Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to John Blackwood, Knebworth, 14 [April] 1860
Title
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to John Blackwood, Knebworth, 14 [April] 1860
Title
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to John Blackwood, Knebworth, 14 [April] 1860
Sender
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton
Recipient
M
Date(s)
- 1860-04-14
Place
Knebworth
Letter Content
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to John Blackwood, Knebworth, 14 [April] 1860
MS: National Library of Scotland. Brief extract published: III, 314, n. l.
Kneb[wor]th 14 1860.
My dear Sir
I have just finished the Mill on the Floss and can assure you of my very high opinion of its many beauties. That rare and minute knowledge of the female heart which struck me so forcibly in A. Bede is here brought out with more variety, and in more richness of humour. All the Dodson sisters are wonderful. I feel it a great relief to get rid of the Provincial Dialect, and the language of Dialogue in the rural characters is extremely natural without vulgarity and full of point and playfulness. The only criticism I should here make is that here and there is a little unconscious imitation of Dickens; not more so perhaps than so fascinating and popular a genius as his would inevitably cause in persons writing somewhat after him and resorting to somewhat the same classes of Society for characters. Putting that aside, the general style is admirable.
In the 1st Volume as to construction and position I did not see a fault.
Tom and Maggie as children are most beautifully drawn. Towards the latter part of the 2nd Volume I began to fear that there might be the same fault (as I think it) which I found in Ad. Bede. viz.: the want of clear perception and close study of what I call [position] in Narrative. There is position in Narrative as well as Drama, and it can never be neglected without more or less injury to the story. In fact it comprises much of what the antient Critics meant by "the Becoming." No character should be placed in a position that does not become the conceptions already formed of that character, and it is in vain to reply that there is no violation of the Natural in such a position. The Natural that belongs to the Individual Character is violated. There is nothing for instance of the "unbecoming" or "false position" in the beating of Thersites; it becomes him to be beat. But if Achilles had kicked Agammenon for taking away Briseis it might be quite natural in Achilles to do so, but it would have been "unbecoming" so far as Agammenon was concerned, and it would have been difficult afterwards to respect him as the King of Men.
Now when Tom and Maggie go to meet Phillip, Maggie is put into a false position as regards the previous description of her hasty generous impulsive character to stand by and listen with so little interruption to her brother's coarse abuse of Phillip, and her natural fear must have been felt that Phillip would think she had brought Tom there, and it was a sort of treachery, and her inevitable impulse would have been to burst out with profound sympathy for Phillip. She is brought here as it is, for no sufficient cause in the plot, merely to witness her lover's humiliation and the situation is untrue to the courage of her character. Hence she loses somewhat in interest after that scene. But this is unimportant compared to the error, as I think, of her whole position towards Stephen. It may be quite natural that she should take that liking to him, but it is a position at variance with all that had before been Heroic about her. The indulgence of such a sentiment for the affianced of a friend under whose roof she was, was a treachery and a meanness according to the Ethics of Art, and nothing can afterwards lift the character into the same hold on us. The refusal to marry Stephen fails to do so. This brings me to another view of a fault in the same direction. In studying plot or incident the very remarkable writer does not eno[ugh] weigh what is Agreeable or Disagreeable. Now the Disagreeable should be carefully avoided. You may have the painful, the terrible, the horrible, even; but the disagreeable should be shunned. For instance, it is a disagreeable and unworthy position for Phillip to treat so lightly the blows his father had received from the father of the woman he wants to marry, and Phillip sinks in dignity on acc[oun]t of it. Lastly -- the Tragic should be prepared for and seem to come step by step as if unavoidable. But that is not the case here.
One feels from the time that Maggie's father dies in consequence of his meeting with Phillip's father that the end cannot be happy, but the steps that lead towards an end so gloomy are not sufficiently marked and solemn and when the Drowning comes at last, it fails accordingly in the pathos and terror it would otherwise excite; there has not been even sufficient care taken to make that final reconciliation in death of brother and sister as touching as it should be. Tom indeed has been by that time set so far apart from his sister that he can't be jerked back into the old boyish love of a sudden, and we don't see why he should be drowned at all. These are to my mind defects that belong to the same class of defects as those in Ad. Bede but they are not so marked, and these defects did not prevent or even injure the great popularity of Adam Bede. Neither will they in this case. I even doubt whether they will be visible to most readers. Where such defects really tell (even supposing I am right, which I may not be) is 10 or 20 years hence in the duration of a work. They scarcely touch its first sale or the author's immediate reputation.
I have been more lengthy in dwelling on faults real or supposed, because I measure the author by a very high standard. I know no female author with such grasp of character, such deep cuts into secret recesses of the heart, such ease and power of language, such charming combination of unaffected pathos and delicate affluent humour. And on the whole I like the Book even better than Adam Bede -- which is indeed saying a great deal.
Yours
E. B. L.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Brief extract published: III, 314, n. l.
Kneb[wor]th 14 1860.
My dear Sir
I have just finished the Mill on the Floss and can assure you of my very high opinion of its many beauties. That rare and minute knowledge of the female heart which struck me so forcibly in A. Bede is here brought out with more variety, and in more richness of humour. All the Dodson sisters are wonderful. I feel it a great relief to get rid of the Provincial Dialect, and the language of Dialogue in the rural characters is extremely natural without vulgarity and full of point and playfulness. The only criticism I should here make is that here and there is a little unconscious imitation of Dickens; not more so perhaps than so fascinating and popular a genius as his would inevitably cause in persons writing somewhat after him and resorting to somewhat the same classes of Society for characters. Putting that aside, the general style is admirable.
In the 1st Volume as to construction and position I did not see a fault.
Tom and Maggie as children are most beautifully drawn. Towards the latter part of the 2nd Volume I began to fear that there might be the same fault (as I think it) which I found in Ad. Bede. viz.: the want of clear perception and close study of what I call [position] in Narrative. There is position in Narrative as well as Drama, and it can never be neglected without more or less injury to the story. In fact it comprises much of what the antient Critics meant by "the Becoming." No character should be placed in a position that does not become the conceptions already formed of that character, and it is in vain to reply that there is no violation of the Natural in such a position. The Natural that belongs to the Individual Character is violated. There is nothing for instance of the "unbecoming" or "false position" in the beating of Thersites; it becomes him to be beat. But if Achilles had kicked Agammenon for taking away Briseis it might be quite natural in Achilles to do so, but it would have been "unbecoming" so far as Agammenon was concerned, and it would have been difficult afterwards to respect him as the King of Men.
Now when Tom and Maggie go to meet Phillip, Maggie is put into a false position as regards the previous description of her hasty generous impulsive character to stand by and listen with so little interruption to her brother's coarse abuse of Phillip, and her natural fear must have been felt that Phillip would think she had brought Tom there, and it was a sort of treachery, and her inevitable impulse would have been to burst out with profound sympathy for Phillip. She is brought here as it is, for no sufficient cause in the plot, merely to witness her lover's humiliation and the situation is untrue to the courage of her character. Hence she loses somewhat in interest after that scene. But this is unimportant compared to the error, as I think, of her whole position towards Stephen. It may be quite natural that she should take that liking to him, but it is a position at variance with all that had before been Heroic about her. The indulgence of such a sentiment for the affianced of a friend under whose roof she was, was a treachery and a meanness according to the Ethics of Art, and nothing can afterwards lift the character into the same hold on us. The refusal to marry Stephen fails to do so. This brings me to another view of a fault in the same direction. In studying plot or incident the very remarkable writer does not eno[ugh] weigh what is Agreeable or Disagreeable. Now the Disagreeable should be carefully avoided. You may have the painful, the terrible, the horrible, even; but the disagreeable should be shunned. For instance, it is a disagreeable and unworthy position for Phillip to treat so lightly the blows his father had received from the father of the woman he wants to marry, and Phillip sinks in dignity on acc[oun]t of it. Lastly -- the Tragic should be prepared for and seem to come step by step as if unavoidable. But that is not the case here.
One feels from the time that Maggie's father dies in consequence of his meeting with Phillip's father that the end cannot be happy, but the steps that lead towards an end so gloomy are not sufficiently marked and solemn and when the Drowning comes at last, it fails accordingly in the pathos and terror it would otherwise excite; there has not been even sufficient care taken to make that final reconciliation in death of brother and sister as touching as it should be. Tom indeed has been by that time set so far apart from his sister that he can't be jerked back into the old boyish love of a sudden, and we don't see why he should be drowned at all. These are to my mind defects that belong to the same class of defects as those in Ad. Bede but they are not so marked, and these defects did not prevent or even injure the great popularity of Adam Bede. Neither will they in this case. I even doubt whether they will be visible to most readers. Where such defects really tell (even supposing I am right, which I may not be) is 10 or 20 years hence in the duration of a work. They scarcely touch its first sale or the author's immediate reputation.
I have been more lengthy in dwelling on faults real or supposed, because I measure the author by a very high standard. I know no female author with such grasp of character, such deep cuts into secret recesses of the heart, such ease and power of language, such charming combination of unaffected pathos and delicate affluent humour. And on the whole I like the Book even better than Adam Bede -- which is indeed saying a great deal.
Yours
E. B. L.
Signature
E. B. L.
Citation
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to John Blackwood, Knebworth, 14 [April] 1860, 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/95601