"
Her busy brain was again at work with new plans for future books and
articles for magazines.
"Gladly would I fly to you on the wings of the wind," she says, "but I
am a slave, a bound thrall to _work_, and I cannot work and play
at the same time. After this year I hope to have a little rest, and
above all things I won't be hampered with a serial to write.... We
have sold out in Hartford."
All this routine of labor was to have a new form of interruption,
which gave her intense joy. "I am doing just what you say," she wrote,
"being first lady-in-waiting on his new majesty. He is very pretty,
very gracious and good, and his little mamma and he are a pair.... I
am getting to be an old fool of a grandma, and to think there is no
bliss under heaven to compare with a baby." Later she wrote on the
same subject: "You ought to see my baby. I have discovered a way to
end the woman controversy. Let the women all say that they won't take
care of the babies till the laws are altered. One week of this
discipline would bring all the men on their marrow-bones. Only tell us
what you want, they would say, and we will do it. Of course you may
imagine me trailing after our little king,--first granny-in-waiting."
In the summer of 1869 there was a pleasant home at St. John's Wood, in
London, which possessed peculiar attractions. Other houses were as
comfortable to look at, other hedges were as green, other drawing
rooms were gayer, but this was the home of George Eliot, and on Sunday
afternoons the resort of those who desired the best that London had to
give.
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