GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 27-28 August 1860]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 27-28 August 1860]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 27-28 August 1860]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1860-08-27–<br /> 1860-08-28
Place
[Wandsworth]
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 27-28 August 1860]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Aug. 27. 60. Extracts published: Cross, II, 268-271.
My dear Sara
I am very sorry that anything I have written should have pained you. That certainly is the result I should most seek to avoid in the very slight communication which we are able to keep up -- necessarily under extremely imperfect acquaintance with each other's present self.
My first letter to you about your book, 618 after having read it through, was as simple and sincere a statement of the main impressions it had produced on me, as I knew how to write in a few words. My second letter, in which I unhappily used a formula in order to express to you in briefest phrase my difficulty in discerning the justice of your analogical argument, as I understood it, was written from no other impulse than the desire to show you that I did not neglect your abstract just sent to me. The said formula was entirely deprived of its application by the statement in your next letter that you used the word "essence" in another sense than the one hitherto received in philosophical writing on the question as to the nature of our knowledge; and the explanation given of your meaning in your last letter shows me -- unless I am plunging into further mistake -- that you mean nothing but what I fully believe. My offensive formula was written under the supposition that your conclusion meant something which it apparently did not mean.
It is probable enough that I was stupid, but I should be distressed to think that the discipline of life had been of so little use to me as to leave me with a tendency to leap at once to the attitude of a critic, instead of trying first to be a learner from every book written with sincere labour.
Mr. Spencer lunched with us, as I think I told you, before his departure for Scotland, and was in very good spirits at the aspect of his subscription list. We spoke of your book, and as far [as] I was able to gather, he was in the same position towards it as myself -- except that he had not read it through. He implied that he found in it much ingenious thought, and especially an admirable moral spirit, but had, so far as he had looked into it, found some difficulty in seizing your meaning and in perceiving the consistency of certain phraseology with previously stated propositions.
Will you tell Mr. Bray that we are quitting our present house in order to be nearer town for Charley's sake, who has an appointment in the Post Office; and our time will be arduously occupied during the next few weeks in arrangements to that end. So that our acceptance of the pleasant proposition to visit Sydenham for a while is impossible. We have advertised for a house near Regent's Park, having just found a gentleman and lady ready to take our present one off our hands. They want to come in on quarter day, so that we have no time to spare.
Mrs. Congreve, who has just returned from the neighbourhood of Coventry, brought me the sad news, which you confirmed, of continued and even heightened distress there. One can't think of the effect of the rain on one's own pleasure -- the thought of the heavy suffering it is likely to cause for those whose lives are so far less pleasurable than ours at the best of times, urges itself before every other. It is piteous to see the laid corn, and then hear the rain pouring in the still night!
I have been reading this morning for my spiritual good, Emerson's "Man the Reformer," 619 which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning. My heart goes out with venerating gratitude to that mild face which I daresay is smiling on some one as beneficently as it one day did on me years and years ago.
I forgot to tell you that I 'abmet'bb saw Miss Frances Carter 620 at Mrs. Bodichon's some time ago. Her sickliness and deformity attract a sympathy which her manners do not encourage. I spoke to her of you but she said you were "Alice's friend." Perhaps the unengaging manners are only another outside trial that Nature has laid on her -- misrepresenting her inward self.
Do not write again about opinions on large questions, dear Sara. The liability to mutual misconception which attends such correspondence -- especially in my case, who can only write with brevity and haste -- makes me dread it greatly, and I think there is no benefit derivable to you to compensate for the presence of that dread in me. You do not know me well enough as I am (according to the doctrine of development which you have yourself expounded) to have the materials for interpreting my imperfect expressions.
Tuesday. How comforting to see the sun again for the third day! I add a few lines this morning to say, that I have told you as well as I could the gist of what Mr. Spencer said about your book, because you appeared to ask me; but pray do not write or say anything to him on the strength of my report. He would perhaps prefer that you should only have his opinions when he has been able to read you more fully, and his health has been of late so barely sufficient for his own work, that I fancy he will want as much of his time as possible while he is in Scotland to be given up to pure relaxation and oblivion of difficult questions. You know, he is at no time a great reader -- perhaps I should say, he is the minimum of a reader, except for special purposes of his own.
I think you would spare yourself some pain if you would attribute to your friends a larger comprehension of ideas, and a larger acquaintance with them, than you appear to do. I should imagine that many of them, or at least some of them, share with you, much more fully than you seem to suppose, in the interest and hope you derive from the Doctrine of Development, with its geometrical progression towards fuller and fuller being.
Surely it is a part of human piety we should all cultivate, not to form conclusions, on slight and dubious evidence, as to other people's "tone of mind," or to regard particular mistakes as a proof of general moral incapacity to understand us. I suppose such a tendency to large conclusions about others is part of the original sin we are all born with, for I have continually to check it in myself.
Ever yours with old affection,
M. E. Lewes.
My love to Cara and Mr. Bray, and joy in their joy over the "insides." I wish there were no sorrowful outsides for me to share their pain in them. Ever yours, M. E. L.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Aug. 27. 60. Extracts published: Cross, II, 268-271.
My dear Sara
I am very sorry that anything I have written should have pained you. That certainly is the result I should most seek to avoid in the very slight communication which we are able to keep up -- necessarily under extremely imperfect acquaintance with each other's present self.
My first letter to you about your book, 618 after having read it through, was as simple and sincere a statement of the main impressions it had produced on me, as I knew how to write in a few words. My second letter, in which I unhappily used a formula in order to express to you in briefest phrase my difficulty in discerning the justice of your analogical argument, as I understood it, was written from no other impulse than the desire to show you that I did not neglect your abstract just sent to me. The said formula was entirely deprived of its application by the statement in your next letter that you used the word "essence" in another sense than the one hitherto received in philosophical writing on the question as to the nature of our knowledge; and the explanation given of your meaning in your last letter shows me -- unless I am plunging into further mistake -- that you mean nothing but what I fully believe. My offensive formula was written under the supposition that your conclusion meant something which it apparently did not mean.
It is probable enough that I was stupid, but I should be distressed to think that the discipline of life had been of so little use to me as to leave me with a tendency to leap at once to the attitude of a critic, instead of trying first to be a learner from every book written with sincere labour.
Mr. Spencer lunched with us, as I think I told you, before his departure for Scotland, and was in very good spirits at the aspect of his subscription list. We spoke of your book, and as far [as] I was able to gather, he was in the same position towards it as myself -- except that he had not read it through. He implied that he found in it much ingenious thought, and especially an admirable moral spirit, but had, so far as he had looked into it, found some difficulty in seizing your meaning and in perceiving the consistency of certain phraseology with previously stated propositions.
Will you tell Mr. Bray that we are quitting our present house in order to be nearer town for Charley's sake, who has an appointment in the Post Office; and our time will be arduously occupied during the next few weeks in arrangements to that end. So that our acceptance of the pleasant proposition to visit Sydenham for a while is impossible. We have advertised for a house near Regent's Park, having just found a gentleman and lady ready to take our present one off our hands. They want to come in on quarter day, so that we have no time to spare.
Mrs. Congreve, who has just returned from the neighbourhood of Coventry, brought me the sad news, which you confirmed, of continued and even heightened distress there. One can't think of the effect of the rain on one's own pleasure -- the thought of the heavy suffering it is likely to cause for those whose lives are so far less pleasurable than ours at the best of times, urges itself before every other. It is piteous to see the laid corn, and then hear the rain pouring in the still night!
I have been reading this morning for my spiritual good, Emerson's "Man the Reformer," 619 which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning. My heart goes out with venerating gratitude to that mild face which I daresay is smiling on some one as beneficently as it one day did on me years and years ago.
I forgot to tell you that I 'abmet'bb saw Miss Frances Carter 620 at Mrs. Bodichon's some time ago. Her sickliness and deformity attract a sympathy which her manners do not encourage. I spoke to her of you but she said you were "Alice's friend." Perhaps the unengaging manners are only another outside trial that Nature has laid on her -- misrepresenting her inward self.
Do not write again about opinions on large questions, dear Sara. The liability to mutual misconception which attends such correspondence -- especially in my case, who can only write with brevity and haste -- makes me dread it greatly, and I think there is no benefit derivable to you to compensate for the presence of that dread in me. You do not know me well enough as I am (according to the doctrine of development which you have yourself expounded) to have the materials for interpreting my imperfect expressions.
Tuesday. How comforting to see the sun again for the third day! I add a few lines this morning to say, that I have told you as well as I could the gist of what Mr. Spencer said about your book, because you appeared to ask me; but pray do not write or say anything to him on the strength of my report. He would perhaps prefer that you should only have his opinions when he has been able to read you more fully, and his health has been of late so barely sufficient for his own work, that I fancy he will want as much of his time as possible while he is in Scotland to be given up to pure relaxation and oblivion of difficult questions. You know, he is at no time a great reader -- perhaps I should say, he is the minimum of a reader, except for special purposes of his own.
I think you would spare yourself some pain if you would attribute to your friends a larger comprehension of ideas, and a larger acquaintance with them, than you appear to do. I should imagine that many of them, or at least some of them, share with you, much more fully than you seem to suppose, in the interest and hope you derive from the Doctrine of Development, with its geometrical progression towards fuller and fuller being.
Surely it is a part of human piety we should all cultivate, not to form conclusions, on slight and dubious evidence, as to other people's "tone of mind," or to regard particular mistakes as a proof of general moral incapacity to understand us. I suppose such a tendency to large conclusions about others is part of the original sin we are all born with, for I have continually to check it in myself.
Ever yours with old affection,
M. E. Lewes.
My love to Cara and Mr. Bray, and joy in their joy over the "insides." I wish there were no sorrowful outsides for me to share their pain in them. Ever yours, M. E. L.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 27-28 August 1860], 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/93876