GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 16 July [1867]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 16 July [1867]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 16 July [1867]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1867-07-16
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 16 July [1867]
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
July 16.
Dear Cara
It was very good of you to write me a little news of yourself. I feel it a privation if I wait very long without a word or two from you or Sara, to give me some idea of the aspect life is bearing with you. Even if the aspect be grievous I prefer the pain of knowing it, to remaining ignorant and therefore indifferent while something is pressing hardly on you. I don't know whether you boil over, as I do, at the want of proportion in the denunciation of sins. That Sara should be one of the sufferers from the commercial baseness into which the nation is sinking helps to make me think with still more indignation at the comparative indulgence which that worst corruption of our society meets with, while our friend Professor Beesly is being persecuted for simply pointing out the unfairness with which crime is estimated. 648
Dear Sara -- I think a great deal, though she may not, of her income being reduced. And she is one among multitudes. An old friend of Mr.
Lewes's, 649 a man of distinguished intellectual refinement, who has been wealthy enough to live the life of a "country gentleman," unhappily some years ago, discovered a valuable sort of clay on his land, and thinking he ought to get money for daughters, entered into commercial schemes for working this clay. In the panic last year all turned out badly for him, and he has had to part with everything -- even to his library. A sickly, sensitive man, too, and no longer young.
That unmanageable Mr. Thornton is a grievous thorn in your sides -- the more so as I suppose it would be difficult, if not impossible to get quite rid of him.
I trust, dear Cara, that there is no friend to whom you would allow the privilege of giving you any help or comfort rather than to me. Change inevitably comes in many things as life advances, but of this I am sure, that my affection for you, my gratitude, my regret that I have not been a worthier friend to you, will never change while my mind lives. One needs to say these things now and then. But usually I feel with you that letters are unsatisfactory except as an occasional bulletin showing how and where one's friend is. It is a sad waste of life to write explanatory sheets that end in explaining nothing except the impossibility of mutual understanding.
You asked about my portrait. There has never been any portrait of me except the one now hung at the academy (by Mr. Burton in chalks) and another by Lawrence also in chalks, done many years ago, and now in the possession of Mr. Blackwood, at Edinburgh.
With best love to Sara
Your affectionate
Marian.
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
July 16.
Dear Cara
It was very good of you to write me a little news of yourself. I feel it a privation if I wait very long without a word or two from you or Sara, to give me some idea of the aspect life is bearing with you. Even if the aspect be grievous I prefer the pain of knowing it, to remaining ignorant and therefore indifferent while something is pressing hardly on you. I don't know whether you boil over, as I do, at the want of proportion in the denunciation of sins. That Sara should be one of the sufferers from the commercial baseness into which the nation is sinking helps to make me think with still more indignation at the comparative indulgence which that worst corruption of our society meets with, while our friend Professor Beesly is being persecuted for simply pointing out the unfairness with which crime is estimated. 648
Dear Sara -- I think a great deal, though she may not, of her income being reduced. And she is one among multitudes. An old friend of Mr.
Lewes's, 649 a man of distinguished intellectual refinement, who has been wealthy enough to live the life of a "country gentleman," unhappily some years ago, discovered a valuable sort of clay on his land, and thinking he ought to get money for daughters, entered into commercial schemes for working this clay. In the panic last year all turned out badly for him, and he has had to part with everything -- even to his library. A sickly, sensitive man, too, and no longer young.
That unmanageable Mr. Thornton is a grievous thorn in your sides -- the more so as I suppose it would be difficult, if not impossible to get quite rid of him.
I trust, dear Cara, that there is no friend to whom you would allow the privilege of giving you any help or comfort rather than to me. Change inevitably comes in many things as life advances, but of this I am sure, that my affection for you, my gratitude, my regret that I have not been a worthier friend to you, will never change while my mind lives. One needs to say these things now and then. But usually I feel with you that letters are unsatisfactory except as an occasional bulletin showing how and where one's friend is. It is a sad waste of life to write explanatory sheets that end in explaining nothing except the impossibility of mutual understanding.
You asked about my portrait. There has never been any portrait of me except the one now hung at the academy (by Mr. Burton in chalks) and another by Lawrence also in chalks, done many years ago, and now in the possession of Mr. Blackwood, at Edinburgh.
With best love to Sara
Your affectionate
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 16 July [1867], 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/93274