GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, St. Leonard's, [4 June 1848]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, St. Leonard's, [4 June 1848]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, St. Leonard's, [4 June 1848]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1848-06-04
Place
ST. LEONARD'S
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, St. Leonard's, [4 June 1848]
MS: Yale. Endorsed: June 4, 1848. Extracts published: Cross, I, 188-189.
Victoria Hotel | St. Leonard's | Sunday.
My dear Sara
I wait and wait for a better mood, in which, poor moon that I am, I may shed on you some gentle, peaceful light, instead of thrusting my cold dark orb between you and the [lux alma] which is just now shining on you from Cara's and other friendly eyes. 738 But the better mood does not come, and if I were silent longer you might fancy that it was because I was [full rich and reigning as a king without you.]
Alas for the fate of poor mortals which condemns them to wake up some fine morning and find all the poetry in which their world was bathed only the evening before utterly gone -- the hard angular world of chairs and tables and looking-glasses staring at them in all its naked prose. It is so in all the stages of life -- the poetry of girlhood goes -- the poetry of love and marriage -- the poetry of maternity -- and at last the very poetry of duty forsakes us for a season and we see ourselves and all about us as nothing more than miserable agglomerations of atoms -- poor tentative efforts of the Natur Princip to mould a personality. This is the state of prostration -- the self-abnegation through which the soul must go, and to which perhaps it must again and again return, that its poetry or religion, which is the same thing, may be a real ever-flowing river fresh from the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep -- not an artificial basin with grotto work and gold fish.
I feel a sort of madness growing upon me -- just the opposite of the delirium which makes people fancy that their bodies are filling the room. It seems to me as if I were shrinking into that mathematical abstraction, a point -- so entirely am I destitute of contact that I am unconscious of length or breadth, and by the time you see me again, I shall have lost all possibility of giving you any demonstration of a spiritual existence -- like a poor sprite metamorphosed into a pomegranate seed or some such thing. But I am wasting this "good Sunday morning" in grumblings.
A thousand blessings on you all, whether at Woodford or Clapton. I wish it were given to mortal love to waft a delicious scent as of thyme or violets as a most gentle assurance and remembrancer of its existence to the beloved ones at a distance. If it were so, you all might walk in a perpetual springtide odour. My feet are so cold I must go and walk.
Your affectionate
Mary Ann.
MS: Yale. Endorsed: June 4, 1848. Extracts published: Cross, I, 188-189.
Victoria Hotel | St. Leonard's | Sunday.
My dear Sara
I wait and wait for a better mood, in which, poor moon that I am, I may shed on you some gentle, peaceful light, instead of thrusting my cold dark orb between you and the [lux alma] which is just now shining on you from Cara's and other friendly eyes. 738 But the better mood does not come, and if I were silent longer you might fancy that it was because I was [full rich and reigning as a king without you.]
Alas for the fate of poor mortals which condemns them to wake up some fine morning and find all the poetry in which their world was bathed only the evening before utterly gone -- the hard angular world of chairs and tables and looking-glasses staring at them in all its naked prose. It is so in all the stages of life -- the poetry of girlhood goes -- the poetry of love and marriage -- the poetry of maternity -- and at last the very poetry of duty forsakes us for a season and we see ourselves and all about us as nothing more than miserable agglomerations of atoms -- poor tentative efforts of the Natur Princip to mould a personality. This is the state of prostration -- the self-abnegation through which the soul must go, and to which perhaps it must again and again return, that its poetry or religion, which is the same thing, may be a real ever-flowing river fresh from the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep -- not an artificial basin with grotto work and gold fish.
I feel a sort of madness growing upon me -- just the opposite of the delirium which makes people fancy that their bodies are filling the room. It seems to me as if I were shrinking into that mathematical abstraction, a point -- so entirely am I destitute of contact that I am unconscious of length or breadth, and by the time you see me again, I shall have lost all possibility of giving you any demonstration of a spiritual existence -- like a poor sprite metamorphosed into a pomegranate seed or some such thing. But I am wasting this "good Sunday morning" in grumblings.
A thousand blessings on you all, whether at Woodford or Clapton. I wish it were given to mortal love to waft a delicious scent as of thyme or violets as a most gentle assurance and remembrancer of its existence to the beloved ones at a distance. If it were so, you all might walk in a perpetual springtide odour. My feet are so cold I must go and walk.
Your affectionate
Mary Ann.
Signature
Mary Ann.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, St. Leonard's, [4 June 1848], 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/94113