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Journal, 1859.

Jan. 12.– We went into town to-day and looked in the "Annual Register" for cases of inundation. Letter from Blackwood to-day, speaking of renewed delight in "Adam Bede," and proposing 1st Feb. as the day of publication. Read the article in yesterday's Times on George's "Sea-side Studies" – highly gratifying. We are still reading Scott's life with great interest; and G. is reading to me Michelet's book "De l'Amour."

Jan. 15.– I corrected the last sheets of "Adam Bede," and we afterwards walked to Wimbledon to see our new house, which we have taken for seven years. I hired the servant – another bit of business done: and then we had a delightful walk across Wimbledon Common and through Richmond Park homeward. The air was clear and cold – the sky magnificent.

Jan. 31.– Received a check for £400 from Blackwood, being the first instalment of the payment for four years' copyright of "Adam Bede." To-morrow the book is to be subscribed, and Blackwood writes very pleasantly – confident of its "great success." Afterwards we went into town, paid money into the bank, and ordered part of our china and glass towards house-keeping.

Letter to John Blackwood, 31st Jan. 1859.

Enclosed is the formal acknowledgment, bearing my signature, and with it let me beg you to accept my thanks —not formal but heartfelt – for the generous way in which you have all along helped me with words and with deeds.

The impression "Adam Bede" has made on you and Major Blackwood – of whom I have always been pleased to think as concurring with your views – is my best encouragement, and counterbalances, in some degree, the depressing influences to which I am peculiarly sensitive. I perceive that I have not the characteristics of the "popular author," and yet I am much in need of the warmly expressed sympathy which only popularity can win.

A good subscription would be cheering, but I can understand that it is not decisive of success or non-success. Thank you for promising to let me know about it as soon as possible.

Journal, 1859.

Feb. 6.– Yesterday we went to take possession of Holly Lodge, Wandsworth, which is to be our dwelling, we expect, for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh bright day – I will accept the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the subscription to "Adam Bede," which was published on the 1st: 730 copies, Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms —i. e., ten per cent. on the sale price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood told me the first ab extra opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what I most desired. A cabinet-maker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had read the sheets, and declared that the writer must have been brought up to the business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop.

Feb. 12.– Received a cheering letter from Blackwood, saying that he finds "Adam Bede" making just the impression he had anticipated among his own friends and connections, and enclosing a parcel from Dr. John Brown "to the author of 'Adam Bede.'" The parcel contained "Rab and his Friends," with an inscription.

Letter to John Blackwood, 13th Feb. 1859.

Will you tell Dr. John Brown that when I read an account of "Rab and his Friends" in a newspaper, I wished I had the story to read at full length; and I thought to myself the writer of "Rab" would perhaps like "Adam Bede."

When you have told him this, he will understand the peculiar pleasure I had on opening the little parcel with "Rab" inside, and a kind word from Rab's friend. I have read the story twice – once aloud, and once to myself, very slowly, that I might dwell on the pictures of Rab and Ailie, and carry them about with me more distinctly. I will not say any commonplace words of admiration about what has touched me so deeply; there is no adjective of that sort left undefiled by the newspapers. The writer of "Rab" knows that I must love the grim old mastiff with the short tail and the long dewlaps – that I must have felt present at the scenes of Ailie's last trial.

Thanks for your cheering letter. I will be hopeful – if I can.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Feb. 1859.

You have the art of writing just the sort of letters I care for – sincere letters, like your own talk. We are tolerably settled now, except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more of vulgar indulgences in it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well ventilated rooms, and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from palaces – Crystal or otherwise – with an orchard behind me full of old trees, and rough grass and hedge-row paths among the endless fields where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing drivel for dishonest money. In the mean time the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancements, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

Pretty Arabella Goddard we heard play at Berlin – play the very things you heard as a bonne bouche at the last – none the less delightful from being so unlike the piano playing of Liszt and Clara Schumann, whom we had heard at Weimar – both great, and one the greatest.

Thank you for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labors, or live to go on working? Sometimes, when I read of the death of some great, sensitive human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and yet, along with that, such deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature is gone forever into darkness, and we can never know that our love and reverence can reach him, that I seem to have gone through a personal sorrow when I shut the book and go to bed. I felt in that way the other night when I finished the life of Scott aloud to Mr. Lewes. He had never read the book before, and has been deeply stirred by the picture of Scott's character, his energy and steady work, his grand fortitude under calamity, and the spirit of strict honor to which he sacrificed his declining life. He loves Scott as well as I do.

We have met a pleasant-faced, bright-glancing man, whom we set down to be worthy of the name, Richard Congreve. I am curious to see if our Ahnung will be verified.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th Feb. 1859.

One word of gratitude to you first before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest, disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow. I need hardly tell you what I want, you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. I wish I were not an anxious, fidgety wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an anxiety soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness – such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me. Since I wrote this, I have just had a letter from my sister Chrissey – ill in bed, consumptive – regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart.

Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Feb. 1859.

Mrs. Carlyle's ardent letter will interest and amuse you. I reckon it among my best triumphs that she found herself "in charity with the whole human race" when she laid the book down. I want the philosopher himself to read it, because the pre-philosophic period – the childhood and poetry of his life – lay among the furrowed fields and pious peasantry. If he could be urged to read a novel! I should like, if possible, to give him the same sort of pleasure he has given me in the early chapters of "Sartor," where he describes little Diogenes eating his porridge on the wall in sight of the sunset, and gaining deep wisdom from the contemplation of the pigs and other "higher animals" of Entepfuhl.

Your critic was not unjustly severe on the "Mirage Philosophy" – and I confess the "Life of Frederic" was a painful book to me in many respects; and yet I shrink, perhaps superstitiously, from any written or spoken word which is as strong as my inward criticism.

I needed your letter very much – for when one lives apart from the world, with no opportunity of observing the effect of books except through the newspapers, one is in danger of sinking into the foolish belief that the day is past for the recognition of genuine, truthful writing, in spite of recent experience that the newspapers are no criterion at all. One such opinion as Mr. Caird's outweighs a great deal of damnatory praise from ignorant journalists.

It is a wretched weakness of my nature to be so strongly affected by these things; and yet how is it possible to put one's best heart and soul into a book and be hardened to the result – be indifferent to the proof whether or not one has really a vocation to speak to one's fellow-men in that way? Of course one's vanity is at work; but the main anxiety is something entirely distinct from vanity.

You see I mean you to understand that my feelings are very respectable, and such as it will be virtuous in you to gratify with the same zeal as you have always shown. The packet of newspaper notices is not come yet. I will take care to return it when it has come.

The best news from London hitherto is that Mr. Dallas is an enthusiastic admirer of Adam. I ought to except Mr. Langford's reported opinion, which is that of a person who has a voice of his own, and is not a mere echo.

Otherwise, Edinburgh has sent me much more encouraging breezes than any that have come from the sweet South. I wonder if all your other authors are as greedy and exacting as I am. If so, I hope they appreciate your attention as much. Will you oblige me by writing a line to Mrs. Carlyle for me. I don't like to leave her second letter (she wrote a very kind one about the "Clerical Scenes") without any sort of notice. Will you tell her that the sort of effect she declares herself to have felt from "Adam Bede" is just what I desire to produce – gentle thoughts and happy remembrances; and I thank her heartily for telling me, so warmly and generously, what she has felt. That is not a pretty message: revise it for me, pray, for I am weary and ailing, and thinking of a sister who is slowly dying.

Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1859.

The folio of notices duly came, and are returned by to-day's post. The friend at my elbow ran through them for me, and read aloud some specimens to me, some of them ludicrous enough. The Edinburgh Courant has the ring of sincere enjoyment in its tone; and the writer there makes himself so amiable to me that I am sorry he has fallen into the mistake of supposing that Mrs. Poyser's original sayings are remembered proverbs! I have no stock of proverbs in my memory; and there is not one thing put into Mrs. Poyser's mouth that is not fresh from my own mint. Please to correct that mistake if any one makes it in your hearing.

I have not ventured to look into the folio myself; but I learn that there are certain threatening marks, in ink, by the side of such stock sentences as "best novel of the season," or "best novel we have read for a long time," from such authorities as the Sun, or Morning Star, or other orb of the newspaper firmament – as if these sentences were to be selected for reprint in the form of advertisement. I shudder at the suggestion. Am I taking a liberty in entreating you to keep a sharp watch over the advertisements, that no hackneyed puffing phrase of this kind may be tacked to my book? One sees them garnishing every other advertisement of trash: surely no being "above the rank of an idiot" can have his inclination coerced by them? and it would gall me, as much as any trifle could, to see my book recommended by an authority who doesn't know how to write decent English. I believe that your taste and judgment will concur with mine in the conviction that no quotations of this vulgar kind can do credit to a book; and that unless something looking like the real opinion of a tolerably educated writer, in a respectable journal, can be given, it would be better to abstain from "opinions of the press" altogether. I shall be grateful to you if you will save me from the results of any agency but your own – or at least of any agency that is not under your rigid criticism in this matter.

Pardon me if I am overstepping the author's limits in this expression of my feelings. I confide in your ready comprehension of the irritable class you have to deal with.

Journal, 1859.

Feb. 26.– Laudatory reviews of "Adam Bede" in the Athenæum, Saturday, and Literary Gazette. The Saturday criticism is characteristic: Dinah is not mentioned!

The other day I received the following letter, which I copy, because I have sent the original away:

Letter from E. Hall to George Eliot.

"To the Author of 'Adam Bede,'

"Chester Road, Sunderland

"Dear Sir, – I got the other day a hasty read of your 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and since that a glance at your 'Adam Bede,' and was delighted more than I can express; but being a poor man, and having enough to do to make 'ends meet,' I am unable to get a read of your inimitable books.

"Forgive, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it. I felt so different when I shut your books, even though it was but a kind of 'hop-skip-and-jump' read.

"I feel so strongly in this matter that I am determined to risk being thought rude and officious, and write to you.

"Many of my working brethren feel as I do, and I express their wish as well as my own. Again asking your forgiveness for intruding myself upon you, I remain, with profoundest respect, yours, etc.,

"E. Hall."

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Feb. 1859.

I have written to Chrissey, and shall hear from her again. I think her writing was the result of long, quiet thought – the slow return of a naturally just and affectionate mind to the position from which it had been thrust by external influence. She says: "My object in writing to you is to tell you how very sorry I have been that I ceased to write, and neglected one who, under all circumstances, was kind to me and mine. Pray believe me when I say it will be the greatest comfort I can receive to know that you are well and happy. Will you write once more?" etc. I wrote immediately, and I desire to avoid any word of reference to anything with which she associates the idea of alienation. The past is abolished from my mind. I only want her to feel that I love her and care for her. The servant trouble seems less mountainous to me than it did the other day. I was suffering physically from unusual worrit and muscular exertion in arranging the house, and so was in a ridiculously desponding state. I have written no end of letters in answer to servants' advertisements, and we have put our own advertisement in the Times– all which amount of force, if we were not philosophers and therefore believers in the conservation of force, we should declare to be lost. It is so pleasant to know these high doctrines – they help one so much. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Congreve have called on us. We shall return the call as soon as we can.

Journal, 1859.

March 8.– Letter from Blackwood this morning saying that "'Bedesman' has turned the corner and is coming in a winner." Mudie has sent for 200 additional copies (making 700), and Mr. Langford says the West End libraries keep sending for more.

March 14.– My dear sister wrote to me about three weeks ago, saying she regretted that she had ever ceased writing to me, and that she has been in a consumption for the last eighteen months. To-day I have a letter from my niece Emily, telling me her mother had been taken worse, and cannot live many days.

March 14.– Major Blackwood writes to say "Mudie has just made up his number of 'Adam Bede' to 1000. Simpkins have sold their subscribed number, and have had 12 to-day. Every one is talking of the book."

March 15.– Chrissey died this morning at a quarter to 5.

March 16.– Blackwood writes to say I am "a popular author as well as a great author." They printed 2090 of "Adam Bede," and have disposed of more than 1800, so that they are thinking about a second edition. A very feeling letter from Froude this morning. I happened this morning to be reading the 30th Ode, B. III. of Horace – "Non omnis moriar."

Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1859.

The news you have sent me is worth paying a great deal of pain for, past and future. It comes rather strangely to me, who live in such unconsciousness of what is going on in the world. I am like a deaf person, to whom some one has just shouted that the company round him have been paying him compliments for the last half hour. Let the best come, you will still be the person outside my own home who first gladdened me about "Adam Bede;" and my success will always please me the better because you will share the pleasure.

Don't think I mean to worry you with many such requests – but will you copy for me the enclosed short note to Froude? I know you will, so I say "thank you."

Letter to J. A. Froude from George Eliot.

Dear Sir, – My excellent friend and publisher, Mr. Blackwood, lends me his pen to thank you for your letter, and for his sake I shall be brief.

Your letter has done me real good – the same sort of good as one has sometimes felt from a silent pressure of the hand and a grave look in the midst of smiling congratulations.

I have nothing else I care to tell you that you will not have found out through my books, except this one thing: that, so far as I am aware, you are only the second person who has shared my own satisfaction in Janet. I think she is the least popular of my characters. You will judge from that, that it was worth your while to tell me what you felt about her.

I wish I could help you with words of equal value; but, after all, am I not helping you by saying that it was well and generously done of you to write to me? – Ever faithfully yours,

George Eliot.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st March, 1859.

It was worth your while to write me those feeling words, for they are the sort of things that I keep in my memory and feel the influence of a long, long while. Chrissey's death has taken from the possibility of many things towards which I looked with some hope and yearning in the future. I had a very special feeling towards her – stronger than any third person would think likely.

Journal, 1859.

March 24.– Mr. Herbert Spencer brought us word that "Adam Bede" had been quoted by Mr. Charles Buxton in the House of Commons: "As the farmer's wife says in 'Adam Bede,' 'It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different.'"

March 26.– George went into town to-day and brought me home a budget of good news that compensated for the pain I had felt in the coldness of an old friend. Mr. Langford says that Mudie "thinks he must have another hundred or two of 'Adam' – has read the book himself, and is delighted with it." Charles Reade says it is "the finest thing since Shakespeare" – placed his finger on Lisbeth's account of her coming home with her husband from their marriage – praises enthusiastically the style – the way in which the author handles the Saxon language. Shirley Brooks also delighted. John Murray says there has never been such a book. Mr. Langford says there must be a second edition, in 3 vols., and they will print 500: whether Mudie takes more or not, they will have sold all by the end of a month. Lucas delighted with the book, and will review it in the Times the first opportunity.

Letter to John Blackwood, 30th March, 1859.

I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see well he is a man whose experience and study enable him to relish parts of my book, which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his finger on passages which I wrote either with strong feeling or from intimate knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find entirely passed over by reviewers. Surely I am not wrong in supposing him to be a clergyman? There was one exemplary lady Mr. Langford spoke of, who, after reading "Adam," came the next day and bought a copy both of that and the "Clerical Scenes." I wish there may be three hundred matrons as good as she! It is a disappointment to me to find that "Adam" has given no impulse to the "Scenes," for I had sordid desires for money from a second edition, and had dreamed of its coming speedily.

About my new story, which will be a novel as long as "Adam Bede," and a sort of companion picture of provincial life, we must talk when I have the pleasure of seeing you. It will be a work which will require time and labor.

Do write me good news as often as you can. I owe thanks to Major Blackwood for a very charming letter.

Letter to John Blackwood, 10th April, 1859.

The other day I received a letter from an old friend in Warwickshire, containing some striking information about the author of "Adam Bede." I extract the passage for your amusement:

"I want to ask you if you have read 'Adam Bede,' or the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and whether you know that the author is Mr. Liggins?.. A deputation of dissenting parsons went over to ask him to write for the 'Eclectic,' and they found him washing his slop-basin at a pump. He has no servant, and does everything for himself; but one of the said parsons said that he inspired them with a reverence that would have made any impertinent question impossible. The son of a baker, of no mark at all in his town, so that it is possible you may not have heard of him. You know he calls himself 'George Eliot.' It sounds strange to hear the Westminster doubting whether he is a woman, when here he is so well known. But I am glad it has mentioned him. They say he gets no profit out of 'Adam Bede,' and gives it freely to Blackwood, which is a shame. We have not read him yet, but the extracts are irresistible."

Conceive the real George Eliot's feelings, conscious of being a base worldling – not washing his own slop-basin, and not giving away his MS.! not even intending to do so, in spite of the reverence such a course might inspire. I hope you and Major Blackwood will enjoy the myth.

Mr. Langford sent me a letter the other day from Miss Winkworth, a grave lady, who says she never reads novels, except a few of the most famous, but that she has read "Adam" three times running. One likes to know such things – they show that the book tells on people's hearts, and may be a real instrument of culture. I sing my Magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I think I should soon begin to believe that Liggins wrote my books – it is so difficult to believe what the world does not believe, so easy to believe what the world keeps repeating.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th April, 1859.

The very day you wrote we were driving in an open carriage from Ryde to the Sandrock Hotel, taking in a month's delight in the space of five hours. Such skies – such songs of larks – such beds of primroses! I am quite well now – set up by iron and quinine, and polished off by the sea-breezes. I have lost my young dislike to the spring, and am as glad of it as the birds and plants are. Mr. Lewes has read "Adam Bede," and is as dithyrambic about it as others appear to be, so I must refresh my soul with it now as well as with the spring-tide. Mr. Liggins I remember as a vision of my childhood – a tall, black-coated, genteel young clergyman-in-embryo.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th April, 1859.

Mr. Lewes is "making himself into four" in writing answers to advertisements and other exertions which he generously takes on himself to save me. A model husband!

We both like your literal title, "Thoughts in Aid of Faith," very much, and hope to see a little book under that title before the year is out – a book as thorough and effective in its way as "Christianity and Infidelity."

Rewriting is an excellent process, frequently both for the book and its author; and to prevent you from grudging the toil, I will tell you that so old a writer as Mr. Lewes now rewrites everything of importance, though in all the earlier years of his authorship he would never take that trouble.

We are so happy in the neighborhood of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Congreve. She is a sweet, intelligent, gentle woman. I already love her: and his fine, beaming face does me good, like a glimpse of an Olympian.

Journal, 1859.

April 17.– I have left off recording the history of "Adam Bede" and the pleasant letters and words that came to me – the success has been so triumphantly beyond anything I had dreamed of that it would be tiresome to put down particulars. Four hundred of the second edition (of 750) sold in the first week, and twenty besides ordered when there was not a copy left in the London house. This morning Hachette has sent to ask my terms for the liberty of translation into French. There was a review in the Times last week, which will naturally give a new stimulus to the sale; and yesterday I sent a letter to the Times denying that Mr. Liggins is the author, as the world and Mr. Anders had settled it. But I must trust to the letters I have received and preserved for giving me the history of the book if I should live long enough to forget details.

Shall I ever write another book as true as "Adam Bede?" The weight of the future presses on me, and makes itself felt even more than the deep satisfaction of the past and present.

Letter to John Blackwood, 20th April, 1859.

This myth about Liggins is getting serious, and must be put a stop to. We are bound not to allow sums of money to be raised on a false supposition of this kind. Don't you think it would be well for you to write a letter to the Times, to the effect that, as you find in some stupid quarters my letter has not been received as a bonâ-fide denial, you declare Mr. Liggins not to be the author of "Clerical Scenes" and "Adam Bede;" further, that any future applications to you concerning George Eliot will not be answered, since that writer is not in need of public benevolence. Such a letter might save us from future annoyance and trouble, for I am rather doubtful about Mr. Liggins's character. The last report I heard of him was that he spent his time in smoking and drinking. I don't know whether that is one of the data for the Warwickshire logicians who have decided him to be the author of my books.

Journal, 1859.

April 29.– To-day Blackwood sent me a letter from Bulwer, which I copy because I have to send back the original, and I like to keep in mind the generous praise of one author for another.

Letter from E. B. Lytton to John Blackwood.

"Malvern, April 24, 1859

"My dear Sir, – I ought long since to have thanked you for 'Adam Bede.' But I never had a moment to look at it till arriving here, and ordered by the doctors to abstain from all 'work.'

"I owe the author much gratitude for some very pleasing hours. The book indeed is worthy of great admiration. There are touches of beauty in the conception of human character that are exquisite, and much wit and much poetry embedded in the 'dialect,' which nevertheless the author over-uses.

"The style is remarkably good whenever it is English and not provincial – racy, original, and nervous.

"I congratulate you on having found an author of such promise, and published one of the very ablest works of fiction I have read for years. —

Yours truly,

E. B. L.

"I am better than I was, but thoroughly done up."

Journal, 1859.

April 29.– Finished a story – "The Lifted Veil" – which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head was too stupid for more important work.

Resumed my new novel, of which I am going to rewrite the two first chapters. I shall call it provisionally "The Tullivers," for the sake of a title quelconque, or perhaps "St. Ogg's on the Floss."

Letter to John Blackwood, 29th April, 1859.

Thank you for sending me Sir Edward Lytton's letter, which has given me real pleasure. The praise is doubly valuable to me for the sake of the generous feeling that prompted it. I think you judged rightly about writing to the Times. I would abstain from the remotest appearance of a "dodge." I am anxious to know of any positive rumors that may get abroad; for while I would willingly, if it were possible – which it clearly is not – retain my incognito as long as I live, I can suffer no one to bear my arms on his shield.

There is one alteration, or rather an addition – merely of a sentence – that I wish to make in the 12s. edition of "Adam Bede." It is a sentence in the chapter where Adam is making the coffin at night, and hears the willow wand. Some readers seem not to have understood what I meant – namely, that it was in Adam's peasant blood and nurture to believe in this, and that he narrated it with awed belief to his dying day. That is not a fancy of my own brain, but a matter of observation, and is, in my mind, an important feature in Adam's character. There is nothing else I wish to touch. I will send you the sentence some day soon, with the page where it is to be inserted.

Journal, 1859.

May 3.– I had a letter from Mrs. Richard Congreve, telling me of her safe arrival, with her husband and sister,7 at Dieppe. This new friend, whom I have gained by coming to Wandsworth, is the chief charm of the place to me. Her friendship has the same date as the success of "Adam Bede" – two good things in my lot that ought to have made me less sad than I have been in this house.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1859.

Your letter came yesterday at tea-time, and made the evening happier than usual. We had thought of you not a little as we listened to the howling winds, especially as the terrible wrecks off the Irish coast had filled our imaginations disagreeably. Now I can make a charming picture of you all on the beach, except that I am obliged to fancy your face looking still too languid after all your exertion and sleeplessness. I remember the said face with peculiar vividness, which is very pleasant to me. "Rough" has been the daily companion of our walks, and wins on our affections, as other fellow mortals do, by a mixture of weaknesses and virtues – the weaknesses consisting chiefly in a tendency to become invisible every ten minutes, and in a forgetfulness of reproof, which, I fear, is the usual accompaniment of meekness under it. All this is good discipline for us selfish solitaries, who have been used to stroll along, thinking of nothing but ourselves.

We walked through your garden to-day, and I gathered a bit of your sweetbrier, of which I am at this moment enjoying the scent as it stands on my desk. I am enjoying, too, another sort of sweetness, which I also owe to you – of that subtle, haunting kind which is most like the scent of my favorite plants – the belief that you do really care for me across the seas there, and will associate me continually with your home. Faith is not easy to me, nevertheless I believe everything you say and write.

Write to me as often as you can – that is, as often as you feel any prompting to do so. You were a dear presence to me, and will be a precious thought to me all through your absence.

Journal, 1859.

May 4.– To-day came a letter from Barbara Bodichon, full of joy in my success, in the certainty that "Adam Bede" was mine, though she had not read more than extracts in reviews. This is the first delight in the book as mine, over and above the fact that the book is good.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th May, 1859.

God bless you, dearest Barbara, for your love and sympathy. You are the first friend who has given any symptom of knowing me – the first heart that has recognized me in a book which has come from my heart of hearts. But keep the secret solemnly till I give you leave to tell it; and give way to no impulses of triumphant affection. You have sense enough to know how important the incognito has been, and we are anxious to keep it up a few months longer. Curiously enough my old Coventry friends, who have certainly read the Westminster and the Times, and have probably by this time read the book itself, have given no sign of recognition. But a certain Mr. Liggins, whom rumor has fixed on as the author of my books, and whom they have believed in, has probably screened me from their vision. I am a very blessed woman, am I not, to have all this reason for being glad that I have lived? I have had no time of exultation; on the contrary, these last months have been sadder than usual to me, and I have thought more of the future and the much work that remains to be done in life than of anything that has been achieved. But I think your letter to-day gave me more joy – more heart-glow – than all the letters or reviews or other testimonies of success that have come to me since the evenings when I read aloud my manuscript to my dear, dear husband, and he laughed and cried alternately, and then rushed to me to kiss me. He is the prime blessing that has made all the rest possible to me, giving me a response to everything I have written – a response that I could confide in, as a proof that I had not mistaken my work.

Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th May, 1859.

You must not think me too soft-hearted when I tell you that it would make me uneasy to leave Mr. Anders without an assurance that his apology is accepted. "Who with repentance is not satisfied," etc.; that doctrine is bad for the sinning, but good for those sinned against. Will you oblige me by allowing a clerk to write something to this effect in the name of the firm? – "We are requested by George Eliot to state, in reply to your letter of the 16th, that he accepts your assurance that the publication of your letter to the reviewer of 'Adam Bede' in the Times was unintentional on your part."

Yes, I am assured now that "Adam Bede" was worth writing – worth living through long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past, but not at faith in the future.

A friend in Algiers8 has found me out – "will go to the stake on the assertion that I wrote 'Adam Bede'" – simply on the evidence of a few extracts. So far as I know, this is the first case of detection on purely internal evidence. But the secret is safe in that quarter.

I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again during some visit that you will pay to town before very long. It would do me good to have you shake me by the hand as the ascertained George Eliot.

Journal, 1859.

May 9.– We had a delicious drive to Dulwich, and back by Sydenham. We stayed an hour in the gallery at Dulwich, and I satisfied myself that the St. Sebastian is no exception to the usual "petty prettiness" of Guido's conceptions. The Cuyp glowing in the evening sun, the Spanish beggar boys of Murillo, and Gainsborough's portrait of Mrs. Sheridan and her sister, are the gems of the gallery. But better than the pictures was the fresh greenth of the spring – the chestnuts just on the verge of their flowering beauty, the bright leaves of the limes, the rich yellow-brown of the oaks, the meadows full of buttercups. We saw for the first time Clapham Common, Streatham Common, and Tooting Common – the two last like parks rather than commons.

May 19.– A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an acknowledgment of "Adam Bede's" success.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th May, 1859.

Mrs. Congreve is a sweet woman, and I feel that I have acquired a friend in her – after recently declaring that we would never have any friends again, only acquaintances.

Letter to John Blackwood, 21st May, 1859.

Thank you: first, for acting with that fine integrity which makes part of my faith in you; secondly, for the material sign of that integrity. I don't know which of those two things I care for most – that people should act nobly towards me, or that I should get honest money. I certainly care a great deal for the money, as I suppose all anxious minds do that love independence and have been brought up to think debt and begging the two deepest dishonors short of crime.

I look forward with quite eager expectation to seeing you – we have so much to say. Pray give us the first day at your command. The excursion, as you may imagine, is not ardently longed for in this weather, but when "merry May" is quite gone, we may surely hope for some sunshine; and then I have a pet project of rambling along by the banks of a river, not without artistic as well as hygienic purposes.

Pray bring me all the Liggins Correspondence. I have an amusing letter or two to show you – one from a gentleman who has sent me his works; happily the only instance of the kind. For, as Charles Lamb complains, it is always the people whose books don't sell who are anxious to send them to one, with their "foolish autographs" inside.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st May, 1859.

We don't think of going to the festival, not for want of power to enjoy Handel – there are few things that I care for more in the way of music than his choruses, performed by a grand orchestra – but because we are neither of us fit to encounter the physical exertion and inconveniences. It is a cruel thing the difficulty and dearness of getting any music in England – concerted music, which is the only music I care for much now. At Dresden we could have thoroughly enjoyable instrumental music every evening for two-pence; and I owed so many thoughts and inspirations of feeling to that stimulus.

Journal, 1859.

May 27.– Blackwood came to dine with us on his arrival in London, and we had much talk. A day or two before he had sent me a letter from Professor Aytoun, saying that he had neglected his work to read the first volume of "Adam Bede;" and he actually sent the other two volumes out of the house to save himself from temptation. Blackwood brought with him a correspondence he has had with various people about Liggins, beginning with Mr. Bracebridge, who will have it that Liggins is the author of "Adam Bede" in spite of all denials.

June 5.– Blackwood came, and we concocted two letters to send to the Times, in order to put a stop to the Liggins affair.

Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th June, 1859.

The "Liggins business" does annoy me, because it subjects you and Mr. John Blackwood to the reception of insulting letters, and the trouble of writing contradictions. Otherwise, the whole affair is really a subject for a Molière comedy – "The Wise Men of Warwickshire," who might supersede "The Wise Men of Gotham."

The letter you sent me was a very pleasant one from Mrs. Gaskell, saying that since she came up to town she has had the compliment paid her of being suspected to have written "Adam Bede." "I have hitherto denied it; but really, I think, that as you want to keep your real name a secret, it would be very pleasant for me to blush acquiescence. Will you give me leave?"