[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.]
The "we" in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot's Journal and letters are a good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most interesting are perhaps the following:
_April 29th, 1859_ (from the Journal): "Finished a story, _The Lifted Veil_, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel" (this was _The Mill on the Floss_), "of which I am going to rewrite the two first chapters. I shall call it provisionally _The Tullivers_, or perhaps _St. Ogg's on the Floss_."
_May 6th_ (from a letter to Major Blackwood): "Yes I _am_ assured now that _Adam Bede_ was worth writing--worth living through long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the future."
_May 19th_ (from Journal): "A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an acknowledgment of _Adam Bede's_ success."
_June 8th_ (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): "I want to get rid of this house--cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you."
_July 21st_ (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in Switzerland): "Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters from Blackwood--nothing to annoy us."
_November 10th_ (from the Journal): "Dickens dined with us to-day for the first time."
_December 15th_ (from the Journal): "Blackwood proposes to give me for _The Mill on the Floss_, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d., and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted."
_January 3rd, 1860_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "We are demurring about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer _The House of Tulliver, or Life on the Floss_, to our old notion of _Sister Maggie_. _The Tullivers, or Life on the Floss_ has the advantage of slipping easily off the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (_The Newcomes_, _The Bertrams_, &c., &c.). Then there is _The Tulliver Family, or Life on the Floss_. Pray meditate and give us your opinion."