Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon to GE, Hastings, [10? December 1871]
Title
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon to GE, Hastings, [10? December 1871]
Title
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon to GE, Hastings, [10? December 1871]
Sender
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1871-12-10
Place
Hastings
Letter Content
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon to GE, Hastings, [10? December 1871]
MS: Yale.
East Parade | Hastings.
My dearest Marian,
I have read your new book and I think it the most interesting subject you have ever given us and I think it is only too happy and beautiful a book for the horrid things coming after in her life. I feel intensely about it and I never felt so much interest in any story but 2 in my life.
I think it is your best work -- no that I won't say but being the last I have read it does seem to me to day to be by far your best. I am sure it is the most interesting only I dread the unfolding and feel quite certain it is a horrible tragedy coming.
I hear people say it is so witty amusing and lively so it is but all is shadowed by the coming misery to me. I can't help feeling it desperately. I am very sorry for the poor thing 69 just as if she were alive and I want to stop her. She is like a child dancing into a quick sand on a sunny morning and I feel a sort of horror at your story as if it were all real and going on at this moment. I do not know if you meant to produce this sort of terrible foreshadowing of inevitable misery and I see some of 'em have read it and only see wit character and liveliness, and call it light reading now I find it heavy reading to my heart though I think it a most noble book and thank you for it.
I am going to read it again because I read it all through in one day as hard as I could to take in the whole impression and I have given to you. But then a great many do not feel it as I do.
I am enchanted with you for publishing it so that I can buy it at once for myself and have it for my friends it is quite a progress and was the first thing I blessed you for. Only I do not like the cover at all it is not artistic enough -- much better have nothing on the cover than that riggle and landscape which are not worthy of your work at all. The green is not a bad colour much better than the blue of the Spanish Gypsy which was a very hard wicked blue and made me unhappy and a plain Roman letter on that green would have been very nice, do not let them do what they like in dressing your children it does make a difference and I like to see your things in becoming clothes.
Ever yours
B.
I feel I have not expressed myself a bit.
MS: Yale.
East Parade | Hastings.
My dearest Marian,
I have read your new book and I think it the most interesting subject you have ever given us and I think it is only too happy and beautiful a book for the horrid things coming after in her life. I feel intensely about it and I never felt so much interest in any story but 2 in my life.
I think it is your best work -- no that I won't say but being the last I have read it does seem to me to day to be by far your best. I am sure it is the most interesting only I dread the unfolding and feel quite certain it is a horrible tragedy coming.
I hear people say it is so witty amusing and lively so it is but all is shadowed by the coming misery to me. I can't help feeling it desperately. I am very sorry for the poor thing 69 just as if she were alive and I want to stop her. She is like a child dancing into a quick sand on a sunny morning and I feel a sort of horror at your story as if it were all real and going on at this moment. I do not know if you meant to produce this sort of terrible foreshadowing of inevitable misery and I see some of 'em have read it and only see wit character and liveliness, and call it light reading now I find it heavy reading to my heart though I think it a most noble book and thank you for it.
I am going to read it again because I read it all through in one day as hard as I could to take in the whole impression and I have given to you. But then a great many do not feel it as I do.
I am enchanted with you for publishing it so that I can buy it at once for myself and have it for my friends it is quite a progress and was the first thing I blessed you for. Only I do not like the cover at all it is not artistic enough -- much better have nothing on the cover than that riggle and landscape which are not worthy of your work at all. The green is not a bad colour much better than the blue of the Spanish Gypsy which was a very hard wicked blue and made me unhappy and a plain Roman letter on that green would have been very nice, do not let them do what they like in dressing your children it does make a difference and I like to see your things in becoming clothes.
Ever yours
B.
I feel I have not expressed myself a bit.
Signature
B.
Citation
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon to GE, Hastings, [10? December 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/95539