I have had it in my mind to write to you for many days, wanting to tell you, yet feeling there might be some impertinence in doing so, of the delight and gratitude I felt in reading your article on "Industrial Co-operation." Certain points admirably brought out in that article would, I think, be worth the labor of a life if one could help in winning them thorough recognition. I don't mean that my thinking so is of any consequence, but simply that it is of consequence to me when I find your energetic writing confirm my own faith.

It would be fortunate for us if you had nothing better to do than look in on us on Tuesday evening. Professor Huxley will be with us, and one or two others whom you know, and your presence would make us all the brighter.

Journal, 1866.

Jan. 9.– Professors Huxley and Beesley, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Spencer dined with us. Mr. Harrison in the evening.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 12th Jan. 1866.

The ample and clear statement you have sent me with kind promptness has put me in high spirits – as high spirits as can belong to an unhopeful author. Your hypothetical case of a settlement suits my needs surprisingly well. I shall be thankful to let Sugden alone, and throw myself entirely on your goodness, especially as what I want is simply a basis of legal possibilities and not any command of details. I want to be sure that my chords will not offend a critic accomplished in thorough bass – not at all to present an exercise in thorough bass.

I was going to write you a long story, but, on consideration, it seems to me that I should tax your time less, and arrive more readily at a resolution of my doubts on various points not yet mentioned to you, if you could let me speak instead of writing to you.

On Wednesday afternoons I am always at home; but on any day when I could be sure of your coming I would set everything aside for the sake of a consultation so valuable to me.

Journal, 1866.

Jan. 20.– For the last fortnight I have been unusually disabled by ill-health. I have been consulting Mr. Harrison about the law in my book, with satisfactory result.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 22d Jan. 1866.

I had not any opportunity, or not enough presence of mind, to tell you yesterday how much I felt your kindness in writing me that last little note of sympathy.

In proportion as compliments (always beside the mark) are discouraging and nauseating, at least to a writer who has any serious aims, genuine words from one capable of understanding one's conceptions are precious and strengthening.

Yet I have no confidence that the book will ever be worthily written. And now I have something else to ask. It is that if anything strikes you as untrue in cases where my drama has a bearing on momentous questions, especially of a public nature, you will do me the great kindness to tell me of your doubts.

On a few moral points, which have been made clear to me by my experience, I feel sufficiently confident – without such confidence I could not write at all. But in every other direction I am so much in need of fuller instruction as to be constantly under the sense that I am more likely to be wrong than right.

Hitherto I have read my MS. (I mean of my previous books) to Mr. Lewes, by forty or fifty pages at a time, and he has told me if he felt an objection to anything. No one else has had any knowledge of my writings before their publication. (I except, of course, the publishers.)

But now that you are good enough to incur the trouble of reading my MS., I am anxious to get the full benefit of your participation.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th Jan. 1866.

We arrived here on Tuesday, and have been walking about four hours each day, and the walks are so various that each time we have turned out we have found a new one. George is already much the better for the perfect rest, quiet, and fresh air. Will you give my thanks to Mr. Congreve for the "Synthèse" which I have brought with me and am reading? I expect to understand three chapters well enough to get some edification.

George had talked of our taking the train to Dover to pay you a "morning call." He observes that it would have been a "dreadful sell" if we had done so. Your letter, therefore, was providential – and without doubt it came from a dear little Providence of mine that sits in your heart.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 31st Jan. 1866.

I have received both your precious letters – the second edition of the case, and the subsequent note. The story is sufficiently in the track of ordinary probability; and the careful trouble you have so generously given to it has enabled me to feel a satisfaction in my plot which beforehand I had sighed for as unattainable.

There is still a question or two which I shall want to ask you, but I am afraid of taxing your time and patience in an unconscionable manner. So, since we expect to return to town at the end of next week, I think I will reserve my questions until I have the pleasure and advantage of an interview with you, in which pros and cons can be more rapidly determined than by letter. It seems to me that you have fitted my phenomena with a rationale quite beautifully. If there is any one who could have done it better, I am sure I know of no man who would. Please to put your help of me among your good deeds for this year of 1866.

To-day we have resolute rain, for the first time since we came down. You don't yet know what it is to be a sickly wretch, dependent on these skyey influences. But Heine says illness "spiritualizes the members." It had need do some good in return for one's misery.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Feb. 1866.

Thanks for your kind letter. Alas! we had chiefly bad weather in the country. George was a little benefited, but only a little. He is too far "run down" to be wound up in a very short time. We enjoyed our return to our comfortable house, and, perhaps, that freshness of home was the chief gain from our absence.

You see, to counterbalance all the great and good things that life has given us beyond what our fellows have, we hardly know now what it is to be free from bodily malaise.

After the notion I have given you of my health you will not wonder if I say that I don't know when anything of mine will appear. I can never reckon on myself.

Journal, 1866.

March 7.– I am reading Mill's "Logic" again. Theocritus still, and English History and Law.

March 17.– To St. James's Hall hearing Joachim, Piatti, and Hallé in glorious Beethoven music.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th April, 1866.

Don't think any evil of me for not writing. Just now the days are short, and art is long to artists with feeble bodies. If people don't say expressly that they want anything from me, I easily conclude that they will do better without me, and have a good weight of idleness, or, rather, bodily fatigue, which puts itself into the scale of modesty. I torment myself less with fruitless regrets that my particular life has not been more perfect. The young things are growing, and to me it is not melancholy but joyous that the world will be brighter after I am gone than it has been in the brief time of my existence. You see my pen runs into very old reflections. The fact is, I have no details to tell that would much interest you. It is true that I am going to bring out another book, but just when is not certain.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 10th April, 1866.

The happiness in your letter was delightful to me, as you guessed it would be. See how much better things may turn out for all mankind, since they mend for single mortals even in this confused state of the bodies social and politic.

As soon as we can leave we shall go away, probably to Germany, for six weeks or so. But that will not be till June. I am finishing a book which has been growing slowly, like a sickly child, because of my own ailments; but now I am in the later acts of it I can't move till it is done.

You know all the news, public and private – all about the sad cattle plague, and the reform bill, and who is going to be married and who is dead – so I need tell you nothing. You will find the English world extremely like what it was when you left it – conversation more or less trivial and insincere, literature just now not much better, and politics worse than either. Bring some sincerity and energy to make a little draught of pure air in your particular world. I shall expect you to be a heroine in the best sense, now you are happier after a time of suffering. See what a talent I have for telling other people to be good!

We are getting patriarchal, and think of old age and death as journeys not far off. All knowledge, all thought, all achievement seems more precious and enjoyable to me than it ever was before in life. But as soon as one has found the key of life, "it opes the gates of death." Youth has not learned the art of living, and we go on bungling till our experience can only serve us for a very brief space. That is the "external order" we must submit to.

I am too busy to write except when I am tired, and don't know very well what to say, so you must not be surprised if I write in a dreamy way.

Journal, 1866.

April 21.– Sent MS. of two volumes to Blackwood.

April 25.– Blackwood has written to offer me £5000 for "Felix Holt." I have been ailing, and uncertain in my strokes, and yesterday got no further than p. 52 of Vol. III.

Letter to John Blackwood, 25th April, 1866.

It is a great pleasure to me to be writing to you again, as in the old days. After your kind letters, I am chiefly anxious that the publication of "Felix Holt" may be a satisfaction to you from beginning to end.

Mr. Lewes writes about other business matters, so I will only say that I am desirous to have the proofs as soon and as rapidly as will be practicable.

They will require correcting with great care, and there are large spaces in the day when I am unable to write, in which I could be attending to my proofs.

I think I ought to tell you that I have consulted a legal friend about my law, to guard against errors. The friend is a Chancery barrister, who "ought to know."

After I had written the first volume, I applied to him, and he has since read through my MS.

Letter to John Blackwood, 27th April, 1866.

How very good it was of you to write me a letter which is a guarantee to me of the pleasantest kind that I have made myself understood.

The tone of the prevalent literature just now is not encouraging to a writer who at least wishes to be serious and sincere; and, owing to my want of health, a great deal of this book has been written under so much depression as to its practical effectiveness that I have sometimes been ready to give it up.

Your letter has made me feel, more strongly than any other testimony, that it would have been a pity if I had listened to the tempter Despondency. I took a great deal of pains to get a true idea of the period. My own recollections of it are childish, and of course disjointed, but they help to illuminate my reading. I went through the Times of 1832-33 at the British Museum, to be sure of as many details as I could. It is amazing what strong language was used in those days, especially about the Church. "Bloated pluralists," "Stall-fed dignitaries," etc., are the sort of phrases conspicuous. There is one passage of prophecy which I longed to quote, but I thought it wiser to abstain. "Now, the beauty of the Reform Bill is that, under its mature operation, the people must and will become free agents" – a prophecy which I hope is true, only the maturity of the operation has not arrived yet.

Mr. Lewes is well satisfied with the portion of the third volume already written; and, as I am better in health just now, I hope to go on with spirit, especially with the help of your cordial sympathy. I trust you will see, when it comes, that the third volume is the natural issue prepared for by the first and second.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 27th April, 1866.

A thousand thanks for your note. Do not worry yourself so much about those two questions that you will be forced to hate me. On Tuesday next we are to go to Dorking for probably a fortnight. I wished you to read the first hundred pages of my third volume; but I fear now that I must be content to wait and send you a duplicate proof of a chapter or two that are likely to make a lawyer shudder by their poetic license. Please to be in great distress sometime for want of my advice, and tease me considerably to get it, that I may prove my grateful memory of these days.

Letter to John Blackwood, 30th April, 1866.

To-morrow we go – Mr. Lewes's bad health driving us – to Dorking, where everything will reach me as quickly as in London.

I am in a horrible fidget about certain points which I want to be sure of in correcting my proofs. They are chiefly two questions. I wish to know,

1. Whether, in Napoleon's war with England, after the breaking-up of the Treaty of Amiens, the seizure and imprisonment of civilians was exceptional, or whether it was continued throughout the war?

2. Whether, in 1833, in the case of transportation to one of the colonies, when the sentence did not involve hard labor, the sentenced person might be at large on his arrival in the colony?

It is possible you may have some one near at hand who will answer these questions. I am sure you will help me if you can, and will sympathize in my anxiety not to have even an allusion that involves practical impossibilities.

One can never be perfectly accurate, even with one's best effort, but the effort must be made.

Journal, 1866.

May 31.– Finished "Felix Holt."

The manuscript bears the following inscription:

"From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love."

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th June, 1866.

My last hope of seeing you before we start has vanished. I find that the things urged upon me to be done in addition to my own small matters of preparation will leave me no time to enjoy anything that I should have chosen if I had been at leisure. Last Thursday only I finished writing, in a state of nervous excitement that had been making my head throb and my heart palpitate all the week before. As soon as I had finished I felt well. You know how we had counted on a parting sight of you; and I should have particularly liked to see Emily and witness the good effect of Derbyshire. But send us a word or two if you can, just to say how you all three are. We start on Thursday evening for Brussels. Then to Antwerp, the Hague, and Amsterdam. Out of Holland we are to find our way to Schwalbach. Let your love go with us, as mine will hover about you and all yours – that group of three which the word "Wandsworth" always means for us.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th June, 1866.

I finished writing ("Felix Holt") on the last day of May, after days and nights of throbbing and palpitation – chiefly, I suppose, from a nervous excitement which I was not strong enough to support well. As soon as I had done I felt better, and have been a new creature ever since, though a little overdone with visits from friends and attention (miserabile dictu!) to petticoats, etc.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 6th June, 1866.

I can't help being a little vexed that the course of things hinders my having the great delight of seeing you again, during this visit to town. Now that my mind is quite free, I don't know anything I should have chosen sooner than to have a long, long quiet day with you.

Journal, 1866.

June 7.– Set off on our journey to Holland.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 25th June, 1866, from Schwalbach.

I wish you could know how idle I feel, how utterly disinclined to anything but mere self-indulgence; because that knowledge would enable you to estimate the affection and anxiety which prompt me to write in spite of disinclination. June is so far gone, that by the time you get this letter you will surely have some result of the examination to tell me of; and I can't bear to deprive myself of that news by not letting you know where we are. "In Paradise," George says; but the Paradise is in the fields and woods of beech and fir, where we walk in uninterrupted solitude in spite of the excellent roads and delightful resting-places, which seem to have been prepared for visitors in general. The promenade, where the ladies – chiefly Russian and German, with only a small sprinkling of English and Americans – display their ornamental petticoats and various hats, is only the outskirt of Paradise; but we amuse ourselves there for an hour or so in the early morning and evening, listening to the music and learning the faces of our neighbors. There is a deficiency of men, children, and dogs, otherwise the winding walks, the luxuriant trees and grass, and the abundant seats of the promenade have every charm one can expect at a German bath. We arrived here last Thursday, after a fortnight spent in Belgium and Holland; and we still fall to interjections of delight whenever we walk out – first at the beauty of the place, and next at our own happiness in not having been frightened away from it by the predictions of travellers and hotel-keepers, that we should find no one here – that the Prussians would break up the railways, etc., etc. – Nassau being one of the majority of small states who are against Prussia. I fear we are a little in danger of becoming like the Bürger in "Faust," and making it too much the entertainment of our holiday to have a

"Gespräch von Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei
Wenn hinten, weit, in der Türkei,
Die Völker auf einander schlagen."

Idle people are so eager for newspapers that tell them of other people's energetic enthusiasm! A few soldiers are quartered here, and we see them wisely using their leisure to drink at the Brunnen. They are the only suggestion of war that meets our eyes among these woody hills. Already we feel great benefit from our quiet journeying and repose. George is looking remarkably well, and seems to have nothing the matter with him. You know how magically quick his recoveries seem. I am too refined to say anything about our excellent quarters and good meals; but one detail, I know, will touch your sympathy. We dine in our own room! It would have marred the Kur for me if I had had every day to undergo a table d'hôte where almost all the guests are English, presided over by the British chaplain. Please don't suspect me of being scornful towards my fellow countrymen or women: the fault is all mine that I am miserably gênée by the glances of strange eyes.

We want news from you to complete our satisfaction, and no one can give it but yourself. Send us as many matter-of-fact details as you have the patience to write. We shall not be here after the 4th, but at Schlangenbad.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d Aug. 1866.

We got home last night, after a rough passage from Ostend. You have been so continually a recurrent thought to me ever since I had your letter at Schwalbach, that it is only natural I should write to you as soon as I am at my old desk again. The news of Mr. Congreve's examination being over made me feel for several days that something had happened which caused me unusual lightness of heart. I would not dwell on the possibility of your having to leave Wandsworth, which, I know, would cause you many sacrifices. I clung solely to the great, cheering fact that a load of anxiety had been lifted from Mr. Congreve's mind. May we not put in a petition for some of his time now? And will he not come with you and Emily to dine with us next week, on any day except Wednesday and Friday? The dinner-hour seems more propitious for talk and enjoyment than lunch-time; but in all respects choose what will best suit your health and habits – only let us see you.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 4th Aug. 1866.

We returned from our health-seeking journey on Thursday evening, and your letter was the most delightful thing that awaited me at home. Be sure it will be much read and meditated; and may I not take it as an earnest that your help, which has already done so much for me, will be continued? I mean, that you will help me by your thoughts and your sympathy – not that you will be teased with my proofs.

I meant to write you a long letter about the æsthetic problem; but Mr. Lewes, who is still tormented with headachy effects from our rough passage, comes and asks me to walk to Hampstead with him, so I send these hasty lines. Come and see us soon.

Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Aug. 1866.

We got home on Thursday evening, and are still feeling some unpleasant effects from our very rough passage – an inconvenience which we had waited some days at Ostend to avoid. But the wind took no notice of us, and went on blowing.

I was much pleased with the handsome appearance of the three volumes which were lying ready for me. My hatred of bad paper and bad print, and my love of their opposites, naturally get stronger as my eyes get weaker; and certainly that taste could hardly be better gratified than it is by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons.

Colonel Hamley's volume is another example of that fact. It lies now on my revolving desk as one of the books I mean first to read. I am really grateful to have such a medium of knowledge, and I expect it to make some pages of history much less dim to me.

My impression of Colonel Hamley, when we had that pleasant dinner at Greenwich, and afterwards when he called in Blandford Square, was quite in keeping with the high opinion you express. Mr. Lewes liked the article on "Felix" in the Magazine very much. He read it the first thing yesterday morning, and told me it was written in a nice spirit, and the extracts judiciously made.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th Aug. 1866.

I have had a delightful holiday, and find my double self very much the better for it. We made a great round in our journeying. From Antwerp to Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Amsterdam, Cologne; then up the Rhine to Coblentz, and thence to Schwalbach, where we stayed a fortnight. From Schwalbach to Schlangenbad, where we stayed till we feared the boats would cease to go to and fro; and, in fact, only left just in time to get down the Rhine to Bonn by the Dutch steamer. From Bonn, after two days, we went to Aix; then to dear old Liége, where we had been together thirteen years before; and, to avoid the King of the Belgians, ten minutes backwards to the baths of pretty Chaudfontaine, where we remained three days. Then to Louvain, Ghent, and Bruges; and, last of all, to Ostend, where we waited for a fine day and calm sea, until we secured – a very rough passage indeed.

Ought we not to be a great deal wiser and more efficient personages, or else to be ashamed of ourselves? Unhappily, this last alternative is not a compensation for wisdom.

I thought of you – to mention one occasion among many – when we had the good fortune, at Antwerp, to see a placard announcing that the company from the Ober-Ammergau, Bavaria, would represent, that Sunday evening, the Lebensgeschichte of our Saviour Christ, at the Théatre des Variétés. I remembered that you had seen the representation with deep interest – and these actors are doubtless the successors of those you saw. Of course we went to the theatre. And the Christ was, without exaggeration, beautiful. All the rest was inferior, and might even have had a painful approach to the ludicrous; but both the person and the action of the Jesus were fine enough to overpower all meaner impressions. Mr. Lewes, who, you know, is keenly alive to everything "stagey" in physiognomy and gesture, felt what I am saying quite as much as I did, and was much moved.

Rotterdam, with the grand approach to it by the broad river; the rich red brick of the houses; the canals, uniformly planted with trees, and crowded with the bright brown masts of the Dutch boats – is far finer than Amsterdam. The color of Amsterdam is ugly; the houses are of a chocolate color, almost black (an artificial tinge given to the bricks), and the woodwork on them screams out in ugly patches of cream-color; the canals have no trees along their sides, and the boats are infrequent. We looked about for the very Portuguese synagogue where Spinoza was nearly assassinated as he came from worship. But it no longer exists. There are no less than three Portuguese synagogues now – very large and handsome. And in the evening we went to see the worship there. Not a woman was present, but of devout men not a few – a curious reversal of what one sees in other temples. The chanting and the swaying about of the bodies – almost a wriggling – are not beautiful to the sense; but I fairly cried at witnessing this faint symbolism of a religion of sublime, far-off memories. The skulls of St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins seem a modern suggestion compared with the Jewish Synagogue. At Schwalbach and Schlangenbad our life was led chiefly in the beech woods, which we had all to ourselves, the guests usually confining themselves to the nearer promenades. The guests, of course, were few in that serious time; and between war and cholera we felt our position as health – and pleasure – seekers somewhat contemptible.

There is no end to what one could say, if one did not feel that long letters cut pieces not to be spared out of the solid day.

I think I have earned that you should write me one of those perfect letters in which you make me see everything you like about yourself and others.

Journal, 1866.

Aug. 30.– I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gypsy," again, and am reading on Spanish subjects – Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorante, etc.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 15th Aug. 1866.

I have read several times your letter of the 19th, which I found awaiting me on my return, and I shall read it many times again. Pray do not even say, or inwardly suspect, that anything you take the trouble to write to me will not be valued. On the contrary, please to imagine as well as you can the experience of a mind morbidly desponding, of a consciousness tending more and more to consist in memories of error and imperfection rather than in a strengthening sense of achievement – and then consider how such a mind must need the support of sympathy and approval from those who are capable of understanding its aims. I assure you your letter is an evidence of a fuller understanding than I have ever had expressed to me before. And if I needed to give emphasis to this simple statement, I should suggest to you all the miseries one's obstinate egoism endures from the fact of being a writer of novels – books which the dullest and silliest reader thinks himself competent to deliver an opinion on. But I despise myself for feeling any annoyance at these trivial things.

That is a tremendously difficult problem which you have laid before me; and I think you see its difficulties, though they can hardly press upon you as they do on me, who have gone through again and again the severe effort of trying to make certain ideas thoroughly incarnate, as if they had revealed themselves to me first in the flesh and not in the spirit. I think æsthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching, because it deals with life in its highest complexity. But if it ceases to be purely æsthetic – if it lapses anywhere from the picture to the diagram – it becomes the most offensive of all teaching. Avowed Utopias are not offensive, because they are understood to have a scientific and expository character: they do not pretend to work on the emotions, or couldn't do it if they did pretend. I am sure, from your own statement, that you see this quite clearly. Well, then, consider the sort of agonizing labor to an English-fed imagination to make out a sufficiently real background for the desired picture – to get breathing, individual forms, and group them in the needful relations, so that the presentation will lay hold on the emotions as human experience – will, as you say, "flash" conviction on the world by means of aroused sympathy.

I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write "Romola" – neglecting nothing I could find that would help me to what I may call the "idiom" of Florence, in the largest sense one could stretch the word to; and then I was only trying to give some out of the normal relations. I felt that the necessary idealization could only be attained by adopting the clothing of the past. And again, it is my way (rather too much so, perhaps) to urge the human sanctities through tragedy – through pity and terror, as well as admiration and delight. I only say all this to show the tenfold arduousness of such a work as the one your problem demands. On the other hand, my whole soul goes with your desire that it should be done; and I shall at least keep the great possibility (or impossibility) perpetually in my mind, as something towards which I must strive, though it may be that I can do so only in a fragmentary way.

At present I am going to take up again a work which I laid down before writing "Felix." It is —but, please, let this be a secret between ourselves– an attempt at a drama, which I put aside at Mr. Lewes's request, after writing four acts, precisely because it was in that stage of creation – or Werden– in which the idea of the characters predominates over the incarnation. Now I read it again, I find it impossible to abandon it; the conceptions move me deeply, and they have never been wrought out before. There is not a thought or symbol that I do not long to use: but the whole requires recasting; and, as I never recast anything before, I think of the issue very doubtfully. When one has to work out the dramatic action for one's self, under the inspiration of an idea, instead of having a grand myth or an Italian novel ready to one's hand, one feels anything but omnipotent. Not that I should have done any better if I had had the myth or the novel, for I am not a good user of opportunities. I think I have the right locus and historic conditions, but much else is wanting.