GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, 9 February 1849]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, 9 February 1849]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, 9 February 1849]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1849-02-09
Place
[FOLESHILL]
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, 9 February 1849]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Feb. 9th, 1849. Mostly published: Cross, I, 197-200.
Dear Sara
My life is a perpetual nightmare -- always haunted by something to be done which I have never the time or rather the energy to do.
Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious and I alas! am not one of them. Else I might write to you oftener, if indeed you would thank me for doing so. I have sat down in desperation this evening though dear Father is very uneasy and his moans distract me, just to tell you that you have full absolution for your criticism 775 which I do not reckon of the [impertinent] order. I wish you thoroughly to understand that the writers who have most profoundly influenced me -- who have rolled away the waters from their bed raised new mountains and spread delicious valleys for me -- are not in the least oracles to me. It is just possible that I may not embrace one of their opinions, that I may wish my life to be shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance it would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to stun me with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, and government are miserably erroneous -- that he was guilty of some of the worst bassesses that have degraded civilized man. I might admit all this -- and it would be not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions, which has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me -- and this not by teaching me any new belief. It is simply that the rushing mighty wind 776 of his inspiration has so quickened my faculties that I have been able to shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously dwelt as dim [ahnungen] in my soul -- the fire of his genius has so fused together old thoughts and prejudices that I have been ready to make new combinations.
It is thus with G. Sand. I should never dream of going to her writings as a moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree with her about marriage or not 777 -- whether I think the design of her plot correct or that she had no precise design at all but began to write as the spirit moved her and trusted to Providence for the catastrophe, which I think the more probable case -- it is sufficient for me as a reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that [great power of God] 778 manifested in her -- that I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results -- (and I must say in spite of your judgment) some of the moral instincts and their tendencies -- with such truthfulness such nicety of discrimination such tragic power and withal such loving gentle humour that one might live a century with nothing but one's own dull faculties and not know so much as those six pages will suggest. The psychological anatomy of Jacques and Fernande in the early days of their marriage 779 seems quite preternaturally true -- I mean that her power of describing it is preter-natural. Fernande and Jacques are merely the masculine and the feminine nature and their early married life an everyday tragedy -- but I will not dilate on the book or on your criticism for I am so sleepy that I should write nothing but b'eatises.
I have at last the most delightful "de imitatione Christi" with quaint woodcuts. 780 One breathes a cool air as of cloisters in the book -- it makes one long to be a saint for a few months. Verily its piety has its foundations in the depth of the divine-human soul.
Thine Ever
Pollian.
Do not suppose that I mean this as an answer to your criticism or that I do not understand it.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Feb. 9th, 1849. Mostly published: Cross, I, 197-200.
Dear Sara
My life is a perpetual nightmare -- always haunted by something to be done which I have never the time or rather the energy to do.
Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious and I alas! am not one of them. Else I might write to you oftener, if indeed you would thank me for doing so. I have sat down in desperation this evening though dear Father is very uneasy and his moans distract me, just to tell you that you have full absolution for your criticism 775 which I do not reckon of the [impertinent] order. I wish you thoroughly to understand that the writers who have most profoundly influenced me -- who have rolled away the waters from their bed raised new mountains and spread delicious valleys for me -- are not in the least oracles to me. It is just possible that I may not embrace one of their opinions, that I may wish my life to be shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance it would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to stun me with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, and government are miserably erroneous -- that he was guilty of some of the worst bassesses that have degraded civilized man. I might admit all this -- and it would be not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions, which has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me -- and this not by teaching me any new belief. It is simply that the rushing mighty wind 776 of his inspiration has so quickened my faculties that I have been able to shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously dwelt as dim [ahnungen] in my soul -- the fire of his genius has so fused together old thoughts and prejudices that I have been ready to make new combinations.
It is thus with G. Sand. I should never dream of going to her writings as a moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree with her about marriage or not 777 -- whether I think the design of her plot correct or that she had no precise design at all but began to write as the spirit moved her and trusted to Providence for the catastrophe, which I think the more probable case -- it is sufficient for me as a reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that [great power of God] 778 manifested in her -- that I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results -- (and I must say in spite of your judgment) some of the moral instincts and their tendencies -- with such truthfulness such nicety of discrimination such tragic power and withal such loving gentle humour that one might live a century with nothing but one's own dull faculties and not know so much as those six pages will suggest. The psychological anatomy of Jacques and Fernande in the early days of their marriage 779 seems quite preternaturally true -- I mean that her power of describing it is preter-natural. Fernande and Jacques are merely the masculine and the feminine nature and their early married life an everyday tragedy -- but I will not dilate on the book or on your criticism for I am so sleepy that I should write nothing but b'eatises.
I have at last the most delightful "de imitatione Christi" with quaint woodcuts. 780 One breathes a cool air as of cloisters in the book -- it makes one long to be a saint for a few months. Verily its piety has its foundations in the depth of the divine-human soul.
Thine Ever
Pollian.
Do not suppose that I mean this as an answer to your criticism or that I do not understand it.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, 9 February 1849], 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/93827