GE to Francois D'Albert-Durade, London, 28 November 1863
Title
GE to Francois D'Albert-Durade, London, 28 November 1863
Title
GE to Francois D'Albert-Durade, London, 28 November 1863
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Francois D'Albert-Durade
Date(s)
- 1863-11-28
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Francois D'Albert-Durade, London, 28 November 1863
Text: Copy by D'Albert-Durade in the Tinker Collection, Yale. MS listed in W. V. Daniell Catalogue, July 1903, item 242. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory | 21 North Bank | Regents Park, N.W.
November 28th 1863.
Dear Friend
Your letters are always so charming that I never forget when it is your [turn] to write and not mine. Now unless I am mistaken, it was you who were in debt in our correspondence until your letter came yesterday, and I was really beginning to feel rather hurt and sad at your long silence. But I forgot all such discontent when I read once more the delightful assurance that you have been thinking of me as usual.
Our life has been very eventful since I last wrote to you. During part of the summer we had our two younger boys at home, and were much occupied with thoughts and arrangements about their future destination. Thornton, our second boy, who is at once amiable and troublesome, easy and difficult to manage, has caused us considerable anxiety. Unknown to us he had during his last year in Edinburgh contracted a dislike to the thought of going to India and did not work heartily and thoroughly in preparation for the final examination. He failed, and we found that he had expected to fail; and this for a time was a great grief and disappointment to us. However, I will not trouble you with a narration of our various agitations and schemes on his account, since they have all ended happily enough in his willing departure for Natal with a first-rate rifle and revolver, excellent introductions to well known friends of our friends, and a very sanguine expectation of shooting lions. To give you an instance of the lad's nature, he had come from Edinburgh with a fixed idea of going to fight for the Poles against the hated Russians. His father felt that it would be a sin to allow a boy of nineteen to incur the demoralisation of joining [the] coarse men engaged in a guerilla warfare, to say nothing of Thornie's utter unfitness for military subordination and other inevitable hardships. But for some time it seemed as [if] he would take willingly to no other career. With all this he is the best-tempered lad in the world; intense, though narrow, in his mental activity and he may possibly [turn] out to be something useful and remarkable. Our other boy Bertie is in Scotland, learning agriculture, so that at last we have regained our quiet domesticity with no interruption in our t'eate 'e0 t'eate beyond the occasional presence of our eldest boy.
Besides these grave parental duties, we have had to think of our new residence and to decide on buying a house. You see our new address at the head of my letter and will be careful not to recur to the old one. At present we are well satisfied with our home, which is not at all like a London house with rooms piled one above the other after the fashion of boxes. It stands in a garden detached from all other houses; and the living rooms are all on [one] floor. Our drawing room has been decorated for us by an artistic friend, who has given himself with kind enthusiasm to make [the room] in which I sit thoroughly harmonious. We have not been in our new home quite a month yet, and on Tuesday we had our "house-warming" in celebration of Charlie's twenty-first birthday -- a great epoch. I am glad to tell you that he has been promoted in his official employment and is altogether a comfort to us from the growth in him of a manliness which does not in the least subtract from his child-like purity and affection. It is very pretty to us the worship he gives me, preparing him, I hope, for a yet more complete devotion to some Beatrice in store for him.
There! I have written a letter all about ourselves, and it would be a very poor sort of affectation for me to apologize. Because you and Maman are good, you care about us and care to know those small affairs which affect our daily life. I am very idle now -- indulging myself in mere reading and in study for no more express subject than to feed my soul. We have just finished correcting the proofs of "The Life of Goethe" which is coming out in a cheaper edition, and are still correcting the proofs of the volume on "Aristotle" which is to appear after Christmas. Mr. Lewes's health is much improved and mine since I got [rid] of a bad cough is also tolerable. A thousand imaginary kisses to Maman, and to yourself perfect regard from
Yours very [fai]thfully
M. E. Lewes.
Text: Copy by D'Albert-Durade in the Tinker Collection, Yale. MS listed in W. V. Daniell Catalogue, July 1903, item 242. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory | 21 North Bank | Regents Park, N.W.
November 28th 1863.
Dear Friend
Your letters are always so charming that I never forget when it is your [turn] to write and not mine. Now unless I am mistaken, it was you who were in debt in our correspondence until your letter came yesterday, and I was really beginning to feel rather hurt and sad at your long silence. But I forgot all such discontent when I read once more the delightful assurance that you have been thinking of me as usual.
Our life has been very eventful since I last wrote to you. During part of the summer we had our two younger boys at home, and were much occupied with thoughts and arrangements about their future destination. Thornton, our second boy, who is at once amiable and troublesome, easy and difficult to manage, has caused us considerable anxiety. Unknown to us he had during his last year in Edinburgh contracted a dislike to the thought of going to India and did not work heartily and thoroughly in preparation for the final examination. He failed, and we found that he had expected to fail; and this for a time was a great grief and disappointment to us. However, I will not trouble you with a narration of our various agitations and schemes on his account, since they have all ended happily enough in his willing departure for Natal with a first-rate rifle and revolver, excellent introductions to well known friends of our friends, and a very sanguine expectation of shooting lions. To give you an instance of the lad's nature, he had come from Edinburgh with a fixed idea of going to fight for the Poles against the hated Russians. His father felt that it would be a sin to allow a boy of nineteen to incur the demoralisation of joining [the] coarse men engaged in a guerilla warfare, to say nothing of Thornie's utter unfitness for military subordination and other inevitable hardships. But for some time it seemed as [if] he would take willingly to no other career. With all this he is the best-tempered lad in the world; intense, though narrow, in his mental activity and he may possibly [turn] out to be something useful and remarkable. Our other boy Bertie is in Scotland, learning agriculture, so that at last we have regained our quiet domesticity with no interruption in our t'eate 'e0 t'eate beyond the occasional presence of our eldest boy.
Besides these grave parental duties, we have had to think of our new residence and to decide on buying a house. You see our new address at the head of my letter and will be careful not to recur to the old one. At present we are well satisfied with our home, which is not at all like a London house with rooms piled one above the other after the fashion of boxes. It stands in a garden detached from all other houses; and the living rooms are all on [one] floor. Our drawing room has been decorated for us by an artistic friend, who has given himself with kind enthusiasm to make [the room] in which I sit thoroughly harmonious. We have not been in our new home quite a month yet, and on Tuesday we had our "house-warming" in celebration of Charlie's twenty-first birthday -- a great epoch. I am glad to tell you that he has been promoted in his official employment and is altogether a comfort to us from the growth in him of a manliness which does not in the least subtract from his child-like purity and affection. It is very pretty to us the worship he gives me, preparing him, I hope, for a yet more complete devotion to some Beatrice in store for him.
There! I have written a letter all about ourselves, and it would be a very poor sort of affectation for me to apologize. Because you and Maman are good, you care about us and care to know those small affairs which affect our daily life. I am very idle now -- indulging myself in mere reading and in study for no more express subject than to feed my soul. We have just finished correcting the proofs of "The Life of Goethe" which is coming out in a cheaper edition, and are still correcting the proofs of the volume on "Aristotle" which is to appear after Christmas. Mr. Lewes's health is much improved and mine since I got [rid] of a bad cough is also tolerable. A thousand imaginary kisses to Maman, and to yourself perfect regard from
Yours very [fai]thfully
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Francois D'Albert-Durade, London, 28 November 1863, 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/92364