GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Venice, 10 June 1880
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Venice, 10 June 1880
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Venice, 10 June 1880
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve
Date(s)
- 1880-06-10
Place
Venice
Letter Content
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Venice, 10 June 1880
Text: Cross, III, 405-407.
It may well seem incredible to you, for it is hardly credible to myself, that while I have been longing to write to you ever since I received your dear letter, I have not found the time to satisfy my longing. Perhaps you are more able than most people to conceive the difficulty of getting a clear half hour between the business of travelling and the attention to little details of packing and toilette, over and above the companionship of talk and reading. Certainly I have thought of you all the more, but you have not known that, and I have lost my claim to hear about you -- a use and wont which I would not willingly part with.
I wonder whether you have imagined -- I believe that you are quick to imagine for the benefit of others -- all the reasons why it was left at last to Charles to tell you of the great, once undreamed-of change in my life. The momentous decision, in fact, was not made till scarcely more than a fortnight before my marriage; and even if opportunity had lent itself to my confiding everything to you, I think I could hardly have done it at a time when your presence filled me rather with a sense of your and Emily's trouble 444 than with my own affairs. Perhaps Charles will have told you that the marriage deprives no one of any good I felt bound to render before -- it only gives me a more strenuous position, in which I cannot sink into the self-absorption and laziness I was in danger of before. The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead of any former affection being displaced in my mind, I seem to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean that I had been conscious of a certain dryingup of tenderness in me, and that now the spring seems to have risen again. Who could take your place within me or make me amends for the loss of you? And yet I should not take it bitterly if you felt some alienation from me. Such alienation is very natural where a friend does not fulfil expectations of long standing.
We have already been ten days at Venice, but we hope to remain as long again, not fearing the heat, which has hitherto been only a false alarm in the minds of English travellers. If you could find time to send me word how you all are -- yourself, Dr Congreve after his holiday, and Emily, with all her cares about removal -- a letter sent to the Poste Restante here would reach me, even if we had left before the next ten days were over. We shall hardly be at Witley before the middle of July: but the sense of neighbourhood to you at Witley is sadly ended now.
Text: Cross, III, 405-407.
It may well seem incredible to you, for it is hardly credible to myself, that while I have been longing to write to you ever since I received your dear letter, I have not found the time to satisfy my longing. Perhaps you are more able than most people to conceive the difficulty of getting a clear half hour between the business of travelling and the attention to little details of packing and toilette, over and above the companionship of talk and reading. Certainly I have thought of you all the more, but you have not known that, and I have lost my claim to hear about you -- a use and wont which I would not willingly part with.
I wonder whether you have imagined -- I believe that you are quick to imagine for the benefit of others -- all the reasons why it was left at last to Charles to tell you of the great, once undreamed-of change in my life. The momentous decision, in fact, was not made till scarcely more than a fortnight before my marriage; and even if opportunity had lent itself to my confiding everything to you, I think I could hardly have done it at a time when your presence filled me rather with a sense of your and Emily's trouble 444 than with my own affairs. Perhaps Charles will have told you that the marriage deprives no one of any good I felt bound to render before -- it only gives me a more strenuous position, in which I cannot sink into the self-absorption and laziness I was in danger of before. The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead of any former affection being displaced in my mind, I seem to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean that I had been conscious of a certain dryingup of tenderness in me, and that now the spring seems to have risen again. Who could take your place within me or make me amends for the loss of you? And yet I should not take it bitterly if you felt some alienation from me. Such alienation is very natural where a friend does not fulfil expectations of long standing.
We have already been ten days at Venice, but we hope to remain as long again, not fearing the heat, which has hitherto been only a false alarm in the minds of English travellers. If you could find time to send me word how you all are -- yourself, Dr Congreve after his holiday, and Emily, with all her cares about removal -- a letter sent to the Poste Restante here would reach me, even if we had left before the next ten days were over. We shall hardly be at Witley before the middle of July: but the sense of neighbourhood to you at Witley is sadly ended now.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Venice, 10 June 1880, 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/93675