GE to Oscar Browning, Dresden, 23 August 1867
Title
GE to Oscar Browning, Dresden, 23 August 1867
Title
GE to Oscar Browning, Dresden, 23 August 1867
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Oscar Browning
Date(s)
- 1867-08-23
Place
Dresden
Letter Content
GE to Oscar Browning, Dresden, 23 August 1867
MS: Folger Shakespeare Library. Hitherto unpublished.
(i.e. No. five, letter B) Waisenhaus Gasse
Dresden | August 23. 67.
Dear Mr. Browning
Although we arrived at Dresden four days ago, I have only today felt any certainty that we should carry out our intention of remaining here a month, for we have found an unexpected difficulty in getting the sort of lodging we require.
At last, however, I can beg you to seek us at the address which I have written above. 667 At present we are at the hotel, but we shall enter our quiet, roomy lodgings on Monday, and shall feel very much pleased when you beam on our quietude. You will imagine how full Dresden is when I tell you that on inquiring for rooms at the Belvedere Hotel, we found that there was only one chamber vacant looking on the river. The weather is perfect now, the fierce heat of Tuesday and Wednesday having subsided after a magnificent thunder storm.
We were enraptured with our Ilmenau revisited, and found it more beautiful even than it had been in our thirteen-years' memories. When you want to escape from the English and meditate in vast solitudes, go to Ilmenau. You will probably get no water-jug, and you will dine with many Kaufleute of homely manners, but I think there are no other annoyances negative or positive.
Mr. Lewes is regenerated by the breath of the pine-forests, and by the end of September I hope he will be able to enter on a Winter Campaign in London with the prospect of keeping well for three or four months. I am not sanguine enough to expect that he will not gradually "run down," and require another journey in the Spring. That is a broken metaphor -- but Shakspeare surely has made broken metaphors "exquisite," as Mr. Knight thinks he has made bad grammar. 668
We will talk of many things when you come. Mr. Lewes joins in my wish that we may not be disappointed.
Always yours truly
M. E. Lewes.
Oscar Browning Esq.
MS: Folger Shakespeare Library. Hitherto unpublished.
(i.e. No. five, letter B) Waisenhaus Gasse
Dresden | August 23. 67.
Dear Mr. Browning
Although we arrived at Dresden four days ago, I have only today felt any certainty that we should carry out our intention of remaining here a month, for we have found an unexpected difficulty in getting the sort of lodging we require.
At last, however, I can beg you to seek us at the address which I have written above. 667 At present we are at the hotel, but we shall enter our quiet, roomy lodgings on Monday, and shall feel very much pleased when you beam on our quietude. You will imagine how full Dresden is when I tell you that on inquiring for rooms at the Belvedere Hotel, we found that there was only one chamber vacant looking on the river. The weather is perfect now, the fierce heat of Tuesday and Wednesday having subsided after a magnificent thunder storm.
We were enraptured with our Ilmenau revisited, and found it more beautiful even than it had been in our thirteen-years' memories. When you want to escape from the English and meditate in vast solitudes, go to Ilmenau. You will probably get no water-jug, and you will dine with many Kaufleute of homely manners, but I think there are no other annoyances negative or positive.
Mr. Lewes is regenerated by the breath of the pine-forests, and by the end of September I hope he will be able to enter on a Winter Campaign in London with the prospect of keeping well for three or four months. I am not sanguine enough to expect that he will not gradually "run down," and require another journey in the Spring. That is a broken metaphor -- but Shakspeare surely has made broken metaphors "exquisite," as Mr. Knight thinks he has made bad grammar. 668
We will talk of many things when you come. Mr. Lewes joins in my wish that we may not be disappointed.
Always yours truly
M. E. Lewes.
Oscar Browning Esq.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Oscar Browning, Dresden, 23 August 1867, 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/93751