GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, [Broadstairs, 19 August 1852]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, [Broadstairs, 19 August 1852]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, [Broadstairs, 19 August 1852]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1852-08-19
Place
Broadstairs
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, [Broadstairs, 19 August 1852]
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I 287; George Eliot and John Chapman, p. 62.
Broadstairs | Thursday.
Dearest Cara
Are you really the better for having been here? Since you left I have been continually regretting that I could not make your visit pleasanter. I was irritable and out of sorts. But you have an apparatus for secreting happiness -- that's it.
Providence, seeing that I wanted weaning from this place, has sent a swarm of harvest-bugs and lady-birds to bite my legs. These, with the half blank, half dissipated feeling which comes on after having companions and losing them, make me think of returning to London on Saturday week with more resignation than I have felt before. Mr. Chapman writes to me in the hastiest fashion and tells me nothing of what he has been doing in business matters during the last week. The issue of the Cobden business is just what I expected. I find he is a churchman. 165
The sentence you quote is a good specimen of Mr. Chapman's skill in "the art of sinking," not in poetry, but in letter-writing. But it is nothing worse than bungling. He feels better than he writes, just as some other acquaintances of ours write better than they feel. I am sure I ought to have sympathy enough with people who mean well and do ill, for the grand occupation of my life has been contributing to hell-paving.
Thanks for the sermon -- it made us 166 laugh well over our tea on Monday.
I am very well -- minus the bites -- and [plucky,] a word which I propose to substitute for happy, as more truthful.
Best love to Sara and kind regards to your visitors. 167
Ever your loving
Marian.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I 287; George Eliot and John Chapman, p. 62.
Broadstairs | Thursday.
Dearest Cara
Are you really the better for having been here? Since you left I have been continually regretting that I could not make your visit pleasanter. I was irritable and out of sorts. But you have an apparatus for secreting happiness -- that's it.
Providence, seeing that I wanted weaning from this place, has sent a swarm of harvest-bugs and lady-birds to bite my legs. These, with the half blank, half dissipated feeling which comes on after having companions and losing them, make me think of returning to London on Saturday week with more resignation than I have felt before. Mr. Chapman writes to me in the hastiest fashion and tells me nothing of what he has been doing in business matters during the last week. The issue of the Cobden business is just what I expected. I find he is a churchman. 165
The sentence you quote is a good specimen of Mr. Chapman's skill in "the art of sinking," not in poetry, but in letter-writing. But it is nothing worse than bungling. He feels better than he writes, just as some other acquaintances of ours write better than they feel. I am sure I ought to have sympathy enough with people who mean well and do ill, for the grand occupation of my life has been contributing to hell-paving.
Thanks for the sermon -- it made us 166 laugh well over our tea on Monday.
I am very well -- minus the bites -- and [plucky,] a word which I propose to substitute for happy, as more truthful.
Best love to Sara and kind regards to your visitors. 167
Ever your loving
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, [Broadstairs, 19 August 1852], 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/93203