GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 18 October 1875
Title
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 18 October 1875
Title
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 18 October 1875
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. Mark Pattison
Date(s)
- 1875-10-18
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 18 October 1875
MS: British Museum. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
October 18. 75.
My poor dear Figliuolina
Alas, I had been making pictures of you to myself in Oxford again, cured and tasting your ordinary life with hard-won freshness, and your letter has just brought me what I must consider very bad news. How gladly would I comfort you! but the attempt to give comfort by words in such trouble as yours would be an impertinence and a mockery. Even if I sat by you I should keep silence and trust to your knowledge that I am enough acquainted with bodily suffering to enter with fellow-feeling into your heavier trial. I think much of the Rector too, and of the way in which his loneliness must enter into your sadness under the condemnation to exile. 322
That you are having your violin sent with your papers is a pleasant proof of your power to use all your ten fingers. And I build some hope on the general liability to error in doctor's prophecies. The complexity of the subjects they pronounce upon makes it no disgrace to them when things turn out better as well as worse than they expected, and I have known, as I dare say you have, as many instances of the "better" as of the "worse."
As to Nice, I compassionate you with some knowledge of the place, though only through short visits. But there are other places that would do as well, if you are obliged to go south for other winters -- not perhaps places with much art in them, but still preferable as a variety. You must consider the Southern map, and if you are a good sailor, you may get to some scenery fresh enough to be something of a substitute for the Art above Nature, which Nature makes.
I hope that the Rector has some work in hand of the absorbing kind -- a work of like value with the [Isaac Casaubon.] That is the best refuge in domestic privation. And you will carry on the woof of work begun. You see I am determined to think of you as cheerfully as I can, being too much inclined to despond about my own doings to afford despondency about my friends.
There is nothing to tell you, except that we are just come back to town and are unable to sit in the drawing-room for the smell of paint. I have not been well through the last four months, and a rainy fort-night's excursion into Wales was not greatly curative. The weather is now brightening, and we have had a couple of autumnal days with clear air and a sharp edge of cold.
Our only real ground of sadness lately has been the death of our youngest son, who was settled (and married) in S. Africa. He was a dear good fellow, and thoroughly happy in his marriage, so that his death seems an extinction of nothing but joy -- not at all of a counterbalancing evil. His young widow has two tiny children, and it is our comfort to be able to provide for them.
Always when one looks beyond one's own lot there is some evident reason for taking one's share of trouble as not excessive, when it is something short of agony. But I fear that your long, wearisome endurance of pain which eats itself into every cranny of mind and body may have sometimes seemed to you to deserve the name of agony. I have been thinking a great deal lately of such cases as Auguste Thierry's, who with paralyzed limbs which obliged him to be carried about like a bundle, made his life precious to himself and others, and was really an enjoying creature. 323
Mr. Lewes joins me in sympathy and affectionate wishes.
Always your faithfully attached
M. E. Lewes.
MS: British Museum. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
October 18. 75.
My poor dear Figliuolina
Alas, I had been making pictures of you to myself in Oxford again, cured and tasting your ordinary life with hard-won freshness, and your letter has just brought me what I must consider very bad news. How gladly would I comfort you! but the attempt to give comfort by words in such trouble as yours would be an impertinence and a mockery. Even if I sat by you I should keep silence and trust to your knowledge that I am enough acquainted with bodily suffering to enter with fellow-feeling into your heavier trial. I think much of the Rector too, and of the way in which his loneliness must enter into your sadness under the condemnation to exile. 322
That you are having your violin sent with your papers is a pleasant proof of your power to use all your ten fingers. And I build some hope on the general liability to error in doctor's prophecies. The complexity of the subjects they pronounce upon makes it no disgrace to them when things turn out better as well as worse than they expected, and I have known, as I dare say you have, as many instances of the "better" as of the "worse."
As to Nice, I compassionate you with some knowledge of the place, though only through short visits. But there are other places that would do as well, if you are obliged to go south for other winters -- not perhaps places with much art in them, but still preferable as a variety. You must consider the Southern map, and if you are a good sailor, you may get to some scenery fresh enough to be something of a substitute for the Art above Nature, which Nature makes.
I hope that the Rector has some work in hand of the absorbing kind -- a work of like value with the [Isaac Casaubon.] That is the best refuge in domestic privation. And you will carry on the woof of work begun. You see I am determined to think of you as cheerfully as I can, being too much inclined to despond about my own doings to afford despondency about my friends.
There is nothing to tell you, except that we are just come back to town and are unable to sit in the drawing-room for the smell of paint. I have not been well through the last four months, and a rainy fort-night's excursion into Wales was not greatly curative. The weather is now brightening, and we have had a couple of autumnal days with clear air and a sharp edge of cold.
Our only real ground of sadness lately has been the death of our youngest son, who was settled (and married) in S. Africa. He was a dear good fellow, and thoroughly happy in his marriage, so that his death seems an extinction of nothing but joy -- not at all of a counterbalancing evil. His young widow has two tiny children, and it is our comfort to be able to provide for them.
Always when one looks beyond one's own lot there is some evident reason for taking one's share of trouble as not excessive, when it is something short of agony. But I fear that your long, wearisome endurance of pain which eats itself into every cranny of mind and body may have sometimes seemed to you to deserve the name of agony. I have been thinking a great deal lately of such cases as Auguste Thierry's, who with paralyzed limbs which obliged him to be carried about like a bundle, made his life precious to himself and others, and was really an enjoying creature. 323
Mr. Lewes joins me in sympathy and affectionate wishes.
Always your faithfully attached
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. Mark Pattison, London, 18 October 1875, 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/93537