GE to John Blackwood, Gorey, 11 June 1857
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Gorey, 11 June 1857
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Gorey, 11 June 1857
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1857-06-11
Place
Gorey
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, Gorey, 11 June 1857
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, 1, 457-461.
Rosa Cottage, Gorey | June 11. 57.
My dear Sir
I am not much surprized, and not at all hurt by your letter received today with the proof. It is a great satisfaction -- in fact my only satisfaction, that you should give me your judgment with perfect frankness. I am able, I think, to enter into an editor's doubts and difficulties, and to see my stories in some degree from your point of view as well as my own. My answer is written after considering the question as far as possible on all sides, and as I feel that I shall not be able to make any other than superficial alterations in the proof, I will, first of all, say what I can in explanation of the spirit and future course of the present story.
The collision in the drama is not at all between "bigotted churchmanship" and evangelicalism, but between irreligion and religion. Religion in this case happens to be represented by evangelicalism, and the story so far as regards the persecution, is a real bit in the religious history of England that happened about eight-and-twenty years ago. I thought I had made it apparent in my sketch of Milby feelings on the advent of Mr. Tryan that the conflict lay between immorality and morality -- irreligion and religion. Mr. Tryan will carry the reader's sympathy. It is through him that Janet is brought to repentance. Dempster's vices have their natural evolution in deeper and deeper moral deterioration (though not without softening touches) and death from intemperance. Everything is softened from the fact, so far as art is permitted to soften and yet to remain essentially true. The real town was more vicious than my Milby; the real Dempster 899 was far more disgusting than mine; the real Janet alas! had a far sadder end than mine, who will melt away from the reader's sight in purity, happiness and beauty.
My sketches both of churchmen and dissenters, with whom I am almost equally acquainted, are drawn from close observation of them in real life, and not at all from hearsay or from the descriptions of novelists.
Dempster is no more like a dissenter than Jonathan Oldbuck is like Davie Deans. 900 If I were to undertake to alter Dempster's language or character, I should be attempting to represent some vague conception of what may possibly exist in other people's minds, but has no existence in my own. Such of your marginal objections as relate to a mere detail I can meet without difficulty by alteration; but as an artist I should be utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and character. There is nothing to be done with the story, but either to let Dempster and Janet and the rest be as I see them, or to renounce it as too painful. I am keenly alive, at once to the scruples and alarms an editor may feel, and to my own utter inability to write under any cramping influence, and on this double ground I should like you to consider whether it will not be better to close the series for the Magazine now. I daresay you will feel no difficulty about publishing a volume containing the story of Janet's Repentance, though you may not like to hazard its insertion in the Magazine, and I shall accept that plan with no other feeling than that you have been to me the most liberal and agreeable of editors and are the man of all others I would choose for a publisher.
My irony, so far as I understand myself, is not directed against opinions -- against any class of religious views -- but against the vices and weaknesses that belong to human nature in every sort of clothing. But it is possible that I may not affect other minds as I intend and wish to affect them, and you are a better judge than I can be of the degree in which I may occasionally be offensive. I should like not to be offensive -- I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humour, with tenderness, with belief in goodness. But I may have failed in this case of Janet, at least so far as to have made you feel its publication in the Magazine a disagreeable risk. If so, there will be no harm done by closing the series with No. 2, as I have suggested. If, however, I take your objections to be deeper than they really are -- if you prefer inserting the story in spite of your partial dissatisfaction, I shall of course be happy to appear under Maga's wing still.
When I remember what have been the successes in fiction even as republications from Maga I can hardly believe that the public will regard my pictures as exceptionally coarse. But in any case there are too many prolific writers who devote themselves to the production of pleasing pictures, to the exclusion of all disagreeable truths for me to desire to add one to their number. In this respect, at least, I may have some resemblance to Thackeray, though I am not conscious of being in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do, on the whole the most powerful of living novelists.
I will retain the proof until I receive an answer from you. In the meanwhile, I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours with sincere regard and obligation
George Eliot.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, 1, 457-461.
Rosa Cottage, Gorey | June 11. 57.
My dear Sir
I am not much surprized, and not at all hurt by your letter received today with the proof. It is a great satisfaction -- in fact my only satisfaction, that you should give me your judgment with perfect frankness. I am able, I think, to enter into an editor's doubts and difficulties, and to see my stories in some degree from your point of view as well as my own. My answer is written after considering the question as far as possible on all sides, and as I feel that I shall not be able to make any other than superficial alterations in the proof, I will, first of all, say what I can in explanation of the spirit and future course of the present story.
The collision in the drama is not at all between "bigotted churchmanship" and evangelicalism, but between irreligion and religion. Religion in this case happens to be represented by evangelicalism, and the story so far as regards the persecution, is a real bit in the religious history of England that happened about eight-and-twenty years ago. I thought I had made it apparent in my sketch of Milby feelings on the advent of Mr. Tryan that the conflict lay between immorality and morality -- irreligion and religion. Mr. Tryan will carry the reader's sympathy. It is through him that Janet is brought to repentance. Dempster's vices have their natural evolution in deeper and deeper moral deterioration (though not without softening touches) and death from intemperance. Everything is softened from the fact, so far as art is permitted to soften and yet to remain essentially true. The real town was more vicious than my Milby; the real Dempster 899 was far more disgusting than mine; the real Janet alas! had a far sadder end than mine, who will melt away from the reader's sight in purity, happiness and beauty.
My sketches both of churchmen and dissenters, with whom I am almost equally acquainted, are drawn from close observation of them in real life, and not at all from hearsay or from the descriptions of novelists.
Dempster is no more like a dissenter than Jonathan Oldbuck is like Davie Deans. 900 If I were to undertake to alter Dempster's language or character, I should be attempting to represent some vague conception of what may possibly exist in other people's minds, but has no existence in my own. Such of your marginal objections as relate to a mere detail I can meet without difficulty by alteration; but as an artist I should be utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and character. There is nothing to be done with the story, but either to let Dempster and Janet and the rest be as I see them, or to renounce it as too painful. I am keenly alive, at once to the scruples and alarms an editor may feel, and to my own utter inability to write under any cramping influence, and on this double ground I should like you to consider whether it will not be better to close the series for the Magazine now. I daresay you will feel no difficulty about publishing a volume containing the story of Janet's Repentance, though you may not like to hazard its insertion in the Magazine, and I shall accept that plan with no other feeling than that you have been to me the most liberal and agreeable of editors and are the man of all others I would choose for a publisher.
My irony, so far as I understand myself, is not directed against opinions -- against any class of religious views -- but against the vices and weaknesses that belong to human nature in every sort of clothing. But it is possible that I may not affect other minds as I intend and wish to affect them, and you are a better judge than I can be of the degree in which I may occasionally be offensive. I should like not to be offensive -- I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humour, with tenderness, with belief in goodness. But I may have failed in this case of Janet, at least so far as to have made you feel its publication in the Magazine a disagreeable risk. If so, there will be no harm done by closing the series with No. 2, as I have suggested. If, however, I take your objections to be deeper than they really are -- if you prefer inserting the story in spite of your partial dissatisfaction, I shall of course be happy to appear under Maga's wing still.
When I remember what have been the successes in fiction even as republications from Maga I can hardly believe that the public will regard my pictures as exceptionally coarse. But in any case there are too many prolific writers who devote themselves to the production of pleasing pictures, to the exclusion of all disagreeable truths for me to desire to add one to their number. In this respect, at least, I may have some resemblance to Thackeray, though I am not conscious of being in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do, on the whole the most powerful of living novelists.
I will retain the proof until I receive an answer from you. In the meanwhile, I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours with sincere regard and obligation
George Eliot.
Signature
George Eliot.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, Gorey, 11 June 1857, 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/92580