Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald
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London is utterly vacant to me, of all but noises from Cremorne and such
sources: there is not in Britain a better place for work than this
Garret, if one had strength or heart for fronting work to any purpose. I
try a little, but mostly with very small result.
If you know _Glyde_ of Ipswich, and can understand him to be really worth
subscribing for, pray put down your name and mine, as a bit of duty; if
not, not,--and burn his letter.
I send the heartiest thanks, and remembrances to kind Mrs. Smith, and all
the industrious Harvesters; also to Papa and the young lady at
Bredfield:--as I well may!--I recommend myself to your prayers; and hope
to come again, if I live, when you have set your own house in order.
Yours, dear F., with true regards,
T. CARLYLE.
Naseby Pillar (briefest and final form).
_Siste Viator_.
Here, and for --- yards to rearward, lies the Dust of men slain in the
Battle of Naseby, 14 June 1645. Hereabouts appears to have been the
crisis of the struggle, hereabouts the final charge of Oliver Cromwell
and his Ironsides, that day.
This {302a} Ground was opened, not irreverently or witht reluctance,
Saty 23 Septr 1842, to ascertain that fact, and render the
contemporary records legible. Peace henceforth to these old Dead.
Edwd Fitzgd (with date).
ADDISCOMBE FARM, CROYDON,
15 _Septr_, 1855.
DEAR FITZGERALD,
I have been here ever since the day you last heard of me; leading the
strangest life of absolute _Latrappism_; and often enough remembering
Farlingay and you. I live perfectly alone, and without speech at
all,--there being in fact nobody to speak to, except one austerely
punctual housemaid, who does her functions, like an eight-day clock,
generally without bidding. My wife comes out now and then to give the
requisite directions; but commonly withdraws again on the morrow, leaving
the monster to himself and his own ways. I have Books; a complete
Edition of _Voltaire_, {302b} for one Book, in which I read for _use_, or
for idleness oftenest,--getting into endless reflexions over it, mostly
of a sad and not very utterable nature. I find V. a 'gentleman,' living
in a world partly furnished with such; and that there are now almost no
'gentlemen' (not quite _none_): this is one great head of my reflexions,
to which there is no visible _tail_ or finish. I have also a Horse
(borrowed from my fat Yeoman friend, who is at sea bathing in Sussex);
and I go riding, at great lengths daily, over hill and dale: this I
believe is really the main good I am doing,--if in this either there be
much good. But it is a strange way of life to me, for the time; perhaps
not unprofitable: To let _Chaos_ say out its say, then, and one's Evil
Genius give one the very worst language he has, for a while. It is still
to last for a week or more. To day, for the first time, I ride back to
Chelsea, but mean to return hither on Monday. There is a great circle of
yellow light all the way from Shooter's Hill to Primrose Hill, spread
round my horizon every night, I see it while smoking my pipe before bed
(so bright, last night, it cast a visible shadow of me against the white
window-shutters); and this is all I have to do with London and its
_gases_ for a fortnight or more. My wife writes to me, there was an
awful jangle of bells last day she went home from this; a Quaker asked in
the railway, of some porter, 'Can thou tell me what these bells
mean?'--'Well, I suppose something is up. They say Sebastopol is took,
and the Rushans run away.'--_A la bonne heure_: but won't they come back
again, think you?
On the whole I say, when you get your little Suffolk cottage, you must
have in it a 'chamber in the wall' for me, _plus_ a pony that can trot,
and a cow that gives good milk: with these outfits we shall make a pretty
rustication now and then, not wholly _Latrappish_, but only _half_, on
much easier terms than here; and I shall be right willing to come and try
it, I for one party.--Meanwhile, I hope the Naseby matter is steadily
going ahead; sale _completed_; and even the _monument_ concern making
way. Tell me a little how that and other matters are. If you are at
home, a line is rapidly conveyed hither, steam all the way: after the
beginning of the next week, I am at Chelsea, and (I dare say) there is a
fire in the evenings now to welcome you there. Shew face in some way or
other.
And so adieu; for my hour of riding is at hand.
Yours ever truly,
T. CARLYLE.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
31 GREAT PORTLAND STREET, P. PLACE.
[1856.]
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . You never say a word about your Hafiz. Has that fallen for the
present, Austin not daring to embark in it in these days of war, when
nothing that is not warlike sells except Macaulay? Don't suppose I bandy
compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a
writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose
must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous
prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure of.
But it is done.
[_Jan_. 1856.]
MY DEAR COWELL,
I send you a sketch of Jami's Life, which cut, correct, and annotate as
you like. Where there was so little to tell I have brought in all the
fine Names and extra bits I could to give it a little sparkle. There is
very little after all; I have spread it over Paper to give you room to
note _upon_ it. Only take care not to lose either these, or Yesterday's,
Papers--for my Terror at going over the Ground!
You must put in the corrected Notice about the Sultan Hussein, both in
the Memoir and in the Note to the Poem. The latter will have room for at
least four (I think five) lines of note Type: which you must fill, and
not overflow: 'Strong without rage, etc.'
I feel guilty at taking up your Time and Thoughts: and also at Dressing
myself so in your Plumes. But I mean to say a word about this, [Greek
text], in my Preliminary Notice; and would gladly dedicate the little
Book to you by Name, with due acknowledgment, did I think the world would
take it for a Compliment to you. But though I like the Version, and you
like it, we know very well the world--even the very little world, I mean,
who will see it--may not; and might laugh at us both for any such
Compliment. They cannot laugh at your Scholarship; but they might laugh
at the use I put it to: and at my dedicating a _cobweb_ (as Carlyle
called Maud the other night) to you.
31 GT PORTLAND ST., P. PLACE.
_Jan_. 10/56.
MY DEAR COWELL,
Do make a sign of some sort to me. I sent you a string of Questions
about Salaman last week, all of which I did not want you to answer _at
once_, but wishing at least to hear if you had leisure and Inclination to
meddle with them. There is no reason in the world you should unless you
really have Time and Liking. If you _have_, I will send you the Proofs
of the Little Book which Mr. Childs is even now putting in hand. Pray
let me know as soon as you can what and how much of all this will be
agreeable to you.
You don't tell me how Hafiz gets on. There is one thing which I think I
find in Salaman which may be worth your consideration (not needing much)
in Hafiz: namely, in Translation to retain the original Persian Names as
much as possible--'Shah' for 'king' for instance--'Yusuf and Suleyman'
for 'Joseph and Solomon,' etc. The Persian is not only more musical, but
removes such words and names further from Europe and European Prejudices
and Associations. So also I think best to talk of '_A Moon_' rather than
'_a Month_,' and perhaps 'sennight' is better than 'week.'
This is a little matter; but it is well to rub off as little Oriental
Colour as possible.
As to a Notice of Jami's Life, you need not trouble yourself to draw it
up unless you like; since I can make an extract of Ouseley's, and send
you for any addition or correction you like. Very little needs be said.
I have not yet been able to find Jami out in the Biographie Universelle.
. . .
Now let me hear from you _something_--whatever you like. Yours and
Lady's, E. F. G.
You, I believe, in your Oxford Essay, translate Jami's 'Haft Aurang' as
the '_Seven Thrones_,' it also meaning, I see, the seven Stars of the
Great Bear--'The Seven Stars.' Why should not this latter be the
Translation? more intelligible, Poetical, and Eastern (as far as I see)
than 'Thrones.'
_To Mrs. Cowell_.
LONDON. Friday [_April_ 25, 1856].
MY DEAR LADY,
The Picture after all did not go down yesterday as I meant, but shall and
will go to-morrow (Saturday). Also I shall send you dear Major Moor's
'Oriental Fragments'; an almost worthless Book, I doubt, to those who did
not know him--which means, _love_ him! {307} And somehow all of us in
our corner of Suffolk knew something of him: and so again loved something
of him. For there was nothing at all about him not to be beloved. Ah! I
think how interested he would have been with all this Persian: and how we
should have disputed over parts and expressions over a glass of his
Shiraz wine (for he had some) in his snug Parlour, or in his Cornfields
when the Sun fell upon the latest Gleaners! He is dead, and you will go
where he lived, to be dead to me!
Remember to take poor Barton's little Book {308a} with you to India;
better than many a better Book to you there!
I got a glimpse of Professor Muller's Essay {308b}--full of fine things;
but I hardly gather it up into a good whole, which is very likely my
fault; from hasty perusal, ignorance, or other Incapacity. Perhaps, on
the other hand, he found the Subject too great for his Space; and so has
left it disproportioned, which the German is not inapt to do. But one
may be well thankful for such admirable fragments, perhaps left so in the
very honesty that is above rounding them into a specious Theory which
will not hold.
[1856.]
MY DEAR LADY,
. . . If you see Trench's new Book about Calderon {308c} you will see he
has dealt very handsomely with me. He does not approve the Principle I
went on; and what has he made of his own! I say this with every reason,
as you will see, to praise him for his good word. He seems to me wrong
about his 'asonantes,' which were much better _un_-assonanted as Cowell
did his Specimens. {309} With Trench the Language has to be forced to
secure the shadow of a Rhyme which is no pleasure to the Ear. So it
seems to me on a hasty Look.
* * * * *
Mr. Cowell was appointed Professor of History at the Presidency College,
Calcutta, in 1856, and went out to India by the Cape in August, greatly
to FitzGerald's regret. 'Your talk of going to India,' he wrote, 'makes
my Heart hang really heavy at my side.'
_To E. B. Cowell_.
31 GT PORTLAND ST. LONDON.
_Jan._ 22/57.
MY DEAREST COWELL,
As usual I blunder. I have been taking for granted all this while that
of course we could not write to you till you had written to us! Else how
several times I could have written! could have sent you some Lines of
Hafiz or Jami or Nizami that I thought wanted Comment of some kind: so as
the Atlantic should have been no greater Bar between us than the two
hours rail to Oxford. And now I have forgot many things, or have left
the Books scattered in divers places; or, if I had all here, 'twould be
too much to send. So I must e'en take up with what the present Hour
turns up.
It was only yesterday I heard from your Brother of a Letter from you,
telling of your safe Arrival; of the Dark Faces about you at your
Calcutta Caravanserai! Methinks how I should like to be there! Perhaps
should not, though, were the Journey only half its length! Write to me
one day. . . .
I have now been five weeks alone at my old Lodgings in London where you
came this time last year! My wife in Norfolk. She came up yesterday;
and we have taken Lodgings for two months in the Regent's Park. And I
positively stay behind here in the old Place on purpose to write to you
in the same condition you knew me in and I you! I believe there are new
Channels fretted in my Cheeks with many unmanly Tears since then,
'remembering the Days that are no more,' in which you two are so mixt up.
Well, well; I have no news to tell you. Public Matters you know I don't
meddle with; and I have seen scarce any Friends even while in London
here. Carlyle but once; Thackeray not once; Spedding and Donne pretty
often. Spedding's first volume of Bacon is out; some seven hundred
pages; and the Reviews already begin to think it over-commentaried. How
interested would you be in it! and from you I should get a good Judgment,
which perhaps I can't make for myself. I hear Tennyson goes on with King
Arthur; but I have not seen or heard from him for a long long while.
Oddly enough, as I finished the last sentence, Thackeray was announced;
he came in looking gray, grand, and good-humoured; and I held up this
Letter and told him whom it was written to and he sends his Love! He
goes Lecturing all over England; has fifty pounds for each Lecture: and
says he is ashamed of the Fortune he is making. But he deserves it.
And now for my poor Studies. I have read really very little except
Persian since you went: and yet, from want of Eyes, not very much of
that. I have gone carefully over two-thirds of Hafiz again with
Dictionary and Von Hammer: and gone on with Jami and Nizami. But my
great Performance all lies in the last five weeks since I have been alone
here; when I wrote to Napoleon Newton to ask him to lend me his MS. of
Attar's Mantic uttair; and, with the help of Garcin de Tassy {311} have
nearly made out about two-thirds of it. For it has greatly interested
me, though I confess it is always an old Story. The Germans make a Fuss
about the Sufi Doctrine; but, as far as I understand, it is not very
abstruse Pantheism, and always the same. One becomes as wearied of the
_man-i_ and _du-i_ in their Philosophy as of the _bulbul_, etc., in their
Songs. Attar's Doctrine seems to me only Jami and Jelaleddin (of whom I
have poked out a little from the MS. you bought for me), but his Mantic
has, like Salaman, the advantage of having a Story to hang all upon; and
some of his illustrative Stories are very agreeable: better than any of
the others I have seen. He has not so much Fancy or Imagination as Jami,
nor I dare say, so much depth as Jelaleddin; but his touch is lighter. I
mean to make a Poetic Abstract of the Mantic, I think: neither De Tassy
nor Von Hammer {312} gives these Stories which are by far the best part,
though there are so many childish and silly ones. Shah Mahmud figures in
the best. I am very pleased at having got on so well with this MS.
though I doubt at more cost of Eyesight than it is worth. I have
exchanged several Letters with Mr. Newton, though by various mischances
we have not yet met; he has however introduced me to Mr. Dowson of the
Asiatic, with whom, or with a certain Seyd Abdullah recommended by Allen,
I mean (I think) to read a little. No need of this had you remained
behind! Oh! how I should like to read the Mantic with you! It is very
easy in the main. But I believe I shall never see you again; I really do
believe that. And my Paper is gradually overcome as I write this: and I
must say Good Bye. Good Bye, my dear dear Friends! I dare not meddle
with Mr. and Mrs. Charlesworth. {313} Thackeray coming in overset me,
with one thing and another. Farewell. Write to me; direct--whither? For
till I see better how we get on I dare fix on no place to live or die in.
Direct to me at Crabbe's, Bredfield, till you hear further.
24 PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK.
Saturday _January_ 23 [? 24] 1857.
MY DEAR E. B. C.,
I must write you a second Letter (which will reach you, I suppose, by the
same Post as that which I posted on Thursday Jan. 22) to tell you that
not half an hour after I had posted that first Letter, arrived yours! And
now, to make the Coincidence stranger, your Brother Charles, who is now
with us for two days, tells me that very Thursday Jan. 24 (? 22) is your
Birthday! I am extremely obliged to you for your long, kind, and
interesting Letter: yes, yes: I should have liked to be on the Voyage
with you, and to be among the Dark People with you even now. Your
Brother Charles, who came up yesterday, brought us up your Home Letter,
and read it to us last night after Tea to our great Satisfaction. I
believe that in my already posted Letter I have told you much that you
enquire about in yours received half an hour after: of my poor Studies at
all events. This morning I have been taking the Physiognomy of the 19th
Birds. . . . There are, as I wrote you, very pleasant stories. One, of
a Shah returning to his Capital, and his People dressing out a Welcome
for him, and bringing out Presents of Gold, Jewels, etc., all which he
rides past without any Notice, till, coming to the Prison, the Prisoners,
by way of their Welcome, toss before him the Bloody Heads and Limbs of
old and recent Execution. At which the Shah for the first time stops his
Horse--smiles--casts Largess among the Prisoners, etc. And when asked
why he neglected all the Jewels, etc., and stopped with satisfaction at
such a grim welcome as the Prisoners threw him, he says, 'The Jewels,
etc., were but empty Ostentation--but those bloody Limbs prove that my
Law has been executed, without which none of those Heads and Carcases
would have parted Company, etc.' De Tassy notices a very agreeable Story
of Mahmud and the Lad fishing: and I find another as pleasant about
Mahmud consorting 'incog:' with a Bath-Stove-Keeper, who is so good a
Fellow that, at last, Mahmud, making himself known, tells the Poor Man to
ask what he will--a Crown, if he likes. But the poor Fellow says, 'All I
ask is that the Shah will come now and then to me as I am, and here where
I am; here, in this poor Place, which he has made illustrious with his
Presence, and a better Throne to me with Him, than the Throne of Both
Worlds without Him, etc.' You observed perhaps in De Tassy's Summary
that he notices an Eastern Form of William Tell's Apple? A Sultan doats
on a beautiful Slave, who yet is seen daily to pine away under all the
Shah's Favour, and being askt why, replies, 'Because every day the Shah,
who is a famous Marksman with the Bow, shoots at an Apple laid on my
Head, and always hits it; and when all the Court cries "Lo! the Fortune
of the King!" He also asks me why I turn pale under the Trial, he being
such a Marksman, and his Mark an Apple set on the Head he most doats
upon?' I am going to transcribe on the next Page a rough draft of a
Version of another Story, because all this will amuse you, I think. I
couldn't help running some of these Apologues into Verse as I read them:
but they are in a very rough state as yet, and so perhaps may continue,
for to correct is _the_ Bore.
When Yusuf from his Father's House was torn,
His Father's Heart was utterly forlorn;
And, like a Pipe with but one note, his Tongue
Still nothing but the name of Yusuf rung.
Then down from Heaven's Branches came the Bird
Of Heaven, and said 'God wearies of that Word.
Hast thou not else to do, and else to say?'
So Yacub's Lips were sealed from that Day.
But one Night in a Vision, far away
His Darling in some alien Home he saw,
And stretch'd his Arms forth; and between the Awe
Of God's Displeasure, and the bitter Pass
Of Love and Anguish, sigh'd forth an _Alas_!
And stopp'd--But when he woke The Angel came,
And said, 'Oh, faint of purpose! Though the Name
Of that Beloved were not uttered by
Thy Lips, it hung sequester'd in that Sigh.'
You see this is very imperfect, and I am not always quite certain of
always getting the right Sow by the Ear; but it is pretty anyhow. In
this, as in several other Stories, one sees the fierce vindictive
Character of the Eastern Divinity and Religion: a 'jealous God' indeed!
So there is another Story of a poor Hermit, who retires into the
Wilderness to be alone with God, and lives in a Tree; and there in the
Branches a little Bird has a Nest, and sings so sweetly that the poor old
Man's Heart is drawn to it in spite of Himself; till a Voice from Heaven
calls to Him--'What are you about? You have bought _Me_ with your
Prayers, etc., and I _You_ by some Largess of my Grace: and is this
Bargain to be cancelled by the Piping of a little Bird?' {316} So I
construe at least right or wrong. . . .
Monday Jan. 25 [? 26]. Like your Journal, you see, I spread my Letter
over more than a Day. On Saturday Night your Brother and I went to hear
Thackeray lecture on George III.--very agreeable to me, though I did not
think highly of the Lecture. . . . I should like to see Nizami's Shirin,
though I have not yet seen enough to care for in Nizami. Get me a MS. if
you can get a fair one; as also one of Attar's Birds; of which however
Garcin de Tassy gives hint of publishing a Text. There might be a good
Book made of about half the Text of the Original; for the Repetitions are
many, and the stories so many of them not wanted. What a nice Book too
would be the Text of some of the best Apologues in Jami, Jelaleddin,
Attar, etc., with literal Translations! . . .
I was with Borrow {317} a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yarmouth three
months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray. He read me a
long Translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not admire,
and his Taste becomes stranger than ever.
24 PORTLAND TERRACE,
REGENT'S PARK.
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . March 12. You see I leave this Letter like an unfinished Picture;
giving it a touch every now and then. Meanwhile it lies in a volume of
Sir W. Ouseley's Travels. Meanwhile also I keep putting into shape some
of that Mantic which however would never do to publish. For this reason;
that anything like a literal Translation would be, I think, unreadable;
and what I have done for amusement is not only so unliteral, but I doubt
_unoriental_, in its form and expression, as would destroy the value of
the Original without replacing it with anything worth reading of my own.
It has amused me however to reduce the Mass into something of an Artistic
Shape. There are lots of Passages which--how should I like to talk them
over with you! Shall we ever meet again? I think not; or not in such
plight, both of us, as will make Meeting what it used to be. Only to-day
I have been opening dear old Salaman: the original Copy we bought and
began this time three years ago at Oxford; with all my scratches of Query
and Explanation in it, and the Notes from you among the Leaves. How
often I think with Sorrow of my many Harshnesses and Impatiences! which
are yet more of manner than Intention. My wife is sick of hearing me
sing in a doleful voice the old Glee of 'When shall we Three Meet again?'
Especially the Stanza, 'Though in foreign Lands we sigh, Parcht beneath a
hostile Sky, etc.' How often too I think of the grand Song written by
some Scotch Lady, {318} which I sing to myself for you on Ganges Banks!
Slow spreads the Gloom my Soul desires,
The Sun from India's Shore retires:
To _Orwell's_ Bank, with temperate ray--
Home of my Youth!--he leads the Day:
Oh Banks to me for ever dear,
Oh Stream whose Murmur meets my Ear;
Oh all my Hopes of Bliss abide
Where Orwell mingles with the Tide.
The Music has come to me for these Words, little good otherwise than
expressive: but there is no use sending it to India. To India! It seems
to me it would be easy to get into the first great Ship and never see
Land again till I saw the Mouth of the Ganges! and there live what
remains of my shabby Life.
But there is no good in all such Talk. I never write to you about
Politics in which you know I little meddle. . . . March 20. Why, see
how the Time goes! And here has my Letter been lying in Sir W. Ouseley
for the last ten days, I suppose. To-day I have been writing twenty
pages of a metrical Sketch of the Mantic, for such uses as I told you of.
It is an amusement to me to take what Liberties I like with these
Persians, who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such
excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them. I don't
speak of Jelaleddin whom I know so little of (enough to show me that he
is no great Artist, however), nor of Hafiz, whose _best_ is
untranslatable because he is the best Musician of Words. Old Johnson
{319} said the Poets were the best Preservers of a Language: for People
must go to the Original to relish them. I am sure that what Tennyson
said to you is true: that Hafiz is the most Eastern--or, he should have
said, most _Persian_--of the Persians. He is the best representative of
their character, whether his Saki and Wine be real or mystical. Their
Religion and Philosophy is soon seen through, and always seems to me
_cuckooed_ over like a borrowed thing, which people, once having got,
don't know how to parade enough. To be sure, their Roses and
Nightingales are repeated enough; but Hafiz and old Omar Khayyam ring
like true Metal. The Philosophy of the Latter is, alas!, one that never
fails in the World. 'To-day is ours, etc.'
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