Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

E >> Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

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

_To E. B. Cowell_.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_Feb._ 2/75.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I hope you have read, and liked, the Paper on the old Kings of
Norway in last Fraser. I bought it because the Athenaeum told me it was
Carlyle's; others said it was an Imitation of him: but his it must be, if
for no other reason than that the Imitator, you know, always exaggerates
his Master: whereas in this Paper Carlyle is softened down from his old
Self, mellowed like old Wine. Pray read, and tell me you think so too.
It is quite delightful, whoever did it. I was on the point of writing a
Line to tell him of my own delight: but have not done so. . . .

I have failed in another attempt at Gil Blas. I believe I see its easy
Grace, humour, etc. But it is (like La Fontaine) too thin a Wine for me:
all sparkling with little adventures, but no one to care about; no
Colour, no Breadth, like my dear Don; whom I shall resort to forthwith.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

LOWESTOFT, _Sept._ 22, [1878].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

You will scarce thank me for a letter in pencil: perhaps you would thank
me less if I used the steel pen, which is my other resource. You could
very well dispense with a Letter altogether: and yet I believe it is
pleasant to get one when abroad.

I dare say I may have told you what Tennyson said of the Sistine Child,
which he then knew only by Engraving. He first thought the Expression of
his Face (as also the Attitude) almost too solemn, even for the Christ
within. But some time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he
told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as
a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe
'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you
this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are now standing on.

Which reminds me also of a remark of Beranger's not out of place. He
says God forgot to give Raffaelle to Greece, and made a 'joli cadeau' of
him to the Church of Rome.

I brought here some Volumes of Lever's 'Cornelius O'Dowd' Essays, very
much better reading than Addison, I think. Also some of Sainte Beuve's
better than either. A sentence in O'Dowd reminded me of your Distrust of
Civil Service Examinations: 'You could not find a worse Pointer than the
Poodle which would pick you out all the letters of the Alphabet.' And is
not this pretty good of the World we live in? 'You ask me if I am going
to "_The Masquerade_." I am at it: Circumspice!'

So I pick out and point to other Men's Game, this Sunday Morning, when
the Sun makes the Sea shine, and a strong head wind drives the Ships with
shortened Sail across it. Last night I was with some Sailors at the Inn:
some one came in who said there was a Schooner with five feet water in
her in the Roads: and off they went to see if anything beside water could
be got out of her. But, as you say, one mustn't be epigrammatic and
clever. Just before Grog and Pipe, the Band had played some German
Waltzes, a bit of Verdi, Rossini's 'Cujus animam,' and a capital Sailors'
Tramp-chorus from Wagner, all delightful to me, on the Pier: how much
better than all the dreary oratorios going on all the week at Norwich;
Elijah, St. Peter, St. Paul, Eli, etc. There will be an Oratorio for
every Saint and Prophet; which reminds me of my last Story. Voltaire had
an especial grudge against Habakkuk. Some one proved to him that he had
misrepresented facts in Habakkuk's history. 'C'est egal,' says V.,
'Habakkuk etait capable de tout.' Cornewall Lewis, who (like most other
Whigs) had no Humour, yet tells this: I wonder if it will reach Dresden.

_To Mrs. W. H. Thompson_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sept._ 23, [1875].

DEAR MRS. THOMPSON,

It is very good of you to write to me, so many others as, I know, you
must have to write to. I can tell you but little in return for the Story
of your Summer Travel: but what little I have to say shall be said at
once. As to Travel, I have got no further than Norfolk, and am rather
sorry I did not go further North, to the Scottish Border, at any rate.
But now it is too late. I have contented myself with my Boat on the
River here: with my Garden, Pigeons, Ducks, etc.; a great Philosopher
indeed! But (to make an end of oneself) I have not been well all the
summer; unsteady in head and feet; the Beginning of the End, I suppose;
and if the End won't be too long spinning out, one cannot complain of its
coming too soon. . . .

I had a kindly Letter from Carlyle some days ago: he was summering at
some place near Bromley in Kent, lent him by a Lady Derby; once, he says,
Lady Salisbury, which I don't understand. He had also the use of a
Phaeton and Pony; which latter he calls '_Shenstone_' from a partiality
to stopping at every Inn door. Carlyle had been a little touched in
revisiting Eltham, and remembering Frank Edgeworth who resided there
forty years ago 'with a little Spanish Wife, but no pupils.' Carlyle
would name him with a sort of sneer in the Life of Sterling; {184} could
not see that any such notice was more than needless, just after
Edgeworth's Death. This is all a little Scotch indelicacy to other
people's feelings. But now Time and his own Mortality soften him. I
have been looking over his Letters to me about Cromwell: the amazing
perseverance and accuracy of the Man, who writes so passionately! In a
letter of about 1845 or 6 he says he has burned at least six attempts at
Cromwell's Life: and finally falls back on sorting and elucidating the
Letters, as a sure Groundwork. . . .

I have this Summer made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom I
have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sevigne. I
had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of
hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs.
Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not those from
Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and now I want to go and
visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[1875.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I
had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I
thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go
without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. As yet however I cannot
screw my Courage to go up: I have no Curiosity about what is to be seen
or heard there; my Day is done. I have not been very well all this
Summer, and fancy that I begin to 'smell the Ground,' as Sailors say of
the Ship that slackens speed as the Water shallows under her. I can't
say I have much care for long Life: but still less for long Death: I mean
a lingering one.

Did you ever read Madame de Sevigne? I never did till this summer,
rather repelled by her perpetual harping on her Daughter. But it is all
genuine, and the same intense Feeling expressed in a hundred natural yet
graceful ways: and beside all this such good Sense, good Feeling, Humour,
Love of Books and Country Life, as makes her certainly the Queen of all
Letter writers.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, SUFFOLK.
(_Post Mark Dec._ 8.) _Dec._ 9/75.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Carlyle's Niece has sent me a Card from you, asking for a Copy of an
Agamemnon: taken--I must not say, translated--from AEschylus. It was not
meant for Greek Scholars, like yourself, but for those who do not know
the original, which it very much misrepresents. I think it is my friend
Mrs. Kemble who has made it a little known on your wide Continent. As
you have taken the trouble to enquire for it all across the Atlantic,
beside giving me reason before to confide in your friendly reception of
it, I post you one along with this letter. I can fancy you might find
some to be interested in it who do not know the original: more interested
than in more faithful Translations of more ability. But there I will
leave it: only begging that you will not make any trouble of
acknowledging so small a Gift.

Some eighty of Carlyle's Friends and Admirers have been presenting him
with a Gold Medal of himself, and an Address of Congratulation on his
80th Birthday. I should not have supposed that either Medal or Address
would be much to his Taste: but, as more important People than myself
joined in the Thing, I did not think it became me to demur. But I shall
not the less write him my half-yearly Letter of Good Hopes and Good
Wishes. He seems to have been well and happy in our pretty County of
Kent during the Summer.

Believe me, with Thanks for the Interest you have taken in my _Libretti_,
yours sincerely, E. FITZGERALD.

P.S. I am doing an odd thing in bethinking me of sending you two
Calderon Plays, which my friend Mrs. Kemble has spoken of also in your
Country. So you might one day hear of them: and, if you liked what came
before, wish to see them. So here they are, for better or worse; and, at
any rate, one Note of Thanks (which I doubt you will feel bound to write)
will do for both, and you can read as little as you please of either. All
these things have been done partly as an amusement in a lonely life:
partly to give some sort of idea of the originals to friends who knew
them not: and printed, because (like many others, I suppose) I can only
dress my best when seeing myself in Type, in the same way as I can scarce
read others unless in such a form. I suppose there was some Vanity in it
all: but really, if I had that strong, I might have done (considering
what little I can do) like Crabbe's Bachelor--

I might have made a Book, but that my Pride
In the not making was more gratified. {187}

Do you read more of Crabbe than we his Countrymen?

_To Miss Aitken_. {188a}

WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 9/75.

DEAR MISS AITKEN,

It is a fact that the night before last I thought I would write my half-
yearly Enquiry about your Uncle: and at Noon came your Note. I judge
from it that he is well. I think he will thrash me (as Bentley said
{188b}) even now.

I must say I scarce knew what to do when asked to join in that Birthday
Address. I did not know whether it would be agreeable to your Uncle: and
of course I could not ask him. So I asked Spedding and Pollock, and
found they were of the Party: so it did not become me to hesitate. I
hope we were not all amiss.

But as to Agamemnon the King: I shall certainly send Mr. Norton a Copy,
as he has taken the trouble to send across the Atlantic for it. But as
to Mr. Carlyle, 'c'est une autre affaire.' It was not meant for any
Greek Scholar, and only for a few not Greek, who I thought would be
interested, as they have been, in my curious Version. Among these was
Mrs. Kemble, who I suppose it is has praised it in a way that somehow
gains ground in America. But your Uncle--a few years ago he would have
been perhaps a little irritated with it; and now would not, I feel sure,
care to spend his Eyes over its sixty or seventy pages. He would even
now think--but in Pity now--how much better one might have spent one's
time (though not very much was spent) than in such Dilettanteism. So
tell him not quite to break his heart if I don't put him to the Trial:
but still believe me his, and, if you will allow me, yours sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

_Fragment of a Letter to Miss Biddell_.

_Dec._ 1875.

Thank you for the paragraph about Shelley. Somehow I don't believe the
Story, {189} in spite of Trelawney's Authority. Let them produce the
Confessor who is reported to tell the Story; otherwise one does not need
any more than such a Squall as we have late had in these Seas, and yet
more sudden, I believe, in those, to account for the Disaster.

I believe I told you that my Captain Newson and his Nephew, my trusty
Jack, went in the Snow to the Norfolk Coast, by Cromer, to find Newson's
Boy. They found him, what remained of him, in a Barn there: brought him
home through the Snow by Rail thus far: and through the Snow by Boat to
Felixstow, where he is to lie among his Brothers and Sisters, to the
Peace of his Father's Heart.

_To S. Laurence_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Dec._ 30/75.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I find rather
insufferable in practice about me. I never could read Miss Austen, nor
(later) the famous George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things,
which I don't and can't see; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. . . .
As to Thackeray's, they are terrible; I really look at them on the
shelf, and am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper
into the Springs of Common Action than these Ladies: wonderful he is, but
not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. _Jan._ 23/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

. . . I suppose you may see one of the Carlyle Medallions: and you can
judge better of the Likeness than I, who have not been to Chelsea, and
hardly out of Suffolk, these fifteen years and more. I dare say it is
like him: but his Profile is not his best phase. In two notes dictated
by him since that Business he has not adverted to it: I think he must be
a little ashamed of it, though it would not do to say so in return, I
suppose. And yet I think he might have declined the Honours of a Life of
'Heroism.' I have no doubt he would have played a Brave Man's Part if
called on; but, meanwhile, he has only sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea,
scolding all the world for not being Heroic, and not always very precise
in telling them how. He has, however, been so far heroic, as to be
always independent, whether of Wealth, Rank, and Coteries of all sorts:
nay, apt to fly in the face of some who courted him. I suppose he is
changed, or subdued, at eighty: but up to the last ten years he seemed to
me just the same as when I first knew him five and thirty years ago. What
a Fortune he might have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as
Thackeray and Dickens did; I don't mean they did it for Vanity: but to
make money: and that to spend generously. Carlyle did indeed lecture
near forty years ago before he was a Lion to be shown, and when he had
but few Readers. I heard his 'Heroes' which now seems to me one of his
best Books. He looked very handsome then, with his black hair, fine
Eyes, and a sort of crucified Expression.

I know of course (in Books) several of those you name in your Letter:
Longfellow, whom I may say I love, and so (I see) can't call him
_Mister_: and Emerson whom I admire, for I don't feel that I know the
Philosopher so well as the Poet: and Mr. Lowell's 'Among my Books' is
among mine. I also have always much liked, I think rather loved, O. W.
Holmes. I scarce know why I could never take to that man of true Genius,
Hawthorne. There is a little of my Confession of Faith about your
Countrymen, and I should say mine, if I were not more Irish than English.

[WOODBRIDGE. _Feb._ 7/76.]

MY DEAR SIR,

I will not look on the Book you have sent me as any Return for the
Booklet I sent you, but as a free and kindly Gift. I really don't know
that you could have sent me a better. I have read it with more
continuous attention and gratification than I now usually feel, and
always (as Lamb suggested) well disposed to say Grace after reading.

Seeing what Mr. Lowell has done for Dante, Rousseau, etc., one does not
wish him to be limited in his Subjects: but I do wish he would do for
English Writers what Ste. Beuve has done for French. Mr. Lowell so far
goes along with him as to give so much of each Writer's Life as may
illustrate his Writings; he has more Humour (in which alone I fancy S. B.
somewhat wanting), more extensive Reading, I suppose; and a power of
metaphorical Illustration which (if I may say so) seems to me to want
only a little reserve in its use: as was the case perhaps with Hazlitt.
But Mr. Lowell is not biassed by Hazlitt's--(by anybody's, so far as I
see)--party or personal prejudices; and altogether seems to me the man
most fitted to do this Good Work, where it has not (as with Carlyle's
Johnson) been done, for good and all, before. Of course, one only wants
the Great Men, in their kind: Chaucer, Pope (Dryden being done {193}),
and perhaps some of the 'minora sidera' clustered together, as Hazlitt
has done them. Perhaps all this will come forth in some future Series
even now gathering in Mr. Lowell's Head. However that may be, this
present Series will make me return to some whom I have not lately looked
up. Dante's face I have not seen these ten years: only his Back on my
Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell says of him recalled to me what Tennyson
said to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were stopping before
a shop in Regent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I
suppose) said, 'What is there in old Dante's Face that is missing in
Goethe's?' And Tennyson (whose Profile then had certainly a remarkable
likeness to Dante's) said: 'The Divine.' Then Milton; I don't think I've
read him these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain
Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory; but I never could
read ten lines together without stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me
at once out of Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than
either. Tennyson again used to say that the two grandest of all Similes
were those of the Ships hanging in the Air, and 'the Gunpowder one,'
which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days that are no more.
He certainly then thought Milton the sublimest of all the Gang; his
Diction modelled on Virgil, as perhaps Dante's.

Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. Lowell's good word)
shall still content myself with such delightful Quotations from him as
one lights upon here and there: the last from Mr. Lowell.

Then, old 'Daddy Wordsworth,' as he was sometimes called, I am afraid,
from my Christening, he is now, I suppose, passing under the Eclipse
consequent on the Glory which followed his obscure Rise. I remember
fifty years ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting for him by
the Few against the Many of us who only laughed at 'Louisa in the Shade,'
etc. His Brother was then Master of Trinity College; like all
Wordsworths (unless the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He used to
drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called him the 'Meeserable
Sinner' and his brother the 'Meeserable Poet.' Poor fun enough: but I
never can forgive the Lakers all who first despised, and then patronized
'Walter Scott,' as they loftily called him: and He, dear, noble, Fellow,
thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far
more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a
Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as
John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at Abbotsford, as to
Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if
Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his
Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) July 18 or 19, 1831. It is a piece
of Tragedy, even to the muttering Thunder, like the Lammermuir, which
does not look very small beside Peter Bell and Co.

My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last Sentence will lead
to another dirty little Story about my Daddy: to which you must listen or
I should feel like the Fine Lady in one of Vanbrugh's Plays, 'Oh my God,
that you won't listen to a Woman of Quality when her Heart is bursting
with Malice!' And perhaps you on the other Side of the Great Water may
be amused with a little of your old Granny's Gossip.

Well then: about 1826, or 7, Professor Airy (now our Astronomer Royal)
and his Brother William called on the Daddy at Rydal. In the course of
Conversation Daddy mentioned that sometimes when genteel Parties came to
visit him, he contrived to slip out of the room, and down the garden walk
to where 'The Party's' travelling Carriage stood. This Carriage he would
look into to see what Books they carried with them: and he observed it
was generally 'WALTER SCOTT'S.' It was Airy's Brother (a very veracious
man, and an Admirer of Wordsworth, but, to be sure, more of Sir Walter)
who told me this. It is this conceit that diminishes Wordsworth's
stature among us, in spite of the mountain Mists he lived among. Also, a
little stinginess; not like Sir Walter in that! I remember Hartley
Coleridge telling us at Ambleside how Professor Wilson and some one else
(H. C. himself perhaps) stole a Leg of Mutton from Wordsworth's Larder
for the fun of the Thing.

Here then is a long Letter of old world Gossip from the old Home. I hope
it won't tire you out: it need not, you know.

P.S. By way of something better from the old World, I post you Hazlitt's
own Copy of his English Poets, with a few of his marks for another
Edition in it. If you like to keep it, pray do: if you like better to
give it to Hazlitt's successor, Mr. Lowell, do that from yourself.

_To Mrs. Cowell_.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_April_ 8/76.

. . . If you go to Brittany you must go to my dear Sevigne's 'Rochers.'
If I had the 'Go' in me, I should get there this Summer too: as to
Abbotsford and Stratford. She has been my Companion here; quite alive in
the Room with me. I sometimes lament I did not know her before: but
perhaps such an Acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the End.

_To C. E. Norton_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_June_ 10 {196}, [1876].

MY DEAR SIR,

I don't know that I should trouble you so soon again--(only, don't
trouble yourself to answer for form's sake only)--but that there is a
good deal of Wordsworth in the late Memoir of Haydon by his Son. All
this you might like to see; as also Mr. Lowell. And do you, or he, know
of some dozen very good Letters of Wordsworth's addressed to a Mr.
Gillies who published them in what he calls the Life of a Literary
Veteran some thirty years ago, {197} I think? This Book, of scarce any
value except for those few Letters, and a few Notices of Sir Walter
Scott, all good, is now not very common, I think. If you or Mr. Lowell
would like to have a Copy, I can send you one, through Quaritch, if not
per Post: I have the Letters separately bound up from another Copy of
long ago. There is also a favorable account of a meeting between
Wordsworth and Foscolo in an otherwise rather valueless Memoir of Bewick
the Painter. I tell you of all this Wordsworth, because you have, I
think, a more religious regard for him than we on this side the water: he
is not so much honoured in his own Country, I mean, his Poetry. I, for
one, feel all his lofty aspiration, and occasional Inspiration, but I
cannot say that, on the whole, he makes much of it; his little pastoral
pieces seem to me his best: less than a Quarter of him. But I may be
wrong.

I am very much obliged to you for wishing me to see Mr. Ticknor's Life,
etc. I hope to make sure of that through our Briareus-handed Mudie; and
have marked the Book for my next Order. For I suppose that it finds its
way to English Publishers, or Librarians. I remember his Spanish
Literature coming out, and being for a long time in the hands of my
friend Professor Cowell, who taught me what I know of Spanish. Only a
week ago I began my dear Don Quixote over again; as welcome and fresh as
the Flowers of May. The Second Part is my favorite, in spite of what
Lamb and Coleridge (I think) say; when, as old Hallam says, Cervantes has
fallen in Love with the Hero whom he began by ridiculing. When this
Letter is done I shall get out into my Garden with him, Sunday though it
be.

We have also Memoirs of Godwin, very dry, I think; indeed with very
little worth reading, except two or three Letters of dear Charles Lamb,
'Saint Charles,' as Thackeray once called him, while looking at one of
his half-mad Letters, and remember[ing] his Devotion to that quite mad
Sister. I must say I think his Letters infinitely better than his
Essays; and Patmore says his Conversation, when just enough animated by
Gin and Water, was better than either: which I believe too. Procter said
he was far beyond the Coleridges, Wordsworths, Southeys, etc. And I am
afraid I believe that also.

I am afraid too this is a long letter nearly [all] about my own Likes and
Dislikes. 'The Great Twalmley's.' {198} But I began only thinking about
Wordsworth. Pray do believe that I do not wish you to write unless you
care to answer on that score. And now for the Garden and the Don: always
in a common old Spanish Edition. Their coarse prints always make him
look more of the Gentleman than the better Artists of other Countries
have hitherto done.

Carlyle, I hear, is pretty well, though somewhat shrunk: scolding away at
Darwin, The Turk, etc.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_Septr._ 10/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

When your Letter reached me a few days ago I looked up Gillies: and found
the Wordsworth Letters so good, kindly, sincere, and modest, that I
thought you and Mr. Lowell should have the Volume they are in at once. So
it travels by Post along with this Letter. The other two volumes shall
go one day in some parcel of Quaritch's if he will do me that Courtesy;
but there is, I think, little you would care for, unless a little more of
'Walter Scott's' generosity and kindness to Gillies in the midst of his
own Ruin; a stretch of Goodness that Wordsworth would not, I think, have
reached. However, these Letters of his make me think I ought to feel
more filially to my Daddy: I must dip myself again in Mr. Lowell's
excellent Account of him with a more reverent Spirit. Do you remember
the fine Picture that Haydon gives of him sitting with his grey head in
the free Benches of some London Church? {199} I wonder that more of such
Letters as these to Gillies are not preserved or produced; perhaps Mr.
Lowell will make use of them on some future occasion; some new Edition,
perhaps, of his last volume. I can assure you and him that I read that
volume with that Interest and Pleasure that made me sure I should often
return to it: as indeed I did more than once till--lent out to three
several Friends! It is now in the hands of a very civilized,
well-lettered, and agreeable Archdeacon, {200} of this District.

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