GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [18 April 1849]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [18 April 1849]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [18 April 1849]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1849-04-18
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [18 April 1849]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: April 18/49. Extract published: Cross, I, 200-203.
Foleshill | Wednesday.
Dear love
I have given you a sad excuse for flirtation, 782 but I have not been beyond seas long enough to make it lawful for you to take a new husband -- therefore I come back to you with all a husband's privileges and command you to love me whether I shew you any love or not, and to be faithful to me though I play you false every day of my life -- and indeed you ought to be thankful for such an opportunity of being something better than a publican and a sinner. But in the veriest truth and simplicity, my Sara, thou art very dear to me and I sometimes talk to you in my soul as lovingly as Solomon's Song. Tell me not that I am a mere prater -- that feeling never talks and a thousand more Hennellisms -- I will talk and caress and look lovingly until death makes me as stony as the Gorgon-like heads of all the judicious people I know. What is anything worth until it is uttered? Is not the Universe one great utterance? Utterance there must be in word or deed to make life of any worth. Every true pentecost is a gift of utterance. Our life is too short and opportunities too meagre for many deeds -- besides the best friendships are precisely those where there is no possibility of material helpfulness -- and I would take no deeds as an adequate compensation for the frigid glassy eye and hard indifferent tones of one's very solid and sensible and conscientious friend.
You will wonder of what this is 'e0 propos -- only of a little bitterness in my own soul just as this moment, and not of anything between you and me, my beloved. I have nothing to tell you, for all the [haps] of my life are so indifferent -- I spin my existence so entirely out of myself, that there is a sad want of proper names in my conversation and I am becoming a greater bore than ever. It is a consciousness of this that has kept me from writing to you -- my letters would be a sort of hermit's diary. I have so liked the thought of your being with Mr. Hennell and yet more that of your enjoying the Nemesis of Faith. 783 I quote Keats's sonnet apropos of that book. It has made me feel like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken, Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific -- and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmize -- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 784 You must read the [Shadows of the Clouds] 785 -- it produces a sort of palpitation that one hardly knows whether to call wretched or delightful. I cannot take up the book again though wanting very much to read it more closely. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is blessed to think that a sort of transhumanation is possible by which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's greatness, beauty or bliss is our own -- and let us sing a Magnificat when we are conscious that this power of expansion and sympathy is growing just in proportion as the individual satisfactions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but it is worth while to be so for the sake of the living soul -- the breath of God within us. You see I can do nothing but scribble my own prosy stuff -- such chopped straw as my soul is foddered on.
I am translating the Tractatus Theologico-politicus of Spinoza 786 and seem to want the only friend that knows how to praise or blame. How exquisite is the satisfaction of feeling that another mind than your own sees precisely where and what is the difficulty -- and can exactly appreciate the success with which it is overcome. One knows -- sed longo intervallo -- the full meaning of the "fit audience though few." 787 How an artist must hate the noodles that stare at his picture with a vague notion that it is a clever thing to be able to paint.
The cold of this weather really enters into one's soul. 788 Write to me -- I feel as if writing would be very delightful now. I have a corresponding fit just come over me. Do you have a correspondent fit?
Yours in perennial silliness and love,
Pollian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: April 18/49. Extract published: Cross, I, 200-203.
Foleshill | Wednesday.
Dear love
I have given you a sad excuse for flirtation, 782 but I have not been beyond seas long enough to make it lawful for you to take a new husband -- therefore I come back to you with all a husband's privileges and command you to love me whether I shew you any love or not, and to be faithful to me though I play you false every day of my life -- and indeed you ought to be thankful for such an opportunity of being something better than a publican and a sinner. But in the veriest truth and simplicity, my Sara, thou art very dear to me and I sometimes talk to you in my soul as lovingly as Solomon's Song. Tell me not that I am a mere prater -- that feeling never talks and a thousand more Hennellisms -- I will talk and caress and look lovingly until death makes me as stony as the Gorgon-like heads of all the judicious people I know. What is anything worth until it is uttered? Is not the Universe one great utterance? Utterance there must be in word or deed to make life of any worth. Every true pentecost is a gift of utterance. Our life is too short and opportunities too meagre for many deeds -- besides the best friendships are precisely those where there is no possibility of material helpfulness -- and I would take no deeds as an adequate compensation for the frigid glassy eye and hard indifferent tones of one's very solid and sensible and conscientious friend.
You will wonder of what this is 'e0 propos -- only of a little bitterness in my own soul just as this moment, and not of anything between you and me, my beloved. I have nothing to tell you, for all the [haps] of my life are so indifferent -- I spin my existence so entirely out of myself, that there is a sad want of proper names in my conversation and I am becoming a greater bore than ever. It is a consciousness of this that has kept me from writing to you -- my letters would be a sort of hermit's diary. I have so liked the thought of your being with Mr. Hennell and yet more that of your enjoying the Nemesis of Faith. 783 I quote Keats's sonnet apropos of that book. It has made me feel like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken, Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific -- and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmize -- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 784 You must read the [Shadows of the Clouds] 785 -- it produces a sort of palpitation that one hardly knows whether to call wretched or delightful. I cannot take up the book again though wanting very much to read it more closely. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is blessed to think that a sort of transhumanation is possible by which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's greatness, beauty or bliss is our own -- and let us sing a Magnificat when we are conscious that this power of expansion and sympathy is growing just in proportion as the individual satisfactions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but it is worth while to be so for the sake of the living soul -- the breath of God within us. You see I can do nothing but scribble my own prosy stuff -- such chopped straw as my soul is foddered on.
I am translating the Tractatus Theologico-politicus of Spinoza 786 and seem to want the only friend that knows how to praise or blame. How exquisite is the satisfaction of feeling that another mind than your own sees precisely where and what is the difficulty -- and can exactly appreciate the success with which it is overcome. One knows -- sed longo intervallo -- the full meaning of the "fit audience though few." 787 How an artist must hate the noodles that stare at his picture with a vague notion that it is a clever thing to be able to paint.
The cold of this weather really enters into one's soul. 788 Write to me -- I feel as if writing would be very delightful now. I have a corresponding fit just come over me. Do you have a correspondent fit?
Yours in perennial silliness and love,
Pollian.
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [18 April 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/93899