[Woodbridge, 1873.]

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

You must attribute this third Letter to an ‘IdÉe’ that has come into my head relating to those Memoirs of yourself which you say you are at some loss to dispose of. I can easily understand that your Children, born and bred (I think) in another World, would not take so much interest in them as some of your old Friends who make part of your Recollections: as you yourself occupy much of theirs. But then they are old Friends; and are not their Children, Executors and Assigns, as little to be depended on as your own Kith and Kin? Well; I bethink me of one of your old Friends’ Children whom I could reckon upon for you, as I would for myself: Mowbray Donne: the Son of one who you know loves you of old, and inheriting all his Father’s Loyalty to his Father’s Friends. I am quite convinced that he is to be perfectly depended upon in all respects for this purpose; for his Love, his Honour, and his Intelligence. I should then make him one day read the Memoirs to me—for I can’t be assured of my own Eyes interpreting your MS. without so much difficulty as would disturb one’s Enjoyment, or Appreciation, of such a Memoir. Unless indeed you should one day come down yourself to my ChÂteau in dull Woodbridge, and there read it over, and talk it over.

Well; this is what I seriously advise, always supposing that you have decided not to print and publish the Memoir during your Life. No doubt you could make money of it, beside ‘bolting up’ [30] such Accident as the Future comprehends. The latter would, I know, be the only recommendation to you.

I don’t think you will do at all as I advise you. But I nevertheless advise you as I should myself in case I had such a Record as you have to leave behind me.—

Now once more for French Songs. When I was in Paris in 1830, just before that Revolution, I stopped one Evening on the Boulevards by the Madeleine to listen to a Man who was singing to his Barrel-organ. Several passing ‘Blouses’ had stopped also: not only to listen, but to join in the Songs, having bought little ‘Libretti’ of the words from the Musician. I bought one too; for, I suppose, the smallest French Coin; and assisted in the Song which the Man called out beforehand (as they do Hymns at Church), and of which I enclose you the poor little Copy. ‘Le Bon Pasteur, s’il vous plait’—I suppose the Circumstances: the ‘beau temps,’ the pleasant Boulevards, the then so amiable People, all contributed to the effect this Song had upon me; anyhow, it has constantly revisited my memory for these forty-three years; and I was thinking, the other day, touched me more than any of BÉranger’s most beautiful Things. This, however, may be only one of ‘Old Fitz’s’ Crotchets, as Tennyson and others would call them. [31]

I have been trying again at another Great Artist’s work which I never could care for at all, Goethe’s Faust, in Hayward’s Prose Translation; Eighth Edition. Hayward quotes from Goethe himself, that, though of course much of a Poem must evaporate in a Prose Translation, yet the Essence must remain. Well; I distinguish as little of that Essential Poetry in the Faust now as when I first read it—longer ago than ‘Le Bon Pasteur,’ and in other subsequent Attempts. I was tempted to think this was some Defect—great Defect—in myself: but a Note at the end of the Volume informs me that a much greater Wit than I was in the same plight—even Coleridge; who admires the perfect German Diction, the Songs, Choruses, etc. (which are such parts as cannot be translated into Prose); he also praises Margaret and Mephistopheles; but thinks Faust himself dull, and great part of the Drama flat and tiresome; and the whole Thing not a self-evolving Whole, but an unconnected Series of Scenes: all which are parts that can be judged of from Translation, by Goethe’s own Authority. I find a great want of Invention and Imagination both in the Events and Characters.

Gervinus’ Theory of Hamlet is very staking. Perhaps Shakespeare himself would have admitted, without ever having expressly designed, it. I always said with regard to the Explanation of Hamlet’s Madness or Sanity, that Shakespeare himself might not have known the Truth any more than we understand the seeming Discords we see in People we know best. Shakespeare intuitively imagined, and portrayed, the Man without being able to give a reason—perhaps—I believe in Genius doing this: and remain your Inexhaustible Correspondent

E. F.G.

Excuse this very bad writing, which I have gone over ‘with the pen of Correction,’ and would have wholly re-written if my Eyes were not be-glared with the Sun on the River. You need only read the first part about Donne.