John Blackwood to GE, St. Andrews, 8 September 1872
Title
John Blackwood to GE, St. Andrews, 8 September 1872
Title
John Blackwood to GE, St. Andrews, 8 September 1872
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1872-09-08
Place
St. Andrews
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GE, St. Andrews, 8 September 1872
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Strathtyrum | St. Andrews | N.B.
September 8/72.
My Dear Mrs. Lewes
The first hundred pages of Sunset and Sunrise came here last night and instead of going to Church with the rest of the family I sat down and have just finished reading the proof. Dorothea is better than any sermon that ever was preached by man. It is noble. The picture of that bleeding solitary gallant heart alone that night in her dreary chamber is grandly moving. 590 How one longs to help her and how beautifully you let the daylight in.
How skilfully you are unravelling that most tangled skein of trouble. I think I see my way but I am dying to see the sun fairly risen. If the rest of the M.S. was in Edinburgh I would telegraph to the printers never to stop work until it was ready to send to me. I do not wonder at such work upsetting the ordinary routine of life and consequently health. The mere reading of it has made me think with contempt of lunch, the gong for which is about to sound.
Lewes said something about changing the division of the Books. There might be a break at page 194, which would make Book 8 begin with "In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad opinion of her husband." 591 How exquisitely those touches relieve the graver parts. The little talk with Tantrip in "the old tone" follows daylight delightfully in Dorothea's room. 592
I do hope this will find you better and the work finished. When I wrote to you yesterday with all the admiration I expressed and felt I was puzzled as to how you could "put your house in order" but now accept from me the first instalment of the hearty congratulations and thanks the world will soon offer to you.
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
On thinking over the division of the Books I feel that Dorothea's declaration of standing by Lydgate is so good an opening for what is to be expected in the last book that it is the most appropriate finish for
Book 7, so I would not mind making the one Book thin and the other thick.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Strathtyrum | St. Andrews | N.B.
September 8/72.
My Dear Mrs. Lewes
The first hundred pages of Sunset and Sunrise came here last night and instead of going to Church with the rest of the family I sat down and have just finished reading the proof. Dorothea is better than any sermon that ever was preached by man. It is noble. The picture of that bleeding solitary gallant heart alone that night in her dreary chamber is grandly moving. 590 How one longs to help her and how beautifully you let the daylight in.
How skilfully you are unravelling that most tangled skein of trouble. I think I see my way but I am dying to see the sun fairly risen. If the rest of the M.S. was in Edinburgh I would telegraph to the printers never to stop work until it was ready to send to me. I do not wonder at such work upsetting the ordinary routine of life and consequently health. The mere reading of it has made me think with contempt of lunch, the gong for which is about to sound.
Lewes said something about changing the division of the Books. There might be a break at page 194, which would make Book 8 begin with "In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad opinion of her husband." 591 How exquisitely those touches relieve the graver parts. The little talk with Tantrip in "the old tone" follows daylight delightfully in Dorothea's room. 592
I do hope this will find you better and the work finished. When I wrote to you yesterday with all the admiration I expressed and felt I was puzzled as to how you could "put your house in order" but now accept from me the first instalment of the hearty congratulations and thanks the world will soon offer to you.
always yours truly
John Blackwood.
On thinking over the division of the Books I feel that Dorothea's declaration of standing by Lydgate is so good an opening for what is to be expected in the last book that it is the most appropriate finish for
Book 7, so I would not mind making the one Book thin and the other thick.
Signature
John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GE, St. Andrews, 8 September 1872, 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/95346