GE to Mrs. James T. Fields, London, 16 May 1872
Title
GE to Mrs. James T. Fields, London, 16 May 1872
Title
GE to Mrs. James T. Fields, London, 16 May 1872
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. James T. Fields
Date(s)
- 1872-05-16
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. James T. Fields, London, 16 May 1872
MS: Harvard. Envelope: Mrs. Fields | Boston | U.S.A. Postmark: LONDON-N.W | 2 | MY 17 | 72. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 16. 72.
Dear Mrs. Fields
Your friendly words which have come to me this morning are really very sweet to me, for our two interviews when you were in England left such an impression that I like to feel myself remembered by you with a personal regard. Your note makes me wish that it were a very easy thing to get to America and see the best of it, instead of the difficult, too exciting effort which it would really be to me. Unhappily, I have been in a state of unusual feebleness for the last year, and the feebleness has often turned into positive illness. I do need a holiday, but my pleasures must be all of a kind as far as possible from laborious. Boston I always imagine to be a delightful place to go straight to and come straight back from. But the Atlantic is too wide for that.
I confess invitations from such people as you and Mr. Fields are very pleasant to have, though, one may be obliged to do without accepting them; and both Mr. Lewes and I value the assurance that you would be glad to see us.
I trust that the papers gave a too painful account of dear Mrs. Stowe's accident, 517 which, since you do not mention it, I shall take the comfort of thinking is quite an affair of the past with her. Miss Lowell's marriage 518 is an interesting bit of news to me -- I remember her bright face so well.
We read with much enjoyment the store of letters and recollections which Mr. Fields gave us 'e0propos of Dickens. 519 They helped to confirm the sense I have of great kindness in your nation. You seem to me much more readily affectionate and expansive than we are.
I value my public among you, more and more. If course there is the select public and the echoing, hurrying public in all countries, and the one fills the side of discouragement as the other fills the side of encouragement in the scale, when one asks, what is the good of writing? But when you say that you and Mr. Fields like my book, I am feeling the scale dip a little on the side of encouragement.
We are going into the country immediately, to escape from the socialities which our London season brings, and which I am not just now equal to.
I hope that Mr. Fields is free from such infirmities as ours, and without that paleness which I remember in his face -- a consequence, I imagine, of the dreadful voyage. Pray offer our united kind regards to him, and believe me, dear Mrs. Fields,
Yours with unfailing remembrance
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Harvard. Envelope: Mrs. Fields | Boston | U.S.A. Postmark: LONDON-N.W | 2 | MY 17 | 72. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
May 16. 72.
Dear Mrs. Fields
Your friendly words which have come to me this morning are really very sweet to me, for our two interviews when you were in England left such an impression that I like to feel myself remembered by you with a personal regard. Your note makes me wish that it were a very easy thing to get to America and see the best of it, instead of the difficult, too exciting effort which it would really be to me. Unhappily, I have been in a state of unusual feebleness for the last year, and the feebleness has often turned into positive illness. I do need a holiday, but my pleasures must be all of a kind as far as possible from laborious. Boston I always imagine to be a delightful place to go straight to and come straight back from. But the Atlantic is too wide for that.
I confess invitations from such people as you and Mr. Fields are very pleasant to have, though, one may be obliged to do without accepting them; and both Mr. Lewes and I value the assurance that you would be glad to see us.
I trust that the papers gave a too painful account of dear Mrs. Stowe's accident, 517 which, since you do not mention it, I shall take the comfort of thinking is quite an affair of the past with her. Miss Lowell's marriage 518 is an interesting bit of news to me -- I remember her bright face so well.
We read with much enjoyment the store of letters and recollections which Mr. Fields gave us 'e0propos of Dickens. 519 They helped to confirm the sense I have of great kindness in your nation. You seem to me much more readily affectionate and expansive than we are.
I value my public among you, more and more. If course there is the select public and the echoing, hurrying public in all countries, and the one fills the side of discouragement as the other fills the side of encouragement in the scale, when one asks, what is the good of writing? But when you say that you and Mr. Fields like my book, I am feeling the scale dip a little on the side of encouragement.
We are going into the country immediately, to escape from the socialities which our London season brings, and which I am not just now equal to.
I hope that Mr. Fields is free from such infirmities as ours, and without that paleness which I remember in his face -- a consequence, I imagine, of the dreadful voyage. Pray offer our united kind regards to him, and believe me, dear Mrs. Fields,
Yours with unfailing remembrance
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. James T. Fields, London, 16 May 1872, 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/93510