GE to John Sibree, Jr., Foleshill, [February 1848]
Title
GE to John Sibree, Jr., Foleshill, [February 1848]
Title
GE to John Sibree, Jr., Foleshill, [February 1848]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Sibree, Jr.
Date(s)
- 1848-02
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to John Sibree, Jr., Foleshill, [February 1848]
Text: Copy (by Mary Sibree Cash?), Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I, 175-178.
My dear Mr. Sibree,
I have tired myself with trying to write cleverly "invita Minerva," 703 and having in vain endeavoured to refresh myself by turning over Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies and still queerer judgments on them 704 it is a happy thought of mine that I have a virtuous reason for spending my ennui on you. 705 I am going to have a visitor for a few days, with whom I shall have to talk till I am dead tired every night, and now I know that you are melancholy I can't bear to wait till the end of that time before I tell you that I care about it. This is the utmost I can do since you have not elected me into a friend and told me the "why" and I suppose your adamantine self will feel no salutary vibrations from such a pennyworth of sympathy, though my fluid nature is always stirred by the idea that any heart beats just a little quicker because of me. Well I will send you a stanza I picked up the other day in George Sand's Lettres d'un Voyageur, which is almost the ultimatum of human wisdom on the question of human sorrow. It will either make you laugh or weep ("iron tears" 706 of course) and so it must do good. Le bonheur et le malheur Nous viennent du m'eame auteur Voil'e0 la ressemblance.
Le bonheur nous rend heureux, Et le malheur malheureux, Voil'e0 la différence. 707
Ah! here comes a cup of coffee to console me. When I have taken it I will tell you what G.S. says. "Sais tu bien que tout est dit devant Dieu et devant les hommes quand l'homme infortuné demande compte de ses maux et qu'il obtienne cette résponse? Qu'y a-t-il de plus? Rien."
But I am not a mocking pen, and if I were talking to you instead of writing you would detect some falsity in the ring of my voice. Alas! the atrabiliar patient you describe is first cousin to me in my very worst moods, but I have a profound faith that the servant's head will be bruised. This conscious kind of false life that is ever and anon endeavouring to form itself within us and eat away our true life will be overcome by continued accession of vitality, by our perpetual increase in "quantity of existence" as Foster calls it. 708 Creation is the superadded life of the intellect; sympathy, all-embracing love, the superadded moral life. These given more and more abundantly, I feel that all the demons, which are but my own egotism, mopping and mowing and gibbering would vanish away and there would be no place for them -- for Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath. 709 Evil, even sorrows, are they not all negations? Thus matter is in a perpetual state of decomposition -- superadd the principle of life, and the tendency to decomposition is overcome. Add to this consciousness, and there is a power of self-amelioration. The passions and senses decompose, so to speak. The intellect by its analytic power, restrains the fury with which they rush to their own destruction, the moral nature purifies beautifies and at length transmutes them. But to whom am I talking? You know far more sur ce chapitre than I.
After all, you are a very blessed creature for being melancholy seeing that I have not yet reached a condition to do without being so. Only you are far too impersonal. There are not half so many I's in your letters as in mine. Every one talks of himself or herself to me, and I beg you will follow every one's example in this one thing only. Individuals are precious to me in proportion as they unfold to me their intimate selves. I have just had lent me the journal of a person who died some years ago. When I was less venerable I should have felt the reading of such a thing insupportable -- now it interests me, though it is the simplest record of events and feelings.
Mary says she has told you about Mr. Dawson and his lecture -- miserable crude and mystifying in some parts but with a few fine passages. He is a very delightful man but not (at least so say my impressions) a great man. How difficult it is to be great in this world, where there is a tariff for spiritualities as well as for beeves and cheese and tallow. It is scarcely possible for a man simply to give out his true inspiration -- the real profound conviction which he has won by hard wrestling or the few and far between pearls of imagination -- he must go on talking or writing by rote or he must starve. Would it not be better to take to tent-making with Paul or to spectacle-making with Spinoza.
Thank you for that picture of your study. I have you now in my mind's eye. But that standing is an awful symptom of your rigid nature. Give it up, mon ami, or you will get a diseased firmness. I am very tired and so are you I guess. Write again as soon as you can, for it is a real pleasure to see a letter from you when I look into the abyss of the post-bag. That is an appeal to your goodness which I know you will not withstand.
When shall we see your face again? At Easter? Good night -- It is here I put an extinguisher on myself for I am very low in the socket.
M. A. E.
Text: Copy (by Mary Sibree Cash?), Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I, 175-178.
My dear Mr. Sibree,
I have tired myself with trying to write cleverly "invita Minerva," 703 and having in vain endeavoured to refresh myself by turning over Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies and still queerer judgments on them 704 it is a happy thought of mine that I have a virtuous reason for spending my ennui on you. 705 I am going to have a visitor for a few days, with whom I shall have to talk till I am dead tired every night, and now I know that you are melancholy I can't bear to wait till the end of that time before I tell you that I care about it. This is the utmost I can do since you have not elected me into a friend and told me the "why" and I suppose your adamantine self will feel no salutary vibrations from such a pennyworth of sympathy, though my fluid nature is always stirred by the idea that any heart beats just a little quicker because of me. Well I will send you a stanza I picked up the other day in George Sand's Lettres d'un Voyageur, which is almost the ultimatum of human wisdom on the question of human sorrow. It will either make you laugh or weep ("iron tears" 706 of course) and so it must do good. Le bonheur et le malheur Nous viennent du m'eame auteur Voil'e0 la ressemblance.
Le bonheur nous rend heureux, Et le malheur malheureux, Voil'e0 la différence. 707
Ah! here comes a cup of coffee to console me. When I have taken it I will tell you what G.S. says. "Sais tu bien que tout est dit devant Dieu et devant les hommes quand l'homme infortuné demande compte de ses maux et qu'il obtienne cette résponse? Qu'y a-t-il de plus? Rien."
But I am not a mocking pen, and if I were talking to you instead of writing you would detect some falsity in the ring of my voice. Alas! the atrabiliar patient you describe is first cousin to me in my very worst moods, but I have a profound faith that the servant's head will be bruised. This conscious kind of false life that is ever and anon endeavouring to form itself within us and eat away our true life will be overcome by continued accession of vitality, by our perpetual increase in "quantity of existence" as Foster calls it. 708 Creation is the superadded life of the intellect; sympathy, all-embracing love, the superadded moral life. These given more and more abundantly, I feel that all the demons, which are but my own egotism, mopping and mowing and gibbering would vanish away and there would be no place for them -- for Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath. 709 Evil, even sorrows, are they not all negations? Thus matter is in a perpetual state of decomposition -- superadd the principle of life, and the tendency to decomposition is overcome. Add to this consciousness, and there is a power of self-amelioration. The passions and senses decompose, so to speak. The intellect by its analytic power, restrains the fury with which they rush to their own destruction, the moral nature purifies beautifies and at length transmutes them. But to whom am I talking? You know far more sur ce chapitre than I.
After all, you are a very blessed creature for being melancholy seeing that I have not yet reached a condition to do without being so. Only you are far too impersonal. There are not half so many I's in your letters as in mine. Every one talks of himself or herself to me, and I beg you will follow every one's example in this one thing only. Individuals are precious to me in proportion as they unfold to me their intimate selves. I have just had lent me the journal of a person who died some years ago. When I was less venerable I should have felt the reading of such a thing insupportable -- now it interests me, though it is the simplest record of events and feelings.
Mary says she has told you about Mr. Dawson and his lecture -- miserable crude and mystifying in some parts but with a few fine passages. He is a very delightful man but not (at least so say my impressions) a great man. How difficult it is to be great in this world, where there is a tariff for spiritualities as well as for beeves and cheese and tallow. It is scarcely possible for a man simply to give out his true inspiration -- the real profound conviction which he has won by hard wrestling or the few and far between pearls of imagination -- he must go on talking or writing by rote or he must starve. Would it not be better to take to tent-making with Paul or to spectacle-making with Spinoza.
Thank you for that picture of your study. I have you now in my mind's eye. But that standing is an awful symptom of your rigid nature. Give it up, mon ami, or you will get a diseased firmness. I am very tired and so are you I guess. Write again as soon as you can, for it is a real pleasure to see a letter from you when I look into the abyss of the post-bag. That is an appeal to your goodness which I know you will not withstand.
When shall we see your face again? At Easter? Good night -- It is here I put an extinguisher on myself for I am very low in the socket.
M. A. E.
Signature
M. A. E.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Sibree, Jr., Foleshill, [February 1848], 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/92818