Letters of Edward FitzGerald

E >> Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Your Hafiz is fine: and his tavern world is a sad and just idea. I did
not send that vine leaf {205a} to A. T. but I have not forgotten it. It
sticks in my mind.

"In Time's fleeting river
The image of that little vine-leaf lay,
Immovably unquiet--and for ever
It trembles--but it cannot pass away." {205b}

I have read nothing you would care for since I saw you. It would be a
good work to give us some of the good things of Hafiz and the Persians;
of bulbuls and ghuls we have had enough.

Come and bring over Spinoza; or I must go and bring him.

_From T. Carlyle_.

CHELSEA, 8 _April_, 1846.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

I have now put the little sketch of Naseby Fight, {205c} rough and ready,
into its place in the Appendix: it really does pretty well, when it is
fairly written out; had I had time for that, it might almost have gone
into the Text,--and perhaps shall, if ever I live to see another edition.
Naseby Field will then have its due honour;--only you should actually
raise a stone over that Grave that you opened (I will give you the
_shinbone_ back and keep the _teeth_): you really should, with a simple
Inscription saying merely in business English: 'Here, as proved by strict
and not too impious examination, lie the slain of the Battle of Naseby.
Dig no farther. E. FitzGerald,--1843.' By the bye, was it 1843 or 2;
when we did those Naseby feats? tell me, for I want to mark that in the
Book. And so here is your Paper again, since at any rate you wish to
keep that. I am serious about the stone!

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.
[1846.]

MY DEAR DONNE,

I don't know which of us is most to blame for this long gulph of silence.
Probably I; who have least to do. I have been for two months to London;
where (had I thought it of any use) I should have written to try and get
you up for a few days; as I had a convenient lodging, and many beside
myself would have been glad to see you.

I came back a week ago; and on looking in at Barton's last evening he
showed me your letter with such pleasure as he is wont to receive your
letters with. And there I read all the surprising story of your moving
to old Bury. When I passed through Cambridge two months ago, Thompson
said (I think) that he had seen you; and that you had given up thoughts
of Bury. But now you are going. As you say, you will then be nearer to
us than you now are at Mattishall; especially when our Railroad shall be
completed. In my journeys to and from Bedfordshire, I shall hope to stay
a night at the good old Angel, and so have a chat with you.

I saw very little of Spedding in London; for he was out all day at State
paper offices and Museums; and I out by night at Operas, etc., with my
Mother. He is however well and immutable. A. Tennyson was in London;
for two months striving to spread his wings to Italy or Switzerland. It
has ended in his flying to the Isle of Wight till Autumn, when Moxon
promises to convoy him over; and then God knows what will become of him
and whether we shall ever see his august old body over here again. He
was in a ricketty state of body; brought on wholly by neglect, etc., but
in fair spirits; and one had the comfort of seeing the Great Man. Carlyle
goes on fretting and maddening as usual. Have you read his Cromwell? Are
you converted, or did you ever need conversion? I believe I remain
pretty much where I was. I think Milton, who is the best evidence
Cromwell has in his favour, warns him somewhat prophetically at the end
of his Second Defence against taking on him Kingship, etc., and in the
tract on the State of England in 1660 (just before it was determined to
bring back Charles the Second) he says _nothing at all_ of Cromwell, no
panegyric; but glances at the evil ambitious men in the Army have done;
and, now that all is open to choose, prays for a pure Republic! So I
herd with the flunkies and lackies, I doubt; but am yours
notwithstanding,

E. F. G.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

BEDFORD, _Septr_. 15/46.

DEAR COWELL,

Here I am at last, after making a stay at Lowestoft, where I sailed in
boats, bathed, and in all ways enjoyed the sea air. I wished for you
upon a heathy promontory there, good museum for conversation on old
poets, etc. What have you been reading, and what tastes of rare Authors
have you to send me? I have read (as usual with me) but very little,
what with looking at the sea with its crossing and recrossing ships, and
dawdling with my nieces of an evening. Besides a book is to me what
Locke says that watching the hour hand of a clock is to all; other
thoughts (and those of the idlest and seemingly most irrelevant) will
intrude between my vision and the written words: and then I have to read
over again; often again and again till all is crossed and muddled. If
Life were to be very much longer than is the usual lot of men, one would
try very hard to reform this lax habit, and clear away such a system of
gossamer association: even as it is, I try to turn all wandering fancy
out of doors, and listen attentively to Whately's Logic, and old Spinoza
still! I find some of Spinoza's Letters very good, and so far useful as
that they try to clear up some of his abstrusities at the earnest request
of friends as dull as myself. I think I perceive as well as ever how the
quality of his mind forbids much salutary instinct which widens the
system of things to more ordinary men, and yet helps to keep them from
wandering in it. I am now reading his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
which is very delightful to me because of its clearness and acuteness. It
is fine what he says of Christ--'_nempe_,' that God revealed himself in
bits to other prophets, but he was the mind of Christ. I suppose not new
in thought or expression.

Let me hear from you, whether you have bits of revelations from old poets
to send, or not. If I had the Mostellaria here, I would read it; or a
Rabelais, I would do as Morgan Rattler advised you.

_To Bernard Barton_.

[CAMBRIDGE, _Oct_. 18, 1846.]

MY DEAR BARTON,

Though my letter bears such frontispiece as the above, {209} I am no
longer in Bedford, but come to Cambridge. And here I sit in the same
rooms {210a} in which I sat as a smooth-chinned Freshman twenty years
ago. The same prints hang on the walls: my old hostess {210b} does not
look older than she did then. My present purpose is to be about a week
here: then to go for a day or two to Bury, to see Donne; and then to move
homewards. It is now getting very cold, and the time for wandering is
over.

Why do you not send me your new Poem? Or is it too big to send as a
letter? Or shall I buy it? which I shall be glad to do. . . .

All the preceding was written four days ago: cut short by the sudden
entrance of Moore, whom I have been lionizing ever since. He goes away
to London to-day. . . .

Moore is delighted with a Titian and Giorgione at the Fitzwilliam. I
have just left him to feed upon them at his ease there, while I indite a
letter to you.

_To W. B. Donne_.

[31 _Oct_. 1846.]

MY DEAR DONNE,

. . . I only got home to-day: and found one letter on my table from
Ireland. I did not notice it had a black edge and seal: saw it was from
Edgeworthstown: written in the hand of Edgeworth's wife, who often wrote
down from his dictation since his eyes became bad. But she tells me that
he is dead after twelve days illness! I do not yet feel half so sorry as
I shall feel: I shall constantly miss him. {211a}

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[End of 1846.]

DEAR COWELL,

The weather is so ungenial, and likely to be so, that I put off my
journey to Ipswich till next week. I do not dislike the weather for my
part: but one is best at home in such: and as I am to stay two days with
the Hockleys, I would fain have tolerably fair days, and fair ways, for
it: that one may get about and so on. One does not mind being cooped up
in one's own room all day. I think of going on Monday. Shall you be at
home next week?

I have read Longus and like him much. Is it the light easy Greek that
pleases one? Or is it the story, the scenery, etc.? Would the book
please one if written in English as good as the Greek?

The lines from Nonnus are very beautiful. It is always a pleasure to me
to get from you such stray leaves from gardens I shall never enter.

I have been doing some of the dialogue, {211b} which seems the easiest
thing in the world to do but is not. It is not easy to keep to good
dialectic, and yet keep up the disjected sway of natural conversation. I
talk, you see, as if I were to do some good thing: but I don't mean that.
But any such trials of one's own show one the art of such dialogues as
Plato's, where the process is so logical and conversational at once: and
the result so plain, and seemingly so easy. They remain the miracles of
that Art to this day: and will do for many a day: for I don't believe
they will ever be surpassed; certainly not by Landor.

Yours ever,

E. F. G.

[Postmark WOODBRIDGE, _Jan_. 13, 1847.]

DEAR COWELL,

I am always delighted to see you whenever you can come, and Friday will
do perfectly well for me. But do not feel bound to come if it snow, etc.
In other respects I have small compunction, for I think it must do you
good to go out, even to such a desert as this.

I have not got Phidippus into any presentible shape: and indeed have not
meddled with him lately: as the spirit of light dialogue evaporated from
me under an influenza, and I have not courted it back yet. Luckily I and
the world can very well afford to wait for its return. I began
Thucydides two days ago! and read (after your example) a very little
every day, _i.e._ have done so for two days. Your Sanscrit sentences are
very fine. It is good for you to go on with that. We hear Mr. Nottidge
{213} is dying: who can be sorry for him!

Yours,

E. F. G.

* * * * *

Early in 1847 Carlyle received a communication from an unknown
correspondent, who professed to have in his possession a number of
letters written by Cromwell and other documents, which if genuine were
certainly of importance. As I published in the Historical Review for
April 1886 all the evidence which exists on the subject, I shall not
further dwell upon it here, except to say that I am not in the least
convinced by the arguments which have been put forward that the thirty-
five letters of Cromwell which Carlyle printed in Fraser's Magazine for
1847 were forged by his imperfectly educated correspondent William
Squire. Squire was living at Yarmouth at this time, and as FitzGerald
was frequently in his neighbourhood Carlyle asked him to endeavour to see
him and examine the papers which he professed to have. In reply to
Carlyle's letter he wrote as follows in February 1847.

DEAR CARLYLE,

When I go into Norfolk, which will be some time this Spring, I will go to
Yarmouth and see for Mr. Squire, if you like. But if he is so rusty as
you say, and as I also fancy, I doubt if he will open his treasures to
any but to you who have already set him creaking. But we shall see. Some
of his MS. extracts are curious and amusing. He writes himself something
like Antony Wood, or some such ancient book-worm. It is also curious to
hear of the old proud angry people about Peterboro', who won't show their
records.

I have not seen the lives of the Saints you spoke of in a former letter.
But when I go to London I must look out for a volume. I have begun to
read Thucydides, which I never read before, and which does very well to
hammer at for an hour in a day: though I can't say I care much for the
Greeks and their peddling quarrels; one must go to Rome for wars.

Don't you think Thackeray's Mrs. Perkins's Ball very good? I think the
empty faces of the dance room were never better done. It seems to me
wonderful that people can endure to look on such things: but I am forty,
and got out of the habit now, and certainly shall not try to get it back
ever again.

I am glad you and Mrs. Carlyle happen to be in a milder part of England
during this changeable and cold season. Yet, for my own sake, I shall be
sorry to see the winter go: with its decided and reasonable balance of
daylight and candlelight. I don't know when I shall go to London,
perhaps in April. Please to remember me to Mrs. Carlyle.

_To S. Laurence_.

GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES.

[_June_ 20, 1847.]

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

I have had another letter from the Bartons asking about your advent. In
fact Barton's daughter is anxious for her Father's to be done, and done
this year. He is now sixty-three; and it won't do, you know, for grand-
climacterical people to procrastinate--nay, to _proannuate_--which is a
new, and, for all I see, a very bad word. But, be this as it may, do you
come down to Woodbridge this summer if you can; and that you can, I doubt
not; since it is no great things out of your way to or from Norwich.

The means to get to Ipswich are--A steamboat will bring you for five
shillings (a very pretty sail) from the Custom House to Ipswich, the
Orwell steamer; going twice a week, and heard of directly in the fishy
latitudes of London Bridge. Or, a railroad brings you for the same sum;
if you will travel third class, which I sometimes do in fine weather. I
should recommend _that_; the time being so short, so certain: and no
eating and drinking by the way, as must be in a steamer. At Ipswich, I
pick you up with the washerwoman's pony and take you to Woodbridge. There
Barton sits with the tea already laid out; and Miss about to manage the
urn; plain, agreeable people. At Woodbridge too is my little friend
Churchyard, with whom we shall sup off toasted cheese and porter. Then,
last and not least, the sweet retirement of Boulge: where the Graces and
Muses, etc.

I write thus much because my friends seem anxious; my friend, I mean,
Miss Barton: for Barton pretends he dreads having his portrait done;
which is 'my eye.' So come and do it. He is a generous, worthy, simple-
hearted, fellow: worth ten thousand better wits. Then you shall see all
the faded tapestry of country town life: London jokes worn threadbare;
third rate accomplishments infinitely prized; scandal removed from Dukes
and Duchesses to the Parson, the Banker, the Commissioner of Excise, and
the Attorney.

Let me hear from you soon that you are coming. I shall return to Boulge
the end of this week.

P.S. Come if you can the latter part of the week; when the Quaker is
most at leisure. There is a daily coach from Woodbridge to Norwich.

_To T. Carlyle_.

BOULGE. _June_ 29/47.

DEAR CARLYLE,

Last week I went over to Yarmouth and saw Squire. I was prepared, and I
think you were, to find a quaint old gentleman of the last century. Alas
for guesses at History! I found a wholesome, well-grown, florid, clear-
eyed, open-browed, man of about my own age! There was no difficulty at
all in coming to the subject at once, and tackling it. Squire is, I
think, a straight-forward, choleric, ingenuous fellow--a little
mad--cracks away at his family affairs. 'One brother is a rascal--another
a spend-thrift--his father was of an amazing size--a prodigious eater,
etc.--the family all gone to _smithers_,' etc. I liked Squire well: and
told him he must go to you; I am sure you will like him better than the
London penny-a-liners. He is rather a study: and besides he can tell you
bits of his Ancestor's journal; which will indeed make you tear your hair
for what is burned--Between two and three hundred folio pages of MSS. by
a fellow who served under Oliver; been sent on secret service by him;
dreaded him: but could not help serving him--Squire told me a few
circumstances which he had picked up in running over the Journal before
he burnt it; and which you ought to hear from himself before long.
Dreadful stories of Oliver's severity; soldiers cut down by sabre on
parade for 'violence to women'--a son shot on the spot just before his
Father's house for having tampered with Royalists--no quarter to
spies--noses and ears of Royalists slit in retaliation of a like injury
done to Roundheads;--many deeds which that ancient Squire witnessed, or
knew for certain, and which he and his successor thought severe and
_cruel_:--but I could make out nothing unjust--I am very sure _you_ would
not. The Journalist told a story of Peterboro' Cathedral like yours in
your book about Ely:--Oliver marching in as the bells were ringing to
service: bundling out canons, prebendaries, choristers, with the flat of
the sword; and then standing up to preach himself in his armour! A grand
picture. Afterwards they broke the painted windows which I should count
injudicious;--but that I sometimes feel a desire that some boys would go
and do likewise to the Pusey _votive_ windows; if you know that branch of
art.

Ancestor Squire got angry with Oliver toward the end of the Journal; on
some such account as this--Cromwell had promised him a sum of money; but
the ancestor got taken prisoner by pirate or privateer before he went to
claim the money; had to be redeemed by Oliver; and the redemption money
was subtracted from the whole sum promised by Oliver when payment-time
came. This proceeding seemed to both Squires, living and dead, shabby;
but one not belonging to the family may be permitted to think it all
fair.

On the whole, I suspect you would have used Ancestor Squire as you have
used many others who have helped you to materials of his kind; like a
sucked orange: you would have tossed him into the dirt carelessly, I
doubt; and then what would Squire minor have said? Yet he himself did
not like all his Ancestor had done; the _secret_ service, which our
Squire called '_spy-age_'; going to Holland with messages and despatches
which he was to deliver to some one who was to meet him on the quay, and
show him a gold ring; the man with the gold ring supposed to be the
Stadtholder! I tried to persuade our friend there was no great shame in
being an agent of this sort; but he said with a light rap on the table
that _he_ wouldn't do such a thing.

I have now told you something of what remains in my head after our
conference; but you must see the man. What gave us the idea of his being
old was his old-fashioned notions; he and his family have lived in
Peterboro' and such retired places these three hundred years; and amazing
as it may seem to us that any people should be ashamed that their
ancestors fought for Low Church, yet two hundred years are but as a day
in a Cathedral Close. Nothing gives one more the idea of the Sleeping
Palace than that. Esto perpetua! I mean, as long as I live at least.
When I expressed wonder to Squire that his wife's friends, or his
Peterboro' friends, should be so solicitous about the world's ever
knowing that their ancestors had received letters from Cromwell, he very
earnestly assured me that he knew some cases in which persons'
advancement in public life had been suddenly stopt by the Queen or her
ministers, when it got wind that they were related in any way to
Cromwell! I thought this a piece of dotage, as I do now; but I have
heard elsewhere of some one not being allowed to take the name of
Cromwell; I mean not very many years back; but more likely under a George
than under a Victoria.

I think Squire must be a little crazy on this score; that is, the old
dotage of a Cathedral town superstition worked up into activity by a
choleric disposition. He seems, as I told you, of the sanguine
temperament; and he mentioned a long illness during which he was not
allowed to read a book, etc., which looks like some touch of the head.
Perhaps brain fever. Perhaps no such thing, but all my fancy. He was
very civil; ordered in a bottle of Sherry and biscuits: asked me to dine,
which I could not do. And so ends my long story. But you must see him.

Yours,

E. F. G.

He spoke of a portrait of Oliver that had been in his family since
Oliver's time--till sold for a few shillings to some one in Norwich by
some rascal relation. The portrait unlike all he has seen in painting or
engraving: very pale, very thoughtful, very commanding, he says. If he
ever recovers it, he will present you with it; he says if it should cost
him 10 pounds--for he admires you. {220}

_To Bernard Barton_.

EXETER, _August_ 16/47.

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . Here I am at Exeter: a place I never was in before. It is a fine
country round about; and last evening I saw landscape that would have
made Churchyard crazy. The Cathedral is not worth seeing to an ordinary
observer, though I dare say Archaeologists find it has its own private
merits. . . .

Tell Churchyard we were wrong about Poussin's Orion. I found this out on
my second visit to it. What disappointed me, and perhaps him, at first
sight, was a certain stiffness in Orion's own figure; I expected to see
him stalk through the landscape forcibly, as a giant usually does; but I
forgot at the moment that Orion was _blind_, and must walk as a blind
man. Therefore this stiffness in his figure was just the right thing. I
think however the picture is faulty in one respect, that the atmosphere
of the landscape is not that of _dawn_; which it should be most visibly,
since Morning is so principal an actor in the drama. All this seems to
be more addressed to Churchyard, who has seen the picture, than to you
who have not.

I saw also in London panoramas of Athens and the Himalaya mountains. In
the latter, you see the Ganges glittering a hundred and fifty miles off;
and far away the snowy peak of the mountain it rises from; that mountain
25,000 feet high. What's the use of coming to Exeter, when you can see
all this for a shilling in London? . . . And now I am going to the
Cathedral, where the Bishop has a cover to his seat sixty feet high. So
now goodbye for the present.

GLOUCESTER, _Augst_. 29/47.

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . After I wrote to you at Exeter, I went for three days to the
Devonshire coast; and then to Lusia's home in Somersetshire. I never saw
her look better or happier. De Soyres pretty well; their little girl
grown a pretty and strong child; their baby said to be very thriving.
They live in a fine, fruitful, and picturesque country: green pastures,
good arable, clothed with trees, bounded with hills that almost reach
mountain dignity, and in sight of the Bristol Channel which is there all
but Sea. I fancy the climate is moist, and I should think the trees are
too many for health: but I was there too little time to quarrel with it
on that score. After being there, I went to see a parson friend in
Dorsetshire; {222} a quaint, humorous man. Him I found in a most out-of-
the-way parish in a fine open country; not so much wooded; chalk hills.
This man used to wander about the fields at Cambridge with me when we
both wore caps and gowns, and then we proposed and discussed many
ambitious schemes and subjects. He is now a quiet, saturnine, parson
with five children, taking a pipe to soothe him when they bother him with
their noise or their misbehaviour: and I!--as the Bishop of London said,
'By the grace of God I am what I am.' In Dorsetshire I found the
churches much occupied by Puseyite Parsons; new chancels built with
altars, and painted windows that officiously displayed the Virgin Mary,
etc. The people in those parts call that party 'Pugicides,' and receive
their doctrine and doings peacefully. I am vext at these silly men who
are dishing themselves and their church as fast as they can.

_To F. Tennyson_.

[LEAMINGTON, 4 _Sept._ 1847.]

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I believe I must attribute your letter to your having skipped to Leghorn,
and so got animated by the sight of a new place. _I_ also am an
Arcadian: have been to Exeter--the coast of Devonshire--the Bristol
Channel--and to visit a Parson in Dorsetshire. He wore cap and gown when
I did at Cambridge--together did we roam the fields about Granchester,
discuss all things, thought ourselves fine fellows, and that one day we
should make a noise in the world. He is now a poor Rector in one of the
most out-of-the-way villages in England--has five children--fats and
kills his pig--smokes his pipe--loves his home and cares not ever to be
seen or heard of out of it. I was amused with his company; he much
pleased to see me: we had not met face to face for fifteen years--and now
both of us such very sedate unambitious people! Now I am verging
homeward; taking Leamington and Bedford in my way.

You persist in not giving me your clear direction at Florence. It is
only by chance that you give the name 'Villa Gondi' of the house you
describe so temptingly to me. I should much like to visit you there; but
I doubt shall never get up the steam for such an expedition. And now
know that, since the last sentence was written, I have been to
Cheltenham, and called at your Mother's; and seen her, and Matilda, and
Horatio: all well: Alfred is with the Lushingtons and is reported to be
all the better for the water-cure. Cheltenham seemed to me a woeful
place: I had never seen it before. I now write from Leamington; where I
am come to visit my Mother for a few days. . . .

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20