But I also write to beg you not to leave your Daughter for ever so short a while, simply because you had so arranged, and told me of your Arrangement.
If this Note of mine reach you somehow to morrow, there will be plenty of time for you to let me know whether you go or not: and, even if there be not time before Wednesday, why, I shall take no harm in so far as I really have a very little to do, and moreover shall see a poor Lady who has just lost her husband, after nearly three years anxious and uncertain watching, and now finds herself (brave and strong little Woman) somewhat floored now the long conflict is over. These are the people I may have told you of whom I have for some years met here and there in Suffolk—chiefly by the Sea; and we somehow suited one another. [158] He was a brave, generous, Boy (of sixty) with a fine Understanding, and great Knowledge and Relish of Books: but he had applied too late in Life to Painting which he could not master, though he made it his Profession. A remarkable mistake, I always thought, in so sensible a man.
Whether I find you next week, or afterward (for I promise to find you any time you appoint) I hope to find you alone—for twenty years’ Solitude make me very shy: but always your sincere
E. F.G.
LXII.
Little Grange: Woodbridge. October 7, [1879]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
When I got home yesterday, and emptied my Pockets, I found the precious Enclosure which I had meant to show, and (if you pleased) to give you. A wretched Sketch (whether by me or another, I know not) of your Brother John in some Cambridge Room, about the year 1832-3, when he and I were staying there, long after Degree time—he, studying Anglo-Saxon, I suppose—reading something, you see, with a glass of Ale on the table—or old Piano-forte was it?—to which he would sing very well his German Songs. Among them,
Do you remember? I afterwards associated it with some stray verses applicable to one I loved.