Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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20 LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
1901
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition_ 1894. _Reprinted_ 1901
{Edward FitzGerald: p0.jpg}
PREFACE
In compliance with a very generally expressed wish that the Letters of
Edward FitzGerald should be separated from his Literary Remains, they are
now issued with some additions to their number which have not before
appeared. It was no part of my plan to form a complete collection of his
letters, but rather to let the story of his life be told in such of them
as gave an indication of his character and pursuits. It would have been
easy to increase the number considerably had I printed all that I
possess, but it seemed better to create the desire for more than to incur
the reproach of having given more than enough.
Since these volumes were completed a large number of letters, addressed
by FitzGerald to his life-long friend Mrs. Kemble, have come into the
possession of Messrs. Richard Bentley and Son, and will shortly make
their appearance. By the desire of Mr. George Bentley I have undertaken
to see them through the press.
WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
31 _March_, 1894.
NOTE
In vol. ii. p. 181 the date 1875, which was conjectural, has been changed
to 1878, in which year September 22--the day on which the letter was
written--was a Sunday. There was a Musical Festival at Norwich in both
years, and the same Oratorios were performed, and this led me to put the
letter out of its place.
W. A. W.
PREFACE TO LETTERS AND LITERARY REMAINS
After Mr. FitzGerald's death in June 1883 a small tin box addressed to me
was found by his executors, containing among other things corrected
copies of his printed works, and the following letter, which must have
been written shortly after my last visit to him at Easter that year:
WOODBRIDGE: _May_ 1/83.
MY DEAR WRIGHT,
I do not suppose it likely that any of my works should be reprinted
after my Death. Possibly the three Plays from the Greek, and
Calderon's Magico: which have a certain merit in the Form they are
cast into, and also in the Versification.
However this may be, I venture to commit to you this Box containing
Copies of all that I have corrected in the way that I would have them
appear, if any of them ever should be resuscitated.
The C. Lamb papers are only materials for you, or any one else, to use
at pleasure.
The Crabbe volume would, I think, serve for an almost sufficient
Selection from him; and some such Selection will have to be made, I
believe, if he is to be resuscitated. Two of the Poems--'The Happy
Day' and 'The Family of Love'--seem to me to have needed some such
abridgement as the 'Tales of the Hall,' for which I have done little
more than hastily to sketch the Plan. For all the other Poems, simple
Extracts from them will suffice: with a short notice concerning their
Dates of Composition, etc., at the Beginning.
My poor old Lowestoft Sea-slang may amuse yourself to look over
perhaps.
And so, asking your pardon for inflicting this Box upon you I am ever
sincerely yours
E. F. G.
In endeavouring to carry out these last wishes of my friend I thought
that of the many who know him only as a translator some would be glad to
have a picture of him as he appeared to the small circle of his intimate
acquaintances. The mere narrative of the life of a man of leisure and
literary tastes would have contained too few incidents to be of general
interest, and it appeared to me best to let him be his own biographer,
telling his own story and revealing his own character in his letters.
Fortunately there are many of these, and I have endeavoured to give such
a selection from them as would serve this purpose, adding a few words
here and there to connect them and explain what was not sufficiently
evident. As the letters begin from the time that he left College and
continue with shorter or longer intervals till the day before his death,
it was only necessary to introduce them by a short sketch of his early
life in order to make the narrative complete.
FitzGerald's letters, like his conversation, were perfectly unaffected
and full of quiet humour. In his lonely life they were the chief means
he had of talking with his friends, and they were always welcome. In
reply to one of them Carlyle wrote: 'Thanks for your friendly human
letter; which gave us much entertainment in the reading (at breakfast
time the other day), and is still pleasant to think of. One gets so many
_in_human letters, ovine, bovine, porcine, etc., etc.: I wish you would
write a little oftener; when the beneficent Daimon suggests, fail not to
lend ear to him.' Another, who has since followed him 'from sunshine to
the sunless land,' and to whom he wrote of domestic affairs, said, 'The
striking feature in his correspondence with me is the exquisite
tenderness of feeling which it exhibits in regard to all family matters;
the letters might have been written by a mother or a sister.' He said of
himself that his friendships were more like loves, and as he was constant
in affectionate loyalty to others, he might also say with Brutus,
In all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
The Poet-Laureate, on hearing of his death, wrote to the late Sir
Frederic Pollock: 'I had no truer friend: he was one of the kindliest of
men, and I have never known one of so fine and delicate a wit. I had
written a poem to him the last week, a dedication, which he will never
see.'
When Thackeray, not long before he died, was asked by his daughter which
of his old friends he had loved most, he replied, 'Why, dear old Fitz, to
be sure; and Brookfield.'
And Carlyle, quick of eye to discern the faults and weaknesses of others,
had nothing but kindliness, with perhaps a touch of condescension, 'for
the peaceable, affectionate, and ultra-modest man, and his innocent _far
niente_ life.'
It was something to have been intimate with three such friends, and one
can only regret that more of his letters addressed to them have not been
preserved. Of those written to the earliest and dearest friend of all,
James Spedding, not one is left.
One of his few surviving contemporaries, speaking from a lifelong
experience, described him with perfect truth as an eccentric man of
genius, who took more pains to avoid fame than others do to seek it.
His love of music was one of his earliest passions, and remained with him
to the last. I cannot refrain from quoting some recollections of the
late Archdeacon Groome, a friend of his College days, and so near a
neighbour in later life that few letters passed between them. 'He was a
true musician; not that he was a great performer on any instrument, but
that he so truly appreciated all that was good and beautiful in music. He
was a good performer on the piano, and could get such full harmonies out
of the organ that stood in one corner of his entrance room at Little
Grange as did good to the listener. Sometimes it would be a bit from one
of Mozart's Masses, or from one of the finales of some one of his or
Beethoven's Operas. And then at times he would fill up the harmonies
with his voice, true and resonant almost to the last. I have heard him
say, "Did you never observe how an Italian organ-grinder will sometimes
put in a few notes of his own in such perfect keeping with the air which
he was grinding?" He was not a great, but he was a good composer. Some
of his songs have been printed, and many still remain in manuscript. Then
what pleasant talk I have had with him about the singers of our early
years; never forgetting to speak of Mrs. Frere of Downing, as the most
perfect private singer we had ever heard. And so indeed she was. Who
that had ever heard her sing Handel's songs can ever forget the purity of
her phrasing and the pathos of her voice? She had no particle of vanity
in her, and yet she would say, "Of course, I can sing Handel. I was a
pupil of John Sale, and he was a pupil of Handel." To her old age she
still retained the charm of musical expression, though her voice was but
a thread. And so we spoke of her; two old men with all the enthusiastic
admiration of fifty years ago. Pleasant was it also to hear him speak of
the public singers of those early days. Braham, so great, spite of his
vulgarity; Miss Stephens, so sweet to listen to, though she had no voice
of power; and poor Vaughan, who had so feeble a voice, and yet was always
called "such a chaste singer." How he would roar with laughter, when I
would imitate Vaughan singing
His hiddeus (_sic_) love provokes my rage,
Weak as I am, I must engage,
from Acis and Galatea. Then too his reminiscences of the said Acis and
Galatea as given at the Concerts for Ancient Music. "I can see them now,
the dear old _creeters_ with the gold eye-glasses and their turbans,
noddling their heads as they sang
O the pleasures of the plains!"
'These old _creeters_ being, as he said, the sopranos who had sung first
as girls, when George the Third was king.
'He was a great lover of our old English composers, specially of Shield.
Handel, he said, has a scroll in his marble hand in the Abbey on which
are written the first bars of
I know that my Redeemer liveth;
and Shield should hold a like scroll, only on it should be written the
first bars of
A flaxen-headed ploughboy.
'He was fond of telling a story of Handel, which I, at least, have never
seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his "Samson," in which
there is that most touching of all songs, specially to any one whose
powers of sight are waning--"Total Eclipse." Mr. Beard was the great
tenor singer of the day, who was to sing this song. Handel sent for him,
"Mr. Beard," he said, "I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can
tell you how it ought to be sung." And then he sang it, with what
strange pathos need not be told. Beard stood listening, and when it was
finished said, with tears in his eyes, "But Mr. Handel, I can never sing
it like that." And so he would tell the story with tears in his voice,
such as those best remember, who ever heard him read some piece of his
dear old Crabbe, and break down in the reading.'
With this I will conclude, and I have only now to express my sincere
thanks to all who have entrusted me with letters addressed to themselves
or to those whom they represent. It has been my endeavour to justify
their confidence by discretion. To Messrs. Richard Bentley and Son I am
indebted for permission to reprint Virgil's Garden from the Temple Bar
Magazine. {0a}
The portrait is from a photograph by Cade and White of Ipswich taken in
1873.
WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
20 May, 1889.
LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD
Edward FitzGerald was born at Bredfield House in Suffolk, an old Jacobean
mansion about two miles from Woodbridge, on the 31st of March, 1809. He
was the third son of John Purcell, who married his cousin Mary Frances
FitzGerald, and upon the death of her father in 1818 took the name and
arms of FitzGerald. In 1816 Mr. Purcell went to France, and for a time
settled with his family at St. Germains. FitzGerald in later life would
often speak of the royal hunting parties which he remembered seeing in
the forest. They afterwards removed to Paris, occupying the house in
which Robespierre had once lived, and here FitzGerald had for his
drillmaster one of Napoleon's Old Guard. Even at this early period the
vivacious humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn
itself, for his father writing to some friends in England speaks of
little Edward keeping the whole family in good spirits by his unfailing
fun and droll speeches. The dramatic circumstances of the assassination
of M. Fualdes, a magistrate at Rodez, in 1817, and the remarkable trial
which followed, fastened themselves on FitzGerald's memory, and he was
familiar with all the details which he had heard spoken of when quite a
child in Paris. In 1821 he was sent to King Edward the Sixth's School at
Bury St. Edmunds, where his two elder brothers were already under the
charge of Dr. Malkin, who, like himself in after life, was a great
admirer of Crabbe. Among his schoolfellows were James Spedding and his
elder brother, W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble, and William Airy the brother of
Sir George Airy, formerly Astronomer-Royal. I have often heard him say
that the best piece of declamation he had ever listened to was Kemble's
recitation of Hotspur's speech, beginning 'My liege, I did deny no
prisoners,' on a prize day at Bury. When he left for Cambridge in 1826
the Speddings were at the head of the School. He was entered at Trinity
on 6th February 1826 under Mr. (afterwards Dean) Peacock and went into
residence in due course in the following October, living in lodgings at
Mrs. Perry's (now Oakley's), No. 19 King's Parade. James Spedding did
not come up till the year following, and his greatest friends in later
life, John Allen, afterwards Archdeacon of Salop, W. M. Thackeray, and W.
H. Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity, were his juniors at the
University by two years. The three Tennysons were also his
contemporaries, but it does not appear that he knew them till after he
had left Cambridge. Indeed, in a letter to Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Miss
Thackeray), written in 1882, he says of the Laureate, 'I can tell you
nothing of his College days; for I did not know him till they were over,
though I had seen him two or three times before. I remember him well--a
sort of Hyperion.'
FitzGerald was unambitious of University distinctions and was not in the
technical sense a reading man, but he passed through his course in a
leisurely manner, amusing himself with music and drawing and poetry, and
modestly went out in the Poll in January 1830, after a period of suspense
during which he was apprehensive of not passing at all. Immediately
after taking his degree he went to stay with his brother-in-law, Mr.
Kerrich, at Geldestone Hall, near Beccles, where he afterwards spent much
of his time. While there, and still undecided as to his future
movements, he writes to his friend John Allen that his father had to some
extent decided for him by reducing his allowance, a measure which would
compel him to go and live in France. It was apparently not in
consequence of this, for the difficulty with his father was
satisfactorily arranged, that he went in the spring of 1830 to Paris,
where his aunt, Miss Purcell, was living. Thackeray joined him for a
short time in April, but left suddenly, and was the bearer of a hurried
letter written by FitzGerald at the Palais Royal to the friend who was at
this time his chief correspondent.
'If you see Roe (the Engraver, not the Haberdasher) give him my
remembrance and tell him I often wish for him in the Louvre: as I do
for you, my dear Allen: for I think you would like it very much. There
are delightful portraits (which you love most), and statues so
beautiful that you would for ever prefer statues to pictures. There
are as fine pictures in England: but not one statue so fine as any
here. There is a lovely and very modest Venus: and the Gladiator: and
a very majestic Demosthenes, sitting in a chair, with a roll of
writing in his hands, and seemingly meditating before rising to speak.
It is quite awful.'
FitzGerald remained in France till about the end of May, and before
leaving wrote again to Allen, not perhaps altogether seriously, yet with
more truth than he imagined, of his future mode of life.
'I start for England in a week, as I purpose now: I shall go by Havre
de Grace and Southampton, and stay for a month or two perhaps at
Dartmouth, a place on the Devonshire coast. Tell Thackeray that he is
never to invite me to his house, as I intend never to go: not that I
would not go out there rather than any place perhaps, but I cannot
stand seeing new faces in the polite circles. You must know I am
going to become a great bear: and have got all sorts of Utopian ideas
into my head about society: these may all be very absurd, but I try
the experiment on myself, so I can do no great hurt. Where I shall go
in the summer I know not.'
In the end he made Southampton his headquarters and spent several weeks
there, going on short excursions to visit some college acquaintances. In
November he was at Naseby, where his father had a considerable estate,
including the famous battlefield, of which we shall hear more in his
later correspondence. 'This place is solitary enough,' he writes to John
Allen, 'but I am well off in a nice farm-house. I wish you could come
and see the primitive inhabitants, and the fine field of Naseby. There
are grand views on every side: and all is interesting. . . . Do you
know, Allen, that this is a very curious place with odd fossils: and
mixed with bones and bullets of the fight at Naseby; and the identical
spot where King Charles stood to see the battle. . . . I do wish you and
Sansum were here to see the curiosities. Can't you come? I am quite the
King here I promise you. . . . I am going to-day to dine with the
Carpenter, a Mr. Ringrose, and to hear his daughter play on the
pianoforte. Fact.
'My blue surtout daily does wonders. At Church its effect is truly
delightful.'
It was at Naseby, in the spring of the following year (1831), that he
made his earliest attempt in verse, the earliest at any rate which has
yet been discovered. Charles Lamb, writing to Moxon in August, tells
him, 'The Athenaeum has been hoaxed with some exquisite poetry, that was,
two or three months ago, in Hone's Book. . . . The poem I mean is in
Hone's Book as far back as April. I do not know who wrote it; but 'tis a
poem I envy--_that_ and Montgomery's "Last Man": I envy the writers,
because I feel I could have done something like them.' It first appeared
in Hone's Year Book for April 30, 1831, with the title 'The Meadows in
Spring,' and the following letter to the Editor. 'These verses are in
the old style; rather homely in expression; but I honestly profess to
stick more to the simplicity of the old poets than the moderns, and to
love the philosophical good humor of our old writers more than the sickly
melancholy of the Byronian wits. If my verses be not good, they are good
humored, and that is something.' With a few verbal changes they were
sent to the Athenaeum, and appeared in that paper on July 9, 1831,
accompanied by a note of the Editor's, from which it is evident that he
supposed them to have been written by Lamb.
_To the Editor of the Athenaeum_.
SIR,
These verses are something in the old style, but not the worse for that:
not that I mean to call them good: but I am sure they would not have been
better, if dressed up in the newest Montgomery fashion, for which I
cannot say I have much love. If they are fitted for your paper, you are
welcome to them. I send them to you, because I find only in your paper a
love of our old literature, which is almost monstrous in the eyes of
modern ladies and gentlemen. My verses are certainly not in the present
fashion; but, I must own, though there may not be the same merit in the
thoughts, I think the style much better: and this with no credit to
myself, but to the merry old writers of more manly times.
Your humble servant,
EPSILON.
'Tis a dull sight
To see the year dying,
When winter winds
Set the yellow wood sighing:
Sighing, oh! sighing.
When such a time cometh,
I do retire
Into an old room
Beside a bright fire:
Oh, pile a bright fire!
And there I sit
Reading old things,
Of knights and lorn damsels,
While the wind sings--
Oh, drearily sings!
I never look out
Nor attend to the blast;
For all to be seen
Is the leaves falling fast:
Falling, falling!
But close at the hearth,
Like a cricket, sit I,
Reading of summer
And chivalry--
Gallant chivalry!
Then with an old friend
I talk of our youth--
How 'twas gladsome, but often
Foolish, forsooth:
But gladsome, gladsome!
Or to get merry
We sing some old rhyme,
That made the wood ring again
In summer time--
Sweet summer time!
Then go we to smoking,
Silent and snug:
Nought passes between us,
Save a brown jug--
Sometimes!
And sometimes a tear
Will rise in each eye,
Seeing the two old friends
So merrily--
So merrily!
And ere to bed
Go we, go we,
Down on the ashes
We kneel on the knee,
Praying together!
Thus, then, live I,
Till, 'mid all the gloom,
By heaven! the bold sun
Is with me in the room.
Shining, shining!
Then the clouds part,
Swallows soaring between;
The spring is alive,
And the meadows are green!
I jump up, like mad,
Break the old pipe in twain,
And away to the meadows,
The meadows again!
I had very little hesitation, from internal evidence alone, in
identifying these verses with those which FitzGerald had written, as he
said, when a lad, or little more than a lad, and sent to the Athenaeum,
but all question has been set at rest by the discovery of a copy in a
common-place book belonging to the late Archdeacon Allen, with the
heading 'E. F. G.,' and the date 'Naseby, Spring, 1831.' This copy
differs slightly from those in the Year Book and in the Athenaeum, and in
place of the tenth stanza it has,
So winter passeth
Like a long sleep
From falling autumn
To primrose-peep.
But although at this time he appears to have written nothing more himself
he was not unmindful of what was done by others, for in May 1831 he
writes to Allen, 'I have bought A. Tennyson's poems. How good Mariana
is!' And again a year later, after a night-ride on the coach to London,
'I forgot to tell you that when I came up in the mail, and fell a dozing
in the morning, the sights of the pages in crimson and the funerals which
the Lady of Shalott saw and wove, floated before me: really, the poem has
taken lodging in my poor head.'
The correspondence will now for the most part tell its own story, and
with it all that is to be told of FitzGerald's life.
In October and November 1831 he was for three weeks in town with
Thackeray, and in the following summer was thinking of joining him at
Havre when he wrote to his friend Allen.
[SOUTHAMPTON]
_July_ 31, _Tuesday_ [1832.]
MY DEAR ALLEN,
. . . And now I will tell you of a pilgrimage I made that put me in mind
of you much. I went to Salisbury to see the Cathedral, but more to walk
to Bemerton, George Herbert's village. It is about a mile and half from
Salisbury alongside a pleasant stream with old-fashioned watermills
beside: through fields very fertile. When I got to Bemerton I scarcely
knew what to do with myself. It is a very pretty village with the Church
and Parsonage much as Herbert must have left it. But there is no
memorial of him either in or outside the walls of the church: though
there have been Bishops and Deans and I know not what all so close at
hand at Salisbury. This is a great shame indeed. I would gladly put up
a plain stone if I could get the Rector's leave. I was very sorry to see
no tablet of any kind. The people in the Cottages had heard of a very
pious man named Herbert, and had read his books--but they don't know
where he lies. I have drawn the church and village: the little woodcut
of it in Walton's Lives is very like. I thought I must have passed along
the spot in the road where he assisted the man with the fallen horse: and
to shew the benefit of good examples, I was serviceable that very evening
in the town to some people coming in a cart: for the driver was drunk and
driving furiously home from the races, and I believe would have fallen
out, but that some folks, amongst whom I was one, stopped the cart. This
long history is now at an end. I wanted John Allen much to be with me. I
noticed the little window into which Herbert's friend looked, and saw him
kneeling so long before the altar, when he was first ordained.
* * * * *
In the summer and autumn of this year FitzGerald spent some weeks at
Tenby and was a good deal with Allen to whom he wrote on his return to
London.
LONDON, _Nov_. 21, 1832.
MY DEAR ALLEN,
I suppose it must seem strange to you that I should like writing letters:
and indeed I don't know that I do like it in general. However, here I
see no companions, so I am pleased to talk to my old friend John Allen:
which indeed keeps alive my humanity very much. . . . I have been about
to divers Bookshops and have bought several books--a Bacon's Essays,
Evelyn's Sylva, Browne's Religio Medici, Hazlitt's Poets, etc. The
latter I bought to add to my Paradise, which however has stood still of
late. I mean to write out Carew's verses in this letter for you, and
your Paradise. As to the Religio, I have read it again: and keep my
opinion of it: except admiring the eloquence, and beauty of the notions,
more. But the arguments are not more convincing. Nevertheless, it is a
very fine piece of English: which is, I believe, all that you contend
for. Hazlitt's Poets is the best selection I have ever seen. I have
read some Chaucer too, which I like. In short I have been reading a good
deal since I have been here: but not much in the way of knowledge.
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