GE to John Blackwood, London, 18 January 1872
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 18 January 1872
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 18 January 1872
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1872-01-18
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, London, 18 January 1872
MS: National Library of Scotland. Mostly published: Cross, III, 147-149.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
January 18. 72.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
It is like your kindness to write me your encouraging impressions on reading the Third Book. I suppose it is my poor health that just now makes me think my writing duller than usual. For certainly the reception of the First Book by my old readers is quite beyond my most daring hopes. One of them, who is a great champion of Adam Bede and Romola, told Mr. Lewes yesterday that he thought Middlemarch surpassed them. 442 All this is very wonderful to me. I am thoroughly comforted as to the half of the work which is already written -- but there remains the terror about the unwritten. Mr. Lewes is much satisfied with the Fourth Book, which opens with the continuation of the Featherstone drama. I wanted for the sake of quantity, to add a chapter to the Third Book, instead of opening the Fourth with it. But Mr. Lewes objects on the ground of effectiveness.
We went yesterday to the Tichborne Trial, 443 which was an experience of great interest to me. Unhappily Mr. Lewes got ill with the bad air, and we had to come away after the third hour of Coleridge's speaking, but it was a great enjoyment to me to hear what I did. Coleridge is a rare orator -- not of the declamatory but of the argumentative order.
Thanks, not formal, but sincerely felt, for the two photographs, which complete each other. They are admirable bits of art which the fierce zeal of the Frenchman has produced. I am particularly satisfied with the mouth which is the feature most apt to be a failure in photographs. This likeness will always carry me back to the first time I saw you, in our little Richmond lodging, when I was thinking anxiously of "Adam Bede," as I now am of "Middlemarch." 444
I felt something like a shudder when Sir Henry Maine 445 asked me last Sunday whether this would not be a very long book -- saying, when I told him it would be four good volumes, that that was what he had calculated. However it will not be longer than Thackeray's books, if so long. And I don't see how the sort of thing I want to do could have been done briefly.
I would not for the world say anything to hurt Mr. Main, who is as keenly sensitive as I am, so that he must have no hint of my criticism, which, indeed, I would not have written to any one but you. Mr. Lewes, who caught a hoarseness yesterday, sends his regards to you dolorously.
It is I who have to be grateful for the gift of Brougham's Life, which will be a welcome addition to my means of knowing the time "when his ugliness had not passed its bloom." 446
Yours always truly
M. E. Lewes.
John Blackwood Esq.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Mostly published: Cross, III, 147-149.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
January 18. 72.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
It is like your kindness to write me your encouraging impressions on reading the Third Book. I suppose it is my poor health that just now makes me think my writing duller than usual. For certainly the reception of the First Book by my old readers is quite beyond my most daring hopes. One of them, who is a great champion of Adam Bede and Romola, told Mr. Lewes yesterday that he thought Middlemarch surpassed them. 442 All this is very wonderful to me. I am thoroughly comforted as to the half of the work which is already written -- but there remains the terror about the unwritten. Mr. Lewes is much satisfied with the Fourth Book, which opens with the continuation of the Featherstone drama. I wanted for the sake of quantity, to add a chapter to the Third Book, instead of opening the Fourth with it. But Mr. Lewes objects on the ground of effectiveness.
We went yesterday to the Tichborne Trial, 443 which was an experience of great interest to me. Unhappily Mr. Lewes got ill with the bad air, and we had to come away after the third hour of Coleridge's speaking, but it was a great enjoyment to me to hear what I did. Coleridge is a rare orator -- not of the declamatory but of the argumentative order.
Thanks, not formal, but sincerely felt, for the two photographs, which complete each other. They are admirable bits of art which the fierce zeal of the Frenchman has produced. I am particularly satisfied with the mouth which is the feature most apt to be a failure in photographs. This likeness will always carry me back to the first time I saw you, in our little Richmond lodging, when I was thinking anxiously of "Adam Bede," as I now am of "Middlemarch." 444
I felt something like a shudder when Sir Henry Maine 445 asked me last Sunday whether this would not be a very long book -- saying, when I told him it would be four good volumes, that that was what he had calculated. However it will not be longer than Thackeray's books, if so long. And I don't see how the sort of thing I want to do could have been done briefly.
I would not for the world say anything to hurt Mr. Main, who is as keenly sensitive as I am, so that he must have no hint of my criticism, which, indeed, I would not have written to any one but you. Mr. Lewes, who caught a hoarseness yesterday, sends his regards to you dolorously.
It is I who have to be grateful for the gift of Brougham's Life, which will be a welcome addition to my means of knowing the time "when his ugliness had not passed its bloom." 446
Yours always truly
M. E. Lewes.
John Blackwood Esq.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, London, 18 January 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/92621