Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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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.
_To Bernard Barton_.
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.
_To F. Tennyson_.
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
Desert'; 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.
_To John Allen_.
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 pounds 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 soiree next Saturday;
Barton himself being about to go to that soiree, 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 Athenaeum 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. . . .
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