Lowestoft: October 24/76.

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

Little—Nothing—as I have to write, I am nevertheless beginning to write to you, from this old Lodging of mine, from which I think our Correspondence chiefly began—ten years ago. I am in the same Room: the same dull Sea moaning before me: the same Wind screaming through the Windows: so I take up the same old Story. My Lugger was then about building: [115] she has passed into other hands now: I see her from time to time bouncing into Harbour, with her ‘244’ on her Bows. Her Captain and I have parted: I thought he did very wrongly—Drink, among other things: but he did not think he did wrong: a different Morality from ours—that, indeed, of Carlyle’s ancient Sea Kings. I saw him a few days ago in his house, with Wife and Children; looking, as always, too big for his house: but always grand, polite, and unlike anybody else. I was noticing the many Flies in the room—‘Poor things,’ he said, ‘it is the warmth of our Stove makes them alive.’ When Tennyson was with me, whose Portrait hangs in my house in company with those of Thackeray and this Man (the three greatest men I have known), I thought that both Tennyson and Thackeray were inferior to him in respect of Thinking of Themselves. When Tennyson was telling me of how The Quarterly abused him (humorously too), and desirous of knowing why one did not care for his later works, etc., I thought that if he had lived an active Life, as Scott and Shakespeare; or even ridden, shot, drunk, and played the Devil, as Byron, he would have done much more, and talked about it much less. ‘You know,’ said Scott to Lockhart, ‘that I don’t care a Curse about what I write,’ [116] and one sees he did not. I don’t believe it was far otherwise with Shakespeare. Even old Wordsworth, wrapt up in his Mountain mists, and proud as he was, was above all this vain Disquietude: proud, not vain, was he: and that a Great Man (as Dante) has some right to be—but not to care what the Coteries say. What a Rigmarole!

Donne scarce ever writes to me (Twalmley the Great), and if he do not write to you, depend upon it he thinks he has nothing worth sending over the Atlantic. I heard from Mowbray quite lately that his Father was very well.

Yes: you told me in a previous Letter that you were coming to England after Christmas. I shall not be up to going to London to see you, with all your Company about you; perhaps (don’t think me very impudent!) you may come down, if we live till Summer, to my Woodbridge ChÂteau, and there talk over some old things.

I make a kind of Summer in my Room here with Boccaccio. What a Mercy that one can return with a Relish to these Books! As Don Quixote can only be read in his Spanish, so I do fancy Boccaccio only in his Italian: and yet one is used to fancy that Poetry is the mainly untranslateable thing. How prettily innocent are the Ladies, who, after telling very loose Stories, finish with ‘E cosÌ Iddio faccia [noi] godere del nostro Amore, etc.,’ sometimes, Domeneddio, more affectionately. [117a]

Anyhow, these Ladies are better than the accursed Eastern Question; [117b] of which I have determined to read, and, if possible, hear, no more till the one question be settled of Peace or War. If war, I am told I may lose some £5000 in Russian Bankruptcy: but I can truly say I would give that, and more, to ensure Peace and Good Will among Men at this time. Oh, the Apes we are! I must retire to my Montaigne—whom, by the way, I remember reading here, when the Lugger was building! Oh, the Apes, etc. But there was A Man in all that Business still, who is so now, somewhat tarnished.—And I am yours as then sincerely

E. F.G.