Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 28

_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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sages in his Life in which I was partly concerned. In particular, staying at his c.u.mberland 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: Sh.e.l.ley, 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 a.s.sociate 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Superst.i.tions 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 a.s.sociated 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 Gla.s.ses, 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 b.u.t.tercup 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 grat.i.tude.

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 Lat.i.tudes. 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].