GE to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lytton, London, 20 March 1872
Title
GE to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lytton, London, 20 March 1872
Title
GE to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lytton, London, 20 March 1872
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lyt
Date(s)
- 1872-03-20
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lytton, London, 20 March 1872
MS: Lady Hermione Cobbold.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 72.
Dear Friends both
It seems a restoration to my rights to know something about you once more. I am hungry for any details even to the smallest gossip, but I shall never earn them honestly by writing to you, so I shall trust to your generosity.
I had been fearing that illness was the cause of the long silence which somehow or other we fancy ourselves warranted in complaining of -- I suppose simply because you have made precedents of kindness and affection which we turn into claims. The illness is a new tie and ground of understanding between us, for how can a wretch crawling between heaven and earth as I have been for a good part of the last year, have much community with robust flesh and blood? The words "nausea" and "depression" reveal more common experience between us than could be told in many letters. But Spring and Carlsbad will I trust do for you, dear Mrs. Lytton, what the clear days we are already having seem likely to do for me -- turn the miserable consciousness of a stomach into healthy hunger and peaceful digestion.
I like to think of the Baby that is coming to make another sort of fresh Spring time. I don't promise to be delighted with endless babies, but this one I am really glad to expect for you. You will let me know, will you not, when it is safely arrived?
Mrs. Locke 82 promises to come and see me, and I am prepared to like her very much. At present she is a charming portrait to me and of course I prefer the original, objecting to every shade of difference.
I hope Mr. Lewes has told you how mathematics and psychological problems have been renewing his youth these last two years. He has still too much headache, but he is much stronger and looks, I think, younger than when you saw him. We are so unspeakably happy in all other respects that we ought not to grumble at paying a little tax in the form of bodily malaise.
We wish that you could be satisfactorily transplanted and brought nearer to England. 83 I wonder where you would best like to be -- in Italy or in Germany? Meanwhile the Fables which are being copied on that enviable paper will come out in a pretty volume 84 and leave room for new studies -- perhaps for science which will feed some new form of poetic production. I cannot help believing that there are fibres still to be stirred towards such a combination in you.
Mr. Ralston has just brought out a volume on Russian poetry and legends in which there is this little sketch of a story that Heine would have turned into a poem. "A poverty-stricken wretch tries to keep up appearances by singing, and hears another voice in unison with his own, for which he cannot account until he discovers that it belongs to misery, who is keeping him company." 85
I usually scribble such letters as I write (Mr. Lewes in his angelic goodness undertaking to write all business notes for me) on my knee, the last thing before going bed, thus giving my friends the ragged edge of my day. This is a poor return for the delightful stories which have made us laugh, and all the other good things that we care for under your hand and -- envelope.
Much affection and sympathy, dear Mrs. Lytton, specially in these weeks -- much sincere tender friendship to you both at all times from
Yours ever faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Lady Hermione Cobbold.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 72.
Dear Friends both
It seems a restoration to my rights to know something about you once more. I am hungry for any details even to the smallest gossip, but I shall never earn them honestly by writing to you, so I shall trust to your generosity.
I had been fearing that illness was the cause of the long silence which somehow or other we fancy ourselves warranted in complaining of -- I suppose simply because you have made precedents of kindness and affection which we turn into claims. The illness is a new tie and ground of understanding between us, for how can a wretch crawling between heaven and earth as I have been for a good part of the last year, have much community with robust flesh and blood? The words "nausea" and "depression" reveal more common experience between us than could be told in many letters. But Spring and Carlsbad will I trust do for you, dear Mrs. Lytton, what the clear days we are already having seem likely to do for me -- turn the miserable consciousness of a stomach into healthy hunger and peaceful digestion.
I like to think of the Baby that is coming to make another sort of fresh Spring time. I don't promise to be delighted with endless babies, but this one I am really glad to expect for you. You will let me know, will you not, when it is safely arrived?
Mrs. Locke 82 promises to come and see me, and I am prepared to like her very much. At present she is a charming portrait to me and of course I prefer the original, objecting to every shade of difference.
I hope Mr. Lewes has told you how mathematics and psychological problems have been renewing his youth these last two years. He has still too much headache, but he is much stronger and looks, I think, younger than when you saw him. We are so unspeakably happy in all other respects that we ought not to grumble at paying a little tax in the form of bodily malaise.
We wish that you could be satisfactorily transplanted and brought nearer to England. 83 I wonder where you would best like to be -- in Italy or in Germany? Meanwhile the Fables which are being copied on that enviable paper will come out in a pretty volume 84 and leave room for new studies -- perhaps for science which will feed some new form of poetic production. I cannot help believing that there are fibres still to be stirred towards such a combination in you.
Mr. Ralston has just brought out a volume on Russian poetry and legends in which there is this little sketch of a story that Heine would have turned into a poem. "A poverty-stricken wretch tries to keep up appearances by singing, and hears another voice in unison with his own, for which he cannot account until he discovers that it belongs to misery, who is keeping him company." 85
I usually scribble such letters as I write (Mr. Lewes in his angelic goodness undertaking to write all business notes for me) on my knee, the last thing before going bed, thus giving my friends the ragged edge of my day. This is a poor return for the delightful stories which have made us laugh, and all the other good things that we care for under your hand and -- envelope.
Much affection and sympathy, dear Mrs. Lytton, specially in these weeks -- much sincere tender friendship to you both at all times from
Yours ever faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lytton, London, 20 March 1872, 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/93181