Lowestoft: April 19/75.

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

Yesterday I wrote you a letter: enveloped it: then thought there was something in it you might misunderstand—Yes!—the written word across the Atlantic looking perhaps so different from what intended; so kept my Letter in my pocket, and went my ways. This morning your Letter of April 3 is forwarded to me; and I shall re-write the one thing that I yesterday wrote about—as I had intended to do before your Letter came. Only, let me say that I am really ashamed that you should have taken the trouble to write again about my little, little, Book.

Well—what I wrote about yesterday, and am to-day about to re-write, is—Macready’s Memoirs. You asked me in your previous Letter whether I had read them. No—I had not: and had meant to wait till they came down to Half-price on the Railway Stall before I bought them. But I wanted to order something of my civil Woodbridge Bookseller: so took the course of ordering this Book, which I am now reading at Leisure: for it does not interest me enough to devour at once. It is however a very unaffected record of a very conscientious Man, and Artist; conscious (I think) that he was not a great Genius in his Profession, and conscious of his defect of Self-control in his Morals. The Book is almost entirely about himself, his Studies, his Troubles, his Consolations, etc.; not from Egotism, I do think, but as the one thing he had to consider in writing a Memoir and Diary. Of course one expects, and wishes, that the Man’s self should be the main subject; but one also wants something of the remarkable people he lived with, and of whom one finds little here but that ‘So-and-so came and went’—scarce anything of what they said or did, except on mere business; Macready seeming to have no Humour; no intuition into Character, no Observation of those about him (how could he be a great Actor then?)—Almost the only exception I have yet reached is his Account of Mrs. Siddons, whom he worshipped: whom he acted with in her later years at Country Theatres: and who was as kind to him as she was even then heart-rending on the Stage. He was her Mr. Beverley: [71] ‘a very young husband,’ she told him: but ‘in the right way if he would study, study, study—and not marry till thirty.’ At another time, when he was on the stage, she stood at the side scene, called out ‘Bravo, Sir, Bravo!’ and clapped her hands—all in sight of the Audience, who joined in her Applause. Macready also tells of her falling into such a Convulsion, as it were, in Aspasia [72a] (what a subject for such a sacrifice!) that the Curtain had to be dropped, and Macready’s Father, and Holman, who were among the Audience, looked at each other to see which was whitest! This was the Woman whom people somehow came to look on as only majestic and terrible—I suppose, after Miss O’Neill rose upon her Setting.

Well, but what I wrote about yesterday—a passage about you yourself. I fancy that he and you were very unsympathetic: nay, you have told me of some of his Egotisms toward you, ‘who had scarce learned the rudiments of your Profession’ (as also he admits that he scarce had). But, however that may have been, his Diary records, ‘Dec^r. 20 (1838) Went to Covent Garden Theatre: on my way continued the perusal of Mrs. Butler’s Play, which is a work of uncommon power. Finished the reading of Mrs. Butler’s Play, which is one of the most powerful of the modern Plays I have seen—most painful—almost shocking—but full of Power, Poetry and Pathos. She is one of the most remarkable women of the present Day.’

So you see that if he thought you deficient in the Art which you (like himself) had unwillingly to resort to, you were efficient in the far greater Art of supplying that material on which the Histrionic must depend. (N.B.—Which play of yours? Not surely the ‘English Tragedy’ unless shown to him in MS.? [72b] Come: I have sent you my Translations: you should give me your Original Plays. When I get home, I will send you an old Scratch by Thackeray of yourself in Louisa of Savoy—shall I?)

On the whole, I find Macready (so far as I have gone) a just, generous, religious, and affectionate Man; on the whole, humble too! One is well content to assure oneself of this; but it is not worth spending 28s. upon.

Macready would have made a better Scholar—or Divine—than Actor, I think: a Gentleman he would have been in any calling, I believe, in spite of his Temper—which he acknowledges, laments, and apologizes for, on reflection.

Now, here is enough of my small writing for your reading. I have been able to read, and admire, some Corneille lately: as to Racine—‘Ce n’est pas mon homme,’ as Catharine of Russia said of him. Now I am at Madame de SÉvignÉ’s delightful Letters; I should like to send you a Bouquet of Extracts: but must have done now, being always yours

E. F.G.