Unbrokenly the correspondence continues: the intimacy added charm, interest, fragrance to his life, brought out in him all that was genial, playful, humorous. He fights the admonitions of coming weakness; goes to Sidmouth with a sore throat, but takes his papers and his books. It is, he says, a deserted little sea-coast place. “Mrs. Grundy has a small house there, but she does not know me by sight. If Madame Novikoff were to come, the astonished little town, dazzled first by her, would find itself invaded by theologians, bishops, ambassadors of deceased emperors, and an ex-Prime-Minister.” But as time goes on he speaks more often of his suffering throat; of gout, increasing deafness, only half a voice: his last letter is written in July, 1890, to condole with his friend upon her husband’s death. In October his nurse takes the pen; Madame Novikoff comes back hurriedly from Scotland to find him in his last illness. “It is very nice,” he told his nurse, “to see dear Madame Novikoff again, but I am going down hill fast, and cannot hope to be well enough to see much of her.” This is in November, 1890; on New Year’s Eve came the inexorable, “Terminator of delights and Separator of friends.” CHAPTER VI LATER DAYS, AND DEATH FOR twenty years Kinglake lived in Hyde Park Place, in bright cheerful rooms looking in one direction across the Park, but on another side into a churchyard. The churchyard, Lady Gregory tells us, gave him pause on first seeing the rooms. “I should not like to live here, I should be afraid of ghosts.” “Oh no, sir, there is always a policeman round the corner.” {111} “Pleaceman X.” has not, perhaps, before been revered as the Shade-compelling son of Maia: “Tu pias lætis animas reponis Sedibus, _virgaque levem coerces_ _Aurea turbam_.”