GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, [19 September 1859]
Title
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, [19 September 1859]
Title
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, [19 September 1859]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Charles Bray
Date(s)
- 1859-09-19
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, [19 September 1859]
MS: Yale. Envelope: Charles Bray Esq | Ivy Cottage | Radford Road | Coventry. Postmarks: LONDON-S.W | 8 | SP 19 | 59; COVENTRY | SP 20 | 59. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge.
Dear Friend
I am seriously annoyed at Mr. Bracebridge's conduct and letters, 307 and Mr. Lewes is writing very severely to him. I shouldn't mind so much if what he is spreading were true, but it is entirely false -- that is, entirely false as he apprehends it. He is so ignorant (of what writing is) and so foolish, that these qualities must fairly weigh something in extenuation of his gross indelicacy as well as presumption.
There is not a single portrait in Adam Bede, as I have said before -- but the desire to impart information seldom shows itself more zealously than in informing people of what are their own affairs and of what is their intimate consciousness.
I could never have written Adam Bede if I had not learned something of my father's early experience: but no one who knew my father could call Adam a portrait of him -- and the course of Adam's life is entirely different from my father's. Again, Dinah and Seth are not my aunt and uncle. 308 I knew my aunt and uncle and they were Methodists -- my aunt a preacher; and I loved them: so far only they resembled Seth and Dinah. The whole course of the story in Adam Bede -- the descriptions of scenery or houses -- the characters -- the dialogue -- everything is a combination from widely sundered elements of experience. I never heard of a Rev. George Hole 309 -- or of a "statue outside Ellastone church!" or of half the other things that the Staffordshire Advertiser and Mr. Bracebridge are wise about. I remember very well the moment of writing that speech of Mrs. Poyser's in which she says Dinah provokes her because she's "like the statty outside Treddles'on church -- a-staring and smiling whether it's fair weather or foul." But I never remember seeing any statue outside any church, that suggested the image. It was the only place where Mrs. Poyser could have seen anything like a statue -- that was the reason why the statue was "outside Treddles'on church." Treddleston is not Ellastone. Hayslope is, with a difference. But no one who is not an artist knows how experience is wrought up in writing any form of poetry -- though every one who is as foolish as Mr. Bracebridge thinks himself competent to pronounce upon the subject.
One of the scenes in my books that many people have pitched on as peculiarly true is the conversation of the clergy at the Clerical Dinner, in Amos Barton. 310 It is needless to say, that I was never present at a Clerical Dinner party. Mr. Bracebridge is quite right in saying I was too young to witness and judge, when the events that suggested my stories occurred -- the inference of a little wisdom and a little modesty would be, that the events are not precisely what happened, as people with dim confused memories imagine them to be, because they see a few particulars which they do remember. I've no doubt there are people who think that Dempster really spoke from a window just as I have described 311 -- if he did, I never heard that he did, and I was a child kneeling on a form at a school-room window at that date.
The insolence of contradicting Mr. Lewes's explicit statement made evidently on my responsibility, as to the nullity of Liggins in the matter, is beyond merely sane stupidity and ungentlemanliness.
As I have said, there are two portraits in Clerical Scenes: they are, first, Amos Barton who however is made a much better man than he really was, and far more unimpeachable in conduct. The affair of the "Countess" was never fully known to me: so far as it was known, it is varied from my knowledge of the alleged fact. 2d Dempster, whose original 312 has been dead twenty years or more, (I thought '91Amos'92 was dead) and was by no means so witty, I imagine, as his representative in "Janet."
This letter is for your family alone. I do not think you would suspect me of telling falsehoods about my works: but you might imagine there was truth in these statements about Adam Bede, for I think I have hitherto said nothing specific about the origination of the whole work.
I do hope you will feel your moral sentiment engaged against Mr. Bracebridge's proceedings, or those of any person who may copy him at a humble distance in presumptuous, impertinent folly -- folly is the mildest word. He must surely be a man who deals in "equivoque" 313 himself?
Ever yours
Marian.
The people (readers of "Adam") who know Derbyshire and the adjacent counties all say, "This is just the way the people talk there." 314 Now, I never knew any Derbyshire people, or Staffordshire either, except my father and his brothers. His brothers I never saw so many times as I could count fingers, and my visits to those counties were not more than four or five altogether -- none of them for more than a few days. Yet, I imagine, no one will go to the length of saying that the dialect was put in for me.
I never knew my aunt had a journal 315 -- [three words deleted] and I hear it with some surprize -- incredulity, rather. Some one said they thought Mrs. Poyser's sayings must have been collected for me!! It is happy for me that I never expected any gratification of a personal kind from my authorship. The worst of all this is that it nauseates me -- chills me and discourages me in my work.
I enclose a copy of Mr. Lewes's letter which please return.
MS: Yale. Envelope: Charles Bray Esq | Ivy Cottage | Radford Road | Coventry. Postmarks: LONDON-S.W | 8 | SP 19 | 59; COVENTRY | SP 20 | 59. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge.
Dear Friend
I am seriously annoyed at Mr. Bracebridge's conduct and letters, 307 and Mr. Lewes is writing very severely to him. I shouldn't mind so much if what he is spreading were true, but it is entirely false -- that is, entirely false as he apprehends it. He is so ignorant (of what writing is) and so foolish, that these qualities must fairly weigh something in extenuation of his gross indelicacy as well as presumption.
There is not a single portrait in Adam Bede, as I have said before -- but the desire to impart information seldom shows itself more zealously than in informing people of what are their own affairs and of what is their intimate consciousness.
I could never have written Adam Bede if I had not learned something of my father's early experience: but no one who knew my father could call Adam a portrait of him -- and the course of Adam's life is entirely different from my father's. Again, Dinah and Seth are not my aunt and uncle. 308 I knew my aunt and uncle and they were Methodists -- my aunt a preacher; and I loved them: so far only they resembled Seth and Dinah. The whole course of the story in Adam Bede -- the descriptions of scenery or houses -- the characters -- the dialogue -- everything is a combination from widely sundered elements of experience. I never heard of a Rev. George Hole 309 -- or of a "statue outside Ellastone church!" or of half the other things that the Staffordshire Advertiser and Mr. Bracebridge are wise about. I remember very well the moment of writing that speech of Mrs. Poyser's in which she says Dinah provokes her because she's "like the statty outside Treddles'on church -- a-staring and smiling whether it's fair weather or foul." But I never remember seeing any statue outside any church, that suggested the image. It was the only place where Mrs. Poyser could have seen anything like a statue -- that was the reason why the statue was "outside Treddles'on church." Treddleston is not Ellastone. Hayslope is, with a difference. But no one who is not an artist knows how experience is wrought up in writing any form of poetry -- though every one who is as foolish as Mr. Bracebridge thinks himself competent to pronounce upon the subject.
One of the scenes in my books that many people have pitched on as peculiarly true is the conversation of the clergy at the Clerical Dinner, in Amos Barton. 310 It is needless to say, that I was never present at a Clerical Dinner party. Mr. Bracebridge is quite right in saying I was too young to witness and judge, when the events that suggested my stories occurred -- the inference of a little wisdom and a little modesty would be, that the events are not precisely what happened, as people with dim confused memories imagine them to be, because they see a few particulars which they do remember. I've no doubt there are people who think that Dempster really spoke from a window just as I have described 311 -- if he did, I never heard that he did, and I was a child kneeling on a form at a school-room window at that date.
The insolence of contradicting Mr. Lewes's explicit statement made evidently on my responsibility, as to the nullity of Liggins in the matter, is beyond merely sane stupidity and ungentlemanliness.
As I have said, there are two portraits in Clerical Scenes: they are, first, Amos Barton who however is made a much better man than he really was, and far more unimpeachable in conduct. The affair of the "Countess" was never fully known to me: so far as it was known, it is varied from my knowledge of the alleged fact. 2d Dempster, whose original 312 has been dead twenty years or more, (I thought '91Amos'92 was dead) and was by no means so witty, I imagine, as his representative in "Janet."
This letter is for your family alone. I do not think you would suspect me of telling falsehoods about my works: but you might imagine there was truth in these statements about Adam Bede, for I think I have hitherto said nothing specific about the origination of the whole work.
I do hope you will feel your moral sentiment engaged against Mr. Bracebridge's proceedings, or those of any person who may copy him at a humble distance in presumptuous, impertinent folly -- folly is the mildest word. He must surely be a man who deals in "equivoque" 313 himself?
Ever yours
Marian.
The people (readers of "Adam") who know Derbyshire and the adjacent counties all say, "This is just the way the people talk there." 314 Now, I never knew any Derbyshire people, or Staffordshire either, except my father and his brothers. His brothers I never saw so many times as I could count fingers, and my visits to those counties were not more than four or five altogether -- none of them for more than a few days. Yet, I imagine, no one will go to the length of saying that the dialect was put in for me.
I never knew my aunt had a journal 315 -- [three words deleted] and I hear it with some surprize -- incredulity, rather. Some one said they thought Mrs. Poyser's sayings must have been collected for me!! It is happy for me that I never expected any gratification of a personal kind from my authorship. The worst of all this is that it nauseates me -- chills me and discourages me in my work.
I enclose a copy of Mr. Lewes's letter which please return.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, [19 September 1859], Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/92177