And now I have written more than enough for yourself and me: whose Eyes may be the worse for it to-morrow. I still go about in Blue Glasses, and flinch from Lamp and Candle. Pray let me know about your own Eyes, and your own Self; and believe me always sincerely yours
Littlegrange.
May 8, [1881].
If still at Leamington, you look upon a sight which I used to like well; that is, the blue Avon (as in this weather it will be) roaming through buttercup meadows all the way to Warwick; unless those meadows are all built over since I was there some forty years ago. . . .
I am got back to my Sévigné! who somehow returns to me in Spring; fresh as the Flowers. These latter have done but badly this Spring:
cut off or withered by the Cold: and now parched up by this blazing Sun and dry Wind.
From another Letter in the same year.
It has been what we call down here ‘smurring’ rather than raining, all day long, and I think that Flower and Herb already show their gratitude. My Blackbird (I think it is the same I have tried to keep alive during the Winter) seems also to have ‘wetted his Whistle,’ and what they call the ‘Cuckoo’s mate’ with a rather harsh scissor note announces that his Partner may be on the wing to these Latitudes. You will hear of him at Mr W. Shakespeare’s, it may be. [313] There must be Violets, white and blue, somewhere about where he lies, I think. They are generally found in a Churchyard, where also (the Hunters used to say) a Hare: for the same reason of comparative security I suppose.
To Miss S. F. Spedding.
Little Grange, Woodbridge.
July /81.
. . . As I am so very little known to yourself, or your Mother, I did not choose to trouble you with any of my own feelings about your Uncle’s Death. But I am not sorry to take this opportunity of saying, and, I know, truly, there was no one