Part 15 (1/2)

Spedding reads my proofs--for, though I have confidence in my Selection of the Verse (owl), I have but little in my interpolated Prose, which I make obscure in trying to make short. Spedding occasionally marks a blunder; but (confound him!) generally leaves me to correct it.

Come--here is more than enough of my little owl. At night we read Sir Walter for an Hour (Montrose just now) by way of 'Play'--then 'ten minutes' refreshment allowed'--and the Curtain rises on d.i.c.kens (Copperfield now) which sends me gaily to bed--after one Pipe of solitary Meditation--in which the--'little owl,' etc.

By the way, in talking of Plays--after sitting with my poor friend and his brave little Wife till it was time for him to turn bedward--I looked in at the famous Lyceum Hamlet; and soon had looked, and heard enough. It was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to 'Something too much of this,' I called out from the Pit door where I stood, 'A good deal too much,' and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long--and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. You know you are not bound to repay it in length, even if you answer it at all; which I again vainly ask you not to do if a bore.

I hear from Mrs. Mowbray that our dear Donne is but 'pretty well'; and I am still yours

E. F.G.

LV.

WOODBRIDGE: _April_ 25, [1879.]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I think I have let sufficient time elapse before asking you for another Letter. I want to know how you are: and, if you can tell me that you are as well as you and I now expect to be--anyhow, well rid of that Whooping Cough--that will be news enough for one Letter. What else, you shall add of your own free will:--not feeling bound.

When you last wrote me from Leamington, you crossed over your Address: and I (thinking perhaps of America) deciphered it 'Baltimore.' I wonder the P. O. did not return me my Letter: but there was no Treason in it, I dare say.

My Brother keeps waiting--and hoping--for--Death: which will not come: perhaps Providence would have let it come sooner, were he not rich enough to keep a Doctor in the house, to keep him in Misery. I don't know if I told you in my last that he was ill; seized on by a Disease not uncommon to old Men--an 'internal Disorder' it is polite to say; but I shall say to you, disease of the Bladder. I had always supposed he would be found dead one good morning, as my Mother was--as I hoped to be--quietly dead of the Heart which he had felt for several Years. But no; it is seen good that he shall be laid on the Rack--which he may feel the more keenly as he never suffered Pain before, and is not of a strong Nerve. I will say no more of this. The funeral Bell, which has been at work, as I never remember before, all this winter, is even now, as I write, tolling from St. Mary's Steeple.

'Parlons d'autres choses,' as my dear Sevigne says.

I--We--have finished all Sir Walter's Scotch Novels; and I thought I would try an English one: Kenilworth--a wonderful Drama, which Theatre, Opera, and Ballet (as I once saw it represented) may well reproduce. The Scene at Greenwich, where Elizabeth 'interviews' Suss.e.x and Leicester, seemed to me as fine as what is called (I am told, wrongly) Shakespeare's Henry VIII. {145} Of course, plenty of melodrama in most other parts:--but the Plot wonderful.

Then--after Sir Walter--d.i.c.kens' Copperfield, which came to an end last night because I would not let my Reader read the last Chapter. What a touch when Peggotty--the man--at last finds the lost Girl, and--throws a handkerchief over her face when he takes her to his arms--never to leave her! I maintain it--a little Shakespeare--a c.o.c.kney Shakespeare, if you will: but as distinct, if not so great, a piece of pure Genius as was born in Stratford. Oh, I am quite sure of that, had I to choose but one of them, I would choose d.i.c.kens' hundred delightful Caricatures rather than Thackeray's half-dozen terrible Photographs.

In Michael Kelly's Reminiscences {146} (quite worth reading about Sheridan) I found that, on January 22, 1802, was produced at Drury Lane an Afterpiece called _Urania_, by the Honourable W. Spencer, in which 'the scene of Urania's descent was entirely new to the stage, and produced an extraordinary effect.' Hence then the Picture which my poor Brother sent you to America.

'D'autres choses encore.' You may judge, I suppose, by the N.E. wind in London what it has been hereabout. Scarce a tinge of Green on the hedgerows; scarce a Bird singing (only once the Nightingale, with broken Voice), and no flowers in the Garden but the brave old Daffydowndilly, and Hyacinth--which I scarce knew was so hardy. I am quite pleased to find how comfortably they do in my Garden, and look so Chinese gay. Two of my dear Blackbirds have I found dead--of Cold and Hunger, I suppose; but one is even now singing--across that Funeral Bell. This is so, as I write, and tell you--Well: we have Suns.h.i.+ne at last--for a day--'thankful for small Blessings,' etc.

I think I have felt a little sadder since March 31 that shut my seventieth Year behind me, while my Brother was--in some such way as I shall be if I live two or three years longer--'Parlons d'autres'--that I am still able to be sincerely yours

E. F.G.

LVI.

WOODBRIDGE: _May_ 18, [1879.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

By this Post you ought to receive my Crabbe Book, about which I want your Opinion--not as to your own liking, which I doubt not will be more than it deserves: but about whether it is best confined to Friends, who will like it, as you do, more or less out of private prejudice--Two points in particular I want you to tell me;