Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) Part 27

CV.

WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 24, [1882.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

You wrote me that you had bidden Blanche to let you know about her Father: and this I conclude that she, or some of her family have done.

Nevertheless, I will make a.s.surance doubly sure by enclosing you the letters I received from Mowbray, according to their dates: and will send them--for once--through Coutts, in hopes that he may find you, as you will not allow me to do without his help. Of that Death {243a} I say nothing: as you may expect of me, and as I should expect of you also; if I may say so.

I have been to pay my annual Visit to George Crabbe and his Sisters in Norfolk. And here is warm weather come to us at last (as not unusual after the Longest Day), and I have almost parted with my Bronchial Cold--though, as in the old Loving Device of the open Scissors, 'To meet again.' I can only wonder it is no worse with me, considering how my contemporaries have been afflicted.

I am now reading Froude's Carlyle, which seems to me well done. Insomuch, that I sent him all the Letters I had kept of Carlyle's, to use or not as he pleased, etc. I do not think they will be needed among the thousand others he has: especially as he tells me that his sole commission is, to edit Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, for which what he has already done is preparatory: and when this is completed, he will add a Volume of personal Recollections of C. himself. Froude's Letter to me is a curious one: a sort of vindication (it seems to me) of himself--quite uncalled for by me, who did not say one word on the subject. {243b} The job, he says, was forced upon him: 'a hard problem'--No doubt--But he might have left the Reminiscences unpublisht, except what related to Mrs. C.--in spite of Carlyle's oral injunction which reversed his written. Enough of all this!

Why will you not 'initiate' a letter when you are settled for a while among your Mountains? Oh, ye Medes and Persians! This may be impertinent of me: but I am ever yours sincerely

E. F.G.

I see your Book advertised as 'ready.'

CVI. {245a}

[_August_, 1882.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I have let the Full Moon {245b} go by, and very well she looked, too--over the Sea by which I am now staying. Not at Lowestoft: but at the old extinguished Borough of Aldeburgh, to which--as to other 'premiers Amours,' I revert--where more than sixty years ago I first saw, and first felt, the Sea--where I have lodged in half the houses since; and where I have a sort of traditional acquaintance with half the population. 'Clare Cottage' is where I write from; two little rooms--enough for me--a poor civil Woman pleased to have me in them--oh, yes,--and a little spare Bedroom in which I stow a poor Clerk, with his Legs out of the window from his bed--like a Heron's from his nest--but rather more horizontally.

We dash about in Boats whether Sail or Oar--to which latter I leave him for his own good Exercise. Poor fellow, he would have liked to tug at that, or rough-ride a horse, from Boyhood: but must be made Clerk in a London Lawyer's Office: and so I am glad to get him down for a Holyday when he can get one, poor Fellow!

The Carlyle 'Reminiscences' had long indisposed me from taking up the Biography. But when I began, and as I went on with that, I found it one of the most interesting of Books: and the result is that I not only admire and respect Carlyle more than ever I did: but even love him, which I never thought of before. For he loved his Family, as well as for so long helped to maintain them out of very slender earnings of his own; and, so far as these two Volumes show me, he loved his Wife also, while he put her to the work which he had been used to see his own Mother and Sisters fulfil, and which was suitable to the way of Life which he had been used to. His indifference to her sufferings seems to me rather because of Blindness than Neglect; and I think his Biographer has been even a little too hard upon him on the score of Selfish disregard of her.

Indeed Mr. Norton wrote to me that he looked on Froude as something of an Iago toward his Hero in respect of all he has done for him. The publication of the Reminiscences is indeed a mystery to me: for I should [have] thought that, even in a mercantile point of view, it would indispose others, as me it did, to the Biography. But Iago must have bungled in his work so far as I, for one, am concerned, if the result is such as I find it--or unless I am very obtuse indeed. So I tell Mr.

Norton; who is about to edit Carlyle's Letters to Emerson, and whom I should not like to see going to his work with such an 'Animus' toward his Fellow-Editor.

Yours always, E. F.G.

Faites, s'il vous plait, mes pet.i.ts Compliments a Madame Wister.

CVII. {247}

ALDEBURGH: _Sept._ 1, [1882.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Still by the Sea--from which I saw _The Harvest Moon_ rise for her three nights' Fullness. And to-day is so wet that I shall try and pay you my plenilunal due--not much to your satisfaction; for the Wet really gets into one's Brain and Spirits, and I have as little to write of as ever any Full Moon ever brought me. And yet, if I accomplish my letter, and 'take it to the Barber's,' where I sadly want to go, and, after being wrought on by him, post my letter--why, you will, by your Laws, be obliged to answer it. Perhaps you may have a little to tell me of yourself in requital for the very little you have to hear of me.

I have made a new Acquaintance here. Professor Fawcett (Postmaster General, I am told) married a Daughter of one Newson Garrett of this Place, who is also Father of your Doctor Anderson. Well, the Professor (who was utterly blinded by the Discharge of his Father's Gun some twenty or twenty-five years ago) came to this Lodging to call on Aldis Wright; and, when Wright was gone, called on me, and also came and smoked a Pipe one night here. A thoroughly unaffected, unpretending, man; so modest indeed that I was ashamed afterwards to think how I had harangued him all the Evening, instead of getting him to instruct me. But I would not ask him about his Parliamentary Shop: and I should not have understood his Political Economy: and I believe he was very glad to be talked to instead, about some of those he knew, and some whom I had known. And, as we were both in Crabbe's Borough, we talked of him: the Professor, who had never read a word, I believe, about him, or of him, was pleased to hear a little; and I advised him to buy the Life written by Crabbe's Son; and I would give him my Abstract of the Tales of the Hall, by way of giving him a taste of the Poet's self.

Yes; you must read Froude's Carlyle above all things, and tell me if you do not feel as I do about it. Professor Norton persists {248} in it that I am proof against Froude's invidious insinuations simply because of my having previously known Carlyle. But how is it that I did not know that Carlyle was so good, grand, and even loveable, till I read the Letters, which Froude now edits? I regret that I did not know what the Book tells us while Carlyle was alive; that I might have loved him as well as admired him. But Carlyle never spoke of himself in that way: I never heard him advert to his Works and his Fame, except one day he happened to mention 'About the time when Men began to talk of me.'

I do not know if I told you in my last that (as you foretold me would be the case) I did not find your later Records so interesting as the earlier. Not from any falling off of the recorder, but of the material.

The two dates of this Letter arise from my having written this second half-sheet so badly that I resolved to write it over again--I scarce know whether for better or worse. I go home this week, expecting Charles Keene at Woodbridge for a week. Please to believe me (with Compliments to Mrs. Wister)

Yours sincerely always E. F.G.

CVIII. {249}

WOODBRIDGE: _Oct._ 17, [1882.]

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I suppose that you are returned from the Loire by this time; but as I am not sure that you have returned to the 'Hotel des Deux Mondes,' whence you dated your last, I make bold once more to trouble Coutts with adding your Address to my Letter. I think I shall have it from yourself not long after. I shall like to hear a word about my old France, dear to me from childish a.s.sociations; and in particular of the Loire endeared to me by Sevigne--for I never saw the glimmer of its Waters myself. If you were in England I should send you an account of a tour there, written by a Lady in 1833--written in the good old way of Ladies' writing, without any of the smartness, and not too much of the 'graphic' of later times.

Did you look at Les Rochers, which, I have read, is not to be looked _into_ by the present owner? {250a}

Now for my 'Story, G.o.d bless you,' etc., you may guess where none is to be told. Only, my old Housekeeper here has been bedded for this last month, an illness which has caused her great pain, and at one time seemed about to make an End of her. So it may do still: but for the last few days she has suffered less pain, and so we--hope. This has caused much trouble in my little household, as you may imagine--as well on our own account, as on hers.

Mowbray Donne wrote me that his Edith had been seriously--I know not if dangerously--ill; and he himself much out of sorts, having never yet (he says, and I believe) recovered from his Father's death. Blanche, for the present, is quartered at Friends' and Kinsfolk's houses.

Aldis Wright has sent me a Photograph, copied from Mrs. Cameron's original, of James Spedding--so fine that I know not whether I feel more pleasure or pain in looking at it. When you return to England, you shall see it somehow.

I have had a letter or two from Annie Ritchie, who is busy writing various Articles for Magazines. One concerning Miss Edgeworth in the Cornhill is pleasant reading. {250b} She tells me that Tennyson is at Aldworth (his Hamps.h.i.+re house, you know), and a notice in Athenaeum or Academy tells that he is about to produce 'a Pastoral Drama' at one of the smaller Theatres! {251a}

You may have seen--but more probably have not seen--how Mr. Irving and Co. have brought out 'Much Ado' with all _eclat_.

It seems to me (but I believe it seems so every year) that our trees keep their leaves very long; I suppose because of no severe frosts or winds up to this time. And my garden still shows some Geranium, Salvia, Nasturtium, Great Convolvulus, and that grand African Marigold whose Colour is so comfortable to us Spanish-like Paddies. {251b} I have also a dear Oleander which even now has a score of blossoms on it, and touches the top of my little Greenhouse--having been sent me when 'haut comme ca,' as Marquis Somebody used to say in the days of Louis XIV. Don't you love the Oleander? So clean in its leaves and stem, as so beautiful in its flower; loving to stand in water, which it drinks up so fast. I rather wors.h.i.+p mine.

Here is pretty matter to get Coutts to further on to Paris--to Mrs.

Kemble in Paris. And I have written it all in my best MS. with a pen that has been held with its nib in water for more than a fortnight--Charles Keene's recipe for keeping Pens in condition--Oleander- like.

Please to make my Compliments to Mrs. Wister--my good wishes to the young Musician; {252a} and pray do you believe me your sincere as ever--in spite of his new name--

LITTLEGRANGE.