Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 5 December 1878
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 5 December 1878
Title
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 5 December 1878
Sender
Edith Simcox
Recipient
U
Date(s)
- 1878-12-05
Place
London
Letter Content
Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 5 December 1878
MS: Bodleian.
Thursday 5 December 1878
Yesterday went to see Elma; she grieves as much as I -- and yet -- she is able to go to shops, to visit strangers, rail at things and people, and even half jest -- I wonder as of old whether the strong feeling is as strong there where it does not always rule. Today I went to Highgate -- I learnt incidentally from her that he was buried there yesterday. It was hard to have to ask where the grave was -- of cheerful officials who look it out in a book like house agents -- No. 84 "in the dissenters' portion." I ask a gardener -- with half-a-crown -- to find it for me and he got a relenting clerk to come -- then at last I was close by the desolate new mound. Two white wreaths were on the grave and I laid mine of heather between them. Then I lay on the grass just beyond, and after a while the spot did not seem so hideous; it is there, not to the ghostly portal of buried hope and joy that I must go now to pray. Oh it is strange to see the crowded streets. I asked the man how many graves they made each day -- he said 5 or 6, sometimes 2, sometimes 10. I thought that was hardly enough to make them care so little. A funeral came while I was there -- with nodding horseplumes, the clergyman went away jovially before me -- tapes were hanging down from the sleeves of his surplice. As I was lying on the grass a gravedigger came to me. He said he had put forked sticks to keep the white wreaths from the wet; he had been told the lady was coming to see it this afternoon and he had tried to make it "look nice." I gave him a shilling and hoped -- perhaps in vain -- that the next comer might be spared his talk. He promised soothingly to turf it over soon -- I asked when and he didn't know. "You see the ground may sink a little, we have some more earth at the side to put on if it does." Then he went and I think I cried, till looking up I saw two dark figures I thought were Elma and her friend; 471 I rushed back behind the shelter of an evergreen clump -- a withered azalea bloom still hung on the branch. Then I sobbed bitterly, and when I rose after a while no one was there. Visitors are many -- it was probably not.
Then I walked across to Hampstead and passed hesitatingly their son's gate; as I turned back some one in black (? [Octavia]) was going in. I had hardly meant to go today, but somehow the aspect of the house was not forbidding, and I thought I might dare to go tomorrow. . . . It is a cruel thing to say of so good a mother, but if she only had children of her own to comfort her now -- perhaps Johnny does, but one feels now without selfishness what one used to grudge at wickedly that none of the gladness from another's being, which is still my note of love, that none of that -- or not enough to count -- ever came to her from us.
MS: Bodleian.
Thursday 5 December 1878
Yesterday went to see Elma; she grieves as much as I -- and yet -- she is able to go to shops, to visit strangers, rail at things and people, and even half jest -- I wonder as of old whether the strong feeling is as strong there where it does not always rule. Today I went to Highgate -- I learnt incidentally from her that he was buried there yesterday. It was hard to have to ask where the grave was -- of cheerful officials who look it out in a book like house agents -- No. 84 "in the dissenters' portion." I ask a gardener -- with half-a-crown -- to find it for me and he got a relenting clerk to come -- then at last I was close by the desolate new mound. Two white wreaths were on the grave and I laid mine of heather between them. Then I lay on the grass just beyond, and after a while the spot did not seem so hideous; it is there, not to the ghostly portal of buried hope and joy that I must go now to pray. Oh it is strange to see the crowded streets. I asked the man how many graves they made each day -- he said 5 or 6, sometimes 2, sometimes 10. I thought that was hardly enough to make them care so little. A funeral came while I was there -- with nodding horseplumes, the clergyman went away jovially before me -- tapes were hanging down from the sleeves of his surplice. As I was lying on the grass a gravedigger came to me. He said he had put forked sticks to keep the white wreaths from the wet; he had been told the lady was coming to see it this afternoon and he had tried to make it "look nice." I gave him a shilling and hoped -- perhaps in vain -- that the next comer might be spared his talk. He promised soothingly to turf it over soon -- I asked when and he didn't know. "You see the ground may sink a little, we have some more earth at the side to put on if it does." Then he went and I think I cried, till looking up I saw two dark figures I thought were Elma and her friend; 471 I rushed back behind the shelter of an evergreen clump -- a withered azalea bloom still hung on the branch. Then I sobbed bitterly, and when I rose after a while no one was there. Visitors are many -- it was probably not.
Then I walked across to Hampstead and passed hesitatingly their son's gate; as I turned back some one in black (? [Octavia]) was going in. I had hardly meant to go today, but somehow the aspect of the house was not forbidding, and I thought I might dare to go tomorrow. . . . It is a cruel thing to say of so good a mother, but if she only had children of her own to comfort her now -- perhaps Johnny does, but one feels now without selfishness what one used to grudge at wickedly that none of the gladness from another's being, which is still my note of love, that none of that -- or not enough to count -- ever came to her from us.
Citation
Edith Simcox, Edith Simcox, Autobiography, 5 December 1878, 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/91807