Chapter XX: George Eliot

CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE ELIOT.--GEORGE ELIOT'S FIRST
IMPRESSIONS OF MRS. STOWE.--MRS. STOWE'S LETTER TO MRS.
FOLLEN.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--MRS.
STOWE'S REPLY.--LIFE IN FLORIDA.--ROBERT DALE OWEN AND
MODERN SPIRITUALISM.--GEORGE ELIOT'S LETTER ON THE
PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM.--MRS. STOWE'S DESCRIPTION
OF SCENERY IN FLORIDA.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING
"MIDDLEMARCH."--GEORGE ELIOT TO MRS. STOWE DURING REV.
H. W. BEECHER'S TRIAL.--MRS. STOWE CONCERNING HER LIFE
EXPERIENCE WITH HER BROTHER, H. W. BEECHER, AND HIS
TRIAL.--MRS. LEWES' LAST LETTER TO MRS. STOWE.--DIVERSE
MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE TWO WOMEN.--MRS.
STOWE'S FINAL ESTIMATE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM.

IT is with a feeling of relief that we turn from one of the most disagreeable experiences of Mrs. Stowe's life to one of the most delightful, namely, the warm friendship of one of the most eminent women of this age, George Eliot.

There seems to have been some deep affinity of feeling that drew them closely together in spite of diversity of intellectual tastes.

George Eliot's attention was first personally attracted to Mrs. Stowe in 1853, by means of a letter which the latter had written to Mrs. Follen. Speaking of this incident she (George Eliot) writes: "Mrs. Follen showed me a delightful letter which she has just had from Mrs. Stowe, telling all about herself. She begins by saying, 'I am a little bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a decidedly used-up article.' The whole letter is most fascinating, and makes one love her."[17]

The correspondence between these two notable women was begun by Mrs. Stowe, and called forth the following extremely interesting letter from the distinguished English novelist:--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _May 8, 1869._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I value very highly the warrant to
call you friend which your letter has given me. It
lay awaiting me on our return the other night from a
nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost
wish that you could have a momentary vision of the
discouragement,--nay, paralyzing despondency--in which
many days of my writing life have been passed, in order
that you might fully understand the good I find in such
sympathy as yours, in such an assurance as you give me
that my work has been worth doing. But I will not dwell
on any mental sickness of mine. The best joy your words
give me is the sense of that sweet, generous feeling in
you which dictated them. I shall always be the richer
because you have in this way made me know you better. I
must tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman
came through a letter of yours, and charmed me very
much. The letter was addressed to Mrs. Follen, and
one morning I called on her in London (how many years
ago!); she was kind enough to read it to me, because it
contained a little history of your life, and a sketch
of your domestic circumstances. I remember thinking
that it was very kind of you to write that long letter,
in reply to inquiries of one who was personally unknown
to you; and, looking back with my present experience,
I think it was kinder than it then appeared, for at
that time you must have been much oppressed with the
immediate results of your fame. I remember, too, that
you wrote of your husband as one who was richer in
Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as an
ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar
interest to me, I have rarely had your image in my mind
without the accompanying image (more or less erroneous)
of such a scholar by your side. I shall welcome the
fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes.

I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as
to the obstacles your new book ("Oldtown Folks") may
find here from its thorough American character. Most
readers who are likely to be really influenced by
writing above the common order will find that special
aspect an added reason for interest and study; and
I dare say you have long seen, as I am beginning to
see with new clearness, that if a book which has any
sort of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular,
widely circulated book, the power over the social mind
for any good is, after all, due to its reception by a
few appreciative natures, and is the slow result of
radiation from that narrow circle. I mean that you can
affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may
affect a few more, but that no exquisite book tells
properly and directly on a multitude, however largely
it may be spread by type and paper. Witness the things
the multitude will say about it, if one is so unhappy
as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not
write this cynically, but in pure sadness and pity.
Both traveling abroad and staying at home among our
English sights and sports, one must continually feel
how slowly the centuries work toward the moral good of
men, and that thought lies very close to what you say
as to your wonder or conjecture concerning my religious
point of view. I believe that religion, too, has to
be modified according to the dominant phases; that
a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must
express less care of personal consolation, and the more
deeply awing sense of responsibility to man springing
from sympathy with that which of all things is most
certainly known to us,--the difficulty of the human
lot. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary,
and when one writes on wide subjects, are likely to
create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I
have little anxiety in writing to you, dear friend and
fellow-laborer; for you have had longer experience than
I as a writer, and fuller experience as a woman, since
you have borne children and known a mother's history
from the beginning. I trust your quick and long-taught
mind as an interpreter little liable to mistake me.

When you say, "We live in an orange grove, and are
planting many more," and when I think you must have
abundant family love to cheer you, it seems to me
that you must have a paradise about you. But no list
of circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless,
I must believe that the joyous, tender humor of your
books clings about your more immediate life, and
makes some of that sunshine for yourself which you
have given to us. I see the advertisement of "Oldtown
Folks," and shall eagerly expect it. That and every
other new link between us will be reverentially valued.
With great devotion and regard,

Yours always,
M. L. LEWES.

Mrs. Stowe writes from Mandarin to George Eliot:--

MANDARIN, _February 8, 1872._

DEAR FRIEND,--It is two years nearly since I had your
last very kind letter, and I have never answered,
because two years of constant and severe work have made
it impossible to give a drop to anything beyond the
needs of the hour. Yet I have always thought of you,
loved you, trusted you all the same, and read every
little scrap from your writing that came to hand.

One thing brings you back to me. I am now in Florida
in my little hut in the orange orchard, with the broad
expanse of the blue St. John's in front, and the
waving of the live-oaks, with their long, gray mosses,
overhead, and the bright gold of oranges looking
through dusky leaves around. It is like Sorrento,--so
like that I can quite dream of being there. And when I
get here I enter another life. The world recedes; I am
out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise
die away in the far distance; and here is no winter, an
open-air life,--a quaint, rude, wild wilderness sort of
life, both rude and rich; but when I am here I write
more letters to friends than ever I do elsewhere. The
mail comes only twice a week, and then is the event
of the day. My old rabbi and I here set up our tent,
he with German, and Greek, and Hebrew, devouring all
sorts of black-letter books, and I spinning ideal webs
out of bits that he lets fall here and there.

I have long thought that I would write you again when I
got here, and so I do. I have sent North to have them
send me the "Harper's Weekly," in which your new story
is appearing, and have promised myself leisurely to
devour and absorb every word of it.

While I think of it I want to introduce to you a friend
of mine, a most noble man, Mr. Owen, for some years our
ambassador at Naples, now living a literary and scholar
life in America. His father was Robert Dale Owen, the
theorist and communist you may have heard of in England
some years since.

Years ago, in Naples, I visited Mr. Owen for the
first time, and found him directing his attention
to the phenomena of spiritism. He had stumbled upon
some singular instances of it accidentally, and he
had forthwith instituted a series of researches and
experiments on the subject, some of which he showed me.
It was the first time I had ever seriously thought of
the matter, and he invited my sister and myself to see
some of the phenomena as exhibited by a medium friend
of theirs who resided in their family. The result at
the time was sufficiently curious, but I was interested
in his account of the manner in which he proceeded,
keeping records of every experiment with its results,
in classified orders. As the result of his studies
and observations, he has published two books, one
"Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," published
in 1860, and latterly, "The Debatable Land Between this
World and the Next." I regard Mr. Owen as one of the
few men who are capable of entering into an inquiry of
this kind without an utter drowning of common sense,
and his books are both of them worth a fair reading. To
me they present a great deal that is intensely curious
and interesting, although I do not admit, of course,
all his deductions, and think he often takes too much
for granted. Still, with every abatement there remains
a residuum of fact, which I think both curious and
useful. In a late letter to me he says:--

"There is no writer of the present day whom I more
esteem than Mrs. Lewes, nor any one whose opinion of my
work I should more highly value."

I believe he intends sending them to you, and I hope
you will read them. Lest some of the narratives should
strike you, as such narratives did me once, as being a
perfect Arabian Nights' Entertainment, I want to say
that I have accidentally been in the way of confirming
some of the most remarkable by personal observation....
In regard to all this class of subjects, I am of the
opinion of Goethe, that "it is just as absurd to deny
the facts of spiritualism now as it was in the Middle
Ages to ascribe them to the Devil." I think Mr. Owen
attributes too much value to his facts. I do not think
the things contributed from the ultra-mundane sphere
are particularly valuable, apart from the evidence they
give of continued existence after death.

I do not think there is yet any evidence to warrant
the idea that they are a supplement or continuation of
the revelations of Christianity, but I do regard them
as an interesting and curious study in psychology,
and every careful observer like Mr. Owen ought to be
welcomed to bring in his facts. With this I shall
send you my observations on Mr. Owen's books, from
the "Christian Union." I am perfectly aware of the
frivolity and worthlessness of much of the revealings
purporting to come from spirits. In my view, the worth
or worthlessness of them has nothing to do with the
question of fact.

Do invisible spirits speak in any wise,--wise or
foolish?--is the question _a priori_? I do not know
of any reason why there should not be as many foolish
virgins in the future state as in this. As I am a
believer in the Bible and Christianity, I don't need
these things as confirmations, and they are not likely
to be a religion to me. I regard them simply as I do
the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, or Darwin's
studies on natural selection, as curious studies into
nature. Besides, I think some day we shall find a law
by which all these facts will fall into their places.

I hope now this subject does not bore you: it certainly
is one that seems increasingly to insist on getting
itself heard. It is going on and on, making converts,
who are many more than dare avow themselves, and for my
part I wish it were all brought into the daylight of
inquiry.

Let me hear from you if ever you feel like it. I know
too well the possibilities and impossibilities of a
nature like yours to ask more, but it can do you no
harm to know that I still think of you and love you as
ever.

Faithfully yours,
H. B. STOWE.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, _March 4, 1872._

DEAR FRIEND,--I can understand very easily that the
two last years have been full for you of other and
more imperative work than the writing of letters not
absolutely demanded either by charity or business. The
proof that you still think of me affectionately is very
welcome now it has come, and more cheering because it
enables me to think of you as enjoying your retreat
in your orange orchard,--your western Sorrento--the
beloved rabbi still beside you. I am sure it must be
a great blessing to you to bathe in that quietude, as
it always is to us when we go out of reach of London
influences and have the large space of country days to
study, walk, and talk in....

When I am more at liberty I will certainly read Mr.
Owen's books, if he is good enough to send them to me.
I desire on all subjects to keep an open mind, but
hitherto the various phenomena, reported or attested
in connection with ideas of spirit intercourse and so
on, have come before me here in the painful form of the
lowest charlatanerie....

But apart from personal contact with people who get
money by public exhibitions as mediums, or with
semi-idiots such as those who make a court for a Mrs.
----, or other feminine personages of that kind, I
would not willingly place any barriers between my mind
and any possible channel of truth affecting the human
lot. The spirit in which you have written in the paper
you kindly sent me is likely to touch others, and
arouse them at least to attention in a case where you
have been deeply impressed....

Yours with sincere affection,
M. L. LEWES.

(Begun April 4th.)

MANDARIN, FLORIDA, _May 11, 1872._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was very glad to get your dear
little note,--sorry to see by it that you are not in
your full physical force. Owing to the awkwardness
and misunderstanding of publishers, I am not reading
"Middlemarch," as I expected to be, here in these
orange shades: they don't send it, and I am too far
out of the world to get it. I felt, when I read your
letters, how glad I should be to have you here in our
Florida cottage, in the wholly new, wild, woodland
life. Though resembling Italy in climate, it is wholly
different in the appearance of nature,--the plants, the
birds, the animals, all different. The green tidiness
and culture of England here gives way to a wild and
rugged savageness of beauty. Every tree bursts forth
with flowers; wild vines and creepers execute delirious
gambols, and weave and interweave in interminable
labyrinths. Yet here, in the great sandy plains back
of our house, there is a constant wondering sense
of beauty in the wild, wonderful growths of nature.
First of all, the pines--high as the stone pines of
Italy--with long leaves, eighteen inches long, through
which there is a constant dreamy sound, as if of
dashing waters. Then the live-oaks and the water-oaks,
narrow-leaved evergreens, which grow to enormous size,
and whose branches are draped with long festoons of the
gray moss. There is a great, wild park of these trees
back of us, which, with the dazzling, varnished green
of the new spring leaves and the swaying drapery of
moss, looks like a sort of enchanted grotto. Underneath
grow up hollies and ornamental flowering shrubs, and
the yellow jessamine climbs into and over everything
with fragrant golden bells and buds, so that sometimes
the foliage of a tree is wholly hidden in its embrace.

This wild, wonderful, bright and vivid growth, that
is all new, strange, and unknown by name to me, has a
charm for me. It is the place to forget the outside
world, and live in one's self. And if you were here,
we would go together and gather azaleas, and white
lilies, and silver bells, and blue iris. These flowers
keep me painting in a sort of madness. I have just
finished a picture of white lilies that grow in the
moist land by the watercourses. I am longing to begin
on blue iris. Artist, poet, as you are by nature, you
ought to see all these things, and if you would come
here I would take you in heart and house, and you
should have a little room in our cottage. The history
of the cottage is this: I found a hut built close to
a great live-oak twenty-five feet in girth, and with
overarching boughs eighty feet up in the air, spreading
like a firmament, and all swaying with mossy festoons.
We began to live here, and gradually we improved the
hut by lath, plaster, and paper. Then we threw out
a wide veranda all round, for in these regions the
veranda is the living-room of the house. Ours had to be
built around the trunk of the tree, so that our cottage
has a peculiar and original air, and seems as if it
were half tree, or a something that had grown out of
the tree. We added on parts, and have thrown out gables
and chambers, as a tree throws out new branches, till
our cottage is like nobody else's, and yet we settle
into it with real enjoyment. There are all sorts of
queer little rooms in it, and we are accommodating at
this present a family of seventeen souls. In front,
the beautiful, grand St. John's stretches five miles
from shore to shore, and we watch the steamboats plying
back and forth to the great world we are out of. On
all sides, large orange trees, with their dense shade
and ever-vivid green, shut out the sun so that we can
sit, and walk, and live in the open air. Our winter
here is only cool, bracing out-door weather, without
snow. No month without flowers blooming in the open
air, and lettuce and peas in the garden. The summer
range is about 90°, but the sea-breezes keep the air
delightfully fresh. Generally we go North, however, for
three months of summer. Well, I did not mean to run on
about Florida, but the subject runs away with me, and I
want you to visit us in spirit if not personally.

My poor rabbi!--he sends you some Arabic, which I fear
you cannot read: on diablerie he is up to his ears in
knowledge, having read all things in all tongues, from
the Talmud down....

Ever lovingly yours,
H. B. STOWE.

BOSTON, _September 26, 1872._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I think when you see my name again
so soon, you will think it rains, hails, and snows
notes from this quarter. Just now, however, I am in
this lovely, little nest in Boston, where dear Mrs.
Fields, like a dove, "sits brooding on the charmed
wave." We are both wishing we had you here with us,
and she has not received any answer from you as yet
in reply to the invitation you spoke of in your last
letter to me. It seems as if you must have written,
and the letter somehow gone astray, because I know,
of course, you would write. Yesterday we were both out
of our senses with mingled pity and indignation at
that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,--and think of poor
Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so
cold and repulsive a rock! He is a little too dreadful
for anything: there does not seem to be a drop of warm
blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and
not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get
angry with him. It is the scene in the garden, after
the interview with the doctor, that rests on our mind
at this present. There was such a man as he over in
Boston, high in literary circles, but I fancy his wife
wasn't like Dorothea, and a vastly proper time they had
of it, treating each other with mutual reverence, like
two Chinese mandarins.

My love, what I miss in this story is just what we
would have if you would come to our tumble-down, jolly,
improper, but joyous country,--namely, "jollitude."
You write and live on so high a plane! It is all
self-abnegation. We want to get you over here, and into
this house, where, with closed doors, we sometimes
make the rafters ring with fun, and say anything and
everything, no matter what, and won't be any properer
than we's a mind to be. I am wishing every day you
could see our America,--travel, as I have been doing,
from one bright, thriving, pretty, flowery town to
another, and see so much wealth, ease, progress,
culture, and all sorts of nice things. This dovecot
where I now am is the sweetest little nest imaginable;
fronting on a city street, with back windows opening on
a sea view, with still, quiet rooms filled with books,
pictures, and all sorts of things, such as you and
Mr. Lewes would enjoy. Don't be afraid of the ocean,
now! I've crossed it six times, and assure you it is
an overrated item. Froude is coming here--why not you?
Besides, we have the fountain of eternal youth here,
that is, in Florida, where I live, and if you should
come you would both of you take a new lease of life,
and what glorious poems, and philosophies, and whatnot,
we should have! My rabbi writes, in the seventh heaven,
an account of your note to him. To think of his
setting-off on his own account when I was away!

Come now, since your answer to dear Mrs. Fields is yet
to come; let it be a glad yes, and we will clasp you to
our heart of hearts.

Your ever loving,
H. B. S.

During the summer of 1874, while Mrs. Stowe's brother, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, was the victim of a most revolting, malicious, and groundless attack on his purity, Mrs. Lewes wrote the following words of sympathy:--

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The other day I had a letter from
Mrs. Fields, written to let me know something of you
under that heavy trouble, of which such information as
I have had has been quite untrustworthy, leaving me
in entire incredulity in regard to it except on this
point, that you and yours must be suffering deeply.
Naturally I thought most of you in the matter (its
public aspects being indeterminate), and many times
before our friend's letter came I had said to Mr.
Lewes: "What must Mrs. Stowe be feeling!" I remember
Mrs. Fields once told me of the wonderful courage and
cheerfulness which belonged to you, enabling you to
bear up under exceptional trials, and I imagined you
helping the sufferers with tenderness and counsel, but
yet, nevertheless, I felt that there must be a bruising
weight on your heart. Dear, honored friend, you who are
so ready to give warm fellowship, is it any comfort to
you to be told that those afar off are caring for you
in spirit, and will be happier for all good issues that
may bring you rest?

I cannot, dare not, write more in my ignorance, lest
I should be using unreasonable words. But I trust in
your not despising this scrap of paper which tells you,
perhaps rather for my relief than yours, that I am
always in grateful, sweet remembrance of your goodness
to me and your energetic labors for all.

It was two years or more before Mrs. Stowe replied to these words of sympathy.

Orange-blossom time, MANDARIN, _March 18, 1876._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I always think of you when the orange
trees are in blossom; just now they are fuller than
ever, and so many bees are filling the branches that
the air is full of a sort of still murmur. And now I am
beginning to hear from you every month in Harper's. It
is as good as a letter. "Daniel Deronda" has succeeded
in awaking in my somewhat worn-out mind an interest.
So many stories are tramping over one's mind in every
modern magazine nowadays that one is macadamized, so to
speak. It takes something unusual to make a sensation.
This does excite and interest me, as I wait for each
number with eagerness. I wish I could endow you with
our long winter weather,--not winter, except such as
you find in Sicily. We live here from November to
June, and my husband sits outdoors on the veranda
and reads all day. We emigrate in solid family: my
two dear daughters, husband, self, and servants come
together to spend the winter here, and so together to
our Northern home in summer. My twin daughters relieve
me from all domestic care; they are lively, vivacious,
with a real genius for practical life. We have around
us a little settlement of neighbors, who like ourselves
have a winter home here, and live an easy, undress,
picnic kind of life, far from the world and its cares.
Mr. Stowe has been busy on eight volumes of Görres on
the mysticism of the Middle Ages.[18] This Görres was
Professor of Philosophy at Munich, and he reviews the
whole ground of the shadow-land between the natural and
the supernatural,--ecstacy, trance, prophecy, miracles,
spiritualism, the stigmata, etc. He was a devout Roman
Catholic, and the so-called facts that he reasons on
seem to me quite amazing; and yet the possibilities
that lie between inert matter and man's living,
all-powerful, immortal soul may make almost anything
credible. The soul at times can do anything with
matter. I have been busying myself with Sainte-Beuve's
seven volumes on the Port Royal development. I like him
(Sainte-Beuve). His capacity of seeing, doing justice
to all kinds of natures and sentiments, is wonderful. I
am sorry he is no longer our side the veil.

There is a redbird (cardinal grosbeak) singing in
the orange trees fronting my window, so sweetly and
insistently as to almost stop my writing. I hope, dear
friend, you are well--better than when you wrote last.

It was very sweet and kind of you to write what you
did last. I suppose it is so long ago you may have
forgotten, but it was a word of tenderness and sympathy
about my brother's trial; it was womanly, tender, and
sweet, such as at heart you are. After all, my love of
you is greater than my admiration, for I think it more
and better to be really a woman worth loving than to
have read Greek and German and written books. And in
this last book I read, I feel more with you in some
little, fine points,--they stare at me as making an
amusing exhibition. For, my dear, I feel myself at
last as one who has been playing and picnicking on the
shores of life, and waked from a dream late in the
afternoon to find that everybody almost has gone over
to the beyond. And the rest are sorting their things
and packing their trunks, and waiting for the boat to
come and take them.

It seems now but a little time since my brother Henry
and I were two young people together. He was my two
years junior, and nearest companion out of seven
brothers and three sisters. I taught him drawing and
heard his Latin lessons, for you know a girl becomes
mature and womanly long before a boy. I saw him through
college, and helped him through the difficult love
affair that gave him his wife; and then he and my
husband had a real German, enthusiastic love for each
other, which ended in making me a wife. Ah! in those
days we never dreamed that he, or I, or any of us, were
to be known in the world. All he seemed then was a
boy full of fun, full of love, full of enthusiasm for
protecting abused and righting wronged people, which
made him in those early days write editorials, and wear
arms and swear himself a special policeman to protect
the poor negroes in Cincinnati, where we then lived,
when there were mobs instigated by the slaveholders of
Kentucky.

Then he married, and lived a missionary life in the new
West, all with a joyousness, an enthusiasm, a chivalry,
which made life bright and vigorous to us both. Then
in time he was called to Brooklyn, just as the crisis
of the great anti-slavery battle came on, and the
Fugitive Slave Law was passed. I was then in Maine,
and I well remember one snowy night his riding till
midnight to see me, and then our talking, till near
morning, what we could do to make headway against the
horrid cruelties that were being practiced against the
defenseless blacks. My husband was then away lecturing,
and my heart was burning itself out in indignation and
anguish. Henry told me then that he meant to fight that
battle in New York; that he would have a church that
would stand by him to resist the tyrannic dictation
of Southern slaveholders. I said: "I, too, have begun
to do something; I have begun a story, trying to
set forth the sufferings and wrongs of the slaves."
"That's right, Hattie," he said; "finish it, and I
will scatter it thick as the leaves of Vallambrosa,"
and so came "Uncle Tom," and Plymouth Church became a
stronghold where the slave always found refuge and a
strong helper. One morning my brother found sitting on
his doorstep poor old Paul Edmonson, weeping; his two
daughters, of sixteen and eighteen, had passed into
the slave warehouse of Bruin & Hill, and were to be
sold. My brother took the man by the hand to a public
meeting, told his story for him, and in an hour raised
the two thousand dollars to redeem his children. Over
and over again, afterwards, slaves were redeemed at
Plymouth Church, and Henry and Plymouth Church became
words of hatred and fear through half the Union. From
that time until we talked together about the Fugitive
Slave Law, there was not a pause or stop in the battle
till we had been through the war and slavery had been
wiped out in blood. Through all he has been pouring
himself out, wrestling, burning, laboring everywhere,
making stump speeches when elections turned on the
slave question, and ever maintaining that the cause
of Christ was the cause of the slave. And when all
was over, it was he and Lloyd Garrison who were sent
by government once more to raise our national flag
on Fort Sumter. You must see that a man does not
so energize without making many enemies. Half of
our Union has been defeated, a property of millions
annihilated by emancipation, a proud and powerful slave
aristocracy reduced to beggary, and there are those
who never saw our faces that, to this hour, hate him
and me. Then he has been a progressive in theology.
He has been a student of Huxley, and Spencer, and
Darwin,--enough to alarm the old school,--and yet
remained so ardent a supernaturalist as equally to
repel the radical destructionists in religion. He and I
are Christ-worshippers, adoring Him as the Image of the
Invisible God and all that comes from believing this.
Then he has been a reformer, an advocate of universal
suffrage and woman's rights, yet not radical enough to
please that reform party who stand where the Socialists
of France do, and are for tearing up all creation
generally. Lastly, he has had the misfortune of a
popularity which is perfectly phenomenal. I cannot give
you any idea of the love, worship, idolatry, with which
he has been overwhelmed. He has something magnetic
about him that makes everybody crave his society,--that
makes men follow and worship him. I remember being at
his house one evening in the time of early flowers, and
in that one evening came a box of flowers from Maine,
another from New Jersey, another from Connecticut,--all
from people with whom he had no personal acquaintance,
who had read something of his and wanted to send him
some token. I said, "One would think you were a _prima
donna_. What does make people go on so about you?"

My brother is hopelessly generous and confiding. His
inability to believe evil is something incredible, and
so has come all this suffering. You said you hoped
I should be at rest when the first investigating
committee and Plymouth Church cleared my brother almost
by acclamation. Not so. The enemy have so committed
themselves that either they or he must die, and there
has followed two years of the most dreadful struggle.
First, a legal trial of six months, the expenses
of which on his side were one hundred and eighteen
thousand dollars, and in which he and his brave wife
sat side by side in the court-room, and heard all that
these plotters, who had been weaving their webs for
three years, could bring. The foreman of the jury was
offered a bribe of ten thousand dollars to decide
against my brother. He sent the letter containing the
proposition to the judge. But with all their plotting,
three fourths of the jury decided against them, and
their case was lost. It was accepted as a triumph
by my brother's friends; a large number of the most
influential clergy of all denominations so expressed
themselves in a public letter, and it was hoped the
thing was so far over that it might be lived down and
overgrown with better things.

But the enemy, intriguing secretly with all those
parties in the community who wish to put down a public
and too successful man, have been struggling to bring
the thing up again for an ecclesiastical trial. The
cry has been raised in various religious papers that
Plymouth Church was in complicity with crime,--that
they were so captivated with eloquence and genius that
they refused to make competent investigation. The six
months' legal investigation was insufficient; a new
trial was needed. Plymouth Church immediately called a
council of ministers and laymen, in number representing
thirty-seven thousand Congregational Christians, to
whom Plymouth Church surrendered her records,--her
conduct,--all the facts of the case, and this great
council unanimously supported the church and ratified
her decision; recognizing the fact that, in all the
investigations hitherto, nothing had been proved
against my brother. They at his request, and that of
Plymouth Church, appointed a committee of five to whom
within sixty days any one should bring any facts that
they could prove, or else forever after hold their
peace. It is thought now by my brother's friends that
this thing must finally reach a close. But you see
why I have not written. This has drawn on my life--my
heart's blood. He is myself; I know you are the kind of
woman to understand me when I say that I felt a blow at
him more than at myself. I, who know his purity, honor,
delicacy, know that he has been from childhood of an
ideal purity,--who reverenced his conscience as his
king, whose glory was redressing human wrong, who spake
no slander, no, nor listened to it.

Never have I known a nature of such strength, and
such almost childlike innocence. He is of a nature
so sweet and perfect that, though I have seen him
thunderously indignant at moments, I never saw him
fretful or irritable,--a man who continuously, in
every little act of life, is thinking of others, a
man that all the children on the street run after,
and that every sorrowful, weak, or distressed person
looks to as a natural helper. In all this long history
there has been no circumstance of his relation to any
woman that has not been worthy of himself,--pure,
delicate, and proper; and I know all sides of it, and
certainly should not say this if there were even a
misgiving. Thank God, there is none, and I can read my
New Testament and feel that by all the beatitudes my
brother is blessed.

His calmness, serenity, and cheerfulness through all
this time has uplifted us all. Where he was, there was
no anxiety, no sorrow. My brother's power to console
is something peculiar and wonderful. I have seen him
at death-beds and funerals, where it would seem as if
hope herself must be dumb, bring down the very peace of
Heaven and change despair to trust. He has not had less
power in his own adversity. You cannot conceive how
he is beloved, by those even who never saw him,--old,
paralytic, distressed, neglected people, poor
seamstresses, black people, who have felt these arrows
shot against their benefactor as against themselves,
and most touching have been their letters of sympathy.
From the first, he has met this in the spirit of
Francis de Sales, who met a similar plot,--by silence,
prayer, and work, and when urged to defend himself said
"God would do it in his time." God was the best judge
how much reputation he needed to serve Him with.

In your portrait of Deronda, you speak of him as one
of those rare natures in whom a private wrong bred
no bitterness. "The sense of injury breeds, not the
will to inflict injuries, but a hatred of all injury;"
and I must say, through all this conflict my brother
has been always in the spirit of Him who touched and
healed the ear of Malchus when he himself was attacked.
His friends and lawyers have sometimes been aroused
and sometimes indignant with his habitual caring for
others, and his habit of vindicating and extending
even to his enemies every scrap and shred of justice
that might belong to them. From first to last of this
trial, he has never for a day intermitted his regular
work. Preaching to crowded houses, preaching even in
his short vacations at watering places, carrying on
his missions which have regenerated two once wretched
districts of the city, editing a paper, and in short
giving himself up to work. He cautioned his church not
to become absorbed in him and his trials, to prove
their devotion by more faithful church work and a
wider charity; and never have the Plymouth missions
among the poor been so energetic and effective. He
said recently, "The worst that can befall a man is to
stop thinking of God and begin to think of himself;
if trials make us self-absorbed, they hurt us." Well,
dear, pardon me for this outpour. I loved you--I love
you--and therefore wanted you to know just what I felt.
Now, dear, this is over, don't think you must reply to
it or me. I know how much you have to do,--yes, I know
all about an aching head and an overtaxed brain. This
last work of yours is to be your best, I think, and I
hope it will bring you enough to buy an orange grove in
Sicily, or somewhere else, and so have lovely weather
such as we have.

Your ancient admirer,[19] who usually goes to bed at
eight o'clock, was convicted by me of sitting up after
eleven over the last installment of "Daniel Deronda,"
and he is full of it. We think well of Guendoline, and
that she isn't much more than young ladies in general
so far.

Next year, if I can possibly do it, I will send you
some of our oranges. I perfectly long to have you enjoy
them.

Your very loving H. B. STOWE.

P. S. I am afraid I shall write you again when I
am reading your writings, they are so provokingly
suggestive of things one wants to say.

H. B. S.

In her reply to this letter Mrs. Lewes says, incidentally: "Please offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am ruthlessly proud of having kept him out of his bed. I hope that both you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children."

After Mr. Lewes's death, Mrs. Lewes writes to Mrs. Stowe:--

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, _April 10, 1879._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have been long without sending you
any sign (unless you have received a message from me
through Mrs. Fields), but my heart has been going out
to you and your husband continually as among the chief
of the many kind beings who have given me their tender
fellow-feeling in my last earthly sorrow.... When your
first letter came, with the beautiful gift of your
book,[20] I was unable to read any letters, and did not
for a long time see what you had sent me. But when I
did know, and had read your words of thankfulness at
the great good you have seen wrought by your help, I
felt glad, for your sake first, and then for the sake
of the great nation to which you belong. The hopes
of the world are taking refuge westward, under the
calamitous conditions, moral and physical, in which we
of the elder world are getting involved....

Thank you for telling me that you have the comfort of
seeing your son in a path that satisfies your best
wishes for him. I like to think of your having family
joys. One of the prettiest photographs of a child that
I possess is one of your sending to me....

Please offer my reverential, affectionate regards to
your husband, and believe me, dear friend,

Yours always gratefully,
M. L. LEWES.

As much as has been said with regard to spiritualism in these pages, the subject has by no means the prominence that it really possessed in the studies and conversations of both Professor and Mrs. Stowe.

Professor Stowe's very remarkable psychological development, and the exceptional experiences of his early life, were sources of conversation of unfailing interest and study to both.

Professor Stowe had made an elaborate and valuable collection of the literature of the subject, and was, as Mrs. Stowe writes, "over head and ears in _diablerie_."

It is only just to give Mrs. Stowe's views on this perplexing theme more at length, and as the mature reflection of many years has caused them to take form.

In reference to professional mediums, and spirits that peep, rap, and mutter, she writes:--

"Each friend takes away a portion of ourselves. There was some part of our being related to him as to no other, and we had things to say to him which no other would understand or appreciate. A portion of our thoughts has become useless and burdensome, and again and again, with involuntary yearning, we turn to the stone at the door of the sepulchre. We lean against the cold, silent marble, but there is no answer,--no voice, neither any that regardeth.

"There are those who would have us think that in _our_ day this doom is reversed; that there are those who have the power to restore to us the communion of our lost ones. How many a heart, wrung and tortured with the anguish of this fearful silence, has throbbed with strange, vague hopes at the suggestion! When we hear sometimes of persons of the strongest and clearest minds becoming credulous votaries of certain spiritualist circles, let us not wonder: if we inquire, we shall almost always find that the belief has followed some stroke of death; it is only an indication of the desperation of that heart-hunger which in part it appeases.

"Ah, _were_ it true! Were it indeed so that the wall between the spiritual and material is growing thin, and a new dispensation germinating in which communion with the departed blest shall be among the privileges and possibilities of this our mortal state! Ah, were it so that when we go forth weeping in the gray dawn, bearing spices and odors which we long to pour forth for the beloved dead, we should indeed find the stone rolled away and an angel sitting on it!

"But for us the stone must be rolled away by an _unquestionable_ angel, whose countenance is as the lightning, who executes no doubtful juggle by pale moonlight or starlight, but rolls back the stone in fair, open morning, and sits on it. Then we could bless God for his mighty gift, and with love, and awe, and reverence take up that blessed fellowship with another life, and weave it reverently and trustingly into the web of our daily course.

"But no such angel have we seen,--no such sublime, unquestionable, glorious manifestation. And when we look at what is offered to us, ah! who that had a friend in heaven could wish them to return in such wise as this? The very instinct of a sacred sorrow seems to forbid that our beautiful, our glorified ones should stoop lower than even to the medium of their cast-off bodies, to juggle, and rap, and squeak, and perform mountebank tricks with tables and chairs; to recite over in weary sameness harmless truisms, which we were wise enough to say for ourselves; to trifle, and banter, and jest, or to lead us through endless moonshiny mazes. Sadly and soberly we say that, if this be communion with the dead, we had rather be without it. We want something a little in advance of our present life, and not below it. We have read with some attention weary pages of spiritual communication purporting to come from Bacon, Swedenborg, and others, and long accounts from divers spirits of things seen in the spirit land, and we can conceive of no more appalling prospect than to have them true.

"If the future life is so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable as we might infer from these readings, one would have reason to deplore an immortality from which no suicide could give an outlet. To be condemned to such eternal prosing would be worse than annihilation.

"Is there, then, no satisfaction for this craving of the soul? There is One who says: "I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of hell and of death;" and this same being said once before: "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him." This is a promise direct and personal; not confined to the first apostles, but stated in the most general way as attainable by any one who loves and does the will of Jesus. It seems given to us as some comfort for the unavoidable heart-breaking separations of death that there should be, in that dread unknown, one all-powerful Friend with whom it is possible to commune, and from whose spirit there may come a response to us. Our Elder Brother, the partaker of our nature, is not only in the spirit land, but is all-powerful there. It is he that shutteth and no man openeth, and openeth and no man shutteth. He whom we have seen in the flesh, weeping over the grave of Lazarus, is he who hath the keys of hell and of death. If we cannot commune with our friends, we can at least commune with Him to whom they are present, who is intimately with them as with us. He is the true bond of union between the spirit world and our souls; and one blest hour of prayer, when we draw near to Him and feel the breadth, and length, and depth, and heighth of that love of his that passeth knowledge, is better than all those incoherent, vain, dreamy glimpses with which longing hearts are cheated.

"They who have disbelieved all spiritual truth, who have been Sadduceeic doubters of either angel or spirit, may find in modern spiritualism a great advance. But can one who has ever really had communion with Christ, who has said with John, "Truly our fellowship is with the Father and the Son,"--can such an one be satisfied with what is found in the modern circle?

"For Christians who have strayed into these inclosures, we cannot but recommend the homely but apt quotation of old John Newton:--

"'What think ye of Christ is the test
To try both your word and your scheme.'

"In all these so-called revelations, have there come any echoes of the _new song_ which no man save the redeemed from earth could learn; any unfoldings of that love that passeth knowledge,--anything, in short, such as spirits might utter to whom was unveiled that which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered the heart of man to conceive? We must confess that all those spirits that yet have spoken appear to be living in quite another sphere from John or Paul.

"Let us, then, who long for communion with spirits, seek nearness to Him who has promised to speak and commune, leaving forever this word to his church:--

"'I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[17] George Eliot's Life, edited by J. W. Cross, vol. i.

[18] _Die Christliche Mystik._

[19] Professor Stowe.

[20] _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, new edition, with introduction.