Charles Dickens to GE, Higham, 10 July 1859
Title
Charles Dickens to GE, Higham, 10 July 1859
Title
Charles Dickens to GE, Higham, 10 July 1859
Sender
Charles Dickens
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1859-07-10
Place
Higham
Letter Content
Charles Dickens to GE, Higham, 10 July 1859
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Published: The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter, 3 vols., 1938, III, 110-111.
Gad's Hill Place, | Higham by Rochester, Kent.
Sunday Tenth July 1859.
My Dear Madam,
I have received your letter 208 here this morning, with the greatest interest and pleasure. It is unnecessary for me to add, that I have received it in confidence.
Believe me, when I wrote to you on the subject of the Scenes of Clerical Life, I did nothing but relieve my mind, very inadequately, of the strong feelings of admiration with which you had filled it. Wherever I went, I said the same things. It was a rare and genuine delight to me, to become acquainted in the spirit with so noble a writer; and it would have been hardly less difficult to me to repress myself for good and all, than to repress my admiration of such genius.
This opportunity of writing to you, relieves me from a difficulty in which I have felt myself to be placed ever since you sent me Adam Bede, 209 and for my extrication from which, I have always trusted to the result that has come -- for I have always had the vanity to believe that I should one day hear from you as a real individual woman.
I had no means of acknowledging the receipt of that book but through Blackwood, and knowing at that time what changes I was going to make in my publishing arrangements, I had a great delicacy in suggesting to the Scotch-Publishing-Mind through any after-splicing of this and that together, that I had been waylaying you! 210 Confident that you could not doubt my enthusiasm after I had read the book, I therefore resolved not to write to George Elliot, but to wait until I could write to you in person, whoever you might be.
Adam Bede has taken its place among the actual experiences and endurances of my life. Every high quality that was in the former book, is in that, with a World of Power added thereunto. The conception of
Hetty's character is so extraordinarily subtle and true, that I laid the book down fifty times, to shut my eyes and think about it. I know nothing so skilful, determined, and uncompromising. The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you. And that part of the book which follows Hetty's trial (and which I have observed to be not as widely understood as the rest), affected me far more than any other, and exalted my sympathy with the writer to its utmost height. You must not suppose that I am writing this to you. I have been saying it over and over again, here and elsewhere, until I feel in a ludicrously apologetic state for repeating myself on this paper.
I cannot close this note without touching on two heads. Firstly (Blackwood not now being the medium of communication), if you should ever have the freedom and inclination to be a fellow labourer with me, it would yield me a pleasure that I have never known yet and can never know otherwise; and no channel that even you could command, should be so profitable as to yourself. Secondly, I hope you will let me come to see you when we are all in or near London again, and tell you -- as a curiosity -- my reasons for the faith that was in me that you were a woman, and for the absolute and never-doubting confidence with which I have waved all men away from Adam Bede, and nailed my colors to the Mast with "Eve" upon them.
A word of remembrance and regard to Lewes -- and of congratulation -- that I know he will feel and understand as I do. My dear Madam,
Yours faithfully
Charles Dickens.
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Published: The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter, 3 vols., 1938, III, 110-111.
Gad's Hill Place, | Higham by Rochester, Kent.
Sunday Tenth July 1859.
My Dear Madam,
I have received your letter 208 here this morning, with the greatest interest and pleasure. It is unnecessary for me to add, that I have received it in confidence.
Believe me, when I wrote to you on the subject of the Scenes of Clerical Life, I did nothing but relieve my mind, very inadequately, of the strong feelings of admiration with which you had filled it. Wherever I went, I said the same things. It was a rare and genuine delight to me, to become acquainted in the spirit with so noble a writer; and it would have been hardly less difficult to me to repress myself for good and all, than to repress my admiration of such genius.
This opportunity of writing to you, relieves me from a difficulty in which I have felt myself to be placed ever since you sent me Adam Bede, 209 and for my extrication from which, I have always trusted to the result that has come -- for I have always had the vanity to believe that I should one day hear from you as a real individual woman.
I had no means of acknowledging the receipt of that book but through Blackwood, and knowing at that time what changes I was going to make in my publishing arrangements, I had a great delicacy in suggesting to the Scotch-Publishing-Mind through any after-splicing of this and that together, that I had been waylaying you! 210 Confident that you could not doubt my enthusiasm after I had read the book, I therefore resolved not to write to George Elliot, but to wait until I could write to you in person, whoever you might be.
Adam Bede has taken its place among the actual experiences and endurances of my life. Every high quality that was in the former book, is in that, with a World of Power added thereunto. The conception of
Hetty's character is so extraordinarily subtle and true, that I laid the book down fifty times, to shut my eyes and think about it. I know nothing so skilful, determined, and uncompromising. The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you. And that part of the book which follows Hetty's trial (and which I have observed to be not as widely understood as the rest), affected me far more than any other, and exalted my sympathy with the writer to its utmost height. You must not suppose that I am writing this to you. I have been saying it over and over again, here and elsewhere, until I feel in a ludicrously apologetic state for repeating myself on this paper.
I cannot close this note without touching on two heads. Firstly (Blackwood not now being the medium of communication), if you should ever have the freedom and inclination to be a fellow labourer with me, it would yield me a pleasure that I have never known yet and can never know otherwise; and no channel that even you could command, should be so profitable as to yourself. Secondly, I hope you will let me come to see you when we are all in or near London again, and tell you -- as a curiosity -- my reasons for the faith that was in me that you were a woman, and for the absolute and never-doubting confidence with which I have waved all men away from Adam Bede, and nailed my colors to the Mast with "Eve" upon them.
A word of remembrance and regard to Lewes -- and of congratulation -- that I know he will feel and understand as I do. My dear Madam,
Yours faithfully
Charles Dickens.
Signature
Charles Dickens.
Citation
Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens to GE, Higham, 10 July 1859, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91740