GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 13 July [1864]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 13 July [1864]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 13 July [1864]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1864-07-13
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 13 July [1864]
MS: Coventry City Libraries. Envelope: Miss Hennell | 3 Barr's Hill Terrace | Coventry. Postmark: LONDON-N.W. | 3 | JY 13 | 64. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | North Bank, | Regents Park.
July 13
Dear Sara
Your letter interested me deeply. I can't help thinking very often of the time when Nelly was a bright little child, playing with Fly on the lawn. That part of her life, I think, was really joyous -- and how much you did for her then! I used to feel your elevation above me continually in the attitude of mind you showed about Nelly's education and your sense of your relation towards childhood generally. These are the lasting things -- the true thoughts, the true feelings, the good deeds, which live in others even when they have gone quite away from the mind in which they were born, so that sometimes the man or woman who is sitting in desolation is doing the office of a glorified Saint for those who remember. Surely that is a strange perversion into which men's minds have been led by long and various causes -- to think that unless life can be made perfect, unless the prospects of humanity can be made to appear the very best, strong moral motives are gone! As if the very absence of that highest security were not a more urgent reason for at least diminishing the pressure of evil, for worshipping the goodness and the great endeavours that are at least a partial salvation, a partial redemption of the world? 277
The other day, Miss Marshall called on us, to our great pleasure, and so certified to me what I was in doubt about -- that she will go on living in London. I was very glad of that, and I hope now to see her oftener than of old, when she had imprisoning duties. 278
I have been reading Newman's Apologia pro Vita Su'e2, 279 with such absorbing interest that I found it impossible to forsake the book until I had finished it. I don't know whether the affair between him and Kingsley has interested you, or whether you have shared at all my view of it. I have been made so indignant by Kingsley's mixture of arrogance, coarse impertinence and unscrupulousness with real intellectual incompetence, that my first interest in Newman's answer arose from a wish to see what I consider thoroughly vicious writing thoroughly castigated. But the Apology now mainly affects me as the revelation of a life -- how different in form from one's own, yet with how close a fellowship in its needs and burthens -- I mean spiritual needs and burthens. At the end there is a beautiful letter written by our old acquaintance Dr. Ullathorne, Bishop of Birmingham, 280 intended as a public testimony to Newman's active life since he entered the Catholic Church.
Yesterday we went to see Holman Hunt's picture which he has been labouring at intermittently of course for five or six years. He calls it the Afterglow in Egypt, but the chief thing is what the afterglow shines upon -- a Nubian girl carrying a bundle of gleaned wheat which has attracted a flight of pigeons towards her. One pigeon clutches the bundle and pecks there -- the others are about her feet. She and the wheat and the pigeons are so much physical life and beauty ripened under the rich sunlight. It is a bit of existence, not of action, and is painted with immense elaboration, yet with shortcomings in the midst of elaboration that prevent it from being a triumph. That is always rather a sad thing to say when there has been so much study, so much hard work, so much heroism as must always go to the doing of anything difficult. But Inspiration is a rare incalculable thing -- it will flash out sometimes in a mere bit of sky and water and weed, and leave you only to wonder at its absence in a picture where all sorts of rare and beautiful things have been brought together and studied with immeasurable pains.
How your story about Harriet amused me! Mr. Lewes is nearly the same with our bull-dog as Harriet with her cat. "Ben" is master of us all, and the most momentous subject must be deferred if Ben wants a stick thrown for him.
My best love and deep sympathy to Cara and Mr. Bray. Write again on the first movement of your will that way.
Ever thine
Pollian.
MS: Coventry City Libraries. Envelope: Miss Hennell | 3 Barr's Hill Terrace | Coventry. Postmark: LONDON-N.W. | 3 | JY 13 | 64. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | North Bank, | Regents Park.
July 13
Dear Sara
Your letter interested me deeply. I can't help thinking very often of the time when Nelly was a bright little child, playing with Fly on the lawn. That part of her life, I think, was really joyous -- and how much you did for her then! I used to feel your elevation above me continually in the attitude of mind you showed about Nelly's education and your sense of your relation towards childhood generally. These are the lasting things -- the true thoughts, the true feelings, the good deeds, which live in others even when they have gone quite away from the mind in which they were born, so that sometimes the man or woman who is sitting in desolation is doing the office of a glorified Saint for those who remember. Surely that is a strange perversion into which men's minds have been led by long and various causes -- to think that unless life can be made perfect, unless the prospects of humanity can be made to appear the very best, strong moral motives are gone! As if the very absence of that highest security were not a more urgent reason for at least diminishing the pressure of evil, for worshipping the goodness and the great endeavours that are at least a partial salvation, a partial redemption of the world? 277
The other day, Miss Marshall called on us, to our great pleasure, and so certified to me what I was in doubt about -- that she will go on living in London. I was very glad of that, and I hope now to see her oftener than of old, when she had imprisoning duties. 278
I have been reading Newman's Apologia pro Vita Su'e2, 279 with such absorbing interest that I found it impossible to forsake the book until I had finished it. I don't know whether the affair between him and Kingsley has interested you, or whether you have shared at all my view of it. I have been made so indignant by Kingsley's mixture of arrogance, coarse impertinence and unscrupulousness with real intellectual incompetence, that my first interest in Newman's answer arose from a wish to see what I consider thoroughly vicious writing thoroughly castigated. But the Apology now mainly affects me as the revelation of a life -- how different in form from one's own, yet with how close a fellowship in its needs and burthens -- I mean spiritual needs and burthens. At the end there is a beautiful letter written by our old acquaintance Dr. Ullathorne, Bishop of Birmingham, 280 intended as a public testimony to Newman's active life since he entered the Catholic Church.
Yesterday we went to see Holman Hunt's picture which he has been labouring at intermittently of course for five or six years. He calls it the Afterglow in Egypt, but the chief thing is what the afterglow shines upon -- a Nubian girl carrying a bundle of gleaned wheat which has attracted a flight of pigeons towards her. One pigeon clutches the bundle and pecks there -- the others are about her feet. She and the wheat and the pigeons are so much physical life and beauty ripened under the rich sunlight. It is a bit of existence, not of action, and is painted with immense elaboration, yet with shortcomings in the midst of elaboration that prevent it from being a triumph. That is always rather a sad thing to say when there has been so much study, so much hard work, so much heroism as must always go to the doing of anything difficult. But Inspiration is a rare incalculable thing -- it will flash out sometimes in a mere bit of sky and water and weed, and leave you only to wonder at its absence in a picture where all sorts of rare and beautiful things have been brought together and studied with immeasurable pains.
How your story about Harriet amused me! Mr. Lewes is nearly the same with our bull-dog as Harriet with her cat. "Ben" is master of us all, and the most momentous subject must be deferred if Ben wants a stick thrown for him.
My best love and deep sympathy to Cara and Mr. Bray. Write again on the first movement of your will that way.
Ever thine
Pollian.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 13 July [1864], 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/93989