Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 12

Donne scarce ever writes to me (Twalmley the Great), and if he do not write to you, depend upon it he thinks he has nothing worth sending over the Atlantic. I heard from Mowbray quite lately that his Father was very well.

Yes: you told me in a previous Letter that you were coming to England after Christmas. I shall not be up to going to London to see you, with all your Company about you; perhaps (don't think me very impudent!) you may come down, if we live till Summer, to my Woodbridge Chateau, and there talk over some old things.

I make a kind of Summer in my Room here with Boccaccio. What a Mercy that one can return with a Relish to these Books! As Don Quixote can only be read in his Spanish, so I do fancy Boccaccio only in his Italian: and yet one is used to fancy that Poetry is the mainly untranslateable thing. How prettily innocent are the Ladies, who, after telling very loose Stories, finish with 'E cosi Iddio faccia [noi] G.o.dere del nostro Amore, etc.,' sometimes, _Domeneddio_, more affectionately. {117a}

Anyhow, these Ladies are better than the accursed Eastern Question; {117b} of which I have determined to read, and, if possible, hear, no more till the one question be settled of Peace or War. If war, I am told I may lose some 5000 pounds in Russian Bankruptcy: but I can truly say I would give that, and more, to ensure Peace and Good Will among Men at this time. Oh, the Apes we are! I must retire to my Montaigne--whom, by the way, I remember reading here, when the Lugger was building! Oh, the Apes, etc. But there was A Man in all that Business still, who is so now, somewhat tarnished.--And I am yours as then sincerely

E. F.G.

XLIV.

LOWESTOFT: _December_ 12/76.

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

If you hold to your Intention of coming to Europe in January, this will be my last Letter over the Atlantic--till further Notice! I dare say you will send me a last Rejoinder under the same conditions.

I write, you see, from the Date of my last letter: but have been at home in the meanwhile. And am going home to-morrow--to arrange about Christmas Turkeys (G.o.d send we haven't all our fill of that, this Year!) and other such little matters pertaining to the Season--which, to myself, is always a very dull one. Why it happens that I so often write to you from here, I scarce know; only that one comes with few Books, perhaps, and the Sea somehow talks to one of old Things. I have ever my Edition of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall with me. How pretty is this--

'In a small Cottage on the rising Ground West of the Waves, and just beyond their Sound.' {118}

Which reminds me also that one of the Books I have here is Leslie Stephen's 'Hours in a Library,' really delightful reading, and, I think, really settling some Questions of Criticism, as one wants to be finally done in all Cases, so as to have no more about and about it. I think I could have suggested a little Alteration in the matter of this Crabbe, whom I probably am better up in than L. S., though I certainly could not write about it as he does. Also, one word about _Clarissa_. Almost all the rest of the two Volumes I accept as a Disciple. {119a}

Another Book of the kind--Lowell's 'Among my Books,' is excellent also: perhaps with more _Genius_ than Stephen: but on the other hand not so temperate, judicious, or scholarly in _taste_. It was Professor Norton who sent me Lowell's Second Series; and, if you should--(as you inevitably will, though in danger of losing the s.h.i.+p) answer this Letter, pray tell me if you know how Professor Norton is--in health, I mean. You told me he was very delicate: and I am tempted to think he may be less well than usual, as he has not acknowledged the receipt of a Volume {119b} I sent him with some of Wordsworth's Letters in it, which he had wished to see. The Volume did not need Acknowledgment absolutely: but probably would not have been received without by so amiable and polite a Man, if he [were] not out of sorts. I should really be glad to hear that he has only forgotten, or neglected, to write.

Mr. Lowell's Ode {120a} in your last Magazine seemed to me full of fine Thought; but it wanted Wings. I mean it kept too much to one Level, though a high Level, for Lyric Poetry, as Ode is supposed to be: both in respect to Thought, and Metre. Even Wordsworth (least musical of men) changed his Flight to better purpose in his Ode to Immortality. Perhaps, however, Mr. Lowell's subject did not require, or admit, such Alternations.

Your last Gossip brought me back to London--but what Street I cannot make sure of--but one Room in whatever Street it were, where I remember your Mr. Wade, who took his Defeat at the Theatre so bravely. {120b} And your John, in Spain with the Archbishop of Dublin: and coming home full of Torrijos: and singing to me and Thackeray one day in Russell Street: {120c}

{Music score for Si un Elio conspiro alevo. . .: p120.jpg}

All which comes to me west of the waves and just within the sound: and is to travel so much farther Westward over an Expanse of Rollers such as we see not in this Herring-pond. Still, it is--The Sea.

Now then Farewell, dear Mrs. Kemble. You will let me know when you get to Dublin? I will add that, after very many weeks, I did hear from Donne, who told me of you, and that he himself had been out to dine: and was none the worse.

And I still remain, you see, your long-winded Correspondent

E. F.G.

XLV.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT, _February_ 19/77.

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Donne has sent me the Address on the cover of this Letter. I know you will write directly you hear from me; that is 'de rigueur' with you; and, at any rate, you have your Voyage home to England to tell me of: and how you find yourself and all in the Old Country. I suppose you include my Old Ireland in it. Donne wrote that you were to be there till this Month's end; that is drawing near; and, if that you do not protract your Visit, you will [be] very soon within sight of dear Donne himself, who, I hear from Mowbray, is very well.

Your last Gossip was very interesting to me. I see in it (but not in the most interesting part) {122a} that you write of a 'J. F.,' who tells you of a Sister of hers having a fourth Child, etc. I fancy this must be a Jane FitzGerald telling you of her Sister Kerrich, who would have numbered about so many Children about that time--1831. Was it that Jane?

I think you and she were rather together just then. After which she married herself to a Mr. Wilkinson--made him very Evangelical--and tiresome--and so they fed their Flock in a Suffolk village. {122b} And about fourteen or fifteen years ago he died: and she went off to live in Florence--rather a change from the Suffolk Village--and there, I suppose, she will die when her Time comes.

Now you have read Harold, I suppose; and you shall tell me what you think of it. Pollock and Miladi think it has plenty of Action and Life: one of which Qualities I rather missed in it.

Mr. Lowell sent me his Three Odes about Liberty, Was.h.i.+ngton, etc. They seemed to me full of fine Thought, and in a lofty Strain: but wanting Variety both of Mood and Diction for Odes--which are supposed to mean things to be chanted. So I ventured to hint to him--Is he an angry man?

But he wouldn't care, knowing of me only through amiable Mr. Norton, who knows me through you. I think _he_ must be a very amiable, modest, man.

And I am still yours always

E. F.G.

XLVI.

12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT, _March_ 15, [1877.

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

By this time you are, I suppose, at the Address you gave me, and which will now cover this Letter. You have seen Donne, and many Friends, perhaps--and perhaps you have not yet got to London at all. But you will in time. When you do, you will, I think, have your time more taken up than in America--with so many old Friends about you: so that I wish more and more you would not feel bound to answer my Letters, one by one; but I suppose you will.

What I liked so much in your February Atlantic {123} was all about Goethe and Portia: I think, _fine_ writing, in the plain sense of the word, and partly so because not 'fine' in the other Sense. You can indeed spin out a long Sentence of complicated Thought very easily, and very clearly; a rare thing. As to Goethe, I made another Trial at Hayward's Prose Translation this winter, but failed, as before, to get on with it. I suppose there is a Screw loose in me on that point, seeing what all thinking People think of it. I am sure I have honestly tried. As to Portia, I still think she ought not to have proved her 'Superiority' by withholding that simple Secret on which her Husband's Peace and his Friend's Life depended. Your final phrase about her 'sinking into perfection' is capital. Epigram--without Effort.

You wrote me that Portia was your _beau-ideal_ of Womanhood {124a}--Query, of _Lady-hood_. For she had more than 500 pounds a year, which Becky Sharp thinks enough to be very virtuous on, and had not been tried. Would she have done Jeanie Deans' work? She might, I believe: but was not tried.

I doubt all this will be rather a Bore to you: coming back to England to find all the old topics of Shakespeare, etc., much as you left them. You will hear wonderful things about Browning and Co.--Wagner--and H. Irving.

In a late TEMPLE BAR magazine {124b} Lady Pollock says that her Idol Irving's Reading of Hood's Eugene Aram is such that any one among his Audience who had a guilty secret in his Bosom 'must either tell it, or die.' These are her words.

You see I still linger in this ugly place: having a very dear little Niece a little way off: a complete little 'Pocket-Muse' I call her. One of the first Things she remembers is--_you_, in white Satin, and very handsome, she says, reading Twelfth Night at this very place. And I am

Yours ever E. F.G.

(I am now going to make out a Dictionary-list of the People in my dear Sevigne, for my own use.) {125a}

XLVII.

LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.