Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble | Page 8

one of these rules in my head; but just as I got out of a Cab, etc., yet the success of the Thing made me consider afterward why it succeeded; and I have now read you my Lecture on the Subject. Pray do not forgo your Intention--nay, your Promise, as I regard it--to sit, and send me the result. {25}
Here has been a bevy of Letters, and long ones, from me, you see. I don't know if it is reasonable that one should feel it so much easier to write to a Friend in England than to the same Friend abroad; but so it is, with me at least. I suppose that a Letter directed to Stoneleigh will find you before you leave--for America!--and even after that. But I shall not feel the same confidence and ease in transcribing for you pretty Norman Songs, or gossiping about them as I have done when my Letters were only to travel to Kenilworth: which very place--which very name of a Place--makes the English world akin. I suppose you have been at Stratford before this--an event in one's Life. It was not the Town itself--or even the Church--that touched me most: but the old Footpaths over the Fields which He must have crossed three Centuries ago.
Spedding tells me he is nearing Land with his Bacon. And one begins to think Macready a Great Man amid the Dwarfs that now occupy his Place.
Ever yours sincerely
E. F.G.

XI.
September 18/73.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
I have not forgotten you at all, all these months--What a Consolation to you! But I felt I had nothing to send among the Alps after you: I have been nowhere but for two Days to the Field of Naseby in Northamptonshire, where I went to identify the spot where I dug up the Dead for Carlyle thirty years ago. I went; saw; made sure; and now--the Trustees of the Estate won't let us put up the Memorial stone we proposed to put up; they approve (we hear) neither of the Stone, nor the Inscription; both as plain and innocent as a Milestone, says Carlyle, and indeed much of the same Nature. This Decision of the foolish Trustees I only had some ten days ago: posted it to Carlyle who answered from Dumfries; and his Answer shows that he is in full vigour, though (as ever since I have known him) he protests that Travelling has utterly discomfited him, and he will move no more. But it is very silly of these Trustees. {28a}
And, as I have been nowhere, I have seen no one; nor read anything but the Tichborne Trial, and some of my old Books--among them Walpole, Wesley, and Johnson (Boswell, I mean), three very different men whose Lives extend over the same times, and whose diverse ways of looking at the world they lived in make a curious study. I wish some one would write a good Paper on this subject; I don't mean to hint that I am the man; on the contrary, I couldn't at all; but I could supply some [one] else with some material that he would not care to hunt up in the Books perhaps.
Well: all this being all, I had no heart to write--to the Alps! And now I remember well you told me you [were] coming back to England--for a little while--a little while--and then to the New World for ever--which I don't believe! {28b} Oh no! you will come back in spite of yourself, depend upon it--and yet I doubt that my saying so will be one little reason why you will not! But do let me hear of you first: and believe me ever yours
E. F.G.

XII.
[WOODBRIDGE, 1873.]
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
You must attribute this third Letter to an 'Idee' that has come into my head relating to those Memoirs of yourself which you say you are at some loss to dispose of. I can easily understand that your Children, born and bred (I think) in another World, would not take so much interest in them as some of your old Friends who make part of your Recollections: as you yourself occupy much of theirs. But then they are old Friends; and are not their Children, Executors and Assigns, as little to be depended on as your own Kith and Kin? Well; I bethink me of one of your old Friends' Children whom I could reckon upon for you, as I would for myself: Mowbray Donne: the Son of one who you know loves you of old, and inheriting all his Father's Loyalty to his Father's Friends. I am quite convinced that he is to be perfectly depended upon in all respects for this purpose; for his Love, his Honour, and his Intelligence. I should then make him one day read the Memoirs to me--for I can't