Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume II Part 11

You antic.i.p.ate rightly all I think of the new Idylls. {111} I had bought the Book at Lowestoft: and when I returned here for Christmas found that A. T.'s Publisher had sent me a Copy. As I suppose this was done by A.

T.'s order, I have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him something, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell him that I think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what is very true) that, though the main Myth of King Arthur's Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur in my Eyes, the several legendary fragments of it never did much interest me; excepting the _Morte_, which I suppose most interested him also, as he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than elaborated into a modern Epic form. I never cared, however, for _any_ chivalric Epic; neither Ta.s.so, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic has a sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one of all this sort I have ever cared for.

I certainly wish that Alfred had devoted his diminished powers to translating Sophocles, or AEschylus, as I fancy a Poet should do--_one_ work, at any rate--of his great Predecessors. But Pegasus won't be harnessed.

From which I descend to my own humble feet. I will send you some copies of Calderon when I have uncloseted and corrected them. As to Agamemnon, I bound up a Copy of him in the other Translations I sent to Trinity Library--not very wisely, I doubt; but I thought the Book would just be put up on its shelf, and I had given all I was asked for, or ever could be asked for. The Master, however, wrote me that it came to his Eyes, and I dare say he thought I had best have let AEschylus alone. My Version was not intended for those who know the Original; but, by hook or by crook, to interest some who do not. The _Shape_ I have wrought the Play into is good, I think: the Dialogue good also: but the Choruses (though well contrived for the progress of the Story) are very false to AEschylus; and anyhow want the hand of a Poet. Mine, as I said, are only a sort of 'Entr' acte' Music, which would be better supplied by Music itself.

I will send you in a day or two my Christmas Gossip for the East Anglian, where I am more at home. But you have heard me tell it all before.

It is too late to wish you a good Christmas--(I wonder how you pa.s.sed it, mine was solitary and dull enough) but you know I wish you all the Good the New Year can bring. Love to Elizabeth; do not be so long without writing again, if only half a dozen lines, to yours and hers sincerely,

E. F. G.

_To S. Laurence_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.

_Jan._ 13/70.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Can you tell me (in a line) how I should treat some old Pictures of mine which have somehow got rusty with the mixt damp and then fires (I suppose) of my new house, which, after being built at near double its proper cost, is just what I do not want, according to the usage of the Ballyblunder Family, of which I am a very legitimate offshoot?

If you were down here, I think I should make you take a life-size Oil Sketch of the Head and Shoulders of my Captain of the Lugger. You see by the enclosed that these are neither of them of a bad sort: and the Man's Soul is every way as well proportioned, missing in nothing that may become A Man, as I believe. He and I will, I doubt, part Company; well as he likes me, which is perhaps as well as a sailor cares for any one but Wife and Children: he likes to be, what he is born to be, his own sole Master, of himself, and of other men. So now I have got him a fair start, I think he will carry on the Lugger alone: I shall miss my Hobby, which is no doubt the last I shall ride in this world: but I shall also get eased of some Anxiety about the lives of a Crew for which I now feel responsible. And this last has been a Year of great Anxiety in this respect.

I had to run to London for one day about my Eyes (which, you see by my MS., are not in prime order at all) and saw a Sir Joshua at a Framer's window, and brought it down. The face faded, but elegant and lady-like always; the dress in colour quite Venetian. It was in Leicester Square; I can't think how all the world of Virtuosos kept pa.s.sing and would not give twenty pounds for it. But you don't rate Sir Joshua in comparison with Gainsboro'.

WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 20/70.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . My Captain lives at Lowestoft, and is there at present: he also in anxiety about his Wife who was brought to bed the very same day my Landlady died, and (as a letter from him this morning tells me) has a hard time of it. I should certainly like a large Oil-sketch, like Thackeray's, done in your most hasty, and worst, style, to hang up with Thackeray and Tennyson, with whom he shares a certain Grandeur of Soul and Body. As you guess, the colouring is (when the Man is all well) as fine as his form: the finest Saxon type: with that complexion which Montaigne calls 'vif, male, et flamboyant'; blue eyes; and strictly auburn hair, that any woman might sigh to possess. He says it is coming off, as it sometimes does from those who are constantly wearing the close hot Sou'westers. We must see what can be done about a Sketch.

LOWESTOFT, _February_ 27 [1870].

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I came here a few days ago, for the benefit of my old Doctor, The Sea, and my Captain's Company, which is as good. He has not yet got his new Lugger home; but will do so this week, I hope; and then the way for us will be somewhat clearer.

If you sketch in a head, you might send it down to me to look at, so as I might be able to guess if there were any likelihood in that way of proceeding. Merely the Lines of Feature indicated, even by Chalk, might do. As I told you, the Head is of the large type, or size, the proper Capital of a six foot Body, of the broad dimensions you see in the Photograph. The fine shape of the Nose, less than Roman, and more than Greek, scarce appears in the Photograph; the Eye, and its delicate Eyelash, of course will remain to be made out; and I think you excel in the Eye.

When I get home (which I shall do this week) I will send you two little Papers about the Sea words and Phrases used hereabout, {116a} for which this Man (quite unconsciously) is my main Authority. You will see in them a little of his simplicity of Soul; but not the Justice of Thought, Tenderness of Nature, and all the other good Gifts which make him a Gentleman of Nature's grandest Type.

SUFFOLK HOTEL, LOWESTOFT, _August_ 2/70.

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . The Lugger is now preparing in the Harbour beside me; the Captain here, there, and everywhere; with a word for no one but on business; the other side of the Man you saw looking for Birds' Nests; all things in their season. I am sure the Man is fit to be King of a Kingdom as well as of a Lugger. To-day he gives the customary Dinner to his Crew before starting, and my own two men go to it; and I am asked too: but will not spoil the Fun.

I declare, you and I have seen A Man! Have we not? Made in the mould of what Humanity should be, Body and Soul, a poor Fisherman. The proud Fellow had better have kept me for a Partner in some of his responsibilities. {116b} But no; he must rule alone, as is right he should too.

I date from the Inn where my Letters are addressed; but I write in the little s.h.i.+p which I live in. My Nieces are now here; in the town, I mean; and my friend Cowell and his Wife; so I have more company than all the rest of the year. I try to shut my Eyes and Ears against all tidings of this d.a.m.nable War, seeing that I can do no good to others by distressing myself.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

BRIDGEWOOD, _Nov._ 1, [1870].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I must say that my savageness against France goes no further than wis.h.i.+ng that the new and gay part of Paris were battered down; not the poor working part, no, nor any of the People destroyed. But I wish ornamental Paris down, because then I think the French would be kept quiet till they had rebuilt it. For what would France be without a splendid Palace? I should not wish any such Catastrophe, however, if Paris were now as I remember it: with a lot of old historic houses in it, old Gardens, etc., which I am told are now made away with. Only Notre Dame, the Tuileries, and perhaps the beautiful gilt Dome of the Invalides do I care for. They are historical and beautiful too.

But I believe it would be a good thing if the rest of Europe would take possession of France itself, and rule it for better or worse, leaving the French themselves to amuse and enlighten the world by their Books, Plays, Songs, Bon Mots, and all the Arts and Sciences which they are so ingenious in. They can do all things but manage themselves and live at peace with others: and they should themselves be glad to have their volatile Spirits kept in order by the Good Sense and Honesty which other Nations certainly abound in more than themselves. {118a}

I see what I think very good remarks about them in old Palmerston's Papers quoted in my Athenaeum. {118b} He was just the Man they wanted, I think.

WOODBRIDGE, _Nov._ 15, [1870].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . Ah, I should like to hear Fidelio again, often as I have heard it.

I do not find so much 'Melody' in it as you do: understanding by Melody that which a.s.serts itself independently of Harmony, as Mozart's Airs do.

I miss it especially in Leonora's Hope song. But, what with the story itself, and the Pa.s.sion and Power of the Music it is set to, the Opera is one of those that one can hear repeated as often as any.

If any one ever would take a good suggestion from me, you might suggest to Mr. Sullivan, or some competent Musician, to adapt that Epilogue part of Tennyson's King Arthur, beginning--

And so to bed; where yet in sleep I seem'd To sail with Arthur, etc.

down to

And War shall be no more--

to adapt this, I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering in upon them. It is very grand in Fidelio: and I am persuaded might have a grand effect in this Poem. But no one will do it, of course; especially in these Days when War is so far from being no more!

I want to hear Cherubini's Medea, which I dare say I should find masterly and dull. I quite agree with you about the Italians: Mozart the only exception; who is all in all.

WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 5/70.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . Had not Sunday followed Sat.u.r.day I was a little tempted to run up to hear Cherubini's Medea, which I saw advertised for the Night. But I believe I should feel strange at a Play now: and probably should not have sat the Opera half out. So you have a good Play, {120} and that well acted, at last, on English Boards! At the old Haymarket, I think: the pleasantest of all the Theatres (for size and Decoration) that I remember; yes, and for the Listons and Vestrises that I remember there in the days of their Glory. Vestris, in what was called a 'Pamela Hat' with a red feather; and, again, singing 'Cherry Ripe,' one of the Dozen immortal English Tunes. That was in 'Paul Pry.' Poor Plays they were, to be sure: but the Players were good and handsome, and--oneself was young--1822-3! There was Macready's Virginius at old Covent Garden, an event never to be forgotten.

One Date leads to another. In talking one day about different Quotations which get abroad without people always knowing whence they are derived, I could have sworn that I remember Spring Rice mentioning one that he himself had invented, and had been amused at seeing quoted here and there--

Coldly correct and critically dull.

Now only last night I happened to see the Line quoted in the Preface to Frederick Reynolds' (the Playwright's) stupid Memoirs, published in 1827; some time before Spring Rice would have thought of such things, I suppose. . . .

What Plays Reynolds' were, which made George III. laugh so, and put 500 pounds apiece into the writer's Pocket! But then there were Lewis, Quick, Kemble, Edwin, Parsons, Palmer, Mrs. Jordan, etc. to act them.

WOODBRIDGE, _Jan._ 22, [1871].