GE to Mary Sibree, 662 Foleshill, 10 May [1847]
Title
GE to Mary Sibree, 662 Foleshill, 10 May [1847]
Title
GE to Mary Sibree, 662 Foleshill, 10 May [1847]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mary Sibree
Date(s)
- 1847-05-10
Place
662 FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Mary Sibree, 662 Foleshill, 10 May [1847]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1847. Envelope: Miss Sibree | J. Robertson Esq. | Widcombe Villa | Richmond Hill | Clifton. Postmarks: COVENTRY | MY 10 | 1847; [BRISTOL] MY 11 | 1847 | A. Mostly published: Cross, I, 160-163.
Foleshill May 10th.
My dear Mary
It is worth while to forget a friend for a week or ten days, just for the sake of the agreeable kind of startle it gives one to be reminded that one has such a treasure in reserve -- the same sort of pleasure I suppose that a poor body feels who happens to lay his hand on an undreamt-of sixpence which had sunk to a corner of his pocket. When Mr. Sibree brought me your parcel, I had been to London for a week and having been full of Mendelssohn oratorios and Italian operas, I had just this kind of delightful surprize when I saw your note and the beautiful purse. Not that I mean to compare you to a sixpence -- you are a bright golden sovereign to me, with edges all unrubbed, fit to remind a poor tarnished bruised piece like me that there are ever fresh and more perfect coinages of human nature forth-coming. I am very proud of my purse, first, because I have long had to be ashamed of drawing my old one out of my pocket, and secondly, because it is a sort of symbol of your love for me, and who is not proud to be loved? For there is a beautiful kind of pride at which no one need frown -- I may call it a sort of impersonal pride -- a thrill of exultation at all that is good and lovely and joyous as a possession of our human nature.
I am glad to think of all your pleasure among friends new and old. Mrs. Delf's mother 663 is I daresay a valuable person -- but do not I beseech thee go to old people as oracles on matters which date any later than their 35th year -- only trust them, if they are good, in those practical rules which are the common property of long experience. If they are governed by one special idea which circumstances or their own mental bias have caused them to grasp with peculiar firmness and to work up into original forms, make yourself master of their thoughts and convictions, the residuum of all that long travail which poor mortals have to encounter in their three score years and ten, but do not trust their application of their gathered wisdom, for however just old people may be in their principles of judgment, they are often wrong in their application of them, from an imperfect or unjust conception of the matter to be judged. Love and cherish and venerate the old, but never imagine that a worn-out, dried-up organization can be so rich in inspiration as one which is full fraught with life and energy. I am not talking like one who is superlatively jealous for the rights of the old, yet such I am I assure thee.
I heard Mendelssohn's new oratorio "Elijah," when I was in London. It has been performed four times in Exeter Hall to as large an audience as the building would hold -- Mendlessohn himself the conductor. It is a glorious production and altogether I look upon it as a kind of sacramental purification of Exeter Hall, and a proclamation of indulgence for all that is to be perpetrated there during this month of May. 664 This is a piece of impiety which you may expect from a lady who has been guanoing her mind with French novels. (This is the impertinent expression of d'Israeli, 665 who writing himself much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen can do nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into reading his Tancred than speak superciliously of all other men and things, an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one would expect.) But au fond, dear Mary, I have no impiety in my mind at this moment, and my soul heartily responds to your rejoicing that society is attaining a more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's exhortation -- Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. 666 I believe the Amen to this will be uttered more and more fervently, "among all posterities for ever more."
When shall we be sitting together again? The thought is as pleasant to me as that of an atmosphere unimpregnated with the smell of paint, which I am far from breathing at this present. The most detestable smell, the talking and stamping of workmen and all the consequent dirt make just now an environment for me not precisely enviable and I should not wonder if my letter reads ill-temperedly. Nevertheless the May sun is shining and the grass is at last growing and the blossoms opening. I am ready to think after our long winter, what can mortal want more than a smiling sky with beautiful trees and flowers?
My pen tells me to leave off or be illegible, though perhaps this is not a mere possibility already. Goodbye, dear love,
Yours ever
Mary Ann Evans.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1847. Envelope: Miss Sibree | J. Robertson Esq. | Widcombe Villa | Richmond Hill | Clifton. Postmarks: COVENTRY | MY 10 | 1847; [BRISTOL] MY 11 | 1847 | A. Mostly published: Cross, I, 160-163.
Foleshill May 10th.
My dear Mary
It is worth while to forget a friend for a week or ten days, just for the sake of the agreeable kind of startle it gives one to be reminded that one has such a treasure in reserve -- the same sort of pleasure I suppose that a poor body feels who happens to lay his hand on an undreamt-of sixpence which had sunk to a corner of his pocket. When Mr. Sibree brought me your parcel, I had been to London for a week and having been full of Mendelssohn oratorios and Italian operas, I had just this kind of delightful surprize when I saw your note and the beautiful purse. Not that I mean to compare you to a sixpence -- you are a bright golden sovereign to me, with edges all unrubbed, fit to remind a poor tarnished bruised piece like me that there are ever fresh and more perfect coinages of human nature forth-coming. I am very proud of my purse, first, because I have long had to be ashamed of drawing my old one out of my pocket, and secondly, because it is a sort of symbol of your love for me, and who is not proud to be loved? For there is a beautiful kind of pride at which no one need frown -- I may call it a sort of impersonal pride -- a thrill of exultation at all that is good and lovely and joyous as a possession of our human nature.
I am glad to think of all your pleasure among friends new and old. Mrs. Delf's mother 663 is I daresay a valuable person -- but do not I beseech thee go to old people as oracles on matters which date any later than their 35th year -- only trust them, if they are good, in those practical rules which are the common property of long experience. If they are governed by one special idea which circumstances or their own mental bias have caused them to grasp with peculiar firmness and to work up into original forms, make yourself master of their thoughts and convictions, the residuum of all that long travail which poor mortals have to encounter in their three score years and ten, but do not trust their application of their gathered wisdom, for however just old people may be in their principles of judgment, they are often wrong in their application of them, from an imperfect or unjust conception of the matter to be judged. Love and cherish and venerate the old, but never imagine that a worn-out, dried-up organization can be so rich in inspiration as one which is full fraught with life and energy. I am not talking like one who is superlatively jealous for the rights of the old, yet such I am I assure thee.
I heard Mendelssohn's new oratorio "Elijah," when I was in London. It has been performed four times in Exeter Hall to as large an audience as the building would hold -- Mendlessohn himself the conductor. It is a glorious production and altogether I look upon it as a kind of sacramental purification of Exeter Hall, and a proclamation of indulgence for all that is to be perpetrated there during this month of May. 664 This is a piece of impiety which you may expect from a lady who has been guanoing her mind with French novels. (This is the impertinent expression of d'Israeli, 665 who writing himself much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen can do nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into reading his Tancred than speak superciliously of all other men and things, an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one would expect.) But au fond, dear Mary, I have no impiety in my mind at this moment, and my soul heartily responds to your rejoicing that society is attaining a more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's exhortation -- Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. 666 I believe the Amen to this will be uttered more and more fervently, "among all posterities for ever more."
When shall we be sitting together again? The thought is as pleasant to me as that of an atmosphere unimpregnated with the smell of paint, which I am far from breathing at this present. The most detestable smell, the talking and stamping of workmen and all the consequent dirt make just now an environment for me not precisely enviable and I should not wonder if my letter reads ill-temperedly. Nevertheless the May sun is shining and the grass is at last growing and the blossoms opening. I am ready to think after our long winter, what can mortal want more than a smiling sky with beautiful trees and flowers?
My pen tells me to leave off or be illegible, though perhaps this is not a mere possibility already. Goodbye, dear love,
Yours ever
Mary Ann Evans.
Signature
Mary Ann Evans.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mary Sibree, 662 Foleshill, 10 May [1847], 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/92958