GE to John Blackwood, [Munich], 28 May 1858
Title
GE to John Blackwood, [Munich], 28 May 1858
Title
GE to John Blackwood, [Munich], 28 May 1858
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1858-05-28
Place
[Munich]
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, [Munich], 28 May 1858
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, II, 42-43.
May 28th /58.
My dear Sir
You were right in believing that I should like to hear Mr. Newdegate's opinion of the Stories. His testimony to the spirit in which they are written is really valuable, for I know he deserves the character you give him.
As to details, he seems, from what you say, as likely to be mistaken about them as he is about the authorship; but it is invariably the case that when people discover certain points of coincidence in a fiction with facts that happen to have come to their knowledge, they believe themselves able to furnish a key to the whole. That is amusing enough to the author, who knows from what widely sundered portions of experience -- from what a combination of subtle shadowy suggestions with certain actual objects and events, his story has been formed. Certain vague traditions about Sir Roger Newdegate 1146 (him of "Newdegate-Prize" celebrity) which I heard when I was a child are woven into the character of Sir Christopher Cheverel, and the house he improved into a charming Gothic place with beautiful cielings, I know from actual vision -- but the rest of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is spun out of the subtlest web of minute observation and inward experience, from my first childish recollections up to recent years. So it is with all the other stories. It would be a very difficult thing for me to furnish a key to them myself. But where there is no exact memory of the past any story with a few remembered points of character or of incident may pass for a history.
Surely there has been a sale of the Clerical Scenes in Scotland so as to make up the 800, of which I had received a confident impression that they had been sold, some time before I left England? If not, I shall be really uncomfortable on the subject since I had written to you under that confident impression.
We pay for our sight of the snowy mountains here by the most capricious of climates. English weather is steadfast compared with Munich weather. You go to dinner here in summer and come away from it in winter. You are languid among trees and feathery grass at one end of the town, and are shivering in a hurricane of dust at the other. This inconvenience of climate, with the impossibility of dining (well) at any other hour than one o'clock, is not friendly to the stomach -- that great seat of the imagination, and I shall never advise an author to come to Munich except ad interim -- when he is writing nothing, and only gathering materials for a picture of society where it is held a recreation to drink tea without flavour and tell jokes without point. There is something else worth studying -- the great Saal full of Rubens's Pictures, and two or three precious bits of sculpture; and the sky on a fine day always puts one in a good temper -- it is so deliciously clear and blue, making even the ugliest buildings look beautiful by the light it casts on them.
Ever yours truly
George Eliot.
J. Blackwood Esq.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, II, 42-43.
May 28th /58.
My dear Sir
You were right in believing that I should like to hear Mr. Newdegate's opinion of the Stories. His testimony to the spirit in which they are written is really valuable, for I know he deserves the character you give him.
As to details, he seems, from what you say, as likely to be mistaken about them as he is about the authorship; but it is invariably the case that when people discover certain points of coincidence in a fiction with facts that happen to have come to their knowledge, they believe themselves able to furnish a key to the whole. That is amusing enough to the author, who knows from what widely sundered portions of experience -- from what a combination of subtle shadowy suggestions with certain actual objects and events, his story has been formed. Certain vague traditions about Sir Roger Newdegate 1146 (him of "Newdegate-Prize" celebrity) which I heard when I was a child are woven into the character of Sir Christopher Cheverel, and the house he improved into a charming Gothic place with beautiful cielings, I know from actual vision -- but the rest of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is spun out of the subtlest web of minute observation and inward experience, from my first childish recollections up to recent years. So it is with all the other stories. It would be a very difficult thing for me to furnish a key to them myself. But where there is no exact memory of the past any story with a few remembered points of character or of incident may pass for a history.
Surely there has been a sale of the Clerical Scenes in Scotland so as to make up the 800, of which I had received a confident impression that they had been sold, some time before I left England? If not, I shall be really uncomfortable on the subject since I had written to you under that confident impression.
We pay for our sight of the snowy mountains here by the most capricious of climates. English weather is steadfast compared with Munich weather. You go to dinner here in summer and come away from it in winter. You are languid among trees and feathery grass at one end of the town, and are shivering in a hurricane of dust at the other. This inconvenience of climate, with the impossibility of dining (well) at any other hour than one o'clock, is not friendly to the stomach -- that great seat of the imagination, and I shall never advise an author to come to Munich except ad interim -- when he is writing nothing, and only gathering materials for a picture of society where it is held a recreation to drink tea without flavour and tell jokes without point. There is something else worth studying -- the great Saal full of Rubens's Pictures, and two or three precious bits of sculpture; and the sky on a fine day always puts one in a good temper -- it is so deliciously clear and blue, making even the ugliest buildings look beautiful by the light it casts on them.
Ever yours truly
George Eliot.
J. Blackwood Esq.
Signature
George Eliot.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, [Munich], 28 May 1858, 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/92555