GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 31 May 1872
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 31 May 1872
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 31 May 1872
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1872-05-31
Place
Redhill
Letter Content
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 31 May 1872
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
Elversley, Park Road | Red Hill, Surrey | Friday 31 May 72.
My dear Main
Your letters, always so cheering in their fervour and their keen sympathetic insight, seem particularly suited to the tone of mind which our summer solitude induces, and yesterday we had both a real pleasure in your last. It was high time to get away from London and its turmoil, for Mrs. Lewes was no sooner getting a little stronger than some other excitement was sure to come to destroy the good again. We propose to live like hermits, we refuse to go into Society even to go into other people's houses (though I am not absolutely excluded -- only making the rule a convenient excuse for not going oftener than I like) and yet somehow what with this desire of people to come and see her, and what with our desire to have pleasant people round us, we do endure far too much social excitement to permit of work being properly carried on. Lords and Ladies, poets and cabinet ministers, artists and men of science, crowd upon us on Sundays -- very delightfully -- but we as hosts have to pay for the pleasure -- and they even flow into the week days, so that what with one thing and another les jours se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas, whereas here seeing no one les jours se ressemblent and one morning takes up the thread of yesterday. She is already the better for this change and I hope three months' peace will see her at the end of Middlemarch and then we shall be off to the Continent for a real holiday.
In return for your pleasant bit of news about "Romola" let me tell you something about the "Sayings." A very sweet creature and dear friend of ours, Mrs. George Howard, 526 (the future Lady Carlisle) who was much set against "the idea of the Sayings" and has been thoroughly converted by possessing the book, asked me the other day to tell her about you. She was sure "he must be a dear fellow: such a fine mind is seen in the choice of the extracts."
I may also tell you -- quite in private of course -- what I think will please you almost as much as it did me: Mrs. Cowper Temple told Mrs. Lewes that she had copied passages from "Romola" into her New Testament. This is strong measure from an English woman, and a devout one, but it shows how deeply the wisdom and beauty of that work has penetrated.
Cuc0u257 dwu257 llu259 du275 r not Cu257 dwu259 llu257 der is the right accentuation. "The opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked" reminds me of a mot of one of my German friends. I was walking with him in the Thiergarten of Berlin and expressing my annoyance at not being able to remember the gender of some noun. "Sometimes I say der and sometimes das," said I. He smiled and said "Choose one of them, whichever you like, stick to it, and although you will be wrong, you will at least be consistent: it is die."
Ever yours truly
G. H. Lewes.
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
Elversley, Park Road | Red Hill, Surrey | Friday 31 May 72.
My dear Main
Your letters, always so cheering in their fervour and their keen sympathetic insight, seem particularly suited to the tone of mind which our summer solitude induces, and yesterday we had both a real pleasure in your last. It was high time to get away from London and its turmoil, for Mrs. Lewes was no sooner getting a little stronger than some other excitement was sure to come to destroy the good again. We propose to live like hermits, we refuse to go into Society even to go into other people's houses (though I am not absolutely excluded -- only making the rule a convenient excuse for not going oftener than I like) and yet somehow what with this desire of people to come and see her, and what with our desire to have pleasant people round us, we do endure far too much social excitement to permit of work being properly carried on. Lords and Ladies, poets and cabinet ministers, artists and men of science, crowd upon us on Sundays -- very delightfully -- but we as hosts have to pay for the pleasure -- and they even flow into the week days, so that what with one thing and another les jours se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas, whereas here seeing no one les jours se ressemblent and one morning takes up the thread of yesterday. She is already the better for this change and I hope three months' peace will see her at the end of Middlemarch and then we shall be off to the Continent for a real holiday.
In return for your pleasant bit of news about "Romola" let me tell you something about the "Sayings." A very sweet creature and dear friend of ours, Mrs. George Howard, 526 (the future Lady Carlisle) who was much set against "the idea of the Sayings" and has been thoroughly converted by possessing the book, asked me the other day to tell her about you. She was sure "he must be a dear fellow: such a fine mind is seen in the choice of the extracts."
I may also tell you -- quite in private of course -- what I think will please you almost as much as it did me: Mrs. Cowper Temple told Mrs. Lewes that she had copied passages from "Romola" into her New Testament. This is strong measure from an English woman, and a devout one, but it shows how deeply the wisdom and beauty of that work has penetrated.
Cuc0u257 dwu257 llu259 du275 r not Cu257 dwu259 llu257 der is the right accentuation. "The opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked" reminds me of a mot of one of my German friends. I was walking with him in the Thiergarten of Berlin and expressing my annoyance at not being able to remember the gender of some noun. "Sometimes I say der and sometimes das," said I. He smiled and said "Choose one of them, whichever you like, stick to it, and although you will be wrong, you will at least be consistent: it is die."
Ever yours truly
G. H. Lewes.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 31 May 1872, 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/94429