and poisoned Wife, Wife’s Mother and Sister after insuring their Lives. De Quincey (who was one of the Magazine) has one of his Essays about this wretch.
Here is another half-sheet filled, after all: I am afraid rather troublesome to read. In three or four days we shall have another Atlantic, and I am ever yours
E. F.G.
XXXV.
Woodbridge: Decr. 29/75.
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
You will say I am a very good Creature indeed, for beginning to answer your Letter the very day it reaches me. But so it happens that this same day also comes a Letter from Laurence the Painter, who tells me something of poor Minnie’s Death, [90b] which answers to the Query in your Letter. Laurence sends me Mrs. Brookfield’s Note to him: from which I quote to you—no!—I will make bold to send you her Letter itself! Laurence says he is generally averse to showing others a Letter meant for himself (the little Gentleman that he is!), but he ventures in this case, knowing me to be an old friend of the Family. And so I venture to post it over the Atlantic
to you who take a sincere Interest in them also. I wonder if I am doing wrong?
In the midst of all this mourning comes out a new Volume of Thackeray’s Drawings—or Sketches—as I foresaw it would be, too much Caricature, not so good as much [of] his old Punch; and with none of the better things I wanted them to put in—for his sake, as well as the Community’s. I do not wonder at the Publisher’s obstinacy, but I wonder that Annie T. did not direct otherwise. I am convinced I can hear Thackeray saying, when such a Book as this was proposed to him—‘Oh, come—there has been enough of all this’—and crumpling up the Proof in that little hand of his. For a curiously little hand he had, uncharacteristic of the grasp of his mind: I used to consider it half inherited from the Hindoo people among whom he was born. [91]
I dare say I told you of the Proposal to congratulate Carlyle on his eightieth Birthday; and probably some