GE to Martha Jackson, Foleshill, 21 April 1845
Title
GE to Martha Jackson, Foleshill, 21 April 1845
Title
GE to Martha Jackson, Foleshill, 21 April 1845
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Martha Jackson
Date(s)
- 1845-04-21
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Martha Jackson, Foleshill, 21 April 1845
Text: Bookman, 3 (January 1893), 119.
Foleshill, April 21st, 1845.
My dear Martha
To prove to you that your note gave me as much pleasure as your affectionate heart could wish, I will tell you that my gratitude for it induces me to answer it at midnight, lest to-morrow should bring some hindrances, disagreeable or agreeable. I think you would be quite satisfied if you could read my heart's record of you. . . .
I would renounce more than one delight for the sake of having again your caresses and your visible friendship. As it is, you are a bright picture in my memory, like Raphael's St. Catharine, and I assure you I give you a high place among influences when I range you with pictures. Thank you, my dear Martha, for your inquiries about myself. I am writing, rather wearily, for of translating a great book of 1500 pages there is no speedy end; but as the sun travels from one sign to another, I get from one section to another, and so I suppose I shall come to Beersheba at last.
What should you say to my becoming a wife? Should you think it a duty to ascertain the name of the rash man that you might warn him from putting on such a matrimonial hair-shirt as he would have with me? I did meditate an engagement, but I have determined, whether wisely or not I cannot tell, to defer it, at least for the present.
My health is not of the strongest -- dreadful headaches come now and then to me as well as to the rest of mankind, but idleness is my chief disease, and my most salutary medicine the exhortation, "Work while it is day." 551 I and father go on living and loving together as usual, and it is my chief source of happiness to know that I form one item of his.
So now you know my state, or at least its outward, material part. The spirit varies far more than the forms under which it lives and works, and our souls live two years while our bodies live but two months. Nay, the experience of a week, of a day, may make one grey in wisdom or in sadness as well as in hair. Perhaps you would find some symptoms of age creeping over me if you were with me now, and you would accuse me of being too old for five-and-twenty, which is a sufficiently venerable sum of years in the calendar of young ladies generally. But I can laugh and love and fall into a fit of enthusiasm still, so there is some of the youthful sap left. . . .
I dined last week with Harriet Martineau at Mrs. Bracebridge's, of Atherstone. She is a charming person -- quite one of those great people whom one does not venerate the less for having seen. Full of mesmerism and its marvels, as you may suppose.
Text: Bookman, 3 (January 1893), 119.
Foleshill, April 21st, 1845.
My dear Martha
To prove to you that your note gave me as much pleasure as your affectionate heart could wish, I will tell you that my gratitude for it induces me to answer it at midnight, lest to-morrow should bring some hindrances, disagreeable or agreeable. I think you would be quite satisfied if you could read my heart's record of you. . . .
I would renounce more than one delight for the sake of having again your caresses and your visible friendship. As it is, you are a bright picture in my memory, like Raphael's St. Catharine, and I assure you I give you a high place among influences when I range you with pictures. Thank you, my dear Martha, for your inquiries about myself. I am writing, rather wearily, for of translating a great book of 1500 pages there is no speedy end; but as the sun travels from one sign to another, I get from one section to another, and so I suppose I shall come to Beersheba at last.
What should you say to my becoming a wife? Should you think it a duty to ascertain the name of the rash man that you might warn him from putting on such a matrimonial hair-shirt as he would have with me? I did meditate an engagement, but I have determined, whether wisely or not I cannot tell, to defer it, at least for the present.
My health is not of the strongest -- dreadful headaches come now and then to me as well as to the rest of mankind, but idleness is my chief disease, and my most salutary medicine the exhortation, "Work while it is day." 551 I and father go on living and loving together as usual, and it is my chief source of happiness to know that I form one item of his.
So now you know my state, or at least its outward, material part. The spirit varies far more than the forms under which it lives and works, and our souls live two years while our bodies live but two months. Nay, the experience of a week, of a day, may make one grey in wisdom or in sadness as well as in hair. Perhaps you would find some symptoms of age creeping over me if you were with me now, and you would accuse me of being too old for five-and-twenty, which is a sufficiently venerable sum of years in the calendar of young ladies generally. But I can laugh and love and fall into a fit of enthusiasm still, so there is some of the youthful sap left. . . .
I dined last week with Harriet Martineau at Mrs. Bracebridge's, of Atherstone. She is a charming person -- quite one of those great people whom one does not venerate the less for having seen. Full of mesmerism and its marvels, as you may suppose.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Martha Jackson, Foleshill, 21 April 1845, 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/92925