Letter to Mrs A. Helps p.1

Description:Eliot thanks Alice for her invitation to see Iolanthe at the Haymarket in December but declines as she is going with Lewes. She talks about various domestic arrangements but ends on a humorous note "I am no more dowdy than usual"

Transcript:

The Priory,
21, North Bank
Regents Park.

Nov. 30. 75


My dear Alice

Mr. Lewes is to take me, else I should have been glad of your sweet guardianship in going to see 'Iolanthe'.

I have not been able to deserve your remembrance in any way except by often thinking of you. This I have done, but I have not had ten spare minutes to spend in telling you of it. We came home about the middle of October, but, to our annoyance. found a smell of paint in the drawing room which obliged us to live for three weeks in my study.

We are now at large in the house as usual, & there is no one we should like to see better than you, if it were not unreasonable to wish that you should come so far in the cold without some duteous zeal to warm you on the way.

Only remember that you have two cordial friends in this corner, whom your presence will gladden.

Mr. Lewes is ailing. I am not more dowdy than usual.

Always yours affectionately

M. E. Lewes


Note: George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was a local authoress based in the Coventry and Nuneaton district, from 1819-1880.