John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 8 April 1867
Title
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 8 April 1867
Title
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 8 April 1867
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1867-04-08
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 8 April 1867
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh | April 8/67.
My Dear Madam
I was glad to receive your pleasant note about the first part of the illustrated edition of the Novels 605 which Mr. Simpson feels as a peculiar grace to himself. The figure of Adam 606 is hard and their making it so sinuous as well as sinewy irritated me, but the accessories are good.
We cannot tell yet how the series is going to do but although the first demand has not been so good as I expected, I hope that it will go on steadily improving. I feel that it should do.
I shall be very curious indeed to see the Spanish Poem or Drama. That it will be very fine I have not a doubt. I intend to be in London some time in May when I hope to find this and your other project taking shape. If any of the M.S. of the Poem is in such a state that you would not mind showing it, I should feel very great interest in looking at it.
I have mislaid Lewes' note and cannot recollect what he wrote about, but I remember that I entirely concurred in what he proposed, whatever that was, and I do not think it required an answer.
In reply to your kind allusion to family arrangements, I am sorry to tell you that my nephew's marriage has been broken off. It has been a sore grief, but as it happened months ago now, the wound is I trust beginning to heal over. There was an objection to the marriage originally in this, that the young lady was doubly Willie's cousin, her father being his mother's full brother and her mother their cousin. If her parents had made this objection at first, nobody could have denied that there was something in it, but to bring it forward after six month's engagement with their entire approval, was a stupid cruel business, harder even upon the girl whom they frightened than it could be upon any man. Willie would have pushed it on, but after such a fear had been put into a girl's head I should have dreaded the result.
I hope Lewes' health continues in the upward state and that he is getting corpulent.
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
Mrs. Lewes.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh | April 8/67.
My Dear Madam
I was glad to receive your pleasant note about the first part of the illustrated edition of the Novels 605 which Mr. Simpson feels as a peculiar grace to himself. The figure of Adam 606 is hard and their making it so sinuous as well as sinewy irritated me, but the accessories are good.
We cannot tell yet how the series is going to do but although the first demand has not been so good as I expected, I hope that it will go on steadily improving. I feel that it should do.
I shall be very curious indeed to see the Spanish Poem or Drama. That it will be very fine I have not a doubt. I intend to be in London some time in May when I hope to find this and your other project taking shape. If any of the M.S. of the Poem is in such a state that you would not mind showing it, I should feel very great interest in looking at it.
I have mislaid Lewes' note and cannot recollect what he wrote about, but I remember that I entirely concurred in what he proposed, whatever that was, and I do not think it required an answer.
In reply to your kind allusion to family arrangements, I am sorry to tell you that my nephew's marriage has been broken off. It has been a sore grief, but as it happened months ago now, the wound is I trust beginning to heal over. There was an objection to the marriage originally in this, that the young lady was doubly Willie's cousin, her father being his mother's full brother and her mother their cousin. If her parents had made this objection at first, nobody could have denied that there was something in it, but to bring it forward after six month's engagement with their entire approval, was a stupid cruel business, harder even upon the girl whom they frightened than it could be upon any man. Willie would have pushed it on, but after such a fear had been put into a girl's head I should have dreaded the result.
I hope Lewes' health continues in the upward state and that he is getting corpulent.
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
Mrs. Lewes.
Signature
John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 8 April 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/95293