Letters of Edward FitzGerald

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The sun shines very bright, and there is a kind of bustle in these clean
streets, because there is to be a grand True Blue dinner in the town
Hall. Not that I am going: in an hour or two I shall be out in the
fields rambling alone. I read Burnet's History--ex pede Herculem. Well,
say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a country as Old
England--never were there such a Gentry as the English. They will be the
distinguishing mark and glory of England in History, as the Arts were of
Greece, and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me to any land
so beautiful, as the good sense, justice, and liberality of my good
countrymen make this. And I cling the closer to it, because I feel that
we are going down the hill, and shall perhaps live ourselves to talk of
all this independence as a thing that has been. To none of which you
assent perhaps. At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have
done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a window that
looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the
distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc. Haven't
I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of Massaniello long ago?

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE HALL,
_Sunday_, _July_ 12/40.

MY DEAR JOHN ALLEN,

I wrote a good bit of a letter to you three weeks ago: but, being non-
plussed suddenly, tore it up. Lusia says she has had a letter from Mrs.
Allen, telling how you had a troublesome and even dangerous passage to
Tenby: but that there you arrived at last. And there I suppose you are.
The _veteris vestigia flammae_, or old pleasant recollections of our
being together at that place make me begin another sheet to you. I am
almost convicted in my own mind of ingratitude for not having travelled
long ago to Pembrokeshire, to show my most kind friends of Freestone that
I remember their kindness, and that they made my stay so pleasant as to
make me wish to test their hospitality again. Nothing but my besetting
indolence (the strongest thing about me) could have prevented my doing
this. I should like much to see Mr. and Mrs. Allen again, and Carew
Castle, and walk along the old road traversed by you and me several times
between Freestone and Tenby. Does old Penelly Top stand where it did,
faintly discernible in these rainy skies? Do you sit ever upon that rock
that juts out by Tenby harbour, where you and I sat one day seven years
ago, and quoted G. Herbert? Lusia tells me also that nice Mary Allen is
to be married to your brother--Charles, I think. She is really one of
the pleasantest remembrances of womanhood I have. I suppose she sits
still in an upper room, with an old turnip of a watch (tell her I
remember this) on the table beside her as she reads wholesome books. As
I write, I remember different parts of the house and the garden, and the
fields about. Is it absolutely _that_ Mary Allen that is to become Mrs.
Charles Allen? Pray write, and let me hear of this from yourself.
Another thing also: are you to become our Rector in Sussex? This is
another of Lusia's scandals. I rather hope it is true: but not quite.
Lusia is pretty well: better, I think, than when she first came down from
London. . . . She makes herself tolerably happy down here: and wishes to
exert herself: which is the highest wish a FitzGerald can form. I go on
as usual, and in a way that needs no explanation to you: reading a
little, drawing a little, playing a little, smoking a little, etc. I
have got hold of Herodotus now: the most interesting of all Historians.
But I find the disadvantage of being so ill-grounded and bad a scholar: I
can get at the broad sense: but all the delicacies (in which so much of
the beauty and character of an author lie) escape me sadly. The more I
read, the more I feel this. But what does it all signify? Time goes on,
and we get older; and whether my idleness comprehends the distinctions of
the 1st and 2nd Aorist will not be noted much in the Book of Life, either
on this or the other side of the leaf. Here is a letter written on this
Sunday Night, July 12, 1840. And it shall go to-morrow. My kind
remembrances to Mrs. Allen: and (I beg you to transmit them) to all my
fore-known friends at Freestone. And believe me yours now as I have been
and hope to be ever affectionately,

E. FITZGERALD.

I shall be here till the end of the month.

N.B. I am growing bald.

BOULGE, _July_ 25/40.

MY DEAR FELLOW,

Many thanks for your kind long letter. It brought me back to the green
before the house at Freestone, and the old schoolroom in it. I have
always felt within myself that if ever I did go again to Freestone, I
should puzzle myself and every one else by bringing back old associations
among existing things: I should have felt awkward. The place remains
quite whole in my mind: Anne Allen's damask cheek forming part of the
colouring therein. I remember a little well somewhere in the woods about
a mile from the house: and those faint reports of explosions from towards
Milford, etc., which we used to hear when we all walked out together. You
are to thank Mary Allen for her kind wishes: and tell her she need not
doubt that I wish her all good things. I enclose you as you see a little
drawing of a Suffolk farm house close here: copied from a sketch of poor
Mr. Nursey. If you think it worth giving to Mary Allen, do: it seems,
and perhaps is, very namby-pamby to send this: but she and I used to talk
of drawings together: and this will let her know that I go on just the
same as I did eight years ago. N.B. It is not intended as a nuptial
present.

Now, you need not answer this letter: as you have done remarkably well
already. I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage
close by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer which I
tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for
me. I have also just concocted two gallons of Tar water under the
directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day
after a careful skimming: and then drunk by those who can and will. It
is to be tried first on my old woman: if she survives, I am to begin: and
it will then gradually spread into the Parish, through England, Europe,
etc., 'as the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.' Good people here
are much scandalized at Thirlwall's being made a Bishop: Isabella {73a}
brought home a report from a clergyman that Thirlwall had so bad a
character at Trinity that many would not associate with him. I do not
think however that I would have made him Bishop: I am all for good and
not great Bishops. Old Evans {73b} would have done better. I am become
an Oxford High Church Divine after Newman: whose sermons are the best
that ever were written in my judgment. Cecil I have read: and liked for
his good sense. Is the croft at Tenby still green: and does Mary Allen
take a turn on it in a riding habit as of old? And I remember a ravine
on the horn of the bay opposite the town where the sea rushes up. I mean
as you go on past the croft. I can walk there as in a dream. I see
Thackeray's book {73c} announced as about to be published, and I hear
Spedding has written a Review of Carlyle's Revolution in the Edinburgh. I
don't know a book more certain to evaporate away from posterity than
that, except it be supported by his other works. Parts may perhaps be
found two hundred years hence and translated into Erse by some inverted
Macpherson. 'These things seem strange,' says Herodotus, {73d} [Greek
text]. Herodotus makes few general assertions: so when he does make
them, they tell. I could talk more to you, but my paper is out. John
Allen, I rejoice in you.

_To Bernard Barton_.

BEDFORD, _Aug_. 31/40.

DEAR SIR,

I duly received your letter. I am just returned from staying three days
at a delightful Inn by the river Ouse, where we always go to fish. I
dare say I have told you about it before. The Inn is the cleanest, the
sweetest, the civillest, the quietest, the liveliest, and the cheapest
that ever was built or conducted. Its name, the Falcon of Bletsoe. On
one side it has a garden, then the meadows through which winds the Ouse:
on the other, the public road, with its coaches hurrying on to London,
its market people halting to drink, its farmers, horsemen, and foot
travellers. So, as one's humour is, one can have whichever phase of life
one pleases: quietude or bustle; solitude or the busy hum of men: one can
sit in the principal room with a tankard and a pipe and see both these
phases at once through the windows that open upon either. But through
all these delightful places they talk of leading railroads: a sad thing,
I am sure: quite impolitic. But Mammon is blind.

I went a week ago to see Luton, Lord Bute's place; filled with very fine
pictures, of which I have dreamt since. It is the gallery in England
that I most wish to see again: but I by no means say it is the most
valuable. A great many pictures seemed to me misnamed--especially
Correggio has to answer for some he never painted.

I am thinking of going to Naseby for a little while: after which I shall
return here: and very likely find my way back to Norfolk before long. At
all events, the middle of October will find me at Boulge, unless the
Fates are very contrary.

_To Samuel Laurence_. {75}

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE,
_Nov_. 9/40.

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . We have had much rain which has hindered the sporting part of our
company: but has not made much difference to me. One or two sunshiny
days have made me say within myself, 'how felicitously and at once would
Laurence hit off an outline in this clear atmosphere.' For this fresh
sunlight is not a mere dead medium of light, but is so much vital
champagne both to sitter and to artist. London will become worse as it
becomes bigger, which it does every hour.

I don't see much prospect of my going to Cumberland this winter: though I
should like to go snipe-shooting with that literary shot James Spedding.
Do you mean to try and go up Skiddaw? You will get out upon it from your
bedroom window: so I advise you to begin before you go down to breakfast.
There is a mountain called Dod, which has felt me upon its summit. It is
not one of the highest in that range. Remember me to Grisedale Pike; a
very well-bred mountain. If you paint--put him not only in a good light,
but to leeward of you in a strong current of air. . . .

Farewell for the present.

_To F. Tennyson_.

LONDON, _Jan_. 16, 1841.

DEAR FREDERIC,

I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent pleasure, the
purchase of a large picture by Constable, of which, if I can continue in
the mood, I will enclose you a sketch. It is very good: but how you and
Morton would abuse it! Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of
Constable's faults, and might escape some of your censures. The trees
are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which (according to Constable's
theory) the Earth scatters up with her wheels in travelling so briskly
round the sun; and there is a dash and felicity in the execution that
gives one a thrill of good digestion in one's room, and the thought of
which makes one inclined to jump over the children's heads in the
streets. But if you could see my great enormous Venetian Picture you
would be extonished. Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at
pictures in a house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right
through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, as Harlequins
do? A steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of
it ironically tempts one to outrage it: one feels it would close again
over the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened. That portrait of
Spedding, for instance, which Laurence has given me: not swords, nor
cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure,
discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at
such an altitude: no wonder his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied
that the common consciences of men cannot endure it. Thackeray and I
occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of Spedding's forehead: we
find it somehow or other in all things, just peering out of all things:
you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead
rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake of
Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The forehead is at present in
Pembrokeshire, I believe: or Glamorganshire: or Monmouthshire: it is hard
to say which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there.

[A water-colour sketch of Constable's picture.]

This you see is a sketch of my illustrious new purchase. The two animals
in the water are cows: that on the bank a dog: and that in the glade of
the wood a man or woman as you may choose. I can't say my drawing gives
you much idea of my picture, except as to the composition of it: and even
that depends on the colour and disposition of light and shade. The
effect of the light breaking under the trees is very beautiful in the
original: but this can only be given in water-colours on thick paper,
where one can scratch out the lights. One would fancy that Constable had
been looking at that fine picture of Gainsborough's in the National: the
Watering Place: which is superior, in my mind, to all the Claudes there.
But this is perhaps because I am an Englishman and not an Italian.

_To W. H. Thompson_. {79a}

[18_th_ _Feb._ 1841.]
* BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.

* Doesn't this name express heavy clay? {79b}

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I wish you would write to me ten lines to say how you are. You are, I
suppose, at Cambridge: and I am buried (with all my fine parts, what a
shame) here: so that I hear of nobody--except that Spedding and I abuse
each other about Shakespeare occasionally: a subject on which you must
know that he has lost his conscience, if ever he had any. For what did
Dr. Allen . . . say when he felt Spedding's head? Why, that all his
bumps were so tempered that there was no merit in his sobriety--then what
would have been the use of a Conscience to him? Q. E. D.

Since I saw you, I have entered into a decidedly agricultural course of
conduct: read books about composts, etc. I walk about in the fields also
where the people are at work, and the more dirt accumulates on my shoes,
the more I think I know. Is not this all funny? Gibbon might elegantly
compare my retirement from the cares and splendours of the world to that
of Diocletian. Have you read Thackeray's little book--the second Funeral
of Napoleon? If not, pray do; and buy it, and ask others to buy it: as
each copy sold puts 7.5_d._ in T.'s pocket: which is very empty just now,
I take it. I think this book is the best thing he has done. What an
account there is of the Emperor Nicholas in Kemble's last Review, {80a}
the last sentence of it (which can be by no other man in Europe but Jack
himself) has been meat and drink to me for a fortnight. The electric eel
at the Adelaide Gallery is nothing to it. Then Edgeworth fires away
about the Odes of Pindar, {80b} and Donne is very aesthetic about Mr.
Hallam's Book. {80c} What is the meaning of 'exegetical'? Till I know
that, how can I understand the Review?

Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, and such other potentates as
I knew in the days before they 'assumed the purple.' I am reading
Gibbon, and see nothing but this d---d colour before my eyes. It changes
occasionally to bright yellow, which is (is it?) the Imperial colour in
China, and also the antithesis to purple (_vide_ Coleridge and Eastlake's
Goethe)--even as the Eastern and Western Dynasties are antithetical, and
yet, by the law of extremes, potentially the same (_vide_ Coleridge,
etc.) Is this aesthetic? is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you
can assure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for,
pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place.
'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan
of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat,
beans, and clover--requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally
stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an
unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects--nor an uncommon one.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.
[21 March, 1841.]

DEAR FREDERIC TENNYSON,

I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning. You here
may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering
it. I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and
half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in. I supposed
you were alive: though I don't quite know why. De non existentibus et
non apparentibus eadem est ratio. I heard from Morton three months ago:
he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious
sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them. He wanted to
meet you: or at all events to hear of you. I wrote to him, but could
tell him nothing. I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have
gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8
Charlotte Street. . . . All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding
residing calmly in Lincoln's Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the
play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh
Review. Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their
chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their
travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln's Inn. As
to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to
London: and staying there but a short time when I do go. You, Morton,
Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only
Spedding is now to be found. Thackeray lives in Paris.

From this you may judge that I have no such sights to tell of as you
have. Neither do _mortaletti_ ever go off at Boulge: which is perhaps
not to be regretted. Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is
the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the
same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman
trundling by in their carts. As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will
not further describe Suffolk. No new books (except a perfectly insane
one of Carlyle, {82} who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become
popular), nor new pictures, no music. A game at picquet of two hours
duration closes each day. But for that I might say with Titus--perdidi
diem. Oh Lord! all this is not told you that you may admire my
philosophic quietude, etc.; pray don't think that. I should travel like
you if I had the eyes to see that you have: but, as Goethe says, the eye
can but see what it brings with it the power of seeing. If anything I
had seen in my short travels had given me any new ideas worth having I
should travel more: as it is, I see your Italian lakes and cities in the
Picturesque Annuals as well as I should in the reality. You have a more
energetic, stirring, acquisitive, and capacious soul. I mean all this
seriously, believe me: but I won't say any more about it. Morton also is
a capital traveller: I wish he would keep notes of what he sees, and
publish them one day.

I must however tell you that I am becoming a Farmer! Can you believe in
this? I hope we shall both live to laugh over it together. When do you
mean to come back? Pray do not let so long a time elapse again without
writing to me: never mind a long letter: write something to say you are
alive and where. Rome certainly is nearer England than Naples: so
perhaps you are coming back. Bring Morton back with you. I will then go
to London and we will smoke together and be as merry as sandboys. We
will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding's forehead. People talk
of a war with America. Poor dear old England! she makes a gallant shew
in her old age. If Englishmen are to travel, I am glad that such as you
are abroad--good specimens of Englishmen: with the proper fierte about
them. The greater part are poor wretches that go to see oranges growing,
and hear Bellini for eighteen-pence. I hope the English are as proud and
disagreeable as ever. What an odd thing that the Italians like such
martial demonstrations as you describe--not at all odd, probably--their
spirit begins and goes off in noise and smoke. It is like all other
grand aspirations. So ---'s Epics crepitate in Sonnets. All I ask of
you is to write no Sonnets on what you see or hear--no sonnets can sound
well after Daddy Wordsworth, ---, etc., who have now succeeded in quite
spoiling one's pleasure in Milton's--and they are heavy things. The
words 'subjective and objective' are getting into general use now, and
Donne has begun with _aesthetics_ and _exegetical_ in Kemble's review.
Kemble himself has written an article on the Emperor Nicholas which must
crush him. If you could read it, no salvos of _mortalletti_ could ever
startle you again. And now my paper is almost covered: and I must say
Good bye to you. This is Sunday March 21--a fine sunny blowing day. We
shall dine at one o'clock--an hour hence--go to Church--then walk--have
tea at six, and pass rather a dull evening, because of no picquet. You
will be sauntering in St. Peter's perhaps, or standing on the Capitol
while the sun sets. I should like to see Rome after all. Livy's lies
(as the aesthetics prove them to be) do at least animate one so far--how
far?--so far as to wish, and not to do, having perfect power to do.

Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Theory of Mortaletti!

_To W. H. Thompson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE,
_March_ 26/41.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

. . . I had a long letter from Morton the other day--he is still
luxuriating at Venice. Also a letter from Frederic Tennyson, who has
been in Sicily, etc., and is much distracted between enjoyment of those
climates and annoyance from Fleas. These two men are to be at Rome
together soon: so if any one wants to go to Rome, now is a good time. I
wish I was there. F. Tennyson says that he and a party of Englishmen
fought a cricket match with the crew of the Bellerophon on the
_Parthenopaean hills_ (query about the correctness of this--I quote from
memory), and _sacked_ the sailors by 90 runs. Is not this pleasant?--the
notion of good English blood striving in worn out Italy--I like that such
men as Frederic should be abroad: so strong, haughty and passionate. They
keep up the English character abroad. . . . Have you read poor Carlyle's
raving book about heroes? Of course you have, or I would ask you to buy
my copy. I don't like to live with it in the house. It smoulders. He
ought to be laughed at a little. But it is pleasant to retire to the
Tale of a Tub, Tristram Shandy, and Horace Walpole, after being tossed on
his canvas waves. This is blasphemy. Dibdin Pitt of the Coburg could
enact one of his heroes. . . .

_To F. Tennyson_.

IRELAND, _July_ 26, 1841.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I got your letter ten days ago in London on my way here. We have
incessant rain, which is as bad as your sciroccos; at least it damps my
energies very much. But people are accustomed to it in Ireland: and my
uncle (in whose house I am staying) is just set off with three of his
children--on horseback--cantering and laughing away in the midst of a
hopeless shower. I am afraid some of us are too indolent for such
things.

I am glad Morton has taken up painting in good earnest, and I shall
encourage him to persevere as much as I can. . . . I have begun to draw
a little--the fit comes upon one in summer with the foliage: as to
sunshine, so necessary for pictures, I have been obliged to do without
that. We have had scarce a ray for a month . . . I have read nothing,
except the Annual Register: which is not amiss in a certain state of
mind, and is not easily exhausted. A goodly row of some hundred very
thick volumes which may be found in every country town wherever one goes
forbid all danger of exhaustion. So long as there is appetite, there is
food: and of that plain substantial nature which, Johnson says, suits the
stomach of middle life. Burke, for instance, is a sufficiently poetical
politician to interest one just when one's sonneteering age is departing,
but before one has come down quite to arid fact. Do you know anything of
poor Sir Egerton Brydges?--this, in talking of sonnets--poor fellow, he
wrote them for seventy years, fully convinced of their goodness, and only
lamenting that the public were unjust and stupid enough not to admire
them also. He lived in haughty seclusion, and at the end of life wrote a
doating Autobiography. He writes good prose however, and shews himself
as he is very candidly: indeed he is proud of the display.

All this is not meant to be a lesson to you who write, everybody says,
good sonnets. Sir E. Brydges would have been the same dilettante if he
had written Epics--probably worse. I certainly don't like sonnets, as
you know: we have been spoiled for them by Daddy Wordsworth, ---, and Co.
Moxon must write them too forsooth. What do they seem fit for but to
serve as little shapes in which a man may mould very mechanically any
single thought which comes into his head, which thought is not lyrical
enough in itself to exhale in a more lyrical measure? The difficulty of
the sonnet metre in English is a good excuse for the dull didactic
thoughts which naturally incline towards it: fellows know there is no
danger of decanting their muddy stuff ever so slowly: they are neither
prose nor poetry. I have rather a wish to tie old Wordsworth's volume
about his neck and pitch him into one of the deepest holes of his dear
Duddon.

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