Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 6

DEAR BARTON,

. . . I have brought down here with me Sydney Smith's Works, now first collected: you will delight in them: I shall bring them to Suffolk when I come: and it will not be long, I dare say, before I come, as there is to be rather a large meeting of us at Boulge this August. I have got the fidgets in my right arm and hand (how the inconvenience redoubles as one mentions it)--do you know what the fidgets are?--a true ailment, though perhaps not a dangerous one. Here I am again in the land of old Bunyan--better still in the land of the more perennial Ouse, making many a fantastic winding and going much out of his direct way to fertilize and adorn. Fuller supposes that he lingers thus in the pleasant fields of Bedfordshire, being in no hurry to enter the more barren fens of Lincolnshire. So he says. This house is just on the edge of the town: a garden on one side skirted by the public road which again is skirted by a row of such Poplars as only the Ouse knows how to rear--and pleasantly they rustle now--and the room in which I write is quite cool and opens into a greenhouse which opens into said garden: and it's all deuced pleasant. For in half an hour I shall seek my Piscator, {61a} and we shall go to a Village {61b} two miles off and fish, and have tea in a pot- house, and so walk home. For all which idle ease I think I must be d.a.m.ned. I begin to have dreadful suspicions that this fruitless way of life is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open eyes above. One really ought to dip for a little misery: perhaps however all this ease is only intended to turn sour by and bye, and so to poison one by the very nature of self-indulgence. Perhaps again as idleness is so very great a trial of virtue, the idle man who keeps himself tolerably chaste, etc., may deserve the highest reward; the more idle, the more deserving. Really I don't jest: but I don't propound these things as certain.

There is a fair review of Sh.e.l.ley in the new Edinburgh: saying the truth on many points where the truth was not easily enunciated, as I believe.

Now, dear sir, I have said all I have to say: and Carlyle says, you know, it is dangerous to attempt to say more. So farewell for the present: if you like to write soon, direct to the Post Office, Bedford: if not, I shall soon be at Woodbridge to antic.i.p.ate the use of your pen.

HALVERSTOWN, {62} _Sunday_, Oct. 20, [1839].

MY DEAR SIR,

I am very glad that you lifted yourself at last from your mahogany desk, and took such a trip as you describe in your last letter. I don't think you could have made a better in the same given s.p.a.ce of time. It is some years since I have seen the Castle at Windsor, except from Eton. The view from the Terrace is the n.o.blest I know of, taking it with all its a.s.sociations together. Gray's Ode rises up into the mind as one looks around--does it not?--a sure proof that, however people may condemn certain conceits and expressions in the poem, the spirit of it is genuine. 'Ye distant spires, ye antique towers'--very large and n.o.ble, like the air that breathes upon one as one looks down along the view. My brother John told me he thought the Waterloo gallery very fine: the portraits by Sir Thomas almost as fine as Vand.y.k.e. You saw them, of course. You say nothing of having seen the National Gallery in London: indeed I rather fear it is closed these two months. This is a great loss to you: the Rubens landscape you would never have forgot. Thank you for the picture of my dear old Bredfield which you have secured for me: it is most welcome. Poor Nursey once made me a very pretty oil sketch of it: but I gave it to Mr. Jenney. By all means have it engraved for the pocket book: it is well worthy. Some of the tall ash trees about it used to be visible at sea: but I think their topmost branches are decayed now.

This circ.u.mstance I put in, because it will tell in your verse ill.u.s.tration of the view. From the road before the lawn, people used plainly to see the topmasts of the men-of war lying in Hollesley bay during the war. I like the idea of this: the old English house holding up its enquiring chimneys and weather c.o.c.ks (there is great physiognomy in weatherc.o.c.ks) toward the far-off sea, and the ships upon it. How well I remember when we used all to be in the Nursery, and from the window see the hounds come across the lawn, my Father and Mr. Jenney in their hunting caps, etc., with their long whips--all Daguerreotyped into the mind's eye now--and that is all. Perhaps you are not civilised enough to know what Daguerreotype is: no more do I well. We were all going on here as merrily as possible till this day week, when my Piscator got an order from his Father to go home direct!) So go he would the day after. I wanted to go also: but they would have me stay here ten days more. So I stay: I suppose I shall be in London toward the end of this week however: and then it will not be long before I pay you a visit. . . .

I have gone through Homer's Iliad--sorry to have finished it. The accounts of the Zoolu people, with Dingarn their king, etc., {64} give one a very good idea of the Homeric heroes, who were great brutes: but superior to the G.o.ds who governed them: which also has been the case with most nations. It is a lucky thing that G.o.d made Man, and that Man has not to make G.o.d: we should fare badly, judging by the specimens already produced--Frankenstein Monster G.o.ds, formed out of the worst and rottenest sc.r.a.ps of humanity--gigantic--and to turn destructively upon their Creators--

'But be ye of good cheer! I have overcome the world--'

So speaks a gentle voice.

I found here a Number of Tait's Magazine for August last, containing a paper on Southey, Wordsworth, etc., by De Quincey. Incomplete and disproportioned like his other papers: but containing two n.o.ble pa.s.sages: one, on certain years of his own Life when Opium shut him out from the world; the other, on Southey's style: in which he tells a truth which is obvious, directly it is told. Tait seems to be very well worth a shilling a month: that is the price of him, I see. You have bought Carlyle's Miscellanies, have you not? I long to get them: but one must wait till they are out of print before the Dublin booksellers shall have heard of them. Now here is really a very long letter, and what is more, written with a pen of my own mending--more consolatory to me than to you.

Mr. Macnish's inscription {65} for Milton is--

His lofty spirit was the home Of inspirations high, A mighty temple whose great dome Was hidden in the sky.

Who Mr. Macnish is, I don't know. Didn't he write some Essays on Drunkenness once? or on Dreams?

Farewell for the present, my dear Sir. We shall soon shake hands again.

Ever yours,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, [4 _April_, 1840]

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . The country is now showing symptoms of greenness and warmth.

Yesterday I walked (not a common thing for me) eleven miles; partly over a heath, covered with furze bushes just come out into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind blew into my face. Such a day it was, only not so warm as when you and I used to sit on those rocks overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight years ago. I am afraid you are growing too good a Christian for me, Master Allen, if you know what I mean by that. Don't be alarmed however. I have just read the first number of d.i.c.kens' new work {66a}: it does not promise much, I think.

Love to all Coram Street. {66b}

_To Frederic Tennyson_.

THE CORPORATE TOWN OF BEDFORD, _June_ 7, 1840.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Your letter dated from the Eternal City on the 15th of May reached me here two days ago. Perhaps you have by this time left Naples to which you bid me direct: or will have left it by the time my letter gets there.

. . . Our letters are dated from two very different kinds of places: but perhaps equally well suited to the genius of the two men. For I am becoming more hebete every hour: and have not even the ambition to go up to London all this spring to see the Exhibitions, etc. I live in general quietly at my brother-in-law's in Norfolk {67} and I look with tolerable composure on vegetating there for some time to come, and in due time handing out my eldest nieces to waltz, etc., at the County b.a.l.l.s. People affect to talk of this kind of life as very beautiful and philosophical: but I don't: men ought to have an ambition to stir, and travel, and fill their heads and senses: but so it is. Enough of what is now generally called the subjective style of writing. This word has made considerable progress in England during the year you have been away, so that people begin to fancy they understand what it means. I have been striving at it, because it is a very _sine qua non_ condition in a book which I have just been reading, Eastlake's translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours.

I recommend it to you, when you can get hold of it. Come back to England quick and read my copy. Goethe is all in opposition to Newton: and reduces the primitive colours to two. Whewell, I believe, does not patronise it: but it is certainly very Baconically put together. While you are wandering among ruins, waterfalls, and temples, and contemplating them as you sit in your lodgings, I poke about with a book and a colour- box by the side of the river Ouse--quiet scenery enough--and make horrible sketches. The best thing to me in Italy would be that you are there. But I hope you will soon come home and install yourself again in Mornington Crescent. I have just come from Leamington: while there, I met Alfred by chance: we made two or three pleasant excursions together: to Stratford upon Avon and Kenilworth, etc. Don't these names sound very thin amid your warm southern nomenclature? But I'll be bound you would be pleased to exchange all your fine burnt up places for a look at a Warwickshire pasture every now and then during these hot days. . . .

The sun shines very bright, and there is a kind of bustle in these clean streets, because there is to be a grand True Blue dinner in the town Hall. Not that I am going: in an hour or two I shall be out in the fields rambling alone. I read Burnet's History--ex pede Herculem. Well, say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a country as Old England--never were there such a Gentry as the English. They will be the distinguishing mark and glory of England in History, as the Arts were of Greece, and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me to any land so beautiful, as the good sense, justice, and liberality of my good countrymen make this. And I cling the closer to it, because I feel that we are going down the hill, and shall perhaps live ourselves to talk of all this independence as a thing that has been. To none of which you a.s.sent perhaps. At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a window that looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc. Haven't I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of Ma.s.saniello long ago?

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE HALL, _Sunday_, _July_ 12/40.

MY DEAR JOHN ALLEN,

I wrote a good bit of a letter to you three weeks ago: but, being non- plussed suddenly, tore it up. Lusia says she has had a letter from Mrs.

Allen, telling how you had a troublesome and even dangerous pa.s.sage to Tenby: but that there you arrived at last. And there I suppose you are.

The _veteris vestigia flammae_, or old pleasant recollections of our being together at that place make me begin another sheet to you. I am almost convicted in my own mind of ingrat.i.tude for not having travelled long ago to Pembrokeshire, to show my most kind friends of Freestone that I remember their kindness, and that they made my stay so pleasant as to make me wish to test their hospitality again. Nothing but my besetting indolence (the strongest thing about me) could have prevented my doing this. I should like much to see Mr. and Mrs. Allen again, and Carew Castle, and walk along the old road traversed by you and me several times between Freestone and Tenby. Does old Penelly Top stand where it did, faintly discernible in these rainy skies? Do you sit ever upon that rock that juts out by Tenby harbour, where you and I sat one day seven years ago, and quoted G. Herbert? Lusia tells me also that nice Mary Allen is to be married to your brother--Charles, I think. She is really one of the pleasantest remembrances of womanhood I have. I suppose she sits still in an upper room, with an old turnip of a watch (tell her I remember this) on the table beside her as she reads wholesome books. As I write, I remember different parts of the house and the garden, and the fields about. Is it absolutely _that_ Mary Allen that is to become Mrs.

Charles Allen? Pray write, and let me hear of this from yourself.

Another thing also: are you to become our Rector in Suss.e.x? This is another of Lusia's scandals. I rather hope it is true: but not quite.

Lusia is pretty well: better, I think, than when she first came down from London. . . . She makes herself tolerably happy down here: and wishes to exert herself: which is the highest wish a FitzGerald can form. I go on as usual, and in a way that needs no explanation to you: reading a little, drawing a little, playing a little, smoking a little, etc. I have got hold of Herodotus now: the most interesting of all Historians.

But I find the disadvantage of being so ill-grounded and bad a scholar: I can get at the broad sense: but all the delicacies (in which so much of the beauty and character of an author lie) escape me sadly. The more I read, the more I feel this. But what does it all signify? Time goes on, and we get older; and whether my idleness comprehends the distinctions of the 1st and 2nd Aorist will not be noted much in the Book of Life, either on this or the other side of the leaf. Here is a letter written on this Sunday Night, July 12, 1840. And it shall go to-morrow. My kind remembrances to Mrs. Allen: and (I beg you to transmit them) to all my fore-known friends at Freestone. And believe me yours now as I have been and hope to be ever affectionately,

E. FITZGERALD.

I shall be here till the end of the month.

N.B. I am growing bald.

BOULGE, _July_ 25/40.

MY DEAR FELLOW,

Many thanks for your kind long letter. It brought me back to the green before the house at Freestone, and the old schoolroom in it. I have always felt within myself that if ever I did go again to Freestone, I should puzzle myself and every one else by bringing back old a.s.sociations among existing things: I should have felt awkward. The place remains quite whole in my mind: Anne Allen's damask cheek forming part of the colouring therein. I remember a little well somewhere in the woods about a mile from the house: and those faint reports of explosions from towards Milford, etc., which we used to hear when we all walked out together. You are to thank Mary Allen for her kind wishes: and tell her she need not doubt that I wish her all good things. I enclose you as you see a little drawing of a Suffolk farm house close here: copied from a sketch of poor Mr. Nursey. If you think it worth giving to Mary Allen, do: it seems, and perhaps is, very namby-pamby to send this: but she and I used to talk of drawings together: and this will let her know that I go on just the same as I did eight years ago. N.B. It is not intended as a nuptial present.

Now, you need not answer this letter: as you have done remarkably well already. I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also just concocted two gallons of Tar water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming: and then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be tried first on my old woman: if she survives, I am to begin: and it will then gradually spread into the Parish, through England, Europe, etc., 'as the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.' Good people here are much scandalized at Thirlwall's being made a Bishop: Isabella {73a} brought home a report from a clergyman that Thirlwall had so bad a character at Trinity that many would not a.s.sociate with him. I do not think however that I would have made him Bishop: I am all for good and not great Bishops. Old Evans {73b} would have done better. I am become an Oxford High Church Divine after Newman: whose sermons are the best that ever were written in my judgment. Cecil I have read: and liked for his good sense. Is the croft at Tenby still green: and does Mary Allen take a turn on it in a riding habit as of old? And I remember a ravine on the horn of the bay opposite the town where the sea rushes up. I mean as you go on past the croft. I can walk there as in a dream. I see Thackeray's book {73c} announced as about to be published, and I hear Spedding has written a Review of Carlyle's Revolution in the Edinburgh. I don't know a book more certain to evaporate away from posterity than that, except it be supported by his other works. Parts may perhaps be found two hundred years hence and translated into Erse by some inverted Macpherson. 'These things seem strange,' says Herodotus, {73d} [Greek text]. Herodotus makes few general a.s.sertions: so when he does make them, they tell. I could talk more to you, but my paper is out. John Allen, I rejoice in you.

_To Bernard Barton_.

BEDFORD, _Aug_. 31/40.

DEAR SIR,

I duly received your letter. I am just returned from staying three days at a delightful Inn by the river Ouse, where we always go to fish. I dare say I have told you about it before. The Inn is the cleanest, the sweetest, the civillest, the quietest, the liveliest, and the cheapest that ever was built or conducted. Its name, the Falcon of Bletsoe. On one side it has a garden, then the meadows through which winds the Ouse: on the other, the public road, with its coaches hurrying on to London, its market people halting to drink, its farmers, hors.e.m.e.n, and foot travellers. So, as one's humour is, one can have whichever phase of life one pleases: quietude or bustle; solitude or the busy hum of men: one can sit in the princ.i.p.al room with a tankard and a pipe and see both these phases at once through the windows that open upon either. But through all these delightful places they talk of leading railroads: a sad thing, I am sure: quite impolitic. But Mammon is blind.

I went a week ago to see Luton, Lord Bute's place; filled with very fine pictures, of which I have dreamt since. It is the gallery in England that I most wish to see again: but I by no means say it is the most valuable. A great many pictures seemed to me misnamed--especially Correggio has to answer for some he never painted.

I am thinking of going to Naseby for a little while: after which I shall return here: and very likely find my way back to Norfolk before long. At all events, the middle of October will find me at Boulge, unless the Fates are very contrary.

_To Samuel Laurence_. {75}

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, _Nov_. 9/40.