GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Naples, 5 May 1860
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Naples, 5 May 1860
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Naples, 5 May 1860
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve
Date(s)
- 1860-05-05
Place
Naples
Letter Content
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Naples, 5 May 1860
Text: Cross, 205-207.
We left Rome a week ago, 535 almost longing, at last, to come southward in search of sunshine. Every one likes to boast of peculiar experience, and we can boast of having gone to Rome in the very worst spring that has been known for the last twenty years. Here, at Naples, we have had some brilliant days, though the wind is still cold, and rain has often fallen heavily in the night. It is the very best change for us after Rome: there is comparatively little art to see, and there is nature in transcendent beauty. We both think it the most beautiful place in the world, and are sceptical about Constantinople, which has not had the advantage of having been seen by us. That is the fashion of travellers, as you know: for you must have been bored many times in your life by people who have insisted on it that you must go and see the thing they have seen -- there is nothing like it. We shall bore you in that way, I daresay -- so prepare yourself. Our plan at present is to spend the next week in seeing Paestum, Amalfi, Castellamare, and Sorrento, and drinking in as much of this Southern beauty, in a quiet way, as our souls are capable of absorbing.
The calm blue sea, and the mountains sleeping in the afternoon light, as we have seen them to-day from the height of St Elmo, make one feel very passive and contemplative, and disinclined to bustle about in search of meaner sights. Yet I confess Pompeii, and the remains of Pompeian art and life in the Museum, have been impressive enough to rival the sea and sky. It is a thing never to be forgotten -- that walk through the silent city of the past, and then the sight of utensils, and eatables, and ornaments, and half-washed linen, and hundreds of other traces of life so startlingly like our own in its minutest details, suddenly arrested by the fiery deluge. All that you will see some day, and with the advantage of younger eyes than mine.
We expect to reach Florence (by steamboat, alas!) on the 17th, so that if you have the charity to write to me again, address to me there.
We thought the advance to eighteen in the number of hearers 536 was very satisfactory, and rejoiced over it. The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life -- the work at home after the holiday is done -- is to help in some small nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of this beautiful earth. I am writing at night -- Mr Lewes is already asleep, else he would say, "Send my kind regards to them all." We have often talked of you, and the thought of seeing you again makes the South Fields look brighter in our imagination than they could have looked from the dreariest part of the world if you had not been living in them.
Text: Cross, 205-207.
We left Rome a week ago, 535 almost longing, at last, to come southward in search of sunshine. Every one likes to boast of peculiar experience, and we can boast of having gone to Rome in the very worst spring that has been known for the last twenty years. Here, at Naples, we have had some brilliant days, though the wind is still cold, and rain has often fallen heavily in the night. It is the very best change for us after Rome: there is comparatively little art to see, and there is nature in transcendent beauty. We both think it the most beautiful place in the world, and are sceptical about Constantinople, which has not had the advantage of having been seen by us. That is the fashion of travellers, as you know: for you must have been bored many times in your life by people who have insisted on it that you must go and see the thing they have seen -- there is nothing like it. We shall bore you in that way, I daresay -- so prepare yourself. Our plan at present is to spend the next week in seeing Paestum, Amalfi, Castellamare, and Sorrento, and drinking in as much of this Southern beauty, in a quiet way, as our souls are capable of absorbing.
The calm blue sea, and the mountains sleeping in the afternoon light, as we have seen them to-day from the height of St Elmo, make one feel very passive and contemplative, and disinclined to bustle about in search of meaner sights. Yet I confess Pompeii, and the remains of Pompeian art and life in the Museum, have been impressive enough to rival the sea and sky. It is a thing never to be forgotten -- that walk through the silent city of the past, and then the sight of utensils, and eatables, and ornaments, and half-washed linen, and hundreds of other traces of life so startlingly like our own in its minutest details, suddenly arrested by the fiery deluge. All that you will see some day, and with the advantage of younger eyes than mine.
We expect to reach Florence (by steamboat, alas!) on the 17th, so that if you have the charity to write to me again, address to me there.
We thought the advance to eighteen in the number of hearers 536 was very satisfactory, and rejoiced over it. The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life -- the work at home after the holiday is done -- is to help in some small nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of this beautiful earth. I am writing at night -- Mr Lewes is already asleep, else he would say, "Send my kind regards to them all." We have often talked of you, and the thought of seeing you again makes the South Fields look brighter in our imagination than they could have looked from the dreariest part of the world if you had not been living in them.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Naples, 5 May 1860, 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/93665