12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft,
February 19/77.

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

Donne has sent me the Address on the cover of this Letter. I know you will write directly you hear from me; that is ‘de rigueur’ with you; and, at any rate, you have your Voyage home to England to tell me of: and how you find yourself and all in the Old Country. I suppose you include my Old Ireland in it. Donne wrote that you were to be there till this Month’s end; that is drawing near; and, if that you do not protract your Visit, you will [be] very soon within sight of dear Donne himself, who, I hear from Mowbray, is very well.

Your last Gossip was very interesting to me. I see in it (but not in the most interesting part) [122a] that you write of a ‘J. F.,’ who tells you of a Sister of hers having a fourth Child, etc. I fancy this must be a Jane FitzGerald telling you of her Sister Kerrich, who would have numbered about so many Children about that time—1831. Was it that Jane? I think you and she were rather together just then. After which she married herself to a Mr. Wilkinson—made him very Evangelical—and tiresome—and so they fed their Flock in a Suffolk village. [122b] And about fourteen or fifteen years ago he died: and she went off to live in Florence—rather a change from the Suffolk Village—and there, I suppose, she will die when her Time comes.

Now you have read Harold, I suppose; and you shall tell me what you think of it. Pollock and Miladi think it has plenty of Action and Life: one of which Qualities I rather missed in it.

Mr. Lowell sent me his Three Odes about Liberty, Washington, etc. They seemed to me full of fine Thought, and in a lofty Strain: but wanting Variety both of Mood and Diction for Odes—which are supposed to mean things to be chanted. So I ventured to hint to him—Is he an angry man? But he wouldn’t care, knowing of me only through amiable Mr. Norton, who knows me through you. I think he must be a very amiable, modest, man. And I am still yours always

E. F.G.