GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Richmond, [30 October 1857]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Richmond, [30 October 1857]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Richmond, [30 October 1857]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1857-10-30
Place
Richmond
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Richmond, [30 October 1857]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Nov. 1. 57. Extracts published: Cross, I, 469.
Richmond, Friday.
Dear Cara
How I wish I could get to you by some magic and have one walk over the hill with you again. I often think I see your dear little shoulders and dearer phiz just as they used to come towards me. Letters are poor things compared with five minutes of looking and speaking and one kiss. Nevertheless I do like to have a little letter now and then, though I don't for a moment ask it, if you have no spontaneous impulse to give it, and my words to Sara were rather intended as an apology for sending messages quite gratuitously, than as a complaint. I can't help losing belief that people love me -- the unbelief is in my nature and no sort of fork will drive it finally out.
I fancy you a great deal in your present [Weben und Streben,] with your kitchen apron on one hour, and looking very nice and pretty at your sewing or writing the next. Then taking up the books as you used to do in the evening and picking out some joke or other, at which I see your laughing face as well as if it were only yesterday that I looked at it last.
I can't help wondering you can think of me in the past with much pleasure. It all seems so painful to me, made up of blunders and selfishness, and it only comes back upon me as a thing to be forgiven. That is honest and painful truth, and not sentimentality. But I am thankful if others found more good than I am able to remember.
Mr. Lewes laughed very heartily at your description of Mr. Wise, 1001 which I read to him. We had never heard of him before and wondered who was the anonymous man Mr. Chapman talked of as the proposer of an article on Shelley.
If ever you know of any one who would be glad of some old clothes, too good for servants -- such as would do to make up for children etc. I wish you would ask me to rummage among mine; for now I don't send them to my sister, 1002 I should sometimes have such things, and among all your objects of charity you might be able to find a destination more useful for them than I can.
Ever your affectionate
Marian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: Nov. 1. 57. Extracts published: Cross, I, 469.
Richmond, Friday.
Dear Cara
How I wish I could get to you by some magic and have one walk over the hill with you again. I often think I see your dear little shoulders and dearer phiz just as they used to come towards me. Letters are poor things compared with five minutes of looking and speaking and one kiss. Nevertheless I do like to have a little letter now and then, though I don't for a moment ask it, if you have no spontaneous impulse to give it, and my words to Sara were rather intended as an apology for sending messages quite gratuitously, than as a complaint. I can't help losing belief that people love me -- the unbelief is in my nature and no sort of fork will drive it finally out.
I fancy you a great deal in your present [Weben und Streben,] with your kitchen apron on one hour, and looking very nice and pretty at your sewing or writing the next. Then taking up the books as you used to do in the evening and picking out some joke or other, at which I see your laughing face as well as if it were only yesterday that I looked at it last.
I can't help wondering you can think of me in the past with much pleasure. It all seems so painful to me, made up of blunders and selfishness, and it only comes back upon me as a thing to be forgiven. That is honest and painful truth, and not sentimentality. But I am thankful if others found more good than I am able to remember.
Mr. Lewes laughed very heartily at your description of Mr. Wise, 1001 which I read to him. We had never heard of him before and wondered who was the anonymous man Mr. Chapman talked of as the proposer of an article on Shelley.
If ever you know of any one who would be glad of some old clothes, too good for servants -- such as would do to make up for children etc. I wish you would ask me to rummage among mine; for now I don't send them to my sister, 1002 I should sometimes have such things, and among all your objects of charity you might be able to find a destination more useful for them than I can.
Ever your affectionate
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Richmond, [30 October 1857], 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/93318