GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Munich, 17 April 1858
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Munich, 17 April 1858
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Munich, 17 April 1858
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1858-04-17
Place
Munich
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Munich, 17 April 1858
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, II, 28-29.
Luitpold Strasse | Munich | April 17. 1858.
Dear Sara
We got into our lodgings last Tuesday, and on Wednesday when we were seated on our sofa, taking our after-dinner coffee, I read aloud your journal. So you see, you have made part of our thoughts in this far-off new place.
We arrived here on Sunday night from N'fcrnberg -- that town of towns -- and of course the first thing to be done on Monday morning was to look out for lodgings. We walked ourselves weary all round by the Englischer Garten and the streets leading from the Ludwig Strasse, till we began to think it a hopeless business. That private mode of advertising which is common in Germany, seems to attain its climax here; for the only intimation you get of lodgings to be let is on small bits of paper covered with small German manuscript and pasted up at street corners as remote as possible from the place in question. At last, Mr. Lewes bethought himself of going to Oldenburg, 1120 the publisher, to whom he had an introduction, and he turned out to be an unostentatiously kind man, who was ready to take a great deal of trouble for us without making the smallest fuss. He took us to two H'f4tels Garnis -- places where you get lodgings and attendance and coffee and nothing else -- but they were too grand and comfortless. Then we took to reading notices again, and trudged along no end of streets all in vain, till we couldn't, for shame, trouble our benevolent German any longer. So after our one o'clock dinner we set out again by ourselves and at last found "zwei elegant m'f6blirte Zimmer," where there has been an immense expenditure on wax and china ornaments and the least possible outlay in basins. We have two time-pieces under glass shades, several crucifixes also under glass shades, several bouquets of artificial flowers under glass shades, a Schranke with glass doors crammed full of the most brittle and tiny articles to be found in the German shops, selected apparently for their brittle-minuteness, and seventeen bad pictures. These are the chief advantages of our lodgings. As secondary ones, we have a very clean old maid as our landlady, and a goodnatured ruddy dummes m'e4dchen for servant; we have a clean Abtritt(!) and two very large gilt framed mirrors hung in dark corners.
Our only discomfort of a serious kind, is that our box of books dispatched a fortnight ago is not yet arrived. We only want that to make us feel quite settled. Mr. Lewes has introductions to some of the best people here -- von Siebold, 1121 and Bodenstedt 1122 and eminences of that sort -- and Oldenburg is going to introduce him to Liebig, 1123 who is now one of the University professors here. So I dare say we shall have quite as much society as we shall care for.
We have been just to take a sip at the two Pinacotheks (the new one devoted to modern art is just finished) and at the Glyptothek, have bought our catalogues, and glanced here and there at the chief attractions. At present the Rubens-Saal is what I most long to return to. Rubens gives me more pleasure than any other painter, whether that is right or wrong. To be sure, I have not seen so many pictures and pictures of so high a rank, by any other great master. I feel sure that when I have seen as much of Raffaelle, I shall like him better, but at present Rubens more than any one else makes me feel that painting is a great art and that he was a great artist. His are such real, breathing men and women -- men and women moved by passions, not mincing and grimacing and posing in mere apery of passion! What a grand, glowing, forceful thing life looks in his pictures -- the men such grand bearded grappling beings fit to do the work of the world, the women such real mothers.
We have just glanced round the Glyptothek, and looked at the original Sleeping Faun, of which I had seen an excellent copy at Berlin, at your great Apollo, the Medusa head, 1124 and the Venus of Cnidos; but the cold marble floors are not so comfortable now as they will be in warm weather, and enthusiasm, I find, though of the warmest "description" will not warm one's feet. So we hurried out, promising ourselves many another visit by and bye. Amongst the modern pictures Kaulbach's seem to me quite the best -- I don't know what we shall say to Cornelius here, but at Berlin I saw nothing that gave me a great idea of him.
The general aspect of Munich is distasteful to me. The buildings are generally huge, expensive and ugly, and one feels everywhere that the art is something superinduced by royal patronage. Such a contrast to N'fcrnberg! I see by your journal that you didn't come to Munich by way of N'fcrnberg -- the more's the pity. We staid there only twenty-four hours, and I felt sad to leave it so soon. There one sees a real mediaeval town, which has grown up with the life of a community as much as the shell of a nautilus has grown with the life of the animal; and the result is just as beautiful. No uniform barrack-like lines of houses there. Every house has a physiognomy -- there is no end to the varieties which the vista of every street presents -- but it is a variety like Nature's, showing general unity presiding over an endless play of individual variety. A pity the place became protestant, so that there is only one Catholic church where one can go in and out as one would. We turned into the famous St. Sebald's for a minute, where a Protestant clergyman was reading in a cold formal way under the grand gothic arches. Then we went to the Catholic church, the Frauenkirche, where the organ and voices were giving forth a glorious mass, and we stood with a feeling of brotherhood among the standing congregation, till the last note of the organ had died out.
I can understand the effect you must have experienced from being set in a different key to your companions. The gentleman 1125 you mention once said to me, "I think Mannheim the most delightful of German towns." I have never seen Mannheim, but since then I have read Riehl's description of it, and know just what sort of place it must be. That is enough to tell me how much sympathy you must have had.
I am miserable physically for the first time since setting out, having caught a Schnupfen or Schleimfieber, which gives me a headache and a general sense that life is a thing which smells badly and has a nasty taste.
Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards. By the bye, did the "lady" present herself only at Ivy Cottage? Love to all from
Your affectionate
Marian.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, II, 28-29.
Luitpold Strasse | Munich | April 17. 1858.
Dear Sara
We got into our lodgings last Tuesday, and on Wednesday when we were seated on our sofa, taking our after-dinner coffee, I read aloud your journal. So you see, you have made part of our thoughts in this far-off new place.
We arrived here on Sunday night from N'fcrnberg -- that town of towns -- and of course the first thing to be done on Monday morning was to look out for lodgings. We walked ourselves weary all round by the Englischer Garten and the streets leading from the Ludwig Strasse, till we began to think it a hopeless business. That private mode of advertising which is common in Germany, seems to attain its climax here; for the only intimation you get of lodgings to be let is on small bits of paper covered with small German manuscript and pasted up at street corners as remote as possible from the place in question. At last, Mr. Lewes bethought himself of going to Oldenburg, 1120 the publisher, to whom he had an introduction, and he turned out to be an unostentatiously kind man, who was ready to take a great deal of trouble for us without making the smallest fuss. He took us to two H'f4tels Garnis -- places where you get lodgings and attendance and coffee and nothing else -- but they were too grand and comfortless. Then we took to reading notices again, and trudged along no end of streets all in vain, till we couldn't, for shame, trouble our benevolent German any longer. So after our one o'clock dinner we set out again by ourselves and at last found "zwei elegant m'f6blirte Zimmer," where there has been an immense expenditure on wax and china ornaments and the least possible outlay in basins. We have two time-pieces under glass shades, several crucifixes also under glass shades, several bouquets of artificial flowers under glass shades, a Schranke with glass doors crammed full of the most brittle and tiny articles to be found in the German shops, selected apparently for their brittle-minuteness, and seventeen bad pictures. These are the chief advantages of our lodgings. As secondary ones, we have a very clean old maid as our landlady, and a goodnatured ruddy dummes m'e4dchen for servant; we have a clean Abtritt(!) and two very large gilt framed mirrors hung in dark corners.
Our only discomfort of a serious kind, is that our box of books dispatched a fortnight ago is not yet arrived. We only want that to make us feel quite settled. Mr. Lewes has introductions to some of the best people here -- von Siebold, 1121 and Bodenstedt 1122 and eminences of that sort -- and Oldenburg is going to introduce him to Liebig, 1123 who is now one of the University professors here. So I dare say we shall have quite as much society as we shall care for.
We have been just to take a sip at the two Pinacotheks (the new one devoted to modern art is just finished) and at the Glyptothek, have bought our catalogues, and glanced here and there at the chief attractions. At present the Rubens-Saal is what I most long to return to. Rubens gives me more pleasure than any other painter, whether that is right or wrong. To be sure, I have not seen so many pictures and pictures of so high a rank, by any other great master. I feel sure that when I have seen as much of Raffaelle, I shall like him better, but at present Rubens more than any one else makes me feel that painting is a great art and that he was a great artist. His are such real, breathing men and women -- men and women moved by passions, not mincing and grimacing and posing in mere apery of passion! What a grand, glowing, forceful thing life looks in his pictures -- the men such grand bearded grappling beings fit to do the work of the world, the women such real mothers.
We have just glanced round the Glyptothek, and looked at the original Sleeping Faun, of which I had seen an excellent copy at Berlin, at your great Apollo, the Medusa head, 1124 and the Venus of Cnidos; but the cold marble floors are not so comfortable now as they will be in warm weather, and enthusiasm, I find, though of the warmest "description" will not warm one's feet. So we hurried out, promising ourselves many another visit by and bye. Amongst the modern pictures Kaulbach's seem to me quite the best -- I don't know what we shall say to Cornelius here, but at Berlin I saw nothing that gave me a great idea of him.
The general aspect of Munich is distasteful to me. The buildings are generally huge, expensive and ugly, and one feels everywhere that the art is something superinduced by royal patronage. Such a contrast to N'fcrnberg! I see by your journal that you didn't come to Munich by way of N'fcrnberg -- the more's the pity. We staid there only twenty-four hours, and I felt sad to leave it so soon. There one sees a real mediaeval town, which has grown up with the life of a community as much as the shell of a nautilus has grown with the life of the animal; and the result is just as beautiful. No uniform barrack-like lines of houses there. Every house has a physiognomy -- there is no end to the varieties which the vista of every street presents -- but it is a variety like Nature's, showing general unity presiding over an endless play of individual variety. A pity the place became protestant, so that there is only one Catholic church where one can go in and out as one would. We turned into the famous St. Sebald's for a minute, where a Protestant clergyman was reading in a cold formal way under the grand gothic arches. Then we went to the Catholic church, the Frauenkirche, where the organ and voices were giving forth a glorious mass, and we stood with a feeling of brotherhood among the standing congregation, till the last note of the organ had died out.
I can understand the effect you must have experienced from being set in a different key to your companions. The gentleman 1125 you mention once said to me, "I think Mannheim the most delightful of German towns." I have never seen Mannheim, but since then I have read Riehl's description of it, and know just what sort of place it must be. That is enough to tell me how much sympathy you must have had.
I am miserable physically for the first time since setting out, having caught a Schnupfen or Schleimfieber, which gives me a headache and a general sense that life is a thing which smells badly and has a nasty taste.
Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards. By the bye, did the "lady" present herself only at Ivy Cottage? Love to all from
Your affectionate
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Munich, 17 April 1858, 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/94069