My dear Sir,
You have doubtless heard from Mr. Lowell since he got to Spain: he may have mentioned that unaccomplished visit to me which he was to have undertaken at your Desire. I doubt the two letters I wrote to be given him in London (through Quaritch) did not reach him: only the first which said my house was full of Nieces, so as I must lodge him (as I did our Laureate) at the Inn: but the second Letter was to say that I had Houseroom, and would meet him at the Train any day and hour. He wrote to me the day before he left for Paris to say that he had never intended to do more than just run down for the Day, shake hands, and away! That I had an Instinct
against: that one half-day’s meeting of two Septuagenarians (I believe), to see one another’s face for that once, ‘But here, upon that Bank and Shoal of Time and’ then, ‘jump the Life to come’ as well as the Life before. No: I say I am glad he did not do that: but I had my house all ready to entertain him as best I could; and had even planned a little Visit to our neighbouring Coast, where are the Village remains of a once large Town devoured by the Sea: and, yet undevoured (except by Henry VIII.), the grey walls of a Grey Friars’ Priory, beside which they used to walk, under such Sunsets as illumine them still. This pathetic Ruin, still remaining by the Sea, would (I feel sure) have been more to one from the New Atlantis than all London can show: but I should have liked better had Mr. Lowell seen it on returning to America, rather than going to Spain, where the yet older and more splendid Moors would soon have effaced the memory of our poor Dunwich. If you have a Map of England, look for it on the Eastern Coast. If Mr. Lowell should return this way, and return in the proper Season for such cold Climate as ours, he shall see it: and so shall you, if you will, under like conditions; including a reasonable and available degree of Health in myself to do the honours. . . .
I live down in such a Corner of this little Country that I see scarce any one but my Woodbridge Fellow-townsmen, and learn but little from such Friends as could tell me of the World beyond. But the English
do not generally love Letter writing: and very few of us like it the more as we get older. So I have but little to say that deserves an Answer from you: but please to write me a little: a word about Mr. Lowell, whom you have doubtless heard from. [One politeness I had prepared for him here was, to show him some sentences in his Books which I did not like!] Which also leads me to say that some one sent me a number of your American ‘Nation’ with a Review of my redoubtable Agamemnon: written by a superior hand, and, I think, quite discriminating in its distribution of Blame and Praise: though I will not say the Praise was not more than deserved; but it was where deserved, I think.
To J. R. Lowell. [224]
Woodbridge. August 26/77.
My dear Sir,
I ought scarce to trouble you amid your diplomatic cares and dignities. But I will, so far as to say I hope you had my second letter before you left London: saying that my house was emptied of Nieces, and I was ready to receive you for as long as you would. Indeed, I chiefly flinched at the thought of your taking the trouble to come down only for a Day: which means, less than half a Day: a sort of meeting that seems a mockery in the lives
of two men, one of whom I know by Register to be close on Seventy. I do indeed deprecate any one coming down out of his way: but, if he come, I would rather he did so for such time as would allow of some palpable Acquaintance. And I meant to take you to no other sight than the bare grey walls of an old Grey Friars’ Priory near the Sea; and I proposed to make myself further agreeable by showing you three or two passages in your Books that I do not like amid all the rest which I like so much: and had even meant to give you a very small thirty year old Dialogue of my own, which one of your ‘Study Windows’ reminded me of. All this I meant; and, any how, wrote to say that I and my house were ready. And there is enough of the matter. You are busied with other and greater things. Nor must you think yourself called on to answer this letter at all.