XXVI.
Lowestoft, March 17/75.
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
This bit of Letter is written to apprise you that, having to go to Woodbridge three days ago, I sent you by Post a little Volume of the Plays, and (what I had forgotten) a certain little Prose Dialogue [65] done up with them. This is more than you wanted, but so it is. The Dialogue is a pretty thing in some respects: but disfigured by some confounded smart writing in parts: And this is all that needs saying about the whole concern. You must not think necessary to say anything more about it yourself, only that you receive the Book. If you do not, in a month’s time, I shall suppose it has somehow lost its way over the Atlantic:
and then I will send you the Plays you asked for, stitched together—and those only.
I hope you got my Letter (which you had not got when your last was written) about Crabbe: for I explained in it why I did not wish to trouble you or Mr. Furness any more with such an uncertain business. Anyhow, I must ask you to thank him for the trouble he had already taken, as I hope you know that I thank you also for your share in it.
I scarce found a Crocus out in my Garden at home, and so have come back here till some green leaf shows itself. We are still under the dominion of North East winds, which keep people coughing as well as the Crocus under ground. Well, we hope to earn all the better Spring by all this Cold at its outset.
I have so often spoken of my fear of troubling you by all my Letters, that I won’t say more on that score. I have heard no news of Donne since I wrote. I have been trying to read Gil Blas and La Fontaine again; but, as before, do not relish either. [67] I must get back to my Don Quixote by and by.
Yours as ever
E. F.G.
I wonder if this letter will smell of Tobacco: for it is written just after a Pipe, and just before going to bed.
XXVII.
Lowestoft: April 9/75.
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
I wrote you a letter more than a fortnight ago—mislaid it—and now am rather ashamed to receive one from you thanking me beforehand for the mighty Book which I posted you a month ago. I only hope you will not feel bound to acknowledge [it] when it does reach you, I think I said so in the Letter I wrote to go along with it. And I must say no more in the way of deprecating your Letters, after what you write me. Be assured that all my deprecations were for your sake, not mine; but there’s an end of them now.
I had a longish letter from Donne himself some while ago; indicating, I thought, some debility of Mind and Body. He said, however, he was going on very well. And a Letter from Mowbray (three or four days old) speaks of his Father as ‘remarkably well.’ But these Donnes won’t acknowledge Bodily any more than Mental fault in those they love. Blanche had been ill, of neuralgic Cold: Valentia not well: but both on the mending hand now.
It has been indeed the Devil of a Winter: and even now—To-day as I write—no better than it was three months ago. The Daffodils scarce dare take April, let alone March; and I wait here till a Green Leaf shows itself about Woodbridge.
I have been looking over four of Shakespeare’s Plays, edited by Clark and Wright: editors of the ‘Cambridge Shakespeare.’ These ‘Select Plays’ are very well done, I think: Text, and Notes; although with somewhat too much of the latter. Hamlet, Macbeth, Tempest, and Shylock—I heard them talking in my room—all alive about me.
By the by—How did you read ‘To-morrow and To-morrow, etc.’ All the Macbeths I have heard took the opportunity to become melancholy when they came to this: and, no doubt, some such change from Fury and Desperation was a relief to the Actor, and perhaps to the Spectator. But I think it should all go in the same Whirlwind of Passion as the rest: Folly!—Stage Play!—Farthing Candle; Idiot, etc. Macready used to drop his Truncheon when he heard of the Queen’s Death, and stand with his Mouth open for some while—which didn’t become him.
I have not seen his Memoir: only an extract or two in the Papers. He always seemed to me an Actor by Art and Study, with some native Passion to inspire him. But as to Genius—we who have seen Kean!
I don’t know if you were acquainted with Sir A. Helps, [68] whose Death (one of this Year’s Doing) is much regretted by many. I scarcely knew him except at Cambridge forty years ago: and could never relish his Writings, amiable and sensible as they are. I suppose they will help to swell that substratum of
Intellectual Peat (Carlyle somewhere calls it) [69] from [which] one or two living Trees stand out in a Century. So Shakespeare above all that Old Drama which he grew amidst, and which (all represented by him alone) might henceforth be left unexplored, with the exception of a few twigs of Leaves gathered here and there—as in Lamb’s Specimens. Is Carlyle himself—with all his Genius—to subside into the Level? Dickens, with all his Genius, but whose Men and Women act and talk already after a more obsolete fashion than Shakespeare’s? I think some of Tennyson will survive, and drag the deader part along with it, I suppose. And (I doubt) Thackeray’s terrible Humanity.
And I remain yours ever sincerely,
A very small Peat-contributor,
E. F.G.
I am glad to say that Clark and Wright Bowdlerize
Shakespeare, though much less extensively than Bowdler. But in one case, I think, they have gone further—altering, instead of omitting: which is quite wrong!