I want to keep myself free from all inducements to
premature publication; I mean, publication before I have given my work
as much revision as I can hope to give it while my mind is still
nursing it. Beyond this, delay would be useless. The theory of laying
by poems for nine years may be a fine one, but it could not answer for
me to apply it. I could no more live through one of my books a second
time than I can live through last year again. But I like to keep
checks on myself, and not to create external temptations to do what I
should think foolish in another. If you thought it possible to secure
us against the oozing out of proofs and gossip, the other objections
would be less important. One difficulty is, that in my MS. I have
frequently two readings of the same passage, and, being uncertain
which of them is preferable, I wish them both to stand for future
decision. But perhaps this might be managed in proof. The length of
the poem is at present uncertain, but I feel so strongly what Mr.
Lewes insists on, namely, the evil of making it too long, that I shall
set it before me as a duty not to make it more than nine thousand
lines, and shall be glad if it turns out a little shorter.

Will you think over the whole question? I am sure your mind will
supply any prudential considerations that I may have omitted.

I am vexed by the non-success of the serial edition of the works. It
is not, Heaven knows, that I read my own books or am puffed up about
them, but I have been of late quite astonished by the strengthening
testimonies that have happened to come to me of people who care about
every one of my books, and continue to read them--especially young
men, who are just the class I care most to influence. But what sort of
data can one safely go upon with regard to the success of editions?

"Felix Holt" is immensely tempted by your suggestion,[2] but George
Eliot is severely admonished by his domestic critic not to scatter his
energies.

Mr. Lewes sends his best regards. He is in high spirits about the
poem.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_Nov. 22._--Began an "Address to the Working Men, by Felix Holt," at
Blackwood's repeated request.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1867.]

Yes, indeed--when I do _not_ reciprocate "chaos is come again." I was
quite sure your letter would come, and was grateful beforehand.

There is a scheme on foot for a Woman's College, or, rather,
University, to be built between London and Cambridge, and to be in
connection with the Cambridge University, sharing its professors,
examinations, and degrees! _Si muove._

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st Dec. (?) 1867.]

I have written to Miss Davies to ask her to come to see me on Tuesday.

I am much occupied just now, but the better education of women is one
of the objects about which I have _no doubt_, and shall rejoice if
this idea of a college can be carried out.

I see Miss Julia Smith's beautiful handwriting, and am glad to think
of her as your guardian angel.

The author of the glorious article on the Talmud _is_ "that bright
little man" Mr. Deutsch--a very dear, delightful creature.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_Dec. 4._--Sent off the MS. of the "Address" to Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Dec. 1867.]

I agree with you about the phrase "Masters of the country."[3] I wrote
that part twice, and originally I distinctly said that the epithet was
false. Afterwards I left that out, preferring to make a stronger
_argumentum ad hominem_, in case any workman believed himself a future
master.

I think it will be better for you to write a preliminary note, washing
your hands of any over-trenchant statements on the part of the
well-meaning Radical. I much prefer that you should do so.

Whatever you agree with will have the advantage of not coming from one
who can be suspected of being a special pleader.

What you say about Fedalma is very cheering. But I am chiefly anxious
about the road still untravelled--the road I have still _zurück zu
legen_.

Mr. Lewes has to request several proofs of Fedalma, to facilitate
revision. But I will leave him to say how many. We shall keep them
strictly to ourselves, you may be sure, so that three or four will be
enough--one for him, one for me, and one for the resolution of our
differences.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood 12th Dec. 1867.]

I am very grateful to you for your generous words about my work. That
you not only feel so much sympathy, but are moved to express it so
fully, is a real help to me.

I am very glad to have had the revise of the "Address." I feel the
danger of not being understood. Perhaps, by a good deal longer
consideration and gradual shaping, I might have put the ideas into a
more concrete, easy form.

Mr. Lewes read the proof of the poem all through to himself for the
first time last night, and expressed great satisfaction in the
impression it produced. Your suggestion of having it put into type is
a benefit for which we have reason to be obliged to you.

I cannot help saying again that it is a strong cordial to me to have
such letters as yours, and to know that I have such a _first reader_
as you.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_Dec. 21._--Finished reading "Averroës and Averroisme" and "Les
Médicins Juifs." Reading "First Principles."

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Dec. 1867.]

Our Christmas will be very quiet. On the 27th Mr. Lewes means to start
on a solitary journey to Bonn, and perhaps to Würzburg, for anatomical
purposes. I don't mean that he is going to offer himself as an
anatomical subject, but that he wants to get answers to some questions
bearing on the functions of the nerves. It is a bad time for him to
travel in, but he hopes to be at home again in ten days or a
fortnight, and _I_ hope the run will do him good rather than harm.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1867.]

_Dec. 25._--George and I dined happily alone; he better for weeks than
he has been all the summer before; I more ailing than usual, but with
much mental consolation, part of it being the delight he expresses in
my poem, of which the first part is now in print.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1867.]

Thanks for the pretty remembrance. You were not unthought of before it
came. Now, however, I rouse all my courage under the thick fog to tell
you my inward wish--which is that the new year, as it travels on
towards its old age, may bring you many satisfactions undisturbed by
bodily ailment.

Mr. Lewes is going to-morrow on an unprecedented expedition--a rapid
run to Bonn, to make some anatomical researches with Professor Schutze
there. If he needs more than he can get at Bonn, he may go to
Heidelberg and Würzburg. But in any case he will not take more than a
fortnight.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Dec. 1867.]

Public questions which, by a sad process of reduction, become piteous
private questions, hang cloudily over all prospects. The state of
Europe, the threat of a general war, the starvation of multitudes--one
can't help thinking of these things at one's breakfast. Nevertheless,
there is much enjoyment going on, and abundance of rosy children's
parties.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Dec. 1867.]

It is very good and sweet of you to propose to come round for me on
Sunday, and I shall cherish particularly the remembrance of that
kindness. But, on our reading your letter, Mr. Lewes objected, on
grounds which I think just, to my going to any public manifestation
without him, since his absence could not be divined by outsiders.

I am companioned by dyspepsia, and feel life a struggle under the
leaden sky. Mme. Bodichon writes that in Sussex the air is cold and
clear, and the woods and lanes dressed in wintry loveliness of fresh,
grassy patches, mingled with the soft grays and browns of the trees
and hedges. Mr. Harrison shed the agreeable light of his kind eyes on
me yesterday for a brief space; but I hope I was more endurable to my
visitors than to myself, else I think they will not come again. I
object strongly to myself, as a bundle of unpleasant sensations with a
palpitating heart and awkward manners. Impossible to imagine the large
charity I have for people who detest me. But don't you be one of them.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Dec. 1867.]

I am much obliged to you for your handsome check, and still more
gratified that the "Address" has been a satisfaction to you.

I am very glad to hear of your projected visit to town, and shall
hope to have a good batch of MS. for you to carry back. Mr. Lewes is
in an unprecedented state of delight with the poem, now that he is
reading it with close care. He says he is astonished that he can't
find more faults. He is especially pleased with the sense of variety
it gives; and this testimony is worth the more because he urged me to
put the poem by (in 1865) on the ground of monotony. He is really
exultant about it now, and after what you have said to me I know this
will please you.

Hearty wishes that the coming year may bring you much good, and that
the "Spanish Gypsy" may contribute a little to that end.


_SUMMARY._

JANUARY, 1867, TO DECEMBER, 1867.

     Letter to Madame Bodichon from Bordeaux--Madame
     Mohl--Scherer--Renan--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from
     Biarritz--Delight in Comte's "Politique"--Gratitude to him
     for illumination--Learning Spanish--Papers in the _Revue des
     Deux Mondes_, by Saveney--Letter to Madame Bodichon from
     Barcelona--Description of
     scenery--Pampeluna--Saragossa--Lerida--Letter to F. Harrison
     from Granada--The vindication of the _law_ in "Felix
     Holt"--Spanish travelling--Letter to John Blackwood from
     Granada--Alicante--Granada--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from
     Biarritz--Delight of the journey--Madrid pictures--Return to
     the Priory--Letter to John Blackwood--"Felix Holt"--Cheap
     edition of novels--"Spanish Gypsy"--Dr. Congreve's Lectures
     on Positivism--Letter to Miss Hennell--Historical Portraits
     at South Kensington--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Women's
     claims--Comte's position--Fortnight's Visit to the Isle of
     Wight--Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve--Two months' visit to
     North Germany--Return to England--Reading on Spanish
     subjects--Mr. Lewes and Mr. Spencer at
     Weybridge--Acquaintance with Mrs. Cross and family--Letter to
     Miss Hennell--Deutsch's article on the Talmud--Letter to
     Blackwood about putting "Spanish Gypsy" in type--"Address to
     Workingmen, by Felix Holt"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Girton
     College--Letter to Madame Bodichon--The higher education of
     women--Letter to John Blackwood on the "Address"--Christmas
     day at the Priory--Letter to Miss Hennell--Visit of Mr. Lewes
     to Bonn--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Depression--Letter to John
     Blackwood--Mr. Lewes on "Spanish Gypsy."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "An Old Story and Other Poems," by Elizabeth D. Cross.

[2] "Address to the Working Men."

[3] In the "Address to the Working Men."




CHAPTER XV.


[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 9th Jan. 1868.]

There is a good genius presiding over your gifts--they are so
felicitous. You always give me something of which I have felt the want
beforehand, and can use continually. It is eminently so with my pretty
mittens; there was no little appendage I wanted more; and they are
just as warm at the wrist as I could have wished them to be--warming,
too, as a mark of affection at a time when all cheering things are
doubly welcome.

Mr. Lewes came home last night, and you may imagine that I am glad.
Between the bad weather, bad health, and solitude, I have been so far
unlike the wicked that I have not flourished like the green bay-tree.
To make amends, he--Mr. Lewes, not the wicked--has had a brilliant
time, gained great instruction, and seen some admirable men, who have
received him warmly.

I go out of doors very little, but I shall open the drawer and look at
my mittens on the days when I don't put them on.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_Jan._--Engaged in writing Part III. of "Spanish Gypsy."

_Feb. 27._--Returned last evening from a very pleasant visit to
Cambridge.[4] I am still only at p. 5 of Part IV., having had a
wretched month of _malaise_.

_March 1._--Finished Guillemin on the "Heavens," and the 4th Book of
the "Iliad." I shall now read Grote.

_March 6._--Reading Lubbock's "Prehistoric Ages."

_March 8._--Saturday concert. Joachim and Piatti, with Schubert's
Ottett.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th Mch. 1868.]

We go to-morrow morning to Torquay for a month, and I can't bear to go
without saying a word of farewell to you. How sadly little we have
seen each other this winter! It will not be so any more, I hope, will
it?

We are both much in need of the change, for Mr. Lewes has got rather
out of sorts again lately. When we come back I shall ask you to come
and look at us before the bloom is off. I should like to know how you
all are; but you have been so little inspired for note-writing lately
that I am afraid to ask you to send me a line to the post-office at
Torquay. I really deserve nothing of my friends at present.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Mch. 1868.]

I don't know whether you have ever seen Torquay. It is pretty, but not
comparable to Ilfracombe; and, like all other easily accessible
sea-places, it is sadly spoiled by wealth and fashion, which leave no
secluded walks, and tattoo all the hills with ugly patterns of roads
and villa gardens. Our selfishness does not adapt itself well to these
on-comings of the millennium.

I am reading about savages and semi-savages, and think that our
religious oracles would do well to study savage ideas by a method of
comparison with their own. Also, I am studying that semi-savage poem,
the "Iliad." How enviable it is to be a classic. When a verse in the
"Iliad" bears six different meanings, and nobody knows which is the
right, a commentator finds this equivocalness in itself admirable!

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, end of Mch. 1868.]

Mr. Lewes quite agrees with you, that it is desirable to announce the
poem. His suggestion is, that it should be simply announced as "a
poem" first, and then a little later as "The Spanish Gypsy," in order
to give a new detail for observation in the second announcement. I
chose the title, "The Spanish Gypsy," a long time ago, because it is a
little in the fashion of the elder dramatists, with whom I have
perhaps more cousinship than with recent poets. Fedalma might be
mistaken for an Italian name, which would create a definite
expectation of a mistaken kind, and is, on other grounds, less to my
taste than "The Spanish Gypsy."

This place is becoming a little London, or London suburb. Everywhere
houses and streets are being built, and Babbacombe will soon be joined
to Torquay.

I almost envy you the excitement of golf, which helps the fresh air to
exhilarate, and gives variety of exercise. Walking can never be so
good as a game--if one loves the game. But when a friend of Mr.
Lewes's urges him angrily to play rackets for his health, the prospect
seems dreary.

We are afraid of being entangled in excursion trains, or crowds of
Easter holiday-makers, in Easter week, and may possibly be driven back
next Wednesday. But we are loath to have our stay so curtailed.

Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards, and pities all of us who are less
interested in ganglionic cells. He is in a state of beatitude about
the poem.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th April, 1868.]

We find a few retired walks, and are the less discontented because the
weather is perfect. I hope you are sharing the delights of sunshine
and moonlight. There are no waves here, as you know; but under such
skies as we are having, sameness is so beautiful that we find no
fault, and there is a particular hill at Babbacombe of the richest
Spanish red. On the whole, we are glad we came here, having avoided
all trouble in journeying and settling. But we should not come again
without special call, for in a few years all the hills will be parts
of a London suburb.

How glorious this weather is for the hard workers who are looking
forward to their Easter holiday! But for ourselves, we are rather
afraid of the railway stations in holiday time. Certainly, we are ill
prepared for what Tennyson calls the "To-be," and it is good that we
shall soon pass from this objective existence.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th April, 1868.]

I think Ruskin has not been encouraged about women by his many and
persistent attempts to teach them. He seems to have found them wanting
in real scientific interest--bent on sentimentalizing in everything.

What I should like to be sure of, as a result of higher education for
women--a result that will come to pass over my grave--is their
recognition of the great amount of social unproductive labor which
needs to be done by women, and which is now either not done at all or
done wretchedly. No good can come to women, more than to any class of
male mortals, while each aims at doing the highest kind of work, which
ought rather to be held in sanctity as what only the few can do well.
I believe, and I want it to be well shown, that a more thorough
education will tend to do away with the odious vulgarity of our
notions about functions and employment, and to propagate the true
gospel, that the deepest disgrace is to insist on doing work for which
we are unfit--to do work of any sort badly. There are many points of
this kind that want being urged, but they do not come well from me.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th April, 1868.]

Your letter came just at the right time to greet us. Thanks for that
pretty remembrance. We are glad to be at home again with our home
comforts around us, though we became deeply in love with Torquay in
the daily heightening of spring beauties, and the glory of perpetual
blue skies. The eight hours' journey (one hour more than we paid for)
was rather disturbing; and, I think, Mr. Lewes has got more zoological
experience than health from our month's delight--but a delight it
really has been to us to have perfect quiet with the red hills, the
sunshine, and the sea.

I shall be absorbed for the next fortnight, so that I cannot allow
myself the sort of pleasure you kindly project for us; and when May
begins, I want you to come and stay a night with us. I shall be ready
by and by for such holiday-making, and you must be good to me. Will
you give Dr. Congreve my thanks for his pamphlet, which I read at
Torquay with great interest? All protests tell, however slowly and
imperceptibly, and a protest against the doctrine that England is to
keep Ireland under all conditions was what I had wished to be made.
But in this matter he will have much more important concurrence than
mine. I am bearing much in mind the great task of the translation.
When it is completed we shall be able and glad to do what we were not
able to do in the case of the "Discours Préliminaire," namely, to take
our share, if we may, in the expenses of publication.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_April 16._--Returned home, bringing Book IV. finished.

_April 18._--Went with Mr. Pigott to see Holman Hunt's great picture,
Isabella and the Pot of Basil.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st April, 1868.]

I send you by to-day's post the MS. of Book IV., that it may be at
hand whenever there is opportunity for getting it into print, and
letting me have it in that form for correction. It is desirable to get
as forward as we can, in case of the Americans asking for delay after
their reception of the sheets--if they venture to make any
arrangement. I shall send the MS. of Book V. (the last) as soon as
headache will permit, but that is an uncertain limit. We returned from
Torquay on the 16th, leaving the glorious weather behind us. We were
more in love with the place on a better acquaintance: the weather, and
the spring buds, and the choirs of birds, made it seem more of a
paradise to us every day.

The poem will be less tragic than I threatened: Mr. Lewes has
prevailed on me to return to my original conception, and give up the
additional development, which I determined on subsequently. The poem
is rather shorter in consequence. Don't you think that my artistic
deference and pliability deserve that it should also be better in
consequence? I now end it as I determined to end it when I first
conceived the story.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_April 25._--Finished the last dialogue between Silva and Fedalma. Mr.
and Mrs. Burne Jones dined with us.

_April 29._--Finished "The Spanish Gypsy."

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Aug. 1868.]

I send you by to-day's post the conclusion of the poem in MS., and the
eighteen sheets of revise. The last book is brief, but I may truly use
the old epigram--that it would have taken less time to make it longer.
It is a great bore that the name of my heroine is wrongly spelled in
all the earlier sheets. It is a fresh proof of the fallibility of our
impressions as to our own doings, that I would have confidently
affirmed the name to be spelled Fedalma (as it ought to be) in my
manuscript. Yet I suppose I should have affirmed falsely, for the _i_
occurs in the slips constantly.

As I shall not see these paged sheets again, will you charitably
assure me that the alterations are safely made?

     Among my wife's papers were four or five pages of MS. headed,
     "Notes on the Spanish Gypsy and Tragedy in General." There is
     no evidence as to the date at which this fragment was
     written, and it seems to have been left unfinished. But there
     was evidently some care to preserve it; and as I think she
     would not have objected to its presentation, I give it here
     exactly as it stands. It completes the history of the poem.

[Sidenote: Notes on "The Spanish Gypsy."]

The subject of "The Spanish Gypsy" was originally suggested to me by a
picture which hangs in the Scuola di' San Rocco at Venice, over the
door of the large Sala containing Tintoretto's frescoes. It is an
Annunciation, said to be by Titian. Of course I had seen numerous
pictures of this subject before; and the subject had always attracted
me. But in this my second visit to the Scuola di' San Rocco, this
small picture of Titian's, pointed out to me for the first time,
brought a new train of thought. It occurred to me that here was a
great dramatic motive of the same class as those used by the Greek
dramatists, yet specifically differing from them. A young maiden,
believing herself to be on the eve of the chief event of her
life--marriage--about to share in the ordinary lot of womanhood, full
of young hope, has suddenly announced to her that she is chosen to
fulfil a great destiny, entailing a terribly different experience from
that of ordinary womanhood. She is chosen, not by any momentary
arbitrariness, but as a result of foregoing hereditary conditions: she
obeys. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Here, I thought, is a
subject grander than that of Iphigenia, and it has never been used. I
came home with this in my mind, meaning to give the motive a clothing
in some suitable set of historical and local conditions. My
reflections brought me nothing that would serve me except that moment
in Spanish history when the struggle with the Moors was attaining its
climax, and when there was the gypsy race present under such
conditions as would enable me to get my heroine and the hereditary
claim on her among the gypsies. I required the opposition of race to
give the need for renouncing the expectation of marriage. I could not
use the Jews or the Moors, because the facts of their history were too
conspicuously opposed to the working-out of my catastrophe. Meanwhile
the subject had become more and more pregnant to me. I saw it might be
taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the general human lot
by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of the fact that
what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions; for even in
cases of just antagonism to the narrow view of hereditary claims, the
whole background of the particular struggle is made up of our
inherited nature. Suppose for a moment that our conduct at great
epochs was determined entirely by reflection, without the immediate
intervention of feeling, which supersedes reflection, our
determination as to the right would consist in an adjustment of our
individual needs to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to our
natural constitution, partly as sharers of life with our
fellow-beings. Tragedy consists in the terrible difficulty of this
adjustment--

     "The dire strife of poor Humanity's afflicted will,
     Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."

Looking at individual lots, I seemed to see in each the same story,
wrought out with more or less of tragedy, and I determined the
elements of my drama under the influence of these ideas.

In order to judge properly of the dramatic structure it must not be
considered first in the light of doctrinal symbolism, but in the light
of a tragedy representing some grand collision in the human lot. And
it must be judged accordingly. A good tragic subject must represent a
possible, sufficiently probable, not a common, action; and to be
really tragic, it must represent irreparable collision between the
individual and the general (in differing degrees of generality). It is
the individual with whom we sympathize, and the general of which we
recognize the irresistible power. The truth of this test will be seen
by applying it to the greatest tragedies. The collision of Greek
tragedy is often that between hereditary, entailed Nemesis and the
peculiar individual lot, awakening our sympathy, of the particular man
or woman whom the Nemesis is shown to grasp with terrific force.
Sometimes, as in the Oresteia, there is the clashing of two
irreconcilable requirements, two duties, as we should say in these
times. The murder of the father must be avenged by the murder of the
mother, which must again be avenged. These two tragic relations of the
individual and general, and of two irreconcilable "oughts," may
be--will be--seen to be almost always combined. The Greeks were not
taking an artificial, entirely erroneous standpoint in their art--a
standpoint which disappeared altogether with their religion and their
art. They had the same essential elements of life presented to them as
we have, and their art symbolized these in grand schematic forms. The
Prometheus represents the ineffectual struggle to redeem the small
and miserable race of man, against the stronger adverse ordinances
that govern the frame of things with a triumphant power. Coming to
modern tragedies, what is it that makes Othello a great tragic
subject? A story simply of a jealous husband is elevated into a most
pathetic tragedy by the hereditary conditions of Othello's lot, which
give him a subjective ground for distrust. Faust, Rigoletto (Le Roi
s'Amuse), Brutus. It might be a reasonable ground of objection against
the whole structure of "The Spanish Gypsy" if it were shown that the
action is outrageously improbable--lying outside all that can be
congruously conceived of human actions. It is _not_ a reasonable
ground of objection that they would have done better to act otherwise,
any more than it is a reasonable objection against the Iphigenia that
Agamemnon would have done better not to sacrifice his daughter.

As renunciations coming under the same great class, take the
renunciation of marriage, where marriage cannot take place without
entailing misery on the children.

A tragedy has not to expound why the individual must give way to the
general; it has to show that it is compelled to give way; the tragedy
consisting in the struggle involved, and often in the entirely
calamitous issue in spite of a grand submission. Silva presents the
tragedy of entire rebellion; Fedalma of a grand submission, which is
rendered vain by the effects of Silva's rebellion. Zarca, the struggle
for a great end, rendered vain by the surrounding conditions of life.

Now, what is the fact about our individual lots? A woman, say, finds
herself on the earth with an inherited organization; she may be lame,
she may inherit a disease, or what is tantamount to a disease; she
may be a negress, or have other marks of race repulsive in the
community where she is born, etc. One may go on for a long while
without reaching the limits of the commonest inherited misfortunes. It
is almost a mockery to say to such human beings, "Seek your own
happiness." The utmost approach to well-being that can be made in such
a case is through large resignation and acceptance of the inevitable,
with as much effort to overcome any disadvantage as good sense will
show to be attended with a likelihood of success. Any one may say,
that is the dictate of mere rational reflection. But calm can, in
hardly any human organism, be attained by rational reflection.
Happily, we are not left to that. Love, pity, constituting sympathy,
and generous joy with regard to the lot of our fellow-men comes
in--has been growing since the beginning--enormously enhanced by wider
vision of results, by an imagination actively interested in the lot of
mankind generally; and these feelings become piety--_i.e._, loving,
willing submission and heroic Promethean effort towards high
possibilities, which may result from our individual life.

There is really no moral "sanction" but this inward impulse. The will
of God is the same thing as the will of other men, compelling us to
work and avoid what they have seen to be harmful to social existence.
Disjoined from any perceived good, the divine will is simply so much
as we have ascertained of the facts of existence which compel
obedience at our peril. Any other notion comes from the supposition of
arbitrary revelation.

That favorite view, expressed so often in Clough's poems, of doing
duty in blindness as to the result, is likely to deepen the
substitution of egoistic yearnings for really moral impulses. We
cannot be utterly blind to the results of duty, since that cannot be
duty which is not already judged to be for human good. To say the
contrary is to say that mankind have reached no inductions as to what
is for their good or evil.

The art which leaves the soul in despair is laming to the soul, and is
denounced by the healthy sentiment of an active community. The
consolatory elements in "The Spanish Gypsy" are derived from two
convictions or sentiments which so conspicuously pervade it that they
may be said to be its very warp, on which the whole action is woven.
These are: (1) The importance of individual deeds. (2) The
all-sufficiency of the soul's passions in determining sympathetic
action.

In Silva is presented the claim of fidelity to social pledges. In
Fedalma the claim constituted by an hereditary lot less consciously
shared.

With regard to the supremacy of love: if it were a fact without
exception that man or woman never did renounce the joys of love, there
could never have sprung up a notion that such renunciation could
present itself as a duty. If no parents had ever cared for their
children, how could parental affection have been reckoned among the
elements of life? But what are the facts in relation to this matter?
Will any one say that faithfulness to the marriage tie has never been
regarded as a duty, in spite of the presence of the profoundest
passion experienced after marriage? Is Guinivere's conduct the type of
duty?


[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 7th May, 1868.]

Yes, I am at rest now--only a few pages of revise to look at more. My
chief excitement and pleasure in the work are over: for when I have
once written anything, and it is gone out of my power, I think of it
as little as possible. Next to the doing of the thing, of course, Mr.
Lewes's delight in it is the cream of all sympathy, though I care
enough about the sympathy of others to be very grateful for any they
give me. Don't you imagine how the people who consider writing simply
as a money-getting profession will despise me for choosing a work by
which I could only get hundreds, where for a novel I could get
thousands? I cannot help asking you to admire what my husband is,
compared with many possible husbands--I mean, in urging me to produce
a poem rather than anything in a worldly sense more profitable. I
expect a good deal of disgust to be felt towards me in many quarters
for doing what was not looked for from me, and becoming unreadable to
many who have hitherto found me readable and debatable. Religion and
novels every ignorant person feels competent to give an opinion upon,
but _en fait de poésie_, a large number of them "only read
Shakespeare." But enough of that.

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 25th May, 1868.]

Before we set off to Germany I want to tell you that a copy of "The
Spanish Gypsy" will be sent to you. If there had been time before our
going away I should have written on the fly-leaf that it was offered
by the author "in grateful remembrance." For I especially desire that
you should understand my reasons for asking you to accept the book to
be retrospective and not prospective.

And I am going out of reach of all letters, so that you are free from
any need to write to me, and may let the book lie till you like to
open it.

I give away my books only by exception, and in venturing to make you
an exceptional person in this matter, I am urged by the strong wish
to express my value for the help and sympathy you gave me two years
ago.

     The manuscript of "The Spanish Gypsy" bears the following
     inscription:

     "To my dear--every day dearer--Husband."

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 26th (?) May, 1868.]

Yes, indeed, I not only remember your letter, but have always kept it
at hand, and have read it many times. Within these latter months I
have seemed to see in the distance a possible poem shaped on your
idea. But it would be better for you to encourage the growth towards
realization in your own mind, rather than trust to transplantation.

My own faint conception is that of a frankly Utopian construction,
freeing the poet from all local embarrassments. Great epics have
always been more or less of this character--only the construction has
been of the past, not of the future.

Write to me _Poste Restante_, Baden-Baden, within the next fortnight.
My head will have got clearer then.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_May 26._--We set out this evening on our journey to Baden, spending
the night at Dover. Our route was by Tournay, Liége, Bonn, and
Frankfort, to Baden, where we stayed nine days; then to Petersthal,
where we stayed three weeks; then to Freiburg, St. Märgen, Basle,
Thun, and Interlaken. From Interlaken we came by Fribourg, Neuchâtel,
Dijon, to Paris and Folkestone.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th July, 1868.]

We got your letter yesterday here among the peaceful mountain-tops.
After ascending gradually (in a carriage) for nearly four hours, we
found ourselves in a region of grass, corn, and pine woods, so
beautifully varied that we seem to be walking in a great park laid
out for our special delight. The monks, as usual, found out the
friendly solitude, and this place of St. Märgen was originally nothing
but an Augustinian monastery. About three miles off is another place
of like origin, called St. Peter's, formerly a Benedictine monastery,
and still used as a place of preparation for the Catholic priesthood.
The monks have all vanished, but the people are devout Catholics. At
every half-mile by the roadside is a carefully kept crucifix; and last
night, as we were having our supper in the common room of the inn, we
suddenly heard sounds that seemed to me like those of an accordion.
"Is that a zittern?" said Mr. Lewes to the German lady by his side.
"No--it is prayer." The servants, by themselves--the host and hostess
were in the same room with us--were saying their evening prayers,
men's and women's voices blending in unusually correct harmony. The
same loud prayer is heard at morning, noon, and evening, from the
shepherds and workers in the fields. We suppose that the believers in
Mr. Home and in Madame Rachel would pronounce these people "grossly
superstitious." The land is cultivated by rich peasant proprietors,
and the people here, as in Petersthal, look healthy and contented.
This really adds to one's pleasure in seeing natural beauties. In
North Germany, at Ilmenau, we were constantly pained by meeting
peasants who looked underfed and miserable. Unhappily, the weather is
too cold and damp, and our accommodations are too scanty, under such
circumstances, for us to remain here and enjoy the endless walks and
the sunsets that would make up for other negatives in fine, warm
weather. We return to Freiburg to-morrow, and from thence we shall go
on by easy stages through Switzerland, by Thun and Vevay to Geneva,
where I want to see my old friends once more.

We shall be so constantly on the move that it might be a vain trouble
on your part to shoot another letter after such flying birds.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_July 23._--Arrived at home (from Baden journey).

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th July, 1868.]

We got home last night--sooner than we expected, because we gave up
the round by Geneva, as too long and exciting. I dare say the three
weeks since we heard from you seem very short to you, passed amid your
usual occupations. To us they seem long, for we have been constantly
changing our scene. Our two months have been spent delightfully in
seeing fresh natural beauties, and with the occasional cheering
influence of kind people. But I think we were hardly ever, except in
Spain, so long ignorant of home sayings and doings, for we have been
chiefly in regions innocent even of _Galignani_. The weather with us
has never been oppressively hot; and storms or quiet rains have been
frequent. But our bit of burned-up lawn is significant of the dryness
here. I believe I did not thank you for the offer of "Kinglake," which
we gratefully accept. And will you kindly order a copy of the poem to
be sent to Gerald Massey, Hemel-Hempstead.

A friendly gentleman at Belfast sends me a list of emendations for
some of my verses, which are very characteristic and amusing.

I hope you have kept well through the heat. We are come back in great
force, for such feeble wretches.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th July, 1868.]

As to the reviews, we expected them to be written by omniscient
personages, but we did _not_ expect so bad a review as that Mr. Lewes
found in the _Pall Mall_. I have read no notice except that in the
_Spectator_, which was modest in tone. A very silly gentleman, Mr.
Lewes says, undertakes to admonish me in the _Westminster_; and he
thinks the best _literary_ notice of the poem that has come before him
is in the _Athenæum_. After all, I think there would have been good
reason to doubt that the poem had either novelty or any other
considerable intrinsic reason to justify its being written, if the
periodicals had cried out "Hosanna!" I am sure you appreciate all the
conditions better than I can, after your long experience of the
relations between authors and critics. I am serene, because I only
expected the unfavorable. To-day the heat is so great that it is
hardly possible even to read a book that requires any thought. London
is a bad exchange for the mountains.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th July, 1868.]

I enclose a list of corrections for the reprint. I am indebted to my
friendly correspondent from Belfast for pointing out several
oversights, which I am ashamed of, after all the proof-reading. But,
among the well-established truths of which I never doubt, the
fallibility of my own brain stands first.

I suppose Mudie and the other librarians will not part with their
copies of the poems quite as soon as they would part with their more
abundant copies of a novel. And this supposition, if warranted, would
be an encouragement to reprint another moderate edition at the same
price. Perhaps, before a cheaper edition is prepared, I may add to the
corrections, but at present my mind resists strongly the effort to go
back on its old work.

I think I never mentioned to you that the occasional use of irregular
verses, and especially verses of twelve syllables, has been a
principle with me, and is found in all the finest writers of blank
verse. I mention it now because, as you have a certain _solidarité_
with my poetical doings, I would not have your soul vexed by the
detective wisdom of critics. Do you happen to remember that saying of
Balzac's, "When I want the world to praise my novels I write a drama;
when I want them to praise my drama I write a novel"?

On the whole, however, I should think I have more to be grateful for
than to grumble at. Mr. Lewes read me out last night some very
generous passages from the _St. Paul's Magazine_.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_August._--Reading 1st book of Lucretius, 6th book of the "Iliad,"
"Samson Agonistes," Warton's "History of English Poetry," Grote, 2d
volume, "Marcus Aurelius," "Vita Nuova," vol. iv. chap. i. of the
"Politique Positive," Guest on "English Rhythms," Maurice's "Lectures
on Casuistry."

_Sept. 19._--We returned from a visit to Yorkshire. On Monday we went
to Leeds, and were received by Dr. Clifford Allbut, with whom we
stayed till the middle of the day on Wednesday. Then we went by train
to Ilkley, and from thence took a carriage to Bolton. The weather had
been gray for two days, but on this evening the sun shone out, and we
had a delightful stroll before dinner, getting our first view of the
Priory. On Thursday we spent the whole day in rambling through the
woods to Barden Tower and back. Our comfortable little inn was the Red
Lion, and we were tempted to lengthen our stay. But on Friday morning
the sky was threatening, so we started for Newark, which we had
visited in old days on our expedition to Gainsborough. At Newark we
found our old inn, the Ram, opposite the ruins of the castle, and then
we went for a stroll along the banks of the Trent, seeing some
charming, quiet landscapes.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 20th Sept. 1868.]

This note comes to greet you on your return home, but it cannot greet
you so sweetly as your letter did me on our arrival from Leeds last
night. I think it gave me a deeper pleasure than any I have had for a
long while. I am very grateful to you for it.

We went to Leeds on Monday, and stayed two days with Dr. Allbut. Dr.
Bridges dined with us one day, and we had a great deal of delightful
chat. But I will tell you everything when we see you. Let that be
soon--will you not? We shall be glad of any arrangement that will give
us the pleasure of seeing you, Dr. Congreve, and Emily, either
separately or all together. Please forgive me if I seem very fussy
about your all coming. I want you to understand that we shall feel it
the greatest kindness in you if you will all choose to come, and also
choose _how_ to come--either to lunch or dinner, and either apart or
together. I hope to find that you are much the better for your
journey--better both in body and soul. One has immense need of
encouragement, but it seems to come more easily from the dead than
from the living.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Sept. 1868.]

Your letter gave an additional gusto to my tea and toast this morning.
The greater confidence of the trade in subscribing for the second
edition is, on several grounds, a satisfactory indication; but, as you
observe, we shall be still better pleased to know that the copies are
not slumbering on the counters, but having an active life in the hands
of readers.

I am now going carefully through the poem for the sake of correction.
I have read it through once, and have at present found some ten or
twelve _small_ alterations to be added to those already made. But I
shall go through it again more than once, for I wish to be able to put
"revised" to the third edition, and to leave nothing that my
conscience is not ready to swear by. I think it will be desirable for
me to see proofs. It is possible, in many closely consecutive
readings, not to see errors which strike one immediately on taking up
the pages after a good long interval.

We are feeling much obliged for a copy of "Kinglake," which I am
reading aloud to Mr. Lewes as a part of our evening's entertainment
and edification, beginning again from the beginning.

This week we have had perfect autumnal days, though last week, when we
were in Yorkshire, we also thought that the time of outside chills and
inside fires was beginning.

We do not often see a place which is a good foil for London, but
certainly Leeds is in a lower circle of the great town--_Inferno_.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 25th Sept. 1868.]

I can imagine how delicious your country home has been under the
glorious skies we have been having--glorious even in London. Yesterday
we had Dr. and Mrs. Congreve, and went with them to the Zoological
Gardens, and on our return, about 5 o'clock, I could not help pausing
and exclaiming at the exquisite beauty of the light on Regent's Park,
exalting it into something that the young Turner would have wanted to
paint.

We went to Leeds last week--saw your favorite, David Cox, and thought
of you the while. Certainly there was nothing finer there in landscape
than that Welsh funeral. Among the figure-painters, Watts and old
Philip are supreme.

We went on from Leeds to Bolton, and spent a day in wandering through
the grand woods on the banks of the Wharfe. Altogether, our visit to
Yorkshire was extremely agreeable. Our host, Dr. Allbut, is a good,
clever, graceful man, enough to enable one to be cheerful under the
horrible smoke of ugly Leeds; and the fine hospital, which, he says,
is admirably fitted for its purpose, is another mitigation. You would
like to see the tasteful, subdued ornamentation in the rooms which are
to be sick wards. Each physician is accumulating ornamental objects
for his own ward--chromo-lithographs, etc.--such as will soothe sick
eyes.

It was quite cold in that northerly region. Your picture keeps a
memory of sunshine on my wall even on this dark morning.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Oct. 1868.]

I have gone through the poem twice for the sake of revision, and have
a crop of small corrections--only in one case extending to the
insertion of a new line. But I wish to see the proof-sheets, so that
"Revised by the Author" may be put in the advertisement and on the
title-page.

Unhappily, my health has been unusually bad since we returned from
abroad, so that the time has been a good deal wasted on the endurance
of _malaise_; but I am brooding over many things, and hope that coming
months will not be barren. As to the criticisms, I suppose that better
poets than I have gone through worse receptions. In spite of my reason
and of my low expectations, I am too susceptible to all discouragement
not to have been depressingly affected by some few things in the shape
of criticism which I have been obliged to know. Yet I am ashamed of
caring about anything that cannot be taken as strict evidence against
the value of my book. So far as I have been able to understand, there
is a striking disagreement among the reviewers as to what is best and
what is worst; and the weight of agreement, even on the latter point,
is considerably diminished by the reflection that three different
reviews may be three different phases of the same gentleman, taking
the opportunity of earning as many guineas as he can by making easy
remarks on George Eliot. But, as dear Scott's characters say, "Let
that fly stick in the wa'--when the dirt's dry, it'll rub out." I
shall look at "Doubles and Quits," as you recommend. I read the two
first numbers of "Madame Amelia," and thought them promising.

I sympathize with your melancholy at the prospect of quitting the
country; though, compared with London, beautiful Edinburgh is country.
Perhaps some good, thick mists will come to reconcile you with the
migration.

We have been using the fine autumn days for flights into Kent between
Sundays. The rich woods about Sevenoaks and Chislehurst are a delight
to the eyes, and the stillness is a rest to every nerve.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_Oct. 22._--Received a letter from Blackwood, saying that "The Spanish
Gypsy" must soon go into a third edition. I sent my corrections for
it.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 27th Oct. 1868.]

At last I have spirit enough in me to thank you for your valuable
gift, which Emily kindly brought me in her hand. I am grateful for
it--not only because the medallion[5] is a possession which I shall
always hold precious, but also because you thought of me among those
whom you would choose to be its owners.

I hope you are able to enjoy some walking in these sunshiny mornings.
We had a long drive round by Hendon and Finchley yesterday morning,
and drank so much clear air and joy from the sight of trees and fields
that I am quite a new-old creature.

I think you will not be sorry to hear that the "Spanish Gypsy" is so
nearly out of print again that the publishers are preparing a new,
cheaper edition. The second edition was all bought up (subscribed
for) by the booksellers the first day.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Oct. 1868.]

Your pretty letter is irresistible. May we then be with you on Tuesday
somewhere about twelve, and return home on Wednesday by afternoon
daylight? If the weather should be very cold or wet on Tuesday we must
renounce or defer our pleasure, because we are both too rickety to run
the risk of taking cold. So you see we are very much in need of such
sweet friendliness as yours gives us faith in, to keep us cheerful
under the burden of the flesh.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_Nov. 3._--Went to dine and sleep at the Congreves, at Wandsworth.

_Nov. 4._--We set off for Sheffield, where we went over a great iron
and steel factory under the guidance of Mr. Benzon. On Saturday, the
7th, we went to Matlock and stayed till Tuesday. I recognized the
objects which I had seen with my father nearly thirty years
before--the turn of the road at Cromford, the Arkwrights' house, and
the cottages with the stone floors chalked in patterns. The landscape
was still rich with autumn leaves.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Thursday evening, 12th Nov. 1868.]

We got home last night after delicious days spent at Matlock. I was so
renovated that my head was clearer, and I was more unconscious of my
body than at the best of times for many months. But it seemed suddenly
colder when we were in London, and old uneasy sensations are
revisiting us both to-day.

I wonder whether you will soon want to come to town, and will send me
word that you will come and take shelter with us for the night? The
bed is no softer and no broader; but will you not be tempted by a new
carpet and a new bit of matting for your bath?--perhaps there will
even be a new fender? If you want to shop, I will take you in the
brougham.

I think you will be just able to make out this note, written by a
sudden impulse on my knee over the fire.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 16th Nov. 1868.]

No oracle would dare to predict what will be our next migration. Don't
be surprised if we go to the borders of the White Sea, to escape the
fitful fast and loose, hot and cold, of the London climate.

We enjoyed our journey to the north. It was a great experience to me
to see the stupendous iron-works at Sheffield; and then, for a
variety, we went to the quiet and beauty of Matlock, and I recognized
all the spots I had carried in my memory for more than five-and-twenty
years. I drove through that region with my father when I was a young
grig--not very full of hope about my woman's future. I am one of those
perhaps exceptional people whose early, childish dreams were much less
happy than the real outcome of life.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1868.]

I think your birthday comes after mine; but I am determined to write
beforehand to prove to you that I bear you in my thoughts without any
external reminder.

I suppose we are both getting too old to care about being wished
_many_ happy returns of the day. We shall be content to wish each
other as many more years as can carry with them some joy and calm
satisfaction in the sense of living. But there is one definite
prospect for you which I may fairly hope for, as I do most
tenderly--the prospect that this time next year you will be looking
back on your achieved work as a good seed-sowing. Some sadness there
must always be in saying good-bye to a work which is done with love;
but there may--I trust there _will_--be a compensating good in feeling
that the thing you yearned to do is gone safely out of reach of
casualties that might have cut it short.

We have been to Sheffield at the seducing invitation of a friend, who
showed us the miraculous iron-works there; and afterwards we turned
aside to beautiful Matlock, where I found again the spots, the turns
of road, the rows of stone cottages, the rushing river Derwent, and
the Arkwright mills--among which I drove with my father when I was in
my teens. We had glorious weather, and I was quite regenerated by the
bracing air. Our friend Mr. Spencer is growing younger with the years.
He really looks brighter and more enjoying than he ever did before,
since he was in the really young, happy time of fresh discussion and
inquiry. His is a friendship which wears well, because of his
truthfulness. He always asks with sympathetic interest how you are
going on.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_Nov. 22._--The return of this St. Cecilia's Day finds me in better
health than has been usual with me in these last six months. But I am
not yet engaged in any work that makes a higher life for me--a life
that is young and grows, though in my other life I am getting old and
decaying. It is a day for resolves and determinations. I am meditating
the subject of Timoleon.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 30th Nov. 1868.]

I like to think of you painting the physiological charts, although
they tire your eyes a little; for you must be sure that the good of
such work is of a kind that goes deep into young lives. "Fearfully and
wonderfully made" are words quite unshaken by any theory as to the
making; and I think a great awe in the contemplation of man's delicate
structure, freighted with terrible destinies, is one of the most
important parts of education. A much-writing acquaintance of ours one
day expressed his alarm for "the masses" at the departure of a
religion which had _terror_ in it. Surely terror is provided for
sufficiently in this life of ours--if only the dread could be directed
towards the really dreadful.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 12th Dec. 1868.]

We have been having a little company, and are rejoicing to think that
our duties of this sort are done for the present. We like our studies
and our dual solitude too well to feel company desirable more than one
day a-week. I wish our affection may be with you as some little
cheering influence through the dark months. We hardly estimate enough
the difference of feeling that would come to us if we did not imagine
friendly souls scattered here and there in places that make the chief
part of the world so far as we have known it.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Dec. 1868.]

Tell Dr. Congreve that the "mass of positivism," in the shape of "The
Spanish Gypsy," is so rapidly finding acceptance with the public that
the second edition, being all sold, the third, just published, has
already been demanded to above 700. Do not think that I am becoming an
egotistical author. The news concerns the doctrine, not the writer.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 19th Dec. 1868.]

I am moved to congratulate you on writing against the ballot with such
admirably good sense--having just read your "slip" at the
breakfast-table. It has been a source of amazement to me that men
acquainted with practical life can believe in the suppression of
bribery by the ballot, as if bribery in all its Protean forms could
ever disappear by means of a single external arrangement. They might
as well say that our female vanity would disappear at an order that
women should wear felt hats and cloth dresses. It seems to me that you
have put the main unanswerable arguments against the ballot with
vigorous brevity.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 29th Dec. 1868.]

Thanks for letting me know about the meeting. I shall not be able to
join it bodily, but I am glad always to have the possibility of being
with you in thought. I have a twofold sympathy on the occasion, for I
cannot help entering specially into your own wifely anxieties, and I
shall be glad to be assured that Dr. Congreve has borne the excitement
without being afterwards conscious of an excessive strain.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1868.]

_Dec. 30._--I make to-day the last record that I shall enter of the
old year 1868. It has been as rich in blessings as any preceding year
of our double life, and I enjoy a more and more even cheerfulness and
continually increasing power of dwelling on the good that is given to
me and dismissing the thought of small evils. The chief event of the
year to us has been the publication and friendly reception by the
public of "The Spanish Gypsy." The greatest happiness (after our
growing love) which has sprung and flowed onward during the latter
part of the year is George's interest in his psychological inquiries.
I have, perhaps, gained a little higher ground and firmer footing in
some studies, notwithstanding the yearly loss of retentive power. We
have made some new friendships that cheer us with the sense of new
admiration of actual living beings whom we know in the flesh, and who
are kindly disposed towards us. And we have had no real trouble. I
wish we were not in a minority of our fellow-men! I desire no added
blessing for the coming year but this--that I may do some good,
lasting work, and make both my outward and inward habits less
imperfect--that is, more directly tending to the best uses of life.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 31st Dec. 1868.]

Many thanks for the check, which I received yesterday afternoon. Mr.
Lewes is eminently satisfied with the sales; and, indeed, it does
appear from authoritative testimony that the number sold is unusually
large even for what is called a successful poem.

The cheap edition of the novels is so exceptionally attractive in
print, paper, and binding, for 3_s._ 6_d._, that I cannot help
fretting a little at its not getting a more rapid sale. The fact
rather puzzles me, too, in presence of the various proofs that the
books really are liked. I suppose there is some mystery of reduced
prices accounting for the abundant presentation of certain works and
series on the bookstalls at the railways, and the absence of others,
else surely those pretty volumes would have a good chance of being
bought by the travellers whose taste shrinks from the diabolical
red-and-yellow-pictured series. I am sure you must often be in a state
of wonderment as to how the business of the world gets done so as not
to ruin two thirds of the people concerned in it; for, judging from
the silly propositions and requests sometimes made to me by
bald-headed, experienced men, there must be a very thin allowance of
wisdom to the majority of their transactions.

Mr. Lewes is attracted by the biographical studies of George the
Second's time; but last night, after he had done reading about
Berkeley, I heard him laughing over "Doubles and Quits." It is
agreeable to think that I have that bit of cheerful reading in store.

Our first snow fell yesterday, and melted immediately. This morning
the sun is warm on me as I write. The doctors say that the season has
been horribly unhealthy, and that they have been afraid to perform
some operations from the low state of vitality in the patients, due to
the atmospheric conditions. This looks like very wise writing, and
worthy of Molière's "Médecin."

Mr. Lewes joins me in sincere good wishes to Mr. William Blackwood, as
well as yourself, for the coming year--wishes for general happiness.
The chief, particular wish would be that we should all in common look
back next Christmas on something achieved in which we share each
other's satisfaction.

[Sidenote: Letter to Hon. Robert Lytton (now Lord Lytton). No date.
Probably in 1868.]

I am much obliged to you for mentioning, in your letter to Mr. Lewes,
the two cases of inaccuracy (I fear there may be more) which you
remembered in the "Spanish Gypsy." How I came to write Zincálo instead
of Zíncalo is an instance which may be added to many sadder examples
of that mental infirmity which makes our senses of little use to us in
the presence of a strong prepossession. As soon as I had conceived my
story with its gypsy element, I tried to learn all I could about the
names by which the gypsies called themselves, feeling that I should
occasionally need a musical name, remote from the vulgar English
associations which cling to "gypsy." I rejected Gitana, because I
found that the gypsies themselves held the name to be opprobrious; and
Zíncalo--which, with a fine capacity for being wrong, I at once got
into my head as Zincálo--seemed to be, both in sound and meaning, just
what I wanted. Among the books from which I made notes was "Pott, die
Zigeuner," etc.; and in these notes I find that I have copied the sign
of the tonic accent in Romanó, while in the very same sentence I have
not copied it in Zíncalo, though a renewed reference to Pott shows it
in the one word as well as the other. But "my eyes were held"--by a
demon prepossession--"so that I should not see it." Behold the
fallibility of the human brain, and especially of George Eliot's.

I have been questioned about my use of Andalus for Andalusia, but I
had a sufficient authority for that in the "Mohammedan Dynasties,"
translated by Gayangos.

It may interest you, who are familiar with Spanish literature, to know
that after the first sketch of my book was written I read Cervantes'
novel "La Gitanélla," where the hero turns gypsy for love. The novel
promises well in the earlier part, but falls into sad commonplace
towards the end. I have written my explanation partly to show how much
I value your kind help towards correcting my error, and partly to
prove that I was not careless, but simply stupid. For in authorship I
hold carelessness to be a mortal sin.


_SUMMARY._

JANUARY, 1868, TO DECEMBER, 1868.

     Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mr. Lewes's return from Bonn--First
     visit to Cambridge--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Month's visit to
     Torquay--Letter to Miss Hennell--Reading the "Iliad"--Letter
     to John Blackwood--Title of "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to Madame
     Bodichon--Women's work--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--England and
     Ireland--Translation of the "Politique"--Return to London
     from Torquay--Letter to John Blackwood--Ending of "Spanish
     Gypsy"--The poem finished--George Eliot's "Notes on the
     Spanish Gypsy and Tragedy in general"--Suggestion of the poem
     an Annunciation by Titian, at Venice--Motive--Hereditary
     conditions--Gypsy race--Determination of conduct--Nature of
     tragedy--Collision between the individual and the
     general--Greek tragedy--Hereditary misfortunes--Growth of
     human sympathy--Moral sanction is obedience to facts--Duty
     what tends to human good--Letter to Mrs. Bray on the writing
     of poetry instead of novels--Letter to F. Harrison presenting
     copy of "Spanish Gypsy"--Inscription on MS. of "Spanish
     Gypsy"--Letter to F. Harrison on suggestion of a poem--Six
     weeks' journey to Baden, etc.--Letter to John Blackwood from
     St. Märgen--Catholic worship--Return to London--Letters to
     John Blackwood--_Pall Mall_ review of "Spanish Gypsy"--Saying
     of Balzac--Letter to William
     Blackwood--Versification--Reading Lucretius, Homer, Milton,
     Warton, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Comte, Guest, Maurice--Visit
     to Dr. Clifford Allbut at Leeds--Visit to Newark--Letter to
     Mrs. Congreve--Letters to John Blackwood--Second edition of
     "Spanish Gypsy"--"Kinglake"--Criticisms on "Spanish
     Gypsy"--Visit to the Congreves--Visit to Sheffield with Mr.
     Benzon--Matlock--Letters to Madame Bodichon and Miss Hennell
     on Sheffield journey--Herbert Spencer--Meditating subject of
     Timoleon--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Physiological charts--Letter
     to Madame Bodichon on influence of friends--Letter to Mrs.
     Congreve--Positivism in "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to Charles
     Bray on vote by ballot--Retrospect of 1868--Letter to John
     Blackwood--The cheap edition of novels--Letter to the Hon.
     Robert Lytton--Pronunciation in "Spanish Gypsy"--Cervantes'
     "La Gitanélla."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Visit to Mr. W. G. Clark.

[5] Of Comte.




CHAPTER XVI.


[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_Jan. 1._--I have set myself many tasks for the year--I wonder how
many will be accomplished?--a novel called "Middlemarch," a long poem
on Timoleon, and several minor poems.

_Jan. 23._--Since I wrote last I have finished a little poem on old
Agatha. But the last week or two I have been so disturbed in health
that no work prospers. I have made a little way in constructing my new
tale; have been reading a little on philology; have finished the 24th
Book of the "Iliad," the 1st Book of the "Faery Queene," Clough's
poems, and a little about Etruscan things, in Mrs. Grey and Dennis.
Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's "Alchemist"
and "Volpone," and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading,
besides the first four cantos of "Don Juan." But the last two or three
days I have seemed to live under a leaden pressure--all movement,
mental or bodily, is grievous to me. In the evening read aloud
Bright's fourth speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the
_Spectator_ some interesting facts about loss of memory and "double
life." In the _Revue des Cours_, a lecture by Sir W. Thomson, of
Edinburgh, on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis.

_Jan. 27._--The last two days I have been writing a rhymed poem on
Boccaccio's story of "Lisa." Aloud I have read Bright's speeches, and
"I Promessi Sposi." To myself I have read Mommsen's "Rome."

_Feb. 6._--We went to the third concert. Madame Schumann played finely
in Mendelssohn's quintet, and a trio of Beethoven's. As a solo she
played the sonata in D minor. In the evening I read aloud a short
speech of Bright's on Ireland, delivered twenty years ago, in which he
insists that nothing will be a remedy for the woes of that country
unless the Church Establishment be annulled: after the lapse of twenty
years the measure is going to be adopted. Then I read aloud a bit of
the "Promessi Sposi," and afterwards the _Spectator_, in which there
is a deservedly high appreciation of Lowell's poems.

_Feb. 14._--Finished the poem from Boccaccio. We had rather a numerous
gathering of friends to-day, and among the rest came Browning, who
talked and quoted admirably _à propos_ of versification. The Rector of
Lincoln thinks the French have the most perfect system of
versification in these modern times!

_Feb. 15._--I prepared and sent off "How Lisa Loved the King" to
Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Feb. 1869.]

I have looked back to the verses in Browning's poem about Elisha, and
I find no mystery in them. The foregoing context for three pages
describes that function of genius which revivifies the past. Man, says
Browning (I am writing from recollection of his general meaning),
cannot create, but he can restore: the poet gives forth of his own
spirit, and reanimates the forms that lie breathless. His use of
Elisha's story is manifestly symbolical, as his mention of Faust
is--the illustration which he abandons the moment before to take up
that of the Hebrew seer. I presume you did not read the context
yourself, but only had the two concluding verses pointed out or quoted
to you by your friends. It is one of the afflictions of authorship to
know that the brains which should be used in understanding a book are
wasted in discussing the hastiest misconceptions about it; and I am
sure you will sympathize enough in this affliction to set any one
right, when you can, about this quotation from Browning.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_Feb. 20._--A glorious concert: Hallé, Joachim, and Piatti winding up
with Schubert's trio.

_Feb. 21._--Mr. Deutsch and Mrs. Pattison lunched with us--he in
farewell before going to the East. A rather pleasant gathering of
friends afterwards.

_Feb. 24._--I am reading about plants, and Helmholtz on music. A new
idea of a poem came to me yesterday.

_March 3._--We started on our fourth visit to Italy, viâ France and
the Cornice.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1869, from Paris.]

I found your letter at Florence on our arrival there (on the 23d); but
until now bodily ease and leisure enough to write to you have never
happened to me in the same moments. Our long journey since we left
home on the 3d March, seen from a point of view which, happily, no one
shares with me, has been a history of ailments. In shunning the
English March, we found one quite as disagreeable, without the
mitigation of home comforts; and though we went even as far as Naples
in search of warmth, we never found it until we settled in Rome, at
the beginning of April. Here we had many days of unbroken sunshine,
and enjoyed what we were never able to enjoy during our month's stay
in 1860--the many glorious views of the city and the mountains. The
chief novelty to us in our long route has been the sight of Assisi and
Ravenna; the rest has been a revisiting of scenes already in our
memories; and to most of them we have probably said our last
good-bye. Enough of us and our travels. The only remarkable thing
people can tell of their doings in these days is that they have stayed
at home.

The _Fortnightly_ lay uncut at Mr. Trollope's, and Mr. Lewes had
nothing more pressing to do than to cut it open at the reply to
Professor Huxley.[6] He presently came to me, and said it was
excellent. It delighted him the more because he had just before, at
Rome, alighted on the _Pall Mall_ account of the article, which
falsely represented it as entirely apologetic. At the first spare
moment I plunged into an easy-chair, and read, with thorough
satisfaction in the admirable temper and the force of the reply. We
intend to start for Calais this evening; and as the rain prevents us
from doing anything agreeable out of doors, I have nothing to hinder
me from sitting, with my knees up to my chin, and scribbling, now that
I am become a little sounder in head and in body generally than
beautiful Italy allowed me to be. As beautiful as ever--more
beautiful--it has looked to me on this last visit; and it is the fault
of my _physique_ if it did not agree with me. Pray offer my warmest
sympathy to Dr. Congreve in the anxieties of his difficult task. What
hard work it seems to go on living sometimes! Blessed are the dead.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_May 5._--We reached home after our nine weeks' absence. In that time
we have been through France to Marseilles, along the Cornice to
Spezia, then to Pisa, Florence, Naples, Rome, Assisi, Perugia,
Florence again, Ravenna, Bologna, Verona; across the Brenner Pass to
Munich; then to Paris _viâ_ Strasburg. In such a journey there was
necessarily much interest both in renewing old memories and recording
new; but I never had such continuous bad health in travelling as I
have had during these nine weeks. On our arrival at home I found a
delightful letter from Mrs. H. B. Stowe, whom I have never seen,
addressing me as her "dear friend."

     It was during this journey that I, for the first time, saw my
     future wife, at Rome. My eldest sister had married Mr. W. H.
     Bullock (now Mr. W. H. Hall), of Six-Mile-Bottom,
     Cambridgeshire, and they were on their wedding journey at
     Rome when they happened to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewes by chance
     in the Pamfili Doria Gardens. They saw a good deal of one
     another, and when I arrived, with my mother and another
     sister, we went by invitation to call at the Hôtel Minerva,
     where Mr. Lewes had found rooms on their first arrival in
     Rome. I have a very vivid recollection of George Eliot
     sitting on a sofa with my mother by her side, entirely
     engrossed with her. Mr. Lewes entertained my sister and me on
     the other side of the room. But I was very anxious to hear
     also the conversation on the sofa, as I was better acquainted
     with George Eliot's books than with any other literature. And
     through the dimness of these fifteen years, and all that has
     happened in them, I still seem to hear, as I first heard
     them, the low, earnest, deep, musical tones of her voice; I
     still seem to see the fine brows, with the abundant
     auburn-brown hair framing them, the long head, broadening at
     the back, the gray-blue eyes, constantly changing in
     expression, but always with a very loving, almost
     deprecating, look at my mother, the finely-formed, thin,
     transparent hands, and a whole _Wesen_ that seemed in
     complete harmony with everything one expected to find in the
     author of "Romola." The next day Mr. and Mrs. Lewes went on
     to Assisi and we to Naples, and we did not meet again till
     the following August at Weybridge.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 8th May, 1869.]

I value very highly the warrant to call you friend which your letter
has given me. It lay awaiting me on our return, the other night, from
a nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost wish that you
could have a momentary vision of the discouragement--nay, paralyzing
despondency--in which many days of my writing life have been passed,
in order that you might fully understand the good I find in such
sympathy as yours--in such an assurance as you give me that my work
has been worth doing. But I will not dwell on any mental sickness of
mine. The best joy your words give me is the sense of that sweet,
generous feeling in you which dictated them, and I shall always be the
richer because you have in this way made me know you better. I must
tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman came through a letter
of yours, and charmed me very much. The letter was addressed to Mrs.
Follen; and one morning when I called on her in London (how many years
ago![7]) she was kind enough to read it to me because it contained a
little history of your life, and a sketch of your domestic
circumstances. I remember thinking that it was very kind of you to
write that long letter in reply to the inquiries of one who was
personally unknown to you; and looking back with my present experience
I think it was still kinder than it then appeared. For at that time
you must have been much oppressed with the immediate results of your
fame. I remember, too, that you wrote of your husband as one who was
richer in Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as the
ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar interest to me,
I have rarely had your image in my mind without the accompanying image
(more or less erroneous) of such a scholar by your side. I shall
welcome the fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes. In the
meantime let me assure you that whoever else gave you that description
of my husband's "History of Philosophy"--namely, "that it was to solve
and settle all things"--he himself never saw it in that light. The
work has been greatly altered, as well as enlarged, in three
successive editions; and his mind is so far from being a captive to
his own written words that he is now engaged in physiological and
psychological researches which are leading him to issues at variance
in some important respects with the views expressed in some of his
published works. He is one of the few human beings I have known who
will often, in the heat of an argument, see, and straightway confess,
that he is in the wrong, instead of trying to shift his ground or use
any other device of vanity.

I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as to the obstacles
your new book may find here from its thorough American character. Most
readers who are likely to be really influenced by writing above the
common order will find that special aspect an added reason for
interest and study, and I dare say you have long seen, as I am
beginning to see with new clearness, that if a book which has any sort
of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular, widely circulated
book, its power over the social mind for any good is, after all, due
to its reception by a few appreciative natures, and is the slow result
of radiation from that narrow circle. I mean, that you can affect a
few souls, and that each of these in turn may affect a few more, but
that no exquisite book tells properly and directly on a multitude,
however largely it may be spread by type and paper. Witness the things
the multitude will say about it, if one is so unhappy as to be obliged
to hear their sayings. I do not write this cynically, but in pure
sadness and pity. Both travelling abroad, and staying at home among
our English sights and sports, one must continually feel how slowly
the centuries work towards the moral good of men. And that thought
lies very close to what you say as to your wonder or conjecture
concerning my religious point of view. I believe that religion, too,
has to be modified--"developed," according to the dominant phrase--and
that a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must express less
care for personal consolation, and a more deeply-awing sense of
responsibility to man, springing from sympathy with that which of all
things is most certainly known to us, the difficulty of the human lot.
I do not find my temple in Pantheism, which, whatever might be its
value speculatively, could not yield a practical religion, since it is
an attempt to look at the universe from the outside of our relations
to it (that universe) as human beings. As healthy, sane human beings,
we must love and hate--love what is good for mankind, hate what is
evil for mankind. For years of my youth I dwelt in dreams of a
pantheistic sort, falsely supposing that I was enlarging my sympathy.
But I have travelled far away from that time. Letters are necessarily
narrow and fragmentary, and, when one writes on wide subjects, are
liable to create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I have
little anxiety of that kind in writing to you, dear friend and
fellow-laborer, for you have had longer experience than I as a writer,
and fuller experience as a woman, since you have borne children and
known the mother's history from the beginning. I trust your quick and
long-taught mind as an interpreter little liable to mistake me.

When you say, "We live in an orange grove and are planting many more,"
and when I think that you must have abundant family love to cheer you,
it seems to me that you must have a paradise about you. But no list of
circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless, I must believe that
the joyous, tender humor of your books clings about your more
immediate life, and makes some of that sunshine for yourself which you
have given to us.

I see the advertisement of "Old Town Folk," and shall eagerly expect
it.

That and every other new link between us will be reverentially valued.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_May 8_ (Saturday).--Poor Thornie arrived from Natal, sadly wasted by
suffering.

_May 24._--Sold "Agatha" to Fields & Osgood, for the _Atlantic
Monthly_, for £300.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 26th May, 1869.]

That "disturbance" in my favorite work, with which you and Dr.
Congreve are good enough to sympathize, is unhappily greater now than
it has been for years before. Our poor Thornie came back to us about
seventeen days ago. We can never rejoice enough that we were already
at home, seeing that we held it impossible for him to set out on his
voyage until at least six weeks later than he did. Since he arrived
our lives have been chiefly absorbed by cares for him; and though we
now have a nurse to attend on him constantly, we spend several hours
of the day by his side. There is joy in the midst of our trouble, from
the tenderness towards the sufferer being altogether unchecked by
anything unlovable in him. Thornie's disposition seems to have become
sweeter than ever with the added six years; and there is nothing that
we discern in his character or habits to cause us grief. Enough of our
troubles. I gather from your welcome letter, received this morning,
that there is a good deal of enjoyment for you in your temporary home,
in spite of bad weather and faceache, which I hope will have passed
away when you read this.

Mr. Beesley[8] wrote to me to tell me of his engagement, and on Sunday
we had the pleasure of shaking him by the hand and seeing him look
very happy. His is one of a group of prospective marriages which we
have had announced to us since we came home. Besides Mr. Harrison's,
there is Dr. Allbut's, our charming friend at Leeds. I told Mr.
Beesley that I thought myself magnanimous in really rejoicing at the
engagements of men friends, because, of course, they will be
comparatively indifferent to their old intimates.

Dear Madame Bodichon is a precious help to us. She comes twice a week
to sit with Thornie, and she is wonderfully clever in talking to young
people. One finds out those who have real practical sympathy in times
of trouble.

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 9th June, 1869.]

Your letter has fulfilled two wishes of mine. It shows me that you
keep me in your kind thoughts, and that you are very happy. I had been
told by our friends, the Nortons, of your engagement, but I knew
nothing more than that bare fact, and your letter gives me more of a
picture. A very pretty picture--for I like to think of your love
having grown imperceptibly along with sweet family affections. I do
heartily share in your happiness, for however space and time may keep
us asunder, you will never to my mind be lost in the distance, but
will hold a place of marked and valued interest quite apart from those
more public hopes about you which I shall not cease to cherish.

Both Mr. Lewes and I shall be delighted to see you any evening. I
imagine that when you are obliged to stay in town the evening will be
the easiest time for you to get out to us. Any time after eight you
will find us thoroughly glad to shake hands with you. Do come when you
can.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_July 3._--Finished my reading in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's
"L'homme qui rit;" also the Frau von Hillern's novel, "Ein Arzt der
Seele." This week G. and I have been to Sevenoaks, but were driven
home again by the cold winds and cloudy skies. "Sonnets on
Childhood"--five--finished.

_July 10._--I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, in answer to a second letter of
hers, accompanied by one from her husband.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 11th July, 1869.]

I hoped before this to have seen our friend, Mrs. Fields, on her
return from Scotland, and to have begged her to send you word of a
domestic affliction which has prevented me from writing to you since I
received your and your husband's valued letters. Immediately on our
return from Italy, Mr. Lewes's second son, a fine young man of
five-and-twenty, returned to us from Natal, wasted by suffering from
a long-standing spinal injury. This was on the 8th of May, and since
then we have both been absorbed in our duties to this poor child, and
have felt our own health and nervous energy insufficient for our
needful activity of body and mind. He is at present no better, and we
look forward to a long trial. Nothing but a trouble so great as this
would have prevented me from writing again to you, not only to thank
you and Professor Stowe for your letters, but also to tell you that I
have received and read "Old Town Folks." I think few of your many
readers can have felt more interest than I have felt in that picture
of an elder generation; for my interest in it has a double root--one,
in my own love for our old-fashioned provincial life, which had its
affinities with a contemporary life, even all across the Atlantic, and
of which I have gathered glimpses in different phases, from my father
and mother, with their relations; the other is, my experimental
acquaintance with some shades of Calvinistic orthodoxy. I think your
way of presenting the religious convictions which are not your own,
except by indirect fellowship, is a triumph of insight and true
tolerance. A thorough comprehension of the mixed moral influence shed
on society by dogmatic systems is rare even among writers, and one
misses it altogether in English drawing-room talk. I thank you
sincerely for the gift (in every sense) of this book, which, I can
see, has been a labor of love.

Both Mr. Lewes and I are deeply interested in the indications which
the Professor gives of his peculiar psychological experience, and we
should feel it a great privilege to learn much more of it from his
lips. It is a rare thing to have such an opportunity of studying
exceptional experience in the testimony of a truthful and in every
way distinguished mind. He will, I am sure, accept the brief thanks
which I can give in this letter, for all that he has generously
written to me. He says, "I have had no connection with any of the
modern movements, except as father confessor;" and I can well believe
that he must be peculiarly sensitive to the repulsive aspects which
those movements present. Your view as to the cause of that "great wave
of spiritualism" which is rushing over America--namely, that it is a
sort of Rachel-cry of bereavement towards the invisible existence of
the loved ones, is deeply affecting. But so far as "spiritualism" (by
which I mean, of course, spirit-communication, by rapping, guidance of
the pencil, etc.) has come within reach of my judgment on our side of
the water, it has appeared to me either as degrading folly, imbecile
in the estimate of evidence, or else as impudent imposture. So far as
my observation and experience have hitherto gone, it has even seemed
to me an impiety to withdraw from the more assured methods of studying
the open secret of the universe any large amount of attention to
alleged manifestations which are so defiled by low adventurers and
their palpable trickeries, so hopelessly involved in all the
doubtfulness of individual testimonies as to phenomena witnessed,
which testimonies are no more true objectively because they are honest
subjectively, than the Ptolemaic system is true because it seemed to
Tycho Brahé a better explanation of the heavenly movements than the
Copernican. This is a brief statement of my position on the subject,
which your letter shows me to have an aspect much more compulsory on
serious attention in America than I can perceive it to have in
England. I should not be as simply truthful as my deep respect for you
demands, if I did not tell you exactly what is my mental attitude in
relation to the phenomena in question. But whatever you print on the
subject and will send me I shall read with attention, and the idea you
give me of the hold which spiritualism has gained on the public mind
in the United States is already a fact of historic importance.

Forgive me, dear friend, if I write in the scantiest manner,
unworthily responding to letters which have touched me profoundly. You
have known so much of life, both in its more external trials and in
the peculiar struggles of a nature which is made twofold in its
demands by the yearnings of the author as well as of the woman, that I
can count on your indulgence and power of understanding my present
inability to correspond by letter.

May I add my kind remembrances to your daughter to the high regard
which I offer to your husband?

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_July 14._--Returned from Hatfield, after two days' stay.

_July 15._--Began Nisard's "History of French
Literature"--Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Christine de Pisan,
Philippe de Comines, Villers.

_July 16._--Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in "Ancient
Geography." Looked into Jewitt's "Universal History" again for
Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Littérature du Midi"
for Roman de la Rose; and ran through the first chapter about the
formation of the Romance languages. Read about _Thallogens_ and
_Acrogens_ in the "Vegetable World." Read Drayton's "Nymphidia"--a
charming poem--a few pages of his "Polyolbion." Re-read Grote,
v.-vii., on Sicilian affairs, down to rise of Dionysius.

_July 18._--Miss Nannie Smith came, after a long absence from England;
Professor Masson and Dr. Bastian, Madame Bodichon, and Dr. Payne. Some
conversation about Saint-Simonism, _à propos_ of the meeting on
Woman's Suffrage the day before, M. Arles Dufour being uneasy because
Mill did not in his speech recognize what women owed to
Saint-Simonism.

_July 19._--Writing an introduction to "Middlemarch." I have just
re-read the 15th Idyll of Theocritus, and have written three more
sonnets. My head uneasy. We went in the afternoon to the old
water-colors, finding that the exhibition was to close at the end of
the week. Burne-Jones's Circe and St. George affected me, by their
colors, more than any of the other pictures--they are poems. In the
evening read Nisard on Rabelais and Marot.

_July 22._--Read Reybaud's book on "Les Réformateurs Modernes." In the
afternoon Mrs. P. Taylor came and saw Thornie, who has been more
uneasy this week, and unwilling to move or come out on the lawn.

_July 23._--Read Theocritus, Id. 16. Meditated characters for
"Middlemarch." Mrs. F. Malleson came.

_July 24._--Still not quite well and clear-headed, so that little
progress is made. I read aloud Fourier and Owen, and thought of
writing something about Utopists.

_July 25._--Read Plato's "Republic" in various parts. After lunch Miss
Nannie Smith, Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Deutsch. In the evening
I read Nisard, and Littré on Comte.

_Aug. 1._--Since last Sunday I have had an uncomfortable week from
mental and bodily disturbance. I have finished eleven sonnets on
"Brother and Sister," read Littré, Nisard, part of 22d Idyll of
Theocritus, Sainte-Beuve, aloud to G. two evenings. Monday evening
looked through Dickson's "Fallacies of the Faculty." On Tuesday
afternoon we went to the British Museum to see a new bronze, and I was
enchanted with some fragments of glass in the Slade collection, with
dyes of sunset in them. Yesterday, sitting in Thornie's room, I read
through all Shakespeare's "Sonnets." Poor Thornie has had a miserably
unsatisfactory week, making no progress. After lunch came Miss N.
Smith and Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones, and Mr.
Sanderson.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 1st Aug. 1869.]

My last words to you might appear to imply something laughably opposed
to my real meaning. "Think of me only as an example" meant--an example
to be avoided. It was an allusion in my mind to the servant-girl who,
being arrested for theft, said to her fellow-servant, "Take example by
me, Sally." With the usual caprice of language, we say. "Make an
example of her," in that sense of holding up for a warning, which the
poor girl and I intended.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_Aug. 2._--Began "Middlemarch" (the Vincy and Featherstone parts).

_Aug. 5._--Thornie during the last two or three days gives much more
hopeful signs: has been much more lively, with more regular appetite
and quieter nights. This morning I finished the first chapter of
"Middlemarch." I am reading Renouard's "History of Medicine."

_Aug. 31._--We went to Weybridge, walked on St. George's Hill, and
lunched with Mrs. Cross and her family.

     This visit to Weybridge is a very memorable one to me,
     because there my own first intimacy with George Eliot began,
     and the bonds with my family were knitted very much closer.
     Mr. and Mrs. Bullock were staying with us; and my sister, who
     had some gift for music, had set one or two of the songs from
     the "Spanish Gypsy." She sang one of them--"On through the
     woods, the pillared pines"--and it affected George Eliot
     deeply. She moved quickly to the piano, and kissed Mrs.
     Bullock very warmly, in her tears. Mr. and Mrs. Lewes were in
     deep trouble owing to the illness of Thornton Lewes; we were
     also in much anxiety as to the approaching confinement of my
     sister with her first child; and I was on the eve of
     departure for America. Sympathetic feelings were strong
     enough to overleap the barrier (often hard to pass) which
     separates acquaintanceship from friendship. A day did the
     work of years. Our visitors had come to the house as
     acquaintances, they left it as lifelong friends. And the
     sequel of that day greatly intensified the intimacy. For
     within a month my sister had died in childbirth, and her
     death called forth one of the most beautiful of George
     Eliot's letters. A month later Thornton Lewes died.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_Sept. 1._--I meditated characters and conditions for "Middlemarch,"
which stands still in the beginning of chapter iii.

_Sept. 2._--We spent the morning in Hatfield Park, arriving at home
again at half-past three.

_Sept. 10._--I have achieved little during the last week, except
reading on medical subjects--Encyclopædia about the "Medical
Colleges," "Cullen's Life," Russell's "Heroes of Medicine," etc. I
have also read Aristophanes' "Ecclesiazusoe," and "Macbeth."

_Sept. 11._--I do not feel very confident that I can make anything
satisfactory of "Middlemarch." I have need to remember that other
things which have been accomplished by me were begun under the same
cloud. G. has been reading "Romola" again, and expresses profound
admiration. This is encouraging.

_Sept. 15._--George and I went to Sevenoaks for a couple of nights,
and had some delicious walks.

_Sept. 21._--Finished studying again Bekker's "Charikles." I am
reading Mandeville's Travels. As to my work, _im Stiche gerathen_.
Mrs. Congreve and Miss Bury came; and I asked Mrs. Congreve to get me
some information about provincial hospitals, which is necessary to my
imagining the conditions of my hero.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Sept. 1869.]

As to the Byron subject, nothing can outweigh to my mind the heavy
social injury of familiarizing young minds with the desecration of
family ties. The discussion of the subject in newspapers, periodicals,
and pamphlets is simply odious to me, and I think it a pestilence
likely to leave very ugly marks. One trembles to think how easily that
moral wealth may be lost which it has been the work of ages to produce
in the refinement and differencing of the affectionate relations. As
to the high-flown stuff which is being reproduced about Byron and his
poetry, I am utterly out of sympathy with it. He seems to me the most
_vulgar-minded_ genius that ever produced a great effect in
literature.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1869.]

_Sept. 22._--We went down to Watford for a change.

_Sept. 24._--Returned home this morning because of the unpromising
weather. It is worth while to record my great depression of spirits,
that I may remember one more resurrection from the pit of melancholy.
And yet what love is given to me! What abundance of good I possess!
All my circumstances are blessed; and the defect is only in my own
organism. Courage and effort!

_Oct. 5._--Ever since the 28th I have been good for little, ailing in
body and disabled in mind. On Sunday an interesting Russian pair came
to see us--M. and Mme. Kovilevsky: she, a pretty creature, with
charming modest voice and speech, who is studying mathematics (by
allowance, through the aid of Kirchhoff) at Heidelberg; he, amiable
and intelligent, studying the concrete sciences apparently--especially
geology; and about to go to Vienna for six months for this purpose,
leaving his wife at Heidelberg!

I have begun a long-meditated poem, "The Legend of Jubal," but have
not written more than twenty or thirty verses.

_Oct. 13._--Yesterday Mr. W. G. Clark of Cambridge came to see us, and
told of his intention to give up his oratorship and renounce his
connection with the Church.

I have read rapidly through Max Müller's "History of Sanskrit
Literature," and am now reading Lecky's "History of Morals." I have
also finished Herbert Spencer's last number of his "Psychology." My
head has been sadly feeble, and my whole body ailing of late. I have
written about one hundred verses of my poem. Poor Thornie seems to us
in a state of growing weakness.

_Oct. 19._--This evening at half-past six our dear Thornie died. He
went quite peacefully. For three days he was not more than fitfully
and imperfectly conscious of the things around him. He went to Natal
on the 17th October, 1863, and came back to us ill on the 8th May,
1869. Through the six months of his illness his frank, impulsive mind
disclosed no trace of evil feeling. He was a sweet-natured boy--still
a boy, though he had lived for twenty-five years and a half. On the
9th of August he had an attack of paraplegia, and although he
partially recovered from it, it made a marked change in him. After
that he lost a great deal of his vivacity, but he suffered less pain.
This death seems to me the beginning of our own.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Dec. 1869.]

The day after our dear boy's funeral we went into the quietest and
most beautiful part of Surrey, four miles and a half from any railway
station. I was very much shaken in mind and body, and nothing but the
deep calm of fields and woods would have had a beneficent effect on
me. We both of us felt, more than ever before, the blessedness of
being in the country, and we are come back much restored. It will
interest you, I think, to know that a friend of ours, Mr. W. G. Clark,
the public orator at Cambridge, laid down his oratorship as a
preparatory step to writing a letter to his bishop renouncing, or,
rather, claiming to be free from, his clerical status, because he no
longer believes what it presupposes him to believe. Two other men whom
we know are about to renounce Cambridge fellowships on the same
ground.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 31st Dec. 1869.]

We shall be delighted to have you on Monday. I hope you will get your
business done early enough to be by a good fire in our drawing-room
before lunch. Mr. Doyle is coming to dine with us, but you will not
mind that. He is a dear man, a good Catholic, full of varied
sympathies and picturesque knowledge.

[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 15th Jan. 1870.]

I am moved to write to you rather by the inclination to remind you of
me than by the sense of having anything to say. On reading "The
Positivist Problem"[9] a second time, I gained a stronger impression
of its general value, and I also felt less jarred by the more personal
part at the close. Mr. Lewes would tell you that I have an
unreasonable aversion to personal statements, and when I come to like
them it is usually by a hard process of _con_-version. But my second
reading gave me a new and very strong sense that the last two or three
pages have the air of an appendix, added at some distance of time from
the original writing of the article. Some more thoroughly explanatory
account of your non-adhesion seems requisite as a nexus--since the
statement of your non-adhesion had to be mentioned after an argument
for the system against the outer Gentile world. However, it is more
important for me to say that I felt the thorough justice of your
words, when, in conversation with me, you said, "I don't see why there
should be any mystification; having come to a resolution after much
inward debate, it is better to state the resolution." Something like
that you said, and I give a hearty "Amen," praying that I may not be
too apt myself to prefer the haze to the clearness. But the fact is, I
shrink from decided "deliverances" on momentous subjects from the
dread of coming to swear by my own "deliverances," and sinking into an
insistent echo of myself. That is a horrible destiny--and one cannot
help seeing that many of the most powerful men fall into it.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Mch. 1870.]

Cara has told me about your republication of the "Inquiry," and I have
a longing to write--not intrusively, I hope--just to say "thank you"
for the good it does me to know of your being engaged in that act of
piety to your brother's memory. I delight in the act itself, and in
the satisfaction which I know you have in performing it. When I
remember my own obligation to the book, I must believe that among the
many new readers a cheap edition will reach there must be minds to
whom it will bring welcome light in studying the New Testament--sober,
serious help towards a conception of the past, instead of stage-lights
and make-ups. And this value is, I think, independent of the opinions
that might be held as to the different degrees of success in the
construction of probabilities or in particular interpretations.
Throughout there is the presence of grave sincerity. I would gladly
have a word or two directly from yourself when you can scribble a note
without feeling me a bore for wanting it. People who write many
letters without being forced to do so are fathomless wonders to me,
but you have a special faculty for writing such letters as one cares
to read, so it is a pity that the accomplishment should lie quite
unused. I wonder if you have read Emerson's new essays. I like them
very much.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d April, 1870.]

We shall leave Berlin on Tuesday, so that I must ask you to send me
the much-desired news of you to Vienna, addressed to the Hon. Robert
Lytton, British Embassy. We do not yet know the name of the hotel
where rooms have been taken for us. Our journey has not been
unfortunate hitherto. The weather has been cold and cheerless, but we
expected this, and on the 1st of April the sun began to shine. As for
my _Wenigkeit_, it has never known a day of real bodily comfort since
we got to Berlin: headache, sore throat, and _Schnupfen_ have been
alternately my companions, and have made my enjoyment very languid.
But think of this as all past when you get my letter; for this
morning I have a clearer head, the sun is shining, and the better time
seems to be come for me. Mr. Lewes has had a good deal of satisfaction
in his visits to laboratories and to the _Charité_, where he is just
now gone for the third time to see more varieties of mad people, and
hear more about Psychiatrie from Dr. Westphal, a quiet, unpretending
little man, who seems to have been delighted with George's sympathetic
interest in this (to me) hideous branch of practice. I speak with all
reverence: the world can't do without hideous studies.

People have been very kind to us, and have overwhelmed us with
attentions, but we have felt a little weary in the midst of our
gratitude, and since my cold has become worse we have been obliged to
cut off further invitations.

We have seen many and various men and women, but except Mommsen,
Bunsen, and Du Bois Reymond, hardly any whose names would be known to
you. If I had been in good health I should probably have continued to
be more amused than tired of sitting on a sofa and having one person
after another brought up to bow to me, and pay me the same compliment.
Even as it was, I felt my heart go out to some good women who seemed
really to have an affectionate feeling towards me for the sake of my
books. But the sick animal longs for quiet and darkness.

The other night, at Dr. Westphal's, I saw a young English lady
marvellously like Emily in face, figure, and voice. I made advances to
her on the strength of that external resemblance, and found it carried
out in the quickness of her remarks. But new gentlemen to be introduced
soon divided us. Another elegant, pretty woman there was old Boeckh's
daughter. One enters on all subjects by turns in these evening
parties, which are something like reading the Conversations-Lexicon in
a nightmare. Among lighter entertainments we have been four times to
the opera, being tempted at the very beginning of our stay by Gluck,
Mozart, and an opportunity of hearing Tannhäuser for the second time.
Also we have enjoyed some fine orchestral concerts, which are to be had
for sixpence! Berlin has been growing very fast since our former stay
here, and luxury in all forms has increased so much that one only here
and there gets a glimpse of the old-fashioned German housekeeping. But
though later hours are becoming fashionable, the members of the
Reichstag who have other business than politics complain of having to
begin their sitting at eleven, ending, instead of beginning, at four,
when the solid day is almost gone. We went to the Reichstag one
morning, and were so fortunate as to hear Bismarck speak. But the
question was one of currency, and his speech was merely a brief
winding-up.

Now I shall think that I have earned a letter telling me all about
you. May there be nothing but good to tell of! Pray give my best love
to Emily, and my earnest wishes to Dr. Congreve, that he may have
satisfaction in new work.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th May, 1870.]

I gladly and gratefully keep the portrait.[10] For my own part, I
should have said, without hesitation, "Prefix it to the 'Inquiry.'"
One must not be unreasonable about portraits. How can a thing which is
always the same be an adequate representation of a living being who is
always varying--especially of a living being who is sensitive, bright,
many-sided, as your brother was? But I think the impression which this
portrait gives excites interest. I am often sorry for people who lose
half their possible good in the world by being more alive to
deficiencies than to positive merits.

I like to know that you have felt in common with me while you read
"Jubal." Curiously enough, Mr. Lewes, when I first read it to him,
made just the remark you make about the scene of Jubal coming with the
lyre. We laughed at Mr. Bray's sharp criticism. Tell him it is not the
fashion for authors ever to be in the wrong. They have always
justifying reasons. But also it is the fashion for critics to know
everything, so that the authors don't think it needful to tell their
reasons.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1870.]

_May 20._--I am fond of my little old book in which I have recorded so
many changes, and shall take to writing in it again. It will perhaps
last me all through the life that is left to me. Since I wrote in it
last, the day after Thornie's death, the chief epochs have been our
stay at Limpsfield, in Surrey, till near the beginning of December; my
writing of "Jubal," which I finished on the 13th of January; the
publication of the poem in the May number of _Macmillan's Magazine_;
and our journey to Berlin and Vienna, from which we returned on the
6th of this month, after an absence of eight weeks. This is a
fortnight ago, and little has been done by me in the interim. My
health is in an uncomfortable state, and I seem to be all the weaker
for the continual depression produced by cold and sore throat, which
stretched itself all through our long journey. These small bodily
grievances make life less desirable to me, though every one of my best
blessings--my one perfect love, and the sympathy shown towards me for
the sake of my works, and the personal regard of a few friends--have
become much intensified in these latter days. I am not hopeful about
future work. I am languid, and my novel languishes too. But to-morrow
may be better than to-day.

_May 25._--We started for Oxford, where we were to stay with the
Rector of Lincoln and his wife. After luncheon G. and I walked alone
through the town, which, on this first view, was rather disappointing
to me. Presently we turned through Christ Church into the meadows, and
walked along by the river. This was beautiful to my heart's content.
The buttercups and hawthorns were in their glory, the chestnuts still
in sufficiently untarnished bloom, and the grand elms made a border
towards the town. After tea we went with Mrs. Pattison and the rector
to the croquet-ground near the Museum. On our way we saw Sir Benjamin
Brodie, and on the ground Professor Rawlinson, the "narrow-headed
man;" Mrs. Thursfield and her son, who is a Fellow (I think, of
Corpus); Miss Arnold, daughter of Mr. Thomas Arnold, and Professor
Phillips, the geologist. At supper we had Mr. Bywater and Miss Arnold,
and in chat with them the evening was passed.

_May 26._--G. and I went to the Museum, and had an interesting morning
with Dr. Rolleston, who dissected a brain for me. After lunch we went
again to the Museum, and spent the afternoon with Sir Benjamin Brodie,
seeing various objects in his laboratories; among others, the method
by which weighing has been superseded in delicate matters by
_measuring_ in a graduated glass tube. Afterwards Mrs. Pattison took
me a drive in her little pony carriage round by their country refuge,
the Firs, Haddington, and by Littlemore, where I saw J. H. Newman's
little conventual dwelling. Returning, we had a fine view of the
Oxford towers. To supper came Sir Benjamin and Lady Brodie.

_May 27._--In the morning we walked to see the two Martyrs' Memorial,
and then to Sir Benjamin Brodie's pretty place near the river and
bridge. Close by their grounds is the original ford whence the place
took its name. The Miss Gaskells were staying with them, and, after
chatting some time, we two walked with Sir Benjamin to New College,
where we saw the gardens surrounded by the old city wall; the chapel
where William of Wykeham's crosier is kept; and the cloisters, which
are fine, but gloomy, and less beautiful than those of Magdalen, which
we saw in our walk on Thursday before going to the Museum. After lunch
we went to the Bodleian, and then to the Sheldonian Theatre, where
there was a meeting _à propos_ of Palestine Exploration. Captain
Warren, conductor of the Exploration at Jerusalem, read a paper, and
then Mr. Deutsch gave an account of the interpretation, as hitherto
arrived at, of the Moabite Stone. I saw squeezes of this stone for the
first time, with photographs taken from the squeezes. After tea Mrs.
Thursfield kindly took us to see a boat-race. We saw it from the Oriel
barge, under the escort of Mr. Crichton, Fellow of Merton, who, on our
return, took us through the lovely gardens of his college. At supper
were Mr. Jowett, Professor Henry Smith, and Miss Smith, his sister,
Mr. Fowler, author of "Deductive Logic," etc.

_May 28._--After a walk to St. John's College we started by the train
for London, and arrived at home about two o'clock.

_May 29._--Mr. Spencer, Mrs. Burne-Jones, and Mr. Crompton came. I
read aloud No. 3 of "Edwin Drood."

_May 30._--We went to see the autotypes of Michael Angelo's frescoes,
at 36 Rathbone Place. I began Grove on the "Correlation of the
Physical Forces"--needing to read it again--with new interest, after
the lapse of years.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th June, 1870.]

Dr. Reynolds advises Mr. Lewes to leave London again, and go to the
bracing air of the Yorkshire coast. I said that we should be here till
the beginning of August, but the internal order proposes and the
external order disposes--if we are to be so priggish as to alter all
our old proverbs into agreement with new formulas! Dickens's death
came as a great shock to us. He lunched with us just before we went
abroad, and was telling us a story of President Lincoln having told
the Council, on the day he was shot, that something remarkable would
happen, because he had just dreamt, for the third time, a dream which
twice before had preceded events momentous to the nation. The dream
was, that he was in a boat on a great river, all alone, and he ended
with the words, "I drift--I drift--I drift." Dickens told this very
finely. I thought him looking dreadfully shattered then. It is
probable that he never recovered from the effect of the terrible
railway accident.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 23d June, 1870, from Cromer.]

We have been driven away from home again by the state of Mr. Lewes's
health. Dr. Reynolds recommended the Yorkshire coast; but we wanted to
know Cromer, and so we came here first, for the sake of variety. To me
the most desirable thing just now seems to be to have one home, and
stay there till death comes to take me away. I get more and more
disinclined to the perpetual makeshifts of a migratory life, and care
more and more for the order and habitual objects of home. However,
there are many in the world whose whole existence is a makeshift, and
perhaps the formula which would fit the largest number of lives is "a
doing without, more or less patiently." The air just now is not very
invigorating anywhere, I imagine, and one begins to be very anxious
about the nation generally, on account of the threatening drought.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Robert Lytton (now Lady Lytton),
8th July, 1870, from Harrogate.]

I did not like to write to you[11] until Mr. Lytton sent word that I
might do so, because I had not the intimate knowledge that would have
enabled me to measure your trouble; and one dreads, of all things, to
speak or write a wrong or unseasonable word when words are the only
signs of interest and sympathy that one has to give. I know now, from
what your dear husband has told us, that your loss is very keenly felt
by you, that it has first made you acquainted with acute grief, and
this makes me think of you very much. For learning to love any one is
like an increase of property--it increases care, and brings many new
fears lest precious things should come to harm. I find myself often
thinking of you with that sort of proprietor's anxiety, wanting you to
have gentle weather all through your life, so that your face may never
look worn and storm-beaten, and wanting your husband to be and do the
very best, lest anything short of that should be disappointment to
you. At present the thought of you is all the more with me because
your trouble has been brought by death; and for nearly a year death
seems to me my most intimate daily companion. I mingle the thought of
it with every other, not sadly, but as one mingles the thought of some
one who is nearest in love and duty with all one's motives. I try to
delight in the sunshine that will be when I shall never see it any
more. And I think it is possible for this sort of impersonal life to
attain great intensity--possible for us to gain much more independence
than is usually believed of the small bundle of facts that make our
own personality. I don't know why I should say this to you, except
that my pen is chatting as my tongue would if you were here. We women
are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections, and
though our affections are, perhaps, the best gifts we have, we ought
also to have our share of the more independent life--some joy in
things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of
some sweet women when their affections are disappointed; because all
their teaching has been that they can only delight in study of any
kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an
independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess
without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this sort of defence
against passionate affliction even more than men. Just under the
pressure of grief, I do not believe there is any consolation. The word
seems to me to be drapery for falsities. Sorrow must be sorrow, ill
must be ill, till duty and love towards all who remain recover their
rightful predominance. Your life is so full of those claims that you
will not have time for brooding over the unchangeable. Do not spend
any of your valuable time now in writing to me, but be satisfied with
sending me news of you through Mr. Lytton when he has occasion to
write to Mr. Lewes.

I have lately finished reading aloud Mendelssohn's "Letters," which we
had often resolved and failed to read before. They have been quite
cheering to us from the sense they give of communion with an eminently
pure, refined nature, with the most rigorous conscience in art. In
the evening we have always a concert to listen to--a concert of modest
pretensions, but well conducted enough to be agreeable.

I hope this letter of chit-chat will not reach you at a wrong moment.
In any case, forgive all mistakes on the part of one who is always
yours sincerely and affectionately.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1870.]

_Aug. 4._--Two months have been spent since the last record! Their
result is not rich, for we have been sent wandering again by G.'s want
of health. On the 15th June we went to Cromer, on the 30th to
Harrogate, and on the 18th July to Whitby, where Mrs. Burne-Jones also
arrived on the same day. On Monday, August 1, we came home again for a
week only, having arranged to go to Limpsfield next Monday. To-day,
under much depression, I begin a little dramatic poem,[12] the subject
of which engaged my interest at Harrogate.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Aug. 1870.]

We, too, you see, have come back to a well-tried refuge--the same
place that soothed us in our troubles last October--and we especially
delight in this deep country after the fuss which belongs even to
quiet watering-places, such as Cromer, Harrogate, and Whitby, which
are, after all, "alleys where the gentle folks live." We are excited,
even among the still woods and fields, by the vicissitudes of the war,
and chiefly concerned because we cannot succeed in getting the day's
_Times_. We have entered into the period which will be marked in
future historical charts as "The period of German ascendency." But how
saddening to think of the iniquities that the great harvest-moon is
looking down on! I am less grieved for the bloodshed than for the
hateful trust in lies which is continually disclosed. Meanwhile
Jowett's "Translation of Plato" is being prepared for publication, and
he has kindly sent us the sheets of one volume. So I pass from
discussions of French lying and the Nemesis that awaits it to
discussions about rhetorical lying at Athens in the fourth century
before Christ. The translations and introductions to the "Dialogues"
seem to be charmingly done.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 25th Aug. 1870.]

We shall return to town on Monday, various small reasons concurring to
make us resolve on quitting this earthly paradise. I am very sorry for
the sufferings of the French nation; but I think these sufferings are
better for the moral welfare of the people than victory would have
been. The war has been drawn down on them by an iniquitous government;
but in a great proportion of the French people there has been
nourished a wicked glorification of selfish pride, which, like all
other conceit, is a sort of stupidity, excluding any true conception
of what lies outside their own vain wishes. The Germans, it seems,
were expected to stand like toy-soldiers for the French to knock them
down. It is quite true that the war is in some respects the conflict
of two differing forms of civilization. But whatever charm we may see
in the southern Latin races, this ought not to blind us to the great
contributions which the German energies have made in all sorts of ways
to the common treasure of mankind. And who that has any spirit of
justice can help sympathizing with them in their grand repulse of the
French project to invade and divide them? If I were a Frenchwoman,
much as I might wail over French sufferings, I cannot help believing
that I should detest the French talk about the "Prussians." They
wanted to throttle the electric eel for their own purposes.

But I imagine that you and the doctor would not find us in much
disagreement with you in these matters. One thing that is pleasant to
think of is the effort made everywhere to help the wounded.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1870.]

_Oct. 27._--On Monday the 8th August we went to our favorite Surrey
retreat--Limpsfield--and enjoyed three weeks there reading and walking
together. The weather was perfect, and the place seemed more lovely to
us than before. Aloud I read the concluding part of Walter Scott's
Life, which we had begun at Harrogate; two volumes of Froude's
"History of England," and Comte's "Correspondence with Valat." We
returned on Monday the 29th.

During our stay at Limpsfield I wrote the greater part of "Armgart,"
and finished it at intervals during September. Since then I have been
continually suffering from headache and depression, with almost total
despair of future work. I look into this little book now to assure
myself that this is not unprecedented.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Nov. 1870.]

Yesterday, for the first time, we went to hear A. (a popular
preacher). I remembered what you had said about his vulgar, false
emphasis; but there remained the fact of his celebrity. I was glad of
the opportunity. But my impressions fell below the lowest judgment I
ever heard passed upon him. He has the gift of a fine voice, very
flexible and various; he is admirably fluent and clear in his
language, and every now and then his enunciation is effective. But I
never heard any pulpit reading and speaking which in its level tone
was more utterly common and empty of guiding intelligence or emotion;
it was as if the words had been learned by heart and uttered without
comprehension by a man who had no instinct of rhythm or music in his
soul. And the doctrine! It was a libel on Calvinism that it should be
presented in such a form. I never heard any attempt to exhibit the
soul's experience that was more destitute of insight. The sermon was
against fear, in the elect Christian, as being a distrust of God; but
never once did he touch the true ground of fear--the doubt whether the
signs of God's choice are present in the soul. We had plenty of
anecdotes, but they were all poor and pointless--Tract Society
anecdotes of the feeblest kind. It was the most superficial
grocer's-back-parlor view of Calvinistic Christianity; and I was
shocked to find how low the mental pitch of our society must be,
judged by the standard of this man's celebrity.

Mr. Lewes was struck with some of his tones as good actor's tones, and
was not so wroth as I was. But just now, with all Europe stirred by
events that make every conscience tremble after some great principle
as a consolation and guide, it was too exasperating to sit and listen
to doctrine that seemed to look no further than the retail Christian's
tea and muffins. He said "Let us approach the throne of God" very much
as he might have invited you to take a chair; and then followed this
fine touch--"We feel no love to God because he hears the prayers of
others; it is because he hears my prayer that I love him."

You see I am relieving myself by pouring out my disgust to you. Oh,
how short life--how near death--seems to me! But this is not an
uncheerful thought. The only great dread is the protraction of life
into imbecility or the visitation of lingering pain. That seems to me
the insurmountable calamity, though there is an ignorant affectation
in many people of underrating what they call bodily suffering. I
systematically abstain from correspondence, yet the number of
acquaintances and consequent little appeals so constantly increases
that I often find myself inwardly rebelling against the amount of
note-writing that I cannot avoid. Have the great events of these
months interfered with your freedom of spirit in writing? One has to
dwell continually on the permanent, growing influence of ideas in
spite of temporary reactions, however violent, in order to get courage
and perseverance for any work which lies aloof from the immediate
wants of society. You remember Goethe's contempt for the Revolution of
'30 compared with the researches on the Vertebrate Structure of the
Skull? "My good friend, I was not thinking of those people." But the
changes we are seeing cannot be doffed aside in that way.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Nov. 1870.]

Lying awake early in the morning, according to a bad practice of mine,
I was visited with much compunction and self-disgust that I had ever
said a word to you about the faults of a friend whose good qualities
are made the more sacred by the endurance his lot has in many ways
demanded. I think you may fairly set down a full half of any alleged
grievances to my own susceptibility, and other faults of mine which
necessarily call forth less agreeable manifestations from others than
as many virtues would do, if I had them. I trust to your good sense to
have judged well in spite of my errors in the presentation of any
matter. But I wish to protest against myself, that I may, as much as
possible, cut off the temptation to what I should like utterly to
purify myself from for the few remaining years of my life--the
disposition to dwell for a moment on the faults of a friend.

Tell the flower and fern giver, whoever it may be, that some strength
comes to me this morning from the pretty proof of sympathy.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 2d Dec. 1870.]

I have it on my conscience that I may not have given you a clear
impression of my wishes about the poor pensioner who was in question
between us to-day, so I write at once to secure us both against a
possible misunderstanding. I would rather not apply any more money in
that direction, because I know of other channels[13]--especially a
plan which is being energetically carried out for helping a
considerable group of people without almsgiving, and solely by
inducing them to work--into which I shall be glad to pour a little
more aid. The repugnance to have relief from the parish was a feeling
which it was good to encourage in the old days of contra-encouragement
to sturdy pauperism; but I question whether one ought now to indulge
it, and not rather point out the reasons why, in a case of real
helplessness, there is no indignity in receiving from a public fund.

After you had left me, it rang in my ears that I had spoken of my
greater cheerfulness as due to a reduced anxiety about myself and my
doings, and had not seemed to recognize that the deficit or evil in
other lives could be a cause of depression. I was not really so
ludicrously selfish while dressing myself up in the costume of
unselfishness. But my strong egoism has caused me so much melancholy,
which is traceable simply to a fastidious yet hungry ambition, that I
am relieved by the comparative quietude of personal craving which age
is bringing. That is the utmost I have to boast of, and, really, to be
cheerful in these times could only be a virtue in the sense in which
it was felt to be so by the old Romans when they thanked their general
for not despairing of the republic.

I have been reading aloud to Mr. Lewes this evening Mr. Harrison's
article on "Bismarckism," which made me cry--it is in some passages
movingly eloquent.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1870.]

_Dec. 2._--I am experimenting in a story ("Miss Brooke") which I began
without any very serious intention of carrying it out lengthily. It is
a subject which has been recorded among my possible themes ever since
I began to write fiction, but will probably take new shapes in the
development. I am to-day at p. 44. I am reading Wolf's "Prolegomena to
Homer." In the evening, aloud, "Wilhelm Meister" again!

_Dec. 12._--George's mother died this morning quite peacefully as she
sat in her chair.

_Dec. 17._--Reading "Quintus Fixlein" aloud to G. in the evening.
Grote on Sicilian history.

_Dec. 31._--On Wednesday the 21st we went to Ryde to see Madame
Bodichon at Swanmore Parsonage, a house which she had taken for two
months. We had a pleasant and healthy visit, walking much in the
frosty air. On Christmas Day I went with her to the Ritualist Church
which is attached to the parsonage, and heard some excellent intoning
by the delicate-faced, tenor-voiced clergyman. On Wednesday last, the
28th, Barbara came up to town with us. We found the cold here more
severe than at Ryde; and the papers tell us of still harder weather
about Paris, where our fellow-men are suffering and inflicting
horrors.

Here is the last day of 1870. I have written only one hundred
pages--good printed pages--of a story which I began about the opening
of November, and at present mean to call "Miss Brooke." Poetry halts
just now.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Jan. 1871.]

We spent our Christmas in the Isle of Wight, and on Christmas Day I
went to a Ritualist church and heard some fine intoning of the service
by a clear, strong, tenor voice, sweet singing from boys' throats,
and all sorts of Catholic ceremonial in a miniature way.

It is good to see what our neighbors are doing. To live in seclusion
with one's own thoughts is apt to give one very false notions as to
the possibilities of the present time in the matter of conversion
either to superstition or anti-superstition.

In this cruel time, I no sooner hear of an affliction than I see it
multiplied in some one of the endless forms of suffering created by
this hellish war. In the beginning I could feel entirely with the
Germans, and could say of that calamity called "victory," I am glad.
But now I can be glad of nothing. No people can carry on a long,
fierce war without being brutalized by it, more or less, and it pains
me that the educated voices have not a higher moral tone about
national and international duties and prospects. But, like every one
else, I feel that the war is too much with me, and am rather anxious
to avoid unwise speech about it than to utter what may seem to me to
be wisdom. The pain is that one can _do_ so little.

I have not read "Sir Harry Hotspur," but as to your general question,
I reply that there certainly are some women who love in that way, but
"their sex as well as I may chide them for it." Men are very fond of
glorifying that sort of dog-like attachment. It is one thing to love
because you falsely imagine goodness--that belongs to the finest
natures--and another to go on loving when you have found out your
mistake. But married constancy is a different affair. I have seen a
grandly heroic woman who, out of her view as to the responsibilities
of the married relation, condoned everything, took her drunken husband
to her home again, and at last nursed and watched him into penitence
and decency. But there may be two opinions even about this sort of
endurance--_i.e._, about its ultimate tendency, not about the beauty
of nature which prompts it. This is quite distinct from mere animal
constancy. It is duty and human pity.

[Sidenote: Letter to Colonel Hamley (now General Sir Edward Hamley),
24th Jan. 1871.]

I write to say God bless you for your letter to the _Times_, of this
morning. It contains the best expression of right principle--I was
almost ready to say, the only good, sensible words--that I have yet
seen on the actual state of things between the Germans and the French.

You will not pause, I trust, but go on doing what can be done only by
one who is at once a soldier, a writer, and a clear-headed man of
principle.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1871.]

_March 19_ (Sunday).--It is grievous to me how little, from one cause
or other, chiefly languor and occasionally positive ailments, I manage
to get done. I have written about two hundred and thirty-six pages
(print) of my novel, which I want to get off my hands by next
November. My present fear is that I have too much matter--too many
_momenti_.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 3d April, 1871.]

I happened to-day to be talking to a very sweet-faced woman (the
sister of Dr. Bridges, whom I think you know something of), and she
mentioned, _à propos_ of educating children in the love of animals,
that she had felt the want of some good little book as a help in this
matter. I told her of yours, and when I said that it was written by
Mrs. Bray, the author of "Physiology for Schools," she said, "Oh, I
know that book well." I have made her a present of my copy of "Duty to
Animals," feeling that this was a good quarter in which to plant that
offset. For she had been telling me of her practical interest in the
infant and other schools in Suffolk, where she lives. We have had a
great pleasure to-day in learning that our friend Miss Bury is engaged
to be married to Mr. Geddes, a Scotch gentleman. There is a streak of
sadness for her family in the fact that she is to go to India with
her husband next November, but all else is bright in her prospect. It
is very sweet to see, and think of, the happiness of the young. I am
scribbling with an infirm head, at the end of the day, just for the
sake of letting you know one proof, in addition doubtless to many
others which you have already had, that your pretty little book is
likely to supply a want.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Gilchrist, 19th April, 1871.]

We are very much obliged to you for your kind, methodical
thoughtfulness as to all which is necessary for our accommodation at
Brookbank, and also for your hints about the points of beauty to be
sought for in our walks. That "sense of standing on a round world,"
which you speak of, is precisely what I most care for among
out-of-door delights. The last time I had it fully was at St. Märgen,
near Freiburg, on green hilltops, whence we could see the Rhine and
poor France.

The garden has been, and is being, attended to, and I trust we shall
not find the commissariat unendurable.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 6th June, 1871.]

It seems like a resurrection of a buried-alive friendship once more to
have a letter from you. Welcome back from your absorption in the
Franchise! Somebody else ought to have your share of work now, and you
ought to rest.

Ever since the 1st of May we have been living in this queer cottage,
which belongs to Mrs. Gilchrist, wife of the Gilchrist who wrote the
life of William Blake the artist. We have a ravishing country round
us, and pure air and water; in short, all the conditions of health, if
the east wind were away. We have old prints for our dumb
companions--charming children of Sir Joshua's, and large-hatted ladies
of his and Romney's. I read aloud--almost all the evening--books of
German science, and other gravities. So, you see, we are like two
secluded owls, wise with unfashionable wisdom, and knowing nothing of
pictures and French plays. I confess that I should have gone often to
see Got act if I had been in town, he is so really great as an actor.
And yet one is ashamed of seeking amusement in connection with
anything that belongs to poor, unhappy France. I am saved from the
shame by being safely shut out from the amusement.

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th June, 1871.]

How about Madame Mohl and her husband? I have been wondering through
all the horrors whether M. Mohl had returned to Paris, and whether
their house, containing, too probably, the results of much studious
work, lies buried among ruins. But I will not further recall the
sorrows in that direction.

I am glad to see the words "very satisfactory" in connection with the
visit to Hitchin and Cambridge. Ely Cathedral I saw last year, but too
cursorily. It has more of the massive grandeur that one adores in Le
Mans and Chartres than most of our English cathedrals, though I am
ready to recall the comparison as preposterous.

I don't know how long we shall stay here; perhaps, more or less, till
the end of August, for I have given up the idea of going to the Scott
Festival at Edinburgh, to which I had accepted an invitation. The
fatigue of the long journey, with the crowd at the end, would be too
much for me.

Let us know beforehand when you are about coming.

George is gloriously well, and studying, writing, walking, eating, and
sleeping with equal vigor. He is enjoying the life here immensely. Our
country could hardly be surpassed in its particular kind of
beauty--perpetual undulation of heath and copse, and clear views of
hurrying water, with here and there a grand pine wood, steep,
wood-clothed promontories, and gleaming pools.

If you want delightful reading get Lowell's "My Study Windows," and
read the essays called "My Garden Acquaintances" and "Winter."

Get the volumes of a very cheap publication--the "Deutscher
Novellenschatz." Some of the tales are remarkably fine. I am reading
aloud the last three volumes, which are even better than the others. I
have just been so deeply interested in one of the stories--"Diethelm
von Buchenberg"--that I want everybody to have the same pleasure who
can read German.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Gilchrist, 3d July, 1871.]

We are greatly obliged to you for the trouble you have so
sympathetically taken on our behalf, and we shall prepare to quit our
quiet shelter on Wednesday, the 2d of August. During the first weeks
of our stay I did not imagine that I should ever be so fond of the
place as I am now. The departure of the bitter winds, some improvement
in my health, and the gradual revelation of fresh and fresh beauties
in the scenery, especially under a hopeful sky such as we have
sometimes had--all these conditions have made me love our little world
here and wish not to quit it until we can settle in our London home. I
have the regret of thinking that it was my original indifference about
it (I hardly ever like things until they are familiar) that hindered
us from securing the cottage until the end of September, for the
chance of coming to it again after a temporary absence. But all
regrets ought to be merged in thankfulness for the agreeable weeks we
have had, and probably shall have till the end of July. And among the
virtues of Brookbank we shall always reckon this, that our
correspondence about it has been with you rather than with any one
else, so that, along with the country, we have had a glimpse of your
ready, quick-thoughted kindness.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 13th July, 1871.]

One word to you in response to Emily's note, which comes to me this
morning, and lets me know that by this time she is probably in the
last hour of her unmarried life. My thoughts and love and tender
anxiety are with her and with all of you. When you receive this she
will, I suppose, be far away, and it is of little consequence that I
can make no new sign to her of my joy in her joy.

For the next few weeks my anxiety will be concentrated on you and
yours at Yarmouth. Pray, when your mind and body are sufficiently free
from absorbing occupation, remember my need of news about you, and
write to me. The other day I seemed to get a glimpse of you through
Mrs. Call, who told me that you looked like a new creature--so much
stronger than you were wont; and she told me of Dr. Congreve's address
at the school, which raised my keenest sympathy, and made me feel
myself a very helpless friend.

Please give my love to the children, and tell Sophy especially that I
think her happy in this--that there is a place made for all the effort
of her young life to fill it with something like the goodness and
brightness which she has known and has just now to part with. I expect
her to be your guardian angel, perhaps in a new way--namely, in saving
you from some fatigue about details.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th July, 1871.]

I still feel that I owe you my thanks for your kind letter, although
Mr. Lewes undertook to deliver them in the first instance. You
certainly made a seat at the Commemoration Table[14] look more
tempting to me than it had done before; but I think that prudence
advises me to abstain from the fatigue and excitement of a long
railway journey, with a great gathering at the end of it. If there is
a chance that "Middlemarch" will be good for anything, I don't want to
break down and die without finishing it. And whatever "the tow on my
distaff" may be, my strength to unwind it has not been abundant
lately.

_À propos_ of bodily prosperity, I am sincerely rejoiced to know, by
your postscript this morning, that Mr. Simpson is recovered. I hope he
will not object to my considering him a good friend of mine, though it
is so long since I saw him. The blank that is left when thorough
workers like him are disabled is felt not only near at hand, but a
great way off. I often say--after the fashion of people who are
getting older--that the capacity for good work, of the kind that goes
on without trumpets, is diminishing in the world.

The continuous absence of sunshine is depressing in every way, and
makes one fear for the harvest, and so grave a fear that one is
ashamed of mentioning one's private dreariness. You cannot play golf
in the rain, and I cannot feel hopeful without the sunlight; but I
dare say you work all the more, whereas when my spirits flag my work
flags too.

I should have liked to see Principal Tulloch again, and to have made
the acquaintance of Captain Lockhart, whose writing is so jaunty and
cheery, yet so thoroughly refined in feeling. Perhaps I may still have
this pleasure in town, when he comes up at the same time with you.
Please give my kind regards to Mr. William Blackwood.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th July, 1871.]

Thanks for the prompt return of the MS., which arrived this morning.

I don't see how I can leave anything out, because I hope there is
nothing that will be seen to be irrelevant to my design, which is to
show the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional,
and to show this in some directions which have not been from time
immemorial the beaten path--the Cremorne walks and shows of fiction.
But the best intentions are good for nothing until execution has
justified them. And you know I am always compassed about with fears. I
am in danger in all my designs of parodying dear Goldsmith's satire on
Burke, and think of refining when novel-readers only think of
skipping.

We are obliged to turn out of this queer cottage next week; but we
have been fortunate enough to get the more comfortable house on the
other side of the road, so that we can move without any trouble. Thus
our address will continue to be the same until the end of August.

Tennyson, who is one of the "hill-folk" about here, has found us out.

[Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Robert Lytton[15] (now Lady
Lytton), 25th July, 1871.]

This morning your husband's letter came to us, but if I did not know
that it would be nearly a week before any words of mine could reach
you, I should abstain from writing just yet, feeling that in the first
days of sorrowing it is better to keep silence. For a long while after
a great bereavement our only companionship is with the lost one. Yet I
hope it will not be without good to you to have signs of love from
your friends, and to be reminded that you have a home in their
affections, which is made larger for you by your trouble. For weeks my
thought has been continually going out to you, and the absence of news
has made me so fearful that I have mourned beforehand. I have been
feeling that probably you were undergoing the bitterest grief you had
ever known. But under the heart-stroke, is there anything better than
to grieve? Strength will come back for the duty and the fellowship
which gradually bring new contentments, but at first there is no joy
to be desired that would displace sorrow.

What is better than to love and live with the loved? But that must
sometimes bring us to live with the dead; and this too turns at last
into a very tranquil and sweet tie, safe from change and injury.

You see, I make myself a warrant out of my regard for you, to write as
if we had long been near each other. And I cannot help wishing that we
were physically nearer--that you were not on the other side of Europe.
We shall trust in Mr. Lytton's kindness to let us hear of you by and
by. But you must never write except to satisfy your own longing. May
all true help surround you, dear Mrs. Lytton, and whenever you can
think of me, believe in me as yours with sincere affection.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 31st July, 1871.]

I read your touching story[16] aloud yesterday to Mr. Lewes, and we
both cried over it. Your brother wrote to me that you had doubts about
giving your name. My faith is, that signature is right in the absence
of weighty special reasons against it.

We think of you all very often, and feel ourselves much the richer for
having a whole dear family to reckon among our friends. We are to stay
here till the end of the month. When the trees are yellow, I hope you
will be coming to see us in St. John's Wood. How little like the
woods we have around us! I suppose Weybridge is more agreeable than
other places at present, if it has any of its extra warmth in this
arctic season.

Our best love, to your dear mother supremely, and then to all.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 2d Aug. 1871.]

I always say that those people are the happiest who have a peremptory
reason for staying in one place rather than another. Else I should be
sorry for you that you are kept in London--by Parliamentary business,
of course.

There is sunshine over our fields now, but the thermometer is only 64°
in the house, and in the warmest part of the day I, having a talent
for being cold, sit shivering, sometimes even with a warm-water bottle
at my feet. I wonder if you went to the French plays to see the
supreme Got? That is a refined pleasure which I enjoyed so much in
Paris a few years ago that I was sorry to be out of reach of it this
spring.

About the Crystal Palace music I remember feeling just what you
mention--the sublime effect of the Handel choruses, and the total
futility of the solos.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 3d Aug. 1871.]

Thanks for your little picture of things. Eminently acceptable in
place of vague conjectures. I am a bitter enemy to make-believe about
the human lot, but I think there is a true alleviation of distress in
thinking of the intense enjoyment which accompanies a spontaneous,
confident, intellectual activity. This may not be a counterpoise to
the existing evils, but it is at least a share of mortal good, and
good of an exquisite kind.

Are you not happy in the long-wished-for sunshine? I have a pretty
lawn before me, with hills in the background. The train rushes by
every now and then to make one more glad of the usual silence.

A good man writes to me from Scotland this morning, asking me if he is
not right in pronouncing Rom[)o]la, in defiance of the world around
him (not a large world, I hope) who _will_ say Rom[=o]la. Such is
correspondence in these days; so that quantity is magnificent _en
gros_ but shabby _en détail_--_i.e._, in single letters like this.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 14th Aug. 1871.]

We shall stay here only till the end of this month--at least, I have
no hope that our _propriétaires_ will be induced to protract their
absence; and if the lingering smell of paint does not drive us away
from the Priory again, we expect to stay there from the first of
September, without projects of travel for many, many months.

We enjoy our roomy house and pretty lawn greatly. Imagine me seated
near a window, opening under a veranda, with flower-beds and lawn and
pretty hills in sight, my feet on a warm-water bottle, and my writing
on my knees. In that attitude my mornings are passed. We dine at two;
and at four, when the tea comes in, I begin to read aloud. About six
or half-past we walk on to the commons and see the great sky over our
head. At eight we are usually in the house again, and fill our evening
with physics, chemistry, or other wisdom if our heads are at par; if
not, we take to folly, in the shape of Alfred de Musset's poems, or
something akin to them.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Oct. 1871.]

Yesterday we returned from Weybridge, where, for a few days, I have
been petted by kind friends (delightful Scotch people), and have had
delicious drives in the pure autumn air. That must be my farewell to
invalidism and holiday making. I am really better--not robust or fat,
but perhaps as well as I am likely to be till death mends me.

Your account of Mr. Main[17] sets my mind at ease about him; for in
this case I would rather have your judgment than any opportunity of
forming my own. The one thing that gave me confidence was his power of
putting his finger on the right passages, and giving emphasis to the
right idea (in relation to the author's feeling and purpose). Apart
from that, enthusiasm would have been of little value.

One feels rather ashamed of authoresses this week after the
correspondence in the _Times_. One hardly knows which letter is in the
worst taste. However, if we are to begin with marvelling at the little
wisdom with which the world is governed, we can hardly expect that
much wisdom will go to the making of novels.

I should think it quite a compliment if the general got through "Miss
Brooke." Mr. Lewes amused himself with the immeasurable contempt that
Mr. Casaubon would be the object of in the general's mind.

I hardly dare hope that the second part will take quite so well as the
first, the effects being more subtile and dispersed; but Mr. Lewes
seems to like the third part better than anything that has gone before
it. But can anything be more uncertain than the reception of a book by
the public? I am glad to see that the "Coming Race" has got into a
fourth edition. Let us hope that the Koom Posh may be at least
mitigated by the sale of a good book or two.

As for me, I get more and more unable to be anything more than a
feeble sceptic about all publishing plans, and am thankful to have so
many good heads at work for me. _Allah illah allah!_

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1871.]

We who are getting old together have the tie of common infirmities.
But I don't find that the young troubles seem lighter on looking back.
I prefer my years now to any that have gone before. I wish you could
tell me the same thing about yourself. And, surely, writing your book
is, on the whole, a joy to you--it is a large share in the meagre lot
of mankind. All hail for the morrow! How many sweet laughs, how much
serious pleasure in the great things others have done, you and I have
had together in a past islet of time that remains very sunny in my
remembrance.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1871.]

_Dec. 1._--This day the first part of "Middlemarch" was published. I
ought by this time to have finished the fourth part, but an illness
which began soon after our return from Haslemere has robbed me of two
months.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Dec. 1871.]

If you have not yet fallen in with Dickens's "Life" be on the lookout
for it, because of the interest there is in his boyish experience, and
also in his rapid development during his first travels in America. The
book is ill organized, and stuffed with criticism and other matter
which would be better in limbo; but the information about the
childhood, and the letters from America, make it worth reading. We
have just got a photograph of Dickens, taken when he was writing, or
had just written, "David Copperfield"--satisfactory refutation of that
keepsakey, impossible face which Maclise gave him, and which has been
engraved for the "Life" in all its odious beautification. This
photograph is the young Dickens, corresponding to the older Dickens
whom I knew--the same face, without the unusually severe wear and
tear of years which his latest looks exhibited.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1872.]

_Dec. 20._--My health has become very troublesome during the last
three weeks, and I can get on but tardily. Even now I am only at page
227 of my fourth part. But I have been also retarded by construction,
which, once done, serves as good wheels for progress.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Jan. 1872.]

Your good wishes and pleasant bits of news made the best part of my
breakfast this morning. I am glad to think that, in desiring happiness
for you during the new year, I am only desiring the continuance of
good which you already possess.

I suppose we two, also, are among the happiest of mortals, yet we have
had a rather doleful Christmas, the one great lack, that of health,
having made itself particularly conspicuous in the surrounding fog.
Having no grandchildren to get up a Christmas-tree for, we had nothing
to divert our attention from our headaches.

Mr. Main's book broke the clouds a little, and now the heavens have
altogether cleared, so that we are hoping to come back from a visit of
three days to Weybridge with our strength renewed--if not like the
eagle's, at least like a convalescent tomtit's.

The "Sayings" are set off by delightful paper and print, and a binding
which opens with inviting ease. I am really grateful to every one
concerned in the volume, and am anxious that it should not be in any
way a disappointment. The selections seem to me to be made with an
exquisite sensibility to the various lights and shades of life; and
all Mr. Main's letters show the same quality. It is a great help to me
to have such an indication that there exist careful readers for whom
no subtilest intention is lost.

We have both read the story of the "Megara" with the deepest interest;
indeed, with a quite exceptional enjoyment of its direct,
unexaggerated painting.

The prescription of two days' golfing per week will, I hope, keep up
your condition to the excellent pitch at which it was on your return
from Paris. Good news usually acts as a tonic when one's case is not
too desperate; and I shall be glad if you and we can get it in the
form of more success for "Middlemarch." Dickens's "Life," you see,
finds a large public ready to pay more. But the British mind has long
entertained the purchase of expensive biographies. The proofs lately
given that one's books don't necessarily go out like lucifer matches,
never to be taken up again, make one content with moderate immediate
results, which perhaps are as much as can reasonably be expected for
any writing which does not address itself either to fashions or
corporate interests of an exclusive kind.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Jan. 1872.]

It is like your kindness to write me your encouraging impressions on
reading the third book. I suppose it is my poor health that just now
makes me think my writing duller than usual. For certainly the
reception of the first book by my old readers is quite beyond my most
daring hopes. One of them, who is a great champion of "Adam Bede" and
"Romola," told Mr. Lewes yesterday that he thought "Middlemarch"
surpassed them. All this is very wonderful to me. I am thoroughly
comforted as to the half of the work which is already written; but
there remains the terror about the _un_written. Mr. Lewes is much
satisfied with the fourth book, which opens with the continuation of
the Featherstone drama.

We went yesterday to the Tichborne trial, which was an experience of
great interest to me. We had to come away after the third hour of
Coleridge's speaking; but it was a great enjoyment to me to hear what
I did. Coleridge is a rare orator--not of the declamatory, but of the
argumentative order.

Thanks, not formal, but sincerely felt, for the photographs. This
likeness will always carry me back to the first time I saw you, in our
little Richmond lodging, when I was thinking anxiously of "Adam Bede,"
as I now am of "Middlemarch."

I felt something like a shudder when Sir Henry Maine asked me last
Sunday whether this would not be a very long book; saying, when I told
him it would be four good volumes, that that was what he had
calculated. However, it will not be longer than Thackeray's books, if
so long. And I don't see how the sort of thing I want to do could have
been done briefly.

I have to be grateful for the gift of "Brougham's Life," which will be
a welcome addition to my means of knowing the time "when his ugliness
had not passed its bloom."

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Jan. 1872.]

Your letter seems to pierce the rainy fog with a little sunlight. Cold
and clearness are the reverse of what we are usually having here.
Until the last few days my chief consciousness has been that of
struggling against inward as well as outward fog; but I am now better,
and have only been dragged back into headachiness by a little too much
fatigue from visitors. I give you this account as a preface to my
renunciation of a journey to Dover, which would be very delightful, if
I had not already lost too much time to be warranted in taking a
holiday.

Next Saturday we are going to have a party--six to dine, and a small
rush of people after dinner, for the sake of music. I think it is four
years at least since we undertook anything of that kind.

A great domestic event for us has been the arrival of a new dog, who
has all Ben's virtues, with more intelligence, and a begging attitude
of irresistible charm. He is a dark-brown spaniel. You see what
infantine innocence we live in!

Glad you are reading my demigod Milton! We also are rather
old-fashioned in our light reading just now; for I have rejected
Heyse's German stories, brand new, in favor of dear old Johnson's
"Lives of the Poets," which I read aloud in my old age with a
delicious revival of girlish impressions.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1872.]

_Jan. 29._--It is now the last day but one of January. I have finished
the fourth part--_i.e._, the second volume--of "Middlemarch." The
first part, published on December 1, has been excellently well
received; and the second part will be published the day after
to-morrow. About Christmas a volume of extracts from my works was
published, under the title, "Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings, in Prose
and Verse." It was proposed and executed by Alexander Main, a young
man of thirty, who began a correspondence with me by asking me how to
pronounce Romola, in the summer, when we were at Shottermill.
Blackwood proposed that we should share the profits, but we refused.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Jan. 1872.]

I do lead rather a crawling life under these rainy fogs and low
behavior of the barometer. But I am a little better, on the whole,
though just now overdone with the fatigue of company. We have been to
hear Coleridge addressing the jury on the Tichborne trial--a very
interesting occasion to me. He is a marvellous speaker among
Englishmen; has an exquisitely melodious voice, perfect gesture, and a
power of keeping the thread of his syntax to the end of his sentence,
which makes him delightful to follow. We are going some other day, if
possible, to hear a cross-examination of Ballantyne's. The digest of
the evidence which Coleridge gives is one of the best illustrations of
the value or valuelessness of testimony that could be given. I wonder
if the world, which retails Guppy anecdotes, will be anything the
wiser for it.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Feb. 1872.]

To hear of a friend's illness after he has got well through it is the
least painful way of learning the bad news. I hope that your attack
has been a payment of insurance.

You probably know what it grieved us deeply to learn the other
day--that our excellent friend Mr. William Smith is dangerously ill.
They have been so entirely happy and wrapped up in each other that we
cannot bear to think of Mrs. Smith's grief.

Thanks for the list of sales since February 12th. Things are
encouraging, and the voices that reach us are enthusiastic. But you
can understand how people's interest in the book heightens my anxiety
that the remainder should be up to the mark. It has caused me some
uneasiness that the third part is two sheets less than the first. But
Mr. Lewes insisted that the death of old Featherstone was the right
point to pause at; and he cites your approbation of the part as a
proof that effectiveness is secured in spite of diminished quantity.
Still it irks me to ask 5_s._ for a smaller amount than that already
given at the same price. Perhaps I must regard the value as made up
solely by effectiveness, and certainly the book will be long enough.

I am still below par in strength, and am too much beset with visitors
and kind attentions. I long for the quiet spaces of time and the
absence of social solicitations that one enjoys in the country, out of
everybody's reach.

I am glad to hear of the pleasure "Middlemarch" gives in your
household: that makes quite a little preliminary public for me.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 4th Mch. 1872.]

I can understand very easily that the two last years have been full
for you of other and more imperative work than the writing of letters
not absolutely demanded either by charity or business. The proof that
you still think of me affectionately is very welcome now it is come,
and all the more cheering because it enables me to think of you as
enjoying your retreat in your orange orchard--your western
Sorrento--the beloved Rabbi still beside you. I am sure it must be a
great blessing to you to bathe in that quietude--as it always is to us
when we go out of reach of London influences, and have the large space
of country days to study, walk, and talk in. Last year we spent our
summer months in Surrey, and did not leave England. Unhappily, the
country was not so favorable to my bodily health as to my spiritual,
and on our return to town I had an illness which was the climax of the
summer's _malaise_. That illness robbed me of two months, and I have
never quite recovered a condition in which the strict duties of the
day are not felt as a weight. But just now we are having some clear
spring days, and I am in hope of prospering better, the sunshine being
to me the greatest visible good of life--what I call the wealth of
life, after love and trust.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 8th Mch. 1872.]

When I am more at liberty I will certainly read Mr. Owen's books, if
he is good enough to send them to me. I desire on all subjects to keep
an open mind, but hitherto the various phenomena reported or attested
in connection with ideas of spirit-intercourse, "psychion," and so on,
have come before me here in the painful form of the lowest
_charlatanerie_. Take Mr. H. as an example of what I mean. I could not
choose to enter a room where he held a _séance_. He is an object of
moral disgust to me; and nothing of late reported by Mr. Crookes, Lord
Lindsay, and the rest carries conviction to my mind that Mr. H. is not
simply an impostor, whose professedly abnormal manifestations have
varied their fashion in order to create a new market, just as if they
were _papier mâché_ wares or pomades for the idle rich. But apart from
personal contact with people who get money by public exhibitions as
mediums, or with semi-idiots, such as those who make a court for a
Mrs. Guppy or other feminine personage of that kind, I would not
willingly place any barriers between my mind and any possible channel
of truth affecting the human lot.

The spirit in which you have written in the paper you kindly sent me
is likely to teach others--to rouse them, at least, to attention in a
case where you have been deeply impressed.

I write to you quite openly, dear friend, but very imperfectly, for my
letters are always written in shreds of time.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 14th Mch. 1872.]

Thanks for the budget of this morning. The sales, we think, are very
cheering, and we may well be content if they continue in the same
ratio. But the Greek proverb about the beginning being the half of the
whole wants as much defining and excepting from as most other
proverbs.

I have just had sent me a copy of the magazine _Für die Literatur des
Auslander_, containing a review of "Miss Brooke," which will be good
for Asher's edition, and is otherwise satisfactory as an intelligent
appreciation. It mentions at the end the appearance of Mr. Main's
book, "The Sayings." A Frenchman, apparently accomplished, a M.
Landolphe, who has made some important translations, is going to
translate the whole of "Middlemarch;" and one of the contributors to
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ has written for leave to extract
Dorothea's history.

I fancy we have done a good turn to English authors generally by
setting off Asher's series, for we have heard that Tauchnitz has
raised his offers. There is another way in which benefit might come
that would be still more desirable--namely, to make him more careful
in his selections of books for reprint. But I fear that this effect is
not so certain. You see Franz Duncker, who publishes the German
translation of "Middlemarch," has also begun an English series. This
is really worth while, for the Germans are excellent readers of our
books. I was astonished to find so many in Berlin who really knew
one's books, and did not merely pay compliments after the fashion of
the admirers who made Rousseau savage--running after him to pay him
visits, and not knowing a word of his writing.

You and other good readers have spoiled me, and made me rather shudder
at being read only once; and you may imagine how little satisfaction I
get from people who mean to please me by saying that they shall wait
till "Middlemarch" is finished, and then sit up to read it "at one
go-off."

We are looking for a country retreat not too far from town, so that
we may run up easily. There is nothing wanting to our happiness except
that "Middlemarch" should be well ended without growing signs of its
author's debility.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 17th March, 1872.]

Before I received your letter this morning, I was going to write you a
word of sympathy, knowing how deeply you would be feeling the death of
Mazzini. Such a man leaves behind him a wider good than the loss of
his personal presence can take away.

     "The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
     Is to have been a hero."

I must be excused for quoting my own words, because they are my
_credo_. I enter thoroughly into your sense of wealth in having known
him.

Brighton does not suit Mr. Lewes. But he was near going there for a
night a little while ago to see our friends, Mr. and Mrs. William
Smith. He (the author of "Thorndale," etc.) is, I fear, wasting
fatally with organic disease, and we grieve much at the too-probably
near parting of a husband and wife who have been among the perfectly
happy couples of the world. She is a charming woman, and I wish that
you may happen to know her.

[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d March, 1872.]

Owing to my loss of two months in illness, and my infirm health ever
since, I have not yet finished the writing of "Middlemarch." This
payment of wintry arrears makes one prefer the comforts of a London
home; but we are obliged to see more company than my health is equal
to, and for this reason I dare say we shall soon migrate. To-day we
have been to our last morning concert--or Saturday Pop.--held on a
Friday because of the University boat-race to-morrow. These concerts
are an easy pleasure which we are sorry to part with. This is one of
my bad weeks, owing probably to the change in the weather, and I am
constantly struggling with hemicrania and _malaise_. Even writing this
scrap of a note is the feather too much, and I must leave off. You
have known too much of nervous weakness not to understand this.

[Sidenote: Journal, 1872.]

_May 8._--I have been reposing for more than a week in the hope of
getting stronger, my life having been lately a swamp of illness, with
only here and there a bit of firm walking. In consequence of this
incessant interruption (almost every week having been half nullified
for me so far as my work has been concerned) I have only finished the
fifth book, and have still three books to write--equal to a large
volume and a half.

The reception of the book hitherto has been quite beyond what I could
h

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