GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, May? 1846](3)
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, May? 1846](3)
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, May? 1846](3)
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1846-05
Place
[FOLESHILL]
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, May? 1846](3)
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I, 142-143.
Tuesday.
My dear Sara,
As I believe that even your kindness cannot overcome your sincerity I will cast aside my fear that your wish to see me in your own home is rather a plan for my enjoyment than for yours. I believe it would be an unmixed pleasure to me to be your visitor, and one that I would choose among a whole bouquet of agreeable possibilities -- so if Mrs. Hennell will really not feel it an annoyance to have an inmate so unloveable except to her loving-in-spite-of-people's-faults-and-deficiencies daughter Sara and perhaps a few others, I will say that (Father permitting and being well and happy) I will indulge myself and accept the good that the heavens and you offer me. I am miserably in want of you to stir up my soul and make it shake its wings and begin some kind of flight after something good and noble, for I am in a grovelling slothful condition, and you are the only friend I possess who has an animating influence over me.
I have written to Mr. Hennell anent the title-page and have voted for critically examined 624 from an entire conviction of its preferableness. When I returned the prefaces to you I intended to put in a note telling you to ask Mr. H. about the translation of Kalt-bl'fctigkeit, but I forgot all about the matter on coming to fold the sheets up again after an interval. I rather prefer sang froid myself, but I have no particular anxiety about it and if Mr. H. concurred with you in thinking cold bloodedness better I should be more disposed to distrust my own taste than yours and his conjoined -- no very great modesty either, you may say. 625 Please to express to Mrs. Hennell my sense of her kindness in tacitly concurring with your invitation and tell her that I am induced to accept it from my knowledge that she is chiefly gratified by the fulfilment of your wishes.
Ever Thine
Mary Ann.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, I, 142-143.
Tuesday.
My dear Sara,
As I believe that even your kindness cannot overcome your sincerity I will cast aside my fear that your wish to see me in your own home is rather a plan for my enjoyment than for yours. I believe it would be an unmixed pleasure to me to be your visitor, and one that I would choose among a whole bouquet of agreeable possibilities -- so if Mrs. Hennell will really not feel it an annoyance to have an inmate so unloveable except to her loving-in-spite-of-people's-faults-and-deficiencies daughter Sara and perhaps a few others, I will say that (Father permitting and being well and happy) I will indulge myself and accept the good that the heavens and you offer me. I am miserably in want of you to stir up my soul and make it shake its wings and begin some kind of flight after something good and noble, for I am in a grovelling slothful condition, and you are the only friend I possess who has an animating influence over me.
I have written to Mr. Hennell anent the title-page and have voted for critically examined 624 from an entire conviction of its preferableness. When I returned the prefaces to you I intended to put in a note telling you to ask Mr. H. about the translation of Kalt-bl'fctigkeit, but I forgot all about the matter on coming to fold the sheets up again after an interval. I rather prefer sang froid myself, but I have no particular anxiety about it and if Mr. H. concurred with you in thinking cold bloodedness better I should be more disposed to distrust my own taste than yours and his conjoined -- no very great modesty either, you may say. 625 Please to express to Mrs. Hennell my sense of her kindness in tacitly concurring with your invitation and tell her that I am induced to accept it from my knowledge that she is chiefly gratified by the fulfilment of your wishes.
Ever Thine
Mary Ann.
Signature
Mary Ann.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Foleshill, May? 1846](3), 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/93848