Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 24

The Cowells are at Ipswich, and I get over to see them, etc. They talk of coming here too. I have begun again to read Calderon with Cowell: the Magico we have just read, a very grand thing. I suppose Calderon was over-praised some twenty years ago: for the last twenty it has been the fas.h.i.+on to underpraise him, I am sure. His Drama may not be the finest in the world: one sees how often too he wrote in the fas.h.i.+on of his time and country: but he is a wonderful fellow: one of the Great Men of the world.

In October 1852 Thackeray sailed for America and before leaving wrote to FitzGerald the letter which he copied for Archdeacon Allen. I shall I trust be pardoned for thinking that others will be the better for reading the words of 'n.o.ble kindness' in which Thackeray took leave of his friend.

[BOULGE, 22 _Nov._ 1852.]

MY DEAR ALLEN,

I won't send you Thackeray's own letter because it is his own delegation of a little trust I would not hazard. But on the other side of the page I write a copy: for your eyes only: for I would not wish to show even its n.o.ble kindness to any but one who has known him as closely as myself.

_From W. M. Thackeray to E. F. G._

_October_ 27, 1852.

MY DEAREST OLD FRIEND,

I mustn't go away without shaking your hand, and saying Farewell and G.o.d Bless you. If anything happens to me, you by these presents must get ready the Book of Ballads which you like, and which I had not time to prepare before embarking on this voyage. And I should like my daughters to remember that you are the best and oldest friend their Father ever had, and that you would act as such: as my literary executor and so forth. My Books would yield a something as copyrights: and, should anything occur, I have commissioned friends in good place to get a Pension for my poor little wife. . . . Does not this sound gloomily?

Well: who knows what Fate is in store: and I feel not at all downcast, but very grave and solemn just at the brink of a great voyage.

I shall send you a copy of Esmond to-morrow or so which you shall yawn over when you are inclined. But the great comfort I have in thinking about my dear old boy is that recollection of our youth when we loved each other as I do now while I write Farewell.

Laurence has done a capital head of me ordered by Smith the Publisher: and I have ordered a copy and Lord Ashburton another. If Smith gives me this one, I shall send the copy to you. I care for you as you know, and always like to think that I am fondly and affectionately yours

W. M. T.

I sail from Liverpool on Sat.u.r.day Morning by the Canada for Boston.

That the feelings here expressed were fully reciprocated by FitzGerald is clear from the following words of a letter written by him to Thackeray to tell him of a provision he had made in his will.

'You see you can owe me no thanks for giving what I can no longer use "when I go down to the pit," and it would be some satisfaction to me, and some diminution of the shame I felt on reading your letter, if "after many days" your generous and constant friends.h.i.+p bore some sort of fruit, if not to yourself to those you are naturally anxious about.'

I have not been able to ascertain the exact time at which FitzGerald began his Spanish studies; but it must have been long before this, for in 1853 the first-fruits of them appeared in the 'Six Dramas from Calderon freely translated by Edward FitzGerald,' the only book to which he ever put his name. It was probably in 1853 that he took up Persian, in which, as in Spanish, his friend Cowell was his guide.

_To G. Crabbe_.

BOULGE, _July_ 22/53.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

Your account of the Doctor's warnings to your Cousin in your first note delighted me greatly: as it did your Father to whom I read it last night.

For, on coming home from Aldbro' (where I had been for a day) I found to my great surprise your Father smoking in my room, with a bottle of Port (which he had brought with him!). The mystery was then solved; that, after his own dinner, Mr. --- was announced, and your Father dreading lest he should stay all the Evening declared he had most important business, first at Woodbridge, then, on second thoughts, with me; and so decamped.

Now as to your second letter which I found also on my return: I am very glad you like the plays {282} and am encouraged to hope that other persons who are not bia.s.sed by pedantic prejudices or spites might like them too. But I fully expect that (as I told you, I think) the London press, etc., will either sink them, or condemn them as on too free a principle: and all the more if they have not read the originals. For these are safe courses to adopt. All this while I am a.s.suming the plays are well done in their way, which of course I do. On the other hand, they really may not be as well done as I think; on their own principle: and that would really be a fair ground of condemnation.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 25/53.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

Thank you for your letter. Though I believed the Calderon to be on the whole well done and entertaining, I began to wish to be told it was so by others, for fear I had made a total mistake: which would have been a bore. And the very free and easy translation lies open to such easy condemnation, unless it be successful.

Your account of Sherborne rouses all the Dowager within me. I shall have to leave this cottage, I believe, and have not yet found a place sufficiently dull to migrate to. Meanwhile to-morrow I am going to one of my great treats: viz. the a.s.sizes at Ipswich: where I shall see little Voltaire Jervis, {283a} and old Parke, {283b} who I trust will have the gout, he bears it so Christianly.

_To G. Crabbe_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, _Sept_. 12/53.

MY DEAR GEORGE,

I enclose you a sc.r.a.p from 'The Leader' as you like to see criticisms on my Calderon. I suppose your sisters will send you the Athenaeum in which you will see a more determined spit at me. I foresaw (as I think I told you) how likely this was to be the case: and so am not surprized. One must take these chances if one will play at so doubtful a game. I believe those who read the Book, without troubling themselves about whether it is a free Translation or not, like it: but Critics must be supposed to know all, and it is safe to condemn. On the other hand, the Translation may not be good on any ground: and then the Critics are all right.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

3 PARK VILLAS WEST, RICHMOND, SURREY, _October_ 25/53.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I think I forgot to tell you that Mr. Maccarthy (my literal Rival in Calderon) mentions in his Preface a masterly Critique on Calderon in the Westminster 1851, which I take to be yours. {284} He says it, and the included translations, are the best Commentary he has seen on the subject.

I have ordered Eastwick's Gulistan: for I believe I shall potter out so much Persian. The weak Apologue {285a} goes on (for I have not had time for much here) and I find it difficult enough even with Jones's Translation.

I am now going to see the last of the Tennysons at Twickenham.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BREDFIELD RECTORY, {285b} WOODBRIDGE.

_December_ 27/53.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I am too late to wish you a Happy Christmas; so must wish you a happy New Year. Write to me here, and tell me (in however few words) how you prospered in your journey to Italy: how you all are there: and how your Book progresses. I saw Harvest Home advertised in Fraser: and I have heard from Mrs. Alfred it is so admired that Parker is to print two thousand copies of the Volume. I am glad of this: and I think, little ambitious or vain as you really are, you will insensibly be pleased at gaining your proper Station in public Celebrity. Had I not known what an invidious office it is to meddle with such Poems, and how a.s.suredly people would have said that one had helped to clip away the Best Poems, and the best part of them, I should have liked to advise you in the selection: a matter in which I feel confidence. But you would not have agreed with me any more than others: though on different grounds: and so in all ways it was, and is, and will be, best to say nothing more on the subject. I am very sure that, of whatever your Volume is composed, you will make public almost the only Volume of Verse, except Alfred's, worthy of the name.

I hear from Mrs. Alfred they are got to their new abode in the Isle of Wight. I have been into Norfolk: and am now come to spend Christmas in this place, where, as you have been here, you can fancy me. Old Crabbe is as brave and hearty as ever: drawing designs of Churches: and we are all now reading Moore's Memoirs with considerable entertainment: I cannot say the result of it in one's mind is to prove Moore a Great Man: though it certainly does not leave him altogether 'The Poor Creature' that Mr.

Allingham reduced him to. I also amuse myself with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with: I go on with it because it is a point in common with him, and enables us to study a little together. He and his wife are at Oxford: and his Pracrit Grammar is to be out in a few days.

I have settled upon no new Abode: but have packed up all my few goods in a neighbouring Farm House {287a} (that one near Woodbridge I took you to), and will now float about for a year and visit some friends. Perhaps I shall get down to the Isle of Wight one day: also to Shrops.h.i.+re, to see Allen: to Bath to a Sister. But you can always direct hither, since old Crabbe is only too glad to have some letters to pay for, and forward to me. . . . We have one of the old fas.h.i.+oned winters, snow and frost: not fulfilling the word of those who were quite sure the seasons were altered. Farewell, my dear Frederic.

E. F. G.

BATH, _May_ 7/54.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

You see to what fas.h.i.+onable places I am reduced in my old Age. The truth is however I am come here by way of Visit to a sister {287b} I have scarce seen these six years; my visit consisting in this that I live alone in a lodging of my own by day, and spend two or three hours with her in the Evening. This has been my way of Life for three weeks, and will be so for some ten days more: after which I talk of flying back to more native counties. I was to have gone on to see Alfred in his 'Island Home' from here: but it appears he goes to London about the same time I quit this place: so I must and shall defer my Visit to him. Perhaps I shall catch a sight of him in London; as also of old Thackeray who, Donne writes me word, came suddenly on him in Pall Mall the other day: while all the while people supposed the Newcomes were being indited at Rome or Naples.