GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, 1 October 1840
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, 1 October 1840
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, 1 October 1840
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria Lewis
Date(s)
- 1840-10-01
Place
GRIFF
Letter Content
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, 1 October 1840
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd R. [sic] Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering | Northamptonshire. Postmark: COVENTRY | oc 2 | 1840. Extracts published: Cross, I, 73-76.
Griff | October 1st 1840.
My dear Veronica, which being interpreted, is [fidelity in friendship,] when I remember that there was an enquiry at the close of your last letter concerning the fate of your books, which are yet in my keeping, I feel some anxiety as to the effect of my silence of nearly a fortnight -- possibly it has been that of putting a troublesome mote, however minute, in your mind's eye; but without any prolix shewing of causes I beg of you to pardon an error which is not without mitigation from the variety of little matters that Michaelmas presents for my attention. Last week I was absent from home from Wednesday to Saturday, in quest of the "coy maiden" Pleasure -- at least nominally so, the real motive being rather to gratify another's feelings. 249 I heard the Messiah on Thursday morning at Birmingham and some beautiful selections from other oratorios of Handel and Haydn on Friday. With a stupid, drowsy sensation produced by standing sentinel over damson cheese 250 and a warm stove I cannot do better than ask you to read if accessible Wordsworth's short poem on the Power of Sound 251 with which I have just been delighted.
My prospects have been long fluctuating so as to make it unsafe for me to mention them; now I believe I may say that I am not to be dislodged from my present pedestal or resign my sceptre. The secession has devolved on another and the flutterer is to leave the nest -- that nest that will still have its most downy nook ready to receive you. I am as oriental in my style as if I were under the perpendicular darts of Apollo, you will think, in the land of the morning. I am really sorry to send you profitless babil such as my late letters have been filled with; however "les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures" 252 and I hope to become more methodical once again in my occupations.
I have made an alteration in my plans with Mr. Brezzi, and shall henceforward take Italian and German alternately so that I shall not be liable to the consciousness of having imperative employment for every interstice of time. There seems a greater affinity between German and my mind than Italian, though less new to me, possesses. I am reading Schiller's Maria Stuart and Tasso. I was pleased with a little poem I learnt a week or two ago in German, and as I want you to like it I have just put the idea it contains into English doggrel which quite fails to represent the beautiful simplicity and nature of the original, but yet I hope will give you sufficiently its sense to screen the odiousness of the translation. Eccola:
Question and Answer. "Where blooms, O my Father, a thornless rose?" "That can I not tell thee, my child; Not one on the bosom of earth e'er grows, But wounds whom its charms have beguiled." "Would I'd a rose on my bosom to lie! But I shrink from the piercing thorn; I long, but I dare not its point defy, I long, and I gaze forlorn." "Not so, O my child, round the stem again Thy resolute fingers entwine -- Forego not the joy for its sister pain, Let the rose, the sweet rose, be thine!"
I was this morning deeply struck by a figure in I think the 31 chapter of Isaiah 253 where a picture is given of a young lion tearing the flock and fearlessly continuing his work of destruction though a multitude of shepherds be assembled against him -- this to shadow forth the works that God doeth, the desolations He maketh in the earth, unobstructed by all the mustered array of human power and skill. I must prepare for bed. Forgive my desultory nothings. Write as soon as you can and believe me
Your own
Clematis.
Would not a parcel reach you by railway?
MS: Yale. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd R. [sic] Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering | Northamptonshire. Postmark: COVENTRY | oc 2 | 1840. Extracts published: Cross, I, 73-76.
Griff | October 1st 1840.
My dear Veronica, which being interpreted, is [fidelity in friendship,] when I remember that there was an enquiry at the close of your last letter concerning the fate of your books, which are yet in my keeping, I feel some anxiety as to the effect of my silence of nearly a fortnight -- possibly it has been that of putting a troublesome mote, however minute, in your mind's eye; but without any prolix shewing of causes I beg of you to pardon an error which is not without mitigation from the variety of little matters that Michaelmas presents for my attention. Last week I was absent from home from Wednesday to Saturday, in quest of the "coy maiden" Pleasure -- at least nominally so, the real motive being rather to gratify another's feelings. 249 I heard the Messiah on Thursday morning at Birmingham and some beautiful selections from other oratorios of Handel and Haydn on Friday. With a stupid, drowsy sensation produced by standing sentinel over damson cheese 250 and a warm stove I cannot do better than ask you to read if accessible Wordsworth's short poem on the Power of Sound 251 with which I have just been delighted.
My prospects have been long fluctuating so as to make it unsafe for me to mention them; now I believe I may say that I am not to be dislodged from my present pedestal or resign my sceptre. The secession has devolved on another and the flutterer is to leave the nest -- that nest that will still have its most downy nook ready to receive you. I am as oriental in my style as if I were under the perpendicular darts of Apollo, you will think, in the land of the morning. I am really sorry to send you profitless babil such as my late letters have been filled with; however "les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures" 252 and I hope to become more methodical once again in my occupations.
I have made an alteration in my plans with Mr. Brezzi, and shall henceforward take Italian and German alternately so that I shall not be liable to the consciousness of having imperative employment for every interstice of time. There seems a greater affinity between German and my mind than Italian, though less new to me, possesses. I am reading Schiller's Maria Stuart and Tasso. I was pleased with a little poem I learnt a week or two ago in German, and as I want you to like it I have just put the idea it contains into English doggrel which quite fails to represent the beautiful simplicity and nature of the original, but yet I hope will give you sufficiently its sense to screen the odiousness of the translation. Eccola:
Question and Answer. "Where blooms, O my Father, a thornless rose?" "That can I not tell thee, my child; Not one on the bosom of earth e'er grows, But wounds whom its charms have beguiled." "Would I'd a rose on my bosom to lie! But I shrink from the piercing thorn; I long, but I dare not its point defy, I long, and I gaze forlorn." "Not so, O my child, round the stem again Thy resolute fingers entwine -- Forego not the joy for its sister pain, Let the rose, the sweet rose, be thine!"
I was this morning deeply struck by a figure in I think the 31 chapter of Isaiah 253 where a picture is given of a young lion tearing the flock and fearlessly continuing his work of destruction though a multitude of shepherds be assembled against him -- this to shadow forth the works that God doeth, the desolations He maketh in the earth, unobstructed by all the mustered array of human power and skill. I must prepare for bed. Forgive my desultory nothings. Write as soon as you can and believe me
Your own
Clematis.
Would not a parcel reach you by railway?
Signature
Clematis.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, 1 October 1840, 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/92895