Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 14

I send this to you, dear Mrs. Kemble, not because the writer is a Lord--Ex- Chancellor--but a very good, amiable, and judicious man. I should have sent you any other such testimony, had not all but this been oral, only this one took away the Book, and thus returns it. I had forgot to ask about the Book; oh, make Bentley do it; if any other English Publisher should meditate doing so, he surely will apprise you; and you can have some Voice in it.

Ever yours E. F.G.

No need to return, or acknowledge, the Letter.

LI.

LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.

_February_ 22, [1878.]

MY DEAR LADY,

I am calling on you earlier than usual, I think. In my 'Academy' {134a} I saw mention of some Notes on Mrs. Siddons in some article of this month's 'Fortnightly' {134b}--as I thought. So I bought the Number, but can find no Siddons there. You probably know about it; and will tell me?

If you have not already read--_buy_ Keats' Love-Letters to f.a.n.n.y Brawne.

One wishes she had another name; and had left some other Likeness of herself than the Silhouette (cut out by Scissors, I fancy) which dashes one's notion of such a Poet's worship. But one knows what misrepresentations such Scissors make. I had--perhaps have--one of Alfred Tennyson, done by an Artist on a Steamboat--some thirty years ago; which, though not inaccurate of outline, gave one the idea of a respectable Apprentice. {134c} But Keats' Letters--It happened that, just before they reached me, I had been hammering out some admirable Notes on Catullus {135a}--another such fiery Soul who perished about thirty years of age two thousand years ago; and I scarce felt a change from one to other. {135b} From Catullus' better parts, I mean; for there is too much of filthy and odious--both of Love and Hate. Oh, my dear Virgil never fell into that: he was fit to be Dante's companion beyond even Purgatory.

I have just had a nice letter from Mr. Norton in America: an amiable, modest man surely he must be. His aged Mother has been ill: fallen indeed into some half-paralysis: affecting her Speech princ.i.p.ally. He says nothing of Mr. Lowell; to whom I would write if I did not suppose he was very busy with his Diplomacy, and his Books, in Spain. I hope he will give us a Cervantes, in addition to the Studies in his 'Among my Books,' which seem to me, on the whole, the most conclusive Criticisms we have on their several subjects.

Do you ever see Mrs. Ritchie? Fred. Tennyson wrote me that Alfred's son (Lionel, the younger, I suppose) was to be married in Westminster Abbey: which Fred, thinks an ambitious flight of Mrs. A. T.

I may as well stop in such Gossip. Snowdrops and Crocuses out: I have not many, for what I had have been buried under an overcoat of Clay, poor little Souls. Thrushes tuning up; and I hope my old Blackbirds have not forsaken me, or fallen a prey to Cats.

And I am ever yours E. F.G.

LII.

THE OLD (CURIOSITY) SHOP. WOODBRIDGE, _April_ 16, [1878.]

[Where, by the by, I heard the Nightingale for the first time yesterday Morning. That is, I believe, almost its exact date of return, wind and weather permitting. Which being premised--]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I think it is about the time for you to have a letter from me; for I think I am nearly as punctual as the Nightingale, though at quicker Intervals; and perhaps there may be other points of Unlikeness. After hearing that first Nightingale in my Garden, I found a long, kind, and pleasant, Letter from Mr. Lowell in Madrid: the first of him too that I have heard since he flew thither. Just before he wrote, he says, he had been a.s.signing Damages to some American who complained of having been fed too long on Turtle's Eggs {136}:--and all that sort of Business, says the Minister, does not inspire a man to Letter-writing. He is acclimatizing himself to Cervantes, about whom he must write one of his fine, and (as I think) final Essays: I mean such as (in the case of others he has done) ought to leave no room for a reversal of Judgment. Amid the mult.i.tude of Essays, Reviews, etc., one still wants _that_: and I think Lowell does it more than any other Englishman. He says he meets Velasquez at every turn of the street; and Murillo's Santa Anna opens his door for him. Things are different here: but when my Oracle last night was reading to me of Dandie Dinmont's blessed visit to Bertram in Portanferry Gaol, I said--'I know it's Dandie, and I shouldn't be at all surprized to see him come into this room.' No--no more than--Madame de Sevigne! I suppose it is scarce right to live so among Shadows; but--after near seventy years so pa.s.sed--'Que voulez-vous?'

Still, if any Reality would--of its own Volition--draw near to my still quite substantial Self; I say that my House (if the Spring do not prove unkindly) will be ready to receive--and the owner also--any time before June, and after July; that is, before Mrs. Kemble goes to the Mountains, and after she returns from them. I dare say no more, after so much so often said, and all about oneself.

Yesterday the Nightingale; and To-day a small, still, Rain which we had hoped for, to make 'poindre' the Flower-seeds we put in Earth last Sat.u.r.day. All Sunday my white Pigeons were employed in confiscating the Sweet Peas we had laid there; so that To-day we have to sow the same anew.

I think a Memoir of Alfred de Musset, by his Brother, well worth reading.

{138a} I don't say the best, but only to myself the most acceptable of modern French Poets; and, as I judge, a fine fellow--of the moral French type (I suppose some of the Shadow is left out of the Sketch), but of a Soul quite abhorrent from modern French Literature--from V. Hugo (I think) to E. Sue (I am sure). He loves to read--Clarissa! which reminded me of Tennyson, some forty years ago, saying to me _a propos_ of that very book, 'I love those large, _still_, Books.' During a long Illness of A. de M. a Sister of the Bon Secours attended him: and, when she left, gave him a Pen worked in coloured Silks, 'Pensez a vos promesses,' as also a little 'amph.o.r.e' she had knitted. Seventeen years (I think) after, when his last Illness came on him, he desired these two things to be enclosed in his Coffin. {138b}

And I am ever yours E. F.G.

LIII.

DUNWICH: _August_ 24, [1878.]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I forget if I wrote to you from this solitary Seaside, last year: telling you of its old Priory walls, etc. I think you must have been in Switzerland when I was here; however, I'll not tell you the little there is to tell about it now; for, beside that I may have told it all before, this little lodging furnishes only a steel pen, and very diluted ink (as you see), and so, for your own sake, I will be brief. Indeed, my chief object in writing at all, is, to ask when you go abroad, and how you have done at Malvern since last I heard from you--now a month ago, I think.

About the beginning of next week I shall be leaving this place--for good, I suppose--for the two friends--Man and Wife--who form my Company here, living a long musket shot off, go away--he in broken health--and would leave the place too solitary without them. So I suppose I shall decamp along with them; and, after some time spent at Lowestoft, find my way back to Woodbridge--in time to see the End of the Flowers, and to prepare what is to be done in that way for another Year.

And to Woodbridge your Answer may be directed, if this poor Letter of mine reaches you, and you should care to answer it--as you will--oh yes, you will--were it much less significant.

I have been rather at a loss for Books while here, Mudie having sent me a lot I did not care for--not even for Lady Chatterton. Aldis Wright gave me his Edition of Coriola.n.u.s to read; and I did not think '_pow wow_' of it, as Volumnia says. All the people were talking about me.

And I am ever yours truly E. F.G.

LIV.

WOODBRIDGE: _April_ 3/79.

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE:--

I know well how exact you are in answering Letters; and I was afraid that you must be in some trouble, for yourself, or others, when I got no reply to a second Letter I wrote you addressed to Baltimore Hotel, Leamington--oh, two months ago. When you last wrote to me, you were there, with a Cough, which you were just going to take with you to Guy's Cliff. That I thought not very prudent, in the weather we then had. Then I was told by some one, in a letter (not from any Donne, I think--no, Annie Ritchie, I believe) that Mrs. Sartoris was very ill; and so between two probable troubles, I would not trouble you as yet again. I had to go to London for a day three weeks ago (to see a poor fellow dying, sooner or later, of Brain disease), and I ferreted out Mowbray Donne from Somerset House and he told me you were in London, still ill of a Cough; but not your Address. So I wrote to his Wife a few days ago to learn it; and I shall address this Letter accordingly. Mrs. Mowbray writes that you are better, but obliged to take care of yourself. I can only say 'do not trouble yourself to write'--but I suppose you will--perhaps the more if it be a trouble. See what an Opinion I have of you!--If you write, pray tell me of Mrs. Sartoris--and do not forget yourself.

It has been such a mortal Winter among those I know, or know of, as I never remember. I have not suffered myself, further than, I think, feeling a few stronger hints of a const.i.tutional sort, which are, I suppose, to a.s.sert themselves ever more till they do for me. And that, I suppose, cannot be long adoing. I entered on my 71st year last Monday, March 31.

My elder--and now only--Brother, John, has been shut up with Doctor and Nurse these two months--AEt. 76; his Wife AEt. 80 all but dead awhile ago, now sufficiently recovered to keep her room in tolerable ease: I do not know if my Brother will ever leave his house.

Oh dear! Here is enough of Mortality.

I see your capital Book is in its third Edition, as well it deserves to be. I _see_ no one with whom to talk about it, except one brave Woman who comes over here at rare intervals--she had read my Atlantic Copy, but must get Bentley's directly it appeared, and she (a woman of remarkably strong and independent Judgment) loves it all--not (as some you know) wishing some of it away. No; she says she wants all to complete her notion of the writer. Nor have I _heard_ of any one who thinks otherwise: so 'some people' may be wrong. I know you do not care about all this.

I am getting my 'Tales of the Hall' printed, and shall one day ask you, and three or four beside, whether it had better be published. I think you, and those three or four others, will like it; but they may also judge that indifferent readers might not. And that you will all of you have to tell me when the thing is done. I shall not be in the least disappointed if you tell me to keep it among 'ourselves,' so long as 'ourselves' are pleased; for I know well that Publication would not carry it much further abroad; and I am very well content to pay my money for the little work which I have long meditated doing. I shall have done 'my little owl.' Do you know what that means?--No. Well then; my Grandfather had several Parrots of different sorts and Talents: one of them ('Billy,' I think) could only huff up his feathers in what my Grandfather called an owl fashion; so when Company were praising the more gifted Parrots, he would say--'You will hurt poor Billy's feelings--Come!

Do your little owl, my dear!'--You are to imagine a handsome, hair-powdered, Gentleman doing this--and his Daughter--my Mother--telling of it.

And so it is I do my little owl.

This little folly takes a long bit of my Letter paper--and I do not know that you will see any fun in it. Like my Book, it would not tell in Public.