GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 7 October 1859
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 7 October 1859
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 7 October 1859
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1859-10-07
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 7 October 1859
Text: Pall Mall Budget, 7 January 1881, p. 10. 335
Holly Lodge, | October 7, 1859.
Dear Sara, --
I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, what I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family -- few and far-between visits of (to my childish feelings) strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William (a rich builder) in Staffordshire -- but not my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things -- are what I remember of northerly relatives in my childhood.
But when I was seventeen or more -- after my sister was married and I was mistress of the house -- my father took a journey into Derbyshire 336 in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with him, telling her that I should be very, very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavouring to shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament.
I was delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that we should find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman -- above sixty -- and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I imagine, but was now grey -- a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference -- as you will believe -- was not simply physical: no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her manners -- very loving -- and (what she must have been from the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and love of man were fused together.
There was nothing highly distinctive in her religious conversation: I had had much intercourse with pious Dissenters before: The only freshness I found, in our talk, came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and though she left the society when women were no longer allowed to preach, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved: it was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. '91But I hope the good man's in heaven for all that,'92 said my uncle. '91Oh yes,'92 said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction. '91Mr. A's in heaven -- that's sure.'92 This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic hard views -- how beautiful it is to me now!
As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact, that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks, are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed -- among the rest, the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass. In her account of the prison scenes, I remember no word she uttered -- I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe -- or told me nothing -- but that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently -- till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of '91Adam Bede.'92
I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night 337 with my father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me -- when father and I were living at Foleshill: then there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, 338 I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how entirely her individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers, and speeches were copied -- when they were written with hot tears, as they surged up in my own mind!
As to my indebtedness to facts of locale, and personal history of a small kind, connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire -- you may imagine of what kind that is, when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits 339 have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father, in his occasional talk about old times.
As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they did say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt -- that is simply the vague easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with mis-representations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to truth.
Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you -- but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years '91Adam Bede'92 and all that concerns it, may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. Once more, thanks, dear Sara.
Ever your loving
Marian.
Text: Pall Mall Budget, 7 January 1881, p. 10. 335
Holly Lodge, | October 7, 1859.
Dear Sara, --
I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, what I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family -- few and far-between visits of (to my childish feelings) strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William (a rich builder) in Staffordshire -- but not my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things -- are what I remember of northerly relatives in my childhood.
But when I was seventeen or more -- after my sister was married and I was mistress of the house -- my father took a journey into Derbyshire 336 in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with him, telling her that I should be very, very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavouring to shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament.
I was delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that we should find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman -- above sixty -- and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I imagine, but was now grey -- a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference -- as you will believe -- was not simply physical: no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her manners -- very loving -- and (what she must have been from the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and love of man were fused together.
There was nothing highly distinctive in her religious conversation: I had had much intercourse with pious Dissenters before: The only freshness I found, in our talk, came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and though she left the society when women were no longer allowed to preach, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved: it was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. '91But I hope the good man's in heaven for all that,'92 said my uncle. '91Oh yes,'92 said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction. '91Mr. A's in heaven -- that's sure.'92 This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic hard views -- how beautiful it is to me now!
As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact, that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks, are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed -- among the rest, the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass. In her account of the prison scenes, I remember no word she uttered -- I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe -- or told me nothing -- but that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently -- till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of '91Adam Bede.'92
I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night 337 with my father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me -- when father and I were living at Foleshill: then there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, 338 I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how entirely her individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers, and speeches were copied -- when they were written with hot tears, as they surged up in my own mind!
As to my indebtedness to facts of locale, and personal history of a small kind, connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire -- you may imagine of what kind that is, when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits 339 have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father, in his occasional talk about old times.
As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they did say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt -- that is simply the vague easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with mis-representations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to truth.
Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you -- but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years '91Adam Bede'92 and all that concerns it, may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. Once more, thanks, dear Sara.
Ever your loving
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 7 October 1859, 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/94136