Chapter LIV: WOODBRIDGE: April 3/79

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE:--

I know well how exact you are in answering Letters; and I was afraid that you must be in some trouble, for yourself, or others, when I got no reply to a second Letter I wrote you addressed to Baltimore Hotel, Leamington--oh, two months ago. When you last wrote to me, you were there, with a Cough, which you were just going to take with you to Guy's Cliff. That I thought not very prudent, in the weather we then had. Then I was told by some one, in a letter (not from any Donne, I think--no, Annie Ritchie, I believe) that Mrs. Sartoris was very ill; and so between two probable troubles, I would not trouble you as yet again. I had to go to London for a day three weeks ago (to see a poor fellow dying, sooner or later, of Brain disease), and I ferreted out Mowbray Donne from Somerset House and he told me you were in London, still ill of a Cough; but not your Address. So I wrote to his Wife a few days ago to learn it; and I shall address this Letter accordingly. Mrs. Mowbray writes that you are better, but obliged to take care of yourself. I can only say 'do not trouble yourself to write'--but I suppose you will--perhaps the more if it be a trouble. See what an Opinion I have of you!--If you write, pray tell me of Mrs. Sartoris--and do not forget yourself.

It has been such a mortal Winter among those I know, or know of, as I never remember. I have not suffered myself, further than, I think, feeling a few stronger hints of a constitutional sort, which are, I suppose, to assert themselves ever more till they do for me. And that, I suppose, cannot be long adoing. I entered on my 71st year last Monday, March 31.

My elder--and now only--Brother, John, has been shut up with Doctor and Nurse these two months--AEt. 76; his Wife AEt. 80 all but dead awhile ago, now sufficiently recovered to keep her room in tolerable ease: I do not know if my Brother will ever leave his house.

Oh dear! Here is enough of Mortality.

I see your capital Book is in its third Edition, as well it deserves to be. I _see_ no one with whom to talk about it, except one brave Woman who comes over here at rare intervals--she had read my Atlantic Copy, but must get Bentley's directly it appeared, and she (a woman of remarkably strong and independent Judgment) loves it all--not (as some you know) wishing some of it away. No; she says she wants all to complete her notion of the writer. Nor have I _heard_ of any one who thinks otherwise: so 'some people' may be wrong. I know you do not care about all this.

I am getting my 'Tales of the Hall' printed, and shall one day ask you, and three or four beside, whether it had better be published. I think you, and those three or four others, will like it; but they may also judge that indifferent readers might not. And that you will all of you have to tell me when the thing is done. I shall not be in the least disappointed if you tell me to keep it among 'ourselves,' so long as 'ourselves' are pleased; for I know well that Publication would not carry it much further abroad; and I am very well content to pay my money for the little work which I have long meditated doing. I shall have done 'my little owl.' Do you know what that means?--No. Well then; my Grandfather had several Parrots of different sorts and Talents: one of them ('Billy,' I think) could only huff up his feathers in what my Grandfather called an owl fashion; so when Company were praising the more gifted Parrots, he would say--'You will hurt poor Billy's feelings--Come! Do your little owl, my dear!'--You are to imagine a handsome, hair-powdered, Gentleman doing this--and his Daughter--my Mother--telling of it.

And so it is I do my little owl.

This little folly takes a long bit of my Letter paper--and I do not know that you will see any fun in it. Like my Book, it would not tell in Public.

Spedding reads my proofs--for, though I have confidence in my Selection of the Verse (owl), I have but little in my interpolated Prose, which I make obscure in trying to make short. Spedding occasionally marks a blunder; but (confound him!) generally leaves me to correct it.

Come--here is more than enough of my little owl. At night we read Sir Walter for an Hour (Montrose just now) by way of 'Play'--then 'ten minutes' refreshment allowed'--and the Curtain rises on Dickens (Copperfield now) which sends me gaily to bed--after one Pipe of solitary Meditation--in which the--'little owl,' etc.

By the way, in talking of Plays--after sitting with my poor friend and his brave little Wife till it was time for him to turn bedward--I looked in at the famous Lyceum Hamlet; and soon had looked, and heard enough. It was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to 'Something too much of this,' I called out from the Pit door where I stood, 'A good deal too much,' and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long--and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. You know you are not bound to repay it in length, even if you answer it at all; which I again vainly ask you not to do if a bore.

I hear from Mrs. Mowbray that our dear Donne is but 'pretty well'; and I am still yours

E. F.G.