Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

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E. FITZGERALD.

_To W. A. Wright_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 3/78.

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . You may infer that I have been reading--yes, and with great
Interest, however little Scholarship--your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of
Notes, etc. {238} And just as I had done my best with his Catullus, came
to hand the Love-Letters of a kindred Spirit, Keats; whose peevish
Jealousy might, two thousand years ago, have made him as bitter and
indecent against his friend Armitage Brown, as Catullus against Caesar.
But in him too Malice was not stronger than Love, any more than in
Catullus; not only of the Lesbia-Brawne, but of the Fraternal, kind.
Keats sighs after 'Poor Tom' as well as he whose 'Frater ave atque vale'
continues sighing down to these times. (I hope I don't misquote, more
Hibernorum.)

That is a fine Figure of old Caesar entertaining his Lampooner at the
Feast. And I have often thought what a pretty picture, for Millais to
do, of the Child Keats keeping guard outside his sick Mother's Chamber
with a drawn Sword. If Catullus, however, were only _Fescennining_, his
'Malice' was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else
be revenged on him--eh? But I don't understand how Suetonius, or those
he wrote for, could have forgotten, though for party purposes they may
have ignored, the nature and humour of that _Fescennine_ which is known
to Scholars two thousand years after. How very learned, and probably all
wrong, have I become, since becoming interested in this Book!

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 21 [1878].

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . The Enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of _Data_:
{239} you may care to add so much in better MS. than mine to the leaves I
sent you. Those leaves were more intended for such an Edition of the
Letters in batches, as now edited; and, as many of them are private
right, _so_ edited they must continue for some time, I suppose.

An odd coincidence happened only yesterday about them. I was looking to
Lamb's Letter to Manning of Feb. 26, 1808, where he extols Braham, the
Singer, who (he says) led his Spirit 'as the Boys follow Tom the Piper.'
I had not thought who Tom was: rather acquiesced in some idea of the
'pied Piper of Hamelin'; and, not half an hour after, chancing to take
down Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, {240a} found Tom against the
Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him. I suppose Tom survived in
'_Folk lore_' . . . till dear Lamb's time: but how he, a Cockney, knew of
it, I don't know.

I was looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the passage
you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor
can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the
negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself
with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning
is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context right; and more so to
you, I dare say. The passage is one of those bad ones, except the first
line, which he afterwards repeated, mutatis mutandis,

The leaves
That _tremble_ round a Nightingale, {240c}

and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K.
himself knew were bad: but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could
not alter.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 4, 1878.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me a Letter; which you
say is 'in your head.' You have Literary work, and a Family to enjoy
with you what spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas I
have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: all alone for months
together: taking up such Books as I please; and rather liking to write
Letters to my Friends, whom I now only communicate with by such means.
And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, care to answer me,
though I know from no want of Regard: but I know that few sensible men,
who have their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on some
special purpose; and I now rarely get more than one yearly Letter from
each. Seeing which, indeed, I now rarely trouble them for more. So pray
be at ease in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, more
than has passed between myself and my fifty years old Friends for some
years past. I have had two notes from you quite lately: one to tell me
that Squire reached you; and another that he was on his way back here. I
was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe into your hands, he
would continue there as safe as in my own. I also had your other two
Copies of Olympia: one of which I sent to Cowell, who is always too busy
to write to me, except about twice a year, in his Holydays.

I am quite content to take History as you do, that is, as the
Squire-Carlyle presents it to us; not looking the Gift Horse in the
Mouth. Also, I am sure you are quite right about the Keats' Letters. I
hope I should have revolted from the Book had anything in it detracted
from the man: but all seemed to me in his favour, and therefore I did not
feel I did wrong in having the secret of that heart opened to me. I hope
Mr. Lowell will not resent my thinking he might so far sympathize with
me. In fact, could he, could you, resist taking up, and reading, the
Letters, however doubtful their publication might have seemed to your
Conscience?

Now I enclose you a little work of mine {242} which I hope does no
irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant quite otherwise. I
often got puzzled, in reading Lamb's Letters, about some Data in his Life
to which the Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my own
behoof, and then thought that others might be glad of it also. If I set
down his Miseries, and the one Failing for which those Miseries are such
a Justification, I only set down what has been long and publickly known,
and what, except in a Noodle's eyes, must enhance the dear Fellow's
character, instead of lessening it. 'Saint Charles!' said Thackeray to
me thirty years ago, putting one of C. L.'s letters {243} to his
forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: 'If there be a Good Man,
Charles Lamb is one.'

I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner: a
thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should think) affectionate man to a few;
without Humour, I suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to
look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. de Musset, by his
Brother, who (whether well or ill) leaves out the Absinthe, which is
generally supposed to have shortened the Life of that man of Genius.
Think of Clarissa being one of his favourite Books; he could not endure
the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded me of our Tennyson (who has
some likeness, 'mutatis mutandis' of French Morals, Absinthe, etc., to
the Frenchman)--of his once saying to me of Clarissa, 'I love those
large, still, Books.'

I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two volumes of him; all I
had: but I think I see four quoted. That is pretty, his writing to his
Brother, who is dwelling (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose
ramparts, now mounted with cannon, 'I used to gather Violets.' And I
cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that crisis, 'Engage in some
long course of Study to drown Trouble in:' and he quotes Ste. Beuve
saying, one long Summer Day in the Country, 'Lisons tout Madame de
Sevigne.' You may have to advise me to some such course before long. I
will avoid speaking, or, so far as I can, thinking, of what I cannot
prevent, or alter. You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking
what comes from this old Country, more yours than mine. I have heard
that some of your People would even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some
old Church here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the Atlantic.
Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are
restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown together
in their Fields for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping
such a work on a poor little Church I remember these sixty years. Well,
you like my Letters; I think there is too much of this one; but I will
end, as I believe I began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in
answering it, or any other, from

Yours sincerely,
E. F. G.

Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering
returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 16/1878.

Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a
kind long letter from Mr. Lowell: and--and the first Nightingale, who
sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, before the
Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young
Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 17/78.

MY DEAR (SIR ---)--(LOWELL)?

Your letter reached me just after hearing this year's first Nightingale
in my Garden: both very welcome. I am very glad you did not feel bound
to answer me before; I should not write otherwise to you or to some very
old Friends who, like most sensible men as they grow older, dislike all
unnecessary writing more and more. So that I scarce remind them of
myself more than once a year now. I shall feel sure of your good Will
toward me whether you write or not; as I do of theirs.

Mr. Norton thinks, as a Gentleman should, that Keats' Letters should not
have been published. I hope I should not have bought them, had I not
gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You
know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his
Charmian, was not Fanny Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it
was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow:
indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus
gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him,
any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years:
never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good
natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught
of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if
you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This
now reminds me that I will ask his Lordship why it was not published (as
I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if
it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could
hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . .

I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in
Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a
Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and
Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious,
his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to
his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or
spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of
_ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.

I cannot understand why I have not yet taken to Hawthorne, a Man of real
Genius, and that of a kind which I thought I could relish. I will have
another Shot. His Notes of Travel seemed to me very shrewd, original,
and sincere. Charles Sumner, of so different a Genius, also appears to
me very truthful, and, I still fancy, strongly attached to the few he
might care for. I am sorry he got a wrong idea of Sir Walter from Lord
Brougham, and the Whigs, who always hated Scott. Indeed (as I well
remember) it was a point of Faith with them that Scott had not written
the Novels, till the Catastrophe discovered him: on which they changed
their Cry into a denunciation of his having written them only for money,
'Scott's weak point,' Sumner quotes from Brougham. As if Scott loved
Money for anything else than to spend it: not only on Lands and House
(which I maintain were simply those of a Scotch Gentleman) but to help
any poor Devil that applied to him. Then that old Toad Rogers must tell
Sumner that Manzoni's 'Sposi' were worth any ten of Scott's; yes, after
Scott's Diary spoke of 'I really like Rogers, etc.,' and such moderate
expressions of regard as Scott felt for him and his Breakfast of London
Wits.

Here am I running over to Chapter II. You will be surfeited, like your
Captain, if not on Turtles' Eggs. But you can eat me at intervals, you
know, or not at all. Only you will certainly read my last Great Work,
{247} which I enclose, drawn up first for my own benefit, in reading
Lamb's Letters, as now printed in batches to his several Correspondents;
and so I thought others than myself might be glad of a few Data to refer
the letters to. Pollock calls my Paper 'Cotelette d'Agneau a la minute.'

As to my little Dialogue, I can't send it: so pretty in Form, I think,
and with some such pretty parts: but then some odious smart writing,
which I had forgotten till I looked it over again before sending to you.
But I will send you the Calderon which you already like.

And, if you would send me any samples of Spanish, send me some Playbill
(of the old Drama, if now played), or some public Advertisement, or
Newspaper; this is what I should really like. As to Books, I dare say
Quaritch has pretty well ferreted them out of Spain. Give a look, if you
can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making
allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned
in the Book) Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some
respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning
with V. Hugo, and now alive in --- and Co.--(what I call The _Gurgoyle_
School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)--he detested the
modern 'feuilleton' Novel, and read Clarissa! . . . Many years before A.
de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of
Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with 'Pensez a vos promesses'
worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted 'Amphore' she
had knitted at his Bed side. When he came to die, some seventeen years
after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 1878.

Ecce iterum--Crispin! I think you will soon call me '_Les_
FitzGerald_s_' as Madame de Sevigne called her too officious friend
'_Les_ Hacqueville_s_.' However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy
of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that
Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so
you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and
indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice.
He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .

Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was
stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lushington) had
taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The
corrections are from Lushington. I do not understand why Lord H. does
not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something
from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great
Poverty. Her name is 'Fanny.' Ben might do much worse: some say he is
about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as
little as I can. 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne,' said Ste. Beuve one
day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires,
as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it
here in England ere 1879.

A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering,
where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A
long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who
looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note
of mine, 'Finished 10.30 p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.' Not on this
account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if
you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable--Cervantes--Shakespeare.
I mean that Chapter of the Colonel's return to Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn at
Kippletringan.

We are now reading 'Among the Spanish People,' by the Mr. Rose who wrote
'Untrodden Spain'; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with
some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose-
coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he
can't help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of
a Visit he pays to a _pueblo_ he calls Banos up the Sierra Morena: one
would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms
over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else 'les
Hacquevilles' will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and send--'Coals
to Newcastle.'

With Keats I shall send you an Athenaeum with a rather humorous account
of a Cockney squabble about whether Shelley called his Lark an
'_un_-bodied,' or '_em_-bodied,' Spirit. I really forget which way was
settled by MS. Shelley is now the rage in Cockayne; but he is too
unsubstantial for me.

It is now hot here: I suppose something [like] February in Andalusia. Do
you find Madrid Climate as bad as Rose and others describe it? He has
also a very pleasant [chapter] about the Lavanderas of the Manzanares.
What delightful words!

_To W. A. Wright_.

[1878.]

On looking into my dear old Montaigne, I find a passage which may have
rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Othello: it is about the
pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il
n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which
occurs in Florio, 'The courageous _minde-stirring_ harmonic of warlike
music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to
Artillery--but this is not AEsthetic.

Bacon's appropriation you know of C'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas'
(De la Vanite, I _think_).

WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 11, [1878]

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

If you do not remember the passage in Bacon's Essays {251} about 'not to
decide, etc.' I must have fancied it. I am glad you recognize the
Othello bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talking
of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at finding his
footsteps in the Books he read, just as one is in walking over the fields
he walked about Stratford and seeing the Flowers, and hearing the Birds,
he heard and saw, and told of. My Canon is, there is no plagiarism when
he who adopts has proved that he could originate what he adopts, and a
great deal more: which certainly absolves Shakespeare from any such
Charge--even 'The Cloud capt Towers, etc.' That Passage in Othello about
the Propontic and the Hellespont, was, I have read, an afterthought,
after reading some Travel: and, like so many Afterthoughts, I must think,
a Blunder: breaking the Torrent of Passion with a piece of Natural
History. One observes it particularly when acted: the actor down on his
Knees, etc. Were I to act Othello (there'd be many a Bellow

From Pit, Boxes, etc., on that occasion) {252}

I should leave out the passage. . . .

An answer from Carlyle's Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he
is well, and hardy, and reading Goethe which he never tires of: glancing
over Reviews which he calls 'Floods of Nonsense,' etc. I sent them
Groome's 'Only Darter,' which I think so good that I shall get him to let
me print it for others beside those of the Ipswich Journal: it seems to
me a beautiful Suffolk 'Idyll' (why not _Ei_dyll?) and so it seemed to
those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome
returns it to me.

_To C. E. Norton_.

_July_ 2/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You wrote me a very kind Invitation--to your own home--in America! But
it is all too late for that; more on account of habit than time of life:
I will not repeat what I feel sure I have told you before on that
subject. You will be more interested by the enclosed note: of which this
is the simple Story. Some three weeks ago I wrote my half-yearly note of
enquiry to Carlyle's Niece; he was, she said, quite well; walking by the
river before Breakfast: driving out of an Afternoon: constantly reading:
just then reading Goethe of whom he never tired: and glancing over
Magazines and Reviews which he called 'Floods of Nonsense, Cataracts of
Twaddle,' etc. I had sent him the enclosed paper, {253} written by a
Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now
reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others,
yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I
think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America, at your home,
I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the
Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: who, by what his
Niece replied, I suppose liked it too. And, by way of return, I suppose,
he sends me a Volume of Norway Kings and Knox: which I was very glad to
have, not only as a token of his Good Will, but also because Knox was, I
believe, the only one of his works I had not read. And I was obliged to
confess to him in my acknowledgment of his kindly Present, that I
relished these two children of his old Age as much as any of his more
fiery Manhood. I had previously asked if he knew anything of John
Wesley's Journal, which I was then re-perusing; as he his Goethe: yes, he
knew that Wesley too, and 'thought as I did about it' his Niece said; and
in reply to my Question if he knew anything of two 'mountains' (as
English people called hills a hundred years ago) which Wesley says were
called 'The Peas' at Dunbar {254}--why, here is his Answer: evincing the
young Blood in the old Man still.

Wesley's Journal is very well worth reading, and having; not only as an
outline of his own singular character, but of the conditions of England,
Ireland, and Scotland, in the last Century. Voila par exemple un Livre
dont Monsr Lowell pourrait faire une jolie critique, s'il en voudrait,
mais il s'occupe de plus grandes choses, du Calderon, du Cervantes. I
always wish to run on in bad French: but my friends would not care to
read it. But pray make acquaintance with this Wesley; if you cannot find
a copy in America, I will send you one from here: I believe I have given
it to half a dozen Friends. Had I any interest with Publishers, I would
get them to reprint parts of it, as of my old Crabbe, who still sticks in
my Throat.

I have taken that single little Lodging at Dunwich for the next three
months, and shall soon be under those Priory Walls again. But the poor
little 'Dunwich Rose,' brought by those monks from the North Country,
will have passed, after the hot weather we are at last having. Write
when you will, and not till then; I believe in your friendly regard,
with, or without, a Letter to assure me of it.

WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 15/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

. . . I got little more than a Fortnight at that old Dunwich; for my
Landlady took seriously ill, and finally died: and the Friend {255a} whom
I went to meet there became so seriously ill also as to be obliged to
return to London before August was over. So then I went to an ugly place
{255b} on the sea shore also, some fifteen miles off the old Priory; and
there was with some Nephews and Nieces, trying to read the Novels from a
Circulating Library with indifferent Success. And now here am I at home
once more; getting my Garden, if not my House, in order; and here I shall
be probably all Winter, except for a few days visit to that sick Friend
in London, if he desires it. . . .

We too have been having a Fortnight of delightful weather, so as one has
been able to sit abroad all the Day. And now, that Spirit which Tennyson
sung of in one of his early Poems is heard, as it were, walking and
talking to himself among the decaying flower-beds. This Season (such as
we have been enjoying)--my old Crabbe sings of it too, in a very pathetic
way to me: for it always seems to me an Image of the Decline of Life
also.

It was a Day ere yet the Autumn closed,
When Earth before her Winter's War reposed;
When from the Garden as we look'd above,
No Cloud was seen, and nothing seem'd to move;
[When the wide River was a silver Sheet,
And upon Ocean slept the unanchored fleet;] {256a}
When the wing'd Insect settled in our sight,
And waited wind to recommence its flight. {256b}

You see I cross out two lines which, fine as they are, go beyond the
Garden: but I am not sure if I place them aright. The two last lines you
will feel, I think: for I suppose some such Insect is in America too.
(You must not mind Crabbe's self-contradiction about 'nothing moving.') . . .

I have two Letters I want to send Lowell: but I do not like writing as if
to extort answers from him. You see Carlyle's Note within: I do not want
it back, thank you. Good night: for Night it is: and my Reader is
coming. We look forward to The Lammermoor, and Old Mortality before
long. I made another vain attempt on George Eliot at Lowestoft,
Middlemarch.

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