sheet so badly that I resolved to write it over again--I scarce know
whether for better or worse. I go home this week, expecting Charles
Keene at Woodbridge for a week. Please to believe me (with Compliments
to Mrs. Wister)

Yours sincerely always
E. F.G.

CVIII. {249}

WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 17, [1882.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I suppose that you are returned from the Loire by this time; but as I am
not sure that you have returned to the 'Hotel des Deux Mondes,' whence
you dated your last, I make bold once more to trouble Coutts with adding
your Address to my Letter. I think I shall have it from yourself not
long after. I shall like to hear a word about my old France, dear to me
from childish associations; and in particular of the Loire endeared to me
by Sevigne--for I never saw the glimmer of its Waters myself. If you
were in England I should send you an account of a tour there, written by
a Lady in 1833--written in the good old way of Ladies' writing, without
any of the smartness, and not too much of the 'graphic' of later times.
Did you look at Les Rochers, which, I have read, is not to be looked
_into_ by the present owner? {250a}

Now for my 'Story, God bless you,' etc., you may guess where none is to
be told. Only, my old Housekeeper here has been bedded for this last
month, an illness which has caused her great pain, and at one time seemed
about to make an End of her. So it may do still: but for the last few
days she has suffered less pain, and so we--hope. This has caused much
trouble in my little household, as you may imagine--as well on our own
account, as on hers.

Mowbray Donne wrote me that his Edith had been seriously--I know not if
dangerously--ill; and he himself much out of sorts, having never yet (he
says, and I believe) recovered from his Father's death. Blanche, for the
present, is quartered at Friends' and Kinsfolk's houses.

Aldis Wright has sent me a Photograph, copied from Mrs. Cameron's
original, of James Spedding--so fine that I know not whether I feel more
pleasure or pain in looking at it. When you return to England, you shall
see it somehow.

I have had a letter or two from Annie Ritchie, who is busy writing
various Articles for Magazines. One concerning Miss Edgeworth in the
Cornhill is pleasant reading. {250b} She tells me that Tennyson is at
Aldworth (his Hampshire house, you know), and a notice in Athenaeum or
Academy tells that he is about to produce 'a Pastor