GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, Witley, 29 June 1879
Title
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, Witley, 29 June 1879
Title
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, Witley, 29 June 1879
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones
Date(s)
- 1879-06-29
Place
Witley
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, Witley, 29 June 1879
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, III, 368-369.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
June 29. 79.
Dearest Georgie
I too began to feel it long since we had written to each other, but I stilled anxiety by saying to myself, [Things have remained just the same with her: she is waiting for some change to tell me of.] The issue of the Memorial on behalf of M. Andrieu grieves me the more for what you say about his health. If I were in town (and well) I should be tempted straightway to ask him to give me lessons in viva voce translation of English into French.
The idea of any creature with sensitive nerves suffering [acute pain] comes home to me forcibly in these hours, for since this day fortnight precisely I have been going through a little illness in which I have had some eight or ten hours of more severe pain than I had ever known in my life before. I am apparently getting better, but I am writing this in bed with my paper about three quarters of a yard from my eyes. However I do get up towards lunch time, and yesterday I went out for a drive. But your description of the effects you feel from the restless tormenting winds would serve well to represent my experience too. It seems something incredible written in my memory that when I was a little girl I loved the wind -- used to like to walk about when it was blowing great guns. And now the wind is to me what it was to early peoples -- a demon-god cruelly demanding all sorts of human sacrifices.
Thank you dear for caring whether I have any human angels to guard me. None are permanently here except my servants, but Sir James Paget has been down to see me, I have a very comfortable country practitioner 287 to watch over me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who is backwards and forwards continually to see that I lack nothing. 288 Can you imagine me ordering Champagne for my own drinking?
Such is the humiliating fact. I have been enjoined to make the experiment as a remedy for the -- not dys- but -apepsia into which I seem to have fallen. Perhaps this is on the whole worse than having no Cook, but I am not quite sure that you have the advantage, my poor dear, since you have to care for the digestive comfort of so many others besides yourself.
It is a satisfaction to me that you felt the need for [Debasing the Moral Currency] 289 to be written. I was determined to do it though it might make me a stone of stumbling and rock of offense to all the comic tribe.
Do not rate my illness too high in the scale of mortal misery. I am prone to make much of my ailments and am among the worst at enduring pain. Love to all from
Your ever faithful
M. E. L.
MS: Yale. Extracts published: Cross, III, 368-369.
The Heights, Witley, | Nr. Godalming.
June 29. 79.
Dearest Georgie
I too began to feel it long since we had written to each other, but I stilled anxiety by saying to myself, [Things have remained just the same with her: she is waiting for some change to tell me of.] The issue of the Memorial on behalf of M. Andrieu grieves me the more for what you say about his health. If I were in town (and well) I should be tempted straightway to ask him to give me lessons in viva voce translation of English into French.
The idea of any creature with sensitive nerves suffering [acute pain] comes home to me forcibly in these hours, for since this day fortnight precisely I have been going through a little illness in which I have had some eight or ten hours of more severe pain than I had ever known in my life before. I am apparently getting better, but I am writing this in bed with my paper about three quarters of a yard from my eyes. However I do get up towards lunch time, and yesterday I went out for a drive. But your description of the effects you feel from the restless tormenting winds would serve well to represent my experience too. It seems something incredible written in my memory that when I was a little girl I loved the wind -- used to like to walk about when it was blowing great guns. And now the wind is to me what it was to early peoples -- a demon-god cruelly demanding all sorts of human sacrifices.
Thank you dear for caring whether I have any human angels to guard me. None are permanently here except my servants, but Sir James Paget has been down to see me, I have a very comfortable country practitioner 287 to watch over me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who is backwards and forwards continually to see that I lack nothing. 288 Can you imagine me ordering Champagne for my own drinking?
Such is the humiliating fact. I have been enjoined to make the experiment as a remedy for the -- not dys- but -apepsia into which I seem to have fallen. Perhaps this is on the whole worse than having no Cook, but I am not quite sure that you have the advantage, my poor dear, since you have to care for the digestive comfort of so many others besides yourself.
It is a satisfaction to me that you felt the need for [Debasing the Moral Currency] 289 to be written. I was determined to do it though it might make me a stone of stumbling and rock of offense to all the comic tribe.
Do not rate my illness too high in the scale of mortal misery. I am prone to make much of my ailments and am among the worst at enduring pain. Love to all from
Your ever faithful
M. E. L.
Signature
M. E. L.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Edward Burne-Jones, Witley, 29 June 1879, 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/93372