GE to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Witley, 24 August 1880
Title
GE to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Witley, 24 August 1880
Title
GE to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Witley, 24 August 1880
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Date(s)
- 1880-08-24
Place
Witley
Letter Content
GE to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Witley, 24 August 1880
MS: The late Gabriel Wells. A copy found among the Cross papers is at Yale.
Published: Century Magazine, 104 (September 1922), 648.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
August 24. 80.
My dear Miss Phelps
I thank you with much feeling for thinking of me kindly and sending me some of your work, which has a certain sacredness for me from its being done under bodily suffering. I am but lately returned from the continent and my attention has been occupied by immediate demands, but your volume of "Sealed Orders" 470 lies on my little table to be taken up and read episodically either by me or to me. My absence from England has made me seem more than usually a defaulter to my correspondents. Mrs. Stowe wrote to me in the beginning of May telling me that her daughter was coming to England and would like to see me, but I only knew this when the occasion had long gone by Mr. Charles Lewes, who looked at my letters for me, having simply written me word that Mrs. Stowe's was among them. If you are seeing that honoured woman will you kindly mention this little fact to her?
I have carefully laid by your letter in some place, intending to copy your address, and now I am unable to find it, so that I must send this brief note to the care of your publishers.
I wish you could have given me reason to hope that you had before you a time of recovery and confirmed health. It makes a large part of one's calm and comfort in this difficult world to think of the lots of those we know as free from any hard pangs either of sorrow or bodily pain. That you have a mind free enough to make a larger world for yourself by creating is a great blessing. Perhaps the writing too may be a pain, but the negation would be worse.
Believe me, dear Miss Phelps, with high regard,
Yours sincerely
M. A. Cross.
MS: The late Gabriel Wells. A copy found among the Cross papers is at Yale.
Published: Century Magazine, 104 (September 1922), 648.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
August 24. 80.
My dear Miss Phelps
I thank you with much feeling for thinking of me kindly and sending me some of your work, which has a certain sacredness for me from its being done under bodily suffering. I am but lately returned from the continent and my attention has been occupied by immediate demands, but your volume of "Sealed Orders" 470 lies on my little table to be taken up and read episodically either by me or to me. My absence from England has made me seem more than usually a defaulter to my correspondents. Mrs. Stowe wrote to me in the beginning of May telling me that her daughter was coming to England and would like to see me, but I only knew this when the occasion had long gone by Mr. Charles Lewes, who looked at my letters for me, having simply written me word that Mrs. Stowe's was among them. If you are seeing that honoured woman will you kindly mention this little fact to her?
I have carefully laid by your letter in some place, intending to copy your address, and now I am unable to find it, so that I must send this brief note to the care of your publishers.
I wish you could have given me reason to hope that you had before you a time of recovery and confirmed health. It makes a large part of one's calm and comfort in this difficult world to think of the lots of those we know as free from any hard pangs either of sorrow or bodily pain. That you have a mind free enough to make a larger world for yourself by creating is a great blessing. Perhaps the writing too may be a pain, but the negation would be worse.
Believe me, dear Miss Phelps, with high regard,
Yours sincerely
M. A. Cross.
Signature
M. A. Cross.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Witley, 24 August 1880, 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/92297