Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d March, 1858.

Perhaps we may go to Dresden, perhaps not: we leave room for the imprévu, which Louis Blanc found so sadly wanting in Mr. Morgan's millennial village. You are among the exceptional people who say pleasant things to their friends, and don't feel a too exclusive satisfaction in their misfortunes. We like to hear of your interest in Mr. Lewes's books—at least, I am very voracious of such details. I keep the pretty letters that are written to him; and we have had some really important ones from the scientific big-wigs about the "Sea-side Studies." The reception of the book in that quarter has been quite beyond our expectations. Eight hundred copies were sold at once. There is a great deal of close hard work in the book, and every one who knows what scientific work is necessarily perceives this; happily many have been generous enough to express their recognition in a hearty way.

I enter so deeply into everything you say about your mother. To me that old, old popular truism, "We can never have but one mother," has worlds of meaning in it, and I think with more sympathy of the satisfaction you feel in at last being allowed to wait on her than I should of anything else you could tell me. I wish we saw more of that sweet human piety that feels tenderly and reverently towards the aged. [Apropos of some incapable woman's writing she adds.] There is something more piteous almost than soapless poverty in this application of feminine incapacity to literature. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours with Mr. and Mrs. Call last Friday. It was worth a journey on a cold dusty day to see two faces beaming kindness and happiness.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th March, 1858.

I enclose a letter which will interest you. It is affecting to see how difficult a matter it often is for the men who would most profit by a book to purchase it, or even get a reading of it, while stupid Jopling of Reading or elsewhere thinks nothing of giving a guinea for a work which he will simply put on his shelves.

Letter to Charles Bray, March, 1858.

When do you bring out your new poem? I presume you are already in the sixth canto. It is true you never told me you intended to write a poem, nor have I heard any one say so who was likely to know. Nevertheless I have quite as active an imagination as you, and I don't see why I shouldn't suppose you are writing a poem as well as you suppose that I am writing a novel. Seriously, I wish you would not set rumors afloat about me. They are injurious. Several people, who seem to derive their notions from Ivy Cottage,[1] have spoken to me of a supposed novel I was going to bring out. Such things are damaging to me.

Letter to Charles Bray, 31st March, 1858.

Thanks for your disclaimer. It shows me that you take a right view of the subject. There is no undertaking more fruitful of absurd mistakes than that of "guessing" at authorship; and as I have never communicated to any one so much as an intention of a literary kind, there can be none but imaginary data for such guesses. If I withhold anything from my friends which it would gratify them to know, you will believe, I hope, that I have good reasons for doing so, and I am sure those friends will understand me when I ask them to further my object—which is not a whim but a question of solid interest—by complete silence. I can't afford to indulge either in vanity or sentimentality about my work. I have only a trembling anxiety to do what is in itself worth doing, and by that honest means to win very necessary profit of a temporal kind. "There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed" in due time. But till that time comes—till I tell you myself, "This is the work of my hand and brain"—don't believe anything on the subject. There is no one who is in the least likely to know what I can, could, should, or would write.

Journal, 1858.