which is sung and organed at every corner in London. I think you may imagine what kind of flowing 6/8 time of the last degree of imbecility it is. The words are written by Mr. Bunn! Arcades ambo.
I say we shall see you over in England before long: for I rather think you want an Englishman to quarrel with sometimes. I mean quarrel in the sense of a good strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side by occasional outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try. You used to irritate my vegetable blood sometimes.
To Bernard Barton.
[Geldestone, Nov. 27, 1844]
Dear Barton,
My return to Boulge is delayed for another week, because we expect my Father here just now. But for this, I should have been on the Union Coach this day. The children here are most delightful; the best company in all the world, to my mind. If you could see the little girl dance the Polka with her sisters! Not set up like an Infant Terpsichore, but seriously inclined, with perfect steps in perfect time.
We see a fine white frost over the grass this morning; and I suppose you have rubbed your hands and cried ‘Oh Lauk, how cold it is!’ twenty times before I write this. Now one’s pictures become doubly delightful to one. I certainly love winter better than summer. Could one but know, as one sits within the tropic latitude of one’s fireside, that there was not increased want, cold, and misery, beyond it!
My Spectator tells me that Leigh Hunt has published a good volume of Poem-selections; not his own poems, but of others. And Miss Martineau has been cured of an illness of five years standing by Mesmerism! By the help of a few passes of the hand following an earnest Will, she, who had not set foot out of her room, for the chief part of those five years, now can tread the grass again, and walk five miles! Her account of the business in the Athenæum is extremely interesting. She is the only one I have read of who describes the sensations of the trance, which, seeming a painful one to the wide-awake looker on, is in fact a state of tranquil glorification to the patient. It cheers but not inebriates! She felt her disease oozing away out at her feet, and as it were streams of warm fresh vitality coming in its place. And when she woke, lo, this was no dream!
Boulge, Woodbridge, Decr. 8/44.
My dear Frederic,
What is a poor devil to do? You tell me quite truly that my letters have not two ideas in them, and yet you tell me to write my two ideas as soon as I can. So indeed it is so far easy to write down one’s two ideas, if they are not very abstruse ones; but then what the devil encouragement is it to a poor fellow to expose his nakedness so? All I can say is, to say again that if you lived in this place, you would not write so long a letter as you have done, full of capital description and all good things; though without any compliment I am sure you would write a better than I shall. But you see the original fault in me is that I choose to be in such a place as this at all; that argues certainly a talent for dullness which no situation nor intercourse of men could much improve. It is true; I really do like to sit in this doleful place with a good fire, a cat and dog on the rug, and an old woman in the kitchen. This is all my live stock. The house is yet damp as last year; and the great event of this winter is my putting up a trough round the eaves to carry off the wet. There was discussion whether the trough should be of iron or of zinc: iron dear and lasting; zinc the reverse. It was decided for iron; and accordingly iron is put up.
Why should I not live in London and see the world? you say. Why then I say as before, I don’t like it. I think the dullness of country people is better than the impudence of Londoners; and the fresh cold and wet of our clay fields better than a fog that stinks per se; and this room of mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty room in Charlotte St. If you, Morton, and Alfred, were more in London, I should be there more; but now there is but Spedding and Allen whom I care a straw about. I have written two notes to Alfred to ask him just to notify his existence to me; but you know he is obstinate on that point. I heard from Carlyle that he (Alfred) had passed an evening at Chelsea much to C.’s delight; who has opened the gates of his Valhalla to let Alfred in. [181] Thackeray is at Malta, where I am told he means to winter. . . .
As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few books, and know nothing of what is stirring in the literary world. I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who was a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke, which do not add to, or detract from, what I knew and liked in him before. I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps this winter. . . . Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great humbug in deed, and his books have plenty of it in word; but he had got together a vast deal of what was not humbug from others; and, as far as I see, the old philosophers are available now as much as two thousand years back. Perhaps you will think that is not saying much. Don’t suppose I think it good philosophy in myself to keep here out of the world, and sport a gentle Epicurism; I do not; I only follow something of a natural inclination, and know not if I could do better under a more complex system. It is very smooth sailing hitherto down here. No velvet waistcoat and ever-lustrous pumps to be considered; no bon mots got up; no information necessary. There is a pipe for the parsons to smoke, and quite as much bon mots, literature, and philosophy as they care for without any trouble at all. If we could but feed our poor! It is now the 8th of December; it has blown a most desperate East wind, all razors; a wind like one of those knives one sees at shops in London, with 365 blades all drawn and pointed; the wheat is all sown; the fallows cannot be ploughed. What are all the poor folks to do during the winter? And they persist in having the same enormous families they used to do; a woman came to me two days ago who had seventeen children! What farmers are to employ all these? What Landlord can find room for them? The law of Generation must be repealed. The London press does nothing but rail at us poor country folks for our cruelty. I am glad they do so; for there is much to be set right. But I want to know if the Editor of the Times is more attentive to his devils, their wives and families, than our squires and squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners. Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the mouth of Mr. Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm chairs at a club in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity and brutality of those in High Suffolk.
Come, I have got more than two ideas into this sheet; but I don’t know if you won’t dislike them worse than mere nothing. But I was determined to fill my letter. Yes, you are to know that I slept at Woodbridge last night, went to church there this morning, where every one sat with a purple nose, and heard a dismal well-meant sermon; and the organ blew us out with one grand idea at all events, one of old Handel’s Coronation Anthems; that I dined early, also in Woodbridge; and walked up here with a tremendous East wind blowing sleet in my face from over the German Sea, that I found your letter when I entered my room; and reading it through, determined to spin you off a sheet incontinently, and lo! here it is! Now or never! I shall now have my tea in, and read over your letter again while at it. You are quite right in saying that Gravesend excursions with you do me good. When did I doubt it? I remember them with great pleasure; few of my travels so much so. I like a short journey in good company; and I like you all the better for your Englishman’s humours. One doesn’t find such things in London; something more like it here in the country, where every one, with whatever natural stock of intellect endowed, at least grows up his own way, and flings his branches about him, not stretched on the espalier of London dinner-table company.
P.S. Next morning. Snow over the ground. We have our wonders of inundation in Suffolk also, I can tell you. For three weeks ago such floods came, that an old woman was carried off as she was retiring from a beer house about 9 p.m., and drowned. She was probably half seas over before she left the beer house.
And three nights ago I looked out at about ten o’clock at night, before going to bed. It seemed perfectly still; frosty, and the stars shining bright. I heard a continuous moaning sound, which I knew to be, not that of an infant exposed, or female ravished, but of the sea, more than ten miles off! What little wind there was carried to us the murmurs of the waves circulating round these coasts so far over a flat country. But people here think that this sound so heard is not from the waves that break, but a kind of prophetic voice from the body of the sea itself announcing great gales. Sure enough we have got them, however heralded. Now I say that all this shows that we in this Suffolk are not so completely given over to prose and turnips as some would have us. I always said that being near the sea, and being able to catch a glimpse of it from the tops of hills, and of houses, redeemed Suffolk from dullness; and at all events that our turnip fields, dull in themselves, were at least set all round with an undeniably poetic element. And so I see Arnold says; he enumerates five inland counties as the only parts of England for which nothing could be said in praise. Not that I agree with him there neither; I cannot allow the valley of the Ouse about which some of my pleasantest recollections hang to be without its great charm. W. Browne, whom you despised, is married, and I shall see but little of him for the future. I have laid by my rod and line by the willows of the Ouse for ever. ‘He is married and cannot come.’ This change is the true meaning of those verses, [185]
Friend after friend departs;
Who has not lost a friend?
and so on. If I were conscious of being stedfast and good humoured enough, I would marry to-morrow. But a humourist is best by himself.
19 Charlotte
St., Rathbone Place,
Jany. 4/45.
Dear Barton,
Clawed hold of by a bad cold am I—a London cold—where the atmosphere clings to you, like a wet blanket. You have often received a letter from me on a Sunday, haven’t you? I think I used to write you an account of the picture purchases of the week, that you might have something to reflect upon in your silent meeting. (N.B. This is very wrong, and I don’t mean it.) Well, now I have bought no pictures, and sha’n’t; but one I had bought is sent to be lined. A Bassano of course; which nobody will like but myself. It is a grave picture; an Italian Lord dictating to a Secretary with upturned face. Good company, I think.
You did not tell me how you and Miss Barton got on with the Vestiges. I found people talking about it here; and one laudatory critique in the Examiner sold an edition in a few days. I long to finish it. I am going in state to the London Library—my Library—to review the store of books it contains, and carry down a box full for winter consumption. Do you want anything? eh, Mr. Barton?
I went to see Sophocles’ tragedy of Antigone done into English two nights ago. And yesterday I dined with my dear old John Allen who remains whole and intact of the world in the heart of London. He dined some while ago at Lambeth, and the Lady next him asked the Archbishop if he read Punch. Allen thought this was a misplaced question: but I think the Archbishop ought to see Punch: though not to read it regularly perhaps. I then asked Allen about the Vestiges—he had heard of it—laughed at the idea of its being atheistical. ‘No enquiry,’ said he, ‘can be atheistical.’ I doubt if the Archbishop of Canterbury could say that. What do you think of Exeter? Isn’t he a pretty lad?
To W. B. Donne.
Boulge, Jan. 29/45.
My dear Donne,
. . . A. T. has near a volume of poems—elegiac—in memory of Arthur Hallam. Don’t you think the world wants other notes than elegiac now? Lycidas is the utmost length an elegiac should reach. But Spedding praises: and I suppose the elegiacs will see daylight, public daylight, one day. Carlyle goes on growling with his Cromwell: whom he finds more and more faultless every day. So that his paragon also will one day see the light also, an elegiac of a different kind from Tennyson’s; as far apart indeed as Cromwell and Hallam.
Barton comes and sups with me to-morrow, and George Crabbe, son of the poet, a capital fellow.
Boulge, Woodbridge, Feby. 6, 1845.
My dear Frederic,
. . . You like to hear of men and manners. Have I not been to London for a whole fortnight, seen Alfred, Spedding, all the lawyers and all the painters, gone to Panoramas of Naples by Volcano-light (Vesuvius in a blaze illuminating the whole bay, which Morton says is not a bit better than Plymouth Sound, if you could put a furnace in the belly of Mount Edgecumbe)—gone to see the Antigone of Messrs. Sophocles and Mendelssohn at Covent Garden—gone to see the Infant Thalia—now as little of an Infant as a Thalia—at the Adelaide Gallery. So! you see things go on as when you were with us. Only the Thalia has waxed in stature: and perhaps in wisdom also: but that is not in her favour. The Antigone is, as you are aware, a neatly constructed drama, on the French model; the music very fine, I thought—but you would turn up your nose at it, I dare say. It was horribly ill sung, by a chorus in shabby togas, who looked much more like dirty bakers than Theban (were they?) respectable old gentlemen. Mr. Vandenhoff sat on a marble camp-stool in the middle, and looked like one of Flaxman’s Homeric Kings—very well. And Miss Vandenhoff did Antigone. I forget the name of the lady who did Ismene; [189] perhaps you would have thought her very handsome: but I did not, nor was she considered at all remarkable, as far as I could make out. I saw no pantomimes: and all the other theatres were filled with Balfe, whom perhaps you admire very much. So I won’t say anything about him till you have told me what you think on his score. . . .
Well and have you read ‘Eothen’ which all the world talks of? And do you know who it is written by? . . . Then Eliot Warburton has written an Oriental Book! Ye Gods! In Shakespeare’s day the nuisance was the Monsieur Travellers who had ‘swum in a gundello’; but now the bores are those who have smoked tschibouques with a Peshaw! Deuce take it: I say ’tis better to stick to muddy Suffolk.
To Bernard Barton.
Geldestone, April 3/45.
My dear Barton,
. . . I have been loitering out in the garden here this golden day of Spring. The woodpigeons coo in the covert; the frogs croak in the pond; the bees hum about some thyme, and some of my smaller nieces have been busy gathering primroses, ‘all to make posies suitable to this present month.’ I cannot but think with a sort of horror of being in London now: but I doubt I must be ere long. . . . I have abjured all Authorship, contented at present with the divine Poem which Great Nature is now composing about us. These primroses seem more wonderful and delicious Annuals than Ackerman ever put forth. I suppose no man ever grew so old as not to feel younger in Spring. Yet, poor old Mrs. Bodham [190] lifted up her eyes to the windows, and asked if it were a clear or a dull day!
39 Norton
St., FitzRoy Sqr.
[? May 1845.]
Dear Barton,
You see my address. I only got into it yesterday, though I reached London on Friday, and hung loose upon it for all that interval. I spent four days at Cambridge pleasantly enough; and one at Bedford where I heard my friend Matthews preach.
Last night I appeared at the Opera, and shall do so twice a week till further notice. Friends I have seen but few; for I have not yet found time to do anything. Alfred Tennyson was here; but went off yesterday to consider the sea from the top of Beachy Head. Carlyle gets on with his book which will be in two big volumes. He has entirely misstated all about Naseby, after all my trouble. . . .
Did Churchyard see in London a picture at the address I enclose? The man’s card, you see, proclaims ‘Silversmith,’ but he is ‘Pawnbroker.’ A picture hangs up at the door which he calls by ‘Williams,’ but I think is a rather inferior Crome; though the figure in it is not like Crome’s figures. The picture is about three feet high by two broad; good in the distance; very natural in the branching of the trees; heavy in the foliage; all common to Crome. And it seems painted in that fat substance he painted in. If C. come to London let him look at this picture, as well as come and see me.
I have cold, head-ache, and London disgust. Oh that I could look on my Anemones! and hear the sighing of my Scotch firs. The Exhibition is full of bad things: there is a grand Turner, however; quite unlike anything that was ever seen in Heaven above, or in Earth beneath, or in the waters under the Earth.
The reign of primroses and cowslips is over, and the oak now begins to take up the empire of the year and wear a budding garland about his brows. Over all this settles down the white cloud in the West, and the Morning and Evening draw toward Summer.
[? May 1845.]
My dear Barton,
Had not your second note arrived this morning, I should surely have written to you; that you might have a little letter for your Sunday’s breakfast. Do not accuse me of growing enamoured of London; I would have been in the country long ago if I could. . . . Nor do I think I shall get away till the end of this month; and then I will go. I am not so bad as Tennyson, who has been for six weeks intending to start every day for Switzerland or Cornwall, he doesn’t quite know which. However, his stay has been so much gain to me; for he and John Allen are the two men that give me pleasure here.
Tell Churchyard he must come up once again. . . . I saw a most lovely Sir Joshua at Christie’s a week ago; it went far far above my means. There is an old hunting picture in Regent St. which I want him to look at. I think it is Morland; whom I don’t care twopence for; the horses ill drawn; some good colour: the people English; good old England! I was at a party of modern wits last night that made me creep into myself, and wish myself away talking to any Suffolk old woman in her cottage, while the trees murmured without. The wickedness of London appals me; and yet I am no paragon.
To F. Tennyson.
Boulge, Woodbridge. June, 12/45.
Dear Frederic,
Though I write from Boulge you are not to suppose I have been here ever since I last wrote to you. On the contrary, I am but just returned from London, where I spent a month, and saw all the sights and all the people I cared to see. But what am I to tell you of them? Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was fourteen years old when I first knew him at school more than twenty years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and Age. And then as to things seen; you know that one Exhibition tells another, and one Panorama certifieth another, etc. If you want to know something of the Exhibition however, read Fraser’s Magazine for this month; there Thackeray has a paper on the matter, full of fun. I met Stone in the street the other day; he took me by the button, and told me in perfect sincerity, and with increasing warmth, how, though he loved old Thackeray, yet these yearly out-speakings of his sorely tried him; not on account of himself (Stone), but on account of some of his friends, Charles Landseer, Maclise, etc. Stone worked himself up to such a pitch under the pressure of forced calmess that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horse-whipped one day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. At this I, who had partly agreed with Stone that ridicule, though true, needs not always to be spoken, began to laugh: and told him two could play at that game. These painters cling together, and bolster each other up, to such a degree, that they really have persuaded themselves that any one who ventures to laugh at one of their drawings, exhibited publickly for the express purpose of criticism, insults the whole corps. In the mean while old Thackeray laughs at all this; and goes on in his own way; writing hard for half a dozen Reviews and Newspapers all the morning; dining, drinking, and talking of a night; managing to preserve a fresh colour and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear-and-tear of thinking and feeding that would have knocked up any other man I know two years ago, at least. . . .
Alfred was in London the first week of my stay there. He was looking well, and in good spirits; and had got two hundred lines of a new poem in a butcher’s book. He went down to Eastbourne in Sussex; where I believe he now is. He and I made a plan to go to the coast of Cornwall or Wales this summer; but I suppose we shall manage never to do it. I find I must go to Ireland; which I had not intended to do this year.
I have nothing new to tell you of Music. The Operas were the same old affair; Linda di Chamouni, the Pirata, etc. Grisi coarse, . . . only Lablache great. There is one singer also, Brambelli, who, with a few husky notes, carries one back to the days of Pasta. I did not hear ‘Le Désert’; but I fancy the English came to a fair judgment about it. That is, they did not want to hear it more than once. It was played many times, for new batches of people; but I doubt if any one went twice. So it is with nearly all French things; there is a clever showy surface; but no Holy of Holies far withdrawn; conceived in the depth of a mind, and only to be received into the depth of ours after much attention. Poussin must spend his life in Italy before he could paint as he did; and what other Great Man, out of the exact Sciences, have they to show? This you will call impudence. Now Beethoven, you see by your own experience, has a depth not to be reached all at once. I admit with you that he is too bizarre, and, I think, morbid; but he is original, majestic, and profound. Such music thinks; so it is with Gluck; and with Mendelssohn. As to Mozart, he was, as a musical Genius, more wonderful than all. I was astonished at the Don Giovanni lately. It is certainly the Greatest Opera in the world. I went to no concert, and am now sorry I did not.
Now I have told you all my London news. You will not hear of my Cottage and Garden; so now I will shut up shop and have done. We have had a dismal wet May; but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, you must not expect to enjoy at first reading. I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of it. I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steaming blue under the noonday sun. I suppose you are living without clothes in wells, where you are. Remember me to your brothers; write soon; and believe me ever yours,
E. FitzGerald.
As to going to Italy, alas! I have less call to do that than ever: I never shall go. You must come over here about your Railroad land.
Bedford, August 27/45.
Dear good Allen,
. . . I came here a week ago, and am paying my usual visits at the Brownes’ and at Airy’s. [196] I also purpose going to Naseby for two days very soon; and after that I shall retire slowly homeward; not to move, I suppose (except it be for some days to London) till next summer comes again!
I am just now staying with W. B. and his wife. . . . The Father and Mother of Mrs. W. Browne bought old Mrs. Piozzi’s house at Streatham thirty-five years ago; all the Sir Joshua portraits therein, which they sold directly afterward for a song; and all the furniture, of which some yet helps to fill the house I now stay in. In the bedroom I write in is Dr. Johnson’s own bookcase and secretaire; with looking glass in the panels which often reflected his uncouth shape. His own bed is also in the house; but I do not sleep in it.
I am reading Selwyn’s Correspondence, a remarkable book, as all such records of the mind of a whole generation must be. Carlyle writes me word his Cromwell papers will be out in October; and that then we are all to be convinced that Richard had no hump to his back. I am strong in favour of the hump; I do not think the common sense of two centuries is apt to be deceived in such a matter.
Now if your time is not wholly filled up, pray do give me one line to say you have not wholly given me up as a turncoat. I would rather have sat with you on the cliffs of St. David’s than done anything I have done for the last six months. Believe that, please. And now good bye, my dear fellow. The harvest promises very well here about; but I expect to find less prosperity at Naseby.
To Bernard Barton.
Bedford, Septr. 8/45.
Dear Barton,
On Thursday I move towards Norwich; where I see Donne, hear some music, and go to Geldestone. But before this month is over, I hope to be at my Cottage again, where I have my garden to drain, and other important matters.
Do you know I have been greatly tempted to move my quarters from Boulge to this country; so exact a place have I found to suit me. But we will wait.
My noble Preacher Matthews [197] is dead! He had a long cold, which he promoted in all ways of baptizing, watching late and early, travelling in rain, etc., he got worse; but would send for no Doctor, the Lord would raise him up if it were good for him, etc. Last Monday this cold broke out into Typhus fever; and on Thursday he died! I had been out to Naseby for three days, and as I returned on Friday at dusk I saw a coffin carrying down the street: I knew whose it must be. I would have given a great deal to save his life; which might certainly have been saved with common precaution. He died in perfect peace, approving all the principles of his life to be genuine. I am going this afternoon to attend his Funeral. . . . Cromwell is to be out in October; and Laurence has been sent to Archdeacon Berners’s to make a copy of Oliver’s miniature.
To W. B. Donne.
Geldestone, Septr. 23/45.
Dear Donne,
I left one volume of your Swift with good Mrs. Johnson at Norwich; and the other with your Mother at Worship’s house in Yarmouth. So I trust you are in a fair way to get them again.
I sat through one Concert and one Oratorio; [198] and on Thursday went to Yarmouth, which I took a great fancy to. The sands were very good, I assure you; and then when one is weary of the sea, there is the good old town to fall back on. There is Mr. Gooch the Bookseller too; he and his books a great acquisition. I called on Dawson Turner, and in an incredibly short space of time saw several books of coats of Arms, Churches, Refectories, pyxes, cerements, etc.
Manage to read De Quincey’s Article on Wordsworth in the last number of Tail’s Magazine. It is very incomplete, like all De Quincey’s things, but has grand things in it; grand sounds of sense if nothing else. I am glad to see he sets up Daddy’s early Ballads against the Excursion and other Sermons.
I intend to leave this place the end of this week; and go, I suppose, to Boulge; though I have yet a hankering to get a week by the sea, either at Yarmouth or Southwold. . . . Don’t you think £3 very cheap for a fine copy of Rushworth’s Collections, eight volumes folio? I was tempted to buy it if only for the bargain; for I only want to look through it once.
To F. Tennyson.
Boulge,
Woodbridge.
[After Sept. 1845.]
My dear Frederic,
I do beg and desire that when you next begin a letter to me you will not tear it up (as you say you have done some) because of its exhibiting a joviality insulting to any dumps of mine. What was I complaining of so? I forget all about it. It seems to me to be two years since I heard from you. If you had said that my answers to your letters were so barren as to dishearten you from deserving any more I should understand that very well. But if you really did accomplish any letters and not send them, I say, a fico for thy friendship! Do so no more. . . .
The finale of C minor is very noble. I heard it twice at Jullien’s. On the whole I like to hear Mozart better; Beethoven is gloomy. Besides incontestably Mozart is the purest musician; Beethoven would have been Poet or Painter as well, for he had a great deep Soul and Imagination. I do not think it is reported that he showed any very early predilection for Music; Mozart, we know, did. They say Holmes has published a very good life of M. Only think of the poor fellow not being able to sell his music latterly, getting out of fashion, so taking to drink . . . and enact Harlequin at Masquerades! When I heard Handel’s Alexander’s Feast at Norwich this Autumn I wondered; but when directly afterward they played Mozart’s G minor Symphony, it seemed as if I had passed out of a land of savages into sweet civilized Life.
Boulge,
Woodbridge.
[? March 1846.]
Dear Frederic,
I have been wondering some time if you were gone abroad again or not. I go to London toward the end of April: can’t you manage to wait in England? I suppose you will only be a day or two in London before you put foot in rail, coach, or on steamer for the Continent; and I excuse my own dastardly inactivity in not going up to meet you and shake hands with you before you start, by my old excuse; that had you but let me know of your coming to England, I should have seen you. This is no excuse; but don’t put me out of your books as a frog-hearted wretch. I believe that I, as men usually do, grow more callous and indifferent daily: but I am sure I would as soon travel to see your face, and my dear old Alfred’s, as any one’s. But beside my inactivity, I have a sort of horror of plunging into London; which, except for a shilling concert, and a peep at the pictures, is desperate to me. This is my fault, not London’s: I know it is a lassitude and weakness of soul that no more loves the ceaseless collision of Beaux Esprits, than my obese ill-jointed carcase loves bundling about in coaches and steamers. And, as you say, the dirt, both of earth and atmosphere, in London, is a real bore. But enough of that. It is sufficient that it is more pleasant to me to sit in a clean room, with a clear air outside, and hedges just coming into leaf, rather than in the Tavistock or an upper floor of Charlotte Street. And how much better one’s books read in country stillness, than amid the noise of wheels, crowds, etc., or after hearing them eternally discussed by no less active tongues! In the mean time, we of Woodbridge are not without our luxuries; I enclose you a play-bill just received; I being one of the distinguished Members who have bespoken the play. We sha’n’t all sit together in a Box, but go dispersed about the house with our wives and daughters.
White [201] I remember very well. His Tragedy I have seen advertised. He used to write good humorous things in Blackwood: among them, Hints to Authors, which are worth looking at when you get hold of an odd volume of Blackwood. I have got Thackeray’s last book, [202] but have not yet been able to read it. Has any one heard of old Morton, and of his arrival at Stamboul, as he called it? . . .
Now it is a fact that as I lay in bed this morning, before I got your letter, I thought to myself I would write to Alfred. For he sent me a very kind letter two months ago; and I should have written to him before, but that I have looked in vain for a paper I wanted to send him. But, find it or not (and it is of no consequence) I will write to him very shortly. You do not mention if he be with you at Cheltenham. He spoke to me of being ill. . . . I think you should publish some of your poems. They must be admired and liked; and you would gain a place to which you are entitled, and which it offends no man to hold. I should like much to see them again. The whole subjective scheme (damn the word!) of the poems I did not like; but that is quite a genuine mould of your soul; and there are heaps of single lines, couplets, and stanzas, which would consume all the ---, ---, and ---, like stubble. N.B. An acute man would ask how I should like you, if I do not like your own genuine reflex of you? But a less acute, and an acuter, man, will feel or see the difference.
So here is a good sheet full; and at all events, if I am too lazy to travel to you, I am not too lazy to write such a letter as few of one’s contemporaries will now take the pains to write to one. I beg you to remember me to all your noble family, and believe me yours ever,
Edw. FitzGerald.
To W. B. Donne.
Boulge, Sunday, March 8/46.
My dear Donne,
I was very sorry you did not come to us at Geldestone. I have been home now near a fortnight; else I would gladly have gone to Mattishall with you yesterday. This very Sunday, on which I now hear the Grundisburgh bells as I write, I might have been filled with the bread of Life from Padden’s hands.
Our friend Barton is certainly one of the most remarkable men of the Age. After writing to Peel two separate Sonnets, begging him to retire to Tamworth and not alter the Corn Laws, he finally sends him another letter to ask if he will be present at Lord Northampton’s soirée next Saturday; Barton himself being about to go to that soirée, and wishing to see the Premier. On which Peel writes him a most good humoured note asking him to dine at Whitehall Gardens on that same Saturday! And the good Barton is going up for that purpose. [203] All this is great simplicity in Barton: and really announces an internal Faith that is creditable to this Age, and almost unexpected in it. I had advised him not to send Peel many more Sonnets till the Corn Law was passed; the Indian war arranged; and Oregon settled: but Barton sees no dragon in the way.
We have actors now at Woodbridge. A Mr. Gill who was low comedian in the Norwich now manages a troop of his own here. His wife was a Miss Vining; she is a pretty woman, and a lively pleasant actress, not vulgar. I have been to see some of the old comedies with great pleasure; and last night I sat in a pigeon-hole with David Fisher and ‘revolved many memories’ of old days and old plays. I don’t think he drinks so much now: but he looks all ready to blossom out into carbuncles.
We all liked your Athenæum address much; [204a] which I believe I told you before. I have heard nothing of books or friends. I shall hope to see you some time this spring.
To E. B. Cowell. [204b]
[1846]
Dear Cowell,
I am glad you have bought Spinoza. I am in no sort of hurry for him: you may keep him a year if you like. I shall perhaps never read him now I have him. Thank you for the trouble you took. . . .
Your Hafiz is fine: and his tavern world is a sad and just idea. I did not send that vine leaf [205a] to A. T. but I have not forgotten it. It sticks in my mind.
“In Time’s fleeting river
The image of that little vine-leaf lay,
Immovably unquiet—and for ever
It trembles—but it cannot pass away.” [205b]
I have read nothing you would care for since I saw you. It would be a good work to give us some of the good things of Hafiz and the Persians; of bulbuls and ghuls we have had enough.
Come and bring over Spinoza; or I must go and bring him.
From T. Carlyle.
Chelsea, 8 April, 1846.
Dear FitzGerald,
I have now put the little sketch of Naseby Fight, [205c] rough and ready, into its place in the Appendix: it really does pretty well, when it is fairly written out; had I had time for that, it might almost have gone into the Text,—and perhaps shall, if ever I live to see another edition. Naseby Field will then have its due honour;—only you should actually raise a stone over that Grave that you opened (I will give you the shinbone back and keep the teeth): you really should, with a simple Inscription saying merely in business English: ‘Here, as proved by strict and not too impious examination, lie the slain of the Battle of Naseby. Dig no farther. E. FitzGerald,—1843.’ By the bye, was it 1843 or 2; when we did those Naseby feats? tell me, for I want to mark that in the Book. And so here is your Paper again, since at any rate you wish to keep that. I am serious about the stone!
To W. B. Donne.
Boulge
Hall, Woodbridge.
[1846.]
My dear Donne,
I don’t know which of us is most to blame for this long gulph of silence. Probably I; who have least to do. I have been for two months to London; where (had I thought it of any use) I should have written to try and get you up for a few days; as I had a convenient lodging, and many beside myself would have been glad to see you.
I came back a week ago; and on looking in at Barton’s last evening he showed me your letter with such pleasure as he is wont to receive your letters with. And there I read all the surprising story of your moving to old Bury. When I passed through Cambridge two months ago, Thompson said (I think) that he had seen you; and that you had given up thoughts of Bury. But now you are going. As you say, you will then be nearer to us than you now are at Mattishall; especially when our Railroad shall be completed. In my journeys to and from Bedfordshire, I shall hope to stay a night at the good old Angel, and so have a chat with you.
I saw very little of Spedding in London; for he was out all day at State paper offices and Museums; and I out by night at Operas, etc., with my Mother. He is however well and immutable. A. Tennyson was in London; for two months striving to spread his wings to Italy or Switzerland. It has ended in his flying to the Isle of Wight till Autumn, when Moxon promises to convoy him over; and then God knows what will become of him and whether we shall ever see his august old body over here again. He was in a ricketty state of body; brought on wholly by neglect, etc., but in fair spirits; and one had the comfort of seeing the Great Man. Carlyle goes on fretting and maddening as usual. Have you read his Cromwell? Are you converted, or did you ever need conversion? I believe I remain pretty much where I was. I think Milton, who is the best evidence Cromwell has in his favour, warns him somewhat prophetically at the end of his Second Defence against taking on him Kingship, etc., and in the tract on the State of England in 1660 (just before it was determined to bring back Charles the Second) he says nothing at all of Cromwell, no panegyric; but glances at the evil ambitious men in the Army have done; and, now that all is open to choose, prays for a pure Republic! So I herd with the flunkies and lackies, I doubt; but am yours notwithstanding,
E. F. G.
To E. B. Cowell.
Bedford, Septr. 15/46.
Dear Cowell,
Here I am at last, after making a stay at Lowestoft, where I sailed in boats, bathed, and in all ways enjoyed the sea air. I wished for you upon a heathy promontory there, good museum for conversation on old poets, etc. What have you been reading, and what tastes of rare Authors have you to send me? I have read (as usual with me) but very little, what with looking at the sea with its crossing and recrossing ships, and dawdling with my nieces of an evening. Besides a book is to me what Locke says that watching the hour hand of a clock is to all; other thoughts (and those of the idlest and seemingly most irrelevant) will intrude between my vision and the written words: and then I have to read over again; often again and again till all is crossed and muddled. If Life were to be very much longer than is the usual lot of men, one would try very hard to reform this lax habit, and clear away such a system of gossamer association: even as it is, I try to turn all wandering fancy out of doors, and listen attentively to Whately’s Logic, and old Spinoza still! I find some of Spinoza’s Letters very good, and so far useful as that they try to clear up some of his abstrusities at the earnest request of friends as dull as myself. I think I perceive as well as ever how the quality of his mind forbids much salutary instinct which widens the system of things to more ordinary men, and yet helps to keep them from wandering in it. I am now reading his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which is very delightful to me because of its clearness and acuteness. It is fine what he says of Christ—‘nempe,’ that God revealed himself in bits to other prophets, but he was the mind of Christ. I suppose not new in thought or expression.
Let me hear from you, whether you have bits of revelations from old poets to send, or not. If I had the Mostellaria here, I would read it; or a Rabelais, I would do as Morgan Rattler advised you.
To Bernard Barton.
[Cambridge, Oct. 18, 1846.]
My dear Barton,
Though my letter bears such frontispiece as the above, [209] I am no longer in Bedford, but come to Cambridge. And here I sit in the same rooms [210a] in which I sat as a smooth-chinned Freshman twenty years ago. The same prints hang on the walls: my old hostess [210b] does not look older than she did then. My present purpose is to be about a week here: then to go for a day or two to Bury, to see Donne; and then to move homewards. It is now getting very cold, and the time for wandering is over.
Why do you not send me your new Poem? Or is it too big to send as a letter? Or shall I buy it? which I shall be glad to do. . . .
All the preceding was written four days ago: cut short by the sudden entrance of Moore, whom I have been lionizing ever since. He goes away to London to-day. . . .
Moore is delighted with a Titian and Giorgione at the Fitzwilliam. I have just left him to feed upon them at his ease there, while I indite a letter to you.
To W. B. Donne.
[31 Oct. 1846.]
My dear Donne,
. . . I only got home to-day: and found one letter on my table from Ireland. I did not notice it had a black edge and seal: saw it was from Edgeworthstown: written in the hand of Edgeworth’s wife, who often wrote down from his dictation since his eyes became bad. But she tells me that he is dead after twelve days illness! I do not yet feel half so sorry as I shall feel: I shall constantly miss him. [211a]
To E. B. Cowell.
[End of 1846.]
Dear Cowell,
The weather is so ungenial, and likely to be so, that I put off my journey to Ipswich till next week. I do not dislike the weather for my part: but one is best at home in such: and as I am to stay two days with the Hockleys, I would fain have tolerably fair days, and fair ways, for it: that one may get about and so on. One does not mind being cooped up in one’s own room all day. I think of going on Monday. Shall you be at home next week?
I have read Longus and like him much. Is it the light easy Greek that pleases one? Or is it the story, the scenery, etc.? Would the book please one if written in English as good as the Greek?
The lines from Nonnus are very beautiful. It is always a pleasure to me to get from you such stray leaves from gardens I shall never enter.
I have been doing some of the dialogue, [211b] which seems the easiest thing in the world to do but is not. It is not easy to keep to good dialectic, and yet keep up the disjected sway of natural conversation. I talk, you see, as if I were to do some good thing: but I don’t mean that. But any such trials of one’s own show one the art of such dialogues as Plato’s, where the process is so logical and conversational at once: and the result so plain, and seemingly so easy. They remain the miracles of that Art to this day: and will do for many a day: for I don’t believe they will ever be surpassed; certainly not by Landor.
Yours ever,
E. F. G.
[Postmark Woodbridge, Jan. 13, 1847.]
Dear Cowell,
I am always delighted to see you whenever you can come, and Friday will do perfectly well for me. But do not feel bound to come if it snow, etc. In other respects I have small compunction, for I think it must do you good to go out, even to such a desert as this.
I have not got Phidippus into any presentible shape: and indeed have not meddled with him lately: as the spirit of light dialogue evaporated from me under an influenza, and I have not courted it back yet. Luckily I and the world can very well afford to wait for its return. I began Thucydides two days ago! and read (after your example) a very little every day, i.e. have done so for two days. Your Sanscrit sentences are very fine. It is good for you to go on with that. We hear Mr. Nottidge [213] is dying: who can be sorry for him!
Yours,
E. F. G.
* * * * *
Early in 1847 Carlyle received a communication from an unknown correspondent, who professed to have in his possession a number of letters written by Cromwell and other documents, which if genuine were certainly of importance. As I published in the Historical Review for April 1886 all the evidence which exists on the subject, I shall not further dwell upon it here, except to say that I am not in the least convinced by the arguments which have been put forward that the thirty-five letters of Cromwell which Carlyle printed in Fraser’s Magazine for 1847 were forged by his imperfectly educated correspondent William Squire. Squire was living at Yarmouth at this time, and as FitzGerald was frequently in his neighbourhood Carlyle asked him to endeavour to see him and examine the papers which he professed to have. In reply to Carlyle’s letter he wrote as follows in February 1847.
Dear Carlyle,
When I go into Norfolk, which will be some time this Spring, I will go to Yarmouth and see for Mr. Squire, if you like. But if he is so rusty as you say, and as I also fancy, I doubt if he will open his treasures to any but to you who have already set him creaking. But we shall see. Some of his MS. extracts are curious and amusing. He writes himself something like Antony Wood, or some such ancient book-worm. It is also curious to hear of the old proud angry people about Peterboro’, who won’t show their records.
I have not seen the lives of the Saints you spoke of in a former letter. But when I go to London I must look out for a volume. I have begun to read Thucydides, which I never read before, and which does very well to hammer at for an hour in a day: though I can’t say I care much for the Greeks and their peddling quarrels; one must go to Rome for wars.
Don’t you think Thackeray’s Mrs. Perkins’s Ball very good? I think the empty faces of the dance room were never better done. It seems to me wonderful that people can endure to look on such things: but I am forty, and got out of the habit now, and certainly shall not try to get it back ever again.
I am glad you and Mrs. Carlyle happen to be in a milder part of England during this changeable and cold season. Yet, for my own sake, I shall be sorry to see the winter go: with its decided and reasonable balance of daylight and candlelight. I don’t know when I shall go to London, perhaps in April. Please to remember me to Mrs. Carlyle.
Geldestone Hall, Beccles.
[June 20, 1847.]
My dear Laurence,
I have had another letter from the Bartons asking about your advent. In fact Barton’s daughter is anxious for her Father’s to be done, and done this year. He is now sixty-three; and it won’t do, you know, for grand-climacterical people to procrastinate—nay, to proannuate—which is a new, and, for all I see, a very bad word. But, be this as it may, do you come down to Woodbridge this summer if you can; and that you can, I doubt not; since it is no great things out of your way to or from Norwich.
The means to get to Ipswich are—A steamboat will bring you for five shillings (a very pretty sail) from the Custom House to Ipswich, the Orwell steamer; going twice a week, and heard of directly in the fishy latitudes of London Bridge. Or, a railroad brings you for the same sum; if you will travel third class, which I sometimes do in fine weather. I should recommend that; the time being so short, so certain: and no eating and drinking by the way, as must be in a steamer. At Ipswich, I pick you up with the washerwoman’s pony and take you to Woodbridge. There Barton sits with the tea already laid out; and Miss about to manage the urn; plain, agreeable people. At Woodbridge too is my little friend Churchyard, with whom we shall sup off toasted cheese and porter. Then, last and not least, the sweet retirement of Boulge: where the Graces and Muses, etc.
I write thus much because my friends seem anxious; my friend, I mean, Miss Barton: for Barton pretends he dreads having his portrait done; which is ‘my eye.’ So come and do it. He is a generous, worthy, simple-hearted, fellow: worth ten thousand better wits. Then you shall see all the faded tapestry of country town life: London jokes worn threadbare; third rate accomplishments infinitely prized; scandal removed from Dukes and Duchesses to the Parson, the Banker, the Commissioner of Excise, and the Attorney.
Let me hear from you soon that you are coming. I shall return to Boulge the end of this week.
P.S. Come if you can the latter part of the week; when the Quaker is most at leisure. There is a daily coach from Woodbridge to Norwich.
To T. Carlyle.
Boulge. June 29/47.
Dear Carlyle,
Last week I went over to Yarmouth and saw Squire. I was prepared, and I think you were, to find a quaint old gentleman of the last century. Alas for guesses at History! I found a wholesome, well-grown, florid, clear-eyed, open-browed, man of about my own age! There was no difficulty at all in coming to the subject at once, and tackling it. Squire is, I think, a straight-forward, choleric, ingenuous fellow—a little mad—cracks away at his family affairs. ‘One brother is a rascal—another a spend-thrift—his father was of an amazing size—a prodigious eater, etc.—the family all gone to smithers,’ etc. I liked Squire well: and told him he must go to you; I am sure you will like him better than the London penny-a-liners. He is rather a study: and besides he can tell you bits of his Ancestor’s journal; which will indeed make you tear your hair for what is burned—Between two and three hundred folio pages of MSS. by a fellow who served under Oliver; been sent on secret service by him; dreaded him: but could not help serving him—Squire told me a few circumstances which he had picked up in running over the Journal before he burnt it; and which you ought to hear from himself before long. Dreadful stories of Oliver’s severity; soldiers cut down by sabre on parade for ‘violence to women’—a son shot on the spot just before his Father’s house for having tampered with Royalists—no quarter to spies—noses and ears of Royalists slit in retaliation of a like injury done to Roundheads;—many deeds which that ancient Squire witnessed, or knew for certain, and which he and his successor thought severe and cruel:—but I could make out nothing unjust—I am very sure you would not. The Journalist told a story of Peterboro’ Cathedral like yours in your book about Ely:—Oliver marching in as the bells were ringing to service: bundling out canons, prebendaries, choristers, with the flat of the sword; and then standing up to preach himself in his armour! A grand picture. Afterwards they broke the painted windows which I should count injudicious;—but that I sometimes feel a desire that some boys would go and do likewise to the Pusey votive windows; if you know that branch of art.
Ancestor Squire got angry with Oliver toward the end of the Journal; on some such account as this—Cromwell had promised him a sum of money; but the ancestor got taken prisoner by pirate or privateer before he went to claim the money; had to be redeemed by Oliver; and the redemption money was subtracted from the whole sum promised by Oliver when payment-time came. This proceeding seemed to both Squires, living and dead, shabby; but one not belonging to the family may be permitted to think it all fair.
On the whole, I suspect you would have used Ancestor Squire as you have used many others who have helped you to materials of his kind; like a sucked orange: you would have tossed him into the dirt carelessly, I doubt; and then what would Squire minor have said? Yet he himself did not like all his Ancestor had done; the secret service, which our Squire called ‘spy-age’; going to Holland with messages and despatches which he was to deliver to some one who was to meet him on the quay, and show him a gold ring; the man with the gold ring supposed to be the Stadtholder! I tried to persuade our friend there was no great shame in being an agent of this sort; but he said with a light rap on the table that he wouldn’t do such a thing.
I have now told you something of what remains in my head after our conference; but you must see the man. What gave us the idea of his being old was his old-fashioned notions; he and his family have lived in Peterboro’ and such retired places these three hundred years; and amazing as it may seem to us that any people should be ashamed that their ancestors fought for Low Church, yet two hundred years are but as a day in a Cathedral Close. Nothing gives one more the idea of the Sleeping Palace than that. Esto perpetua! I mean, as long as I live at least. When I expressed wonder to Squire that his wife’s friends, or his Peterboro’ friends, should be so solicitous about the world’s ever knowing that their ancestors had received letters from Cromwell, he very earnestly assured me that he knew some cases in which persons’ advancement in public life had been suddenly stopt by the Queen or her ministers, when it got wind that they were related in any way to Cromwell! I thought this a piece of dotage, as I do now; but I have heard elsewhere of some one not being allowed to take the name of Cromwell; I mean not very many years back; but more likely under a George than under a Victoria.
I think Squire must be a little crazy on this score; that is, the old dotage of a Cathedral town superstition worked up into activity by a choleric disposition. He seems, as I told you, of the sanguine temperament; and he mentioned a long illness during which he was not allowed to read a book, etc., which looks like some touch of the head. Perhaps brain fever. Perhaps no such thing, but all my fancy. He was very civil; ordered in a bottle of Sherry and biscuits: asked me to dine, which I could not do. And so ends my long story. But you must see him.
Yours,
E. F. G.
He spoke of a portrait of Oliver that had been in his family since Oliver’s time—till sold for a few shillings to some one in Norwich by some rascal relation. The portrait unlike all he has seen in painting or engraving: very pale, very thoughtful, very commanding, he says. If he ever recovers it, he will present you with it; he says if it should cost him £10—for he admires you. [220]
To Bernard Barton.
Exeter, August 16/47.
My dear Barton,
. . . Here I am at Exeter: a place I never was in before. It is a fine country round about; and last evening I saw landscape that would have made Churchyard crazy. The Cathedral is not worth seeing to an ordinary observer, though I dare say Archæologists find it has its own private merits. . . .
Tell Churchyard we were wrong about Poussin’s Orion. I found this out on my second visit to it. What disappointed me, and perhaps him, at first sight, was a certain stiffness in Orion’s own figure; I expected to see him stalk through the landscape forcibly, as a giant usually does; but I forgot at the moment that Orion was blind, and must walk as a blind man. Therefore this stiffness in his figure was just the right thing. I think however the picture is faulty in one respect, that the atmosphere of the landscape is not that of dawn; which it should be most visibly, since Morning is so principal an actor in the drama. All this seems to be more addressed to Churchyard, who has seen the picture, than to you who have not.
I saw also in London panoramas of Athens and the Himalaya mountains. In the latter, you see the Ganges glittering a hundred and fifty miles off; and far away the snowy peak of the mountain it rises from; that mountain 25,000 feet high. What’s the use of coming to Exeter, when you can see all this for a shilling in London? . . . And now I am going to the Cathedral, where the Bishop has a cover to his seat sixty feet high. So now goodbye for the present.
My dear Barton,
. . . After I wrote to you at Exeter, I went for three days to the Devonshire coast; and then to Lusia’s home in Somersetshire. I never saw her look better or happier. De Soyres pretty well; their little girl grown a pretty and strong child; their baby said to be very thriving. They live in a fine, fruitful, and picturesque country: green pastures, good arable, clothed with trees, bounded with hills that almost reach mountain dignity, and in sight of the Bristol Channel which is there all but Sea. I fancy the climate is moist, and I should think the trees are too many for health: but I was there too little time to quarrel with it on that score. After being there, I went to see a parson friend in Dorsetshire; [222] a quaint, humorous man. Him I found in a most out-of-the-way parish in a fine open country; not so much wooded; chalk hills. This man used to wander about the fields at Cambridge with me when we both wore caps and gowns, and then we proposed and discussed many ambitious schemes and subjects. He is now a quiet, saturnine, parson with five children, taking a pipe to soothe him when they bother him with their noise or their misbehaviour: and I!—as the Bishop of London said, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’ In Dorsetshire I found the churches much occupied by Puseyite Parsons; new chancels built with altars, and painted windows that officiously displayed the Virgin Mary, etc. The people in those parts call that party ‘Pugicides,’ and receive their doctrine and doings peacefully. I am vext at these silly men who are dishing themselves and their church as fast as they can.
To F. Tennyson.
[Leamington, 4 Sept. 1847.]
My dear Frederic,
I believe I must attribute your letter to your having skipped to Leghorn, and so got animated by the sight of a new place. I also am an Arcadian: have been to Exeter—the coast of Devonshire—the Bristol Channel—and to visit a Parson in Dorsetshire. He wore cap and gown when I did at Cambridge—together did we roam the fields about Granchester, discuss all things, thought ourselves fine fellows, and that one day we should make a noise in the world. He is now a poor Rector in one of the most out-of-the-way villages in England—has five children—fats and kills his pig—smokes his pipe—loves his home and cares not ever to be seen or heard of out of it. I was amused with his company; he much pleased to see me: we had not met face to face for fifteen years—and now both of us such very sedate unambitious people! Now I am verging homeward; taking Leamington and Bedford in my way.
You persist in not giving me your clear direction at Florence. It is only by chance that you give the name ‘Villa Gondi’ of the house you describe so temptingly to me. I should much like to visit you there; but I doubt shall never get up the steam for such an expedition. And now know that, since the last sentence was written, I have been to Cheltenham, and called at your Mother’s; and seen her, and Matilda, and Horatio: all well: Alfred is with the Lushingtons and is reported to be all the better for the water-cure. Cheltenham seemed to me a woeful place: I had never seen it before. I now write from Leamington; where I am come to visit my Mother for a few days. . . .