GHL to Charles Holte Bracebridge, Wandsworth, 19 September 1859
Title
GHL to Charles Holte Bracebridge, Wandsworth, 19 September 1859
Title
GHL to Charles Holte Bracebridge, Wandsworth, 19 September 1859
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Charles Holte Bracebridge
Date(s)
- 1859-09-19
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GHL to Charles Holte Bracebridge, Wandsworth, 19 September 1859
Text: Copy by GE; another copy in a different hand has supplied heading, date, and a few words in brackets. Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge, Wimbledon Park, | Wandsworth, S.W.
September 1859.
Sir,
Mr. Bray has forwarded to Mrs. Lewes your two letters to him about "Adam Bede."
I have no doubt that you, having been imposed upon, have been actuated by benevolent motives, but I think that on reflection you must see that your continued rejection of the explicit statements of honourable men, and your persistence in maintaining a belief for which you can have really no evidence, is the more inexcusable because you thereby imply that the Messrs. Blackwood, Mrs. Lewes, and myself are deliberate liars. For equivoques such as you imagine, are lies.
Further, I am compelled to call your attention to the fact that you are placing yourself in a very responsible position by disseminating falsehoods (unintentional, yet positive falsehoods) respecting Mrs. Lewes and her works.
As to Mr. Liggins, whom you declare (authority not stated) to have been once "well acquainted" with Mrs. Lewes, I have to assure you, on her authority, that she never exchanged a single word with him; she is doubtful whether she ever saw him: if she ever did see him it must have been in her childhood and at church. Nor did she ever see a line of Mr. Liggins's writing.
As to Mr. Liggins's share in the authorship, or in having "collected materials" for either of the works, it is false -- false in every possible respect -- and only persons ignorant of how works of art are created could believe in it.
You have been so positive and explicit about the places and characters in Adam Bede that you will no doubt hear with surprize that Mrs. Lewes never saw some of them; and of the rest, while like every other artist she has used the materials which have come within her own experience, it is unequivocally false to say there is a single portrait among the characters in Adam Bede. She knew her uncle and aunt, it is true, and greatly loved and respected them; but it is because she knew them that she can solemnly declare that Seth and Dinah are not portraits of them -- they only resemble them as good and pious people of the same sect resemble each other. The Journals and sermons of which you speak, if they exist, she never saw, never heard of.
So much for what seems your strongest case. I will now take the weakest, but one which will suffice to show how these inferences as to portraits have been drawn. The successor to Mr. Irwine, you say, is Mr. Henry Hake. Now there are more than a thousand Evangelical clergymen who might with equal justice be named as the original. Mrs. Lewes had not Mr. Hake in her mind at the time, nor indeed any other individual man. The name of the Poysers has induced you to "inquire of the Poysers." Mrs. Lewes never saw anyone of that name. Suppose I were to go into Scotland, and find out a Mr. Deans, and repeat as facts respecting Scott and the Heart of Midlothian what Mr. Deans in idle gossip or conjecture might tell me -- what would be your opinion of my sense?
I beg you once for all to understand that these statements are to be accepted literally, and not to suppose, as has hitherto been the case, that any covert meaning is reserved. In saying there are no portraits in Adam Bede, I mean that Adam, Dinah, Seth, Lisbeth, Mrs. Poyser, Hetty, Mr. Irwine and the rest are creations out of combinations of varied experience, just as Hamlet, [Falstaff,] Parson Adams, Jonathan Oldbuck, or Edgar Ravenswood [were creations of their authors,] the materials in each case being of course suggested, but only suggested, not given, as in biography, history or portrait painting.
An occasional nucleus of incident, is in like manner, taken from what did once occur -- for example, Mrs. S. Evans did visit a poor girl in prison -- but then, Mrs. Evans is not Dinah, nor is that poor girl represented in Hetty. Indeed, the very fact upon which you insist, that the materials must have been collected a long time ago, because the people whom you suppose to be drawn, and the incidents you suppose to be adopted belong to a period far removed from our own day, would suffice to show how little the author can have adhered to any actual story, or characters. But the whole supposition of a "collection of materials" is to any one versed in literature sufficiently absurd.
If, because a certain trait in a character resembles or suggests what is known of a real human being, we are rashly to jump to the conclusion that the author meant that particular person by that particular character; any one with sufficient curiosity, and leisure, might draw up a list of portraits and places in every work of fiction that appears. Busy inquiry among relatives and friends (all extremely gratifying to the author and his family, of course) would furnish a large crop of such foolish identifications. It is notorious that "everybody" said his mother was Mrs. Nickleby, and every Yorkshire schoolmaster was Squeers.
The "Scenes of Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede" proceeded entirely from Mrs. Lewes's own mind; the former was commenced in 1856, the latter in 1857. No one's notes, sermons, journals or collections, had anything whatever to do with those works. Indeed you must, on reflection, perceive that in your inexplicable persistence in proclaiming Mr. Liggins to have had a share in these works, you are not only implying that we are liars, but that we are guilty of the baseness of seeking to deprive Mr. Liggins of that share of credit to which you think he has a claim, and of that pecuniary assistance which a belief in his claim would warrant. Such implications as these require an apology. They require also that you should state in plain terms the evidence (not the mere surmise) upon which you make them.
I need not characterize the attempt to pry into private matters, and to circulate the surmises founded thereon. But as you have from the first been very active in circulating statements which you are now informed, on the best authority, are erroneous, I must call upon you to do all that now remains in your power in the way of retractation of those statements to everyone to whom you may have made them. I remain, Sir,
Your obedient Servant
G. H. Lewes.
C. H. Bracebridge Esq.
Text: Copy by GE; another copy in a different hand has supplied heading, date, and a few words in brackets. Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge, Wimbledon Park, | Wandsworth, S.W.
September 1859.
Sir,
Mr. Bray has forwarded to Mrs. Lewes your two letters to him about "Adam Bede."
I have no doubt that you, having been imposed upon, have been actuated by benevolent motives, but I think that on reflection you must see that your continued rejection of the explicit statements of honourable men, and your persistence in maintaining a belief for which you can have really no evidence, is the more inexcusable because you thereby imply that the Messrs. Blackwood, Mrs. Lewes, and myself are deliberate liars. For equivoques such as you imagine, are lies.
Further, I am compelled to call your attention to the fact that you are placing yourself in a very responsible position by disseminating falsehoods (unintentional, yet positive falsehoods) respecting Mrs. Lewes and her works.
As to Mr. Liggins, whom you declare (authority not stated) to have been once "well acquainted" with Mrs. Lewes, I have to assure you, on her authority, that she never exchanged a single word with him; she is doubtful whether she ever saw him: if she ever did see him it must have been in her childhood and at church. Nor did she ever see a line of Mr. Liggins's writing.
As to Mr. Liggins's share in the authorship, or in having "collected materials" for either of the works, it is false -- false in every possible respect -- and only persons ignorant of how works of art are created could believe in it.
You have been so positive and explicit about the places and characters in Adam Bede that you will no doubt hear with surprize that Mrs. Lewes never saw some of them; and of the rest, while like every other artist she has used the materials which have come within her own experience, it is unequivocally false to say there is a single portrait among the characters in Adam Bede. She knew her uncle and aunt, it is true, and greatly loved and respected them; but it is because she knew them that she can solemnly declare that Seth and Dinah are not portraits of them -- they only resemble them as good and pious people of the same sect resemble each other. The Journals and sermons of which you speak, if they exist, she never saw, never heard of.
So much for what seems your strongest case. I will now take the weakest, but one which will suffice to show how these inferences as to portraits have been drawn. The successor to Mr. Irwine, you say, is Mr. Henry Hake. Now there are more than a thousand Evangelical clergymen who might with equal justice be named as the original. Mrs. Lewes had not Mr. Hake in her mind at the time, nor indeed any other individual man. The name of the Poysers has induced you to "inquire of the Poysers." Mrs. Lewes never saw anyone of that name. Suppose I were to go into Scotland, and find out a Mr. Deans, and repeat as facts respecting Scott and the Heart of Midlothian what Mr. Deans in idle gossip or conjecture might tell me -- what would be your opinion of my sense?
I beg you once for all to understand that these statements are to be accepted literally, and not to suppose, as has hitherto been the case, that any covert meaning is reserved. In saying there are no portraits in Adam Bede, I mean that Adam, Dinah, Seth, Lisbeth, Mrs. Poyser, Hetty, Mr. Irwine and the rest are creations out of combinations of varied experience, just as Hamlet, [Falstaff,] Parson Adams, Jonathan Oldbuck, or Edgar Ravenswood [were creations of their authors,] the materials in each case being of course suggested, but only suggested, not given, as in biography, history or portrait painting.
An occasional nucleus of incident, is in like manner, taken from what did once occur -- for example, Mrs. S. Evans did visit a poor girl in prison -- but then, Mrs. Evans is not Dinah, nor is that poor girl represented in Hetty. Indeed, the very fact upon which you insist, that the materials must have been collected a long time ago, because the people whom you suppose to be drawn, and the incidents you suppose to be adopted belong to a period far removed from our own day, would suffice to show how little the author can have adhered to any actual story, or characters. But the whole supposition of a "collection of materials" is to any one versed in literature sufficiently absurd.
If, because a certain trait in a character resembles or suggests what is known of a real human being, we are rashly to jump to the conclusion that the author meant that particular person by that particular character; any one with sufficient curiosity, and leisure, might draw up a list of portraits and places in every work of fiction that appears. Busy inquiry among relatives and friends (all extremely gratifying to the author and his family, of course) would furnish a large crop of such foolish identifications. It is notorious that "everybody" said his mother was Mrs. Nickleby, and every Yorkshire schoolmaster was Squeers.
The "Scenes of Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede" proceeded entirely from Mrs. Lewes's own mind; the former was commenced in 1856, the latter in 1857. No one's notes, sermons, journals or collections, had anything whatever to do with those works. Indeed you must, on reflection, perceive that in your inexplicable persistence in proclaiming Mr. Liggins to have had a share in these works, you are not only implying that we are liars, but that we are guilty of the baseness of seeking to deprive Mr. Liggins of that share of credit to which you think he has a claim, and of that pecuniary assistance which a belief in his claim would warrant. Such implications as these require an apology. They require also that you should state in plain terms the evidence (not the mere surmise) upon which you make them.
I need not characterize the attempt to pry into private matters, and to circulate the surmises founded thereon. But as you have from the first been very active in circulating statements which you are now informed, on the best authority, are erroneous, I must call upon you to do all that now remains in your power in the way of retractation of those statements to everyone to whom you may have made them. I remain, Sir,
Your obedient Servant
G. H. Lewes.
C. H. Bracebridge Esq.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Charles Holte Bracebridge, Wandsworth, 19 September 1859, 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/94449