George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3)

As for "The Mill," I am in repose about it now I know it has found its way to the great public. Its comparative rank can only be decided after some years have passed, when the judgment upon it is no longer influenced by the recent enthusiasm about "Adam," and by the fact that it has the misfortune to be written by me instead of by Mr. Liggins. I shall like to see Bulwer's criticism, if you will be kind enough to send it me; but I particularly wish not to see any of the newspaper articles.

SUMMARY

MARCH TO JUNE, 1860. – FIRST JOURNEY TO ITALY

Crossing Mont Cenis by night in diligence – Turin – Sees Count Cavour – Genoa – Leghorn – Pisa – Civita Vecchia – Disappointment with first sight of Rome – Better spirits after visit to Capitol – View from Capitol – Points most struck with in Rome – Sculpture at Capitol – Sculpture at Vatican first seen by torchlight – St. Peter's – Other churches – Sistine Chapel – Paintings – Illumination of St. Peter's – Disappointment with Michael Angelo's Moses – Visits to artists' studios – Riedel and Overbeck – Pamfili Doria Gardens – Frascati – Tivoli – Pictures at Capitol – Lateran Museum – Shelley's and Keats's graves – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – Pope's blessing – Easter ceremonies – From Rome to Naples – Description – Museo Borbonico – Visit to Pompeii – Solemnity of street of tombs – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – From Naples to Salerno and Pæstum – Temple of Vesta – Temple of Neptune fulfils expectations – Amalfi – Drive to Sorrento – Back to Naples – By steamer to Leghorn – To Florence – Views from Fiesole and Bellosguardo – The Duomo – Baptistery – Palaces – Churches – Dante's tomb – Frescoes – Pictures at the Uffizi – Pictures at the Pitti – Pictures at the Accademia – Expedition to Siena – Back to Florence – Michael Angelo's house – Letter to Blackwood – Dwarfing effect of the past – Letter to Major Blackwood on Times' criticism of "The Mill on the Floss," and first mention of an Italian novel – Leave Florence for Bologna – Churches and pictures – To Padua by Ferrara – The Arena Chapel – Venice by moonlight – Doge's Palace – St. Mark's – Pictures – Scuola di San Rocco – Accademia – Gondola to Chioggia – From Venice to Verona – Milan – Brera Gallery and Ambrosian Library – Disappointment with cathedral – Bellagio – Over Splügen to Switzerland – Letter to Blackwood – Saw Moleschott at Zurich – Home by Berne and Geneva.

CHAPTER XI

Journal, 1860.

July 1.– We found ourselves at home again, after three months of delightful travel. From Berne we brought our eldest boy Charles, to begin a new period in his life, after four years at Hofwyl. During our absence "The Mill on the Floss" came out (April 4), and achieved a greater success than I had ever hoped for it. The subscription was 3600 (the number originally printed was 4000); and shortly after its appearance, Mudie having demanded a second thousand, Blackwood commenced striking off 2000 more, making 6000. While we were at Florence I had the news that these 6000 were all sold, and that 500 more were being prepared. From all we can gather, the votes are rather on the side of "The Mill" as a better book than "Adam."

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st July, 1860.

We reached home by starlight at one o'clock this morning; and I write in haste, fear, and trembling lest you should already be gone to Surrey. You know what I should like – that you and your husband should come to us the first day possible, naming any hour and conditions. We would arrange meals and everything else as would best suit you. Of course I would willingly go to London to see you, if you could not come to me. But I fear lest neither plan should be practicable, and lest this letter should have to be sent after you. It is from your note only that I have learned your loss.²¹ It has made me think of you with the sense that there is more than ever a common fund of experience between us. But I will write nothing more now. I am almost ill with fatigue, and have only courage to write at all because of my anxiety not to miss you.

Affectionate regards from both of us to both of you.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d July, 1860.

I opened your letters and parcel a little after one o'clock on Sunday morning, for that was the unseasonable hour of our return from our long, long journey. Yesterday was almost entirely employed in feeling very weary indeed, but this morning we are attacking the heap of small duties that always lie before one after a long absence.

It is pleasant to see your book²² fairly finished after all delays and anxieties; but I will say nothing to you about that until I have read it. I shall read it the first thing before plunging into a course of study which will take me into a different region of thought.

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey – one of those journeys that seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new veins of interest they open. We went to Geneva, and spent two days with my old, kind friends, the d'Alberts – a real pleasure to me, especially as Mr. Lewes was delighted with "Maman," as I used to call Madame d'Albert. She is as bright and upright as ever; the ten years have only whitened her hair – a change which makes her face all the softer in coloring.

Letter to John Blackwood, 3d July, 1860.

We did not reach home till past midnight on Saturday, when you, I suppose, had already become used to the comfort of having fairly got through your London season. Self-interest, rightly understood of course, prompts us to a few virtuous actions in the way of letter-writing to let the few people we care to hear from know at once of our whereabouts; and you are one of the first among the few.

At Berne Mr. Lewes supped with Professors Valentin and Schiff, two highly distinguished physiologists, and I was much delighted to find how much attention and interest they had given to his views in the "Physiology of Common Life."

A French translation of "Adam Bede," by a Genevese gentleman²³ well known to me, is now in the press; and the same translator has undertaken "The Mill on the Floss." He appears to have rendered "Adam" with the most scrupulous care. I think these are all the incidents we gathered on our homeward journey that are likely to interest you.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th July, 1860.

I have finished my first rather rapid reading of your book, and now I thank you for it: not merely for the special gift of the volume and inscription, but for that of which many others will share the benefit with me – the "thoughts" themselves.

So far as my reading in English books of similar character extends, yours seems to me quite unparalleled in the largeness and insight with which it estimates Christianity as an "organized experience" – a grand advance in the moral development of the race.

I especially delight in the passage, p. 105, beginning, "And how can it be otherwise," and ending with, "formal rejection of it."²⁴ On this and other supremely interesting matters of thought – perhaps I should rather say of experience – your book has shown me that we are much nearer to each other than I had supposed. At p. 174, again, there is a passage beginning, "These sentiments," and ending with "heroes,"²⁵ which, for me, expresses the one-half of true human piety. That thought is one of my favorite altars where I oftenest go to contemplate, and to seek for invigorating motive.

Of the work as a whole I am quite incompetent to judge on a single cursory reading. I admire – I respect – the breadth and industry of mind it exhibits; and I should be obliged to give it a more thorough study than I can afford at present before I should feel warranted to urge, in the light of a criticism, my failure to perceive the logical consistency of your language in some parts with the position you have adopted in others. In many instances your meaning is obscure to me, or at least lies wrapped up in more folds of abstract phraseology than I have the courage or the industry to open for myself. I think you told me that some one had found your treatment of great questions "cold-blooded." I am all the more delighted to find, for my own part, an unusual fulness of sympathy and heart experience breathing throughout your book. The ground for that epithet perhaps lay in a certain professorial tone which could hardly be avoided, in a work filled with criticism of other people's theories, except by the adoption of a simply personal style of presentation, in which you would have seemed to be looking up at the oracles, and trying to reconcile their doctrines for your own behoof, instead of appearing to be seated in a chair above them. But you considered your own plan more thoroughly than any one else can have considered it for you; and I have no doubt you had good reasons for preferring the more impersonal style.

Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards, and when Du Bois Reymond's book on Johannes Müller, with other preoccupations of a like thrilling kind, no longer stand in the way, he will open his copy of the "Thoughts in Aid of Faith." He has felt a new interest aroused towards it since he has learned something about it from me and the reviewer in the Westminster.

Madame Bodichon, who was here the other day, told me that Miss Nightingale and Miss Julia Smith had mentioned their pleasure in your book; but you will hear further news of all that from themselves.

Letter to John Blackwood, 9th July, 1860.

I return Sir Edward Lytton's critical letter, which I have read with much interest. On two points I recognize the justice of his criticism. First, that Maggie is made to appear too passive in the scene of quarrel in the Red Deeps. If my book were still in MS. I should – now that the defect is suggested to me – alter, or rather expand, that scene. Secondly, that the tragedy is not adequately prepared. This is a defect which I felt even while writing the third volume, and have felt ever since the MS. left me. The Epische Breite into which I was beguiled by love of my subject in the two first volumes, caused a want of proportionate fulness in the treatment of the third, which I shall always regret.

The other chief point of criticism – Maggie's position towards Stephen – is too vital a part of my whole conception and purpose for me to be converted to the condemnation of it. If I am wrong there – if I did not really know what my heroine would feel and do under the circumstances in which I deliberately placed her, I ought not to have written this book at all, but quite a different book, if any. If the ethics of art do not admit the truthful presentation of a character essentially noble, but liable to great error – error that is anguish to its own nobleness – then, it seems to me, the ethics of art are too narrow, and must be widened to correspond with a widening psychology.

But it is good for me to know how my tendencies as a writer clash with the conclusions of a highly accomplished mind, that I may be warned into examining well whether my discordance with those conclusions may not arise rather from an idiosyncrasy of mine than from a conviction which is argumentatively justifiable.

I hope you will thank Sir Edward on my behalf for the trouble he has taken to put his criticism into a form specific enough to be useful. I feel his taking such trouble to be at once a tribute and a kindness. If printed criticisms were usually written with only half the same warrant of knowledge, and with an equal sincerity of intention, I should read them without fear of fruitless annoyance.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 10th July, 1860.

The little envelope with its address of "Marian" was very welcome, and as Mr. Lewes is sending what a Malaproprian friend once called a "missile" to Sara, I feel inclined to slip in a word of gratitude – less for the present than for the past goodness, which came back to me with keener remembrance than ever when we were at Genoa and at Como – the places I first saw with you. How wretched I was then – how peevish, how utterly morbid! And how kind and forbearing you were under the oppression of my company. I should like you now and then to feel happy in the thought that you were always perfectly good to me. That I was not good to you is my own disagreeable affair; the bitter taste of that fact is mine, not yours.

Don't you remember Bellagio? It is hardly altered much except in the hotels, which the eleven years have wondrously multiplied and bedizened for the accommodation of the English. But if I begin to recall the things we saw in Italy, I shall write as long a letter as Mr. Lewes's, which, by-the-bye, now I have read it, seems to be something of a "missile" in another sense than the Malaproprian. But Sara is one of the few people to whom candor is acceptable as the highest tribute. And private criticism has more chance of being faithful than public. We must have mercy on critics who are obliged to make a figure in printed pages. They must by all means say striking things. Either we should not read printed criticisms at all (I don't), or we should read them with the constant remembrance that they are a fugitive kind of work which, in the present stage of human nature, can rarely engage a very high grade of conscience or ability. The fate of a book, which is not entirely ephemeral, is never decided by journalists or reviewers of any but an exceptional kind. Tell Sara her damnation – if it ever comes to pass – will be quite independent of Nationals and Westminsters. Let half a dozen competent people read her book, and an opinion of it will spread quite apart from either praise or blame in reviews and newspapers.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, Tuesday evening, July, 1860.

Our big boy is a great delight to us, and makes our home doubly cheery. It is very sweet as one gets old to have some young life about one. He is quite a passionate musician, and we play Beethoven duets with increasing appetite every evening. The opportunity of hearing some inspiring music is one of the chief benefits we hope for to counterbalance our loss of the wide common and the fields.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 14th July, 1860.

We shall certainly read the parts you suggest in the "Education of the Feelings,"²⁶ and I dare say I shall read a good deal more of it, liking to turn over the leaves of a book which I read first in our old drawing-room at Foleshill, and then lent to my sister, who, with a little air of maternal experience, pronounced it "very sensible."

There is so much that I want to do every day – I had need cut myself into four women. We have a great extra interest and occupation just now in our big boy Charlie, who is looking forward to a Government examination, and wants much help and sympathy in music and graver things. I think we are quite peculiarly blest in the fact that this eldest lad seems the most entirely lovable human animal of seventeen and a half that I ever met with or heard of: he has a sweetness of disposition which is saved from weakness by a remarkable sense of duty.

We are going to let our present house, if possible – that is, get rid of it altogether on account of its inconvenient situation – other projects are still in a floating, unfixed condition. The water did not look quite so green at Como – perhaps, as your remark suggests, because there was a less vivid green to be reflected from my personality as I looked down on it. I am eleven years nearer to the sere and yellow leaf, and my feelings are even more autumnal than my years. I have read no reviews of the "Mill on the Floss" except that in the Times which Blackwood sent me to Florence. I abstain not from superciliousness, but on a calm consideration of the probable proportion of benefit on the one hand, and waste of thought on the other. It was certain that in the notices of my first book, after the removal of my incognito, there would be much ex post facto wisdom, which could hardly profit me since I certainly knew who I was beforehand, and knew also that no one else knew who had not been told.

Letter to Charles Bray, 18th July, 1860.

We are quite uncertain about our plans at present. Our second boy, Thornie, is going to leave Hofwyl, and to be placed in some more expensive position, in order to the carrying on of his education in a more complete way, so that we are thinking of avoiding for the present any final establishment of ourselves, which would necessarily be attended with additional outlay. Besides, these material cares draw rather too severely on my strength and spirits. But until Charlie's career has taken shape we frame no definite projects.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Aug. 1860.

If Cara values the article on Strikes in the Westminster Review, she will be interested to know – if she has not heard it already – that the writer is blind. I dined with him the other week, and could hardly keep the tears back as I sat at table with him. Yet he is cheerful and animated, accepting with graceful quietness all the minute attentions to his wants that his blindness calls forth. His name is Fawcett, and he is a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I am sitting for my portrait – for the last time, I hope – to Lawrence, the artist who drew that chalk-head of Thackeray, which is familiar to you.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, Friday, Aug. 1860.

I know you will rejoice with us that Charlie has won his place at the Post-office, having been at the head of the list in the examination. The dear lad is fairly launched in life now.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, Saturday evening, Aug. 1860.

I am thoroughly vexed that we didn't go to Lawrence's to-day. We made an effort, but it was raining too hard at the only time that would serve us to reach the train. That comes of our inconvenient situation, so far off the railway; and alas! no one comes to take our house off our hands. We may be forced to stay here after all.

One of the things I shall count upon, if we are able to get nearer London, is to see more of your schools and other good works. That would help me to do without the fields for many months of the year.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Aug. 1860.

I am very sorry that anything I have written should have pained you. That, certainly, is the result I should seek most to avoid in the very slight communication which we are able to keep up – necessarily under extremely imperfect acquaintance with each other's present self.

My first letter to you about your book, after having read it through, was as simple and sincere a statement of the main impressions it had produced on me as I knew how to write in few words. My second letter, in which I unhappily used a formula in order to express to you, in briefest phrase, my difficulty in discerning the justice of your analogical argument, as I understood it, was written from no other impulse than the desire to show you that I did not neglect your abstract just sent to me. The said formula was entirely deprived of its application by the statement in your next letter that you used the word "essence" in another sense than the one hitherto received in philosophical writing, on the question as to the nature of our knowledge; and the explanation given of your meaning in your last letter shows me – unless I am plunging into further mistake – that you mean nothing but what I fully believe. My offensive formula was written under the supposition that your conclusion meant something which it apparently did not mean. It is probable enough that I was stupid; but I should be distressed to think that the discipline of life had been of so little use to me as to leave me with a tendency to leap at once to the attitude of a critic, instead of trying first to be a learner from every book written with sincere labor.

Will you tell Mr. Bray that we are quitting our present house in order to be nearer town for Charlie's sake, who has an appointment in the Post-office, and our time will be arduously occupied during the next few weeks in arrangements to that end, so that our acceptance of the pleasant proposition to visit Sydenham for a while is impossible. We have advertised for a house near Regent's Park, having just found a gentleman and lady ready to take our present one off our hands. They want to come in on quarter-day, so that we have no time to spare.

I have been reading this morning for my spiritual good Emerson's "Man the Reformer," which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning. My heart goes out with venerating gratitude to that mild face, which I dare say is smiling on some one as beneficently as it one day did on me years and years ago.

Do not write again about opinions on large questions, dear Sara. The liability to mutual misconception which attends such correspondence – especially in my case, who can only write with brevity and haste – makes me dread it greatly; and I think there is no benefit derivable to you to compensate for the presence of that dread in me. You do not know me well enough as I am (according to the doctrine of development which you have yourself expounded) to have the materials for interpreting my imperfect expressions.

I think you would spare yourself some pain if you would attribute to your friends a larger comprehension of ideas, and a larger acquaintance with them, than you appear to do. I should imagine that many of them, or at least some of them, share with you, much more fully than you seem to suppose, in the interest and hope you derive from the doctrine of development, with its geometrical progression towards fuller and fuller being. Surely it is a part of human piety we should all cultivate, not to form conclusions, on slight and dubious evidence, as to other people's "tone of mind," or to regard particular mistakes as a proof of general moral incapacity to understand us. I suppose such a tendency (to large conclusions about others) is part of the original sin we are all born with, for I have continually to check it in myself.

Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Aug. 1860.

I think I must tell you the secret, though I am distrusting my power to make it grow into a published fact. When we were in Florence I was rather fired with the idea of writing an historical romance – scene, Florence; period, the close of the fifteenth century, which was marked by Savonarola's career and martyrdom. Mr. Lewes has encouraged me to persevere in the project, saying that I should probably do something in historical romance rather different in character from what has been done before. But I want first to write another English story, and the plan I should like to carry out is this: to publish my next English novel when my Italian one is advanced enough for us to begin its publication a few months afterwards in "Maga." It would appear without a name in the Magazine, and be subsequently reprinted with the name of George Eliot. I need not tell you the wherefore of this plan. You know well enough the received phrases with which a writer is greeted when he does something else than what was expected of him. But just now I am quite without confidence in my future doings, and almost repent of having formed conceptions which will go on lashing me now until I have at least tried to fulfil them.

I am going to-day to give my last sitting to Lawrence, and we were counting on the Major's coming to look at the portrait and judge of it. I hope it will be satisfactory, for I am quite set against going through the same process a second time.

We are a little distracted just now with the prospect of removal from our present house, which some obliging people have at last come to take off our hands.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th Sept. 1860.

My fingers have been itching to write to you for the last week or more, but I have waited and waited, hoping to be able to tell you that we had decided on our future house. This evening, however, I have been reading your description of Algiers, and the desire to thank you for it moves me too strongly to be resisted. It is admirably written, and makes me see the country. I am so glad to think of the deep draughts of life you get from being able to spend half your life in that fresh, grand scenery. It must make London and English green fields all the more enjoyable in their turn.

As for us, we are preparing to renounce the delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do, for the benefit of the young ones. We have let our present house.

Is it not cheering to have the sunshine on the corn, and the prospect that the poor people will not have to endure the suffering that comes on them from a bad harvest? The fields that were so sadly beaten down a little while ago on the way to town are now standing in fine yellow shocks.

I wish you could know how much we felt your kindness to Charley. He is such a dear good fellow that nothing is thrown away upon him.

Write me a scrap of news about yourself, and tell me how you and the doctor are enjoying the country. I shall get a breath of it in that way. I think I love the fields and shudder at the streets more and more every month.

Journal, 1860.

Sept. 27.– To-day is the third day we have spent in our new home here at 10 Harewood Square. It is a furnished house, in which we do not expect to stay longer than six months at the utmost. Since our return from Italy I have written a slight tale, "Mr. David Faux, Confectioner" ("Brother Jacob"), which G. thinks worth printing.

Letter to John Blackwood, 27th Sept. 1860.

The precious check arrived safely to-day. I am much obliged to you for it, and also for the offer to hasten further payments. I have no present need of that accommodation, as we have given up the idea of buying the house which attracted us, dreading a step that might fetter us to town, or to a more expensive mode of living than might ultimately be desirable. I hope Mr. Lewes will bring us back a good report of Major Blackwood's progress towards re-established health. In default of a visit from him, it was very agreeable to have him represented by his son,²⁷ who has the happy talent of making a morning call one of the easiest, pleasantest things in the world.

I wonder if you know who is the writer of the article in the North British, in which I am reviewed along with Hawthorne. Mr. Lewes brought it for me to read this morning, and it is so unmixed in its praise that if I had any friends I should be uneasy lest a friend should have written it.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Oct. 1860.

Since there is no possibility of my turning in to see you on my walk, as in the old days, I cannot feel easy without writing to tell you my regret that I missed you when you came. In changing a clearer sky for a foggy one we have not changed our habits, and we walk after lunch, as usual; but I should like very much to stay indoors any day with the expectation of seeing you, if I could know beforehand of your coming. It is rather sad not to see your face at all from week to week, and I hope you know that I feel it so. But I am always afraid of falling into a disagreeable urgency of invitation, since we have nothing to offer beyond the familiar, well-worn entertainment of our own society. I hope you and Mr. Congreve are quite well now and free from cares. Emily, I suppose, is gone with the sunshine of her face to Coventry. There is sadly little sunshine except that of young faces just now. Still we are flourishing, in spite of damp and dismalness. We were glad to hear that the well-written article in the Westminster on the "Essays and Reviews" was by your friend Mr. Harrison.²⁸ Though I don't quite agree with his view of the case, I admired the tone and style of the writing greatly.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 19th Oct. 1860.

There is no objection to Wednesday but this – that it is our day for hearing a course of lectures, and the lecture begins at eight. Now, since you can't come often, we want to keep you as long as we can, and we have a faint hope that Mr. Congreve might be able to come from his work and dine with us and take you home. But if that were impossible, could you not stay all night? There is a bed ready for you. Think of all that, and if you can manage to give us the longer visit, choose another day when our evening will be unbroken. I will understand by your silence that you can only come for a shorter time, and that you abide by your plan of coming on Wednesday. I am really quite hungry for the sight of you.

Letter to John Blackwood, 2d Nov. 1860.

I agree with you in preferring to put simply "New Edition;" and I see, too, that the practice of advertising numbers is made vulgar and worthless by the doubtful veracity of some publishers, and the low character of the books to which they affix this supposed guarantee of popularity. Magna est veritas, etc. I can't tell you how much comfort I feel in having publishers who believe that.

You have read the hostile article in the Quarterly, I dare say. I have not seen it; but Mr. Lewes's report of it made me more cheerful than any review I have heard of since "The Mill" came out. You remember Lord John Russell was once laughed at immensely for saying that he felt confident he was right, because all parties found fault with him. I really find myself taking nearly the same view of my position, with the Freethinkers angry with me on one side and the writer in the Quarterly on the other —not because my representations are untruthful, but because they are impartial – because I don't load my dice so as to make their side win. The parenthetical hint that the classical quotations in my books might be "more correctly printed," is an amusing sample of the grievance that belongs to review-writing in general, since there happens to be only one classical quotation in them all – the Greek one from the Philoctetes in "Amos Barton." By-the-bye, will you see that the readers have not allowed some error to creep into that solitary bit of pedantry?

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Nov. 1860.

I understand your paradox of "expecting disappointments," for that is the only form of hope with which I am familiar. I should like, for your sake, that you should rather see us in our own house than in this; for I fear your carrying away a general sense of yellow in connection with us – and I am sure that is enough to set you against the thought of us. There are some staring yellow curtains which you will hardly help blending with your impression of our moral sentiments. In our own drawing-room I mean to have a paradise of greenness. I have lately re-read your "Thoughts," from the beginning of the "Psychical Essence of Christianity" to the end of the "History of Philosophy," and I feel my original impression confirmed – that the "Psychical Essence" and "General Review of the Christian System" are the most valuable portions. I think you once expressed your regret that I did not understand the analogy you traced between Feuerbach's theory and Spencer's. I don't know what gave you that impression, for I never said so. I see your meaning distinctly in that parallel. If you referred to something in Mr. Lewes's letter, let me say, once for all, that you must not impute my opinions to him nor vice versâ. The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions. In this respect I know no man so great as he – that difference of opinion rouses no egoistic irritation in him, and that he is ready to admit that another argument is the stronger the moment his intellect recognizes it. I am glad to see Mr. Bray contributing his quota to the exposure of that odious trickery – spirit-rapping. It was not headache that I was suffering from when Mr. Bray called, but extreme languor and unbroken fatigue from morning to night – a state which is always accompanied in me, psychically, by utter self-distrust and despair of ever being equal to the demands of life. We should be very pleased to hear some news of Mr. and Mrs. Call. I feel their removal from town quite a loss to us.