GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, St. Mary's, 5 April [1857]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, St. Mary's, 5 April [1857]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, St. Mary's, 5 April [1857]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1857-04-05
Place
St. Mary's
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, St. Mary's, 5 April [1857]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1857. Extracts published: Cross, 1, 449-451.
St. Mary's | Scilly Isles | April 5.
Dear Cara
It was very good and pretty of you and Sara to write to me from the midst of your semi-organized chaos. The smallest details written in the hastiest way that will enable me to imagine you as you are, are just what I want -- indeed, all I care about in correspondence. I shall try to do as you do now, and concentrate my affections on the cottage side of the wall, but alas! it is hard to be contented that the windows and the lawn and the garden walks that once knew you should know you no more. When I saw the little celandine, with its heart-shaped leaves, carpeting the lane-sides round Penzance, I thought of the luxuriance with which it used to grow -- and probably grows now -- under the trees near the garden gate at Rosehill.
I can't think of Mr. Bray's flaring gaslight at his elbow without feeling a little bilious, so I confine myself as much as possible to the vague conception that he has certain new comforts which reconcile him to the new home. You seem to say that Sara's present room is not her old one, 824 'ablooking'bb and I am rather at a loss to imagine how she has stowed herself.
We are more and more in love with these little islands. There is not a tree to be seen, but there are grand granite piles on the coast such as I never saw before, and furze covered hills with larks soaring and singing above them, and zoological wonders on the shore to fill our bottles and our souls at once. Mr. Lewes seems already to have recovered the ground he had lost in health during our last few months at Richmond, and by and bye I hope I shall flourish too, but for some time I have been unusually weak and knock-up-able. Our landlady 825 is an excellent woman, but, like almost all peculiarly domestic women, has not more than rudimentary ideas of cooking, and in an island where you can get nothing but beef, except by sending to Penzance, that supreme science has its maximum value. She seems to think eating a purely arbitrary procedure -- an abnormal function of mad people who come to Scilly, and if we ask her what the people live on here is quite at a loss to tell us, apparently thinking the question relates to the abstruser portion of Natural History. But I insist, and give her a culinary lecture every morning, and we do in the end get fed. 826 Altogether, our life here is so far better than the golden age that we work as well [as] play.
That is the happy side of things. But there is a very sad one to me, which I shall not dwell upon -- only tell you of. More than a week ago, I received the news that poor Chrissey had lost one of her pretty little girls of fever, that the other little one -- they were the only two she had at home with her -- was also dangerously ill, and Chrissey herself and her servant apparently attacked by typhus too. 827 The distressing part of [it is] our being here, away so far out of reach of post and out of possibility of my going to her! The thought of her in this state is a perpetual shadow to me in the sunshine. Best love to all. Ever, dear Cara,
Your affectionate
Marian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1857. Extracts published: Cross, 1, 449-451.
St. Mary's | Scilly Isles | April 5.
Dear Cara
It was very good and pretty of you and Sara to write to me from the midst of your semi-organized chaos. The smallest details written in the hastiest way that will enable me to imagine you as you are, are just what I want -- indeed, all I care about in correspondence. I shall try to do as you do now, and concentrate my affections on the cottage side of the wall, but alas! it is hard to be contented that the windows and the lawn and the garden walks that once knew you should know you no more. When I saw the little celandine, with its heart-shaped leaves, carpeting the lane-sides round Penzance, I thought of the luxuriance with which it used to grow -- and probably grows now -- under the trees near the garden gate at Rosehill.
I can't think of Mr. Bray's flaring gaslight at his elbow without feeling a little bilious, so I confine myself as much as possible to the vague conception that he has certain new comforts which reconcile him to the new home. You seem to say that Sara's present room is not her old one, 824 'ablooking'bb and I am rather at a loss to imagine how she has stowed herself.
We are more and more in love with these little islands. There is not a tree to be seen, but there are grand granite piles on the coast such as I never saw before, and furze covered hills with larks soaring and singing above them, and zoological wonders on the shore to fill our bottles and our souls at once. Mr. Lewes seems already to have recovered the ground he had lost in health during our last few months at Richmond, and by and bye I hope I shall flourish too, but for some time I have been unusually weak and knock-up-able. Our landlady 825 is an excellent woman, but, like almost all peculiarly domestic women, has not more than rudimentary ideas of cooking, and in an island where you can get nothing but beef, except by sending to Penzance, that supreme science has its maximum value. She seems to think eating a purely arbitrary procedure -- an abnormal function of mad people who come to Scilly, and if we ask her what the people live on here is quite at a loss to tell us, apparently thinking the question relates to the abstruser portion of Natural History. But I insist, and give her a culinary lecture every morning, and we do in the end get fed. 826 Altogether, our life here is so far better than the golden age that we work as well [as] play.
That is the happy side of things. But there is a very sad one to me, which I shall not dwell upon -- only tell you of. More than a week ago, I received the news that poor Chrissey had lost one of her pretty little girls of fever, that the other little one -- they were the only two she had at home with her -- was also dangerously ill, and Chrissey herself and her servant apparently attacked by typhus too. 827 The distressing part of [it is] our being here, away so far out of reach of post and out of possibility of my going to her! The thought of her in this state is a perpetual shadow to me in the sunshine. Best love to all. Ever, dear Cara,
Your affectionate
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, St. Mary's, 5 April [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/93324