Lowestoft: October 4/74.

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

Do, pray, write your Macready (Thackeray used to say ‘Megreedy’) Story to Pollock: Sir F. 59 Montagu Square. I rather think he was to be going to Press with his Megreedy about this time: but you may be sure he will deal with whatever you may confide to him discreetly and reverently. It is ‘Miladi’ P. who worshipped Macready: and I think I never recovered what Esteem I had with her when I told her I could not look on him as a ‘Great’ Actor at all. I see in PlanchÉ’s Memoirs that when your Father prophesied great things of him to your Uncle J. P. K., the latter said, ‘Con quello viso?’ which ‘viso’ did very well however in parts not positively heroic. But one can’t think of him along with Kean, who was heroic in spite of undersize. How he swelled up in Othello! I remember thinking he looked almost as tall as your Father when he came to Silence that dreadful Bell.

I think you agree with me about Kean: remembering your really capital Paper—in Macmillan [53a]—about Dramatic and Theatric. I often look to that Paper, which is bound up with some Essays by other Friends—Spedding among them—no bad Company. I was thinking of your Pasta story of ‘feeling’ the Antique, etc., [53b] when reading in my dear Ste. Beuve [53c] of my dear Madame du Deffand asking Madame de Choiseul: ‘You know you love me, but do you feel you love me?’ ‘Quoi? vous m’aimez donc?’ she said to her secretary Wiart, when she heard him sobbing as she dictated her last letter to Walpole. [53d]

All which reminds me of one of your friends departed—Chorley—whose Memoirs one now buys from Mudie for 2s. 6d. or so. And well—well—worth to those who recollect him. I only knew him by Face—and Voice—at your Father’s, and your Sister’s: and used to think what a little waspish Dilettante it was: and now I see he was something very much better indeed: and I only hope I may have Courage to face my Death as he had. Dickens loved him, who did not love Humbugs: and Chorley would have two strips of Gadshill Yew [54] put with him in his Coffin. Which again reminds me that—À propos of your comments on Dickens’ crimson waistcoat, etc., Thackeray told me thirty years ago, that Dickens did it, not from any idea of Cockney fashion: but from a veritable passion for Colours—which I can well sympathize with, though I should not exhibit them on my own Person—for very good reasons. Which again reminds me of what you write about my abiding the sight of you in case you return to England next year. Oh, my dear Mrs. Kemble, you must know how wrong all that is—tout au contraire, in fact. Tell me a word about Chorley when next you write: you said once that Mendelssohn laughed at him: then, he ought not. How well I remember his strumming away at some Waltz in Harley or Wimpole’s endless Street, while your Sister and a few other Guests went round. I thought then he looked at one as if thinking ‘Do you think me then—a poor, red-headed Amateur, as Rogers does?’ That old Beast! I don’t scruple to say so.

I am positively looking over my everlasting Crabbe again: he naturally comes in about the Fall of the Year. Do you remember his wonderful ‘October Day’? [55]

‘Before the Autumn closed,
When Nature, ere her Winter Wars, reposed
When from our Garden, as we looked above,
No Cloud was seen; and nothing seem’d to move;
When the wide River was a Silver Sheet,
And upon Ocean slept the unanchor’d fleet:
When the wing’d Insect settled in our Sight,
And waited Wind to recommence her flight.’

And then, the Lady who believes her young Lover dead, and has vowed eternal Celibacy, sees him advancing, a portly, well to do, middle aged man: and swears she won’t have him: and does have him, etc.

Which reminds me that I want you to tell me if people in America read Crabbe.

Farewell, dear Mrs. Kemble, for the present: always yours

E. F.G.

Have you the Robin in America? One is singing in the little bit Garden before me now.