Chapter IV: Part 4

These fast-following letters of mine seem intended to refute a charge made against me by Morton: that I had only so much impulse of correspondence as resulted from the receipt of a friend's letter. Is it very frivolous to write all these letters, on no business whatsoever? What I think is, that one will soon be going into the country, where one hears no music, and sees no pictures, and so one will have nothing to write about. I mean to take down a Thucydides, to feed on: like a whole Parmesan. But at present here I am in London: last night I went to see Acis and Galatea brought out, with Handel's music, and Stanfield's scenery: really the best done thing I have seen for many a year. As I sat alone (alone in spirit) in the pit, I wished for you: and now Sunday is over: I have been to church: I have dined at Portland Place: {102} and now I come home to my lodgings: light my pipe: and will whisper something over to Italy. You talk of your Naples: and that one cannot understand Theocritus without having been on those shores. I tell you, you can't understand Macready without coming to London and seeing his revival of Acis and Galatea. You enter Drury Lane at a quarter to seven: the pit is already nearly full: but you find a seat, and a very pleasant one. Box doors open and shut: ladies take off their shawls and seat themselves: gentlemen twist their side curls: the musicians come up from under the stage one by one: 'tis just upon seven: Macready is very punctual: Mr. T. Cooke is in his place with his marshal's baton in his hand: he lifts it up: and off they set with old Handel's noble overture. As it is playing, the red velvet curtain (which Macready has substituted, not wisely, for the old green one) draws apart: and you see a rich drop scene, all festooned and arabesqued with River Gods, Nymphs, and their emblems; and in the centre a delightful, large, good copy of Poussin's great landscape (of which I used to have a print in my rooms) where the Cyclops is seen seated on a mountain, looking over the sea-shore. The overture ends, the drop scene rises, and there is the sea-shore, a long curling bay: the sea heaving under the moon, and breaking upon the beach, and rolling the surf down--the stage! This is really capitally done. But enough of description. The choruses were well sung, well acted, well dressed, and well grouped; and the whole thing creditable and pleasant. Do you know the music? It is of Handel's best: and as classical as any man who wore a full-bottomed wig could write. I think Handel never gets out of his wig: that is, out of his age: his Hallelujah chorus is a chorus not of angels, but of well-fed earthly choristers, ranged tier above tier in a Gothic cathedral, with princes for audience, and their military trumpets flourishing over the full volume of the organ. Handel's gods are like Homer's, and his sublime never reaches beyond the region of the clouds. Therefore I think that his great marches, triumphal pieces, and coronation anthems, are his finest works. There is a little bit of Auber's, at the end of the Bayadere when the God resumes his divinity and retires into the sky, which has more of pure light and mystical solemnity than anything I know of Handel's: but then this is only a scrap: and Auber could not breathe in that atmosphere long: whereas old Handel's coursers, with necks with thunder clothed and long resounding pace, never tire. Beethoven thought more deeply also: but I don't know if he could sustain himself so well. I suppose you will resent this praise of Beethoven: but you must be tired of the whole matter, written as it is in this vile hand: and so here is an end of it. . . . And now I am going to put on my night-cap: for my paper is nearly ended, and the iron tongue of St. Paul's, as reported by an East wind, has told twelve. This is the last news from the city. So Good night. I suppose the violets will be going off in the Papal dominions by the time this letter reaches you: my country cousins are making much of a few aconites. Love to Morton.

P.S. I hope these foolish letters don't cost you and Morton much: I always pay 1_s._ 7_d._ for them here: which ought to carry such levities to Hindostan without further charge.

_To Bernard Barton_.

LONDON, _February_ 21/42.

I have just got home a new coat for my Constable: which coat cost 33 shillings: just the same price as I gave for a Chesterfield wrapper (as it is called) for myself some weeks ago. People told me I was not improved by my Chesterfield wrapper: and I am vext to see how little my Constable is improved by his coat of Cloth of Gold. But I have been told what is the use of a frame lately: only as it requires nice explanation I shall leave it till I see you. Don't you wish me to buy that little Evening piece I told you of? worth a dozen of your Paul Veroneses put together.

When I rate you (as you call it) about shewing my verses, letters, etc., you know in what spirit I rate you: thanking you all the time for your generous intention of praising me. It would be very hard, and not desirable, to make you understand why my Mama need not have heard the verses: but it is a very little matter: so no more of it. As to my doing anything else in that way, I know that I could write volume after volume as well as others of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease: but I think unless a man can do better, he had best not do at all; I have not the strong inward call, nor cruel-sweet pangs of parturition, that prove the birth of anything bigger than a mouse. With you the case is different, who have so long been a follower of the Muse, and who have had a kindly, sober, English, wholesome, religious spirit within you that has communicated kindred warmth to many honest souls. Such a creature as Augusta--John's wife--a true Lady, was very fond of your poems: and I think that is no mean praise: a very good assurance that you have not written in vain. I am a man of taste, of whom there are hundreds born every year: only that less easy circumstances than mine at present are compel them to one calling: that calling perhaps a mechanical one, which overlies all their other, and naturally perhaps more energetic impulses. As to an occasional copy of verses, there are few men who have leisure to read, and are possessed of any music in their souls, who are not capable of versifying on some ten or twelve occasions during their natural lives: at a proper conjunction of the stars. There is no harm in taking advantage of such occasions.

This letter-writing fit (one must suppose) can but happen once in one's life: though I hope you and I shall live to have many a little bargain for pictures. But I hold communion with Suffolk through you. In this big London all full of intellect and pleasure and business I feel pleasure in dipping down into the country, and rubbing my hand over the cool dew upon the pastures, as it were. I know very few people here: and care for fewer; I believe I should like to live in a small house just outside a pleasant English town all the days of my life, making myself useful in a humble way, reading my books, and playing a rubber of whist at night. But England cannot expect long such a reign of inward quiet as to suffer men to dwell so easily to themselves. But Time will tell us:

Come what come may,
Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day. {106}

It is hard to give you so long a letter, so dull an one, and written in so cramped a hand, to read in this hardworking part of your week. But you can read a bit at odd times, you know: or none at all. Anyhow 'tis time to have done. I am going to walk with Lusia. So farewell

P.S. I always direct to you as 'Mr. Barton' because I know not if Quakers ought to endure Squiredom. How I long to shew you my Constable!

Pray let me know how Mr. Jenney is. I think that we shall get down to Suffolk the end of next week.

LONDON, _Febr_. 25/42.

MY DEAR BARTON,

Your reason for liking your Paul Veronese (what an impudence to talk so to a man who has just purchased a real Titian!) does not quite disprove my theory. You like the picture because you like the verses you once made upon it: you associate the picture (naturally enough) with them: and so shall I in future, because I like the verses too. But then you ask further, what made you write the verses if you were not moved by the picture imprimis? Why you know the poetic faculty does wonders, as Shakespeare tells us, in imagining the forms of things unseen, etc., and so you made a merit where there was none: and have liked that merit ever since. But I will not disturb you any further in your enjoyment: if you have a vision of your own, why should I undo it?

Yesterday I was busily employed in painting over my Opie, which had suffered by heat, or something of that kind. I borrowed Laurence's palette and brushes and lay upon the floor two hours patching over and renovating. The picture is really greatly improved, and I am more reconciled to it. It has now to be varnished: and then I hope some fool will be surprised into giving 4 pounds for it, as I did. I have selected an advantageous position for it in a dealer's shop, just under a rich window that excludes the light.

On second thoughts I shall not send you down my Twilight: but bring it with me. I like it much, and do not repent the purchase. As to the difficulty of bringing down so many pictures, I shall travel by the steamer; which will bear any quantity. The great new purchase, spoken of in yesterday's letter, will also go with me: it will be insured at a high valuation before it is entrusted to the Deep, of whose treasures I don't at all wish it to become one. My Titian is a great hit: if not by him, it is as near him as ever was painted. But you would not care six straws for it. The history of the finest theory of colouring lies in those few inches of canvas. But Laurence (who has gone for some days into the country) must see it, and tell me about it. He is so good a judge, that I ought never to talk till I have first heard his verdict.

I was amused at a passage in Clarissa the other day, which gives one some idea of what the average state of the arts was among the gentry of a hundred years ago. Miss Howe, in drawing up a character of her lost Clarissa, says that among other things she had a fine taste for the Pencil: had not time to practise it much, but 'was an absolute mistress of the "should be,"' and then proceeds thus: 'To give a familiar instance for the sake of young Ladies: she (untaught) observed _when but a child_, that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, never appeared at once: and were therefore never to be in one piece: that bears, tygers, lions, were not natives of an English climate, and should not therefore have a place in an English landscape: that these ravagers of the forest consorted not with lambs, kids, or fawns: nor kites, hawks, or vultures, with doves, partridges, and pheasants.' Such was a prodigy in those days. It is easy to sneer at this passage: but whoever has read anything of the Masques, etc., of James's time, will readily recall what absurdities were brought together, even by the good Scholars of the day: and therefore will not wonder at the imperfect Natural History that was found in young Ladies' Drawings, and samplers. I remember now to have seen wonderful combinations of phenomena in those samplers which are occasionally to be found hung up in the parlours of Country Inns, and Farm houses.

These letters succeed like the ghosts of Banquo's progeny before the eyes of Macbeth. Lucky that time itself draws on too close for this letter to 'hold a glass that shews you many more.' You did not answer my question about the Gainsboroughs. So I won't ask you another.

SONNET ON MY NEW PICTURE.

Oh Twilight! Twilight!!

Rot me, if I am in a poetical humour: I can't translate the picture into words.

LONDON, _March_ 5, 1842.

MY DEAR BARTON,

Before the cavalcade and suite of Hardinge's (a melancholy procession) reaches you, I think this letter will. You need not envy me my purchases, which are imprudent ones: both because I can't well afford them, and because I have no house to put them. And yet all this gives a sense of stolen enjoyment to them. I am yet haunted with the ghost of a Battle-piece (little in my way) at a shop in Holborn: by whom I know not: but so good as to be cheap at 4 pounds: 10_s._, which the man wants for it. My Twilight _is_ an upright picture: about a foot wide, and rather more than a foot high.

Mr. Browne has declined taking my Opie, unless in conjunction with some others which I won't part with: so the Forest Girl must set up her stall at a Broker's. I doubt she will never bring me the money I gave for her. She is the only bad speculation of the season. Were she but sold, I should be rejoicing in the Holborn Battle Piece. After this year however I think I shall bid complete adieu to picture-_hunting_: only taking what comes in my way. There is a great difference between these two things: both in the expense of time, thought, and money. Who can sit down to Plato while his brains are roaming to Holborn, Christie's, Phillips's, etc.?

My Father talks of going down to Suffolk early next week. Whether I shall accompany him is not certain. Do you remember what a merry Good Friday you and I passed last year? I suppose I shall find the banks covered with primroses, the very name carries a dew upon it.

'As one who long in populous city pent, etc.' {111}

Good-bye. I am going to pay my compliments at Portland Place, and then to walk in a contrary direction to Holborn.

_To F. Tennyson_.

[31 _March_, 1842.]

DEAR FREDERIC,

. . . Concerning the bagwigs of composers. Handel's was not a bagwig, which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn's and Mozart's--much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the Sir Godfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great General of the day used to take off his head after the fatigue of the battle, and hand over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it. Such a wig was a fugue in itself. I don't understand your theory about trumpets, which have always been so little spiritual _in use_, that they have been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from the beginning of the world. '_Power_,' whether spiritual or physical, is the meaning of the trumpet: and so, well used, as you say, by Handel in his approaches to the Deity. The fugue in the overture to the Messiah expresses perhaps the thorny wandering ways of the world before the voice of the one in the wilderness, and before 'Comfort ye my people, etc.' Mozart, I agree with you, is the most universal musical genius: Beethoven has been too analytical and erudite: but his inspiration is nevertheless true. I have just read his Life by Moscheles: well worth reading. He shewed no very decided preference for music when a child, though he was the son of a composer: and I think that he was, strictly speaking, more of a thinker than a musician. A great genius he was somehow. He was very fond of reading: Plutarch and Shakespeare his great favourites. He tried to think in music: almost to reason in music: whereas perhaps we should be contented with _feeling_ in it. It can never speak very definitely. There is that famous 'Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, etc.,' in Handel: nothing can sound more simple and devotional: but it is only lately adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love song in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses more than their God. Then the famous music of 'He layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, etc.,' was originally fitted to an Italian pastoral song--'Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc.' That part which seems so well to describe 'and walketh on the wings of the wind' falls happily in with 'e con l'aura di fortuna' with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata--Op. 14--is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome--Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the analogous phenomena spiritual or material--if you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes the battle of the passions as well as of armed men. This is long and muddy discourse: but the walls of Charlotte Street present little else, especially during this last week of Lent, to twaddle about. The Cambridge Dons have been up in town for the Easter vacation: so we have smoked and talked over Peacock, Whewell, etc. Alfred is busy preparing a new volume for the press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Taylor, also appear in new volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks of publishing a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one. Nothing has been heard of Spedding: {114a} but we all conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped.

_To W. F. Pollock_. {114b}

BOULGE HALL, _May_ 11/42.

DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . I have just been reading the great Library of Athanasius. {114c} Certainly only you and I and Thackeray understand it. When men like Spedding quote to me such a passage as 'Athanasius alas is innocent of many smiles, etc.,' they shew me they don't understand it. The beauty--if one may dare to define--lies more in such expressions as 'adjusting the beaks of the macaws, etc.' I have laughed outright (how seldom one does this alone!) at the Bishops' meeting. 'Mr. Talboys--that candle behind Dr. Allnut--really that I should be obliged--.' I suppose this would be the most untranslateable book in the world. I never shall forget how I laughed when I first read it.

[GELDESTONE HALL, 22 _May_ 1842.]

DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . So Alfred is come out. {115a} I agree with you quite about the skipping-rope, etc. But the bald men {115b} of the Embassy would tell you otherwise. I should not wonder if the whole theory of the Embassy, perhaps the discovery of America itself, was involved in that very Poem. Lord Bacon's, honesty may, I am sure, be found there. Alfred, whatever he may think, cannot trifle--many are the disputes we have had about his powers of badinage, compliment, waltzing, etc. His smile is rather a grim one. I am glad the book is come out, though I grieve for the insertion of these little things, on which reviewers and dull readers will fix; so that the right appreciation of the book will be retarded a dozen years. . . .

The rain will not come and we are burnt up, and in despair. But the country never looked more delicious than it does. I am as happy here as possible, though I don't like to boast. I am going to see my friend Donne in ten days, he is writing the dullest of histories--one of Rome. What the devil does it signify setting us in these days right as to the Licinian Rogation, and Livy's myths? Every school-boy knew that Livy lied; but the main story was clear enough for all the purposes of experience; and, that being so, the more fabulous and entertaining the subsidiary matter is the better. Tell Thackeray not to go into Punch yet.

_To S. Laurence_.

GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES. SUNDAY, _May_ 22/42.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I read of the advertisements of sales and auctions, but don't envy you Londoners while I am here in the midst of _green idleness_, as Leigh Hunt might call it. What are pictures? I am all for pure spirit. You have of course read the account of Spedding's forehead landing in America. English sailors hail it in the Channel, mistaking it for Beachy Head. There is a Shakespeare cliff, and a Spedding cliff. Good old fellow! I hope he'll come back safe and sound, forehead and all.

I sit writing this at my bedroom window, while the rain (long-looked for) patters on the window. I prophesied it to-day: which is a great comfort. We have a housefull of the most delightful children: and if the rain would last, and the grass grow, all would be well. I think the rain will last: I shall prophesy so when I go down to our early dinner. For it is Sunday: and we dine children and all at one o'clock: and go to afternoon church, and a great tea at six--then a pipe (except for the young ladies)--a stroll--a bit of supper--and to bed. Wake in the morning at five--open the window and read Ecclesiasticus. A proverb says that 'everything is fun in the country.'

My Constable has been greatly admired, and is reckoned quite genuine by our great judge, Mr. Churchyard. Mr. C. paints himself: (not in _body_ colours, as you waggishly insinuate) and nicely too. He understands Gainsborough, Constable, and old Crome. Have you ever seen pictures by the latter? some very fine. He was a Norwich man.

BOULGE HALL, _June_ 19/42.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Keep the head of Raffaelle as long as you please. I am glad that one of the three pictures at all events is worth something. I anticipated that Morton's friend would spoil them in the carriage: friends always do. Keep them all, like my other pictures, at your house: and make what use of them you please. The head of Dante is, I suppose, the same as the one L. Hunt shewed us engraved in a book: a theatrical one, I thought. . . . Have you been to any auction-rooms? I have forgot all about them: and can live very well without pictures. I believe one loses all one's tastes in the country: and one is not the less happy. We have had glorious weather: new pease and young potatoes--fresh milk (how good!) and a cool library to sit in of mornings. . . .

_To F. Tennyson_.

BEDFORD, _August_ 16, 1842.

DEAR TENNYSON,

I have been long hoping for a letter from you: it has come this morning, and repays me for all waiting. While you and Morton write to me about Italy I shall never go to see it. And yet your account of Cicero's villa, I confess, gives me a twinge. But of this I am sure: if I saw all these fine things with the bodily eye, I should but see them as a scene in a play, with the additional annoyance of being bitten with fleas perhaps, and being in a state of transition which is not suitable to me: whereas while you see them, and will represent them to me, I see them through your imagination, and that is better than any light of my own. This is very true, I assure you: and you and Morton have given me quite a different view of Italy to what I had before: a much more enchanting one, but not the more likely to seduce me into making the false step of trying to realize it for myself. . . . In the mean time how tired and bored would you be to take one of my travels--a voyage of eight miles from Bedford perhaps--travelled twenty times before--every winding of the river, every church-spire, every country pot house and the quality of its beer, well known. No surprise at all. Nil admirari--I find that old Horace is a good fellow-traveller in England: so is Virgil. It is odd that those fellows living in the land they did live in should have talked so coldly about it. As to Alfred's book, I believe it has sold well: but I have not seen him for a long while, and have had no means of hearing about the matter except from Thompson, who told me that very many copies had been sold at Cambridge, which indeed will be the chief market for them. Neither have I seen any notice of them in print except that in the Examiner; and that seemed so quiet that I scarce supposed it was by Forster. Alfred himself is, I believe, in Kent at present. And now, my dear Frederic, why do you think of returning to England? Depend upon it you are better off as you are. You will never turn magistrate nor bean- dibbler, nor make yourself of use in the country, and therefore why should you not live where you like to live best? When I read of your laughing and singing and riding into Naples with huge self-supplying beakers full of the warm South I am sure you had best stay where you are. I should indeed be very glad to see you again: but then I should miss hearing from you: and you would only come here to abuse us all and go back again. You Tennysons are born for warm climates. As to poor England, I never see a paper, but I think with you that she is on the go. I used to dread this: but somehow I now contemplate it as a necessary thing, and, till the shoe begins to pinch me sorely, walk on with some indifference. It seems impossible the manufacturers can go on as they are: and impossible that the demand for our goods can continue as of old in Europe: and impossible but that we must get a rub and licking in some of our colonies: and if all these things come at once, why then the devil's in it. I used to think as you do about France and the French: and we all agreed in London that France should be divided among the other powers as Poland was: but Donne has given me pause: he says that France is the great counteracting democratic principle to Russia. This may be: though I think Russia is too unwieldly and rotten-ripe ever to make a huge progress in conquest. What is to be thought of a nation where the upper classes speak the language of another country, and have varnished over their honest barbarism with the poorest French profligacy and intrigue? Russia does not seem a whole to me. In the mean time, all goes on toward better and better, as is my firm belief: and humanity grows clear by flowing, (very little profited by any single sage or hero), and man shall have wings to fly and something much better than that in the end. . . .

I draw a very little, and think of music as I walk in the fields: but have no piano in this part of the world. . . . I hear there is a fine new Symphony by Mendelssohn, who is by far our best writer now, and in some measure combines Beethoven and Handel. I grow every day more and more to love only the old God save the King style: the common chords, those truisms of music, like other truisms so little understood in the full. Just look at the mechanism of Robin Adair.

Now pray write to me again when you can. You don't know how much I rejoice in your letters.

_To S. Laurence_.

BEDFORD, _Thursday_, [_August_, 1842.]

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I have heard from Morton and F. Tennyson; the letter of the latter very descriptive and fine. He is summering at Castellamare, and Morton at Sorrento. What must Italy be if we are complaining of heat here!

I have just been naming all Mr. Browne's pictures for him. This he has insisted on for three years, and at last this very hot day after an early dinner pens and paper were brought out and I have been writing down awful calumnies about Cuyp, Both, etc. Who could have painted Catharine of Medicis, do you know? We are afraid to call it Vandyke, as he lived (I believe) a century after her: and Mr. B. won't give up its being Catharine's portrait. So here we are in a fix. I went to see Lord Northampton's place Castle Ashby a week ago: expected pictures, and saw very bad ones. The house is very handsome, built by Inigo Jones.

I weigh 14 stone--fact.

_To John Allen_.

[KEYSOE, _August_ 1842.]

MY DEAR JOHN ALLEN,

. . . I am much _entete_ at present about one Matthews, {122} a preacher at Bedford, who would do very well for Manchester in opposition to Chartists, etc. If you are here on a Friday or a Sunday go and hear him. I would gladly subscribe to remove him from Bedford. All this you will think absurd; and so perhaps it is.

I have been reading Stobaeus' Anthology as I saunter in the fields: a pretty collection of Greek aphorisms in verse and prose. The bits of Menander and the comic poets are very acceptable. And this is really all I have looked at all this summer.

BEDFORD, _August_ 29/42.

MY DEAREST FELLOW,

Your letter reached me this morning and gave me much pleasure. An old acquaintance is not the worse for its wear, I think. This very time ten years ago we were in Wales together: I at Mr. Rees' boarding-house at Tenby: and there I made chance acquaintance with the whiskered man {123} at whose house I am now staying:--then a boy of sixteen. He is now a man of business, of town-politics, and more intent on the first of September than on anything else in the world. I see very little of him. . . .

I occasionally read sentences about the Virtues out of this collection of Stobaeus, and look into Sartor Resartus, which has fine things in it: and a little Dante and a little Shakespeare. But the great secret of all is the not eating meat. To that the world must come, I am sure. Only it makes one grasshopper foolish. I also receive letters from Morton and F. Tennyson full of fine accounts of Italy, finer than any I ever read. They came all of a sudden on Cicero's villa--one of them at least, the Formian--with a mosaic pavement leading thro' lemon gardens down to the sea, and a little fountain as old as the Augustan age bubbling up as fresh, Tennyson says, 'as when its silver sounds mixed with the deep voice of the orator as he sate there in the stillness of the noon day, devoting the siesta-hours to study.' When I first read of these things I wish to see them; but, on reflection, I am sure I see them much better in such letters as these.

I have seen one good picture about here: a portrait of O. Cromwell by Lely--so said--unlike other Lelys, but very carefully painted: and, I should think, an original portrait. . . I also read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day. Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter: but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and, because Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist, almost immediately left his wife in the North, and scarce saw her till the end of his life: when, old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her, and she received him, and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures; even as a matter of Art, I am sure.

Whether this letter will ever reach you, I don't know. I am going in two days to Naseby for a little while, and shall then find my way home to Suffolk for the greater part of the Winter and Spring, I suppose.

O beate Sesti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.

I think of hiring a house in some country town like this, but nearer Suffolk, and there have my books, etc. I want a house much: and a very small one will content me, with a few old women close by to play cards with at night. What a life, you will say!

His virtues walked then humble round,
Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void:
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.

That was not in playing picquet, I doubt. What fine lines of Johnson's {125} these!

* * * * *

On the 15th of September 1842 FitzGerald first made Carlyle's personal acquaintance. He always spoke of his having first gone to Chelsea in company with Thackeray, and in the Notes which he left of his excavations at Naseby he repeats what he frequently told myself and others. But his memory was clearly at fault, for in a letter to Pollock, written on the 16th, but dated by mistake the 17th, of September, he says, 'I have come up to London for two days on a false errand: and am therefore going back in a pet, to Naseby. . . . I enquired at Spedding's rooms to-day: he is expected by the 20th, which is near. Laurence is the only person I know in town. . . . He and I went to see Carlyle at Chelsea yesterday. That genius has been surveying the field of battle of Naseby in company with Dr. Arnold, who died soon after, poor man! I doubt (from Carlyle's description) if they identified the very ground of the carnage. . . . I have heard nothing of Thackeray for these two months. He was to have visited an Irish brother of mine: but he has not yet done so. I called at Coram Street yesterday, and old John seemed to think he was yet in Ireland.' With this correction I now give the Memorandum referred to, which FitzGerald entrusted to my keeping together with several of Carlyle's letters. An attempt to put up a monument on the real site of the battle proved abortive, as will appear hereafter.

'About the middle of September 1842, W. M. Thackeray took me to tea
with Carlyle whom I had not previously known. He was then busy with
Cromwell; had just been, he told us, over the Field of Naseby in
company with Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and had sufficiently identified the
Ground of the Battle with the contemporaneous Accounts of it. As I
happened to know the Field well--the greater part of it then belonging
to my Family--I knew that Carlyle and Arnold had been mistaken--misled
in part by an Obelisk which my Father had set up as on the highest
Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of
the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe
that he and Arnold could have been deceived--that he could accept no
hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence of his own Eyes, etc.
However, as I was just then going down to Naseby, I might enquire
further into the matter.

'On arriving at Naseby, I had spade and mattock taken to a hill near
half a mile across from the "Blockhead Obelisk," and pitted with
several hollows, overgrown with rank Vegetation, which Tradition had
always pointed to as the Graves of the Slain. One of these I had
opened; and there, sure enough, were the remains of Skeletons closely
packed together--chiefly teeth--but some remains of Shinbone, and
marks of Skull in the Clay. Some of these, together with some
sketches of the Place, I sent to Carlyle.

'The Naseby Monument, already advised by Carlyle, was not executed at
the time: and some how or other was not again talked of till 1855 when
the Estate was to be sold from us. I was told however by the Lawyers,
etc., that it was better not to interfere while that Business was
going on. So the Scheme went to sleep again till 1872, when, Carlyle
renewing the subject in some Letter, I applied to the Agent of the
Estate who was willing to help us in getting permission to erect the
Stone, and to a neighbouring Mason to fashion it as Carlyle desired.
We had some difficulty in this latter point, but at last all was
settled, when suddenly Agent and Lawyer informed us the thing must not
be done--for one reason, that Stone and Inscription were considered
too plain.'

Before the excavations were begun, however, FitzGerald received the following letter of instructions from Carlyle, written three days after their interview.

CHELSEA, 18 _Sept_., 1842.

MY DEAR SIR,

Profiting by the unexpected fact that _you_ are now master of Naseby Battlefield, I have gone over the whole matter once more, probably for the twentieth time; I have copied you my illegible pencil-notes, and re- verified everything,--that so, if you can understand the meaning (which will be difficult, I fear), you may append to it what commentary, collected on the spot, you may judge edifying. Let me, however, again impress upon you that these statements and descriptions are actual _facts_, gathered with industry from some seven or eight eyewitnesses, looking at the business with their own eyes from seven or eight different sides; that the present figure of the ground, in my recollection, corresponds very tolerably well with the whole of them;--and that no 'theory,' by what Professor soever, can be of any use to me in comparison. I wish you had Sprigge's complete Plan of the Battle: but you have it not; you have only that foolish Parson's {128} very dim copy of it, and must help yourself with that.

The things I wish you to give me are first: The whole story of your Blacksmith, or other oral Chronicler, be it wise and credible, be it absurd and evidently false. Then you can ask, whether there remains any tradition of a windmill at Naseby? One stands in the Plan, not far from North of the village, probably some 300 yards to the west of where the ass of a column now stands: the whole concern, of fighting, rallying, flying, killing and chasing, transacted itself to the _west_ of that,--on the height, over the brow of the height, down the slope, in the hollow, and up again to the grounds of Dust Hill, where the _final_ dispersion took place. Therefore, again, pray ask.

Where precisely any dead bodies are known to have been found? Where and when the _last_-found was come upon; what they made of it,--whether no Antiquarian kept a tooth; at any rate, a button or the like? Cannon-balls ought to be found, especially musket-balls, down in that hollow, and on the slope thitherward: is any extant cabinet master of one?

Farther, are there, on the high ground N.W. or W. of Naseby village, any traces still discoverable of such names as these: 'Lantford hedges' (or perhaps 'hedge'); a kind of thicket running _up_ the slope, towards the western environs of Naseby village, nearly from the North;--Fairfax had dragoons hidden here, who fired upon Rupert's right, as he charged upwards: 'Rutput Hill': 'Fanny Hill' (according to Rushworth, 'Famny Hill' in Sprigge),--probably two swellings in the ground, that lie between the south end of Lantford Hedges and the village; 'Lean Leaf Hill' seemingly another swelling, parallel to these, which reaches in with its slope _to_ the very village--from the west: 'Mill Hill' farther to the east (marked as due west from the windmill, which of course must have stood upon a part of it), lying therefore upon the north part of the village? Is it possible, in spite of all ditching and enclosure bills, there may still some vestige of these names adhere to some fields or messuages; the exact position of which it would be satisfactory to fix. You can also tell me whether Burrough Hill is visible from Naseby, and 'what it is like'; and what the Sibbertoft height, on the other side, and the Harboro' Height are like! I suppose one sees Sibbertoft steeple, but no houses, from Naseby Height? Also that it was undoubtedly Clipston (as the good Dr. Arnold and I supposed) that we saw there. Dr. A. and I came, as I find, thro' Crick, West Hadden, Cold Ashby; and crossed the Welford and Northampton road, perhaps some three miles from Naseby.

On the whole, my dear Sir, here seems to be work enough for you! But after all is it not worth your while on other accounts? Were it not a most legitimate task for the Proprietor of Naseby, a man of scholarship, intelligence and leisure, to make himself completely acquainted with the true state of all details connected with Naseby Battle and its localities? Few spots of ground in all the world are memorabler to an Englishman. We could still very well stand a good little book on Naseby! _Verbum sapienti_.

As for myself, had I the wings of an eagle, most likely I should still fly to you, and to several other quarters; but with railways and tub-gigs, and my talent for insomnolence, and fretting myself to fiddlestrings with all terrestrial locomotion whatsoever--alas, alas!

Believe me always, My dear Sir, Very truly yours T. CARLYLE.

FitzGerald's letter to Carlyle, giving an account of the first results of his excavations, has apparently not been preserved, but it was promptly acknowledged.

CHELSEA, _Saturday_, 25 [24] _Septr_., 1842.

MY DEAR SIR,

You will do me and the Genius of History a real favour, if you persist in these examinations and excavations to the utmost length possible for you! It is long since I read a letter so interesting as yours of yesterday. Clearly enough you are upon the very battle-ground;--and I, it is also clear, have only looked up towards it from the slope of Mill Hill. Were not the weather so wet, were not, etc., etc., so many _etceteras_, I could almost think of running up to join you still! But that is evidently unfeasible at present.

The opening of that burial-heap blazes strangely in my thoughts: these are the very jawbones that were clenched together in deadly rage, on this very ground, 197 years ago! It brings the matter home to one, with a strange veracity,--as if for the first time one saw it to be no fable and theory but a dire fact. I will beg for a tooth and a bullet; authenticated by your own eyes and word of honour!--Our Scotch friend too, making turnip manure of it, he is part of the Picture. I understand almost all the Netherlands battlefields have already given up their bones to British husbandly; why not the old English next? Honour to thrift. If of 5000 wasted men, you can make a few usable turnips, why, do it!

The more sketches and details you can contrive to send me, the better. I want to know for one thing whether there is any _house_ on Cloisterwell; what house that was that I saw from the slope of Naseby height (Mill-hill, I suppose), and fancied to be Dust Hill Farm? It must lie about North by West from Naseby Church, perhaps near a mile off. You say, one cannot see Dust Hill at all, much less any farm house of Dust Hill, from that Naseby Height?

But why does the Obelisk stand there? It might as well stand at Charing Cross; the blockhead that it is! I again wish I had wings: alas, I wish many things; that the gods would but annihilate Time and Space, which would include all things!

In great haste, Yours most truly,

T. CARLYLE.

The following letters will partly supply the place of the missing letter to Carlyle.

_To Bernard Barton_.

LONDON. _Friday_, _Septr_. [16] 1842.

DEAR BARTON,

Have you supposed me dead or what? Well, so far from it, I have grown more fat than ever, which is quite as much reason for not writing. I have been staying at Naseby, and, having come up here for two days, return to that place by railroad to-morrow. I went to see Carlyle last night. He had just returned from the neighbourhood of Bury. He is full of Cromwell, and, funny enough, went over from Rugby to Naseby this spring with poor Dr. Arnold. They saw nothing, and walked over what was not the field of battle. I want him to go down with me: but he thinks it would be too expensive. So I have engaged to collect what matter I can for him on the spot. At the beginning of October I expect to be back in East Anglia for the winter. Frail is human virtue. I thought I had quite got over picture dealing, when lo! walking in Holborn this day I looked into a shop just to shew the strength of my virtue, and fell. That accursed Battle Piece--I have bought it--and another picture of dead chaffinches, which Mr. C[hurchyard] will like, it is so well done: I expect you to give high prices for these pictures--mind that: and begin to economize in household matters. Leave off sugar in tea and make all your household do so. Also write to me at Naseby, Welford, Northampton. That's my direction--such a glorious country, Barton. I wrote you a letter a week ago, but never posted it. So now goodbye. I shall bring down the Chaffinches with me to Suffolk. Trade has been very bad, the dealers tell me. My fruit Girl still hangs up at a window--an unpleasant sight. Nobody is so hard set as to bid for her.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

NASEBY, WELFORD, NORTHAMPTON, _Septr_. 20/42.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . London was very close and nasty: so I am glad to get down here: where, however, I am not (as at present proposed) to stay long: my Father requiring my services in Suffolk early in October. Laurence has made a sort of promise to come and see me here next Saturday: I wanted him to come down with me while the weather was fine. The place is very desert, but a battle was probably fought here 200 years ago, as an Obelisk planted by my Papa on the wrong site intimates. Poor Carlyle got into sad error from that deluding Obelisk: which Liston used to call (in this case with truth) an Obstacle. I am afraid Carlyle will make a mad mess of Cromwell and his Times: what a poor figure Fairfax will cut! I am very tired of these heroics; and I can worship no man who has but a square inch of brains more than myself. I think there is but one Hero: and that is the Maker of Heroes.

Here I am reading Virgil's delightful Georgics for the first time. They really attune perfectly well with the plains and climate of Naseby. Valpy (whose edition I have) cannot quite follow Virgil's plough--in its construction at least. But the main acts of agriculture seem to have changed very little, and the alternation of green and corn crops is a good dodge. And while I heard the fellows going out with their horses to plough as I sat at breakfast this morning, I also read--

Libra die somnique pares ubi fecerit horas,
Et medium luci atque umbris jam dividit orbem,
Exercete, viri, tauros, serite hordea campis
Usque sub extremum brumae intractabilis imbrem. {134}

One loves Virgil somehow.

_To Bernard Barton_.

[NASEBY], _Septr_. 22/42.

MY DEAR BARTON,

The pictures are left all ready packed up in Portland Place, and shall come down with me, whenever that desirable event takes place. In the mean while here I am as before: but having received a long and interesting letter from Carlyle asking information about this Battle field, I have trotted about rather more to ascertain names of places, positions, etc. After all he will make a mad book. I have just seen some of the bones of a dragoon and his horse who were found foundered in a morass in the field--poor dragoon, much dismembered by time: his less worthy members having been left in the owner's summer-house for the last twenty years have disappeared one by one: but his skull is kept safe in the hall: not a bad skull neither: and in it some teeth yet holding, and _a bit of the iron heel of his boot_, put into the skull by way of convenience. This is what Sir Thomas Browne calls 'making a man act his Antipodes.' {135} I have got a fellow to dig at one of the great general graves in the field: and he tells me to-night that he has come to bones: to-morrow I will select a neat specimen or two. In the mean time let the full harvest moon wonder at them as they lie turned up after lying hid 2400 revolutions of hers. Think of that warm 14th of June when the Battle was fought, and they fell pell-mell: and then the country people came and buried them so shallow that the stench was terrible, and the putrid matter oozed over the ground for several yards: so that the cattle were observed to eat those places very close for some years after. Every one to his taste, as one might well say to any woman who kissed the cow that pastured there.

Friday, 23rd. We have dug at a place, as I said, and made such a trench as would hold a dozen fellows: whose remains positively make up the mould. The bones nearly all rotted away, except the teeth which are quite good. At the bottom lay the _form_ of a perfect skeleton: most of the bones gone, but the pressure distinct in the clay: the thigh and leg bones yet extant: the skull a little pushed forward, as if there were scanty room. We also tried some other reputed graves, but found nothing: indeed it is not easy to distinguish what are graves from old marl-pits, etc. I don't care for all this bone-rummaging myself: but the identification of the graves identifies also where the greatest heat of the battle was. Do you wish for a tooth?

As I began this antiquarian account in a letter to you, so I have finished it, that you may mention it to my Papa, who perhaps will be amused at it. Two farmers insisted on going out exploring with me all day: one a very solid fellow, who talks like the justices in Shakespeare: but who certainly was inspired in finding out this grave: the other a Scotchman full of intelligence, who proposed the flesh-soil for manure for turnips. The old Vicar, whose age reaches halfway back to the day of the Battle, stood tottering over the verge of the trench. Carlyle has shewn great sagacity in guessing at the localities from the vague descriptions of contemporaries: and his short _pasticcio_ of the battle is the best I have seen. {137} But he will spoil all by making a demi- god of Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise that he brought about the very thing he fought to prevent--the restoration of an unrestricted monarchy.

_To S. Laurence_.

NASEBY, _Septr_. 28/42.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,