GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 1 February [1848]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 1 February [1848]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 1 February [1848]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1848-02-01
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 1 February [1848]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1848. Extracts published: Cross, I, 184-185.
Foleshill | February 1st.
My dear Sara
Mr. Bray has brought to me [des mots bien durs] on your part -- "that you never hear from me, and that therefore I am nothing to you now." Has it ever been understood between us that our correspondence should represent our friendship? If so have there not been periods which might have led me to pronounce the same sentence of death to our love? I imagined that you of all other persons would be the one to understand that without writing to you it would be possible for me to go on loving you all the more as the months passed. I can only say that if you were clairvoyante you would see the proof of that possibility in my heart or stomach or bowels or pineal gland or adhesiveness or cerebral mass in toto. In my view there are but two kinds of regular correspondence possible -- one of simple affection which gives a picture of all the details painful and pleasurable that a loving heart pines after -- and this we carry on through the medium of Cara -- or one purely moral and intellectual carried on for the sake of ghostly edification, in which each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on all sorts of subjects in order to send a weekly or fortnightly packet, as so much duty and self-castigation. I have lately begun such a correspondence by way of entering on a career of virtue, 685 but I have always been given to understand that such Lady-Jane-Grey-like works were your abhorrence. However, let me know what you would like -- what would make you continue to hold me in loving remembrance or convince you that you are a bright evergreen in my garden of pleasant plants. Behold me ready to tear off my right hand or pluck out my right eye (metaphorically of course -- I speak to an experienced exegetist, comme dirait notre Strauss) or write reams of letters full of interesting falsehoods or very dull truths -- anything, so you will revoke those cruel words. If I did not hear of you every week, do you think I should rest without writing to you? I do not feel separated from you -- I am ever with you.
We have always concluded that our correspondence should be of the third possible kind -- one of impulse which is necessarily irregular as the northern lights. I confess that I am a wretch for not having had the impulse since your last letter which gave me all sorts of pleasure. I have been a horrid stagnant pool where you can hear nothing but croakings of miserable batrachian reptiles -- or perhaps more like a wandering star going fast outside the blessed realms of light to whom was reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. 686 Comment n'as-tu pas deviné tout cela? The suffering are never expansive -- when they begin to be so the crisis is past. But pardon! pardon! Henceforth I will be as a dove whose wings are wings of silver and her feathers like gold 687 and I will have a bosom all soft feathers against which you shall lean your dear cheek and heart for evermore.
Pollian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1848. Extracts published: Cross, I, 184-185.
Foleshill | February 1st.
My dear Sara
Mr. Bray has brought to me [des mots bien durs] on your part -- "that you never hear from me, and that therefore I am nothing to you now." Has it ever been understood between us that our correspondence should represent our friendship? If so have there not been periods which might have led me to pronounce the same sentence of death to our love? I imagined that you of all other persons would be the one to understand that without writing to you it would be possible for me to go on loving you all the more as the months passed. I can only say that if you were clairvoyante you would see the proof of that possibility in my heart or stomach or bowels or pineal gland or adhesiveness or cerebral mass in toto. In my view there are but two kinds of regular correspondence possible -- one of simple affection which gives a picture of all the details painful and pleasurable that a loving heart pines after -- and this we carry on through the medium of Cara -- or one purely moral and intellectual carried on for the sake of ghostly edification, in which each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on all sorts of subjects in order to send a weekly or fortnightly packet, as so much duty and self-castigation. I have lately begun such a correspondence by way of entering on a career of virtue, 685 but I have always been given to understand that such Lady-Jane-Grey-like works were your abhorrence. However, let me know what you would like -- what would make you continue to hold me in loving remembrance or convince you that you are a bright evergreen in my garden of pleasant plants. Behold me ready to tear off my right hand or pluck out my right eye (metaphorically of course -- I speak to an experienced exegetist, comme dirait notre Strauss) or write reams of letters full of interesting falsehoods or very dull truths -- anything, so you will revoke those cruel words. If I did not hear of you every week, do you think I should rest without writing to you? I do not feel separated from you -- I am ever with you.
We have always concluded that our correspondence should be of the third possible kind -- one of impulse which is necessarily irregular as the northern lights. I confess that I am a wretch for not having had the impulse since your last letter which gave me all sorts of pleasure. I have been a horrid stagnant pool where you can hear nothing but croakings of miserable batrachian reptiles -- or perhaps more like a wandering star going fast outside the blessed realms of light to whom was reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. 686 Comment n'as-tu pas deviné tout cela? The suffering are never expansive -- when they begin to be so the crisis is past. But pardon! pardon! Henceforth I will be as a dove whose wings are wings of silver and her feathers like gold 687 and I will have a bosom all soft feathers against which you shall lean your dear cheek and heart for evermore.
Pollian.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 1 February [1848], 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/93912