“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841]
George Eliot
This text was shared with me by one of my favourite people, who I only know via social media. She knows I adore autumn, and sent this excerpt of a letter along to me. Thanks Shirley!
I used to go into bookstores demanding to know why George Eliot wasn’t shelved in the Women’s Writers section – luckily, I think having such a section in a bookstore was a trend that came & went years ago. Now her & other women’s literature is thankfully shelved with everyone else’s.
It’s a bit odd that the above-mentioned letter is known to have been written to Eliot, but the author of the letter was curiously left out. It’s a fantastic text, though. That someone thought of me when she read that means I must be doing something right.
Glad, oh so glad, that I reared 2 feminist sons!