Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes

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I have myself been somewhat bothered at times for the last three months
with pains and heaviness about the Heart: which I knew from a Doctor was
unsettled five years ago. I shall not at all complain if it takes the
usual course, only wishing to avoid _Angina_, or some such form of the
Disease. My Family get on gaily enough till seventy, and then generally
founder after turning the corner.

I hope you know Charles Tennyson's Sonnets; three times too many, and
some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or
Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with
Alfred's, and no one else's. Old Fred might have made one of Three
Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of
Sonnet Compass: but he couldn't. He says, Charles makes one regard and
love little things more than any other Poet.

My Nephew De Soyres seems to have made a good Edition of Pascal's
Letters: I should have thought they had been quite well enough edited
before; and yet a more 'exhaustive' Edition is to follow the House that
Jack built, he tells us.

Groome had proposed a month ago that he would visit me about this time:
but I have heard no more of him: and am always afraid to write, for fear
of those poor Eyes of his.

I was very glad to meet Merivale on Lowestoft Pier for some days. Mrs.
M. writes to me of an enlarged Photo of him whose Negative will be
destroyed in a month unless subscribed for by Friends, etc. 'Will I ask
Friends, etc.' No: I will not do that, though I will take a copy if
wanted to complete a number: though, if it be life size, having no where
to hang it up: my own Mother, by Sir T. Lawrence, being put away in a
cupboard for want of room.

Now, my dear Master, I want neither you nor the Mistress to reply to this
Letter: but please to believe me, both of you, yours as ever sincerely

E. FITZ.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20, 1881.

MY DEAR NORTON,

. . . I have little to say about Carlyle, but that my heart did follow
him to Ecclefechan, from which place I have, or had, several letters
dated by him. I think it was fine that he should anticipate all
Westminster Abbey honours, and determine to be laid where he was born,
among his own kindred, and with all the simple and dignified obsequies of
(I suppose) his own old Puritan Church. The Care of his Posthumous
Memory will be left in good hands, I believe, if in those of Mr. Froude.
His Niece, who had not answered a Note of Enquiry I wrote her some two
months ago, answered it a few days after his Death: she had told him, she
said, of my letter, and he said, 'You must answer that.'

_To Mrs. Kemble_.

[_March_, 1881].

MY DEAR LADY,

It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding.
Yes: Aldis Wright had apprised me of the matter just after it happened,
he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days after the
accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even cheerful; only
anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting for some
communication that S. had promised him! Whether to live, or to die, he
will be Socrates still.

Directly that I heard from Wright, I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me
just a Post Card daily, if he or his Wife could, with but one or two
words on it, 'Better,' 'Less well,' or whatever it might be. This
morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be expected,
according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which you tell me
of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that French Adage,
'Monsieur se porte mal--Monsieur se porte mieux--Monsieur est--!' Ah,
you know, or you guess, the rest.

My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years and
more, and probably should never see again; but he lives, his old Self, in
my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but embellish the
recollection of him, if it could be embellished; for he is but the same
that he was from a Boy, all that is best in Heart and Head, a man that
would be incredible had one not known him.

I certainly should have gone up to London, even with Eyes that will
scarce face the lamps of Woodbridge, not to see him, but to hear the
first intelligence I could about him. But I rely on the Post-card for
but a Night's delay. Laurence, Mowbray tells me, had been to see him,
and found him as calm as had been reported by Wright. But the Doctors
had said that he should be kept as quiet as possible.

I think, from what Mowbray also says, that you may have seen our other
old friend Donne in somewhat worse plight than usual because of his being
much shocked at this accident. He would feel it indeed!--as you do.

I had even thought of writing to tell you all this, but could not but
suppose that you were more likely to know of it than myself; though
sometimes one is greatly mistaken with these 'of course you knows, etc.'
But you have known it all: and have very kindly written of it to me, whom
you might also have supposed already informed of it: but you took the
trouble to write, not relying on 'of course you know, etc.'

I have thought lately that I ought to make some enquiry about Arthur
Malkin, who was always very kind to me. I had meant to send him my
Crabbe, who was a great favourite of his Father's, 'an excellent
Companion for Old Age' he told--Donne, I think. But I do not know if I
ever did send him the Book; and now, judging by what you tell me, it is
too late to do so, unless for Compliment.

The Sun, I see, has put my Fire out, for which I only thank him, and will
go to look for him himself in my Garden, only with a Green Shade over my
Eyes. I must get to London to see you before you move away to
Leamington; when I can bear Sun or Lamp without odious blue glasses, etc.
I dare to think those Eyes are better, though not Sun-proof.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 13, [1881].

MY DEAR NORTON,

I send you along with this Letter Part II. of OEdipus, with some
corrections or suggestions which I have been obliged to make in Pencil,
because of the Paper blotting under the lightest Penwork. And, along
with it, a preliminary Letter, which I believe I told you of also,
addressed to your Initial: for I did not wish to compromise you even with
yourself in such a Business. I know you will like it probably more than
it deserves, and excuse its inroads on the Original, though you may, and
probably will, think I might better have left it alone, or followed it
more faithfully. As to those Students you tell me of who are meditating,
or by this time may have accomplisht, their Representation, they could
only look on me as a Blasphemer. . . .

It seems almost wrong or unreasonable of me to be talking thus of myself
and my little Doings, when not only Carlyle has departed from us, but
one, not so illustrious in Genius, but certainly not less wise, my dear
old Friend of sixty years, James Spedding: {302} whose name you will know
as connected with Lord Bacon. To re-edit his Works, which did not want
any such re-edition, and to vindicate his Character which could not be
cleared, did this Spedding sacrifice forty years which he might well have
given to accomplish much greater things; Shakespeare, for one. But
Spedding had no sort of Ambition, and liked to be kept at one long work
which he knew would not glorify himself. He was the wisest man I have
known: not the less so for plenty of the Boy in him; a great sense of
Humour, a Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity
so long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach
America, I mean, of his Death, run over by a Cab and dying in St.
George's Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not be
removed home alive. I believe that had Carlyle been alive, and but as
well as he was three months ago, he would have insisted on being carried
to the Hospital to see his Friend, whom he respected as he did few
others. I have just got the Carlyle Reminiscences, which will take me
some little time to read, impatient as I may be to read them. What I
have read is of a stuff we can scarce find in any other Autobiographer:
whether his Editor Froude has done quite well in publishing them as they
are, and so soon, is another matter. Carlyle's Niece thinks, not quite.
She sent me a Pipe her Uncle had used, for Memorial. I had asked her for
the Bowl, and an Inch of stem, of one of the Clay Pipes such as I had
smoked with him under that little old Pear Tree in his Chelsea garden
many an Evening. But she sent me a small Meerschaum which Lady Ashburton
had given him, and which he used when from home.

_To S. Laurence_.

_March_ 13/81.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

It was very very good of you to think of writing to me at all on this
occasion: {303} much more, writing to me so fully, almost more fully than
I dared at first to read: though all so delicately and as you always
write. It is over! I shall not write about it. He was all you say.

So I turn to myself! And that is only to say that I am much as usual:
here all alone for the last six months, except a two days visit to London
in November to see Mrs. Kemble, who is now removed from Westminster to
Marshall Thompson's Hotel Cavendish Square: and Mrs. Edwards who is
naturally better and happier than a year ago, but who says she never
should be happy unless always at work. And that work is taking off
impressions of yet another--and I believe last--batch of her late
Husband's Etchings. I saw and heard nothing else than these two Ladies:
and some old Nurseys at St. John's Wood: and dear Donne, who was infirmer
than when I had seen him before, and, I hear, is infirmer still than when
I saw him last.

By the by, I began to think my own Eyes, which were blazed away by
Paraffin some dozen years ago, were going out of me just before
Christmas. So for the two dreary months which followed I could scarce
read or write. And as yet I am obliged to use them tenderly: only too
glad to find that they are better; and not quite going (as I hope) yet. I
think they will light me out of this world with care. On March 31 I
shall enter on my seventy-third year: and none of my Family reaches over
seventy-five.

When I was in London I was all but tempted to jump into a Cab and just
knock at Carlyle's door, and ask after him, and give my card, and--run
away. . . .

The cold wind will not leave us, and my Crocuses do not like it. Still I
manage to sit on one of those Benches you may remember under the lee side
of the hedge, and still my seventy-third year approaches.

_To Miss Anna Biddell_.

_March_ 1881.

I can only say of Carlyle what you say; except that I do not find the
style 'tiresome' any more than I did his Talk: which it is, only put on
Paper, quite fresh, from an Individual Man of Genius, unlike almost all
Autobiographic Memoirs. I doubt not that he wrote it by way of some
Employment, as well as (in his Wife's case) some relief to his Feelings.
. . .

I did not know that I should feel Spedding's Loss as I do, after an
interval of more than twenty years [since] meeting him. But I knew that
I could always get the Word I wanted of him by Letter, and also that from
time to time I should meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in
some Quarter or other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his
Mind wandered. I wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost
something, as one does in a Dream: and truly enough, I have lost _him_.
'Matthew is in his Grave, etc.'

_To Mrs. Kemble_.

[20 _March_, 1881.]

MY DEAR LADY,

I have let the Full Moon pass because I thought you had written to me so
lately, and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I would not call on
you so soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has
made me recall very many passages in his Life in which I was partly
concerned. In particular, staying at his Cumberland Home along with
Tennyson in the May of 1835. 'Voila bien longtemps de ca!' His Father
and Mother were both alive: he, a wise man, who mounted his Cob after
Breakfast and was at his Farm till Dinner at two; then away again till
Tea: after which he sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but
always courteous and quite content with any company his Son might bring
to the house, so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would
have gone whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets
not to like them or their Trade: Shelley, for a time living among the
Lakes: Coleridge at Southey's (whom perhaps he had a respect for--Southey
I mean); and Wordsworth whom I do not think he valued. He was rather
jealous of 'Jem,' who might have done available service in the world, he
thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with Tennyson
conning over the Morte d'Arthur, Lord of Burleigh, and other things which
helped to make up the two volumes of 1842. So I always associate that
Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a
sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And
there was an old Friend of hers, Miss Bristowe, who always reminded me of
Miss La Creevy if you know of such a Person in Nickleby.

At the end of May we went to lodge for a week at Windermere, where
Wordsworth's new volume of Yarrow Revisited reached us. W. was then at
his home: but Tennyson would not go to visit him: and of course I did
not: nor even saw him.

You have, I suppose, the Carlyle Reminiscences: of which I will say
nothing except that much as we outsiders gain by them, I think that, on
the whole, they had better have been kept unpublished, for some while at
least.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

[1881.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Thank you for your kind Letter; which I forwarded, with its enclosure, to
Thompson, as you desired.

If Spedding's Letters, or parts of them, would not suit the Public, they
would surely be a very welcome treasure to his Friends. Two or three
pages of Biography would be enough to introduce them to those who knew
him less long and less intimately than ourselves: and all who read would
be the better, and the happier, for reading them.

I am rather surprised to find how much I dwell upon the thought of him,
considering that I had not refreshed my Memory with the sight or sound of
him for more than twenty years. But all the past (before that) comes
upon me: I cannot help thinking of him while I wake; and when I do wake
from Sleep, I have a feeling of something lost, as in a Dream, and it is
J. S. I suppose that Carlyle amused himself, after just losing his Wife,
with the Records he has left: what he says of her seems a sort of
penitential glorification: what of others, just enough in general: but in
neither case to be made public, and so immediately after his Decease. . . .
I keep wondering what J. S. would have said on the matter: but I
cannot ask him now, as I might have done a month ago. . . .

Dear old Jem! His Loss makes one's Life more dreary, and 'en revanche'
the end of it less regretful.

_To Mrs. Alfred Tennyson_. {308a}

WOODBRIDGE: _March_ 22, [1881].

MY DEAR MRS. TENNYSON,

It is very, very [good] of you to write to me, even to remember me. I
have told you before why I did not write to any other of your Party, as I
might occasionally wish to do for the sake of asking about you all: the
task of answering my Letter was always left to you: and I did not choose
to put you to that trouble. Laurence had written me some account of his
Visit to St. George's: all Patience: only somewhat wishful to be at home:
somewhat weary with lying without Book, or even Watch, for company. What
a Man! as in Life so in Death, which, as Montaigne says, proves what is
at the bottom of the Vessel. {308b} I had not seen him for more than
twenty years, and should never have seen him again, unless in the Street,
where Cabs were crossing! He did not want to see me; he wanted nothing,
I think: but I was always thinking of him, and should have done till my
own Life's end, I know. I only wrote to him about twice a year: he only
cared to answer when one put some definite Question to him: and I had
usually as little to ask as to tell. I was thinking that, but for that
Cab, I might even now be asking him what I was to think of his Cousin
Froude's Carlyle Reminiscences. I see but one Quotation in the Book,
which is 'of the Days that are no more,' which clung to him when his
Sorrow came, as it will to many and many who will come after him.

I certainly hope that some pious and judicious hand will gather, and
choose from our dear Spedding's Letters: no fear of indelicate
personality with him, you know: and many things which all the world would
be the wiser and better for. Archdeacon Allen sent me the other day a
Letter about Darwin's Philosophy, so wise, so true, so far as I could
judge, and, though written off, all fit to go as it was into Print, and
do all the World good. {309} . . .

It was fine too of Carlyle ordering to be laid among his own homely
Kindred in the Village of his Birth: without Question of Westminster
Abbey. So think I, at least. And dear J. S. at Mirehouse where your
Husband and I stayed, very near upon fifty years ago, in 1835 it was, in
the month of May, when the Daffodil was out in a field before the house,
as I see them, though not in such force, owing to cold winds, before my
window now. Does A. T. remember them?

_To Mrs. Kemble_.

[_April_, 1881.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Somewhat before my usual time, you see; but Easter comes, and I shall be
glad to hear if you keep it in London, or elsewhere. Elsewhere there has
been no inducement to go until To-day: when the Wind though yet East has
turned to the Southern side of it; one can walk without any wrapper; and
I dare to fancy we have turned the corner of Winter at last. People talk
of changed Seasons: only yesterday I was reading in my dear old Sevigne,
how she was with the Duke and Duchess of Chaulnes at their Chateau of
Chaulnes in Picardy all but two hundred years ago: that is in 1689: and
the green has not as yet ventured to shew its 'nez' nor a Nightingale to
sing. You see that I have returned to her as for some Spring Music, at
any rate. As for the Birds, I have nothing but a Robin who seems rather
pleased when I sit down on a Bench under an old Ivied Pollard, where I
suppose he has a Nest, poor little Fellow. But we have terrible
Superstitions about him here; no less than that he always kills his
Parents if he can: my young Reader is quite determined on this head: and
there lately has been a Paper in some Magazine to the same effect.

My dear old Spedding sent me back to old Wordsworth too, who sings (his
best songs I think) about the Mountains and Lakes they were both
associated with: and with a quiet feeling he sings that somehow comes
home to me more now than ever it did before.

As to Carlyle, I thought on my first reading that he must have been
_egare_ at the time of writing: a condition which I well remember saying
to Spedding long ago that one of his temperament might likely fall into.
And now I see that Mrs. Oliphant hints at something of the sort. Hers I
think an admirable Paper: {311} better than has yet been written, or (I
believe) is likely to be written by any one else. . . . I must think
Carlyle's judgments mostly, or mainly, true; but that he must have 'lost
his head' if not when he recorded them, yet when he left them in any
one's hands to decide on their publication. Especially when not about
Public Men, but about their Families. It is slaying the Innocent with
the Guilty. But of all this you have doubtless heard in London more than
enough. 'Pauvre et triste Humanite!' One's heart opens again to him at
the last: sitting alone in the middle of her Room. 'I want to die.' 'I
want--a Mother.' 'Ah mamma Letizia!' Napoleon is said to have murmured
as he lay. By way of pendant to this recurs to me the Story that when
Ducis was wretched his Mother would lay his head on her Bosom--'Ah, mon
homme! mon pauvre homme!' . . .

And now I have written more than enough for yourself and me: whose Eyes
may be the worse for it to-morrow. I still go about in Blue Glasses, and
flinch from Lamp and Candle. Pray let me know about your own Eyes, and
your own Self; and believe me always sincerely yours

LITTLEGRANGE.
_May_ 8, [1881].

If still at Leamington, you look upon a sight which I used to like well;
that is, the blue Avon (as in this weather it will be) roaming through
buttercup meadows all the way to Warwick; unless those meadows are all
built over since I was there some forty years ago. . . .

I am got back to my Sevigne! who somehow returns to me in Spring; fresh
as the Flowers. These latter have done but badly this Spring: cut off or
withered by the Cold: and now parched up by this blazing Sun and dry
Wind.

_From another Letter in the same year_.

It has been what we call down here 'smurring' rather than raining, all
day long, and I think that Flower and Herb already show their gratitude.
My Blackbird (I think it is the same I have tried to keep alive during
the Winter) seems also to have 'wetted his Whistle,' and what they call
the 'Cuckoo's mate' with a rather harsh scissor note announces that his
Partner may be on the wing to these Latitudes. You will hear of him at
Mr W. Shakespeare's, it may be. {313} There must be Violets, white and
blue, somewhere about where he lies, I think. They are generally found
in a Churchyard, where also (the Hunters used to say) a Hare: for the
same reason of comparative security I suppose.

_To Miss S. F. Spedding_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE.
_July /81_.

. . . As I am so very little known to yourself, or your Mother, I did not
choose to trouble you with any of my own feelings about your Uncle's
Death. But I am not sorry to take this opportunity of saying, and, I
know, truly, there was no one I loved and honoured more; that, though I
had not seen him for more than twenty years, I was always thinking of him
all the while: always feeling that I could apply to him for a wise word I
needed for myself; always knowing that I might light upon some wiser word
than any one else's in some Review, etc., and _now_ always thinking I
have lost all that. I say that I have not known, no, nor heard of, any
mortal so prepared to step unchanged into the better world we are
promised--Intellect, and Heart, and such an outer Man to them as I
remember.

WOODBRIDGE: _July_ 31, [1881].

. . . I rejoice to hear of a Collection, or Reprint, of his stray works.
. . . I used to say he wrote 'Virgilian Prose.' One only of his I did
not care for; but that, I doubt not, was because of the subject, not of
the treatment: his own printed Report of a Speech he made in what was
called the 'Quinquaginta Club' Debating Society (not the Union) at
Cambridge about the year 1831. This Speech his Father got him to recall
and recompose in Print; wishing always that his Son should turn his
faculties to such public Topics rather than to the Poets, of whom he had
seen enough in Cumberland not to have much regard for: Shelley, for one,
at one time stalking about the mountains, with Pistols, and other such
Vagaries. I do not think he was much an Admirer of Wordsworth (I don't
know about Southey), and I well remember that when I was at M_e_rehouse
(as Miss Bristowe would have us call it) with A. Tennyson in 1835, Mr.
Spedding grudged his Son's giving up much time and thought to
consultations about Morte d'Arthur's, Lords of Burleigh, etc., which were
then in MS. He more than once questioned me, who was sometimes present
at the meetings: 'Well, Mr. F., and what is it? Mr. Tennyson reads, and
Jem criticizes:--is that it?' etc. This, while I might be playing Chess
with dear Mrs. Spedding, in May, while the Daffodils were dancing outside
the Hall door.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _August_ 5/81.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I am sorry that you felt bound to write me so fully about the Play when,
as you tell me, you had so much other work on your hands. Any how, do
not trouble yourself to write more. If you think my Version does as
well, or better, without any introduction, why, tear that out; all,
except (if you like the Verse well enough to adopt it) the first sentence
of Dedication to yourself: adding your full name and Collegiate Honours
whenever you care so to do.

Your account of your Harvard original in the Atlantic Monthly was quite
well fitted for its purpose: a general account of it for the general
reader, without going into particulars which only the Scholar would
appreciate.

I believe I told you that thirty years ago at least I advised our
Trinity's Master, then only Greek Professor, to do the like with one of
the Greek Tragedies, in what they call their Senate-house, well fitted
for such a purpose. But our Cambridge is too well fed, and slow to stir;
and I not important enough to set it a-going.

By the way, I have been there for two days; not having seen the place for
those same thirty years, except in passing through some ten years ago to
Naseby Field, for the purpose of doing Carlyle's will in setting up a
memorial Stone with his Inscription upon it. But the present owners of
the Place would not consent: and so that simple thing came to nothing.

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