GE to Alexander Main, London, 13 May 1874
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 13 May 1874
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 13 May 1874
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1874-05-13
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Alexander Main, London, 13 May 1874
MS: Huntington Library. Extracts published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 524-525.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 13. 74.
My dear Mr. Main
Your affectionate letters are very cheering to me. Though your praise 91 is to be measured by your own enthusiasm rather than by my merit -- by your own fulness rather than by mine -- there is always this satisfaction for me less alarmingly due to my vanity, namely that what you quote and emphasize is almost always what I most felt and believed in when I wrote it.
Thanks for your thought about our health. Mr. Lewes continues to enjoy more than his average amount of bodily comfort and working power. He is far on towards the end of his second volume now. I have lately had a relapse into feebleness and discomfort owing to a cold taken in the change of weather. I have been unusually depressed, but I am recovering and getting my chin above the muddy slough. My malaise has been giving me a sort of perpetual nightmare in which ideas have thronged upon me and made me feel the more miserably unable to grasp and use them.
I am grieved to hear that your Mother's days are passed in suffering -- I think you had not mentioned that before.
We shall leave town at the beginning of June, but if you come to London we shall probably be able to arrange that you should come to us in the country, as the house we have taken is not out of reach. You will tell us all about yourself then, will you not? -- Give me an account of your studies, and how your activity has hitherto shaped itself, and what you look forward to with the most yearning. I think you have a strong faith, as I have, in the influences of a life apart from authorship, and in that dignity of work which comes from the thoroughness of doing, rather than from the order of the work.
Agatha was written after a visit to that St. M'e4rgen described at the beginning of the poem. There was really an aged woman among those green hills who suggested the picture of Agatha. Always
Yours with affectionate interest
M. E. Lewes.
Mr Lewes is downstairs working at his desk, else he would send his love to you. We laughed at your prediction that he would call your letter "one of Main's screeds." He has really used that word, but you can hardly imagine how pleased he is with a "screed" which has me for its subject. His happy nature assimilates all agreeable things, and especially any tribute to me. I am much gratified, for your sake as well as his, with the signs of your having given real study and appreciation to the [Problems.] It would make a sad gulf between us if you did not care for Science -- [Wissenschaft] in the largest sense.
MS: Huntington Library. Extracts published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 524-525.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 13. 74.
My dear Mr. Main
Your affectionate letters are very cheering to me. Though your praise 91 is to be measured by your own enthusiasm rather than by my merit -- by your own fulness rather than by mine -- there is always this satisfaction for me less alarmingly due to my vanity, namely that what you quote and emphasize is almost always what I most felt and believed in when I wrote it.
Thanks for your thought about our health. Mr. Lewes continues to enjoy more than his average amount of bodily comfort and working power. He is far on towards the end of his second volume now. I have lately had a relapse into feebleness and discomfort owing to a cold taken in the change of weather. I have been unusually depressed, but I am recovering and getting my chin above the muddy slough. My malaise has been giving me a sort of perpetual nightmare in which ideas have thronged upon me and made me feel the more miserably unable to grasp and use them.
I am grieved to hear that your Mother's days are passed in suffering -- I think you had not mentioned that before.
We shall leave town at the beginning of June, but if you come to London we shall probably be able to arrange that you should come to us in the country, as the house we have taken is not out of reach. You will tell us all about yourself then, will you not? -- Give me an account of your studies, and how your activity has hitherto shaped itself, and what you look forward to with the most yearning. I think you have a strong faith, as I have, in the influences of a life apart from authorship, and in that dignity of work which comes from the thoroughness of doing, rather than from the order of the work.
Agatha was written after a visit to that St. M'e4rgen described at the beginning of the poem. There was really an aged woman among those green hills who suggested the picture of Agatha. Always
Yours with affectionate interest
M. E. Lewes.
Mr Lewes is downstairs working at his desk, else he would send his love to you. We laughed at your prediction that he would call your letter "one of Main's screeds." He has really used that word, but you can hardly imagine how pleased he is with a "screed" which has me for its subject. His happy nature assimilates all agreeable things, and especially any tribute to me. I am much gratified, for your sake as well as his, with the signs of your having given real study and appreciation to the [Problems.] It would make a sad gulf between us if you did not care for Science -- [Wissenschaft] in the largest sense.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Alexander Main, London, 13 May 1874, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91985