Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 26 December 1879
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 26 December 1879
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 26 December 1879
Sender
Edith Simcox
Recipient
U
Date(s)
- 1879-12-26
Place
London
Letter Content
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 26 December 1879
MS: Bodleian. Extract published: Haight, George Eliot, p. 533.
She was alone; said it was rare for her to see no one all day as was the case the day before. She was reading, or rather cutting a new book.
I apologized for coming so soon again, that I felt always guilty because instead of bringing her useful or entertaining information my own ideal was just to hold my tongue and be comfortable, she deprecated the useful information and the silence alike: then reflected she had not returned my kiss, and did so -- she thought it such a horrid habit of people to put their cheek and make no return, the little niece from Natal does so (and she is called Marian!) while the little boy puts up his lips. I said should I go, having had the kiss I came for. She said she wasn't so easily tired. She had heard from Elma, who had been ill and was sorry, not surprised that Roland had not passed; 516 I failed to explain myself about the absence of the maternal instinct in Elma. She said with all her admirable generosity and so on she was a strange person and quoted some one, perhaps Mrs. Charles Lewes, who found it difficult to get on with her. I was vexed with myself for seeming to be judging her, though Mrs. Lewes was doing so also by her regrets that Elma had planned everything in such detail to her own mind that she could not but have been disappointed. Then we got on to politics -- Lady Strangford and her Bulgarians, whom she doesn't think half as wise and good as the Turks. Disraeli -- she scolded me much for calling him unprincipled -- she was disgusted with the venom of the Liberal speeches from Gladstone downwards. I tried to justify my use of the term as a slowly formed sincere belief, referred to his books, which she thought wonderfully clever; I said look at the Truck System in Sybil 517 and his indifference to the obscure useful acts upon the subject. She admitted that was a real charge and implored me only to make such real concrete doings or omissions the ground of attack and to refrain from judgments on the whole man. Then we mixed in the Cornhill on Tennyson, which she got to refer to the one parallel passage which showed a really interesting resemblance (a poem of Lord Herbert of Cherbury to In Memoriam). 518
She said men's characters were as mixed as the origins of mythology. We went back more than once to the question of "principle." I said I used to hate L. N. 519 and she said Yes -- one was tempted to call the author of the Coup d'Etat a bad man, but she believed he was only willing to do one bad action as a means, and then meant to do good ones. Dizzy was [a politician?] therefore ambitious, not a fool, and so he must care for a place in history and how could he expect to win that by doing harm? I said he would be satisfied with such a place as Wolsey or Richelieu -- whereto She "And the Positivists are setting to work to idealize Richelieu, so what then? 520 But here she stopped, it was enough not to idealize the evil, she did wish to idealize the good out of knowledge. I said no, because hero worship was an indulgence, there was self-denial in not insisting on it, and then I lapsed into some of the fond folly which always provokes her. She had never known anyone perfect and worshipped none the less.
Then for the twentieth time I prepared to go and said she had been scolding me for the nearest approach to good points I had -- I thought she believed me to be at least charitable and veracious, she startled me by some little outcry at the last word -- had she ever said I was veracious -- that was a rash thing to say of any one, it was so very difficult to attain perfect truth -- nay more, it was a virtue that might be overdone and on the whole she elected to scold me rather for imperfect veiling of unpleasant truths, as when I didn't like any one -- here I burst in that I never did dislike any one, and she quoted my letter from Dinan, as if I had said their love-making bored me. Still she didn't deny I was indifferent honest. I said, she must tell me if she ever thought otherwise.
She said, after half a pause, would I really rather she said anything she thought -- would it hurt me -- my heart sank fathoms underground and tears came into my eyes -- if she said she did not like for me to call her [Mother] -- I gave a sigh of relief, if that was all. She went on, she knew it was her fault, she had begun, she was apt to be rash and commit herself in one mood to what was irksome to her in another -- not with her own mother, but her associations otherwise with the name were as of a task and it was a fact that her feeling for me was not at all a mother's -- any other name she didn't mind, she had much more "respect and admiration" for me now than when she knew me first, but etc. -- she hoped I was not hurt. 521 I tried to say that the only name natural to me was darling, and that I took the other as being less greedy and more dutiful. I sat up late last night writing (to post tomorrow) a short reassurance that I am not hurt.
MS: Bodleian. Extract published: Haight, George Eliot, p. 533.
She was alone; said it was rare for her to see no one all day as was the case the day before. She was reading, or rather cutting a new book.
I apologized for coming so soon again, that I felt always guilty because instead of bringing her useful or entertaining information my own ideal was just to hold my tongue and be comfortable, she deprecated the useful information and the silence alike: then reflected she had not returned my kiss, and did so -- she thought it such a horrid habit of people to put their cheek and make no return, the little niece from Natal does so (and she is called Marian!) while the little boy puts up his lips. I said should I go, having had the kiss I came for. She said she wasn't so easily tired. She had heard from Elma, who had been ill and was sorry, not surprised that Roland had not passed; 516 I failed to explain myself about the absence of the maternal instinct in Elma. She said with all her admirable generosity and so on she was a strange person and quoted some one, perhaps Mrs. Charles Lewes, who found it difficult to get on with her. I was vexed with myself for seeming to be judging her, though Mrs. Lewes was doing so also by her regrets that Elma had planned everything in such detail to her own mind that she could not but have been disappointed. Then we got on to politics -- Lady Strangford and her Bulgarians, whom she doesn't think half as wise and good as the Turks. Disraeli -- she scolded me much for calling him unprincipled -- she was disgusted with the venom of the Liberal speeches from Gladstone downwards. I tried to justify my use of the term as a slowly formed sincere belief, referred to his books, which she thought wonderfully clever; I said look at the Truck System in Sybil 517 and his indifference to the obscure useful acts upon the subject. She admitted that was a real charge and implored me only to make such real concrete doings or omissions the ground of attack and to refrain from judgments on the whole man. Then we mixed in the Cornhill on Tennyson, which she got to refer to the one parallel passage which showed a really interesting resemblance (a poem of Lord Herbert of Cherbury to In Memoriam). 518
She said men's characters were as mixed as the origins of mythology. We went back more than once to the question of "principle." I said I used to hate L. N. 519 and she said Yes -- one was tempted to call the author of the Coup d'Etat a bad man, but she believed he was only willing to do one bad action as a means, and then meant to do good ones. Dizzy was [a politician?] therefore ambitious, not a fool, and so he must care for a place in history and how could he expect to win that by doing harm? I said he would be satisfied with such a place as Wolsey or Richelieu -- whereto She "And the Positivists are setting to work to idealize Richelieu, so what then? 520 But here she stopped, it was enough not to idealize the evil, she did wish to idealize the good out of knowledge. I said no, because hero worship was an indulgence, there was self-denial in not insisting on it, and then I lapsed into some of the fond folly which always provokes her. She had never known anyone perfect and worshipped none the less.
Then for the twentieth time I prepared to go and said she had been scolding me for the nearest approach to good points I had -- I thought she believed me to be at least charitable and veracious, she startled me by some little outcry at the last word -- had she ever said I was veracious -- that was a rash thing to say of any one, it was so very difficult to attain perfect truth -- nay more, it was a virtue that might be overdone and on the whole she elected to scold me rather for imperfect veiling of unpleasant truths, as when I didn't like any one -- here I burst in that I never did dislike any one, and she quoted my letter from Dinan, as if I had said their love-making bored me. Still she didn't deny I was indifferent honest. I said, she must tell me if she ever thought otherwise.
She said, after half a pause, would I really rather she said anything she thought -- would it hurt me -- my heart sank fathoms underground and tears came into my eyes -- if she said she did not like for me to call her [Mother] -- I gave a sigh of relief, if that was all. She went on, she knew it was her fault, she had begun, she was apt to be rash and commit herself in one mood to what was irksome to her in another -- not with her own mother, but her associations otherwise with the name were as of a task and it was a fact that her feeling for me was not at all a mother's -- any other name she didn't mind, she had much more "respect and admiration" for me now than when she knew me first, but etc. -- she hoped I was not hurt. 521 I tried to say that the only name natural to me was darling, and that I took the other as being less greedy and more dutiful. I sat up late last night writing (to post tomorrow) a short reassurance that I am not hurt.
Citation
Edith Simcox, Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 26 December 1879, 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/91795