My mind is more rebellious than yours, and I can't help being saddened by the idea of you and Cara being in any other home than the dear old one. But I know that your cheerful courage is yet stronger in deed than in word. Will not business or pleasure bring you to London soon, and will you not come to see us? We can give you a bed—not a sumptuous one, but one which you will perhaps not find intolerable for a night. I know the trip up the Thames is charming, and we should like to do it with you, but I don't think we can manage it this summer. We are going to send or take the boys (Mr. Lewes's sons) to school in Germany at midsummer, and are at present uncertain about our arrangements. If we can send them, we shall go to the coast as soon as the warm weather comes, and remain there for three months. But our plans are not yet crystallized.
Letter to Charles Bray, 1st April, 1856.
After I wrote you yesterday morning we had a letter from Germany which has made Mr. Lewes incline to defer sending the boys thither till next year. But he is anxious to remove them from their present school: and, in the course of our consultations on the subject, we thought of Mr. John Sibree as a person in whom we should feel confidence as to the moral influence he would exercise as a tutor. The risk of placing children with entire strangers is terrible. So I tease you with another letter to ask you if Mr. J. Sibree continues in the same position as formerly, and if he is still anxious to obtain pupils. What a delicious day! We are going to have a holiday at the Zoological Gardens.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th April, 1856.
Thank you for taking the trouble to write me a full account of matters so interesting to me. I hope you will be able thoroughly to enjoy this last precious summer on the pretty lawn, where it is one of my pleasures on sunshiny days to think of you all strolling about or seated on the Bearskin. We are very thankful for the Hofwyl circular, and have almost decided to send the two eldest boys there. But it is necessary to weigh all things carefully before coming to a determination; as, not being either swindlers or philanthropists, we don't like to incur obligations which there is not a reasonable certainty of our being able to meet. I am much obliged to Mr. Bray, too, for sending Mr. John Sibree's letter. Mr. Lewes had already received an answer from him declining his proposition, but we were interested to read his very characteristic letter to his sister, which proved to Mr. Lewes that I had given him a correct description of the man.
The next few weeks are, perhaps, the most signally important and interesting of all in George Eliot's development. There are unmistakable signs of the rising of the sap of creative production.
In the middle of April Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had been abroad for some time, returned to England, and dined with them at Park Shot on the 15th, and on the 18th they went with him to Sydenham. On the 22d April George Eliot began her article on Young; and on the 29th she began to read Riehl's book,[50] on which she was to write another article for the Westminster. On the 8th of May they set off for Ilfracombe, and we have the following "recollections" of that place:
Ilfracombe, Recollections, 1856.
It was a cold, unfriendly day—the 8th of May—on which we set out for Ilfracombe with our hamper of glass jars, which we meant for our sea-side vivarium. We had to get down at Windsor, and were not sorry that the interval was long enough to let us walk round the castle, which I had never seen before except from a distance. The famous "slopes," the avenues in the park, and the distant landscape, looked very lovely in the fresh and delicate greens of spring; and the castle is surely the most delightful royal residence in the world. We took our places from Windsor all the way to Exeter; and at Bristol, where we had to wait three hours, the misery of my terrible headache was mitigated by the interest we felt in seeing the grand old Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, forever associated with the memory of Chatterton.
"It stands, the maestrie of a human hand,
The pride of Bristowe and the western land."
It was cheering, the next morning after our arrival at Ilfracombe, to get up with a head rather less aching, and to walk up and down the little garden of Runnymede Villa in the bright sunshine. I had a great deal of work before me—the writing of an article on Riehl's book, which I had not half read, as well as the article on Belles-lettres; but my head was still dizzy, and it seemed impossible to sit down to writing at once in these new scenes, so we determined to spend the day in explorations.