Woodbridge, July 31/76.

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

A better pen than usual tempts me to write the little I have to tell you; so that [at] any rate your Eyes shall not be afflicted as sometimes I doubt they are by my MS.

Which MS. puts me at once in mind of Print: and to tell you that I shall send you Quaritch’s Reprint of Agamemnon: which is just done after many blunders. The revises were not sent me, as I desired: so several things are left as I meant not: but ‘enfin’ here it is at last so fine that I am ashamed of it. For, whatever the merit of it may be, it can’t come near all this fine Paper, Margin, etc., which Quaritch will have as counting on only a few buyers, who will buy—in America almost wholly, I think. And, as this is wholly due to you, I send you the Reprint, however little different to what you had before.

‘Tragedy wonders at being so fine,’ which leads me to that which ought more properly to have led to it: your last two Papers of ‘Gossip,’ which are capital, both for the Story told, and the remarks that arise from it. To-morrow, or next day, I shall have a new Number; and I really do count rather childishly on their arrival. Spedding also is going over some of his old Bacon ground in the Contemporary, [111] and his writing is always delightful to me though I cannot agree with him at last. I am told he is in full Vigour: as indeed I might guess from his writing. I heard from Donne some three weeks ago: proposing a Summer Holyday at Whitby, in Yorkshire: Valentia, I think, not very well again: Blanche then with her Brother Charles. They all speak very highly of Mrs. Santley’s kindness and care. Mowbray talks of coming down this way toward the end of August: but had not, when he last wrote, fixed on his Holyday place.

Beside my two yearly elder Nieces, I have now a younger who has spent the last five Winters in Florence with your once rather intimate (I think) Jane FitzGerald my Sister. She married, (you may know) a Clergyman considerably older than herself. I wrote to Annie Thackeray lately, and had an answer (from the Lakes) to say she was pretty well—as also Mr. Stephen.

And I am ever yours
E. F.G.

P.S. On second thoughts I venture to send you A. T.’s letter, which may interest you and cannot shame her. I do not want it again.