morrow, there will be plenty of
time for you to let me know whether you go or not: and, even if there be
not time before Wednesday, why, I shall take no harm in so far as I
really have a very little to do, and moreover shall see a poor Lady who
has just lost her husband, after nearly three years anxious and uncertain
watching, and now finds herself (brave and strong little Woman) somewhat
floored now the long conflict is over. These are the people I may have
told you of whom I have for some years met here and there in
Suffolk--chiefly by the Sea; and we somehow suited one another. {158} He
was a brave, generous, Boy (of sixty) with a fine Understanding, and
great Knowledge and Relish of Books: but he had applied too late in Life
to Painting which he could not master, though he made it his Profession.
A remarkable mistake, I always thought, in so sensible a man.

Whether I find you next week, or afterward (for I promise to find you any
time you appoint) I hope to find you alone--for twenty years' Solitude
make me very shy: but always your sincere

E. F.G.

LXII.

LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 7, [1879]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

When I got home yesterday, and emptied my Pockets, I found the precious
Enclosure which I had meant to show, and (if you pleased) to give you. A
wretched Sketch (whether by me or another, I know not) of your Brother
John in some Cambridge Room, about the year 1832-3, when he and I were
staying there, long after Degree time--he, studying Anglo-Saxon, I
suppose--reading something, you see, with a glass of Ale on the table--or
old Piano-forte was it?--to which he would sing very well his German
Songs. Among them,

{Music Score: p159.jpg}

Do you remember? I afterwards associated it with some stray verses
applicable to one I loved.

'Heav'n would answer all your wishes,
Were it much as Earth is here;
Flowing Rivers full of Fishes,
And good Hunting half the Year.'

Well:--here is the cause of this Letter, so soon after our conversing
together, face to face, in Queen Anne's Mansions. A strange little After-
piece to twenty years' Separation.

And now, here are the Sweet Peas, and Marigolds, sown in the Spring,
still in a faded Blossom, and the Spirit that Tennyson told us of fifty
years ago haunting the Flower-beds, {160} and a Robin singing--nobody
else.

And I am to lose my capital Reader, he tells me, in a Fortnight, no Book-
binding surviving unde