GE to Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, London, 25 September 1868
Title
GE to Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, London, 25 September 1868
Title
GE to Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, London, 25 September 1868
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon
Date(s)
- 1868-09-25
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, London, 25 September 1868
MS: Mr. Philip Leigh-Smith. Extract published: Cross, III, 60-61.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
September 25. 68.
Barbara carissima
Two minutes before your letter came this morning at breakfast, you had been in my mind. Alas, the fine weather is no more -- unless it rises again and makes a new Easter. One may hope for change to anything in this climate. Your kind pretty project would have been forbidden to us for next week, apart from the weather, because we have an indefinite engagement for one day or other in it to three people who are to come and dine with us. They were to have come this week and have been put off till next, and they are people we care about a great deal. Also, George has got a little bit of work to do for a friend and he is very anxious to get it finished. But under all these hindrances there remains to us the pleasure of being grateful to you for your affectionate wish to see us. I can imagine how delicious your country home has been under the glorious skies we have been having -- glorious even in London. Yesterday, we had Doctor and Mrs. Congreve with their two adopted children, 817 and went with them to the Zool. Gardens; and on our return about five o'clock I could not help pausing and exclaiming at the exquisite beauty of the light on Regents Park, exalting it into something that the young Turner would have wanted to paint.
We went to Leeds last week -- saw your favourite David Cox and thought of you the while. Certainly there was nothing finer there in landscape than that Welsh funeral. Among the figure painters Watts and old Philip are supreme. 818 We went on from Leeds to Bolton and spent a day in wandering through the grand woods on the banks of the Wharfe. Altogether our visit to Yorkshire was extremely agreeable, our host Dr. Allbut is a good clever graceful man, enough to enable one to be cheerful under the horrible smoke of ugly Leeds, and the fine hospital which he says is admirably fitted for its purpose is another mitigation. You would like to see the tasteful subdued ornamentation in the rooms which are to be the sick wards. Each physician is accumulating ornamental objects for his own ward -- Chromo-lithographs etc. -- such as will soothe sick eyes. But the Leeds work people, we were told, are sadly coarse beer-soaked bodies, with pleasures, mostly of the brutal sort, and the mill-girls "epicene" creatures that make one shudder.
It was quite cold in that northerly region, and we sat close to the fender every day when we were not out of doors. Yesterday I flaunted muslin and was warm -- this morning I am in a flannel dressing gown. Such is life!
Our best regards to the Doctor and thanks for his hospitable wish.
Always your affectionate
Marian.
Your picture keeps a memory of sunshine on my wall even on this dark morning.
MS: Mr. Philip Leigh-Smith. Extract published: Cross, III, 60-61.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
September 25. 68.
Barbara carissima
Two minutes before your letter came this morning at breakfast, you had been in my mind. Alas, the fine weather is no more -- unless it rises again and makes a new Easter. One may hope for change to anything in this climate. Your kind pretty project would have been forbidden to us for next week, apart from the weather, because we have an indefinite engagement for one day or other in it to three people who are to come and dine with us. They were to have come this week and have been put off till next, and they are people we care about a great deal. Also, George has got a little bit of work to do for a friend and he is very anxious to get it finished. But under all these hindrances there remains to us the pleasure of being grateful to you for your affectionate wish to see us. I can imagine how delicious your country home has been under the glorious skies we have been having -- glorious even in London. Yesterday, we had Doctor and Mrs. Congreve with their two adopted children, 817 and went with them to the Zool. Gardens; and on our return about five o'clock I could not help pausing and exclaiming at the exquisite beauty of the light on Regents Park, exalting it into something that the young Turner would have wanted to paint.
We went to Leeds last week -- saw your favourite David Cox and thought of you the while. Certainly there was nothing finer there in landscape than that Welsh funeral. Among the figure painters Watts and old Philip are supreme. 818 We went on from Leeds to Bolton and spent a day in wandering through the grand woods on the banks of the Wharfe. Altogether our visit to Yorkshire was extremely agreeable, our host Dr. Allbut is a good clever graceful man, enough to enable one to be cheerful under the horrible smoke of ugly Leeds, and the fine hospital which he says is admirably fitted for its purpose is another mitigation. You would like to see the tasteful subdued ornamentation in the rooms which are to be the sick wards. Each physician is accumulating ornamental objects for his own ward -- Chromo-lithographs etc. -- such as will soothe sick eyes. But the Leeds work people, we were told, are sadly coarse beer-soaked bodies, with pleasures, mostly of the brutal sort, and the mill-girls "epicene" creatures that make one shudder.
It was quite cold in that northerly region, and we sat close to the fender every day when we were not out of doors. Yesterday I flaunted muslin and was warm -- this morning I am in a flannel dressing gown. Such is life!
Our best regards to the Doctor and thanks for his hospitable wish.
Always your affectionate
Marian.
Your picture keeps a memory of sunshine on my wall even on this dark morning.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Barbara [Mme Eugene] Bodichon, London, 25 September 1868, 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/93050