GE to John Chapman, Broadstairs, [24-25 July 1852]
Title
GE to John Chapman, Broadstairs, [24-25 July 1852]
Title
GE to John Chapman, Broadstairs, [24-25 July 1852]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Chapman
Date(s)
- 1852-07-24–<br /> 1852-07-25
Place
Broadstairs
Letter Content
GE to John Chapman, Broadstairs, [24-25 July 1852]
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Endorsed: Marian Evans | July 25. 1852. Published: George Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 58-61.
Broadstairs | Saturday Evening.
Dear Friend
I laid Mr. Gilpin's note with the accompanying pamphlet on my desk the morning I left London, meaning to commend them to your care. I dare say you will find them in my room. If not, I believe the purport of Mr. Gilpin's note was that the writer of said pamphlet wished to know if an article on "Free Schools in Worcestershire" 148 (the subject of the pamphlet) would be accepted for the Westminster. I am not sure whether it was requested that the pamphlet should be noticed by us.
I return Froude's letter and Martineau's. Of course you will let Froude have his 26 pages. 149 As to Martineau, there is no doubt that he will write -- "Self-interest well understood" 150 will secure that. Pray, how came you to tell him that J. S. Mill 151 was going to write? I have told you all along that he would flatly contradict Martineau and that there was nothing for it but to announce contradiction on our title-page. I think M. is right as to the [idea] of a quarterly, but it is plain that the Westminster can't realize that [idea.] However, if I were its proprietor and could afford to make it what I liked, it should certainly not represent the Martineau "School of thought." Not that I mean to decry him, or to speak superciliously of one so immeasurably superior to myself -- I simply mean that I can't see things through spectacles of his colour.
What do you think of sending the note which I enclose to Miss Bronty? The thrice-announced parcel has just arrived. As to my disgraceful mistake about the stamps, I can only say -- peccavi, peccavi. The only excuse I have to make is that I just glanced at the envelope in which you forwarded the same M.S. to me, and saw only two stamps on it. I need not say that I did not pause to use my reasoning faculty in the matter.
Don't suggest [Fashion] as a subject to any one else -- I should like to keep it. 152
Sunday -- This morning came (with the Athenaeum and Leader, for which thanks) a letter from Geo. Combe announcing Dr. S. Brown's refusal to write said article for October. I enclose the letters of both. Please return Geo. Combe's with the one of his which I sent you some time ago. (See last page of my letter.) I am sorry for Dr. B's defection as I am very favourably impressed with the character of his mind. I wish Mr. Bastard would wait until January 153 and still get Dr. B. 154 to write. I shall say so to Geo. Combe. If yes, what do you say to Lewes on Lamarck? 155
I have noticed the advertisement of the British Q[uarterl]y this morning. 156 Its list of subjects is excellent. I wish you could contrive to let me see the number when it comes out. They have one subject of which I am jealous -- "Pre-Raphaelism in Painting and Literature." We have no good writer on such subjects on our staff. Ought we not, too, to try and enlist David Masson, who is one of the Br[itish] Q[uarterly] set? He wrote that article in the Leader on the Patagonian Missionaries, 157 which I thought very beautiful. Seeing [Margaret Fuller] among their subjects makes me rather regret having missed the first moment for writing an article on her life myself, but I think she still may come in as one of a triad or quaternion.
I feel that I am a wretched helpmate to you, almost out of the world and incog. so far as I am in it. When you can afford to pay an Editor, if that time will ever come, you must get one. If you believe in Free Will, in the Theism that looks on manhood as a type of the godhead and on Jesus as the Ideal Man, get one belonging to the Martineau
[School of thought,] and he will drill you a regiment of writers who will produce a Prospective on a larger scale, and so the Westminster may come to have [dignity] in the eyes of Liverpool.
If not -- if you believe, as I do, that the thought which is to mould the Future has for its root a belief in necessity, that a nobler presentation of humanity has yet to be given in resignation to individual nothingness, than could ever be shewn of a being who believes in the phantasmagoria of hope unsustained by reason -- why then get a man of another calibre and let him write a fresh Prospectus, and if Liverpool theology and ethics are to be admitted, let them be put in the "dangerous ward," alias, the Independent Section.
The only third course is the present one, that of Editorial compromise. Martineau writes much that we can agree with and admire. Newman ditto, J. S. Mill still more, Froude a little less and so on. These men can write more openly in the Westminster than anywhere else. They are amongst the world's vanguard, though not all in the foremost line; it is good for the world, therefore, that they should have every facility for speaking out. Ergo, since each can't have a periodical to himself, it is good that there should be one which is common to them -- id est, the Westminster. The grand mistake with respect to this plan is the paragraph in the Prospectus which announces the Independent Section and which thus makes the Editors responsible for everything outside that railing -- Ah me! how wise we all are apr'e8s coup.
If we don't have Lewes's article on Lamarck, I think you had better sound him when he comes back and see what hope there is in him for October. 158 Defective as his articles are, they are the best we can get of the kind.
An article on Chalmers 159 would not be [light.] It is important that this Hereditary Transmission business should be settled as soon as possible, and so I shall tell Combe, that we may know whether we want I article or 2. Apropos of Combe, I think you are too sore on the subject of the [Copyright] -- you did not tell him the terms when you agreed that he should write. Besides for your purposes his article is a bone picked quite clean -- let him use it up in his Papin's digester 160 if he will.
It is amusing to see J. Martineau so confidently setting down the Niebuhr article as Newman's and so deluding himself into praising it. 161 It is to me the most entirely satisfactory article in the number. I thought Lewes's criticism in the Leader 162 very poor and undiscriminating.
The publishing world seems utterly stagnant -- nothing coming out which would do as a peg for an article. I am running on, scribbling to no purpose and you will hardly thank me. Miss Hennell writes the following opinion of the English article: 163 "I have just read Syme's Eng. article. Most of it is very good; whenever he is in earnest he is good. But in the theological it is mostly slash and scoff, without giving us any confidence that he has any opinions of his own, and in other parts his style is quite too coarse, especially Nell Gwyn. One feels that he does not write as a gentleman." I congratulate you on your ability to be cheerful malgr'e9 tout.
Yours etc.
Marian Evans.
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Endorsed: Marian Evans | July 25. 1852. Published: George Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 58-61.
Broadstairs | Saturday Evening.
Dear Friend
I laid Mr. Gilpin's note with the accompanying pamphlet on my desk the morning I left London, meaning to commend them to your care. I dare say you will find them in my room. If not, I believe the purport of Mr. Gilpin's note was that the writer of said pamphlet wished to know if an article on "Free Schools in Worcestershire" 148 (the subject of the pamphlet) would be accepted for the Westminster. I am not sure whether it was requested that the pamphlet should be noticed by us.
I return Froude's letter and Martineau's. Of course you will let Froude have his 26 pages. 149 As to Martineau, there is no doubt that he will write -- "Self-interest well understood" 150 will secure that. Pray, how came you to tell him that J. S. Mill 151 was going to write? I have told you all along that he would flatly contradict Martineau and that there was nothing for it but to announce contradiction on our title-page. I think M. is right as to the [idea] of a quarterly, but it is plain that the Westminster can't realize that [idea.] However, if I were its proprietor and could afford to make it what I liked, it should certainly not represent the Martineau "School of thought." Not that I mean to decry him, or to speak superciliously of one so immeasurably superior to myself -- I simply mean that I can't see things through spectacles of his colour.
What do you think of sending the note which I enclose to Miss Bronty? The thrice-announced parcel has just arrived. As to my disgraceful mistake about the stamps, I can only say -- peccavi, peccavi. The only excuse I have to make is that I just glanced at the envelope in which you forwarded the same M.S. to me, and saw only two stamps on it. I need not say that I did not pause to use my reasoning faculty in the matter.
Don't suggest [Fashion] as a subject to any one else -- I should like to keep it. 152
Sunday -- This morning came (with the Athenaeum and Leader, for which thanks) a letter from Geo. Combe announcing Dr. S. Brown's refusal to write said article for October. I enclose the letters of both. Please return Geo. Combe's with the one of his which I sent you some time ago. (See last page of my letter.) I am sorry for Dr. B's defection as I am very favourably impressed with the character of his mind. I wish Mr. Bastard would wait until January 153 and still get Dr. B. 154 to write. I shall say so to Geo. Combe. If yes, what do you say to Lewes on Lamarck? 155
I have noticed the advertisement of the British Q[uarterl]y this morning. 156 Its list of subjects is excellent. I wish you could contrive to let me see the number when it comes out. They have one subject of which I am jealous -- "Pre-Raphaelism in Painting and Literature." We have no good writer on such subjects on our staff. Ought we not, too, to try and enlist David Masson, who is one of the Br[itish] Q[uarterly] set? He wrote that article in the Leader on the Patagonian Missionaries, 157 which I thought very beautiful. Seeing [Margaret Fuller] among their subjects makes me rather regret having missed the first moment for writing an article on her life myself, but I think she still may come in as one of a triad or quaternion.
I feel that I am a wretched helpmate to you, almost out of the world and incog. so far as I am in it. When you can afford to pay an Editor, if that time will ever come, you must get one. If you believe in Free Will, in the Theism that looks on manhood as a type of the godhead and on Jesus as the Ideal Man, get one belonging to the Martineau
[School of thought,] and he will drill you a regiment of writers who will produce a Prospective on a larger scale, and so the Westminster may come to have [dignity] in the eyes of Liverpool.
If not -- if you believe, as I do, that the thought which is to mould the Future has for its root a belief in necessity, that a nobler presentation of humanity has yet to be given in resignation to individual nothingness, than could ever be shewn of a being who believes in the phantasmagoria of hope unsustained by reason -- why then get a man of another calibre and let him write a fresh Prospectus, and if Liverpool theology and ethics are to be admitted, let them be put in the "dangerous ward," alias, the Independent Section.
The only third course is the present one, that of Editorial compromise. Martineau writes much that we can agree with and admire. Newman ditto, J. S. Mill still more, Froude a little less and so on. These men can write more openly in the Westminster than anywhere else. They are amongst the world's vanguard, though not all in the foremost line; it is good for the world, therefore, that they should have every facility for speaking out. Ergo, since each can't have a periodical to himself, it is good that there should be one which is common to them -- id est, the Westminster. The grand mistake with respect to this plan is the paragraph in the Prospectus which announces the Independent Section and which thus makes the Editors responsible for everything outside that railing -- Ah me! how wise we all are apr'e8s coup.
If we don't have Lewes's article on Lamarck, I think you had better sound him when he comes back and see what hope there is in him for October. 158 Defective as his articles are, they are the best we can get of the kind.
An article on Chalmers 159 would not be [light.] It is important that this Hereditary Transmission business should be settled as soon as possible, and so I shall tell Combe, that we may know whether we want I article or 2. Apropos of Combe, I think you are too sore on the subject of the [Copyright] -- you did not tell him the terms when you agreed that he should write. Besides for your purposes his article is a bone picked quite clean -- let him use it up in his Papin's digester 160 if he will.
It is amusing to see J. Martineau so confidently setting down the Niebuhr article as Newman's and so deluding himself into praising it. 161 It is to me the most entirely satisfactory article in the number. I thought Lewes's criticism in the Leader 162 very poor and undiscriminating.
The publishing world seems utterly stagnant -- nothing coming out which would do as a peg for an article. I am running on, scribbling to no purpose and you will hardly thank me. Miss Hennell writes the following opinion of the English article: 163 "I have just read Syme's Eng. article. Most of it is very good; whenever he is in earnest he is good. But in the theological it is mostly slash and scoff, without giving us any confidence that he has any opinions of his own, and in other parts his style is quite too coarse, especially Nell Gwyn. One feels that he does not write as a gentleman." I congratulate you on your ability to be cheerful malgr'e9 tout.
Yours etc.
Marian Evans.
Signature
Marian Evans.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Chapman, Broadstairs, [24-25 July 1852], 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/92775