John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 19 November 1874
Title
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 19 November 1874
Title
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 19 November 1874
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1874-11-19
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 19 November 1874
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extract published: John Blackwood, pp. 385-386.
George Street, | Edinburgh.
November 19/74.
My Dear Mrs. Lewes
When I got back from the Country last Thursday I found a most alarming pile of letters and packets of manuscript of all kinds awaiting me, but your pleasant dispatch with its most welcome news leavened the whole mass. 161 I do long to see that "Slice of M.S." which has passed into the "irrevocable." Lewes and I are both I believe good critics but it is very plain sailing when we have works such as yours to comment upon.
You will be glad to hear that Kinglake has returned for press nearly the last sheet of his Inkerman volume. It is a splendid series of pictures and will take us all back to the Crimea. In writing to him I told the good news of your novel with a sort of explanation of your mode of composition and I cannot resist copying for Lewes' delectation if not for yours his truly graceful and powerful comment. He says, "Another novel from Mrs. Lewes is really a national blessing! Why don't critics have illuminations for news so grateful instead of making believe to [rejoice] at some absurd [birth-day] or the accession of another Lord Mayor? What you tell me of the intellectual fermentation from which works like Middlemarch result is very interesting and makes me envy the process of disciplined thought which after the [simmering] passes all at once into [the irrevocable.]" There speaks a Master of English and I feel ashamed to go on with my own disjointed sentences.
We are shaking down into town life now and the stair carpets are down. I mildly suggested that they might have been laid down before we came but was sternly asked what effect the innumerable packing boxes and workmen's feet would have upon them. I retired. The leaving
Strathtyrum was as usual a melancholy business and we had to leave behind Tickler, the favourite old Terrier, for whom a visit to his usual sanitarium, the keeper's lodge, was declared necessary. He was heard swearing violently as we drove through the lodge gate to the railway. Meanwhile we are not without dogs, as that rascal Jack brought down a fox terrier with him from school and left it with us. It is a perfect demon of mischief. Its first act was to tear my own copy of the monthly Magazine and then it tried to apologise to me by utterly demolishing a Cornhill. From its supposed great value it is not allowed to go into the streets yet and occupies its leisure with insane attacks upon a bear skin rug in the library. It will finish the work my nephew's rifle began in the Himmala&ytilde;a. I see I cannot spell the word in any known form although I am printing it every month. Have you read the Abode of Snow 162 -- not that it is by my nephew? I wish it was.
With best regards to Lewes and hoping to hear from you soon, I am
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extract published: John Blackwood, pp. 385-386.
George Street, | Edinburgh.
November 19/74.
My Dear Mrs. Lewes
When I got back from the Country last Thursday I found a most alarming pile of letters and packets of manuscript of all kinds awaiting me, but your pleasant dispatch with its most welcome news leavened the whole mass. 161 I do long to see that "Slice of M.S." which has passed into the "irrevocable." Lewes and I are both I believe good critics but it is very plain sailing when we have works such as yours to comment upon.
You will be glad to hear that Kinglake has returned for press nearly the last sheet of his Inkerman volume. It is a splendid series of pictures and will take us all back to the Crimea. In writing to him I told the good news of your novel with a sort of explanation of your mode of composition and I cannot resist copying for Lewes' delectation if not for yours his truly graceful and powerful comment. He says, "Another novel from Mrs. Lewes is really a national blessing! Why don't critics have illuminations for news so grateful instead of making believe to [rejoice] at some absurd [birth-day] or the accession of another Lord Mayor? What you tell me of the intellectual fermentation from which works like Middlemarch result is very interesting and makes me envy the process of disciplined thought which after the [simmering] passes all at once into [the irrevocable.]" There speaks a Master of English and I feel ashamed to go on with my own disjointed sentences.
We are shaking down into town life now and the stair carpets are down. I mildly suggested that they might have been laid down before we came but was sternly asked what effect the innumerable packing boxes and workmen's feet would have upon them. I retired. The leaving
Strathtyrum was as usual a melancholy business and we had to leave behind Tickler, the favourite old Terrier, for whom a visit to his usual sanitarium, the keeper's lodge, was declared necessary. He was heard swearing violently as we drove through the lodge gate to the railway. Meanwhile we are not without dogs, as that rascal Jack brought down a fox terrier with him from school and left it with us. It is a perfect demon of mischief. Its first act was to tear my own copy of the monthly Magazine and then it tried to apologise to me by utterly demolishing a Cornhill. From its supposed great value it is not allowed to go into the streets yet and occupies its leisure with insane attacks upon a bear skin rug in the library. It will finish the work my nephew's rifle began in the Himmala&ytilde;a. I see I cannot spell the word in any known form although I am printing it every month. Have you read the Abode of Snow 162 -- not that it is by my nephew? I wish it was.
With best regards to Lewes and hoping to hear from you soon, I am
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
Signature
John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 19 November 1874, 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/95210