GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Earlswood Common, 22 September 1874
Title
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Earlswood Common, 22 September 1874
Title
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Earlswood Common, 22 September 1874
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Elma Stuart
Date(s)
- 1874-09-22
Place
Earlswood Common
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Earlswood Common, 22 September 1874
MS: British Museum. Published: Stuart, pp. 26-29.
The Cottage | Earlswood Common | September 22. 74.
Dearest Elma
Your sweet letter came yesterday. I grieve to see that it gives no address to which I could send this with a chance of its reaching you before you return to Dinan. But I please myself with writing at once -- while I am musing the fire burns, and now write I with my pen.
After the letter, in the evening, came the delicate woollen things which well represent the warmth and tenderness of Elma's love. There is hardly any bodily comfort I prefer to these gossamer woollen garments which give one warmth without weight. I am also grateful that you think my words worth remembering -- especially since they are sometimes enough to hinder you from marrying a man with a quiverful of those problematic blessings. Pray, if you fall in love ascertain first that the objet aim'e9 is without encumbrances. If not let him find some poor governess who is well broken-in and without prospects. I have no patience with these widowers who are always expecting women to take compassion on them, and never themselves take compassion on women really forlorn. They must always have the best, forsooth -- are always good enough for the best to accept. This is the fine principle of Natural Selection, they will say. I admit it, but it is also the selection of conceited gentlemen.
Little Blanche was here from Saturday till Monday morning, and was showing me the toys which a certain lady brought her -- a lady who scatters her pretty gifts over the earth, like the symbolical Spring in the pictures with a miraculous cornucopia. She (Blanche) was especially delighted with her "s'an," which swam in my basin to admiration.
Mr. Lewes has just had a horrible fit of headache, 144 but is now his bright self again, and is beginning to pack the books in preparation for flight homewards. He is gone off to Reigate to get labels, but I know he has love to send or keep, wherever mine goes or stays, and he delights in you, too, for your own sake -- not only because you are good to me. He certainly does enjoy reading your letters, and he has no shame, as I may well have, in reading words which express the height of your affection rather than my desert. But I will not be like Coleridge and talk humility, which somehow never is active when one thinks one's audience likely to assent.
In one point, dear, you cannot be hyperbolical, and that is in believing that my strongest desire for you is that you should feel helped by me to be -- what you are so well capable of being -- "a joy, and blessing, and comfort and strength to others." You see I am using your own words, which are very precious to me. Only don't try what is too difficult -- too great a risk of failure.
I am not too strong, though on the whole better. And this feebleness of mine makes me value very much your considerate tenderness, which is content with a silence rarely broken. I must touch on this, because I have felt particularly your delicacy in refraining from putting an address that I might not have the possibility of self-reproach in not writing. You could teach me many refinements of perfect love, which does not come altogether by nature but is acquired in the long discipline of our own need.
Good-bye, dearest Elma. I go into silence, but not that of memory, which will continually speak of you and imaginatively to you.
Your loving Mother
M. E. Lewes.
MS: British Museum. Published: Stuart, pp. 26-29.
The Cottage | Earlswood Common | September 22. 74.
Dearest Elma
Your sweet letter came yesterday. I grieve to see that it gives no address to which I could send this with a chance of its reaching you before you return to Dinan. But I please myself with writing at once -- while I am musing the fire burns, and now write I with my pen.
After the letter, in the evening, came the delicate woollen things which well represent the warmth and tenderness of Elma's love. There is hardly any bodily comfort I prefer to these gossamer woollen garments which give one warmth without weight. I am also grateful that you think my words worth remembering -- especially since they are sometimes enough to hinder you from marrying a man with a quiverful of those problematic blessings. Pray, if you fall in love ascertain first that the objet aim'e9 is without encumbrances. If not let him find some poor governess who is well broken-in and without prospects. I have no patience with these widowers who are always expecting women to take compassion on them, and never themselves take compassion on women really forlorn. They must always have the best, forsooth -- are always good enough for the best to accept. This is the fine principle of Natural Selection, they will say. I admit it, but it is also the selection of conceited gentlemen.
Little Blanche was here from Saturday till Monday morning, and was showing me the toys which a certain lady brought her -- a lady who scatters her pretty gifts over the earth, like the symbolical Spring in the pictures with a miraculous cornucopia. She (Blanche) was especially delighted with her "s'an," which swam in my basin to admiration.
Mr. Lewes has just had a horrible fit of headache, 144 but is now his bright self again, and is beginning to pack the books in preparation for flight homewards. He is gone off to Reigate to get labels, but I know he has love to send or keep, wherever mine goes or stays, and he delights in you, too, for your own sake -- not only because you are good to me. He certainly does enjoy reading your letters, and he has no shame, as I may well have, in reading words which express the height of your affection rather than my desert. But I will not be like Coleridge and talk humility, which somehow never is active when one thinks one's audience likely to assent.
In one point, dear, you cannot be hyperbolical, and that is in believing that my strongest desire for you is that you should feel helped by me to be -- what you are so well capable of being -- "a joy, and blessing, and comfort and strength to others." You see I am using your own words, which are very precious to me. Only don't try what is too difficult -- too great a risk of failure.
I am not too strong, though on the whole better. And this feebleness of mine makes me value very much your considerate tenderness, which is content with a silence rarely broken. I must touch on this, because I have felt particularly your delicacy in refraining from putting an address that I might not have the possibility of self-reproach in not writing. You could teach me many refinements of perfect love, which does not come altogether by nature but is acquired in the long discipline of our own need.
Good-bye, dearest Elma. I go into silence, but not that of memory, which will continually speak of you and imaginatively to you.
Your loving Mother
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Elma Stuart, Earlswood Common, 22 September 1874, 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/93384