The “we” in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot’s Journal and letters are a good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most interesting are perhaps the following:
April 29th, 1859 (from the Journal): “Finished a story, The Lifted Veil, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel” (this was The Mill on the Floss), “of which I am going to rewrite the two first chapters. I shall call it provisionally The Tullivers, or perhaps St. Ogg’s on the Floss.”
May 6th (from a letter to Major Blackwood): “Yes I am assured now that Adam Bede was worth writing—worth living through long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the future.”
May 19th (from Journal): “A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an acknowledgment of Adam Bede’s success.”
June 8th (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): “I want to get rid of this house—cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you.”
July 21st (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in Switzerland): “Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters from Blackwood—nothing to annoy us.”
November 10th (from the Journal): “Dickens dined with us to-day for the first time.”
December 15th (from the Journal): “Blackwood proposes to give me for The Mill on the Floss, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d., and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted.”
January 3rd, 1860 (from a letter to John Blackwood): “We are demurring about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer The House of Tulliver, or Life on the Floss, to our old notion of Sister Maggie. The Tullivers, or Life on the Floss has the advantage of slipping easily off the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (The Newcomes, The Bertrams, &c., &c.). Then there is The Tulliver Family, or Life on the Floss. Pray meditate and give us your opinion.”
January 16th, 1860 (from the Journal): “Finished my second volume this morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow. We have decided that the title shall be The Mill on the Floss.”