GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 August 1866
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 August 1866
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 August 1866
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1866-08-10
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 August 1866
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, 11, 436-439.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
August 10. 66.
My dear Sara
When I read Mr. Bray's letter I felt it to be a perversity in things that you should all three have made a long stay at Sydenham precisely during my absence. But I must grumble at nothing, since I have had a delightful holiday, and find my double self very much the better for it.
Mr. Bray will wonder less that Mr. Lewes could be so long away when he knows that he had arranged the programmes of all the numbers beforehand, save for such circumstantial demands as Mr. Anthony Trollope undertook to meet; and that there is always on the spot a subeditor
(Mr. Dennis) 512 who has the unfailing interest of a shareholder in the proprietorship of the Review. Mr. Lewes is much better, and I am quite well -- "looking," Grace says, "just like my portrait," from which I conclude that my face has some of that "fleshiness" which Cara found objectionable.
Please to understand that this account of our condition is an advance which you are expected to repay by an equivalent account of yourself and belongings.
We made a great round in our journeying. From Antwerp to Rotterdam, The Hague, Leyden, Amsterdam, Cologne. Then up the Rhine to Coblenz, and thence to Schwalbach, where we stayed a fortnight. From Schwalbach to Schlangenbad where we stayed, till we feared the boats would cease to go to and fro, and in fact only left just in time to get down the Rhine to Bonn by the Dutch steamer. From Bonn, after two days, we went to Aix; then to dear old Li'e8ge, where we had been together thirteen years before: and, to avoid the King of the Belgians, ten minutes backward to the baths of pretty Chaudfontaine, where we remained three days. Then to Louvain, Ghent and Bruges, and last of all to Ostend, where we waited for a fine day and calm sea until we secured -- a very rough passage indeed. Ought we not to be a great deal wiser and more efficient personages, or else to be ashamed of ourselves? Unhappily this last alternative is not a compensation for wisdom.
I thought of you -- to mention one occasion amongst many -- when we had the good fortune at Antwerp to see a placard announcing that the company from the Oberammergau, Bavaria, would represent that Sunday evening the Lebensgeschichte of our Saviour Christ at the Th'e9'e2tre des Vari'e9t'e9s. I remembered that you had seen the representation with deep interest, and these actors are doubtless the successors of those you saw. Of course we went to the theatre. And the Christ was, without exaggeration, beautiful. All the rest was inferior and might even have had a painful approach to the ludicrous, but both the person and action of the Jesus were fine enough to overpower all meaner impressions. Mr. Lewes, who, you know, is keenly alive to everything "stagey" in physiognomy and gesture, felt what I am saying quite as much as I did, and was much moved. 513
I forgot what was your exact route to Cologne, and how far you saw the Belgian towns, besides Antwerp. To me, these towns remain superior in interest to anything in Holland. Rotterdam with the grand approach to it by the broad river, the rich brick of the houses, the canals uniformly planted with trees and crowded with the bright brown masts of the Dutch boats, is far finer than Amsterdam. The colour of Amsterdam is ugly: the houses are of a chocolate colour, almost black (an artificial tinge given to the bricks) and the woodwork on them screams out in ugly patches of cream-colour; the canals have no trees along their sides, and the boats are infrequent. We looked about for the very Portuguese Synagogue where Spinoza was nearly assassinated as he came from worship. But it no longer exists. 514 There are no less than three Portuguese Synagogues now -- very large and handsome. And in the evening we went to see the worship there. Not a woman was present, but of devout men not a few, curious reversal of what one sees in other temples. The chanting and the swaying about of the bodies -- almost a wriggling -- are not beautiful to the sense, but I fairly cried at witnessing this faint symbolism of a religion of sublime far-off memories. The skulls of St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins seem a modern suggestion compared with the Jewish Synagogue.
I know you have been at Kissingen, so you are very well acquainted with the nature of the German Bath, and can imagine the sort of life led at Schwalbach and Schlangenbad. Our life was led chiefly in the beech woods which we had all to ourselves, the guests usually confining themselves to the nearer promenades. The guests of course, were few in that serious time, and between war and cholera we felt our position as health-and-pleasure-seekers somewhat contemptible.
The Congreves dined with us yesterday. They intend to settle in London -- a great sacrifice to duty -- as soon as they can sell their present house. The delightful relief of having got through the medical examination has made a young man again of Dr. Congreve.
Our Gertrude expects to have her baby at the end of September and is remarkably well. And we have found no greater domestic calamity on our return, than the distortion of our white blinds and curtains by cleaning, and the extortions of a wicked gardener's bill. I wish Mr. Bray did not hint at vexations of this latter sort for him too. We enter thoroughly into his need for quiet above all things. I fear age is making us too impatient of our fellow-men's society.
There is no end to what one could say, if one did not feel that long letters cut pieces not to be spared out of the solid day. I think I have earned that you should write me one of those perfect letters in which you make me see everything you like about yourself and others. Best love to all.
Always your
Pollian.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, 11, 436-439.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
August 10. 66.
My dear Sara
When I read Mr. Bray's letter I felt it to be a perversity in things that you should all three have made a long stay at Sydenham precisely during my absence. But I must grumble at nothing, since I have had a delightful holiday, and find my double self very much the better for it.
Mr. Bray will wonder less that Mr. Lewes could be so long away when he knows that he had arranged the programmes of all the numbers beforehand, save for such circumstantial demands as Mr. Anthony Trollope undertook to meet; and that there is always on the spot a subeditor
(Mr. Dennis) 512 who has the unfailing interest of a shareholder in the proprietorship of the Review. Mr. Lewes is much better, and I am quite well -- "looking," Grace says, "just like my portrait," from which I conclude that my face has some of that "fleshiness" which Cara found objectionable.
Please to understand that this account of our condition is an advance which you are expected to repay by an equivalent account of yourself and belongings.
We made a great round in our journeying. From Antwerp to Rotterdam, The Hague, Leyden, Amsterdam, Cologne. Then up the Rhine to Coblenz, and thence to Schwalbach, where we stayed a fortnight. From Schwalbach to Schlangenbad where we stayed, till we feared the boats would cease to go to and fro, and in fact only left just in time to get down the Rhine to Bonn by the Dutch steamer. From Bonn, after two days, we went to Aix; then to dear old Li'e8ge, where we had been together thirteen years before: and, to avoid the King of the Belgians, ten minutes backward to the baths of pretty Chaudfontaine, where we remained three days. Then to Louvain, Ghent and Bruges, and last of all to Ostend, where we waited for a fine day and calm sea until we secured -- a very rough passage indeed. Ought we not to be a great deal wiser and more efficient personages, or else to be ashamed of ourselves? Unhappily this last alternative is not a compensation for wisdom.
I thought of you -- to mention one occasion amongst many -- when we had the good fortune at Antwerp to see a placard announcing that the company from the Oberammergau, Bavaria, would represent that Sunday evening the Lebensgeschichte of our Saviour Christ at the Th'e9'e2tre des Vari'e9t'e9s. I remembered that you had seen the representation with deep interest, and these actors are doubtless the successors of those you saw. Of course we went to the theatre. And the Christ was, without exaggeration, beautiful. All the rest was inferior and might even have had a painful approach to the ludicrous, but both the person and action of the Jesus were fine enough to overpower all meaner impressions. Mr. Lewes, who, you know, is keenly alive to everything "stagey" in physiognomy and gesture, felt what I am saying quite as much as I did, and was much moved. 513
I forgot what was your exact route to Cologne, and how far you saw the Belgian towns, besides Antwerp. To me, these towns remain superior in interest to anything in Holland. Rotterdam with the grand approach to it by the broad river, the rich brick of the houses, the canals uniformly planted with trees and crowded with the bright brown masts of the Dutch boats, is far finer than Amsterdam. The colour of Amsterdam is ugly: the houses are of a chocolate colour, almost black (an artificial tinge given to the bricks) and the woodwork on them screams out in ugly patches of cream-colour; the canals have no trees along their sides, and the boats are infrequent. We looked about for the very Portuguese Synagogue where Spinoza was nearly assassinated as he came from worship. But it no longer exists. 514 There are no less than three Portuguese Synagogues now -- very large and handsome. And in the evening we went to see the worship there. Not a woman was present, but of devout men not a few, curious reversal of what one sees in other temples. The chanting and the swaying about of the bodies -- almost a wriggling -- are not beautiful to the sense, but I fairly cried at witnessing this faint symbolism of a religion of sublime far-off memories. The skulls of St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins seem a modern suggestion compared with the Jewish Synagogue.
I know you have been at Kissingen, so you are very well acquainted with the nature of the German Bath, and can imagine the sort of life led at Schwalbach and Schlangenbad. Our life was led chiefly in the beech woods which we had all to ourselves, the guests usually confining themselves to the nearer promenades. The guests of course, were few in that serious time, and between war and cholera we felt our position as health-and-pleasure-seekers somewhat contemptible.
The Congreves dined with us yesterday. They intend to settle in London -- a great sacrifice to duty -- as soon as they can sell their present house. The delightful relief of having got through the medical examination has made a young man again of Dr. Congreve.
Our Gertrude expects to have her baby at the end of September and is remarkably well. And we have found no greater domestic calamity on our return, than the distortion of our white blinds and curtains by cleaning, and the extortions of a wicked gardener's bill. I wish Mr. Bray did not hint at vexations of this latter sort for him too. We enter thoroughly into his need for quiet above all things. I fear age is making us too impatient of our fellow-men's society.
There is no end to what one could say, if one did not feel that long letters cut pieces not to be spared out of the solid day. I think I have earned that you should write me one of those perfect letters in which you make me see everything you like about yourself and others. Best love to all.
Always your
Pollian.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 August 1866, 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/93982