Emily Davies to Jane Crow, London, 21 August [1869]
Title
Emily Davies to Jane Crow, London, 21 August [1869]
Title
Emily Davies to Jane Crow, London, 21 August [1869]
Sender
Emily Davies
Recipient
Jane Crow
Date(s)
- 1869-08-21
Place
London
Letter Content
Emily Davies to Jane Crow, London, 21 August [1869]
887
MS: Girton College. Published: Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 1927, pp. 182-184.
7 Cunningham Place. | August 21st.
My dear Jane
I went to see Mrs. Lewes this afternoon, and though I did not stay very long, she said a great deal. We spoke of her health, which is such that she has scarcely ever had the feeling of being really well or can work without a sense of drag, but it does not come to an illness, and she is afraid she inherits from her father, longevity. The anxiety about Mr. Lewes's son upsets her a good deal, "but one hates oneself for being perturbed." Then she remarked how easily one fell both into any little vice that belongs to us, after being disturbed in it, and spoke of the state of perturbation as entirely caused by not being sufficiently occupied with large interests. I referred to something in Felix Holt about Mr. Lyon's preoccupation which set him above small cares, 888 and said what an enviable state it must be. She said Yes, one only knew it by contrast, by the sense of the want of it.
Somehow we got to talk of the Mill on the Floss. She said her sole purpose in writing it was to show the conflict which is going on everywhere when the younger generation with its higher culture comes into collision with the older, and in which, she said, so many young hearts make shipwreck far worse than Maggie. I asked if she had known actual people like the Dodsons, and she said "Oh, so much worse." She thought those Dodsons very nice people and that we owe much to them for keeping up the sense of respectability, which was the only religion possible to the mass of the English people. Their want of education made a theoretic or dogmatic religion impossible, and since the Reformation, an imaginative religion had not been possible. It had all been drained away. She considers that in the Mill on the Floss, everything is softened, as compared with real life. Her own experience she said was worse. It was impossible for her to write an autobiography, but she wished that somebody else could do it, it might be useful -- or, that she could do it herself. She could do it better than any one else, because she could do it impartially, judging herself, and showing how wrong she was. She spoke of having come into collision with her father and being on the brink of being turned out of his house. And she dwelt a little on how much fault there is on the side of the young in such cases, of their ignorance of life, and the narrowness of their intellectual superiority.
Then we got to talk of fiction, and she was eager to explain the difference between prosaic and poetical fiction -- that what is prosaic in ordinary novels is not the presence of the realistic element, without which the tragedy cannot be given &unknown;shown&unknown; -- she herself is obliged to see and feel every minutest detail -- but in the absence of anything suggesting the ideal, the higher life. She seems quite oppressed with the quantity of second rate art everywhere about. It gives her such a sense of nausea that it makes it almost impossible to her to write -- "such a quantity of dialogue about everything, every hole and corner being ransacked, every possible incident seized upon," not well done, but done in such abundance that good art is discouraged and the higher standard works are thrust aside. She was anxious to impress upon me what she felt about the difference between prosaic and poetical work, because she thought I might disseminate it. She said in an appealing tone "Then when you talk to young people and teachers, you will advise against indiscriminate reading?"
She thinks she has done very little, in quantity. She cannot write what she does not care about. She has not that kind of ability. Whatever she has done, she has studied for. Before she began to write the Mill on the Floss, she had it all in her mind, and read about the Trent to make sure that the physical conditions of some English river were such as to make the inundation possible, and assured herself that the population in its neighbourhood was such as to justify her picture. It is still amazing to me, though she seemed only to feel how little she had done, how she has managed to get through so much work, actual hard labour, in the time. A great deal of it must have been very rapidly done.
Mrs. Lewes said a good deal besides what I have put down. She thinks people who write regularly for the Press are almost sure to be spoiled by it. There is so much dishonesty, people's work being praised because they belong to the confederacy. She spoke very strongly about the wickedness of not paying one's debts. She thinks it worse than drunkenness, not in its consequences, but in the character itself. . . .
887
MS: Girton College. Published: Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 1927, pp. 182-184.
7 Cunningham Place. | August 21st.
My dear Jane
I went to see Mrs. Lewes this afternoon, and though I did not stay very long, she said a great deal. We spoke of her health, which is such that she has scarcely ever had the feeling of being really well or can work without a sense of drag, but it does not come to an illness, and she is afraid she inherits from her father, longevity. The anxiety about Mr. Lewes's son upsets her a good deal, "but one hates oneself for being perturbed." Then she remarked how easily one fell both into any little vice that belongs to us, after being disturbed in it, and spoke of the state of perturbation as entirely caused by not being sufficiently occupied with large interests. I referred to something in Felix Holt about Mr. Lyon's preoccupation which set him above small cares, 888 and said what an enviable state it must be. She said Yes, one only knew it by contrast, by the sense of the want of it.
Somehow we got to talk of the Mill on the Floss. She said her sole purpose in writing it was to show the conflict which is going on everywhere when the younger generation with its higher culture comes into collision with the older, and in which, she said, so many young hearts make shipwreck far worse than Maggie. I asked if she had known actual people like the Dodsons, and she said "Oh, so much worse." She thought those Dodsons very nice people and that we owe much to them for keeping up the sense of respectability, which was the only religion possible to the mass of the English people. Their want of education made a theoretic or dogmatic religion impossible, and since the Reformation, an imaginative religion had not been possible. It had all been drained away. She considers that in the Mill on the Floss, everything is softened, as compared with real life. Her own experience she said was worse. It was impossible for her to write an autobiography, but she wished that somebody else could do it, it might be useful -- or, that she could do it herself. She could do it better than any one else, because she could do it impartially, judging herself, and showing how wrong she was. She spoke of having come into collision with her father and being on the brink of being turned out of his house. And she dwelt a little on how much fault there is on the side of the young in such cases, of their ignorance of life, and the narrowness of their intellectual superiority.
Then we got to talk of fiction, and she was eager to explain the difference between prosaic and poetical fiction -- that what is prosaic in ordinary novels is not the presence of the realistic element, without which the tragedy cannot be given &unknown;shown&unknown; -- she herself is obliged to see and feel every minutest detail -- but in the absence of anything suggesting the ideal, the higher life. She seems quite oppressed with the quantity of second rate art everywhere about. It gives her such a sense of nausea that it makes it almost impossible to her to write -- "such a quantity of dialogue about everything, every hole and corner being ransacked, every possible incident seized upon," not well done, but done in such abundance that good art is discouraged and the higher standard works are thrust aside. She was anxious to impress upon me what she felt about the difference between prosaic and poetical work, because she thought I might disseminate it. She said in an appealing tone "Then when you talk to young people and teachers, you will advise against indiscriminate reading?"
She thinks she has done very little, in quantity. She cannot write what she does not care about. She has not that kind of ability. Whatever she has done, she has studied for. Before she began to write the Mill on the Floss, she had it all in her mind, and read about the Trent to make sure that the physical conditions of some English river were such as to make the inundation possible, and assured herself that the population in its neighbourhood was such as to justify her picture. It is still amazing to me, though she seemed only to feel how little she had done, how she has managed to get through so much work, actual hard labour, in the time. A great deal of it must have been very rapidly done.
Mrs. Lewes said a good deal besides what I have put down. She thinks people who write regularly for the Press are almost sure to be spoiled by it. There is so much dishonesty, people's work being praised because they belong to the confederacy. She spoke very strongly about the wickedness of not paying one's debts. She thinks it worse than drunkenness, not in its consequences, but in the character itself. . . .
Citation
Emily Davies, Emily Davies to Jane Crow, London, 21 August [1869], 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/91827