Woodbridge: Oct^r. 20, 1880.

My dear Mrs. Kemble,

I was to have gone to London on Monday with my Italian Niece on her way homeward. But she feared saying ‘Farewell’ and desired me to let her set off alone, to avoid doing so.

Thus I delay my visit to you till November—perhaps toward the middle of it: when I hope to find you, with your blue and crimson Cushions [197] in Queen Anne’s Mansions, as a year ago. Mrs. Edwards is always in town: not at all forgetful of her husband; and there will be our Donne also of whom I hear nothing, and so conclude there is nothing to be told, and with him my Visits will be summed up.

Now, lose not a Day in providing yourself with Charles Tennyson Turner’s Sonnets, published by Kegan Paul. There is a Book for you to keep on your table, at your elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their Generation: and he perhaps would, if he could, have confined himself to limits not quite so narrow as the Sonnet. But he is a Poet, and cannot be harnessed.

I have still a few flowers surviving in my Garden; and I certainly never remember the foliage of trees so little changed in October’s third week. A little flight of Snow however: whose first flight used to quicken my old Crabbe’s fancy: Sir Eustace Grey written under such circumstances. [198]

And I am always yours
Littlegrange

(not ‘Markethill’ as you persist in addressing me.)