omission of the sort I have found in all his letters of the last
twenty-five years of his life.

His daughter's long illness had left him without hope for months past,
but this, as he confessed, did not mend matters much. In his letters to
his two most intimate friends, he recalls her brilliant promise, her
happy marriage, her] "faculty for art, which some of the best artists
have told me amounted to genius." [But he was naturally reticent in
these matters, and would hardly write of his own griefs unbidden even
to old friends.]

85 Marina, St. Leonards, November 21, 1887.

My dear Spencer,

You will not have forgotten my bright girl Marian, who married so
happily and with such bright prospects half a dozen years ago?

Well, she died three days ago of a sudden attack of pneumonia, which
carried her off almost without warning. And I cannot convey to you a
sense of the terrible sufferings of the last three years better than by
saying that I, her father, who loved her well, am glad that the end has
come thus...

My poor wife is well nigh crushed by the blow. For though I had lost
hope, it was not in the nature of things that she should.

Don't answer this--I have half a mind to tear it up--for when one is in
a pool of trouble there is no sort of good in splashing other people.