George Combe to John Chapman, Edinburgh, 5 March 1854
Title
George Combe to John Chapman, Edinburgh, 5 March 1854
Title
George Combe to John Chapman, Edinburgh, 5 March 1854
Sender
George Combe
Recipient
John Chapman
Date(s)
- 1854-03-05
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
George Combe to John Chapman, Edinburgh, 5 March 1854
MS: Copy in Combe Letter Book, National Library of Scotland.
Edinburgh 5th March 1854.
John Chapman Esq.
My dear Sir
I am favoured with your letter of 3d March, and beg to remark that, according to my recollection, I told you that the act abolishing Transportation had been passed; that new prisons must be built, new modes of discipline instituted, and that as the convicts would be liberated after a few years confinement, there would be a public interest excited, as soon as the nature of the act was known. All this information I derived from Mr. Perry, medical inspector of Prisons, before the Act was printed for the public, or its probable effects known; and I communicated it to you and asked you whether you would wish to have an article on the subject in your January number, which would probably anticipate the other Reviews. You said you would be glad to have it. I certainly said that I should be willing to write it; but apparently you thought that I suggested the article to gratify some wish of my own; I, on the other hand, being conscious only of a friendly desire to aid the Review by furnishing an article on a subject of public interest which, it appeared to me, no other person was likely to supply. Your view, I am willing to allow, may have been as natural to you, as my own was to me; and here was a mistake for which neither of us was to blame.
I never hinted a complaint of your postponing the article from January till April, until you proposed again to postpone it till July, and then I could not help saying that I thought that you should have given me the earliest possible notice of your wish to postpone it, to set me at liberty, whereas you allowed me to toil on, and proposed postponement only after I wrote that I had finished it. Perhaps you did not know sooner; but no explanation was given me to that effect.
In regard to the delay between the slips and the proof, and the difficulty of reducing the Pamphlet to the size of an article, I was wholly in the dark, until your letter of the 3d March explained the former, and the moment I got a proof I removed the latter. -- Miss Evans informed me that her official connection with the Review had ceased on 1st January, but I imagined that she continued to take an interest in its affairs, and that from her knowing more of Phrenology than you professed to do, the arrangement by which she agreed to edit the pamphlet and judge of its suitableness for an article, would be equally beneficial to you and me. When she expressed her difficulty in reducing it, which she did before a proof was sent to me, I said that I could not judge whether I could to it myself, until I got a proof. When one came, I instantly saw that the thing could be done, and did not lose a post in saying so. I may add that when the M.S. was sent to Miss Evans in January I was sleepless and confined to bed for weeks, rising only for a few hours in the evening, otherwise I should have probably saved her the trouble I imposed on her.
You will perceive from this statement that your proposal to delay inserting the article till July came upon me quite by surprise, and that while you assigned the delay in preparing it, as your reason for the postponement, I felt that I was wholly guiltless of that delay, and that on your side alone it had arisen, imagining, as I did, that you and Miss Evans were co-operating in the matter. With these explanations, I leave the matter in your own hands. Insert or reject the article as suits your own convenience. I see no reason for your paying me £20, and do not ask or wish you to do so, because I wrote the article with the desire to aid the Review; but if you are of a different opinion, I leave this to your own decision also.
I remain
MS: Copy in Combe Letter Book, National Library of Scotland.
Edinburgh 5th March 1854.
John Chapman Esq.
My dear Sir
I am favoured with your letter of 3d March, and beg to remark that, according to my recollection, I told you that the act abolishing Transportation had been passed; that new prisons must be built, new modes of discipline instituted, and that as the convicts would be liberated after a few years confinement, there would be a public interest excited, as soon as the nature of the act was known. All this information I derived from Mr. Perry, medical inspector of Prisons, before the Act was printed for the public, or its probable effects known; and I communicated it to you and asked you whether you would wish to have an article on the subject in your January number, which would probably anticipate the other Reviews. You said you would be glad to have it. I certainly said that I should be willing to write it; but apparently you thought that I suggested the article to gratify some wish of my own; I, on the other hand, being conscious only of a friendly desire to aid the Review by furnishing an article on a subject of public interest which, it appeared to me, no other person was likely to supply. Your view, I am willing to allow, may have been as natural to you, as my own was to me; and here was a mistake for which neither of us was to blame.
I never hinted a complaint of your postponing the article from January till April, until you proposed again to postpone it till July, and then I could not help saying that I thought that you should have given me the earliest possible notice of your wish to postpone it, to set me at liberty, whereas you allowed me to toil on, and proposed postponement only after I wrote that I had finished it. Perhaps you did not know sooner; but no explanation was given me to that effect.
In regard to the delay between the slips and the proof, and the difficulty of reducing the Pamphlet to the size of an article, I was wholly in the dark, until your letter of the 3d March explained the former, and the moment I got a proof I removed the latter. -- Miss Evans informed me that her official connection with the Review had ceased on 1st January, but I imagined that she continued to take an interest in its affairs, and that from her knowing more of Phrenology than you professed to do, the arrangement by which she agreed to edit the pamphlet and judge of its suitableness for an article, would be equally beneficial to you and me. When she expressed her difficulty in reducing it, which she did before a proof was sent to me, I said that I could not judge whether I could to it myself, until I got a proof. When one came, I instantly saw that the thing could be done, and did not lose a post in saying so. I may add that when the M.S. was sent to Miss Evans in January I was sleepless and confined to bed for weeks, rising only for a few hours in the evening, otherwise I should have probably saved her the trouble I imposed on her.
You will perceive from this statement that your proposal to delay inserting the article till July came upon me quite by surprise, and that while you assigned the delay in preparing it, as your reason for the postponement, I felt that I was wholly guiltless of that delay, and that on your side alone it had arisen, imagining, as I did, that you and Miss Evans were co-operating in the matter. With these explanations, I leave the matter in your own hands. Insert or reject the article as suits your own convenience. I see no reason for your paying me £20, and do not ask or wish you to do so, because I wrote the article with the desire to aid the Review; but if you are of a different opinion, I leave this to your own decision also.
I remain
Citation
George Combe, George Combe to John Chapman, Edinburgh, 5 March 1854, 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/94245