GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Witley, 14 October 1879
Title
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Witley, 14 October 1879
Title
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Witley, 14 October 1879
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Elma Stuart
Date(s)
- 1879-10-14
Place
Witley
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Witley, 14 October 1879
MS: British Museum. Published: Stuart, pp. 133-136.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
October 14. 79.
Dearest Elma
I bless you for the good deed you have done to poor 'e0 Beckett. 328 The great blessing to you is the sense that you have saved him from extra suffering, but I add my tiny blessing as one dewdrop on the heavenly rose. You are contented to have renounced coming to London for the sake of making another's burthen lighter, so I too will be contented. I am constantly feeling that the worst of all privation is not the privation of joy but of ardent sympathy -- the finding one's heart dry up, so that one has to act by rule without the tide of love to carry one. Clearly that is not your trouble, and so I can think of you with comfort notwithstanding the several hardships which have newly accumulated in your life -- the prospect of more separation from dear Mrs. Menzies not the least. But I am learning to encourage the hopefulness (for my friends) of which my Husband always set me the example. He never was tempted to forecast the fashion of uncertain ills, and liked to keep in mind that the year brings in its hand much unexpected good as well as ill to us mortals. Something may happen in your lot before next year is out that may make present despondency appear as sad waste of soul. If the southern climate has a benignant effect on your dear body, life will be comparatively easy to you. I should think that you will like San Remo better than Nice, which always seemed to me a gossiping, worldly, fashionable treadmill, in spite of the glorious Nature around it. Florence is an eminently dangerous place for delicate people -- arctic winds up one street and the Tropics in another. You must wait till March is over before you think of going there.
I am very thankful to you for what you say about the stick and other relics. I should trust to your cherishing care of what belonged to His memory.
My health is wonderfully better, and, by dint of being better taken note of medically, I am really stronger than I was eighteen months ago. I return to town on the 30th.
It is not surprising but it is very satisfactory that your neighbours are affectionately sorry to part with you. Alas, I am cowardly for you when I think of your quitting your pretty home which you have been so long decking according to your taste. Ugly London seems something of a Dante limbo, a preliminary circle of the Inferno, by comparison with the loveable smallness of a pretty French town. London is less gossipy, that is its one superiority.
I see your handwriting has all its old firmness, which makes me imagine you without rheumatic torment -- at least in the arms. Please tell Mrs. Menzies and Roly that their loving remembrance is among my comforts -- what love is not? but especially the love of creatures themselves so loveable.
Bless you, dear, once more, and think of me always as your faithfully and gratefully affectionate mother
M. E. L.
There is a good student in view for the G. H. L. Studentship, but some of the applications in answer to the advertisement were incredibly silly and presumptuous. But the real aspirants in physiology are so rare that every physiologist knows them all. It is the science least adequately studied in England.
My servants are proud and pleased to be remembered by you.
MS: British Museum. Published: Stuart, pp. 133-136.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
October 14. 79.
Dearest Elma
I bless you for the good deed you have done to poor 'e0 Beckett. 328 The great blessing to you is the sense that you have saved him from extra suffering, but I add my tiny blessing as one dewdrop on the heavenly rose. You are contented to have renounced coming to London for the sake of making another's burthen lighter, so I too will be contented. I am constantly feeling that the worst of all privation is not the privation of joy but of ardent sympathy -- the finding one's heart dry up, so that one has to act by rule without the tide of love to carry one. Clearly that is not your trouble, and so I can think of you with comfort notwithstanding the several hardships which have newly accumulated in your life -- the prospect of more separation from dear Mrs. Menzies not the least. But I am learning to encourage the hopefulness (for my friends) of which my Husband always set me the example. He never was tempted to forecast the fashion of uncertain ills, and liked to keep in mind that the year brings in its hand much unexpected good as well as ill to us mortals. Something may happen in your lot before next year is out that may make present despondency appear as sad waste of soul. If the southern climate has a benignant effect on your dear body, life will be comparatively easy to you. I should think that you will like San Remo better than Nice, which always seemed to me a gossiping, worldly, fashionable treadmill, in spite of the glorious Nature around it. Florence is an eminently dangerous place for delicate people -- arctic winds up one street and the Tropics in another. You must wait till March is over before you think of going there.
I am very thankful to you for what you say about the stick and other relics. I should trust to your cherishing care of what belonged to His memory.
My health is wonderfully better, and, by dint of being better taken note of medically, I am really stronger than I was eighteen months ago. I return to town on the 30th.
It is not surprising but it is very satisfactory that your neighbours are affectionately sorry to part with you. Alas, I am cowardly for you when I think of your quitting your pretty home which you have been so long decking according to your taste. Ugly London seems something of a Dante limbo, a preliminary circle of the Inferno, by comparison with the loveable smallness of a pretty French town. London is less gossipy, that is its one superiority.
I see your handwriting has all its old firmness, which makes me imagine you without rheumatic torment -- at least in the arms. Please tell Mrs. Menzies and Roly that their loving remembrance is among my comforts -- what love is not? but especially the love of creatures themselves so loveable.
Bless you, dear, once more, and think of me always as your faithfully and gratefully affectionate mother
M. E. L.
There is a good student in view for the G. H. L. Studentship, but some of the applications in answer to the advertisement were incredibly silly and presumptuous. But the real aspirants in physiology are so rare that every physiologist knows them all. It is the science least adequately studied in England.
My servants are proud and pleased to be remembered by you.
Signature
M. E. L.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Witley, 14 October 1879, 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/93425