Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 36

'_Tuesday_, _Dec._ 14. 1875.

'MY DEAR EDWARD FITZGERALD,

'I have got a printing-machine and am going to try and write to you upon it and see if it will suit your eyes better than my scrawl of handwriting. Thank you for the Photographs and the line of music; I know that old bit of tune, it seems to me. I think Mr. Irving's face more like Young's than my Father's. Tom Taylor, years ago, told me that Miss Ellen Terry would be a consummate comic actress. Portia should never be without some one to set her before the Public. She is my model woman.'

{97a} See 'Letters,' ii. 192

{97b} See the _Athenaeum_ for Jan. 1, 15, 22, 29, 1876.

{100} In her 'Further Records,' i. 250, Mrs. Kemble wrote, March 11th, 1876:--

'Last week my old friend Edward Fitzgerald (Omar Kyam, you know), sent me a beautiful miniature of my mother, which his mother--her intimate friend--had kept till her death, and which had been painted for Mrs.

Fitzgerald. It is a full-length figure, very beautifully painted, and very like my mother. Almost immediately after receiving this from England, my friend Mr. Horace Furness came out to see me. He is a great collector of books and prints, and brought me an old engraving of my mother in the character of Urania, which a great many years ago I remember to have seen, and which was undoubtedly the original of Mrs. Fitzgerald's miniature. I thought the concidence of their both reaching me at the same time curious.'

{105} On July 22nd, 1880, he wrote to me:--"I am still reading her! And could make a pretty Introduction to her; but Press-work is hard to me now, and n.o.body would care for what I should do, when done. Mrs. Edwards has found me a good Photo of 'nos pauvres Rochers,' a straggling old Chateau, with (I suppose) the Chapel which her old 'Bien Bon' Uncle built in 1671--while she was talking to her Gardener Pilois and reading Montaigne, Moliere, Pascal, _or_ Cleopatra, among the trees she had planted. Bless her! I should like to have made Lamb like her, in spite of his anti-gallican Obstinacy."

{106} Mrs. Charles Donne, daughter of John Mitch.e.l.l Kemble, died April 15th, 1876.

{107} First acted April 18th, 1876.

{108a} See 'Letters,' ii. 293.

{108b} See 'Letters,' ii. 198.

{109a} _Atlantic Monthly_, June 1876, p. 719.

{109b} Which opened May 10th, 1876.

{110} In one of his Common Place Books FitzGerald has entered from the _Monthly Mirror_ for 1807 the following pa.s.sage of Rousseau on Stage Scenery--'Ils font, pour epouventer, un Fracas de Decorations sans Effet.

Sur la scene meme il ne faut pas tout dire a la Vue: mais ebranler l'Imagmation.'

{111} For April and May 1876: 'The Latest Theory about Bacon.'

{113a} See letter of October 4th, 1875

{113b} See 'Letters,' ii. 202-205.

{113c} This card is now in my possession, 'Mr. Alfred Tennyson.

Farringford.' On it is written in pencil, "Dear old Fitz--I am pa.s.sing thro' and will call again. [The last three words are crossed out and 'am here' is written over them]. A.T." FitzGerald enclosed it to Thompson (Master of Trinity) and wrote on the back, 'P.S. Since writing, this card was sent in: the Writer followed with his Son: and here we all are as if twenty years had not pa.s.sed since we met.'

{114a} About the same time he wrote to me:--"Tennyson came here suddenly ten days ago--with his Son Hallam, whom I liked much. It was a Relief to find a Young Gentleman not calling his Father 'The Governor' but even--'Papa,' and tending him so carefully in all ways. And nothing of 'awfully jolly,' etc. I put them up at the Inn--Bull--as my own House was in a sort of Interregnum of Painting, within and without: and I knew they would be well provided at 'John Grout's'--as they were. Tennyson said he had not found such Dinners at Grand Hotels, etc. And John (though a Friend of Princes of all Nations--Russian, French, Italian, etc.--who come to buy Horse flesh) was gratified at the Praise: though he said to me 'Pray, Sir, what is the name of the Gentleman?'"

{114b} On September 11th, 1877, he wrote to me: 'You ought to have Hugo's French Shakespeare: it is not wonderful to see how well a German Translation thrives:--but French Prose--no doubt better than French Verse. When I was looking over King John the other day I knew that Napoleon would have owned it as the thing he craved for in the Theatre: as also the other Historical Plays:--not Love of which one is sick: but the Business of Men. He said this at St. Helena, or elsewhere.'

{115} It was in 1867. See 'Letters,' ii. 90, 94.

{116} Life, vi. 215. Letter to Lockhart, January 15th, 1826.

{117a} These expressions must not be looked for in the Decameron, as 'emendato secondo l'ordine del Sacro Concilio di Trento.'

{117b} See 'Letters,' ii. 203. In a letter to me dated November 4th, 1876, he says:--

"I have taken refuge from the Eastern Question in Boccaccio, just as the 'piacevoli Donne' who tell the Stories escaped from the Plague. I suppose one must read this in Italian as my dear Don in Spanish: the Language of each fitting the Subject 'like a Glove.' But there is nothing to come up to the Don and his Man."

{118} Book XVIII., vol. vii. p. 188.

{119a} See 'Letters,' ii. 208.

{119b} Gillies' Memoirs of a Literary Veteran. See Letters, ii. 197, 199.

{120a} An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876.

{120b} Mr. Wade, author of _The Jew of Aragon_, which failed. Mrs.

Kemble says (_Atlantic Monthly_, December 1876, p. 707):--

"I was perfectly miserable when the curtain fell, and the poor young author, as pale as a ghost, came forward to meet my father at the side scene, and bravely holding out his hand to him said, 'Never mind, Mr.

Kemble, I'll do better another time.'"

{120c} Francisco Javier Elio, a Spanish General, was executed in 1822 for his seventies against the liberals dining the reactionary period 1814- 1820.

{122a} _Atlantic Monthly_, February 1877, p. 222.

{122b} Holbrook, near Ipswich. That she had also some of the family humour is evident from what she wrote to Mr. Crabbe of her brother's early life. 'As regards spiritual advantages out of the house he had none; for our Pastor was one of the old sort, with a jolly red nose caused by good cheer. He used to lay his Hat and Whip on the Communion Table and gabble over the service, running down the Pulpit Stairs not to lose the opportunity of being invited to a good dinner at the Hall.' It was with reference to his sister's husband that FitzGerald in conversation with Tennyson used the expression 'A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.'

'Why, Fitz,' said Tennyson, 'that's a verse, and a very bad one too.' And they would afterwards humorously contend for the authorship of the worst line in the English language.

{123} _Atlantic Monthly_, February 1877, pp. 210, 211, and pp. 220, 221.

{124a} See note to Letter of Dec. 29_th_ 1875.

{124b} For November 1875, in an article called 'The Judgment of Paris,'

p. 400.

{125a} See 'Letters,' ii. 217. This is in my possession.

{125b} It came to an end in April 1877. In a letter to Miss St. Leger, December 31st, 1876 ('Further Records,' ii. 33), Mrs. Kemble says, 'You ask me how I mean to carry on the publication of my articles in the _Atlantic Magazine_ when I leave America; but I do not intend to carry them on. The editor proposed to me to do so, but I thought it would entail so much trouble and uncertainty in the transmission of ma.n.u.script and proofs, that it would be better to break off when I came to Europe.

The editor will have ma.n.u.script enough for the February, March, and April numbers when I come away, and with those I think the series must close.

As there is no narrative or sequence of events involved in the publication, it can, of course, be stopped at any moment; a story without an end can end anywhere.'

{126} See letter of December 29th, 1875.

{127a} 15, Connaught Square. See 'Further Records,' ii. 42, etc.

{127b} Valentia Donne marred the Rev. R. F. Smith, minor Canon of Southwell, May 24th, 1877.

{131a} 'We might say in a short word, which means a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from the heart outwards, your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them.'--Carlyle, 'Miscellanies,' vi. 69 (ed. 1869), 'Sir Walter Scott'

{131b} Procter, 'Autobiographical Fragments,' p. 154.