Woodbridge: March 6, [1883.]

My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I have asked more than one person for tidings of you, for the last two months: and only yesterday heard from M. Donne that he had seen you at the Address to which I shall direct this letter. I wrote to you about mid-November, desiring Coutts to forward my letter: in which I said that if you were in no mood to write during the time of Mrs. Wister’s departure for America (which you had told me was to be November end) you were not to trouble yourself at all. Since which time I have really not known whether you had not gone off to America too. Anyhow, I thought better to wait till I had some token of your ‘whereabout,’ if nothing more. And now Mowbray tells me that much, and I will venture another Letter to you after so long an interval. You must always follow your own inclination as to answering me—not by any means make a ‘Duty’ of it.

As usual I have nothing to say of myself but what you have heard from me for years. Only that my (now one year old) friend Bronchitis has thus far done but little more than to keep me aware that he has not quitted me, nor even thinks of so doing. Nay, this very day, when the Snow which held off all winter is now coming down under stress of N.E. wind, I feel my friend stirring somewhat within.

Enough of that and of myself. Mowbray gives me a very good report of you—Absit Nemesis for my daring to write it!—And you have got back to something of our old London Quarters, which I always look to as better than the new. And do you go to even a Play, in the old Quarters also? Wright, who was with me at Christmas, was taken by Macmillan to see ‘Much Ado,’ and found, all except Scenery, etc. (which was too good) so bad that he vowed he would never go to see Sh. ‘at any of your Courts’ again. Irving without any Humour, Miss Terry with simply Animal Spirits, etc. However, Wright did intend once more to try—Comedy of Errors, at some theatre; but how he liked it—I may hear if he comes to me at Easter.

Now this is enough—is it not?—for a letter: but I am as always

Sincerely yours,

E. F.G.