GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 27 November [1847]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 27 November [1847]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 27 November [1847]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1847-11-27
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 27 November [1847]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1847. Extracts published: Cross, I, 167-169.
Foleshill November 27.
How are you, meine Geliebte, and how do you like Lelia, 678 of which you have never spoken one word? I want a letter "to my own cheek," because you are not quite the same Sara to me that you are to Cara, and I like my Sara best. I am provoked with you for being in the least pleased with Tancred, but if you have found out any lofty meaning in it or any true picturing of life, tell it me and I will recant.
I have found two new readers of Strauss. One a lady at Leamington who is also reading the Inquiry, but likes Strauss better! No great good will come of her, but it is better for people to have a reason for their unbelief. 679 The other is John Sibree who is in my good graces again. I have not seen him since he has read it, but his sister tells me that he says "it is most clever and ingenious, and that no one whose faith rests only on the common foundation can withstand it." I think he may safely say that his faith rests on an uncommon foundation. The book will certainly give him a lift in the right direction from its critical, logical character -- just the opposite of his own. I confess to a fit of destructiveness just now which might have been more easily gratified if I had lived in the days of iconoclasm -- for now alas! men's idols are to be demolished only by wit and wisdom and divine enthusiasm.
I was interested the other day in talking to Miss Caroline Congreve, a young lady who lives in a nest of clergymen, her brothers, but not of the evangelical school. 680 She had been reading Blanco White's life 681 and seems to have had her spirit stirred within her, as every one's must be who reads the book with any power of appreciation. She is unable to account to herself for the results at which Blanco White arrived with his earnestness and love of truth and she asked me if I had come to the same conclusions.
I think "Live and teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and learn." We must teach either for good or evil, and if we use our inward light as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and trim it well our teaching must in the end be for good.
We are growing old together, are we not? I am growing happier too and I only want the assurance that you are to make me contented.
I am amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel 682 as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, rumbustical beasts with their horns -- the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars seem like my passions and vain fancies which are to be knocked down one after the other -- until all is subdued into a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides -- the spirit of love -- the Catholicism of the Universe -- if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase. It has a meaning for my sage noddle.
What is the use of writing so stupid a letter to you? Certainly not to do you any good, but let it do me good by procuring me a wee note, just as an outward and visible sign to feed my faith.
Thy
Pollian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1847. Extracts published: Cross, I, 167-169.
Foleshill November 27.
How are you, meine Geliebte, and how do you like Lelia, 678 of which you have never spoken one word? I want a letter "to my own cheek," because you are not quite the same Sara to me that you are to Cara, and I like my Sara best. I am provoked with you for being in the least pleased with Tancred, but if you have found out any lofty meaning in it or any true picturing of life, tell it me and I will recant.
I have found two new readers of Strauss. One a lady at Leamington who is also reading the Inquiry, but likes Strauss better! No great good will come of her, but it is better for people to have a reason for their unbelief. 679 The other is John Sibree who is in my good graces again. I have not seen him since he has read it, but his sister tells me that he says "it is most clever and ingenious, and that no one whose faith rests only on the common foundation can withstand it." I think he may safely say that his faith rests on an uncommon foundation. The book will certainly give him a lift in the right direction from its critical, logical character -- just the opposite of his own. I confess to a fit of destructiveness just now which might have been more easily gratified if I had lived in the days of iconoclasm -- for now alas! men's idols are to be demolished only by wit and wisdom and divine enthusiasm.
I was interested the other day in talking to Miss Caroline Congreve, a young lady who lives in a nest of clergymen, her brothers, but not of the evangelical school. 680 She had been reading Blanco White's life 681 and seems to have had her spirit stirred within her, as every one's must be who reads the book with any power of appreciation. She is unable to account to herself for the results at which Blanco White arrived with his earnestness and love of truth and she asked me if I had come to the same conclusions.
I think "Live and teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and learn." We must teach either for good or evil, and if we use our inward light as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and trim it well our teaching must in the end be for good.
We are growing old together, are we not? I am growing happier too and I only want the assurance that you are to make me contented.
I am amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel 682 as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, rumbustical beasts with their horns -- the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars seem like my passions and vain fancies which are to be knocked down one after the other -- until all is subdued into a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides -- the spirit of love -- the Catholicism of the Universe -- if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase. It has a meaning for my sage noddle.
What is the use of writing so stupid a letter to you? Certainly not to do you any good, but let it do me good by procuring me a wee note, just as an outward and visible sign to feed my faith.
Thy
Pollian.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, 27 November [1847], 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/93920