I have only just got my Garden laid up for the winter, and planted some trees in lieu of those which that last gale blew down. I hear that Kensington Gardens suffered greatly: how was it with your Green Park, on which you now look down from such a height, and, I suppose, through a London Fog?
Ever yours
Little G.
XCVII.
[Dec. 1881.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble:
I will write to you before 1881 is gone, carrying Christmas along with him. A dismal Festivity it always seems to me—I dare say not much merrier to you. I think you will tell me where, and with whom, you pass it. My own company are to be, Aldis Wright, with whom Shakespeare, etc., a London Clerk, may be—that is, if he can get sufficient Holyday—and one or two Guests for the Day.
I forget if I wrote to you since I had a letter from Hallam Tennyson, telling me of a Visit that he and his Father had been making to Warwickshire and Sherwood. The best news was that A. T. was ‘walking and working as usual.’
Why, what is become of your Sequel? I see no more advertisement of it in Athenæum and Academy—unless it appears in the last, which I have not conned over. Somehow I think it not impossible—or even unlikely—that you—may—have—withdrawn—for some reason of your own. You see that I speak with hesitation—meaning no offence—and only hoping for my own, and other sakes that I am all astray.
We are reading Nigel, which I had not expected to care for: but so far as I got—four first Chapters—makes me long for Night to hear more. That return
of Richie to his Master, and dear George Heriot’s visit just after! Oh, Sir Walter is not done for yet by Austens and Eliots. If one of his Merits were not his clear Daylight, one thinks, there ought to be Societies to keep his Lamp trimmed as well as—Mr. Browning. He is The Newest Shakespeare Society of Mr. Furnivall.