Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 18

DEAR MRS. THOMPSON,

It is very good of you to write to me, so many others as, I know, you must have to write to. I can tell you but little in return for the Story of your Summer Travel: but what little I have to say shall be said at once. As to Travel, I have got no further than Norfolk, and am rather sorry I did not go further North, to the Scottish Border, at any rate.

But now it is too late. I have contented myself with my Boat on the River here: with my Garden, Pigeons, Ducks, etc.; a great Philosopher indeed! But (to make an end of oneself) I have not been well all the summer; unsteady in head and feet; the Beginning of the End, I suppose; and if the End won't be too long spinning out, one cannot complain of its coming too soon. . . .

I had a kindly Letter from Carlyle some days ago: he was summering at some place near Bromley in Kent, lent him by a Lady Derby; once, he says, Lady Salisbury, which I don't understand. He had also the use of a Phaeton and Pony; which latter he calls '_Shenstone_' from a partiality to stopping at every Inn door. Carlyle had been a little touched in revisiting Eltham, and remembering Frank Edgeworth who resided there forty years ago 'with a little Spanish Wife, but no pupils.' Carlyle would name him with a sort of sneer in the Life of Sterling; {184} could not see that any such notice was more than needless, just after Edgeworth's Death. This is all a little Scotch indelicacy to other people's feelings. But now Time and his own Mortality soften him. I have been looking over his Letters to me about Cromwell: the amazing perseverance and accuracy of the Man, who writes so pa.s.sionately! In a letter of about 1845 or 6 he says he has burned at least six attempts at Cromwell's Life: and finally falls back on sorting and elucidating the Letters, as a sure Groundwork. . . .

I have this Summer made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom I have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sevigne. I had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs.

Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not those from Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and now I want to go and visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[1875.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. As yet however I cannot screw my Courage to go up: I have no Curiosity about what is to be seen or heard there; my Day is done. I have not been very well all this Summer, and fancy that I begin to 'smell the Ground,' as Sailors say of the s.h.i.+p that slackens speed as the Water shallows under her. I can't say I have much care for long Life: but still less for long Death: I mean a lingering one.

Did you ever read Madame de Sevigne? I never did till this summer, rather repelled by her perpetual harping on her Daughter. But it is all genuine, and the same intense Feeling expressed in a hundred natural yet graceful ways: and beside all this such good Sense, good Feeling, Humour, Love of Books and Country Life, as makes her certainly the Queen of all Letter writers.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, SUFFOLK.

(_Post Mark Dec._ 8.) _Dec._ 9/75.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Carlyle's Niece has sent me a Card from you, asking for a Copy of an Agamemnon: taken--I must not say, translated--from AEschylus. It was not meant for Greek Scholars, like yourself, but for those who do not know the original, which it very much misrepresents. I think it is my friend Mrs. Kemble who has made it a little known on your wide Continent. As you have taken the trouble to enquire for it all across the Atlantic, beside giving me reason before to confide in your friendly reception of it, I post you one along with this letter. I can fancy you might find some to be interested in it who do not know the original: more interested than in more faithful Translations of more ability. But there I will leave it: only begging that you will not make any trouble of acknowledging so small a Gift.

Some eighty of Carlyle's Friends and Admirers have been presenting him with a Gold Medal of himself, and an Address of Congratulation on his 80th Birthday. I should not have supposed that either Medal or Address would be much to his Taste: but, as more important People than myself joined in the Thing, I did not think it became me to demur. But I shall not the less write him my half-yearly Letter of Good Hopes and Good Wishes. He seems to have been well and happy in our pretty County of Kent during the Summer.

Believe me, with Thanks for the Interest you have taken in my _Libretti_, yours sincerely, E. FITZGERALD.

P.S. I am doing an odd thing in bethinking me of sending you two Calderon Plays, which my friend Mrs. Kemble has spoken of also in your Country. So you might one day hear of them: and, if you liked what came before, wish to see them. So here they are, for better or worse; and, at any rate, one Note of Thanks (which I doubt you will feel bound to write) will do for both, and you can read as little as you please of either. All these things have been done partly as an amus.e.m.e.nt in a lonely life: partly to give some sort of idea of the originals to friends who knew them not: and printed, because (like many others, I suppose) I can only dress my best when seeing myself in Type, in the same way as I can scarce read others unless in such a form. I suppose there was some Vanity in it all: but really, if I had that strong, I might have done (considering what little I can do) like Crabbe's Bachelor--

I might have made a Book, but that my Pride In the not making was more gratified. {187}

Do you read more of Crabbe than we his Countrymen?

_To Miss Aitken_. {188a}

WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 9/75.

DEAR MISS AITKEN,

It is a fact that the night before last I thought I would write my half- yearly Enquiry about your Uncle: and at Noon came your Note. I judge from it that he is well. I think he will thrash me (as Bentley said {188b}) even now.

I must say I scarce knew what to do when asked to join in that Birthday Address. I did not know whether it would be agreeable to your Uncle: and of course I could not ask him. So I asked Spedding and Pollock, and found they were of the Party: so it did not become me to hesitate. I hope we were not all amiss.

But as to Agamemnon the King: I shall certainly send Mr. Norton a Copy, as he has taken the trouble to send across the Atlantic for it. But as to Mr. Carlyle, 'c'est une autre affaire.' It was not meant for any Greek Scholar, and only for a few not Greek, who I thought would be interested, as they have been, in my curious Version. Among these was Mrs. Kemble, who I suppose it is has praised it in a way that somehow gains ground in America. But your Uncle--a few years ago he would have been perhaps a little irritated with it; and now would not, I feel sure, care to spend his Eyes over its sixty or seventy pages. He would even now think--but in Pity now--how much better one might have spent one's time (though not very much was spent) than in such Dilettanteism. So tell him not quite to break his heart if I don't put him to the Trial: but still believe me his, and, if you will allow me, yours sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

_Fragment of a Letter to Miss Biddell_.

_Dec._ 1875.

Thank you for the paragraph about Sh.e.l.ley. Somehow I don't believe the Story, {189} in spite of Trelawney's Authority. Let them produce the Confessor who is reported to tell the Story; otherwise one does not need any more than such a Squall as we have late had in these Seas, and yet more sudden, I believe, in those, to account for the Disaster.

I believe I told you that my Captain Newson and his Nephew, my trusty Jack, went in the Snow to the Norfolk Coast, by Cromer, to find Newson's Boy. They found him, what remained of him, in a Barn there: brought him home through the Snow by Rail thus far: and through the Snow by Boat to Felixstow, where he is to lie among his Brothers and Sisters, to the Peace of his Father's Heart.

_To S. Laurence_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 30/75.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I find rather insufferable in practice about me. I never could read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things, which I don't and can't see; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. . . .

As to Thackeray's, they are terrible; I really look at them on the shelf, and am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper into the Springs of Common Action than these Ladies: wonderful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. _Jan._ 23/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

. . . I suppose you may see one of the Carlyle Medallions: and you can judge better of the Likeness than I, who have not been to Chelsea, and hardly out of Suffolk, these fifteen years and more. I dare say it is like him: but his Profile is not his best phase. In two notes dictated by him since that Business he has not adverted to it: I think he must be a little ashamed of it, though it would not do to say so in return, I suppose. And yet I think he might have declined the Honours of a Life of 'Heroism.' I have no doubt he would have played a Brave Man's Part if called on; but, meanwhile, he has only sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea, scolding all the world for not being Heroic, and not always very precise in telling them how. He has, however, been so far heroic, as to be always independent, whether of Wealth, Rank, and Coteries of all sorts: nay, apt to fly in the face of some who courted him. I suppose he is changed, or subdued, at eighty: but up to the last ten years he seemed to me just the same as when I first knew him five and thirty years ago. What a Fortune he might have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as Thackeray and d.i.c.kens did; I don't mean they did it for Vanity: but to make money: and that to spend generously. Carlyle did indeed lecture near forty years ago before he was a Lion to be shown, and when he had but few Readers. I heard his 'Heroes' which now seems to me one of his best Books. He looked very handsome then, with his black hair, fine Eyes, and a sort of crucified Expression.

I know of course (in Books) several of those you name in your Letter: Longfellow, whom I may say I love, and so (I see) can't call him _Mister_: and Emerson whom I admire, for I don't feel that I know the Philosopher so well as the Poet: and Mr. Lowell's 'Among my Books' is among mine. I also have always much liked, I think rather loved, O. W.

Holmes. I scarce know why I could never take to that man of true Genius, Hawthorne. There is a little of my Confession of Faith about your Countrymen, and I should say mine, if I were not more Irish than English.

[WOODBRIDGE. _Feb._ 7/76.]

MY DEAR SIR,

I will not look on the Book you have sent me as any Return for the Booklet I sent you, but as a free and kindly Gift. I really don't know that you could have sent me a better. I have read it with more continuous attention and gratification than I now usually feel, and always (as Lamb suggested) well disposed to say Grace after reading.

Seeing what Mr. Lowell has done for Dante, Rousseau, etc., one does not wish him to be limited in his Subjects: but I do wish he would do for English Writers what Ste. Beuve has done for French. Mr. Lowell so far goes along with him as to give so much of each Writer's Life as may ill.u.s.trate his Writings; he has more Humour (in which alone I fancy S. B.

somewhat wanting), more extensive Reading, I suppose; and a power of metaphorical Ill.u.s.tration which (if I may say so) seems to me to want only a little reserve in its use: as was the case perhaps with Hazlitt.

But Mr. Lowell is not bia.s.sed by Hazlitt's--(by anybody's, so far as I see)--party or personal prejudices; and altogether seems to me the man most fitted to do this Good Work, where it has not (as with Carlyle's Johnson) been done, for good and all, before. Of course, one only wants the Great Men, in their kind: Chaucer, Pope (Dryden being done {193}), and perhaps some of the 'minora sidera' cl.u.s.tered together, as Hazlitt has done them. Perhaps all this will come forth in some future Series even now gathering in Mr. Lowell's Head. However that may be, this present Series will make me return to some whom I have not lately looked up. Dante's face I have not seen these ten years: only his Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell says of him recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in Regent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I suppose) said, 'What is there in old Dante's Face that is missing in Goethe's?' And Tennyson (whose Profile then had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said: 'The Divine.' Then Milton; I don't think I've read him these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory; but I never could read ten lines together without stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out of Paradise, or even h.e.l.l, into the Schoolroom, worse than either. Tennyson again used to say that the two grandest of all Similes were those of the s.h.i.+ps hanging in the Air, and 'the Gunpowder one,'

which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days that are no more.

He certainly then thought Milton the sublimest of all the Gang; his Diction modelled on Virgil, as perhaps Dante's.

Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. Lowell's good word) shall still content myself with such delightful Quotations from him as one lights upon here and there: the last from Mr. Lowell.

Then, old 'Daddy Wordsworth,' as he was sometimes called, I am afraid, from my Christening, he is now, I suppose, pa.s.sing under the Eclipse consequent on the Glory which followed his obscure Rise. I remember fifty years ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting for him by the Few against the Many of us who only laughed at 'Louisa in the Shade,'

etc. His Brother was then Master of Trinity College; like all Wordsworths (unless the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He used to drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called him the 'Meeserable Sinner' and his brother the 'Meeserable Poet.' Poor fun enough: but I never can forgive the Lakers all who first despised, and then patronized 'Walter Scott,' as they loftily called him: and He, dear, n.o.ble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to wors.h.i.+p at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) July 18 or 19, 1831. It is a piece of Tragedy, even to the muttering Thunder, like the Lammermuir, which does not look very small beside Peter Bell and Co.

My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last Sentence will lead to another dirty little Story about my Daddy: to which you must listen or I should feel like the Fine Lady in one of Vanbrugh's Plays, 'Oh my G.o.d, that you won't listen to a Woman of Quality when her Heart is bursting with Malice!' And perhaps you on the other Side of the Great Water may be amused with a little of your old Granny's Gossip.