Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 22

I found A. Tennyson in chambers at Lincoln's Inn: and recreated myself with a sight of his fine old mug, and got out of him all his dear old stories, and many new ones. He is re-publishing his Poems, the Princess with songs interposed. I cannot say I thought them like the old vintage of his earlier days, though perhaps better than other people's. But, even to you, such opinions appear blasphemies. A. T. is now gone on a visit into Leicestershire: and I miss him greatly. Carlyle I have not seen; but I read an excellent bit of his in the Examiner, about Ireland.

Thackeray is well again, except not quite strong yet. Spedding is not yet returned: and I doubt will not return before I have left London.

I have been but to one play; to see the Hypocrite, and Tom Taylor's burlesque {254a} at the Strand Theatre. It was dreadfully cold in the pit: and I thought dull. Farren almost unintelligible: Mrs. Glover good in a disagreeable part. {254b} Diogenes has very good Aristophanic hits in it, as perhaps you know: but its action was rather slow, I thought: and I was so cold I could not sit it half through.

_To F. Tennyson_.

[Written from Bramford? E. F. G. was staying at this time with the Cowells.]

Direct to BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE.

_March_ 7/50.

MY DEAR OLD FREDERIC,

. . . I saw Alfred in London--pretty well, I thought. He has written songs to be stuck between the cantos of the Princess, none of them of the old champagne flavour, as I think. But I am in a minority about the Princess, I believe. If you print any poems, I especially desire you will transmit them to me. I wish I was with you to consider about these: for though I cannot write poems, you know I consider that I have the old woman's faculty of judging of them: yes, much better than much cleverer and wiser men; I pretend to no Genius, but to Taste: which, according to my aphorism, is the feminine of Genius. . . .

. . . Please to answer me directly. I constantly think of you: and, as I have often sincerely told you, with a kind of love which I feel towards but two or three friends. Are you coming to England? How goes on Grimsby! Doesn't the state of Europe sicken you? Above all, let me have any poems you print: you are now the only man I expect verse from; such gloomy grand stuff as you write. Thackeray, to be sure, can write good ballads, half serious. His Pendennis is very stupid, I think: d.i.c.kens'

Copperfield on the whole, very good. He always lights one up somehow.

There is a new volume of posthumous poems by Ebenezer Elliott: with fine things in it. I don't find myself growing old about Poetry; on the contrary. I wish I could take twenty years off Alfred's shoulders, and set him up in his youthful glory: . . . He is the same magnanimous, kindly, delightful fellow as ever; uttering by far the finest prose sayings of any one.

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE: _March_ 9/50.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . I have now been home about three weeks, and, as you say, one sees indications of lovely spring about. I have read but very little of late; indeed my eyes have not been in superfine order. I caught a glimpse of the second volume of Southey's Life and Letters; interesting enough. I have also bought Emerson's 'Representative Men,' a shilling book of Bohn's: with very good scattered thoughts in it: but scarcely leaving any large impression with one, or establishing a theory. So at least it has seemed to me: but I have not read very carefully. I have also bought a little posthumous volume of Ebenezer Elliott: which is sure to have fine things in it.

I believe I love poetry almost as much as ever: but then I have been suffered to doze all these years in the enjoyment of old childish habits and sympathies, without being called on to more active and serious duties of life. I have not put away childish things, though a man. But, at the same time, this visionary inactivity is better than the mischievous activity of so many I see about me; not better than the useful and virtuous activity of a few others: John Allen among the number.

_To F. Tennyson_.

PORTLAND COFFEE HOUSE, LONDON.

_April_ 17/50.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

You tell me to write soon: and this letter is begun, at least, on the day yours reaches me. This is partly owing to my having to wait an hour here in the Coffee room of the Portland Hotel: whither your letter has been forwarded to me from Boulge. I am come up for one week: once more to haggle with Lawyers; once more to try and settle my own affairs as well as those of others for a time. . . .

I don't think of drowning myself yet: and what I wrote to you was a sort of safety escape for my poor flame . . . It is only idle and well-to-do people who kill themselves; it is ennui that is hopeless: great pain of mind and body 'still, still, on hope relies': the very old, the very wretched, the most incurably diseased never put themselves to rest. It really gives me pain to hear you or any one else call me a philosopher, or any good thing of the sort. I am none, never was; and, if I pretended to be so, was a hypocrite. Some things, as wealth, rank, respectability, I don't care a straw about; but no one can resent the toothache more, nor fifty other little ills beside that flesh is heir to. But let us leave all this.

I am come to London; but I do not go to Operas or Plays: and have scarce time (and, it must be said, scarce inclination) to hunt up many friends.

Dear old Alfred is out of town; Spedding is my sheet-anchor, the truly wise and fine fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening: and there I believe Thackeray, Venables, etc., are to be. I hope not a large a.s.sembly: for I get shyer and shyer even of those I knew. Thackeray is in such a great world that I am afraid of him; he gets tired of me: and we are content to regard each other at a distance. You, Alfred, Spedding, and Allen, are the only men I ever care to see again. If ever I leave this country I will go and see you at Florence or elsewhere; but my plans are at present unsettled. I have refused to be G.o.dfather to all who have ever asked me; but I declare it will give me sincere pleasure to officiate for your Child. I got your photograph at last: it is a beastly thing: not a bit like: why did you not send your Poems, which are like you; and reflect your dear old face well? As you know I admire your poems, the only poems by a living writer I do admire, except Alfred's, you should not hesitate. I can have no doubt whatever they ought to be published in England: I believe Moxon would publish them: and I believe you would make some money by them. But don't send them to Alfred to revise or select: only for this reason, that you would both of you be a little annoyed by gossip about how much share each of you had in them.

Your poems can want no other hand than your own to meddle with them, except in respect of the choice of them to make a volume which would please generally: a little of the vulgar faculty of popular tact is all that needs to be added to you, as I think. You will know I do not say this presumptuously: since I think the power of writing one fine line transcends all the 'Able-Editor' ability in the ably-edited Universe.

Do you see Carlyle's 'Latter Day Pamphlets'? They make the world laugh, and his friends rather sorry for him. But that is because people will still look for practical measures from him: one must be content with him as a great satirist who can make us feel when we are wrong though he cannot set us right. There is a bottom of truth in Carlyle's wildest rhapsodies. I have no news to tell you of books or music, for I scarce see or hear any. And moreover I must be up, and leave the mahogany coffee-room table on which I write so badly: and be off to Lincoln's Inn.

G.o.d bless you, my dear fellow. I ask a man of business here in the room about Grimsby: he says, 'Well, all these railways are troublesome; but the Grimsby one is one of the best: railway property must look up a little: and so will Grimsby.'

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE: Friday [4 _Oct_. 1850].

MY DEAR DONNE,

I have been some while intending to send you a few lines, to report my continued existence, to thank you for the Papers, which I and my dear old Crabbe read and mark, and to tell you I was much pleased with Laurence's sketch of you, which he exhibited to me in a transitory way some weeks ago. Has he been to Bury again? To Sir H. Bunbury's?

I am packing up my mind by degrees to move away from here on a round of visits: and will give you a look at Bury if you like it. I am really frightened that it is a whole year since I have seen you: and we but two hours asunder! I know it is not want of will on my part: though you may wonder what other want detains me; but you will believe me when I say it is not want of will. You are too busy to come here: where indeed is nothing to come for. I wished for Charles last Monday: for people came to shoot the three brace of pheasants inhabiting these woods: had I remembered the first of October, I would have let him know. Otherwise, I am afraid to invite the young, whom I cannot entertain.

H. Groome came over and dined with me on Wednesday: and Crabbe came to meet him; but the latter had no hearty smoker to keep him in countenance, and was not quite comfortable. H. Groome improves: his poetical and etymological ambitions begin to pale away before years that bring the philosophic mind, and before a rising family.

I liked your Articles on Pepys much. How go on the Norfolk worthies? I see by your review that you are now ripe to write them at your ease: which means (in a work of that kind) successfully.

_To F. Tennyson_.

[BOULGE], _Decr_. 31/50.

MY DEAR OLD FREDERIC,

If you knew how glad I am to hear from you, you would write to me oftener. You see I make a quick return whenever I get an epistle from you. I should indeed have begun to indite before, but I had not a sc.r.a.p of serviceable paper in the house: and I am only this minute returned from a wet walk to Woodbridge bringing home the sheet on which I am now writing, along with the rest of a half-quire, which may be filled to you, if we both live. I now count the number of sheets: there are nine. I do not think we average more than three letters a year each. Shall both of us, or either, live three years more, beginning with the year that opens to-morrow? I somehow believe _not_: which I say not as a doleful thing (indeed you may look at it as a very ludicrous one). Well, we shall see.

I am all for the short and merry life. Last night I began the sixth Book of Lucretius in bed. You laugh grimly again? I have not looked into it for more than a year, and I took it up by mistake for one of Swift's dirty volumes; and, having got into bed with it, did not care to get out to change it.

The delightful lady . . . is going to leave this neighbourhood and carry her young Husband {261} to Oxford, there to get him some Oriental Professorship one day. He is a delightful fellow, and, _I_ say, will, if he live, be the best Scholar in England. Not that I think Oxford will be so helpful to his studies as his counting house at Ipswich was. However, being married he cannot at all events become Fellow, and, as so many do, dissolve all the promise of Scholarship in Sloth, Gluttony, and sham Dignity. I shall miss them both more than I can say, and must take to Lucretius! to comfort me. I have entirely given up the _Genteel_ Society here about; and scarce ever go anywhere but to the neighbouring Parson, {262a} with whom I discuss Paley's Theology, and the Gorham Question. I am going to him to-night, by the help of a Lantern, in order to light out the Old Year with a Cigar. For he is a great Smoker, and a very fine fellow in all ways.

I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, {262b} in their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume. For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some personal Beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in water: and I said then one never could look at the willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man, how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his plain a.s.sertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to make shine at my own expense.

Don't suppose that this or any other ideal day with him effaces my days with you. Indeed, my dear Frederic, you also mark many times and many places in which I have been with you. Gravesend and its [Greek text]

shrimps cannot be forgotten. You say I shall never go to see you at Florence. I have said to you before and I now repeat it, that if ever I go abroad it shall be to see you and my G.o.dchild. I really cannot say if I should not have gone this winter (as I hinted in my last) in case you had answered my letter. But I really did not know if you had not left Florence; and a fortnight ago I thought to myself I would write to Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you. As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled Alfred, I mean spoiled him for the great work he ought now to be entering upon; the lovely and n.o.ble things he has done must remain. It is dangerous work this prophesying about great Men. . . .

I beg you very much to send me your poems, the very first opportunity; as I want them very much. n.o.body doubts that you ought to make a volume for Moxon. Send your poems to Spedding to advise on. No doubt Alfred would be best adviser of all: but then people would be stupid, and say that he had done all that was good in the Book--(wait till I take my tea, which has been lying on the table these ten minutes)--Now, animated by some very inferior Souchong from the village shop, I continue my letter, having reflected during my repast that I have seen two College men you remember since I last wrote, Thompson and Merivale. The former is just recovering of the water cure, looking blue: the latter, Merivale, is just recovering from--Marriage!--which he undertook this Midsummer, with a light-haired daughter of George Frere's. Merivale lives just on the borders of Suffolk: and a week before his marriage he invited me to meet F. Pollock and his wife at the Rectory. There we spent two easy days, and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . . Have you seen Merivale's History of Rome, beginning with the Empire? Two portly volumes are out, and are approved of by Scholars, I believe. I have not read them, not having money to buy, nor any friend to lend.

I hear little music but what I make myself, or help to make with my Parson's son and daughter. We, with not a voice among us, go through Handel's Coronation Anthems! Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite so; the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest outline of them tells; my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows: his is the Music for a Great, Active, People. Sometimes too, I go over to a place elegantly called _Bungay_, where a Printer {265} lives who drills the young folks of a manufactory there to sing in Chorus once a week. . . . They sing some of the English Madrigals, some of Purcell, and some of Handel, in a way to satisfy me, who don't want perfection, and who believe that the _grandest_ things do not depend on delicate finish. If you were here now, we would go over and hear the Harmonious Blacksmith sung in Chorus, with words, of course. It almost made me cry when I heard the divine Air rolled into vocal harmony from the four corners of a large Hall. One can scarce comprehend the Beauty of the English Madrigals till one hears them done (though coa.r.s.ely) in this way and on a large scale: the play of the parts as they alternate from the different quarters of the room.

I have taken another half sheet to finish my letter upon: so as my calculation of how far this half-quire is to spread over Time is defeated. Let us write oftener, and longer, and we shall not tempt the Fates by inchoating too long a hope of letter-paper. I have written enough for to-night: I am now going to sit down and play one of Handel's Overtures as well as I can--Semele, perhaps, a very grand one--then, lighting my lantern, trudge through the mud to Parson Crabbe's. Before I take my pen again to finish this letter the New Year will have dawned--on some of us. 'Thou fool! this night thy soul may be required of thee!'

Very well: while it is in this Body I will wish my dear old F. T. a happy New Year. And now to drum out the Old with Handel. Good Night.

New Year's Day, 1851. A happy new Year to you! I sat up with my Parson till the Old Year was past, drinking punch and smoking cigars, for which I endure some headache this morning. Not that we took much; but a very little punch disagrees with me. Only I would not disappoint my old friend's convivial expectations. He is one of those happy men who has the boy's heart throbbing and trembling under the snows of sixty-five.

_To G. Crabbe_.

[GELDESTONE, _Feb_. 11, 1851.]

MY DEAR GEORGE,

I send you an Euphranor, and (as you desire it) Spedding's Examiner.

{266} I believe that I should be ashamed of his praise, if I did not desire to take any means to make my little book known for a good purpose.

I think he over-praises it: but he cannot over-praise the design, and (as I believe) the tendency of it.

60 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, [_Feb_. 27, 1851.]

MY DEAR GEORGE,