[Manchester—Friday, 1 August 1873]
Friday August 1st What with some letters, some visiting and much indisposition to the pen business—the whole past week has flown unrecorded. The weather has been the severest of the season but always beautiful here. J. & I have been on the Knoll drinking up the exquisite scene and the breezes every afternoon—almost. Mr. J. Gilbert read at Mrs Towne’s one day—Wolsey—Ion—Ingoldsby legends. Today Mrs Putnam and Georgina came to pass the day with us. It is cooler and a soft rain drops from time to time.
They gave us a “moving history” of the anxieties they experienced for their adopted son Charlie Lowell who has just passed his examination for Sophomore at Harvard. “One whole hour from nine till ten o’clock that night I stood with my face glued to the front door glass said Georgie. I knew I could tell his step as I came round the corner. Soon after 9 the boys began to return—first came a company of 5 singing—I knew they were successful—later straggling groups, then I began to fear he did not succeed—not but what we intended to receive him as a conquering hero whatever the result might be, we had agreed with ourselves to do that for we knew how unhappy he would be if he did not get in but still we waited until ten and had almost given up hoping when a buggy stopped (one of his cousins has driven out for him) out Charlie jumped and all was well.”
Mrs Putnam here took up the narrative. In the morning of the day C. was to return, remembering he had been ill, and how unjust examinations sometimes were, Georgie and I found we had each decided upon a similar line of conduct—we both were about to put our bonnets on and go down town to buy him a present for the result whichever way it tended.
The examination was truly severe—7 hours in one day and lasted three. I wish Charlie could remain at home, keep up his Sophomore studies, continue modern languages which he will pursue to much greater advantage with me, and put off going to College to live until the Junior year. I fear however this will prove impossible. “I taught Willy Italian and German without his ever being obliged to look out a word, all that drudgery was spared him. He became a perfect scholar in both languages beside in French.”
As Jamie says of dear Mrs Putnam, her heart is in the grave. We never cease to wonder at the activity of her knowledge of politics and statesmen both foreign and native, nor at her deep and lively interest in Education. During the afternoon she said Jane Austen was not a favorite author of hers and yet her story called “persuasion” had one character “Anne” in it which possessed a beauty of character upon which she could seldom reflect without finding her eyes fill with tears. Of Middlemarch she said, she much preferred the early short stories of George Eliot. She thought her standard of character low. In the Mill on the Floss she thought the character of Maggie especially unworthy and all her heroines seem to partake in a measure of the same qualities—they expect to have consideration, love, worship, all the valuable gifts of this world and pay nothing for them. Maggie allows her brother’s rabbits to die for lack of care and is afterward unhappy because he blames her and does not love her as much. Now if she loved her brother she had nothing to do of so great importance as taking care of what was dear to him. And this one proof of affection she was not strong enough to show. What is such love worth!
So with Dorothea! she married Mr. Casaubon without good or sufficient reason and then killed him as one might say by her behavior. Such a character seems to me to be the bane of our present time and George Eliot does great harm by enticing our minds by her own love of her people to admire what is unworthy of admiration.
We drove to Mr. Bartols and they returned from the small station there. I think they thoroughly enjoyed the day.
