Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Oct. 1859.
I beg that you and Major Blackwood will accept my thanks for your proposal to give me a further share in the success of "Adam Bede," beyond the terms of our agreement, which are fulfilled by the second check for £400, received this morning. Neither you nor I ever calculated on half such a success, thinking that the book was too quiet, and too unflattering to dominant fashion, ever to be very popular. I hope that opinion of ours is a guarantee that there is nothing hollow or transient in the reception "Adam" has met with. Sometimes when I read a book which has had a great success, and am unable to see any valid merits of an artistic kind to account for it, I am visited with a horrible alarm lest "Adam," too, should ultimately sink into the same class of outworn admirations. But I always fall back on the fact that no shibboleth and no vanity is flattered by it, and that there is no novelty of mere form in it which can have delighted simply by startling.
Journal, 1859.
Nov. 10.—Dickens dined with us to-day, for the first time, and after he left I went to the Congreves, where George joined me, and we had much chat—about George Stephenson, religion, etc.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th Nov. 1859.
A very beautiful letter—beautiful in feeling—that I have received from Mrs. Gaskell to-day, prompts me to write to you and let you know how entirely she has freed herself from any imputation of being unwilling to accept the truth when it has once clearly presented itself as truth. Since she has known "on authority" that the two books are mine, she has re-read them, and has written to me, apparently on the prompting they gave in that second reading: very sweet and noble words they are that she has written to me. Yesterday Dickens dined with us, on his return from the country. That was a great pleasure to me: he is a man one can thoroughly enjoy talking to—there is a strain of real seriousness along with his keenness and humor.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th Nov. 1859.
The Liggins affair is concluded so far as any action of ours is concerned, since Mr. Quirk (the inmost citadel, I presume) has surrendered by writing an apology to Blackwood, saying he now believes he was imposed on by Mr. Liggins. As to Miss Martineau, I respect her so much as an authoress, and have so pleasant a recollection of her as a hostess for three days, that I wish that distant impression from herself and her writings to be disturbed as little as possible by mere personal details. Anything she may do or say or feel concerning me personally is a matter of entire indifference: I share her bitterness with a large number of far more blameless people than myself. It can be of no possible benefit to me, or any one else, that I should know more of those things, either past, present, or to come. "I do owe no man anything" except to write honestly and religiously what comes from my inward promptings; and the freer I am kept of all knowledge of that comparatively small circle who mingle personal regards or hatred with their judgment or reception of my writings, the easier it will be to keep my motives free from all indirectness and write truly.
Journal, 1859.
Nov. 18.—On Monday Dickens wrote, asking me to give him, after I have finished my present novel, a story to be printed in All the Year Round—to begin four months after next Easter, and assuring me of my own terms. The next day G. had an interview by appointment with Evans (of Bradbury & Evans), and Lucas, the editor of Once a Week, who, after preliminary pressing of G. himself to contribute, put forward their wish that I should give them a novel for their Magazine. They were to write and make an offer, but have not yet done so. We have written to Dickens, saying that time is an insurmountable obstacle to his proposition, as he puts it.