GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, London, 3 December 1877
Title
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, London, 3 December 1877
Title
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, London, 3 December 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones
Date(s)
- 1877-12-03
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, London, 3 December 1877
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, III, 322-323.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
December 3. 77.
Dearest Mignon
I have been made rather unhappy by my husband's impulsive proposal about Christmas. We are dull old persons, and your two sweet young ones ought to find each Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family, and we have usually taken our sober merrymaking with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year, 789 and thus [mein Mann] feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question -- namely, our total lack of means to make a suitably joyous meeting, a real festival, for Phil and Margaret. I was conscious of this lack in the very moment of the proposal, and the consciousness has been pressing on me more and more painfully ever since. Even my husband's affectionate hopefulness cannot withstand my melancholy demonstration.
So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves only on simple black letter days when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning. I have been putting off too long the writing of this true deliverance, and I feel that to defer what I have to say till Friday for the chance of seeing you then might leave your mind inconveniently hampered with considerations about an arrangement with us.
I am not afraid of your misunderstanding one word. You know that it is not a little love with which I am
Yours ever
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, III, 322-323.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
December 3. 77.
Dearest Mignon
I have been made rather unhappy by my husband's impulsive proposal about Christmas. We are dull old persons, and your two sweet young ones ought to find each Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family, and we have usually taken our sober merrymaking with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year, 789 and thus [mein Mann] feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question -- namely, our total lack of means to make a suitably joyous meeting, a real festival, for Phil and Margaret. I was conscious of this lack in the very moment of the proposal, and the consciousness has been pressing on me more and more painfully ever since. Even my husband's affectionate hopefulness cannot withstand my melancholy demonstration.
So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves only on simple black letter days when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning. I have been putting off too long the writing of this true deliverance, and I feel that to defer what I have to say till Friday for the chance of seeing you then might leave your mind inconveniently hampered with considerations about an arrangement with us.
I am not afraid of your misunderstanding one word. You know that it is not a little love with which I am
Yours ever
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, London, 3 December 1877, 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/93362