GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 February 1874
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 February 1874
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 February 1874
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1874-02-10
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 February 1874
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Tuesday Evening | February 10. 74.
Dear Sara
Oh what a picture that is which you have been so good as to give me of Harriet! -- how deeply pathetic, and yet almost happy from the rays of affectionate goodness both in her and in her poor friend Ann! I am quite grateful to you for taking the trouble to write me the narrative, and I quite share your comfort in the sense that Harriet is now in kind keeping and sure to have the needful tendance.
I have read both the newspaper slips. Your letter to the Examiner 22 is much milder than I expected, and hardly makes apparent the severe objections you mentioned to me. But I am not sorry that there should be a little boiling of the peas shot at poor Mr. Spencer just now, for he is running the gauntlet in rather a fatiguing way between Cambridge men who are criticising his physics and psychology, and historians who are criticising the [Sociological Tables] on which he has already spent £500, in the hope that he is doing the world a service. Perhaps you do not see [the Academy,] which has been regenerated and has started on its new life with great vigour: it is in this periodical that the [Tables] have been discussed. 23 Then there is Moulton, 24 a Cambridge mathematician, who is carrying on a venomous as well as harassing attack in the British Quarterly; and there are various bitings and snappings of metaphysicians in other directions. Such are the delights of philosophical celebrity -- of a better sort however than those of poor Dickens, as they are painfully revealed in this third and last volume of his Life. 25
I have been almost constantly an invalid during the last seven weeks or more, and last week I had quite a new form of an ailment which Dr. Andrew Clarke is inclined to dignify with the name of lumbar neuralgia. The pain was very trying while it lasted, but happily it came on in fits and after a few hours would leave me suddenly like a cast out daemon. However, I have now been free for several days and am cheerfully hoping that the enemy will not return.
The dirty Christians 26 are very dilatory too, but I suppose we must allow for an immense amount of pressing business in which dear Cara's story seems to lie like one pebble in a heap as seen from the Secretary's point of view, he having painfully to dispose of the heap pebble by pebble. I have been thinking of it almost daily, and have been tempted to the irrationality of writing to ask her whether she had had any news of it.
Your handsome green volume 27 has been duly sent to me -- but only the other day. The paper-covered parts are pleasant to hold, but not so good for reference. Thank you for this extra gift.
Do you know that the [Examiner] is now the property of Mr. Peter Taylor? -- who, by the way, is one of the minority of returned Liberals, keeping his old seat for Leicester. Surely the Mr. Jackson you mention must be the son of Peter Jackson? But who is [old Sam Carter]? 28 However the story you tell of his behaviour is very pretty.
I am not yet quite up to my ordinary pitch of strength, and find my inevitable letter-writing a little too much for me. But I am very glad of the occasion which has made me scribble this to you the last thing before going to bed. I read your account of Harriet to Mr. Lewes, who has entered into it very keenly. Best love to all from
Your ever affectionate
Pollian.
I return the slips, lest you should not have any duplicates. Mrs. William Smith has written a very interesting memoir of her husband (the author of Thorndale) which is appended to his Essays on Knowing and Feeling originally published in the Contemporary. 29
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Tuesday Evening | February 10. 74.
Dear Sara
Oh what a picture that is which you have been so good as to give me of Harriet! -- how deeply pathetic, and yet almost happy from the rays of affectionate goodness both in her and in her poor friend Ann! I am quite grateful to you for taking the trouble to write me the narrative, and I quite share your comfort in the sense that Harriet is now in kind keeping and sure to have the needful tendance.
I have read both the newspaper slips. Your letter to the Examiner 22 is much milder than I expected, and hardly makes apparent the severe objections you mentioned to me. But I am not sorry that there should be a little boiling of the peas shot at poor Mr. Spencer just now, for he is running the gauntlet in rather a fatiguing way between Cambridge men who are criticising his physics and psychology, and historians who are criticising the [Sociological Tables] on which he has already spent £500, in the hope that he is doing the world a service. Perhaps you do not see [the Academy,] which has been regenerated and has started on its new life with great vigour: it is in this periodical that the [Tables] have been discussed. 23 Then there is Moulton, 24 a Cambridge mathematician, who is carrying on a venomous as well as harassing attack in the British Quarterly; and there are various bitings and snappings of metaphysicians in other directions. Such are the delights of philosophical celebrity -- of a better sort however than those of poor Dickens, as they are painfully revealed in this third and last volume of his Life. 25
I have been almost constantly an invalid during the last seven weeks or more, and last week I had quite a new form of an ailment which Dr. Andrew Clarke is inclined to dignify with the name of lumbar neuralgia. The pain was very trying while it lasted, but happily it came on in fits and after a few hours would leave me suddenly like a cast out daemon. However, I have now been free for several days and am cheerfully hoping that the enemy will not return.
The dirty Christians 26 are very dilatory too, but I suppose we must allow for an immense amount of pressing business in which dear Cara's story seems to lie like one pebble in a heap as seen from the Secretary's point of view, he having painfully to dispose of the heap pebble by pebble. I have been thinking of it almost daily, and have been tempted to the irrationality of writing to ask her whether she had had any news of it.
Your handsome green volume 27 has been duly sent to me -- but only the other day. The paper-covered parts are pleasant to hold, but not so good for reference. Thank you for this extra gift.
Do you know that the [Examiner] is now the property of Mr. Peter Taylor? -- who, by the way, is one of the minority of returned Liberals, keeping his old seat for Leicester. Surely the Mr. Jackson you mention must be the son of Peter Jackson? But who is [old Sam Carter]? 28 However the story you tell of his behaviour is very pretty.
I am not yet quite up to my ordinary pitch of strength, and find my inevitable letter-writing a little too much for me. But I am very glad of the occasion which has made me scribble this to you the last thing before going to bed. I read your account of Harriet to Mr. Lewes, who has entered into it very keenly. Best love to all from
Your ever affectionate
Pollian.
I return the slips, lest you should not have any duplicates. Mrs. William Smith has written a very interesting memoir of her husband (the author of Thorndale) which is appended to his Essays on Knowing and Feeling originally published in the Contemporary. 29
Signature
Pollian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, London, 10 February 1874, 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/93983