GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [30 March 1840]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [30 March 1840]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [30 March 1840]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria Lewis
Date(s)
- 1840-03-30
Place
GRIFF
Letter Content
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [30 March 1840]
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering. Postmark: COVENTRY | M 31 | 1840. Extracts published: Cross, I, 62-65.
Griff Monday Evening.
My very dear Friend,
If you go on conferring favours on me I shall be so hopelessly distanced in the race, that I must e'en as I have heard some grateful people systematically do, quarrel with my Friend to be quit of the sense of obligation. Seriously I do fully estimate your kind sacrifice of precious time to my gratification and I heartily wish I could give you a kiss with my thanks at this moment, though by the bye I am forgetting that our house is now, and will be for the next two months miserably noisy and disorderly with the musical operations of masons carpenters and painters. You know how abhorrent all this is to my tastes and feelings, taking all the spice out of my favorite little epithet "This working day world": 184 I can no longer use it figuratively. How impressive must the gradual rise of Solomon's Temple have been! Each prepared mass of virgin marble laid in reverential silence. I fancy Heber has compared it to the growth of a Palm. 185
Your nice miniature chart which I shall carefully treasure up has quite satisfied me that Dr. Pearson at least has not realized my conceptions, though it has left me still dubious as to my own power of doing so. I will just (if you can bear to hear more of the matter) give you an idea of the plan, which may have partly faded from your memory. The series of perpendicular columns will successively contain, the Roman Emperors with their dates, the political and religious state of the Jews, the bishops, remarkable men and events in the several churches, a column being devoted to each of the chief ones, the aspect of heathenism and Judaism toward Christianity, the chronology of the Apos[tolical] and Patristical writings, schisms and heresies, General Councils, eras of corruption, under which head the remarks would be general, and I thought possibly an application of the Apocalyptic prophecies, which would merely require a few figures and not take up room. I think there must be a break in the chart after the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Empire, and I have come to a determination not to carry it beyond the first acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope, by Phocas 186 in 606 when Mahommedanism became a besom of destruction in the hand of the Lord, and completely altered the aspect of Ecclesiastical Hist[or]y. So much for this, at present, airy project, about which I hope never to teaze you more.
Mr. Harper 187 lent me a little time ago a work by the Revd W. Gresley, begging me to read it, as he thought it was calculated to make me a proselyte to the opinions it advocates. I had skimmed the book before ("Portrait of An English Churchman") but I read it attentively a second time and was pleased with the spirit of piety that breathes throughout. His last work is one in a similar style, "The English Citizen," 188 which I have cursorily read, and as they are both likely to be seen by you, I want to know your opinion of them. Mine is this: that they are sure to have a powerful influence on the minds of small readers and shallow thinkers, as, from the simplicity and clearness with which the author, by his beau idéal characters, enunciates his sentiments they furnish a magazine of easily wielded weapons for morning calling and evening party controversialists, as well as that really honest minds will be inclined to think they have found a resting-place amid the foot-balling of religious parties. But it appears to me that there is unfairness in arbitrarily selecting a train of circumstances, and a set of characters as a development of a class of opinions. In this way we might make atheism appear wonderfully calculated to promote social happiness. I remember, as I dare say you do, a very amiable atheist depicted by Bulwer in Devereux, 189 and for some time after the perusal of that book, which I read 7 or 8 years ago, I was considerably shaken by the impression that religion was not a requisite to moral excellence.
Have you not alternating seasons of mental stagnation and activity? Just such as the political economists say there must be in a nation's pecuniary condition -- all one's precious specie, time, going out to procure a stock of commodities while one's own manufactures are too paltry to be worth vending. I am just in that condition, partly I think owing to my not having met with any steel to sharpen my edge against for the last three weeks. I am going to read a volume of the Oxford Tracts and the Lyra Apostolica; 190 the former I almost shrink from the labour of conning, but the other I confess I am attracted towards by some highly poetical extracts that I have picked up in various quarters. I have just bought Mr. Keble's Christian Year, 191 a volume of sweet poetry that perhaps you know; if not it is a dish both in ingredients and cooking that would suit you. Not more than 2/6 or 3s. The fields of poesy look more lovely than ever now I have hedged myself in the geometrical regions of fact, where I can do nothing but draw parallels and measure differences in a double sense. I shall soon hate heretics as vehemently as any papist can desire, for both their wide uniformity and their narrow differences are as Chrissey would say, pestering. Certain divines enjoin us to consult ecclesiastical records for the settling of our faith, a result the very opposite to what they appear likely to produce, in my humble and narrow apprehension. I was struck yesterday with Mr. Hake's text, 2. Hosea 6 and 7 verses. They appeared partly an exact description of some of my experience. How exquisite the succeeding chapter is, the 3d I fancy, in which the Almighty covenants to bestow on His people all blessings for time and eternity! "I will betroth thee unto me" etc. Why do we yearn after a fellow mortal but because we do not live and delight in conscious union with Him who condescends to say, "Ye shall no more call me Baali or Lord, but ye shall call me Ishi, 192 my husband." Our Lord's words, "Henceforth I call you not servants but friends," 193 etc. seem to be an allusion to this text.
With respect to my own state of soul of which I have said nothing for some time, I fear that my sins or rather one particular manifestation of them, have forsaken me instead of my forsaking and abhorring them. I feel that a sight of one being whom I have not beheld except passingly since the interview I last described to you would probably upset all; but as it is, the image now seldom arises in consequence of entire occupation and, I trust in some degree, desire and prayer to be free from rebelling against Him whose I am by right, whose I would be by adoption. I endeavoured to pray for the beloved object to whom I have alluded, I must still a little while say beloved, last night and felt soothingly melted in thinking that if mine be really prayers my acquaintance with him has probably caused the first to be offered up specially in his behalf. But all this I ought not to have permitted to slip from my pen. 194
I am quite angry with those around you for letting your life be uninterrupted monotony, when they have the power of pleasantly varying it. Why does not Mr. Craig shew his superiority to the childishness and narrowness, that shew themselves in wayward jealousy on one side and stiff assumption on the other? You do not say anything of your health, hence I conclude you are tolerably well. Dear Chrissey has been staying at Warwick, a fact that will describe her state of health better than my rhetoric. Poor Mrs. Buchanan has been in anxiety about her little Anney, 195 who has been very ill. She desired me to tell you that Mrs. MacDonell has a son! The Attlebro Bazaar will take place in November next; but if you work for it, I shall blush. It is now twelve o'clock, and the obtuseness of my faculties has reached its climax. I would ask you to forgive all the nonsense and bad English I have scribbled, but that you have interdicted all such appeals. The sooner I see your handwriting the better for
Your affectionate
Polly.
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering. Postmark: COVENTRY | M 31 | 1840. Extracts published: Cross, I, 62-65.
Griff Monday Evening.
My very dear Friend,
If you go on conferring favours on me I shall be so hopelessly distanced in the race, that I must e'en as I have heard some grateful people systematically do, quarrel with my Friend to be quit of the sense of obligation. Seriously I do fully estimate your kind sacrifice of precious time to my gratification and I heartily wish I could give you a kiss with my thanks at this moment, though by the bye I am forgetting that our house is now, and will be for the next two months miserably noisy and disorderly with the musical operations of masons carpenters and painters. You know how abhorrent all this is to my tastes and feelings, taking all the spice out of my favorite little epithet "This working day world": 184 I can no longer use it figuratively. How impressive must the gradual rise of Solomon's Temple have been! Each prepared mass of virgin marble laid in reverential silence. I fancy Heber has compared it to the growth of a Palm. 185
Your nice miniature chart which I shall carefully treasure up has quite satisfied me that Dr. Pearson at least has not realized my conceptions, though it has left me still dubious as to my own power of doing so. I will just (if you can bear to hear more of the matter) give you an idea of the plan, which may have partly faded from your memory. The series of perpendicular columns will successively contain, the Roman Emperors with their dates, the political and religious state of the Jews, the bishops, remarkable men and events in the several churches, a column being devoted to each of the chief ones, the aspect of heathenism and Judaism toward Christianity, the chronology of the Apos[tolical] and Patristical writings, schisms and heresies, General Councils, eras of corruption, under which head the remarks would be general, and I thought possibly an application of the Apocalyptic prophecies, which would merely require a few figures and not take up room. I think there must be a break in the chart after the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Empire, and I have come to a determination not to carry it beyond the first acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope, by Phocas 186 in 606 when Mahommedanism became a besom of destruction in the hand of the Lord, and completely altered the aspect of Ecclesiastical Hist[or]y. So much for this, at present, airy project, about which I hope never to teaze you more.
Mr. Harper 187 lent me a little time ago a work by the Revd W. Gresley, begging me to read it, as he thought it was calculated to make me a proselyte to the opinions it advocates. I had skimmed the book before ("Portrait of An English Churchman") but I read it attentively a second time and was pleased with the spirit of piety that breathes throughout. His last work is one in a similar style, "The English Citizen," 188 which I have cursorily read, and as they are both likely to be seen by you, I want to know your opinion of them. Mine is this: that they are sure to have a powerful influence on the minds of small readers and shallow thinkers, as, from the simplicity and clearness with which the author, by his beau idéal characters, enunciates his sentiments they furnish a magazine of easily wielded weapons for morning calling and evening party controversialists, as well as that really honest minds will be inclined to think they have found a resting-place amid the foot-balling of religious parties. But it appears to me that there is unfairness in arbitrarily selecting a train of circumstances, and a set of characters as a development of a class of opinions. In this way we might make atheism appear wonderfully calculated to promote social happiness. I remember, as I dare say you do, a very amiable atheist depicted by Bulwer in Devereux, 189 and for some time after the perusal of that book, which I read 7 or 8 years ago, I was considerably shaken by the impression that religion was not a requisite to moral excellence.
Have you not alternating seasons of mental stagnation and activity? Just such as the political economists say there must be in a nation's pecuniary condition -- all one's precious specie, time, going out to procure a stock of commodities while one's own manufactures are too paltry to be worth vending. I am just in that condition, partly I think owing to my not having met with any steel to sharpen my edge against for the last three weeks. I am going to read a volume of the Oxford Tracts and the Lyra Apostolica; 190 the former I almost shrink from the labour of conning, but the other I confess I am attracted towards by some highly poetical extracts that I have picked up in various quarters. I have just bought Mr. Keble's Christian Year, 191 a volume of sweet poetry that perhaps you know; if not it is a dish both in ingredients and cooking that would suit you. Not more than 2/6 or 3s. The fields of poesy look more lovely than ever now I have hedged myself in the geometrical regions of fact, where I can do nothing but draw parallels and measure differences in a double sense. I shall soon hate heretics as vehemently as any papist can desire, for both their wide uniformity and their narrow differences are as Chrissey would say, pestering. Certain divines enjoin us to consult ecclesiastical records for the settling of our faith, a result the very opposite to what they appear likely to produce, in my humble and narrow apprehension. I was struck yesterday with Mr. Hake's text, 2. Hosea 6 and 7 verses. They appeared partly an exact description of some of my experience. How exquisite the succeeding chapter is, the 3d I fancy, in which the Almighty covenants to bestow on His people all blessings for time and eternity! "I will betroth thee unto me" etc. Why do we yearn after a fellow mortal but because we do not live and delight in conscious union with Him who condescends to say, "Ye shall no more call me Baali or Lord, but ye shall call me Ishi, 192 my husband." Our Lord's words, "Henceforth I call you not servants but friends," 193 etc. seem to be an allusion to this text.
With respect to my own state of soul of which I have said nothing for some time, I fear that my sins or rather one particular manifestation of them, have forsaken me instead of my forsaking and abhorring them. I feel that a sight of one being whom I have not beheld except passingly since the interview I last described to you would probably upset all; but as it is, the image now seldom arises in consequence of entire occupation and, I trust in some degree, desire and prayer to be free from rebelling against Him whose I am by right, whose I would be by adoption. I endeavoured to pray for the beloved object to whom I have alluded, I must still a little while say beloved, last night and felt soothingly melted in thinking that if mine be really prayers my acquaintance with him has probably caused the first to be offered up specially in his behalf. But all this I ought not to have permitted to slip from my pen. 194
I am quite angry with those around you for letting your life be uninterrupted monotony, when they have the power of pleasantly varying it. Why does not Mr. Craig shew his superiority to the childishness and narrowness, that shew themselves in wayward jealousy on one side and stiff assumption on the other? You do not say anything of your health, hence I conclude you are tolerably well. Dear Chrissey has been staying at Warwick, a fact that will describe her state of health better than my rhetoric. Poor Mrs. Buchanan has been in anxiety about her little Anney, 195 who has been very ill. She desired me to tell you that Mrs. MacDonell has a son! The Attlebro Bazaar will take place in November next; but if you work for it, I shall blush. It is now twelve o'clock, and the obtuseness of my faculties has reached its climax. I would ask you to forgive all the nonsense and bad English I have scribbled, but that you have interdicted all such appeals. The sooner I see your handwriting the better for
Your affectionate
Polly.
Signature
Polly.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [30 March 1840], 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/92893