Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1861.
Your loving words of remembrance find a very full answer in my heart—fuller than I can write. The years seem to rush by now, and I think of death as a fast-approaching end of a journey—double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day. We went to see Fechter's Othello the other night. It is lamentably bad. He has not weight and passion enough for deep tragedy; and, to my feeling, the play is so degraded by his representation that it is positively demoralizing—as, indeed, all tragedy must be when it fails to move pity and terror. In this case it seems to move only titters among the smart and vulgar people who always make the bulk of a theatre audience. We had a visit from our dear friend Mrs. Congreve on Wednesday—a very infrequent pleasure now; for between our own absences from home and hers, and the fatigue of London journeying, it is difficult for us to manage meetings. Mr. Congreve is, as usual, working hard in his medical studies—toiling backward and forward daily. What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!
Journal, 1861.
Nov. 30.—In the evening we had Wilkie Collins, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Spencer, and talked without any music.
Dec. 3-7.—I continued very unwell until Saturday, when I felt a little better. In the evening Dr. Baetcke, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Redford.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Dec. 1861.
Miss Marshall came to see us yesterday. That is always a pleasure to me, not only from the sense I have of her goodness, but because she stirs so many remembrances. The first time I saw her was at Rufa's[32] wedding; and don't you remember the evening we spent at Mrs. Dobson's? How young we all were then—how old now! She says you are all under the impression that Mr. Lewes is still very ailing. Thank all good influences it is not so. He has been mending ever since we went to Malvern, and is enjoying life and work more than he has done before for nearly a year. He has long had it in his mind to write a history of science—a great, great undertaking, which it is happiness to both of us to contemplate as possible for him. And now he is busy with Aristotle, and works with all the zest that belongs to fresh ideas. Strangely enough, after all the ages of writing about Aristotle, there exists no fair appreciation of his position in natural science.
I am particularly grumbling and disagreeable to myself just now, and I think no one bears physical pain so ill as I do, or is so thoroughly upset by it mentally.
Bulwer has behaved very nicely to me, and I have a great respect for the energetic industry with which he has made the most of his powers. He has been writing diligently in very various departments for more than thirty years, constantly improving his position, and profiting by the lessons of public opinion and of other writers.
I'm sorry you feel any degeneracy in Mr. George Dawson. There was something very winning about him in old days, and even what was not winning, but the reverse, affected me with a sort of kindly pity. With such a gift of tongue as he had, it was inevitable that speech should outrun feeling and experience, and I could well imagine that his present self might look back on that self of 21-27 with a sort of disgust. It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow. It would interest me a good deal to know just how Mr. Dawson preaches now.