GE to Maria Lewis, Foleshill, [2 November 1841]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Foleshill, [2 November 1841]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Foleshill, [2 November 1841]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria Lewis
Date(s)
- 1841-11-02
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Maria Lewis, Foleshill, [2 November 1841]
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering. Postmark: COVENTRY | NO 2 | 1841. One sentence published: Cross, I, 92.
Foleshill | Tuesday Morning.
Like a true friend, my ain dearie, I am delighted to plunge you in blushes for not writing to me on Saturday by sending you a second packet within the week. This morning has brought the enclosed note and advertisement from Miss Crump -- they will explain themselves. You know better than I the importance of promptness in these matters, and except the proviso about furnishing pupils, there seems to be no obstacle to your obtaining the situation if that promptness be used. This to be sure is something like saying that a mountain might be climbed if it were not too steep, but impossibility is the only insurmountable barrier to human effort and that does not here exist. Effort! 'tis the very sound of the inspiriting trumpet, the hand that draws out all the rich tones from the lyre of human life.
Tell me what you think of the matter to-morrow, if possible and also tell me that you forgive my -- something between brusquerie and confusion in my last letter. The present one will not indeed compensate for its predecessor's faults, but must ask for the benefit of the same indemnity. I sat down after pork pie and coffee with the single intention to send you Miss C's prettily proffered aid, and though I cannot bear to send you one empty side of the sheet I seem just now not to have a peg in my mind on which to hang another idea. Not all the wonders of flood, fire, earth or air can avail me at this unpropitious hour. I might certainly moralize at some length on the [destructive conflagration] at the Tower, 386 or poetize on the loud laugh that the spirits of the elements are having at man's mimicry of power, or politically economize on the magic potency of law shewn in the conduct of the sentry -- the newspaper having furnished me with this ready change for the day, in common with other luckless mortals whose conversation purse needs such replenishment -- but I spare you the pains of doing what by others is often self-inflictingly done, unawares -- reading whole pages full of their own thoughts in another's livery.
I am going I hope to-day to effect a breach in the thick wall of indifference behind which the denizens of Coventry seem inclined to entrench themselves, but I fear I shall fail. 387 Hope in one scale, fear in the other, alternately preponderating -- such is the description of our microcosm within, to speak learnedly and sentimentally as it behooves a young lady what reads.
When my dear Maria, one's physical forces are occupied in digestion, it is obviously impossible according to the laws of matter that they should at the same time be ministering to the action of one's brain. Hence my folly -- and the enduring of this must have been a capital object in your unwise bargain to adopt as a friend
Your
Mary Ann.
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering. Postmark: COVENTRY | NO 2 | 1841. One sentence published: Cross, I, 92.
Foleshill | Tuesday Morning.
Like a true friend, my ain dearie, I am delighted to plunge you in blushes for not writing to me on Saturday by sending you a second packet within the week. This morning has brought the enclosed note and advertisement from Miss Crump -- they will explain themselves. You know better than I the importance of promptness in these matters, and except the proviso about furnishing pupils, there seems to be no obstacle to your obtaining the situation if that promptness be used. This to be sure is something like saying that a mountain might be climbed if it were not too steep, but impossibility is the only insurmountable barrier to human effort and that does not here exist. Effort! 'tis the very sound of the inspiriting trumpet, the hand that draws out all the rich tones from the lyre of human life.
Tell me what you think of the matter to-morrow, if possible and also tell me that you forgive my -- something between brusquerie and confusion in my last letter. The present one will not indeed compensate for its predecessor's faults, but must ask for the benefit of the same indemnity. I sat down after pork pie and coffee with the single intention to send you Miss C's prettily proffered aid, and though I cannot bear to send you one empty side of the sheet I seem just now not to have a peg in my mind on which to hang another idea. Not all the wonders of flood, fire, earth or air can avail me at this unpropitious hour. I might certainly moralize at some length on the [destructive conflagration] at the Tower, 386 or poetize on the loud laugh that the spirits of the elements are having at man's mimicry of power, or politically economize on the magic potency of law shewn in the conduct of the sentry -- the newspaper having furnished me with this ready change for the day, in common with other luckless mortals whose conversation purse needs such replenishment -- but I spare you the pains of doing what by others is often self-inflictingly done, unawares -- reading whole pages full of their own thoughts in another's livery.
I am going I hope to-day to effect a breach in the thick wall of indifference behind which the denizens of Coventry seem inclined to entrench themselves, but I fear I shall fail. 387 Hope in one scale, fear in the other, alternately preponderating -- such is the description of our microcosm within, to speak learnedly and sentimentally as it behooves a young lady what reads.
When my dear Maria, one's physical forces are occupied in digestion, it is obviously impossible according to the laws of matter that they should at the same time be ministering to the action of one's brain. Hence my folly -- and the enduring of this must have been a capital object in your unwise bargain to adopt as a friend
Your
Mary Ann.
Signature
Mary Ann.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria Lewis, Foleshill, [2 November 1841], 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/92871