GE to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Redhill, [24] June 1872
Title
GE to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Redhill, [24] June 1872
Title
GE to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Redhill, [24] June 1872
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Harriet Beecher S
Date(s)
- 1872-06-24
Place
Redhill
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Redhill, [24] June 1872
Text: Cross, III, 159-163, dated 4 June 1872.
We too are in a country refuge, you see, and this bit of Surrey, as I dare say you know, is full of beauty of the too garden-like sort for which you pity us. How different from your lodge in the wilderness! 535 I have read your description three or four times -- it enchants me so thoroughly; and Mr Lewes is just as much enamoured of it. We shall never see it, I imagine, except in the mirror of your loving words; but thanks many and warm, dear friend, for saying that our presence would be welcome. I have always had delight in descriptions of American forests since the early days when I read [Atala,] 536 which I believe that you would criticise as half unveracious. I dwelt on the descriptions in [Dred] 537 with much enjoyment.
Pray give my special thanks to the Professor for his letter. His handwriting, which does really look like Arabic, -- a very graceful character, surely, -- happens to be remarkably legible to me, and I did not hesitate over a single word. Some of the words, as expressions of fellowship, were very precious to me; and I hold it very good of him to write to me that best sort of encouragement. 538 I was much impressed with the fact -- which you had told me -- that he was the original of the "visionary boy" in [Old Town Folk;] and it must be deeply interesting to talk with him on his experience. Perhaps I am inclined, under the influence of the facts, physiological and psychological, which have been gathered of late years, to give larger place to the interpretation of vision-seeing as subjective than the Professor would approve. It seems difficult to limit -- at least to limit with any precision -- the possibility of confounding sense by impressions, derived from inward conditions, with those which are directly dependent on external stimulus. In fact, the division between within and without in this sense seems to become every year a more subtle and bewildering problem.
Your experience with the planchette is amazing; but that the words which you found it to have written were dictated by the spirit of Charlotte Bront'eb is to me (whether rightly or not) so enormously improbable, that I could only accept it if every condition were laid bare, and every other explanation demonstrated to be impossible. 539 If it were another spirit aping Charlotte Bront'eb -- if here and there at rare spots and among people of a certain temperament, or even at many spots and among people of all temperaments, tricksy spirits are liable to rise as a sort of earth-bubbles and set furniture in movement, and tell things which we either know already or should be as well without knowing -- I must frankly confess that I have but a feeble interest in these doings, feeling my life very short for the supreme and awful revelations of a more orderly and intelligible kind which I shall die with an imperfect knowledge of. If there were miserable spirits whom we could help -- then I think we should pause and have patience with their trivial-mindedness; but otherwise I don't feel bound to study them more than I am bound to study the special follies of a particular phase of human society. Others, who feel differently, and are attracted towards this study, are making an experiment for us as to whether anything better than bewilderment can come of it. At present it seems to me that to rest any fundamental part of religion on such a basis is a melancholy misguidance of men's minds from the true sources of high and pure emotion. I am comforted to think that you partly agree with me there.
I have not time to write more than this very imperfect fragmentary sketch of only one aspect which the question of spirit-communications wears to me as present -- being always rather brain-weary after my morning's work, and called for by my husband to walk with him and read aloud to him. I spend nearly three hours every day in this exercise of reading aloud, which, happily, I can carry on without fatigue of lungs. Yet it takes strength as well as time.
Mr Lewes is gone into town to-day, 540 so I have an additional hour at liberty, and have been glad to be able to send you a letter which is not worth anything, indeed, but which satisfies my need to thank you and the Professor for your sweet friendliness -- very sweet to me, I assure you. Please accept my entire frankness as a proof of that high value I set on you. And do not call anything I may have written a prejudice -- it is simply a statement of how certain things appear to my inward eyesight, which I am ready to have rectified by more light.
About photographs -- I have no photograph of myself, having always avoided having one taken. That makes me seem very selfish in being particularly glad to get yours.
Mrs Fields, with the beautiful face and charming manners, sent me a letter a little while ago, inviting us in the most tempting way to go to Boston. She said that this pretty action was done at your prompting, which is just like you as you have always shown yourself to me.
Dear friend, how much you have lived through both in the flesh and in the spirit! My experience has been narrow compared with yours. I assure you I feel this, so do not misinterpret anything I say to you as being written in a flippant or critical spirit. One always feels the want of the voice and eyes to accompany a letter, and give it the right tone.
Text: Cross, III, 159-163, dated 4 June 1872.
We too are in a country refuge, you see, and this bit of Surrey, as I dare say you know, is full of beauty of the too garden-like sort for which you pity us. How different from your lodge in the wilderness! 535 I have read your description three or four times -- it enchants me so thoroughly; and Mr Lewes is just as much enamoured of it. We shall never see it, I imagine, except in the mirror of your loving words; but thanks many and warm, dear friend, for saying that our presence would be welcome. I have always had delight in descriptions of American forests since the early days when I read [Atala,] 536 which I believe that you would criticise as half unveracious. I dwelt on the descriptions in [Dred] 537 with much enjoyment.
Pray give my special thanks to the Professor for his letter. His handwriting, which does really look like Arabic, -- a very graceful character, surely, -- happens to be remarkably legible to me, and I did not hesitate over a single word. Some of the words, as expressions of fellowship, were very precious to me; and I hold it very good of him to write to me that best sort of encouragement. 538 I was much impressed with the fact -- which you had told me -- that he was the original of the "visionary boy" in [Old Town Folk;] and it must be deeply interesting to talk with him on his experience. Perhaps I am inclined, under the influence of the facts, physiological and psychological, which have been gathered of late years, to give larger place to the interpretation of vision-seeing as subjective than the Professor would approve. It seems difficult to limit -- at least to limit with any precision -- the possibility of confounding sense by impressions, derived from inward conditions, with those which are directly dependent on external stimulus. In fact, the division between within and without in this sense seems to become every year a more subtle and bewildering problem.
Your experience with the planchette is amazing; but that the words which you found it to have written were dictated by the spirit of Charlotte Bront'eb is to me (whether rightly or not) so enormously improbable, that I could only accept it if every condition were laid bare, and every other explanation demonstrated to be impossible. 539 If it were another spirit aping Charlotte Bront'eb -- if here and there at rare spots and among people of a certain temperament, or even at many spots and among people of all temperaments, tricksy spirits are liable to rise as a sort of earth-bubbles and set furniture in movement, and tell things which we either know already or should be as well without knowing -- I must frankly confess that I have but a feeble interest in these doings, feeling my life very short for the supreme and awful revelations of a more orderly and intelligible kind which I shall die with an imperfect knowledge of. If there were miserable spirits whom we could help -- then I think we should pause and have patience with their trivial-mindedness; but otherwise I don't feel bound to study them more than I am bound to study the special follies of a particular phase of human society. Others, who feel differently, and are attracted towards this study, are making an experiment for us as to whether anything better than bewilderment can come of it. At present it seems to me that to rest any fundamental part of religion on such a basis is a melancholy misguidance of men's minds from the true sources of high and pure emotion. I am comforted to think that you partly agree with me there.
I have not time to write more than this very imperfect fragmentary sketch of only one aspect which the question of spirit-communications wears to me as present -- being always rather brain-weary after my morning's work, and called for by my husband to walk with him and read aloud to him. I spend nearly three hours every day in this exercise of reading aloud, which, happily, I can carry on without fatigue of lungs. Yet it takes strength as well as time.
Mr Lewes is gone into town to-day, 540 so I have an additional hour at liberty, and have been glad to be able to send you a letter which is not worth anything, indeed, but which satisfies my need to thank you and the Professor for your sweet friendliness -- very sweet to me, I assure you. Please accept my entire frankness as a proof of that high value I set on you. And do not call anything I may have written a prejudice -- it is simply a statement of how certain things appear to my inward eyesight, which I am ready to have rectified by more light.
About photographs -- I have no photograph of myself, having always avoided having one taken. That makes me seem very selfish in being particularly glad to get yours.
Mrs Fields, with the beautiful face and charming manners, sent me a letter a little while ago, inviting us in the most tempting way to go to Boston. She said that this pretty action was done at your prompting, which is just like you as you have always shown yourself to me.
Dear friend, how much you have lived through both in the flesh and in the spirit! My experience has been narrow compared with yours. I assure you I feel this, so do not misinterpret anything I say to you as being written in a flippant or critical spirit. One always feels the want of the voice and eyes to accompany a letter, and give it the right tone.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Redhill, [24] June 1872, 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/93466