GE to John Blackwood, Ragatz, 6 July 1876
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Ragatz, 6 July 1876
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Ragatz, 6 July 1876
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1876-07-06
Place
Ragatz
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, Ragatz, 6 July 1876
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, III, 285-287.
Hof-Ragatz | Ragatz | July 6. 76.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
After much travelling and almost continual bad health we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us -- filled with various scenes and various ailments -- but to you, I daresay, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell.
On our arriving at Aix the effect of railway travelling and heat on me warned us to renounce our project of going to the Maritime Alps and to turn northward, so after resting at Aix to be ill and get better, we went to Chamb'e9ry just to make a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes, 504 and then set our faces northward, staying at beautiful Lausanne and Vevey for a week and then coming on by easy stages to this nook in the mountains, where we begin to think there is a chance of our getting an appetite and recovering the flesh we have been losing. In spite of illness, however, we have had much enjoyment of the lovely scenery we have been dwelling in ever since we entered Savoy, where one gets what I most delight in -- the combination of rich, well-cultivated land, friendly to man, and the grand outline and atmospheric effects of mountains near and distant.
This place seems to be one of the quietest Baths possible. Such fashion as there is, is of a German unimposing kind, and the King of Saxony, 505 who is at the twin hotel with this, is I imagine a much quieter kind of eminence than a London Stock-broker. At present the company seems to be almost exclusively Swiss and German, but all the appliances for living and carrying on the "cure" are thoroughly generous and agreeable. We rose at five this morning, drank our glasses of warm water and walked till 'bc to 7, then breakfasted and from 'bd past 8 to 11 walked to Bad Pf'e4ffers and back again, along a magnificent ravine where the Tamina boils down beneath a tremendous wall of rock and where it is interesting to see the electric telegraph leaping from the summit, crossing the gulf, and then quietly running by our roadside till it leaps upward again to the opposite summit.
Mr. Lewes has read his Times when he has had an opportunity, so we have known that Servia has declared war against Turkey, and that Harriet Martineau is dead, as well as George Sand. 506 But you may consider us as generally ill-informed and as ready to make much of a little news as any old provinical folk in the days when the stage coach brought a single London paper to the village Crown or Red Lion.
I should like to know whether you have had any further communication with modest Mr. Dowden, the Dublin professor. I have no opinion about his proposal, but I think the man himself is worthy of attention and regard.
It is well we provided ourselves with some books before getting here, for the shops seem to be of the usual watering-place order, and the windows are furnished with the same French novels that we have been seeing from Paris onward.
I hope that Book VI does not show a diminished sale. Your letter which met us with the proof at the Poste Restante, Paris, was very welcome and cheering to me.
Our Son is our only correspondent at present, reading or sifting our letters and letting us know the obliging propositions of American editors (and English) to furnish the public with our biographies etc. etc. Doubtless the biographies will be given whether we furnish the facts or not -- and we certainly shall not.
By and by, you are probably in town now with Mrs. and Miss Blackwood. If so, I hope that you are having as much sunshine as we are having, with only moderate heat. Our weather has been uniformly splendid since we left Paris, with the exception of some storms which have conveniently laid the dust.
Mr. Lewes unites with me in kind regards, and I am always
Yours most truly
M. E. Lewes.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: Cross, III, 285-287.
Hof-Ragatz | Ragatz | July 6. 76.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
After much travelling and almost continual bad health we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us -- filled with various scenes and various ailments -- but to you, I daresay, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell.
On our arriving at Aix the effect of railway travelling and heat on me warned us to renounce our project of going to the Maritime Alps and to turn northward, so after resting at Aix to be ill and get better, we went to Chamb'e9ry just to make a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes, 504 and then set our faces northward, staying at beautiful Lausanne and Vevey for a week and then coming on by easy stages to this nook in the mountains, where we begin to think there is a chance of our getting an appetite and recovering the flesh we have been losing. In spite of illness, however, we have had much enjoyment of the lovely scenery we have been dwelling in ever since we entered Savoy, where one gets what I most delight in -- the combination of rich, well-cultivated land, friendly to man, and the grand outline and atmospheric effects of mountains near and distant.
This place seems to be one of the quietest Baths possible. Such fashion as there is, is of a German unimposing kind, and the King of Saxony, 505 who is at the twin hotel with this, is I imagine a much quieter kind of eminence than a London Stock-broker. At present the company seems to be almost exclusively Swiss and German, but all the appliances for living and carrying on the "cure" are thoroughly generous and agreeable. We rose at five this morning, drank our glasses of warm water and walked till 'bc to 7, then breakfasted and from 'bd past 8 to 11 walked to Bad Pf'e4ffers and back again, along a magnificent ravine where the Tamina boils down beneath a tremendous wall of rock and where it is interesting to see the electric telegraph leaping from the summit, crossing the gulf, and then quietly running by our roadside till it leaps upward again to the opposite summit.
Mr. Lewes has read his Times when he has had an opportunity, so we have known that Servia has declared war against Turkey, and that Harriet Martineau is dead, as well as George Sand. 506 But you may consider us as generally ill-informed and as ready to make much of a little news as any old provinical folk in the days when the stage coach brought a single London paper to the village Crown or Red Lion.
I should like to know whether you have had any further communication with modest Mr. Dowden, the Dublin professor. I have no opinion about his proposal, but I think the man himself is worthy of attention and regard.
It is well we provided ourselves with some books before getting here, for the shops seem to be of the usual watering-place order, and the windows are furnished with the same French novels that we have been seeing from Paris onward.
I hope that Book VI does not show a diminished sale. Your letter which met us with the proof at the Poste Restante, Paris, was very welcome and cheering to me.
Our Son is our only correspondent at present, reading or sifting our letters and letting us know the obliging propositions of American editors (and English) to furnish the public with our biographies etc. etc. Doubtless the biographies will be given whether we furnish the facts or not -- and we certainly shall not.
By and by, you are probably in town now with Mrs. and Miss Blackwood. If so, I hope that you are having as much sunshine as we are having, with only moderate heat. Our weather has been uniformly splendid since we left Paris, with the exception of some storms which have conveniently laid the dust.
Mr. Lewes unites with me in kind regards, and I am always
Yours most truly
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, Ragatz, 6 July 1876, 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/92699