Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1867.
Thanks for the pretty remembrance. You were not unthought of before it came. Now, however, I rouse all my courage under the thick fog to tell you my inward wish—which is that the new year, as it travels on towards its old age, may bring you many satisfactions undisturbed by bodily ailment.
Mr. Lewes is going to-morrow on an unprecedented expedition—a rapid run to Bonn, to make some anatomical researches with Professor Schutze there. If he needs more than he can get at Bonn, he may go to Heidelberg and Würzburg. But in any case he will not take more than a fortnight.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Dec. 1867.
Public questions which, by a sad process of reduction, become piteous private questions, hang cloudily over all prospects. The state of Europe, the threat of a general war, the starvation of multitudes—one can't help thinking of these things at one's breakfast. Nevertheless, there is much enjoyment going on, and abundance of rosy children's parties.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Dec. 1867.
It is very good and sweet of you to propose to come round for me on Sunday, and I shall cherish particularly the remembrance of that kindness. But, on our reading your letter, Mr. Lewes objected, on grounds which I think just, to my going to any public manifestation without him, since his absence could not be divined by outsiders.
I am companioned by dyspepsia, and feel life a struggle under the leaden sky. Mme. Bodichon writes that in Sussex the air is cold and clear, and the woods and lanes dressed in wintry loveliness of fresh, grassy patches, mingled with the soft grays and browns of the trees and hedges. Mr. Harrison shed the agreeable light of his kind eyes on me yesterday for a brief space; but I hope I was more endurable to my visitors than to myself, else I think they will not come again. I object strongly to myself, as a bundle of unpleasant sensations with a palpitating heart and awkward manners. Impossible to imagine the large charity I have for people who detest me. But don't you be one of them.
Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Dec. 1867.
I am much obliged to you for your handsome check, and still more gratified that the "Address" has been a satisfaction to you.