Woodbridge. February 20, 1881.
My dear Norton,
. . . I have little to say about Carlyle, but that my heart did follow him to Ecclefechan, from which place I have, or had, several letters dated by him. I think it was fine that he should anticipate all Westminster Abbey honours, and determine to be laid where he was born, among his own kindred, and with all the simple and dignified obsequies of (I suppose) his own old Puritan Church. The Care of his Posthumous Memory will be left in good hands, I believe, if in those of Mr. Froude. His Niece, who had not answered a Note of Enquiry I wrote her some two months ago, answered it a few days after his Death: she had told him, she said, of my letter, and he said, ‘You must answer that.’
To Mrs. Kemble.
[March, 1881].
My dear Lady,
It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding. Yes: Aldis Wright had
apprised me of the matter just after it happened, he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting for some communication that S. had promised him! Whether to live, or to die, he will be Socrates still.
Directly that I heard from Wright, I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me just a Post Card daily, if he or his Wife could, with but one or two words on it, ‘Better,’ ‘Less well,’ or whatever it might be. This morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be expected, according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that French Adage, ‘Monsieur se porte mal—Monsieur se porte mieux—Monsieur est—!’ Ah, you know, or you guess, the rest.
My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years and more, and probably should never see again; but he lives, his old Self, in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but embellish the recollection of him, if it could be embellished; for he is but the same that he was from a Boy, all that is best in Heart and Head, a man that would be incredible had one not known him.