GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Wandsworth, 24 February [1859]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Wandsworth, 24 February [1859]
Title
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Wandsworth, 24 February [1859]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray
Date(s)
- 1859-02-24
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Wandsworth, 24 February [1859]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1859. Extracts published: Cross, II, 85.
Holly Lodge | February 24.
Dear Cara
One word of gratitude to you first, before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow.
The advertisement in the Herald is a business-like way of proceeding. Perhaps it would be worth while to mention that the servant is wanted for a lady and gentleman only. I need hardly tell you what I want -- you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. Cooking is a material thing, not because Mr. Lewes is epicurean (for he is stupid of palate) but because he is, amongst his other eminences, eminently dyspeptic. I am anxious therefore to have a cook who is not only honest but soup-making and full of devices -- as good a cook as your Hannah of old time. Honesty and cleanliness are the two other emphatic requirements and a not unimportant one is a power of keeping simple accounts -- the spelling ad libitum.
I wish I were not an anxious fidgetty wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an anxiety soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness, such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me.
Ever your grateful
Marian.
I wrote to Mrs. Call too, confiding in her kindness and her wonderful skill in finding out all that makes life go smoothly.
Since I wrote this I have just had a letter from my Sister Chrissey -- ill in bed -- consumptive -- regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: 1859. Extracts published: Cross, II, 85.
Holly Lodge | February 24.
Dear Cara
One word of gratitude to you first, before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow.
The advertisement in the Herald is a business-like way of proceeding. Perhaps it would be worth while to mention that the servant is wanted for a lady and gentleman only. I need hardly tell you what I want -- you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. Cooking is a material thing, not because Mr. Lewes is epicurean (for he is stupid of palate) but because he is, amongst his other eminences, eminently dyspeptic. I am anxious therefore to have a cook who is not only honest but soup-making and full of devices -- as good a cook as your Hannah of old time. Honesty and cleanliness are the two other emphatic requirements and a not unimportant one is a power of keeping simple accounts -- the spelling ad libitum.
I wish I were not an anxious fidgetty wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an anxiety soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness, such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me.
Ever your grateful
Marian.
I wrote to Mrs. Call too, confiding in her kindness and her wonderful skill in finding out all that makes life go smoothly.
Since I wrote this I have just had a letter from my Sister Chrissey -- ill in bed -- consumptive -- regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart.
Signature
Marian.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Caroline [Mrs. Charles] Bray, Wandsworth, 24 February [1859], 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/93331