to dispense with her and have you over here: but I can’t well make sure what day: sometimes I ask one man to go, sometimes another, and so all is cut up. Besides I was away six weeks in all at Lowestoft; then a fortnight at Ramsgate, Dover, Calais, etc. When the apple ερευθεται ακρω επ οσδω [69a]—then my Ship will be laid up, and one more Summer of mine departed, and then I hope you will come over to talk over many things.
Read Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt: which you won’t like, because of some latitude in Religious thought, and also because of some vulgar slang, such as Schoolboys, and American Women use, and it is now the bad fashion for even English Ladies to adopt. But the Book is worth reading notwithstanding this, and making allowance for a Lady or Gentleman seeing all rose-colour in a new Pet or Plaything. On sending the Book back to the Library this morning I quote out of it something about Oriental Poetry which you may know well enough but I was not so conscious of. In a Love-song where the Lover declines a Physician for the wound which the Wind (Love) has caused, he says ‘For only he who has hurt can cure me.’ ‘N.B. The masculine pronoun is always used instead of the feminine in Poetry, out of decorum: sometimes even in conversation.’ [69b] (It being as forbidden to talk of women as to see them, etc.)
I was very pleased with Calais, which remains the ‘vieille France’ of my Childhood.
Donne came to see me for a Day at Lowestoft, the same ‘vieil Donne’ also of my Boyhood.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
To John Allen.
Markethill: Woodbridge.
Nov. 1/65.
My dear Allen,
Let me hear how you and yours are: it is now a long [time] since we exchanged Letters. G. Crabbe wrote me you were corresponding with a very different person: the Editor of the Times. I never see that nor any other Paper but the good old Athenæum. G. Crabbe also said you were at the Norwich Congress. Then why didn’t you come here? He said the Bishop of Oxford, whom he had never met before, met him at Lord Walsingham’s, and shook him so cordially by the hand, and pressed him so for a visit to Oxford, that he (G. C.) rather thought he (Sam) deserved the Epithet usually added to his Name. Perhaps, however, the Bishop did feel for a Grandson of the Poet.
I have no more to tell you of myself this past Summer than for so many Summers past. Only sailing about, Lowestoft, Ramsgate, Dover, Calais, etc. I was very pleased indeed with Calais; just