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,

Music Score

Do you remember? I afterwards associated it with some stray verses applicable to one I loved.

‘Heav’n would answer all your wishes,
Were it much as Earth is here;
Flowing Rivers full of Fishes,
And good Hunting half the Year.’

Well:—here is the cause of this Letter, so soon after our conversing together, face to face, in Queen Anne’s Mansions. A strange little After-piece to twenty years’ Separation.

And now, here are the Sweet Peas, and Marigolds, sown in the Spring, still in a faded Blossom, and the Spirit that Tennyson told us of fifty years ago haunting the Flower-beds, [160] and a Robin singing—nobody else.

And I am to lose my capital Reader, he tells me, in a Fortnight, no Book-binding surviving under the pressure of Bad Times in little Woodbridge. ‘My dear Fitz, there is no Future for little Country towns,’ said Pollock to me when he came here some years ago.

But my Banker here found the Bond which he had considered unnecessary, safe in his Strong Box:—and I am your sincere Ancient

E. F.G.

Burn the poor Caricature if offensive to you. The ‘Alexander’ profile was become somewhat tarnished then.