Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 15

MY DEAR GOOD ALLEN,

Let me hear from you, if even but a line, before you leave London on your summer excursion, whithersoever that is to be. I conclude you go somewhere; to Hamps.h.i.+re, or to Tenby. . . .

I have nothing to tell you of myself. Here I exist, and read sc.r.a.ps of books, garden a little, and am on good terms with my neighbours. The Times paper is stirring up our farming society to the root, and some good will come of it, I dare say, and some ill. Do you know of any good books on Education? not for the poor or Charity schools, but on modern Gentlemen's grammar schools, etc. Did not Combe write a book? But he is the driest Scotch Snuff. I beg leave to say that this letter is written with a pen of my own making: the first I have made these twenty years. I doubt after all it is no proof of a very intelligent pen-Creator, but only of a lucky slit. The next effort shall decide. Farewell, my dear Fellow. Don't forget unworthy me. We shall soon have known each other twenty years, and soon thirty, and forty, if we live a little while.

_To Bernard Barton_.

GELDESTONE, 22 _August_ 1844.

MY DEAR BARTON,

You will think I have forgot you. I spent four pleasant days with Donne: who looks pale and thin, and in whose face the grey is creeping up from those once flouris.h.i.+ng whiskers to the skull. It is doing so with me. We are neither of us in what may be called the first dawn of boyhood. Donne maintains his shape better than I do, but sorrow I doubt has done that: and so we see why the house of mourning is better than the stalled ox.

For it is a grievous thing to grow poddy: the age of Chivalry is gone then. An old proverb says that 'a full belly neither fights nor flies well.'

I also saw Geldart at Norwich. He paints, and is deep in religious thoughts also: he has besides the finest English good sense about him: and altogether he is a man one goes to that one may learn from him. I walked much about Norwich and was pleased with the old place.

Here I see my old friend Mrs. Schutz, and play with the children. Having shown the little girl the prints of Boz's Curiosity Shop, I have made a short abstract of Little Nelly's wanderings which interests her much, leaving out the Swivellers, etc. For children do not understand how merriment should intrude in a serious matter. This might make a nice child's book, cutting out Boz's sham pathos, as well as the real fun; and it forms a kind of Nelly-ad, {174a} or Homeric narration of the child's wandering fortunes till she reaches at last a haven more desirable than any in stony Ithaca.

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 Bedfords.h.i.+re--a little Northamptons.h.i.+re--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! t.i.tmarsh 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 n.o.ble 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 Terpsich.o.r.e, but seriously inclined, with perfect steps in perfect time.

We see a fine white frost over the gra.s.s 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 lat.i.tude 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 pa.s.ses 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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-l.u.s.trous 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 paris.h.i.+oners.

Punch also a.s.sumes 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 s.h.i.+ning 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,