breadth. Cara's assurance that you are well and comfortable is worth a luncheon to me, which is just the thing I am generally most in want of, for we dine at six now. I love to imagine you in your home; and everything seems easy to me when I am not disturbed about the health or well-being of my loved ones. It is really so; I do not say it out of any sort of affectation, benevolent or otherwise. I am without carefulness, alas! in more senses than one. Thank Sara very heartily for her letter. I do not write a special sheet for her to-day, because I have to write to two or three other people, but she must not the less believe how I valued a little private morsel from her; and also that I would always rather she wrote "from herself" than "to me"—that is my theory of letter-writing. Your letters are as welcome as Elijah's ravens—I thought of saying the dinner-bell, only that would be too gross! I get impatient at the end of the ten days which it takes for our letters to go to and fro; and I have not the least faith in the necessity for keeping the sheet three or four days before Mr. Bray can find time to write his meagre bit. If you see the Miss Franklins, give my love to them; my remembrances to Mr. and Mrs. Whittem; love to Miss Sibree always. Hearty love to Clapton27 and Woodford;28 and a very diffusive benevolence to the world in general, without any particular attachment to A or B. I am trying to please Mr. Bray. Good-bye, dear souls. Dominus vobiscum.
Letter to the Brays, Thursday, 4th Oct. 1849.
I am anxious for you to know my new address, as I shall leave here on Tuesday. I think I have at last found the very thing. I shall be the only lodger. The appartement is assez joli, with an alcove, so that it looks like a sitting-room in the daytime—the people, an artist of great respectability, and his wife, a most kind-looking, lady-like person, with two boys, who have the air of being well educated. They seem very anxious to have me, and are ready to do anything to accommodate me. I shall live with them—that is, dine with them; breakfast in my own room. The terms are fr. 150 per month, light included. M. and Mme. d'Albert are middle-aged, musical, and, I am told, have beaucoup d'esprit. I hope this will not exceed my means for four or five months. There is a nice, large salon and a good salle à manger. I am told that their society is very good. Mme. de Ludwigsdorff was about going there a year ago, and it was she who recommended it to me.
I hope Sara's fears are supererogatory—a proof of a too nervous solicitude about me, for which I am grateful, though it does me no good to hear of it. I want encouraging rather than warning and checking. I believe I am so constituted that I shall never be cured of my faults except by God's discipline. If human beings would but believe it, they do me the most good by saying to me the kindest things truth will permit; and really I cannot hope those will be superlatively kind. The reason I wished to raise a little extra money is that I wanted to have some lessons and other means of culture—not for my daily bread, for which I hope I shall have enough; but, since you think my scheme impracticable, we will dismiss it. Au reste, be in no anxiety about me. Nothing is going wrong that I know of. I am not an absolute fool and weakling. When I am fairly settled in my new home I will write again. My address will be—M. d'Albert Durade, Rue des Chanoines, No. 107.
Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 4th Oct. 1849.
The blessed compensation there is in all things made your letter doubly precious for having been waited for, and it would have inspired me to write to you again much sooner, but that I have been in uncertainty about settling myself for the winter, and I wished to send you my future address. I am to move to my new home on Tuesday the 9th. I shall not at all regret leaving here; the season is beginning to be rather sombre, though the glorious chestnuts here are still worth looking at half the day. You have heard of some of the people whom I have described in my letters to Rosehill. The dear little old maid, Mlle. de Phaisan, is quite a good friend to me—extremely prosy, and full of tiny details; but really people of that calibre are a comfort to one occasionally, when one has not strength enough for more stimulating things. She is a sample of those happy souls who ask for nothing but the work of the hour, however trivial; who are contented to live without knowing whether they effect anything, but who do really effect much good, simply by their calm and even maintien. I laugh to hear her say in a tone of remonstrance—"Mme. de Ludwigsdorff dit qu'elle s'ennuie quand les soirées sont longues: moi, je ne conçois pas comment on peut s'ennuyer quand on a de l'ouvrage ou des jeux ou de la conversation." When people who are dressing elegantly and driving about to make calls every day of their life have been telling me of their troubles—their utter hopelessness of ever finding a vein worth working in their future life—my thoughts have turned towards many whose sufferings are of a more tangible character, and I have really felt all the old commonplaces about the equality of human destinies, always excepting those spiritual differences which are apart not only from poverty and riches, but from individual affections. Dear Chrissey has found time and strength to write to me, and very precious her letter was, though I wept over it. "Deep, abiding grief must be mine," she says, and I know well it must be. The mystery of trial! It falls with such avalanche weight on the head of the meek and patient. I wish I could do something of more avail for my friends than love them and long for their happiness.
Letter to the Brays, 11th Oct. 1849.
M. and Mme. d'Albert are really clever people—people worth sitting up an hour longer to talk to. This does not hinder madame from being an excellent manager—dressing scrupulously, and keeping her servants in order. She has hung my room with pictures, one of which is the most beautiful group of flowers conceivable thrown on an open Bible, painted by herself. I have a piano which I hire. There is also one in the salon. M. d'Albert plays and sings, and in the winter he tells me they have parties to sing masses and do other delightful things. In fact, I think I am just in the right place. I breakfast in my own room at half-past eight, lunch at half-past twelve, and dine at four or a little after, and take tea at eight. From the tea-table I have gone into the salon and chatted until bedtime. It would really have been a pity to have stayed at Plongeon, out of reach of everything, and with people so little worth talking to. I have not found out the desagrémens here yet. It is raining horribly, but this just saves me from the regret I should have felt at having quitted the chestnuts of Plongeon. That campagne looked splendid in its autumn dress.
George Eliot retained so warm an admiration and love for M. d'Albert Durade to the end of her life that it seems fitting here to mention that he still lives, carrying well the weight of eighty winters. He is conservateur of the Athénée—a permanent exhibition of works of art in Geneva; and he published only last year (1883) a French translation of the "Scenes of Clerical Life," having already previously published translations of "Adam Bede," "Felix Holt," "Silas Marner," and "Romola." The description of his personal appearance, in the following letter, still holds good, save that the gray hair has become quite white. He lost his wife in 1873; and it will be seen from subsequent letters that George Eliot kept up a faithful attachment to her to the end. They were both friends after her own heart. The old apartment is now No. 18, instead of No. 107, Rue des Chanoines, and is occupied as the printing-office of the Journal de Genève. But half of the rooms remain just as they were five-and-thirty years ago. The salon, wainscoted in imitation light-oak panels, with a white China stove, and her bedroom opening off it—as she had often described it to me; and M. d'Albert has still in his possession the painting of the bunch of beautiful flowers thrown on an open Bible mentioned in the last letter. He told me that when Miss Evans first came to look at the house she was so horrified with the forbidding aspect of the stairs that she declared she would not go up above the first floor; but when she got inside the door she was reconciled to her new quarters. Calvin's house is close to the Rue des Chanoines, and she was much interested in it. It will be seen that she did some work in physics under Professor de la Rive; but she principally rested and enjoyed herself during the stay at Geneva. It was exactly the kind of life she was in need of at the time, and the letters show how much she appreciated it.
Letter to the Brays, 26th Oct. 1849.
I languished for your letter before it came, and read it three times running—judge whether I care less for you than of old. It is the best of blessings to know that you are well and cheerful; and when I think of all that might happen in a fortnight to make you otherwise, especially in these days of cholera and crises, I cannot help being anxious until I get a fresh assurance that at least five days ago all was well. Before I say anything about myself, I must contradict your suspicion