Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 16

WOODBRIDGE: _August_ 4, [1879].

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE:

Two or three days, I think, after receiving your last letter, I posted an answer addrest to the Poste Restante of--Lucerne, was it?--anyhow, the town whose name you gave me, and no more. Now, I will venture through Coutts, unwilling as I am to trouble their Highnesses--with whom my Family have banked for three--if not four--Generations. Otherwise, I do not think they would be troubled with my Accounts, which they attend to as punctually as if I were 'my Lord;' and I am now their last Customer of my family, I believe, though I doubt not they have several Dozens of my Name in their Books--for Better or Worse.

What now spurs me to write is--an Article {153} I have seen in a Number of Macmillan for February, with very honourable mention of your Brother John in an Introductory Lecture on Anglo Saxon, by Professor Skeat. If you have not seen this 'Hurticle' (as Thackeray used to say) I should like to send it to you; and will so do, if you will but let me know where it may find you.

I have not been away from this place save for a Day or two since last you heard from me. In a fortnight I may be going to Lowestoft along with my friends the Cowells.

I take great Pleasure in Hawthorne's Journals--English, French, and Italian--though I cannot read his Novels. They are too thickly detailed for me: and of unpleasant matter too. We of the Old World beat the New, I think, in a more easy manner; though Browning & Co. do not bear me out there. And I am sincerely yours

E. F.G.

LIX.

LOWESTOFT, _Septr._ l8, [1879.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Your last letter told me that you were to be back in England by the middle of this month. So I write some lines to ask if you _are_ back, and where to be found. To be sure, I can learn that much from some Donne: to the Father of whom I must commit this letter for any further Direction. But I will also say a little--very little having to say--beyond asking you how you are, and in what Spirits after the great Loss you have endured. {154}

Of that Loss I heard from Blanche Donne--some while, it appears, before you heard of it yourself. I cannot say that it was surprising, however sad, considering the terrible Illness she had some fifteen years ago. I will say no more of it, nor of her, of whom I could say so much; but nothing that would not be more than superfluous to you.

It did so happen, that, the day before I heard of her Death, I had thought to myself that I would send her my Crabbe, as to my other friends, and wondered that I had not done so before. I should have sent off the Volume for Donne to transmit when--Blanche's Note came.

After writing of this, I do not think I should add much more, had I much else to write about. I will just say that I came to this place five weeks ago to keep company with my friend Edward Cowell, the Professor; we read Don Quixote together in a morning and chatted for two or three hours of an evening; and now he is gone away to Cambridge and [has] left me to my Nephews and Nieces here. By the month's end I shall be home at Woodbridge, whither any Letter you may please to write me may be addressed.

I try what I am told are the best Novels of some years back, but find I cannot read any but Trollope's. So now have recourse to Forster's Life of d.i.c.kens--a very good Book, I still think. Also, Eckermann's Goethe--almost as repeatedly to be read as Boswell's Johnson--a German Johnson--and (as with Boswell) more interesting to me in Eckermann's Diary than in all his own famous works.

Adieu: Ever yours sincerely E. F.G.

I am daily--hourly--expecting to hear of the Death of another Friend {155}--not so old a Friend, but yet a great loss to me.

LX.

11 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT, _Septr._ 24, [1879 ]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I was to have been at Woodbridge before this: and your Letter only reached me here yesterday. I have thought upon your desire to see me as an old Friend of yourself and yours; and you shall not have the trouble of saying so in vain. I should indeed be perplext at the idea of your coming all this way for such a purpose, to be shut up at an Hotel with no one to look in on you but myself (for you would not care for my Kindred here)--and my own Woodbridge House would require a little time to set in order, as I have for the present lost the services of one of my 'helps'

there. What do you say to my going to London to see you instead of your coming down to see me? I should anyhow have to go to London soon; and I could make my going sooner, or as soon as you please. Not but, if you want to get out of London, as well as to see me, I can surely get my house right in a little time, and will gladly do so, should you prefer it. I hope, indeed, that you will not stay in London at this time of year, when so many friends are out of it; and it has been my thought--and hope, I may say--that you have already betaken yourself to some pleasant place, with a pleasant Friend or two, which now keeps me from going at once to look for you in London, after a few Adieus here. Pray let me know your wishes by return of Post: and I will do my best to meet them immediately: being

Ever sincerely yours E. F.G.

LXI.

WOODBRIDGE: _Sept._ 28, [1879.]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE:--

I cannot be sure of your Address: but I venture a note--to say that--If you return to London on Wednesday, I shall certainly run up (the same day, if I can) to see you before you again depart on Sat.u.r.day, as your letter proposes. {157}

But I also write to beg you not to leave your Daughter for ever so short a while, simply because you had so arranged, and told me of your Arrangement.

If this Note of mine reach you somehow to morrow, there will be plenty of time for you to let me know whether you go or not: and, even if there be not time before Wednesday, why, I shall take no harm in so far as I really have a very little to do, and moreover shall see a poor Lady who has just lost her husband, after nearly three years anxious and uncertain watching, and now finds herself (brave and strong little Woman) somewhat floored now the long conflict is over. These are the people I may have told you of whom I have for some years met here and there in Suffolk--chiefly by the Sea; and we somehow suited one another. {158} He was a brave, generous, Boy (of sixty) with a fine Understanding, and great Knowledge and Relish of Books: but he had applied too late in Life to Painting which he could not master, though he made it his Profession.

A remarkable mistake, I always thought, in so sensible a man.

Whether I find you next week, or afterward (for I promise to find you any time you appoint) I hope to find you alone--for twenty years' Solitude make me very shy: but always your sincere

E. F.G.

LXII.

LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 7, [1879]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

When I got home yesterday, and emptied my Pockets, I found the precious Enclosure which I had meant to show, and (if you pleased) to give you. A wretched Sketch (whether by me or another, I know not) of your Brother John in some Cambridge Room, about the year 1832-3, when he and I were staying there, long after Degree time--he, studying Anglo-Saxon, I suppose--reading something, you see, with a gla.s.s of Ale on the table--or old Piano-forte was it?--to which he would sing very well his German Songs. Among them,

{Music Score: p159.jpg}

Do you remember? I afterwards a.s.sociated it with some stray verses applicable to one I loved.

'Heav'n would answer all your wishes, Were it much as Earth is here; Flowing Rivers full of Fishes, And good Hunting half the Year.'

Well:--here is the cause of this Letter, so soon after our conversing together, face to face, in Queen Anne's Mansions. A strange little After- piece to twenty years' Separation.

And now, here are the Sweet Peas, and Marigolds, sown in the Spring, still in a faded Blossom, and the Spirit that Tennyson told us of fifty years ago haunting the Flower-beds, {160} and a Robin singing--n.o.body else.

And I am to lose my capital Reader, he tells me, in a Fortnight, no Book- binding surviving under the pressure of Bad Times in little Woodbridge.

'My dear Fitz, there is no Future for little Country towns,' said Pollock to me when he came here some years ago.

But my Banker here found the Bond which he had considered unnecessary, safe in his Strong Box:--and I am your sincere Ancient