My love, what I miss in this story is "jollitude"

Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Eliot were pen pals. The American author Stowe and the British author Eliot (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans) had an epistolary friendship that lasted eleven years. The correspondence had been initiated by Stowe in the spring of 1869. After re-reading Eliot's novels, she wrote to Eliot to offer both praise and criticism of her work. At the time, Stowe was 57 years old and famous for her bestselling and highly influential Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), while Eliot —eight years younger— was also an established author, with very successful novels like Adam Bede (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) to her name. The women's personalities were decidedly different, as were their religious convictions. Stowe was a devout Christian and had married a biblical scholar, whereas Eliot had abandoned her faith and lived "in sin" with the married critic George Henry Lewes. Until Eliot's death in 1880, the women maintained an intermittent correspondence, which covered topics such as literature, spiritualism and their families/ husbands.

Shown below is one of the letters from Stowe to Eliot, dated 26 September 1872, three years after their correspondence had started. In it, Stowe first talked about Eliot's novel Middlemarch (1871-1872) —being widely regarded today as Eliot's finest work— and mentioned two of its main characters, Dorothea and Casaubon. Finding the novel too somber, lacking "jollitude", she next invited Eliot to come to America with Mr Lewes in order to have a bit of fun and relaxation. Despite Stowe's warm and cheerful invitation, Eliot never came to see her and vice versa. Ultimately, the two women never met. 

Mrs Fields mentioned in the letter was Annie Adams Fields, an American writer and close friend of Stowe's. She was married to respected publisher James T. Fields, and their home at 148 Charles Street in Boston was a gathering place for prominent authors. It was probably from their home that Stowe, who herself lived in Florida, wrote this letter.

Boston, September 26, 1872

My dear Friend,

I think when you see my name again so soon, you will think it rains, hails, and snows notes from this quarter. Just now, however, I am in this lovely, little nest in Boston, where dear Mrs. Fields, like a dove, "sits brooding on the charmed wave." We are both wishing we had you here with us, and she has not received any answer from you as yet in reply to the invitation you spoke of in your last letter to me. It seems as if you must have written, and the letter somehow gone astray, because I know, of course, you would write. Yesterday we were both out of our senses with mingled pity and indignation at that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,—and think of poor Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so cold and repulsive a rock! He is a little too dreadful for anything: there does not seem to be a drop of warm blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get angry with him. It is the scene in the garden, after the interview with the doctor, that rests on our mind at this present. There was such a man as he over in Boston, high in literary circles, but I fancy his wife wasn't like Dorothea, and a vastly proper time they had of it, treating each other with mutual reverence, like two Chinese mandarins.

My love, what I miss in this story is just what we would have if you would come to our tumble-down, jolly, improper, but joyous country,—namely, "jollitude." You write and live on so high a plane! It is all self-abnegation. We want to get you over here, and into this house, where, with closed doors, we sometimes make the rafters ring with fun, and say anything and everything, no matter what, and won't be any properer than we's a mind to be. I am wishing every day you could see our America,—travel, as I have been doing, from one bright, thriving, pretty, flowery town to another, and see so much wealth, ease, progress, culture, and all sorts of nice things. This dovecot where I now am is the sweetest little nest imaginable; fronting on a city street, with back windows opening on a sea view, with still, quiet rooms filled with books, pictures, and all sorts of things, such as you and Mr. Lewes would enjoy. Don't be afraid of the ocean, now! I've crossed it six times, and assure you it is an overrated item. [Historian and novelist James Anthony] Froude is coming here—why not you? Besides, we have the fountain of eternal youth here, that is, in Florida, where I live, and if you should come you would both of you take a new lease of life, and what glorious poems, and philosophies, and whatnot, we should have! My rabbi writes, in the seventh heaven, an account of your note to him. To think of his setting-off on his own account when I was away!

Come now, since your answer to dear Mrs. Fields is yet to come; let it be a glad yes, and we will clasp you to our heart of hearts.

Your ever loving,

H. B. S. 

Source letter: Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled from Her Letters and Journals, by Charles Edward Stowe (1889)

Via: Project Gutenberg

Image: Harriet Beecher Stowe circa 1870s-1880s (left), and portrait of George Eliot by Sir Frederic William Burton from 1865

Source: Wikimedia Commons