GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 6 October 1871
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 6 October 1871
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 6 October 1871
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1871-10-06
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 6 October 1871
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
October 6. 71.
Dear Cara
I am getting better now -- many thanks for your affectionate sympathy. The attack has been sharper than anything I have had in the form of illness since I was a little girl. It was gastric irritation which just swept the edges of gastric fever, and I have to be grateful, i.e. patient and contented on the score of my comparatively easy escape. A friend of ours has just had gastric fever lasting for six weeks, and is now so reduced that she cries at everything like a fretful infant.
I think my complaint had nothing to do with brain-work, except so far as this has been diffused over my life at the expense of my bodily capital; for I have not been taxing myself -- indeed for many months I have been too ailing to do more than an apology for a morning's work. We are hoping that this crisis may have delivered me from long-accumulating sources of dyspepsia, for I am certainly going on well now in my eingeweide. But I am as thin as a mediaeval Christ, and Mr. Lewes is exerting his ingenuity to feed me up. He has been housekeeper, secretary and Nurse all in one -- as good a nurse as if he had been trained in a hospital.
Our old servants' going was a shock to me at first. 375 We should never have dismissed them, and we looked forward to taking care of them when they were too old to work. But their oddities were a yoke which we were certain would get heavier with the years, and since they could think of going we are contented now that they should go. To inherit servants from Mrs. Call, who is in all respects an excellent mistress, seems the best fortune that could have happened to us in this matter. But it is difficult for us masters and mistresses to allow enough for the difference between our drawing-room point of view and that of the kitchen. A very good quiet young woman 376 whom we had as nurse for Thornie, soon became an object of dislike and criticism to Grace and Amelia, and they apparently are unable to tolerate any "stranger," though she were hired purely to relieve them from excessive work.
Here is a long spell about myself -- the first letter I have written, and probably the last for a good while. With best love to all,
Your faithful
Marian.
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
October 6. 71.
Dear Cara
I am getting better now -- many thanks for your affectionate sympathy. The attack has been sharper than anything I have had in the form of illness since I was a little girl. It was gastric irritation which just swept the edges of gastric fever, and I have to be grateful, i.e. patient and contented on the score of my comparatively easy escape. A friend of ours has just had gastric fever lasting for six weeks, and is now so reduced that she cries at everything like a fretful infant.
I think my complaint had nothing to do with brain-work, except so far as this has been diffused over my life at the expense of my bodily capital; for I have not been taxing myself -- indeed for many months I have been too ailing to do more than an apology for a morning's work. We are hoping that this crisis may have delivered me from long-accumulating sources of dyspepsia, for I am certainly going on well now in my eingeweide. But I am as thin as a mediaeval Christ, and Mr. Lewes is exerting his ingenuity to feed me up. He has been housekeeper, secretary and Nurse all in one -- as good a nurse as if he had been trained in a hospital.
Our old servants' going was a shock to me at first. 375 We should never have dismissed them, and we looked forward to taking care of them when they were too old to work. But their oddities were a yoke which we were certain would get heavier with the years, and since they could think of going we are contented now that they should go. To inherit servants from Mrs. Call, who is in all respects an excellent mistress, seems the best fortune that could have happened to us in this matter. But it is difficult for us masters and mistresses to allow enough for the difference between our drawing-room point of view and that of the kitchen. A very good quiet young woman 376 whom we had as nurse for Thornie, soon became an object of dislike and criticism to Grace and Amelia, and they apparently are unable to tolerate any "stranger," though she were hired purely to relieve them from excessive work.
Here is a long spell about myself -- the first letter I have written, and probably the last for a good while. With best love to all,
Your faithful
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, London, 6 October 1871, 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/93310