GE to Alexander Main, London, 2 May 1876
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 2 May 1876
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 2 May 1876
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1876-05-02
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Alexander Main, London, 2 May 1876
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 549-550.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 2. 76.
Dear Mr. Main
Having a leisure half hour unexpectedly this afternoon I use it in writing to you, rather than trust to the time nearer our departure, which may be filled with small details of preparation. Even if you had not asked me, it would have been my impulse to send you a few lines, that I might thank you, with more directness than through my husband's report, for all your affectionate sympathy and for the painstaking appreciation with which you continually cheer me. Generally it is not good for me to be much within hearing of what is said about my books until they are at a good distance from their birth and I am in the dispassionate mood towards them of a hen towards her feathered chickens. But some genuine signs of understanding which assure me that I have not missed my aim are a helpful blessing, and you are one who can give such signs. Still, I shall be glad to take flight into the privacy of travel, as we hope to do at the beginning of June. We both need repose.
Are you not sometimes made rather desponding by the reading of newspapers and periodicals? One cannot escape seeing and hearing something of political and literary criticism in one's need to know what one's fellow-men are doing, and all information is given in a soup of comment. The ignorance, the recklessness, the lack of any critical principles by which to distinguish what is matter of technical judgment and what of individual taste, the ridiculous absence of fundamental comparison while hardly any judgment is passed without a futile and offensive comparison of one author with another -- [Tired of all this,] I sometimes shrink from every article that pretends to be critical -- I mean of other people's productions, not of course my own, for you know I am well taken care of by my husband and am saved from getting my mind poisoned with print about myself. You who are young may hope to do something towards making periodical writing a genuine contribution to culture, and I am glad to think you have found access for your thoughts with Mr. Ribot and Mr. Robertson. 466 Mr. Lewes has been much pleased with your ready and acute perception of philosophical and scientific bearings.
I trust that all is well with you in more material and domestic matters. We get great pleasure now from the thought of young lives filled with joyous activity. We too are unspeakably happy in our activity, but we have the drawback of increasing susceptibility to fatigue. I am often painfully anxious about Mr. Lewes's health -- the anxiety that one must pay as the price of loving greatly.
This letter says little that I should like to say, but let it have a symbolic significance and stand as an indirect sign that I am always
Yours with sincere regard
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Parrish Collection, Princeton. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 549-550.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 2. 76.
Dear Mr. Main
Having a leisure half hour unexpectedly this afternoon I use it in writing to you, rather than trust to the time nearer our departure, which may be filled with small details of preparation. Even if you had not asked me, it would have been my impulse to send you a few lines, that I might thank you, with more directness than through my husband's report, for all your affectionate sympathy and for the painstaking appreciation with which you continually cheer me. Generally it is not good for me to be much within hearing of what is said about my books until they are at a good distance from their birth and I am in the dispassionate mood towards them of a hen towards her feathered chickens. But some genuine signs of understanding which assure me that I have not missed my aim are a helpful blessing, and you are one who can give such signs. Still, I shall be glad to take flight into the privacy of travel, as we hope to do at the beginning of June. We both need repose.
Are you not sometimes made rather desponding by the reading of newspapers and periodicals? One cannot escape seeing and hearing something of political and literary criticism in one's need to know what one's fellow-men are doing, and all information is given in a soup of comment. The ignorance, the recklessness, the lack of any critical principles by which to distinguish what is matter of technical judgment and what of individual taste, the ridiculous absence of fundamental comparison while hardly any judgment is passed without a futile and offensive comparison of one author with another -- [Tired of all this,] I sometimes shrink from every article that pretends to be critical -- I mean of other people's productions, not of course my own, for you know I am well taken care of by my husband and am saved from getting my mind poisoned with print about myself. You who are young may hope to do something towards making periodical writing a genuine contribution to culture, and I am glad to think you have found access for your thoughts with Mr. Ribot and Mr. Robertson. 466 Mr. Lewes has been much pleased with your ready and acute perception of philosophical and scientific bearings.
I trust that all is well with you in more material and domestic matters. We get great pleasure now from the thought of young lives filled with joyous activity. We too are unspeakably happy in our activity, but we have the drawback of increasing susceptibility to fatigue. I am often painfully anxious about Mr. Lewes's health -- the anxiety that one must pay as the price of loving greatly.
This letter says little that I should like to say, but let it have a symbolic significance and stand as an indirect sign that I am always
Yours with sincere regard
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Alexander Main, London, 2 May 1876, 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/91991