I have taken that single little Lodging at Dunwich for the next three months, and shall soon be under those Priory Walls again. But the poor little ‘Dunwich Rose,’ brought by those monks from the North Country, will have passed, after the hot weather we are at last having. Write when you will, and not till then; I believe in your friendly regard, with, or without, a Letter to assure me of it.
Woodbridge. October 15/78.
My dear Norton,
. . . I got little more than a Fortnight at that old Dunwich; for my Landlady took seriously ill, and finally died: and the Friend [255a] whom I went to meet there became so seriously ill also as to be obliged to return to London before August was over. So then I went to an ugly place [255b] on the sea shore also, some fifteen miles off the old Priory; and there was with some Nephews and Nieces, trying to read the Novels from a Circulating Library with indifferent Success. And now here am I at home once more; getting my Garden, if not my House, in order; and here I shall
be probably all Winter, except for a few days visit to that sick Friend in London, if he desires it. . . .
We too have been having a Fortnight of delightful weather, so as one has been able to sit abroad all the Day. And now, that Spirit which Tennyson sung of in one of his early Poems is heard, as it were, walking and talking to himself among the decaying flower-beds. This Season (such as we have been enjoying)—my old Crabbe sings of it too, in a very pathetic way to me: for it always seems to me an Image of the Decline of Life also.
It was a Day ere yet the Autumn closed,
When Earth before her Winter’s War reposed;
When from the Garden as we look’d above,
No Cloud was seen, and nothing seem’d to move;
[When the wide River was a silver Sheet,
And upon Ocean slept the unanchored fleet;] [256a]
When the wing’d Insect settled in our sight,
And waited wind to recommence its flight. [256b]
You see I cross out two lines which, fine as they are, go beyond the Garden: but I am not sure if I place them aright. The two last lines you will feel, I think: for I suppose some such Insect is in America too. (You must not mind Crabbe’s self-contradiction about ‘nothing moving.’) . . .
I have two Letters I want to send Lowell: but I do not like writing as if to extort answers from him.
You see Carlyle’s Note within: I do not want it back, thank you. Good night: for Night it is: and my Reader is coming. We look forward to The Lammermoor, and Old Mortality before long. I made another vain attempt on George Eliot at Lowestoft, Middlemarch.