Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes
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Edward FitzGerald >> Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes
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This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see
Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor.
_To S. Laurence_.
11 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT.
_Septr._ 22/79.
MY DEAR LAURENCE,
Your letter found me here this morning: here, where I have now been near
six weeks, for a month of which Edward Cowell and his Wife were my
neighbours; and we had two or three hours of Don Quixote's company of a
morning, and only ourselves for company at night. They are gone,
however; and I might have gone to my own home also, but that some Nephews
and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that
Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk,
a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can
get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old
routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should
die at 70.
Yes: though Edwards was comparatively a Friend of late growth--he, and
his brave wife--they encountered me down in my own country here, and we
somehow suited one another; and I feel sad thinking of the pleasant days
at Dunwich, which the Tide now rolling up here will soon reach. {277} . . .
I am here re-reading Forster's Life of Dickens, which seems to me a very
good Book, though people say, I believe, there is too much Forster in it.
At any rate, there is enough to show the wonderful Daemonic Dickens: as
pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I
can love also.
_Sentence from a Letter written to Prof. Norton Feb._ 22/80.
'I cannot yet get the 2nd Part (Coloneus) to fit as I wish to the first:
finding (what I never doubted) that nothing is less true than Goethe's
saying that these two Plays and Antigone must be read in Sequence, as a
Trilogy.'
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 4, 1880.
MY DEAR NORTON,
Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part I. of OEdipus, which I found
on my return here after a week's absence. I really hope you will like
it, after taking the trouble more than once to ask for it: only
(according to my laudable rule of Give or Take in such cases) say no more
of it to me than to point out anything amendable: for which, you see, I
leave a wide margin, for my own behoof as well as my reader's. And again
I will say that I wish you would keep it wholly to yourself: and, above
all, not let a word about it cross the Atlantic. I will not send a Copy
even to Professor Goodwin, to whom you can show yours, if he should
happen to mention the subject; nor will I send one to Mrs. Kemble, the
only other whom I had thought of. In short, you, my dear Sir, are the
only Depository of this precious Document, which I would have you keep as
though it were very precious indeed.
You will see at once that it is not even a Paraphrase, but an Adaptation,
of the Original: not as more adapted to an Athenian Audience 400 years
B.C. but to a merely English Reader 1800 years A.D. Some dropt stitches
in the Story, not considered by the old Genius of those days, I have, I
think, 'taken up,' as any little Dramatist of these Days can do: though
the fundamental absurdity of the Plot (equal to Tom Jones according to
Coleridge!) remains; namely, that OEdipus, after so many years reigning
in Thebes as to have a Family about him, should apparently never have
heard of Laius' murder till the Play begins. One acceptable thing I have
done, I think, omitting very much rhetorical fuss about the poor man's
Fatality, which I leave for the Action itself to discover; as also a good
deal of that rhetorical Scolding, which, I think, becomes tiresome even
in its Greek: as the Scene between OEdipus and Creon after Tiresias: and
equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by
Scholars, I have left to old Potter to supply, as I was hopeless of
making anything of them; pasting, you see, his 'Finale' over that which I
had tried.
I believe that I must leave Part II. for the present, being rather
wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at AEtat. 71. If I live
another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will
make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.
_To Charles Keene_. {280a}
_Friday_.
MY DEAR KEENE,
. . . Beckford's Hunting is an old friend of mine: excellently written;
such a relief (like Wesley and the religious men) to the Essayist style
of the time. Do not fail to read the capital Squire's Letter in
recommendation of a Stable-man, dated from Great Addington, Northants,
1734: of which some little is omitted after Edition I.; which edition has
also a Letter from Beckford's Huntsman about a wicked 'Daufter,' wholly
omitted. This first Edition is a pretty small 4to 1781, with a
Frontispiece by Cipriani! . . .
If you come down this Spring, but not before May, I will show you some of
these things in a Book {280b} I have, which I might call 'Half Hours with
the Worst Authors,' and very fine things by them. It would be the very
best Book of the sort ever published, if published; but no one would
think so but myself, and perhaps you, and half a dozen more. If my Eyes
hold out I will copy a delightful bit by way of return for your Ballad.
_To C. E. Norton_.
_May_ 1, 1880.
MY DEAR NORTON,
I must thank you for the Crabbe Review {281} you sent me, though, had it
been your own writing, I should probably not tell you how very good I
think it. I am somewhat disappointed that Mr. Woodberry dismisses
Crabbe's 'Trials at Humour' as summarily as Mr. Leslie Stephen does; it
was mainly for the Humour's sake that I made my little work: Humour so
evident to me in so many of the Tales (and Conversations), and which I
meant to try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in
case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the
'stern Painter' softened by his Grand Climacteric, removed from the gloom
and sadness of his early associations, and looking to the Follies rather
than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a
Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were
almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression
behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all
this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and
perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that
Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having
Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the
phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to
suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue
could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that
other Autumnal one in 'Delay has Danger,' beginning--
Early he rose, and look'd with many a sigh,
On the red Light that fill'd the Eastern sky, etc.
Where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in--nay,
as it were, to take a reflection from--the Hero's troubled Soul. In the
Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes, {282} and contrasts with those
of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative
representation of the scene have been out of character with the English
Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more
evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further--
While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees
The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease,
But to his own reflections made reply,
And said aloud--'Yes, doubtless we must die.'
[Greek text]--
This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.
One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth
condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly 'priggish' candle
case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know. We all know that
of Crabbe's 'Village' one passage was one of the first that struck young
Wordsworth: and when Crabbe's son was editing his Father's Poems in 1834,
old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and
Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been
written since, including Wordsworth's own. And Wordsworth was too
honest, as well as too exclusive, to write so much even to a Son of the
dead Poet, without meaning all he said.
I should not have written all this were it not that I think so much of
Mr. Woodberry's Paper; but I doubt I could not persuade him to think more
of my old Man than he sees good to think for himself. I rejoice that he
thinks even so well of the Poet: even if his modified Praise does not
induce others to try and think likewise. The verses he quotes--
Where is that virtue which the generous boy, etc. {283}
made my heart glow--yes, even out at my Eyes--though so familiar to me.
Only in my private Copy, instead of
When Vice had triumph--_who his tear bestow'd_
On injured merit--
in place of that '_bestowed Tear_,' I cannot help reading
When Vice and Insolence in triumph rode, etc.
which is, of course, only for myself, and you, it seems: for I never
mentioned that, and some scores of such impudencies.
_To R. C. Trench_.
LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_May_ 9/80.
MY DEAR LORD,
You are old enough, like myself, to remember People reading and talking
of Crabbe. I know not if you did so yourself; but you know that no one,
unless as old as ourselves, does so now. As he has always been one of my
Apollos, in spite of so many a cracked string, I wanted to get a few
others to listen a little as I did; and so printed the Volume which I
send you: printed it, not by way of improving, or superseding, the
original, but to entice some to read the original in all its length, and
(one must say) uncouth and wearisome '_longueurs_' and want of what is
now called 'Art.' These Tales are perhaps as open to that charge as any
of his; and, moreover, not principally made up of that 'sternest' stuff
which Byron celebrated as being most characteristic of him. When writing
these Tales, the Poet had reached his Grand Climacteric, and liked to
look on somewhat of the sunnier side of things; more on the Comedy than
the Tragedy of Human Life: and hence these Tales are, with all their
faults, the one work of his which leaves me (ten years past my Grand
Climacteric also) with a pleasant Impression. So I tried to make others
think; but I was told by Friends whose Judgment I could trust that no
Public would listen to me. . . . And so I paid for my printing, and kept
my Book to be given away to some few as old as myself, and brought up in
somewhat of another Fashion than what now reigns. And so I now take
heart to send it to you whose Poems and Writings prove that you belong to
another, and, as I think, far better School, whether you care for Crabbe
or not. I dare say you will feel bound to acknowledge the Book; but pray
do so, if at all, by a simple acknowledgment of its receipt; I mean, so
far as I am concerned in it: any word about Crabbe I shall be very glad
to have if you care to write it; but I always maintain it best to say
nothing, unless to find fault, with what is sent to one in this Book
Line. And so to be done by.
_To Lord Houghton_. {285a}
WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 10_th_ 1880. {285b}
DEAR LORD HOUGHTON,
I think I have sent you a yearly letter of some sort or other for several
years, so it has come upon me once again. I have nothing to ask of you
except how you are. I should just like to know that, including 'yours'
in you. Just a very few words will suffice, and I daresay you have no
time for more. I have so much time that it is evident I have nothing to
tell, except that I have just entered upon a military career in so far as
having become much interested in the battle of Waterloo, which I just
remember a year after it was fought, when a solemn anniversary took place
in a neighbouring parish where I was born, and the village carpenter came
to my father to borrow a pair of Wellington boots for the lower limbs of
a stuffed effigy of Buonaparte, which was hung on a gibbet, and guns and
pistols were discharged at him, while we and the parson of the parish sat
in a tent where we had beef and plum pudding and loyal toasts. To this
hour I remember the smell of the new-cut hay in the meadow as we went in
our best summer clothes to the ceremony. But now I am trying to
understand whether the Guards or the 52nd Regiment deserved most credit
for _ecraseing_ the Imperial Guard. {286} Here is a fine subject to
address you on in the year 1880! Let it go for nothing; but just tell me
how you are, and believe me, with some feeling of old, if not very close
intimacy,
Yours sincerely,
EDWARD FITZGERALD.
_To R. C. Trench_.
WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 18/80.
MY DEAR LORD,
I should have sent a line before now to thank you for your Calderon, had
I not waited for some tidings of Donne from Mowbray, to whom I wrote some
days ago. Not hearing from him, I suppose that he is out holyday-making
somewhere; and therefore I will delay no longer.
You gave me your Calderon when it first came out, now some five and
twenty years ago! I am always glad to know that it, or any of your
writings, Prose or Verse, still flourish--which I think not many others
of the kind will do after the Generation they are born in. I remember
that you regretted having tried the asonante, and you now decide that
Prose is best for English Translation. It may be so; in a great degree
it must be so; but I think the experiment might yet be tried; namely, the
short trochaic line, regardless of an assonant that will not speak in our
thin vowels, but looped up at intervals with a strong monosyllabic rhyme,
without which the English trochaic, assonant or not, is apt to fray out,
or run away too watery-like without some such interruption; I mean when
running to any considerable length, as I should think would be the case
in Longfellow's Hiawatha; which I have not however seen since it
appeared. Were I a dozen years younger I might try this with Calderon
which I think I have found to succeed in some much shorter flights: but
it is too late now, and you may think it well that it is so, with one who
takes such great liberties with great Poets, himself pretending to be
little more than a Versifier. I know not how it is with you who are
really a Poet; and perhaps you may think I am as wrong about my trochee
as about my iambic.
As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years,
not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty and noble as he always
is. Much less can I endure the _Gurgoyle_ school (I call it) begun, I
suppose, by V. Hugo. . . . I do think you will find something better
than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given
to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe's Son and Editor
would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account
of its mingled 'Truth and Poetry.' And this includes Wordsworth's own.
So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be
popular.
This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe's Grandson,
one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me
a two days' Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to
farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George
Crabbe's own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew
as a very gentlemanly young man indeed. I think _he_ will not gainsay
what I write to you of his 'Parson.'
Your kind Letter has encouraged me to write all this. I felt some
hesitation in addressing you again after an interval of some fifteen
years, I think; and now I think I shall venture on writing to you once
again before another year be gone, if we both live to see 1881 in, and
out.
_To Charles Keene_.
WOODBRIDGE. _Sunday_.
MY DEAR KEENE,
Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sevigne; I
mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory
Argument and List of Dramatis Personae, and a clue to the course of her
Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some
previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among. But I
shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always
distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd. Some such
Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with
Persons, Dates, etc., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite
sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim
over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriving at--
Ci git
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
Marquise de Sevigne
Decedee le 18 Avril 1696
still to be found, I believe, on a Tablet in the Church of Grignan in
Provence. I have been half minded to run over to Brittany just to see
Les Rochers; but a French 'Murray' informed me that the present owner
will not let it be seen by Strangers attracted by all those 'paperasses,'
as he calls her Letters. Probably I should not have gone in any case
when it came to proof. . . .
I did not forget Waterloo Day. Just as I and my Reader Boy were going
into the Pantry for some _grub_, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18,
who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the 'coup de
grace' to the Imperial Guard about 8 p.m. and then marched to Rossomme,
seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in
some French Soldier's knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, 'You
must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it.' That was a
Compliment worth having!
I have, like you, always have, and from a Child had, a mysterious feeling
about that 'Sizewell Gap.' There were reports of kegs of Hollands found
under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near by: and we Children looked
with awe on the 'Revenue Cutters' which passed Aldbro', especially
remembering one that went down with all hands, 'The Ranger.'
They have half spoilt Aldbro'; but now that Dunwich is crossed out from
my visiting Book by the loss of that fine fellow, {290} whom this time of
year especially reminds me of, I must return to Aldbro' now and then. Why
can't you go there with me? I say no more of your coming here, for you
ought to be assured that you would be welcome at any time; but I never do
ask any busy, or otherwise engaged man to come. . . .
Here is a good Warwickshire word--'I _sheered_ my Eyes round the room.'
So good, that it explains itself.
WHITE LION, ALDEBURGH.
_July_ 7/80.
MY DEAR KEENE,
I shall worry you with Letters: here is one, however, which will call for
no answer. It is written indeed in acknowledgement of your packet of
Drawings, received by me yesterday at Woodbridge.
My rule concerning Books is, that Giver and Taker (each in his turn)
should just say nothing. As I am not an Artist (though a very great
Author) I will say that Four of your Drawings seemed capital to me: I
cannot remember the Roundabouts which they initialed: except two: 1. The
lazy idle Boy, which you note as not being used; I suppose, from not
being considered sufficiently appropriate to the Essay (which I forget),
but which I thought altogether good; and the old Man, with a look of
Edwards! 2. Little Boy in Black, very pretty: 3. (I forget the Essay)
People looking at Pictures: one of them, the principal, surely a
recollection of W. M. T. himself. Then 4. There was a bawling Boy:
subject forgotten. I looked at them many times through the forenoon: and
came away here at 2 p.m.
I do not suppose, or wish, that you should make over to me all these
Drawings, which I suppose are the originals from which the Wood was cut.
I say I do not 'wish,' because I am in my 72nd year: and I now give away
rather than accept. But I wished for one at least of your hand; for its
own sake, and as a remembrance, for what short time is left me, of one
whom I can sincerely say I regard greatly for himself, as also for those
Dunwich days in which I first became known to him. 'Viola qui est dit.'
And I wish you were here, not for your own sake, for it is dull enough.
No Sun, no Ship, a perpetual drizzle; and to me the melancholy of another
Aldbro' of years gone by. Out of that window there 'le petit' Churchyard
sketched Thorpe headland under an angry Sunset of Oct. 55 which heralded
a memorable Gale that washed up a poor Woman with a Babe in her arms: and
old Mitford had them buried with an inscribed Stone in the old
Churchyard, peopled with dead 'Mariners'; and Inscription and Stone are
now gone. Yesterday I got out in a Boat, drizzly as it was: but to-day
there is too much Sea to put off. I am to be home by the week's end, if
not before. The melancholy of Slaughden last night, with the same Sloops
sticking sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago! And I the venerable
Remembrancer.
MY DEAR KEENE,
I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your Paris map, which is
excellent; so that, eyes permitting, I can follow my Sevigne about from
her Rue St. Catherine over the Seine to the Faubourg St. Germain quite
distinctly. These cold East winds, however, coming so suddenly after the
heat, put those Eyes of mine in a pickle, so as I am obliged to let them
lie fallow, looking only at the blessed Green of the Trees before my
Window, or on my Quarterdeck. {293} My two Nieces are with me, so that I
leave all the house to them, except my one Room downstairs, which serves
for Parlour, Bedroom and all. And it does very well for me; reminding me
of my former Cabin life in my little Ship 'd'autrefois.' . . .
Do not you forget (as you will) to tell Mr. Millais one day of the pretty
Subject I told you; little Keats standing sentry before his sick Mother's
Door with a drawn sword; in his Shirt it might be, with some Rembrandtish
Light and Shade. The Story is to be found at the beginning of Lord
Houghton's Life.
Also, for any Painter you know of what they call the 'Genre' School:
Sevigne and the 'de Villars' looking through the keyhole at Mignard
painting Madame de Fontevrauld (Rochechouart) while the Abbe Tetu talks
to her (Letter of Sept. 6, 1675). It might be done in two compartments,
with the wall slipt between, so as to show both Parties, as one has seen
on the Stage.
_To C. E. Norton_.
WOODBRIDGE. _Nov._ 3, 1880.
MY DEAR NORTON,
. . . With all your knowledge, and all the use you can make of it, I
wonder that you can think twice of such things as I can offer you in
return for what you send me: but I take you at your word, and shall
perhaps send you the last half of OEdipus, if I can prepare him for the
Printer; a rather hard business to me now, when turned of seventy, and
reminded by some intimations about the Heart that I am not likely to
exceed the time which those of my Family have stopped going at. But this
is no great Regret to me.
I have sent you a better Book than any I can send you of my own: or of
any one else's in the way of Verse, I think: the Sonnets of Alfred
Tennyson's Brother Charles. Two thirds of them I do not care for: but
there is scarce one without some fine thought or expression: some of them
quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original. I think you in
America may like these leaves from the Life of a quiet Lincolnshire
Parson.
. . . We have had the Leaves green unusually late this year, I think: but
so I have thought often before, I am told. The last few nights have
brought Frost, however: and changed the countenance of all. A Blackbird
(have you him as the 'ousel'?) whom I kept alive, I think, through last
hard winter by a saucer of Bread and Milk, has come to look for it again.
_To Miss Anna Biddell_.
_Nov._ 30, 1880.
One day I went into the Abbey at 3.5 p.m. while a beautiful anthem was
beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful,
well intoned on one single note by the Minister. And when I looked up
and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to
have raised. The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of
them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I
remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and
Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni
floating everywhere about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several
Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother's Box on the
third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both. The Audience
all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also;
only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed;
Trebelli, her name. The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan:
excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the
whole.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
LITTLEGRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.
_Decr._ 15 [1880].
MY DEAR MASTER,
I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not
wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected
to enquire about you. I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five
minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on
behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were
still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here. I saw nobody in
London except my two Widows, my dear old Donne, and some coeval Suffolk
Friends. I was half tempted to jump into a Bus and just leave my name at
Carlyle's Door! But I did not. I should of course have asked and heard
how he was: which I can find no one now to tell me. For his Niece has a
Child, if only one, to attend to, and I do not like to trouble. I heard
from vague Information in London that he is almost confined to his house.
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