Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 6-13 February 1878
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 6-13 February 1878
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 6-13 February 1878
Sender
Edith Simcox
Recipient
U
Date(s)
- 1878-02-06–<br /> 1878-02-13
Place
London
Letter Content
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 6-13 February 1878
MS: Bodleian. Extract published: McKenzie, p. 105.
Wednesday 6 February 1878
Yesterday I went to see her, and have been in a calm glow of happiness since: -- for no special reason, only that to have been near her happens to have that effect on me. She had had headaches and was in a somewhat despondent mood, so I did nothing but make reckless love to her. I told her about the International 412 (how I withheld my name from the council and then in remorse offered to lend Dean St. 413 for a council chamber!) and she seemed to think me well out of it. I brought her two of the least spoilt of my valentines, which she humanely forebore to read in my presence. She said it was a pity my letters could not be kept some 5 centuries to show a more sober posterity what hyperbole had once been possible. I asked if she took so gloomy a view of the future as to think 5 centuries hence there would be no one as adorable as herself: -- of that, said Lewes, you may be sure. I agreed and she professed to be silenced in confusion. I had told her of my ambition to be allowed to lie silently at her feet as she pursued her occupations, and that made her refer to my last letter. She also said -- as she once wrote that I "knew all the craft of fyne loving," 414 as she also tells her husband; he and I pelted her with a little loving chaff about her own unamiableness, and when he affected to agree with her I said it was a mean attempt to curry favour with divinity -- I could be no party to such hypocrisy -- unless I had as much as he to gain! I tore myself away with difficulty, choked with tears in the passages -- and so came away.
Wednesday 13 February 1878
Heard from Tr'fcbner that a second edition of "Natural Law" would be wanted soon. Today wrote a little "Competition" and -- just before 3 -- a visitor was announced! -- Came forward and lo! in the middle of the room was my goddess! I threw my arms round her -- she had on a spotted net veil that could have grieved me but for the angelic way in which she took it off at my prayer. Apropos of the second edition we got onto high problems of ethics. I said I was in doubt whether to give any explanation about Utilitarianism; she thought the misunderstandings of reviewers hardly amounted to a presumption that one was wrong. She thought the weak point of Utilitarianism, in Sidgwick and others, lay not in their taking human welfare as the standard of right but in their trying to find in it the moral motive. We agreed I think in substance there, and they assented to my objection to Huxley's last article, evening Darwin's Origin of Species with Harvey's circulation of the blood. 415 I proposed to add a paragraph in the sense of what she had said to me, of the dangerousness of making "right" into a metaphysical abstraction, severed from the intuitions which constitute its nature, and said that I felt myself that that might be a snare. She was rather slow to believe that it could be a snare to me to take anything for granted, and I said she didn't know, I was always very much of my own opinion. Then (there had been some professional transactions 416 first of all) they arose to go; I should say that for the last few minutes I had been kneelling by her, looking up into her face with my cheek resting against a bit of fur round her wrist, -- we went down stairs and at the door Maria was admitting a man, he advanced to the foot of the stairs and lo! The Rector of Lincoln 417 -- tableau! They turned back and there was more conversation, concerning Jevons on Mill and the rising school in Oxford which follows Green and Caird to think English philosophy nowhere, Kant and Hegel on the right track, but they themselves in some unexplained way, many leagues in advance even of them -- She thought there was a dangerous tendency among 2nd and 3rd rate thinkers to go on inventing something that shall catch disciples without any strong preliminary conviction. She instanced
Schopenhauer and a man for whom she had a great respect -- I guessed Herbert Spencer. The Rector thought professional jealousies were not officially to blame for this, but quoted Pusey on the other side. Then they really went, but I got yet another kiss and am considerably consoled.
MS: Bodleian. Extract published: McKenzie, p. 105.
Wednesday 6 February 1878
Yesterday I went to see her, and have been in a calm glow of happiness since: -- for no special reason, only that to have been near her happens to have that effect on me. She had had headaches and was in a somewhat despondent mood, so I did nothing but make reckless love to her. I told her about the International 412 (how I withheld my name from the council and then in remorse offered to lend Dean St. 413 for a council chamber!) and she seemed to think me well out of it. I brought her two of the least spoilt of my valentines, which she humanely forebore to read in my presence. She said it was a pity my letters could not be kept some 5 centuries to show a more sober posterity what hyperbole had once been possible. I asked if she took so gloomy a view of the future as to think 5 centuries hence there would be no one as adorable as herself: -- of that, said Lewes, you may be sure. I agreed and she professed to be silenced in confusion. I had told her of my ambition to be allowed to lie silently at her feet as she pursued her occupations, and that made her refer to my last letter. She also said -- as she once wrote that I "knew all the craft of fyne loving," 414 as she also tells her husband; he and I pelted her with a little loving chaff about her own unamiableness, and when he affected to agree with her I said it was a mean attempt to curry favour with divinity -- I could be no party to such hypocrisy -- unless I had as much as he to gain! I tore myself away with difficulty, choked with tears in the passages -- and so came away.
Wednesday 13 February 1878
Heard from Tr'fcbner that a second edition of "Natural Law" would be wanted soon. Today wrote a little "Competition" and -- just before 3 -- a visitor was announced! -- Came forward and lo! in the middle of the room was my goddess! I threw my arms round her -- she had on a spotted net veil that could have grieved me but for the angelic way in which she took it off at my prayer. Apropos of the second edition we got onto high problems of ethics. I said I was in doubt whether to give any explanation about Utilitarianism; she thought the misunderstandings of reviewers hardly amounted to a presumption that one was wrong. She thought the weak point of Utilitarianism, in Sidgwick and others, lay not in their taking human welfare as the standard of right but in their trying to find in it the moral motive. We agreed I think in substance there, and they assented to my objection to Huxley's last article, evening Darwin's Origin of Species with Harvey's circulation of the blood. 415 I proposed to add a paragraph in the sense of what she had said to me, of the dangerousness of making "right" into a metaphysical abstraction, severed from the intuitions which constitute its nature, and said that I felt myself that that might be a snare. She was rather slow to believe that it could be a snare to me to take anything for granted, and I said she didn't know, I was always very much of my own opinion. Then (there had been some professional transactions 416 first of all) they arose to go; I should say that for the last few minutes I had been kneelling by her, looking up into her face with my cheek resting against a bit of fur round her wrist, -- we went down stairs and at the door Maria was admitting a man, he advanced to the foot of the stairs and lo! The Rector of Lincoln 417 -- tableau! They turned back and there was more conversation, concerning Jevons on Mill and the rising school in Oxford which follows Green and Caird to think English philosophy nowhere, Kant and Hegel on the right track, but they themselves in some unexplained way, many leagues in advance even of them -- She thought there was a dangerous tendency among 2nd and 3rd rate thinkers to go on inventing something that shall catch disciples without any strong preliminary conviction. She instanced
Schopenhauer and a man for whom she had a great respect -- I guessed Herbert Spencer. The Rector thought professional jealousies were not officially to blame for this, but quoted Pusey on the other side. Then they really went, but I got yet another kiss and am considerably consoled.
Citation
Edith Simcox, Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 6-13 February 1878, 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/91810