Chapter LIX: LOWESTOFT, Septr. l8, 1879

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Your last letter told me that you were to be back in England by the middle of this month. So I write some lines to ask if you _are_ back, and where to be found. To be sure, I can learn that much from some Donne: to the Father of whom I must commit this letter for any further Direction. But I will also say a little--very little having to say--beyond asking you how you are, and in what Spirits after the great Loss you have endured. {154}

Of that Loss I heard from Blanche Donne--some while, it appears, before you heard of it yourself. I cannot say that it was surprising, however sad, considering the terrible Illness she had some fifteen years ago. I will say no more of it, nor of her, of whom I could say so much; but nothing that would not be more than superfluous to you.

It did so happen, that, the day before I heard of her Death, I had thought to myself that I would send her my Crabbe, as to my other friends, and wondered that I had not done so before. I should have sent off the Volume for Donne to transmit when--Blanche's Note came.

After writing of this, I do not think I should add much more, had I much else to write about. I will just say that I came to this place five weeks ago to keep company with my friend Edward Cowell, the Professor; we read Don Quixote together in a morning and chatted for two or three hours of an evening; and now he is gone away to Cambridge and [has] left me to my Nephews and Nieces here. By the month's end I shall be home at Woodbridge, whither any Letter you may please to write me may be addressed.

I try what I am told are the best Novels of some years back, but find I cannot read any but Trollope's. So now have recourse to Forster's Life of Dickens--a very good Book, I still think. Also, Eckermann's Goethe--almost as repeatedly to be read as Boswell's Johnson--a German Johnson--and (as with Boswell) more interesting to me in Eckermann's Diary than in all his own famous works.

Adieu: Ever yours sincerely E. F.G.

I am daily--hourly--expecting to hear of the Death of another Friend {155}--not so old a Friend, but yet a great loss to me.