George Eliot - George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3)

The following is the letter before referred to as containing an important and noteworthy declaration of opinion on the very interesting question of conformity:

The first thing I have to say to you is to entreat that you and Mrs. Hennell will not perplex yourselves for a moment about my accommodation during the night. I am so well now that a hearthrug would be as luxurious a couch as I should need, and I defy anything short of a kettledrum or my conscience to keep me awake after a long day.

The subject of your conversation with Miss D – is a very important one, and worth an essay. I will not now inflict one of mine on you, but I will tell you, as briefly as possible, my present opinion, which you know is contrary to the one I held in the first instance. I am inclined to think that such a change of sentiment is likely to happen to most persons whose views on religious matters undergo a change early in life. The first impulse of a young and ingenuous mind is to withhold the slightest sanction from all that contains even a mixture of supposed error. When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope. We think we shall run well when we have the full use of our limbs and the bracing air of independence, and we believe that we shall soon obtain something positive, which will not only more than compensate us for what we have renounced, but will be so well worth offering to others that we may venture to proselytize as fast as our zeal for truth may prompt us. But a year or two of reflection, and the experience of our own miserable weakness, which will ill afford to part even with the crutch of superstition, must, I think, effect a change. Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of individual minds. Agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the truth of feeling

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The farm is also known as the South Farm, Arbury.

"Felix Holt" – Introduction.

See vol. ii. p. 96.

A Mr. Heming was the Radical candidate.

"Mill on the Floss," chap. iii. book iv.

"Daniel Deronda."

See vol. iii.

"Felix Holt," chap. xxxviii. p. 399.

Given to her as a school prize when she was fourteen.

"Mill on the Floss," chap. v. book vi.

Of ecclesiastical history.

The Squire of Coton.

When she would be thirteen years old.

Written probably in view of her brother's marriage.

Visit to Miss Rawlins, her brother's fiancée .

By a curious coincidence, when she became Mrs. Cross, this actually was her motto.

Brother's marriage.

Miss Mary Hennell was the author of "An Outline of the Various Social Systems founded on the Principle of Co-operation," published in 1841.