GE to the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Rickmansworth, 19 August 1875
Title
GE to the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Rickmansworth, 19 August 1875
Title
GE to the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Rickmansworth, 19 August 1875
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby
Date(s)
- 1875-08-19
Place
Rickmansworth
Letter Content
GE to the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Rickmansworth, 19 August 1875
Text: Cross, III, 261-263.
I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. Please take it as a proof of special feeling that I declined answering your kind inquiries by proxy.
This corner of Hertfordshire is as pretty as it can be of the kind. There are really rural bits at every turn. But for my particular taste I prefer such a region as that round Haslemere -- with wide furzy commons and a grander horizon. Also I prefer a country where I don't make bad blood by having to see one public house to every six dwellings -- which is literally the case in many spots around us. My gall rises at the rich brewers in Parliament and out of it, who plant these poison shops for the sake of their million-making trade, while probably their families are figuring somewhere as refined philanthropists or devout evangelicals and ritualists.
You perceive from this that I am dyspeptic and disposed to melancholy views. In fact I have not been flourishing -- but I am getting a little better; grateful thanks that you will care to know it. On the whole the sins of brewers, with their drugged ale and devil's traps, depress me less than my own inefficiency. But every fresh morning is an opportunity that one can look forward to for exerting one's will. I shall not be satisfied with your philosophy till you have conciliated necessitarianism -- I hate the ugly word -- with the practice of willing strongly, willing to will strongly, and so on, that being what you certainly can do and have done about a great many things in life, whence it is clear that there is nothing in truth to hinder you from it -- except you will say the absence of a motive. But that absence I don't believe in, in your case -- only in the case of empty barren souls.
Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition -- i.e., direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof -- as necessary starting-points for thought.
Text: Cross, III, 261-263.
I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. Please take it as a proof of special feeling that I declined answering your kind inquiries by proxy.
This corner of Hertfordshire is as pretty as it can be of the kind. There are really rural bits at every turn. But for my particular taste I prefer such a region as that round Haslemere -- with wide furzy commons and a grander horizon. Also I prefer a country where I don't make bad blood by having to see one public house to every six dwellings -- which is literally the case in many spots around us. My gall rises at the rich brewers in Parliament and out of it, who plant these poison shops for the sake of their million-making trade, while probably their families are figuring somewhere as refined philanthropists or devout evangelicals and ritualists.
You perceive from this that I am dyspeptic and disposed to melancholy views. In fact I have not been flourishing -- but I am getting a little better; grateful thanks that you will care to know it. On the whole the sins of brewers, with their drugged ale and devil's traps, depress me less than my own inefficiency. But every fresh morning is an opportunity that one can look forward to for exerting one's will. I shall not be satisfied with your philosophy till you have conciliated necessitarianism -- I hate the ugly word -- with the practice of willing strongly, willing to will strongly, and so on, that being what you certainly can do and have done about a great many things in life, whence it is clear that there is nothing in truth to hinder you from it -- except you will say the absence of a motive. But that absence I don't believe in, in your case -- only in the case of empty barren souls.
Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition -- i.e., direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof -- as necessary starting-points for thought.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to the Hon. Mrs. Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Rickmansworth, 19 August 1875, 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/94156