Information
‘… I am getting as haggard as an old witch under London atmosphere and influences ,’ wrote George Eliot to friends in May 1852. She had not long been in the capital, having recently embarked on her short spell as assistant editor of the radical ‘ Westminster Review’. Until then her only published work had been a translation from the German of a life of Jesus; the great novels – ‘Adam Bede‘, ‘Mill on the Floss‘, ‘Silas Marner’, ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Daniel Deronda’ – were to appear from 1859 onwards.
Clearly in need of a change of scenery, George Eliot went to Broadstairs at the beginning of July and stayed there in Chandos Cottage, at the corner of Oscar Road and Chandos Square, until the end of August. In a succession of letters to friends, she described her delight in her holiday surroundings. Towards the end of her stay, a slightly more prosaic reality intruded and she took it as a sign that she should soon return to London!
Quotations
4th July 1852. Broadstairs is perfect, and I have the snuggest little lodgings conceivable with a motherly good woman and a nice little damsel of 14 to wait on me. … I have a sitting-room about 8 feet by 9 and a bedroom a little larger, yet in that small space there is almost every comfort. … I pay a guinea a week for my rooms, so I shall not ruin myself by staying a month unless I commit excesses with coffee and sugar.
14th July 1852…. this is the nicest sea place I have seen – so quiet and full of natural beauty.
15th July 1852. I am imbibing its (Broadstairs) peaceful beauty and dignity and half determining never to go back to that human world with its jealousies and unrest.
16th July 1852. If you could see me in my quiet nook! I am half ashamed of being in such clover both spiritually and materially while some of my friends are on the dusty highways without a tuft of grass or a flower to cheer them.
19th August 1852. Providence, seeing that I needed weaning from this place, has sent a swarm of harvest-bugs and lady birds to bite my legs.
Place | Extract |
| Broadstairs | Until then her only published work had been a translation from the German of a life of Jesus; the great novels – ‘Adam Bede‘, ‘Mill on the Floss‘, ‘Silas Marner’, ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Daniel Deronda’ – were to appear from 1859 onwards... |
| Ramsgate | During a prolonged stay in Broadstairs in the summer of 1852, George Eliot must have had occasion to visit Ramsgate several times... |
