GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 12 February 1874
Title
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 12 February 1874
Title
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 12 February 1874
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Mrs. William Smith
Date(s)
- 1874-02-12
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 12 February 1874
Text: Cross, III, 223-224.
We have received the volume 30 -- your kind and valuable gift -- and I have read it aloud with Mr Lewes, all except the later pages, which we both feel too much to bear reading them in common. You have given a deeply interesting and, we think, instructive picture, and Mr Lewes has expressed his wish that it had not been restricted to a private circulation. But I understand your shrinking from indiscriminate publicity, at least in the first instance. Perhaps, if many judges on whom you rely concur with Mr Lewes, you will be induced to extend the possible benefit of the volume. 31 I care so much for the demonstration of an intense joy in life on the basis of "plain living and high thinking," 32 in this time of more and more eager scrambling after wealth and show. And then there are exquisite bits which you have rescued from that darkness to which his self-depreciation condemned them. I think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called "Christian Resignation"; 33 and Mr Lewes, when I read it aloud, at once exclaimed, "How very fine. Read it again!" I am also much impressed with the wise mingling of moderation with sympathy in that passage, given in a note, from the article on Greg's [Political Essays.] 34
What must have been the effort which the writing cost you I can -- not fully but -- almost imagine. But believe, dear friend, that in our judgment you have not poured out these recollections in a cry of anguish all in vain. I feel roused and admonished by what you have told, and if I -- then others.
Text: Cross, III, 223-224.
We have received the volume 30 -- your kind and valuable gift -- and I have read it aloud with Mr Lewes, all except the later pages, which we both feel too much to bear reading them in common. You have given a deeply interesting and, we think, instructive picture, and Mr Lewes has expressed his wish that it had not been restricted to a private circulation. But I understand your shrinking from indiscriminate publicity, at least in the first instance. Perhaps, if many judges on whom you rely concur with Mr Lewes, you will be induced to extend the possible benefit of the volume. 31 I care so much for the demonstration of an intense joy in life on the basis of "plain living and high thinking," 32 in this time of more and more eager scrambling after wealth and show. And then there are exquisite bits which you have rescued from that darkness to which his self-depreciation condemned them. I think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called "Christian Resignation"; 33 and Mr Lewes, when I read it aloud, at once exclaimed, "How very fine. Read it again!" I am also much impressed with the wise mingling of moderation with sympathy in that passage, given in a note, from the article on Greg's [Political Essays.] 34
What must have been the effort which the writing cost you I can -- not fully but -- almost imagine. But believe, dear friend, that in our judgment you have not poured out these recollections in a cry of anguish all in vain. I feel roused and admonished by what you have told, and if I -- then others.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Mrs. William Smith, London, 12 February 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/93739