GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 24 June 1859]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 24 June 1859]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 24 June 1859]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1859-06-24
Place
[Wandsworth]
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 24 June 1859]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: June 24. 1859. Mostly published: Cross, II, 114-115.
Dear Sara
There is always an after-sadness belonging to brief and interrupted intercourse between friends 165 -- the sadness of feeling that the blundering efforts we have made towards mutual understanding have only made a new veil between us -- still more the sadness of feeling that some pain may have been given which separation makes a permanent memory. We are quite unable to represent ourselves truly -- why should we complain that our friends see a false image?
I say this, because I am feeling painfully this morning that instead of helping you when you brought before me a matter so deeply interesting to you, I have only blundered, and that I have blundered, as most of us do, from too much egoism and too little sympathy. If my mind had been more open to receive impressions instead of being in over-haste to give them, I should more readily have seen what your object was in giving me that portion of your M.S., and we might have gone through the necessary part of it together on Tuesday. 166 It seems of no use to write this now -- and yet, I can't help wanting to assure you that, if I am too imperfect to do and feel the right thing at the right moment, I am not without the slower sympathy that becomes all the stronger from a sense of previous mistake.
Dear Sara, believe that I shall think of you and your work much, and that my ear and heart are more open for the future because I feel I have not done what a better spirit would have made me do in the past.
Yours,
Marian.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: June 24. 1859. Mostly published: Cross, II, 114-115.
Dear Sara
There is always an after-sadness belonging to brief and interrupted intercourse between friends 165 -- the sadness of feeling that the blundering efforts we have made towards mutual understanding have only made a new veil between us -- still more the sadness of feeling that some pain may have been given which separation makes a permanent memory. We are quite unable to represent ourselves truly -- why should we complain that our friends see a false image?
I say this, because I am feeling painfully this morning that instead of helping you when you brought before me a matter so deeply interesting to you, I have only blundered, and that I have blundered, as most of us do, from too much egoism and too little sympathy. If my mind had been more open to receive impressions instead of being in over-haste to give them, I should more readily have seen what your object was in giving me that portion of your M.S., and we might have gone through the necessary part of it together on Tuesday. 166 It seems of no use to write this now -- and yet, I can't help wanting to assure you that, if I am too imperfect to do and feel the right thing at the right moment, I am not without the slower sympathy that becomes all the stronger from a sense of previous mistake.
Dear Sara, believe that I shall think of you and your work much, and that my ear and heart are more open for the future because I feel I have not done what a better spirit would have made me do in the past.
Yours,
Marian.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, [Wandsworth, 24 June 1859], 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/93874