GE to John Walter Cross, London, 6 November 1877
Title
GE to John Walter Cross, London, 6 November 1877
Title
GE to John Walter Cross, London, 6 November 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Walter Cross
Date(s)
- 1877-11-06
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to John Walter Cross, London, 6 November 1877
MS: Yale. Envelope: J. W. Cross Esq. | Weybridge Heath | Weybridge | S.W. Postmarks: ST. JOHNS-WOOD | C 5 | NO 6 | 77 | N.W; WEYBRIDGE-STATION | A | NO 7 | 77. Extract published: Cross, III, 318.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 6. 77.
My dearest Nephew
If I could find it in my heart I should scold you for not observing a precept of the Seven Sages. 756 Two battledores and a shuttle cock would have been apparatus enough for my skill, or want of skill. And we find that with these we can play a modest game in our little entrance hall. I cannot bear to have that magnificent rainbow of a net and its polished poles exposed to the alternate smoke and rain of this avenue to Tartarus. But with all this grumbling at your too lavish generosity under these morose skies, I am deeply touched by your thoughtful kindness.
Still -- which would you choose? An aunt who lost headaches and gained flesh by spending her time on tennis and Badminton, 757 or an aunt who remained sickly and beckoned death by writing more books? Behold yourself in a dilemma! If you choose the plump and idle aunt, she will declare that you don't mind about her writing. If you choose the pallid and productive aunt she will declare that you have no real affection for her. It is impossible to satisfy an author.
Apropos of authorship I was a little uneasy on Sunday 758 because I had seemed in the unmanageable current of talk to echo a too slight way of speaking about a great poet. I did not mean to say Amen when
[The Idyls of the King] seemed to be judged rather [de haut en bas.] I only meant that I should value for my own mind [In Memoriam] as the chief of the larger works, and that while I feel exquisite beauty in passages scattered through the Idyls, I must judge some smaller wholes among the lyrics as the works most decisive of Tennyson's high place among the immortals.
Not that my deliverance on this matter is of any moment, but that I cannot bear to fall in with the sickening fashion of people who talk much about writers whom they read little, and pronounce on a great man's powers with only half his work in their mind, while if they remembered the other half they would find their judgments as to his limits flatly contradicted. Then again, I think Tennyson's dramas such as the world should be glad of -- and would be if there had been no pre-judgment that he could not write a drama.
Perhaps you will reflect that all this scribbling is my Badminton for a wet morning.
Your affectionate Aunt
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Yale. Envelope: J. W. Cross Esq. | Weybridge Heath | Weybridge | S.W. Postmarks: ST. JOHNS-WOOD | C 5 | NO 6 | 77 | N.W; WEYBRIDGE-STATION | A | NO 7 | 77. Extract published: Cross, III, 318.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
November 6. 77.
My dearest Nephew
If I could find it in my heart I should scold you for not observing a precept of the Seven Sages. 756 Two battledores and a shuttle cock would have been apparatus enough for my skill, or want of skill. And we find that with these we can play a modest game in our little entrance hall. I cannot bear to have that magnificent rainbow of a net and its polished poles exposed to the alternate smoke and rain of this avenue to Tartarus. But with all this grumbling at your too lavish generosity under these morose skies, I am deeply touched by your thoughtful kindness.
Still -- which would you choose? An aunt who lost headaches and gained flesh by spending her time on tennis and Badminton, 757 or an aunt who remained sickly and beckoned death by writing more books? Behold yourself in a dilemma! If you choose the plump and idle aunt, she will declare that you don't mind about her writing. If you choose the pallid and productive aunt she will declare that you have no real affection for her. It is impossible to satisfy an author.
Apropos of authorship I was a little uneasy on Sunday 758 because I had seemed in the unmanageable current of talk to echo a too slight way of speaking about a great poet. I did not mean to say Amen when
[The Idyls of the King] seemed to be judged rather [de haut en bas.] I only meant that I should value for my own mind [In Memoriam] as the chief of the larger works, and that while I feel exquisite beauty in passages scattered through the Idyls, I must judge some smaller wholes among the lyrics as the works most decisive of Tennyson's high place among the immortals.
Not that my deliverance on this matter is of any moment, but that I cannot bear to fall in with the sickening fashion of people who talk much about writers whom they read little, and pronounce on a great man's powers with only half his work in their mind, while if they remembered the other half they would find their judgments as to his limits flatly contradicted. Then again, I think Tennyson's dramas such as the world should be glad of -- and would be if there had been no pre-judgment that he could not write a drama.
Perhaps you will reflect that all this scribbling is my Badminton for a wet morning.
Your affectionate Aunt
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Walter Cross, London, 6 November 1877, 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/92835