The Life of George Eliot. George Eliot
MS. of the translation sent to Miss Hennell—Joy at finishing—Delighted with Strauss's Preface.
CHAPTER III.
The completion of the translation of Strauss is another milestone passed in the life journey of George Eliot, and the comparatively buoyant tone of the letters immediately following makes us feel that the galled neck is out of the yoke for a time. In May, Mrs. Bray had gone away from home for a visit, and the next letter is addressed to her.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, Sunday (probably about 6th May), 1846.
Do not stay any longer than is necessary to do you good, lest I should lose the pleasure of loving you, for my affections are always the warmest when my friends are within an attainable distance. I think I can manage to keep respectably warm towards you for three weeks without seeing you, but I cannot promise more. Tell Mr. Bray I am getting too amiable for this world, and Mr. Donovan's wizard hand would detect a slight corrugation of the skin on my organs 5 and 6;20 they are so totally without exercise. I had a lecture from Mr. Pears on Friday, as well as a sermon this morning, so you need be in no alarm for my moral health. Do you never think of those Caribs who, by dint of flattening their foreheads, can manage to see perpendicularly above them without so much as lifting their heads? There are some good people who remind me of them. They see everything so clearly and with so little trouble, but at the price of sad self-mutilation.
On the 26th May Miss Evans went to pay a visit to Mrs. and Miss Hennell at Hackney, and she writes from there to Mrs. Bray, who was expected to join them in London.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of May, 1846.
I cannot deny that I am very happy without you, but perhaps I shall be happier with you, so do not fail to try the experiment. We have been to town only once, and are saving all our strength to "rake" with you; but we are as ignorant as Primitive Methodists about any of the amusements that are going. Please to come in a very mischievous, unconscientious, theatre-loving humor. Everybody I see is very kind to me, and therefore I think them all very charming; and, having everything I want, I feel very humble and self-denying. It is only rather too great a bore to have to write to my friends when I am half asleep, and I have not yet reached that pitch of amiability that makes such magnanimity easy. Don't bring us any bad news or any pains, but only nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.
They stayed in London till the 5th June, and on the 15th of that month the translation of Strauss was published. On the 2d July Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "is going to Dover with her father, for a fortnight." In passing through Dover on our way to the Continent, in 1880, after our marriage, we visited the house they stayed at in 1846, and my wife then told me that she had suffered a great deal there, as her father's health began to show signs of breaking up. On returning to Coventry there is the following letter referring to Wicksteed's review of the translation of Strauss, which was advertised for the forthcoming number of the Prospective Review.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Thursday, Aug. (?) 1846.
Do you think it worth my while to buy the Prospective for the sake of Wicksteed's review—is there anything new in it? Do you know if Mr. Chapman has any unusual facilities for obtaining cheap classics? Such things are to be got handsome and second-hand in London—if one knew but the way. I want to complete Xenophon's works. I have the "Anabasis," and I might, perhaps, get a nice edition of the "Memorabilia" and "Cyropædia" in a cheaper way than by ordering them directly from our own bookseller. I have been reading the "Fawn of Sertorius."21 I think you would like it, though the many would not. It is pure, chaste, and classic, beyond any attempt at fiction I ever read. If it be Bulwer's, he has been undergoing a gradual transfiguration, and is now ready to be exalted into the assembly of the saints. The professor's (Strauss's) letter, transmitted through you, gave me infinite consolation, more especially the apt and pregnant quotation from Berosus. Precious those little hidden lakelets of knowledge in the high mountains, far removed from the vulgar eye, only visited by the soaring birds of love.
On 25th September, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "looks very brilliant just now. We fancy she must be writing her novel;" and then come the following letters, written in October and November:
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Oct. 1846.
All the world is bathed in glory and beauty to me now, and thou sharest in the radiance. Tell me whether I live for you as you do for me, and tell me how gods and men are treating you. You must send me a scrap every month—only a scrap with a dozen words in it, just to prevent me from starving on faith alone—of which you know I have the minimum of endowment. I am sinning against my daddy by yielding to the strong impulse I felt to write to you, for he looks at me as if he wanted me to read to him.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Oct. 1846.
I do not know whether I can get up any steam again on the subject of Quinet; but I will try—when Cara comes back, however, for she has run away with "Christianity" into Devonshire, and I must have the book as a springing-board. When does the Prospective come out?
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Nov. 1846.
The review of Strauss contains some very just remarks, though, on the whole, I think it shallow, and in many cases unfair. The praise it gives to the translation is just what I should have wished; indeed, I cannot imagine anything more gratifying in the way of laudation. Is it not droll that Wicksteed should have chosen one of my interpolations, or rather paraphrases, to dilate on. The expression "granite," applied to the sayings of Jesus, is nowhere used by Strauss, but is an impudent addition of mine to eke out his metaphor. Did you notice the review of Foster's Life?22 I am reading the Life, and thinking all the time how you would like it. It is deeply interesting to study the life of a genius under circumstances amid which genius is so seldom to be found. Some of the thoughts in his journal are perfect gems.
The words of the reviewer of the Strauss translation in the Prospective are worth preserving: "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike translation. Whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic, and harmonious force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which imparts to the volumes before us the air and spirit of an original. Though the translator never obtrudes himself upon the reader with any notes or comments of his own, yet he is evidently a man who has a familiar knowledge of the whole subject; and if the work be the joint production of several hands, moving in concert, the passages of a specially scholastic character, at least, have received their version from a discerning and well-informed theologian. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for the English edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is 'et accurata et perspicua.'"
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Nov. 1846.
Many things, both outward and inward, have concurred to make this November far happier than the last. One's thoughts
"Are widened with the process of the suns;"
and if one is rather doubtful whether one is really wiser or better, it is some comfort to know that the desire to be so is more pure and dominant. I have been thinking of that most beautiful passage in Luke's Gospel—the appearance of Jesus to the disciples at Emmaus. How universal in its significance! The soul that has hopelessly followed its Jesus—its impersonation of the highest and best—all in despondency; its thoughts all refuted, its dreams all dissipated. Then comes another Jesus—another, but the same—the same highest and best, only chastened—crucified instead of triumphant—and the soul learns that this is the true way to conquest and glory. And then there is the burning of the heart, which assures that "this was the Lord!"—that this is the inspiration from above, the true comforter that leads unto