Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce to GE, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 August 1869
Title
Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce to GE, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 August 1869
Title
Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce to GE, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 August 1869
Sender
Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce
Recipient
Ge, Cambridge
Date(s)
- 1869-08-02
Place
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Letter Content
Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce to GE, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 August 1869
MS: Yale. Extracts published: McKenzie, p. xiv.
Cambridge, Mass. August 2nd/69.
Dearest --
You will not be bored by another love-letter -- a little one? It is three whole years since I wrote to you before, and you sent me such a grave, kind, precious little answer. O how wise thou art! Where didst thou learn it all?
Some one sent me to-day the "Weekly American Workman," and the first thing in it was this heading [cutting pasted on]:
OUR STORY. This story cost the Original English Publishers twelve hundred and fifty dollars in gold. 878
SILAS MARNER: THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE. XI.
Though it is horrid to have you so preyed upon, yet I was surprised and gratified that the "intelligent American mechanic should know enough" as he says, to select a classic for his fellow workmen to read and call it "Our Story." I read the chapter -- that immortal one where that blessed Dolly took her little Aaron to see the poor robbed Silas -- and it was such a sweet and unexpected breath of thee -- that -- here I am writing this note.
I meant ere now to have sent you my one small published labour, a little book called Cooperative Housekeeping, 879 but I have not yet found a publisher. It came out last winter as articles in the Atlantic under promise of Mr. Fields that if it were a success he would publish it as a book. His assistant-editor 880 assured me it was a "great success" in the magazine, but Mr. Fields found it convenient to take a different view, and so left me in the lurch. I don't suppose in itself it would interest you much, it is so revolutionary. Still I wanted you to see it, for your letter helped me so much to write it. Writing is such an intense and hateful labour to me that I need all the outside pressure I can get to enable me to finish anything, and countless times has it strengthened me. [The only problem for us, the only hope, is to try and unite the utmost activity with the utmost resignation.] 881
You wrote it for me, dearest, and often it has shamed me and spurred me on. Yet I wish I were as faithful as you. I might have done much by this time, and be more worthy to be your little sister. That small book was finished more than a year ago, and I have hardly touched the pen since. I am always waiting for a more convenient season. My sisters are flitting from me now, sweet things; one is going to Berlin to study the piano, another elsewhere, so that I might have long stretches of time; but the ladies here are organizing a cooperative housekeeping society, and as
I originated the idea, they look to me to function through. So study and writing must again go to the wall for an indefinite period, and I am getting very tired or very lazy or both. Such is the disorganization of the old relation of mistress and servant in this country that there are already eight towns where women are waiting only to see us get fairly started here to attempt the same thing themselves.
I wish you would come over here. The student of mankind ought to see this young, generous, reckless nation. The times are great if one can only live worthily up to them. It vexes me to think of my townspeople 882 who have met you, know you, and I do not. The Nortons, Harry James Jr -- sentimentalist and transcendentalist Harry James' efforts to take you in amuse me. 883
Darling, The Spanish Gypsy made me sad, it was so noble: the poetry was so beautiful, but must noble women always fail? Is there no sumptious flower of happiness for us? And then you made all the people in the book faithful but the Christian! Is that indeed the shallowest of all human allegiances? Nay. By Him who hung on the Cross, if I could not die with joy at the foot of it if he called me, I would choose to die now. Life else would have no value equal to the burden. The world would shrink into blackness like a scroll. And how many thousand felt and have felt the same in every age. Forgive me if I am stupid. I know the consummate artist makes characters as they are, not as he would like to have them. But when I grope after you, I can't help wishing I could find you.
Don't answer this, dearest. I don't require you to think of me as anything more than the evening breeze that sometimes kisses your cheek. I love to love you, you are so love-worthy. And once in a long time I love to say so to you. But I would not have it burden you with the weight of a rose leaf.
[No signature.]
MS: Yale. Extracts published: McKenzie, p. xiv.
Cambridge, Mass. August 2nd/69.
Dearest --
You will not be bored by another love-letter -- a little one? It is three whole years since I wrote to you before, and you sent me such a grave, kind, precious little answer. O how wise thou art! Where didst thou learn it all?
Some one sent me to-day the "Weekly American Workman," and the first thing in it was this heading [cutting pasted on]:
OUR STORY. This story cost the Original English Publishers twelve hundred and fifty dollars in gold. 878
SILAS MARNER: THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE. XI.
Though it is horrid to have you so preyed upon, yet I was surprised and gratified that the "intelligent American mechanic should know enough" as he says, to select a classic for his fellow workmen to read and call it "Our Story." I read the chapter -- that immortal one where that blessed Dolly took her little Aaron to see the poor robbed Silas -- and it was such a sweet and unexpected breath of thee -- that -- here I am writing this note.
I meant ere now to have sent you my one small published labour, a little book called Cooperative Housekeeping, 879 but I have not yet found a publisher. It came out last winter as articles in the Atlantic under promise of Mr. Fields that if it were a success he would publish it as a book. His assistant-editor 880 assured me it was a "great success" in the magazine, but Mr. Fields found it convenient to take a different view, and so left me in the lurch. I don't suppose in itself it would interest you much, it is so revolutionary. Still I wanted you to see it, for your letter helped me so much to write it. Writing is such an intense and hateful labour to me that I need all the outside pressure I can get to enable me to finish anything, and countless times has it strengthened me. [The only problem for us, the only hope, is to try and unite the utmost activity with the utmost resignation.] 881
You wrote it for me, dearest, and often it has shamed me and spurred me on. Yet I wish I were as faithful as you. I might have done much by this time, and be more worthy to be your little sister. That small book was finished more than a year ago, and I have hardly touched the pen since. I am always waiting for a more convenient season. My sisters are flitting from me now, sweet things; one is going to Berlin to study the piano, another elsewhere, so that I might have long stretches of time; but the ladies here are organizing a cooperative housekeeping society, and as
I originated the idea, they look to me to function through. So study and writing must again go to the wall for an indefinite period, and I am getting very tired or very lazy or both. Such is the disorganization of the old relation of mistress and servant in this country that there are already eight towns where women are waiting only to see us get fairly started here to attempt the same thing themselves.
I wish you would come over here. The student of mankind ought to see this young, generous, reckless nation. The times are great if one can only live worthily up to them. It vexes me to think of my townspeople 882 who have met you, know you, and I do not. The Nortons, Harry James Jr -- sentimentalist and transcendentalist Harry James' efforts to take you in amuse me. 883
Darling, The Spanish Gypsy made me sad, it was so noble: the poetry was so beautiful, but must noble women always fail? Is there no sumptious flower of happiness for us? And then you made all the people in the book faithful but the Christian! Is that indeed the shallowest of all human allegiances? Nay. By Him who hung on the Cross, if I could not die with joy at the foot of it if he called me, I would choose to die now. Life else would have no value equal to the burden. The world would shrink into blackness like a scroll. And how many thousand felt and have felt the same in every age. Forgive me if I am stupid. I know the consummate artist makes characters as they are, not as he would like to have them. But when I grope after you, I can't help wishing I could find you.
Don't answer this, dearest. I don't require you to think of me as anything more than the evening breeze that sometimes kisses your cheek. I love to love you, you are so love-worthy. And once in a long time I love to say so to you. But I would not have it burden you with the weight of a rose leaf.
[No signature.]
Citation
Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce, Mrs. Charles Sanders Peirce to GE, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2 August 1869, 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/95558