Second paragraph of third letter (written November 1871):
And what will you say when I tell you that I can hardly pity one who suffers from Gout; though I would undoubtedly prefer that you should be free from that, or any other ailment. But I have always heard that Gout exempts one from many other miseries which Flesh is heir to: at any rate, it almost always leaves the Head clear: and that is so much! My Mother, who suffered a good deal, used often to say how she was kept awake of nights by the Pain in her feet, or hands, but felt so clear aloft that she made Night pass even agreeably away with her reflections and recollections
Fascinated as I am by Fanny Kemble (1809-1893), I picked this up from Project Gutenberg to get a sense of her from her friend, Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), who had had a big publishing hit in the 1860s with The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and was now living in comfort in Suffolk. I got fifty pages into it and have put it aside; I wanted to hear her voice rather than his, and while there’s nothing objectionable about him, there’s nothing terribly interesting either.
Though I did smile at this 1873 account of a letter gone astray:
Some while ago Carlyle sent me a Letter from an American gentleman named Norton (once of the N. American Review, C. says, and a most amiable, intelligent Gentleman)—whose Letter enclosed one from Ruskin, which had been entrusted to another American Gentleman named Burne Jones—who kept it in a Desk ten years, and at last forwarded it as aforesaid—to me! The Note (of Ruskin’s) is about one of the Persian Translations: almost childish, as that Man of Genius is apt to be in his Likes as well as Dislikes. I dare say he has forgotten all about Translator and Original long before this.
“Carlyle” is presumably Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881); “Norton” is definitely Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908); “Ruskin” is of course John Ruskin (1819-1900); and “Burne Jones” must surely be the decidedly non-American Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), though it seems odd that Fitzgerald had not heard of him – he was already pretty well known by 1873.