Chapter VI: Part 6

Lusia is to be married {174b} on the 2nd, I hear; and I shall set out for Leamington where the event takes place in the middle of next week. Whether I shall touch in my flight at Boulge is yet uncertain: so don't order any fireworks just at present. I hear from Mr. Crabbe he is delighted with D'Israeli's Coningsby, which I advised him to read. Have you read it? The children still wonder what Miss Charlesworth meant when she said that she didn't mean what she said. I tell them it is a new way of thinking of young England. I have exercised the children's minds greatly on the doctrine of Puseyitical reticence (that is not the word) but I find that children, who are great in the kingdom of Heaven, are all for blurting out what they mean. Farewell for the present. Ever yours, E. F. G.

If war breaks out with France, I will take up arms as a volunteer under Major Pytches. Pytches and Westminster Abbey!

LEAMINGTON, _Sept._ 28/44.

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . I expect to be here about a week, and I mean to give a day to looking over the field of Edgehill, on the top of which, I have ascertained, there is a very delightful pot-house, commanding a very extensive view. Don't you wish to sit at ease in such a high tower, with a pint of porter at your side, and to see beneath you the ground that was galloped over by Rupert and Cromwell two hundred years ago, in one of the richest districts of England, and on one of the finest days in October, for such my day is to be?

In the meanwhile I cast regretful glances of memory back to my garden at Boulge, which I want to see dug up and replanted. I have bought anemone roots which in the Spring shall blow Tyrian dyes, and Irises of a newer and more brilliant prism than Noah saw in the clouds. I have bought a picture of my poor quarrelsome friend Moore, just to help him; for I don't know what to do with his picture.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Oct_. 10/44.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

You will think I have wholly cut you. But I wrote half a letter to you three months ago; and mislaid it; spent some time in looking for it, always hoping; and then some more time despairing; and we all know how time goes when [we] have got a thing to do which we are rather lazy about doing. As for instance, getting up in a morning. Not that writing a letter to you is so bad as getting up; but it is not easy for mortal man who has heard, seen, done, and thought, nothing since he last wrote, to fill one of these big foreign sheets full as a foreign letter ought to be. I am now returned to my dull home here after my usual pottering about in the midland counties of England. A little Bedfordshire--a little Northamptonshire--a little more folding of the hands--the same faces--the same fields--the same thoughts occurring at the same turns of road--this is all I have to tell of; nothing at all added--but the summer gone. My garden is covered with yellow and brown leaves; and a man is digging up the garden beds before my window, and will plant some roots and bulbs for next year. My parsons come and smoke with me, etc. 'The round of life from hour to hour'--alluding doubtless to a mill-horse. Alfred is reported to be still at Park House, where he has been sojourning for two months, I think; but he never writes me a word. Hydropathy has done its worst; he writes the names of his friends in water. . . . I spent two days in London with old Morton about five weeks ago; and pleasant days they were. The rogue bewitches me with his wit and honest speech. He also staid some while at Park House, while Alfred was there, and managed of course to frighten the party occasionally with some of his sallies. He often writes to me; and very good his letters are all of them.

When do you mean to write me another? Morton told me in his last that he had heard from Brotherton you were gone, or going, to Naples. I dare say this sheet of mine will never get to your hands. But if it does, let me hear from you. Is Italy becoming stale to you? Are you going to Cairo for fresh sensations? Thackeray went off in a steamboat about the time the French were before Mogadore; he was to see those coasts and to visit Jerusalem! Titmarsh at Jerusalem will certainly be an era in Christianity. But I suppose he will soon be back now. Spedding is yet in his highlands, I believe, considering Grouse and Bacon.

I expect to run up to London some time during the winter just to tell over old friends' faces and get a sup of music and painting. I have bought very few more pictures lately; and [heard] no music but Mendelssohn's M. Night's Dream. The overture, which was published long ago, is the best part; but there is a very noble triumphal march also.

Now I feel just in the same fix as I did in that sheet of paper whose fate is uncertain. But if I don't put in a word more, yet this shall go, I am determined. Only consider how it is a matter of necessity that I should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most unbounded applause by Miss Rainforth,

'I dreamt that I dwelt in marble Halls,'

which is sung and organed at every corner in London. I think you may imagine what kind of flowing 6/8 time of the last degree of imbecility it is. The words are written by Mr. Bunn! Arcades ambo.

I say we shall see you over in England before long: for I rather think you want an Englishman to quarrel with sometimes. I mean quarrel in the sense of a good strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side by occasional outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try. You used to irritate my vegetable blood sometimes.

_To Bernard Barton_.

[GELDESTONE, _Nov_. 27, 1844]

DEAR BARTON,

My return to Boulge is delayed for another week, because we expect my Father here just now. But for this, I should have been on the Union Coach this day. The children here are most delightful; the best company in all the world, to my mind. If you could see the little girl dance the Polka with her sisters! Not set up like an Infant Terpsichore, but seriously inclined, with perfect steps in perfect time.

We see a fine white frost over the grass this morning; and I suppose you have rubbed your hands and cried 'Oh Lauk, how cold it is!' twenty times before I write this. Now one's pictures become doubly delightful to one. I certainly love winter better than summer. Could one but know, as one sits within the tropic latitude of one's fireside, that there was not increased want, cold, and misery, beyond it!

My Spectator tells me that Leigh Hunt has published a good volume of Poem- selections; not his own poems, but of others. And Miss Martineau has been cured of an illness of five years standing by Mesmerism! By the help of a few passes of the hand following an earnest Will, she, who had not set foot out of her room, for the chief part of those five years, now can tread the grass again, and walk five miles! Her account of the business in the Athenaeum is extremely interesting. She is the only one I have read of who describes the sensations of _the trance_, which, seeming a painful one to the wide-awake looker on, is in fact a state of tranquil glorification to the patient. It cheers but not inebriates! She felt her disease oozing away out at her feet, and as it were streams of warm fresh vitality coming in its place. And when she woke, lo, this was no dream!

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Decr_. 8/44.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

What is a poor devil to do? You tell me quite truly that my letters have not two ideas in them, and yet you tell me to write my two ideas as soon as I can. So indeed it is so far easy to write down one's two ideas, if they are not very abstruse ones; but then what the devil encouragement is it to a poor fellow to expose his nakedness so? All I can say is, to say again that if you lived in this place, you would not write so long a letter as you have done, full of capital description and all good things; though without any compliment I am sure you would write a better than I shall. But you see the original fault in me is that I choose to be in such a place as this at all; that argues certainly a talent for dullness which no situation nor intercourse of men could much improve. It is true; I really do like to sit in this doleful place with a good fire, a cat and dog on the rug, and an old woman in the kitchen. This is all my live stock. The house is yet damp as last year; and the great event of this winter is my putting up a trough round the eaves to carry off the wet. There was discussion whether the trough should be of iron or of zinc: iron dear and lasting; zinc the reverse. It was decided for iron; and accordingly iron is put up.

Why should I not live in London and see the world? you say. Why then _I_ say as before, I don't like it. I think the dullness of country people is better than the impudence of Londoners; and the fresh cold and wet of our clay fields better than a fog that stinks _per se_; and this room of mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty room in Charlotte St. If you, Morton, and Alfred, were more in London, I should be there more; but now there is but Spedding and Allen whom I care a straw about. I have written two notes to Alfred to ask him just to notify his existence to me; but you know he is obstinate on that point. I heard from Carlyle that he (Alfred) had passed an evening at Chelsea much to C.'s delight; who has opened the gates of his Valhalla to let Alfred in. {181} Thackeray is at Malta, where I am told he means to winter. . . .

As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few books, and know nothing of what is stirring in the literary world. I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who was a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke, which do not add to, or detract from, what I knew and liked in him before. I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps this winter. . . . Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great humbug in deed, and his books have plenty of it in word; but he had got together a vast deal of what was not humbug from others; and, as far as I see, the old philosophers are available now as much as two thousand years back. Perhaps you will think that is not saying much. Don't suppose I think it good philosophy in myself to keep here out of the world, and sport a gentle Epicurism; I do not; I only follow something of a natural inclination, and know not if I could do better under a more complex system. It is very smooth sailing hitherto down here. No velvet waistcoat and ever-lustrous pumps to be considered; no bon mots got up; no information necessary. There is a pipe for the parsons to smoke, and quite as much bon mots, literature, and philosophy as they care for without any trouble at all. If we could but feed our poor! It is now the 8th of December; it has blown a most desperate East wind, all razors; a wind like one of those knives one sees at shops in London, with 365 blades all drawn and pointed; the wheat is all sown; the fallows cannot be ploughed. What are all the poor folks to do during the winter? And they persist in having the same enormous families they used to do; a woman came to me two days ago who had seventeen children! What farmers are to employ all these? What Landlord can find room for them? The law of Generation must be repealed. The London press does nothing but rail at us poor country folks for our cruelty. I am glad they do so; for there is much to be set right. But I want to know if the Editor of the Times is more attentive to his devils, their wives and families, than our squires and squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners. Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the mouth of Mr. Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm chairs at a club in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity and brutality of those in High Suffolk.

Come, I have got more than two ideas into this sheet; but I don't know if you won't dislike them worse than mere nothing. But I was determined to fill my letter. Yes, you are to know that I slept at Woodbridge last night, went to church there this morning, where every one sat with a purple nose, and heard a dismal well-meant sermon; and the organ blew us out with one grand idea at all events, one of old Handel's Coronation Anthems; that I dined early, also in Woodbridge; and walked up here with a tremendous East wind blowing sleet in my face from over the German Sea, that I found your letter when I entered my room; and reading it through, determined to spin you off a sheet incontinently, and lo! here it is! Now or never! I shall now have my tea in, and read over your letter again while at it. You are quite right in saying that Gravesend excursions with you do me good. When did I doubt it? I remember them with great pleasure; few of my travels so much so. I like a short journey in good company; and I like you all the better for your Englishman's humours. One doesn't find such things in London; something more like it here in the country, where every one, with whatever natural stock of intellect endowed, at least grows up his own way, and flings his branches about him, not stretched on the espalier of London dinner-table company.

P.S. Next morning. Snow over the ground. We have our wonders of inundation in Suffolk also, I can tell you. For three weeks ago such floods came, that an old woman was carried off as she was retiring from a beer house about 9 p.m., and drowned. She was probably half seas over before she left the beer house.

And three nights ago I looked out at about ten o'clock at night, before going to bed. It seemed perfectly still; frosty, and the stars shining bright. I heard a continuous moaning sound, which I knew to be, not that of an infant exposed, or female ravished, but of the sea, more than ten miles off! What little wind there was carried to us the murmurs of the waves circulating round these coasts so far over a flat country. But people here think that this sound so heard is not from the waves that break, but a kind of prophetic voice from the body of the sea itself announcing great gales. Sure enough we have got them, however heralded. Now I say that all this shows that we in this Suffolk are not so completely given over to prose and turnips as some would have us. I always said that being near the sea, and being able to catch a glimpse of it from the tops of hills, and of houses, redeemed Suffolk from dullness; and at all events that our turnip fields, dull in themselves, were at least set all round with an undeniably poetic element. And so I see Arnold says; he enumerates five inland counties as the only parts of England for which nothing could be said in praise. Not that I agree with him there neither; I cannot allow the valley of the Ouse about which some of my pleasantest recollections hang to be without its great charm. W. Browne, whom you despised, is married, and I shall see but little of him for the future. I have laid by my rod and line by the willows of the Ouse for ever. 'He is married and cannot come.' This change is the true meaning of those verses, {185}

Friend after friend departs;
Who has not lost a friend?

and so on. If I were conscious of being stedfast and good humoured enough, I would marry to-morrow. But a humourist is best by himself.

_To Bernard Barton_.

19 CHARLOTTE ST., RATHBONE PLACE, _Jany_. 4/45.

DEAR BARTON,

Clawed hold of by a bad cold am I--a London cold--where the atmosphere clings to you, like a wet blanket. You have often received a letter from me on a Sunday, haven't you? I think I used to write you an account of the picture purchases of the week, that you might have something to reflect upon in your silent meeting. (N.B. This is very wrong, and I don't mean it.) Well, now I have bought no pictures, and sha'n't; but one I _had_ bought is sent to be lined. A Bassano of course; which nobody will like but myself. It is a grave picture; an Italian Lord dictating to a Secretary with upturned face. Good company, I think.

You did not tell me how you and Miss Barton got on with the Vestiges. I found people talking about it here; and one laudatory critique in the Examiner sold an edition in a few days. I long to finish it. I am going in state to the London Library--_my_ Library--to review the store of books it contains, and carry down a box full for winter consumption. Do you want anything? eh, Mr. Barton?

I went to see Sophocles' tragedy of Antigone done into English two nights ago. And yesterday I dined with my dear old John Allen who remains whole and intact of the world in the heart of London. He dined some while ago at Lambeth, and the Lady next him asked the Archbishop if he read Punch. Allen thought this was a misplaced question: but I think the Archbishop ought to see Punch: though not to read it regularly perhaps. I then asked Allen about the Vestiges--he had heard of it--laughed at the idea of its being atheistical. 'No enquiry,' said he, 'can be atheistical.' I doubt if the Archbishop of Canterbury could say that. What do you think of Exeter? Isn't he a pretty lad?

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE, _Jan_. 29/45.

MY DEAR DONNE,

. . . A. T. has near a volume of poems--elegiac--in memory of Arthur Hallam. Don't you think the world wants other notes than elegiac now? Lycidas is the utmost length an elegiac should reach. But Spedding praises: and I suppose the elegiacs will see daylight, public daylight, one day. Carlyle goes on growling with his Cromwell: whom he finds more and more faultless every day. So that _his_ paragon also will one day see the light also, an elegiac of a different kind from Tennyson's; as far apart indeed as Cromwell and Hallam.

Barton comes and sups with me to-morrow, and George Crabbe, son of the poet, a capital fellow.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Feby_. 6, 1845.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

. . . You like to hear of men and manners. Have I not been to London for a whole fortnight, seen Alfred, Spedding, all the lawyers and all the painters, gone to Panoramas of Naples by Volcano-light (Vesuvius in a blaze illuminating the whole bay, which Morton says is not a bit better than Plymouth Sound, if you could put a furnace in the belly of Mount Edgecumbe)--gone to see the Antigone of Messrs. Sophocles and Mendelssohn at Covent Garden--gone to see the Infant Thalia--now as little of an Infant as a Thalia--at the Adelaide Gallery. So! you see things go on as when you were with us. Only the Thalia has waxed in stature: and perhaps in wisdom also: but that is not in her favour. The Antigone is, as you are aware, a neatly constructed drama, on the French model; the music very fine, _I_ thought--but you would turn up your nose at it, I dare say. It was horribly ill sung, by a chorus in shabby togas, who looked much more like dirty bakers than Theban (were they?) respectable old gentlemen. Mr. Vandenhoff sat on a marble camp-stool in the middle, and looked like one of Flaxman's Homeric Kings--very well. And Miss Vandenhoff did Antigone. I forget the name of the lady who did Ismene; {189} perhaps you would have thought her very handsome: but I did not, nor was she considered at all remarkable, as far as I could make out. I saw no pantomimes: and all the other theatres were filled with Balfe, whom perhaps you admire very much. So I won't say anything about him till you have told me what you think on his score. . . .

Well and have you read 'Eothen' which all the world talks of? And do you know who it is written by? . . . Then Eliot Warburton has written an Oriental Book! Ye Gods! In Shakespeare's day the nuisance was the Monsieur Travellers who had 'swum in a gundello'; but now the bores are those who have smoked _tschibouques_ with a _Peshaw_! Deuce take it: I say 'tis better to stick to muddy Suffolk.

_To Bernard Barton_.

GELDESTONE, _April_ 3/45.

MY DEAR BARTON,

. . . I have been loitering out in the garden here this golden day of Spring. The woodpigeons coo in the covert; the frogs croak in the pond; the bees hum about some thyme, and some of my smaller nieces have been busy gathering primroses, 'all to make posies suitable to this present month.' I cannot but think with a sort of horror of being in London now: but I doubt I must be ere long. . . . I have abjured all Authorship, contented at present with the divine Poem which Great Nature is now composing about us. These primroses seem more wonderful and delicious Annuals than Ackerman ever put forth. I suppose no man ever grew so old as not to feel younger in Spring. Yet, poor old Mrs. Bodham {190} lifted up her eyes to the windows, and asked if it were a clear or a dull day!

39 NORTON ST., FITZROY SQR. [? _May_ 1845.]

DEAR BARTON,

You see my address. I only got into it yesterday, though I reached London on Friday, and hung loose upon it for all that interval. I spent four days at Cambridge pleasantly enough; and one at Bedford where I heard my friend Matthews preach.

Last night I appeared at the Opera, and shall do so twice a week till further notice. Friends I have seen but few; for I have not yet found time to do anything. Alfred Tennyson was here; but went off yesterday to consider the sea from the top of Beachy Head. Carlyle gets on with his book which will be in two big volumes. He has entirely misstated all about Naseby, after all my trouble. . . .

Did Churchyard see in London a picture at the address I enclose? The man's card, you see, proclaims 'Silversmith,' but he is 'Pawnbroker.' A picture hangs up at the door which he calls by 'Williams,' but I think is a rather inferior Crome; though the figure in it is not like Crome's figures. The picture is about three feet high by two broad; good in the distance; very natural in the branching of the trees; heavy in the foliage; all common to Crome. And it seems painted in that fat substance he painted in. If C. come to London let him look at this picture, as well as come and see me.

I have cold, head-ache, and London disgust. Oh that I could look on my Anemones! and hear the sighing of my Scotch firs. The Exhibition is full of bad things: there is a grand Turner, however; quite unlike anything that was ever seen in Heaven above, or in Earth beneath, or in the waters under the Earth.

The reign of primroses and cowslips is over, and the oak now begins to take up the empire of the year and wear a budding garland about his brows. Over all this settles down the white cloud in the West, and the Morning and Evening draw toward Summer.

[? _May_ 1845.]

MY DEAR BARTON,

Had not your second note arrived this morning, I should surely have written to you; that you might have a little letter for your Sunday's breakfast. Do not accuse me of growing enamoured of London; I would have been in the country long ago if I could. . . . Nor do I think I shall get away till the end of this month; and then I will go. I am not so bad as Tennyson, who has been for six weeks intending to start every day for Switzerland or Cornwall, he doesn't quite know which. However, his stay has been so much gain to me; for he and John Allen are the two men that give me pleasure here.

Tell Churchyard he must come up once again. . . . I saw a most lovely Sir Joshua at Christie's a week ago; it went far far above my means. There is an old hunting picture in Regent St. which I want him to look at. I think it is Morland; whom I don't care twopence for; the horses ill drawn; some good colour: the people English; good old England! I was at a party of modern wits last night that made me creep into myself, and wish myself away talking to any Suffolk old woman in her cottage, while the trees murmured without. The wickedness of London appals me; and yet I am no paragon.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE. _June_, 12/45.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Though I write from Boulge you are not to suppose I have been here ever since I last wrote to you. On the contrary, I am but just returned from London, where I spent a month, and saw all the sights and all the people I cared to see. But what am I to tell you of them? Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was fourteen years old when I first knew him at school more than twenty years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and Age. And then as to things seen; you know that one Exhibition tells another, and one Panorama certifieth another, etc. If you want to know something of the Exhibition however, read Fraser's Magazine for this month; there Thackeray has a paper on the matter, full of fun. I met Stone in the street the other day; he took me by the button, and told me in perfect sincerity, and with increasing warmth, how, though he loved old Thackeray, yet these yearly out-speakings of his sorely tried him; not on account of himself (Stone), but on account of some of his friends, Charles Landseer, Maclise, etc. Stone worked himself up to such a pitch under the pressure of forced calmess that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horse-whipped one day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. At this I, who had partly agreed with Stone that ridicule, though true, needs not always to be spoken, began to laugh: and told him two could play at that game. These painters cling together, and bolster each other up, to such a degree, that they really have persuaded themselves that any one who ventures to laugh at one of their drawings, exhibited publickly for the express purpose of criticism, insults the whole corps. In the mean while old Thackeray laughs at all this; and goes on in his own way; writing hard for half a dozen Reviews and Newspapers all the morning; dining, drinking, and talking of a night; managing to preserve a fresh colour and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear-and-tear of thinking and feeding that would have knocked up any other man I know two years ago, at least. . . .

Alfred was in London the first week of my stay there. He was looking well, and in good spirits; and had got two hundred lines of a new poem in a butcher's book. He went down to Eastbourne in Sussex; where I believe he now is. He and I made a plan to go to the coast of Cornwall or Wales this summer; but I suppose we shall manage never to do it. I find I must go to Ireland; which I had not intended to do this year.

I have nothing new to tell you of Music. The Operas were the same old affair; Linda di Chamouni, the Pirata, etc. Grisi coarse, . . . only Lablache great. There is one singer also, Brambelli, who, with a few husky notes, carries one back to the days of Pasta. I did not hear 'Le Desert'; but I fancy the English came to a fair judgment about it. That is, they did not want to hear it more than once. It was played many times, for new batches of people; but I doubt if any one went twice. So it is with nearly all French things; there is a clever showy surface; but no Holy of Holies far withdrawn; conceived in the depth of a mind, and only to be received into the depth of ours after much attention. Poussin must spend his life in Italy before he could paint as he did; and what other Great Man, out of the exact Sciences, have they to show? This you will call impudence. Now Beethoven, you see by your own experience, has a depth not to be reached all at once. I admit with you that he is too bizarre, and, I think, morbid; but he is original, majestic, and profound. Such music _thinks_; so it is with Gluck; and with Mendelssohn. As to Mozart, he was, as a musical Genius, more wonderful than all. I was astonished at the Don Giovanni lately. It is certainly the Greatest Opera in the world. I went to no concert, and am now sorry I did not.

Now I have told you all my London news. You will not hear of my Cottage and Garden; so now I will shut up shop and have done. We have had a dismal wet May; but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, you must not expect to enjoy at first reading. I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of it. I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steaming blue under the noonday sun. I suppose you are living without clothes in wells, where you are. Remember me to your brothers; write soon; and believe me ever yours,

E. FITZGERALD.

As to going to Italy, alas! I have less call to do that than ever: I never shall go. You must come over here about your Railroad land.

_To John Allen_.

BEDFORD, _August_ 27/45.

DEAR GOOD ALLEN,

. . . I came here a week ago, and am paying my usual visits at the Brownes' and at Airy's. {196} I also purpose going to Naseby for two days very soon; and after that I shall retire slowly homeward; not to move, I suppose (except it be for some days to London) till next summer comes again!

I am just now staying with W. B. and his wife. . . . The Father and Mother of Mrs. W. Browne bought old Mrs. Piozzi's house at Streatham thirty-five years ago; all the Sir Joshua portraits therein, which they sold directly afterward for a song; and all the furniture, of which some yet helps to fill the house I now stay in. In the bedroom I write in is Dr. Johnson's own bookcase and secretaire; with looking glass in the panels which often reflected his uncouth shape. His own bed is also in the house; but I do not sleep in it.

I am reading Selwyn's Correspondence, a remarkable book, as all such records of the mind of a whole generation must be. Carlyle writes me word his Cromwell papers will be out in October; and that then we are all to be convinced that Richard had no hump to his back. I am strong in favour of the hump; I do not think the common sense of two centuries is apt to be deceived in such a matter.

Now if your time is not wholly filled up, pray do give me one line to say you have not wholly given me up as a turncoat. I would rather have sat with you on the cliffs of St. David's than done anything I have done for the last six months. Believe that, please. And now good bye, my dear fellow. The harvest promises very well here about; but I expect to find less prosperity at Naseby.

_To Bernard Barton_.

BEDFORD, _Septr_. 8/45.

DEAR BARTON,

On Thursday I move towards Norwich; where I see Donne, hear some music, and go to Geldestone. But before this month is over, I hope to be at my Cottage again, where I have my garden to drain, and other important matters.

Do you know I have been greatly tempted to move my quarters from Boulge to this country; so exact a place have I found to suit me. But we will wait.

My noble Preacher Matthews {197} is dead! He had a long cold, which he promoted in all ways of baptizing, watching late and early, travelling in rain, etc., he got worse; but would send for no Doctor, the Lord would raise him up if it were good for him, etc. Last Monday this cold broke out into Typhus fever; and on Thursday he died! I had been out to Naseby for three days, and as I returned on Friday at dusk I saw a coffin carrying down the street: I knew whose it must be. I would have given a great deal to save his life; which might certainly have been saved with common precaution. He died in perfect peace, approving all the principles of his life to be genuine. I am going this afternoon to attend his Funeral. . . . Cromwell is to be out in October; and Laurence has been sent to Archdeacon Berners's to make a copy of Oliver's miniature.

_To W. B. Donne_.

GELDESTONE, _Septr_. 23/45.

DEAR DONNE,

I left one volume of your Swift with good Mrs. Johnson at Norwich; and the other with your Mother at Worship's house in Yarmouth. So I trust you are in a fair way to get them again.

I sat through one Concert and one Oratorio; {198} and on Thursday went to Yarmouth, which I took a great fancy to. The sands were very good, I assure you; and then when one is weary of the sea, there is the good old town to fall back on. There is Mr. Gooch the Bookseller too; he and his books a great acquisition. I called on Dawson Turner, and in an incredibly short space of time saw several books of coats of Arms, Churches, Refectories, pyxes, cerements, etc.

Manage to read De Quincey's Article on Wordsworth in the last number of Tail's Magazine. It is very incomplete, like all De Quincey's things, but has grand things in it; grand sounds of sense if nothing else. I am glad to see he sets up Daddy's early Ballads against the Excursion and other Sermons.

I intend to leave this place the end of this week; and go, I suppose, to Boulge; though I have yet a hankering to get a week by the sea, either at Yarmouth or Southwold. . . . Don't you think 3 pounds very cheap for a fine copy of Rushworth's Collections, eight volumes folio? I was tempted to buy it if only for the bargain; for I only want to look through it once.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE. [After _Sept_. 1845.]

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I do beg and desire that when you next begin a letter to me you will not tear it up (as you say you have done some) because of its exhibiting a joviality insulting to any dumps of mine. What was I complaining of so? I forget all about it. It seems to me to be two years since I heard from you. If you had said that my answers to your letters were so barren as to dishearten you from deserving any more I should understand that very well. But if you really did accomplish any letters and not send them, I say, a fico for thy friendship! Do so no more. . . .

The finale of C minor is very noble. I heard it twice at Jullien's. On the whole I like to hear Mozart better; Beethoven is gloomy. Besides incontestably Mozart is the purest _musician_; Beethoven would have been Poet or Painter as well, for he had a great deep Soul and Imagination. I do not think it is reported that he showed any very early predilection for Music; Mozart, we know, did. They say Holmes has published a very good life of M. Only think of the poor fellow not being able to sell his music latterly, getting out of fashion, so taking to drink . . . and enact Harlequin at Masquerades! When I heard Handel's Alexander's Feast at Norwich this Autumn I wondered; but when directly afterward they played Mozart's G minor Symphony, it seemed as if I had passed out of a land of savages into sweet civilized Life.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE. [? _March_ 1846.]

DEAR FREDERIC,

I have been wondering some time if you were gone abroad again or not. I go to London toward the end of April: can't you manage to wait in England? I suppose you will only be a day or two in London before you put foot in rail, coach, or on steamer for the Continent; and I excuse my own dastardly inactivity in not going up to meet you and shake hands with you before you start, by my old excuse; that had you but let me know of your coming to England, I should have seen you. This is no excuse; but don't put me out of your books as a frog-hearted wretch. I believe that I, as men usually do, grow more callous and indifferent daily: but I am sure I would as soon travel to see your face, and my dear old Alfred's, as any one's. But beside my inactivity, I have a sort of horror of plunging into London; which, except for a shilling concert, and a peep at the pictures, is desperate to me. This is my fault, not London's: I know it is a lassitude and weakness of soul that no more loves the ceaseless collision of Beaux Esprits, than my obese ill-jointed carcase loves bundling about in coaches and steamers. And, as you say, the dirt, both of earth and atmosphere, in London, is a real bore. But enough of that. It is sufficient that it is more pleasant to me to sit in a clean room, with a clear air outside, and hedges just coming into leaf, rather than in the Tavistock or an upper floor of Charlotte Street. And how much better one's books read in country stillness, than amid the noise of wheels, crowds, etc., or after hearing them eternally discussed by no less active tongues! In the mean time, we of Woodbridge are not without our luxuries; I enclose you a play-bill just received; _I_ being one of the distinguished Members who have bespoken the play. We sha'n't all sit together in a Box, but go dispersed about the house with our wives and daughters.

White {201} I remember very well. His Tragedy I have seen advertised. He used to write good humorous things in Blackwood: among them, Hints to Authors, which are worth looking at when you get hold of an odd volume of Blackwood. I have got Thackeray's last book, {202} but have not yet been able to read it. Has any one heard of old Morton, and of his arrival at Stamboul, as he called it? . . .

Now it is a fact that as I lay in bed this morning, before I got your letter, I thought to myself I would write to Alfred. For he sent me a very kind letter two months ago; and I should have written to him before, but that I have looked in vain for a paper I wanted to send him. But, find it or not (and it is of no consequence) I will write to him very shortly. You do not mention if he be with you at Cheltenham. He spoke to me of being ill. . . . I think you should publish some of your poems. They must be admired and liked; and you would gain a place to which you are entitled, and which it offends no man to hold. I should like much to see them again. The whole _subjective_ scheme (damn the word!) of the poems I did not like; but that is quite a genuine mould of your soul; and there are heaps of single lines, couplets, and stanzas, which would consume all the ---, ---, and ---, like stubble. N.B. An acute man would ask how I should like _you_, if I do not like your own genuine reflex of _you_? But a less acute, and an acuter, man, will feel or see the difference.

So here is a good sheet full; and at all events, if I am too lazy to travel to you, I am not too lazy to write such a letter as few of one's contemporaries will now take the pains to write to one. I beg you to remember me to all your noble family, and believe me yours ever,

EDW. FITZGERALD.

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE, Sunday, _March_ 8/46.

MY DEAR DONNE,

I was very sorry you did not come to us at Geldestone. I have been home now near a fortnight; else I would gladly have gone to Mattishall with you yesterday. This very Sunday, on which I now hear the Grundisburgh bells as I write, I might have been filled with the bread of Life from Padden's hands.

Our friend Barton is certainly one of the most remarkable men of the Age. After writing to Peel two separate Sonnets, begging him to retire to Tamworth and not alter the Corn Laws, he finally sends him another letter to ask if he will be present at Lord Northampton's soiree next Saturday; Barton himself being about to go to that soiree, and wishing to see the Premier. On which Peel writes him a most good humoured note asking him to dine at Whitehall Gardens on that same Saturday! And the good Barton is going up for that purpose. {203} All this is great simplicity in Barton: and really announces an internal Faith that is creditable to this Age, and almost unexpected in it. I had advised him not to send Peel many more Sonnets till the Corn Law was passed; the Indian war arranged; and Oregon settled: but Barton sees no dragon in the way.

We have actors now at Woodbridge. A Mr. Gill who was low comedian in the Norwich now manages a troop of his own here. His wife was a Miss Vining; she is a pretty woman, and a lively pleasant actress, not vulgar. I have been to see some of the old comedies with great pleasure; and last night I sat in a pigeon-hole with David Fisher and 'revolved many memories' of old days and old plays. I don't think he drinks so much now: but he looks all ready to blossom out into carbuncles.

We all liked your Athenaeum address much; {204a} which I believe I told you before. I have heard nothing of books or friends. I shall hope to see you some time this spring.

_To E. B. Cowell_. {204b}

[1846]

DEAR COWELL,

I am glad you have bought Spinoza. I am in no sort of hurry for him: you may keep him a year if you like. I shall perhaps never read him now I have him. Thank you for the trouble you took. . . .

Your Hafiz is fine: and his tavern world is a sad and just idea. I did not send that vine leaf {205a} to A. T. but I have not forgotten it. It sticks in my mind.

"In Time's fleeting river
The image of that little vine-leaf lay,
Immovably unquiet--and for ever
It trembles--but it cannot pass away." {205b}

I have read nothing you would care for since I saw you. It would be a good work to give us some of the good things of Hafiz and the Persians; of bulbuls and ghuls we have had enough.

Come and bring over Spinoza; or I must go and bring him.

_From T. Carlyle_.

CHELSEA, 8 _April_, 1846.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

I have now put the little sketch of Naseby Fight, {205c} rough and ready, into its place in the Appendix: it really does pretty well, when it is fairly written out; had I had time for that, it might almost have gone into the Text,--and perhaps shall, if ever I live to see another edition. Naseby Field will then have its due honour;--only you should actually raise a stone over that Grave that you opened (I will give you the _shinbone_ back and keep the _teeth_): you really should, with a simple Inscription saying merely in business English: 'Here, as proved by strict and not too impious examination, lie the slain of the Battle of Naseby. Dig no farther. E. FitzGerald,--1843.' By the bye, was it 1843 or 2; when we did those Naseby feats? tell me, for I want to mark that in the Book. And so here is your Paper again, since at any rate you wish to keep that. I am serious about the stone!

_To W. B. Donne_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE. [1846.]

MY DEAR DONNE,

I don't know which of us is most to blame for this long gulph of silence. Probably I; who have least to do. I have been for two months to London; where (had I thought it of any use) I should have written to try and get you up for a few days; as I had a convenient lodging, and many beside myself would have been glad to see you.

I came back a week ago; and on looking in at Barton's last evening he showed me your letter with such pleasure as he is wont to receive your letters with. And there I read all the surprising story of your moving to old Bury. When I passed through Cambridge two months ago, Thompson said (I think) that he had seen you; and that you had given up thoughts of Bury. But now you are going. As you say, you will then be nearer to us than you now are at Mattishall; especially when our Railroad shall be completed. In my journeys to and from Bedfordshire, I shall hope to stay a night at the good old Angel, and so have a chat with you.

I saw very little of Spedding in London; for he was out all day at State paper offices and Museums; and I out by night at Operas, etc., with my Mother. He is however well and immutable. A. Tennyson was in London; for two months striving to spread his wings to Italy or Switzerland. It has ended in his flying to the Isle of Wight till Autumn, when Moxon promises to convoy him over; and then God knows what will become of him and whether we shall ever see his august old body over here again. He was in a ricketty state of body; brought on wholly by neglect, etc., but in fair spirits; and one had the comfort of seeing the Great Man. Carlyle goes on fretting and maddening as usual. Have you read his Cromwell? Are you converted, or did you ever need conversion? I believe I remain pretty much where I was. I think Milton, who is the best evidence Cromwell has in his favour, warns him somewhat prophetically at the end of his Second Defence against taking on him Kingship, etc., and in the tract on the State of England in 1660 (just before it was determined to bring back Charles the Second) he says _nothing at all_ of Cromwell, no panegyric; but glances at the evil ambitious men in the Army have done; and, now that all is open to choose, prays for a pure Republic! So I herd with the flunkies and lackies, I doubt; but am yours notwithstanding,

E. F. G.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

BEDFORD, _Septr_. 15/46.

DEAR COWELL,

Here I am at last, after making a stay at Lowestoft, where I sailed in boats, bathed, and in all ways enjoyed the sea air. I wished for you upon a heathy promontory there, good museum for conversation on old poets, etc. What have you been reading, and what tastes of rare Authors have you to send me? I have read (as usual with me) but very little, what with looking at the sea with its crossing and recrossing ships, and dawdling with my nieces of an evening. Besides a book is to me what Locke says that watching the hour hand of a clock is to all; other thoughts (and those of the idlest and seemingly most irrelevant) will intrude between my vision and the written words: and then I have to read over again; often again and again till all is crossed and muddled. If Life were to be very much longer than is the usual lot of men, one would try very hard to reform this lax habit, and clear away such a system of gossamer association: even as it is, I try to turn all wandering fancy out of doors, and listen attentively to Whately's Logic, and old Spinoza still! I find some of Spinoza's Letters very good, and so far useful as that they try to clear up some of his abstrusities at the earnest request of friends as dull as myself. I think I perceive as well as ever how the quality of his mind forbids much salutary instinct which widens the system of things to more ordinary men, and yet helps to keep them from wandering in it. I am now reading his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which is very delightful to me because of its clearness and acuteness. It is fine what he says of Christ--'_nempe_,' that God revealed himself in bits to other prophets, but he was the mind of Christ. I suppose not new in thought or expression.

Let me hear from you, whether you have bits of revelations from old poets to send, or not. If I had the Mostellaria here, I would read it; or a Rabelais, I would do as Morgan Rattler advised you.

_To Bernard Barton_.

[CAMBRIDGE, _Oct_. 18, 1846.]

MY DEAR BARTON,

Though my letter bears such frontispiece as the above, {209} I am no longer in Bedford, but come to Cambridge. And here I sit in the same rooms {210a} in which I sat as a smooth-chinned Freshman twenty years ago. The same prints hang on the walls: my old hostess {210b} does not look older than she did then. My present purpose is to be about a week here: then to go for a day or two to Bury, to see Donne; and then to move homewards. It is now getting very cold, and the time for wandering is over.

Why do you not send me your new Poem? Or is it too big to send as a letter? Or shall I buy it? which I shall be glad to do. . . .

All the preceding was written four days ago: cut short by the sudden entrance of Moore, whom I have been lionizing ever since. He goes away to London to-day. . . .

Moore is delighted with a Titian and Giorgione at the Fitzwilliam. I have just left him to feed upon them at his ease there, while I indite a letter to you.

_To W. B. Donne_.

[31 _Oct_. 1846.]