'

Your kind Letter has encouraged me to write all this. I felt some
hesitation in addressing you again after an interval of some fifteen
years, I think; and now I think I shall venture on writing to you once
again before another year be gone, if we both live to see 1881 in, and
out.

_To Charles Keene_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Sunday_.

MY DEAR KEENE,

Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sevigne; I
mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory
Argument and List of Dramatis Personae, and a clue to the course of her
Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some
previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among. But I
shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always
distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd. Some such
Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with
Persons, Dates, etc., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite
sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim
over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriving at--

Ci git
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
Marquise de Sevigne
Decedee le 18 Avril 1696

still to be found, I believe, on a Tablet in the Church of Grignan in
Provence. I have been half minded to run over to Brittany just to see
Les Rochers; but a French 'Murray' informed me that the present owner
will not let it be seen by Strangers attracted by all those 'paperasses,'
as he calls her Letters. Probably I should not have gone in any case
when it came to proof. . . .

I did not forget Waterloo Day. Just as I and my Reader Boy were going
into the Pantry for some _grub_, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18,
who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the 'coup de
grace' to the Imperial Guard about 8 p.m. and then marched to Rossomme,
seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in
some French Soldier's knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, 'You
must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it.' That was a
Compliment worth having!

I have, like you, always have, and from a Child had, a mysterious feeling
about that 'Sizewell Gap.' There were reports of kegs of Hollands found
under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near by: and we Children looked
with awe on the 'Revenue Cutters' which passed Aldbro', especially
remembering one that went down with all hands, 'The