[184b] On June 30, 1880, he wrote to me, ‘Half her Beauty is the liquid melodiousness of her language—all unpremeditated as a Blackbird’s.’
[186] See letter of May 5, 1877.
[187] In a letter to me of the same date he wrote: ‘Last night when Miss Tox was just coming, like a good Soul, to ask about the ruined Dombey, we heard a Splash of Rain, and I had the Book shut up, and sat listening to the Shower by myself—till it blew over, I am sorry to say, and no more of the sort all night. But we are thankful for that small mercy.
‘I am reading through my Sévigné again—welcome as the flowers of May.’
[188a] On June 9, 1879, FitzGerald wrote to me: “I was from Tuesday to Saturday last in Norfolk with my old Bredfield Party—George, not very well: and, as he has not written to tell me he is better, I am rather anxious. You should know him; and his Country: which is still the old Country which we have lost here; small enclosures, with hedgeway timber: green gipsey drift-ways: and Crome Cottage and Farmhouse of that beautiful yellow ‘Claylump’ with red pantile roof’d—not the d---d Brick and Slate of these parts.”
[188b] See ‘Letters,’ ii. 290.
[190] See letter of Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, June 15, 1689.
[191] In one of FitzGerald’s Common Place Books he gives the story thus: “When Chancellor Cheverny went home in his Old Age and for the last time, ‘Messieurs’ (dit-il aux Gentilshommes du Canton accourus pour le saluer), ‘Je ressemble au bon Lièvre qui vient mourir au Gîte.’”
[192a] Tom Taylor died July 12, 1880.
[192b] On July 16 FitzGerald wrote to me: ‘Not being assured that you were back from Revision, I wrote yesterday to Cowell asking him—and you, when returned—to call on Professor Goodwin, of American Cambridge, who goes to-morrow to your Cambridge—to see—if not to stay with—Mr. Jebb. Mr. Goodwin proposed to give me a look here before he went to Cambridge: but I told him I could not bear the thought of his coming all this way for such a purpose. I think you can witness that I do not wish even old English Friends to take me except on their way elsewhere: and for an American Gentleman! It is not affectation to say that any such proposal worried me. So what must I do but ask him to be sure to see Messrs. Wright and Cowell when he got to Cambridge: and spend part of one of his days there in going to Bury, and (even if he cared not for the Abbey with its Abbot Samson and Jocelyn) to sit with a Bottle of light wine at the Angel window, face to face with that lovely Abbey gate. Perhaps Cowell, I said, might go over with him—knowing and loving Gothic—that was a liberty for me to take with Cowell, but he need not go—I did not hint at you. I suppose I muddled it all. But do show the American Gentleman some civilities, to make amends for the disrespect which you and Cowell told me of in April.’