(Reader finishes Cake and Porter: and we now adjourn to ‘All the Year Round.’)
10 p.m. ‘All the Year Round’ read—part of it—and Reader departed.
Pray do tell me if any one reads Crabbe in America; nobody does here, you know, but myself; who bore about it. Does Mrs. Wister, who reads many things? Does Mrs. Kemble, now she has the Atlantic between her and the old Country?
‘Over the Forth I look to the North,
But what is the North and its Hielands to me?
The North and the East gie small ease to my breast,
The far foreign land and the wide rolling Sea.’ [37]
I think that last line will bring the Tears into Mrs. Kemble’s Eyes—which I can’t find in the Photograph she sent me. Yet they are not extinguisht, surely?
I read in some Athenæum that A. Tennyson was changing his Publisher again: and some one told me that it was in consequence of the resigning Publisher having lost money by his contract with the Poet; which was, to pay him £1000 per Quarter for the exclusive sale of his Poems. It was a Woodbridge Literati who told me this, having read it in a Paper called ‘The Publisher.’ More I know not.
A little more such stuff I might write: but I think here is enough of it. For this Night, anyhow: so I shall lick the Ink from my Pen; and smoke one Pipe, not forgetting you while I do so; and if nothing turns up To-morrow, here is my Letter done, and I remaining yours always sincerely
E. F.G.
XV.
Woodbridge: Nov. 24, [1873].