GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 3 March 1876
Title
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 3 March 1876
Title
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 3 March 1876
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Mark Pattison
Date(s)
- 1876-03-03
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 3 March 1876
MS: British Museum. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 3. 76.
Dearest Figliuolina
When the Rector said that you had twenty-seven unanswered letters on your desk I despaired of hearing from you again. That makes your letter all the welcomer. And besides, the news you send me is better than the intimations beforehand had allowed me to hope. The best element in it is the cheerfulness of its tone, but after that it is really a solid good that you are now able to think of moving northward and getting the new mental stimulus that you must be sorely in need of at the end of your long banishment. Such a nurse and general care-taker as you describe in your matronly-bodied Burgundian is a "mercy." I had thought with some alarm for you of the "French courier-nurse" having once seen an unlucky speculation of that kind.
I wish you could have seen the collection of Walker's pictures. 415 They were worth enduring the suffocation prepared for me by the crowd of beholders. I came away headachy but enriched more than one can well be by a miscellaneous exhibition which compels one to see the world through twenty different minds in quick succession. One day we encountered your good friend Miss E. Smith in the crush at this [gallery,] and we talked of you less cheerfully than we should have done if I had then had your courageous letter. -- We are hoping to get away to the continent by the end of May, but I hope also you will have risen above the horizon here before that time. You will find us looking thin and ghastly.
The Rector's article in [Mind] on Philosophy at Oxford pleased us mightily by its vigorous portrait of the Prizeman. 416 He spoke with husband's pride of your having written your last article on the Life of Voltaire 417 without any books at hand.
Burne Jones goes on transcending himself and is rising into the inconvenient celebrity which is made up of echoes as well as voices. I do hope he will be urged into having a collection of his pictures in a separate little gallery for a time, so that his admirers might point to the reason for the faith that is in them. 418
I have no news worth telling. We go to our one amusement of the Saturday concert, our friends come to see us on a Sunday, and lately we have said goodbye to the Lyttons with many longings for his and her good in their new, distant, trying honours. She is expecting another Baby in August, and one hopes it may be a boy to soothe the poignant memories of the lost ones. 419
Mr. Lewes begs you to think "without contempt" of his kind regards and sympathetic wishes as of a fellow-creature to whom also gout is not alien, making him occasionally cry out in the night as if a crab had hold of his foot. Rain, rain, rain here, and unhealthy mugginess in quick alternation with cold, upsetting the liver and bodily comfort generally of
Your affectionate
Madre.
MS: British Museum. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 3. 76.
Dearest Figliuolina
When the Rector said that you had twenty-seven unanswered letters on your desk I despaired of hearing from you again. That makes your letter all the welcomer. And besides, the news you send me is better than the intimations beforehand had allowed me to hope. The best element in it is the cheerfulness of its tone, but after that it is really a solid good that you are now able to think of moving northward and getting the new mental stimulus that you must be sorely in need of at the end of your long banishment. Such a nurse and general care-taker as you describe in your matronly-bodied Burgundian is a "mercy." I had thought with some alarm for you of the "French courier-nurse" having once seen an unlucky speculation of that kind.
I wish you could have seen the collection of Walker's pictures. 415 They were worth enduring the suffocation prepared for me by the crowd of beholders. I came away headachy but enriched more than one can well be by a miscellaneous exhibition which compels one to see the world through twenty different minds in quick succession. One day we encountered your good friend Miss E. Smith in the crush at this [gallery,] and we talked of you less cheerfully than we should have done if I had then had your courageous letter. -- We are hoping to get away to the continent by the end of May, but I hope also you will have risen above the horizon here before that time. You will find us looking thin and ghastly.
The Rector's article in [Mind] on Philosophy at Oxford pleased us mightily by its vigorous portrait of the Prizeman. 416 He spoke with husband's pride of your having written your last article on the Life of Voltaire 417 without any books at hand.
Burne Jones goes on transcending himself and is rising into the inconvenient celebrity which is made up of echoes as well as voices. I do hope he will be urged into having a collection of his pictures in a separate little gallery for a time, so that his admirers might point to the reason for the faith that is in them. 418
I have no news worth telling. We go to our one amusement of the Saturday concert, our friends come to see us on a Sunday, and lately we have said goodbye to the Lyttons with many longings for his and her good in their new, distant, trying honours. She is expecting another Baby in August, and one hopes it may be a boy to soothe the poignant memories of the lost ones. 419
Mr. Lewes begs you to think "without contempt" of his kind regards and sympathetic wishes as of a fellow-creature to whom also gout is not alien, making him occasionally cry out in the night as if a crab had hold of his foot. Rain, rain, rain here, and unhealthy mugginess in quick alternation with cold, upsetting the liver and bodily comfort generally of
Your affectionate
Madre.
Signature
Madre.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 3 March 1876, 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/93551