As to our house, spite of beautiful lawn, tall trees, fine kitchen-garden, and good, invigorating air, we have already made up our minds that it will not do for our home. Still, we have many things to enjoy, but we shall not probably remain here longer than to the end of October.
My motherly love to all such young ones as may be around you. I do not disturb George in order to ask for messages from him, being sure that his love goes with mine.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 19th Sept. 1873.]
I quite assent to your proposal that there should be a new edition of "Middlemarch" in one volume, at 7_s._ 6_d._--to be prepared at once, but not published too precipitately.
I like your project of an illustration; and the financial arrangements you mention are quite acceptable to me.
For one reason especially I am delighted that the book is going to be reprinted--namely, _that I can see the proof-sheets and make corrections_. Pray give orders that the sheets be sent to me. I should like the binding to be of a rich, sober color, with very plain Roman lettering. It might be called a "revised edition."
Thanks for the extract from Mr. Collins's letter. I did not know that there was really a Lowick, in a Midland county too. Mr. Collins has my gratitude for feeling some regard towards Mr. Casaubon, in whose life _I_ lived with much sympathy.
When I was at Oxford, in May, two ladies came up to me after dinner: one said, "How could you let Dorothea marry _that_ Casaubon?" The other, "Oh, I understand her doing that, but why did you let her marry the other fellow, whom I cannot bear?" Thus two "ardent admirers" wished that the book had been quite different from what it is.
I wonder whether you have abandoned--as you seemed to agree that it would be wise to do--the project of bringing out my other books in a cheaper form than the present 3_s._ 6_d._, which, if it were not for the blemish of the figure illustrations, would be as pretty an edition as could be, and perhaps as cheap as my public requires. Somehow, the cheap books that crowd the stalls are always those which look as if they were issued from Pandemonium.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 11th Oct. 1873.]
I am rather ashamed of our grumblings. We are really enjoying the country, and have more than our share of everything. George has happy mornings at his desk now, and we have fine bracing air to walk in--air which I take in as a sort of nectar. We like the bits of scenery round us better and better as we get them by heart in our walks and drives. The house, with all its defects, is very pretty, and more delightfully secluded, without being remote from the conveniences of the world, than any place we have before thought of as a possible residence for us.