Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 23

and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K.

himself knew were bad: but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could not alter.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 4, 1878.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me a Letter; which you say is 'in your head.' You have Literary work, and a Family to enjoy with you what spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas I have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: all alone for months together: taking up such Books as I please; and rather liking to write Letters to my Friends, whom I now only communicate with by such means.

And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, care to answer me, though I know from no want of Regard: but I know that few sensible men, who have their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on some special purpose; and I now rarely get more than one yearly Letter from each. Seeing which, indeed, I now rarely trouble them for more. So pray be at ease in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, more than has pa.s.sed between myself and my fifty years old Friends for some years past. I have had two notes from you quite lately: one to tell me that Squire reached you; and another that he was on his way back here. I was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe into your hands, he would continue there as safe as in my own. I also had your other two Copies of Olympia: one of which I sent to Cowell, who is always too busy to write to me, except about twice a year, in his Holydays.

I am quite content to take History as you do, that is, as the Squire-Carlyle presents it to us; not looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth. Also, I am sure you are quite right about the Keats' Letters. I hope I should have revolted from the Book had anything in it detracted from the man: but all seemed to me in his favour, and therefore I did not feel I did wrong in having the secret of that heart opened to me. I hope Mr. Lowell will not resent my thinking he might so far sympathize with me. In fact, could he, could you, resist taking up, and reading, the Letters, however doubtful their publication might have seemed to your Conscience?

Now I enclose you a little work of mine {242} which I hope does no irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant quite otherwise. I often got puzzled, in reading Lamb's Letters, about some Data in his Life to which the Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my own behoof, and then thought that others might be glad of it also. If I set down his Miseries, and the one Failing for which those Miseries are such a Justification, I only set down what has been long and publickly known, and what, except in a Noodle's eyes, must enhance the dear Fellow's character, instead of lessening it. 'Saint Charles!' said Thackeray to me thirty years ago, putting one of C. L.'s letters {243} to his forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: 'If there be a Good Man, Charles Lamb is one.'

I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner: a thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should think) affectionate man to a few; without Humour, I suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. de Musset, by his Brother, who (whether well or ill) leaves out the Absinthe, which is generally supposed to have shortened the Life of that man of Genius.

Think of Clarissa being one of his favourite Books; he could not endure the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded me of our Tennyson (who has some likeness, 'mutatis mutandis' of French Morals, Absinthe, etc., to the Frenchman)--of his once saying to me of Clarissa, 'I love those large, still, Books.'

I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two volumes of him; all I had: but I think I see four quoted. That is pretty, his writing to his Brother, who is dwelling (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose ramparts, now mounted with cannon, 'I used to gather Violets.' And I cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that crisis, 'Engage in some long course of Study to drown Trouble in:' and he quotes Ste. Beuve saying, one long Summer Day in the Country, 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne.' You may have to advise me to some such course before long. I will avoid speaking, or, so far as I can, thinking, of what I cannot prevent, or alter. You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking what comes from this old Country, more yours than mine. I have heard that some of your People would even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some old Church here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the Atlantic.

Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown together in their Fields for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping such a work on a poor little Church I remember these sixty years. Well, you like my Letters; I think there is too much of this one; but I will end, as I believe I began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in answering it, or any other, from

Yours sincerely, E. F. G.

Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 16/1878.

Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a kind long letter from Mr. Lowell: and--and the first Nightingale, who sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, before the Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 17/78.

MY DEAR (SIR ---)--(LOWELL)?

Your letter reached me just after hearing this year's first Nightingale in my Garden: both very welcome. I am very glad you did not feel bound to answer me before; I should not write otherwise to you or to some very old Friends who, like most sensible men as they grow older, dislike all unnecessary writing more and more. So that I scarce remind them of myself more than once a year now. I shall feel sure of your good Will toward me whether you write or not; as I do of theirs.

Mr. Norton thinks, as a Gentleman should, that Keats' Letters should not have been published. I hope I should not have bought them, had I not gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his Charmian, was not f.a.n.n.y Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow: indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him, any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years: never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This now reminds me that I will ask his Lords.h.i.+p why it was not published (as I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . .

I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious, his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of _ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.

I cannot understand why I have not yet taken to Hawthorne, a Man of real Genius, and that of a kind which I thought I could relish. I will have another Shot. His Notes of Travel seemed to me very shrewd, original, and sincere. Charles Sumner, of so different a Genius, also appears to me very truthful, and, I still fancy, strongly attached to the few he might care for. I am sorry he got a wrong idea of Sir Walter from Lord Brougham, and the Whigs, who always hated Scott. Indeed (as I well remember) it was a point of Faith with them that Scott had not written the Novels, till the Catastrophe discovered him: on which they changed their Cry into a denunciation of his having written them only for money, 'Scott's weak point,' Sumner quotes from Brougham. As if Scott loved Money for anything else than to spend it: not only on Lands and House (which I maintain were simply those of a Scotch Gentleman) but to help any poor Devil that applied to him. Then that old Toad Rogers must tell Sumner that Manzoni's 'Sposi' were worth any ten of Scott's; yes, after Scott's Diary spoke of 'I really like Rogers, etc.,' and such moderate expressions of regard as Scott felt for him and his Breakfast of London Wits.

Here am I running over to Chapter II. You will be surfeited, like your Captain, if not on Turtles' Eggs. But you can eat me at intervals, you know, or not at all. Only you will certainly read my last Great Work, {247} which I enclose, drawn up first for my own benefit, in reading Lamb's Letters, as now printed in batches to his several Correspondents; and so I thought others than myself might be glad of a few Data to refer the letters to. Pollock calls my Paper 'Cotelette d'Agneau a la minute.'

As to my little Dialogue, I can't send it: so pretty in Form, I think, and with some such pretty parts: but then some odious smart writing, which I had forgotten till I looked it over again before sending to you.

But I will send you the Calderon which you already like.

And, if you would send me any samples of Spanish, send me some Playbill (of the old Drama, if now played), or some public Advertis.e.m.e.nt, or Newspaper; this is what I should really like. As to Books, I dare say Quaritch has pretty well ferreted them out of Spain. Give a look, if you can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned in the Book) Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning with V. Hugo, and now alive in --- and Co.--(what I call The _Gurgoyle_ School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)--he detested the modern 'feuilleton' Novel, and read Clarissa! . . . Many years before A.

de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with 'Pensez a vos promesses'

worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted 'Amph.o.r.e' she had knitted at his Bed side. When he came to die, some seventeen years after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 1878.

Ecce iterum--Crispin! I think you will soon call me '_Les_ FitzGerald_s_' as Madame de Sevigne called her too officious friend '_Les_ Hacqueville_s_.' However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice.

He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .

Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lus.h.i.+ngton) had taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The corrections are from Lus.h.i.+ngton. I do not understand why Lord H. does not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great Poverty. Her name is 'f.a.n.n.y.' Ben might do much worse: some say he is about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as little as I can. 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne,' said Ste. Beuve one day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires, as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it here in England ere 1879.

A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering, where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note of mine, 'Finished 10.30 p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.' Not on this account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable--Cervantes--Shakespeare.

I mean that Chapter of the Colonel's return to Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn at Kippletringan.

We are now reading 'Among the Spanish People,' by the Mr. Rose who wrote 'Untrodden Spain'; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose- coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he can't help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of a Visit he pays to a _pueblo_ he calls Banos up the Sierra Morena: one would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else 'les Hacquevilles' will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and send--'Coals to Newcastle.'

With Keats I shall send you an Athenaeum with a rather humorous account of a c.o.c.kney squabble about whether Sh.e.l.ley called his Lark an '_un_-bodied,' or '_em_-bodied,' Spirit. I really forget which way was settled by MS. Sh.e.l.ley is now the rage in c.o.c.kayne; but he is too unsubstantial for me.

It is now hot here: I suppose something [like] February in Andalusia. Do you find Madrid Climate as bad as Rose and others describe it? He has also a very pleasant [chapter] about the Lavanderas of the Manzanares.

What delightful words!

_To W. A. Wright_.

[1878.]

On looking into my dear old Montaigne, I find a pa.s.sage which may have rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Oth.e.l.lo: it is about the pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which occurs in Florio, 'The courageous _minde-stirring_ harmonic of warlike music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to Artillery--but this is not AEsthetic.

Bacon's appropriation you know of C'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas'

(De la Vanite, I _think_).

WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 11, [1878]

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

If you do not remember the pa.s.sage in Bacon's Essays {251} about 'not to decide, etc.' I must have fancied it. I am glad you recognize the Oth.e.l.lo bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talking of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at finding his footsteps in the Books he read, just as one is in walking over the fields he walked about Stratford and seeing the Flowers, and hearing the Birds, he heard and saw, and told of. My Canon is, there is no plagiarism when he who adopts has proved that he could originate what he adopts, and a great deal more: which certainly absolves Shakespeare from any such Charge--even 'The Cloud capt Towers, etc.' That Pa.s.sage in Oth.e.l.lo about the Propontic and the h.e.l.lespont, was, I have read, an afterthought, after reading some Travel: and, like so many Afterthoughts, I must think, a Blunder: breaking the Torrent of Pa.s.sion with a piece of Natural History. One observes it particularly when acted: the actor down on his Knees, etc. Were I to act Oth.e.l.lo (there'd be many a Bellow

From Pit, Boxes, etc., on that occasion) {252}

I should leave out the pa.s.sage. . . .

An answer from Carlyle's Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he is well, and hardy, and reading Goethe which he never tires of: glancing over Reviews which he calls 'Floods of Nonsense,' etc. I sent them Groome's 'Only Darter,' which I think so good that I shall get him to let me print it for others beside those of the Ipswich Journal: it seems to me a beautiful Suffolk 'Idyll' (why not _Ei_dyll?) and so it seemed to those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome returns it to me.

_To C. E. Norton_.

_July_ 2/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You wrote me a very kind Invitation--to your own home--in America! But it is all too late for that; more on account of habit than time of life: I will not repeat what I feel sure I have told you before on that subject. You will be more interested by the enclosed note: of which this is the simple Story. Some three weeks ago I wrote my half-yearly note of enquiry to Carlyle's Niece; he was, she said, quite well; walking by the river before Breakfast: driving out of an Afternoon: constantly reading: just then reading Goethe of whom he never tired: and glancing over Magazines and Reviews which he called 'Floods of Nonsense, Cataracts of Twaddle,' etc. I had sent him the enclosed paper, {253} written by a Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America, at your home, I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: who, by what his Niece replied, I suppose liked it too. And, by way of return, I suppose, he sends me a Volume of Norway Kings and Knox: which I was very glad to have, not only as a token of his Good Will, but also because Knox was, I believe, the only one of his works I had not read. And I was obliged to confess to him in my acknowledgment of his kindly Present, that I relished these two children of his old Age as much as any of his more fiery Manhood. I had previously asked if he knew anything of John Wesley's Journal, which I was then re-perusing; as he his Goethe: yes, he knew that Wesley too, and 'thought as I did about it' his Niece said; and in reply to my Question if he knew anything of two 'mountains' (as English people called hills a hundred years ago) which Wesley says were called 'The Peas' at Dunbar {254}--why, here is his Answer: evincing the young Blood in the old Man still.

Wesley's Journal is very well worth reading, and having; not only as an outline of his own singular character, but of the conditions of England, Ireland, and Scotland, in the last Century. Voila par exemple un Livre dont Monsr Lowell pourrait faire une jolie critique, s'il en voudrait, mais il s'occupe de plus grandes choses, du Calderon, du Cervantes. I always wish to run on in bad French: but my friends would not care to read it. But pray make acquaintance with this Wesley; if you cannot find a copy in America, I will send you one from here: I believe I have given it to half a dozen Friends. Had I any interest with Publishers, I would get them to reprint parts of it, as of my old Crabbe, who still sticks in my Throat.