But this of our dear Donne over-clouds me a little, as I doubt not it does you. Mowbray was to have come down for three days just now to a Friend five miles off: but of course—you know.
Somehow I am at a loss to write to you on such airy topics as usual. Therefore, I shall simply ask you to let me know, in as few lines as you care to write, when you leave England: and to believe me, wherever you go,
Your sincere Ancient
E. F.G.
CV.
Woodbridge, June 24, [1882.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
You wrote me that you had bidden Blanche to let you know about her Father: and this I conclude that she, or some of her family have done. Nevertheless, I will make assurance doubly sure by enclosing you the letters I received from Mowbray, according to their dates: and will send them—for once—through Coutts, in hopes that he may find you, as you will
not allow me to do without his help. Of that Death [243a] I say nothing: as you may expect of me, and as I should expect of you also; if I may say so.
I have been to pay my annual Visit to George Crabbe and his Sisters in Norfolk. And here is warm weather come to us at last (as not unusual after the Longest Day), and I have almost parted with my Bronchial Cold—though, as in the old Loving Device of the open Scissors, ‘To meet again.’ I can only wonder it is no worse with me, considering how my contemporaries have been afflicted.
I am now reading Froude’s Carlyle, which seems to me well done. Insomuch, that I sent him all the Letters I had kept of Carlyle’s, to use or not as he pleased, etc. I do not think they will be needed among the thousand others he has: especially as he tells me that his sole commission is, to edit Mrs. Carlyle’s Letters, for which what he has already done is preparatory: and when this is completed, he will add a Volume of personal Recollections of C. himself. Froude’s Letter to me is a curious one: a sort of vindication (it seems to me) of himself—quite uncalled for by me, who did not say one word on the subject. [243b] The job, he says, was forced