Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 11

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, _Sat.u.r.day_, 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 G.o.ds would but annihilate Time and s.p.a.ce, 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. n.o.body 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 Sat.u.r.day: 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 mora.s.s 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- G.o.d 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,

I am sorry you did not come, as the weather has become fine, and this wild wide country looks well on these blowing days, with flying shadows running over the distance. Carlyle wrote me a long letter of questions concerning the field of Battle, its traditions, etc. So I have trotted about, examined the natives, and answered a great many of his queries as fully, but as shortly, as I could. However I suppose he growls superciliously at my letter, which was necessarily rather a long one. I have also, in company with two farmers, opened one of the reputed graves in which the killed were said to be reposited: and there sure enough we found decayed bones, skulls, arms, legs, etc., and very sound teeth--the only sound part. For many bodies put together corrupt one another of course, and 200 years have not contributed to their preservation. People had often dug about the field before and found nothing; and we tried two or three other spots with no success. I am going to dig once more in a place where tradition talks of a large burial of men and horses. . . .

How long I shall yet be here I know not: but not long I doubt. I dare say I shall pa.s.s through London on my way to Suffolk: and then perhaps see the trans-Atlantic Secretary. {138}

Don't trouble yourself to write answers to my gossip. I have just been at our Church where we have had five clergymen to officiate: two in shovel-hats. Our Vicar is near ninety; we have two curates: and an old Clergyman and his Archdeacon son came on a visit. The son having a shovel-hat, of course the Father could not be left behind. Shovel-hats (you know) came into use with the gift of Tongs.

_To John Allen_.

[BOULGE COTTAGE.]

_Nov_. 18/42.

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . Do you know that I am really going to look out for some permanent abode, which I think I am well qualified to decide on now. But in this very judgment I may be most of all mistaken. I do not love London enough to pitch my tent there: Woodbridge, Ipswich, or Colchester--won't one of them do? . . .

I have been reading Burton's Anatomy {139} lately: a captivating book certainly. That story of his going to the bridge at Oxford to listen to the bargemen's slang, etc., he reports of the old Democritus, his prototype: so perhaps biographers thought it must be Burton's taste also.

Or perhaps Burton took to doing it after example. I cannot help fancying that I see the foundation (partly) of Carlyle's style in Burton: one pa.s.sage quite like part of Sartor Resartus. Much of Barton's Biography may be picked up out of his own introduction to the Anatomy. Maurice's Introductory Lecture I shall be very glad to have. I do not fancy I should read his Kingdom of Christ, should I? You know.

I have had bad cold and cough which still hang about me: this damp cottage is not good for a cure. . . . And now goodbye.

_To F. Tennyson_.

GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES.

[? 1843.]

DEAR FREDERIC,

I am glad you are back, and perhaps sorry. But glad let it be, for I shall be in London, as proposed, in another fortnight--more or less--and shall pig there in a garret for two months. We will go to picture sales and buy bad pictures: though I have scarce money left. But I am really at last going to settle in some spooney quarters in the country, and would fain carry down some better forms and colours to put about me. I cannot get the second or third best: but I can get the imitations of the best: and that is enough for me.

What is become of Alfred? He never writes--nor is heard of.

Your letter found me poring over Harrington's Oceana: a long-shelved book--its doctrine of Government I am no judge of: but what English those fellows wrote! I cannot read the modern mechanique after them. 'This free-born Nation lives not upon the dole or Bounty of One Man, but distributing her Annual Magistracies and Honours with her own hand is herself King People.' Harrington must be a better writer than Milton.