GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 25 April 1873
Title
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 25 April 1873
Title
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 25 April 1873
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. William Smith
Date(s)
- 1873-04-25
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 25 April 1873
Text: Cross, III, 202-204.
It was a cordial to me this morning to learn that you have the project of going with your young friend 779 to Cambridge at the end of the autumn. I could not have thought of anything better to wish for on your behalf, than that you should have the consciousness of helping a younger life. I know, dear friend, that so far as you directly are concerned with this life, the remainder of it can only be patience and resignation. But we are not shut up within our individual life, and it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others: what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.
I am very much interested in the fact of young women studying at Cambridge, and I have lately seen a charming specimen of the pupils at Hitchin -- a very modest lovely girl, who distinguished herself in the last examination. 780 One is anxious that in the beginning of a higher education for women, the immediate value of which is chiefly the social recognition of its desirableness, the students should be favourable subjects for experiment, -- girls or young women whose natures are large and rich enough not to be used up in their efforts after knowledge.
Mr Lewes is very well, and goes on working joyously. Proofs come in slowly, but he is far from being ready with all the manuscript which will be needed for his preliminary volume -- the material which has long been gathered requiring revision and suggesting additions.
Do think it a privilege to have that fine physique of yours, instead of a headachy dyspeptic frame such as many women drag through life. Even in irremediable sorrow it is a sort of blasphemy against one's suffering fellow-beings to think lightly of any good which they would be thankful for in exchange for something they have to bear.
Text: Cross, III, 202-204.
It was a cordial to me this morning to learn that you have the project of going with your young friend 779 to Cambridge at the end of the autumn. I could not have thought of anything better to wish for on your behalf, than that you should have the consciousness of helping a younger life. I know, dear friend, that so far as you directly are concerned with this life, the remainder of it can only be patience and resignation. But we are not shut up within our individual life, and it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others: what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.
I am very much interested in the fact of young women studying at Cambridge, and I have lately seen a charming specimen of the pupils at Hitchin -- a very modest lovely girl, who distinguished herself in the last examination. 780 One is anxious that in the beginning of a higher education for women, the immediate value of which is chiefly the social recognition of its desirableness, the students should be favourable subjects for experiment, -- girls or young women whose natures are large and rich enough not to be used up in their efforts after knowledge.
Mr Lewes is very well, and goes on working joyously. Proofs come in slowly, but he is far from being ready with all the manuscript which will be needed for his preliminary volume -- the material which has long been gathered requiring revision and suggesting additions.
Do think it a privilege to have that fine physique of yours, instead of a headachy dyspeptic frame such as many women drag through life. Even in irremediable sorrow it is a sort of blasphemy against one's suffering fellow-beings to think lightly of any good which they would be thankful for in exchange for something they have to bear.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 25 April 1873, 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/93742