Chapter XV: Book III: Letter III (6)

I got into that Mail the other night with as much repugnance and trepidation as if it had been a Phalaris' brazen bull, instead of a Christian vehicle, invented for purposes of mercy--not of cruelty. There were three besides myself when we started, but two dropped off at the end of the first stage, and the rest of the way I had, as usual, half of the coach to myself. My fellow-passenger had that highest of all terrestrial qualities, which for me a fellow-passenger can possess--he was silent. I think his name was Roscoe, and he read sundry long papers to himself, with the pondering air of a lawyer.

We breakfasted at Lichfield, at five in the morning, on muddy coffee and scorched toast, which made me once more lyrically recognise in my heart (not without a sign of regret) the very different coffee and toast with which you helped me out of my headache. At two there was another stop of ten minutes, that might be employed in lunching or otherwise. Feeling myself more fevered than hungry, I determined on spending the time in combing my hair and washing my face and hands with vinegar. In the midst of this solacing operation I heard what seemed to be the Mail running its rapid course, and quick as lightning it flashed on me, 'There it goes! and my luggage is on the top of it, and my purse is in the pocket of it, and here am I stranded on an unknown beach, without so much as a sixpence in my pocket to pay for the vinegar I have already consumed!' Without my bonnet, my hair hanging down my back, my face half dried, and the towel, with which I was drying it, firm grasped in my hand, I dashed out--along, down, opening wrong doors, stumbling over steps, cursing the day I was born, still more the day on which I took a notion to travel, and arrived finally at the bar of the Inn, in a state of excitement bordering on lunacy. The barmaids looked at me 'with wonder and amazement.' 'Is the coach gone?' I gasped out. 'The coach? Yes!' 'Oh! and you have let it away without me! Oh! stop it, cannot you stop it?' and out I rushed into the street, with streaming hair and streaming towel, and almost brained myself against--the Mail! which was standing there in all stillness, without so much as a horse in it! What I had heard was a heavy coach. And now, having descended like a maniac, I ascended again like a fool, and dried the other half of my face, and put on my bonnet, and came back 'a sadder and a wiser woman.'

I did not find my husband at the 'Swan with Two Necks'; for we were in a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. So I had my luggage put on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside, where I presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By and by, however, the omnibus stopped, and amid cries of 'No room, sir,' 'Can't get in,' Carlyle's face, beautifully set off by a broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the door, like the Peri, who, 'at the Gate of Heaven, stood disconsolate.' In hurrying along the Strand, pretty sure of being too late, amidst all the imaginable and unimaginable phenomena which the immense thoroughfare of a street presents, his eye (Heaven bless the mark!) had lighted on my trunk perched on the top of the omnibus, and had recognised it. This seems to me one of the most indubitable proofs of genius which he ever manifested. Happily, a passenger went out a little further on, and then he got in.

My brother-in-law had gone two days before, so my arrival was most well-timed. I found all at home right and tight; my maid seems to have conducted herself quite handsomely in my absence; my best room looked really inviting. A bust of Shelley (a present from Leigh Hunt), and a fine print of Albert Durer, handsomely framed (also a present) had still further ornamented it during my absence. I also found (for I wish to tell you all my satisfaction) every grate in the house furnished with a supply of coloured clippings, and the holes in the stair-carpet all darned, so that it looks like new. They gave me tea and fried bacon, and staved off my headache as well as might be. They were very kind to me, but, on my life, everybody is kind to me, and to a degree that fills me with admiration. I feel so strong a wish to make you all convinced how very deeply I feel your kindness, and just the more I would say, the less able I am to say anything.

God bless you all. Love to all, from the head of the house down to Johnny.

Your affectionate,

JANE W. CARLYLE.

40. TO MRS. STIRLING, HILL STREET, EDINBURGH.

5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA: October 21, 1859.

You dear nice woman! there you are! a bright cheering apparition to surprise one on a foggy October morning, over one's breakfast--that most trying institution for people who are 'nervous' and 'don't sleep!'

It (the photograph) made our breakfast this morning 'pass off,' like the better sort of breakfasts in Deerbrook,[120] in which people seemed to have come into the world chiefly to eat breakfast in every possible variety of temper!

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything that has 'cast[121] up' in my time or is like to--this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favourably on the morality of the country? I assure you I have often gone into my own room, in the devil's own humour--ready to answer at 'things in general,' and some things in particular--and, my eyes resting by chance on one of my photographs of long-ago places and people, a crowd of sad, gentle thoughts has rushed into my heart, and driven the devil out, as clean as ever so much holy water and priestly exorcism could have done! I have a photograph of Haddington church tower, and my father's tombstone in it--of every place I ever lived at as a home--photographs of old lovers! old friends, old servants, old dogs! In a day or two, you, dear, will be framed and hung up among the 'friends.' And that bright, kind, indomitable face of yours will not be the least efficacious face there for exorcising my devil, when I have him! Thank you a thousand times for keeping your word! Of course you would--that is just the beauty of you, that you never deceive nor disappoint.

Oh my dear! my dear! how awfully tired I was with the journey home, and yet I had taken two days to it, sleeping--that is, attempting to sleep--at York. What a pity it is that Scotland is so far off! all the good one has gained there gets shaken off one in the terrific journey home again, and then the different atmosphere is so trying to one fresh from the pure air of Fife--so exhausting and depressing. If it hadn't been that I had a deal of housemaiding to execute during the week I was here before Mr. C. returned, I must have given occasion for newspaper paragraphs under the head of 'Melancholy Suicide.' But dusting books, making chair covers, and 'all that sort of thing,' leads one on insensibly to live--till the crisis gets safely passed.

My dear! I haven't time nor inclination for much letter-writing--nor have you, I should suppose, but do let us exchange letters now and then. A friendship which has lived on air for so many years together is worth the trouble of giving it a little human sustenance.

Give my kind regards to your husband--I like him--and believe me,

Your ever affectionate,

JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] Clever as she was, she surely made a mistake here--unless she did it on purpose, which is quite possible. "Cadger" is of course only "beggar," and the proverb is the Scotch equivalent of ours about the "beggar on horseback," pretty frequently illustrated now-a-days.

[120] The Deerbrook breakfasts refer to Miss Martineau's poor novel. (T. C.)

[121] Turned. (T. C.)

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)

There are very few examples in biography where the
publication of letters has had a happier effect on the
general idea of the writer than in Macaulay's case. It is
not here a question of historical trustworthiness, or even
of literary-style, in both which respects he has come in for
severe strictures and sometimes for rather half-hearted
defence. Nor do the letters display any purely literary
gifts in him (except perhaps a playfulness of humour or at
least wit) which do not appear in the _History_ and the
_Essays_. But, as the exception may perhaps partly indicate,
they extend and improve the notion of his personality in the
most remarkable fashion. Even those who did not quarrel with
his views sometimes, before Sir George Trevelyan's book,
disliked and regretted what have been called his "pistolling
ways"--the positive, hectoring "hold-your-tongue" sort of
tone which dominated his productions. With the very rarest
exceptions, themselves sometimes of a revealing and
excusable frankness, this tone is, if not quite absent[122]
from, much seldomer present in, his letters. He jokes
without difficulty; talks without in the least monopolising
the conversation; shows himself often willing to live and
let live; and is on the whole as different a person as
possible from the Macaulay who is sure that "every
schoolboy" knows better than the author he is reviewing, and
who finds Johnson guilty of superstition and Swift of
apostasy. "Happy thrice and more also" are those whose
letters thus vindicate them. I have purposely chosen the
following example (written to his sister) from the most
_mundane_ class. "Appointment" was to the _Indian_ Council,
which explains the "Cotton" and "Muslin" and other things.
"Ellis" (Thomas Flower), a friend of Macaulay's from
Cambridge days and his literary executor in part.
"Lushington" (Stephen), a civilian lawyer of great eminence
as a judge in Admiralty and ecclesiastical matters, but a
rather violent politician. "Town"--Leeds. "Miss Berry" is
annotated elsewhere. "Sir Stratford Canning," later Viscount
Stratford de Redcliffe, George Canning's cousin, and one of
the most famous diplomatists of the nineteenth century,
especially during his long tenure of the Embassy at
Constantinople. _Vivian Grey_--Disraeli's first novel. "Lady
Holland," the most famous hostess on the Whig side in the
first half of the nineteenth century, but, by all accounts,
a person now and then quite intolerable. "Allen" (John), an
_Edinburgh Reviewer_, was familiarly called her "tame
atheist" (All the company were of the Holland House "set").
"Bobus"--Robert Percy Smith, Sydney's elder brother, a great
wit and scholar. "Cosher," an Irish word, is not always used
in this sense of "chat."

41. TO HIS SISTER

LONDON: November 1833.

Dear Hannah,

Things stand as they stood; except that the report of my appointment is every day spreading more widely; and that I am beset by advertising dealers begging leave to make up a hundred cotton shirts for me, and fifty muslin gowns for you, and by clerks out of place begging to be my secretaries. I am not in very high spirits to-day, as I have just received a letter from poor Ellis, to whom I had not communicated my intentions till yesterday. He writes so affectionately and so plaintively that he quite cuts me to the heart. There are few indeed from whom I shall part with so much pain; and he, poor fellow, says that, next to his wife, I am the person for whom he feels the most thorough attachment, and in whom he places the most unlimited confidence.

On the 11th of this month there is to be a dinner given to Lushington by the electors of the Tower Hamlets. He has persecuted me with importunities to attend and make a speech for him; and my father has joined in the request. It is enough, in these times, Heaven knows, for a man who represents, as I do, a town of a hundred and twenty thousand people to keep his own constituents in good humour; and the Spitalfields weavers and Whitechapel butchers are nothing to me. But, ever since I succeeded in what everybody allows to have been the most hazardous attempt of the kind ever made,--I mean in persuading an audience of manufacturers, all Whigs or Radicals, that the immediate alteration of the corn-laws was impossible,--I have been considered as a capital physician for desperate cases in politics. However, to return from that delightful theme, my own praises, Lushington, who is not very popular with the rabble of the Tower Hamlets, thinks that an oration from me would give him a lift. I could not refuse him directly, backed as he was by my father. I only said that I would attend if I were in London on the 11th, but I added that, situated as I was, I thought it very probable that I should be out of town.

I shall go to-night to Miss Berry's _soiree_. I do not know whether I told you that she resented my article on Horace Walpole so much that Sir Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was Walpole's greatest favourite. His Reminiscences are addressed to her in terms of the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying at past eighty, he asked her to marry him, merely that he might make her a Countess and leave her his fortune. You know that in _Vivian Grey_ she is called Miss Otranto. I always expected that my article would put her into a passion, and I was not mistaken; but she has come round again, and sent me a most pressing and kind invitation the other day.

I have been racketing lately, having dined twice with Rogers, and once with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraordinary state. She came to Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humour that we were all forced to rally, and make common cause against her. There was not a person at table to whom she was not rude; and none of us were inclined to submit. Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless sport of her; Tom Moore looked excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with simple straightforward rudeness; and I treated her with what I meant to be the coldest civility. Allen flew into a rage with us all, and especially with Sydney, whose guffaws, as the Scotch say, were indeed tremendous. When she and all the rest were gone, Rogers made Tom Moore and me sit down with him for half an hour, and we coshered over the events of the evening. Rogers said that he thought Allen's firing up in defence of his patroness the best thing that he has seen in him. No sooner had Tom and I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an old stager as Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen credit for attachment to anything but his dinner! Allen was bursting with envy to see us so free, while he was conscious of his own slavery."

Her Ladyship has been the better for this discipline. She has overwhelmed me ever since with attentions and invitations. I have at last found out the cause of her ill-humour, or at least of that portion of it of which I was the object. She is in a rage at my article on Walpole, but at what part of it I cannot tell. I know that she is very intimate with the Waldegraves, to whom the manuscripts belong, and for whose benefit the letters were published. But my review was surely not calculated to injure the sale of the book. Lord Holland told me, in an aside, that he quite agreed with me, but that we had better not discuss the subject.

A note; and, by my life, from my Lady Holland: "Dear Mr. Macaulay, pray wrap yourself very warm, and come to us on Wednesday." No, my good Lady. I am engaged on Wednesday to dine at the Albion Tavern with the Directors of the East India Company; now my servants; next week, I hope, to be my masters.

Ever yours,

T. B. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Indeed it exemplifies Defoe's favourite proverb about "What is bred in the bone," etc.--as for instance when, while admitting Chesterfield's high position in some ways, he calls the _Letters_ "for the most part trash." It is scarcely too much to call such criticism itself "trashy."

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES (1803-1849)

Beddoes belongs to the small but remarkable company of
authors who, making little mark in their own time and none
at all for some time afterwards, before very long come into
something like their due, though they never can be exactly
popular. He was certainly very eccentric and possibly quite
mad: the circumstances of his suicide do more than justify
the hopes of charity and the convention of coroners' juries,
as to the latter conclusion. But he was an extremely
poetical poet and a letter-writer of remarkable
individuality and zest. Little notice seems to have been
taken, by any save a very few elect, of the first collected
publication of his work just after his death: though a
single piece, _The Bride's Tragedy_, not by any means his
best, had obtained praise in 1822--a time between the great
poetical outburst of the early nineteenth century and the
revival of its middle period. But Mr. Gosse's reissue in
completer form of the _Poems_ in 1890 and the _Letters_ four
years later, lodged him at once in the affection of all
competent critics. With something of the more eccentric
spirit of the seventeenth century in him, and something of
the Romantic revival as shown in Coleridge, Shelley and
Keats, he had much of his own, though he never got it
thoroughly or sustainedly organised and expressed. His
mingled passion and humour (especially the latter)
"escape"--make fitful spurts and explosions--in his
correspondence. Latterly this reflects his mental breakdown,
increasingly in the prose; though only a few years before
the end it contains wonderful verse such as the song, "The
swallow leaves her nest," which is a link between Blake and
Canon Dixon. But earlier, as in the following, there is
nothing beyond oddity. Of this there may seem to be a good
share, but a few notes will make it intelligible. It clearly
heralds, though the thing is first definitely indicated in a
later letter, Beddoes' marvellous tragedy _Death's
Jest-book_, which he wrote and re-wrote till it became like
the picture in Balzac's story an "Unknown [and Unknowable]
Masterpiece." The letter is further remarkable as combining
intense admiration for the _old_ masterpieces with a quite
"modern" insistence on "begetting" rather than
"reviving"--on "giving the literature of the age a spirit of
its own," etc. For details: "Sulky" (compare the French
_desobligeante_, celebrated by Sterne)--an obsolete form of
chaise. "Breaking Priscian's head" is familiar enough for
"using bad grammar," which the book-keeper very likely did;
but the explanation may be more remote. "Like a ghost from
the tomb" though not "quoted" is, of course, his beloved
Shelley's ("The Cloud"). "_Biped_ knock" = merely
"double"--the peculiar rat-tat which postmen have mostly
forgotten or not learnt--perhaps regarding it as a badge of
slavery like "tips." _The Fatal Dowry_--attributed to (Field
and) Massinger, and spoilt by Rowe into his nevertheless
popular _Fair Penitent_,--is one of the finest examples of
the second stage of Elizabethan drama. _Ultracrepidarian_--a
term derived from the Latin proverb _ne sutor supra_ (or
_ultra_) _crepidam_ and specially applied to the unpopular
critic Gifford who had been a shoemaker--meaning generally
"some one who _does_ go beyond his last and meddles with
things he does not understand." "McCready's" (Macready, the
famous actor and manager) friend Walker was probably Sidney
Walker the Shakespearian critic.

42. TO THOMAS FORBES KELSALL

26 MALL, CLIFTON. (Postmark, Jan. 11. 1825)

Dear Kelsall--

Day after day since Christmas I have intended to write or go to London, and day after day I have deferred both projects; and now I will give you the adventures and mishaps of this present sunday. Remorse, and startling conscience, in the form of an old, sulky, and a shying, horse, hurried me to the 'Regulator' coach-office on Saturday: 'Does the Regulator and its team conform to the Mosaic decalogue, Mr. Book-keeper?' He broke Priscian's head, and through the aperture, assured me that it did not: I was booked for the inside:--"Call at 26 Mall for me."--"Yes, Sir, at 1/2 past five, A.M."--At five I rose like a ghost from the tomb, and betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour. It struck six,--a coach was called,--we hurried to the office but _the_ coach was gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my German dictionary,--your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England, his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit me here next week. This twisted my strong purpose like a thread, and disposed me to remain here about ten days longer. On the 21st at latest I go to London. Be there and I will join you, or, if not, pursue you to Southampton.

The Fatal Dowry has been cobbled, I see, by some purblind ultra-crepidarian--McCready's friend, Walker, very likely; but nevertheless, I maintain 'tis a good play, and might have been rendered very effective by docking it of the whole fifth act, which is an excrescence,--re-creating Novall, and making Beaumelle a great deal more ghost-gaping and moonlightish. The cur-tailor has taken out the most purple piece in the whole web--the end of the fourth Act--and shouldered himself into toleration through the prejudices of the pit, when he should have built his admiration on their necks. Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling fellow, no creeper into worm-holes, no reviver even, however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold. Such ghosts as Marloe, Webster &c. are better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of ours, but they are ghosts; the worm is in their pages; and we want to see something that our great-grandsires did not know. With the greatest reverence for all the antiquities of the drama, I still think that we had better beget than revive; attempt to give the literature of this age an idiosyncrasy and spirit of its own, and only raise a ghost to gaze on, not to live with--just now the drama is a haunted ruin.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

Mrs. Browning was in the habit of using rather extravagant
language herself: and she has certainly been the victim of
language extravagant enough both in praise (the more
damaging of the two) and blame from others. FitzGerald's
unlucky exaggeration (see Introduction) in one way may be
set off by such opposite assertions as that some of her
poems are "the best of their kind in the English language."
But her letters need cause no such alarums and excursions.
If they are sometimes what is called by youth "Early
Victorian"--"Early Anything," and "Middle Anything" and
"Late Anything," are sure to be found sooner or later by all
wise persons to have their own place in life and history.
And sentimentalism has, in private prose, an infinitely less
provocative character than when it is displayed in published
verse. A distinguished Scotch philosopher of the last
generation laid it down that, in literature, for
demonstrative exhibitions of affection and sorrow "the
occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare." But
letter-writing, though it can be eminently literary, is
always literature with a certain license attached to it:
arising from the fact that it was not--or ought not to have
been--intended for publication. And that naturalness of
which so much has been said is displayed constantly and by
no means disagreeably in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
epistles. In fact, you cannot help liking her the better for
them--which in one way at least is the supreme test. The
following, written soon after her marriage--an elopement of
a kind, but certainly justifiable if ever one was--is a very
pleasant specimen in more ways than one, as regards taste,
temper, and descriptive powers. It also contains no
criticism, which in her case was apt to be extremely
uncertain.

43. TO MRS. MARTIN

(PISA) November 5, (1846)

It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine, and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in me and loved me, and, for the sake of the past and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances. So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other quarters.... Am I bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be classed with other cases--what happened to me could not have happened, perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate and loathe everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and I; and the manner the whole business was carried on in might have instructed the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually on my table for the last two years were brought there by one hand, as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London, to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in the house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how grateful it makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more and more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is what he says to me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an 'advantage' to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of all things in heaven and earth, and shows besides as perpetual a good humour and gaiety as if he were--a fool, shall I say? or a considerable quantity more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is not to _my_ honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every week and paid more regularly 'than bard beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson laughs outright at our miraculous prudence and economy, and declares that it is past belief and precedent that we should not burn the candles at both ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind her of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping in a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee. Ah, but she has left Pisa at last--left it yesterday. It was a painful parting to everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood--a month of it under the same roof and in the same carriages--will fasten people together, and then travelling _shakes_ them together. A more affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson[123] and it is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not only _du bout des levres_. Think of her making Robert promise (as he has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write to her instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So kind, so like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate, month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she is engaged to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to be _sought_. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so beautiful and so full of repose, yet not _desolate_: it is rather the repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain, which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove' came as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and when I am tired Robert and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards. We have been to your seashore, too, and seen your island, only he insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and that Corsica is not in sight. _Beautiful_ and blue the island was, however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead of either. Also we have driven up to the foot of the mountains, and seen them reflected down in the little pure lake of Ascuno, and we have seen the pine woods, and met the camels laden with faggots all in a line. So now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in my life. Ah, but, of course, the painful thoughts recur! There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it seems to me that with time and patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into opening his arms to us--will be melted into a clear understanding of motives and intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive and happy. So I manage to hope for the best, and all that remains, all my life here, _is_ best already, could not be better or happier. And willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I would take him and you for witnesses of it, and in the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages; no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted our way, and could you do so much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny Hanford should come here. Will she really? The climate is described by the inhabitants as a 'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if you were to see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this November (?) it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox position by the Arno because we heard with our ears one of the best physicians of the place advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have cool rooms to live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have a little fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings that is; but I do not fear for the winter, there is too much difference to my feelings between this November and any English November I ever knew. We have our dinner from the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our favourite way on thrushes and Chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the lilies of the field took as little thought for their dining, which exactly suits us. It is a continental fashion which we never cease commending. Then at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at nine our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and grapes. So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses; it is not lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do not want society, we shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo Santo instead. Then we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for Fanny Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to do it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold--draw him into the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And let me be throughout all changes,

Your ever faithful and most affectionate,

BA.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] Anna Jameson (1794-1860) was a woman of letters and an art-critic at one time of immense influence through her illustrated books on "Sacred and Legendary" (as well as some other) "Art." But, as somehow or other happens not infrequently, the objects of her "affection and generosity" did not include her husband.

EDWARD FITZGERALD (1809-1883)

Not much need be added to what was said in the Introduction
about this famous translator and almost equally, though less
uniquely, remarkable letter-writer. His life was entirely
uneventful and his friendships have been already
commemorated. The version of Omar Khayyam appeared in 1859;
was an utter "drug"--remainder copies going at a few
pence--for a time; but became one of the most admired books
of the English nineteenth century before very long. Some of
his _Letters_ were published at various times from 1889 to
1901 (those to Fanny Kemble in 1895). It is not perhaps
merely fanciful to suggest that the "uniqueness" above
glanced at does supply a sort of connection between the
_Letters_ and the _Works_. The faculty of at once retaining
the matter of a subject and transforming it in treatment has
perhaps never, as regards translation, been exhibited in
such transcendence as in the English _Rubaiyat_. But
something of this same faculty must belong to every good
letter-writer--and a good deal of it certainly is shown by
FitzGerald in _his_ letters. Indeed one of the processes of
letter-and memoir-study (the memoir as has been said is
practically an "open" letter) is that of comparing the
treatments of the same subject by different persons--say of
the Great Fire by Pepys and Evelyn, of the Riots of '80 by
Walpole and Johnson. He himself, as will be seen, calls the
letter given below "not very interesting." It seems to me
very interesting indeed: and likely to be increasingly so as
time goes on. Few things could be more characteristic of the
writer than his way of "visiting his sister" by living alone
in lodgings all _day_ for a month. The "_old_
age"--forty-five--is hardly less so. The allusions to
"Alfred" (Tennyson); "old" Thackeray, for whom he constantly
keeps the affectionate school and college use of the
adjective; Landor[124] (who unluckily did _not_ die at Bath
though he might have done so but for one of the last and
least creditable of his eccentricities); Beckford ("Old
Vathek"), and a fourth "old," Rogers (who was one of
FitzGerald's aversions); Oxford (as yet almost unstained by
any modernities spiritual or material); and Bath[125] (to
remain still longer a "haunt of ancient peace")--are
precious. The fifth "old," Spedding, who devoted chiefly to
Bacon talents worthy of more varied exercise, was one of the
innermost Tennyson set, as was "Harry" Lushington, who died
very soon after this letter was written. "Your Book" is F.
Tennyson's _Days and Hours_, a volume of poetry while
reading which probably many people have wondered in what
respect it came short of really great poetry, though they
felt it did so.

44. TO FREDERIC TENNYSON

BATH May 7/54.

My dear Frederic,

You see to what fashionable places I am reduced in my old Age. The truth is however I am come here by way of Visit to a sister I have scarce seen these six years; my visit consisting in this that I live alone in a lodging of my own by day, and spend two or three hours with her in the Evening. This has been my way of Life for three weeks, and will be so for some ten days more: after which I talk of flying back to more native counties. I was to have gone on to see Alfred in his "Island Home" from here: but it appears he goes to London about the same time I quit this place: so I must and shall defer my Visit to him. Perhaps I shall catch a sight of him in London; as also of old Thackeray who, Donne writes me word, came suddenly on him in Pall Mall the other day: while all the while people supposed _The Newcomes_ were being indited at Rome or Naples.

If ever you live in England you must live here at Bath. It really is a splendid City in a lovely, even a noble, Country. Did you ever see it? One beautiful feature in the place is the quantity of Garden and Orchard it is all through embroidered with. Then the Streets, when you go into them, are as handsome and gay as London, gayer and handsomer because cleaner and in a clearer Atmosphere; and if you want the Country you get into it (and a very fine Country) on all sides and directly. Then there is such Choice of Houses, Cheap as well as Dear, of all sizes, with good Markets, Railways etc. I am not sure I shall not come here for part of the Winter. It is a place you would like, I am sure: though I do not say but you are better in Florence. Then on the top of the hill is old Vathek's Tower, which he used to sit and read in daily, and from which he could see his own Fonthill, while it stood. Old Landor quoted to me 'Nullus in orbe locus, etc.,' apropos of Bath: he, you may know, has lived here for years, and I should think would die here, though not yet. He seems so strong that he may rival old Rogers; of whom indeed one Newspaper gave what is called an 'Alarming Report of Mr. Rogers' Health' the other day, but another contradicted it directly and indignantly, and declared the Venerable Poet never was better. Landor has some hundred and fifty Pictures; each of which he thinks the finest specimen of the finest Master, and has a long story about, how he got it, when, etc. I dare say some are very good: but also some very bad. He appeared to me to judge of them as he does of Books and Men; with a most uncompromising perversity which the Phrenologists must explain to us after his Death.

By the bye, about your Book, which of course you wish me to say something about. Parker sent me down a copy 'from the Author' for which I hereby thank you. If you believe my word, you already know my Estimation of so much that is in it: you have already guessed that I should have made a different selection from the great Volume which is now in Tatters. As I differ in Taste from the world, however, quite as much as from you, I do not know but you have done very much better in choosing as you have; the few people I have seen are very much pleased with it, the Cowells at Oxford delighted. A Bookseller there sold all his Copies the first day they came down: and even in Bath a Bookseller (and not one of the Principal) told me a fortnight ago he had sold some twenty copies. I have not been in Town since it came out: and have now so little correspondence with literati I can't tell you about them. There was a very unfair Review in the _Athenaeum_; which is the only Literary Paper I see: but I am told there are laudatory ones in _Examiner_ and _Spectator_.

I was five weeks at Oxford, visiting the Cowells in just the same way that I am visiting my Sister here. I also liked Oxford greatly: but not so well I think as Bath: which is so large and busy that one is drowned in it as much as in London. There are often concerts, etc., for those who like them; I only go to a shilling affair that comes off every Saturday at what they call the Pump Room. On these occasions there is sometimes some Good Music if not excellently played. Last Saturday I heard a fine Trio of Beethoven. Mendelssohn's things are mostly tiresome to me. I have brought my old Handel Book here and recreate myself now and then with pounding one of the old Giant's Overtures on my sister's Piano, as I used to do on that Spinnet at my Cottage. As to Operas, and Exeter Halls, I have almost done with them: they give me no pleasure, I scarce know why.

I suppose there is no chance of your being over in England this year, and perhaps as little Chance of my being in Italy. All I can say is, the latter is not impossible, which I suppose I may equally say of the former. But pray write me. You can always direct to me at Donne's, 12, St. James' Square, or at Rev. G. Crabbe's, Bredfield, Woodbridge. Either way the letter will soon reach me. Write soon, Frederic, and let me hear how you and yours are: and don't wait, as you usually do, for some inundation of the Arno to set your pen agoing. Write ever so shortly and whatever-about-ly. I have no news to tell you of Friends. I saw old Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a Niece he dearly loved and whose deathbed at Hastings he had just been waiting upon. Harry Lushington wrote a martial Ode on seeing the Guards march over Waterloo Bridge towards the East: I did not see it, but it was much admired and handed about, I believe. And now my paper is out: and I am going through the rain (it is said to rain very much here) to my Sister's. So Goodbye, and write to me, as I beg you, in reply to this long if not very interesting letter.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] "Fitz's" remarks on Landor's judgment of "Pictures, Books and Men" are very amusing; for they have been often repeated in regard to his own on all these subjects. In fact the two, though FitzGerald was not so childish as Landor, had much in common.

[125] The curious eulogy--preferring it to Oxford as being "large and busy" enough to "drown one as much" as London--is also very characteristic of FitzGerald. You can be alone in the country _and_ in a large town--hardly in a small one.

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE (1809-1893)

To what has been said before of this remarkably gifted lady
little need be added. The two letters which follow, derived
from _Further Records_ (London, 1890), were written rather
late in her life, but are characteristic, in ways partly
coinciding, partly divergent, of her strong intellect[126]
and her powers of expression. The note to the ghost-story
leaves open the question whether Fanny did or did not know
the accepted doctrine that the master and mistress of a
haunted house are exempt from actual haunting. The "whiff of
grape-shot" (as Carlyle might have called it) on the
"Bakespearian" absurdity is one of the best things on the
subject that the present writer, in a long and wide
experience, has come across.

45. TO H---- [EXTRACT]

YORK FARM, BRANCHTOWN, PHILADELPHIA, Monday May 18th, 1874.

One evening that my maid was sitting in the room from which she could see the whole of the staircase and upper landing, she saw the door of my bedroom open, and an elderly woman in a flannel dressing-gown, with a bonnet on her head, and a candle in her hand come out, walk the whole length of the passage, and return again into the bedroom, shutting the door after her. My maid knew that I was in the drawing-room below in my usual black velvet evening dress; moreover, the person she had seen bore no resemblance either in figure or face to me, or to any member of my household, which consisted of three young servant women besides herself, and a negro man-servant. My maid was a remarkably courageous and reasonable person, and, though very much startled (for she went directly upstairs and found no one in the rooms), she kept her counsel, and mentioned the circumstance to nobody, though, as she told me afterwards, she was so afraid lest I should have a similar visitation, that she was strongly tempted to ask Dr. W----'s advice as to the propriety of mentioning her experience to me. She refrained from doing so, however, and some time later, as she was sitting in the dusk in the same room, the man-servant came in to light the gas and made her start, observing which, he said, "Why, lors, Miss Ellen, you jump as if you had seen a ghost." In spite of her late experience, Ellen very gravely replied, "Nonsense, William, how can you talk such stuff! You don't believe in such things as ghosts, do you?" "Well," he said, "I don't know just so sure what to say to that, seeing it's very well known there was a ghost in this house." "Pshaw!" said Ellen. "Whose ghost?" "Well, poor Mrs. R----'s ghost, it's very well known, walks about this house, and no great wonder either, seeing how miserably she lived and died here." To Ellen's persistent expressions of contemptuous incredulity, he went on, "Well, Miss Ellen, all I can say is, several girls" (_i.e._ maid-servants) "have left this house on account of it"; and there the conversation ended. Some days after this, Ellen coming into the drawing-room to speak to me, stopped abruptly at the door, and stood there, having suddenly recognized in a portrait immediately opposite to it, and which was that of the dead mistress of the house, the face of the person she had seen come out of my bedroom. I think this a very tidy ghost story; and I am bound to add, as a proper commentary on it, that I have never inhabited a house which affected me with a sense of such intolerable melancholy gloominess as this; without any assignable reason whatever, either in its situation or any of its conditions. My maid, to the present day, persists in every detail (and without the slightest variation) of this experience of hers, absolutely rejecting my explanation of it; that she had heard, without paying any particular attention to it, some talk among the other servants about the ghost in the house, which had remained unconsciously to her in her memory, and reproduced itself in this morbid nervous effect of her imagination.

46. To H---- [EXTRACT]

YORK FARM, Sunday, December 6th, 1874.

My dearest H----,

It is not possible for me to feel the slightest interest in the sort of literary feat which I consider writing upon "who wrote Shakespeare?" to be. I was very intimate with Harness, Milman, Dyce, Collier--all Shakespearian editors, commentators, and scholars--and this absurd theory about Bacon, which was first broached a good many years ago, never obtained credit for a moment with them; nor did they ever entertain for an instant a doubt that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon were really written by him. Now I am intimately acquainted and in frequent communication with William Donne, Edward FitzGerald, and James Spedding, all thorough Shakespeare scholars, and the latter a man who has just published a work upon Bacon, which has been really the labour of his life; none of these men, competent judges of the matter, ever mentions the question of "Who wrote Shakespeare?" except as a ludicrous thing to be laughed at, and I think they may be trusted to decide whether it is or is not so.

I have a slight feeling of disgust at the attack made thus on the personality of my greatest mental benefactor; and consider the whole thing a misapplication, not to say waste, of time and ingenuity that might be better employed. As I regard the memory of Shakespeare with love, veneration, and gratitude, and am proud and happy to be his countrywoman, considering it among the privileges of my English birth, I resent the endeavour to prove that he deserved none of these feelings, but was a mere literary impostor. I wonder the question had any interest for you, for I should not have supposed you imagined Shakespeare had not written his own plays, Irish though you be. Do you remember the servant's joke in the farce of "High Life Below Stairs" where the cook asks, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" and one of the others answers, with, at any rate, partial plausibility, "Oh! why, Colley Cibber, to be sure!"

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Sometimes one thinks her the wisest woman who ever lived. "Nothing seems stranger than the delusions of other people _when they have ceased to be our own_" suggests La Rochefoucauld and comes near to Solomon; but whosoever may have anticipated or prompted her, he is not at the moment within my memory. But she is often not wise at all: and even her good wits are not always left unaffected by her bad temper. It is really amusing to read Mrs. Carlyle's rather mischievous account of Mrs. Butler (F. K.'s married name) calling and carrying a whip "to keep her hand in": and _then_ to come on F. K.'s waspish resentment at these words, when they were published.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863)

So much has been said of Thackeray's letter-writing powers
in the Introduction that not much need be added here on the
general side. But a few words may be allowed on what we may
call the _conditioning_ circumstances which affected these
powers, and made the result so peculiar. Except in Swift's
case--a thing piquant in itself considering the injustice of
the later writer to the earlier--hardly any body of letters
exhibits these conditions so obviously and in so varied a
fashion. In both there was the utmost intellectual satire
combined with the utmost tenderness of feeling. Thackeray of
course, partly from nature and partly from the influence of
time, did not mask his tenderness and double-edge his
severity with roughness and coarseness. But the combination
was intrinsically not very different. There has also to be
taken into account in Thackeray's case domestic
sorrow--coming quickly and life-long after it began; means
long restricted (partly by his own folly but not so more
tolerable); recognition of genius almost as long deferred;
and yet other "maladies of the soul." The result was a
constant ferment, of which the letters are in a way the
relieving valve or tap. That they are often apparently
light-hearted has nothing surprising in it: for when a man
habitually "eats his heart" it naturally becomes
lighter--till there is nothing of it left.