Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 12

One finds books of this kind in these country houses: and it is pleasant to look them over at midnight in the kitchen, where I retire to smoke. .

Farewell till I see you one of these days.

_To S. Laurence_.

DUBLIN, _July_ 11/43

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

We got here this morning; most of us sick, but not I: not evidently sick, I mean. Here the sun shines, and people go about in their cars or stand idle, just the same as ever. 'Repeal' is faintly chalked on a wall here and there. I have been to see a desperate collection of pictures by the Royal Academy: among them old unsaleables by Maclise and Uwins.

What I write for however is to say that the first volume of t.i.tmarsh's Ireland is at 39 Portland Place; and that I wish you would ask for it there and get it. Keep the two volumes for a time. It is all true. I ordered a bath here when I got in: the waiter said it was heated to 90 degrees, but it was scalding: he next locked me up in the room instead of my locking him out.

Keep an eye on the little t.i.tian, and I shall really make the venture of borrowing 30 pounds to invest in it. Tell Rochard you must have it. I may never be able to get a bit of t.i.tian in my life again: and I shall doubtless learn to admire it properly in time.

_To F. Tennyson_.

HALVERSTOWN, KILCULLEN, IRELAND.

[? _July_ 1843.]

DEAR FREDERIC . . .

. . . You would rave at this climate which is wetter far than that of England. There are the Wicklow hills (mountains we call them) in the offing--quite high enough. In spite of my prejudice for a level, I find myself every day unconsciously verging towards any eminence that gives me the freest view of their blue ranges. One's thoughts take wing to the distance. I fancy that moderately high hills (like these) are the ticket--not to be domineered over by Mont Blancs, etc. But this may be only a pa.s.sing prejudice.

We hear much less of Repeal here than in London: and people seem amused at the troops and waggons of gunpowder that are to be met now and then upon the roads. . .

_To Bernard Barton_.

BALLYSAX, {142a} KILCULLEN, _August_, 17/43

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . That old Suffolk comes over here sometimes, as I say; and greets one's eyes with old familiar names: Sales at Yoxford, Aldeburgh, etc., regattas at Lowestoft, and at Woodbridge. I see Major Moor {142b} turning the road by the old Duke of York; the Deben winding away in full tide to the sea; and numberless little pictures of this kind.

I am going the day after to-morrow to Edgeworth's, for a week, it may be a fortnight before I set sail for England. Where shall I pitch my tent?

that is the question. Whither shall those treasures of ancient art descend, and be reposited there for ever?

I have been looking over the old London Magazine. Lamb's papers come in delightfully: read over the Old China the night you get this, and sympathize with me. The account of the dish of green pease, etc., is the true history of lawful luxury. Not Johnson nor Adam Smith told so much.

It is founded not on statistics but on good humanity.

We have at last delightful weather, and we enjoy it. Yesterday we went to Pool-a-Phooka, the Leap of the Goblin Horse. What is that, do you suppose? Why, a cleft in the mountains down and through which the river Liffey (not very long born from the earth) comes leaping and roaring.

Cold veal pies, champagne, etc., make up the enchantment. We dabbled in the water, splashed each other, forded the river, climbed the rocks, laughed, sang, eat, drank, and were roasted, and returned home, the sun sinking red.

(_A pen and ink sketch_.)

This is not like Pool-a-Phooka.

_To F. Tennyson_.

IRELAND, _August_ 31/43.

DEAR FREDERIC,

. . . I set sail from Dublin to-morrow night, bearing the heartfelt regrets of all the people of Ireland with me.

Where is my dear old Alfred? Sometimes I intend to send him a quotation from a book: but do not perform the same. Are you packing up for Italy?

I had a pleasant week with Edgeworth. He farms, and is a justice: and goes to sleep on the sofa of evenings. At odd moments he looks into Spinoza and Petrarch. People respect him very much in those parts. Old Miss Edgeworth is wearing away: she has a capital bright soul which even now shines quite youthfully through her faded carcase. . . . I had the weakest dream the other night that ever was dreamt. I thought I saw Thomas Frognall Dibdin--and that was all. Tell this to Alfred. Carlyle talks of coming to see Naseby: but I leave him to suit the weather to his taste.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, _Sunday_, _Dec_. 10/1843.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Either you wrote me word yourself, or some one told me, that you meant to winter at Florence. So I shall direct to the Poste Restante there. You see I am not settled at the Florence of Suffolk, called Ipswich, yet: but I am perhaps as badly off; being in this most dull country house quite alone; a grey mist, that seems teeming with half formed snow, all over the landscape before my windows. It is also Sunday morning: ten of the clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the country. So you will be able exactly to measure my apt.i.tude and fullness for letter writing by the quant.i.ty written now, before I bolt off for hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I always put on my thickest great coat to go to our Church in: as fungi grow in great numbers about the communion table. And now, to turn away from Boulge, I must tell you that I went up to London a month ago to see old Thackeray, who had come there to have his eyes doctored. I stayed with him ten days and we were as usual together. Alfred came up 'in transitu' from Boxley to Cheltenham; he looked, and said he was, ill: I have never seen him so hopeless: and I am really anxious to know how he is. . . . I remember the days of the summer when you and I were together, quarrelling and laughing--these I remember with pleasure. Our trip to Gravesend has left a perfume with me. I can get up with you on that everlastingly stopping coach on which we tried to travel from Gravesend to Maidstone that Sunday morning: worn out with it, we got down at an inn, and then got up on another coach--and an old smiling fellow pa.s.sed us holding out his hat--and you said, 'That old fellow must go about as Homer did'--and numberless other turns of road and humour, which sometimes pa.s.s before me as I lie in bed. . . .

Now before I turn over, I will go and see about Church, as I hear no bell, pack myself up as warmly as I can, and be off. So good-bye till twelve o'clock.--'Tis five minutes past twelve by the stable clock: so I saw as I returned from Church through the garden. Parson and Clerk got through the service see saw like two men in a sawpit. In the garden I see the heads of the snowdrops and crocuses just out of the earth.

Another year with its same flowers and topics to open upon us. Shenstone somewhere sings, {146a}

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

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

_To S. Laurence_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Decr_. 21/43.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

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

I have been down to Woodbridge to-day and had a long chat with Churchyard, whom I wish you had seen, as also his Gainsborough sketches.

He is quite clear as to Gainsborough's general method, which was (he says) to lay all in (except the sky, of course) with pure colour, quite unmixed with white. The sketch he has is certainly so; but whether it ever could have been wrought up into a deep finish, I don't know. C.

says yes it could: that Gainsborough began nearly all his pictures so. He has tried it over and over again (he says) and produced exactly the same effect with pure colour, laid on very thin over a light brown ground: asphaltum and blue producing just such a green as many of the trees in this sketch are of. The sky put in afterwards.

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

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

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

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

'FitzGerald was living at Boulge Cottage when I first knew him: a thatched cottage of one storey just outside his Father's Park. No one was, I think, resident at the Hall. His mother would sometimes be there a short time, and would drive about in a coach and four black horses. This would be in 1844, when he was 36. He used to walk by himself, slowly, with a Skye terrier. I was rather afraid of him. He seemed a proud and very punctilious man. I think he was at this time going often of an evening to Bernard Barton's. He did not come to us, except occasionally, till 1846. He seemed to me when I first saw him much as he was when he died, only not stooping: always like a grave middle-aged man: never seemed very happy or light-hearted, though his conversation was most amusing sometimes. His cottage was a mile from Bredfield. He was very fond, I think, of my Father; though they had several coolnesses which I believe were all my Father's fault, who took fancies that people disliked him or were bored by him. E. F. G.

had in his cottage an old woman to wait on him, Mrs. Faiers; a very old-fashioned Suffolk woman. He was just as careful not to make her do anything as he was afterwards with Mrs. Howe. {149} He would never ring the bell, if there was one, of which I am not sure. Sometimes he would give a little dinner--my Father, Brooke, B. Barton, Churchyard--everything most hospitable, but not comfortable.

'In 1846 and 1847 he does not seem to have come much to Bredfield.

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