The Life of George Eliot. George Eliot
will come when there will be a temple of white marble, where sweet incense and anthems shall rise to the memory of every man and woman who has had a deep Ahnung—a presentiment, a yearning, or a clear vision—of the time when this miserable reign of Mammon shall end; when men shall be no longer "like the fishes of the sea," society no more like a face one half of which—the side of profession, of lip-faith—is fair and God-like; the other half—the side of deeds and institutions—with a hard, old, wrinkled skin puckered into the sneer of a Mephistopheles. I worship the man who has written as the climax of his appeal against society, "L'inegalité des talents doit aboutir non à l'inegalité des retributions mais à l'inegalité des devoirs." You will wonder what has wrought me up into this fury. It is the loathsome fawning, the transparent hypocrisy, the systematic giving as little as possible for as much as possible that one meets with here at every turn. I feel that society is training men and women for hell.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d June, 1848.
All creatures about to moult, or to cast off an old skin, or enter on any new metamorphosis, have sickly feelings. It was so with me. But now I am set free from the irritating, worn-out integument. I am entering on a new period of my life, which makes me look back on the past as something incredibly poor and contemptible. I am enjoying repose, strength, and ardor in a greater degree than I have ever known, and yet I never felt my own insignificance and imperfection so completely. My heart bleeds for dear father's pains, but it is blessed to be at hand to give the soothing word and act needed. I should not have written this description of myself but that I felt your affectionate letter demanded some I-ism, which, after all, is often humility rather than pride. Paris, poor Paris—alas! alas!
Letter to Charles Bray, June, 1848.
I have read "Jane Eyre," and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.
About the beginning of July Miss Evans and her father returned to Coventry; and the 13th July was a memorable day, as Emerson came to visit the Brays, and she went with them to Stratford. All she says herself about it is in this note.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, July, 1848.
I have seen Emerson—the first man I have ever seen. But you have seen still more of him, so I need not tell you what he is. I shall leave Cara to tell how the day—the Emerson day—was spent, for I have a swimming head from hanging over the desk to write business letters for father. Have you seen the review of Strauss's pamphlet in the Edinburgh? The title is "Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren, oder Julian der Abtrünnige"—a sort of erudite satire on the King of Prussia; but the reviewer pronounces it to have a permanent value quite apart from this fugitive interest. The "Romantiker," or Romanticist, is one who, in literature, in the arts, in religion or politics, endeavors to revive the dead past. Julian was a romanticist in wishing to restore the Greek religion and its spirit, when mankind had entered on the new development. But you have very likely seen the review. I must copy one passage, translated from the conclusion of Strauss's pamphlet, lest you should not have met with it. "Christian writers have disfigured the death-scene of Julian. They have represented him as furious, blaspheming, despairing, and in his despair exclaiming, Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!—'νενίκηκας Γαλιλαῖε.' This phrase, though false as history, has a truth in it. It contains a prophecy—to us a consoling prophecy—and it is this: Every Julian—i.e., every great and powerful man—who would attempt to resuscitate a state of society which has died, will infallibly be vanquished by the Galilean—for the Galilean is nothing less than the genius of the future!"
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1848.
Father's tongue has just given utterance to a thought which has been very visibly radiating from his eager eyes for some minutes. "I thought you were going on with the book." I can only bless you for those two notes, which have emanated from you like so much ambrosial scent from roses and lavender. Not less am I grateful for the Carlyle eulogium.24 I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love another. More anon—this from my doleful prison of stupidity and barrenness, with a yawning trapdoor ready to let me down into utter fatuity. But I can even yet feel the omnipotence of a glorious chord. Poor pebble as I am, left entangled among slimy weeds, I can yet hear from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoice that it is there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less unworthy of the polishing.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of 1848.
Thank you for a sight of our blessed St. Francis's25 letter. There is no imaginable moment in which the thought of such a being could be an intrusion. His soul is a blessed yea. There is a sort of blasphemy in that proverbial phrase, "Too good to be true." The highest inspiration of the purest, noblest human soul, is the nearest expression of the truth. Those extinct volcanoes of one's spiritual life—those eruptions of the intellect and the passions which have scattered the lava of doubt and negation over our early faith—are only a glorious Himalayan chain, beneath which new valleys of undreamed richness and beauty will spread themselves. Shall we poor earthworms have sublimer thoughts than the universe, of which we are poor chips—mere effluvia of mind—shall we have sublimer thoughts than that universe can furnish out into reality? I am living unspeakable moments, and can write no more.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1849.
I think of you perpetually, but my thoughts are all aqueous; they will not crystallize—they are as fleeting as ripples on the sea. I am suffering perhaps as acutely as ever I did in my life. Breathe a wish that I may gather strength—the fragrance of your wish will reach me somehow.
The next letter is to Mrs. Houghton, who, it will be remembered, was the only daughter by Mr. Evans's first marriage. Miss Evans had more intellectual sympathy with this half-sister Fanny than with any of the other members of her family, and it is a pity that more of the letters to her have not been preserved.
Letter to Mrs. Houghton, Sunday evening, 1849.
I have been holding a court of conscience, and I cannot enjoy my Sunday's music without restoring harmony, without entering a protest against that superficial soul of mine which is perpetually contradicting and belying the true inner soul. I am in that mood which, in another age of the world, would have led me to put on sackcloth and pour ashes on my head, when I call to mind the sins of my tongue—my animadversions on the faults of others, as if I thought myself to be something when I am nothing. When shall I attain to the true spirit of love which Paul has taught for all the ages? I want no one to excuse me, dear Fanny; I only want to remove the shadow of my miserable words and deeds from before the divine image of truth and goodness, which I would have all beings worship. I need the Jesuits' discipline of silence, and though my "evil speaking" issues from the intellectual point of view rather than the moral—though there may be gall in the thought while there is honey in the feeling, yet the evil speaking is wrong. We may satirize character and qualities in the abstract without injury to our moral nature, but persons hardly ever. Poor hints and sketches of souls as we are—with some slight, transient vision of the perfect and the true—we had need help each other to gaze at the blessed heavens instead of peering into each other's eyes to find out the motes there.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday morning, 4th Feb. 1849.
I have not touched the piano for nearly two months until this morning, when, father being better, I was determined to play a mass before the piano is utterly out of tune again. Write, asking for nothing again, like a true disciple of Jesus. I am still feeling rather shattered in brain and limbs; but do not suppose that I lack inward peace and strength. My body is the defaulter—consciously so. I triumph over all things in the spirit, but the flesh is weak, and disgraces itself by headaches and backaches. I am delighted to find that you mention Macaulay, because that is an indication that Mr. Hennell has been reading him. I thought of Mr. H. all through the book, as the only person I could be quite sure would enjoy it as much as I did myself. I did not know if it would interest you: tell