Letters of Edward FitzGerald

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Tedious again to mark the drizzling day,
Again to trace the same sad tracts of snow:
Or, lull'd by vernal airs, again survey
The selfsame hawthorn bud, and cowslips blow.

I rely on you and all your family sympathizing in this. So do I
sometimes: anyhow, people complimenting each other on the approach of
Spring and such like felicitations are very tiresome. Our very year is
of a paltry diameter. But this is not proper language for Mark Tapley,
whose greatest bore just now is having a bad pen; but the letter is
ended. So he is jolly and yours as ever.

_To S. Laurence_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_Decr_. 21/43.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

I hope you got safe and sound to London: as I did to this place
yesterday. Those good Tetter people! I have got an attachment to them
somehow. I left Jane {146b} in a turmoil as to which picture of
W[ilkinson] she was to take. I advised her to take a dose of Time, which
always operates so gently.

I have been down to Woodbridge to-day and had a long chat with
Churchyard, whom I wish you had seen, as also his Gainsborough sketches.
He is quite clear as to Gainsborough's general method, which was (he
says) to lay all in (except the sky, of course) with pure colour, quite
unmixed with white. The sketch he has is certainly so; but whether it
ever could have been wrought up into a deep finish, I don't know. C.
says yes it could: that Gainsborough began nearly all his pictures so. He
has tried it over and over again (he says) and produced exactly the same
effect with pure colour, laid on very thin over a light brown ground:
asphaltum and blue producing just such a green as many of the trees in
this sketch are of. The sky put in afterwards.

He thinks this the great secret of landscape painting. He shewed me the
passage quoted by Burnet {147} from Rubens' maxims (where and what are
they?) 'Begin by painting in your shadows lightly, taking care that _no_
white be suffered to glide into them--_it is the poison of a picture
except in the lights_. If ever your shadows are corrupted by the
introduction of this baneful colour, your tones will no longer be warm
and transparent, but heavy and leaden. It is not the same in the lights:
they may be loaded with colour as much as you think proper.'

Here is a technical letter, you see, from a man who is no artist, and
very ignorant, as you think, I dare say. Try a head in this way. You
have tried a dozen, you say. Very well then.

I will send up your cloak, which is barely bigger than a fig leaf, when I
can. On Saturday I give supper to B. Barton and Churchyard. I wish you
could be with us. We are the chief wits of Woodbridge. And one man has
said that he envies our conversations! So we flatter each other in the
country.

* * * * *

Of FitzGerald's way of life at this time I have the following notes which
were given me by the late Rev. George Crabbe, Rector of Merton, the
grandson of the poet, at whose house he died.

'FitzGerald was living at Boulge Cottage when I first knew him: a
thatched cottage of one storey just outside his Father's Park. No one
was, I think, resident at the Hall. His mother would sometimes be
there a short time, and would drive about in a coach and four black
horses. This would be in 1844, when he was 36. He used to walk by
himself, slowly, with a Skye terrier. I was rather afraid of him. He
seemed a proud and very punctilious man. I think he was at this time
going often of an evening to Bernard Barton's. He did not come to us,
except occasionally, till 1846. He seemed to me when I first saw him
much as he was when he died, only not stooping: always like a grave
middle-aged man: never seemed very happy or light-hearted, though his
conversation was most amusing sometimes. His cottage was a mile from
Bredfield. He was very fond, I think, of my Father; though they had
several coolnesses which I believe were all my Father's fault, who
took fancies that people disliked him or were bored by him. E. F. G.
had in his cottage an old woman to wait on him, Mrs. Faiers; a very
old-fashioned Suffolk woman. He was just as careful not to make her
do anything as he was afterwards with Mrs. Howe. {149} He would never
ring the bell, if there was one, of which I am not sure. Sometimes he
would give a little dinner--my Father, Brooke, B. Barton,
Churchyard--everything most hospitable, but not comfortable.

'In 1846 and 1847 he does not seem to have come much to Bredfield.
Perhaps he was away a good deal. He was often away, visiting his
mother, or W. Browne, or in London, or at the Kerriches'. In 1848,
1849, and 1850 he was a great deal at Bredfield, generally dropping in
about seven o'clock, singing glees with us, and then joining my Father
over his cigar, and staying late and often sleeping. He very often
arranged concerted pieces for us to sing, in four parts, he being
tenor. He sang very accurately but had not a good voice.

'While E. F. G. was at Boulge, he always got up early, eat his small
breakfast, stood at his desk reading or writing all the morning, eat
his dinner of vegetables and pudding, walked with his Skye terrier,
and then often finished the day by spending the evening with us or the
Bartons. He did not visit with the neighbouring gentlefolks, as he
hated a set dinner party.'

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _February_ 24/44.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I got your letter all right. But you did not tell me where to direct to
you again; so I must send to the Poste Restante at Florence. I have also
heard from Morton, to whom I despatched a letter yesterday: and now set
about one to you. As you live in two different cities, one may write
about the same things to both. You told me of the Arno being frozen, and
even Italian noses being cold: he tells me the Spring is coming. I tell
you that we have had the mildest winter known; but as good weather, when
it does come in England, is always unseasonable, and as an old proverb
says that a green Yule makes a fat kirk-yard, so it has been with us: the
extraordinary fine season has killed heaps of people with influenza,
debilitated others for their lives long, worried everybody with colds,
etc. I have had three influenzas: but this is no wonder: for I live in a
hut with walls as thin as a sixpence: windows that don't shut: a clay
soil safe beneath my feet: a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows
over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke, and become very wise, and am
already quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you, as Basil Montagu
once said, in perfect charity, to his friends: 'You see, my dear fellows,
I like you very much, but I continue to advance, and you remain where you
are (you see), and so I shall be obliged to leave you behind me. It is
no fault of mine.' You must begin to read Seneca, whose letters I have
been reading: else, when you come back to England, you will be no
companion to a man who despises wealth, death, etc. What are pictures
but paintings--what are auctions but sales! All is vanity. Erige animum
tuum, mi Lucili, etc. I wonder whether old Seneca was indeed such a
humbug as people now say he was: he is really a fine writer. About three
hundred years ago, or less, our divines and writers called him the divine
Seneca; and old Bacon is full of him. One sees in him the upshot of all
the Greek philosophy, how it stood in Nero's time, when the Gods had worn
out a good deal. I don't think old Seneca believed he should live again.
Death is his great resource. Think of the _rocococity_ of a gentleman
studying Seneca in the middle of February 1844 in a remarkably damp
cottage.

I have heard from Alfred also, who hates his water life--[Greek text] he
calls it--but hopes to be cured in March. Poor fellow, I trust he may.
He is not in a happy plight, I doubt. I wish I lived in a pleasant
country where he might like to come and stay with me--but this is one of
the ugliest places in England--one of the dullest--it has not the merit
of being bleak on a grand scale--pollard trees over a flat clay, with
regular hedges. I saw a stanza in an old book which seemed to describe
my condition rather--

Far from thy kyn cast thee:
Wrath not thy neighbour next thee,
In a good corn country rest thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee. {152}

Funny advice, isn't it? I am glad to hear Septimus is so much improved.
I beg you will felicitate him from me: I have a tacit regard of the true
sort for him, as I think I must have for all of the Tennyson build. I
see so many little natures about that I must draw to the large, even if
their faults be on the same scale as their virtues. You and I shall I
suppose quarrel as often as we meet: but I can quarrel and never be the
worse with you. How we pulled against each other at Gravesend! You
would stay--I wouldn't--then I would--then we did. Do you remember the
face of that girl at the Bazaar, who kept talking to us and looking all
round the room for fresh customers--a way women have--that is, a way of
doing rather gracefully? Then the gentleman who sang Ivy green; a very
extraordinary accentuation, it seemed to me: but I believe you admired it
very much. Really, if these little excursions in the company of one's
friends leave such a pleasant taste behind in the memory, one should
court them oftener. And yet then perhaps the relish would grow less: it
is the infrequency that gives them room to expand. I shall never get to
Italy, that seems clear. My great travel this year will be to Carlisle.
Quid prosit ista tua longa peregrinatio, etc. Travelling, you know, is a
vanity. The _soul_ remains the same. An amorem possis fugare, an
libidinis exsiccari, an timorem mortis depellere? What then will you say
to Pollock's being married! I hear he is to be. Ad matrimonium fugis?
Miser! Scaevola noster dicere solebat, etc. Excuse my overflowing with
philosophy. I am going this evening to eat toasted cheese with that
celebrated poet Bernard Barton. And I must soon stir, and look about for
my great coat, brush myself, etc. It blows a harrico, as Theodore Hook
used to say, and will rain before I get to Woodbridge. Those poor
mistaken lilac buds there out of the window! and an old Robin, ruffled up
to his thickest, sitting mournfully under them, quite disheartened. For
you must know the mild winter is just giving way to a remarkably severe
spring. . . . I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of
evenings some of Handel's great choruses which are the bravest music
after all. I am getting to the true John Bull style of music. I delight
in Handel's Allegro and Penseroso. Do you know the fine pompous joyous
chorus of 'These pleasures, Mirth, if thou canst give, etc.'? Handel
certainly does in music what old Bacon desires in his Essay on Masques,
'Let the songs be loud and cheerful, not puling, etc.' One might think
the Water music was written from this text.

* * * * *

About this time FitzGerald was engaged in collecting information for
Carlyle on the subject of Cromwell's Lincolnshire campaign, and it is to
this he refers in the following fragment of a letter to Mrs. Charlesworth
and the letters which follow.

But as Carlyle is like to make good use of what we can find him, and
make a good English Hero of Oliver--something of a Johnsonian figure--I
hope you will try and pester these Lincoln ladies and gentlemen. I
wrote to Livesey: who once, he says, had a butler named Oliver
Cromwell. That is the nearest approach to history I make through him.

My brother John, after being expected every day this week, wrote
positively to say he could not come to day: and accordingly was seen
to drive up to the Hall two hours ago. *

Believe me, dear Mrs. Charlesworth, yours thankfully,

E. FITZGERALD.

* N.B. I am not at the Hall: but in the Cottage. Pray give my
compliments to all your party

_March_ /44.

BOULGE [1844].

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

Contributions from the fens or anywhere else will be good. We must get
out all from the Allenbys. I think I remember in Carlyle's notes that
the _hill_ in Winsby (where the farm house is) was the scene of a daring
attack of Cromwell's: but my memory is bad. Your correspondent says that
bones, spurs, and _urns_ have been found there: the latter look rather as
if the hill were of _Roman note_. I should like it to be clearly told,
_exactly where_ the relics were dug up: whether on the hill or on the
level said to extend from the hill to the west. Mrs. Allenby's first
letter says _that_ was probably the field of battle: her son says the
hill itself was. Also, _exactly what the relics were_. These two points
are the chief I can see to need thorough sifting. I sent Carlyle the
letter: he is now I dare say groaning over it. I have threatened to turn
the correspondence entirely into his hands: so Miss Charlesworth may
expect that. I go to town (I hope for a very short time) next week. John
is yet here: we all like his wife much. Farewell. Yours ever
thankfully,

E. FITZGERALD.

Poor old Mrs. Chaplin {155} is dead! I have found an old lady here to
replace her.

BOULGE, Friday [1844].

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

I am sorry for the trouble you have. But I must hope that all that is to
be got from such good authority as the Allenbys will be got, as to
Winsby. _Slash Lane_ promises very well. From the Allenbys let us be
content to reap Winsby field _only_: as it seems they once farmed it, and
let us get as good an account as possible of the look of the field, Slash
Lane, the records and traditions of the place, and what remains were dug
up, and _exactly where_; for that generally shows where the stress of the
battle was. It is best to keep people to one point: else they wander off
into generalities: as for instance what the Lady tells of War Scythes
hung up in Horncastle Church: which, cruel as Oliver was, we must refer
back to an earlier warfare than his, I doubt. Pray thank Miss
Charlesworth: and believe me yours ever,

E. FITZGERALD.

BOULGE, _March_ 5/44.

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

I have heard again from Carlyle who has sent me, a letter from Dr.
Cookson, which I am to burn or send, as I think best. Before I do so, I
should be glad to speak to Miss Charlesworth on the matter again: and as
my brother is going off on one of his comet excursions to-morrow (at
least so he purposed an hour ago) I shall go with him to Ipswich, unless
it snows, etc., and shall walk to Bramford. My humble request therefore
is nothing more than that you will be so good as to lock up Miss C. till
I have come and consulted as to what is best to be done: and how best to
address this Doctor: whom I conclude she knows.

However, I only mean that if the day is pretty fair I may hope to find
some of you at home: and Mr. Charlesworth well again.

Yours very truly,

E. FITZGERALD.

[19 CHARLOTTE STREET,
RATHBONE PLACE,]
LONDON, _April_ 11/44.

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

I last night smoked a pipe with Carlyle. He has had two large packets
from Dr. Cookson, who shows alacrity enough to do what is asked, and may
turn up something. But he has chiefly spoken of Winsby: and your
Allenbys had so well cleared all that matter up with their map, etc.,
that the Doctor was going over needless ground. I hope we may be as
successful with some other field: or rather that Cookson will anticipate
us and save us all trouble.

London is very hateful to me. I long to spread wing and fly into the
kind clean air of the country. I see nobody in the streets half so
handsome as Mr. Reynolds {157} of our parish: all clever, composed,
satirical, selfish, well dressed. Here we see what the World is. I am
sure a great City is a deadly Plague: worse than the illness so called
that came to ravage it. I tried to persuade Carlyle to leave his filthy
Chelsea, but he says his wife likes London. I get radishes to eat for
breakfast of a morning: with them comes a savour of earth that brings all
the delicious gardens of the world back into one's soul, and almost draws
tears from one's eyes.

With renewed thanks believe me ever yours,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To Bernard Barton_.

19 CHARLOTTE ST., _April_ 11/44.

DEAR BARTON,

I am still indignant at this nasty place London. Thackeray, whom I came
up to see, went off to Brighton the night after I arrived, and has not re-
appeared: but I must wait some time longer for him. Thank Miss Barton
much for the _kit_; if it is but a kit: my old woman is a great lover of
cats, and hers has just _kitted_, and a wretched little blind puling
tabby lizard of a thing was to be saved from the pail for me: but if Miss
Barton's is a _kit_, I will gladly have it: and my old lady's shall be
disposed of--not to the pail. Oh rus, quando te aspiciam? Construe
that, Mr. Barton.--I am going to send down my pictures to Boulge, if I
can secure them: they are not quite secure at present. If they vanish, I
snap my fingers at them, Magi and all--there is a world (alas!) elsewhere
beyond pictures--Oh, oh, oh, oh--

I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We ascended from his dining room
carrying pipes and tobacco up through two stories of his house, and got
into a little dressing room near the roof: there we sat down: the window
was open and looked out on nursery gardens, their almond trees in
blossom, and beyond, bare walls of houses, and over these, roofs and
chimneys, and roofs and chimneys, and here and there a steeple, and whole
London crowned with darkness gathering behind like the illimitable
resources of a dream. I tried to persuade him to leave the accursed den,
and he wished--but--but--perhaps he _didn't_ wish on the whole.

When I get back to Boulge I shall recover my quietude which is now all in
a ripple. But it is a shame to talk of such things. So Churchyard has
caught another Constable. Did he get off our Debach boy that set the
shed on fire? Ask him that. Can'st thou not minister to a mind
diseased, etc.

A cloud comes over Charlotte Street and seems as if it were sailing
softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed shower upon the lilac buds
and thirsty anemones somewhere in Essex; or, who knows?, perhaps at
Boulge. Out will run Mrs. Faiers, and with red arms and face of woe haul
in the struggling windows of the cottage, and make all tight. Beauty Bob
{159} will cast a bird's eye out at the shower, and bless the useful wet.
Mr. Loder will observe to the farmer for whom he is doing up a dozen of
Queen's Heads, that it will be of great use: and the farmer will agree
that his young barleys wanted it much. The German Ocean will dimple with
innumerable pin points, and porpoises rolling near the surface sneeze
with unusual pellets of fresh water--

Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer cloud,
Without our special wonder?

Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand in the middle of it
are all in a maze, except poor Matthews of Bedford, who fixes his eyes
upon a wooden Cross and has no misgiving whatsoever. When I was at his
chapel on Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on some
of the people to say merely this, that they believed Christ had redeemed
them: and first one got up and in sobs declared she believed it: and then
another, and then another--I was quite overset:--all poor people: how
much richer than all who fill the London Churches. Theirs is the kingdom
of Heaven!

This is a sad farrago. Farewell.

_To Mrs. Charlesworth_.

[27 _April_, 1844?]

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

Thank you over and over again for your letter. The last packet with
sketches, etc., came all safe yesterday: and Carlyle is much pleased. We
may say that Winsby Field is exhausted now. I should like however to
have some sketch of the _relics_: the shape of the stone jugs: their size
specified. The _helmet_ could be identified with the military fashion of
some reign, as represented in prints, pictures, etc. But on the whole,
the Allenbys have done capitally: and so have you: and so have I: and so
I hope will Carlyle one day. He begs seriously to thank you and the
Allenbys.

He was much distressed at Dr. Cookson's death: {161} and said how he
should feel it when he came to think of it alone. Such is the man: he
will call all the wits in London dilettanti, etc., but let a poor fellow
die, and the Scotch heart flows forth in tears.

If any one can be found to do half as much for Gainsborough (which was an
important battle) as has been done for Winsby, why, the Lincolnshire
campaign will be handsomely reported. At Grantham there is no such great
interest, it appears.

I hope to get out of London to my poor old Boulge next week. I have seen
all my friends so as to satisfy them that I am a duller country fellow
than I was, and so we shall part without heart-breaking on either side.
It is partly one's fault not to be up to the London mark: but as there is
a million of persons in the land fully up to it, one has the less call to
repent in that respect. I confess that Mr. Reynolds is a better sight to
me than old rouged Lady Morgan and all such.

I hope it will not be long before I visit you at Bramford. In the mean
while believe me with best regards to all your family, yours ever very
truly,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

19 CHARLOTTE ST., ETC.
_Saturday_.

DEAR MRS. CHARLESWORTH,

I received your last packet just as I was setting off for Suffolk. I
sent part of it to Carlyle. I enclose you what answer he makes me this
morning. If Miss Charlesworth will take the pains to read his dispatch
of Gainsboro' Fight, and can possibly rake out some information on the
doubtful points, we shall help to lay that unquiet spirit of history
which now disturbs Chelsea and its vicinity. Please to keep the paper
safe: for it must have been a nuisance to write it.

I lament your renewed misfortune: but I cannot wonder at it. These
things are not got rid of in a year. Isabella is in England with her
husband, at Hastings.

Believe me yours ever thankfully,

E. FITZGERALD.

BOULGE, _May_ 7/44.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_May_ 24/44.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I think you mean never to write to me again. But you should, for I enjoy
your letters much for years after I have got them. They tell me all I
shall know of Italy, beside many other good things. I received one
letter from you from Florence, and as you gave me no particular
direction, I wrote to you at the Poste Restante there. I am now inditing
this letter on the same venture. As my location is much more permanent,
I command you to respond to me the very day you get this, warmed into
such faint inspiration as my turnip radiance can kindle. You have seen a
turnip lantern perhaps. Well, here I continue to exist: having broken my
rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw all the old
faces--some only in passing, however--saw as few sights as possible,
leaving London two days before the Exhibition opened. This is not out of
moroseness or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could be
nothing new: and therefore the best way would [be] to come new to it
oneself after three or four years absence. I see in Punch a humorous
catalogue of supposed pictures; Prince Albert's favourite spaniel and
bootjack, the Queen's Macaw with a Muffin, etc., by Landseer, etc., in
which I recognize Thackeray's fancy. He is in full vigour play and pay
in London, writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of newspapers: and
while health lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred
since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord Bacon in the
British Museum: his nights to the usual profligacy. . . . My dear
Frederic, you must select some of your poems and publish them: we want
some bits of strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these--etc.
Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else but single lines, or else
the whole poems. When will you come to England and do it? I dare say I
should have stayed longer in London had you been there: but the wits were
too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one
finds few in London _serious_ men: I mean _serious_ even in fun: with a
true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all
individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the
humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads
have mixed us up with metropolitan civilization. I can still find the
heart of England beating healthily down here, though no one will believe
it.

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it
has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings; the same
old books over and over again, having no command of new ones: walk with
my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows,
up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and
thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to
have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the
last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such
verdure! white clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, and
acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to
see! I believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very charming book)
has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all
seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who was of the old
classical taste asked him if he did not find it difficult to place _his
brown tree_ in his pictures, 'Not at all,' said C., 'I never put one in
at all.' And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters'
landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a
picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid it down on the
sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of all this, I
have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but I
agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not
like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of
my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness
of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried at: and
perhaps the old masters chose a soberer scale of things as more within
the compass of lead paint. To paint dew with lead!

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