By the by, I began to think my own Eyes, which were blazed away by Paraffin some dozen years ago, were going out of me just before Christmas. So for the two dreary months which followed I could scarce read or write. And as yet I am obliged to use them tenderly: only too glad to find that they are better; and not quite going (as I hope) yet. I think they will light me out of this world with care. On March 31 I shall enter on my seventy-third year: and none of my Family reaches over seventy-five.
When I was in London I was all but tempted to jump into a Cab and just knock at Carlyle’s door, and ask after him, and give my card, and—run away. . . .
The cold wind will not leave us, and my Crocuses do not like it. Still I manage to sit on one of those Benches you may remember under the lee side of the hedge, and still my seventy-third year approaches.
To Miss Anna Biddell.
March 1881.
I can only say of Carlyle what you say; except that I do not find the style ‘tiresome’ any more than I did his Talk: which it is, only put on Paper, quite fresh, from an Individual Man of Genius, unlike
almost all Autobiographic Memoirs. I doubt not that he wrote it by way of some Employment, as well as (in his Wife’s case) some relief to his Feelings. . . .
I did not know that I should feel Spedding’s Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years [since] meeting him. But I knew that I could always get the Word I wanted of him by Letter, and also that from time to time I should meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his Mind wandered. I wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something, as one does in a Dream: and truly enough, I have lost him. ‘Matthew is in his Grave, etc.’
To Mrs. Kemble.
[20 March, 1881.]