Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 23 May 1880
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 23 May 1880
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 23 May 1880
Sender
Edith Simcox
Recipient
U
Date(s)
- 1880-05-23
Place
London
Letter Content
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 23 May 1880
MS: Bodleian.
Sunday 23 May 1880
Have been scribbling off and on at "Vignettes." Hardly know whether they will come to anything. Am positive not to publish unless they are likely to be really good. Have not been unhappy about her, only just a little uneasy as to whether I may have said a thought too much in answer to her unspoken doubt about our feeling -- mine with that of others. It was honest not to ignore the existence of the question, but was it possible to answer it in a way that should save the fact of its having been asked from causing any pain? I love her just as before: involuntary kisses form themselves and it is an unmixed pleasure to me to think of her as having life made easier again. But this has come of the repeated checks on such close dependence as my soul desired, -- the help I might not have has been done without, and the impulse to seek it is almost extinct. I feel now as if it would not be too costly a risk to ask her, if the need arose, whether it would be for her happiness to let our intercourse drop into casual and rarer shape.
MS: Bodleian.
Sunday 23 May 1880
Have been scribbling off and on at "Vignettes." Hardly know whether they will come to anything. Am positive not to publish unless they are likely to be really good. Have not been unhappy about her, only just a little uneasy as to whether I may have said a thought too much in answer to her unspoken doubt about our feeling -- mine with that of others. It was honest not to ignore the existence of the question, but was it possible to answer it in a way that should save the fact of its having been asked from causing any pain? I love her just as before: involuntary kisses form themselves and it is an unmixed pleasure to me to think of her as having life made easier again. But this has come of the repeated checks on such close dependence as my soul desired, -- the help I might not have has been done without, and the impulse to seek it is almost extinct. I feel now as if it would not be too costly a risk to ask her, if the need arose, whether it would be for her happiness to let our intercourse drop into casual and rarer shape.
Citation
Edith Simcox, Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 23 May 1880, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91790