Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 8

My Brother John so much wants a Copy of Elizabeth's Verses to my Sister Isabella in other Days.

This time twenty years you were going to me at Boulge Cottage: this time ten years you were preparing for India.

Adieu, Love to the Lady.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

LOWESTOFT: _July_ 27 [1866].

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day.

I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so!

I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his Kinsfolk.

A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For, having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls'

made upon him as Shareholder.

At Genus Humanum d.a.m.nat Caligo Futuri.

So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one third bigger than it should be.

All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a hopeless Process, I believe all the while.

Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two honest Fellows to deal with.

We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew.

With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic Aphorisms, observed long ago.

When I was sailing about the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, etc., I read my dear old Sophocles again (sometimes omitting the nonsense-verse Choruses) and thought how much I should have liked to have them commented along in one of your Lectures. All that is now over with you: but you will look into the Text now and then. I have now got Munro's Lucretius on board again. Why is it that I never can take up with Horace--so sensible, elegant, agreeable, and sometimes even grand?

Some one gave me the July Number of the Cornhill to read the 'Loss of the London' in; and very well worth reading it is. But there is also the Beginning of a Story that I am sure must be by Annie Thackeray--capital and wonderful. I forget the name.

Now I won't finish this Second Sheet--all with such Sc.r.a.ps as the foregoing. But do believe how sincerely and truly I wish you well in your new Venture. And so I will shut up, my dear Thompson, for the present. No man can have more reason to wish you a good Return for your long generous Kindness than your old Friend,

E. F. G.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 13/66.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I think you have given me up as a bad Job: and I can't blame you. I have been expecting to hear of you in these parts: though, had it been so, I doubt if I should have been here to meet you. For the last six weeks I have scarce been at home; what with sailing to the Isle of Wight, Norfolk Coast, staying at Lowestoft, etc. And now I am just off again to the latter place, having only returned here on Sat.u.r.day. Nor can I say when I shall be back here for any long while: the Kerriches are at Lowestoft; and I have yet one or two more Sea-trips to make before October consigns me once more to Cold, Indoor Solitude, Melancholy, and Illhealth.

My Companion on board has been Sophocles, as he was three years ago, I find. I am even now going to hunt up some one-volume Virgil to take with me. Horace I never can care about, in spite of his Good Sense, Elegance, and occasional Force. He never made my Eyes wet as Virgil does.

When I was about Cromer Coast, I was reading Windham's Diary: well worth reading, as one of the most honest; but with little else in it than that.

You would scarcely guess from it that he was a man of any Genius, as yet I suppose he was.

Somehow I fancy you must be travelling abroad! Else surely I should have heard something of you. Well: I must anyhow enclose this Letter, or direct it, to your Mother's or Brother's at Ipswich. Do let me hear of yourself and Elizabeth, and believe that I do not forget you, nor cease to be

Yours very sincerely EDWARD FITZGERALD.

LOWESTOFT: _August_ 19/66.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I don't wish you to think I am in Woodbridge all this while since your Note came. It was forwarded to me here, where I have been since I wrote to you a week ago. The fact is, I had promised to return on finding that the Kerriches were to be here. So, here I am: living on board my little Ship: sometimes taking them out for a Sail: sometimes accompanying them in a walk. In other respects, I am very fond of this Place, which I have known and frequented these forty years; till the last three years in company with my Sister Kerrich, who has helped to endear it to me. I believe I shall be here, off and on, some while longer; as my Brother Peter (who has lately lost a capital Wife) is coming to sail about with me. Should I be at Woodbridge for some days I will let you know.

Do you see 'Squire Allenby,' as the folks at Felixtow Ferry call him? If so, ask him why he doesn't sometimes sail here with his ship; he would like it, I fancy: and everybody seems to like him.

Only yesterday I finished reading the Electra. Before that, Ajax; which is well worth re-reading too. I am sorry to find I have only Antigone left of all the precious Seven; a lucid Constellation indeed! I suppose I must try Euripides after this; some few of his Plays.

This time ten years--a month ago--we were all lounging about in the hayfield before your Mother's House at Rushmere. I do not forget these things: nor cease to remember them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate interest: the very sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to recreate them. This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind to me, to believe.

I am going to run again to the Coast of Norfolk--as far as Wells--to wander about Holkham, if the Weather permit. We have had too much Wind and Wet to make such excursions agreeable: for, when one reached the Places by Sea, the Rain prevented one's going about on Sh.o.r.e to look about. But now that there has been rather a better look-out of Weather for the last few Days, and that--

[Greek text]-- {86}

I shall try again for two or three Days. How do you translate [Greek text] here?

Ever yours, E. F. G.

LOWESTOFT still! _Septr._ 4 [1866].

MY DEAR COWELL,

Still here, you see! Till the end of last week I had my Kerrich people here; I am now expecting my Brother Peter again: he has lately lost his capital Wife, and flies about between Ireland and England for Company and Diversion of Thought. I am also expecting Mowbray Donne over from Yarmouth this week.

I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my little Ship, or on Sh.o.r.e? Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about yourself--yourselves--and do not think I am indifferent to you.

I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek Audience expected--as I suppose they also expected the little sententious truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one of the better Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good: but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta {87a} insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter's Life--a piece of Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think. I have not yet read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether, the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly told: but some good descriptive pa.s.sages.

In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Pa.s.sion to return to Sophocles, and read the two OEdipuses again. Oh, how immeasurably superior! In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all! How can they call Euripides [Greek text], {87b} putting a few pa.s.sages of his against whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more moving than any Euripides wrote.

But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral or printed. I mean Sophocles; I don't care to be accurate with the other. Can you recommend any Edition--not too German? I should write to Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on. I mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean Peac.o.c.k; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.

I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and 8th Books of the AEneid. I could now take them up and read them both again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII--the poor Matron kindling her early fire--so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or disproportionate, to the Thing it ill.u.s.trates.

Here is a long Letter--of the old Sort, I suppose. All these Books come back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone together!--I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield said were coming upon her--Winter, Want, and Sickness. {88}

Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and Friends.