GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 November 1872
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 November 1872
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 November 1872
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1872-11-04
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 November 1872
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 496-497.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 4. 72.
My dear Mr. Main
On Thursday evening we arrived at home, and found your letter awaiting us as one of the signs that the thought of us had remained behind in some good hearts while we were away. This morning our debt to you has risen by all the value of your second letter 622 -- no slight value in a world which is apt to give praise in general and remember nothing in particular which merited the praise. I think I have told you before that I care for the finger pointing to the right passage more than for any superlative phrases; and your finger points well.
Yes, we are the better -- many thanks for your wish to have that assurance. Our holiday was spent chiefly in South Germany, a favourite region of ours, where we did not escape the bad weather, but where we probably had rather less of it than our northerly betters. Ten days of quiet sunshine spent at Stuttgardt and Carlsruhe made a good core of thorough enjoyment and though we have been a little pulled down since by an imprudent night-journey and a very rough passage we are still appreciably stronger than when we set out.
One healthy condition at least for me is that I have finished my book and am thoroughly at peace about it -- not because I am convinced of its perfection, but because I have lived to give out what it was in me to give and have not been hindered by illness or death from making my work a whole, such as it is. When a subject has begun to grow in me I suffer terribly until it has wrought itself out -- become a complete organism; and then it seems to take wing and go away from me. That thing is not to be done again -- that life has been lived. I could not rest with a number of unfinished works on my mind. When they -- or rather, when a conception has begun to shape itself in written words, I feel that it must go on to the end before I can be happy about it. Then I move away and look at it from a distance without any agitations.
I never felt inclined to scold you until I found you in your October letter 623 doing just what I had intreated you not to do -- constructing the future of the story. I mean that I felt inclined then to scold you maternally, for your own good. Nothing mars the receptivity more than eager construction -- as I know to my own cost.
I am going now to bathe my mind in deep waters -- going to read Mr. Lewes's manuscript which has been storing itself up for me, and to take up various studies which have been to sleep since I have found my strength hardly enough for "Middlemarch." I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.
This is an egotistic note, such as your warm sympathy has the blame of luring me into. You will not count the I's -- which judicious persons make a rule of cutting out from their manuscript, when it is meant for critical readers. Goodbye, dear Friend. Let us know what answer you get about your article. 624
Yours always faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, pp. 496-497.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 4. 72.
My dear Mr. Main
On Thursday evening we arrived at home, and found your letter awaiting us as one of the signs that the thought of us had remained behind in some good hearts while we were away. This morning our debt to you has risen by all the value of your second letter 622 -- no slight value in a world which is apt to give praise in general and remember nothing in particular which merited the praise. I think I have told you before that I care for the finger pointing to the right passage more than for any superlative phrases; and your finger points well.
Yes, we are the better -- many thanks for your wish to have that assurance. Our holiday was spent chiefly in South Germany, a favourite region of ours, where we did not escape the bad weather, but where we probably had rather less of it than our northerly betters. Ten days of quiet sunshine spent at Stuttgardt and Carlsruhe made a good core of thorough enjoyment and though we have been a little pulled down since by an imprudent night-journey and a very rough passage we are still appreciably stronger than when we set out.
One healthy condition at least for me is that I have finished my book and am thoroughly at peace about it -- not because I am convinced of its perfection, but because I have lived to give out what it was in me to give and have not been hindered by illness or death from making my work a whole, such as it is. When a subject has begun to grow in me I suffer terribly until it has wrought itself out -- become a complete organism; and then it seems to take wing and go away from me. That thing is not to be done again -- that life has been lived. I could not rest with a number of unfinished works on my mind. When they -- or rather, when a conception has begun to shape itself in written words, I feel that it must go on to the end before I can be happy about it. Then I move away and look at it from a distance without any agitations.
I never felt inclined to scold you until I found you in your October letter 623 doing just what I had intreated you not to do -- constructing the future of the story. I mean that I felt inclined then to scold you maternally, for your own good. Nothing mars the receptivity more than eager construction -- as I know to my own cost.
I am going now to bathe my mind in deep waters -- going to read Mr. Lewes's manuscript which has been storing itself up for me, and to take up various studies which have been to sleep since I have found my strength hardly enough for "Middlemarch." I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.
This is an egotistic note, such as your warm sympathy has the blame of luring me into. You will not count the I's -- which judicious persons make a rule of cutting out from their manuscript, when it is meant for critical readers. Goodbye, dear Friend. Let us know what answer you get about your article. 624
Yours always faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 November 1872, 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/91998