GHL to Robert Lytton, Shottermill, 15 June 1871
Title
GHL to Robert Lytton, Shottermill, 15 June 1871
Title
GHL to Robert Lytton, Shottermill, 15 June 1871
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Robert Lyt
Date(s)
- 1871-06-15
Place
Shottermill
Letter Content
GHL to Robert Lytton, Shottermill, 15 June 1871
MS: Lady Hermione Cobbold.
Brookbank Cottage | Shotter Mill | nr Petersfield | 15 June 1871.
My dear Lytton
Cease all doubts and vexations at not having sooner heard from me about your Fable 33 which only reached me yesterday. My son went to the Priory for me and there found your letter which he forwarded. I have read the Fable thrice and think it VERY GOOD -- so good that it ought to be perfect and might perhaps be made so by a touch or two though I don't know how. Perhaps on remeditating and rewriting it you may discover the secret springs of imperfection. All that I can suggest is a certain lessening of the reader's prevision. For instance, slight as it is, I wouldn't have the Inn called the Sign of the Bear. 34 It is too schematic and seems to project a shadow over the coming catastrophe. Altogether I should urge your fixing your critical eye on the last part with a view of making it unfold itself as easily as the others.
Again, I doubt the felicity or propriety of calling it a Fable in cantos and acts -- it is not a drama and the acts suggest misleading thoughts. 35 The writing is throughout admirable -- good thought felicitously expressed. Let us have more such!
We are both distressed to think of your alarm respecting your sweet little wife (je maintiens le mot!) and beg you to write at once to relieve our distress by telling us she has not been laid up with anything worse than a cold. Thank her from Mrs. Lewes for her pretty welcome letter, which Mrs. Lewes would have answered at once had she not alas! been suffering continuously from biliousness, headache and neuralgia. I was at last forced to take her up to London to have medical advice. 36 She is better now but still feeble. Our country quarters, delicious as they are, have not benefited her yet.
For myself they have done wonders. I have got through more, and better work, during this six weeks, than during the whole year previously. I am still dipping at the "foundations of things" and you won't be surprised to hear I find them "rather infinite."
Although Petersfield is our post town Surrey is the county where we luxuriate in miles and miles of heath, park, lane, and picturesque undulating wooded hills. Our range of walks and drives is practically infinite. Had there not been so much cold wind we should have sat in the woods to read poetry and "talk of lovely things that conquer death" more than we have done -- but it will doubtless come. Our cottage is an artist's cottage very picturesque but so far from the world that there are great difficulties in the commissariat. But if we don't live like "fighting cocks" we live like your philosophic Bruin, remote, unvisited, quite away from the dust, envy, turmoil, tittletattle and other uglinesses of London. Not a soul have we seen except Blackwood who ran down one day 37 to have lunch with us on the scent of the new novel -- a distant object -- alas!
Love from both to both
Yours ever
G. H. Lewes.
We shall stay here till end of July. Gourmandise is permissible.
MS: Lady Hermione Cobbold.
Brookbank Cottage | Shotter Mill | nr Petersfield | 15 June 1871.
My dear Lytton
Cease all doubts and vexations at not having sooner heard from me about your Fable 33 which only reached me yesterday. My son went to the Priory for me and there found your letter which he forwarded. I have read the Fable thrice and think it VERY GOOD -- so good that it ought to be perfect and might perhaps be made so by a touch or two though I don't know how. Perhaps on remeditating and rewriting it you may discover the secret springs of imperfection. All that I can suggest is a certain lessening of the reader's prevision. For instance, slight as it is, I wouldn't have the Inn called the Sign of the Bear. 34 It is too schematic and seems to project a shadow over the coming catastrophe. Altogether I should urge your fixing your critical eye on the last part with a view of making it unfold itself as easily as the others.
Again, I doubt the felicity or propriety of calling it a Fable in cantos and acts -- it is not a drama and the acts suggest misleading thoughts. 35 The writing is throughout admirable -- good thought felicitously expressed. Let us have more such!
We are both distressed to think of your alarm respecting your sweet little wife (je maintiens le mot!) and beg you to write at once to relieve our distress by telling us she has not been laid up with anything worse than a cold. Thank her from Mrs. Lewes for her pretty welcome letter, which Mrs. Lewes would have answered at once had she not alas! been suffering continuously from biliousness, headache and neuralgia. I was at last forced to take her up to London to have medical advice. 36 She is better now but still feeble. Our country quarters, delicious as they are, have not benefited her yet.
For myself they have done wonders. I have got through more, and better work, during this six weeks, than during the whole year previously. I am still dipping at the "foundations of things" and you won't be surprised to hear I find them "rather infinite."
Although Petersfield is our post town Surrey is the county where we luxuriate in miles and miles of heath, park, lane, and picturesque undulating wooded hills. Our range of walks and drives is practically infinite. Had there not been so much cold wind we should have sat in the woods to read poetry and "talk of lovely things that conquer death" more than we have done -- but it will doubtless come. Our cottage is an artist's cottage very picturesque but so far from the world that there are great difficulties in the commissariat. But if we don't live like "fighting cocks" we live like your philosophic Bruin, remote, unvisited, quite away from the dust, envy, turmoil, tittletattle and other uglinesses of London. Not a soul have we seen except Blackwood who ran down one day 37 to have lunch with us on the scent of the new novel -- a distant object -- alas!
Love from both to both
Yours ever
G. H. Lewes.
We shall stay here till end of July. Gourmandise is permissible.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Robert Lytton, Shottermill, 15 June 1871, 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/95012