I saw little in London: the Academy Pictures even below the average, I thought: only a Picture by Millais of an old Sea Captain [49c] being read to by
his Daughter which moistened my Eyes. I thought she was reading him the Bible, which he seemed half listening to, half rambling over his past Life: but I am told (I had no Catalogue) that she was reading about the North West Passage. There were three deep of Bonnets before Miss Thompson’s famous Roll Call of the Guards in the Crimea; so I did not wait till they fell away. [50a]
Yours always
E. F.G.
XX.
Lowestoft: Aug. 24, [1874.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
Your letter reached me this morning: and you see I lose no time in telling you that, as I hear from Pollock, Donne is allowed £350 a year retiring Pension. So I think neither he nor his friends have any reason to complain. His successor in the office is named (I think) ‘Piggott’ [50b]—Pollock thinks a good choice. Lord Hertford brought the old and the new Examiners together to Dinner: and all went off well. Perhaps Donne himself may have told you all this before now. He was to be, about this time, with the Blakesleys at Whitby or Filey. I have not heard any of these particulars from himself: nothing indeed since I saw him in London.
Pollock was puzzled by an entry in Macready’s
Journal—1831 or 1832—‘Received Thackeray’s Tragedy’ with some such name as ‘Retribution.’ I told Pollock I was sure it was not W. M. T., who (especially at that time) had more turn to burlesque than real Tragedy: and sure that he would have told me of it then, whether accepted or rejected—as rejected it was. Pollock thought for some while that, in spite of the comic Appearance we keep up, we should each of us rise up from the Grave with a MS. Tragedy in our hands, etc. However, he has become assured it was some other Thackeray: I suppose one mentioned by Planché as a Dramatic Dilettante—of the same Family, I think, as W. M. T.