It is very good of you to write to me, so much as you have to do. I am
much obliged to you also for taking the trouble to go and see my Mother.
You may rely on it she feels as pleased with your company as she says she
is: I do not know any one who has the power of being so agreeable to her
as yourself.
And dear old Thackeray is really going to America! I must fire him a
letter of farewell.
The Cowells are at Ipswich, and I get over to see them, etc. They talk
of coming here too. I have begun again to read Calderon with Cowell: the
Magico we have just read, a very grand thing. I suppose Calderon was
over-praised some twenty years ago: for the last twenty it has been the
fashion to underpraise him, I am sure. His Drama may not be the finest
in the world: one sees how often too he wrote in the fashion of his time
and country: but he is a wonderful fellow: one of the Great Men of the
world.
* * * * *
In October 1852 Thackeray sailed for America and before leaving wrote to
FitzGerald the letter which he copied for Archdeacon Allen. I shall I
trust be pardoned for thinking that others will be the better for reading
the words of 'noble kindness' in which Thackeray took leave of his
friend.
[BOULGE, 22 _Nov._ 1852.]