Journal, 1877.
Nov. 26.—The other day we saw in the Times that G.'s name had been proposed for the Rectorship of St. Andrews. Blackwood writes me that in less than a month they have sold off all but 400 of the 5250 printed; and in October were sold 495 of the 3s. 6d. edition of "Adam Bede."
Our friend Dr. Allbut came to see us last week, after we had missed each other for three or four years.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d Dec. 1877.
I have been made rather unhappy by my husband's impulsive proposal about Christmas. We are dull old persons, and your two sweet young ones ought to find each Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark, shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family, and we have usually taken our sober merry-making with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year; and thus mein Mann, feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question—namely, our total lack of means to make a suitably joyous meeting, a real festival, for Phil and Margaret. I was conscious of this lack in the very moment of the proposal, and the consciousness has been pressing on me more and more painfully ever since. Even my husband's affectionate hopefulness cannot withstand my melancholy demonstration.
So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves, only on simple black-letter days when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning.
I am not afraid of your misunderstanding one word. You know that it is not a little love with which I am yours ever.
Letter to J. W. Cross, 13th Dec. 1877.
Your note yesterday gave me much comfort, and I thank you for sparing the time to write it.
The world cannot seem quite the same to me as long as you are all in anxiety about her who is most precious to you[32] —in immediate urgent anxiety that is. For love is never without its shadow of anxiety. We have this treasure in earthen vessels.