Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 2
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Title: Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 2
Author: Edward FitzGerald
Editor: William Aldis Wright
Release date: February 6, 2007 [eBook #20539]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20539
Credits: Transcribed from the 1901 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD, IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. 2 ***
Transcribed from the 1901 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1901
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition_ 1894. _Reprinted_ 1901
{The "Little Grange," Woodbridge: p0.jpg}
LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD
_To E. B. Cowell_.
88 GT. PORTLAND ST., LONDON,
_Jan._ 13/59.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I have been here some five weeks: but before my Letter reaches you shall
probably have slid back into the Country somewhere. This is my old
Lodging, but new numbered. I have been almost alone here: having seen
even Spedding and Donne but two or three times. They are well and go on
as before. Spedding has got out the seventh volume of Bacon, I believe:
with Capital Prefaces to Henry VII., etc. But I have not yet seen it.
After vol. viii. (I think) there is to be a Pause: till Spedding has set
the Letters to his Mind. Then we shall see what he can make of his
Blackamoor. . . .
I am almost ashamed to write to you, so much have I forsaken Persian, and
even all good Books of late. There is no one now to 'prick the Sides of
my Intent'; Vaulting Ambition having long failed to do so! I took my
Omar from Fraser [? Parker], as I saw he didn't care for it; and also I
want to enlarge it to near as much again, of such Matter as he would not
dare to put in Fraser. If I print it, I shall do the impudence of
quoting your Account of Omar, and your Apology for his Freethinking: it
is not wholly my Apology, but you introduced him to me, and your excuse
extends to that which you have not ventured to quote, and I do. I like
your Apology extremely also, allowing its Point of View. I doubt you
will repent of ever having showed me the Book. I should like well to
have the Lithograph Copy of Omar which you tell of in your Note. My
Translation has its merit: but it misses a main one in Omar, which I will
leave you to find out. The Latin Versions, if they were corrected into
decent Latin, would be very much better. . . . I have forgotten to write
out for you a little Quatrain which Binning found written in Persepolis;
the Persian Tourists having the same propensity as English to write their
Names and Sentiments on their national Monuments. {2}
* * * * *
In the early part of 1859 his friend William Browne was terribly injured
by his horse falling upon him and lingered in great agony for several
weeks.
_To W. B. Donne_.
GOLDINGTON, BEDFORD.
_March_ 26 [1859].
MY DEAR DONNE,
Your folks told you on what Errand I left your house so abruptly. I was
not allowed to see W. B. the day I came: nor yesterday till 3 p.m.; when,
poor fellow, he tried to write a line to me, like a child's! and I went,
and saw, no longer the gay Lad, nor the healthy Man, I had known: but a
wreck of all that: a Face like Charles I. (after decapitation almost)
above the Clothes: and the poor shattered Body underneath lying as it had
lain eight weeks; such a case as the Doctor says he had never known.
Instead of the light utterance of other days too, came the slow painful
syllables in a far lower Key: and when the old familiar words, 'Old
Fellow--Fitz'--etc., came forth, so spoken, I broke down too in spite of
foregone Resolution.
They thought he'd die last Night: but this Morning he is a little better:
but no hope. He has spoken of me in the Night, and (if he wishes) I
shall go again, provided his Wife and Doctor approve. But it agitates
him: and Tears he could not wipe away came to his Eyes. The poor Wife
bears up wonderfully.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES.
_April_ 27 [1859]
MY DEAR COWELL,
Above is the Address you had better direct to in future. I have had a
great Loss. W. Browne was fallen upon and half crushed by his horse near
three months ago: and though the Doctors kept giving hopes while he lay
patiently for two months in a condition no one else could have borne for
a Fortnight, at last they could do no more, nor Nature neither: and he
sunk. I went to see him before he died--the comely spirited Boy I had
known first seven and twenty years ago lying all shattered and Death in
his Face and Voice. . . .
Well, this is so: and there is no more to be said about it. It is one of
the things that reconcile me to my own stupid Decline of Life--to the
crazy state of the world--Well--no more about it.
I sent you poor old Omar who has _his_ kind of Consolation for all these
Things. I doubt you will regret you ever introduced him to me. And yet
you would have me print the original, with many worse things than I have
translated. The Bird Epic might be finished at once: but 'cui bono?' No
one cares for such things: and there are doubtless so many better things
to care about. I hardly know why I print any of these things, which
nobody buys; and I scarce now see the few I give them to. But when one
has done one's best, and is sure that that best is better than so many
will take pains to do, though far from the best that _might be done_, one
likes to make an end of the matter by Print. I suppose very few People
have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though certainly not
to be literal. But at all Cost, a Thing must _live_: with a transfusion
of one's own worse Life if one can't retain the Original's better. Better
a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle. I shall be very well pleased to see
the new MS. of Omar. I shall _one day_ (if I live) print the 'Birds,'
and a strange experiment on old Calderon's two great Plays; and then shut
up Shop in the Poetic Line. Adieu: Give my love to the Lady: and believe
me yours very truly E. F. G.
You see where those Persepolitan Verses {5} come from. I wonder you were
not startled with the metre, though maimed a bit.
_To T. Carlyle_.
GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES.
_June_ 20/59.
DEAR CARLYLE,
Very soon after I called and saw Mrs. Carlyle I got a violent cold, which
(being neglected) flew to my Ears, and settled into such a Deafness I
couldn't hear the Postman knock nor the Omnibus roll. When I began
(after more than a Month) to begin recovering of this (though still so
deaf as to determine not to be a Bore to any one else) I heard from
Bedford that my poor W. Browne (who got you a Horse some fifteen years
ago) had been fallen on and crushed all through the middle Body by one of
his own: and I then kept expecting every Postman's knock was to announce
his Death. He kept on however in a shattered Condition which the Doctors
told me scarce any one else would have borne a Week; kept on for near two
Months, and then gave up his honest Ghost. I went to bid him Farewell:
and then came here (an Address you remember), only going to Lowestoft (on
the Sea) to entertain my old George Crabbe's two Daughters, who, now
living inland, are glad of a sight of the old German Sea, and also
perhaps of poor Me. I return to Lowestoft (for a few days only)
to-morrow, and shall perhaps see the Steam of your Ship passing the
Shore. I have always been wanting to sail to Scotland: but my old Fellow-
traveller is gone! His Accident was the more vexatious as quite
unnecessary--so to say--returning quietly from Hunting. But there's no
use talking of it. Your Destinies and Silences have settled it.
I really had wished to go and see Mrs. Carlyle again: I won't say you,
because I don't think in your heart you care to be disturbed; and I am
glad to believe that, with all your Pains, you are better than any of us,
I do think. You don't care what one thinks of your Books: you know I
love so many: I don't care so much for Frederick so far as he's gone: I
suppose you don't neither. I was thinking of you the other Day reading
in Aubrey's Wiltshire how he heard Cromwell one Day at Dinner (I think)
at Hampton Court say that Devonshire showed the best Farming of any Part
of England he had been in. Did you know all the Dawson Turner Letters?
I see Spedding directs your Letter: which is nearly all I see of his MS.:
though he would let me see enough of it if there were a good Turn to be
done.
Please to give my best Remembrances to Mrs. Carlyle, and believe me yours
sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To Mrs. Charles Allen_.
LOWESTOFT, _October_ 16/59.
MY DEAR MRS. ALLEN,
In passing through London a week ago I found a very kind letter from you
directed to my London Lodging. This will explain why it has not been
sooner answered. As I do not know _your_ Address, I take the Opportunity
of enclosing my Reply to John Allen, of whom I have not heard since May.
I have been in these Suffolk and Norfolk Parts ever since I left London
in March to see my poor Lad die in Bedford. The Lad I first met in the
Tenby Lodging house twenty-seven years ago--not sixteen then--and now
broken to pieces and scarce conscious, after two months such suffering as
the Doctor told me scarce any one would have borne for a Fortnight. They
never told him it was all over with him until [within] ten Days of Death:
though every one else seem'd to _know_ it must be so--and he did not wish
to die yet.
I won't write more of a Matter that you can have but little Interest in,
and that I am as well not thinking about. I came here partly to see his
Widow, and so (as I hope) to avoid having to go to Bedford for the
Present. She, though a wretchedly sickly woman, and within two months of
her confinement when he died, has somehow weathered it all beyond
Expectation. She has her children to attend to, and be her comfort in
turn: and though having lost what most she loved yet has something to
love still, and to be beloved by. There are worse Conditions than that.
I am not going to be long here: but hope to winter somewhere in Suffolk
(London very distasteful now)--But here again:--my good Hostess with whom
I have lodged in Suffolk is dead too: and I must wait till _that_
Household settles down a little.
If it ever gives you pleasure to write to me, it gives me real Pleasure
to hear of you: and I am sincerely grateful for your kind Remembrance of
me.
'Geldestone Hall--Beccles' or 'Farlingay Hall, Woodbridge,' are pretty
sure Addresses. Please to remember me kindly to your Husband and believe
me
Yours very sincerely,
EDWD FITZGERALD.
BATH HOUSE, LOWESTOFT.
_October_ 26 [1859].
DEAR MRS. ALLEN,
I must thank you for your so kind Letter, and kind Invitation. But if I
was but five Days with my old College Friend after twelve years' Promise,
and then didn't go just on to Teignmouth to see my Sister, and her
Family, I must not talk of going elsewhere--even to Prees--where John is
always good enough to be asking me: even in a Letter To day received.
By the way, Last Saturday at Norwich while I was gazing into a Shop, a
Woman's Voice said, 'How d' ye do, Mr. FitzGerald?' I looked up: a young
Woman too, whom (of course) I didn't know. 'You don't remember me,
Andalusia Allen that was!' Now Mrs. Day. I had not seen her since '52,
a Girl of, I suppose, twelve, playing some Character in a Family Play.
John's Letter too tells me of his son going to College.
But Tenby--I don't remember a pleasanter Place. I can now hear the Band
on the Steamer as it left the little Pier for Bristol, the Steamer that
brought me and the poor Boy now in his Grave to that Boardinghouse. It
was such weather as now howls about this Lodging when one of those poor
starved Players was drowned on the Sands, and was carried past our
Windows after Dinner: I often remember the dull Trot of Men up the windy
Street, and our running to the Window, and the dead Head, hair, and
Shoulders hurried past. That was Tragedy, poor Fellow, whatever Parts he
had played before.
I think you remember me with Kindness because accidentally associated
with your old Freestone in those pleasant Days, that also were among the
last of your Sister's Life. Her too I can see, with her China-rose
complexion: in the Lilac Gown she wore.
I keep on here from Week to week, partly because no other Place offers:
but I almost doubt if I shall be here beyond next week. Not in this
Lodging anyhow: which is wretchedly 'rafty' and cold; lets the Rain in
when it Rains: and the Dust of the Shore when it drives: as both have
been doing by turns all Yesterday and To day. I was cursing all this as
I was shivering here by myself last Night: and in the Morning I hear of
three Wrecks off the Sands, and indeed meet five shipwreckt Men with a
Troop of Sailors as I walk out before Breakfast. Oh Dear!
Please remember me to your 'Gude Man' and believe me yours truly,
E. F. G.
Pray do excuse all this Blotting: my Paper _won't_ dry To day.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
10 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_Nov._ 27, 1859.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
After a Fortnight's Visit to my Sister's (where I caught Cold which flew
at once to my Ears, and there hangs) I returned hither, as the nearest
Place to go to, and here shall be till Christmas at all Events. I wish
to avoid London this winter: and indeed seem almost to have done with it,
except for a Day's Business or Sightseeing every now and then. Often
should I like to roam about old Cambridge, and hear St. Mary's Chimes at
Midnight--but--but! This Place of course is dull enough: but here's the
Old Sea (a dirty Dutch one, to be sure) and Sands, and Sailors, a very
fine Race of Men, far superior to those in Regent Street. Also the
Dutchmen (an ugly set whom I can't help liking for old Neighbours) come
over in their broad Bottoms and take in Water at a Creek along the Shore.
But I believe the East winds get very fierce after Christmas, when the
Sea has cooled down. You won't come here, to be sure: or I should be
very glad to smoke a Cigar, and have a Chat: and would take care to have
a Fire in your Bedroom this time: a Negligence I was very sorry for in
London.
I read, or was told, they wouldn't let old Alfred's Bust into your
Trinity. They are right, I think, to let no one in there (as it should
be in Westminster Abbey) till a Hundred Years are past; when, after too
much Admiration (perhaps) and then a Reaction of undue Dis-esteem, Men
have settled into some steady Opinion on the subject: supposing always
that the Hero survives so long, which of itself goes so far to decide the
Question. No doubt A. T. will do _that_.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
10 MARINE TERRACE,
LOWESTOFT.
_Febr._ 23/60.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
'Me voila ici' still! having weathered it out so long. No bad Place, I
assure you, though you who are accustomed to Pall Mall, Clubs, etc.,
wouldn't like it. Mudie finds one out easily: and the London Library
too: and altogether I can't complain of not getting such drowsy Books as
I want. Hakluyt lasted a long while: then came Captain Cook, whom I
hadn't read since I was a Boy, and whom I was very glad to see again. But
he soon evaporates in his large Type Quartos. I can hardly manage
Emerson Tennent's Ceylon: a very dry Catalogue Raisonnee of the Place. A
little Essay of De Quincey's gave me a better Idea of it (as I suppose)
in some twenty or thirty pages. Anyhow, I prefer Lowestoft, considering
the Snakes, Sand-leaches, Mosquitos, etc. I suppose Russell's Indian
Diary is over-coloured: but I feel sure it's true in the Main: and he has
the Art to make one feel in the thick of it; quite enough in the Thick,
however. Sir C. Napier came here to try and get the Beachmen to enlist
in the Naval Reserve. Not one would go: they won't give up their
Independence: and so really half starve here during Winter. Then Spring
comes and they go and catch the Herrings which, if left alone, would
multiply by Millions by Autumn: and so kill their Golden Goose. They are
a strange set of Fellows. I think a Law ought to be made against their
Spring Fishing: more important, for their own sakes, than Game Laws.
I laid out half a crown on your Fraser {13}: and liked much of it very
much: especially the Beginning about the Advantage the Novelist has over
the Play-writer. A little too much always about Miss Austen, whom yet I
think quite capital in a Circle I have found quite unendurable to walk
in. Thackeray's first Number was famous, I thought: his own little
Roundabout Paper so pleasant: but the Second Number, I say, lets the
Cockney in already: about Hogarth: Lewes is vulgar: and I don't think one
can care much for Thackeray's Novel. He is always talking so of himself,
too. I have been very glad to find I could take to a Novel again, in
Trollope's Barchester Towers, etc.: not perfect, like Miss Austen: but
then so much wider Scope: and perfect enough to make me feel I know the
People though caricatured or carelessly drawn. I doubt if you can read
my writing here: or whether it will be worth your Pains to do so. If you
can, or can not, one Day write me a Line, which I will read. I suppose
when the Fields and Hedges begin to grow green I shall move a little
further inland to be among them.
_To Mrs. Charles Allen_.
FARLINGAY: WOODBRIDGE,
_June_ 2/60.
DEAR MRS. ALLEN,
Your kind Note has reacht me here after a Fortnight's abode at my old
Lodgings in London. In London I have not been for more than a year,
unless passing through it in September, and have no thought of going up
at present. I don't think you were there last Spring, were you? Or
perhaps I was gone before you arrived, as I generally used to get off as
soon as it began to fill, and the Country to become amiable. Here at
last we have the 'May' coming out: there it is on some Thorns before my
Windows, and the Tower of Woodbridge Church beyond: and beyond that some
low Hills that stretch with Furze and Broom to the Seaside, about ten
miles off.
I am of course glad of so good a Report of John Allen. I have long been
thinking of writing to him: among other things to give his Wife a Drawing
Laurence made of him for me some four and twenty years ago: in full
Canonicals--very serious--I think a capital Likeness on the whole, and
one that I take pleasure to look at. But I think his Wife and Children
have more title to it: and one never can tell what will become of one's
Things when one's dead. This same Drawing is now in London (I hope: for,
if not, it's lost) and you should see it if you had a mind. For you
don't seem to find your way to Frees any more than I do: I should go if
there weren't a large Family. Mrs. John is always very kind to me. I do
think it is very kind of you too to remember and write to me: at any rate
I do answer Letters, which many better Men don't.
Please to remember me to your Husband: and believe me unforgetful of the
Good old Days, and of you, and yours,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
FARLINGAY: WOODBRIDGE,
_Septr._ 9/60.
MY DEAR MRS. ALLEN,
It is very kind of you to write to me. Ah! how I can fancy the
Stillness, and the Colour, of your pretty Tenby!--now eight and twenty
years since seen! But I can't summon Resolution to go to it: and daily
get worse and worse at moving any where, a common Fate as we grow older.
Your Note came in an Enclosure from your Cousin John, who seems to
flourish with Wife and Children. It is Children who keep alive one's
Interest in Life: that is to say, if one happens to like one's Children.
I have had to stay with me the two sons of my poor Friend killed last
year: he whom I first made Acquaintance with at your very Tenby. As I
haven't found Courage to go to their Country, their Mother would have
them come here, and I took them to _our_ Seaside; not a beautiful Coast
like yours--no Rocks, no Sands, and few Trees--but yet liked because
remembered by me as long as I can remember. Anyhow, there are Ships,
Boats, and Sailors: and the Boys were well pleased with all that. The
place we went to is _called Aldborough_: _spelt_ Aldeburgh: and is the
Birth place of the Poet Crabbe, who also has _Daguerrotyped_ much of the
Character of the Place in his Poems. You send me some Lines about the
Sea: what if I return you four of his?
Still as I gaze upon the Sea I find
Its waves an Image of my restless mind:
_Here_ Thought on Thought: _there_ Wave on Wave succeeds,
Their Produce--idle Thought and idle Weeds!
Adieu: please to remember me to your Husband: and believe me yours ever
very sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To George Crabbe_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_Decr._ 28/60.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
. . . I forgot to tell you I really ran to London three weeks ago: by the
morning Express, and was too glad to rush back by the Evening Ditto. I
went up for a Business I of course did not accomplish: did not call on,
or see, a Friend: couldn't get into the National Gallery: and didn't care
a straw for Holman Hunt's Picture. No doubt, there is Thought and Care
in it: but what an outcome of several Years and sold for several
Thousands! What Man with the Elements of a Great Painter could come out
with such a costive Thing after so long waiting! Think of the Acres of
Canvas Titian or Reynolds would have covered with grand Outlines and deep
Colours in the Time it has taken to niggle this Miniature! The Christ
seemed to me only a wayward Boy: the Jews, Jews no doubt: the Temple I
dare say very correct in its Detail: but think of even Rembrandt's Woman
in Adultery at the National Gallery; a much smaller Picture, but how much
vaster in Space and Feeling! Hunt's Picture stifled me with its
Littleness. I think Ruskin must see what his System has led to.
I have just got Lady Waterford's 'Babes in the Wood,' which are well
enough, pretty in Colour: only, why has she made so bad a Portrait of one
of her chief Performers, whose Likeness is so easily got at, the Robin
Redbreast? This Lady Waterford was at Gillingham this Summer: and my
Sister Eleanor said (as Thackeray had done) she was something almost to
worship for unaffected Dignity.
MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Whit-Monday_ [_May_ 20, 1861].
MY DEAR GEORGE,
. . . I take pleasure in my new little Boat: and last week went with her
to Aldbro'; and she '_behaved_' very well both going and returning;
though, to be sure, there was not much to try her Temper. I am so glad
of this fine Whit-Monday, when so many Holiday-makers will enjoy
_their_selves, and so many others make a little money by their Enjoyment.
Our 'Rifles' are going to march to Grundisburgh, _manuring_ and
_skrimmaging_ as they go, and also (as the Captain {18} hopes)
recruiting. He is a right good little Fellow, I do believe. It is a
shame the Gentry hereabout are so indifferent in the Matter: they
subscribe next to nothing: and give absolutely nothing in the way of
Entertainment or Attention to the Corps. But we are split up into the
pettiest possible Squirarchy, who want to make the utmost of their little
territory: cut down all the Trees, level all the old Violet Banks, and
stop up all the Footways they can. The old pleasant way from Hasketon to
Bredfield is now a Desert. I was walking it yesterday and had the
pleasure of breaking down and through some Bushes and Hurdles put to
block up a fallen Stile. I thought what your Father would have said of
it all. And really it is the sad ugliness of our once pleasant Fields
that half drives me to the Water where the Power of the Squirarchy stops!
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE:
_May_ 22/61.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I receive two Books, via Geldestone, from you: Khold-i-barin (including a
Lecture of your own) and 'Promises of Christianity': I think directed in
your Wife's hand. The Lecture was, I doubt not, very well adapted to its
purpose: the other two Publications I must look at by and bye. I can't
tell you how indolent I have become about Books: some Travels and
Biographies from Mudie are nearly all I read now. Then, I have only been
in London some dozen hours these two years past: my last Expedition was
this winter for five hours: when I ran home here like a beaten Dog. So I
have little to tell you of Friends as of Books. Spedding hammers away at
his Bacon (impudently forestalled by H. Dixon's Book). Carlyle is not so
up to work as of old (I hear). Indeed, he wrote me he was ill last
Summer, and obliged to cut Frederick and be off to Scotland and Idleness:
the Doctors warned him of Congestion of Brain: a warning he scorned. But
what more likely? The last account I had of Alfred Tennyson from Mrs. A.
was a good one. Frederic T. is settled at Jersey. I cannot make up my
mind to go to see any of these good, noble men: I only hope they believe
I do not forget, or cease to regard them.
My chief Amusement in Life is Boating, on River and Sea. The Country
about here is the Cemetery of so many of my oldest Friends: and the petty
race of Squires who have succeeded only use the Earth for an
_Investment_: cut down every old Tree: level every Violet Bank: and make
the old Country of my Youth hideous to me in my Decline. There are fewer
Birds to be heard, as fewer Trees for them to resort to. So I get to the
Water: where Friends are not buried nor Pathways stopt up: but all is, as
the Poets say, as Creation's Dawn beheld. I am happiest going in my
little Boat round the Coast to Aldbro', with some Bottled Porter and some
Bread and Cheese, and some good rough Soul who works the Boat and chews
his Tobacco in peace. An Aldbro' Sailor talking of my Boat said--'She go
like a Wiolin, she do!' What a pretty Conceit, is it not? As the Bow
slides over the Strings in a liquid Tune. Another man was talking
yesterday of a great Storm: 'and, in a moment, all as calm as a Clock.'
By the bye, Forby reasons that our Suffolk third person singular 'It go,
etc.,' is probably right as being the old Icelandic form. Why should the
3rd p. sing. be the only one that varies. And in the auxiliaries _May_,
_Shall_, _Can_, etc., there _is_ no change for the 3rd pers. I incline
to the Suffolk because of its avoiding a hiss.
_To George Crabbe_.
MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_June_ 4/61.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
Let me know when you come into these Parts, and be sure I shall be glad
to entertain you as well as I can if you come while I am here. Nor am I
likely to be away further than Aldbro', so far as I see. I do meditate
crossing one fine Day to Holland: to see the Hague, Paul Potter, and some
Rembrandt at Rotterdam. This, however, is not to be done in my little
Boat: but in some Trader from Ipswich. I also talk of a cruise to
Edinburgh in one of their Schooners. But both these Excursions I reserve
for such hot weather as may make a retreat from the Town agreeable. I
make no advances to Farlingay, because (as yet) we have not had any such
Heat as to bake the Houses here: and, beside, I am glad to be by the
River. It is strange how sad the Country has become to me. I went
inland to see Acton's Curiosities before the Auction: and was quite glad
to get back to the little Town again. I am quite clear I must live the
remainder of my Life in a Town: but a little one, and with a strip of
Garden to saunter in. . . .
I go sometimes to see the Rifles drill, and shoot at their Target, and
have got John {22} to ask them up to Boulge to practise some day: I must
insinuate that he should offer them some Beer when they get there. It is
a shame the Squires do nothing in the matter: take no Interest: offer no
Encouragement, beyond a Pound or two in Money. And who are those who
have most interest at stake in case of Rifles being really wanted? But I
am quite assured that this Country is dying, as other Countries die, as
Trees die, atop first. The lower Limbs are making all haste to follow. . . .
By the bye, don't let me forget to ask you to bring with you my Persian
Dictionary in case you come into these Parts. I read very very little:
and get very desultory: but when Winter comes again must take to some
dull Study to keep from Suicide, I suppose. The River, the Sea, etc.,
serve to divert one now.
Adieu. These long Letters prove one's Idleness.
_To R. C. Trench_. {23a}
MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_July_ 3/61.
DEAR DOCTOR TRENCH,
Thank you sincerely for the delightful little Journal {23b} which I had
from you yesterday, and only wished to be a dozen times as long. The
beautiful note at p. 73 speaks of much yet unprinted! It is a pity Mrs.
Kemble had not read p. 79. I thought in the Night of 'the subdued Voice
of Good Sense' and 'The Eye that invites you to look into it.' I doubt I
can read, more or less attentively, most personal Memoirs: but I am
equally sure of the superiority of this, in its Shrewdness, Humour,
natural Taste, and Good Breeding. One is sorry for the account of Lord
Nelson: but one cannot doubt it. It was at the time when he was
intoxicated, I suppose, with Glory and Lady Hamilton. What your Mother
says of the Dresden Madonna reminds me of what Tennyson once said: that
the Attitude of The Child was that of a Man: but perhaps not the less
right for all that. As to the Countenance, he said that scarce any Man's
Face could look so grave and rapt as a Baby's could at times. He once
said of his own Child's, 'He was a whole hour this morning worshipping
the Sunshine playing on the Bedpost.' He never writes Letters or
Journals: but I hope People will be found to remember some of the things
he has said as naturally as your Mother wrote them. {24}
_To W. H. Thompson_.
MARKET-HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_July_ 15/61.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
I was very glad to hear of you again. You need never take it to
Conscience, not answering my Letters, further than that I really do want
to hear you are well, and where you are, and what doing, from time to
time. I have absolutely nothing to tell about myself, not having moved
from this place since I last wrote, unless to our Sea coast at Aldbro',
whither I run, or sail, from time to time to idle with the Sailors in
their Boats or on their Beach. I love their childish ways: but they too
degenerate. As to reading, my Studies have lain chiefly in some back
Volumes of the New Monthly Magazine and some French Memoirs. Trench was
good enough to send me a little unpublished Journal by his Mother: a very
pretty thing indeed. I suppose he did this in return for one or two
Papers on Oriental Literature which Cowell had sent me from India, and
which I thought might interest Trench. I am very glad to hear old
Spedding is really getting _his_ Share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it
will be half as good as the '_Evenings_,' where Spedding was in the
_Passion_ which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.
I have not seen his Paper on English Hexameters {25} which you tell me
of: but I will now contrive to do so. I, however, believe in them: and I
think the ever-recurring attempts that way show there is some ground for
such belief. To be sure, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Quadrature of
the Circle, have had at least as many Followers. . . .
It was finding some Bits of Letters and Poems of old Alfred's that made
me wish to restore those I gave you to the number, as marking a by-gone
time to me. That they will not so much do to you, who did not happen to
save them from the Fire when the Volumes of 1842 were printing. But I
would waive that if you found it good or possible to lay them up in
Trinity Library in the Closet with Milton's! Otherwise, I would still
look at them now and then for the few years I suppose I have to live. . . .
This is a terribly long Letter: but, if it be legible sufficiently, will
perhaps do as if I were spinning it in talk under the walls of the
Cathedral. I dare not now even talk of going any visits: I can truly say
I wish you could drop in here some Summer Day and take a Float with me on
our dull River, which does lead to THE SEA some ten miles off. . .
You must think I have become very nautical, by all this: haul away at
ropes, swear, dance Hornpipes, etc. But it is not so: I simply sit in
Boat or Vessel as in a moving Chair, dispensing a little Grog and Shag to
those who do the work.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_December_ 7/61.
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . I shall look directly for the passages in Omar and Hafiz which you
refer to and clear up, though I scarce ever see the Persian Character
now. I suppose you would think it a dangerous thing to edit Omar: else,
who so proper? Nay, are you not the only Man to do it? And he certainly
is worth good re-editing. I thought him from the first the most
remarkable of the Persian Poets: and you keep finding out in him
Evidences of logical Fancy which I had not dreamed of. I dare say these
logical Riddles are not his best: but they are yet evidences of a
Strength of mind which our Persian Friends rarely exhibit, I think. I
always said about Cowley, Donne, etc., whom Johnson calls the
metaphysical Poets, that their very Quibbles of Fancy showed a power of
Logic which could follow Fancy through such remote Analogies. This is
the case with Calderon's Conceits also. I doubt I have given but a very
one-sided version of Omar: but what I do only comes up as a Bubble to the
Surface, and breaks: whereas you, with exact Scholarship, might make a
lasting impression of such an Author. So I say of Jelaluddin, whom you
need not edit in Persian, perhaps, unless in selections, which would be
very good work: but you should certainly translate for us some such
selections exactly in the way in which you did that apologue of Azrael.
{27} I don't know the value of the Indian Philosophy, etc., which you
tell me is a fitter exercise for the Reason: but I am sure that you
should give us some of the Persian I now speak of, which you can do all
so easily to yourself; yes, as a holiday recreation, you say, to your
Indian Studies. As to India being 'your Place,' it may be: but as to
your being lost in England, that could not be. You know I do not
flatter. . . .
I declare I should like to go to India as well as any where: and I
believe it might be the best thing for me to do. But, always slow at
getting under way as I have been all my Life, what is to be done with one
after fifty! I am sure there is no longer any great pleasure living in
this Country, so tost with perpetual Alarms as it is. One Day we are all
in Arms about France. To-day we are doubting if To-morrow we may not be
at War to the Knife with America! I say still, as I used, we have too
much Property, Honour, etc., on our Hands: our outward Limbs go on
lengthening while our central Heart beats weaklier: I say, as I used, we
should give up something before it is forced from us. The World, I
think, may justly resent our being and interfering all over the Globe.
Once more I say, would we were a little, peaceful, unambitious, trading,
Nation, like--the Dutch! . . .
Adieu, My Dear Cowell; once more, Adieu. I doubt if you can read what I
have written. Do not forget my Love to your Wife. I wonder if we are
ever to meet again: you would be most disappointed if we were!
_To W. H. Thompson_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Dec._ 9/61.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
The MS. came safe to hand yesterday, thank you: and came out of its
Envelope like a Ray of Old Times to my Eyes. I wish I had secured more
leaves from that old '_Butcher's Book_' torn up in old Spedding's Rooms
in 1842 when the Press went to work with, I think, the Last of old
Alfred's Best. But that, I am told, is only a 'Crotchet.' However, had
I taken some more of the Pages that went into the Fire, after serving in
part for Pipe-lights, I might have enriched others with that which AT
{29} himself would scarce have grudged, jealous as he is of such sort of
Curiosity.
I have seen no more of Tannhauser than the Athenaeum showed me; and
certainly do not want to see more. One wonders that Men of some Genius
(as I suppose these are) should so disguise it in Imitation: but, if they
be very young men, this is the natural course, is it not? By and by they
may find their own Footing.
As to my own Peccadilloes in Verse, which never pretend to be original,
this is the story of _Rubaiyat_. I had translated them partly for
Cowell: young Parker asked me some years ago for something for Fraser,
and I gave him the less wicked of these to use if he chose. He kept them
for two years without using: and as I saw he did'nt want them I printed
some copies with Quaritch; and, keeping some for myself, gave him the
rest. Cowell, to whom I sent a Copy, was naturally alarmed at it; he
being a very religious Man: nor have I given any other Copy but to George
Borrow, to whom I had once lent the Persian, and to old Donne when he was
down here the other Day, to whom I was showing a Passage in another Book
which brought my old Omar up.
(end of letter lost.)
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_March_ 19/62.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
Thanks for your Letter in the middle of graver occupations. It will give
me very great pleasure if you will come here: but not if you only do so
out of kindness; I mean, if you have no other call of Business or
Pleasure to yourself. For I don't deserve--
You should have sent me some Photograph. I hate them nearly all: but S.
Rice {30} was very good. I wonder you don't turn out well: I suppose,
too black, is it? It is generally florid people, I think, who fail: yet,
strange to say, my Brother Peter has come quite handsome in the Process.
. . .
I am all for a little Flattery in Portraits: that is, so far as, I think,
the Painter or Sculptor should try at something more agreeable than
anything he sees sitting to him: when People look either bored, or
smirking: he should give the best possible Aspect which the Features
before him _might_ wear, even if the Artist had not seen that Aspect.
Especially when he works for Friends or Kinsfolk: for even the plainest
face has looked handsome to them at some happy moment, and just such we
like to have perpetuated.
Now, I really do feel ashamed when you ask about my Persian Translations,
though they are all very well: only very little affairs. I really have
not the face to send to Milnes direct: but I send you four Copies which I
have found in a Drawer here to do as you will with. This will save
Milnes, or any one else, the bore of writing to me to acknowledge it.
My old Boat has been altered, I hope not spoiled; and I shall soon be
preparing for the Water--and Mud. I don't think one can reckon on warm
weather till after the Longest Day: but if you should come before, it
will surely be warm enough to walk, or drive, if not to sail; and Leaves
will be green, if the Tide should be out.
You would almost think I wanted to repay you in Compliment if I told you
I regarded even your hasty Letters as excellent in all respects. I do,
however: but I do not wish you to write one when you are busy or
disinclined.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sept._ 29/62.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
'What Cheer, ho!' I somehow fancy that a Line of Nonsense will catch you
before you leave Ely: and yet, now I come to think, you will have left
Ely, probably, and will be returning in another Fortnight to Cambridge
for the Term. Well, I will direct to Cambridge then; and my Note shall
await you there, and you need not answer it till some very happy hour of
Leisure and Inclination. As to Inclination, indeed, I don't think you
will ever have much of that, toward writing such Letters, I mean; what
sensible Man after forty has? You have done so much more (in my Eyes,
and perhaps so much less in your own) coming all this way to see me! I
did wonder at the Goodness of that. I suppose Spedding didn't tell you
that I wrote to him to say so. It was very unlucky I was out when you
came: I have often thought of that with vexation.
Well, I have gone on Boating, etc., just the same ever since. And just
now I have been applying to Spring Rice to use his Influence to get a
larger Buoy laid at the mouth of our River; across which lies a vile Bar
of shifting Sand, and such a little Bit of a Buoy to mark it that we
often almost miss it going in and out, and are in danger of running on
the Shoal; which would break the Boat to Pieces if not drown us. Here is
a fine Piece of Information to a Canon of Ely and Professor of Greek at
Cambridge!
Spring Rice does not speak well, I think, of his health; not at all well;
and his Handwriting looks shaky. What a Loyal Kind Heart it is!
_To W. B. Donne_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE,
_Nov._ 28/62.
MY DEAR DONNE,
I talk indignantly against others bothering you, and do worse than all
myself, I think, what with Bookbindings, Dressing-gowns, etc. (N.B. You
know that the last is only in case when you are going your Rounds to St.
James, etc.) Now I have a little Query to make: which, not being even so
much out of your way, won't I hope trouble you. I remember Thompson
telling me that, from what he had read and seen of Grecian Geography, he
almost thought Clytemnestra's famous Account of the Line of Signal Fires
from Troy to Mycenae to be possible (I mean you know in the Agamemnon).
At least this is what _I believe_ he said: I must not assert from a not
very accurate Memory anything that would compromise a Greek Professor: I
am so ignorant of Geography, ancient as well as modern, I don't know
exactly, or at all, the Points of the Beacons so enumerated: and
Lempriere, the only Classic I have to refer to, doesn't help me in what I
want. Will you turn to the passage, and tell me _what_, and _where_,
are:
1. The [Greek text]--
2. The [Greek text]--
3. The [Greek text].
_What_, _where_, and _why_, so called? The rest I know, or can find in
Dictionary, and Map. But for these--
Lempriere
Is no-where;
Liddell and Scott
Don't help me a jot:
When I'm off, Donnegan
Don't help me _on again_.--
So I'm obliged to resort to old _Donne again_!
Rhyme and Epigram quite worthy of the German.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
Fragment of a Letter written in Nov. 1862.
I took down a Juvenal to look for a Passage about the Loaded Waggon
rolling through the Roman Streets. {34} I couldn't find it. Do you know
where it is? Not that you need answer this Question, which only comes in
as if I were talking to you. I remember asking you whence AEschylus made
his Agamemnon speak of Ulysses as unwilling at first to go on the Trojan
Expedition. I see Paley refers it to some Poem called the Cypria quoted
by Proclus. I was asking Donne the other Day as to some of the names of
the Beacon-places in Clytemnestra's famous Speech: and I then said I
_believed_--but only _believed_, as an inaccurate Man, not wishing to
implicate others--that you, Thompson, had once told me that you thought
the Chain of Fires _might_ have passed from Troy to Mycenae in the way
described--_just possibly_ MIGHT, I think--I assure you I took care not
to commit your Credit by my uncertain Memory, whatever it was you said
was only in a casual way over a Cigar. Are you for [Greek text]? {35a} a
point I don't care a straw about; so don't answer this neither.
No, I didn't go to the Exhibition: which, I know, looks like Affectation:
but was honest Incuriosity and Indolence.
. . . On looking over Juvenal for the Lines I wanted I was amused at the
prosaic Truth of one I didn't want:
Intolerabilius nihil est quam femina dives. {35b}
_To George Crabbe_.
_Dec._ 20, 1862.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
. . . I have been, and am, reading Borrow's 'Wild Wales,' which _I_ like
well, because I can hear him talking it. But I don't know if others will
like it: anyhow there is too much of the same thing. Then what is meant
for the plainest record of Conversation, etc., has such Phrases as 'Marry
come up,' etc., which mar the sense of Authenticity. Then, no one
writing better English than Borrow in general, there is the vile
_Individual_--_Person_--and _Locality_ always cropping up: and even this
vulgar Young Ladyism, 'The Scenery was beautiful _to a Degree_.' _What_
Degree? When did this vile Phrase arise?
_To W. H. Thompson_.
_Good Friday_, 1863.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
Pray never feel ashamed of not answering my Letters so long as you do
write twice a year, to let me know you live and thrive. As much oftener
as you please: but you are only to be ashamed of not doing that. For
that I really want of all who have been very kind and very constant
('_loyal_' is the word that even Emperors now use of themselves) for so
many years. This I say in all sincerity.
Now, while you talk of being ashamed of not writing, I am rather ashamed
of writing so much to you. Partly because I really have so little to
say; and also because saying that little too often puts you to the shame
you speak of. You say my Letters are pleasant, however: and they will be
so far pleasant if they assure you that I like talking to you in that
way: bad as I am at more direct communication. I can tell you your
letters are very pleasant to me; you at least have always something to
tell of your half-year's Life: and you tell it so wholesomely, I always
say in so capital a Style, as makes me regret you have not written some
of your better Knowledge for the Public. I suppose (as I have heard)
that your Lectures {37} are excellent in this way; I can say I should
like very much to attend a course of them, on the Greek Plays, or on
Plato. I dare say you are right about an Apprenticeship in Red Tape
being necessary to make a Man of Business: but is it too late in Life for
you to buckle to and screw yourself up to condense some of your Lectures
and scholarly Lore into a Book? By 'too late in Life' I mean too late to
take Heart to do it.
I am sure you won't believe that I am _scratching_ you in return for any
scratchings from your hands. We are both too old, too sensible, and too
independent, I think, for that sort of thing.
As to my going to Ely in June, I don't know yet what to say; for I have
been Fool enough to order a Boat to be building which will cost me 350
pounds, and she talks of being launched in the very first week of June,
and I have engaged for some short trips in her as soon as she is afloat.
I begin to feel tired of her already; I felt I should when I was
persuaded to order her: and that is the Folly of it. They say it is a
very bad Thing to do Nothing: but I am sure that is not the case with
those who are born to Blunder; I always find that I have to repent of
what I have done, not what I have left undone; and poor W. Browne used to
say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone than done. You
know how glad I should be if you came here: but I haven't the Face to ask
it, especially after that misfit last Summer; which was not my fault
however.
I always look upon old Spedding's as one of the most wasted Lives I know:
and he is a wise Man! Twenty years ago I told him that he should knock
old Bacon off; I don't mean give him up, but wind him up at far less
sacrifice of Time and Labour; and edit Shakespeare. I think it _would_
have been worth his Life to have done those two; and I am always
persuaded his Bacon would have been better if done more at a heat. I
shall certainly buy the new Shakespeare you tell me of, if the Volumes
aren't bulky; which destroys my pleasure in the use of a Book.
I have had my share of Influenza: even this Woodbridge, with all its
capital Air and self-contented Stupidity (which you know is very
conducive to long Life) has been wheezing and coughing all the very mild
winter; and the Bell of the Tower opposite my Room has been tolling
oftener than I ever remember.
Though I can't answer for _June_, I am really meditating a small trip to
Wiltshire _before_ June; mainly to see the daughters of my old George
Crabbe who are settled at Bradford on Avon, and want very much that I
should see how happily they live on very small means indeed. And I must
own I am the more tempted to go abroad because there is preparation for a
Marriage in my Family (a Niece--but not one of my Norfolk Nieces) which
is to be at my Brother's near here; and there will be a Levee of People,
who drop in here, etc. This may blow over, however.
Now I ought to be ashamed of this long Letter: don't you make me so by
answering it.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To George Crabbe_.
WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 8/63.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
Your sister wrote me a very kind Letter to tell of her safe Return home.
I must repeat to you very sincerely that I never recollect to have passed
a pleasanter week. As far as Company went, it was like Old Times at
Bredfield; and the Oak-trees were divine! I never expected to care so
very much for Trees, nor for your flat Country: but I really feel as one
who has bathed in Verdure. I suppose Town-living makes one alive to such
a Change.
I spent a long Day with Thompson: {40} and much liked the painted Roof.
On Thursday I went to Lynn: which I took a Fancy to: the odd old Houses:
the Quay: the really grand Inn (Duke's Head, in the Market place) and the
civil, Norfolk-talking, People. I went to Hunstanton, which is rather
dreary: one could see the Country at Sandringham was good. I enquired
fruitlessly about those Sandringham Pictures, etc.: even the Auctioneer,
whom I found in the Bar of the Inn, could tell nothing of where they had
gone.
_To W. B. Donne_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sat. July_ 18/63.
MY DEAR DONNE,
. . . I can hardly tell you whether I am much pleased with my new Boat;
for I hardly know myself. She is (as I doubted would be from the first)
rather awkward in our narrow River; but then she was to be a good Sea-
boat; and I don't know but she is; and will be better in all ways when we
have got her in proper trim. Yesterday we gave her what they call '_a
tuning_' in a rather heavy swell round Orford Ness: and she did well
without a reef, etc. But, now all is got, I don't any the more want to
go far away by Sea, any more than by Land; having no Curiosity left for
other Places, and glad to get back to my own Chair and Bed after three or
four Days' Absence. So long as I get on the Sea from time to time, it is
much the same to me whether off Aldbro' or Penzance. And I find I can't
sleep so well on board as I used to do thirty years ago: and not to get
one's Sleep, you know, indisposes one more or less for the Day. However,
we talk of Dover, Folkestone, Holland, etc., which will give one's
sleeping Talents a _tuning_.
_To George Crabbe_.
WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 19, [1863].
MY DEAR GEORGE,
You tell me the Romney is at Gardner's: but where is Gardner's? And what
was the Price of the Portrait? Laurence said well about Romney that, as
compared to Sir Joshua and Gainsboro', his Pictures looked tinted, rather
than painted; the colour of the Cheek (for instance) rather superficially
laid on, as rouge, rather than ingrained, and mantling like Blood from
below. Laurence had seen those at last year's Exhibition: I have not
seen near so many. I remember one that seemed to me capital at Lord
Bute's in Bedfordshire.
I came home yesterday from a short Cruise to Yarmouth, etc., where some
people were interested in the Channel Fleet. But I could take no
interest in Steam Ships and Iron Rams.
WOODBRIDGE, _August_ 4, [1863].
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I have at last done my Holland: you won't be surprised to hear that I did
it in two days, and was too glad to rush home on the first pretence,
after (as usual) seeing nothing I cared the least about. The Country
itself I had seen long before in Dutch Pictures, and between Beccles and
Norwich: the Towns I had seen in Picturesque Annuals, Drop Scenes, etc.
But the Pictures--the Pictures--themselves?
Well, you know how I am sure to mismanage: but you will hardly believe,
even of me, that I never saw what was most worth seeing, the Hague
Gallery! But so it was: had I been by myself, I should have gone off
directly (after landing at Rotterdam) to that: but Mr. Manby was with me:
and he thought best to see about Rotterdam first: which was last
Thursday, at whose earliest Dawn we arrived. So we tore about in an open
Cab: saw nothing: the Gallery not worth a visit: and at night I was half
dead with weariness. Then again on Friday I, by myself, should have
started for the Hague: but as Amsterdam was also to be done, we thought
best to go there (as furthest) first. So we went: tore about the town in
a Cab as before: and I raced through the Museum seeing (I must say)
little better than what I have seen over and over again in England. I
couldn't admire the Night-watch much: Van der Helst's very good Picture
seemed to me to have been cleaned: I thought the Rembrandt Burgomasters
worth all the rest put together. But I certainly looked very flimsily at
all.
Well, all this done, away we went to the Hague: arriving there just as
the Museum closed for that day; next Day (Saturday) it was not to be open
at all (I having proposed to wait in case it should), and on Sunday only
from 12 to 2. Hearing all this, in Rage and Despair I tore back to
Rotterdam: and on Saturday Morning got the Boat out of the muddy Canal in
which she lay and tore back down the Maas, etc., so as to reach dear old
Bawdsey shortly after Sunday's Sunrise. Oh, my Delight when I heard them
call out 'Orford Lights!' as the Boat was plunging over the Swell.
All this is very stupid, really wrong: but you are not surprised at it in
me. One reason however of my Disgust was, that we (in our Boat) were
shut up (as I said) in the Canal, where I couldn't breathe. I begged Mr.
Manby to let me take him to an Inn: he would stick to his Ship, he said:
and I didn't like to leave him. Then it was Murray who misled me about
the Hague Gallery: he knew nothing about its being shut on Saturdays.
Then again we neither of us knew a word of Dutch: and I was surprised how
little was known of English in return.
But I shall say no more. I think it is the last foreign Travel I shall
ever undertake; unless I should go with you to see the Dresden Madonna:
to which there is one less impediment now Holland is not to be gone
through. . . . I am the Colour of a Lobster with Sea-faring: and my Eyes
smart: so Good-Bye. Let me hear of you. Ever yours E. F. G.
Oh dear!--Rembrandt's Dissection--where and how did I miss that?
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Aug._ 5/63.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I don't hear from you: I rather think you are deterred by those _Birds_
which I asked you to print (in my last Letter) with some Correction,
etc., of your own: and which you have not found Time or Inclination to
get done. But don't let anything of this sort prevent your writing to me
now and then: no one can be more utterly indifferent than I am whether
these Birds are printed or not: and I suppose I distinctly told you _not_
to put yourself to any Trouble. Indeed I dare say I should only be bored
with the Copies when they were printed: for I don't know a Soul here who
would care for the Thing if it were ten times as well done as I have done
it: nor do I care for Translation or Original, myself. Oh dear, when I
do look into Homer, Dante, and Virgil, AEschylus, Shakespeare, etc.,
those Orientals look--silly! Don't resent my saying so. _Don't_ they? I
am now a good [deal] about in a new Boat I have built, and thought (as
Johnson took Cocker's Arithmetic with him on travel, because he shouldn't
exhaust it) so I would take Dante and Homer with me, instead of Mudie's
Books, which I read through directly. I took Dante by way of slow
Digestion: not having looked at him for some years: but I am glad to find
I relish him as much as ever: he atones with the Sea; as you know does
the Odyssey--these are the Men!
I am just returned in my Ship from Holland--where I stayed--two days!--and
was so glad to rush away home after being imprisoned in a sluggish un-
sweet Canal in Rotterdam: and after tearing about to Amsterdam, the
Hague, etc., to see things which were neither new nor remarkable to me
though I had never seen them before--except in Pictures, which represent
to you the Places as well as if you went there, without the trouble of
going. I am sure wiser men, with keener _out_sight and _in_sight would
see what no Pictures could give: but this I know is always the case with
me: this is my last Voyage abroad, I believe: unless I go to see
Raffaelle's Madonna at Dresden, which no other Picture can represent than
itself: unless Dante's Beatrice.
I don't think you ever told me if you had got, or read, Spedding's two
first volumes of Bacon. My opinion is not the least altered of the Case:
and (as I anticipated) Spedding has brooded over his Egg so long he has
rather addled it. Thompson told me that the very Papers he adduces to
clear Bacon in Essex's Business, rather go against him: I haven't seen
any Notice of the Book in any Review but Fraser: where Donne (of course)
was convinced, etc., and I hear that even the wise old Spedding is
_mortified_ that he has awakened so little Interest for his Hero. You
know his Mortification would not be on _his own_ score. His last Letter
to me (some months ago) seemed to indicate that he could scarce lift up
his Pen to go on--he had as yet, he said, written nothing of volumes 3
and 4. But I suppose he _will_ in time. I say this Life of his wasted
on a vain work is a Tragedy pathetic as Antigone or Iphigenia. Of
Tennyson I hear but little: and I have ceased to look forward to any
future Work of his. Thackeray seems dumb as a gorged Blackbird too: all
growing old!
I have lost my sister Kerrich, the only one of my family I much cared
for, or who much cared for me.
But (not to dwell on what cannot be helped, and to which my talking of
all growing old led me) I see in last week's Athenaeum great Praise of a
new Volume of Poems by Jean Ingelow. The Reviewer talks of a 'new Poet,'
etc., quite unaware that some dozen years ago the 'new Poet' published a
Volume (as you may remember) with as distinct Indications of sweet,
fresh, and original Genius as anything he adduces from this second
Volume. I remember writing a sort of Review, when about you at Bramford,
which I sent to Mitford, to try and give the Book a little move: but
Mitford had just quitted the Gentleman's Magazine, and I tore up my
Paper. Your Elizabeth knows (I think) all about this Lady: who, I
suppose, is connected with Lincolnshire: for the Reviewer speaks of some
of the Poems as relating to that Coast--Shipwrecks, etc. I was told that
Tennyson was writing a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss
Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be
suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long
roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley
Hall. Don't believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to
be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that
(for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having
nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all
owing to London, etc. He is growing old: and I don't believe much in the
Fine Arts thriving on an old Tree: I can't think Milton's Paradise Lost
so good as his Allegro, etc.; one feels the strain of the Pump all
through: only Shakespeare--the exception to all rule--struck out Macbeth
at past fifty. {47a}
By the way, there is a new--and the best--edition {47b} of _Him_ coming
out: edited by two men (Fellows) of Cambridge. Just the Text, with the
various readings of Folio and Quartos: scarce any notes: but suggestions
of Alteration from Pope, Theobald, Coleridge, etc., and--Spedding; who
(as I told him twenty years ago) should have done the work these men are
doing. He also says they are well doing about _half_ what is wanted to
be done. He should--for he could--have done all; and one Frontispiece
Portrait would have served for Author and Editor.
Come--here is a long Letter--and (as I read it over) with more _Go_ than
usually attends my old Pen now. Let it inspire you to answer: never mind
_the Birds_:--which really suggests to me one of Dante's beautiful lines
which made me _cry_ the other Day at Sea.
Mentre che gli occhi per la fronda verde
Ficcava io cosi, come far suole
Chi dietro all' uccellin la vita perde,
Lo piu che Padre mi dicea, etc. {48a}
_To W. B. Donne_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_October_ 4/63.
MY DEAR DONNE,
Very rude of me not to have acknowledged your Tauchnitz {48b} before: but
I have been almost living in my Ship ever since: and I supposed also that
you were abroad in Norfolk. I pitied you undergoing those dreadful
Oratorios: I never heard one that was not tiresome, and in part
ludicrous. Such subjects are scarce fitted for Catgut. Even Magnus
Handel--even Messiah. He (Handel) was a good old Pagan at heart, and
(till he had to yield to the fashionable Piety of England) stuck to
Opera, and Cantatas, such as Acis and Galatea, Milton's Penseroso,
Alexander's Feast, etc., where he could revel and plunge and frolic
without being tied down to Orthodoxy. And these are (to my mind) his
really great works: these, and his Coronation Anthems, where Human Pomp
is to be accompanied and illustrated
Now for Tauchnitz; somehow, that which you sent me is not the thing: I
don't like it half so well as my little Tauchnitz stereotype Sophocles of
1827. The Euripides you send bears date 1846: and is certainly not so
clear to my eyes as 1827. Never mind: don't trouble yourself further: I
shall light upon what I want one of these Days. It is wonderful how _The
Sea_ brought up this Appetite for Greek: it likes to be called [Greek
text] and [Greek text] better than the wretched word '_Sea_,' I am sure:
and the Greeks (especially AEschylus--after Homer) are full of Seafaring
Sounds and Allusions. I think the Murmur of the AEgean (if that is their
Sea) wrought itself into their Language. How is it the Islandic (which I
read is our Mother Tongue) was not more Poluphloisboi-ic?
Sophocles has almost shaken my Allegiance to AEschylus. Oh, those two
OEdipuses! but then that Agamemnon! Well: one shall be the Handel and
'tother the Haydn; one the Michel Angelo, and 'tother the Raffaelle, of
Tragedy. As to the famous Prometheus, I think, as I always thought, it
is somewhat over-rated for Sublimity; I can't see much in the far famed
Conception of the Hero's Character: and I doubt (_rest wanting_).
_To S. Laurence_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 7/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . I want to know about your two Portraits of Thackeray: the first one
(which I think Smith and Elder have) I know by the Print: I want to know
about one you last did (some two years ago?) whether you think it as good
and characteristic: and also who has it. Frederic Tennyson sent me a
Photograph of W. M. T. old, white, massive, and melancholy, sitting in
his Library.
I am surprized almost to find how much I am thinking of him: so little as
I had seen him for the last ten years; not once for the last five. I had
been told--by you, for one--that he was spoiled. I am glad therefore
that I have scarce seen him since he was 'old Thackeray.' I keep reading
his Newcomes of nights, and as it were hear him saying so much in it; and
it seems to me as if he might be coming up my Stairs, and about to come
(singing) into my Room, as in old Charlotte Street, etc., thirty years
ago. {50}
_To George Crabbe_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 12/64.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
. . . Have we exchanged a word about Thackeray since his Death? I am
quite surprised to see how I sit moping about him: to be sure, I keep
reading his Books. Oh, the Newcomes are fine! And now I have got hold
of Pendennis, and seem to like that much more than when I first read it.
I keep hearing him say so much of it; and really think I shall hear his
Step up the Stairs to this Lodging as in old Charlotte Street thirty
years ago. Really, a great Figure has sunk under Earth.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 23/64.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
You see I return with your other troubles of Term time. Only when you
have ten spare minutes let me know how you are, etc. . . . I have almost
wondered at myself how much occupied I have been thinking of Thackeray;
so little as I had seen of him for the last ten years, and my Interest in
him a little gone from hearing he had become somewhat spoiled: which also
some of his later writings hinted to me of themselves. But his Letters,
and former works, bring me back the old Thackeray. . . . I had never
read Pendennis and the Newcomes since their first appearance till this
last month. They are wonderful; Fielding's seems to me coarse work in
comparison. I have indeed been thinking of little this last month but of
these Books and their Author. Of his Letters to me I have only kept some
Dozen, just to mark the different Epochs of our Acquaintance.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 31/64.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I have only Today got your Letter: have been walking out by myself in the
Seckford Almshouse Garden till 9 p.m. in a sharp Frost--with Orion
stalking over the South before me--(do you know him in India? I forget)
have come in--drunk a glass of Porter; and am minded to answer you before
I get to Bed. Perhaps the Porter will leave me stranded, however, before
I get to the End of my Letter.
Before this reaches you--probably before I write it--you will have heard
of Thackeray's sudden Death. It was told me as I was walking alone in
those same Seckford Gardens on Christmas-day Night; by a
Corn-merchant--one George Manby--(do you remember him?) who came on
purpose to tell me--and to wish me in other respects a Happy Christmas. I
have thought little else than of W. M. T. ever since--what with reading
over his Books, and the few Letters I had kept of his; and thinking over
our five and thirty years' Acquaintance as I sit alone by my Fire these
long Nights. I had seen very little of him for these last ten years;
_nothing_ for the last five; he did not care to write; and people told me
he was become a little spoiled: by London praise, and some consequent
Egotism. But he was a very fine Fellow. His Books are wonderful:
Pendennis; Vanity Fair; and the Newcomes; to which compared Fielding's
seems to me coarse work. I don't know yet how his two daughters are left
provided for; the Papers say well. He had built and furnished a fine
House at 7 or 8000 pounds cost; which is as good a Property for them to
let or sell as any other, I suppose; and the Copyright of his Books must
also be a good Property: always supposing he had not encumbered all these
by anticipation.
I was not at all well myself for three months; but either the Doctor's
Stuff, or the sharp clear weather, or both, have set me up pretty much as
I was before. I have nothing to tell, as usual, of People or Places; for
I have scarce stirred from this Place since my little Ship was laid up in
the middle of October. Donne writes sometimes; I see an article of his
about the Antonines advertised in the present Edinburgh; but that you
know is out of my Line. His second son, Mowbray, is lately married to a
Daughter (I don't know which) of Mrs. Salmon's; widow of a former Rector
here, whom your Elizabeth will remember all about, I dare say.
This time ten years I was lodging at Oxford, reading Persian with you. I
doubt I shall never do so again; I am too lazy to turn Dictionaries over
now; and indeed had some while ceased to expect much to turn up from
them. You are quite right, as a Scholar, to work out the Mine; but you
admit that nothing is likely to come out of such Value as from the Greek,
Latin, and English, which we have ready to our hands. Did I tell you how
pleased I had been with Sophocles and AEschylus in my Boat this Summer?
I dare say you are quite right about my 'Birds': indeed I think I had
always told you that my Version was of no _public_ use; I only wanted a
few Copies for private use; and I wanted you to add a short Account, and
a few Notes; in which I am shy of trusting my own Irish Accuracy. But
you have plenty of better work, and _this_ is quite as well left.
Miss Ingelow's second volume isn't half so good as her first, to my
thinking; more ambitious, with a twang of Tennyson. I can't add to the
List you have sent of Elizabeth's Poems.
Maria C[harlesworth] was staying with my Brother at Boulge in the Autumn,
and sent a very kind message to me; I now am sorry I did not see her; but
I keep out of the way of the _Company_ at Boulge, though I am glad to see
my Brother here. So I wish I had asked her to take the Trouble to come
and see me in my Den. Alas! if ever you do come back, you will have to
come and see me; for I really go nowhere now. Frederic Tennyson came to
me for a few Days, and talked of you two: he was looking very well; and
was grand and kind as before. I hear little of Alfred. Spedding's Bacon
seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest,
and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me
they had only convinced _him_ the other way; and that _Ellis_ had long
given up Bacon's Defence before he died.
Now my sheet is filled on the strength of my own Glass of Porter--all at
a heat. So Good Bye: ever yours, E. F. G.
_To S. Laurence_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_April_ 23/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
I only got home last Night, from Wiltshire, where I had been to see Miss
Crabbe, daughter of the old Vicar whom you remember. I found your two
Letters: and then your Box. When I had unscrewed the last Screw, it was
as if a Coffin's Lid were raised; there was the Dead Man. {55} I took
him up to my Bedroom; and when morning came, he was there--reading;
alive, and yet dead. I am perfectly satisfied with it on the whole;
indeed, could only have suggested a very, very, slight alteration, if
any. . .
As I passed through London, I saw that wonderful Collection of Rubbish,
the late Bishop of Ely's Pictures; but I fell desperately in Love with a
Sir Joshua, a young Lady in white with a blue Sash, and a sweet blue Sky
over her sweet, noble, Head; far above Gainsboro' in its Air and
Expression. I see in the Papers that it went for 165 pounds; which, if I
thought well to give so much for any Picture, I could almost have given,
by some means, for such a delightful Work.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_April_ 27/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . I will send back the Gainsboro' copy {56a} at once; I think the
Original must be one of the happiest of the Painter's; while he had
Vandyke in his Eye, with whom he was to go to Heaven. {56b} I will not
argue how far he was superior to Reynolds in Colour; but in the Air of
Dignity and Gentility (in the better Sense) he was surely inferior; it
must be so, from the Difference of Character in the two men. Madame
D'Arblay (Miss Burney) relates how one day when she was dining with Sir
Joshua at Richmond, she chanced to see him looking at her in a peculiar
way; she said to him, 'I know what you are thinking about.' 'Ay,' he
said, 'you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.' They had
often met; but he at last caught _the_ phase of her which was best; but I
don't think it ever went to Canvas. I don't think Gainsboro' could have
painted the lovely portrait at the Bishop of Ely's, slight as it was; Sir
Joshua was by much the finer Gentleman; indeed Gainsboro' was a Scamp.
* * * * *
In the summer of 1864 FitzGerald bought a small farmhouse in the
outskirts of Woodbridge, which he afterwards converted into Little
Grange.
_To George Crabbe_.
WOODBRIDGE: _July_ 31/64.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I returned yesterday from a Ten Days' Cruise to the Sussex Coast: which
was pleasant enough. To-morrow I talk of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.
. . . Read Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, something of a very different
order [from the 'Dean's English'], deeply interesting; pathetic,
eloquent, and, I think, sincere: sincere, in not being conscious of all
the steps he took in reaching his present Place.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Aug._ 31, [1864].
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . I hope you don't think I have forgotten you. Your visit gave me a
sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory of other Days; I now see so
few People, and those all of the common sort, with whom I never talk of
our old Subjects; so I get in some measure unfitted for such converse,
and am almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast when it
comes. And there is something besides; a Shadow of Death: but I won't
talk of such things: only believe I don't forget you, nor wish to be
forgotten by you. Indeed, your kindness touched me.
I have been reading Juvenal with Translation, etc., in my Boat. Nearly
the best things seem to me what one may call Epistles, rather than
Satires: VIII. To Ponticus: XI. To Persicus: and XII. XIII. and XIV to
several others: and, in these, leaving out the directly satirical Parts.
Satires III and X, like Horace's Poems, are prostituted by Parliamentary
and vulgar use, and should lie by for a while. One sees Lucretius, I
think, in many parts; but Juvenal can't rise to Lucretius, who is, after
all, the true sublime Satirist of poor Man, and of something deeper than
his Corruptions and Vices: and he looks on all, too, with 'a Countenance
more in Sorrow than in Anger.' By the way, I want you to tell me the
name and Title of that Essay on Lucretius {58} which you said was
enlarged and reprinted by the Author from the original Cambridge and
Oxford Essays. I want much to get it.
There is a fine Passage in Juvenal's 6th Satire on Women: beginning line
634, 'Fingimus haec, etc.' to 650: but (as I think) leaving out lines
639, 640; because one _can_ understand without them, and they jingle
sadly with their one vowel ending. I mention this because it occurs in a
Satire which, from its Subject, you may perhaps have little cared for.
Another Book I have had is Wesley's Journal, which I used to read, but
gave away my Copy--to you? or Robert Groome {59a} was it? If you don't
know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running
almost coevally with Walpole's Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying
too within a few years of one another, and with such different Lives to
record. And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying,
English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a Style, which all
the world imitated! Remember me to all. Ever yours E. F. G.
'Sed genus humanum damnat caligo Futuri'--a Lucretian line from Juvenal.
{59b}
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Nov._ 11/64.
MY DEAR COWELL,
Let me hear of you whenever you have something to tell of yourself: or
indeed whenever you have a few spare minutes, and happen, to think--of
me. I don't forget you: and 'out of sight' is not 'out of mind' with
you, and three or four more in the World. I hope you see Donne at times:
and you must look out for old Spedding, that melancholy Ruin of the 19th
Century, with his half-white-washed Bacon. Perhaps you will see another
Ruin--the Author of Enoch Arden. Compare that with the Spontaneous _Go_
of Palace of Art, Mort d'Arthur, Gardener's Daughter, Locksley Hall, Will
Waterproof, Sleeping Palace, Talking Oak, and indeed, one may say, all
the two volumes of 1842. As to Maud, I think it the best Poem, as a
whole, after 1842.
To come down to very little, from once great, Things--I don't know if
it's your coming home, or my being better this Winter, or what: but I
have caught up a long ago begun Version of my dear old _Magico_, and have
so recast it that scarce a Plank remains of the original! Pretty
impudence: and yet all done to conciliate English, or modern, Sympathy.
This I sha'n't publish: so say (pray!) nothing of it at all--remember--only
I shall print some Copies for you and one or two more: and you and
Elizabeth will like it a great deal too much. There is really very great
Skill in the Adaptation, and Remodelling of it. By the bye, would you
translate _Demonio_, _Lucifer_, or _Satan_? One of the two I take. I
cut out all the precioso very ingeniously: and give all the
Mountain-moving, etc., in the second Act without Stage direction, so as
it may seem to pass only in the dazzled Eyes, or Fantasy, of Cyprian. All
this is really a very difficult Job to me; not worth the Candle, I dare
say: only that you two will be pleased. I also increase the religious
Element in the Drama; and make Cyprian outwit the Devil more cleverly
than he now does; for the Devil was certainly too clever to be caught in
his own Art. _That_ was very good Fun for an Autodafe Audience, however.
But please say nothing of this to any one. I should like to take up the
Vida es Sueno too in the same manner; but these plays are more difficult
than all the others put together: and I have no spur now.
How would you translate Pliny's 'Quisquis est Deus, et quacumque in
parte, totus est Sensus, totus Visus, totus Auditus, totus Animae, totus
Animi, totus Sui?' {61}
This Passage is alluded to by Calderon; but, in the manner of our old
Playwrights, I quote it in the Latin and translate. I want to know by
you if I have done it sufficiently; and I don't send you mine, in order
that you may send me your Version freely.
Now, Good Bye: I suppose it's this rainy Day that draws out this, with
several other Letters, that had waited some while to be written.
Yours ever E. F. G.
_To R. C. Trench_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_February_ 25/65.
MY DEAR LORD,
Edward Cowell's return to England {62a} set him and me talking of old
Studies together, left off since he went to India. And I took up three
sketched out Dramas, two of Calderon, {62b} and have licked the two
Calderons into some sort of shape of my own, without referring to the
Original. One of them goes by this Post to your Grace; and when I tell
you the other is no other than your own 'Life's a Dream,' you won't
wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in
the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who
did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to
meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces,
and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before
one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these
plays, not caring surely--who can?--for the underplot and buffoonery
which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas. Yet I think it is as
a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and
therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or
nearly so; and altogether the Thing has become so altered one way or
another that I am afraid of it now it's done, and only send you one Play
(the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which
will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt. For the Vida is not so good
even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc.
I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think,
wouldn't care. So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love
Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you _my_ Magician.
You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a
middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to
the Ground!
_To John Allen_.
MARKET HILL: IPSWICH. {63}
_April_ 10/65.
MY DEAR ALLEN,
I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the
second Play. This I don't suppose you'll like as well as the first:
perhaps not at all; it is rather 'Ercles vein' I doubt. I wish to know
however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at
all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with
the first, which really does please those I wished it to please, with its
fine Story and Moral. If you like what I now send, I will send you a
Copy of Both stitched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and
indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it.
I am indulging in the expensive amusement of Building, though not on a
very large scale. It _is_ very pleasant, certainly, to see one's little
Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.
There is a duller Memoir than the 'Lady of Quality,' Miss Lucy Aitken's
Letters, etc. You will find the Private Life of an Eastern Queen a good
little Book. I have now got Carlyle's two last volumes of Frederick: of
which I have only read the latter Part; I don't know whether I can read
through the Wars and Battles, which are said to be very fine.
The piece of Literature I really could benefit Posterity with, I do
believe, is an edition of that wonderful and aggravating Clarissa
Harlowe; and this I would effect with a pair of Scissors only. It would
not be a bit too long as it is, if it were all equally good; but pedantry
comes in, and might, I think, be cleared away, leaving the remainder one
of _the great_, _original_, _Works of the World_! in this Line. Lovelace
is the wonderful character, for Wit: and there is some grand Tragedy too.
And nobody reads it! Ever yours,
E. F. G.
_To Mrs. Cowell_.
[1865].
MY DEAR LADY,
I answer you thus directly because I would stick in a Bit of a Letter
from Thompson of Cambridge: which relates to a question I asked him weeks
ago, as I told E. B. C. I would.
You must not think I was in a hurry to have my Play praised: I was really
fearful of its being bombastic. You are so enthusiastic in your old and
kind Regards and Memories that I can scarce rely on you for a cool
Judgment in the matter. But I gather from E. B. C. that he was not
struck with what I doubted: and I am very glad, at any rate, that you are
very well pleased, both of you.
E. B. C. is quite right about obscurity of Phrase: which is inexcusable
unless where the Passion of the Speakers makes such utterance natural.
This is very often not the case in the Plays, I know: and the Language,
as he says, becomes obscure from elaborate Brevity.
What you tell of the Music in the Air at your Father's Death--Oh, how
Frederic Tennyson would open all his Eyes at this! For he lives in a
World of Spirits--Swedenborg's World, which you would not approve; which
I cannot sympathize with: but yet I admire the Titanic old Soul so
resolutely blind to the Philosophy of the Day.
Oh, I think England would be much better for E. B. C. and you: but I
can't say anything against what he thinks the Duty chalked out for him. I
don't believe the English Rule will hold in India: but, meanwhile, a good
Man may think he must do what Good he can there, come what may of it.
There is also Good to be done in England!
The Wind is still very 'stingy' though the Sun shines, and though it
blows from the West. So we are all better at our homes for the present.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To W. B. Donne_.
RAMSGATE: _August_ 27, [1865].
MY DEAR DONNE,
Your letter found me here, where I have been a week cruising about with
my old Brother Peter. To morrow we leave--for Calais, as we propose;
just to touch French Soil, and drink a Bottle of French Wine in the old
Town: then home again to Woodbridge as fast as we may. For thither goes
William Airy, partly in hopes of meeting me: he says he is much shaken by
the dangerous illness he had this last Spring: and thinks, truly enough,
that our chances of meeting in this World sensibly diminish.
You must not talk of my kindness to you at Lowestoft: when all the good
is on your side, going out of your way to see me. Really it makes me
ashamed.
Together with your Letter, I found a very kind one from Mrs. Kemble, who
took the trouble to write only to tell me how well she liked the Plays. I
know that Good Nature would not affect her Judgment (which I very
honestly think too favourable), but it was Good Nature made her write to
tell me.
Don't forget to sound Murray at some good opportunity about a Selection
from Crabbe. Of course he won't let me do it, though I could do it
better than any he would be likely to employ: for you know I rely on my
Appreciation of what others do, not on what I can do myself.
The 'Parcel' you write of has not been sent me here: but I shall find it
when I return, and will write to you again. I puzzle my Brains to
remember what the '_Conscript_' is.
I have been reading, and reducing to one volume from two (_more meo_), a
trashy Book, 'Bernard's Recollections of the Stage,' with some good
recollections of the Old Actors, up to Macklin and Garrick. But, of all
people's, one can't trust Actors' Stories. In 'Lethe,' where your
Garrick figures in Sir Geoffrey, also figured Woodward, as 'The Fine
Gentleman'; so I think, at least, is the Title of a very capital
mezzotint I have of him in Character,
Oh! famous is your Story of Lord Chatham and the Bishops; {68} be sure
you set it afloat again in print.
You don't tell me if Trench be recovered: but I shall conclude from your
Silence that, at any rate, he is not now seriously ill.
Now I hear my good Brother come in from Morning Mass, and we shall have
Breakfast. He is really capital to sail about with. I read your letter
yesterday while sitting out on a Bench with her--his Wife--a brave Woman,
of the O'Dowd sort; and she wanted to know all about you and yours. We
like Ramsgate very much: genial air: pleasant Country: good Harbour,
Piers, etc.: and the Company, though overflowing, not showy, nor vulgar:
but seemingly come to make the most of a Holiday. I am surprized how
little of the Cockney, in its worse aspect, is to be seen.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Septr._ 5/65.
MY DEAR COWELL,
Let me hear of you: I don't forget, though I don't see, you. Nor am I so
wrapt up in my Ship as not to have many a day on which I should be very
glad to dispense with her and have you over here: but I can't well make
sure what day: sometimes I ask one man to go, sometimes another, and so
all is cut up. Besides I was away six weeks in all at Lowestoft; then a
fortnight at Ramsgate, Dover, Calais, etc. When the apple [Greek text]
{69a}--then my Ship will be laid up, and one more Summer of mine
departed, and then I hope you will come over to talk over many things.
Read Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt: which you won't like, because
of some latitude in Religious thought, and also because of some vulgar
_slang_, such as Schoolboys, and American Women use, and it is now the
bad fashion for even English Ladies to adopt. But the Book is worth
reading notwithstanding this, and making allowance for a Lady or
Gentleman seeing all rose-colour in a new Pet or Plaything. On sending
the Book back to the Library this morning I quote out of it something
about Oriental Poetry which you may know well enough but I was not so
conscious of. In a Love-song where the Lover declines a Physician for
the wound which _the Wind_ (Love) has caused, he says 'For only _he_ who
has hurt can cure me.' 'N.B. The masculine pronoun is always used
instead of the feminine in Poetry, out of decorum: sometimes even in
conversation.' {69b} (It being as forbidden to talk of women as to see
them, etc.)
I was very pleased with Calais, which remains the 'vieille France' of my
Childhood.
Donne came to see me for a Day at Lowestoft, the same 'vieil Donne' also
of my Boyhood.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To John Allen_.
MARKETHILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Nov._ 1/65.
MY DEAR ALLEN,
Let me hear how you and yours are: it is now a long [time] since we
exchanged Letters. G. Crabbe wrote me you were corresponding with a very
different person: the Editor of the Times. I never see that nor any
other Paper but the good old Athenaeum. G. Crabbe also said you were at
the Norwich Congress. Then why didn't you come here? He said the Bishop
of Oxford, whom he had never met before, met him at Lord Walsingham's,
and shook him so cordially by the hand, and pressed him so for a visit to
Oxford, that he (G. C.) rather thought he (Sam) deserved the Epithet
usually added to his Name. Perhaps, however, the Bishop _did_ feel for a
Grandson of the Poet.
I have no more to tell you of myself this past Summer than for so many
Summers past. Only sailing about, Lowestoft, Ramsgate, Dover, Calais,
etc. I was very pleased indeed with Calais; just as I remember it forty
years ago except for the Soldiers' Uniform.
Duncan wrote me not a very cheerful Letter some while ago: he was unwell,
of Cold and rheumatism, I think. Of other Friends I know nothing: but am
going to write my annual Letters to them. What a State of things to come
to! How one used to wonder, hearing our predecessors talk in that way,
something! But I don't think our successors wonder if we talk so; for
they seem to begin Life with indifference, instead of ending it.
My house is not yet finished: two rooms have taken about five months:
which is not slow for Woodbridge. To day I have been catching Cold in
looking at some Trees planted--'factura Nepotibus umbram.'
Now this precious Letter can't go to-night for want of Envelope; and in
half an hour two Merchants are coming to eat Oysters and drink Burton
ale. I would rather be alone, and smoke my own pipe in peace over one of
Trollope's delightful Novels, 'Can you forgive her?'
Now, my dear Allen, here is enough of me, for your sake as well as mine.
But let me hear something from you. All good Remembrances to the Wife
and those of your Children who remember yours ever, E. F. G.
[WOODBRIDGE]
_Decr._ 3/65.
MY DEAR ALLEN,
I enclose you two prints which may amuse you to look at and keep.
I have a wonderful Museum of such scraps of Portrait; about once a year a
Man sends me a Portfolio of such things. But my chief Article is
Murderers; and I am now having a Newgate Calendar from London. I don't
ever wish to see and hear these things tried; but, when they are in
print, I like to sit in Court then, and see the Judges, Counsel,
Prisoners, Crowd: hear the Lawyers' Objections, the Murmur in the Court,
etc.
The Charge is prepared; the Lawyers are met,
The Judges are rang'd, a terrible show.
De Soyres came here the other Day, and we were talking of you; he said
you had invited Newman to your house. A brave thing, if you did. I
think his Apology very noble; and himself quite honest, so far as he can
see himself. The Passage in No. 7 of the Apology where he describes the
State of the World as wholly irreflective of its Creator unless you
turn--to Popery--is very grand.
Now I probably sha'n't write to you again before Christmas: so let me
wish you and Mrs. Allen and your Family a Happy time of it.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
I was very disappointed in Miss Berry's Correspondence; one sees a Woman
of Sense, Taste, Good Breeding, and I suppose, Good Looks; but what more,
to make three great Volumes of! Compare her with Trench's Mother. And
with all her perpetual travels to improve health and spirits (which
lasted perfectly well to near ninety) one would have been more interested
if there were one single intimation of caring about any Body but herself,
helping one poor Person, etc.
I don't know if she or Mrs. Delany is dullest.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
WOODBRIDGE: _March_ 15/66.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
To-day's Post brings me a Letter from Robert Groome, which tells me (on
'Times' authority) that you are Master of Trinity. Judging by your last
Letter, I suppose this was unexpected by yourself: I have no means of
knowing whether it was expected by others beside those who voted you to
the Honour. For I had heard nothing further of the whole matter, even of
Whewell's accident, than you yourself told me. Well, at our time of
Life, any very vehement Congratulations are, I suppose, irrelevant on
both sides. But I am very sure I do congratulate you heartily, if you
are yourself gratified. Whether you are glad of the Post itself or not,
you must, I think, be gratified with the Confidence in your Scholarship
and Character which has made your Society elect you. And so far one may
unreservedly congratulate you. . . .
To-day I was looking at the Carpenters, etc., carrying away Chips, etc.,
of a Tree I had cut down: and, coming home, read--
[Greek text] {74}--
Whose Line?--Certainly not of
Yours ever sincerely, E. F. G.
_To John Allen_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE,
_March_ 19 [1866].
MY DEAR ALLEN,
You shall hear a very little about me; and you shall tell me a very
little about yourself? I forget when I last wrote to you, or heard from
you: I suppose, about the end of Autumn. Here have I been ever since,
without stirring further than Ipswich: and seeing nobody you know except
R. Groome once. He wrote me the other day to announce that Thompson was
Master of Trinity; an Honour quite unexpected by Thompson himself, I
conclude, seeing that he himself had written to me only a Fortnight
before, telling me of Whewell's Disaster, and sincerely hoping for his
Recovery, from a Dread of a new King Log or King Stork, he said. He also
said something of coming here at Easter: which now, I suppose, he won't
be able to do. I have written to congratulate him in a sober way on his
Honours; for, at our Time of Life, I think exultation would be
unseasonable on either side. He will make a magnanimous Master, I
believe; doing all the Honours of his Station well, if he have health.
Spedding wrote me a kind long Letter some while ago. Duncan tells me
Cameron has had a slight Paralysis. Death seems to rise like a Wall
against one now whichever way one looks. When I read Boswell and other
Memoirs now, what presses on me most is--All these people who talked and
acted so busily are gone. It is said that when Talma advanced upon the
Stage his Thought on facing the Audience was, that they were all soon to
be Nothing.
I bought Croker's Boswell; which I find good to refer to, but not to
read; so hashed up it is with interpolations. Besides, one feels somehow
that a bad Fellow like Croker mars the Good Company he introduces. One
should stop with Malone, who was a good Gentleman: only rather too loyal
to Johnson, and so unjust to any who dared hint a fault in him. Yet
_they_ were right. Madame D'Arblay, who was also so vext with Mrs.
Piozzi, admits that she had a hard time with Johnson in his last two
years; so irritable and violent he became that she says People would not
ask _him_ when they invited all the rest of the Party.
Why, my Paper is done, talking about these dead and gone whom you and I
have only known in Print; and yet as well so as most we know in person. I
really find my Society in such Books; all the People seem humming about
me. But now let me hear of you, Allen: and of Wife and Family.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
[_March_, 1866.]
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
I should write 'My dear Master' but I don't know if you are yet
installed. However, I suppose my Letter, so addressed, will find you and
not the Old Lion now stalking in the Shades. . . .
In burning up a heap of old Letters, which one's Executors and Heirs
would make little of, I came upon several of Morton's from Italy: so good
in Parts that I have copied those Parts into a Blank Book. When he was
in his money Troubles I did the same from many other of his Letters, and
Thackeray asked Blackwood to give ten pounds for them for his Magazine.
But we heard no more of them.
I have the usual Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here,
pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and
preparing for my Ship in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon.
I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature,
who I thought would outlive me a dozen years, and should rejoice if she
could. Things look serious about one. If one only could escape easily
and at once! For _I_ think the Fun is over: but that should not be. May
you flourish in your high Place, my dear Master (now I say) for this long
while.
[_June_, 1866.]
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
I won't say that I should have gone to Ely under any Circumstances,
though it is the last Place I have been to stay at with a Friend: three
years ago! And all my Stays there were very pleasant indeed: and I do
not the less thank you for all your Constancy and Kindness. But one is
got down yet deeper in one's Way of Life: of which enough has been said.
William Airy was to have come here about this time: and him I am obliged
to put off because another old Fellow Collegian, Duncan, {77} who has
scarce stirred from his Dorsetshire Parsonage these twenty years, was
seized with a Passion to see me just once more, he says: and he is now
with me: a Hypochondriack Man, nervous, and restless, with a vast deal of
uncouth Humour. . . .
My Ship is afloat, with a new Irish Ensign; but I have scarce been about
with her yet owing to 'Mr. Wesley's Troubles.' {78a}
Only yesterday I took down my little Tauchnitz Sophocles to carry to Sea
with me; and made Duncan here read--
[Greek text], {78b} etc.
and began to blubber a little at
[Greek text], etc.
in the other Great Play. {78c} The Elgin Marbles, and something more,
began to pass before my Eyes.
I believe I write all this knowing you are at Ely: where I suppose you
are more at Leisure than on your Throne in Trinity. But no doubt your
Tyranny follows you there too; post Equitem and all.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
WOODBRIDGE: Friday
[_June_, 1866].
MY DEAR COWELL,
I got your new Address from your Brother a Fortnight ago. You don't
write to me for the very good reason that you have so much to do: I don't
write to you because I have nothing to do, and so nothing to tell you of.
My idle reading all goes down to a few Memoirs and such things: I am not
got down to Miss Braddon and Mrs. Wood yet, and I believe never shall:
not that I think this a merit: for it would show more Elasticity of Mind
to find out and make something out of the Genius in them. But it is too
late for me to try and retrace the 'Salle des pas perdus' of years; I
have not been very well, and more and more 'smell the Mould above the
Rose' as Hood wrote of himself. But I don't want to talk of this.
You are very good to talk of sparing a Day for me when you come down. I
will be sure to be at home any Day, or Days, next week. I can give you
Bed and Board as you know: and a Boat Sail on the River if you like. Why
I don't go over to you I have written and spoken of enough--all I can, if
not satisfactorily: only don't think it is indolence, Neglect, or
Distaste for you, or any of yours. . . .
I haven't, I think, taken in your Sanskrit morsel as yet, for I am called
about this morning on some Furniture Errands: and yet I want to post this
Letter To-day that you may have it this week.
I still think I shall take a Tauchnitz Sophocles with me to Sea, once
more to read the two OEdipuses, and Philoctetes; perhaps more carefully
than before; perhaps not! It is stupid not to get up those three noble
Pieces as well as one can.
I have not yet done my house: and, when I write of Furniture, it is
because I want to get so much ready as will suffice for an Invalid Niece
who wishes to come with her Maid by the End of June, or the Beginning of
July. Your old opposite Neighbour Mason is my Apollo in these matters: I
find him a very clever Fellow, and so well inclined to me that every one
else says he can scarce make money of what he sells me. He has _humour_
too.
I think you and Elizabeth should one day come and stay in this new House,
which will be really very pleasant. As far as I am concerned, I sha'n't
have much to do with it, I believe; but some one will inherit, and--sell
it!
I want you to choose a Lot of my Things to be bequeathed you: Books,
Pictures, Furniture. You mustn't think I prematurely deck myself in
Sables for my own Funeral; but it happens that I sent the rough Draft of
a Will to my Lawyer only three days ago.
My Brother John so much wants a Copy of Elizabeth's Verses to my Sister
Isabella in other Days.
This time twenty years you were going to me at Boulge Cottage: this time
ten years you were preparing for India.
Adieu, Love to the Lady.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
LOWESTOFT: _July_ 27 [1866].
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day.
I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and
you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in
Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of
Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and
Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to
share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or
Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so!
I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till
your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his
Kinsfolk.
A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four
of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For,
having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income
tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls'
made upon him as Shareholder.
At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri.
So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one
third bigger than it should be.
All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now
and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a
hopeless Process, I believe all the while.
Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two
honest Fellows to deal with.
We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these
Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.
With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital
Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No
one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious
during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I
never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for
elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic
Aphorisms, observed long ago.
When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my
dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses)
and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in
one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will look
into the Text now and then. I have now got Munro's Lucretius on board
again. Why is it that I never can take up with Horace--so sensible,
elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand?
Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the 'Loss of the
London' in; and very well worth reading it is. But there is also the
Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray--capital
and wonderful. I forget the name.
Now I won't finish this Second Sheet--all with such Scraps as the
foregoing. But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in
your new Venture. And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the
present. No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your
long generous Kindness than your old Friend,
E. F. G.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 13/66.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can't blame you. I have
been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I
doubt if I should have been here to meet you. For the last six weeks I
have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk
Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc. And now I am just off again to the
latter place, having only returned here on Saturday. Nor can I say when
I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft;
and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns
me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth.
My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I
find. I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with
me. Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance,
and occasional Force. He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does.
When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham's Diary: well worth
reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that.
You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet
I suppose he was.
Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad! Else surely I should have
heard something of you. Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or
direct it, to your Mother's or Brother's at Ipswich. Do let me hear of
yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease
to be
Yours very sincerely
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
LOWESTOFT: _August_ 19/66.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I don't wish you to think I am in Woodbridge all this while since your
Note came. It was forwarded to me here, where I have been since I wrote
to you a week ago. The fact is, I had promised to return on finding that
the Kerriches were to be here. So, here I am: living on board my little
Ship: sometimes taking them out for a Sail: sometimes accompanying them
in a walk. In other respects, I am very fond of this Place, which I have
known and frequented these forty years; till the last three years in
company with my Sister Kerrich, who has helped to endear it to me. I
believe I shall be here, off and on, some while longer; as my Brother
Peter (who has lately lost a capital Wife) is coming to sail about with
me. Should I be at Woodbridge for some days I will let you know.
Do you see 'Squire Allenby,' as the folks at Felixtow Ferry call him? If
so, ask him why he doesn't sometimes sail here with his ship; he would
like it, I fancy: and everybody seems to like him.
Only yesterday I finished reading the Electra. Before that, Ajax; which
is well worth re-reading too. I am sorry to find I have only Antigone
left of all the precious Seven; a lucid Constellation indeed! I suppose
I must try Euripides after this; some few of his Plays.
This time ten years--a month ago--we were all lounging about in the
hayfield before your Mother's House at Rushmere. I do not forget these
things: nor cease to remember them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate
interest: the very sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to
recreate them. This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind to me,
to believe.
I am going to run again to the Coast of Norfolk--as far as Wells--to
wander about Holkham, if the Weather permit. We have had too much Wind
and Wet to make such excursions agreeable: for, when one reached the
Places by Sea, the Rain prevented one's going about on Shore to look
about. But now that there has been rather a better look-out of Weather
for the last few Days, and that--
[Greek text]-- {86}
I shall try again for two or three Days. How do you translate [Greek
text] here?
Ever yours, E. F. G.
LOWESTOFT still! _Septr._ 4 [1866].
MY DEAR COWELL,
Still here, you see! Till the end of last week I had my Kerrich people
here; I am now expecting my Brother Peter again: he has lately lost his
capital Wife, and flies about between Ireland and England for Company and
Diversion of Thought. I am also expecting Mowbray Donne over from
Yarmouth this week.
I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my
little Ship, or on Shore? Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about
yourself--yourselves--and do not think I am indifferent to you.
I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take
greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of
funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek
Audience expected--as I suppose they also expected the little sententious
truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles
always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He
always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A
remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one of the better
Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good:
but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta
{87a} insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that
that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter's Life--a piece of
Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think. I have not yet
read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether,
the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between
Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really
Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in
Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly
told: but some good descriptive passages.
In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Passion to return to
Sophocles, and read the two OEdipuses again. Oh, how immeasurably
superior! In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all! How can they
call Euripides [Greek text], {87b} putting a few passages of his against
whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more
moving than any Euripides wrote.
But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral
or printed. I mean Sophocles; I don't care to be accurate with the
other. Can you recommend any Edition--not too German? I should write to
Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on. I
mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean
Peacock; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.
I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and
8th Books of the AEneid. I could now take them up and read them both
again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII--the poor Matron kindling
her early fire--so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or
disproportionate, to the Thing it illustrates.
Here is a long Letter--of the old Sort, I suppose. All these Books come
back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone
together!--I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to
encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield
said were coming upon her--Winter, Want, and Sickness. {88}
Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and
Friends.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
_To F. Tennyson_.
WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 29/67.
MY DEAR FREDERIC,
Let me hear from you one Day. I would send you my MS. Book of Morton's
Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not
so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to
me. And what odds if you didn't? It might as well die in your
Possession as in mine.
In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that
they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-worshippers,
etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere;
which, I am told, is in Hants. Whether they go to settle there I don't
know. Lucretius' Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication,
I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View. I
should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure
because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of
any Love-philtre. I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my
compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way,
last April. I have since heard that the Papers reported all the
Circumstances. So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it
seems better to give up that Ghost altogether. Old Spedding has written
a Pamphlet about 'Authors and Publishers'; showing up, or striving to
show up, the Publishers' system. He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as
a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc.
But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell.
The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not
wanted. The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of
Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters. The
Essays will no doubt always be in request, like Shakespeare. But I am
perhaps not a proper Judge of these high matters. How should I? who have
just, to my great sorrow, finished 'The Woman in White' for the third
time, once every last three Winters. I wish Sir Percival Clyde's Death
were a little less of the minor Theatre sort; then I would swallow all
the rest as a wonderful Caricature, better than so many a sober Portrait.
I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named 'Marian
Halcombe,' the brave Girl in the Story. Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is
to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which
meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks. I go to
Lowestoft now and then, by way of salutary Change: and there smoke a Pipe
every night with a delightful Chap, who is to be Captain. I have been,
up to this time, better than for the last two winters: but feel a Worm in
my head now and then, for all that. You will say, only a Maggot. Well;
we shall see. When I go to Lowestoft, I take Montaigne with me; very
comfortable Company. One of his Consolations for _The Stone_ is, that it
makes one less unwilling to part with Life. Oh, you think that it didn't
need much Wisdom to suggest that? Please yourself, Ma'am. January, just
gone! February, only twenty-eight Days: then March with Light till six
p.m.: then April with a blush of Green on the Whitethorn hedge: then May,
Cuckoos, Nightingales, etc.; then June, Ship launched, and nothing but
Ship till November, which is only just gone. The Story of our Lives from
Year to Year. This is a poor letter: but I won't set The Worm fretting.
Let me hear how you are: and don't be two months before you do so.
_To W. B. Donne_.
WOODBRIDGE: _Febr._ 15 [1867].
MY DEAR DONNE,
I came home yesterday from a week's Stay at Lowestoft. As to the
Athenaeum, {91} I would bet that the last Sentence was tacked on by the
Editor: for it in some measure contradicts the earlier part of the
Article.
When your letter was put into my hands, I happened to be reading
Montaigne, L. II. Ch. 8, De l'Art de Conferer, where at the end he refers
to Tacitus; the only Book, he says, he had read consecutively for an hour
together for ten years. He does not say very much: but the Remarks of
such a Man are worth many Cartloads of German Theory of Character, I
think: their Philology I don't meddle with. I know that Cowell has
discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit. Montaigne never doubts
Tacitus' facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his
Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences. I mean, if I were
Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too. Nothing is
more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I
suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a
scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear. But then so does the
Mob of Readers. Well, but I believe in the Vox Populi of two hundred
Years: still more, of two thousand. And, whether we be right or wrong,
we prevail: so, however much wiser are the Builders of Theory, their
Labour is but lost who build: they can't reason away Richard's Hump, nor
Cromwell's Ambition, nor Henry's Love of a new Wife, nor Tiberius'
beastliness. Of course, they had all their Gleams of Goodness: but we of
the Mob, if we have any Theory at all, have that which all Mankind have
seen and felt, and know as surely as Day-light; that Power will tempt and
spoil the Best.
Well, but what is all this Lecture to you for? Why, I think you rather
turn to the re-actionary Party about these old Heroes. So I say, however
right you may be, leave us, the many-headed, if not the wise-headed, to
go our way, only making the Text of Tacitus as clear for us to flounder
about in as you can. That, anyhow, must be the first Thing. Something
of the manners and customs of the Times we want also: some Lights from
other contemporary Authors also: and then, 'Gentlemen, you will now
consider your Verdict, and please yourselves.'
Can't you act on Spedding's Advice and have your Prolegomena separate, if
considerable in size? I don't doubt its Goodness: but you know how, when
one wants to take a Volume of an Author on Travel, Ship-board, etc., how
angry one is with the Life, Commentary, etc., which takes up half the
first volume. This we don't complain of in George III. because he is not
a Classic, and your Athenaeum Critic admits that yours is the best Part
of the Business by far.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
'_Scandal_'; LOWESTOFT, _June_ 17 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,
I wrote to Elizabeth, I think, to congratulate you both on the result of
the Election: I have since had your Letter: you will not want me to
repeat what, without my ever having written or said, you will know that I
feel. I wrote to Thompson on the subject, and have had a very kind
Letter from him.
Now you will live at Cambridge among the Learned; but, I repeat, you
would rather live among the Ignorant. However, your Path is cut out for
you: and, to be sure, it is a more useful and proper one for you than the
cool sequestered one which one might like to travel.
I am here in my little Ship--cool and sequestered enough, to be sure--with
no Company but my Crew of Two, and my other--Captain of the Lugger now a-
building: a Fellow I never tire of studying--If he _should_ turn out
knave, I shall have done with all Faith in my own Judgment: and if he
should go to the Bottom of the Sea in the Lugger--I sha'n't cry for the
Lugger.
Well, but I have other Company too--Don Quixote--the 4th Part: where
those Snobs, the Duke and Duchess--(how vulgar Great Folks then, as now!)
make a Fool and Butt of him. Cervantes should have had more respect for
his own Creation: but, I suppose, finding that all the Great Snobs could
only _laugh_ at the earlier part, he thought he had better humour them.
This very morning I read the very verses you admired to me twenty years
ago--
Ven muerte tan escondida, etc.
They are quoted ironically in Part IV. Lib. VII. Ch. 38.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 12 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,
When you have leisure you will let me know of your being settled at
Cambridge? I also want to have your exact Address because I want to send
you the Dryden and Crabbe's Life I promised you. At present you are busy
with your Inaugural Address, I suppose; beside that you feel scarce at
home yet in your new Quarters.
Mr. Allenby told me on Wednesday that Mrs. Charlesworth was really up
again, and even got to Cambridge. Please to remember me to her, and to
all your Party.
My Ship is still afloat: but I have scarce used her during the last cold
weather. I was indeed almost made ill sleeping two nights in that cold
Cabin. I may, however, run to Lowestoft and back; but by the end of next
week I suppose she (the Ship) will be laid up in the Mud; my Men will
have eaten the Michaelmas Goose which I always regale them with on
shutting up shop; and I may come home to my Fire here to read 'The Woman
in White' and play at Patience:--which (I mean the Game at Cards so
called) I now do by myself for an hour or two every night. Perhaps old
Montaigne may drop in to chat with and comfort me: but Sophocles, Don
Quixote, and Boccaccio--I think I must leave them with their Halo of Sea
and Sunshine about them. I have, however, found the second volume of
Sophocles; and may perhaps return to look for Ajax and Deianeira.
Adieu: E. F. G.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_October_ 28 [1867],
Now, MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I have put on a new Goose-quill Nib, on purpose to write my best MS. to
you. But the new Nib has very little to say for me: the old Story:
dodging about in my Ship for these last five months: indeed during all
that time not having lain, I believe, for three consecutive Nights in
Christian Sheets. But now all that is over: this very day is my little
Ship being dismantled, and to-morrow will she go up to her middle in mud,
and here am I anchored to my old Desk for the Winter; and beginning, as
usual, by writing to my Friends, to tell them what little there is to
tell of myself, and asking them to tell what they can of themselves in
return. I shall even fire a shot at old Spedding; who would not answer
my last Letters at all: innocent as they were, I am sure: and asking
definite Questions, which he once told me he required if I wanted any
Answer. I suppose he is now in Cumberland. What _is_ become of Bacon?
Are you one of the Converted, who go the whole Hog?
Thompson--no, I mean the Master of Trinity--has replied to my half-yearly
Enquiries in a very kind Letter. He tells me that my friend Edward
Cowell has pleased all the Audience he had with an inaugural Lecture
about Sanskrit. {97a} Also, that there is such an Article in the
Quarterly about the Talmud {97b} as has not been seen (so fine an
Article, I mean) for years. I have had Don Quixote, Boccaccio, and my
dear Sophocles (once more) for company on board: the first of these so
delightful, that I got to love the very Dictionary in which I had to look
out the words: yes, and often the same words over and over again. The
Book really seemed to me the most delightful of all Books: Boccaccio,
delightful too, but millions of miles behind; in fact, a whole Planet
away.
_To W. A. Wright_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Dec._ 11 [1867].
DEAR SIR,
When Robert Groome was with me a month ago, I was speaking to him of
having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had
observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think,
quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from
the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom
such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but
cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff
at the Latin.
I had not noticed this Seneca coincidence: but I had observed a few
passages of Montaigne's own, which seemed to me to have got into Bacon's
Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been
turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which
comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.'
In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier
ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le
Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son
compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of
course; as if Bacon and Shakespeare couldn't have said much better things
themselves; only for the pleasure of tracing where they read, and what
they were struck by. I see that 'L'Appetit vient en mangeant' is in the
same Essay.
If I light some other day on the other passages, I will take the liberty
of telling you. You see I have already taken the liberty of writing to a
man, not unknown to me in several ways, but with whom I have not the
pleasure of being acquainted personally. Perhaps I may have that
pleasure one of these days; we are both connected with the same town of
Beccles, and may come together. I hope so.
But I have also another reason for writing to you. Your 'Master' wrote
me word the other day, among other things, that you as well as he wished
for my own noble works in your Library. I quite understand that this is
on the ground of my being a Trinity man. But then one should have done
something worthy of ever so little a niche in Trinity Library; and that I
do know is not my case. I have several times told the Master what I
think, and know, of my small Escapades in print; nice little things, some
of them, which may interest a few people (mostly friends, or through
friends) for a few years. But I am always a little ashamed of having
made my leisure and idleness the means of putting myself forward in
print, when really so many much better people keep silent, having other
work to do. This is, I know, my sincere feeling on the subject. However,
as I think some of the Translations I have done are all I can dare to
show, and as it would be making too much fuss to wait for any further
asking on the subject, I will send them if you think good one of these
days all done up together; the Spanish, at least, which are, I think, all
of a size. Will you tell the Master so if you happen to see him and
mention the subject? Allow me to end by writing myself yours sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_Dec._ 28 [1867].
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . I don't think I told you about Garcin de Tassy. He sent me (as no
doubt he sent you) his annual Oration. I wrote to thank him: and said I
had been lately busy with another countryman of his, Mons. Nicolas, with
his Omar Khayyam. On which De Tassy writes back by return of post to ask
'Where I got my Copy of Nicolas? He had not been able to get one in all
Paris!' So I wrote to Quaritch: who told me the Book was to be had of
Maisonneuve, or any Oriental Bookseller in Paris; but that probably the
Shopman did not understand, when '_Les Rubaiyat d'Omar_, etc.,' were
asked for, that it meant '_Les Quatrains_, etc.' This (which I doubt not
is the solution of the Mystery) I wrote to Garcin: at the same time
offering one of my two Copies. By return of Post comes a frank
acceptance of one of the Copies; and his own Translation of Attar's Birds
by way of equivalent. [Greek text]. Well, as I got these Birds just as
I was starting here, I brought them with me, and looked them over. Here,
at Lowestoft, in this same row of houses, two doors off, I was writing
out the Translation I made in the Winter of 1859. I have scarce looked
at Original or Translation since. But I was struck by this; that eight
years had made little or no alteration in my idea of the matter: it
seemed to me that I really had brought in nearly all worth remembering,
and had really condensed the whole into a much compacter Image than the
original. This is what I think I can do, with such discursive things:
such as all the Oriental things I have seen are. I remember you thought
that I had lost the Apologues towards the close; but I believe I was
right in excluding them, as the narrative grew dramatic and neared the
Catastrophe. Also, it is much better to glance at the dangers of the
Valley when the Birds are in it, than to let the Leader recount them
before: which is not good policy, morally or dramatically. When I say
all this, you need not suppose that I am vindicating the Translation as a
Piece of Verse. I remember thinking it from the first rather
disagreeable than not: though with some good parts. Jam satis.
There is a pretty story, which seems as if it really happened (p. 201 of
De Tassy's Translation, referring to v. 3581 of the original), of the Boy
falling into a well, and on being taken out senseless, the Father asking
him to say but a word; and then, but one word more: which the Boy says
and dies. And at p. 256, Translation (v. 4620), I read, 'Lorsque Nizam
ul-mulk fut a l'agonie, il dit: "O mon Dieu, je m'en vais entre les mains
du vent."' Here is our Omar in his Friend's mouth, is it not?
I have come here to wind up accounts for our Herring-lugger: much against
us, as the season has been a bad one. My dear Captain, who looks in his
Cottage like King Alfred in the Story, was rather saddened by all this,
as he had prophesied better things. I tell him that if he is but what I
think him--and surely my sixty years of considering men will not so
deceive me at last!--I would rather lose money with him than gain it with
others. Indeed I never proposed Gain, as you may imagine: but only to
have some Interest with this dear Fellow. Happy New Year to you Both!
I wish you would have Semelet's Gulistan which I have. You know I never
cared for Sadi.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan_: 9/68.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I saw advertised in my old Athenaeum a Review {102} of Richardson's
Novels in the January Cornhill. So I bought it: and began to think you
might have written it: but was not so assured as I went on. It is
however very good, in my opinion, whoever did it: though I don't think it
does all justice to the interminable Original. When the Writer talks of
Grandison and Clarissa being the two Characters--oh, Lovelace himself
should have made the third: if unnatural (as the Reviewer says), yet not
the less wonderful: quite beyond and above anything in Fielding. Whether
you wrote the article or not, I know you are one of the few who have read
the Book. The Reviewer admits that it might be abridged; I am convinced
of that, and have done it for my own satisfaction: but you thought this
was not to be done. So here is internal proof that you didn't write what
Thackeray used to call the '_Hurticle_,' or that you have changed your
mind on that score. But you haven't. But I know better, Lord bless you:
and am sure I could (with a pair of Scissors) launch old Richardson
again: we shouldn't go off the stocks easy (pardon nautical metaphors),
but stick by the way, amid the jeers of Reviewers who had never read the
original: but we should float at last. Only I don't want to spend a lot
of money to be hooted at, without having time to wait for the floating.
I have spent lots of money on my Herring-lugger, which has made but a
poor Season. So now we are going (like wise men) to lay out a lot more
for Mackerel; and my Captain (a dear Fellow) is got ill, which is much
worst of all: so hey for 1868! Which is wishing you better luck next
time, Sir, etc.
Spedding at last found and sent me his delightful little Paper about
Twelfth Night. I was glad to be set right about Viola: but I think he
makes too much of the whole play, 'finest of Comedies,' etc. It seems to
me quite a light, slight, sketch--for Twelfth Night--What you will, etc.
What else does the Name mean? Have I uttered these Impieties! No more!
Nameless as shameless.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
WOODBRIDGE: _May_ 28/68.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I was just about to post you your own Calcutta Review when your Letter
came, asking about some Euphranors. Oh yes! I have a Lot of them:
returned from Parker's when they were going to dissolve their House; I
would not be at the Bother of any further negociation with any other
Bookseller, about half a dozen little Books which so few wanted: so had
them all sent here. I will therefore send you six copies. I had
supposed that you didn't like the second Edition so well as the first:
and had a suspicion myself that, though I improved it in some respects, I
had done more harm than good: and so I have never had courage to look
into it since I sent it to you at Oxford. Perhaps Tennyson {104} only
praised the first Edition and I don't know where to lay my hands on that.
I wonder he should have thought twice about it. Not but I think the
Truth is told: only, a Truth every one knows! And told in a shape of
Dialogue really something Platonic: but I doubt rather affectedly too.
However, such as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it
twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my telling it
could mend the matter!): and I cannot but think that the Generation that
has grown up in these twenty years has not profited by the Fifty Thousand
Copies of this great work!
I am sorry to trouble you about Macmillan; I should not have done so had
I kept my Copy with your corrections as well as my own. As Lamb said of
himself, so I say; that I never had any Luck with printing: I certainly
don't mean that I have had much cause to complain: but, for instance, I
know that Livy and Napier, put into good Verse, are just worth a corner
in one of the swarm of Shilling Monthlies. {105}
'Locksley Hall' is far more like Lucretius than the last Verses put into
his mouth by A. T. But, once get a Name in England, and you may do
anything. But I dare say that wise men too, like Spedding, will be of
the same mind with the Times Critic. (I have not seen him.) What does
Thompson say? You, I, and John Allen, are among the few, I do say, who,
having a good natural Insight, maintain it undimmed by public, or
private, Regards.
P.S. Having consulted my Landlord, I find that I can pay carriage all
through to Cambridge. Therefore it is that I send you, not only your own
Book, and my own, but also one of the genteel copies of Boswell's
Johnson; and Wesley's Journal: both of which I gave you, only never sent!
Now they shall go. Wesley, you will find pleasant to dip into, I think:
of course, there is much sameness; and I think you will allow some
absurdity among so much wise and good. I am almost sorry that I have not
noted down on the fly-leaf some of the more remarkable Entries, as I have
in my own Copy. If you have not read the little Autobiography of
Wesley's Disciple, John Nelson, give a shilling for it. It seems to me
something wonderful to read these Books, written in a Style that cannot
alter, because natural; while the Model Writers, Addison, Johnson, etc.,
have had their Day. Dryden holds, I think: he did not set up for a Model
Prose man. Sir T. Browne's Style is natural to him, one feels.
FELIXTOW FERRY: _July_ 25 [1868.]
MY DEAR COWELL,
I found your Letter on reaching Woodbridge yesterday; where you see I did
not stay long. In fact I only left Lowestoft partly to avoid a Volunteer
Camp there which filled the Town with People and Bustle: and partly that
my Captain might see his Wife: who cannot last _very_ much longer I
think: scarcely through Autumn, surely. She goes about, nurses her
children, etc., but grows visibly thinner, weaker, and more ailing.
If the Wind changes (now directly in our Teeth) I shall sail back to
Lowestoft to-morrow. Thompson and Mrs. T. propose to be at the Royal
Hotel there till Wednesday, and we wish, I believe, to see each other
again. Sailing did not agree with his bilious temperament: and he seemed
to me injudicious in his hours of Exercise, Dinner, etc. But he, and
she, should know best. I like her very much: head and heart right
feminine of the best, it seemed to me: and her experience of the World,
and the Wits, not having injured either.
I only wanted Macmillan to return the Verses {107} if he wouldn't use
them, because of my having no corrected Copy of them.
I see in the last Athenaeum a new '_and revised_' Edition of Clarissa
advertised. I suppose this 'revised' does not mean 'abridged,' without
which the Book will _not_ permanently make way, as I believe. That, you
know, I wanted to do: could do: and nearly have done;--But that, and my
Crabbe, I must leave for my Executors and Heirs to consign to
Lumber-room, or fire.
Pray let me hear of your movements, especially such as tend hitherward.
About September--Alas!--I think we shall be a good Deal here, or at
Woodbridge; probably not so much before that time.
Ever yours and Lady's, E. F. G.
WOODBRIDGE: _March_ 1/69.
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . My Lugger Captain has just left me to go on his Mackerel Voyage to
the Western Coast; and I don't know when I shall see him again. Just
after he went, a muffled bell from the Church here began to toll for
somebody's death: it sounded like a Bell under the sea. He sat listening
to the Hymn played by the Church chimes last evening, and said he could
hear it all as if in Lowestoft Church when he was a Boy, 'Jesus our
Deliverer!' You can't think what a grand, tender, Soul this is, lodged
in a suitable carcase.
_To Mrs. W. H. Thompson_.
[1869.]
DEAR MRS. THOMPSON,
(I must get a new Pen for you--which doesn't promise to act as well as
the old one--Try another.)
Dear Mrs. Thompson--Mistress of Trinity--(this does better)--
I am both sorry, and glad, that you wrote me the Letter you have written
to me: sorry, because I think it was an effort to you, disabled as you
are; and glad, I need not say why.
I despatched Spedding's letter to your Master yesterday; I daresay you
have read it: for there was nothing extraordinary wicked in it. But, he
to talk of _my_ perversity! . . .
My Sir Joshua is a darling. A pretty young Woman ('Girl' I won't call
her) sitting with a turtle-dove in her lap, while its mate is supposed to
be flying down to it from the window. I say 'supposed,' for Sir J. who
didn't know much of the drawing of Birds, any more than of Men and Women,
has made a thing like a stuffed Bird clawing down like a Parrot. But
then, the Colour, the Dove-colour, subdued so as to carry off the richer
tints of the dear Girl's dress; and she, too, pensive, not sentimental: a
Lady, as her Painter was a Gentleman. Faded as it is in the face (the
Lake, which he would use, having partially flown), it is one of the most
beautiful things of his I have seen: more varied in colour; not the
simple cream-white dress he was fond of, but with a light gold-threaded
Scarf, a blue sash, a green chair, etc. . . .
I was rather taken aback by the Master's having discovered my last--yes,
and bona-fide my last--translation in the volume I sent to your Library.
I thought it would slip in unobserved, and I should have given all my
little contributions to my old College, without after-reckoning. Had I
known you as the Wife of any but the 'quondam' Greek Professor, I should
very likely have sent it to you: since it was meant for those who might
wish for some insight into a Play {109} which I must think they can
scarcely have been tempted into before by any previous Translation. It
remains to be much better done; but if Women of Sense and Taste, and Men
of Sense and Taste (who don't know Greek) can read, and be interested in
such a glimpse as I give them of the Original, they must be content, and
not look the Horse too close in the mouth, till a better comes to hand.
My Lugger has had (along with her neighbours) such a Season hitherto of
Winds as no one remembers. We made 450 pounds in the North Sea; and
(just for fun) I did wish to realize 5 pounds in my Pocket. But my
Captain would take it all to pay Bills. But if he makes another 400
pounds this Home Voyage! Oh, then we shall have money in our Pockets. I
do wish this. For the anxiety about all these People's lives has been so
much more to me than all the amusement I have got from the Business, that
I think I will draw out of it if I can see my Captain sufficiently firm
on his legs to carry it on alone. True, there will then be the same risk
to him and his ten men, but they don't care; only I sit here listening to
the Winds in the Chimney, and always thinking of the Eleven hanging at my
own fingers' ends.
This Letter is all desperately about me and mine, Translations and Ships.
And now I am going to walk in _my_ Garden: and feed _my_ Captain's Pony
with white Carrots; and in the Evening have _my_ Lad come and read for an
hour and a half (he stumbles at every third word, and gets dreadfully
tired, and so do I; but I renovate him with Cake and Sweet Wine), and I
can't just now smoke the Pipe nor drink the Grog. 'These are my
Troubles, Mr. Wesley;' {110} but I am still the Master's and Mistress'
loyal Servant,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
WOODBRIDGE: Tuesday,
[28 _Dec._ 1869.]
MY DEAR COWELL,
Your Letter to day was a real pleasure--nay, a comfort--to me. For I had
begun to think that, for whatever reason, you had dropt me; and I know
not one of all my friends whom I could less afford to lose.
You anticipate rightly all I think of the new Idylls. {111} I had bought
the Book at Lowestoft: and when I returned here for Christmas found that
A. T.'s Publisher had sent me a Copy. As I suppose this was done by A.
T.'s order, I have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him
something, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell him that I
think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what is very true) that, though
the main Myth of King Arthur's Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur
in my Eyes, the several legendary fragments of it never did much interest
me; excepting the _Morte_, which I suppose most interested him also, as
he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's
is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to
Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in
something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than
elaborated into a modern Epic form. I never cared, however, for _any_
chivalric Epic; neither Tasso, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic
has a sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one of all
this sort I have ever cared for.
I certainly wish that Alfred had devoted his diminished powers to
translating Sophocles, or AEschylus, as I fancy a Poet should do--_one_
work, at any rate--of his great Predecessors. But Pegasus won't be
harnessed.
From which I descend to my own humble feet. I will send you some copies
of Calderon when I have uncloseted and corrected them. As to Agamemnon,
I bound up a Copy of him in the other Translations I sent to Trinity
Library--not very wisely, I doubt; but I thought the Book would just be
put up on its shelf, and I had given all I was asked for, or ever could
be asked for. The Master, however, wrote me that it came to his Eyes,
and I dare say he thought I had best have let AEschylus alone. My
Version was not intended for those who know the Original; but, by hook or
by crook, to interest some who do not. The _Shape_ I have wrought the
Play into is good, I think: the Dialogue good also: but the Choruses
(though well contrived for the progress of the Story) are very false to
AEschylus; and anyhow want the hand of a Poet. Mine, as I said, are only
a sort of 'Entr' acte' Music, which would be better supplied by Music
itself.
I will send you in a day or two my Christmas Gossip for the East Anglian,
where I am more at home. But you have heard me tell it all before.
It is too late to wish you a good Christmas--(I wonder how you passed it,
mine was solitary and dull enough) but you know I wish you all the Good
the New Year can bring. Love to Elizabeth; do not be so long without
writing again, if only half a dozen lines, to yours and hers sincerely,
E. F. G.
_To S. Laurence_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 13/70.
MY DEAR LAURENCE,
Can you tell me (in a line) how I should treat some old Pictures of mine
which have somehow got rusty with the mixt damp and then fires (I
suppose) of my new house, which, after being built at near double its
proper cost, is just what I do not want, according to the usage of the
Ballyblunder Family, of which I am a very legitimate offshoot?
If you were down here, I think I should make you take a life-size Oil
Sketch of the Head and Shoulders of my Captain of the Lugger. You see by
the enclosed that these are neither of them of a bad sort: and the Man's
Soul is every way as well proportioned, missing in nothing that may
become A Man, as I believe. He and I will, I doubt, part Company; well
as he likes me, which is perhaps as well as a sailor cares for any one
but Wife and Children: he likes to be, what he is born to be, his own
sole Master, of himself, and of other men. So now I have got him a fair
start, I think he will carry on the Lugger alone: I shall miss my Hobby,
which is no doubt the last I shall ride in this world: but I shall also
get eased of some Anxiety about the lives of a Crew for which I now feel
responsible. And this last has been a Year of great Anxiety in this
respect.
I had to run to London for one day about my Eyes (which, you see by my
MS., are not in prime order at all) and saw a Sir Joshua at a Framer's
window, and brought it down. The face faded, but elegant and lady-like
always; the dress in colour quite Venetian. It was in Leicester Square;
I can't think how all the world of Virtuosos kept passing and would not
give twenty pounds for it. But you don't rate Sir Joshua in comparison
with Gainsboro'.
WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 20/70.
MY DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . My Captain lives at Lowestoft, and is there at present: he also in
anxiety about his Wife who was brought to bed the very same day my
Landlady died, and (as a letter from him this morning tells me) has a
hard time of it. I should certainly like a large Oil-sketch, like
Thackeray's, done in your most hasty, and worst, style, to hang up with
Thackeray and Tennyson, with whom he shares a certain Grandeur of Soul
and Body. As you guess, the colouring is (when the Man is all well) as
fine as his form: the finest Saxon type: with that complexion which
Montaigne calls 'vif, male, et flamboyant'; blue eyes; and strictly
auburn hair, that any woman might sigh to possess. He says it is coming
off, as it sometimes does from those who are constantly wearing the close
hot Sou'westers. We must see what can be done about a Sketch.
LOWESTOFT, _February_ 27 [1870].
MY DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . I came here a few days ago, for the benefit of my old Doctor, The
Sea, and my Captain's Company, which is as good. He has not yet got his
new Lugger home; but will do so this week, I hope; and then the way for
us will be somewhat clearer.
If you sketch in a head, you might send it down to me to look at, so as I
might be able to guess if there were any likelihood in that way of
proceeding. Merely the Lines of Feature indicated, even by Chalk, might
do. As I told you, the Head is of the large type, or size, the proper
Capital of a six foot Body, of the broad dimensions you see in the
Photograph. The fine shape of the Nose, less than Roman, and more than
Greek, scarce appears in the Photograph; the Eye, and its delicate
Eyelash, of course will remain to be made out; and I think you excel in
the Eye.
When I get home (which I shall do this week) I will send you two little
Papers about the Sea words and Phrases used hereabout, {116a} for which
this Man (quite unconsciously) is my main Authority. You will see in
them a little of his simplicity of Soul; but not the Justice of Thought,
Tenderness of Nature, and all the other good Gifts which make him a
Gentleman of Nature's grandest Type.
SUFFOLK HOTEL, LOWESTOFT, _August_ 2/70.
DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . The Lugger is now preparing in the Harbour beside me; the Captain
here, there, and everywhere; with a word for no one but on business; the
other side of the Man you saw looking for Birds' Nests; all things in
their season. I am sure the Man is fit to be King of a Kingdom as well
as of a Lugger. To-day he gives the customary Dinner to his Crew before
starting, and my own two men go to it; and I am asked too: but will not
spoil the Fun.
I declare, you and I have seen A Man! Have we not? Made in the mould of
what Humanity should be, Body and Soul, a poor Fisherman. The proud
Fellow had better have kept me for a Partner in some of his
responsibilities. {116b} But no; he must rule alone, as is right he
should too.
I date from the Inn where my Letters are addressed; but I write in the
little Ship which I live in. My Nieces are now here; in the town, I
mean; and my friend Cowell and his Wife; so I have more company than all
the rest of the year. I try to shut my Eyes and Ears against all tidings
of this damnable War, seeing that I can do no good to others by
distressing myself.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
BRIDGEWOOD, _Nov._ 1, [1870].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I must say that my savageness against France goes no further than wishing
that the new and gay part of Paris were battered down; not the poor
working part, no, nor any of the People destroyed. But I wish ornamental
Paris down, because then I think the French would be kept quiet till they
had rebuilt it. For what would France be without a splendid Palace? I
should not wish any such Catastrophe, however, if Paris were now as I
remember it: with a lot of old historic houses in it, old Gardens, etc.,
which I am told are now made away with. Only Notre Dame, the Tuileries,
and perhaps the beautiful gilt Dome of the Invalides do I care for. They
are historical and beautiful too.
But I believe it would be a good thing if the rest of Europe would take
possession of France itself, and rule it for better or worse, leaving the
French themselves to amuse and enlighten the world by their Books, Plays,
Songs, Bon Mots, and all the Arts and Sciences which they are so
ingenious in. They can do all things but manage themselves and live at
peace with others: and they should themselves be glad to have their
volatile Spirits kept in order by the Good Sense and Honesty which other
Nations certainly abound in more than themselves. {118a}
I see what I think very good remarks about them in old Palmerston's
Papers quoted in my Athenaeum. {118b} He was just the Man they wanted, I
think.
WOODBRIDGE, _Nov._ 15, [1870].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . Ah, I should like to hear Fidelio again, often as I have heard it.
I do not find so much 'Melody' in it as you do: understanding by Melody
that which asserts itself independently of Harmony, as Mozart's Airs do.
I miss it especially in Leonora's Hope song. But, what with the story
itself, and the Passion and Power of the Music it is set to, the Opera is
one of those that one can hear repeated as often as any.
If any one ever would take a good suggestion from me, you might suggest
to Mr. Sullivan, or some competent Musician, to adapt that Epilogue part
of Tennyson's King Arthur, beginning--
And so to bed; where yet in sleep I seem'd
To sail with Arthur, etc.
down to
And War shall be no more--
to adapt this, I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio:
Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily,
and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth
and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the
Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words
aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering in upon them. It
is very grand in Fidelio: and I am persuaded might have a grand effect in
this Poem. But no one will do it, of course; especially in these Days
when War is so far from being no more!
I want to hear Cherubini's Medea, which I dare say I should find masterly
and dull. I quite agree with you about the Italians: Mozart the only
exception; who is all in all.
WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 5/70.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . Had not Sunday followed Saturday I was a little tempted to run up
to hear Cherubini's Medea, which I saw advertised for the Night. But I
believe I should feel strange at a Play now: and probably should not have
sat the Opera half out. So you have a good Play, {120} and that well
acted, at last, on English Boards! At the old Haymarket, I think: the
pleasantest of all the Theatres (for size and Decoration) that I
remember; yes, and for the Listons and Vestrises that I remember there in
the days of their Glory. Vestris, in what was called a 'Pamela Hat' with
a red feather; and, again, singing 'Cherry Ripe,' one of the Dozen
immortal English Tunes. That was in 'Paul Pry.' Poor Plays they were,
to be sure: but the Players were good and handsome, and--oneself was
young--1822-3! There was Macready's Virginius at old Covent Garden, an
event never to be forgotten.
One Date leads to another. In talking one day about different Quotations
which get abroad without people always knowing whence they are derived, I
could have sworn that I remember Spring Rice mentioning one that he
himself had invented, and had been amused at seeing quoted here and
there--
Coldly correct and critically dull.
Now only last night I happened to see the Line quoted in the Preface to
Frederick Reynolds' (the Playwright's) stupid Memoirs, published in 1827;
some time before Spring Rice would have thought of such things, I
suppose. . . .
What Plays Reynolds' were, which made George III. laugh so, and put 500
pounds apiece into the writer's Pocket! But then there were Lewis,
Quick, Kemble, Edwin, Parsons, Palmer, Mrs. Jordan, etc. to act them.
WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ 22, [1871].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
My acquaintance with Spanish, as with other Literature, is almost
confined to its Fiction; and of that I have read nothing to care about
except Don Quixote and Calderon. The first is well worth learning
Spanish for. When I began reading the Language more than twenty years
ago, with Cowell who taught me nearly all I know, I tried some of the
other Dramatists, Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, Moratin, etc., but could
take but little interest in them. All Calderon's, I think, have
something beautiful in them: and about a score of them altogether bear
reading again, and will be remembered if read but once. But Don Quixote
is _the_ Book, as you know; to be fully read, I believe, in no language
but its own, though delightful in any. You know as well as I that
Spanish History has a good name; Mariana's for one: and one makes sure
that the Language, at any rate, must be suitable to relate great Things
with. But I do not meddle with History.
There are very good Selections from the Spanish Dramas published in good
large-type Octavo by Don Ochoa, printed (I think) by Baudry, in Paris.
There is one volume of Calderon; one of Lope, I believe: and one or two
made up of other Playwrights. These Books are very easily got at any
foreign Bookseller's.
An Artist {122a} to whom I have lent my house for a while has been
teaching me 'Spanish Dominoes,' a very good Game. He, and I, and the
Captain whose Photo I sent you (did I not?) had a grand bout with it the
other day. If I went about in Company again I think I should do as old
Rossini did, carry a Box of Dominoes, or pack of Cards, which I think
would set Conversation at ease by giving people something easy to do
beside conversing. I say Rossini did this; but I only know of his doing
it once, at Trouville, where F. Hiller met him, who has published the
Conversations they had together.
Did you lead the very curious Paper in the Cornhill, {122b} a year back,
I think, concerning the vext question of Mozart's Requiem? It is curious
as a piece of Evidence, irrespective of any musical Interest. Evidence,
I believe, would compel a Law Court to decide that the Requiem was
mainly, not Mozart's, but his pupil Sussmayer's. And perhaps the Law
Court might justly so decide, if by 'mainly' one understood the more
technical business of filling up the ideas suggested by the Master. But
then those ideas are just everything; and no Court of Musical Equity but
would decide, against all other Evidence, that those ideas were Mozart's.
It is known that he was instructing Sussmayer, almost with his last
breath, about some drum accompaniments to the Requiem; and I have no
doubt, hummed over the subjects, or melodies, of all.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
WOODBRIDGE, _Feb._ 1, [1871],
MY DEAR MASTER,
The Gorgias duly came last week, thank you: and I write rather earlier
than I should otherwise have done to satisfy you on that point.
Otherwise, I say, I should have waited awhile till I had gone over all
the Notes more carefully, with some of the sweet-looking Text belonging
to them; which would have taken some time, as my Eyes have not been in
good trim of late, whether from the Snow on the Ground, and the murky Air
all about one, or because of the Eyes themselves being two years older
than when they got hurt by Paraffin.
The Introduction I have read twice, and find it quite excellently
written. Surely I miss some--ay, more than some--of the Proof you sent
me two years ago; some of the Argument to prove the relation between this
Dialogue and the Republic, and consequently of the Date that must be
assigned to it. All that interested me then as it does now, and I would
rather have seen the Introduction all the longer by it. Perhaps,
however, I am confounding my remembrances of the Date question (which of
course follows from the matter) with the Phaedrus Introduction.
Then as to what I have seen of the Notes: they seem to me as good as can
be. I do not read modern Scholars, and therefore do not know how
generally the Style of English Note-writing may be [different] from that
of the Latin one was used to. But your Notes, I know, seem excellent to
me; I mean, in the Style of them (for of the Scholarship I am not a
proper Judge); totally without pedantry of any sort, whether of solving
unnecessary difficulties, carping at other Critics, etc., but plainly
determined to explain what needs explanation in the shortest, clearest,
way, and in a Style which is most of all suited to the purpose, 'familiar
but by no means vulgar,' such as we have known in such cases, whether in
Latin or English. My Quotation reminds me of yours: how sparingly, and
always just to the point, introduced; Polus 'gambolling' from the Theme:
old Wordsworth's Robin Hood, etc. And the paraphrases you give of the
Greek are so just the thing. I have not read Vaughan's (?) Translation
of the Republic; which I am told is good. But this I know that I never
met with any readable Translation of Plato. Whewell's was intolerable.
You should have translated--(that is, paraphrased, for however far some
People may err on this score, rushing in where Scholars fear to tread) a
Translation must be Paraphrase to be readable; and especially in these
Dialogues where the familiar Grace of the Narrative and Conversation is
so charming a vehicle of the Philosophy. If people will conscientiously
translate [Greek text] 'Oh most excellent man,' when perhaps 'My good
Fellow' was the thing meant, and 'By the Dog!' and so on, why, it is not
English talk, and probably not Greek either. I say you should have, or
should translate one or two Dialogues to show how they should be done; if
no longer than the Lysis, or one of those small and sweet ones which I
believe the Germans disclaim for Plato's.
'The Dog' however does need a Note, as I suppose that, however
far-fetched Olympiodorus' suggestion, this was an Oath familiar to
Socrates alone, and which he took up for some, perhaps whimsical, reason.
It is not to be found (is it?) in Aristophanes, where I suppose all the
common Oaths come in; but then again I wonder that, if it were Socrates'
Oath, it did not find its way into the Clouds, or perhaps into the
criminal Charge against Socrates, as being a sort of mystical or scoffing
Blasphemy.
I am afraid I tire you more with my Letter than you tired me with your
Introduction, a good deal. And you see, to your cost, that my MS. does
not argue much pleasure in the act of writing. But I would say my little
say; which perhaps is all wrong. . . .
One of your Phrases I think truly delightful, about the Treasure to be
sometimes found in a weak Vessel like Proclus. That I think is very
Platonic; all the more for such things coming only now and then, which
makes them tell. Modern Books lose by being over-crowded with good
things.
* * * * *
In the course of this year 1871, FitzGerald parted with his little yacht
the Scandal, so called, he said, because it was the staple product of
Woodbridge, and on September 4 he wrote to me:--
WOODBRIDGE: _Septr._ 4/71.
'I run over to Lowestoft occasionally for a few days, but do not abide
there long: no longer having my dear little Ship for company. I saw her
there looking very smart under her new owner ten days ago, and I felt so
at home when I was once more on her Deck that--Well: I content myself
with sailing on the river Deben, looking at the Crops as they grow green,
yellow, russet, and are finally carried away in the red and blue Waggons
with the sorrel horse.'
_To W. F. Pollock_.
[1871].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . A night or two ago I was reading old Thackeray's Roundabouts; and
(sign of a good book) heard him talking to me. I wonder at his being so
fretted by what was said of him as some of these Papers show that he was:
very unlike his old self, surely. Perhaps Ill Health (which Johnson said
made every one a Scoundrel) had something to do with this. I don't mean
that W. M. T. went this length: but in this one respect he was not so
good as he used to be.
Annie Thackeray in her yearly letter wrote that she had heard from Mrs.
A. T. that the Laureate was still suffering. I judge from your Letter
that he is better. . . . I never heard any of his coadjutor Sullivan's
Music. Is there a Tune, or originally melodious phrase, in any of it?
That is what I always missed in Mendelssohn, except in two or three of
his youthful Pieces; Fingal and Midsummer Night's Dream overtures, and
Meeresstille. Chorley {127} mentions as a great instance of M.'s
candour, that when some of his Worshippers were sneering at Donizetti's
'Figlia,' M. silenced them by saying 'Do you [know] I should like to have
written it myself.' If he meant that he ever could have written it if he
had pleased, he ought to have had his nose tweaked.
I have been reading Sir Walter's Pirate again, and am very glad to find
how much I like it--that is speaking far below the mark--I may say how I
wonder and delight in it. I am rejoiced to find that this is so; and I
am quite sure that it is not owing to my old prejudice, but to the
intrinsic merit and beauty of the Book itself. With all its faults of
detail, often mere carelessness, what a broad Shakespearian Daylight over
it all, and all with no Effort, and--a lot else that one may be contented
to feel without having to write an Essay about. They won't beat Sir
Walter in a hurry (I mean of course his earlier, Northern, Novels), and
he was such a fine Fellow that I really don't believe any one would wish
to cast him in the Shade. {128}
_To T. Carlyle_.
WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 20, [1871].
DEAR CARLYLE,
Do not be alarmed at another Letter from me this year. It will need no
answer: and is only written to tell you that I have not wholly neglected
the wish you expressed in your last about the Naseby stone. I was
reading, some months ago, your letters about our Naseby exploits in 1842:
as also one which you wrote in 1855 (I think) about that Stone, giving me
an Inscription for it. And it was not wholly my fault that your wishes
were not then fulfilled, though perhaps I was wanting in due energy about
the matter. Thus, however, it was; that when you wrote in 1855, we had
just sold Naseby to the Trustees of Lord Clifden: and, as there was some
hitch in the Business (Lord Carlisle being one of the Trustees), I was
told I had better not put in my oar. So the matter dropt. Since then
Lord Clifden is dead: and I do not know if the Estate belongs to his
Family. But, on receiving your last Letter, I wrote to the Lawyers who
had managed for Lord Clifden to know about it: but up to this hour I have
had no answer. Thus much I have done. If I get the Lawyer's and Agent's
consent, I should be very glad indeed to have the stone cut, and
lettered, as you wished. But whether I should pluck up spirit to go
myself and set it up on the proper spot, I am not so sure; and I cannot
be sure that any one else could do it for me. Those who were with me
when I dug up the bones are dead, or gone; and I suppose the Plough has
long ago obliterated the traces of sepulture, in these days of improved
Agriculture; and perhaps even the Tradition is lost from the Memory of
the Generation that has sprung up since I, and the old Parson, and the
Scotch Tenant, turned up the ground. You will think me very base to
hesitate about such a little feat as a Journey into Northamptonshire for
this purpose. But you know that one does not generally grow more active
in Travel as one gets older: and I have been a bad Traveller all my life.
So I will promise nothing that I am not sure of doing. Only, if you
continue to desire this strongly, when next Summer comes, I will resolve
upon it if I can.
These Naseby Letters of yours--they are all yours I have preserved,
because (as in the case of Tennyson and Thackeray) I would not leave
anything of private personal history behind me, lest it should fall into
some unscrupulous hand. Even these Naseby letters--would you wish them
returned to you? Only in case you should desire this, trouble yourself
to answer me now.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 24, [1871]
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott's best: the Women, Minna,
Brenda, Norna, are poor theatrical figures. But Magnus and Jack Bunce
and Claud Halcro (though the latter rather wearisome) are substantial
enough: how wholesomely they swear! and no one ever thinks of blaming
Scott for it. There is a passage where the Company at Burgh Westra are
summoned by Magnus to go down to the Shore to see the Boats go off to the
Deep Sea fishing, and 'they followed his stately step to the Shore as the
Herd of Deer follows the leading Stag, with all manner of respectful
Observance.' This, coming in at the close of the preceding unaffected
Narrative is to me like Homer, whom Scott really resembles in the
simplicity and ease of his Story. This is far more poetical in my Eyes
than all the Effort of ---, ---, etc. And which of them has written such
a Lyric as 'Farewell to Northmaven'? I finished the Book with Sadness;
thinking I might never read it again. . . .
P.S. Can't you send me your Paper about the Novelists? As to which is
the best of all I can't say: that Richardson (with all his twaddle) is
better than Fielding, I am quite certain. There is nothing at all
comparable to Lovelace in all Fielding, whose Characters are common and
vulgar types; of Squires, Ostlers, Lady's maids, etc., very easily drawn.
I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot be third, any more than first
or second: I think you were rather drawn away by a fashion when you put
her there: and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag whom
so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as far as she goes: but
she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or
even one of Fielding's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and
swear a round Oath or two! I must think the 'Woman in White,' with her
Count Fosco, far beyond all that. Cowell constantly reads Miss Austen at
night after his Sanskrit Philology is done: it composes him, like Gruel:
or like Paisiello's Music, which Napoleon liked above all other, because
he said it didn't interrupt his Thoughts.
WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 29 [1871].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
If you come here, come some very fine weather, when we look at our best
inland, and you may take charge of my Boat on the River. I doubt I did
my Eyes damage this Summer by steering in the Sun, and peering out for
the Beacons that mark the Channel; but your Eyes are proof against this,
and I shall resign the command to you, as you wrote that you liked it at
Clovelly. . . .
I had thought Beauty was the main object of the Arts: but these people,
not having Genius, I suppose, to create any new forms of that, have
recourse to the Ugly, and find their Worshippers in plenty. In Poetry,
Music, and Painting, it seems to me the same. And people think all this
finer than Mozart, Raffaelle, and Tennyson--as he _was_--but he never
ceases to be noble and pure. There was a fine passage quoted from his
Last Idyll: about a Wave spending itself away on a long sandy Shore: that
was Lincolnshire, I know.
Carlyle has written to remind me of putting up a Stone on the spot in
Naseby field where I dug up the Dead for him thirty years ago. I will
gladly have the Stone cut, and the Inscription he made for it engraved:
but will I go again to Northamptonshire to see it set up? And perhaps
the people there have forgotten all about the place, now that a whole
Generation has passed away, and improved Farming has passed the Plough
over the Ground. But we shall see.
_To W. A. Wright_.
WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ 20/72.
By way of flourishing my Eyes, I have been looking into Andrew Marvell,
an old favourite of mine, who led the way for Dryden in Verse, and Swift
in Prose, and was a much better fellow than the last, at any rate.
Two of his lines in the Poem on 'Appleton House,' with its Gardens,
Grounds, etc., run:
But most the _Hewel's_ wonders are,
Who here has the Holtseltster's care.
The '_Hewel_' being evidently the Woodpecker, who, by tapping the Trees,
etc., does the work of one who measures and gauges Timber; here, rightly
or wrongly, called '_Holtseltster_.' 'Holt' one knows: but what is
'seltster'? I do not find either this word or 'Hewel' in Bailey or
Halliwell. But 'Hewel' may be a form of 'Yaffil,' which I read in some
Paper that Tennyson had used for the Woodpecker in his Last Tournament.
{133}
This reminded me that Tennyson once said to me, some thirty years ago, or
more, in talking of Marvell's 'Coy Mistress,' where it breaks in--
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near, etc.
'_That_ strikes me as Sublime, I can hardly tell why. Of course, this
partly depends on its place in the Poem.
Apropos of the Woodpecker, a Clergyman near here was telling our
Bookseller Loder, that, in one of his Parishioners' Cottages, he observed
a dried Woodpecker hung up to the Ceiling indoors; and was told that it
always pointed with its Bill to the Quarter whence the Wind blew.
_To Miss Anna Biddell_.
WOODBRIDGE. _Feb._ 22, [1872].
. . . I have lost the Boy who read to me so long and so profitably: and
now have another; a much better Scholar, but not half so agreeable or
amusing a Reader as his Predecessor. We go through Tichborne without
missing a Syllable, and, when Tichborne is not long enough, we take to
Lothair! which has entertained me well. So far as I know of the matter,
his pictures of the manners of English High Life are good: Lothair
himself I do not care for, nor for the more romantic parts, Theodora,
etc. Altogether the Book is like a pleasant Magic Lantern: when it is
over, I shall forget it: and shall want to return to what I do not
forget, some of Thackeray's monumental Figures of 'pauvre et triste
Humanite,' as old Napoleon called it: Humanity in its Depths, not in its
superficial Appearances.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
THE OLD PLACE, _Feb._ 25/72.
. . . Aldis Wright must be right about 'sear' {135a}--French _serre_ he
says. What a pity that Spedding has not employed some of the forty years
he has lost in washing his Blackamoor in helping an Edition of
Shakespeare, though not in the way of these minute archaeologic
Questions! I never heard him read a page but he threw some new Light
upon it. When you see him pray tell him I do not write to him, because I
judge from experience that it is a labour to him to answer, unless it
were to do me any service I asked of him except to tell me of himself.
My heart leaped when the Boy read me the Attorney General's Quotation
from A. T. {135b}
_From T. Carlyle_.
CHELSEA, 15, _June_, 1872.
DEAR FITZGERALD,
I am glad that you are astir on the Naseby-Monument question; and that
the auspices are so favourable. This welcome 'Agent,' so willing and
beneficent, will contrive, I hope, to spare you a good deal of the
trouble,--except indeed that of seeing with your own eyes that the Stone
is put in its right place, and the number of 'yards rearward' is exactly
given.
I think the Inscription will do; and as to the shape, etc., of the
monument, I have nothing to advise,--except that I think it ought to be
of the most perfect _simplicity_, and should {136} go direct to its
object and punctually stop there. A small block of Portland
stone--(Portland excels all stones in the world for durability and
capacity for taking an exact inscription)--block of Portland stone of
size to contain the words and allow itself to be sunk firmly in the
ground; to me it could have no other good quality whatever; and I should
not care if the stone on three sides of it were squared with the hammer
merely, and only _polished_ on its front or fourth side where the letters
are to be.
In short I wish _you_ my dear friend to take charge of this pious act in
all its details; considering me to be loyally passive to whatever you
decide on respecting it. If on those terms you will let me bear half the
expense and flatter myself that in this easy way I have gone halves with
you in this small altogether genuine piece of patriotism, I shall be
extremely obliged to you.
Pollock has told you an altogether flattering tale about my strength, as
it is nearly impossible for any person still on his feet to be more
completely useless.
Yours ever truly,
T. CARLYLE.
J. A. Froude (just come to walk with me) _scripsit_.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 16, [1872].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
Some forty years ago there was a set of Lithograph Outlines from Hayter's
Sketches of Pasta in Medea: caricature things, though done in earnest by
a Man who had none of the Genius of the Model he admired. Looking at
them now people who never saw the Original will wonder perhaps that Talma
and Mrs. Siddons should have said that they might go to learn of Her: and
indeed it was only the Living Genius and Passion of the Woman herself
that could have inspired and exalted, and enlarged her very incomplete
Person (as it did her Voice) into the Grandeur, as well as the _Niobe_
Pathos, of her Action and Utterance. All the nobler features of Humanity
she had indeed: finely shaped Head, Neck, Bust, and Arms: all finely
related to one another: the superior Features too of the Face fine: Eyes,
Eyebrows--I remember Trelawny saying they reminded him of those in the
East--the Nose not so fine: but the whole Face 'homogeneous' as Lavater
calls it, and capable of all expression, from Tragedy to Farce. For I
have seen her in the 'Prova d' un' Opera Seria,' where no one, I believe,
admired her but myself, except Thomas Moore, whose Journal long after
published revealed to me one who thought,--yes, and _knew_--as I did.
Well, these Lithographs are as mere Skeleton Outlines of the living
Woman, but I suppose the only things now to give an Idea of her, I have
been a dozen years looking out for a Copy.
I think I love the Haymarket as much as any part of London because of the
Little Theatre where Vestris used to sing 'Cherry Ripe' in her prime: and
(soon after) because of the old Bills on the opposite Colonnade: 'MEDEA
IN CORINTO. Medea, _Signora Pasta_.' You know what she said, to the
Confusion of all aesthetic People, one of whom said to her, 'sans doute
vous avez beaucoup etudie l'Antique?' 'Peut-etre je l'ai beaucoup
senti.'
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I have remembered, since last writing to you, that the Hayter Sketches
were published by Dickenson of Bond Street, about 1825-6, I fancy. I
have tried to get them, and all but succeeded two years ago. I am afraid
they would give you and Miss Bateman the impression that Pasta played the
Virago: which was not so at all. Her scene with her Children was among
the finest of all: and it was well known at the time how deeply she felt
it. But I suppose the stronger Situations offered better opportunities
for the pencil, such a pencil as Hayter's. I used to admire as much as
anything her Attitude and Air as she stood at the side of the Stage when
Jason's Bridal Procession came on: motionless, with one finger in her
golden girdle: a habit which (I heard) she inherited from Grassini. The
finest thing to me in Pasta's Semiramide was her simple Action of
touching Arsace's Shoulder when she chose him for husband. She was
always dignified in the midst of her Passion: never scolded as her
Caricature Grisi did. And I remember her curbing her Arsace's redundant
Action by taking hold of her (Arsace's) hands, Arsace being played by
Brambilla, who was (I think) Pasta's Niece. {139a}
WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 4/72.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I like your Fraser Paper very much, and recognised some points we had
talked of together, {139b} but nothing that I can claim as my own. I
suppose that I think on these points as very many educated men do think;
I mean as to Principles of Art. I am not sure I understand your word
'Imagination' as opposed to realistic (d---d word) detail at p. 26, but I
suppose I suppose I know what is meant, nevertheless, and agree with
that. Is the Prophet of p. 24 _Gurlyle_? {139c} I think so. The fine
head of him which figures as Frontispiece to the People's Edition of
Sartor made me think of a sad Old Prophet; so that I bought the Book for
the Portrait only.
The 'Brown Umbrella' pleased me greatly.
Well; and I thought there were other Papers in Fraser which made me think
that, on the whole, I would take in Fraser rather than the Cornhill which
you advised. Perhaps I am just now out of tune for Novels; whether that
be so or not, I don't get an Appetite for Annie Thackeray's {140} from
the two Numbers I have had.
And here is Spedding's vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me
about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old Spedding's
pleading for him for ever; that is, old Spedding's simple statement of
the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh Business is quite delightful, better
than Old Kensington.
Then I have bought 3 vols of the '_Ladies Magazine_' for 1750-3 by
'Jasper Goodwill' who died at Vol. iv. It contains the Trials and
Executions (16 men at a time) of the time; _Miss Blandy_ above all; and
such delightful Essays, Poems, and Enigmas, for _Ladies_! The Allegories
are in the Rasselas style, all Oriental. The Essays 'of all the Virtues
which adorn, etc.' Then Anecdotes of the Day: as of a Country woman in
St. James' Park taking on because she cannot go home till she has kissed
the King's hand: one of the Park keepers tells one of the Pages, who
tells the King, who has the Woman in to kiss his hand, and take some
money beside. One wonders there weren't heaps of such loyal Subjects.
Mowbray Donne wrote me that he sent you the Fragments I had saved and
transcribed of Morton's Letters; the best part having been lost by
Blackwood's People thirty years ago, as I believe I told you. But don't
you think what remains capital? I wish you would get them put into some
Magazine, just for the sake of some of our Day getting them in Print. You
might just put a word of Preface as to the Author: an Irish Gentleman, of
Estate and Fortune (which of course went the Irish way), who was Scholar,
Artist, Newspaper Correspondent, etc. A dozen lines would tell all that
is wanted, naming no names. It might be called 'Fragments of Letters by
an "Ill-starred" or "Unlucky" Man of Genius,' etc. as S. M. was:
'Unlucky' being still used in Suffolk, with something of Ancient Greek
meaning. See if you cannot get this done, will you? For I think many of
S. M.'s friends would be glad of it: and the general Public assuredly not
the worse. Some of the names would need some correction, I think: and
the Letters to be put in order of Time. {141a} 'Do it!' as Julia in the
Hunchback says.
[1872.]
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I went to London at the end of last week, on my way to Sydenham, where my
second Brother is staying, whom I had not seen these six years, nor his
Wife. . . . On Saturday I went to the Academy, for little else but to
see Millais, and to disagree with you about him! I thought his three
Women and his Highlanders brave pictures, which you think also; but
braver than you think them. The Women looked alive: the right Eye so
much smaller than the left in the Figure looking at you that I suppose it
was so in the original, so that I should have chosen one of the other
Sisters for the position. I could not see any analogy between the
Picture and Sir Joshua's Graces, except that there were Three. Nor could
I think the Highlanders in the Landscape vulgar; they seemed to me in
character with the Landscape. Both Pictures want tone, which may mean
Glazing: wanting which they may last the longer, and sober down of
themselves without the danger of cracking by any transparent Colour laid
over them.
I scarce looked at anything else, not having much time. Just as I was
going out, who should come up to me but Annie Thackeray, who took my
hands as really glad to see her Father's old friend. I am sure she was;
and I was taken aback somehow; and, out of sheer awkwardness, began to
tell her that I didn't care for her new Novel! And then, after she had
left her Party to come to me, I ran off! It is true, I had to be back at
Sydenham: but it would have been better to forgo all that: and so I
reflected when I had got halfway down Piccadilly: and so ran back, and
went into the Academy again: but could not find A. T. She told me she
was going to Normandy this week: and I have been so vext with myself that
I have written to tell her something of what I have told you. It was
very stupid indeed.
WOODBRIDGE: _November_ 1, [1872].
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
The Spectator, as also the Athenaeum, somewhat over-praise Gareth, I
think: but I am glad they do so. . . . The Poem seems to me scarce more
worthy of what A. T. was born to do than the other Idylls; but you will
almost think it is out of contradiction that I like it better: except, of
course, the original Morte. The Story of this young Knight, who can
submit and conquer and do all the Devoir of Chivalry, interests me much
more than the Enids, Lily Maids, etc. of former Volumes. But Time
_is_--Time _was_--to have done with the whole Concern: pure and noble as
all is, and in parts more beautiful than any one else can do. . . .
Rain--Rain--Rain! What will become of poor Italy? I think we ought to
subscribe for her. Did you read of one French Caricature of the Pope
leaving Rome with the Holy Ghost in a Bird Cage?
WOODBRIDGE, _Nov._ 20.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I am glad the Rogers Verses {144} gratified you. I forget where I saw
them quoted, some ten years ago; but as I had long wished for them
myself, and thought others might wish for them also, I got them reprinted
here in the form I sent you. . . . I have no compunction at all in
reviving this Satire upon the old Banker, whom it is only paying off in
his own Coin. Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill
Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little
malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his
little sentimentalities; while Byron's Scourge hangs over his Memory. The
only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little
cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in her Letters; her excellent Letters, so
far as I can see and judge, next best to Walpole and Cowper in our
Language. . . .
I have bought Regnard, of the old Moliere times, very good; and (what is
always odd to me) as French as the French of To-day: I mean, in point of
Language.
[_Nov._ 1872.]
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
In a late Box of books which I had from Mudie were Macmillan and Fraser,
for 1869-1870. And in one of these--I am nearly sure, Macmillan--is an
Article called 'Objects of Art' {145} which treats very well, I think, on
the subject you and I talked of at Whitsun. . . .
My new Reader . . . has been reading to me Fields' 'Yesterdays with
Authors,' Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray. The latter seems to me a
Caricature: the Dickens has one wonderful bit about Macready in 1869,
which ought not to have been printed during his Life, but which I will
copy out for you if you have not seen it. Hawthorne seems to me the most
of a Man of Genius America has produced in the way of Imagination: yet I
have never found an Appetite for his Books. Frederic Tennyson sent me
Victor Hugo's 'Toilers of the Sea,' which he admires, I suppose; but I
can't get up an Appetite for that neither. I think the Scenes being laid
in the Channel Islands may have something to do with old Frederic's
Liking. . . .
The Daily News only tells me of Crisises in France, Floods in Italy,
Insubordination of London Policemen, and Desertion from the British Army.
So I take refuge in other Topics. Do look for 'Objects of Art' among
them.
Which are you for
Noi leggiavamo }
or } un giorno per diletto? {146a}
Noi leggevamo }
WOODBRIDGE: _Nov._ 28 [1872].
'Multae Epistolae pertransibunt et augebitur Scientia.' Our one Man of
Books down here, Brooke, {146b} had told me that the old Editions on the
whole favoured 'legg_ia_vamo.' Now I shall tell him that the Germans
have decided on 'leggevamo.' But Brooke quotes one Copy (1502) which
reads 'leggev_am_,' which I had also wished for, to get rid of a fifth
(and superfluous) _o_ in the line. I suppose such a plural is as
allowable as
Noi andav_am_ per lo solingo Piano, etc.
What is all this erudite Enquiry about? I was talking with Edwards one
night of this passage, and of this line in particular, which came into my
head as a motto for a Device {146c} we were talking of; and hence all
this precious fuss.
But I want to tell you what I forgot in my last letter; what Dickens
himself says of his 'Holyday Romance' in a letter to Fields.
_July_ 25, 1867.
'I hope the Americans will see the joke of Holyday Romance. The
writing seems to me so much like Children's, that dull folk (on _any_
side of _any_ water) might perhaps rate it accordingly. I should like
to be beside you when you read it, and particularly when you read the
Pirate's Story. It made me laugh to that extent that my people here
thought I was out of my wits: until I gave it to them to read, when
they did likewise.'
One thinks, what a delightful thing to be such an Author! Yet he died of
his work, I suppose.
WOODBRIDGE, _Jan_, 5/73.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I don't know that I have anything to tell you, except a Story which I
have already written to Donne and to Mrs. Kemble, all the way to Rome,
out of a French Book. {147} I just now forget the name, and it is gone
back to Mudie. About 1783, or a little later, a young _Danseur_ of the
French Opera falls in love with a young _Danseuse_ of the same. She,
however, takes up with a 'Militaire,' who indeed commands the Guard who
are on Service at the Opera. The poor Danseur gets mad with jealousy:
attacks the Militaire on his post; who just bids his Soldiers tie the
poor Lad to a Column, without further Injury. The Lad, though otherwise
unhurt, falls ill of Shame and Jealousy; and dies, after bequeathing his
Skeleton to the Doctor attached to the Opera, with an understanding that
the said Skeleton is to be kept in the Doctor's Room at the Opera.
Somehow, this Skeleton keeps its place through Revolutions, and Changes
of Dynasty: and re-appears on the Scene when some Diablerie is on foot,
as in Freischutz; where, says the Book, it still produces a certain
effect. I forgot to say that the _Subject_ wished to be in that Doctor's
Room in order that he might still be near his Beloved when she danced.
Now, is not this a capital piece of French all over?
In Sophie Gay's 'Salons de Paris' {148} I read that when Madlle Contat
(the Predecessor of Mars) was learning under Preville and his Wife for
the Stage, she gesticulated too much, as Novices do. So the Previlles
confined her Arms like '_une Momie_' she says, and then set her off with
a Scene. So long as no great Passion, or Business, was needed, she felt
pretty comfortable, she says: but when the Dialogue grew hot, then she
could not help trying to get her hands free; and _that_, as the Previlles
told her, sufficiently told her when Action should begin, and not till
then, whether in Grave or Comic. This anecdote (told by Contat herself)
has almost an exact counterpart in Mrs. Siddons' practice: who recited
even Lear's Curse with her hands and arms close to her side like an
Egyptian Figure, and Sir Walter Scott, {149a} who heard her, said nothing
could be more terrible. . . .
The Egyptian Mummy reminds me of a clever, dashing, Book we are reading
on the subject, by Mr. Zincke, Vicar of a Village {149b} near Ipswich.
Did you know, or do you believe, that the Mummy was wrapt up into its
Chrysalis Shape as an Emblem of Future Existence; wrapt up, too, in
bandages all inscribed with ritualistic directions for its intermediate
stage, which was not one of total Sleep? I supposed that this might be a
piece of ingenious Fancy: but Cowell, who has been over to see me, says
it is probable.
I have brought my Eyes by careful nursing into sufficient strength to
read Moliere, and Montaigne, and two or three more of my old 'Standards'
with all my old Relish. But I must not presume on this; and ought to
spare your Eyes as well as my own in respect of this letter.
WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ /73.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
I have not been reading so much of my Gossip lately, to send you a good
little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a
look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near
Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney
pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an
English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with the Arab, which is
capital.
Do you know Taschereau's Life of Moliere? I have only got that prefixed
to a common Edition of 1730. But even this is a delightful serio-comic
Drama. I see that H. Heine says the French are all born Actors: which
always makes me wonder why they care so for the Theatre. Heine too, I
find, speaks of V. Hugo's Worship of Ugliness; of which I find so much in
--- and other modern Artists, Literary, Musical, or Graphic. . . .
What, you tell me, Palgrave said about me, I should have thought none but
a very partial Friend, like Donne, would ever have thought of saying. But
I'll say no more on that head. Only that, as regards the little
Dialogue, {150} I think it is a very pretty thing in Form, and with some
very pretty parts in it. But when I read it two or three years ago,
there was, I am sure, some over-smart writing, and some clumsy wording;
insomuch that, really liking the rest, I cut out about a sheet, and
substituted another, and made a few corrections with a Pen in what
remained, though plenty more might be made, little as the Book is. Well;
as you like this little Fellow, and I think he is worth liking, up to a
Point, I shall send you a Copy of these amended Sheets.
[_March_ 1873.]
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
7.15 p.m. After a stroll in mine own Garden, under the moon--shoes
kicked off--Slippers and Dressing Gown on--A Pinch of Snuff--and hey for
a Letter--to my only London Correspondent!
And to London have I been since my last Letter: and have seen the Old
Masters; and finished them off by such a Symphony as was worthy of the
best of them, two Acts of Mozart's 'Cosi.' You wrote me that you had
'assisted' at that also: the Singing, as you know, was inferior: but the
Music itself! Between the Acts a Man sang a song of Verdi's: which was a
strange Contrast, to be sure: one of Verdi's heavy Airs, however: for he
has a true Genius of his own, though not Mozart's. Well: I did not like
even Mozart's two Bravuras for the Ladies: a bad Despina for one: but the
rest was fit for--Raffaelle, whose Christ in the Garden I had been
looking at a little before. I had thought Titian's Cornaro, and a Man in
Black, by a Column, worth nearly all the rest of the Gallery till I saw
the Raffaelle: and I couldn't let that go with the others. All Lord
Radnor's Pictures were new to me, and nearly all very fine. The Vandykes
delightful: Rubens' Daniel, though all by his own hand, not half so good
as a Return from Hunting, which perhaps was not: the Sir Joshuas not
first rate, I think, except a small life Figure of a Sir W. Molesworth in
Uniform: the Gainsboro's scratchy and superficial, _I_ thought: the
Romneys better, _I_ thought. Two fine Cromes: Ditto Turners: and--I will
make an End of my Catalogue Raisonnee. . . .
I suppose you never read Beranger's Letters: there are four thick Volumes
of these, of which I have as yet only seen the Second and Third: and they
are well worth reading. They make one love Beranger: partly because (odd
enough) he is so little of a Frenchman in Character, French as his Works
are. He hated Paris, Plays, Novels, Journals, Critics, etc., hated being
monstered himself as a Great Man, as he proved by flying from it; seems
to me to take a just measure of himself and others, and to be moderate in
his Political as well as Literary Opinions.
I am hoping for Forster's second volume of Dickens in Mudie's forthcoming
Box. Meanwhile, my Boy (whom I momently expect) reads me Trollope's 'He
knew he was right,' the opening of which I think very fine: but which
seems to be trailing off into 'longueur' as I fancy Trollope is apt to
do. But he 'has a world of his own,' as Tennyson said of Crabbe.
_March_ 30/73.
MY DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . You have never told me how you thought him [Spedding] looking,
etc., though you told me that your Boy Maurice went to sit with him. It
really reminds me of some happy Athenian lad who was privileged to be
with Socrates. Some Plato should put down the Conversation.
I have just finished the second volume of Forster's Dickens: and still
have no reason not to rejoice in the Man Dickens. And surely Forster
does his part well; but I can fancy that some other Correspondent but
himself should be drawn in as Dickens' Life goes on, and thickens with
Acquaintances.
We in the Country are having the best of it just now, I think, in these
fine Days, though we have nothing to show so gay as Covent Garden Market.
I am thinking of my Boat on the River. . . .
You say I did not date my last letter: I can date this: for it is my
Birthday. {153} This it was that made me resolve to send you the Photos.
Hey for my 65th year! I think I shall plunge into a Yellow Scratch Wig
to keep my head warm for the Remainder of my Days.
* * * * *
In September 1863 Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to 'The Translator of the
Rubaiyat of Omar,' which he entrusted to Mrs. Burne Jones, who after an
interval of nearly ten years handed it to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton,
Professor of the History of Fine Art in Harvard University. By him it
was transmitted to Carlyle, who sent it to FitzGerald, with the letter
which follows, of which the signature alone is in his own handwriting.
* * * * *
CHELSEA, 14 _April_, 1873.
DEAR FITZGERALD,
Mr. Norton, the writer of that note, is a distinguished American
(co-editor for a long time of the North American Review), an extremely
amiable, intelligent and worthy man; with whom I have had some pleasant
walks, dialogues and other communications, of late months;--in the course
of which he brought to my knowledge, for the first time, your notable
_Omar Khayyam_, and insisted on giving me a copy from the third edition,
which I now possess, and duly prize. From him too, by careful
cross-questioning, I identified, beyond dispute, the hidden 'Fitzgerald,'
the Translator;--and indeed found that his complete silence, and unique
modesty in regard to said meritorious and successful performance, was
simply a feature of my own _Edward F._! The translation is excellent;
the Book itself a kind of jewel in its way. I do Norton's mission
without the least delay, as you perceive. Ruskin's message to you passes
through my hands sealed. I am ever your affectionate
T. CARLYLE.
_Carlyle to Norton_.
5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA,
18 _April_ 1873.
DEAR NORTON,
It is possible Fitzgerald may have written to you; but whether or not I
will send you his letter to myself, as a slight emblem and memorial of
the peaceable, affectionate, and ultra modest man, and his innocent _far
niente_ life,--and the connexion (were there nothing more) of Omar, the
Mahometan Blackguard, and Oliver Cromwell, the English
Puritan!--discharging you completely, at the same time, from ever
returning me this letter, or taking any notice of it, except a small
silent one.
_FitzGerald to Carlyle_.
(Enclosed in the preceding.)
[15 _April_ 1873.]
MY DEAR CARLYLE,
Thank you for enclosing Mr. Norton's Letter: and will you thank him for
his enclosure of Mr. Ruskin's? It is lucky for both R. and me that you
did not read his Note; a sudden fit of Fancy, I suppose, which he is
subject to. But as it was kindly meant on his part, I have written to
thank him. Rather late in the Day; for his Letter (which Mr. Norton
thinks may have lain a year or two in his Friend's Desk) is dated
September 1863.
Which makes me think of our old Naseby Plans, so long talked of, and
undone. I have made one more effort since I last wrote to you; by
writing to the Lawyer, as well as to the Agent, of the Estate; to
intercede with the Trustees thereof, whose permission seems to be
necessary. But neither Agent nor Lawyer have yet answered. I feel sure
that you believe that I do honestly wish this thing to be done; the plan
of the Stone, and Inscription, both settled: the exact site ascertained
by some who were with me when I dug for you: so as we can even specify
the so many 'yards to the rear' which you stipulated for: only I believe
we must write 'to the East--or Eastward'--in lieu of 'to the rear.' But
for this Change we must have your Permission as well as from the Trustees
theirs.
I am glad to hear from Mr. Norton's Letter to you that you hold well,
through all the Wet and Cold we have had for the last six months. Our
Church Bell here has been tolling for one and another of us very
constantly. I get out on the River in my Boat, and dabble about my five
acres of Ground just outside the Town. Sometimes I have thought you
might come to my pleasant home, where I never live, but where you should
be treated with better fare than you had at Farlingay: where I did not
like to disturb the Hostess' Economy. But I may say this: you would not
come; nor could I press you to do so. But I remain yours sincerely, I
assure you,
E. F. G.
P.S. Perhaps I had better write a word of thanks to Mr. Norton myself:
which I will do. I suppose he may be found at the address he gives.
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE, _April_ 17/73.
DEAR SIR,
Two days ago Mr. Carlyle sent me your Note, enclosing one from Mr. Ruskin
'to the Translator of Omar Khayyam.' You will be a little surprized to
hear that Mr. Ruskin's Note is dated September 1863: all but ten years
ago! I dare say he has forgotten all about it long before this: however,
I write him a Note of Thanks for the good, too good, messages he sent me;
better late than never; supposing that he will not be startled and bored
by my Acknowledgments of a forgotten Favor rather than gratified. It is
really a funny little Episode in the Ten years' Dream. I had asked
Carlyle to thank you also for such trouble as you have taken in the
matter. But, as your Note to him carries your Address, I think I may as
well thank you for myself. I am very glad to gather from your Note that
Carlyle is well, and able to walk, as well as talk, with a congenial
Companion. Indeed, he speaks of such agreeable conversation with you in
the Message he appends to your Letter. For which thanking you once more,
allow me to write myself yours sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To W. F. Pollock_.
[5 _May_, 1873.]
DEAR POLLOCK,
. . . I see that you were one of those who were at Macready's Funeral. I,
too, feel as if I had lost a
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