Woodbridge: April 23, [1880.]

My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I was really sorry to hear from you that you were about to move again. I suppose the move has been made by this time: as I do not know whither, I must trouble Coutts, I suppose, to forward my Letter to you; and then you will surely tell me your new Address, and also how you find yourself in it.

I have nothing to report of myself, except that I was for ten days at Lowestoft in company (though not in the house) with Edward Cowell the Professor: with whom, as in last Autumn, I read, and all but finished, the second part of Don Quixote. There came Aldis Wright to join us; and he quite agrees with what you say concerning the Jewel-robbery in the Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers’ Walls as he went out in Act ii. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons should have told Johnson that she preferred Constance to any of Shakespeare’s Characters: perhaps I misremember; she may have said Queen Catharine. [183a] I must not forget to thank you for the Nineteenth Century from Hatchard’s; Tieck’s Article very interesting to me, and I should suppose just in its criticism as to what John Kemble then was. I have a little print of him about the time: in Œdipus—(whose Play, I wonder, on such a dangerous subject?) from a Drawing by that very clever Artist De Wilde: who never missed Likeness, Character, and Life, even when reduced to 16mo Engraving. [183b]

What you say of Tennyson’s Eyes reminded me that he complained of the Dots in Persian type flickering before them: insomuch that he gave up studying it. This was some thirty years ago. Talking on the subject one day to his Brother Frederick, he—(Frederick)—said he thought possible that a sense of the Sublime was connected with Blindness: as in Homer, Milton, and Handel: and somewhat with old Wordsworth perhaps; though his Eyes were, I think, rather weak than consuming with any inward Fire.

I heard from Mr. Norton that Lowell had returned to Madrid in order to bring his Wife to London—if possible. She seems very far from being recovered; and (Norton thinks) would not have recovered in Spain: so Lowell will have one consolation for leaving the land of Cervantes and Calderon to come among the English, whom I believe he likes little better than Hawthorne liked them.

I believe that yesterday was the first of my hearing the Nightingale; certainly of hearing my Nightingale in the trees which I planted, ‘hauts comme Ça,’ as Madame de SÉvignÉ says. I am positively about to read her again, ‘tout Madame de SÉvignÉ,’ as Ste. Beuve said. [184a] What better now Spring is come? [184b] She would be enjoying her Rochers just now. And I think this is a dull letter of mine; but I am always sincerely yours

E. de Petitgrange.