GE to Frederic W. H. Myers, London, 16 November 1877
Title
GE to Frederic W. H. Myers, London, 16 November 1877
Title
GE to Frederic W. H. Myers, London, 16 November 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Frederic W. H. Myers
Date(s)
- 1877-11-16
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Frederic W. H. Myers, London, 16 November 1877
MS: Trinity College, Cambridge. Envelope: Frederic W.H. Myers Esq. | Brandon House | Cheltenham. Postmarks: LONDON N.W | B 5 | NO 16 | 77; CHELTENHAM | A | NO 17 | 77.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 16. 77.
My dear Mr. Myers
I am very grateful to you for your confidence. Indefinable impressions had convinced me that since we began to know something of each other a blight had passed over your energies and it was painful to me to feel in the dark about one of whom I had from the first thought with that hopeful interest which the elder mind, dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to the younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.
What you have disclosed to me affects me too deeply for me to say more about it just now than that my sympathy nullifies to my mind that difference which we were trying to explain on Sunday. When you write -- "My own mournful present and solemn past seem sometimes to show me as it were, for a moment, by direct revelation the whole world's love and woe, and I seem to have drawn closer to other lives in that I have lost my own" -- you express that spiritual result which seems to me the fount of real betterness for poor mankind. I have no controversy with a sorrowing love which has wrought such a result, no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the absence of what has been called consolatory belief.
But all the while I gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits or negations in my own moral powers and life-experience which may screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual good. But we know how the poor help the poor.
The poems you have sent me I have read several times already and they will be treasured by me as a sacred memorial of your confidence. I feel as if some foggy obstruction had been cleared away from my mind and feel strangely the more contented because I know of your great sadness -- as if I had seen and joined hands with one whom I had envied in the procession of reverential mourners. Believe me always
Yours most faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Trinity College, Cambridge. Envelope: Frederic W.H. Myers Esq. | Brandon House | Cheltenham. Postmarks: LONDON N.W | B 5 | NO 16 | 77; CHELTENHAM | A | NO 17 | 77.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 16. 77.
My dear Mr. Myers
I am very grateful to you for your confidence. Indefinable impressions had convinced me that since we began to know something of each other a blight had passed over your energies and it was painful to me to feel in the dark about one of whom I had from the first thought with that hopeful interest which the elder mind, dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to the younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.
What you have disclosed to me affects me too deeply for me to say more about it just now than that my sympathy nullifies to my mind that difference which we were trying to explain on Sunday. When you write -- "My own mournful present and solemn past seem sometimes to show me as it were, for a moment, by direct revelation the whole world's love and woe, and I seem to have drawn closer to other lives in that I have lost my own" -- you express that spiritual result which seems to me the fount of real betterness for poor mankind. I have no controversy with a sorrowing love which has wrought such a result, no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the absence of what has been called consolatory belief.
But all the while I gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits or negations in my own moral powers and life-experience which may screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual good. But we know how the poor help the poor.
The poems you have sent me I have read several times already and they will be treasured by me as a sacred memorial of your confidence. I feel as if some foggy obstruction had been cleared away from my mind and feel strangely the more contented because I know of your great sadness -- as if I had seen and joined hands with one whom I had envied in the procession of reverential mourners. Believe me always
Yours most faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Frederic W. H. Myers, London, 16 November 1877, 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/92434