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1854 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I [1849]Edition used:The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).
Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.
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1854109.TO HARRIET MILL1Châlon—Jan. 2. [1854] 3 I fill my letters with nothing but the chances & mischances of this journey—but I know they are interesting to my dearest one & I shall write better letters when I am quiet at home. Home! how completely home it is even in her absence—but how completely also the place where she is & which I am so happy to have seen & to know, is home too—I am looking with the mind’s eye across that Place des Palmiers which cold as I used to think it, seems almost summer to me now—& seeing that beautiful prospect instead of these tame snowcovered fields. But I will take up the history where I left it—The diligence by which I took my place from Avignon & which was called Messageries Françaises des maîtres de poste, left a little after five, & after four changes of carriage, at Montelimart,2 Valence, Vienne & Givors (the last piece was part of the St. Etienne railway) brought me to Lyons almost frozen at ten on Saturday. I was in despair about getting on, as it was so late to go about finding offices in that large place & I had heard all the way of the impossibility of getting places to Châlon & the fabulous prices paid for them, so I thought myself lucky in being offered a place for 7h the next morning—I made it secure & then went to the Univers & on New Year’s morning made my way in the dark to the office just opposite the place where we landed—They promised I should arrive in 12 hours, or as there was snow perhaps in 14. The carriage turned out to be an omnibus with 8 places which generally goes between Lyons & Villefranche a place about a quarter of the way but which since the steamboats have been stopped, takes passengers to Châlon. It made me pay 25 fr. though others I found were only charged 18 & 20 fr. At the time at which we ought to have been at Châlon we were only at Mâcon where we were kept 3 hours on pretext of waiting for another carriage. I had promised myself a night’s sleep at Châlon, & to leave this morning by the first train & go on by a night train to Boulogne, so saving a day: but we arrived here at 7 this morning when the train was gone & there is no other but the express at 1¾ so I must pass a useless night at Paris. This delay was only partly owing to the snow of which up to Mâcon there was not very much & only a little of the delay was owing to the driver’s knocking against a stone hidden as he said by the snow & breaking the pole of the carriage (at 11 at night): for this only caused about 1½ hour of the twelve hours’ delay. The whole concern is a piece of knavery as those small diligence concerns are apt to be. There were one or two agreeable men especially one Frenchman & a young Savoyard in the crowded little omnibus which made the whole affair a little less tiresome & provoking. I am now at the trois faisans & shall make them shew me their bed rooms in case you like to come there in spring. The inn at Avignon, l’Europe, was cheap as well as good—only the table d’hôte is dear, having an inscription that on account of the énorme increase of the price of wine & of la plupart des vivres the table d’hôte must be raised to 3½ f. except for diligence travellers who have never time to do more than diner à la hôte (considerate). Adieu till Boulogne darling. 110.TO HARRIET MILL1
Thursday 4 My adored one will know without my telling her, how the very instant after I arrived here I rushed through the sloppy melting snow to the post office tormenting myself all the way lest the man should pretend there was no letter. When I got the darling word how I devoured it & how happy & in spirits I was made by the good news of her health & the exquisite proofs of her love that its most precious words contained. But it disappointed me that she had not yet received my first letter, which I put into the post at Arles on Thursday afternoon: which would reach Marseille that evening & I hoped would go to Hyères that night so that she would get it before she wrote—I pleased myself with the thought that she would have a letter sooner than she expected & that her first would tell me she had received it. However no doubt it came right; as it was independent of the man at the post office, having been directed in the same manner as this, which has also been the case with the two I have since written, from Avignon & Châlon; & will be the case with all I write. To go on with my adventures: the Trois Faisans is a second rate inn apparently but has one very large & good salon au premier & plenty of tolerable though not very large bedrooms. I did not go to bed but went on by the train at ½ past 1 & got to Paris very nicely & comfortably the carriages being warmed. I arrived at past 12 at Lawson’s Bedford Hotel, which is close to the Victoria & can almost be seen from it, being the fourth or fifth house in the Rue de l’Arcade, the street which turns off at the fruitshop. It seems a good inn & not dear, & at least to voyageurs who sit in what the waiter called le coffee room. I saw a very nice set of rooms au second & was told they were the like au troisième, those on the premier which must have been if anything better were let avec cuisine which the landlady said she only does in winter. The house looks about as large outwardly as the Victoria, not larger. One recommendation is that it has an omnibus of its own to the northern railroad. As I arrived so late & had not had the night I expected at Châlon, I thought I would give myself a long night at Paris, & not attempt to go by the 9 o’clock train, but wait till the next at one o’clock which I found would do very well as the steamboat next day (Wednesday) did not go till half past one—& I thought now my troubles were over, but the worst was to come & my experience of winter travelling was to be completed by being snowed up for near 24 hours on a railway. We got in pretty good time to Amiens but came to a halt between it & Abbeville—Seven hours we remained on the line while messages were sent to Abbeville & Amiens for another engine—but none came, from the first because there were none there, from the second for some reason I could get no explanation of. At last they got up the steam again & took on the train by half at a time to Abbeville where it was declared we must halt till the road was cleared. I & a few others got into an omnibus & went to the town & I sat by the kitchen fire of the hotel du Commerce from ½ past 3 till daylight when we were sent for by a blunder of the railway people who first told us we could now go, & then when we were seated in the carriages, that we could not, so there all the passengers remained unable to leave the waiting room because told that we might go at any minute till half past two yesterday afternoon. The bore was immense, the passengers being more than half of them English & Americans, the most vulgar & illiterate—& the one or two English & French that were better kept aloof like me & we did not find each other out. I found two of them at this inn at Boulogne, an Englishman who it appeared was a coachmaker & a Frenchman settled in England in some business whose English was quite undistinguishable from an Englishman’s, & found them rather sensible people. To the bore of the detention was added another, viz that somebody went off with my umbrella from the salle d’attente, & I shall have to buy one here. The lost one was luckily old, having been several times covered, but I regret it as you darling liked the stick. I came here to the Hotel Folkestone, one of those on the quai opposite the landing place, thinking I would try it as it was recommended in Galignani2 & it seems a very tolerable place, having both salons & bedrooms on the ground floor & good ones too though not very large. As for my health which she writes so sweetly about, I could not expect not to catch fresh cold now & then. I have been better one day & worse another & am on the whole much the same as at Hyères. I am still of the same opinion about the chief mischief being overaction of the heart which is checked but not conquered by the digitalis I have been taking ever since Avignon—& now heaven bless my own dearest angel. [P.S.] I hate this nasty blue ink but can get no other. 111.TO HARRIET MILL1
Jan. 6. [1854] 5 How sweetest sweet of the darling to write a second time on Friday after she received the letter—& how happy it made me to see her letter here on arriving, among the heap of trumpery [words obliterated] reports &c that the post had brought here in the 3 months—along with a few letters that required attending to about which [words obliterated] tomorrow or next day when I have had more time to look at them. I now write, among what bustle you can imagine, only to say by the very first post what she was anxious to know—how I got here. I had a very smooth passage of only two hours & succeeded in not being sick at all. I got home between 10 & 11 & had a warm reception from Kate & (for him) from Haji. The ground here is covered with snow, & where the snow (at Blackheath) has been partly scraped off or beaten down it is frozen again & very slippery so that getting to town was some trouble & the streets are sloppy with the half melted snow so that London looks its ugliest & feels its most disagreeable. I had not been in my room ten minutes when Hill,2 Thornton3 & various others poured in one after another with their congratulations & enquiries. There seems to have been a general impression that I was so ill that there was no knowing when I might come back (or perhaps if I shd ever come back at all) so that they generally said I looked better than they expected. Several asked if it was not imprudent to return at this season & in this weather. Ellice4 received me with the cordial manner which imposed on me before & which his note so belied, said he had been uneasy about me, having heard from Sykes,5 it did not clearly appear what, but he said he had feared I was worse. I said I had not written again after my second letter because I hoped every week to be able to come. When I said I had been harassed by the thought that I was wanted here he said he would not tell me how much I had been wanted—but I could gather nothing of whether he had really felt the want of me or not. He as well as Hill, Thornton & others asked the questions that might be expected about your health & in a manner which shewed interest. Peacock6 alone asked not a single question about your health & hardly about mine but struck into India house subjects & a visit he has had from James.7 Grote & Prescott8 called together today, as they said to enquire if I was returned & were very warm, especially Grote, in their expressions of sympathy & interest about your illness. It is odd to see the sort of fragmentary manner in which news gets about—Grote had heard of you as dangerously ill but not of my being ill at all, & of your illness as a fever but not of the rupture of a bloodvessel. Grote is vastly pleased with the article in the Edinburgh9 — & a propos I found here a letter from Mrs Grote, of complimentation on the article, which though little worthy of the honour of being sent to you I may as well inclose. The impudence of writing to me at all & of writing in such a manner is only matched by the excessive conceit of the letter. Grote alluded to it saying Mrs Grote had written to me after reading the article—I merely answered that I had found a note from her on arriving. There is a friendly note from Sykes written after we left which I will inclose tomorrow when I can send with it a sketched answer to it—Adieu my most beloved & I shall write soon again. 112.TO JAMES GARTH MARSHALL1
Jan. 7. 1854 Dear SirI am very sorry that my absence from England prevented me until yesterday from receiving your two notes, as I fear that by waiting for an answer to them, the publication of your pamphlet2 (the proof of which I have read with great pleasure) may have been delayed. No doubt, however, it has now long been published3 & I hope, much read. If I had received your note in time I should have requested you to make use of any part of my letter to Ld Monteagle4 in any manner which you might think useful, with no other reservation than that of not implying that I am a positive supporter of your plan—for though it is very likely I may become so, I have not yet seen it sufficiently discussed, to be aware of all the objections to which it may possibly be liable. I am Dr Sir yrs very trulyJ. S. Mill 113.TO HENRY COLE1
Jan. 9. 1854 Dear ColeI found your note2 on arriving in town two days ago. I am sorry that I cannot give you any of the information you require as I am very little acquainted with recent writings on Jurisprudence & especially with those relating to special departments such as that you refer to. I have to thank you for your pamphlet.3 I entirely agree in your conclusion—& your description of the mode of action of public boards ought to carry weight, as it is so evidently derived from actual experience. Very truly yours,J. S. Mill 114.TO HARRIET MILL1I[ndia] H[ouse]. Jan. 9. 1854 7 No letter today darling—but I did not count upon it—& Lily’s to Haji which arrived on Saty evening gave news of my darling one up to Monday. I wonder when I shall be able to write her a letter not filled with petty details. However as the details must be written about, the best plan is to knock them off as quickly as possible & get rid of them. I looked over the bills yesterday & found that the quantity of bread which we thought would be sufficient now, viz a 2 lb loaf every day from Monday to Friday & a 4 lb on Saty, is exactly what has been taken all along, including even the time when Haji was away. I asked Kate the meaning of this & she said she didn’t have potatoes for herself & that she could not take less than a 2 lb loaf—evidently unsatisfactory—but I find from Haji that she has had her aunt staying with her the greater part of the whole time including his absence, which leaves less to be accounted for. Haji says he told you of this (the aunt) at Nice—perhaps it is a good thing by preventing the worse things which you feared. The butter has been pretty regularly a pound of fresh & half pound of salt each week. My return can hardly increase the pound to 1½ lb. Nothing else struck me as noticeable but Parsons2 has not sent any bills for a month owing it is said to Mrs P. having had an accident on the ice—but I shall make him send them. Should the bills be now paid? The birds are in fine feather, & Kate says, sing much more & better than at first & eat immensely. I have answered Marshall3 & Urquhart.4 To M. I said that if it were still in time which of course it is not, I would have bid him do with my letter anything he thought useful, only not to imply that I was a positive supporter of his plan, as it had not yet been sufficiently discussed to bring out all the objections &c. Urquhart I advised to publish his paper5 (a very good one) as a pamphlet but offered if he liked to recommend it to Fraser.6 There was also an application from the Soc. of Arts7 saying that they have to adjudicate a prize to some work on jurisprudence & asking me to send them a list of the three best recently published, in order of merit. I answered acknowledging the honor but saying I was not sufficiently acquainted with recent writings on jurisprudence to be a qualified witness as to their claims to the prize. The Kensington letters8 I inclose, as it is best you should see all that comes from that quarter—& along with them, a note I have just written to my mother. I have looked through the Edinburgh for October—the article on Grote9 reads, to my mind, slighter & flimsier than I thought it would. There is another article by Greg10 on Parly reform shewing that he had seen our letter to Ld Monteagle11 (the one Marshall12 writes about) for he has adopted nearly every idea in the letter almost in the very words, & has also said speaking of the ballot, that it is within his knowledge that some to whom ballot was once a sine qua non, now think it would be “a step backward” the very phrase of the letter. He goes on to attack the ballot with arguments some of them so exactly the same as those in our unpublished pamphlet13 (even to the illustrations) that one would think he had seen that too if it had been physically possible. Though there are some bad arguments mixed yet on the whole this diminishes my regret that ours was not published. It is satisfactory that those letters we take so much trouble to write for some apparently small purpose, so often turn out more useful than we expected. Now about reviewing Comte:14 the reasons pro are evident. Those con are 1st I don’t like to have anything to do with the name or with any publication of H. Martineau. 2dly. The Westr though it will allow I dare say anything else, could not allow me to speak freely about Comte’s atheism & I do not see how it is possible to be just to him, when there is so much to attack, without giving him praise on that point of the subject. 3dly, as Chapman is the publisher he doubtless wishes, & expects, an article more laudatory on the whole, than I shd be willing to write. You dearest one will tell me what your perfect judgment & your feeling decide.—My cough varies from day to day but I have certainly rather more than when I left Hyères, still however the irritation does not feel as if it came from the chest. I do not know what to make of the great derangement of the circulation. My pulse which when I am well is not above 60, is now fully 90, & without any apparent cause, for I have now no signs of the low fever to which Gurney attributed it—my stomach & bowels are in good order, my appetite excellent (during the journey it was immense). I have sent for digitalis from Allen15 but it is impossible to go on taking that indefinitely & it has only a temporary effect when any at all. That & the obstinacy of the cough seem to imply something that keeps up irritation in the system, requiring to be removed but I don’t know whom to consult—I must see Coulson16 I suppose, if only because I have not yet paid him, but this is not I fancy in his line & he would probably refer me to Bird17 who he says has much practice in chest complaints. Tell me dearest what you think. Au reste I feel quite well & strong. Several times every day I have longed to be with her in those little rooms under that light sky instead of this dismal congregation of vapours—though the snow now is nearly gone—adieu my own darling for this time. Love to Lily. 115.TO HARRIET MILL1
Jan. 11. [1854] 8 No letter yet! The two letters dated on the Friday after I left are all I have yet had. Surely one must have miscarried, for she cannot have been eight days without either she or Lily writing even a line—& it does not seem half so unlikely that a letter from Hyères, as it did that one from Sidmouth should go astray. I have enquired everywhere at the I.H. It is of no use writing to Maberly2 till I can tell him on what day the letter was sent. But indeed I shall care comparatively little about a former letter when I shall have received any. Not to have heard for so long fills me with all sorts of anxious misgivings about her health—not to say that my own spirits are apt to flag without the support of her & hearing from her—a letter is a support in the same way though it cannot be in the same degree, as her presence. Did she not see the precious, the dearly beloved one, during those two or nearer three months, that it is impossible for me to be really out of spirits when I am seeing her, living with her? Next to that is the joy & support of a few words of her handwriting—I am writing this in our pleasant room—pleasant even in her absence—indeed her presence always seems to hover over it. My first care after returning was to have everything in it about which she had spoken, arranged in the manner she wished—my second look, & almost my first, on the evening of my arrival, was to see if the chair with its back to the fire was the one that should be—it was so, & has been ever since, & Haji says, always before. The two chairs which should be at the ends of the sideboard are there, with the things tied round them, unchanged. We have moved the table nearer the window, as she wished; the edge at which I sit at meals is opposite the middle of the fire. The little book was procured3 —I wrote in it for the first time on Sunday & have written something each evening since—whether what I have written was much worth writing is another question. Ever since Sunday I have had meat with tea instead of dining out. It is pleasanter & subtracts so much from the being out after dark. I was almost forgetting to say a thing of much more importance, viz. that I today wrote out and signed that codicil4 —the signature is attested by Napier & Bourdillon.5 Touching my health—the digitalis which I have taken for the last three days has I think done the cough some little good but has not reduced the pulse perceptibly. I have pretty well made up my mind to see Clark6 tomorrow or the day after, as the more I think about it the less I rely on any of the opinions given by Gurney on the subject, & besides when an ailment of this sort sticks to one, one should not be too long without consulting somebody. The most unpleasant thing as to present comfort, & a thing I never have been used to formerly, is the great portion of the middle of each night that I lie awake. I do not know the cause—it does not arise from any painful sensation, nor from coughing. The snow is mostly melted & the country looks green from our windows but there has been a north east wind these two days which though not so cold as one would expect is raw & unpleasant. I.H. Thursday. Heaven be thanked, here is her Thursday’s letter. It has not really taken seven days coming as it did not go till Friday, & they tell me here that it arrived yesterday evening—we may call it 5½ days which is still very long. Her not writing sooner is but too well accounted for by her having been unwell & in bed but now when it has come what an angel of a letter! How loving & how lovely like everything that its perfect writer writes, says, does or feels; but it makes me feel very anxious about that cough—I so hope to hear that it gets better by not catching fresh cold. I am glad she is taking again to the quinine. If the cough does not improve will she not send for one of those physicians? At the hotel at Paris I found a book like the Post office Directory & took down the names of the medical men at Hyères: they are Allègre, Benet, Brunel, Chassinat, Honoraty, Verignon. It struck me that Benet (an odd name if French, meaning stupid ass)7 is perhaps Bennet & that that is the name of the English physician. By the way, how can you ask such a question darling about Gurney’s letter—as if there needed any asking for her to open & read anything addressed to me. Do darling & then inclose it or tell me the contents whichever is least trouble. I went to Clark this morning: he examined my chest &c thoroughly & reports favorably so far that he says there is no organic disease—at the same time he quite justifies my having gone to him by the very strong impression he has given me that he thinks me in some degree threatened. In fact when I said “then you find nothing the matter with my lungs beyond catarrh” he qualified his answer by saying “not at present”. He prescribed hemlock pills, & mustard poultices, which I am sure I do not know how Kate will make or I apply: & recommended my coming again in two or three weeks if not quite well by that time, that he may examine me again—meanwhile he will look back to the notes he made formerly—& he let out that he had some “suspicion” then. However I don’t think he thinks there is much to be afraid of, as he said nothing about not going out, or about respirators or anything of that sort—but contented himself with recommending warmer flannels than those I wear. How very much I enjoy those little details about herself. I fancy myself looking at that beautiful view with her—which I am so glad she enjoys—when darling is beginning tea, at half past six, I am always making it, & then beginning my supper. H[aji] always comes in before I have done. He behaves very well & his being in the room is agreeable rather than the contrary. When she wrote this precious letter on Thursday evening I was probably in the act of arriving at our home. I think it is best to write Angleterre. A thousand loves & best wishes for this & all other years. [P.S.] I meant to have inclosed a note8 this time but have not been able to get them in time. 116.TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.1
Jan. 11. 1854 Dear SirOn my arrival I found that Prescott2 had not given you a receipt for the £250. I shall have much pleasure in giving you one the first time I come your way. Mr Pollard Urquhart,3 the member for Westmeath and author of a “Life of Francesco Sforza”4 & of some ingenious Essays on Political Economy,5 has written the inclosed paper6 on the Irish Tenant Right question. I think it quite the best thing I have seen on the subject; moderate, conclusive, & very judiciously put for English readers. Mr Urquhart is desirous of offering it to Fraser’s. I therefore send it for the consideration of the authorities. very faithfully yrsJ. S. Mill Mr Urquhart’s address is Castle
J. W. Parker Junr Esq 117.TO HARRIET MILL1Jan. 14. [1854] 9 The good which that precious letter did me, has not yet left me & will last a long while. I long however to hear more about her dear health. The coughing after talking is not an alarming symptom. It is just the same with me on the bad days of my cough & yet Clark could not find any organic disease—at least “at present”. By the way (as I am on the subject) though I see he has suspicions which he expects to be able to test by reexamination a few weeks hence, I do not at all regard them 1st, because he had similar suspicions, as it now appears, five years ago. 2nd, I can see that the side he a little suspects is the left side: now I have long felt perfectly sure that if my lungs are ever attacked it will be first & worst on the right side, as all my ailments without exception always are—& now all my sensations of uneasiness in the chest back shoulder & side are on the right side chiefly & almost exclusively. So do not be uneasy darling on account of what he said. At present my pulse is better but the appearance of improvement in the cough has ceased—apparently caused by the digitalis & going off whenever I cease taking that. Chronic catarrh is a very common old man’s disorder, but I am hardly old enough for it yet—it seems however that is what I have. I am working hard at getting up the arrear of India house business & have taken some of it home to work at tomorrow (Sunday). I hardly feel well or vigorous enough to set about any work of our own yet on Sundays & in the evenings—when I do the first thing shall be to finish the rewriting of the paper on Nature,2 which I began before we left. It is now (yesterday & today) beautiful weather here, that is for England—mild and clear—but what a difference between this clearness & that, which my darling is now looking on & which do I not wish I was looking on along with her. How I rejoice every day in knowing exactly her whereabout—all the objects about her both indoors & out. I have seen & heard from or of nobody & have no news to tell. I hope the Spectator arrived safe. This morning Kate announced that she had no kitchen candles or soap; the last owing to her having washed things for Haji. I said you expected her stores of all sorts would last till March. I said I would write to you about it & in the meantime to order 1 lb of each from Dalton.3 She also said that there were only potatoes for two or three days. The last had were a bushel on the 3rd of November; have they not gone very fast, considering Haji’s three weeks absence & that when he was here (until the last week) they were only wanted one day in the week? What does the tax gatherer mean by charging us 12/for “armorial bearings”? Can he mean the crest on your dear little seal? Webster’s bill is “Examining correcting & cleaning foreign marble clock 15/, new winder 2/6. Cleaning & repairing carriage clock (which he spoiled) 12/6d.” Roberts sends a bill of £6/5 for things supplied Feb. 26. Ap. 23 & Sept. 14. I think he was paid the two first & shall look into it. Chapman (Cooper) sends a bill for 1s3d for “hoop to washing tub.” Todman a bill for 17/ which it will be very troublesome to pay. I think we settled that Prescott’s4 clerks were not to have the Xmas money this year? I find an unexpected difficulty in getting small notes of the Bank of France. The man I usually employ, Massey,4 in Leadenhall St. says he has not been able to get any, & I have tried two other places with no better success—I could get a note for 500 fr. but that seems too much to risk without first putting forth a feeler—but if I cannot get soon what I want, I must send that. I have been nowhere west of Bucklersbury5 where I went to get tea from Mansell’s.6 Thornton during our absence has published a volume of poems7 in which he has taken the liberty of addressing one to me by name8 —it is an imitation of an epistle of Horace. He apologized for doing it without leave on account of my absence—a very insufficient apology—in the thing itself there is little about me, & that little neither good nor harm. Though the verses in the volume are better than common, he has not raised my opinion of his good sense by publishing them. I send this letter unpaid dear as being one that I am sure is not overweight, that you may see if they do not charge 16 sous, instead of the 10 pence which must be paid to frank it here. There seems no use in paying an extra twopence on every letter for the sake of paying here instead of there. Does there? & now adieu my own precious love. I wait for the next letter as the greatest & chief pleasure I can have during this absence. A thousand thousand loves. 118.TO HARRIET MILL1Blackheath—Jan. 16 [1854] 10 I received this morning my precious one’s letter written on the 11th & 12th—how delightfully quick it has come this time. I hope this quickness will be the general rule. To speak first of the most important thing that exists, to me, or ever can exist, your health—I do not think there is anything alarming in those sudden & violent coughs such as this seems to have been—it is not in that way that organic disease gets on. Such coughs come & go even where there is already pulmonary disease, & are not only got rid of, but do not leave what was already wrong, worse than they found it. As an instance, Sinnett,2 soon after he was pronounced consumptive by Clark, had a most violent, almost terrible cough, & I happening to see him at the time, thought he must be in a very bad way—but the next thing I heard about him was that it was quite gone, & I never heard that he was at all worse after it. On the whole it is a considerable comfort that you should have had so bad a cough without any hemorrhage—but that trial having been now made, I am very happy that it seemed to be going away & I hope in going it will carry off with it the cough you had before, but if it does not, you are probably only in the same case with me, whose cough, now three months old, nothing seems to touch—Clark’s hemlock pills & mustard poultices appear to have no more effect than Gurney’s remedies. I never knew that a mere cough, not consumptive, could be as obstinate as this is, but I believe those influenza coughs last longer than any others. About Mrs Grote’s letter,3 my darling is I dare say right. It did not escape me that there was that amende, & I should have felt much more indignant if there had not. But what was to my feelings like impudent, though impudent is not exactly the right word, was, that after the things she has said & done respecting us,4 she should imagine that a tardy sort of recognition of you, & flattery to me, would serve to establish some sort of relation between us & her. It strikes me as déplacé to answer the letter, especially so long after it was written—but her having made this amende might make the difference of my asking how she is, at least when he mentions her. That is about as much, I think, as her good intentions deserve.—I will, dear, say to Grote what she wishes & the best opportunity will be the first time he writes a note to me in that form. I do not, & have not for years, addressed him as Mr—& it is very dull of him not to have taken the hint. I am getting on with India house work but the arrear will take me a long time—I worked at it at home all yesterday (Sunday) & got through a good deal. Sunday, alas, is not so different from other days as when she is here—though more so than when I am quite with her. I am reading in the evenings, as I said I would do, Sismondi’s Italian Republics5 which I read last in 1838, before going to Italy. Having seen so many of the places since makes it very interesting. I.H. 17th. This morning I watched the loveliest dawn & sunrise & felt that I was looking directly to where she is & that that sun came straight from her. And now here is the Friday’s letter which comes from her in a still more literal sense. I am so happy that the cough is better & that she is in better spirits. How kindly she writes about the keys, never mind darling. I have bought one set of flannels since. I am glad she likes the note to Sykes. As for Chapman’s request,6 the pro was the great desire I feel to atone for the overpraise I have given Comte7 & to let it be generally known to those who know me what I think on the unfavourable side about him. The reason that the objection which you feel so strongly & which my next letter afterwards will have shewn that I felt too, did not completely decide the matter with me, was that Chapman did not want a review of this particular book, but of Comte, & I could have got rid of H.M.’s part8 in a sentence, perhaps without even naming her—I shd certainly have put Comte’s own book at the head along with hers & made all the references to it. But malgré cela I disliked the connexion & now I dislike it still more, & shall at once write to C. to refuse—putting the delay of an answer upon my long absence so that he may not think I hesitated. It is lucky he has not called. A propos he has not sent the January number of the Westr. I will lend the £10 to Holyoake9 as she says darling. I did not propose the Edinburgh to Urquhart10 because he wanted to publish in time for the beginning of the session & could not wait till April—so nothing but a magazine would do. Besides the Ed. would not have taken it. I have an answer from him, thanking me & accepting my offer to send it to Parker which I have done. I have no answer from Marshall11 —I have not been able to get a 100 f. note of the B. of F. but I have at last got the one which I inclose (200 f.). If it goes safe I will send a larger one next. Now that the snow is melted I must have the gardener to clear up the place—& I shall be able to pay the bills & taxes. I paid Kate’s wages. She is exactly all you said—very pleasant to speak to & be served by—but her excuses are like a person with no sense or head at all & she requires much looking after. She says Parsons’ bill is wrong because it charges, during all Haji’s absence about twice the quantity of meat she professes to have had, & she has twice taken the bill to make him alter it, but of course she has had the meat, & last Sunday the fact that a large piece of the roast beef had been cut off was as palpable as in the worst case I remember with the former cook. I shewed it to her of course, not charging her with anything but that she might know I had noticed it. 119.TO HARRIET MILL1Blackheath 19 Jan [1854] 11 Another dear letter came today—& did me good not only as they always do, by the love & sweetness & by the sight of the precious handwriting (she asked me in one of her letters if I could read the pencil! bless her!) but also by the pleasant picture of bright sunshine & pure air with June temperature—which is made so much more pleasant by having seen & knowing that beautiful view & all that she looked on when she stood on the balcony that evening. It is delightful to think of her with such weather—here the weather is not now cold nor very disagreeable, there is only the total absence of agreeableness, characteristic of English winter. She says nothing of her health this time—I hope the better news of the last letter continues. As for my own health she will have seen in my subsequent letters nearly all there is to tell. I am so glad she wished me to see Clark. I should not like to go to any one who had not known my constitution before, therefore certainly not to Gurney’s doctor. How excessively cool of G.2 to make that very modest request to Lily! but you judged him right from the first—you always said he was presuming to the verge of impertinence. It is quite pleasant however to read about ferns growing in immense abundance. How I wish we could see them together. The Comte question is decided—Chapman shall have a most positive negative.3 I sent the £10 to Holyoake4 who has written back a letter of thanks. I am so glad that my answer to Westbourne5 was right. A propos the insolence which I think you mean was in Clara’s letter6 —I do not think Harriet was insolent or at least intended to be so—I think her words have always been much less bad than Clara’s though her conduct has been much the same—The mistake I made about the bread was very stupid—I found it out soon after but forgot to say so to her (my dearest one) & if I had she would have got it too late to save her the trouble of writing about it. Perhaps too the potatoes have lasted as long as could be expected. Kate did make Parsons strike out 1¼ lb of beef from his bill so there was I suppose some truth in what she said.7 She now declares that there are only coals to last till Saturday. The two tons which Haji ordered were had on the 12th November, so they have lasted just nine weeks. I find that the same quantity had on the 23d May lasted till the 15th August being twelve weeks: we had not left off fires in the sitting rooms in May, but perhaps the difference is as little as we could expect. When we had all the fires in full play two tons only lasted a month. I am sorry to say darling I have paid most of the bills to the end of the year but I will get Haji to pay the current ones in future—perhaps once a month will be sufficient? I took what she said in her last letter about letting bills & taxes wait till I had less to do, as implying they might be paid when I had time so I have paid those which lay convenient—even now I think I must myself pay those at Lee, viz. Upton & Stevens.8 Marshall has just sent his bill “repairing tea urn cover 9d. new heater 2/. repairing dish cover 6d. garden fork 3/6. Roberts I see had not been paid at all in the course of the year. Did the 200 fr. note inclosed in my last arrive safe? When I hear that it did I will send another—probably a larger. I inclose a note from M. Laing,9 received today—none of the news seems to have reached her. You do not say (but I forget in what letter I mentioned it) whether to send the Adelaide letter.10 Is it not wonderful, the stand which the Turks are making?11 this last four days battle, they being the assailants, & completely victorious, seems to me one of the most remarkable feats of arms in recent history—they must be not only most determinedly brave but (what nobody expected) excellently led. Selim Pasha12 one of those who commanded is I believe a Pole—what a pity Bem13 did not live to see & take part in it. In the last few days the papers have been full of the Prince Albert political scandal,14 mostly complaining of the public gullibility, but all saying that these reports were very widely spread over the country & largely believed—the worth of popularity! Adieu darling for tonight, for I must make & apply my mustard poultice—you should see me doing it every evening—not that it or the hemlock pills seem to do any good, for the cough if better at all is so little so as to leave the matter doubtful & I am not quite so well otherwise as I was—feverish I suppose for my face is always flushed & burning & my hands generally. I shall see Clark soon again therefore. & now my precious more than life, good night. I.H. Jan. 20. I am better, darling, than yesterday—I was less feverish in the night, & my stomach which was somewhat disordered yesterday is less so today owing to attention to diet. I sleep considerably better than I did. There is however evidently a good deal wrong about my state, but whether it is something great or something comparatively small we cannot at present know. This is, for London, a really bright sunny day with a mild south wind, & even here such a day is inspiriting. I write every evening in the little book.15 I have been reading the Essay on Nature16 as I rewrote the first part of it before we left & I think it very much improved & altogether very passable. I think I could soon finish it equally well. Did I not darling some time before leaving, give you the will? The last one I mean, the one prepared by Gregson.17 I think I did & I certainly cannot find it, but only all the old wills—& now again a thousand loves & blessings. 120.TO HARRIET MILL1Jan. 23 [1854] 12 How very happy my beloved one your letter makes me by saying that the cough is so much better. I longed so for that news & now it has come I feel quite lighthearted. I have made a copy of Bird’s prescription & inclose it but I am rather afraid the pharmaciens will not know anything about Syrup of Iron & Iodide of Quinine. I will when I see Coulson which I have not done yet, but which I will do immediately, ask him to make an equivalent prescription which they will understand. Meanwhile luckily you have some—it is to be taken a teaspoonful thrice a day & Bird prefers that it should be at or immediately after meals. I too have thought very often lately about the life2 & am most anxious that we should complete it the soonest possible. What there is of it is in a perfectly publishable state—as far as writing goes it could be printed tomorrow—& it contains a full writing out as far as anything can write out, what you are, as far as I am competent to describe you, & what I owe to you—but, besides that until revised by you it is little better than unwritten, it contains nothing about our private circumstances, further than shewing that there was intimate friendship for many years, & you only can decide what more it is necessary or desirable to say in order to stop the mouths of enemies hereafter. The fact is there is about as much written as I can write without your help & we must go through this together & add the rest to it at the very first opportunity—I have not forgotten what she said about bringing it with me to Paris.—Now dear about myself, I went again to Clark on Saturday being thereunto determined by feeling myself worse in several ways & especially by having had the aguish chill very much the evening before & a great deal of fever in the night after it. Clark examined my chest &c carefully again & said there is some congestion of the lungs, on the right side, but that he does not believe there is any commencement of organic disease & from the way in which he said it I feel much more sure than I did before both that he did not keep back anything, & also that he does not think the cough a really serious matter. He found some congestion of the liver which he thought was probably the cause of the fever & other symptoms, & for this he prescribed acids (nitric & muriatic) & mustard poultices in the region of the liver. Since that the fever I have had for nearly a fortnight has very much gone off & I feel better altogether—with regard to the cough he advised me to do nothing, but leave off the hemlock pills to see what cough there would be if no sedative were taken. Accordingly it is somewhat worse, especially at night—but since there seems to be nothing dangerous about it we must have patience & it will I suppose go off some time. Thanks darling for the directions about the mustard, but I have till now applied it without any intervening muslin, direct to the skin (by advice of one of the partners at Allen’s)3 & as it is, by Clark’s directions, mixed with an equal quantity of linseed meal, it is not too strong. In fact I cannot get it strong enough though I keep it on much longer than the half hour Clark recommended. My having tea at half past six is by choice—I manage so as to have done my supper & have the tea ready to pour out when Haji comes in—but the last four days I have dined in town at a very good & cheap place which Haji told me of, the place where the French restaurant formerly was, in Gracechurch St. My own angel Haji is not to blame about the place at table. That where I sit is now directly opposite the very middle of the fire, & is I think the warmest—in any case I prefer it to the other. H. does not even always sit there, but sometimes on the contrary side of the table. He behaves very well & is even empressé to do things for me as well as give things up to me—he is altogether much more amiable than I ever knew him, which is probably to be partly ascribed to his being, as he evidently is, in very much better health. He does not mope nor sit with his head on his hand (except a very little occasionally) can, & does, read nearly all the evening, & is not now at all like an invalid. I waited for one more letter before writing to Chapman but as that contained no suggestion about the reply I wrote merely that for various reasons it was impossible for me to do it4 & that I hoped the delay of answering had not caused him inconvenience. The first time he calls however I will say to him what you now suggest. Yesterday was the loveliest day possible in an English winter—I went out for a little in the mild & warm sun & enjoyed the beautiful view towards Shooter’s Hill—what & whom I thought of you do not need that I shd tell. I worked again all day & part of the evening at India house work. I do not however think I shall need to do this again, as I have already made a very perceptible impression on the arrears. Today though it began gloomy has turned out at last equally fine. The stocks & wallflowers in Lily’s garden are beginning to flower, & I hope the bitterness of winter is past. It seems the 26th of Decr was the coldest day; the thermr in London at zero of Fahrenheit, at Nottingham 4 degrees lower, or 36 below freezing! Adieu my perfect—& bless her a million of times. 121.TO HARRIET MILL1Jan. 26 [1854] 13 I got her letter yesterday & though she says it is not a letter I was delighted to have it, as well as with the promise of another in a day or two. To take the subjects in their order: the word “threatened” was not used by Clark but was my own expression of the impression he gave me as to his opinion, by his guarded phrase ‘at present’ & other signs. You will have seen since the more decidedly favorable opinion he afterwards gave—but I agree in all she says about it—no doubt we both are always threatened with consumption when we are long out of health & we must endeavour not to be so. I have continued better as to general health, & the cough after being for two days as I said in my last, rather worse, became & has been since considerably better, in fact more like a gradual going off than I have yet thought it—the diminution being both in cough & expectoration & what I think an improvement in the quality of both. This is the more encouraging as I am doing absolutely nothing against the cough. With regard to Thornton I do not think what you say too severe—he has suddenly plumped down to the place of a quite common person in my estimation, when I thought he was a good deal better. There are in the book2 itself many proofs of excessive, even ridiculous vanity, not much the better for being, as in his case it is, disappointed vanity. He is far from the first instance I have known of inordinate vanity under very modest externals. His misjudgment of me is so far less than you supposed, as he has not put in any flattery proprement dit, but the fact itself is a piece of flattery which he must have thought would be agreeable or he would not have taken so impertinent a liberty. There are so few people of whom one can think even as well as I did of him, that I feel this a loss, & am like you angry with him for it.—I will of course resist the charge for armorial bearings3 but I really do not know whom to call on, for even the name of the Collector is not given & the only one I can hear of lives at Charlton. I have paid Webster4 —he says he will find & send back the packing case. About the clock he offered to send his man again, which I of course declined. Roberts cannot have been paid for I find no entry this year of his name in the monthly account, so I shall pay him the first opportunity. I will try to find out why they charge four sous for the newspaper. At the post office in Leadenhall St, I was told it would go free. Shall I send the Examiner instead? I had not burned her notes, dear things as they were, but I have since burnt them all except the two last (which I shall burn presently) & a bit of one former one containing what is to be said to Grote, which I wish to have to refer to now & then until it has been said. I have not yet written to James,5 but will do so. I have not seen my mother, but have this morning received from her the inclosed note to which I have answered as inclosed. You will see I have adopted your idea of what is the matter with Mrs King6 but I rather suspect the stomach—some chronic inflammation of its coats. I have seen Coulson, & paid him (£10) as I do not expect to have to consult him again. He thought that day of great pain in the leg very singular but gave no other opinion on it. I send a prescription which he wrote for me, equivalent as he said to that of Bird—it is impossible that Bird’s could be made up at Hyères, as C. says the syrup in question is peculiar to one particular chemist (Davenport in G. Russell St) but Coulson’s seems very clear & the handwriting very distinct & no doubt they can manage it. If not however, he says it could be (or rather the equivalent of Bird’s could be) sent by post, in the form of a powder. About the bills—there seems not much amiss in Kate’s goings on. She takes a second half quartern on Tuesday as well as Saty & that suffices. The last week I have caused the extra Saty loaf, for Sunday, to be brown, as I find the underbaked bread (so much the opposite of Continental) disagrees with me at present & obliges me to eat it (unless with meat) chiefly in the form of toast. As to meat we had on Sunday a leg of mutton said in the bill to be 7 lbs 6 oz, which has served me cold the three days following & will serve me hashed today, H[aji] also having it at breakfast. That is about a pound a day allowing for bone, or probably a little less. I had quite a country walk towards Upton’s7 which appears to be about two miles off on the other side of the Eltham road, however he overtook me in his cart before I got there; but as it is impossible for either me or Haji to go all that way to pay the bills weekly or even monthly, I shall henceforth pay them to the man when he comes in the morning. Milk is about the only thing not dearer: bread has long been 5½d the half quartern. The weather here is still very mild & tolerably bright. I enjoy excessively the thought of the brighter, the really bright sky & pure air & June temperature she has. Think of me darling as always enjoying it with you, which I do in the most literal sense—those few bright days with you there have made that place feel completely my home & will till she returns. Adieu my own most precious delight. 122.TO HARRIET MILL1Jan. 29 [1854] 14 I am now writing on the fourth Sunday that I have spent here—it is positively only three weeks last Thursday evening since I arrived—though more than a calendar month since I left home, for home to me is those two rooms. If I were setting out now to go there I should feel it in the full meaning of the term going home. It is not that the time here is unpleasant, though, contrary to custom, a time passed entirely in routine every day similar, has seemed very long: or rather each day has seemed extremely short, but the whole time wonderfully long. However the first month in such cases is always the longest, the others pass quickly enough: I have been feeling much (I must have been incapable of feeling anything if I had not) about the shortness & uncertainty of life & the wrongness of having so much of the best of what we have to say, so long unwritten & in the power of chance—& I am determined to make a better use of what time we have. Two years, well employed, would enable us I think to get the most of it into a state fit for printing—if not in the best form for popular effect, yet in the state of concentrated thought—a sort of mental pemican, which thinkers, when there are any after us, may nourish themselves with & then dilute for other people. The Logic & Pol. Ec. may perhaps keep their buoyancy long enough to hold these other things above water till there are people capable of taking up the thread of thought & continuing it. I fancy I see one large or two small posthumous volumes of Essays, with the Life2 at their head, & my heart is set on having these in a state fit for publication quelconque, if we live so long, by Christmas 1855; though not then to be published if we are still alive to improve & enlarge them. The first thing to be done & which I can do immediately towards it is to finish the paper on Nature,3 & this I mean to set about today, after finishing this letter—being the first Sunday that I have not thought it best to employ in I.H. work. That paper, I mean the part of it rewritten, seems to me on reading it to contain a great deal which we want said, said quite well enough for the volume though not so well as we shall make it when we have time. I hope to be able in two or three weeks to finish it equally well & then to begin something else—but all the other subjects in our list will be much more difficult for me even to begin upon without you to prompt me. All this however is entirely dependent on your health continuing to go on well; for these are not things that can be done in a state of real anxiety. In bodily ill health they might be. I have nothing particular to tell about my health—The cough has been so variable that I can hardly say how it is, or whether the improvement I mentioned in my last has been any of it permanent or not. However there certainly is not a great deal of cough. I live the most regular of lives, &, fortunately, hardly anybody comes to interrupt me, so that I get through a great deal of work quietly at the I.H. & generally rather overstay the hours in order to do more. Ellice has been away for a fortnight on account of gout. Parker4 called yesterday with the accounts of last year. The Logic has sold 260 copies in 1853—in 1852 it only sold 206. This steady sale must proceed I think from a regular annual demand from colleges & other places of education. What is strange is that the Pol. Ec. Essays sell from 20 to 50 copies each year & bring in three or four pounds annually. This is encouraging, since if that sells, I should think anything we put our name to would sell. P. brought a cheque for £102..2..5 which with the £250, & £25 which Lewis has sent for the Grote,5 is pretty well to have come in one year from writings of which money was not at all the object. I have never yet told you of the books which had been sent during our absence: the chief were, a large octavo volume in black imitation of thick old binding, with the arms of the State of S. Carolina stamped on it, consisting of a treatise on Government & on the Constitution of the U. States by Calhoun,6 with a printed paper bound into it saying that it was presented by the Legislature of S. Carolina under whose direction it had been published & who had passed a resolution authorizing the Library Committees to present it “to such individuals distinguished for science learning & public service, & to such libraries as they may select.” This signed by the Chairmen of the two Comees, of Senate & of H. of Representatives. I give you this at so much length that you may be able to judge, whether a letter ought to be written in acknowledgment.7 There is next a treatise on banking by Courcelle Seneuil,8 who is advertised as one of the translators of thePol. Econ.9 that is, I suppose, who took it in hand because Dussard10 failed to get through it. He was one of the best writers in La République11 & has written a rather nice letter with the book. He must be written to some time—I should suppose from the advertisement that the translation is published—but if so I suppose Guillaumin12 would have sent it.—Helps13 has also sent the thing which you will see mentioned in today’s Spectator,14 & there are one or two smaller things not worth mentioning. Parliament meets on Tuesday when we shall perhaps know a little more about the intentions of the Government both as to things foreign & domestic. The best thing stirring at present (save the unexpected eagerness of public opinion to act vigorously against Russia)15 is, that there is an evident movement for secularizing education. The Times for weeks past has been writing with considerable energy on that side of the question,16 & yesterday’s papers contained a great meeting at Edinburgh,17 of the Free Church leaders as well as Liberals, for abolishing all religious tests for schoolmasters in the Scotch parish schools & taking them entirely out of the control of the clergy. These are signs— Jan. 30 And now here is her darling letter of the 26th which has been longer than usual in coming. Thank heaven it was not owing to her being ill. All she says about my health is most sweet & loving, but indeed dearest you misunderstand the cough, as I have before thought you did. Nothing could give, to my sensations, a falser idea to the medical men than to tell them I had had a cough for ten years. I had, as three quarters of all men have, an occasional need to clear my throat, without the slightest irritation or titillation or any sensation the least resembling that of cough, & my present state is totally & generically different from that habitual one. My real coughs which have been occasional but very slight, & yet very long in going off entirely, have always begun as this did with catching cold as indicated by sore throat at waking in the morning. As you wish dearest, I am not now taking medicine as the acids which C[lark] prescribed soon disagreed with my stomach, so I left them off—I shall go to him again in a few days, as though I am much less feverish I have still a bad tongue at getting up & I wish to know what he thinks of the difference in the expectoration—besides as long as the cough persists, it is right to have a medical opinion pretty often. But I am not in the least out of spirits & am quite disposed to “put will into resistance” if she will only tell me what will can do. It is a pleasant coincidence that I should receive her nice say about the “Nature” just after I have resumed it. I shall put those three beautiful sentences about “disorder” verbatim into the essay.18 I wrote a large piece yesterday at intervals (reading a bit of Sismondi19 whenever I was tired) & am well pleased with it. I don’t think we should make these essays very long, though the subjects are inexhaustible. We want a compact argument first, & if we live to expand it & add a larger dissertation, tant mieux: there is need of both. How very delightful it is to read her account of that drive to the seaside. How I should have liked to be there—& how I enjoy her having such nice summer weather & being able to enjoy it. With regard to the will, darling, I feel all but certain of having given it to you, & if I did not, as I do, remember it, I could not doubt it, since it was locked up in my bedroom drawer for long before & is not there now. My recollection is of having given it to you in your bedroom. As for the codicil20 it is not at all needful that it should be on the same paper. To reexecute the will (useless says Gregson) will be useless, since I can not remember Gregson’s exact words, & for everything else the will immediately preceding (which I have safe) will serve. & now my beloved with a thousand loves & blessings from my deepest heart farewell. [P.S.] I inclose a 500 fr. note as the other came safe. 123.TO ARTHUR GORE1[February 1854] Sir—I am glad that my book should have afforded you any of the pleasure or benefit which you do me the honor to tell me you have derived from it. I have received many letters which, like yours, ask me to explain or defend particular passages of the Logic. I am not sorry to receive them as they are a sign that the book has been read in the manner which all thinkers must desire for their writings—that it has stirred up thought in the mind of the reader. But my occupations compel me to beg my correspondents to be satisfied with a more summary explanation of the opinions they dissent from, than I can generally venture to hope will remove their difficulties. It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between the case of the rust & that of the motion of a projectile.2 In the case of the rust the original cause of its existence, were it 1000 years ago, may be said to be the proximate cause, since, as there has been no intermediate change of any sort, there is no cause more proximate than it. You may say, there is the existence of the rust itself during the intermediate time. I answer, the rust all through the 1000 years is one & the same fact, therefore we do not say that it causes itself: but the motion in successive instants (though, as you say, it may be the same qua motion) is, taken in its ensemble, a different fact, since it is essentially constituted by a different phenomenon, viz. the body in one place instead of the same body in another place. The argument is still stronger when the motion is not even the same qua motion—when besides the difference in the fact itself, there has also intervened the action of a new cause, a deflecting force or a resisting medium. The concurrence of forces at each successive instant is then a cause evidently more proximate to the effect of the next instant than the original impulse, which, therefore, can only be called the remote cause. Our difference is more one of expression than of fact. It seems to me that when there is a change of any sort at that precise point we ought to say that a fresh causation commences. It is only while things remain exactly as the original cause left them, that the original can be also termed the proximate cause of their state. I am Sir
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The bushel of potatoes has lasted just five weeks, about 11 lbs a week. I have dined out 8 times or nearly twice a week—say 5 lbs for me, 1 lb Haji, leaving 5 lbs for Kate, less than a pound each. The pound of kitchen candles lasted from 14 Jan. to 11 Feb, the pound of soap to 18 Feb. Wright has sent no bills, I wonder why.
A thousand & a thousand loves.
136.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Blackheath Feb. 24 [1854]
23
I received your Sunday’s letter dearest yesterday (Thursday) & meant to have written yesterday evening but I was tired, fell asleep in my chair, slept a long time & woke feeling unfit for anything but going to bed—the first time since my return that any similar thing has happened, for though I sometimes feel sleepy & doze directly after dinner, it never lasts many minutes. I know nothing to account for it, nor had I had anything particular to tire me yesterday. Your letter thank heaven contains much more of good than bad about your health—the bad is the weakness but though I ardently desire to hear that you are stronger I do not expect it till summer. Your having much less cough & uneasiness in the chest makes me think less about the weakness—one’s strength varies so very much with little apparent cause when once one is in delicate health—& I think one is always weaker at the end of winter—you, especially, always are, & no doubt winter is winter even at Hyères. I too am considerably less strong, or feel so at least, than I did at Nice, but I do not think that proves anything, nor am I sure that it would not turn out to be chiefly nervous weakness which would go off in a day’s walk, or a journey, or anything else which would increase real weakness. Altogether I hope the best for both of us, & see nothing in the state of either to discourage the hope. I hope we shall live to write together “all we wish to leave written” to most of which your living is quite as essential as mine, for even if the wreck I should be could work on with undiminished faculties, my faculties at the best are not adequate to the highest subjects & have already done almost the best they are adequate to. Do not think darling that I should ever make this an excuse to myself for not doing my very best—if I survived you, & anything we much care about was not already fixed in writing, you might depend on my attempting all of it & doing my very best to make it such as you would wish, for my only rule of life then would be what I thought you would wish as it now is what you tell me you wish. But I am not fit to write on anything but the outskirts of the great questions of feeling & life without you to prompt me as well as to keep me right. So we must do what we can while we are alive—the Life being the first thing—which independent of the personal matters which it will set right when we have made it what we intend, is even now an unreserved proclamation of our opinions on religion, nature, & much else. About that long journey—I shall not dread it so much for you if the cough goes quite or nearly quite off, which it is very likely to do, though no doubt there will always be much danger of its returning. It is quite possible that the journey may give strength instead of taking it away; most likely so, if the weakness is as I hope, chiefly nervous. It is a curious coincidence that the same day I received your letter in which you speak of Sykes’ return, he made his appearance. He just mentioned Emilia as regretting that she had not earlier information of your being at Nice (the humbug!) This he said among other things in a manner not requiring that I should take any notice of it which accordingly I did not. He seemed to think he had more need to apologize to me than I to him. His enquiries about your health I answered as you desired—“pretty well, but not strong.” It appeared he had heard about us from Gurney & no doubt heard all that gossiping creature had to say—the only thing he mentioned was that G. had been called in “at the eleventh hour”—it is very lucky it was not the twelfth. Sykes’ account shews that the return of cold weather which you have had has been general, & worse in France than here. At Bourges he said 12 degr centigrade below freezing & at Paris 4 degr I think he said: he did get to Châlons by the steamboat, but it was stopped by the ice the day after. Here it was cold, but nothing comparable to that as indeed our insular cold seldom is. I was amused with myself for what I wrote about the appointments,2 when I read your comment. When I go next to C.3 which will probably be on Tuesday I will put on an old linen shirt. The flannels were from Brier’s, but I will get some from Capper’s today or tomorrow4 & will discard the second flannel though I am sure C. meant it quite seriously. Whatever danger I am in of consumption is not I think from general weak health as I am not sufficiently out of order for that, but specifically from the cough, connected as it is with congestion of the lungs which if long continued is always in danger of ending in consumption. For that reason it seems necessary to have the chest examined now & then unless the cough goes off. It was not examined the last time I went. I should like much to know the meaning of that swelling—had it not gone off before? Is there anything permanent about it? I too have been blistering for a fortnight past, with no perceptible result for the cough is rather worse. I subscribed to the anti-newspaper stamp affair solely out of hostility to the Times.5 If you think it better not I will not subscribe again—though surely it would be a great improvement to English working men if they could be made Americans.
Sharpers’ bill of which I sent a copy in my last letter,6 is dated June 1853. The Govt have brought in a useful bill for schools in Scotland7 but Russell, grown as you say dévôt, the other day repeated his declaration against giving secular education without religion.8
Adieu my own darling love & light of my life, love me always as you do.
137.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Feb. 28 [1854]
24
I received your precious letter yesterday my beloved—precious always, but even more so this time than many others because it tells me that you are better & shews that you are more hopeful. I put off writing till today as I meant to go to Clark this morning that I might tell you anything he said. He thinks, from the indications of the stethoscope and the sounds on percussion, that the chest is a little better. It is the first time he has thought so, & though there is no diminution of cough, if he is right, that I suppose will follow. He thinks my stomach out of order (which is evident) but that medicine will do it no good—saving a slight tonic which he prescribed. I did not ask him about physicians at Paris as you told me not—but his knowledge of my having been at Nice came from me. He asked how long I had had the cough, & when I told him, he said it was imprudent to have let it go on so long without advice. I said I had not, & it was natural & seemed best to shew why I had sought other advice than his. You will say perhaps it was presumption in him to think or say that I had no advice because I did not come to him—but he was perhaps justified by my having gone several times to him on much slighter indications of chest disorder & by my now coming to him again. How I came to mention Gurney’s name I do not remember but I was a little curious to hear what he would say & what would be his judgment between G. & Travis & the result is that I think his opinion would be an affair of party. I have been led into writing all this by the mention of Clark. About our plans, & first our ultimate plans—we are not yet at the £500 certain which you mention,2 but we are past £400: there is the 3 per cent stock—£141: last year there was from Herbert £43: from railways there is £175, altogether £359. Then there is above £700 ready to invest, besides what is in the Comml Bank which I suppose must be at least £500. We might turn the uninvested & the railway money into a life annuity, but as the railways give much higher interest than the common rate, I suppose we should not much increase the income by that. £1200 invested in railways at the present prices would yield not much less than 5 per cent or £60. That gives nearly £420, & we should add something more if we keep to the I.H. for this year, which it will probably be well to do in any case since my health during that time will probably decide not only on my getting next winter abroad but probably on the likelihood of my being able to get a pension. These things being considered you will understand why Clark’s more favourable opinion this morning was quite as disagreeable to me as agreeable. With regard to your coming over, especially with the prospect of a second crossing in autumn, but even without that, I dread it so much that I hardly allow myself to wish it—but when we meet at Paris there will be much greater means of judging—If as I hope the malady has now taken the turn, you will probably be much better then than now. I am very much afraid of your encountering the great cold of the centre & north of France too soon. It seems to me much too soon to leave Hyères yet, while the place continues to agree with you. The change in the direction is the 12th of April, the Wednesday before Good Friday—but Easter really makes no difference as to getting away unless when it is for three or four days only—& though to get away after the change of directors is much easier than before it, the going immediately after has no advantage quoad I.H. but rather the contrary. I have been reading a little book which I remember seeing advertised years ago but did not get it supposing it to be some merely quackish thing, but an edition having been readvertised just now I got it—called The Curability of Consumption, by Dr Ramadge3 & it is not a quackish thing at all—the writer is evidently well entitled to an opinion having been Senior Physician to the Infirmary for diseases of the Chest. I wish I had seen the book long ago—I certainly think any person would be very foolish to let themselves die of consumption without having tried him & his treatment, the chief peculiarity of which consists in breathing (during a small part of every day) through a tube so constructed as to prolong the expiratory movement. The number & quality of the cases of success which he cites, even in an advanced stage of consumption, are such as quite entitle him to a trial. His theory seems only one step in extension of the now generally received theory. He says: It is admitted that if by any means the formation of fresh tubercles could be stopped, those already formed would either continue inert or would soften & be discharged & the cavities left would probably be cicatrized. Now the reason why the formation of fresh tubercles is so seldom stopped is that as soon as there is much disease, the lungs & chest contract, & in proportion to the contraction the tendency is stronger to form fresh tubercles—& this goes on in an augmenting ratio, for when the lungs are of less dimensions while the air passages remain of the same, letting the air rapidly out, the expanding power is still further diminished. Therefore if by artificial means the air could be kept longer in, & the expansion prolonged the best chance is afforded of stopping the progress of the disease. He has combined very ingeniously a number of curious facts (if they are facts) in support of this theory—which seems at least as good as any other medical theory. If he is right, a cold or cough not originating in pthisis, instead of leading to it, is a protection against it—which is the most paradoxical part of his doctrine. I will bring the pamphlet with me to Paris—I am sure it should be at least read by every one who either has or is threatened with consumption. I sent the letter to the Frenchman4 darling & am so glad you liked it—I knew you would alter the ending & improve it. I adopted “considération amicale”. I liked “sincère” best but doubted if it was French—i.e. doubted if “considération” sufficiently included in itself the sense of favourable, without some epithet added to express it—which sincère does not—but it is only a doubt & has almost vanished on subsequent “consideration”. Atterer is to throw down on the earth, à terre—as in Danton’s famous “Pour les vaincre—pour les atterrer—que faut-il? De l’audace—et encore de l’audace—et toujours de l’audace.”5Houblon is hops. The garden shall be attended to exactly as you say—I have written out the instructions to Malyon6 & shall speak to his man besides. The sticks are in their place in the corner, but whether all or only part I do not know. See how I go from one subject to another by the stepping stone of some accidental association—from the French of my letter to the French words & from hops to the garden. About the article on India7 I feel quite decided to give it up but must take some time to concoct a good letter. You have by this time got the chapter8 —As so much is said of the French associations I must put in a few words about the English, of which Furnivall has sent me a long list, especially as it is going among the very people—but I shall take care not to commit myself to anything complimentary to them. F. has also from Nadaud9 some later intelligence about the French, nearly all of which are put down. & now my own love my own dearest love farewell.
[P.S.] There is a bill of 1/10 from one Price10 for mending the butter stand & for a fruit bottle. I suppose it is right.
138.
TO THE CHAIRMEN OF THE LIBRARY COMMITTEES, SOUTH CAROLINA1
3rd March 1854.
Gentlemen,—
A long absence from England2 has made me thus tardy in offering my acknowledgements to you and to the honourable bodies over which you preside for having included me among those to whom, under the resolution of the legislature of South Carolina,3 you have presented copies of the posthumous work of Mr. Calhoun.4
Few things can be done by the legislature of any people more commendable than printing and circulating the writings of their eminent men, and the present is one of the many examples tending to show that the parsimony imputed to the republics of the American Union is aversion to useless, but not to useful, expense. I am one of those who believe that America is destined to give instruction to the world, not only practically, as she has long done, but in speculation also; and my opinion is confirmed by the treatise which I have had the honour of receiving from you, and which, though I am far from agreeing with it on all points, I consider to be a really valuable contribution to the science of government.
With the warmest good wishes for the continued progress of the United States, and hopes that they may lead the way to mental and moral, as they have already done to much political freedom, I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your most obedient servant,
J. S. Mill
139.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 3. [1854]
25
Your Monday’s letter which has just come, my own adored, gives me the greatest happiness because it contains by far the best account of your health I have yet had. The cough evidently going away & your being stronger, together with there being no expectoration, constitute such an improvement in all the alarming symptoms as puts me at ease on the subject of present danger, & though I know it does not amount to proof that there is no organic disease, it seems to me conclusive so far, that if there is, it is as in the case of those two in Australia,2 the variety which is not, under proper precautions, fatal. I have always thought that if you ever had consumption it would probably be of this type, as well as that if I ever had it, it would be of the common type & therefore mortal—unless Ramadge’s plan3 should cure it. His notion is very consoling, for he is of opinion that half the people who go about, in good health, either have, or have had, tubercles in the lungs. Of course the strong ground we now have for believing that you can live in good health at all events on the Continent adds a great weight to the side of our giving up England. The pros & cons of that however we will discuss fully when we meet. As to the more immediately pressing point of when that should be—what you say of Directors &c going away at Easter might make a difference in other years, but I think not in this, for as it will be just the very beginning of the new system4 with the diminished numbers of the Court & the three Government nominees for colleagues I expect they will all wait to see what the new system looks like. What you say however of the convenience of Easter for our being much alone is a very strong reason indeed, & I do not see why the double plan you say you would prefer, should not be possible, since the second absence, if you return with me, need not, if we have fine weather for crossing, be longer than three or four days. If you do not return with me, the second visit can be put off till a little later—& on that supposition the earlier the first visit, the earlier also can be the second. Against these reasons is one very strong one that I dread the weather for you if you start so soon as the 20th March—The centre & north of France are so much colder than England. Here for some days past it is splendid weather for those in perfect health—not a cloud either by day or night, & the air the most transparent it ever is in England—March clearness without your plague of March dust; but sharp frost every night, ice on the ponds & white frost covering every thing, though the wind was south or south west—& now it is S. East & in consequence last night was much colder still. I fear your encountering anything like this, notwithstanding Ramadge’s paradox of the preservative effect of catching cold. It seems to me clear that the mildness of Hyères has abated all your chest symptoms (though the warmth of January may have produced the weakness & want of appetite) & I should dread their coming on again by travelling in March. This part of the question however you can best judge of. About my own health there is nothing new. The cough is not at all better. Clark advised a blister on the left side of the chest, as the right side, which was the worst before, is now according to him rather the best of the two. I shall do it as perhaps the former blistering did the good which he says has been done: but I postpone it till Saturday night that I may keep the blister on all Sunday (as I did the former) for blisters act so very mildly on me that unless I keep them on 24 hours they are hardly of any use. There is not much new in public affairs. The parliamentary reform, it seems to be thought, will be put off for this year,5 the public, it is said, being too much occupied with war prospects to give it the support necessary for its passing. I do not think however that in any case there would have been any strong public feeling for it. It will not sufficiently alter the distribution of power to excite any strong desire for its passing. The Civil Service examination plan6 I am afraid is too good to pass. The report proposing it, by Trevelyan7 & Northcote8 (written no doubt by Trevelyan) has been printed in the Chronicle9 —it is as direct, uncompromising & to the point, without reservation, as if we had written it. But even the Chronicle attacks the plan.10 The grand complaint is that it will bring low people into the offices! as, of course, gentlemen’s sons cannot be expected to be as clever as low people. It is ominous too that the Times has said nothing on the subject lately. I should like to know who wrote the articles in the Times11 in support of the plan—possibly Trevelyan himself. It was somebody who saw his way to the moral & social ultimate effects of such a change. How truly you judge people, how true is what you always say that this ministry are before the public. There has been a renewal of the anti nunnery stuff12 in Parlt, & ministers again outvoted—& an inquiry ordered—the applicability of all the arguments to marriage, & the naif unconsciousness of the speakers, were quite funny. One said, a vow of obedience was contrary to the British Constn & a violation of the right everyone has (he did not even say every man) to personal freedom.13 Another inveighed against allowing young women under age to bind themselves irrevocably to they knew not what.14 It is for the purpose of putting in a telling word on such occasions that it would be pleasant to be in Parlt.—Did you see that Sir John Bowring15 is appointed Governor of Hong Kong & chief authority in China, & has just gone out, with Lady Bowring & two daughters? Your “much” is a great improvement in the letter to the Americans.16 I thought it would have needed “much” more alteration. I will now send it. The gardener came for the first time yesterday. He has put in the peas & covered them over with sticks. He was quite docile about the lime. Everything else shall be done as you say. Adieu with the utmost love.
You received the 200 f. & 100 f. notes?
140.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Mar. 6 [1854]
26
I have your Thursday’s letter today dearest so that it has come quick. The Pol. Ec. was put into the post 21 Feb. being Tuesday, instead of Monday, the day I wrote2 —the reason being that Parker did not send it till I was just leaving the I.H. at near five oclock, & as I had no other copy I wished to read it quietly at home before sending it. It certainly dear was very wrong to read it without making that sentence illegible,3 for it was wrong to run any risk of that kind—the risk happily was small, as they were not likely to take the trouble of looking into letters or packets addressed to unsuspected persons, nor if they did were they likely to see that sentence, nor if they saw it to make the receiver answerable for a sentence in a printed paper forming part of an English book. Still it was a piece of criminal rashness which might have done mischief though it probably has not. Did it arrive with a penny stamp, attached half to the cover & half to the blank page, so as to be a sort of cachet? If it did not, however, it would not prove it to have been opened, as the stamp might come off. It was another piece of thoughtlessness not to say that I had no other copy. It is, however, probable, though not certain, that I could get another from Parker & I would have applied to him for one now if you had said that you would not send yours until you receive this; but as you will probably have sent it after receiving my next letter, & it is therefore probably on its way, I will wait to see. I quite agree with you about the inexpediency of adding anything like practical advice, or anything at all which alters the character of the chapter—the working men ought to see that it was not written for them—any attempt to mingle the two characters would be sure to be a failure & is not the way in which we should do the thing even if we had plenty of time & were together. This morning has come from Chapman4 a proposal for reprinting the article Enfranchisement of Women5 or as he vulgarly calls it the article on Woman. How very vulgar all his notes are. I am glad however that it is your permission he asks. I hope the lady friend6 is not H. Martineau. Mrs Gaskell7 perhaps? you will tell me what to say. I do not remember my darling, what I wrote that could make you uneasy about my health—but Tuesday’s letter will have told you that in Clark’s opinion I am better; & I am certainly better since I saw Clark, for since I took his tonic dinner pill (nux vomica) I have ceased to have the daily slight indigestion, in the form of acidity, which I used to have before. I have little now which shews stomach derangement except a white tongue, & sensations of dryness in the tongue & throat; and both these symptoms vary very much in degree. The cough is just at present better than it has been lately but not better than it has often been. I find no progressive improvement but I quite as much wish not to find it, as to find it. The expectoration is more marked than the cough as is to be expected since there is as we know a general tendency in me to excess of that mucous secretion—there is so much of it that there is generally no choice but between spitting it up & swallowing it. As to the time of our meeting I have not much additional to say. It is now much colder here, to the sensations at least, than when I last wrote; with north east wind & fog, & I fear it is likely to be very cold in France, but all this may change by the time you think of moving. With respect to the carriage, since so little would be got for it, what do you think of leaving it en remise with the Univers man at Lyons or with somebody at Châlon? If we go abroad next winter either for a permanency or for the season, which we are pretty sure to do, (apart from the possibility of your not crossing this year at all) it will be agreeable & even a saving to have the carriage which we know & like to take us to the South, & we are almost sure to go by that railway. The man might be paid two or three months in advance or six if necessary. I only throw this out as a suggestion.—On Wednesday the directors & ex directors meet to do execution on themselves.8 The 15 they have to select out of 29, with the addition of three nominees of Govt, will form the new Court of Directors from the 12th of April. Only three have declined being reelected, & two of those three would have had a good chance. I have not seen Sykes again—being out by rotation he does not come to the I.H. often.—On Saturday I completely finished the arrear of work here, so that I have done in two months the work of 5½. It is true I have generally remained till near five o’clock & have worked two Sundays at home—likewise that I never remember such light mails as they have been of late. I have also by no means got the two months work off my hands, as great part of it still wants my help to push it through the subsequent stages. Still you see how easily they could get their work done giving me any amount of leave of absence. True I have had no waste of time with Ellice & Oliphant,9 as I can do what I please with them—they generally read & pass on what I write & I have not even to see them—while with Hogg10 half my time was spent in explaining, defending, & altering so as to spoil it as little as I could. I have fairly set to at another essay, on the subject you suggested.11 I wrote several hours at it yesterday, after turning it over mentally many days before—but I cannot work at it here yet, as there is another mail in today—luckily a light one. Wright & Sharpers12 are paid. Adieu my sweetest & dearest.
141.
TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1
[After March 8, 1854]
I have not waited till now to make myself acquainted with the Report2 which you have done me the favour of sending to me, and to hail the plan of throwing open the civil service to competition as one of the greatest improvements in public affairs ever proposed by a government. If the examination be so contrived as to be a real test of mental superiority, it is difficult to set limits to the effect which will be produced in raising the character not only of the public service but of Society itself. I shall be most happy to express this opinion in any way in which you think it can be of the smallest use towards helping forward so noble a scheme, but as the successful working of the plan will depend principally on details into which very properly your Report does not enter, I should be unable without some time for consideration, to write anything which could have a chance of being of any service in the way of suggestion.3
I am sorry to say you are mistaken in supposing that anything bearing the remotest resemblance to what you propose, exists at the I.H. It will exist in the India Civil Service by the Act of last year.4
142.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 9. [1854]
27
I have received your Sunday’s letter today darling, the first almost that has been directed in your own dear handwriting—I hail it as a good augury. I do not think darling that you need be uneasy about my cough. It is not what anyone would call much—it is even very little were not the mucous secretion so much more than in proportion to it—the principal inconvenience of it is that it is a hindrance to much talking, or reading aloud. I do not think it ever permanently gets worse. I may very likely have it a long while, perhaps always, & without its turning to consumption, for I am more & more convinced that consumption is a constitutional & not a local disease, at all events “doctored into a consumption” I will not be. I have been coming to much the same conclusion as yours about going to Clark. I never meant to continue indefinitely consulting him—I have his opinion now that tonics are the thing for my stomach & I can manage those myself. I should not go to him any more at all for the sake of anything he can prescribe, but because I feel confidence in his knowledge of the signs of chest disease, & while there seems any liability to consumption it is good to find out now & then whether one is drifting towards it or away from it. All you say about conduct in relation to him I most certainly agree in. About the time of our meeting you, dearest, are the best judge. I mentioned in one of my letters that I think the double going to Paris might be managed if really best. Unless you are mistaken about the notes which is very unlikely, a 200 fr. note has been stolen—I have sent in all 1200 fr. The last 500 fr. I sent in two letters: the first, containing a 200 fr. note you acknowledged—in the very next letter after that, I enclosed another 200 fr. & a 100 fr. of which it would appear that you received only the 100, yet I feel sure that I mentioned both in the letter following, but it does not become me to feel sure of anything, especially after I have foundthe will which I thought I had given to you,2 & found it in my desk at the I.H. with the Bramahlock,3 which I thought I had effectually searched & in which I thought it had never been. It is vexatious if the note is stolen—curious too that they did not take both notes. In any case I shall get another & send it. About the P[olitical] E[conomy] I shall write immediately to Parker for another copy. I do not intend to say anything in praise of the English associations but solely to state the fact that they are now very numerous & increasing—perhaps stating how many, according to a list which F[urnivall] gave me. Whatever I do write I will send you & it will cause no or but little delay as the thing can go to press meanwhile & alterations be made when it is in proof. The two inclosures I now send are very unlike that & one another. Powell’s4 note is rather embarrassing especially as I have not the key of the outhouse. I see two large holes, one of them going right under the wall & connecting the two premises. Kate says she never saw a rat till Monday when she saw one after Powell’s ratcatcher had driven them or made them, as he says, “retreat” to our side & established there, probably, the populous colony he complains of. You will tell me what is to be done. I wrote a note & made Haji leave it, in these words “Mr J. S. Mill is obliged to Mr Powell for his information & will have his side of the garden wall examined”: that seemed safe & uncommitting. The other note is from Trevelyan & is an appeal that I ought to respond to, but it will be difficult, & without you impossible, to write the opinion he asks for, so as to be fit to print. But he ought to be helped, for the scheme is the greatest thing yet proposed in the way of real reform & his report is as I said before,5 almost as if we had written it. I wish it were possible to delay even answering his note till I could send the draft to you & receive it back but I fear that would not do. As for news in the first place the income tax is to be doubled, for half a year only at present, but with every prospect of the same in the next half year & until the war ends.6 Secondly the election of directors has been made, & is generally good.7 They have only retained one (Astell) whom they decidedly should have rejected, & only rejected one (Cotton) whom they decidedly should have elected. Sykes & Eastwick, those I cared most about of the doubtful ones, are elected. Hogg has got in—the rejection of him was too much to hope for—but he has not been able to keep in his son in law. Bayley, Mangles, Prinsep, Shepherd, Ellice, Oliphant, were sure. The remaining five are Willock, Macnaghten, Leslie Melville, Mills & Martin Smith, the last two elected mainly because they are of the two great banking houses, but both rather useful directors. Two other bankers, Masterman the city member, & Muspratt are turned out—neither of them any loss—also Major Moore, & two named Dent & Whiteman, all of them some loss. The rest of the rejected are null or superannuated. I am now afraid lest Hogg should try for the deputy chair but I hope Mangles will, & will beat him. The gardener has put in the crops & dug all the middle of the garden & is today cutting the wall fruit trees—after today I shall not have him till I hear from you—but the week after next, I think he should dig the borders & flowerbeds. I wish I could send you some tea—& rain to lay the dust. Here it is now mild again & very pleasant. Addio con sommo amore.
Would “struck down” do for atterré?8
143.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 11 [1854]
28
My darling love I have just received your Tuesday’s letter, so I write now for the last time to Hyères, dear Hyères—it will always feel like a home to me, though it is not a place of which we should choose to make our permanent home. What you say of the dust & what we know of gnats, shew what all that coast must be except for a very few months of winter. That is one of the difficulties in our living abroad when part of the motive is a good winter climate—that the same place would be sure to be insupportable in summer, so that we require to have the means of frequent change & also could have no fixed home—as we could have at Paris or Bonn or Heidelberg if health had not to be considered. It is wise to take plenty of time for the journey & I should think the 18th not at all too early if as I suppose, Easter, with L[ily] begins with Palm Sunday. And there will probably be no reason now against travelling on account of weather—here it is quite the temperature of advanced spring—very pleasant but from its suddenness not agreeing well with me, if Clark is right. You would not suppose from my last letter that before I wrote again I should have gone again to Clark—but a new symptom is a reason for going, & mine was, night perspirations the last two nights—last night every time I dropped asleep, & this in spite of taking off bedclothes. This being one of the great indications of consumption (though also of other ailments) it was well to find out what it meant. Clark thought it was chiefly from the sudden change of weather & said that almost everybody is complaining of night perspirations, the queen among others. Whatever he may say, it is clear to me that no weather would produce any such effect on me if there were not a strong predisposition to it. He prescribed a different tonic, dispensing with vinegar & water—which I shall do or not as I like myself. I was inclined to prescribe walking, & to use the fine weather for that purpose on Sundays according to your frequent prescription of more walking which I certainly want, for the pains I consulted Bird about have all returned. Clark however recommends less instead of more exertion while this debility lasts, on that too I shall use my own judgment. I shall perhaps not go to Clark any more at all, unless I find myself getting worse. I shall write to Avignon darling & I am sorry on Lily’s account that the post office is a great way from the inns, & in a very out of the way corner. The inn seemed to me an excellent one—the best I found in the whole journey—Europe I think it was—I know it was not the Palais Royal though that also is said to be good. I will send the Examiner Poste Restante Avignon. You will not care much about it, but it may just as well go. Lily will like the cathedral & the tombs of the popes. I inclose now a 200 fr. note. I hope the other may be found but do not expect it. I inclosed in my Thursday’s letter Powell’s note about the rats—since then they have made their presence on our side of the wall very palpable—Kate shewed me this morning that they had in the night bored a passage under the door between the coal place & the scullery—& she says they now make a great uproar in the outhouse, of which I have not the key. As they never shewed themselves before no doubt Powell’s operations have driven them out of his place into ours. I do not know what it is best or even possible to do but to leave things as they are till we meet. How delightful that that will be soon—how much I shall enjoy hearing from you on the journey—you will tell me at what places to write to you. Now from my whole heart I pray that you may have in every sense of the word, the best of all possible journies. If you are as well as when we travelled from Nice to Hyères I feel no doubt of its doing you not only no harm but good. How I shall like to think of you going over the same ground as I did & staying at the same inns—but you will go I suppose by Aix & not through Toulon or Marseilles. The country will be much prettier than as I saw it—bleak & frozen in the south & covered with snow in the north. I have not yet any answer from Parker to my application for another copy of the chapter. What a rambling scambling letter. Adieu my adored.
144.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 14 [1854]
30
If my dearest one got the short letter I wrote yesterday to Marseilles,2 she knows that I am pained to think of her being uneasy about my health & that I do not think there is cause to. I have been three nights now without perspiration except a very little the night before last, though I did not adopt Clark’s sponging with vinegar & water. I did take his tonic (much the same as your quinine draught) but not so often as he said. On Sunday the day was so fine & tempting that I thought I would try walking so after working till near one at the new essay3 I started for Eltham & found out the palace4 —the approach to it & the ground just about it are most excessively pretty. I returned by a field path which joins the high road not far from Lee Lane & so completed the circuit in the most exquisite day possible in England, wanting only the Nice blueness & purity of the sky though it was equally cloudless—as it has been, day & night, though with a south wind, for a week past, till today when the rain has at last come. I was not at all tired & felt better for the walk & I shall certainly if weather permits use the remaining Sundays till we meet, or part of them, in walking, provided I have worked hard enough in the week to have earned a holiday. I still think the cough is better, nor have I much sign of stomach derangement except the white & dry tongue—the dryness I suspect has something to do with the too great mucous secretion lower down. The pains in the limbs &c. are also better—for them, & all stomach symptoms I am convinced walking is the best remedy. I do not think I mentioned the pains to Clark, or my having consulted Coulson & Bird, but it would perhaps as you say be right to do so. If C. thinks I require change of circumstances & especially treatment for chronic indigestion, the chances are that he would recommend a German watering place in the summer, which would not answer our purpose nearly so well as a winter abroad & would probably be incompatible with it unless we give up England this autumn. I do not think he thinks my lungs even threatened—it was only congestion he found on either side & very little of that. I have written at so much length to my dear one about my health not because I am thinking or feeling about it but because she is. To speak of pleasanter things, I need hardly say how heartily I feel all you say about the civil service plan5 & the contempt I feel for the little feeling shewn for it, not to speak of actual hostility. I give the ministers infinite credit for it—that is if they really adopt the whole plan, for as their bill is not yet brought in6 (it is not as you seem to think, part of the Reform Bill) we do not yet know how far they will really go; but the least they can do consistently with their speeches, will be such a sacrifice of the power of jobbing as hardly a politician who ever lived, ever yet made to the sense of right, without any public demand—it stamps them as quite remarkable men for their class & country—Of course all the jobbers are loud against them, especially newspaper editors who all now look out for places. Yet I so share your misgiving that they cannot know how great a thing they are doing, that I am really afraid to say all I feel about it till they are fully committed, lest it should do more harm than good. This was my answer to Trevelyan . . . [Here he quotes Letter 141].
Trevelyan’s answer: “You have done us a great service by the expression of your decided approbation of our plan for the reform of the English Civil Establishments; & as it is well known that you do not form your opinions lightly, I do not wish to trouble you to enter upon the details of the subject at present. If you can suggest any improvement in the more advanced stages, we shall hope to hear from you again.” This looks as if he desired support more than criticism, but it is useful as it opens a channel by which, without obtrusiveness, we may write anything we like in the way of comment on the bill hereafter & be sure of its being read by the government. They have already quoted me in favour of the plan—last night a discussion was raised about it by that true Irishman Lord Monteagle in the H. of Lords, who attacked it,7 but it was defended with real spirit & vigour by two Cabinet Ministers, Lord Granville8 & the D. of Argyle9 the former of whom mentioned as approving of it, along with Stephen10 & some others, “Mr J. Mill of the India House who is an able administrator as well as a philosophic writer”, that is the Times report.11 It is evident they are always glad to have me to quote, & we must give them plenty to quote for. By the bye, the writer of one of the leading articles in today’s Morning Post12 had evidently come hot from reading the Logic, & I am sorry to say did it no credit as a pupil for it was an article against the Jew bill.13 —I find a good deal of difficulty in adding much to the chapter of the P. Econ.14 without altering its character, which must be maintained, in the main, as it is, as something written of but not to the working classes. I think I agree in all your remarks & have adopted them almost all—but I do not see the possibility of bringing in the first two pages (from the preceding chapter)15 —I see no place which they would fit. Not having your copy, I do not know what sentence you would omit from page 330.16 I do not see how to bring in anything about short hours bills well; does it seem necessary to do so here?—& I have not yet succeeded in bringing in your remark on page 346.17 I have translated (with some omissions) all the French.18 I give on the next page all the additions I have made.19 If I make any more I will send them. I shall keep it back from Furnivall for a few days—if he is not urgent, till I hear from you.—While I am writing, in comes a German socialist20 with an introduction from Courcelle Seneuil shewing that he had not received my letter,21 & that he has changed his address. This is a bore, as it necessitates writing to him again. He also says he sent a copy of the Translation of the Pol. Ec.22 but it has not arrived. I must ask at Delizy’s for it. I found the other day to my consternation that among bookseller’s catalogues & other printed things which I found on arrival & had thrown by unopened, I had overlooked an application from the Commissioners for enquiring into the law of partnership23 asking if I still retained my opinions on limited liability & sending a long list of elaborately framed questions to be filled up with answers. I wrote apologizing for the delay, saying I was still of the same opinion & referring them to my evidence24 as containing all I had to say, excusing myself therefore from answering the questions (some of which would have given me a great deal of trouble to answer & would not have been worth it). Yesterday I had their reply saying that my opinions would be taken into consideration (I suppose the official form). By the time my darling receives this she will have had three (or four?) day’s journey25 & will be able to judge how she is able to bear it. I have been trying to make out what her stopping places will be but cannot do so satisfactorily. I suppose she will rest a little at the old city of the popes especially if the inn is as good as it seemed to me.26 How I long to hear from her on the journey, but I shall have two or three darling letters from the dear old place first. I shall always love Hyères because we have been there together as I feel us here all this time, & she has got better there. Adieu—à tous les dieux.
Additional note, in brackets, to p. 33127
[Mr Fitzroy’s Act for the better protection of women & children against assaults, is a well meant though inadequate attempt to remove the first reproach. The second is more flagrant than ever, another Reform Bill having been presented this year, which largely extends the franchise among many classes of men, but leaves all women in their existing state of political as well as social servitude.]
Page 332 near the bottom.28 “The rich in their turn are regarded as a mere prey & pasture for the poor & are the subject of demands & expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for justice or fairness in the relations between the two, is at the least as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages: for the most part their sole endeavour is to receive as much, & return as little in the shape of service, as possible.”
Page 346, continuation of note.29 “One of the most discreditable indications of a low moral condition, given of late by the English working classes, is the opposition to piece work. Dislike to piecework, except under mistaken notions, must be dislike to justice and fairness; or desire to cheat, by not giving work in proportion to the pay. Piecework is the perfection of contract; & contract, in all work, & in the most minute detail—the principle of so much pay for so much service carried to the utmost extremity—is the system, of all others, in the present state of society, most favorable to the worker, though most unfavorable to the non-worker who wishes to be paid for being idle.”
Note to p. 347.30 “According to the latest accounts which have reached us (March 1854) seven of these associations are all which are now left. But Cooperative stores (associations pour la consommation) have greatly developed themselves, especially in the S. of France, & are at least not forbidden (we know not whether discouraged) by the Government.”
Note to p. 348.31 “Though this beneficent movement has been so fatally checked in the country in which it originated, it is rapidly spreading in those other countries which have acquired, & still retain, any political freedom. It forms already an important feature in the social improvement which is proceeding at a most rapid pace in Piedmont: & in England on the 15th of Feb. of the present year 1854 there had been registered under the Ind[ustrial] & Prov[ident] Societies Act, 33 associations, 17 of which are Industrial Societies, the remainder being associations for cooperative consumption only. This does not include Scotland where also these assns are rapidly multiplying. The Societies which have registered under this new Act are only a portion of the whole. A list dated in June 1852 gives 41 assns for productive industry in E. & Sc. besides a very much greater number of flour mill societies & cooperative stores.”
145.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Mar 18 [1854]
31
Your Thursday’s letter my own darling love, has just come. As you expect to be at Lyons on the 24th or 25th or at least wish the letter to be sure of being there at that time, I do not like to write later than today. I hope you got my short letter to Marseilles & my long one to Avignon. They were written in the expectation of your not being there so soon as you now say—but still they would be, I think, in time. I sent the letter to Marseilles on the 13th, & that to Avignon on the 14th, having written my last letter to Hyères (which inclosed 200 fr.) on the 11th. You will have seen by my Avignon letter that Trevelyan does not want, at least for the present, anything more from me than he has got, namely a warm expression of approval with a readiness to write at greater length in defence & commendation of the plan—& also that they have already cited my approval in Parliament. However Trevelyan’s second note, of which I sent you a copy, leaves a complete opening for sending as you say a review of the report. I fear from the strong feeling my darling shews on the matter that she will be disappointed, but even if she had been here I do not think we could have kept him without any answer to his note till the complete review was ready, & if so the first answer however short must have expressed the warm approbation mine did.—My letter to Avignon also contained copies of all the new matter of any importance in the Chapter of the Pol. Ec. & asked what was the sentence in page 330 that you had marked to come out—but the chapter itself has arrived since & there is no sentence marked in that page. I suppose the dear one altered her mind & rubbed out the marks. I still hold to keeping it back from Furnivall till I hear your opinion of the additional matter which will be in a few days now. I am so sorry the few words I wrote to Powell2 vexed her—I was much annoyed at having to write or do anything in such a matter without having time to consult her for I know I always miss the proper thing & above all the proper tone. I shall now do at once what my dearest one recommends, that is her last recommendation. I shall make Marshall send to pick the lock of the outhouse, & shall write to Powell exactly as she says, & then send for his ratcatcher. The clock that is broken is the one in the kitchen & I shall get Kate to ask Verney’s man to send some one as you suggest & I will take care that the gardener only hoes the flowerbeds. Russell has today brought in his bill for the reform of the University of Oxford:3 it will if carried make what will be thought a great change & in every thing which it touches the change will be for the better—but nothing will make a Church of England university a good place of education, except comparatively. The bill for the civil service is not yet brought in4 —but I quite expect that it will go the full length of the report, that is, to make the competition for the first admission into a public office open to every young man between certain ages, without any previous nomination.—It is not proposed that promotion in the offices, or the admission of persons not already in the service to any of the higher situations, should go by competition—& indeed there would be much difficulty in managing that—for instance I hardly know what examination would shew the fittest person for an office like mine at the I.H. Seniority however is no longer to be the ground of promotion to offices requiring talent, & there is an attempt to make merit the sole ground of promotion—the thing most relied on however being that as the clerks &c will no longer be protégés of the heads of offices or of their political or other friends there will be much less motive to favor them for other reasons than merit than there now is. This is the very day she leaves Hyères, the blessed one. I hope (& feel sure) it is a very different day there from here, where it is most gloomily raining, though the morning was fine. The last two days have been bright & much colder with northerly winds, but today the wind is again south. I am truly happy that she is coming nearer. I look forward with the greatest interest to hearing from her on the route & am sorry I cannot write again till I write to Paris. Writing to her is the next greatest pleasure to hearing from her. Since I wrote last the cough & expectoration have been worse, then better again. There is very little cough, the expectoration is much the more prominent of the two. There is now however, I certainly think, less of that in quantity—but there was again a little blood this morning. I feel much less than my usual strength these two or three days, probably from some temporary cause (though I am taking quinine) not weaker however than I have several times felt when nothing seriously ailed me. Clark says I do not lose flesh, & that is also my own opinion.—I wrote another letter to Courcelle Seneuil telling him about the first5 & saying over again much more briefly what it said. Adieu my own—no words can tell how precious one.
146.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 20 [1854]
32
I wrote to my precious one at Lyons on Saturday 18th foolishly thinking that it would be too late to write today—but Lyons is so much nearer than Hyères especially counting the railway, that I shall be quite safe in writing today: & it is the more necessary I should do so as I stupidly said nothing on Saturday about so important & interesting a matter as Chapman’s proposal.2 Because the letter in which you spoke of it was not the last letter but the one before, I fancied I had answered it already, & only on thinking yesterday discovered that I had not. I sent to Chapman the letter you drafted, exactly as it was, only choosing the phrases I preferred where you gave the choice of two. I think that to refuse was best, on the whole, for I should not like any more than you that that paper should be supposed to be the best we could do, or the real expression of our mind on the subject. This is not supposed of a mere review article written on a special occasion as that was, but would perhaps be so if the same thing were put out, years after, under our own auspices as a pamphlet. I only wish the better thing we have promised to write were already written instead of being in prospect.3 In any case the article will of course be in any collection4 or rather selection of articles which we may either publish in our life, or leave for publication afterwards, & whichever we do it shall be preceded by a preface which will shew that much of all my later articles, & all the best of that one, were, as they were, my Darling’s. That creature Dickens, whose last story, Bleak House,5 I found accidentally at the London Library the other day & took home & read—much the worst of his things, & the only one of them I altogether dislike—has the vulgar impudence in this thing to ridicule rights of women. It is done too in the very vulgarest way—just the stile in which vulgar men used to ridicule “learned ladies” as neglecting their children & household &c.6 I wrote a good spell at the new Essay7 yesterday, & hope to get a good deal done to it this week. But I have not yet got to the part of the subject which you so beautifully sketched, having begun with examining the more commonplace view of the subject, the supposed necessity of religion for social purposes as a sanction for morality. I regard the whole of what I am writing or shall write as mere raw material, in what manner & into what to be worked up to be decided between us—& I am much bent upon getting as much of this sort written as possible—but above all I am anxious about the Life, which must be the first thing we go over when we are together. I did not get a walk yesterday as I hoped to have done—instead of the delightful warm sunshine of last Sunday it was a violent cold east wind with frequent heavy showers. If it had been fine I think a walk would have done me good, though I do not feel strong enough to attempt a long one. I do not expect to get any more good from Clark, but have a very great inclination to see Ramadge—though not unless you darling approve. I wish you could see his book.8 I wrote to you what I thought of it—& seeing him does not necessarily imply following his advice. Though his book is specially on consumption, it shews much experience in, & I should think understanding of, chest complaints in general. Be sure my angel when you write to tell me how you are in every respect. You have not told me lately. How I long to see you & be with you, my beloved.
147.
TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1
- East India House
March 27, 1854
Dear Sir
I am sorry to have kept these sheets2 so long, and to return them now with so few additions and improvements. But after much turning over the subject in my mind, I find that to say the things I wished to say, in such a manner as to be of any use, would alter the whole plan and character of the chapter, which being written of but not to the working classes, had better be read by them with that understanding, and is unfit to form a good foundation for a direct appeal to the working classes themselves. I have therefore made only the alterations which I think indispensable—and I shall be happy if, such as it is, its republication should do any of the good you hope from it.
I am Dear Sir
Very truly yours
J. S. Mill
148.
TO HARRIET MILL1
March 29 [1854]
33
I write this my own darling, because from her Dijon letter received today I am afraid she will be disappointed if she does not find a Poste Restante letter at Paris. I had not intended to write till I heard from her where she would be staying at Paris—as I cannot help thinking that Poste Restante letters at that great J. J. Rousseau office must be very uncertain in the delivery & though I have much to say, both great & small, it would be particularly disagreeable either that you should not get it or that any one else should. The letter to Marseilles being written with considerable expectation of what did in fact happen, contained nothing which it mattered that any one should see & therefore I have not written for it. I fear you will have enquired at Paris for this letter before it has arrived—& as I shall so soon hear from you of a safer place to write to I will postpone everything that it would take long to write. You cannot think darling, or rather you can very well think, how much I enjoyed your dear letters on the journey & above all the pleasure it gave me to know that you had stood the journey so well, as is proved by your having got on so fast. That you have recovered so much strength is unspeakably delightful. If I could be at ease respecting your life & health whatever happens, I should have the greatest joy I am capable of. As I shall perhaps hear from you tomorrow I will cut this short here saying only the utmost love.
149.
TO JAMES BENTHAM MILL1
[March 31, 1854]
. . . what is the original seat of his disorder, and though I have little trust in their theories I have a great deal in the experience of those who really have experience of the same kind of complaint.
I do not know how far you take interest in passing events. The time is very near when the new arrangements of the India Act2 will come into operation. For my part, except the throwing open the civil service to competition, all the changes appear to me to be for the worse. It is the most faulty piece of work these ministers3 have turned out—whom otherwise I prefer to any ministers England has yet had.
yrs affy
J. S. Mill
150.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- India House
April 3.
1854
Dear Chadwick
I have read your paper2 carefully twice through & have annotated it in pencil, sometimes suggesting alterations in the expression, at other times only indicating where they seem to be required. Your suggestions are likely to be very useful—but I think you undervalue what can be done by a general examination. I do not find in Trevelyan’s report3 that it is proposed to confine the examination to Oxford & Cambridge acquirements. All depends on having the examinations such as to afford a real test of mental capacity & good intellectual habits—then the list of eligibles being made out on that principle, each office might select from the list according to some test for the special acquirements it particularly needs—or, when special acquirements & those only are needed, as in some of the cases you mention, it might be allowed to take these from anywhere; & not solely from the list.
Everything depends on having a really good kind of general examination.
I need not say I shall be glad to see you.
yrs truly
J. S. Mill
151.
TO HARRIET MILL1
April 3. [1854]
34
I did write to Paris poste restante my own darling—I had not intended to do so because I thought it so very probable that at that great J. J. Rousseau place you would never get it—but as I found by your letter from Dijon that you were expecting one, I wrote on Wedy the 29th, directed Mad. J. S. Mill, saying however very little because I avoided saying anything which I should regret the miscarriage of. I have been anxiously hoping for another letter all the week & fearing lest there should be a worse reason for its not coming than there was. I am so happy that you have accomplished the journey with so little fatigue or disagreeable. The bleeding of the nose is rather a favourable circumstance than otherwise, since it shews that even when the vessels are overfull, they tend to discharge themselves otherwise than through the lungs. A propos I had a visit lately from a rather elderly American, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, Carleton by name,2 who called on me on account of the Logic & of my father’s Analysis (the P.E. he did not seem to have heard of) & seemed chiefly interested in the doctrine of liberty & necessity, thinking I had conceded too much to the free will side, & I had to explain to him that though I object to the word necessity I am entirely with the doctrine meant by it & am so understood by everybody except him & am attacked for it. On my asking him the usual questions about what he does here, how long he meant to stay &c, he told me that he had been long going about Europe for health, that for 18 years he had been subject to hemorrhage from the lungs, coming on at uncertain times, that the medical men say his lungs are tuberculated, but that he has had all that time & has still very tolerable health. You may imagine that this gave me great pleasure to hear. The only thing that I could find he did was to take cod liver oil, & he told me wonders about what Dr Williams,3 one of the great authorities as you know, says of the success of the oil in the Consumption Hospital, that a great majority recover or are greatly improved in health: he told me the numbers, but I have forgotten them. I have tried since to get Dr Williams’ paper on the subject, but I find it is in a medical journal & I cannot discover in what number.4 It is a great pity my own darling that cod liver oil does not agree with you, but I have the strongest hopes that you will do very well without it. I have but a poor account to give of myself: the cough it is true is gone—I do not now cough once in a week. But the expectoration continues & is of a worse kind—it is dislodged by a mere hem, & brought up by a mere action of the throat without coughing. I have more fever, & am weaker, much, than I was a month ago. I do not however think that I am now losing strength, or if I lose one day I gain another. Yesterday (a complete summer day as most now are) I took a longer walk than the Eltham one,5 in the direction of Bromley—a very pretty walk it was—was out two hours walking fast (always the best for me) & was not the least tired, nor should I have been so I believe if I had gone twice as far. I felt as if I could do anything, while today again I feel quite weak. But the worst is that we have lost our mainstay, so far as my health is concerned—reliance on the sincerity of Clark’s assurances. You may perhaps remember that the first time I went to him I had a suspicion that he did not tell me all he thought—but his more strenuous assurances the second time removed my suspicion: now however it is not a suspicion but a certainty—& the consequence is that I cannot trust anything he says that is favourable. However, time will shew, & soon, what we have to expect. If I could but be sure of your life & health whatever happens, I should care little for anything else.—My darling can judge how interested & pleased I was with all those nice letters she wrote on the journey. When I got her approval of the alterations in the chapter, I inserted a saving clause about piece work6 & sent the whole to Furnivall who promises a proof shortly. I have completed an essay on the usefulness of religion7 —such a one as I can write though very far inferior to what she could. My poor mother I am afraid is not in a good way—as to health I mean. In her usual letter about receiving her pension she said: “I have been a sufferer for nearly three months—I have only been out of doors twice” &c “I have suffered & am still suffering great pain. I supposed the pain in my back was rheumatism, but it is not—it proceeds from the stomach, from which I suffer intense pain as well as from the back. Mr Quain8 has been attending me during the time, & he & Sir Jas Clark have had a consultation & I am taking what they prescribe—I can do no more.” And again in answer to my answer—“I am just the same, but it is not rheumatism that I am suffering from, but my liver. I thought it was odd that my stomach should be so much affected from rheumatism. Sir J. Clark is coming here at the end of the week to have another examination & consultation. I cannot write much as I am so very weak.” This looks very ill I fear—very like some organic disease. Mrs King9 she says is a little better & is probably coming to England. I told her what you said a propos of Mrs King’s illness. She wrote “I hope Mrs Mill is still going on well.” There is a kind of bathos in dropping down from such serious matters into trifles, but as trifling things must be done even when serious ones are doing, so they may be written about. The event proved you to be quite right about the Powell affair:10 In answer to my note he sent the ratcatcher’s address & offered to send him, but I made no answer & wrote to the man myself. Meanwhile he came again to Powell’s & after finding one other rat, came on our premises unasked & Powell also—a piece of great impudence on P’s part—but Kate very rightly would not allow them to do anything without orders from me. The ratcatcher came the next day in consequence of my note to him & searched all he thought necessary but without finding a single rat—so that it is plain there were none, but the one which he drove from Powell’s & which afterwards returned there & was caught. I had two notes from P. subsequent to the one I sent you but did not answer either of these. It is of no use transcribing them here. Adieu my darling—keep up your spirits. I will write again as soon as I hear from you & happily it does not take long now.
152.
TO HARRIET MILL1
April 5 [1854]
35
Your dearest kindest letter came today my own beloved, & first touching Clark—I should not my darling have used such a word as certainty about his not having told me his real opinion, if I had no reason for knowing it but a surmise of my own grounded on my notion of my symptoms. But what there is to say on this subject as well as on my health generally had better be said than written, if I am to have the happiness of seeing her almost immediately. About my going, I see no reason against it in the state of my general health but an unlucky complication has occurred in the shape of a boil on the chest, nearly under the left shoulder, which it seems is of a bad kind, approaching to carbuncle, & might be dangerous if the proper treatment of it were intermitted or if I were to go away from medical advice—therefore it seems necessary to wait the uncertain but probably small number of days necessary for getting rid of this, before I venture to leave—& the choice is between waiting that time, or my darling’s crossing without me. I cannot at all judge which is best as I do not know how capable she is of crossing. She alone can judge—but I am most anxious that she should not come if she is really dreading it much. If you decide, darling, to wait a few days till I am better able to come, I will write to you all I know about my health & all that I am doing with regard to it. But you must not think my angel that I am in low spirits—it is true I have a much worse opinion of my health than I had, but that is not being in low spirits nor am I at all so. I know & think nothing now that I did not know & think three weeks ago, but you did not think my letters to Lyons shewed low spirits. I do not at all like the idea of Lily’s losing the semaine sainte at Paris.—Do not think I am triste my own love or that it is the least necessary on my account that you should come directly.—I am feeling provoked by something in the H. of Commons last night. A creature named Bowyer2 has obtained leave to bring in a bill to abolish actions for damages in case of breach of the marriage contract & to make it a criminal offence instead—in order as he says to be like all the Continental countries—& Fitzroy3 (Palmerston4 was absent) though he guarded himself & the Govt from being understood to concur, yet was rather favourable in tone than the contrary. It is mixed up with things ad captandum such as making the wife a defendant as well as the man that she may be heard in her own behalf & the two men not allowed as they are now to blacken her character unopposed. But we see how touching these subjects brings bad novelties as well as good. The Post attacks Bowyer for it,5 contemptuously enough, of course not on the right grounds, though as good as could be expected from ordinary conservatives—& bids him instead of this nonsense, take up the recommendations of the Divorce Commission to make divorce easier.6 —I want my angel to tell me what should be the next essay written. I have done all I can for the subject she last gave me. What exquisite weather. I do hope hers is equally fine. Adieu for the present, darling.
153.
TO MRS. JAMES MILL1
- India House
April 5 [1854]
My dear Mother
I received on Saturday another of Mary’s2 vulgar and insolent letters. The impertinence appears the only motive for writing them and I cannot waste my time in answering any more of them. In this she affects to think that I wish to see her. Will you tell her, that neither I nor my wife will keep up any acquaintance with her whatever.
I hope you are gaining strength and will soon be quite well again. When you are able to write will you let me know how you are. I need not say that we shall always be glad to see you.
yrs affy
J.S.M.
154.
TO HARRIET MILL1
April 8. [1854]
36
My own blessed darling, I should not have written to you in a way which was sure to make you anxious & uncomfortable, if it were not that writing the whole truth would I know make you much more so. Even now I would much rather that what I have to tell could have been postponed till you had accomplished that crossing but any more reticence now would probably alarm you as much as telling all. The “all” then is that it is Clark’s own confession which made me say that he had been insincere with me—about three weeks ago, soon after I wrote to Avignon, he admitted to me that there is organic disease of the lungs & that he had known this all along. My dearest angel, almost all the pain this was to me either at the time or since, was the thought of the pain it would give you. He added many things by way of encouragement—that it would not necessarily shorten my life—that only a small part of the summit of both lungs was affected—that the stethoscope did not shew any progress of the disease since he first examined the chest two months before—that from the age at which the attack came & the gradual manner I had a very good chance for its becoming chronic &c &c. to all which I attach just as much importance & no more, as my own judgment would give to it if he had said nothing. I waited a week & then went to him again when I found that he could do absolutely nothing for me, except recommend cod liver oil, which I have taken ever since. Finding this I went to Ramadge,2 & had a long conversation with him, which ended in my determining to try his treatment. If my precious one had been here I should not have done so unless she approved but even if I had written to ask her, it would have been useless unless she had read his book. He told me who some of the people were whose cases are mentioned in the book—persons of all ranks & classes, some of them of families whom I know—Colonel Astell,3 son of one India Director4 & brother of another5 —a grandson6 of David Ricardo—a son of Burroughes7 the member for Norfolk—the family of Law8 the recorder of London, three of whom had died of consumption before he was consulted; four others all had the disease & he cured them all. He shewed me numbers of letters from people whom he had restored not merely to health but to strength & fitness for all active pursuits though many of them far advanced in consumption; some had been patients of Clark, Chambers,9 Watson10 &c. Wakley11 it seems believes in him & recommends patients to him. Altogether I find it impossible to doubt that he has effected many very remarkable cures: & his theory seems to me very rational. He says, all medical men have examined the lungs of people who have died of consumption, but very few have done what he has done all his life, examined carefully the lungs of persons who have died of other than pulmonary diseases—& this shewed to him by a large experience, 1st the immense number of persons who have lived the ordinary time having tubercles in their lungs, or the marks of having had them formerly. 2nd, that these are always persons in whom the part of the lungs which remains sound is more than ordinarily voluminous. 3rd that they have generally had some conformation or some morbid affection which has impeded the free exit of air from the lungs & therefore by partially imprisoning the air has distended the lungs & enlarged the chest. Then it occurred to him to try if this could be imitated artificially, & he found that by the use of the inhaling tube which he invented the dimensions even of the chest itself were often greatly increased & by the expansion of the lungs cavities actually formed were closed up, & the further deposition of tuberculous matter stopped, on the same principle in which tubercles are never found in the muscles of voluntary motion & on which Clark accounts in his book12 for tubercles being always deposited first & most in the upper lobes, because these are the least expanded by the act of respiration. His paradox about cough is not so much of a paradox when understood. Laennec13 & Louis,14 the two greatest authorities on lung disease, both strenuously maintain (as I know not from Ramadge but from my own reading) that cough not arising from consumption never does nor can lead to it; but they allow & so does Ramadge that it may call it from a latent state into an active—he merely says that the tubercles must have preexisted—that a bad inflammatory cough often accelerates their softening & seems to cause the disease—but that in itself the thickening of the membrane of the air passages by catarrh is a counteractive & often a preservative against consumption & he shews striking facts in support of this. So there being nothing absurd in his theory, & his array of actual cures in very bad cases being extremely striking, I thought there was ground for hope though not for faith. He spoke with great confidence of curing me—said that he seldom had so favourable a case or one in which there was so small an amount of disease & now when I have been following his instructions for a fortnight he thinks or professes to think that I am decidedly better & shall not only be cured but soon. I need hardly say that this is so much vain wind to me & will be so until I see it verified. But I think he is a good physician—a good prescriber. Though the inhaler is his sheet anchor, he does a great many other things to check the disease & support the system until the inhaler has time to act: he gives stomachics, tonics & slight sedatives, & fights against the hectic fever by applying a single leech now & then. I have done this four times & if it has done anything it has done good, for I have not grown at all weaker in the last ten days. Before that, I seemed to get weaker daily—but Ramadge said that this was partly from the liver, that I was in a sort of semi-jaundiced state & indeed my yellowness shewed it—now this he has corrected, not by mercury which he thinks the death warrant of a consumptive patient (though Clark gives it without scruple) as it hastens the softening of tubercles in great numbers at once. R. has prescribed taraxacum & certainly to all appearance he has made my digestion better than it has been for a long time—unless it is the cod liver oil which has done it. R. thinks nothing of that—it seems to me that a little acidity which I still sometimes have is connected with the cod liver oil. As to the pulmonary disease, R. asked to see the expectoration, which Clark never did—& having seen it, says it contains tuberculous matter, as indeed is very evident to myself. So that as there is softening going on, I must expect, as he says, to be feverish & weak but this will not continue if the formation of fresh tubercle is stopped, which he expects will be the effect of the inhalation. He reckons it a very favourable sign that there is so little constitutional disturbance when there is softening & expectoration of tuberculous matter taking place. As for the boil I told you of, I shewed it to him when it was only beginning & he thought it an ordinary boil—then again three days after when it had grown large & ugly & he said at once it was a carbuncle & very dangerous unless taken in time. He at once opened it, told me how to poultice it, & it is now rapidly getting well. He did not think at first but does think now that this boil is partly a tuberculous deposit. I tell you all this, darling, at so much length, that you may not think I am risking anything by following Ramadge’s treatment—In all minor things I am persuaded he does me good—while Clark did nothing & thought he could do nothing but leave me to nature. Of the chances of his curing the disease as he so confidently predicts I can no more judge than I could at first. There are no signs of my being better except my not being worse—but I could not expect any while there is softening going on—that he does not pretend that he can arrest. Whether he is right will soon appear however as he predicts great improvement in another fortnight. The man has a very quiet manner & has not, to my thinking, the air either of what vulgar people call an enthusiast, or a quack. But he has a way of evading anything one says to which he cannot give a satisfactory answer—& then he hardly admits that his plan can fail if properly tried, & persevered in. I am inclined to think that he does not generally know of the failures, as those in whose case the plan fails give over consulting him & he loses sight of them. But it evidently often succeeds—every time I have been to him he has shewn me more letters received that morning, always containing more or less evidence of success. I think it was right to try him & I hope you will think so too.—I do not, darling, feel at all unable to come over to her—I could do most of what R. recommends there as well as here—but if she is fit & able to cross there seems no sufficient object in it—if she was not I would go over directly. I sent a note at once to Haji about the cheque book but he instead of writing himself, got a cheque book & brought it to me—so I inclose two blank cheques—but would it not be better that I should send French notes as before? This long letter is all facts & no feelings—but you will know what the feelings are—the utmost love & wish to live solely for your dear sake & for our objects. I am not the least depressed in spirits, probably because I have hardly any of the sensation of ill health. I wish I could be sure that you would suffer no more than I do. Bless her!
155.
TO HARRIET MILL1
April 10. [1854]
37
My precious! my beloved! what a joy it is to read such a letter & how relieved I feel by her knowing the worst of this business—though that is a selfish feeling too when it causes her so much pain. I am most anxious my darling to know how you are—& that you should be a great deal better before you venture that odious crossing. You will soon, darling, I know, feel calm again, for what is there that can happen to us in such a world as this that is worth being disturbed about when one is prepared for it?—except intense physical pain, but that there is no fear of in this case. I am sometimes surprised at my own perfect tranquillity when I consider how much reason I have to wish to live, but I am in my best spirits, & what I wrote even in the week after Clark’s announcement before I had seen Ramadge, is written with as much spirit & I had as much pleasure in writing it as anything I ever wrote. It is the greatest pleasure to me that you think as you do about Ramadge & his plans, even on my short & imperfect explanation—though I could not doubt that what struck one of us as being good would seem so to the other on sufficient explanation. I think it is clear that his notions are right & that his treatment at least works in the right direction: whether with sufficient efficacy to stop the disease, is the only doubt. I have hitherto done all he recommended. (I breathe through his tube three times a day for half an hour each time—that seems very little does it not? but he thinks it enough) with one exception—he always urges me to get another more complex & expensive apparatus to use in the evenings, which combines with the principle of the tube—the inhalation of the vapour of herbs—camomile, marsh mallow & others—but I have not done this because it evidently is not essential to his plans—nor do I see well the good it can do—he says it is strengthening & soothing. If you advise, however, I will try it. It has long been known that many people live to be old with tubercles but R. says nobody before him had the least idea how many. He thinks half the people who go about have had tubercles. I myself have had them before without knowing it & recovered, for the incident which produced the éclaircissement with Clark was my coughing up a chalky concretion which I at once knew must be the saline part of an old tubercle, which had been cured by absorption. As for Clark’s not asking to see the expectoration—he evidently had made up his mind as to the case from the first day—was convinced that though nature might save me, art could not—& preferred to say nothing which might render me more inquisitive & put him to the cost of additional falsehoods. I continue not at all weaker—though varying from day to day. Yesterday I took a walk nearly twice as long as last Sunday—& though I did not feel quite as vigorous when I went out as I did the former time, I am sure I am the better for the walk. It was a splendid & very hot day & I returned just tired enough to make sitting down a rest. I am stronger & better today after it than I was last Monday. Clark recommended as much exercise in the open air as I could take without fatigue. R. also recommends exercise in the open air, cautioning me however against fatigue. I had no idea what pretty hilly country one soon gets into in the direction of Bromley. I go to & from the I.H. as usual & I think it good for me rather than the contrary. I go in the usual 2d class which are close & give me the same command of window as the first class & the only precaution I use is to go backward. The boil seems extirpated & the place has only to heal. R. thinks as you do that it was a favorable circumstance as to the pulmonary disease. I now always breakfast at home & go out to eat something in the middle of the day—I find this agrees better with my stomach. I send the important pages of the April time bill2 & also the Examiner which, to its disgrace, supports the creature Bowyer.3 The papers today announce that the ministers have appointed a Commission to draw up regulations for the competitive examination for the India civil service—of the four Commissioners,4 three are acquaintances—& as one of those is Lord Ashburton5 I suppose I shall be applied to for an opinion.6 The others are Macaulay, John Lefevre,7 & Jowett,8 an Oxford liberal & great auxiliary of Trevelyan. I do not know that there is anything more to tell at present my precious, but only my fondest love.
156.
TO HARRIET MILL1
April 11 [1854]
38
I have your note this morning my own darling love. Pray my darling do not attempt the crossing till you feel better—much better. I am going on here with everything that can be done & your presence is not at all necessary, pleasant as it will be. I saw Ramadge again yesterday. If one could but trust what those people say, when they wish to give encouragement, I am doing very well; for he says the sounds of respiration indicate a marked improvement & that he is certain of a perfect & rapid cure. But he wishes so much to think so, & to persuade me of it, that I do not feel that what he says can be relied on. I am quite certain however that I am not now growing weaker, but, if anything, a little less weak, & I think too that I have a little less of the hectic fever, but not sufficiently so to build any decisive inference on. You are no doubt aware that it is not uncommon for these symptoms to abate when the first crop of tubercles have softened & been discharged—the patient then gains flesh & strength & there is an interval before any more tubercles soften & so there is an ebbing & flowing of the disease, but each time an additional portion of the lungs is made useless, so that at last one does not get better, but dies because one has spent one’s capital—this however is often an affair of several years—witness George2 —Clark says it was astonishing that he lived, for he had a large cavity in his lungs already before he went to Madeira. But Ramadge is persuaded that by his treatment the deposition of fresh tubercles may be prevented: & though successive liquefactions of old ones at intervals from one another, often happen to his patients, he maintains that his treatment closes up the cavities if any which are left by their discharge—and I am quite satisfied that he does very often effect this, though it must no doubt (though he does not admit it) be very uncertain whether he can do so in any individual case. In any case however I feel sure that his is as you say the best mode to assist nature—& I cannot but think that my not getting weaker for nearly a fortnight while a considerable quantity of softening is going on, & not having more general derangement of health than I have, if it is not owing to his treatment is at least a favourable indication of the chances which nature holds out.—I am sorry to say darling I had two notes this morning from Clara & Mary both saying that my mother is very ill—one says that Clark & the other medical man Quain call her disease enlargement of the liver, the other tumour in the liver & that they think very seriously of it though not expecting immediate danger. I need not send the notes as you will see them so soon & now darling adieu as you will not care to hear about any minor matters at present—bless you my own perfect & perfectly loved one.
157.
TO DR. HENRY CECIL GURNEY1
- I[ndia] H[ouse]
[April, 1854]
My dear Sir—
I am sure you will like to hear how we are going on. My wife & daughter have just got home2 after having made a very easy journey from Hyères, alone for I was not well enough to fetch them3 as I hoped to have done. My wife has continued in extremely delicate health ever since the illness at Nice4 in which evidently the lungs were much concerned. Though she does not recover any strength she has had no return of the attack.5 I have only lately lost the cough I had at Nice but the cause of it still continues. I am under a careful & minute system of medical treatment which I hope in the course of the summer will produce a change for the better. If you shd be in England this year we hope we shall see you. My wife & Helen desire many very kind regards and I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
158.
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NEOPHYTE WRITERS’ SOCIETY1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
April 23. 1854
Sir,—
I have received your letter of 11th of April, in which you do me the honor to request that I will become a member of the Honorary Council of an association termed the N[eophyte] W[riters’] Society.
So far as I am able to collect the objects of the Society from the somewhat vague description given of them in the Prospectus, I am led to believe that it is not established to promote any opinions in particular; that its members are bound together only by the fact of being writers, not by the purposes for which they write; that their publications will admit conflicting opinions with equal readiness; & that the mutual criticism which is invited will have for its object the improvement of the writers merely as writers, & not the promotion, by means of writing, of any valuable object.
Now I set no value whatever on writing for its own sake & have much less respect for the literary craftsman than for the manual labourer except so far as he uses his powers in promoting what I consider true & just. I have on most of the subjects interesting to mankind, opinions to which I attach importance & which I earnestly desire to diffuse; but I am not desirous of aiding the diffusion of opinions contrary to my own; & with respect to the mere faculty of expression independently of what is to be expressed, it does not appear to me to require any encouragement. There is already an abundance, not to say superabundance, of writers who are able to express in an effective manner the mischievous commonplaces which they have got to say. I would gladly give any aid in my power towards improving their opinions; but I have no fear that any opinions they have will not be sufficiently well expressed; nor in any way should I be disposed to give any assistance in sharpening weapons when I know not in what cause they will be used.
For these reasons I cannot consent that my name should be added to the list of writers you send me.
I have the honor to be
Sir yr obt Sert
159.
TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1
[May 23. 1854]
My dear Sir
I have as you requested written a longer letter on the plan for the reorganisation of the civil service & addressed it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.2 I have been much disgusted, less at the direct attacks on the plan, frivolous & interested as they are, than at the cold reception of it by those who ought to know better. It is an instance, along with the rejection of the Scotch Education Bill3 & many others, how much the present Government is in advance of the popular mind on most important subjects.
160.
TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
May 31. 1854
My dear Sir—
I am sorry that a part of what I felt bound to say (in a letter signed with my name)2 respecting the scheme of examinations circulated with your report, should seem to you likely to be injurious. But I hope you will not ascribe it to amour propre when I say, that I should much prefer withdrawing the letter to the omission of that passage.3 In substance it is simply an assertion of what I understand to be the avowed principle of the present Government, religious equality, a principle now very generally professed, but usually with a mental reservation of certain exceptions to it. I hold that there ought to be no exceptions & when a rule is proposed which would amount to exclusion from the public service on religious grounds, it is a matter of conscience & duty with me not to express approbation of the plan, without expressing in an equally decided manner how entirely I disapprove of such an appendage to it. Even without the proposed rule, there will be much danger lest in carrying the plan into operation the so called religious element should be allowed to assume such a predominance as to be practically a cause of exclusion: but when I see a religious test actually proposed, I must be excused for saying, that the advocacy of those whom it would exclude should either be dispensed with altogether, or allowed to be given under a protest against the exclusion.
I am my dr Sir yrs vy truly
To Sir C. E. Trevelyan
161.
TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1
- Blackheath
June 6. 1854
My dear Sir—
It is with great regret that I yield to your objection to a sentence which I think is required in justice to those who dissent from creeds. I have now weakened it so much that I hope it will not be found too strong for the public mind.
162.
TO MRS. JAMES MILL1
Blackheath Park June 9. 1854.
My dear Mother—
I hope you are feeling better than when I saw you last week & that you continue free from pain. I write to say that I am going immediately to the Continent by the urgent recommendation of Clark who has been pressing me to do so for some time past & though I expect to return in a few weeks it will probably be to leave again soon after. I wish again to remind you in case it has not already been done how desirable it is that some one who is fixed in England should be named executor to your will, either instead of me, which I shd prefer, or as well as myself.
My wife sends her kindest wishes & regrets that her weak health makes it difficult for her to come to see you as she would otherwise have done. Ever my dear mother affectionately yours2
J.S.M.
163.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Royal Hotel St Helier
June 11. [1854]
My own darling love, I write a day sooner than we expected as I find that the mail leaves here tomorrow instead of Tuesday—a bad arrangement since it must make two sets of mail steamers necessary when one set would suffice. I had an excellent passage, except that we did not arrive till 11 o’clock, being 10½ hours. The tide was against us all the way & the wind south. I felt so sick whenever I attempted to get up, that I did not go on deck—but as this boat is made in the American fashion with the cabin on deck (the ladies’ cabin is below as usual—contrary to the usual practice of giving to women what is thought the best) I could see out of the cabin windows. It was a dull threatening morning. I saw the French coast to the left, a long low headland apparently a good way off, & Alderney very near on the other side—looking a bare green rising ground, not at all bold, & less in size than the part of the I. of Wight between Ryde & St Helen’s. We went outside Jersey, coasting the west side & then round to the south—parts of this were very rocky & fine on the sea beach & in the sea, but the island looked poor. The water was so low when we arrived that although there are two fine high stone piers, we had to land in small boats. I had been told of many inns & could not discover which was best—This was one of them & as it seemed to have a view I came here—but it is a poor inn, not very clean, at most passable. The vivres however are good. I have just dined at the table d’hote which is a real table d’hote, the landlord presiding. The cookery is all English—all things seem earlier than in England, new potatoes, peas, & the gooseberries quite large. The town is poorly situated, on the side of a harbour ugly as all harbours are (except Dieppe) au fond of a larger bay than I should have thought existed here. It is much more an English than a French town—I have heard nobody but boys in the streets speak French—& two thirds of the names over the shops are English—but then it is true half the shops have no names at all. It is quite like an English country town & the roads about are full of English second rate villas with a few first rate. The town is large—said to have 33,000 inhabitants, the whole island having only 60,000. I see nothing tempting either in the town or the neighbourhood—I have walked a great deal about the place & found some plants. Tomorrow I shall try to get conveyance to the chief show places of the island. As far as I can yet see it is generally bare of trees, though one or two well wooded ravines intersect it from the head of the bay on which the town stands. One cannot help comparing it with the Isle of Wight to which it seems quite infinitely inferior. The chief feature of it seems to be shady lanes. I have got some notion of prices from an old soldier who has been gardener to several of the Colonels of engineers here & from a Mr Williams at the table d’hote who seemed to be looked on as something of an authority. Beef & mutton are 8d, best butter 10½d, the pound (of butter) equal to 18 oz English. The butter at the inn is tolerable & intensely yellow. Tea & coffee are brought from the warehouses in England not having paid duty, so the price must be the same as in England minus the duty. Bread about the same as in England. I suppose house rent is low. Had a beautiful afternoon for my walk & it is now a fine evening—I shall walk again after putting in this letter. I am as well darling as I could expect to be, & in tolerably good cue for walking—perhaps by & by I shall be so for writing—but as yet I feel as if I should not wish to write a thing except letters to my dearest one. I already seem to have been an age parted from her—but it will be all for the best if it does me any good. I never have been out of spirits since my illness but at the prospect of leaving her & now I begin looking forward to the reunion—bless her, ever blessed one.
164.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- St Helier
June 13 [1854]
2
Tuesday evening, darling, sees me still at this place for the steamer which was to have gone to St Malo today at 12 went on an excursion to Alderney yesterday & had not got back here at 5 o’clock, today, probably on account of the very rough weather. It is supposed that it will go to St Malo tomorrow morning. In the meantime I have lost what would have been a very rough & disagreeable passage but it does not matter, as I have not at all exhausted this place, which gains very much on better acquaintance. Yesterday & today began with driving showers, but turned to beautifully fine afterwards though now in the evening it is raining again. I was advised yesterday to go by an omnibus which makes the tour of the island stopping a while at the principal show places—but it turned out that the omnibuses had not yet started for the season, & as nobody wanted to go except four people from this inn, the omnibus owner sent a carriage instead. I felt very odd with my three companions, a middle aged man from Manchester & two young men. The middle aged man was very ignorant, the young men less so, one of them knew something of chemistry, the other of geology & they all liked walking. We went across to the north coast & saw the greater part of it, walking a good deal; & I had a six miles walk in the evening besides; to a tower on an old barrow planted with trees, from which the whole island is visible. Today I was kept dangling after the steamer till one (walking about however) but from one till ½ past 4 I went out, a most beautiful excursion, half an hour by omnibus round the bay, the same back, the other 2½ hours the prettiest walk in the island. The character of the island is table land very much intersected by deep green hollows with meadow at the bottom & wood up the sides—but no very fine trees—a coast very much indented & abounding in promontories which reminded me of the Riviera, wanting the mountain heights. I have made a good many excellent captures of plants. The experiment seems to answer thus far, for my strength is satisfactory & my health (as usual) improved by the much walking—the strength is encouraging for the recovery of flesh: for if the nerves are improved for one purpose they are likely to be so for another. But I have been & still am annoyed with pain under the right shoulder blade & between the shoulders. I have written to Clark to ask him if I should put on a blister. I applied a strong mustard poultice last night but from the awkwardness of the place could not do it myself, but found a chemist who came at night, made it & put it on—his name is Trueman & he is a true man for he gave me two ounces more of mustard & only charged a shilling altogether. I do not think this place can be cheaper than Devonshire except in taxed articles, tea, wine &c. I was asked in the market 3 sh. for a pair of fowls, a pair of ducks or a goose—none of them particularly fine. The 8d a pound for beef, mutton & veal is the Jersey pound of 17½ English ounces. Trueman says he pays £60 rent for his house in a street—but says a good ten roomed house in the outskirts may be had at £30. There are no taxes except a small one for making roads. The judges & other public officers are all unpaid, & the military are paid by England. There are many & various shops, some very large & showy—& a great many booksellers chiefly for French books, with which they seem as well furnished as any French provincial town. They are sending quantities of new potatoes to London, in the barrels in which they have just imported flour from America. The people seem all strong, healthy & well off—the French they talk to one another seems a sort of patois which I cannot understand. I have taken a sort of liking to the place & even do not dislike this inn. I was set against it at first by being offered a bedroom with a horribly dirty counterpane & one or two other small things, but the room I have & the place generally are quite clean & pleasant. This delay will throw all the plans one day later for writing & will make me a day longer in getting her precious first letter. I meant to have had another walk this evening but it has come on a pouring rain. The temperature & air are soft & mild as I remember South Devonshire. Adieu my darling—my own precious love.
165.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- St Malo
June 14 [1854]
3
My dearest dearest love, I arrived here today, having started at 10 & had a smooth & easy enough passage of about five hours in the most pouring wet day there has been this year—so far is the weather from promising any improvement. As it was low water when we arrived, we could not approach the pier, but were taken on shore in boats & had then to walk at least half a mile over rocks & seaweed. It rained so violently when we arrived that I made up my mind not to risk getting wet, but to remain on board till the steamer could get in—but fortunately the rain abated before the last boat was gone & I was able to land. I did not go to the France where we went before but to another near it called Hotel de la Paix, also praised by Murray, & to which almost every passenger seemed to go. It appears good as far as I can judge. I have just returned from the custom house where the whole bevy of passengers, women & all, went in person, the commissioner system not, apparently, being organized here as at the more frequented ports. I walked round the ramparts before dinner (& was caught in the rain doing so) & even in this wretched weather the view was fine. But I can make no plans for tomorrow on account of the weather. The steamers to Dinan are not running now, & the diligences as usual are too early or too late. I employed the five hours of steamboat partly in conning over the subject of justice for the essay2 —& partly in hearing the talk of the passengers, all quite commonplace people & yet one heard now & then the same remarks which would be made by superior people, e.g. that the English abroad all speak ill of one another & get up scandal against each other—saying “Ah we know why he lives abroad, he is obliged on account of his creditors” &c &c. The Jersey people seem to be spoken of, even by Jersey people, in the way Yorkshire people are spoken of—one would think they were “far north” instead of far south. From what I heard it seems that Australia is crammed with Jersey people—people of family as well as poor people. The emigration ships from Liverpool have agents in Jersey, & placards all about, & there is a ship of 1400 tons going from Jersey to Adelaide direct in a few weeks as one of the passengers said who is going by her with the remainder of his family to join part of it who are already there. I could not learn even the name of a single refugee at Jersey except Victor Hugo whose letter about that Guernsey murderer3 had drawn attention to him—the people seem to think him a half mad oddity. There are several newspapers in Jersey both French & English but they seem to be worth little. At the inn (all the inns being boarding houses) they reckoned me as a boarder because I took my meals in the public room, & they charged for board & lodging five shillings a day, which would be cheap anywhere else especially as there was no stinting in quantity or quality—I did not expect to find attendance put in the bill, but so it was, & comparatively dear, being at the rate of 15 pence a day. My back & shoulder are a little better than yesterday (Mr Truman applied a second mustard poultice) but they are still troublesome. I am afraid it is the slight inflammation which so often occurs in this disease & eventuates as the Yankees say in adhesion. However, if the weather would but improve I should get on well enough, & should have perhaps some chance of stopping the great & rapid wasting of flesh which has been going on for the last two months & which if not stopped would soon make me incapable of any bodily exertion whatever. But I do not despair of its being stopped, at least for a time, by this journey. I long to get to St. Brieuc & to hear from her though it will be only a day or so later than our parting. If your health goes well I wish to live—otherwise I am indifferent to it. I find the post does not go till 4 tomorrow afternoon, so I shall add a line tomorrow morning. Thursday 15th. Another wretched day of rain making it impossible to go anywhere. I have gone to the cathedral & about the town, got weighed, tried unsuccessfully to match my scissors &c and when I have taken this to the post shall have to sit down & write till 4 o’clock when I have taken a coupé place to Dinan—but if this weather lasts Dinan will be triste enough. It will not be time lost, for when I cannot go out I can write—but it delays the object of the journey. I seem today to be almost the only person in the inn—the other arrivals having all gone on. If it had been fine I should either have found some other way to Dinan earlier or made an excursion to Cancale in the forenoon. If it is fine tomorrow I may stay a day at Dinan, otherwise I shall go on to St. Brieuc for the letter. Adieu my own most dearly beloved angel.
166.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- St Brieuc
June 16. [1854]
4
Ah darling! I arrived here this evening & she knows very well what was the first thing I did & what the delight was of reading her precious writing. Though I am here two days later than we reckoned on, it only arrived here yesterday—& has the Calais postmark of the 14th which I do not understand. Probably it did not get to London in time for Monday’s post. It seems to have come here from Calais in one day, which is important to know. But how could my darling think of not opening the letter, & all letters? It is odd enough, I was thinking today in the diligence that as nothing had been said about it, it was just possible you might not open. As the seal was red, no doubt the news there was not the worst news but it was of course a note caused by my announcement of going away. However she will read it now & send the contents. She can always best judge whether to send letters or tell me their contents. I expect few letters of which the contents will be worth eightpence, but still less worth a sentence of your writing. I am going on well—not inconvenienced by any weakness except in the arms, which get fatigued by holding an umbrella even if not up. The pain in my shoulder does not trouble me so much. The excursion would be pleasant enough if it were fine weather. Yesterday only cleared up a little (but not completely) while I was en route, en banquette, to Dinan. Today it was cloudy, but without rain, & I hoped it was clearing, but it has begun to mizzle again since I have been here. I had a walk at Dinan of near two hours besides going much about the town, walked much up hills & from relays on the road here (per coupé) & have had a country walk in the dusk since arriving. I now see what Brittany is like, a table land, looking much wooded at a distance, all cut up by inclosures but much of it not cultivated & so neither wild nor civilized—dull generally but fine whenever one comes to the ravines cut deep into it by rivers. So the plan is to halt in some of the best ravines long enough to explore them. Morlaix appears to be one of the best & there seem to be so many good excursions to be made from it that though you will have probably written to Brest, yet if you get this in time to write on Monday the letter will find me still at Morlaix which I do not expect to leave before Thursday morning. I am still three days from Morlaix as my plan is to go only to Guingamp tomorrow & to Lannion next day, so not reaching Morlaix till Monday evening. Do not however darling write to Brest after Wednesday as I do not expect to make any stay there. As you will now know that I am getting on well, it is possible I may not write again till I get to Morlaix so you will not be uneasy if you do not hear again for three days. One sees how cheap living must be here by the cheapness of the inns. At the inn at St Malo, one of the two best, & with pretensions to be the best, the table d’hôte was 2½ francs, breakfast with eggs 1 fr. tea the same; they got me a real petit diner, potage, cutlets, & potatoes for 2 fr. & charged for attendance ten sous. At Dinan, in one of the inns praised by Murray, I had tea (my own) & with the accessories, & café au lait with eggs in the morning, the whole charge was 3 fr. Of course I shall never think of giving more than ten sous for service except perhaps at Brest—& I have no doubt they will be perfectly contented. The people say living would be still cheaper if they did not export so much to the Channel Islands & to England. About this town they grow quantities of onions, said to be for England. After I sent my letter to you from St Malo, the rainy day gave me a long spell at the Essay on Justice2 & if the weather is as bad as it threatens, we shall at least have the consolation of getting on with that. I began it in preference to the other subject because the thoughts had partly shaped themselves for it in my head. Among things I forgot, one was to remind her, a week before the 1st of July, to send on to the London Library a list of all books we have, including the lost book “A Cruize in the Mozambique Channel”.3 I am very glad my dear one was not troubled with Ley.4 How I wish I could wish away from her all other troubles. As this will not go till tomorrow I shall keep it open & if I add nothing she will know that I am well, that nothing is changed & that I am going to Guingamp per banquette at 12 oclock. I shall go in the banquette whenever I can as it is more open air & the coupé fevered me a little today though I had the window open. Adieu angel mine.
June 17. On further thoughts my beloved you had better not write to Morlaix but to Brest, as I shall go from one to the other in a day, probably Thursday. It is a fine morning, darling, & promises well. I shall take this to the post before breakfast & walk after.
Bless her.
167.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Morlaix
19 June [1854]
5
What a darling letter my own love—& how very much it makes me wish that I may get better when I know how great a pleasure it would be to my own sweetest one. Hitherto there is nothing particular to be said on either side of that question. Except the day of crossing & the day at St Malo I have had very tolerable weather—There has been only about one smart shower each day, & it has always been so timed that it has put me to no inconvenience. I have done everything exactly as I said in my last letter that I meant to—& have been so much out walking whenever I have not been travelling or eating that I really have had no time to write any more of the Essay except for an hour at Guingamp. These Breton towns are mostly pretty, quiet & cheerful, the houses mostly of square blocks of granite not stuccoed & therefore looking well, & slated upright roofs which give dignity. The valleys or rather narrow rocky ravines in which they all stand are excessively pretty, & pleasant to explore. This town of Morlaix however is the first fine thing I have come to—like a Swiss town or rather like one’s original idea of one, got from drawings—the rocks rising precipitous behind the tall houses. The town is on both sides of a very un-Swiss because canalized & harbourized river, with quays as broad & in some places as handsome as those at Rouen. I have walked this evening down the ravine to where the river spreads out as it approaches the sea—about 3 miles below the town. There are diligences here, & generally good ones, from everywhere to everywhere, & they go full 7 miles an hour going 20 miles journeys with the same three horses—but there has never been anybody in them except commis voyageurs going their rounds—the people whom the fine gentlemen that write the Times correspondence are so fond of abusing, but I must say from talking with them in diligences & at tables d’hôte I generally find them both sensible & right feeling—& today I got talking republicanism with one of them. By the bye at the table d’hôte here today where all except me seemed to be commis voyageurs I thought I never was at table with so many really nice looking men. I travelled from Guingamp to Lannion with a rather pleasant & well informed Englishman2 —who or what I do not know, but he turned out to be in Brittany on the same errand as I, & had been staying some weeks at St Pol de Léon from which he was making a tour in Brittany. He had been he told me for a whole year confined to two or three rooms & hardly able to walk across one of them—expected by everybody to die of consumption which he still has, but all his symptoms are gone & he reckons himself quite well—though much thinner than I am he walks 20 miles with ease. This is encouraging but it appears to be another of the wonderful effects of cod liver oil which he has been taking for a year. I wish darling you could take it—would you not give it a trial again with quinine, as I took it at first? I really cannot think it was that which gave you the illness. This man broke two blood vessels at 17 & has been consumptive ever since—I suppose he is now about 30. He is coming to Morlaix this evening & he & I are going tomorrow on a very promising excursion into the interior—the day after I shall go with him to St Pol where there is said to be the finest cathedral in Brittany—I meant to go there & return here but as he tells me there is a diligence from St Pol to Brest direct twice a week, Thursday being one of the days, I shall go on by that. I suppose two days will be enough for Brest, one of them passed in going to the French Land’s End, Cape Finisterre, so on the 25th or 26th I shall get to Quimper—do not write there later than the 22d or the 23d if put in in London: if too late for that, up to Saturday 24th (in London) will be in time for Lorient. What a really cheap country this is. At the market of St Brieuc I saw what seemed to me most delicate mutton, too large to be lamb but otherwise like it; & this was 8 sous the pound—veal the same—a tenth more than an English pound—less than half the Jersey price. At Lannion this morning most beautiful lamb was the same price, veal the same & beef the same, which at St Brieuc was 2 sous more. Bread however free trade has made as cheap in England as anywhere—At St Brieuc the officially fixed price of the best quality was 11 sous the kilo or about 5d the 2 lb loaf & I do not suppose we are paying more than that at Blackheath. At Guingamp the table d’hôte was 2 fr. & my petit diner the price of a déjeuner, 1½ fr. At Lannion, an excellent inn, my bedroom excellent & well & much furnished, I had (my own) tea with an omlet at night, eggs in the morning, & the whole bill was 4 fr. The bedrooms are always 1 fr. though sometimes equal to those charged 3 fr. for elsewhere. I have got few plants yet in France—the botanizing at Vire & Dinan in 18443 seems to have exhausted this part of the country. Thanks for the Spectator my treasure. x x x x x x
168.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Brest
June 24 [1854]
6
I arrived here, my precious love a day later than I expected when I wrote from Morlaix, as the excursion into the interior, it turned out, could not be comfortably done in one day. I have received your letter No. 3 of the 16th—I am afraid you would not get mine from St Brieuc in time to prevent your sending No. 4 to Quimper, unless the day extra passed at Jersey had induced you to delay writing one day beyond the time we fixed. But I hoped to have found another letter here, written after you received that from St Brieuc. Perhaps it will come tomorrow morning. I propose staying two days here, one to be passed in going to Cape Finisterre. I hope to get to Quimper from here in one day but perhaps I may be obliged to take two & I shall probably stay there a day for the sake of going to the other promontory, the Bec du Raz, so I shall be at Lorient on either the 29th or 30th but as I shall not stay there, it will hardly do for my dear one to write there after receiving this. If she writes the same day or the next, direct Auray, Morbihan, the place from which the Druidical antiquities are to be seen; if the day after, to Vannes; afterwards to Nantes. This journey has been as pleasant I think as it would have been, without you, if I had been well. I have had no interruption from weather since St Malo & the weather having each day improved a little, yesterday became sunny & today hot. The excursion from Morlaix was into the central country of Brittany, to the mines of Huelgoat & the cascade of Saint Herbot, or rather into the fine woody ravines containing them. The country was very like the finer & wilder parts of England, & the waterfalls somewhat like our Swallow fall.2 I went there as I said I was going to, with an Englishman who it seems is a barrister & is named Pope.3 He turned out a pleasant person to meet, as though he does not seem to me to have any talent, he is better informed than common Englishmen—knows a good deal of French history for example, especially that of the Revolution & seems either to have already got or to be quite ready to receive all our opinions. I tried him on religion, where I found him quite what we think right—on politics, on which he was somewhat more than a radical—on the equality of women which he seemed not to have quite dared to think of himself but seemed to adopt it at once—& to be ready for all reasonable socialism—he boggled a little at limiting the power of bequest which I was glad of, as it shewed that the other agreements were not mere following a lead taken. He was therefore worth talking to & I think he will have taken away a good many ideas from me. I shall probably see him again at Nantes as he is to be there about the same time with me. He had evidently travelled very little & I enjoyed his unaffected pleasure in the scenery. I went with him to St Pol de Léon, a pretty cheerful little place called poor & melancholy by Murray, possessing splendid sea views & a really fine cathedral, a good deal like Caen, besides another church with a tower which is very high & rather fine. I came on here next day (yesterday) stopping half way for a walk & to see a church at a place called Folgoat [sic]4 which is one of the sights of Brittany. I have not seen much of Brest yet, but it seems a fine town as well as a fine bay. As to health I have seldom felt better than these last days—the fever I had for two days at Guingamp having gone off. I have not felt quite so strong as at Jersey & the whole of the first week & I seem to myself to be still losing flesh; which however the weighing does not confirm, for I have been weighed here this morning & found to weigh 65 to 66 kilos instead of 65 as at St Malo. It was a more accurate instrument here & therefore I do not rely on the indication as shewing any real increase of weight but at least I cannot be losing much & it seems to shew that the journey is doing me good. Clark, from whom I have a letter in answer to mine, warns me not to walk so much as he thinks I am inclined to but I must be the best judge of that. I am always out of doors, & walking when not travelling. I have seen no English paper except one number of the Globe, but have now & then seen a French paper which has kept me au courant of what little news there was. From that I saw that there had been a debate on the ballot & that Palmerston had made the speech against it5 but that was all. I reckon on leaving our opinion on that question to form part of the volume of essays, but I am more anxious to get on with other things first, since what is already written6 (when detached from the political pamphlet that was to have been) will in case of the worst suffice, being the essentials of what we have to say, & perhaps might serve to float the volume as the opinion on the ballot would be liked by the powerful classes, and being from a radical would be sure to be quoted by their writers, while they would detest most of the other opinions. I have written nothing since Guingamp & if there are no wet days, may not write much for the present, but if I do, it will be today as I have no long excursion to make. You do not tell me how you are. Perhaps I shall have another darling letter tomorrow. The board & lodging (my usual three meals with their tea) at the best inn (a good one) at Morlaix was just 5 francs a day. At the inn at St Pol a person may board for 40 fr. a month—if they even charge the bedroom per night at their usual price, one franc, it is still less than £34 a year. This is the place for real cheap living.
169.
TO CHARLES F. COLMAN1
[June 26. 1854]
Dear Colman—
Your letter only reached me to-day. The intelligence it contained though so fully expected was yet a shock.
I do not intend to act as Executor.2
I give my full authority to open the letter which you mention.3
When you write to me again you can write to my wife for the address.
I hope that the delay in my receiving your letter will not cause you inconvenience.
I am yrs faithfully
170.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Quimper
June 26 [1854]
7
I have just arrived here my dearest angel & found your letters of the 17th & 19th & also one from Colman.2 It is a comfort that my poor mother suffered no pain—& since it was to be, I am glad that I was not in England when it happened, since what I must have done & gone through would have been very painful & wearing & would have done no good to anyone. It is on every account fortunate that another executor has been appointed. There is a matter connected with the subject which I several times intended speaking to you about, but each time forgot. Unless my memory deceives me, the property my mother inherited from her mother3 was not left to her out & out, but was settled equally on her children. If so, a seventh part of it, being something between £400 & 500, will come to me, & I do not think we ought to take it—what do you think?4 Considering how they have behaved,5 it is a matter of pride more than of anything else—but I have a very strong feeling about it. Supposing this decided there is the further question, whether simply to refuse, by which the share will fall to be divided equally among them, or to give it up to Mrs King6 who wants it most or to Jane who alone of them all has behaved decently well? I have copied on the other side Colman’s letter & my answer. I wish I could have had your approval of the last before sending it. The applying to Haji instead of to you was exactly like them, though probably it was rather from ill breeding, not knowing it was an affront, than that they intended one. As for me I am more feverish & fatigued than I was, but perhaps both will go off. My first day at Brest, Saturday, was sunny & hot, but Sunday there was a sea fog which made my view from Cape Finisterre very limited, & it rained all the way back. Today there has been much wind & several smart showers but the evening is fine. This is a pretty country town, with a cathedral larger but hardly so fine as St Pol. I liked Brest—especially the harbour which is a great inland sea, communicating by a narrow passage with the sea without. I heard most beautiful military music both in the morning & evening. Your last letter appears by the postmark to have been four days in coming. I have nothing to alter in the directions for writing which I gave in my letter from Brest. I have always asked for letters up to the last moment. No second letter to Brest had come when I left & I now hope you did not write there a second time. If you did however they will probably forward it. Do darling tell me how you are. If you get worse I do not wish to get better. Adieu my own darling. Your letter of the 19th is No. the fifth but is marked 4.
171.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Lorient
June 30 [1854]
8
I arrived here this morning my precious angel & got your dear letter—it grieves me that she has been so unwell. I hope she went to Brighton as she intended & was better for it. My darling it quite reconciles me to my own chances the moment I think she is getting worse, but I would far rather be afraid of having to leave her than to lose her. I hope this is only temporary & that she is better again by this time. I feared she was unwell, but from a wrong cause, her not sending this letter to Brest, if she had I should have received it on Saturday but I believe I asked her not to write to Brest later than Tuesday. This letter has the London postmark of 21st, Paris & Nantes of 22nd so you see, letters get to Nantes the very next day, being the whole way by railroad. So Nantes will be safe to write to until you hear from me from Nantes. I wish I had seen a full report of Palmerston’s speech2 —what was given of it in the Spectator did not at all account for your high opinion of it, certainly only the commonplaces I have been familiar with all my life—while the speeches for the ballot were below even the commonplaces. The ballot has sunk to far inferior men, the Brights3 &c. When it was in my father’s hands or even Grote’s4 such trash was not spoken as that the suffrage is a right &c &c. But Palmerston’s saying that a person who will not sacrifice something for his opinion is not fit to have a vote seems to me to involve the same fallacy. It is not for his own sake that one wishes him to have a vote. It is we who suffer because those who would vote with us are afraid to do so. As for the suffrage being a trust, it has always been so said by the Whig & Tory opponents of the ballot & used to be agreed in by its radical supporters. I have not seen a single new argument respecting the ballot for many years except one or two of yours. I do not feel in the way you do the desirableness of writing an article for the Ed[inburgh] on it. There will be plenty of people to say all that is to be said against the ballot—all it wants from us is the authority of an ancient radical & that it will have by what is already written & fit to be published as it is5 —but I now feel so strongly the necessity of giving the little time we are sure of to writing things which nobody could write but ourselves, that I do not like turning aside to anything else. I do not find the essay on Justice goes on well. I wrote a good long piece of it at Quimper, but it is too metaphysical, & not what is most wanted but I must finish it now in that vein & then strike into another. Quimper & Quimperlé are two of the prettiest towns I have seen. All the towns in Brittany are prettily situated, being in vallies & by clear streams, & about each of these there are evidently enough of pretty walks for a week’s exploring. The weather however (which up to Brest was much better than yours seems to have been) has been very bad since—today is the first day not rainy since Monday—today is bright & fine but it is the fineness of a confirmed wet summer which I now fear we are going to have. But I have managed to get some good walking every day besides the travelling which was always with an open front either the banquette of a diligence, the cabriolet of the courier or a cabriolet voiture. I am also now, I think, in as good walking condition as I was at first, which for several days I certainly was not—whether accidentally or because I had overdone, & exceeded my strength. I think the day I partially rested at Quimper did me good. I did not go to the Bec du Raz & the Baie des Trépassés as it was too far & bad weather, but went to the nearer Peninsula of Penmarch instead, a fine rocky coast, & I got some plants. Next day I went to Quimperlé but it rained nearly all the way—it cleared however in the evening & I had a walk. This town is uninteresting: but not as Murray pretends, dirty—on the contrary it is extremely clean: but Murray’s information is almost always either false or behind hand. However the inn here, recommended by him, is one of the best I have come to. I have had a nice walk, even a pretty one, though the country is uninteresting compared with most of the other places. Though I do not now expect letters before Nantes I shall ask for them at Auray & Vannes. Adieu & a thousand loves & blessings.
[P.S.] I suppose H’s letter6 had nothing worth telling now when the end is come.
172.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Nantes
July 4 [1854]
9
I arrived here darling this afternoon from Vannes & found her two letters. To begin with what I feel most about—surely dearest love it is full time to have some advice about the swelling in the side? either to see Tuson2 in the way you thought of doing or to send for South3 —it would be so advantageous in case of any sudden illness to have some competent person near who knew something of the previous state of your health—& I cannot think my darling angel that it can be safe to let this pain in the side grow worse—I have no doubt it is something not necessarily connected with the general state of the health & capable of being treated & cured separately—though tending while it continues, to make all other illness worse. Then about the things required by bad health which you say you are small luxuries—let us have them, that is, you have them darling, at least up to our income. We are now living much within it—& we are not likely to lose more than £300 a year for the Directors are not likely in the circumstances to give less pension than the highest they can give by law, which in my case would be, I am almost sure, three fourths of the salary. I suppose we can decide tolerably well now what mode of life to lay our plans for. I suppose we may resolve to go abroad for the winter—for my own part I now feel pretty confident of being alive then, & not so much worse as to make it impossible or useless for me to go—& though if we are alive we may probably come to England next spring, I suppose we shall never again live in England permanently, so we can judge well enough what we can afford, & have everything desirable which is consistent with it. About that matter of my mother’s inheritance,4 of course as your feeling is so directly contrary, mine is wrong, & I give it up entirely—but it was not the vanity of “acting on the supposition of being a man of fortune”—it was something totally different—it was wishing that they should not be able to say that I had taken away anything from their resources. However that is ended, & I need say no more about it.—You do not mention my letter from Brest, but I suppose you received it. I cannot imagine why that from Morlaix took so long. You must have by this time received the one from Lorient. Since that time there have been four beautiful days, & I hoped the fine weather had come, but alas, it rained much last night & a few showers this morning: it has however been fine since. I staid one night at Auray & two at Vannes, & saw the Druidical antiquities partly from one & partly from the other—a Frenchman at the table d’hote at Auray advised me to go from Vannes to the places which are best gone to in a boat, for the sake of going through the inland sea called Morbihan & its multitude of isles—& I am very glad I did so, for the panorama of them as seen from two islands on which I landed was quite unlike anything else in Brittany, & as is always the case with these things, what one sees by the way is much better worth seeing than the things themselves. I spent all yesterday on the water except a three hours walk about Locmariaker between going & returning—it was lucky I had the fine weather when it was so much wanted, for distant views & water scenery. It was most beautiful & enjoyable. I meant to write to her from Vannes, but did not get back till after post time & thought it better to write from here. I had some very nice walking too at Auray & much of it. That part however of Brittany is in general much tamer than those I had seen before. The northern part is as I described, table land intersected by deep ravines containing clear streams. The corner by Quimper & Quimperlé is much prettier, being all hills & deep valleys, with little or no table land. The rest, from Lorient to Nantes, comparatively flat & tame, though very pretty in parts as at Auray where the river, fine when the tide is up, flows among wooded though not high hills. The south coast also is not nearly so cheap for travelling as the north—whether for living I do not know, for they say prices have been raised in all the further end of Brittany by provisioning the Brest fleet—but at Quimper as well as Brest the table d’hôte was 3 francs & nowhere since has it been less than 2½ & they ask, for all but their worst bedrooms, 1½ francs. However at Lorient veal & mutton were only 9 sous & beef 10. Butter (good all through Brittany) they asked in the market 13 sous for a pound of. There, as at Brest, I am told the best meat is 15 sous, but I have not asked at the market yet. Murray is as ridiculously wrong as usual about the fineness of this town. The quais which are the only thing pretending to be fine are infinitely below Rouen—the best part about equal to the worst of Lyons & no fine buildings, for the cathedral, though of a stately height & with fine columns, wants length & is altogether poor externally. It is quite funny to see how the travelling English who inform Murray, copy the ways of thinking & judging of Frenchmen. I expected to find Brittany very bare & wild instead of which it is the best wooded part of all France, remarkably like England in general appearance, intensely green, with decidedly less of heathy ground than any part of the south of England, & what there is, not looking wild because cut up into inclosed patches. Murray is quite poetical about the stones at Carnac which he says are on a blasted heath, as dreary as Macbeth’s—now the heath is a cheerful piece of greenery close to a large village & there are oats growing between some of the rows of stones. Brittany however must be much altered—the most splendid roads cut it in all directions & the marks of recent cutting down of hills & terracing the slopes of roads by changing their direction are perpetual. As for my health, I am still feverish, for the last 24 hours more so than usual—but my strength has come back & I can walk as well or better than before I set out. I do not expect to find that I have lost any flesh since Brest. I shall get myself weighed tomorrow. I think the excursion has done me good, though there has not been time for it to do much. I do not know whether to prolong it or not. I found a letter here from Clark advising me to stay a few weeks longer—I shall not do that, but I feel rather inclined, as I am so near, to employ a week in seeing something of La Vendée—this however I shall not do unless I hear that you are better & that you advise it. Letters will come here very quickly, & en attendant I shall go to Pornic, the sea bathing place we have often wished to see—the letter (however short) which I hope to find at the post office here when I come back, will decide me whether to take the additional week or return at once, by Angers & Saumur, then crossing the country to the Rouen railroad & taking the steamboat from Dieppe. Adieu my own precious darling angel.
173.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Nantes
July 5. [1854]
10
You will be surprised, darling, at my writing again directly, but I cannot tell you too soon what you will be glad to hear. I was weighed this morning & found to weigh 67 kilos. The difference between this & 65 at St Malo, 65 to 66 by the more accurate instrument at Brest, is more than can be accounted for by any inaccuracies & is the surest proof that the excursion has done me good. Even if I have gained much less than four pounds in three weeks, it is very encouraging & makes me think I may have still two or three years of life in me. If so, much may be done in the time. I have been going about this town all the morning, pleasantly enough, as every French town contains much interesting & is at any rate agreeable. I spent a very pleasant hour in the picture gallery in which there are some good pictures, & old copies of many more. The town itself improves on further knowledge; I had not seen the best of the quais, which is below the main body of the town, & opposite the shipping, but it is not equal to Rouen or near it. Beef & veal here are 12 sous the pound, mutton 14—the first place where I have found mutton the dearest. Tomorrow at ½ past 7 I shall start by the steamboat for Paimboeuf & from there to Pornic. I have heard nothing of my St Pol acquaintance.2 I want to order mourning, a coat & trousers, from Carbery, & would write to him but I do not know where to tell him to send the things: Will she darling either tell me what she thinks, or order them—perhaps Lily would write a note in my name. Thanks darling for the Spectator which this time is better than usual & now adieu with a thousand loves & blessings.
174.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Nantes
July 8. [1854]
11
I have just returned from Pornic my own precious one & have found here her two letters. All the letters she mentions have come safe & in their right order though several had been lying some time in the post offices before I received them. I am glad she is going to see Tuson—I am very anxious & do not much like prolonging my absence when I do not hear that you are better—however on the whole I think it is best that I should make the excursion I projected into La Vendée as I am so evidently benefiting by the journey. The two days which I spent at Pornic I have been quite remarkably well & stronger for walking than I have been at all since I began to lose strength; as well as very little feverish. Today I am rather more feverish again but that is a symptom which has always varied very much up & down. Pornic is such a pretty, funny little place—about the size of Rottingdean, & in much the same situation, except in being at the head of a little cove—the height of the place above the sea much the same but the actual cliff (or rocky escarpment rather, for one can in most places get down it) only about half that height—but the place & its paths & drives over the sea are very pretty & at present very quiet & the whole place is fragrant with Spanish broom which they plant everywhere. I looked at three or four of the houses or lodgings to let—they are all very clean & with a little additional furniture we could inhabit some of them—the general demand seems to be 500 francs for the season, or 200 the month—very dear therefore—but the best I saw would take less & the next best asked less (130 fr. the month). There are some good (or at least better) looking ones out of the town in good situations. The sea view is very fine with the long narrow island of Noirmoutier six leagues off, closing up a considerable part of it. There is another watering place, le Croisic, apparently more pretentious, but this is further off, on the coast of Brittany, towards Vannes, & I have not seen it. I went down the Loire in the steamboat to the very mouth of the mouth, at Saint Nazaire but the country on both sides is flat & uninteresting. I do not know how far I shall go into La Vendée as it will depend on how I like it, but in any case it will be convenient to return through Nantes, so darling write there up to the 12th inclusive. I hope she has not written to Rouen as that will be so long to wait. The weather has generally been very pleasant—sunny & warm, with a few very short showers every day—it seems to be much worse with you—three wet summers in succession—a thing that has not happened since 1828/29/30 & of those only 1829 was as bad as these have been. I have not only gained some good but probably escaped some harm by being away at a time when I could probably have walked little. On returning from Pornic I found here my consumptive acquaintance Mr Pope & he is going into La Vendée with me. I do not know whether much can be made of him but he seems to me the sort of person for whom chiefly we write & I should like to send him the Pol. Economy. At present I do not believe he ever heard of it or has the least idea who I am, except that he now knows my name. About the ballot, it is quite true that few speak or write against it but persons of Whig or Tory tendencies—but one of Sydney Smith’s most popular things,2 sold at railway stations &c is an attack on it & there are & will be plenty of speakers against it & plenty of articles in all the newspapers—the daily ones I mean—except the D. News & perhaps the Advertiser. On reconsideration darling, direct aux Sables d’Olonne, Vendée, up to the 11th & Nantes to the 13th inclusive. Adieu with all possible love.
[P.S.] De Morgan3 can I think wait.
175.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Napoléon Vendée
- (formerly Bourbon-Vendée)
July 12. [1854]
13
My last letter, my precious one, was I believe wrong numbered; it was dated Nantes July 9. It was really No. 12 & this is No. 13. I have got thus far very pleasantly, & am evidently benefiting more & more—my increase of feverishness has quite gone off; these last days I have had very little fever & though I cannot perceive by the eye any increase of flesh, I shall probably find some increase of weight when I am next weighed. Another sign of improvement is that there is certainly some enlargement of the chest. I had not measured for some time, & I now find a very visible difference. I am stronger & more capable for walking purposes than I have yet been. So you see darling the journey has answered its purpose as far as I am concerned. I am anxious for news of her but I probably shall arrive at Les Sables soon after her letter. This country is on the whole inferior to Brittany but has some very pretty places & the weather has been extremely accommodating, being fine at all walking times & raining chiefly at night, or if by day, during the times when it is of no consequence. Having a not disagreeable companion in this excursion makes a variety, an additional change from travelling alone; though the change to travelling alone will be quite as pleasing a variety when it comes, for the man2 has very little in him though perfectly well disposed to receive. We went on Sunday to Clisson, an exceedingly pretty rural valley with a fine old castle & two shew pleasure grounds which would be very pretty indeed if they were kept as they would be in England; Monday to Mortagne, Tuesday to Les Herbiers & today here, having at each place two long walks & a good stroll besides. There are hardly any towns & very few large villages—the country is bosky & green, the best of it like Brittany, & therefore like England, the greater part like Warwickshire, & the tamer inland counties—a large fine ruined castle of which one never heard, at every village with almost no exception—the towns & villages all new, having been all destroyed in the Vendean war3 either by the royalists or the republicans—but nothing whatever to make one like the idea of living here. All that Murray says of the country either was never true or has ceased to be so; it is more uniformly highly cultivated than any part of England which I know of, & the lanes he talks about are simply English lanes, very like those in Sussex—but the whole country both in matter & spirit must be extremely changed by the fine roads which now pierce it as the French happily say in all directions. The crops are splendid & the people from all accounts better off than in most parts of France—a labourer earning about £24 a year & his food. The eatables are not so good as in Brittany—there I never once met with any but very good butter even in the smallest places—here it is seldom good & I have never yet found it very good. This town, the only one of any size in La Vendée, except Les Sables, was built by Napoleon4 as a means of coercing the Vendeans & is a very inactive dead looking though not uncheerful place—unluckily not in a beautiful situation. We have now got into the Plain of La Vendée, having left the hilly part of Les Herbiers—the last point, the Mont des Alouettes, where the Duchess of Berry5 built a chapel, commands a view almost from Nantes to the very opposite extremity of La Vendée & the weather was most splendid for it. We liked it so much that we walked up to it again in the evening. We go tomorrow to La Rochelle which will be the extreme point of my peregrinations & shall then make a round to Les Sables & from there to Nantes. My darling will be safe in writing to Nantes up to the 15th. I shall write again from Les Sables if not sooner. Adieu my own precious with a thousand thousand loves.
176.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Rochefort
July 15 [1854]
14
My own dearest love, I had not the slightest expectation of writing to you from this place or of coming here at all—my plan was to go north from La Rochelle by the roundabout way of Niort & Fontenay—but it appeared that the only ways to get from La Rochelle to Niort today (except by voiture which was too dear even for two) was at 7 in the morning inside a diligence or at 5 in the evening—the first was undesirable on all accounts & as the people at the Messageries said there was a diligence from Rochefort to Niort at the same hour in the afternoon, it seemed as well, having staid all yesterday at La Rochelle, to take this place on the way to Niort—but on coming here it appeared there is no diligence till 5 tomorrow morning. This is the first contretemps that has happened to me in the whole journey—but I shall not lose a day by it though I may be obliged to shorten my walk either at Niort or Fontenay. I shall in any case be at Les Sables on Monday evening. I did not care at all for seeing Rochefort but without Niort & Fontenay one has not seen La Vendée & I had laid my plans so as have a splendid walk at each. You may know by my taking it so leisurely that the journey continues to do me good, indeed it seems to do me more & more. I was weighed at La Rochelle & had gained two pounds more, making six pounds since St Malo—it shews how much weight I must have lost before, as these six pounds make not the smallest perceptible difference to the eye. I have gained still more in strength: yesterday at Rochelle I was out from eight in the morning till nine at night literally with only the exceptions of breakfast & dinner—& walking all the time except an occasional sitting on a bank. La Rochelle is a very nice town, very clean & quiet, with arcades along almost all the streets like Suza and Bologna—the baths are by the seaside a little way out of the town, in a very prettily planted garden & shrubbery along the seaside something like the Villa Reale at Naples, but short in comparison. The military band plays there twice a week in the evening & we happened to hit upon it by accident at the very time. The garden was full of French people—I saw no others—very gay & smart, though not looking like our idea of ladies or gentlemen. The whole place is very pretty; there is a reading room & concert room at the baths, everything in short except baths themselves. I went in to see the kind of thing—they were little oblong tin cuvettes, smaller & less good looking than those at Pornic, which were very like our bath at home but smaller. There are people passing & repassing to the baths all day, sometimes in private carriages, & it is evident that the place is very much used as a watering place by well off French people—who seem by the bye when they go there to take all their children with them. It is odd they nowhere in France contrive to have baths fit to use. Dirty however the baths did not seem, & still less at Pornic, where the people evidently pique themselves on their propreté. La Rochelle is hardly pretty enough to wish to live there, though the sea views are very fine: but it might be pleasant to visit. Meat, the first quality of all kinds, was at the market 12 sous: butter, tolerable but not equal to Brittany, 15. This place, Rochefort, is a quite modern town, built by Louis XIV & very neat & pretty of the kind but no pretty country near. It is now & has for some days been splendid weather—not too hot because tempered by a fine sea wind. All the corn seems fit to cut & some is already cut. I am impatient to get to Les Sables for her letter, & nothing but the great good it is doing me would have induced me thus to prolong the excursion—this contretemps about the coaches therefore bores me. Bless you my precious precious life.
177.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Nantes
July 19 [1854]
15
My dearest angel, as I found no letters at Les Sables I came on at once here & found your letter dated the 12th which tells me of another to Rouen & seems to tell of another here, for it says “I told you in my last that I had written to Rouen”—the last I received before this, was dated the 6th & said not that you had but that you would write next to Rouen. I hope darling that your memory, generally so accurate, has confounded these two things—for otherwise a letter has been lost—the very civil man at the post office here made a great search for it but without effect. I suppose the letter at Rouen will tell me what I most wanted to hear viz. what Tuson said. I found here a note from Colman inclosing the note of my mother, which he mentioned before. It is dated 27th March & runs thus—“I did not mention the furniture in my will which you were so kind as to leave for my use, but as some of it is a great deal worn, I hope you will take the best of it, & do as I should have done if I had considered it my own, give the rest to your two unmarried sisters, Clara & Harriet. Your plate is taken care of & will be restored to you by your sisters. God bless you my dear son—I sincerely hope that you & Mrs Mill will enjoy many many years of uninterrupted happiness.” I remember, before, she could not or would not understand that the furniture was given to her out & out, though it was repeatedly impressed on her. Colman says, “I inclose your mother’s letter which was opened agreeably to your permission. With regard to the furniture C[lara] & H[arriet] wish me to say that as they mean to give up housekeeping, they have no wish to receive from you that share of the furniture to which your mother refers in her letter, & as they intend leaving the house as soon as possible they would be obliged by your letting them know what you wish done with it & where you wish your plate to be sent. I have written to Mr Wotton2 my cotrustee to arrange if possible to transfer the funds left by Mrs Burrow’s3 will on Monday next, & should you be able to send it I should be glad of a line by that time to say whether you wish a transfer made or the amount sold only, & if the latter into whose hands you wish it paid. If I don’t hear from you we shall adopt the usual course.” The last matter therefore has by this time settled itself—as to the first, it is most unnecessary & absurd that we should have to write or do anything about it at all. Of course we can only say that the furniture was my mother’s & must be dealt with as such—but I cannot write the note without a consultation so unless you think it can wait for my return (as I shall be at home now in little more than a week), perhaps darling you will write to Rouen what you think should be said & in what manner, both about that & the plate. A letter will be in time if it leaves London on the 22nd—It is most unlucky that there should have been such atrocious weather in England. In this journey I have hardly lost an hour by weather though there has been a good deal of rain—but four days ago the weather set in intensely hot & bright, & one day even reminded me of those days at Tours. I have therefore not been able to walk quite so much as before, especially such long walks, though I have walked a good deal & am not at all weakened by it. My strength is most satisfactory but this is not weather to gain flesh in. A good deal of the feverishness has come back but I could not expect less in such hot weather. Thanks darling for what she says about Mr Pope, but I do not think he is at all of a calibre to be a permanent acquaintance. I thought more of him at first than I do now from finding his opinions or sentiments so good on the great subjects & such an apparent willingness to receive, & from finding that he was a little up in French history, had read some poets &c I fancied him well informed, but I am now chiefly pleased with the proof he seems to afford that right opinions are very widely scattered through England, when they have reached so very little educated & so little clever or rather so dull a man as he seems to me to be. I will give him a general invitation to call at the I.H. & I can hardly do less after passing so many days in travelling with him—& if he comes we can aviser about anything further. Since I wrote from Rochefort I have seen Niort, an ugly & Fontenay a pretty place—also a fine cathedral at Luçon—Les Sables is on a splendid bay, reminding one of Sandown, but with a still finer beach & a magnificent swell of the sea in waves parallel to the shore, breaking into surf half a mile’s length at a time. There is nothing else good there; the town is the meanest French town I ever saw, hardly a house with more than one story to it, & the streets or rather lanes the worst paved I shd think in France. The town forms a narrow ridge between the bay & a large harbour, much too large for the place as the entrance is getting itself filled up by sand & ships cannot enter. There are plenty of bathing machines, but the hot baths! oh! The principal establishment has just four, in little closets on the beach. Adieu my own most precious. I go tomorrow by railway to Angers.
178.
TO CHARLES F. COLMAN1
- Rouen
July 24 [1854]
Dear Colman
Owing to a change in my route, I did not get to Nantes till later than I originally intended. With regard to my mother’s furniture,2 I always considered it hers, & have often told her so. I think it or its proceeds should be distributed equally among all her daughters. The plate which my mother had, also to be distributed equally in the same manner. I am
yrs faithfully
J. S. Mill
179.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Rouen
July 24 [1854]
16
I have just arrived here my own darling & have received the three letters you addressed here containing the entire history of that horrible abscess. As it has turned out I am perhaps fortunate in having received them all together, as I should have been very anxious, which now I hope there is no cause to be, but on the contrary a permanent evil got rid of (I did not perceive the bull). It confirms your old impressions, for you have often thought there had been inflammation & an abscess is I believe proof positive of chronic inflammation which also it carries off. How very fortunate you saw Tuson when you did. I have not written since Nantes & have come here in less time than I intended, owing to the tropical heat, as the Paris papers very truly call it, which makes it almost impossible & not altogether desirable to walk much. I meant to have had country walks; & long ones, at all the places. At most I have only been able to walk about the towns. The first day I halted at Areines for a few hours & had a 3½ hours walk in the hot sun (with my umbrella up however) & did not feel tired, or the worse for it—but I could not have done so any other day. At Saumur I walked in the evening to the druidical remains which are much finer than any I saw in Brittany, but none (except Gavr Innis on the island) are really fine like Stonehenge because, like all things in France, they are the reverse of solitary. I had generally to set out too early in the mornings to have an early walk, & in the evenings even after dark it is most sultry. This morning however at Vernon where I went on purpose, I was out at half past five till about half past seven & afterwards passed some of the hot hours in the shady woods of Louis Philippe’s2 chateau—an evidently nice house, with grounds & woods which we could make pretty. Notwithstanding the scorching heat & intense sun, I like the Seine as much as ever but the Loire is a thorough humbug—though a fine river, for the Seine after it looks like a ditch—but it turns out that the part from Blois to Tours which I always supposed the dull introduction to something very beautiful beyond, is the only pretty part there is, or at least much the best. From Angers almost to Saumur is an absolute plain. There seems some prettyish country behind Saumur towards the south, but not visible from the river. The finest things I have seen are the cathedrals. Angers is more curious than fine, Evreux fine, Le Mans magnificent, but Chartres deserves all & more than all that has ever been said of it—I only know Amiens & St Ouen that can be compared with it, & till I have seen them again I do not know if even they are equal to it. I shall see St Ouen this evening or tomorrow & the other nice old places & shall have plenty of time to do the little commissions she gave me the pleasure of. I shall get weighed again tomorrow but shall not be surprised if I find I have lost flesh in this very hot weather. I have not lost strength, which is very satisfactory. However seeing the heat which as is natural grows every day greater, I see no use in continuing the journey & shall therefore return home at once. I almost fear you may not get this before my return. I shall go to Dieppe tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday) & the steamer I find leaves at two on Wednesday morning & also at 8.45 on Wednesday evening. At present I think I shall go by the former, in which case I shall have the happiness of being with her some time on Wednesday—if not, early on Thursday. I have been absent six weeks last Saturday, exceeding the longest term we thought of, but it has done enough good to be well worth it. I shall write the letter to Colman3 exactly according to your pencil which seems to me perfectly right—about the plate, there is nothing at all curious or which was presented to my father, & to us it would only be worth its value as old silver—I will therefore as you suggest tell him to deal with it as with the furniture. About Mr Pope, he & I exchanged cards when we separated the first time, & my card had no address on it—I meant to have written India House but forgot. When I left him at Nantes I said I should be glad to see him when he comes to England & that he would find me or hear of me at the I.H. but he asked me to write to tell him how I am when I get to England & I said I would—I meant to write last thing from Dieppe in order that the writing might be like a continuance of only travelling acquaintanceship, but I shall now, I think, not write till I see my precious love & have discussed that & many other things. On the Loire the inns continue cheap though not so cheap as in Britany but the moment one is in Normandy dearness begins. At Saumur the best meat was said to be 11 sous. I got a dish of fine currants for a sou. The best inn at Nantes, an excellent one, is very moderate for a large town. Thanks darling for the Spec. With all possible love.
[P.S.] If she only wrote three to Nantes I got them all—but instead of June 26, July 6 & 12 I got June 29, July 4 & 12.
180.
TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1
- Blackheath
July 27. 1854
Dear Sir
On returning from the Continent I have just received your letter and its numerous inclosures. I will consider of what you propose,2 and will give you an answer the first moment I can find leisure from the many things I have to attend to on returning from an absence.
I am Dear Sir
Yrs very truly
J.S. Mill
181.
TO WILLIAM STIGANT1
- E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]
Aug. 1. 1854
Sir—
Having just returned from the Continent I find your note. I very much wish that it were in my power to refer you or anyone to a book or set of books fitted to form a course of instruction in moral philosophy. None such to my knowledge, exist. In my opinion ethics as a branch of philosophy is still to be created. There are writers on the subject from whom valuable thoughts may be gathered, & others (particularly Bentham)2 who have thrown some though not sufficient light on the mode of systematizing it. But on the whole every one’s ideas of morals must result from the action of his own intellect, upon the materials supplied by life, & by the writers in all languages who have understood life best. The part of psychology which corresponds to morals is one of the most imperfect parts of that most imperfect science. Its most important portion, the laws of the formation of character, have never yet been treated otherwise than superficially. Some idea of the little which has been done may be gathered from parts of Hartley on Man3 & from my father’s article “Education”4 in the Suppl to the Enc. Britannica; but I do not recommend even these for any other purpose than that of furnishing suggestions & stimulus to your own thoughts.
I am Sir yrs faithfully
J.S.M.
William Stigant Esq.
182.
TO BARBOT DE CHÉMENT1
- East India House
7th August 1854
Monsieur,—
Votre lettre est arrivée à mon adresse pendant que j’étais en voyage et ce n’est qu’aujourdhui que je suis à même d’y répondre.
Vous me demandez les noms des personnes connues, scientifiques ou politiques de ce pays-ci, qui adhèrent à la doctrine de M. Comte, et vous me faites l’honneur de me demander, en outre, mon propre jugement sur cette doctrine.
Il y a en effet en Angleterre un certain nombre d’individus qui ont connaissance des écrits de M. Comte2 et qui en font, à plusieurs égards, un grand cas. Mais je ne connais ici personne qui accepte l’ensemble de ses doctrines ni que l’on puisse regarder comme son disciple;3 à commencer par moi, qui ai suivi sa carrière dès ses premières publications, et qui ai plus fait peut-être que tous les autres pour répandre son nom et sa réputation.4
J’admets en général la partie logique de ses doctrines, ou en d’autres mots, tout ce qui se rapporte à la méthode et à la philosophie des sciences.
Tout en y trouvant quelques lacunes que je m’efforce de remplir à ma manière je reconnais que personne, hors Aristote et Bacon, n’autant fait pour perfectionner la théorie des procédés scientifiques.
J’admets en grande partie la critique de ses devanciers, et les bases générales de la théorie historique du développement humain, sauf les divergences de détail. Quant à la religion, qui, comme vous le savez sans doute, pour lui comme pour tout libre penseur est un grand obstacle auprès du commun de mes compatriotes, c’est là sans contredit que mes opinions sont le plus près de celles de M. Comte. Je suis parfaitement d’accord avec lui sur la partie negative de la question, et dans la partie affirmative, je soutiens comme lui que l’idée de l’ensemble de l’humanité, representée surtout par les esprits et les caractères d’élite, passés, présents, et à venir, peut devenir, non seulement pour des personnes exceptionelles mais pour tout le monde, l’objet d’un sentiment capable de remplacer avec avantage toutes les religions actuelles, soit pour les besoins de cœur, soit pour ceux de la vie sociale. Cette vérité, d’autres l’ont sentie avant M. Comte, mais personne que je sache ne l’a si nettement pesée ni si puissamment soutenue.
Restent sa morale et sa politique, et là-dessus je dois avouer mon dissentiment presque total. En me donnant comme positiviste autant que personne au monde, je n’accepte en aucune façon la politique positive comme M. Comte se la représente, ni quant aux anciennes doctrines qu’il conserve; ni quant à ce qu’il y ajouta du sien. Je ne conçois comme lui ni les conditions de l’ordre, ni par conséquent celles du progrès. Et ce que je dis pour moi, je pourrais le dire pour tous ses lecteurs anglais à moi connus. Je ne pense pas que les doctrines pratiques de M. Comte aient fait ici le moindre chemin. Il n’est connu, estimé, ni même combattu que comme philosophe. Dans les questions sociales il ne compte même pas. Lui-même il n’ignore pas ce fait, et se plaint que ses admirateurs anglais n’acceptent que sa philosophie et rejettent sa politique.
Il me parait, donc, peu probable, Monsieur, que vos sentiments envers la doctrine de M. Comte puissent rencontrer ici le genre de sympathie dont vous témoignez le désir. Toutefois M. Comte commence à être assez généralement connu comme chef d’école, et dans le nombre de ses lecteurs il peut y en avoir quelques uns qui acceptent ses doctrines plus intégralement qu’aucun de ceux qu’il m’est arrivé de connaître.
183.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]. London
Aug. 19. 1854.
Sir—
I have the honour of receiving your letter dated the 20th of July. As the specimen of your translation of my Logic,2 which you mentioned your intention of sending, did not accompany the letter, I have waited some days for it; but as it has not yet arrived, I will no longer delay expressing to you the pleasure it gives me to learn that a translation of my book has been undertaken by one who has entered so thoroughly into its spirit, as your letter shews you to have done. I am not acquainted with the translation which has been made of the Inductive portion of the book.3 I am glad to hear from you that it has been so successful; but you have very rightly judged that, to give to the cultivators of physical science the theory of their own operations, was but a small part of the object of the book and that any success in that attempt was chiefly valued by me as a necessary means towards placing metaphysical & moral science on a basis of analysed experience, in opposition to the theory of innate principles, so unfortunately patronized by the philosophers of your country, & which through their influence has become the prevailing philosophy throughout Europe. I consider that school of philosophy as the greatest speculative hindrance to the regeneration so urgently required, of man and society; which can never be effected under the influence of a philosophy which makes opinions their own proof, and feelings their own justification. It is, besides, painful to see such a mass of cultivated intellect, and so great an educational apparatus, as exist in your country, wasted in manufacturing a false appearance of science out of purely subjective impressions. To be thought capable of maintaining a contest against that school even in Germany, is one of the highest compliments my book could receive. Of the opportuneness of a translation, & its chances of success, you must be a much better judge than I can be. Your letter is a proof of your competency for translating the book & I shall be happy to give whatever assistance my opinion can afford you on any of the minor matters on which you express a desire to communicate with me.
184.
TO PASQUALE VILLARI1
- East India House
London
le 22 août 1854
Monsieur
La brochure2 que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’envoyer, ainsi que la lettre qui l’accompagnait, étant arrivées pendant que j’étais en voyage, ne me sont parvenues que très récemment. Permettez-moi, en vous offrant mes remerciments, de témoigner ma sensibilité aux choses flatteuses que vous avez dites à l’égard de la dernière partie de mon Système de Logique.3 Vous avez vu, avec raison, dans ce sixième livre, le but principal de l’ouvrage tout entier, qui a été surtout destiné à répandre sur la méthode des sciences morales, les lumières qu’on peut trouver dans les procédés des sciences physiques. Je ne m’exagère pas la portée de ce que j’ai fait, ni même de ce qui peut se faire dans ce genre. Mais j’estime comme un grand honneur à mon livre, d’avoir éveillé des sympathies et donné une impulsion scientifique jusque dans votre pays, à des personnes qui s’occupent des études morales et politiques. J’aurai pleinement réussi, si j’ai fait quelque chose pour donner aux cultivateurs de ces études, les plus importantes et les moins avancées de toutes, une meilleure discipline intellectuelle. Il me semble qu’aujourd’hui c’est là surtout qu’ils font défaut; et une approbation comme la vôtre m’est un témoignage précieux que mes efforts dans ce sens n’ont pas été tout à fait sans fruit.
La traduction anglaise de votre Essai,4 que vous m’annoncez comme devant m’être remise, n’est point arrivée.
Acceptez, Monsieur, l’assurance de ma haute considération.
J. S. Mill
185.
TO JOHN RAE1
E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse] London, Sept. 19, 1854
Sir—
Your letter of Jany 9th has reached me within these few days. I am glad to hear of the various literary enterprises you have in hand or in contemplation, as I feel assured from the character of your work on Pol. Ec. that your speculations on any subject to which you have applied yourself will contain (whether I agree with them or not) enough both of knowledge & of originality & ingenuity to more than justify bringing them before the world. I have made more use of your treatise2 than you appear to have been informed of, having quoted largely from it, especially from your discussion of the circumstances which influence the “effective desire of accumulation”, a point which you appear to me to have treated better than it had ever been treated before. I have already published my opinion that nothing was wanting to your book except favorable chances to have gained you the reputation you desire, & which I hope you may acquire by other writings.
You could not however have addressed yourself to any person less capable than myself of giving any useful assistance in bringing out your speculations on the Hawaiian language. My own pursuits do not lie in the direction of comparative philology nor have I any acquaintances in this class of érudits (chiefly to be found in Germany) from some one of whom you desire a recommendation & his name as editor. Nor do I think this would easily be obtained for the preliminary pamphlet which you contemplate, whatever might be the case with the completed work.3 Even to get the pamphlet printed is more than I am able to undertake, not only from pressing occupations, but because the state of my health renders my residence in England, at the time when your MS could reach me, extremely unlikely.
Dr. Arnott4 whom you mention as an old acquaintance is alive & flourishing & may possibly have it more in his power to promote your object than myself.
You ask me how your book became known to me. I first heard of it from Mr. Senior5 who recommended it to me as a book of which he had a high opinion, & after I had read it through his means I picked up a copy on a stall.
I hope your health is quite reestablished.
I am Sir very faithfully yours
186.
TO EDWARD HERFORD1
- E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]
Oct. 26, 1854
Sir
I beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your pamphlet “On Some Fallacies of Political Economy”.2
I quite agree with you that many fallacies are engendered by the vague & ambiguous use of the word Capital even among political economists. I do not think however that anyone entitled to the name of a political economist ever confounds capital with money, or with the right to receive money; however often that gross blunder may be committed by the writers of “city articles in the Times”, writers ignorant of the very elements of the subject. The phrases which you cite as examples appear to me to arise from a confusion of another sort, viz. the employment of both these words, money & capital, to express loanable capital, or capital seeking investment, a misuse of terms extremely frequent, & leading to the notion that the causes which influence the loan market & the rate of interest have something to do with the quantity of the currency, than which in my opinion no notion can be more erroneous.
My own definition of capital is the portion of wealth which is destined to be employed for the purpose of production; & my difference with you on this point is well summed up in one sentence of your pamphlet (p. 43), where you say it is absurd that what is not capital should merely by the altered intentions of its owner, become capital, without any change in itself. I hold on the contrary that whether any given portion of wealth is capital or not, is solely a question of the intentions of its owners: just as it is wholly a question of the intentions of the owner whether a given bushel of wheat is seed or food.
I perceive that you are not aware that I have treated the subjects of your pamphlet at much length in my Princ of P.E.3 to which therefore I can refer you for a fuller exposition of my opinions.
I am Sir yours very faithfully
Edw. Herford Esq
- Coroner
Manchester
187.
TO JOHN REVANS1
Oct. 30 [1854]
Dear Revans
Having received no answer to the note I wrote to you at Dartford a fortnight ago I suppose it did not reach you. I therefore write this to the Club to remind you that the longest time you proposed for repaying the £30 you borrowed of me has now for some time expired—
I am yrs fy
John Revans Esq
- Reform Club
188.
TO EDWARD HERFORD1
E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse] Oct. 31 1854
Sir—
In answer to your last note I beg to say that I am well aware that the few words I wrote to you do not contain all that is necessary to explain & vindicate the view I take of some of the most vexed questions in P. Economy. I have endeavoured to do so to the best of my ability in a book which is in print, & I hope to be excused for saying that I have not time to do it over again for a correspondent. I will therefore only say in answer to your last point,2 that if it is the actual use & not the destination which decides how each portion of wealth is to be classed, then there is no food until somebody eats it & no seed until it is sown.
Again apologizing for my brevity I am Sir
yrs very faithfully
J. S. Mill
189.
TO PASQUALE VILLARI1
- East India House
London
le 1er novembre 1854
Monsieur
Je vous demande pardon de n’avoir pas pû répondre plus tôt à votre lettre du 25 septembre. Puisque M. Macaulay2 ne m’a pas remis la traduction anglaise de votre essai avec l’essai même, il est à craindre qu’elle ne soit perdue. Mais en supposant qu’elle me fût parvenue, je ne saurais vraiment à qui m’adresser pour la faire imprimer. Le public anglais est tellement en arrière du mouvement intellectuel Européen, que les hautes spéculations historico-sociales ne sont ni goûtées ni comprises, et j’ai peur qu’il ne se trouverait guère de lecteurs pour une esquisse historique de ces spéculations, surtout faite par un étranger, habitué à s’adresser à un public beaucoup mieux préparé à tout égard. Il est plus que probable qu’un libraire qui en entreprendrait la publication, en serait pour ses frais, et les directeurs de journaux et de revues ne voudraient pas insérer la traduction d’un écrit qui a déjà paru autre part. Ayant si peu d’espoir de succès, je vous demande la permission de ne pas m’occuper des nombreuses démarches qu’exigerait la tentative. Si le traducteur, ou tout autre de vos amis, croit avoir des chances de réussite, il n’a qu’à reclamer le manuscrit auprès de M. Macaulay, pour en faire l’usage qu’il jugera devoir être le plus utile.
Il est très probable que je passerai une partie de l’hiver prochain en Italie pour cause de santé, et dans ce cas j’espère avoir le plaisir de faire votre connaissance personnelle.3
Agréez, Monsieur, l’assurance de ma considération amicale.
J. S. Mill
190.
TO EDWARD HERFORD1
[After Nov. 4, 1854]
Sir—
It was because I thought I perceived from your manner of referring to my book, that you had only referred to it & not read it that I mentioned it to you as containing my opinion on all the points on which you consulted me. I did read both your pamphlet & your letters with attention, & I assure you that they do not contain any difficulty which I had not previously considered & as I believe resolved.
I am Sir
191.
TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.1
- East India House
Nov. 13. 1854
Dear Sir
I have much pleasure in giving this introduction to Mr Alexander Bain. I have long known him, and have mentioned in my Logic the obligations I was under to him in that work for remarks and illustrations.
The work which he proposes to you to publish2 is the result of many years of thought and study, and I am strongly persuaded that it will be an important advance on any previous work on the same subject. I may add that Mr Bain has had great practice as a popular writer, and has shewn much capacity of making abstract subjects interesting by his manner of treating them.
I am Dr Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
- J. W. Parker
Junr Esq.
192.
TO JOHN REVANS1
- E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]
Nov. 17. 1854
Dear Revans
Not having received any answer to the two notes2 I wrote to you respecting the £30 I lent you I can only suppose that you have not received them. I now write to say that I am going abroad for the winter on the 25th of this month3 & if I do not see you before that time I shall be obliged to leave your note of hand with my solicitor Mr Wm Ley &c &c L[incoln’s] I[nn] Fields who will apply to you for the amount.
I am yrs faithfully
John Revans Esq
- Stone—Dartford
- Duplicate to Reform Club.
193.
TO WILLIAM LEY1
- Blackheath
Nov. 26. 1854
I have been prevented by great press of business from calling on you this week as I intended to ask you to be kind enough to undertake a small matter of business—an old acquaintance of mine named Revans borrowed £30 from me last May promising to repay it in July—This he has not done & 2 notes on the subject2 having remained unanswered I last week wrote to him,3 saying that I shd place his note of hand in your hands to obtain the money. I enclose his reply & request you will be good enough to take the needful steps to get it paid & if you succeed paying the amount into my act at Messrs Prescotts 62 Threadneedle Street.
We are leaving town for Torquay for the benefit of its milder climate for my wife who is in very delicate health after which I am going to the S. of Europe for the winter. My wife desires her kind remembrances.
I remain
Yrs very faithfully
194.
TO SIR JOHN McNEILL1
Torquay Dec. 5, 18542
My dear Sir—
I have been unable to answer earlier your note of the 10th of last month, having only found time to read the book3 you were so kind as to send me during a few days passed at this place before going abroad for the winter.4
Mr Ferrier has the rare merit in a conversationalist, of complete fairness. He understands the opinions of all the opponents whom he notices, as fully & states them as clearly & forcibly as his own. He has a very telling mode of discussion. His fabric of speculation is so effectively constructed, & imposing, that it almost ranks as a work of art. It is the romance of logic.
I should be very happy if I could add that I believed it had done, what the author is firmly persuaded it has—solved the problem which all philosophers from the first origin of speculation have been vainly hammering at. On the contrary, it is depressing to me to see a man of so much capacity under what appears to me so deep a delusion. Truly the main hindrance of philosophy is not its intrinsic difficulties, great as they are, but the extreme rarity of men who can reason. It is enough to make one despair of speculation when a man of so much talent & knowledge as this book displays & who piques himself peculiarly on his reasoning faculty commits nearly every fallacy set down in books of logic & this at all the most critical points of his argument. He says that whoever admits his first proposition must admit all the rest. I do not admit his first propn:5 but even if I did, his first great paralogism as it seems to me consists in thinking that his second proposition6 follows7 from his first, & there is a similar or a still greater logical blunder each time that he makes any really fresh advance in his argument. The whole system is one great specimen of reasoning in a circle. Unless each successive conclusion is presupposed it is impossible to admit the premisses in the sense in which alone they can support it. All this I am satisfied I could prove to you, book in hand, in an hour’s conversation. Before I had finished the book I understood his mode of proceeding so well that I could generally see before-hand in what manner he was going to beg the next question. The effect is most disheartening, for when a writer who can so well point out the fallacies of others builds an entire system of philosophy on paralogising, what confidence is it possible to feel in avoiding them, & how vain seems all hope that one has done or can do anything to help these subjects forward. The only thing which alleviates this discouragement is the belief that the author was from the first on a wrong tack—as all metaphysicians, in my opinion, will be until they leave off revolving in the eternal round of Descartes & Spinoza (of the former of whom this book continually reminds me), & cease to imagine that philosophy can be founded on “necessary truths of reason” or indeed that there are such things as necessary truths—any at least which can be known to be necessary in the metaphysical sense of the word. Pray excuse the seeming crudity with which I have expressed the opinion you asked from me—it has not been crudely formed.
I am Dear Sir very truly yours
195.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Blackheath
Thursday evg
[Dec. 7, 1854]
1
My own darling—
my perfect one—how she always knows how to put the utmost possible of pleasurable recollection into the painful fact of parting.2 That little drive & that sweetest farewell have kept me in spirits all day & will keep me so till I have a dear delight of a word to overjoy me about a week hence. To tell the dear one what she wishes to know—I felt no cold, to speak of—none at all till I had got full half way. I had some sandwiches at Swindon as we intended & enjoyed the supper when I got to what will be home when its sun shines upon it again. The fine sunny day made the country look extremely pretty as far as Bath & beyond. The train arrived exact to its time. I called at Pope’s3 but found him not at home—not out of town however—so left my card with a few words in pencil. I stopt en chemin at Deane’s4 to buy a trowel, but they had never heard of such a thing as a trowel that folds up! so I must do without. I found Mrs Lynes5 & her husband both here—they had received the note & done everything right. The shoemaker sent a man who put the strap in order quickly & effectually. After emptying the red bag I locked it & put it in its old place under the bed—& as there is now nothing in it (except Ross’s6 gloves) I have, in case it should be wanted, put the (padlock) key in one of the table drawers in my room. I forgot to return the big medical book to Dr Royle7 before we left & am rather afraid to leave that to the people here lest they should make some mistake between that & the library parcel—if you find it here darling when your darling self comes back, please return it directed Dr Royle, India House.
As long as I was in sight of the same sea which she sees from her window I did not feel separated—it gave me a pang when I lost sight of it—but I am & shall be cheerful. This is hardly worth writing but perhaps she would rather have it than none. I shall write very soon.
With every possible kind of the utmost love—
Your own.
196.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Orleans
Dec. 9. 1854
2
I am here darling at our old quarters in the Hotel du Loiret & shall not get on any further tonight. I have had two days of little misadventures—in the first place dismal weather yesterday & today, though tonight it looks as if it might perhaps clear for tomorrow—then a very rough passage which made me very sea sick—I can almost say I knew for the first time what seasickness is, having had violent pains in the abdomen along with the most excessive sickness. When the boat stopt I was as you appear to be in the same case—I could hardly totter up the steps & had besides a bad return of sickness on the quay. However all this left me in the course of the evening. The next thing is that the effetti must have been excessively knocked about on the steamer—perhaps only by the extreme pitching of the ship—but when they came to be opened at the douane, the large portmanteau was found unlocked, having lost precisely what the smaller one lost at Boulogne before—a very strange effect to come from knocking about—however I miss nothing and do not suspect foul play. Not only was the lid of the cod liver oil box split lengthwise but one of the bottles was broken & had spilt a good deal of the oil—happily spoiling nothing but the red leather cover of my writing book. When I opened the dressing case the earthenware tray which it contains was also broken. I suppose all this happened because the portmanteau though full was not tightly pressed & squeezed down from overfullness as it usually is & therefore could not stand the knocking about. No further harm happened to any of the things on their land journey thus far, & I must go on as I can with them. The necessity of getting the lock mended obliged me to stay this morning at Paris which in any case it would have been disagreeable after arriving at 12 o’clock to leave at 8.40, the latest train which would have taken me to Poitiers today—so I waited for the 1 oclock train which would have taken me to Tours tonight in the dark by a slow train but it was pleasanter to stop here & take the express tomorrow at 11/9. I think I shall stop at Libourne as it is a place I have not seen & so get to Bordeaux by daylight the morning after. It may perhaps be fine by that time. Even Paris looked its very worst—dark, soaked & uncomfortable. The new street to the Hotel de Ville is now all but finished—the houses all built & occupied except just by the Louvre where they have pulled down all the houses between it & the Rue St Honoré & are rebuilding them. The fine old Gothic tower of St Jacques la Boucherie will be the centre of a place—they are restoring it as they are all the old monuments in France. The oldest of the old, & blackest of the black, the Palais de Justice now looks like a new building, to its great loss in my opinion. I went to the Bedford which was comfortable but by no means cheap. I passed your or rather our Hotel de France which was pleasant to see—as it is pleasant to be in this inn where we have been. Yesterday in the railway I was afraid that I was getting into that half mad state which always makes me say that imprisonment would kill me—& which makes me conscious that if I let myself dwell on the idea I could get into the state of being unable to bear the impossibility of flying to the moon—it is a part of human nature I never saw described but have long known by experience—this time the occasion of it was, not being able to get to you—when I reflected that for more than six months I was to be where I could not possibly go to you in less than many days, I felt as if I must instantly turn back & return to you. It will require a good deal of management of myself to keep this sensation out of my nerves. I hope next time I write to have something better to tell than a heap of petits malheurs. I must not forget to say that Mrs Lynes2 (who was very attentive) produced before I went her account of the comestibles she had bought for me amounting to eighteen-pence besides 3d postage on the Adelaide paper & said they were short of money, so I paid her the 1/9 & also 1/8 to cover the parcels money—I made up & directed the medical book to Dr Royle3 & left the library books for her to make up & I thought one might be 8d & the other a shilling but perhaps not so much. I told her to keep the account & give it to you when you return. This letter is worth nothing anima mia but to tell her that I have got safely thus far. I have got some books from a library to read this evening & so get through this dull part of the time. Adieu delight of my life.
197.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Bordeaux
Dec. 11. [1854]
3
My own precious one, I have no more disasters to tell of—it has been very fine weather these two days, though rather cold. Snow fell in the night at Orleans but it melted in the morning & I was not the least cold during the journey in consequence of the nice mode of warming the first class carriages. A man told me on the way to Dover that one English railway, the Great Northern, has adopted this plan: I am sure it is an ample reason for going by that way to the south in the winter half of the year. The railway journey was pretty, especially near Poitiers & there was an agreeable German, of Lubeck, in the carriage whom I had a little talk with—also a young naval officer who had just got leave of absence to see his relations at Angoulême while his ship the Austerlitz is refitting at Cherbourg (having been damaged in the Baltic); his extreme delight made him speak with enthusiasm of everything, especially Hamburg which he seemed to think the most splendid place in the world. He was taking a Russian sheepskin cloak to his vieux père. I stopped at Libourne as I intended & had a walk about it this morning—the best thing there is the bridge of the Dordogne, the view from which is really fine. It was getting into cheapness again—for a thé complet, breakfast with eggs & bed the charge was 4 francs which with half a franc to the waiter was the whole expense. There was ice in the streets & it is sharp today though not sufficiently to be unpleasant. I came on to Bordeaux in a bright sun, always in sight of one of the two fine rivers & have now been strolling about Bordeaux for several hours—it is quite as pleasant & handsome a town as I remember it—but I find it is more difficult to leave it than to get to it, all the diligences being night ones. There is one to Toulouse at 1 oclock in the day reaching Toulouse at 10 next morning but by this they will not book to any place short of Toulouse! & they say chance places are seldom to be had. I do not know if I shall close with this or take my chance of a place part of the way & go on next day by a different diligence. In any case this will not be till Wednesday for I shall give tomorrow to La Teste. I have not gone to our old Hotel de France but to the Hotel du Midi which is in a much better street & of which I liked the advertisement. I have seen the cathedral & another large church—neither of them very fine. The restoring is going on here as it is every where else in France—to the great indignation of Ruskin2 —& I dare say the new figures of saints round the entrances &c &c are not so good as the old were, but of that I am not much of a judge & care very little about it—but what I can perceive is the extremely bad effect produced by their restoring a part at a time, a single window perhaps of a high tower—which looks bright & white in the midst of a dark time stained building producing false unnatural & ugly lights & shades & destroying the effect of the true. It is a very cheerful looking town & not nearly so modern in appearance as I fancied it in recollection. I have seen the large fine theatre outside & intend to see it inside this evening. The air here is about half way between the English air when one calls it particularly clear—as often in March—& the real southern air—but it was charming after the damp weather although much sharper than at Torquay—perhaps however there is now a north wind at Torquay too. I do hope she will not feel it much at Highfield. I have had the good luck to find here, when in search of a Tasso, all the four poets in one volume,3 not too large to go in the pocket nor too small print to read by ordinary light—it cost 7½ francs & is a very good investment of the money. I stupidly left my little ivory memorandum tablets at home & have not been able to find another here at an admissible price. I feel the inconvenience of being without it. This letter has hardly anything in it worth sending but it is a pleasure to write it & it will be a pleasure to her to hear that I am going on well. I shall have more to tell of perhaps next time & then more & more afterwards—I dream almost every night that I am with her or that she is travelling with me. Adieu my darling darling more precious than ever love.
198.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Bordeaux
Dec. 13 [1854]
4
My darling one perhaps hardly expects to hear again so soon, but the best time to write is when I have a spare half hour. I went to La Teste yesterday in a middling day & had six hours consecutive walking there, on the beach & in the pine forest. La Teste itself is a rather shabby village but about a mile from it, is the watering place Arcachon by name, really a tolerable turn out for a French watering place. It lies along the coast, in one road or street which I thought I should never get to the end of—nearly two miles it must be—the houses on one side looking to the sea & on the other to a long ridge covered with pine woods, almost close to the houses—it is empty now but the quantity of hotels & lodging houses (mostly in the pavilion form) is immense—horses & carriages to be had every where & some large architectural looking private houses built or building—for the whole place looks quite new & is rapidly spreading along the coast. The worst is that its sea is to the north for it is not the real sea but an inlet or basin as broad as the broadest parts of the Solent, or broader—but the real sea is soon reached from it. After going a long way by the sea I returned by the pine forest which seems to cover the whole line of coast here & in which I was near losing myself. It is really fine—a succession of bold ridges covered with a pine, not the stone pine but like very fine Scotch fir, full of paths, & where you continually come out on points from which you see across deep woody ravines to other bold woody hills. The underwood where there is any, is tall broom & a sort of tree-like heath, inland, but towards the sea it is arbutus in profuse quantity & splendid flower. According to my recollections of Murray,2 this railway, he pretended, went through the hills of Medoc but it is entirely false. You get directly on the Grandes Landes, which until near the sea are a dead flat & alternate between pine woods & open very wet looking heaths on which I unexpectedly saw in two places, the men we read about, clothed in sheep-skins & mounted on stilts. The day was altogether as pleasant as was consistent with only moderately good weather & a state, in myself, not at all enjoying—the causes of which are probably in part physical, & the long walk of yesterday which has evidently done me much good will I dare say partly remove them. As yet I have not been able to enjoy anything much & yesterday as I was returning in the railway carriage I felt that I must say to my darling that she must not be surprised if she finds any day that I am on my way the very shortest way home. Now I have said it I feel relieved & probably shall be able to go on without. It is evident that the journey even now is doing me good as to health—I was weighed this morning just as I was at Torquay & the result (66½ kilos) shews an increase of more than 2 lbs since, which is very much for the time exactly a week. It is a still duller day today though not actually raining & I am not sorry that I took my place right through to Toulouse though it will give me tonight for travelling & the day tomorrow at Toulouse where I do not want to stay. That makes it unlucky that we did not arrange for a letter at Toulouse as I do long for the first word from her. I shall soon be in the real south & I shall get her first letter at the moment of arriving there. I went to the grand théâtre which is for operas & ballets—very large & fine with gilding & painting, but the boxes all hanging like separate balconies without any support under them which seems to me very ugly. After one of the usual absurd & immoral little pieces there was a ballet called Grenadilla3 which I quite expect will be to be seen in London—all ballets are dull but some of the scenery & even the dancing in this were prettier than usual & if it were not for the noise which the French presume to call music it would be pleasant. There are seldom any newspapers at the inns but local ones but I see from those that things make little progress in the Crimea. I learnt from one this morning qu’on voit en angleterre de nobles ladys confectionner de leurs blanches mains des masses de plummpuddings [sic] pour les soldats de Lord Raglan.4 When I put this letter in the post I shall ask if there are any for me though I do not expect any & shall then go to a salon de lecture for the first time to learn some verités de cette [force?] là. Adieu my darling—I dare say I shall write from Toulouse tomorrow but perhaps I may have the luck to be able to leave immediately. Adieu con tutti gli amori et baci possibili.
199.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Toulouse Dec 14 [1854]
5
I begin writing this evening my darling though I probably shall not finish & send off the letter from this place. Instead of arriving at 10 in the morning the diligence brought me here sometime after dark—in a most dismal day—it rained very much in the night & has been all today like the worst November day (barring fog) in England—but (the satisfactory circumstance is) not cold—I did not feel cold at all in the coupé though it was not full—only one person besides me, who by the bye had not much conversation though he professed to have travelled immensely, as all the persons with whom I have conversed in this journey have done. The German I told you of had seen Niagara, & was just returning from South America, not having been at home for several years. I am not at our old place which seems not to be known by its name now—they call this where I am (the Hotel de l’Europe in the Place Lafayette) Hotel Bibent now, saying that M. Bibent keeps it. I am very comfortable here, luckily as I have caught a bad cold. I suppose the immense chill, almost amounting to an ague fit, which I had at La Teste soon after coming in from my long walk (much heated by quick walking, not to be benighted in the forest) was not wholly as I thought at the time, the effect of my complaint, but was the sign & consequence of catching this cold. I am glad to find that I can get off tomorrow at ten in the forenoon & to avoid night travelling. I shall go no further tomorrow than Carcassonne. It is not far to Narbonne after that & the change to a southern climate is somewhere about Carcassonne which corresponds here to Valence in the Rhone Valley. I believe I passed in the night through some pretty country about La Réole & Agen: there was some very pretty this morning along the base of a line of hills by a road raised somewhat above a broad valley or rather plain in which the Garronne winds beautifully—how splendidly the southwest of France is provided with rivers. All the affluents of the Garronne are large & fine, the Dordogne, Tarn, Lot &c. The rest of the country which I saw both near Bordeaux & here was dull & uninteresting enough, at least in winter. I am beginning to think what I shall take in hand to write during this journey—we were to have discussed that, but forgot to do it & I am a good deal puzzled what to fix upon—it would be a pity to do nothing all this long time & I expect to have plenty of evenings on my hands especially when I become stationary anywhere. Perhaps my darling will suggest something—she may conceive but I am sure she does not know what a difference it makes in the possibility of any verve in writing on a subject & even in the capacity of writing about it at all, for it to have been of her dear suggesting. I was constantly falling asleep for moments in the diligence & dreaming directly of her—the dream mixing oddly with reality as for example, I dreamt that I was seated by her in a carriage with four places with Lily sitting facing us as usual & could not make out in my dream how we came to be three when just before I was sure we had been only two in the carriage—at other times dreaming of much finer scenery than I was passing through. She will not lose anything by not getting this letter directly. I hope I shall be able to tell her of bright skies before I send it. As yet I have only had that once, the day I arrived at Bordeaux.
Carcassonne. Dec. 15. I have just got here, my beauty, at about nine in the evening. It has been another gloomy day, without actual rain, but the roads everywhere soaking with wet. This line of road goes all the way through a kind of valley which extends from one to the other sea but for a long way after Toulouse the heights are very distant & tame. There was nothing fine till (a little before dark) we reached Castelnaudary, a town spread out on the top & sides of an eminence rising in the middle of the valley in question which is here on the broad scale which French scenery so often is—the town looks one way over what seems a vast valley to some very high ground called the Montagnes Noires, forming the termination of the Cevennes at this end, & the other way to some bolder & nearer confused ridges which rise behind one another towards the Pyrenees. In fine weather no doubt the Pyrenees can be seen. I dare say there is fine country between that place & this but the night concealed it. The people all look well off & so do the animals: all the way from Bordeaux there is a splendid breed of cattle like those in the Pontine marshes, & the geese are so enormous that they seem intended to be eaten by beings superior to men. One sees however perfectly here what people mean when they talk of the inferiority of French agriculture. There are scarcely any ploughs, all is done by hand—digging or rather hoeing with instruments like these
or 
which it is quite painful to see them work with—accordingly the green corn is hardly more advanced than it was a month ago in England & most of the land is not yet prepared for seed at all—if it were not for their mild winter they could not get their corn into the ground till spring. It is very curious to look at the faces of a crowd in one of these towns—a great many faces very beautiful—many quite idiotic—most of them characteristic in some way & every now & then one (generally a woman) so deeply tragic as hardly any English face is capable of being. Having so much physiognomy as the French have no wonder they are physiognomists. People seem to me to talk less about the government than they did a year ago—they neither speak for nor against it—& they do not talk half as much about the war2 as people in England do. I was asked for my passport at Castelnaudary for the second time after landing—the first being at the inn at Paris, & with apologies, merely as they said to take down the name. Nowhere else have the inn people asked my name & they have nowhere produced a book. I find I can get on to Narbonne tomorrow in the middle of the day, which will give me time for a walk here & to see the place. I have had no walk yet, deserving the name, except the one at La Teste. By the bye in what I said about the pine forests I did not mention the use they are put to. Great numbers of trees have a large piece of bark sliced off near the bottom, where the turpentine exudes & drying up becomes a large white cake of considerable thickness. The woods belong to the government & are advertised pin maritime à gommer mort, or à gommer vif, as it happens. The landlord at Toulouse is the man who had the Hotel Bibent which last still exists but is called Hotel de Paris. The Place du Capitole is all remis à neuf—they were I think in 1849 pulling down the side opposite to the Capitole—that is now a long Palais Royal like affair with arcades, & the other two sides exactly like it, arcades excepted, looking bran new, très magnifique, & of a desolating sameness. They have now named the Rue & Place Lafayette, Rue & Place Louis Napoleon but I perceive the people still use the old names. My cold is getting better. Goodbye darling—I shall get her beautiful writing tomorrow which is next (though far removed) to her beautiful self.
200.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Montpellier
Dec. 18. [1854]
7
My precious love, after I had put my letter in the post at Narbonne I walked about the town & in the neighbourhood in the most delightful sunshine & temperature though with a great deal of wind: a man here said, we have almost always du vent only rarely a calm (une bonace). Nothing can be seen of the sea nor even of the lagunes (here called étangs) which come close up to the town, & though there are heights & ridges at no great distance there are no rocks visible except a sort of mural line along the top of a long ridge which closes the view southwest, through which there are gaps evidently made by water washing the precipice away. As the country is cultivated to the top of the heights there is no beauty at this season except what the climate gives; it is all bare earth or scarcely visible stubble, the olives being scattered & poor—nevertheless it was very pleasant after the northern stay. These southern towns have mostly low houses so that when seen from without they seem to crouch at the foot of the lofty cathedral forming an apt image of middle age hierarchy. By the bye the people in all this country are either most strenuous catholics or their religion has received a great fillip from the cholera, for in all the towns I have lately passed through, most of the houses, great or small, are placarded with printed papers imploring the intercession of Marie conçue sans péché & occasionally of St Roch, the latter usually requested to preserve them from the cholera. I enjoyed the walk & even got a few plants—all along the road, afterwards I passed among the dead carcasses of so many fine plants that I would gladly have found living. The hedges here are mostly of that grey coloured maritime-looking shrub which is so much planted about Torquay—nice Torquay!2 how I have conned over all its localities in the bit of England that is in our map of France & which gives the outline of that coast really well. I soon found there was little more to be seen of Narbonne & determined to omit Perpignan on the principle of leaving something for another time—it would come so well into a Pyrenean tour which we shall make perhaps some day if we live & are strong enough. So I came on to Beziers by a diligence which leaves at two & arrived at ½ past 4 & notwithstanding the wind, made myself very comfortable in the banquette. There were mountains at no great distance to the left all the way, which & the passes through them were evidently very fine, but it was plain that most abominable weather was going forward there, & now & then the tail of a cloud from that quarter brushed over us & gave a few drops of rain—looking back to Narbonne I more than suspected that the place was having its first rain for a year past if the man told truth—another man said, il ne pleut jamais ici, pour ainsi dire jamais. Beziers is a nice town on a steep hill, with a nice new part & a nice old part. I went to the theatre there, tempted by an opera, La Favorite,3 which was really very well sung and acted—but the pit was the most boisterous assemblage I ever was in—perhaps the day, Sunday, had something to do with that. I had the theatre for nothing, as it cost me exactly what I should otherwise have paid for fire, being one franc: at Narbonne they wanted to make me pay 1½ franc. At Beziers the charge for dinner & bed, the former a large table d’hôte, the bed as good as anywhere & the bedroom very decent, was three francs. I have found no such low charge anywhere else. I left at six this morning for Montpellier & arrived there at two. The night had been splendid, the stars even brighter I think than at Nice, & the early part of the day was exquisite, but the mountains enveloped in rain & at last the clouds gradually collected everywhere—it became as dull a day as in England, except that even in dull days here there is a transparency in the air which we never or very seldom see in England. When I got here it had just begun to rain & promises to do so all the evening which is the reason I am writing. I had meant to walk about till dark & chat with my darling in the evening. There will be no letters yet but I shall ask for them directly to familiarize messieurs du bureau with the idea. I am in what is called the best hotel, Hotel Nevet, a large place in the best situation in the town, & by good luck the landlady who pretends to speak English, apologized (as her premier was full) for giving me a ground floor room which suits me the best in the house, with a direct outlet to the esplanade through a garden, very nicely furnished & comfortable, the cost being two francs. I shall stay here several days, till I have seen all the old places & all those I had not seen which are worth seeing & I shall take the opportunity at the same time of recommencing the cod liver oil which I suspended during the journey. I have several times read a little of Tasso,4 to the benefit I hope of my Italian, for I do not seem likely to derive any other pleasure or profit from it—it seems to me the most prosaic of prose & I do not think that this is only from not liking the subject of the Jerusalem, nor what is called romantic poetry in general. Fortunately the same volume contains Dante who with Filicaja5 & perhaps Alfieri6 seem to me as far as I know the only Italian poets—but I shall try the Aminta7 which is perhaps better & I suppose I must attempt a little of Petrarch especially if I go to Vaucluse. I have a great respect for him as one of the principal restorers of ancient & founders of modern literature but I cannot say the little I have read of his writings or know of his life interests me much. It now pours, & I shall probably get wet in going to the post but I must do so as for aught I know it may save a day—letters however go quick from here as it is almost all railway. A propos the Bordeaux & Cette line was in sight all the way making rapid progress in all parts & almost finished in some—also the Canal du Midi the great work of Colbert8 which is made very ornamental by its windings & by a broad towing path planted on both sides all the way with trees—mostly planes, which are the staple as though they lose their leaves in winter they do not in summer, as most of the deciduous trees do here, thus failing when shade is wanted. But the plane has like the Australian trees the bad habit of stripping itself of its bark & exposing itself stark naked, or with a few fragments of clothing hanging in rags about it. All the towns, this included, look at a distance just like the grey limestone they are made of which also stands out of the ground in blocks like the houses of some of the dwarfs in Tieck’s9 fairy tales. Does not my treasure find my letters very rambling. I write things just when & where they come into my head—how I long for the next letter, but it would not be written I am afraid till yesterday—however as I said it will come quick. Will my darling kiss her next letter just in the middle of the first line of writing—the kiss will come safe & I shall savourer it. Adieu darling
201.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Montpellier
Dec. 20 [1854]
8
I have had but a poor specimen of this climate, my beauty—the first day it rained heavily all the afternoon & evening—the second was brilliant but there was such a violent north wind that I sometimes could hardly stand against it & had to hold my hat on & walk stooping—& this morning when I awoke it was snowing hard—& though the snow soon melted in most places, on the promenades there was still some left late in the afternoon. So you see, first it blew, then it snew & then it thew, & perhaps tomorrow I may have to say then it friz. The people say that there was no rain in November this year & it is just like our ill luck last year that it should have come now. In spite of this I was on foot yesterday from soon after daylight till dark, with the sole intermission of breakfast. The country is not beautiful but peculiar—like no other I ever saw—much as my recollections made it—but the rocky waste which chiefly composed it formerly is in many places changed to vineyards & olive grounds. The limestone of this country is hard, but moulders into very tolerable soil & if people will take the trouble to dig out with pickaxe & shovel the hard blocks they generally find soil enough hanging about them to plant in & the stone itself does to build with & is burnt into lime for mortar. I found many large spaces inclosed by walls & containing houses & grounds where I only remember garrigues (as they call these wastes) so multiplying the little campagnes which dot the whole country round the town as at Nice or Marseille. I walked out 12 kilometres on the road I best knew, being that which leads to the chateau formerly of the Benthams2 —but which has ceased to be theirs these twenty years & more—I found my recollections in no material point inaccurate. This road must be quite the finest which leads out of Montpellier—it goes direct towards the foot of the Pic St Loup the only mountain very conspicuous from the town & the approaches to which lie over & among rocky heights & I came to several views very like & fit for Salvator.3 The town itself is much the same except that it is very much cleaner, better paved, & has many new buildings—like all towns in these days it has evidently become manufacturing & the outskirts are crowded with works of different sorts, of which one effect is that the clearness of the sky is now much tarnished by coal smoke—for the place having a railway right into the heart of one of the chief coal basins of France has taken to burning a great deal of coal (& sometimes also le cock as they pronounce it). Hence the promenade du Peyrou on the top of the hill which the town covers, still the finest promenade for situation & beauty I ever saw (the water which supplies the town is brought to this promenade by an aqueduct of two rows of arches spanning a great valley) now looks across smoke towards the sea, & only on the side towards the mountains has its beautiful clearness. I have not yet had weather to see the Pyrenees from it, as can always be done when there is fine weather in that direction. Today I have gone very little out of the town, the roads being sloppy with the snow. If my own recollections did not confirm it, I should think the people here were in a conspiracy to tell lies in defence of their climate. They say it hardly ever snows (two people have told me they saw snow here today for the first time) & that it sometimes does not rain for 18 months but this it seems is the season of the high winds. The wind yesterday though due north direct from the mountains & so strong & though I was walking right against it was not, I am bound to say, cold—& today it is warm but not so warm as it was at Torquay when I was there. Tell me dearest when you write what weather you had at the same time. Today I saw the picture gallery all new since I was here & I should think the best to be found in any provincial town in France, founded by a painter named Fabre,4 who spent in collecting pictures all of his life which was not employed in painting them, & gave them all to his native town, since which two other people have given their galleries to add to it. They are mostly originals, many of them of the best painters & some very fine. Either the same or someone else also gave a large library to the town, which is kept in the same building. On the whole the place must be pleasant, having always had very good literary & scientific society & the usual share of other—as somebody in Chamfort said of some place, la bonne société y est comme partout, et la mauvaise y est excellente. Living must be cheap—at a large butcher’s shop I was told that beef, mutton & veal were severally 10, 11, & 14 sous the lb, best parts & best quality (the woman asked more when she thought I was a buyer & when they understood my object the man evidently made a conscience of telling me the truth). For good sized fowls I was asked 15 sous—they must be still cheaper at Toulouse (I wish I had asked) that country being said to be the head quarters of fowldom, & I passed on the road repeatedly waggonloads of hencoops full of them laden top heavy like hay waggons in England, which a fellow traveller said were going from Toulouse to Marseilles not for the fleet but for the ordinary supply of the town. This seems as if in Provence as at Nice the peasants did not keep fowls as profusely as they do elsewhere in France. For plump little turkeys the woman who had the fowls asked 4½ francs but this was only her first word. The meat I can positively say is excellent if I may judge from this table d’hôte—which is by many degrees the best I ever dined at—all the dishes of good quality, well cooked & in profusion & what is more uncommon, the most perfect order, rapidity & polite attention in the serving—though thirty or forty are always there, every one is individually asked to take of every dish, the waiters having an immense variety of civil formulas with which they offer it as a master of the house would to his guests. The servants of all sorts are all pleasant mannered people & the whole thing gives one a high idea of the old lady who manages it. I have a very comfortable room, & the rest from travelling is very pleasant & useful—not that I was physically overdone but mentally. This evening when I have finished this letter I have my plant papers to change & dry, my Italian to read (Aminta is not such dull work, quite, as the Gerusalemme) & a novel to finish with. There is here a nice library & salon littéraire where I get books & read the papers—they always have Galignani & occasionally get the Post or Chronicle. I was agreeably surprised at seeing the Post & not the Times. Tomorrow I shall perhaps get another precious letter. I have asked each day of the very civil people. Altogether I like the place, but it is not beautiful enough nor quite a good enough climate for one to wish to choose it as a place to live in. I wish though that my darling had seen it with me & hope we shall come here some day together. I will finish by saying that the cod liver oil I am sure is an excellent thing for me, for I never had digested perfectly since I left it off, & have from the very first day I resumed it—a thousand loves & kisses to my own divine treasure.
202.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Montpellier
Dec. 22 [1854]
9
You see dearest angel that I am here still, but I leave for Nîmes tomorrow. I got her second letter yesterday morning on the way to the railroad & it is quite painful to think of her being worried & put out of spirits & the benefit of the change in great part lost by that most unsuitable companionship—it is always so—when you are for any time with the grand’mère2 your feelings & conscience are always revolted & nerves set on edge. You have said the truest of words—always dupe de votre cœur—you thought she felt declining & had the natural wish to give what she would feel agreeable, but you are not physically fit for that now—& why should you throw yourself away on one for whom Caroline is not only good enough but pleasanter to her than you. Why did you do it & why did I not try to dissuade you. If it was but to be soon over—but two months are such a terrible length of time. I shall be as glad now to know you safe at home as I was glad to think that you were in that nice place—nice before but spoilt in idea now by that presence. I have not much to tell—I should have written directly after reading her letter if I had not known that she would in the meantime have received several of mine which would shew that I was feeling more comfortable. I am getting on very well & shall do well enough—different somehow from the summer journey—I was then what people call much more out of spirits, that is I thought badly of my prospects as to health which now I do not—but then I was active & buoyant, mentally, & liked to talk to all sorts of people—now I feel no disposition to it & generally am silent at tables d’hôte & even with fellow travellers (after a few words have been said to shew friendliness) unless they shew a desire to talk. This they seldom do—the French are now a much more silent people than the English. Among perhaps forty people at table there will not be six who say anything & these generally only to their own party & but little to them. I have seen hardly any English: at Béziers there were two, but they aspired to being fast & I kept aloof from them. There are three or four in this inn, & some of them are said to dine at the table d’hôte but I do not distinguish them by sight or tongue—though I do one or two Germans. As for my proceedings—I went yesterday by the railway to Cette, which I found little worth seeing—a seaport is always ugly & a small one worse than a large, because you cannot get away from the port. But this sky makes everything look well. I walked back 29 kilometers (18 miles) & should not have been at all tired had it not been again a day of violent wind (though otherwise very fine) & in the whole distance I could never, for fear of losing my hat, walk for any consecutive five minutes upright—I could only see the view by occasionally looking up, with my hand firmly attached to my hat. This is not pleasant—my neighbour yesterday at dinner told me there is always wind here, & a waiter to whom I have just spoken thinks nothing of this wind, & says it will be the same all January & February & much worse in March—a nice place for consumption! but the wind is not cold, only troublesome. The waiter said if there were only more rain here the pays would be trop riche. Today par merveille there has been but little wind (though we should call it anywhere else a fresh breeze) & a fine sky though with many beautiful clouds. The mountains are loaded with masses of cloud every day & all day & there must be torrents of rain there. Today I have walked about & taken a moderately long walk out in the garrigues. I like when a place is at all interesting to stay long enough there to carry away a permanent image of it which I am sure is correct, which one never does of a place one only passes through. This place if it would but cease blowing, would gain on one extremely—I never saw anything more lovely than the Peyrou & its view this evening just after sunset, & from something different I suppose in the state of the air I saw none of the smoke I mentioned before—everything was pure & the tone that of the finest Poussin.3 At the gallery I had great pleasure in seeing an exceedingly nice painting of Pau with the castle & mountains. I shall stay I suppose two nights at Nimes, there is much to see there but I shall see tomorrow the Arènes, Maison Carrée &c & next day go to the Pont de Gard—on foot if possible. Adieu my precious—there is never a day an hour or a minute when I am not wishing for her. There is no doubt another letter on the way to Marseilles—there would perhaps be time for still another there, but to make sure I will rather say, write to Genoa the day she receives this if it is quite convenient. I will ask there if I do not find two at Marseilles. Adieu again mio bene.
203.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Montpellier Dec 23 [1854]
10
I wrote yesterday my darling & she will get this by the same post. I write again to thank her for such a sweet note (No. 3) & to send a letter I have just received from Pope.2 There seems to have been a malentendu altogether. He means to go to the south of France in the very worst months & asks me to tell him where. I do not know any place that would suit him except Hyères or Pau (perhaps Cannes?) & I hate to send him to either. I shall not write to him till I hear from you. Pisa, Rome or Malta are the places for him but he evidently does not like going alone to Italy on account of the language. Malta I had suggested to him before. I am so happy that even in those most depressing & irritating circumstances her health has still improved. Mille mille baci.
204.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Avignon—Dec 25 [1854]
11
We thought of being at Florence today my dearest & I am only here—but that was when I thought of leaving England sooner than the 8th. Last Christmas Day we were together at Hyères, a day I shall never forget—now I am not far from the same place but without the delight of my life. She knows I wish her every good that can possibly be wished at this time & a happy meeting in the warm weather six months hence unless I am happy enough for it to be sooner by her coming to meet me. How unlike this day to the last I spent here—about the same time of year: but it makes as fine time now as it made villain time then. I little thought that the place where I should first in this journey fully taste the pleasure of existence would be Avignon—if I had not come here I should not have known what a splendidly beautiful place it is. The Promenade des Rochers, close to the Cathedral—in these southern towns they always contrive to have a fine promenade in the finest situation—from this promenade on the summit of the town there is a complete panorama all round, commanding a fine Vega encircled on all sides by mountains with the snowy Mont Ventoux the foremost of them & through this three great rivers winding viz. the Rhone below the town & its two enormous and widely diverging branches above this under the splendidest of skies & suns & with the temperature of a fine day at the beginning of October. I could have spent the whole day with pleasure merely pacing the two long bridges across the two branches of the Rhone. I arrived here from Nimes about 12 & walked about till nearly dark which is not till after 5, for the winter days are longer & the summer days shorter in these latitudes. It will be lovely going to Vaucluse tomorrow. The most prominent object at Nimes is the Arènes, about half the size of the Colosseum but much more perfect at least externally—it forms the centre of a great place & my window looked out on it—& it looked finer at night than in the day. Here too I had two splendid days, with no more wind than was agreeable, though not quite equal to this day at Avignon. The Maison Carrée is a very nice graceful temple, Greek not Roman though of the Roman times, & in perfect preservation. They have made the interior a picture gallery & museum & there are some good pictures. There are in the town some other Roman antiquities but only like the nameless ones one finds everywhere in the Campagna—also an old Roman tower on the top of a hill, the ascent to which is a nicely planted promenade & from the top of which is a splendid view of the town & country. Nimes consists of boulevards with shops & houses in the Paris stile encircling an old town somewhat like the old part of Nice. For my part I am coming to like the modern parts best. It is not the uncomfortable squalid oldness of the buildings that makes the French towns so delightful—it is the infinitely varying physiognomy, & that is as perfect in the boulevards of Paris & Nimes as in the oldest recesses of either. I went yesterday to the Pont du Gard—being 22 kilometres, it was too far to go & return on foot but a cabriolet with a good horse only cost 10 francs. This day gave me a picture for life. The Pont is an aqueduct of three tiers of arches crossing a ravine at an immense height—almost perfectly preserved, even to the conduit which conveyed the water & which I walked into & a good way along though I could not quite stand upright. Against the lowest tier of arches was built, 100 years ago, a bridge to carry a road across but it is a bye road—the place is most retired & on the other side of the Pont nothing is seen but the old stonework. Beyond is the loveliest & wildest ravine winding among ilex & other bushes, along the middle of which runs the purest of all crystal streams. I had a glorious walk up the ravine to an old feudal chateau with high machicolated towers. Everything looks so splendid under this sky, though today is the first in which I have had perfect physical comfort—all the other bright days there has been too much wind though they thought nothing of it at Nimes & said it always blows there. The cathedrals in these towns are mere common churches like that at Nice. The one at Montpellier has nothing remarkable but a porch which from its height & the size of its two pillars seems built by & for giants. I went into a church here & found a man preaching with great vehemence a metaphysical & philosophical sermon, shewing that science (of which he really seemed to know something) can explain & understand very little—wherefore incomprehensibility ought not to hinder us from believing.—I sent her from Montpellier Pope’s letter. His plan now is that I should not have him for any part of the time I might have liked to have him, & should have him in Greece where I would much rather not, since I shall there see more or less of people with whom he would be merely in the way. I should have liked well enough to have him in Sicily but you see he gives up that & I feel inclined to shirk him altogether but do not know the best way. However I need only at present tell him where to direct to me if he writes. I have no idea where to advise him to go.
I shall go to Marseilles darling the day after tomorrow & shall write as soon as I have been to the post office & fixed by what steamer to leave. If this weather holds, the journey will be very pleasant. It evidently rains or snows very much in the mountains, as is shewn by the muddiness of the Rhone. I cannot make up my mind whether to call on Mr Pasquale Villari or not at Florence & also whether to leave my card with Bulwer.2 Adieu my darling of darlings. The people were going about everywhere so cheerful & gay this fine fête day.
205.
TO HARRIET MILL1
- Marseille
Dec. 27 [1854]
12
I found her dear dear letter on arriving today my own cherished one. What good her letters do me—this one has put me quite into spirits because of her being so well (considering the circumstances) & because she has fine weather & likes the place—she makes me like it again, the dear one does, but I long for the time when she will go out & enjoy it—how often I realize those nice walks & drives about there & I think I like them quite as much as any place I have been in since, without counting the fact of her being there, without which no place is beautiful to me. One of those six hours Sunday walks is about as much as I can really enjoy fully the beauty of when my darling is not with me. However darling I am cheerful & doing very well & was this morning when I weighed 68 kilos being 3 lbs more than Bordeaux, 5 than Torquay & 8 than London. I have got up to the highest I weighed in the summer excursion—all but a pound, the weight of the thick waistcoat. A propos that waistcoat has worthily justified its own existence—I have done many things that I could not have done but for the complete protection it gave to my chest. I found on getting her[e] (what I did not expect) that a steamer starts for Genoa tomorrow—so as I do not expect any more letters here, I have arranged everything for going by it. I am sorry to say it takes 24 hours & starts in the morning instead of evening so my only hope for escaping sickness consists in the calm weather which after so much wind is now delightful. The days have continued splendid till this morning which was partially cloudy but entirely cleared off towards afternoon. I have come to the Empereurs because she went there—it is full of English—there were several English officers in uniform at the table d’hôte—young men one very handsome & all I should think very silly. Vaucluse is not like my expectations except in those broad features that one cannot be mistaken in. Of course a shew place is always prosaic, but instead of the villas which would recommend it in England there is one of the ugly villages which look like the worst part of the towns. Happily just above the village the ravine takes a turn & there is a quarter of a mile tolerably clear but there is nothing like seclusion as at the Pont du Gard. The source is at the foot of a mountain apparently nearly the height of Snowdon, but with scarcely a particle of green on it & knocked about in ledges & pillars & other fantastic shapes & the water comes out, if it can be called coming out, at the back of a precipice which reaches nearly the whole height of the mountain. Here in a nook where the narrow rocky gorge suddenly ends, is a pool about the size of a small pond on a common, but out of this rushes a mountain river as large as the Adour at Bagnères & immediately tumbles over a series of enormous blocks of rock for about the height of the Swallow fall,2 with the most splendid noise & foam, after which in the next furlong the water gushes out from at least 100 places in the mountain & swells the stream till from its size & rapidity if it were in England it would rank as one of our notable rivers. A thing I have not seen mentioned, I think, in any description is that in the quiet pool above the fall you constantly hear a deep hollow roaring as if there was a great commotion of waters in the heart of the precipitous mountain—& possibly there is, though more probably it is the effect of the loud noise of the fall—reverberated from every part of the amphitheatre of immensely high rocks which surrounds. Altogether it was very fine, especially the water & one had to ignore the Café Pétrarque, the Hotel Pétrarque et de Laure &c all of which happily were out of sight. It is 27 kilometres from Avignon & a cabriolet cost 12 francs. The bill for the two days at Avignon including servants was 21½ francs, about 8s.6d a day. The whole cost of this three weeks journey is just about £20, from Boulogne, or counting from London £23: rather different from the summer journey which cost less than £31 for nearly seven weeks—but there has been much more railway & a greater distance travelled besides tables d’hôte at 3½ fr. instead of 2 f. & 2½, & bedrooms 2 f. instead of 1. so that I have done pretty well. I hope darling to find another sweet letter at Genoa. Ah dearest I wish I could tell her all my dreams—last night I had such a sweet dream—dear one had come & was going the rest of the way with me. She sees I have taken just about the time we thought in getting from England here. My beauty will get this letter pretty quick especially as I shall put it in the post tonight for there are two mails in the 24 hours from here. How much pleasanter railway travelling is in these countries than any other. It seems to suit every country better than England—it cuts up beauties of detail but suits the scale of the objects here which are large & far apart. In all the towns here the railway with its long lines of arches is a really fine feature in the view. Addio con tutti i baci possibili—ah dearest how I do love you.
206.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Genoa Dec 30 [1854]
13
I write my angel before having received her letter if letter there be, for it has not arrived yet as it was impossible it should—& by calculation it seems hardly possible that it could arrive today or tonight so that it was a mistake asking her to write here, but I was so very anxious to hear without those very long intervals that I took the chance & I dare say the post office here will redirect to Pisa. I had a horrible passage—the boat did not get off till half past one though it required everybody to go on board at eleven—& it arrived here about half past one yesterday—at first I did pretty well, remaining on deck in the beautiful afternoon & evening & passing that fine coast on which I could quite distinguish Hyères, at least its exact position. We passed close to the islands, but it was very rough even then whenever we were not under the shelter of the heights a strong north wind having set in early in the morning. After dark I was wretchedly sick & had hardly any sleep for sickness & all day after arriving here I felt so ill & miserable that I could go nowhere & do nothing. I am terrified at the idea that all this must be gone through again for Sicily & again for Greece—it seems as if nothing that they can give in my solitary condition can be worth it. Today however I am well again & have gone about in the most exquisite cloudless day, without the slightest cold though there is snow on the low mountains just outside the town on the side next Chiavari. I am quite reconciled to Genoa which looked so dismal in the abominable weather we had last year that my impression of it was very disagreeable, but in this glorious weather it looks splendid. I am at the Quattro Nazioni, where the people are very attentive & I am very comfortable though it does not seem to be very thriving. It appears that the only way here to have a bedroom with a fireplace is to take a sitting room with it or to pay the same as if you did. I have therefore a large cheerful sitting room au 3me with a bedroom opening from it for which I pay three francs. By the bye the Hotel des Empereurs was about the dearest inn I ever was in, in France: 3 fr. for the sort of bedroom which is 2 fr. everywhere else: table d’hote 4 fr. & other things in proportion. There is a beautiful promenade here planted with trees & a garden looking splendidly over the eastern part of the town & the mountains adjoining it—made, as an inscription shews since we were first here—& where do you think the railway goes? Exactly in front of the hotels, between them & the terrace wall, every train night & day passing close to your window—which cannot be pleasant for those au premier I should think. I feel much more in spirits again than I yesterday thought I should in the whole journey. I have nearly arranged with a vetturino to go to Lucca in three days, halting at Sestri & la Spezia, paying 40 francs which is more than I like to pay but having tried several I do not think I shall be able to do better. Among the disagreeables of that sea passage one is a bad cold in my head which it has left—but I do not mind it, as these colds go off without leaving any cough that lasts above a day or two. I see either the French papers or Galignani sufficiently often to be tolerably au courant but I seldom read those tiresome speeches even when I have an opportunity. Why dear did you wish the Foreign Enlistment Bill to be lost?2 It seems to have been a mistake because unpopular but no doubt Lord Raglan wants more practised soldiers than they are able to send him. I have not seen in the whole of my passage through France a single indication great or small that the war is popular there. They talk of it quite as they would of some foreign contest & generally I think do not augur well of its success. Neither have I heard one word uttered in favour of L. Napoleon. People say but little & I do not like to tempt them to say much but they say quite enough to shew the most entire hostility. I shall now take this to the post & perhaps see one or two of the palaces. I seem much farther from my dear one than in France—any place in France if it be ever so far off seems so much a home to us. I do not get on well with the Italian here not only from the badness of my Italian but of theirs, for it is a horrible patois almost as unItalian as the Venetian but without its softness. Adieu darling—love me always—a thousand dearest loves.
207.
TO HARRIET MILL1
Genoa—30 Dec. evening [1854]
14
There was no letter by today’s post, darling, which came in about two. I should wait here for one: only that I am not certain she will write here. The post office promises to send it on to Pisa if it comes. I have been on foot nearly all day & have commenced performing the first duty of man when in Italy, that of seeing pictures. I have seen two of the best palaces, the Brignole Sale & the Pallavicini, both full of fine pictures, & also a church or two: there were plenty more to see, but too many pictures the same day are more than do one any good—& at the best this hurried seeing of picture galleries is a sort of feast of Tantalus. If I could come each day to one, or even two or three of the finest pictures I have seen today, & sit down before them until I got to feel them really what a different thing it would be. As it is one only sees. I dare say by the time I leave Italy I shall be able to give a tolerable guess at the authorship of a picture, but perhaps I shall not have had much enjoyment of them. I could not help seeing however what a gem almost any one of these pictures would appear in any modern exhibition, & what is much more in any private room—& again even the common unknown pictures in the churches all shew how the great painters have created certain types & a certain stile which makes even the commonest Italian painting have a certain grandeur as well as grace in it—something which is to Guercino2 & the Caracci3 what they are to Titian & Michael Angelo & I see the same in the colossal statues in the churches. I have seen also a great many of the finest Vandykes extant, for the great Genoese families seem all to have had themselves painted by him—& a Rubens that might almost be taken for a Raphael, it is so really beautiful. My negociation with the vetturino is off for he has found other English & they will not travel tomorrow because it is Sunday, & the next day is fête (New Year) so he says he cannot go till Tuesday, and I have bargained with another to take me to Spezia in two days & I shall probably finish this letter there. Perhaps it is as well so, for I may possibly stay there a day & go to Lerici or Porto Venere. I wish dearest you could see this place in its beauty—I am now quite charmed with it as I was the first time. This inn too is so much better & the people pleasanter than where we were. A propos the trains which pass the window are only the goods trains, which go to the custom house for the convenience of loading there: I suppose it is the great means of transporting foreign goods to Turin. I have been reading a number of Italia e Popolo which has a vigorous attack on our friend the Avenir of Nice for saying the Piedmontese ought not to hate the French government.4 It is quite a pleasure to read any thing free spoken again. I am strong & well today, to my almost surprise after the extreme prostration of yesterday—but that no doubt was partly owing to having eaten nothing for 36 hours.
Sestri. Dec. 31. The voiture plan is answering capitally & I am very glad I did not go with those English people, for being with Italians only I get on like a house on fire with my Italian. The vetturino had managed to fill his vehicle with Italians of I know not exactly what rank though certainly plus que modeste, who no doubt paid him very little, for there is anything but prix fixe on these occasions—but none of them were at all disagreeable & one pleasant man about 40 with whom I got into conversation directly though he could speak nothing but Italian & evidently was not an educated man but yet (what never happens in England) spoke his own language clearly & correctly. I got on capitally by referring often to the little dictionary & had the satisfaction of giving him a breakfast or rather dinner which he would not have had otherwise. A propos of the dictionary when I teazed Lily for it I did not know it was the nice copy with her (my darling’s) name in it. I thought it was a similar one that I had formerly & which I would much rather have taken for such hard wear than this, though it is sweet to have this. The voiture travelling does excellently in all ways—one makes use of the whole day, does not get into the night, & by utilizing hills & the midday stoppage one gets nearly all the good of a walking tour—today besides a very long hill I walked from the stopping place, Rapallo, nearly to Chiavari before I was overtaken. It quite agrees with my recollections that this eastern Riviera is finer than the western: there is more variety in the farms, there is not the interruption by those plains & generally instead of going round the promontories, one crosses them, which makes more variety: what it does resemble is the last bit from Mentone to Nice, & it is not at all finer than that. Indeed that mountain of La Turbia with its appendages of Montalbano, Villafranca, St Jean, St Hospice & Monaco comprise in themselves all the beauty of which this kind of scenery seems susceptible & whoever has seen them thoroughly has seen the whole Riviera, & I am much inclined to think, all that is really characteristic in the scenery of Italy & Sicily altogether. Consequently I should have been more excited by this if we had not been at Nice so lately5 —nevertheless I enjoyed it much, having the most perfect weather yesterday & today while the sun was up not a moment of cold though many of heat & this although the people here talk of the weather as cold—what must it be usually on the last day of the year! & the foliage here is just the same in winter as in summer. I saw shortly before sunset an effect of light which I never imagined possible & should have declared impossible I am afraid if I had seen it in a picture. The bay being very calm & merely just rippled, the reflexion from the nearly horizontal sun was projected not in the ordinary way but in a broad pillar of light as well defined as a river or a great road, of the exact breadth of the disk of the horizontal sun, extending in a perfect straight line or avenue beginning at the horizon & ending at the shore & too dazzling in every part to be looked at for more than a moment. In nearly the whole distance whenever one turned back one saw the line of the other Riviera backed by high snowy mountains, extending full half way to Nice (one man said quite into France) & looking quite close. There is here at Sestri a first rate inn but I think it will prove very dear. The only dear thing in the bill at Genoa was the firewood, in excuse for which the man said that wood is always dear there & is brought from Cività Vecchia. I should rather suppose it is brought from Tuscany (though perhaps the Tuscans want all their wood themselves) or perhaps from Corsica, the préfet of which I see advertises his coupe de bois by affiches in the streets of Genoa. There is great complaint of the distress of the people here—my fellow traveller said everything had failed except olives—not only the vines but all grain & that the propriétaires are dying of hunger. A propos I have been reading of a great & rapidly extending disease among silkworms, propagated by the eggs—it seems as if there was a conspiracy among the powers of nature to thwart human industry—if it once reaches the real necessaries of life the human race may starve. The potato disease was a specimen & that was but one root: if it should reach corn? I think that should be a signal for the universal & simultaneous suicide of the whole human race, suggested by Novalis.6 What a number of sensible things are not done, faute de s’entendre! In the meantime let us make what we can of what human life we have got, which I am hardly doing by being away from you. I think I should feel the whole thing worthier if I were writing something—but I cannot make up my mind what to write. Nothing that is not large will meet the circumstances. I have finished Aminta & am toiling through the Gerusalemme but this evening for a change I added a canto of Dante—what a difference! now I said, I am beginning to enjoy—I shall take the occasion of reading Dante through though I have no helps—luckily I read Sismondi over again last winter.7 This Genoa is full of remembrances of those 16 volumes & by the bye was the most turbulent, the worst governed & the least respectable of all those republics, the frantic personal animosities of the factions of nobles not only filling the place with perpetual bloodshed but making one or the other party continually put the place under a foreign despot, either France, Austria or Spain. There is no city in Italy except Naples for whose antecedents I have so little respect—but still the occasional freedom & constant demand for energy made them vigorous & successful both in war & in commerce: it is curious now to think for how long a period they were masters of Galata in Constantinople, & Caffa in the Crimea. I ramble on darling because it is the only way of talking to her. I shall not however close this letter tonight. I do not find any plants now—the few I found in France were all of them last roses of summer, not first ones of spring—but the hellebore is beginning to come out to my great delectation. I brought a botanical relic or two from Vaucluse & have tried to read a little of Petrarch but it will not do— i begl’occhi of Laura m’ennuient. I must give her a specimen of my fellow traveller—he was remonstrating with another for jumping out of the carriage & falling down & after some other things he added E tanto più facile di farsi male che di farsi bene.8 It reminded me of “toute chose a ses inconvéniens”. Now darling I must go to bed for my fire is going out.
Spezia 1st January. Every possible good that the new year can possibly bring to the only person living who is worthy to live, & may she have the happiest & the maniest New Years that the inexorable powers allow to any of us poor living creatures. I have been travelling again from eight to seven—all the first part to Borghetto was among what seemed the tops of mountains exactly like those which we saw from the back of the house at Nice but twenty times as many of them—sometimes quite inland, sometimes seeing the sea or the fine coast far below—coming often to snow which was lying in all the places where it had drifted, & which a week ago, it seems, made this road impassable even to the post. In one fine descent there was visible in front a long high range of completely snowy mountains, like the Alps or Pyrenees, being the Apennines, near Pontremoli I suppose. From Borghetto I walked on for more than five hours & was in the very town of Spezia before the carriage overtook me, though I had walked up several great heights before. I saw by a rather dim moonlight that magnificent first view of the Gulf of Spezia & walked down the winding descent of the mountain to it through the olive groves. The inn seems a very good one & the rooms only Genoa price—Sestri was a franc more & I think I shall stay here tomorrow especially as this vetturino though very eager to take me on to Lucca or Pisa cannot be talked into doing it for less than 35 francs. Here is one of the conveniences of a companion. Though as you see by my walking I am strong enough, my digestion is far from good & has not been so in this journey. I do not think it is the diet, because I digested perfectly in the last journey & did not digest well at Torquay. I am afraid the unlucky truth is that I cannot digest without cod liver oil & that none but Allen’s agrees with me. Certainly the only week of decent digestion I have had this December was when I was drinking one of the bottles of that—I have to save it, been drinking some since, bought at Avignon, but it does me no good, no more than the two kinds I tried at Torquay. I have begun one of the three remaining ones today & if I really thought I should see Pope, I certainly should ask him to bring some more out with him.9 Meanwhile the case is coming to pieces—it was not strong enough for so much jolting & tossing by sea & land. The Italian has gone on glibly today & my progress surprises me. There was among others a jovial young Franciscan who I am sure is no hypocrite: you should have heard his merry laugh at my suggestion that the electric telegraph would formerly have been thought un’ opra del diavolo—Nothing like cold even in the mountains till after dark & not much then. To shew you the care I am taking of my diet, I eat only some soup at Borghetto, & here at night a roast chicken (what a small one!) with boiled potatoes & no bread & no tea. I shall take to simple hot milk in the mornings, because with that bread is not necessary, & I shall try what bitters & quinine will do again. Here is a long letter my beloved & it does not end quite so satisfactorily as the beginning but there is no help. I am very sleepy from so much walking & must go to bed. The Franciscan was a most ignorant fellow—he guessed the mountains towards Nice to be those of Corsica. These last we ought to have seen but could not as the day was less clear than the last three or four though still very fine. There is a beautiful spring heath just beginning to come into flower which will make the wilderness blossom like the rose. Good night my dearest dearest love—I kiss her mentally with my whole heart. The mysterious looking paper I inclose this in will do as well as anything else for a cover.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: CHALON . . . . / 2 / JANV / 54.
[2. ]Sic. For Montélimar.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: BOULOGNE-S-MER / 5 JA? / 54.
[2. ]A. and W. Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through France (Paris, 1819, and many editions thereafter).
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ANG / 7 JANV / 54 / CALAIS and HYERES / 10 JANV / ??. An excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 186-87.
[2. ]David Hill, who ranked just above JSM in the Examiner’s Department of the East India Co.
[3. ]William Thomas Thornton.
[4. ]Russell Ellice (1799-1873), partner in the bank of Roberts, Lubbock and Co.; a director of the East India Company, 1831-73, Chairman, 1853-54.
[5. ]William Henry Sykes.
[6. ]Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), novelist; head of the Examiner’s Department at the East India House, 1836-56.
[7. ]James Bentham Mill (1814-1862), JSM’s younger brother, recently retired from service for the Company in India.
[8. ]William George Prescott (1800-1865), George Grote’s partner in their banking firm.
[9. ]The review of the last three volumes of History of Greece; see Letter 99.
[1. ]MS at King’s.
James Garth Marshall (1802-1873), textile manufacturer, MP for Leeds, 1847-52, son-in-law to Lord Monteagle of Brandon.
[2. ]See Letter 93.
[3. ]A second edition had appeared before the end of 1853.
[4. ]Letter 93.
[1. ]MS at LSE.
Henry (later Sir Henry) Cole (1808-1882), official and editor, was a member of many commissions dealing with public exhibitions. He had been a friend of JSM since 1826; Earlier Letters contains 13 letters to him. See Anna J. Mill, “Some Notes on Mill’s Early Friendship with Henry Cole,” The Mill News Letter, IV (Spring, 1969), 2-8.
[2. ]Cole’s note probably accompanied the “application from the Soc. of Arts” which JSM refers to in Letter 114. Cole was Chairman of the Council of the Society, 1851-52. See ibid., n. 7.
[3. ]Perhaps the pamphlet by Cole and R. Redgrave, Addresses of the Superintendents of the Department of Practical Art (London, 1853).
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: AF . . . / JA 9 / 1854. A part published in Hayek, pp. 187-88.
[2. ]The butcher.
[3. ]Letter 112.
[4. ]William Pollard Urquhart (1815-1871), writer on history and political economy; MP for Westmeath, 1852-57, 1859-71.
[5. ]“The Irish Tenant-Right Question,” Fraser’s, XLIX (Feb., 1854), 234-44.
[6. ]See Letter 116.
[7. ]The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures; a society “of popular and educational intention” founded by William Shipley in 1754. See Letter 113.
[8. ]From his family, who lived in Kensington.
[9. ]See Letter 111, n. 9.
[10. ]William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881), writer on political, economic, and social questions. His article was “Parliamentary Purification,” ER, XCVIII (Oct., 1853), 566-624. Greg had published two previous articles on similar subjects in Jan. and Oct., 1852.
[11. ]Letter 93.
[12. ]See Letter 112.
[13. ]Probably JSM’s Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (London, 1859), in good part written some years before it was published.
[14. ]John Chapman had asked JSM to review Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation of Comte’s Philosophie positive. See also Letter 65.
[15. ]A chemist.
[16. ]Dr. William Coulson.
[17. ]Dr. Golding Bird.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: . . . / JA —12 / 1854 and 13[?] JAN / 54.
[2. ]William Leader Maberly (1798-1885), joint secretary of the general post office, 1836-54.
[3. ]JSM had begun a diary on Jan. 8 as an experiment to discover (entry for that day) “what effect is produced on the mind by the obligation of having at least one thought per day which is worth writing down. . . . It must either relate to life, to feeling, or to high metaphysical speculation. The first thing which I am likely to discover in the attempt is that instead of one per day, I have not one such thought in a month; but only repetitions of thoughts, to us so familiar, that writing them here would only expose the poverty of the land.” The diary, which was terminated on April 15, is published in Elliot, II, 357-86.
[4. ]To his will.
[5. ]Macvey Napier, Jr., and Edmund D. Bourdillon, clerks in the Examiner’s Department.
[6. ]Sir James Clark (1788-1870), physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria.
[7. ]The French word benêt.
[8. ]A French banknote.
[1. ]MS at LSE.
John William Parker, Jr. (1820-1860), editor and publisher, eldest son of John William Parker; worked in father’s publishing house from 1843 until his death.
[2. ]William George Prescott.
[3. ]See Letter 114, n. 4.
[4. ]The Life and Times of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1852).
[5. ]Essays on Subjects of Political Economy (Aberdeen, 1850).
[6. ]See Letter 114, n. 5. Fraser’s was edited and published by John W. Parker from July, 1847, to Dec., 1850, and by John W. Parker and Son from Jan., 1851, to Dec., 1860.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: BK / 14 JA / 1854; . . . ANGL / 15 / JANV / 54 / CALAIS; and HYERES / 18 / JA / . . .
[2. ]See Letter 103.
[3. ]Tradesman, as are the others mentioned next—Webster, Roberts, Chapman, and Todman.
[4. ]Banker, as is Massey just below.
[5. ]East central part of London.
[6. ]Tradesman.
[7. ]William Thomas Thornton, Zohráb: or, a Midsummer Day’s Dream, and other poems (London, 1854).
[8. ]“To John Stuart Mill, Esq. In Imitation of an Epistle of Horace to Maecenas,” ibid., pp. 132-49, with the Latin of Horace on facing pages.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Part published in Hayek, pp. 188-89.
[2. ]Frederick Sinnett (1831-1866), business man, journalist; a friend of Algernon Taylor, who emigrated to South Australia in 1849.
[3. ]See Letter 111.
[4. ]The Mills believed that Mrs. Grote had gossiped about them in the years before their marriage.
[5. ]J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques italiennes du moyen âge (16 vols., Paris, 1809-18); the English translation, A History of the Italian Republics, being a view of the origin, progress and fall of Italian freedom (London, 1832), appeared as part of Lardner’s Cabinet Encyclopedia (133 vols., London, 1830-49).
[6. ]That he review Harriet Martineau’s translation of Comte. See Letter 114, n. 14.
[7. ]In Logic, Book VI, “On the Logic of the Moral Sciences,” and passim, esp. in the 1st ed.
[8. ]Harriet Martineau’s translation of the Philosophie positive. See Letters 65 and 114.
[9. ]George Jacob Holyoake.
[10. ]W. P. Urquhart. See Letter 116.
[11. ]Letter 112.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ANGL / 21 JANV / 54 / CALAIS and HYERES / 24 / JANV / 54. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 190.
[2. ]Dr. Cecil Gurney.
[3. ]See Letters 114 and 118.
[4. ]See Letter 118.
[5. ]Presumably the London suburb of that name, but JSM’s correspondent there has not been identified.
[6. ]Presumably letters from his sisters Clara and Harriet were among the “Kensington” letters enclosed in his letter of Jan. 9 (Letter 114).
[7. ]See Letter 118.
[8. ]Tradesmen, as are Marshall and Roberts, mentioned next.
[9. ]Probably Marianne Laing, a relative of Harriet.
[10. ]Probably from Harriet’s favourite and youngest brother, Arthur Hardy, who lived in Adelaide, Australia.
[11. ]Turkey had considerable success on land during the first months of the war with Russia; Russia’s Prince Gorchakov was decisively defeated in battle Jan. 6-9, 1854, at Getatea (Citale), near Kalafat.
[12. ]The Examiner, Jan. 21, 1854, p. 38, mentions Selim Pasha, “a European,” as commander of Turkish troops at Kalafat. Karl Marx in The Eastern Question (London, 1897), p. 225, identifies Selim Pasha as the “Pole Zedlinsky.”
[13. ]Josef Bem (1795-1850), Polish soldier. He fought in the Polish war of independence in 1830, offered his services to Hungarian revolutionaries in 1848, and led a brilliant campaign in Transylvania; thereafter he fled to Turkey, where he became a Mohammedan and served as governor of Aleppo.
[14. ]The rumour had spread that because of undue interference in affairs of state Prince Albert had been sent to the Tower for high treason. See leader in The Times, Jan. 18, 1854, p. 8; “The Stories about Prince Albert,” Sp., Jan. 14, 1854, pp. 37-38; “The Attacks on Prince Albert,” Examiner, Jan. 28, 1854, p. 49.
[15. ]His diary; see Letter 115, n. 3.
[16. ]See Letter 103.
[17. ]John Gregson (1806-1879), solicitor.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 190.
[2. ]The first draft of Autobiog. See Stillinger, Early Draft.
[3. ]Chemist.
[4. ]To write on Comte for the WR (see Letters 64, 65, 114, and 118).
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]Zohráb (see Letter 117, n. 7).
[3. ]In his letter of Jan. 14 to Harriet he reported that the tax gatherer had charged him 12/ for “armorial bearings.”
[4. ]Tradesman, as is Roberts just below.
[5. ]His brother, James Bentham Mill.
[6. ]Probably his sister Wilhelmina.
[7. ]Tradesman.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 30 JA 30 / 1854 and ANGL . . . / 31 / JANV. / 54 / CALAIS. Published in part in Hayek, pp. 190-92, 199.
[2. ]Autobiog. (See Letter 122).
[3. ]See Letters 103 and 119.
[4. ]John William Parker.
[5. ]The review of the last three volumes of Grote’s History of Greece.
[6. ]John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), American statesman. The posthumous work was A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States, ed. R. K. Crallé (Columbia, S.C., 1851).
[7. ]See Letter 138.
[8. ]Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil, Traité théorique et pratique des opérations de banque (Paris, 1853).
[9. ]See Letter 73, n. 4.
[10. ]Hippolyte Dussard (1789-1876), French economist.
[11. ]La République, political journal, published in Paris 1848-51 by Eugène Bareste. Courcelle-Seneuil wrote many articles on political economy and finance for this and other liberal journals.
[12. ]Gilbert Urbain Guillaumin was the publisher of the French translation of the Pol. Econ.
[13. ]Arthur Helps (1813-1875), writer, later (1860-75) clerk of the privy council. JSM had reviewed his The Claims of Labour in 1845, reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 181-217, Am. ed. II, 260-96, and in Collected Works, IV, 363-89. See Earlier Letters, p. 643.
[14. ]“Some Thought for Next Summer,” a review in Sp., Jan. 28, 1854, p. 93, of Arthur Helps’s Friends in Council; Some Thought for Next Summer (printed for private circulation, London, 1853).
[15. ]The Examiner, Dec. 24, 1853, p. 817, speaks of a “dissatisfaction with the [lukewarm] Eastern policy which is felt by ninety-nine people out of a hundred.” French and British ships were sent to the Black Sea in Jan.—the prelude to the Crimean War.
[16. ]The Times reported the Manchester meeting of the National Public School Association (“Mr. Cobden on Education . . . ” on Jan. 19, p. 10, “National Public School Association at Manchester,” Jan. 20, p. 7) and ran leaders favouring secular education (Jan. 20, p. 6; Jan. 21, p. 8; and Jan. 28, p. 8).
[17. ]The Edinburgh meeting was held on Wednesday, Jan. 25, Lord Panmure presiding. It was reported in Sp., Jan. 28, 1854, p. 85; and in The Times (“National Education in Scotland”), Jan. 28, 1854, p.10.
[18. ]Probably the following sentences in the essay “Nature”: “Even the love of ‘order’ which is thought to be a following of the ways of Nature, is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as ‘disorder’ and its consequences is precisely a counterpart of Nature’s ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestilence.” (Three Essays on Religion [London, 1874], pp. 30-31)
[19. ]See Letter 118, n. 5.
[20. ]See Letter 119, n. 17. The will was eventually found by JSM (see Letter 142).
[1. ]MS draft at Leeds. Draft is headed: Arthur Gore Esq. 17 Trinity Coll. Dublin. Published in Elliot, I, 178-79. The date is that given by Elliot; none appears on the draft except a pencilled 1843? in another hand.
Gore entered at Trinity College, 1850; B.A., 1853, M.A., 1854.
[2. ]JSM discussed the difference in the Logic, Book III, chap. xv, sec. 1.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: . . . / E 2 / . . . 854; ANGL / 3 / FE . . . / CALAIS; and HYERES / 6 / FEVR. / 54.
[2. ]Actually JSM did not retire from the India House until 1858. See Letters 325 and 326, n. 2.
[3. ]See Letters 103 and 122.
[4. ]Charles de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), philosopher. Montesquieu, in his Spirit of the Laws (2 vols., New York, 1900), said that all was lost by secret votes in the Roman Republic, that people’s votes ought to be public, but that votes of nobles or senators cannot be too secret (I, 14-15). He also cites the observation of Cicero, in De Legibus, Lib. I, xvi, and III, xv, that the laws which made the vote secret toward the close of the Roman Republic were the cause of its decline.
[5. ]Queen Victoria’s speech opening Parliament on Jan. 31, 1854, reported in The Times, Feb. 1, p. 3.
[6. ]The parliamentary Reform Bill was introduced on Feb. 13 and withdrawn on April 11, 1854.
[7. ]The Second Common Law Procedure Bill was introduced on Feb. 27.
[8. ]The Oxford University Bill was introduced on April 27.
[9. ]The Settlement and Removal Bill was introduced on Feb. 10.
[10. ]Although civil service reform was part of its programme outlined at the opening session, the government announced on May 5 that the bill would not be submitted at this session. See also Letters 139, 141, 144, and 159.
[11. ]As part of the Government of India Bill passed in Aug., 1853.
[12. ]The three named were tradesmen.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 4 FE 4 / 1854; ANGL / ... / CALAIS; and ... RES / 8 / FEVR / 54. Excerpts published in Principles, pp. 1032-33, and in Hayek, p. 202.
[2. ]See Letters 103, 122, and 124.
[3. ]See Letters 120 and 122.
[4. ]Probably vol. 4 of Système de politique positive (4 vols., Paris, 1851-54).
[5. ]“John Stuart Mill on the Theory of Causation,” a review of the 3rd ed. of his Logic (1851), No. Am. Rev., LXXVIII (Jan., 1854), 82-105.
[6. ]Francis Bowen (1811-1890), philosopher and educator; proprietor and editor of the No. Am. Rev., 1843-54.
[7. ]In “Of the Law of Universal Causation,” Book III, chap. v, 360-62, 370-72.
[8. ]No change with reference to Bowen was made in the 4th ed. (1856), though the section was heavily revised.
[9. ]F. J. Furnivall; see Letters 31 and 33.
[10. ]“On the probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,” Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii.
[11. ]See Letter 129.
[12. ]Tradesman.
[13. ]George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon and Baron Hyde (1800-1870), British Foreign Secretary, 1853-58, 1865-66, 1868-70.
[14. ]Russia demanded an explanation of the intentions of the British and French fleets in the Black Sea. Clarendon, with the approval of England’s allies, proposed a settlement of the Turkish dispute and stated that if Russia did not accept she would be responsible for war. Lord Clarendon summarized the situation in a speech in the House of Lords on Jan. 31. Sp., Feb. 4, 1854, pp. 109-11.
[15. ]The Russian ambassador called at the Foreign Office and formally suspended relations on Feb. 4, 1854. The Times, Feb. 4, p. 9 and Feb. 6, p. 7.
[16. ]Morning Post, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 4.
[17. ]Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855), Emperor of Russia, 1825-55.
[18. ]On Feb. 27, Britain and France demanded Russian evacuation of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia—now part of Rumania.
[19. ]Britain and France made a formal alliance with Turkey on March 12 and declared war on Russia on March 27; Russia had made no reply to the demand for evacuation of the principalities.
[20. ]In leader on p. 8.
[21. ]Prussia and Austria made an alliance in April to oppose Russian expansion in the Balkans. When Britain and France declared war at the end of March, Prussia refused to join and Austria hesitated, although Austrian mobilization caused Russia to evacuate the principalities.
[22. ]Letter from Clarendon to Sir G. H. Seymour, ambassador in St. Petersburg, dated Dec. 27, 1853; published in The Times, Feb. 3, 1854, p. 7.
[23. ]French and British fleets had entered the Black Sea in Jan., 1854.
[24. ]Tradesman.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 7 FE 7 / 1854 and ANGL / 8FEVR. / 54 / CALAIS. One par. published in Hayek, p. 192.
[2. ]Voluntary retirement left the amount of a pension to the discretion of the directors; retirement for reasons of health was almost certain to mean a grant of two-thirds of his salary of £800 a year.
[3. ]Tradeswoman.
[4. ]Pensions paid by the East India Company to James Mill’s heirs.
[5. ]See preceding Letter.
[6. ]Packe lists on pp. 368-69 JSM’s works on the subjects mentioned, published between 1859 and 1874.
[7. ]A review in the Examiner, Feb. 4, 1854, pp. 68-69, of Letters of Rachel, Lady Russell, ed. J.R. [Earl Russell] (2 vols., London, 1853).
[8. ]“The Socialist Conference of the Society of Arts,” Examiner, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 68.
[9. ]See preceding Letter.
[10. ]Until the last moment The Times urged a peaceful settlement.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 10 FE 10 / 1854; PARIS / 11 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 14 / FEVR / 54. Largely published in Hayek, pp. 193-94.
[2. ]See Letters 120, 122, and 125.
[3. ]Harriet and her daughter were planning to meet him in Paris; see next Letter.
[4. ]Harriet’s reply (MS at LSE), dated Feb. 14 and 15, is the only one preserved from this period; it is published in Hayek, pp. 195-96.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 13 FE 13 / 1854; ANGL / 14 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; and HYERES / 17 / FEVR / ??. Excerpt in Packe, p. 363.
[2. ]Tradeswoman.
[3. ]The South Carolina Library Committee (see Letters 122 and 138).
[4. ]Courcelle-Seneuil (see Letter 122).
[5. ]See Letter 122, n. 8.
[6. ]A bookstore, apparently specializing in foreign books.
[7. ]See Letter 122, n. 11.
[8. ]Arthur Helps.
[9. ]Henry (later Sir Henry) Taylor (1800-1886), poet, dramatist, and member of the Colonial Office. He was an old acquaintance from the London Debating Society days.
[10. ]William Henry Sykes. Emilia has not been identified.
[11. ]One of the French physicians listed in Letter 115.
[12. ]Its leaders of Feb. 4, p. 9, and Feb. 9, 1854, p. 6.
[13. ]Morning Post, a leader of Feb. 11, 1854, p. 5, an attack upon The Times’s support of the “abrogation of the patronage of the Crown.”
[14. ]Its leader of Feb. 11, 1854, p. 8.
[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus.; MS draft at Leeds. Envelope addressed: F. J. Furnivall Esq. / 11 New Square / Lincoln’s Inn. Postmark: 3AN3 / FE 14 / 1854. Published in Elliot, I, 177-78.
[2. ]On JSM’s revisions of this chapter, see Letter 74. On co-operation, see Letter 82.
[3. ]3rd ed., 1852. There is no evidence that the proposal to reprint the chapter was ever carried out.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Principles, p. 1033, and in Hayek, p. 197.
[2. ]Actually, health forced him to go abroad in June of this year.
[3. ]James Oliphant, then Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, became Chairman later in the year.
[4. ]The early draft of Autobiog.; see Letters 120, 122, 125, 127.
[5. ]See Letters 125, 129, and 132.
[6. ]“On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes.”
[7. ]On Feb. 13, 1854; see next Letter.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 15 FE 15 / 1854; ANGL / 16 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; [PARI]S 5 / 16 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 19 / FEVR / 54.
[2. ]See preceding Letter, n. 2.
[3. ]English physician at Nice.
[4. ]See preceding Letter, n. 7.
[5. ]James Garth Marshall; see Letter 112.
[6. ]Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey, later wrote Parliamentary Government considered with reference to a Reform of Parliament (London, 1858, 2nd ed., 1864).
[7. ]Report of House of Commons, Examiner, Feb. 18, 1854, p. 104. Russell’s new Reform Bill had been introduced on Feb. 13.
[8. ]See Letter 119, n. 14. See also “The Position of Prince Albert,” Sp., Feb. 4, 1854, p. 124.
[9. ]John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell (1779-1861), legal biographer, Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor. He had been chairman of a royal commission to inquire into the question of divorce; the investigation led eventually to the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857.
[10. ]The Commission had reported its findings to the House of Lords during the previous session. Based on its recommendation a Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act was introduced on June 13, 1854, but was withdrawn on July 10. In the debate on the latter date Campbell was still urging that divorce should be granted in cases of adultery of the wife but not of the husband. “The moral guilt incurred by the husband was the same, but in most cases it might be condoned.”
[11. ]Probably the unheaded leader on law reform in the Morning Post, Feb. 3, 1854, p. 4, cols. 4-5, which urged the government to “consider whether an equality of justice, irrespective of the sex of the claimants, should not be provided in all cases.”
[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus. Envelope addressed: F. J. Furnivall Esq. / 11 New Square / Lincoln’s Inn. Postmark: 1 AN 1 / FE 18 / 1854.
[2. ]See Letters 130 and 133.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 18 FE 18 / 1854; ANGL / 19 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1033.
[2. ]See Letter 129.
[3. ]See preceding Letter.
[4. ]See next Letter.
[5. ]See Letter 122, n. 8.
[6. ]See discussion of this draft in Letter 137. Apparently Courcelle-Seneuil never received JSM’s letter (see Letter 144).
[7. ]By John C. Calhoun. See Letter 122.
[8. ]See Letter 138.
[9. ]See Letters 97 and 103.
[10. ]See Letter 99.
[11. ]Autobiog. See Letter 130.
[12. ]War was declared on March 27.
[13. ]Because of the developing alliance of France with England.
[14. ]See, e.g., the report of a speech at Halifax by Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, Examiner, Feb. 12, 1853, p. 97.
[15. ]See Letter 131. Lord John Russell withdrew the Bill on April 11.
[1. ]MS in 1965 in the possession of Joseph H. Schaffner of New York.
[2. ]See Letters 129 and 132.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 21 FE 21 / 1854; ANGL / 22 FEVR / ?? / CALAIS; PARIS / 22 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 2 ? / FEVR / ??. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 197-98, and in Principles, pp. 1033-34.
[2. ]MS of her letter at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 195-96.
[3. ]Eventually published in the posthumous Three Essays on Religion. Harriet had written: “About the Essays dear, would not religion, the Utility of Religion, be one of the subjects you would have most to say on—there is to account for the existence nearly universal of some religion (superstition) by the instincts of fear hope and mystery etc., and throwing over all doctrines and theories, called religion, as devices for power, to show how religion & poetry fill the same want, the craving after higher objects, the consolation of suffering, by hopes of heaven for the selfish, love of God for the tender & grateful—how all this must be superseded by morality deriving its power from sympathies and benevolence and its reward from the approbation of those we respect.
“There, what a long winded sentence, which you would say ten times as well in words half the length. . . .”
[4. ]Autobiog. See Letter 133.
[5. ]Harriet had written: “Should there not be a summary of our relationship from its commencement in 1830—I mean given in a dozen lines—so as to preclude other and different versions of our lives at Ki[ngston] and Wal[ton]—our summer excursions, etc. This ought to be done in its genuine truth & simplicity—strong affection, intimacy of friendship, and no impropriety. It seems to me an edifying picture for those poor wretches who cannot conceive friendship but in sex—nor believe that expediency and the consideration for feelings of others can conquer sensuality. But of course this is not my reason for wishing it done. It is that every ground should be occupied by ourselves on our own subject.”
[6. ]His revision of the chapter for Furnivall’s proposed reprint (see Letter 134).
[7. ]He did add current information on the French associations in his 5th ed. (1862). For all changes of text on this subject, see Principles, pp. 775-85. See also Letter 82.
[8. ]Harriet’s younger son Algernon was born on Feb. 21, 1830.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 24 FE 24 / 1854, and ?? / ??R / 54. Part published in Hayek, pp. 199-200.
[2. ]In Letter 128.
[3. ]Sir James Clark, physician.
[4. ]Brier and Capper were shopkeepers.
[5. ]The movement to repeal the remaining stamp tax on newspapers was continuing. On Feb. 8 the Association for Promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge had held a soirée in honour of Milner Gibson’s efforts on behalf of repeal of the tax on advertisements (see Examiner, Feb. 11, 1854, p. 89). JSM’s hostility to The Times was of long standing. Here the implication may be that such a powerful paper could afford to pay the stamp tax, while liberal, or working-class papers could not.
[6. ]See preceding Letter.
[7. ]On Feb. 23, 1854, the Lord Advocate introduced a Bill to improve education in Scotland. See Examiner, Feb. 25, 1854, p. 120.
[8. ]In a speech on the above-mentioned Bill, Feb. 23, 1854. See Hansard, CXXX, cols. 1185-89.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 28 FE 28 / 1854; . . . / . . . / . . . / CALAIS; PARIS / . . . / . . . / 54; and an illegible one. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1034.
[2. ]They had apparently decided that he should not retire until they had at least £500 a year as income from investments.
[3. ]Francis Hopkins Ramadge (1793-1867), physician. His The Curability of Consumption, originally published in 1834, had appeared in later editions, the most recent in this month.
[4. ]Courcelle-Seneuil; see Letters 128 and 133.
[5. ]Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), revolutionary leader. At the conclusion of his speech to the Legislative Assembly on Sept. 2, 1792, on the eve of the massacres, Danton is reported to have said: “pour les [les ennemis de la patrie] vaincre, Messieurs, il faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace, et la France est sauvée.” Moniteur, Sept. 4, 1792, p. 1051.
[6. ]Gardener.
[7. ]See Letters 97 and 133.
[8. ]See Letter 135, n. 6.
[9. ]Martin Nadaud (1815-1898), political leader, follower of Proudhon; an exile in England, 1851-59.
[10. ]Tradesman.
[1. ]MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 179-80.
[2. ]From Sept. 24 through Dec., 1853.
[3. ]In Dec., 1851.
[4. ]See Letter 122, n. 6.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 3 MR 3 / 1854 / ; ANGL / 4 / MARS / CALAIS; PARIS / 4 / MARS / 54 /; and HYERES / ?? / ?? / 54. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 200.
[2. ]Possibly Harriet’s brothers Alfred and Arthur Hardy, both of whom had emigrated to Australia. Harriet’s eldest brother Thomas Hardy (1803-c.1829) had died of consumption.
[3. ]See Letter 137, n. 3.
[4. ]Provided for by the Government of India Act adopted in Aug., 1853.
[5. ]See Letter 133, n. 15.
[6. ]A plan for strict qualifying examinations for civil service appointments. The Report was dated Nov. 23, 1853. “The Organization of the Permanent Civil Service,” Parl. Papers, 1854, XXVII.
[7. ]Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807-1886), statesman, long an official in India; later, Governor of Madras.
[8. ]Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, later 1st Earl of Iddesleigh (1818-1887), statesman.
[9. ]Morning Chronicle, Feb. 22, 1854, p. 4.
[10. ]In leaders of Feb. 23, 1854, p. 4; Feb. 24, p. 5; and Feb. 27, p. 4. An additional attack appeared the day following this Letter, p. 7.
[11. ]Leaders in The Times, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 9; Feb. 9, p. 6.
[12. ]On Feb. 28, 1854, Thomas Chambers, MP for Hertford, moved that a select committee consider legislation to regulate conventual and monastic institutions.
[13. ]Joseph Napier, MP for Dublin University, in his speech on Feb. 28, 1854. Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 77-84, esp. col. 78.
[14. ]Lord Claud Hamilton, of Tyrone, on the same day as Mr. Napier of the preceding note. Ibid., cols. 101-103.
[15. ]Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), linguist, writer, politician; first editor of WR; friend and literary executor of Bentham; MP for Kilmarnock, 1835-37, and for Bolton, 1841-49; British consul at Canton, 1849-53; Governor of Hong Kong, 1854-59. Earlier Letters has one letter to Bowring, whom JSM and James Mill disliked.
[16. ]Letter 138.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 6 MR 6 / 1854; ?? / 7 / Mars / 54; and an illegible one. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 202-203, and in Principles, pp. 1034-35.
[2. ]See Letter 135.
[3. ]Probably the sentence attacking Louis Napoleon as an “unprincipled adventurer” in the chapter on “The Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” in the third (1852) ed. only; see Principles, p. 748.
[4. ]John Chapman.
[5. ]From the July, 1851, WR. See Letters 28, 30, and 35.
[6. ]Perhaps Mary Anne Evans, later known as George Eliot; she was Chapman’s assistant on WR from the time he took it over in 1852 until the fall of 1853. She wrote for WR until 1857.
[7. ]Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), the novelist.
[8. ]See Letter 139, n. 4. For the results of the election, see Letter 142.
[9. ]See Letter 130.
[10. ]Sir James Weir Hogg (1790-1876), Director of East India Company; MP for Beverley, 1835-47, for Honiton 1847-57; alternately Deputy Chairman and Chairman of Court of Directors almost continuously, 1845-53.
[11. ]The “Utility of Religion”; see Letter 135, n. 3.
[12. ]Tradesmen.
[1. ]MS not located. In reply to Trevelyan’s of March 8, MS at Johns Hopkins. Quoted in JSM’s letter to his wife of March 14 (published in Hayek, pp. 201-202) as is also part of Trevelyan’s rejoinder to this letter.
[2. ]The Civil Service Examination Plan; see Letters 124, 139, and 144.
[3. ]Later in the year JSM wrote a paper in support of the plan; see Letter 159.
[4. ]The Government of India Act, passed in Aug., 1853, provided for a system of examinations for admission into the India Civil Service. See “The Little Indian Charter,” Examiner, Aug. 27, 1853, p. 546.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1035.
[2. ]See Letter 122.
[3. ]A lock named for its inventor, Joseph Bramah (1748-1814), engineer and inventor.
[4. ]His neighbour.
[5. ]See Letters 139, 141, and 159.
[6. ]Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had presented his budget proposals on March 6, in anticipation of war with Russia.
[7. ]See Letter 140. The full names of the successful and unsuccessful candidates for the Court of Directors of the East India Co. at the election on March 8 were (in the order JSM mentions them) as follows: John Harvey Astell, John Cotton, Col. William Henry Sykes, William Joseph Eastwick, Sir James Weir Hogg, William Butterworth Bailey, Ross Donnelly Mangles, Henry Thoby Prinsep, John Shepherd, Russell Ellice, Major James Oliphant, Sir Henry Willock, Elliott Macnaghten, Hon. William Henry Leslie Melville, Charles Mills, Martin Tucker Smith, John Masterman, John Petty Muspratt, Major John Arthur Moore, William Dent, and John C. Whiteman.
[8. ]See Letter 137.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ??? / 12 / MARS / 54 / CALAIS; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 203.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 201-202, and in Principles, pp. 1035-36.
[2. ]This letter was lost and never reached her; see Letter 148.
[3. ]“On the Utility of Religion”; see Letter 140.
[4. ]Eltham Palace, a residence of the kings of England from Edward II to Henry VIII.
[5. ]See Letters 139, 141, and 142.
[6. ]On May 5, 1854, in response to a question, Gladstone said it was not the intention of the Government to submit the Civil Service Bill during the present session (Hansard, CXXXII, col. 1305).
[7. ]On March 13 Lord Monteagle asked for a copy of the instructions given to the commissioners reporting on the Civil Service, and delivered a long attack on the report. See Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 640-55.
[8. ]Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville (1815-1891), Lord President of Council, 1852-54, later Foreign Secretary; leader of Liberal party in House of Lords after 1855. For his defence of the Civil Service Report, see Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 655-62.
[9. ]For the Duke of Argyll’s remarks in defence, see ibid., col. 668.
[10. ]Sir James Stephen (1789-1859), colonial undersecretary, father of Leslie and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.
[11. ]The Times, March 14, 1854, p. 6. As reported in Hansard, ibid. (col. 659), Granville characterized JSM as “not only a great philosophical writer, but one of the most able administrators of the day,” and said that he “cordially approved of the introduction of examinations and competition.”
[12. ]March 14, 1854, p. 5.
[13. ]See Letter 6, n. 11. The article began with a plea for the application of scientific method to political and social problems, but ended with an attack on a writer in Fraser’s for attempting to prove the “compatibility of Judaism with a sterling English character.”
[14. ]See Letters 129, 132, 137, 140.
[15. ]Probably Book IV, chap. vi, “Of the Stationary State.” No such change was made in any later edition.
[16. ]No changes were made in this passage; see Principles, II, 746-65.
[17. ]The only change made in this passage is that contained in the note JSM added to this Letter (see below).
[18. ]Quotations about French workers’ associations from Cherbuliez, Feugueray, Villiaumé. Hayek (p. 307) notes that in the People’s Edition of the Pol. Econ. (1865), these passages are translated from the French.
[19. ]These additions appear in the 4th ed., 1857.
[20. ]Not identified.
[21. ]See Letters 133 and 137.
[22. ]See Letter 73, n. 4.
[23. ]See Letters 31, 33, and 82.
[24. ]See Letter 82, n. 3.
[25. ]On her way to Paris with her daughter Helen to meet him.
[26. ]L’Europe, the inn at Avignon, mentioned in Letter 108.
[27. ]See Principles, II, 765b.
[28. ]See ibid., p. 767e-e.
[29. ]See ibid., p. 783n.
[30. ]This passage was extensively rewritten for the 1857 ed. See ibid., p. 784h-h.
[31. ]See ibid., p. 784i-i 793.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Poste Restante / à Lyon / Rhône. Postmarks: 18 MR 18 / 1854; LYON / 20 / MARS / 54, and two illegible ones. Excerpts published in Principles, p. 1037.
[2. ]See Letter 142.
[3. ]See The Times, March 18, 1854, p. 6.
[4. ]See Letters 124 and 128.
[5. ]See Letters 137 and 144.
[1. ]MS at King’s. Excerpts in Packe, pp. 311, 311n, 347.
[2. ]To reprint “Enfranchisement of Women”; see Letter 140.
[3. ]This eventually became The Subjection of Women (London, 1869).
[4. ]It was eventually reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II (1859), Am. ed. III (1867).
[5. ]London, 1853.
[6. ]See par. about the middle of chap. viii, beginning: “We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House.”
[7. ]“Utility of Religion”; see Letters 135, 140, and 144.
[8. ]See Letter 137, n. 3.
[1. ]MS at Huntington.
[2. ]Of the chapter on the “Futurity of the Labouring Classes”; see Letters 129, 132, 135, 144.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Addressed: A Madame / Madame J. S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: PARIS / 30 / MARS / 54 / POSTE RESTANTE; and two illegible ones.
[1. ]The MS of this torn-off last page of the letter is at LSE. Envelope addressed: J. B. Mill Esq. / Ullapool / N.B. Postmarks: 1854 / 31 MR 31; . . . GWALL / AP 2 / 54 and . . . APOOL / AP 3 / 1854. Part published in Hayek, p. 308, n. 40.
James Bentham Mill had retired from the East India Co. service in 1852 and moved to Scotland.
[2. ]The Government of India Act, adopted in Aug., 1853.
[3. ]The Aberdeen Cabinet, in office since Dec., 1852.
[1. ]MS at UCL.
[2. ]Chadwick’s contribution to “Papers relating to the reorganization of the Civil Service,” in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 135-228.
[3. ]On reform of the civil service; see Letter 141.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / (No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 1954/3AP3, and two illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 205-206, and in Principles, p. 1037.
[2. ]Henry Carleton (1785-1863), jurist and author; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1837-39. He resigned on account of ill health and subsequently travelled in Europe (but settled in Philadelphia). Author of Liberty and Necessity (Philadelphia, 1857), Essay on the Will (1863).
[3. ]Charles James Blasius Williams (1805-1889), physician, author of several treatises on tuberculosis, and a co-founder of the Consumption Hospital at Brompton.
[4. ]Dr. Williams’s paper on the use of cod liver oil was published in vol. I (1849) of the London Journal of Medicine, and reviewed in the Lancet for 1849, pp. 100 ff.
[5. ]See Letter 144.
[6. ]Principles, II, 783n, and note to p. 346 included in Letter 144.
[7. ]“Utility of Religion”; see Letters 135, 140, 144, 146.
[8. ]Richard Quain (1800-1887), physician; professor of descriptive anatomy, University of London, 1832-50; President of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1868.
[9. ]His sister Wilhelmina, then in Germany.
[10. ]See Letters 142 and 145.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No. 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 5EV5 / AP5 / ?? /; ??? / AP-5 / 1854; and 6 / AVRIL / 54 / PARIS.
[2. ]Sir George Bowyer (1811-1883), jurist and politician; MP for Dundalk, 1852-68, and for Wexford, 1874-80.
[3. ]Henry Fitzroy (1807-1859), statesman, then undersecretary for the Home Department.
[4. ]Palmerston was then Home Secretary.
[5. ]Morning Post, April 5, 1854, p. 4.
[6. ]The Divorce Commission, which had been appointed in 1850, issued its report in 1853.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. Published in Packe, p. 355.
[2. ]His sister, Mary Elizabeth Colman. Her letter, dated Saturday, April 3, is at LSE.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 8AP8 / 1854; [PARI]S / 9 / AVRIL / 54; and one illegible.
[2. ]See Letters 137 and 139.
[3. ]Col. Richard William Astell (1804-1864).
[4. ]William Astell (1774-1847), a director of the East India Co. for forty-seven years.
[5. ]John Harvey Astell (1806-1887), also a director of the East India Co.
[6. ]Not identified.
[7. ]Henry Negus Burroughes (1791-1872), MP for East Norfolk, 1837-57.
[8. ]Charles Ewan Law (1792-1850), recorder of London, 1833-50; MP for Cambridge, 1835-50.
[9. ]William Frederick Chambers (1786-1855), until his retirement in 1848 the leading physician in London.
[10. ]Thomas, later Sir Thomas Watson (1792-1882), physician to the Middlesex Hospital, 1827-44; professor of medicine, King’s College, 1835-40; author of Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine (2 vols., London, 1843, and later editions), for thirty years the chief English textbook of medicine.
[11. ]Thomas Wakley (1795-1862), medical reformer, founder of the Lancet; MP for Finsbury, 1835-52.
[12. ]Probably Sir James’s Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (London, 1835). Clark was also the author of several works on the effect of climate on consumption.
[13. ]René Théophile Laennec (1781-1826), physician, inventor of the stethoscope.
[14. ]Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787-1872), physician.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / no 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 10AP10 / ???; 11 / AVRIL / ???; and 11 / AVRIL / 54 / PARIS. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 205.
[2. ]Train schedule.
[3. ]See Examiner, April 8, 1854, p. 211. See also Letter 152, n. 5.
[4. ]There were five; JSM overlooked Henry Melville (1798-1871), then Principal of the East India College at Haileybury, later (1856) Canon of St. Paul’s.
[5. ]William Bingham Baring, 2nd Baron Ashburton (1799-1864), statesman; his wife, Lady Harriet, was the close friend of Thomas Carlyle.
[6. ]See Letters 141 and 159.
[7. ]John Shaw-Lefevre (1797-1879), public official.
[8. ]Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), then a fellow and tutor, later (1870) Master of Balliol. Trevelyan and Northcote’s “Report on the Organization of the Permanent Civil Service” in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, included a “Letter from the Rev. B. Jowett,” some of whose recommendations JSM was soon to attack (see Letter 160).
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 1854 / 11AP11; 12 / AVRIL / 54 / CALAIS / ; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 206.
[2. ]His brother, who had died in Madeira the preceding summer.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE.
[2. ]Harriet and her daughter Helen arrived at Blackheath about the middle of April.
[3. ]From Paris.
[4. ]For which Gurney had been her physician. See Letter 107.
[5. ]At this point in the draft the following passage has been cancelled: “As for myself I am on the whole rather worse than at Nice though I have not now any cough. I am under very careful medical treatment & am doing all I can to get better.”
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. Published in Elliot I, 180-81.
[1. ]MS draft at Johns Hopkins. In reply to Trevelyan’s letter of May 11, MS at LSE, as is also Trevelyan’s rejoinder of May 24. See also Letter 141.
[2. ]“Paper on Reform of Civil Service, addressed as letter to Chancellor of Exchequer,” May 22, 1854, in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 92-98. Also separately printed, London, 1855. See Letter 141.
[3. ]See Letter 136, n. 7.
[1. ]MS draft at Johns Hopkins, as is also Trevelyan’s letter of May 30 requesting JSM’s permission to omit one passage from the text to be published of his letter of May 22 on civil service reform.
[2. ]See preceding Letter.
[3. ]The passage, which was an attack on some of Benjamin Jowett’s recommendations in the Report, was published with one change. See next Letter. As published it read as follows: “Whatever means of judging of the moral character of the applicants may be adopted, I will venture to express a hope that they may be of a different kind from those suggested by Mr. Jowett; who would demand from every candidate for examination a certificate of baptism, thus excluding even the Christian sects which do not practise that rite; and would require, among other references, one to a clergyman or a dissenting minister; which, as they would of course give their recommendations only to those whose religious character they approved of, would amount to the severest penalty for non-attendance on some church or minister of religion, and would be in fact a religious test, excluding many highly qualified candidates.” (Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 95.)
JSM also objected to the requirement of a statement from a school or college about the candidate; he pointed out that he himself would have been excluded from such a competition, since he had never attended school or college.
Jowett’s reply to the objections is printed in a long footnote (ibid., 96-97) subjoined to JSM’s statement.
[1. ]MS draft at Johns Hopkins, as is also Trevelyan’s letter of June 2. For the passage as it finally appeared, see n. 3 of the preceding Letter.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. Published in Hayek, p. 207.
[2. ]This paragraph is a revision of a paragraph which read as follows: “If you shd have occasion to write to me direct to my house at Blackheath and my wife will forward it. My wife sends her best wishes & regrets that her health has made it impossible for her to call on you as she much wished to have done [the last seven words replace—“would otherwise have done long before this]—Ever my dear” etc.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent / England. Envelope bears note in another hand: 1) June 54 Jersey. The “1)” indicates the first of another series of letters. Postmarks: [J]ERS[E]Y / JU 11 / 1854, and CH / 13JU13.
Following his wife’s return from her stay at Hyères, JSM’s own health continued to deteriorate seriously. Finally yielding to the urging of his doctors, he left England on June 9 for a tour of Brittany. His first stop on the journey was at St. Helier on the island of Jersey, where he spent three days.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent / England. Envelope bears note in another hand: 2) June 54 Jersey. Postmarks: JU 13 / 1854, and ??? / JU15 / 1854.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Envelope bears in another hand: 3 June 19th 54 / St Malo. Postmarks: ST. MALO / 15 / JUIN / 54; 19 JU 19 / 1854; and two illegible ones.
[2. ]Later incorporated in Utilitarianism.
[3. ]The great French writer, forced into an exile of nearly twenty years after Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of Dec., 1851, had settled in Jersey in Aug., 1852. On Feb. 20, 1854, The Times (p. 11) had printed a translation of a letter from Hugo to Lord Palmerston, the Home Secretary, protesting the execution of a criminal named Tapner on the island of Guernsey and charging that it was performed to “accommodate” Louis Napoleon. In a leader of the same day, The Times (p. 8) was very critical of Hugo.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]See preceding Letter, n. 2.
[3. ]Lieut. Barnard, Three Years’ Cruise in Mozambique Channel (London, 1848).
[4. ]Probably Arthur Ley, husband of Harriet’s sister Caroline.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: MORLAIX / 20 / JUIN / 54; PARIS / 22 / JUIN / 54; 23JU23 / 1854.
[2. ]Later identified by JSM only as a Mr. Frederick Pope, a young barrister suffering from tuberculosis. A letter by him to JSM dated Dec. 17, 1854 (MS at Johns Hopkins) gives his London address as 16 Oxford Terrace.
[3. ]By JSM himself on a summer trip with Harriet and Helen Taylor.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Bears in another hand: 6 / Brest. Postmarks: BREST / 2 ? / JUIN / 54; PAID / ET / 27 JU 27 / 1854; and one illegible. Excerpts published in Hayek, p. 208.
[2. ]In the stream of the Beaver or Afanc, near Nant Ffrancon, Wales.
[3. ]See preceding Letter.
[4. ]Folgoët.
[5. ]On June 13 in the House of Commons.
[6. ]Eventually included in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859).
[1. ]MS draft at LSE, in reply to Colman’s letter of June 17 (copied by JSM in the next Letter) announcing the death of his mother on June 15. He had left England on June 9, and Colman’s letter reached him in Brittany on June 26.
Charles Frederick Colman, husband of JSM’s youngest sister, Mary.
[2. ]Clara Mill had been appointed joint executor with JSM.
[3. ]A letter dated March 27, 1854, left for him by his mother, expressing her wishes with regard to the disposal of her household furnishings. The letter (MS at LSE) is published in Packe, p. 356.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: QUIMPER / 26 / JUIN / 54, and PAID / EV / 28 JU 28 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 209-10. For text of JSM’s reply to Colman, see Letter 169.
[2. ][Copied on last page, Charles Colman’s letter of June 17]
My dear Mill,
I have only just got your address, which enables me to write to you.
I am sorry to have to tell you that your mother died on Thursday Evening last, suffering no pain at all.
I should not have taken upon myself to write to you now, but I do so at Clara’s request to ascertain if it is your intention to act as Executor or whether she shall do so, as she has been appointed jointly with you.
There is a letter addressed to you by your Mother which I should have inclosed had I not feared it might have been lost, it is supposed to contain her wishes relative to the disposal of certain articles not mentioned in the Will, & if you are not likely to return soon it might be desirable for you to give leave for its being opened with a view to acting upon it.
If you wish to leave this matter in Clara’s hands I will render all the assistance I can for its proper settlement, as I am remaining in town for that purpose.
Will you kindly reply by return of post, as I am desirous of returning to Clifton as soon as I can
I amFaithy yours
Charles F. Colman
[3. ]Mrs. Harriet Burrow.
[4. ]Harriet did not agree; see Letter 172.
[5. ]He was especially resentful toward his sisters Clara and Mary.
[6. ]His sister Wilhelmina, who was a widow.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: LORIENT / 1 / ??? / ???; PAID / EY / 3 JY 3 / 1854, and three illegible ones. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 209.
[2. ]On June 13, against the ballot; reported in Sp., June 17, 1854, p. 630.
[3. ]John Bright (1811-1889), the well-known Liberal leader of whom JSM was usually critical.
[4. ]George Grote throughout his career in Parliament (1832-41) was the leading advocate of the ballot.
[5. ]Probably what was later published in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859).
[6. ]Perhaps a letter by his sister Harriet written before their mother’s death.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / ??? / ??? / ???; ??? / JY6 / 1854; and two illegible ones. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 210.
[2. ]Edward William Tuson (1802-1865), physician, author of The Structure and Function of the Female Breast (London, 1846).
[3. ]John Flint South (1797-1882), surgeon; lived at Blackheath Park.
[4. ]See Letter 170.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 5 / JUIL / 54; PAID / EC / 7JY7 / 1854; 10FN10 / JY7 / 1854; and one illegible.
[2. ]Frederick Pope.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 9 / JUIL / ???; REIMS / 10 / JUIL / 54; PAID / JY11 / 1854.
[2. ]Sydney Smith (1771-1845), Canon of St. Paul’s, writer and wit; one of the founders of ER. The work referred to is his Ballot (London, 1839).
[3. ]Augustus De Morgan.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NAPOLEON-VENDEE / 13 / JUIL / 54; PAID / 15 JY 15 / 54 PARIS / 14 / JUIL / 54; and one illegible. No letter numbered 12 has been located.
[2. ]Frederick Pope.
[3. ]The counter-revolutionary insurrection in La Vendée broke out in 1793.
[4. ]Napoléon-Vendée, founded in 1804, on the site of La Roche-sur-Yon, in the centre of the rebellious province; the name was altered under the Restoration to Bourbon-Vendée.
[5. ]Caroline Ferdinande Louise, Duchess of Berry (1797-1870), widow of the Duke assassinated in 1820, and mother of the comte de Chambord, Bourbon aspirant to the throne. The chapel on Mont-des-Alouettes was actually built by the Duchess of Angoulême, a daughter of Louis XVI who laid the first stone on Sept. 18, 1823.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: ROCHEFORT / 16 / JUIL / 54; BURDE . . . A PARIS / 16 / JUIL / 54; and PAID / EL / 18JY18 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 210-11.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 19 / ???; JY21 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 211.
[2. ]Not identified.
[3. ]JSM’s maternal grandmother. See Letter 170.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. Published in Hayek, p. 211.
[2. ]See Letters 177 and 179.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: ROUEN / 24 / JUIL / 54; three others illegible.
[2. ]Louis Philippe (1773-1850), King of the French, 1830-48.
[3. ]The preceding Letter.
[1. ]MS at Huntington.
[2. ]Possibly on workers’ associations and co-operatives or on the Working Men’s College, which was to open that fall.
[1. ]MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 181-82.
William Stigant (later Stigand) (1825-1915), later a consular official and author, best known for his The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine (2 vols., London, 1875).
[2. ]See esp. his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London, 1789) and Deontology or Science of Morality, ed. John Bowring (2 vols., London, 1834).
[3. ]David Hartley, Observations on Man (London, 1749).
[4. ]Reprinted in Essays on Government, Jurisprudence [etc.], written for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Edinburgh, [1825]).
[1. ]MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 182-84.
Barbot de Chément, a French captain of artillery and a disciple of Comte. For Comte’s letters to him (1846-51) see Correspondance inédite d’Auguste Comte (4 vols., Paris, 1903-4), III; and Nouvelles lettres inédites, ed. P. E. de Berredo-Carniero (Paris, 1939).
[2. ]Including among JSM’s friends and acquaintances: Alexander Bain, George Henry Lewes, and George Grote.
[3. ]In the following year Richard Congreve (1819-1899) began the establishment of a Positivist community in London. Positivism did not flourish until 1867, however, when the Positivist Society was organized, the important leaders being Congreve and Frederic Harrison (1831-1923), lawyer and author interested in social reform. See chaps. vii and viii, W. M. Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1963).
[4. ]For JSM’s help to Comte and for his correspondence with him, see Earlier Letters and Lettres inédites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte, publiées avec les réponses de Comte, éd. L. Lévy-Bruhl (Paris, 1899). For his later judgments on Comte, see Autobiog., pp. 99-100, 125-28, and 147-48 n; and Auguste Comte and Positivism (London, 1865), reprinted in Collected Works, X, 261-368.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE, as is also Gomperz’s letter of July 20 to which this is a reply. Published in Heinrich Gomperz, Theodor Gomperz, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ausgewählt, erläutert und zu einer Darstellung seines Lebens verknüpft, I (all published, Vienna, 1936), 178-79, and in Lord Stamp, “New Letters of John Stuart Mill. A philosopher in politics,” The Times, Dec. 29, 1938. The MSS of JSM’s letters to Theodor Gomperz, which Lord Stamp had acquired from a dealer to whom Heinrich Gomperz had sold them, were destroyed in the bombing of Stamp’s home on April 16, 1941, in which he lost his life.
Theodor Gomperz (1832-1912), Austrian philosopher and philologist, a great admirer of JSM’s philosophy. He later supervised the translation of JSM’s works into German. For an excellent recent study of their relationship, see Adelaide Weinberg, Theodor Gomperz and John Stuart Mill, in Travaux de Droit, d’Economie, de Sociologie et de Science Politiques, No. 16 (Genève, 1963). For Gomperz on JSM, see his “Lebenserinnerungen” in Essays und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, 1905) esp. pp. 33-38, and in the same volume, pp. 87-102, his “Zur Erinnerung an John Stuart Mill (1806-1873),” reprinted from the Deutsche Zeitung, May 16 and 23, 1873.
[2. ]Gomperz’s translation of the Logic was eventually published as vols. II-IV (1873-75) in the Gesammelte Werke (12 vols., Leipzig, 1869-80). In a letter to his sister (July 6, 1854) he wrote of the Logic: “It is a work which . . . I consider the most important philosophical achievement of this half century, bound . . . to exert the most powerful influence in all areas of thought” (trans. from H. Gomperz, p. 174). On Jan. 7, 1855, after completing the first draft of his translation, Gomperz wrote his friend Heinrich Jacques (1831-94) a letter which contains a virtual exposition of the Logic (Gomperz, pp. 195-206).
[3. ]John Stuart Mill, die induktive Logik, trans. J. Schiel (Braunschweig, 1849). Later the same translator did the complete book: J. S. Mill, System der deductiven und inductiven Logik (Braunschweig, 1862).
[1. ]MS in the Vatican Library.
Pasquale Villari (1826-1917), Italian historian and statesman. This letter was the beginning of a correspondence and friendship that lasted until JSM’s death.
[2. ]Possibly Villari’s review article on Cesare Beccaria (1854) reprinted in his Saggi Storia, Di Critica e Di Politica (Firenze, 1868), pp. 282-325. Beccaria’s treatise Dei Delitti e delle Pene (1764), trans. as On Crimes and Punishments (1768), had been highly influential among the Benthamites.
[3. ]“On the Logic of the Moral Sciences.”
[4. ]Probably his Saggio sul’origine della filosofia della storia (Firenze, 1854), which appears to have been Villari’s only other publication that year. No English translation of it has been located.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE, in reply to Rae’s letter from Koali, Sandwich Islands, Dec. 5, 1853-Jan. 9, 1854, also at LSE. Both letters were published in “John Rae and John Stuart Mill: A Correspondence,” Economica, n.s. X (Aug., 1943), 253-55.
John Rae (1796-1872), economist. He left Aberdeen for Canada in 1822, and went to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1851. He wrote on philology, geology, and sociology, as well as on political economy. See R. Warren James, John Rae, Political Economist. An Account of His Life and a Compilation of His Main Writings (2 vols., Toronto, 1965).
[2. ]John Rae, Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy . . . (Boston, 1834). JSM quotes extensively from it in his Pol. Econ., Book I, chap. xi, “Of the Law of the Increase of Capital.”
[3. ]Rae later published some articles on the Hawaiian language in the newspaper The Polynesian, Sept. 27, Oct. 4, and Oct. 11, 1862. See also Letter 585.
[4. ]Neil Arnott (1788-1874), well-known physician and natural philosopher. Also from Aberdeen, Arnott had a large and lucrative practice in London, 1811-55. From 1836 he was a member of the Senate of London University.
[5. ]Nassau Senior.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Oct. 19, 1854, also at LSE.
[2. ]A paper read to the Manchester Statistical Society on March 9, 1854, published as a pamphlet (Manchester, 1854), and also in Transactions of Manchester Stat. Soc., 1853-54.
[3. ]See Pol. Econ., Book I, chaps. iv, v, and vi.
[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Revans’s letters of May 18 and June 8 soliciting the loan and promising repayment in Oct. are also at Yale.
John Revans had been secretary to the Royal Poor Law Commission, 1832-34 and in 1850 had presented reports to the Poor Law Board on the laws of settlement and removal of the poor. See also Earlier Letters, p. 733.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Oct. 27, 1854, also at LSE.
[2. ]Herford, in his letter of Oct. 27, 1854, had said: “I apprehend that every grain of wheat is in point of fact both a seed, & an article of food, until the very instant when it is either ground into flour, or sown into the earth. It being the actual use & not the destination or intention of using, which decides the question.”
[1. ]MS in Vatican Library.
[2. ]Presumably T. B. Macaulay, the historian and essayist, but no information on any connection of his with Villari has been found. For the essay, see Letter 184, n. 4.
[3. ]They met in Florence in June, 1855. See Letter 242.
[1. ]MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Nov. 4, 1854, also at LSE. See Letters 186 and 188.
[1. ]MS in 1965 in the possession of Joseph H. Schaffner of New York.
[2. ]The Senses and the Intellect, which was accepted for publication by John W. Parker and Son in 1855.
[1. ]MS draft at Yale.
[2. ]See Letter 187.
[3. ]Actually he did not leave until Dec. 8.
[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Written on paper (Prospectus) headed, in print: The Safety Life Assurance Company / Chief Offices / 3 Adelphi Terrace / Strand / London.
William Ley, probably a brother of Arthur Ley, husband of Mrs. Mill’s sister Caroline.
[2. ]See Letter 187.
[3. ]See Letter 192.
[1. ]MS draft of first half is at LSE; of the rest, at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 184-85.
Sir John McNeill (1795-1883), physician and diplomat, who served in India and Persia, was appointed chairman of the board of supervision for the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1845, and participated in a commission of inquiry on the supplying of troops in the Crimea.
[2. ]So dated by Elliot. No date appears on the draft.
[3. ]James Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic, The Theory of Knowing and Being (Edinburgh and London, 1854). James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864), professor of moral philosophy and political economy at St. Andrews, 1845-64.
[4. ]JSM had taken his wife to Torquay, where she spent the winter. He then left London on Dec. 8, 1854, for an extended tour, which included Italy, Sicily, and Greece. He rejoined his wife in Paris on June 22, 1855.
[5. ]“Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself.”
[6. ]“The object of knowledge, whatever it may be, is always something more than what is naturally or usually regarded as the object. It always is, and must be, the object with the addition of oneself,—object plus subject,—thing, or thought, mecum. Self is an integral and essential part of every object of cognition.”
[7. ]The portion of the MS at LSE ends here.
[1. ]MS at Yale. This is the first of a series of 49 letters extending to June 18, 1855.
[2. ]He had left his wife at Torquay, where she was to remain for some weeks during his absence on the Continent.
[3. ]Frederick Pope, his walking companion in France the preceding June. In a letter of Dec. 17, 1854, from 16 Oxford Terrace (MS at Johns Hopkins) Pope reported that he had written JSM at Blackheath but had received no reply. He hoped to rejoin JSM on the Continent about the middle of Jan. for the remainder of his journey. The Dec. 17 letter reached JSM in Montpellier on Dec. 23 (see Letter 203).
[4. ]Probably Deane & Co., hardware merchants, of 46 William St., London Bridge, E.C.
[5. ]Presumably a housekeeper.
[6. ]The owner of the house JSM leased at Blackheath.
[7. ]Dr. John Forbes Royle.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: ORLEANS / 10 / DEC / 54; ??? / 12 DE 12 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DEC 13 / 1854.
[2. ]Presumably the housekeeper.
[3. ]See preceding Letter.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: BORDEAUX / 11 / ??? / ???; PAID / 13 DE 13 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DE 14 / 1854.
[2. ]JSM may have read John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849), chap. vi of which (“The Lamp of Memory”) contains an attack on restoration of old buildings.
[3. ]Perhaps Biblioteca portatile Del Viaggiatore (Firenze, 1829-30), I, which contains Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso.
[1. ]MS at Yale, along with a copy of the programme of the ballet. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: BORDEAUX / 13 / DEC / ???; PAID / PO / 15 DEC 15 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DEC 16 / 1854.
[2. ]One of the guidebooks published by John Murray.
[3. ]Eugène Durand, Grenadilla. Ballet fantastique en 2 actes et 1 prologue; musique de M. Rochefort . . . , first performed at Bordeaux, Grand théâtre, Dec. 9, 1854.
[4. ]Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788-1855), commander of the British forces in the Crimean War, 1854-55.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: CARCASSONNE / 16 / DEC / 54; PAID / EO / 20 DEC 20 / 1854; TORQUAY / DEC 21 / 1854; and one illegible.
[2. ]In the Crimea.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Letter 6 in this series has not been located.
[2. ]Where Harriet was then staying.
[3. ]La Favorite, opera by Gaetano Donizetti, first produced by the Paris Opera (1840); in Italy, at the Scala (Milan, 1843), and in England at the Drury Lane Theatre (1843).
[4. ]See Letter 197.
[5. ]Vicenzo da Filicaia (1642-1707), Italian poet.
[6. ]Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), Italian poet.
[7. ]By Torquato Tasso (1544-1595).
[8. ]Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), famous minister of Louis XIV; the Canal du Midi, built (1666-81) under Colbert by Paul Riquet, connects the Atlantic with the Mediterranean with the aid of the Garonne River. At one time it was regarded as a marvel of engineering skill.
[9. ]Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), German poet, dramatist, and novelist.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]Brig.-Gen. Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), Jeremy Bentham’s younger brother, who at the time of JSM’s stay in France with the Benthams in 1820, occupied the Château of Pompignan on the heights overlooking the plain of the Garonne between Montauban and Toulouse; later in the same year Sir Samuel acquired the estate of Restinclière near the foot of the mountain of St. Loup, in the neighbourhood of Montpellier (see Autobiog., chap. ii, and Earlier Letters, pp. 10-11).
[3. ]Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), Neapolitan painter, famous for picturesque landscapes of the Abruzzi.
[4. ]François Xavier Pascal Fabre (1766-1837), French painter, corresponding member of the Institute, was born and died in Montpellier, but lived for the better part of his life in Rome and Florence. He left his collection of rare books, paintings, and objets d’art to the Museum at Montpellier, which honoured his memory by naming the gallery after him.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]Harriet’s mother and her sister Caroline were staying with her at Torquay.
[3. ]Nicolas Poussin (ca. 1594-1665), French painter.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]The letter of Dec. 17 from Frederick Pope, 16 Oxford Terrace, is at Johns Hopkins.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]Presumably William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, later (1871) Baron Dalling and Bulwer (1801-1872), diplomat, rather than his nephew Edward Robert Bulwer, later (1873) Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), who was serving as his private secretary. Sir Henry was minister plenipotentiary to the court of the Grand Duke of Florence, 1852-55.
[1. ]MS at Yale.
[2. ]See Letter 168, n. 2.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs. J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: GENOVA / 30 / DEC??; PAID / EA / s JA 3 / 1855; and TORQUAY / JA 4 / 1855. Last three sentences published in Hayek, p. 213.
[2. ]The Enlistment of Foreigners Bill had its 3rd reading and passed in the House of Lords on Dec. 18, 1854. Hansard, CXXXVI, cols. 429-61.
[1. ]MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 214-15.
[2. ]Il Guercino [the squinter], Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), Italian painter of the Bolognese school whose first style was formed after that of the Carracci.
[3. ]Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602), Annibale (1560-1609), Carracci, Bolognese painters; the cousins founded the Bologna Academy.
[4. ]Conquered in 1792 by the armies of the French Republic, Nice was part of France till 1814, after which date it reverted to Sardinia. Later, by a treaty concluded in 1860 between the Sardinian King and Napoleon II, it was again transferred to France, and the cession was ratified by over 25,000 electors out of a total of 30,700. L’Avenir de Nice, a newspaper, “le porte-parole des partisans de l’annexion, relate jour par jour les sympathies dont sont entourés les soldats français. . . .”
[5. ]In the autumn of 1853.
[6. ]“Only inward disunion among the powers of Nature has preserved men hitherto; nevertheless, that great epoch cannot fail to arrive, when the whole family of mankind, by a grand universal Resolve, will snatch themselves from this sorrowful condition, from this frightful imprisonment; and by a voluntary Abdication of their terrestial abode, redeem their race from this anguish, and seek refuge in a happier world, with their Ancient Father. . . .” Trans. by Thomas Carlyle, in his essay “Novalis” (1829), from Lehrlinge zu Sais [The Pupils at Sais] from Novalis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel (4th ed., 2 vols., Berlin, 1826), II, 43-57.
[7. ]See Letter 118, n. 5.
[8. ]It is so much easier to do oneself harm than to do oneself good.
[9. ]See Letters 195 and 203.