Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and delight in the Allegro
and Penseroso, full of pomp and fancy. What a pity Handel could not have
written music to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton would
have written, if they had known of such a musician to write for.
_To S. Laurence_.
_May_, 1844.
DEAR LAURENCE,
I hope your business is settled by this time. I have seen praise of your
picture in the Athenaeum, which quoted also the Chronicle's good opinion.
I am very glad of all this and I hope you will now set to work, and paint
away with ease and confidence, forgetting that there is such a hue as
bottle-green {166} in the universe (it was tastefully omitted from the
rainbow, you see); and, in spite of what Moore says, paint English people
in English atmospheres. Your Coningham was rather orange, wasn't he? But
he was very good, I thought. Dress your ladies in cheerful dresses, not
quite so vulgar as Chalon's. . . . I heard from my sister that you had
finished Wilkinson to the perfect content of all: I had charged her
particularly not to allow Mrs. W. to intercede for any smirk or
alteration whatever.
My Venetian pictures look very grand on my walls, which previously had
been papered with a still green (not bottled) on purpose to receive them.
On my table is a long necked bottle with three flowers just now in it . . .
a tuft of rhododendron, a tuft of scarlet geranium, and a tuft of white
gilli-flower. Do you see these in your mind's eye? I wish you could
come down here and refresh your sodden eyes with pure daylight, budding
oak trees, and all the changes of sky and cloud. To live to make sonnets
about these things, and doat upon them, is worse Cockneyism than
rejoicing in the sound of Bow Bells for ever so long: but here one has
them whether one will or no: and they are better than Lady Morgan and ---
at a rout in Harley Street. Maclise is a handsome and fine fellow, I
think: and Landseer is very good natured. I long for my old Alfred
portrait here sometimes: but you had better keep it for the present. W.
Browne and Spedding are with me, good representatives one of the Vita
Contemplativa, the other of the Vita Attiva. Spedding, if you tell him
this, will not allow that he has not the elements of Action in him: nor
has he not: nor has not the other those of contemplation: but each
inclines a different way notwithstanding. I wish you and Spedding could
come down here: though there is little to see, and to eat. When you
write you must put _Woodbridge_ after Boulge. This letter of yours went
to Bury St. Edmunds, for want of that. I hear Alfred Tennyson is in very
good looks: mind and paint him _quickly_ when he comes to town; looking
full at you.
_To Bernard Barton_.
19 CHARLOTTE ST.,
RATHBONE PLACE.
[1844.]
DEAR BARTON,
I got here but yesterday, from Bedford, where I left W. Browne in train
to be married to a rich woman. When I heard that they could not have
less than five hundred a year, I gave up all further interest in the
matter: for I could not wish a reasonable couple more. W. B. may be
spoilt if he grows rich: that is the only thing could spoil him. This
time ten years I first went to ride and fish with him about the river
Ouse--he was then 18--quick to love and quick to fight--full of
confidence, generosity, and the glorious spirit of Youth. . . . I shall
go to Church and hope he mayn't be defiled with the filthy pitch. Oh! if
we could be brought to open our eyes. I repent in ashes for reviling the
Daddy who wrote that Sonnet against damned Riches.
I heard a man preach at Bedford in a way that shook my soul. He
described the crucifixion in a way that put the scene before his
people--no fine words, and metaphors: but first one nail struck into one
hand, and then into another, and one through both feet--the cross lifted
up with God in man's image distended upon it. And the sneers of the
priests below--'Look at that fellow there--look at him--he talked of
saving others, etc.' And then the sun veiled his face in Blood, etc. I
certainly have heard oratory now--of the Lord Chatham kind, only Matthews
has more faith in Christ than Pitt in his majority. I was almost as much
taken aback as the poor folks all about me who sobbed: and I hate this
beastly London more and more. It stinks all through of churchyards and
fish shops. As to pictures--well, never mind them. Farewell!
In the chapel opposite this house preaches Robert Montgomery!
19 CHARLOTTE ST., RATHBONE PLACE.
[13 _June_ 1844.]
Oh, Barton man! but I am grilled here. Oh for to sit upon the banks of
the dear old Deben, with the worthy collier sloop going forth into the
wide world as the sun sinks! I went all over Westminster Abbey yesterday
with a party of country folks, to see the tombs. I did this to vindicate
my way of life. Then we had a smoke with Carlyle and he very gloomy
about the look of affairs, as usual. I am as tired this morning as if
I'd walked fifty miles. Morton, fresh from Italy, agrees that London is
not fit to live in. I can't write, nor can you read perhaps. So
farewell. Early next week (unless I go round by Bedford) I expect to see
good Woodbridge.
_To S. Laurence_.
BOULGE, _July_ 4/44.
DEAR LAURENCE,
I have but lately returned from Holbrook, where I saw your last portrait
of Wilkinson. It is very capital, and gives my sister and all her
neighbours great satisfaction. Jane indeed can talk of nothing else. I
will say this however, with my usual ignorance and presumption, that I
think the last day's sitting made it a little heavier than when I left it
unfinished. Was it that the final glazing was somewhat too thick? I
only mention this as a very slight defect, which I should not have
observed had I not seen its penultimate state, and were I not a
crotchetty stickler for lightness and ease. But I hope and trust you
will now do all your future sketches in oil in the same way in which this
is done: the long brush, the wholesome distance between canvas, painter,
and sitter, and the few sittings. For myself, I have always been sure of
this: but I can assert it to you with more confidence now, seeing that
every one else seems to agree with me, if I may judge by the general
approval of this specimen of the long brush. Besides, such a method must
shorten your labour, preserve the freshness of your eye and spirit, and
also ensure the similitude of the sitter to himself by the very
speediness of the operation.
Mills was very much delighted at W.'s portrait. What will you say of me
when I tell you that I did not encourage him to have his wife painted by
you, as he seemed to purpose! You will pray heaven to deliver you from
your friends. But notwithstanding this, I am sure this last portrait
will bring you sitters from this part of the country. Perhaps you will
not find it easy to forgive me this. I must tell you that Mrs. Mills,
who sets up to be no judge of pictures, but who never is wrong about
anything, instantly pitched on your portrait of Coningham as the best in
the Exhibition, without seeing who it was by: and when she referred to
the Catalogue, called out to her husband 'Why this is by E. F. G.'s
friend Mr. Laurence.'
July 18. You see that all up to this was written a fortnight ago. I did
not finish, for I did not know where to direct. And now I shall finish
this portrait of my mind, you see, in a different aspect perhaps to that
with which I set out. On looking over what I wrote however, I stick to
all I said about the painting: as to Mrs. Mills, whose case seems to
require some extenuation on my part, I fancied she was one of those
persons' faces you would not take to: and so not succeed in. It is
rather a pretty face, without meaning, it seems to me: and yet she has
meaning in her. Mills has already had one portrait of her, which
discontents all, and therefore it was I would not advise any painter who
did not understand the art of _Millinery_ well: for if the face does not
wholly content, there is the dress to fall back on. I fancy Chalon would
do the business.
I hear you have been doing some brother or brother in law of Mrs.
Lumsden. Mind what I have told you. I may not be a good judge of
painting, but I can judge of what people in general like. . . .
_To John Allen_.
(About July 16, 1844 J. A.)
MY DEAR GOOD ALLEN,
Let me hear from you, if even but a line, before you leave London on your
summer excursion, whithersoever that is to be. I conclude you go
somewhere; to Hampshire, or to Tenby. . . .
I have nothing to tell you of myself. Here I exist, and read scraps of
books, garden a little, and am on good terms with my neighbours. The
Times paper is stirring up our farming society to the root, and some good
will come of it, I dare say, and some ill. Do you know of any good books
on Education? not for the poor or Charity schools, but on modern
Gentlemen's grammar schools, etc. Did not Combe write a book? But he is
the driest Scotch Snuff. I beg leave to say that this letter is written
with a pen of my own making: the first I have made these twenty years. I
doubt after all it is no proof of a very intelligent pen-Creator, but
only of a lucky slit. The next effort shall decide. Farewell, my dear
Fellow. Don't forget unworthy me. We shall soon have known each other
twenty years, and soon thirty, and forty, if we live a little while.
_To Bernard Barton_.
GELDESTONE, 22 _August_ 1844.
MY DEAR BARTON,
You will think I have forgot you. I spent four pleasant days with Donne:
who looks pale and thin, and in whose face the grey is creeping up from
those once flourishing whiskers to the skull. It is doing so with me. We
are neither of us in what may be called the first dawn of boyhood. Donne
maintains his shape better than I do, but sorrow I doubt has done that:
and so we see why the house of mourning is better than the stalled ox.
For it is a grievous thing to grow poddy: the age of Chivalry is gone
then. An old proverb says that 'a full belly neither fights nor flies
well.'
I also saw Geldart at Norwich. He paints, and is deep in religious
thoughts also: he has besides the finest English good sense about him:
and altogether he is a man one goes to that one may learn from him. I
walked much about Norwich and was pleased with the old place.
Here I see my old friend Mrs. Schutz, and play with the children. Having
shown the little girl the prints of Boz's Curiosity Shop, I have made a
short abstract of Little Nelly's wanderings which interests her much,
leaving out the Swivellers, etc. For children do not understand how
merriment should intrude in a serious matter. This might make a nice
child's book, cutting out Boz's sham pathos, as well as the real fun; and
it forms a kind of Nelly-ad, {174a} or Homeric narration of the child's
wandering fortunes till she reaches at last a haven more desirable than
any in stony Ithaca.
Lusia is to be married {174b} on the 2nd, I hear; and I shall set out for
Leamington where the event takes place in the middle of next week.
Whether I shall touch in my flight at Boulge is yet uncertain: so don't
order any fireworks just at present. I hear from Mr. Crabbe he is
delighted with D'Israeli's Coningsby, which I advised him to read. Have
you read it? The children still wonder what Miss Charlesworth meant when
she said that she didn't mean what she said. I tell them it is a new way
of thinking of young England. I have exercised the children's minds
greatly on the doctrine of Puseyitical reticence (that is not the word)
but I find that children, who are great in the kingdom of Heaven, are all
for blurting out what they mean. Farewell for the present. Ever yours,
E. F. G.
If war breaks out with France, I will take up arms as a volunteer under
Major Pytches. Pytches and Westminster Abbey!
LEAMINGTON, _Sept._ 28/44.
MY DEAR BARTON,
. . . I expect to be here about a week, and I mean to give a day to
looking over the field of Edgehill, on the top of which, I have
ascertained, there is a very delightful pot-house, commanding a very
extensive view. Don't you wish to sit at ease in such a high tower, with
a pint of porter at your side, and to see beneath you the ground that was
galloped over by Rupert and Cromwell two hundred years ago, in one of the
richest districts of England, and on one of the finest days in October,
for such my day is to be?
In the meanwhile I cast regretful glances of memory back to my garden at
Boulge, which I want to see dug up and replanted. I have bought anemone
roots which in the Spring shall blow Tyrian dyes, and Irises of a newer
and more brilliant prism than Noah saw in the clouds. I have bought a
picture of my poor quarrelsome friend Moore, just to help him; for I
don't know what to do with his picture.
_To F. Tennyson_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Oct_. 10/44.
MY DEAR FREDERIC,
You will think I have wholly cut you. But I wrote half a letter to you
three months ago; and mislaid it; spent some time in looking for it,
always hoping; and then some more time despairing; and we all know how
time goes when [we] have got a thing to do which we are rather lazy about
doing. As for instance, getting up in a morning. Not that writing a
letter to you is so bad as getting up; but it is not easy for mortal man
who has heard, seen, done, and thought, nothing since he last wrote, to
fill one of these big foreign sheets full as a foreign letter ought to
be. I am now returned to my dull home here after my usual pottering
about in the midland counties of England. A little Bedfordshire--a
little Northamptonshire--a little more folding of the hands--the same
faces--the same fields--the same thoughts occurring at the same turns of
road--this is all I have to tell of; nothing at all added--but the summer
gone. My garden is covered with yellow and brown leaves; and a man is
digging up the garden beds before my window, and will plant some roots
and bulbs for next year. My parsons come and smoke with me, etc. 'The
round of life from hour to hour'--alluding doubtless to a mill-horse.
Alfred is reported to be still at Park House, where he has been
sojourning for two months, I think; but he never writes me a word.
Hydropathy has done its worst; he writes the names of his friends in
water. . . . I spent two days in London with old Morton about five weeks
ago; and pleasant days they were. The rogue bewitches me with his wit
and honest speech. He also staid some while at Park House, while Alfred
was there, and managed of course to frighten the party occasionally with
some of his sallies. He often writes to me; and very good his letters
are all of them.
When do you mean to write me another? Morton told me in his last that he
had heard from Brotherton you were gone, or going, to Naples. I dare say
this sheet of mine will never get to your hands. But if it does, let me
hear from you. Is Italy becoming stale to you? Are you going to Cairo
for fresh sensations? Thackeray went off in a steamboat about the time
the French were before Mogadore; he was to see those coasts and to visit
Jerusalem! Titmarsh at Jerusalem will certainly be an era in
Christianity. But I suppose he will soon be back now. Spedding is yet
in his highlands, I believe, considering Grouse and Bacon.
I expect to run up to London some time during the winter just to tell
over old friends' faces and get a sup of music and painting. I have
bought very few more pictures lately; and [heard] no music but
Mendelssohn's M. Night's Dream. The overture, which was published long
ago, is the best part; but there is a very noble triumphal march also.
Now I feel just in the same fix as I did in that sheet of paper whose
fate is uncertain. But if I don't put in a word more, yet this shall go,
I am determined. Only consider how it is a matter of necessity that I
should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You
who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There
is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the
most unbounded applause by Miss Rainforth,
'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble Halls,'
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 Athenaeum 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!
_To F. Tennyson_.
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}
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