GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, 5 July 1859
Title
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, 5 July 1859
Title
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, 5 July 1859
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Charles Bray
Date(s)
- 1859-07-05
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, 5 July 1859
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, II, 117-118.
H. L. | July 5. 59.
Dear Friend
Thanks for the letters. 201 They have given me one pleasure -- that of knowing that Mr. Liggins has not been greatly culpable -- though Mr. B's statement that only "some small sums" have been collected, does not accord with what has been written to Blackwood from other counties.
But "O I am sick!" 202 Take no more trouble about me -- and let every one believe -- as they will in spite of all your kind efforts -- what they like to believe.
It is amazing, after the experience we have all had when we have lived a good number of years in the world, that our minds still rush to accept statements and repeat them. I feel so deeply the duty of doubting everything to the disadvantage of another until demonstration comes, that I beg you not to regard the last thing Mr. Lewes told you about Herbert Spencer, as a thing incapable of being so explained as to make it more consistent with our previous conviction concerning his character. Mr. Lewes and I both hope in the possibility of such an explanation. And I need hardly say that anything we have told you about him, has been told in full confidence that you would allow no symptom of such knowledge to escape you either to him or others. We shall be doubly careful to speak only of what we admire in him to the world generally. The rest we have told to no one but Mrs. Bodichon, you, and Blackwood. Blackwood we were obliged to tell in order to account for the betrayal of the anonymity.
We had heard of Ld Carlisle's 203 tribute, but I had not seen the exact words, which heighten its value.
We intend to start for Switzerland on Saturday -- nothing hindering -- to remain away not more than ten days, I imagine.
I can't tell you how much melancholy it causes me that people are, for the most part, so incapable of comprehending the state of mind which cares for that which is essentially human in all forms of belief, and desires to exhibit it under all forms with loving truthfulness. Free-thinkers are scarcely wider than the orthodox in this matter -- they all want to see themselves and their own opinions held up as the true and the lovely. On the same ground that an idle woman with flirtations and flounces likes to read a French novel because she can imagine herself the heroine, grave people, with opinions, like the most admirable character in a novel to be their mouth-piece. If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.
I have had heart-cutting experience that opinions are a poor cement between human souls; and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.
Yours ever
G. E.
My name is Marian Evans Lewes.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, II, 117-118.
H. L. | July 5. 59.
Dear Friend
Thanks for the letters. 201 They have given me one pleasure -- that of knowing that Mr. Liggins has not been greatly culpable -- though Mr. B's statement that only "some small sums" have been collected, does not accord with what has been written to Blackwood from other counties.
But "O I am sick!" 202 Take no more trouble about me -- and let every one believe -- as they will in spite of all your kind efforts -- what they like to believe.
It is amazing, after the experience we have all had when we have lived a good number of years in the world, that our minds still rush to accept statements and repeat them. I feel so deeply the duty of doubting everything to the disadvantage of another until demonstration comes, that I beg you not to regard the last thing Mr. Lewes told you about Herbert Spencer, as a thing incapable of being so explained as to make it more consistent with our previous conviction concerning his character. Mr. Lewes and I both hope in the possibility of such an explanation. And I need hardly say that anything we have told you about him, has been told in full confidence that you would allow no symptom of such knowledge to escape you either to him or others. We shall be doubly careful to speak only of what we admire in him to the world generally. The rest we have told to no one but Mrs. Bodichon, you, and Blackwood. Blackwood we were obliged to tell in order to account for the betrayal of the anonymity.
We had heard of Ld Carlisle's 203 tribute, but I had not seen the exact words, which heighten its value.
We intend to start for Switzerland on Saturday -- nothing hindering -- to remain away not more than ten days, I imagine.
I can't tell you how much melancholy it causes me that people are, for the most part, so incapable of comprehending the state of mind which cares for that which is essentially human in all forms of belief, and desires to exhibit it under all forms with loving truthfulness. Free-thinkers are scarcely wider than the orthodox in this matter -- they all want to see themselves and their own opinions held up as the true and the lovely. On the same ground that an idle woman with flirtations and flounces likes to read a French novel because she can imagine herself the heroine, grave people, with opinions, like the most admirable character in a novel to be their mouth-piece. If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.
I have had heart-cutting experience that opinions are a poor cement between human souls; and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.
Yours ever
G. E.
My name is Marian Evans Lewes.
Signature
G. E.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Charles Bray, Wandsworth, 5 July 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/92189