Letters of Edward FitzGerald Volume I Part 9

Therefore I think that his great marches, triumphal pieces, and coronation anthems, are his finest works. There is a little bit of Auber's, at the end of the Bayadere when the G.o.d resumes his divinity and retires into the sky, which has more of pure light and mystical solemnity than anything I know of Handel's: but then this is only a sc.r.a.p: and Auber could not breathe in that atmosphere long: whereas old Handel's coursers, with necks with thunder clothed and long resounding pace, never tire. Beethoven thought more deeply also: but I don't know if he could sustain himself so well. I suppose you will resent this praise of Beethoven: but you must be tired of the whole matter, written as it is in this vile hand: and so here is an end of it. . . . And now I am going to put on my night-cap: for my paper is nearly ended, and the iron tongue of St. Paul's, as reported by an East wind, has told twelve. This is the last news from the city. So Good night. I suppose the violets will be going off in the Papal dominions by the time this letter reaches you: my country cousins are making much of a few aconites. Love to Morton.

P.S. I hope these foolish letters don't cost you and Morton much: I always pay 1_s._ 7_d._ for them here: which ought to carry such levities to Hindostan without further charge.

_To Bernard Barton_.

LONDON, _February_ 21/42.

I have just got home a new coat for my Constable: which coat cost 33 s.h.i.+llings: just the same price as I gave for a Chesterfield wrapper (as it is called) for myself some weeks ago. People told me I was not improved by my Chesterfield wrapper: and I am vext to see how little my Constable is improved by his coat of Cloth of Gold. But I have been told what is the use of a frame lately: only as it requires nice explanation I shall leave it till I see you. Don't you wish me to buy that little Evening piece I told you of? worth a dozen of your Paul Veroneses put together.

When I rate you (as you call it) about shewing my verses, letters, etc., you know in what spirit I rate you: thanking you all the time for your generous intention of praising me. It would be very hard, and not desirable, to make you understand why my Mama need not have heard the verses: but it is a very little matter: so no more of it. As to my doing anything else in that way, I know that I could write volume after volume as well as others of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease: but I think unless a man can do better, he had best not do at all; I have not the strong inward call, nor cruel-sweet pangs of parturition, that prove the birth of anything bigger than a mouse. With you the case is different, who have so long been a follower of the Muse, and who have had a kindly, sober, English, wholesome, religious spirit within you that has communicated kindred warmth to many honest souls. Such a creature as Augusta--John's wife--a true Lady, was very fond of your poems: and I think that is no mean praise: a very good a.s.surance that you have not written in vain. I am a man of taste, of whom there are hundreds born every year: only that less easy circ.u.mstances than mine at present are compel them to one calling: that calling perhaps a mechanical one, which overlies all their other, and naturally perhaps more energetic impulses.

As to an occasional copy of verses, there are few men who have leisure to read, and are possessed of any music in their souls, who are not capable of versifying on some ten or twelve occasions during their natural lives: at a proper conjunction of the stars. There is no harm in taking advantage of such occasions.

This letter-writing fit (one must suppose) can but happen once in one's life: though I hope you and I shall live to have many a little bargain for pictures. But I hold communion with Suffolk through you. In this big London all full of intellect and pleasure and business I feel pleasure in dipping down into the country, and rubbing my hand over the cool dew upon the pastures, as it were. I know very few people here: and care for fewer; I believe I should like to live in a small house just outside a pleasant English town all the days of my life, making myself useful in a humble way, reading my books, and playing a rubber of whist at night. But England cannot expect long such a reign of inward quiet as to suffer men to dwell so easily to themselves. But Time will tell us:

Come what come may, Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day. {106}

It is hard to give you so long a letter, so dull an one, and written in so cramped a hand, to read in this hardworking part of your week. But you can read a bit at odd times, you know: or none at all. Anyhow 'tis time to have done. I am going to walk with Lusia. So farewell

P.S. I always direct to you as 'Mr. Barton' because I know not if Quakers ought to endure Squiredom. How I long to shew you my Constable!

Pray let me know how Mr. Jenney is. I think that we shall get down to Suffolk the end of next week.

LONDON, _Febr_. 25/42.

MY DEAR BARTON,

Your reason for liking your Paul Veronese (what an impudence to talk so to a man who has just purchased a real t.i.tian!) does not quite disprove my theory. You like the picture because you like the verses you once made upon it: you a.s.sociate the picture (naturally enough) with them: and so shall I in future, because I like the verses too. But then you ask further, what made you write the verses if you were not moved by the picture imprimis? Why you know the poetic faculty does wonders, as Shakespeare tells us, in imagining the forms of things unseen, etc., and so you made a merit where there was none: and have liked that merit ever since. But I will not disturb you any further in your enjoyment: if you have a vision of your own, why should I undo it?

Yesterday I was busily employed in painting over my Opie, which had suffered by heat, or something of that kind. I borrowed Laurence's palette and brushes and lay upon the floor two hours patching over and renovating. The picture is really greatly improved, and I am more reconciled to it. It has now to be varnished: and then I hope some fool will be surprised into giving 4 pounds for it, as I did. I have selected an advantageous position for it in a dealer's shop, just under a rich window that excludes the light.

On second thoughts I shall not send you down my Twilight: but bring it with me. I like it much, and do not repent the purchase. As to the difficulty of bringing down so many pictures, I shall travel by the steamer; which will bear any quant.i.ty. The great new purchase, spoken of in yesterday's letter, will also go with me: it will be insured at a high valuation before it is entrusted to the Deep, of whose treasures I don't at all wish it to become one. My t.i.tian is a great hit: if not by him, it is as near him as ever was painted. But you would not care six straws for it. The history of the finest theory of colouring lies in those few inches of canvas. But Laurence (who has gone for some days into the country) must see it, and tell me about it. He is so good a judge, that I ought never to talk till I have first heard his verdict.

I was amused at a pa.s.sage in Clarissa the other day, which gives one some idea of what the average state of the arts was among the gentry of a hundred years ago. Miss Howe, in drawing up a character of her lost Clarissa, says that among other things she had a fine taste for the Pencil: had not time to practise it much, but 'was an absolute mistress of the "should be,"' and then proceeds thus: 'To give a familiar instance for the sake of young Ladies: she (untaught) observed _when but a child_, that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, never appeared at once: and were therefore never to be in one piece: that bears, tygers, lions, were not natives of an English climate, and should not therefore have a place in an English landscape: that these ravagers of the forest consorted not with lambs, kids, or fawns: nor kites, hawks, or vultures, with doves, partridges, and pheasants.' Such was a prodigy in those days. It is easy to sneer at this pa.s.sage: but whoever has read anything of the Masques, etc., of James's time, will readily recall what absurdities were brought together, even by the good Scholars of the day: and therefore will not wonder at the imperfect Natural History that was found in young Ladies' Drawings, and samplers. I remember now to have seen wonderful combinations of phenomena in those samplers which are occasionally to be found hung up in the parlours of Country Inns, and Farm houses.

These letters succeed like the ghosts of Banquo's progeny before the eyes of Macbeth. Lucky that time itself draws on too close for this letter to 'hold a gla.s.s that shews you many more.' You did not answer my question about the Gainsboroughs. So I won't ask you another.

SONNET ON MY NEW PICTURE.

Oh Twilight! Twilight!!

Rot me, if I am in a poetical humour: I can't translate the picture into words.

LONDON, _March_ 5, 1842.

MY DEAR BARTON,

Before the cavalcade and suite of Hardinge's (a melancholy procession) reaches you, I think this letter will. You need not envy me my purchases, which are imprudent ones: both because I can't well afford them, and because I have no house to put them. And yet all this gives a sense of stolen enjoyment to them. I am yet haunted with the ghost of a Battle-piece (little in my way) at a shop in Holborn: by whom I know not: but so good as to be cheap at 4 pounds: 10_s._, which the man wants for it. My Twilight _is_ an upright picture: about a foot wide, and rather more than a foot high.

Mr. Browne has declined taking my Opie, unless in conjunction with some others which I won't part with: so the Forest Girl must set up her stall at a Broker's. I doubt she will never bring me the money I gave for her.

She is the only bad speculation of the season. Were she but sold, I should be rejoicing in the Holborn Battle Piece. After this year however I think I shall bid complete adieu to picture-_hunting_: only taking what comes in my way. There is a great difference between these two things: both in the expense of time, thought, and money. Who can sit down to Plato while his brains are roaming to Holborn, Christie's, Phillips's, etc.?

My Father talks of going down to Suffolk early next week. Whether I shall accompany him is not certain. Do you remember what a merry Good Friday you and I pa.s.sed last year? I suppose I shall find the banks covered with primroses, the very name carries a dew upon it.

'As one who long in populous city pent, etc.' {111}

Good-bye. I am going to pay my compliments at Portland Place, and then to walk in a contrary direction to Holborn.

_To F. Tennyson_.

[31 _March_, 1842.]

DEAR FREDERIC,

. . . Concerning the bagwigs of composers. Handel's was not a bagwig, which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn's and Mozart's--much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great General of the day used to take off his head after the fatigue of the battle, and hand over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.

Such a wig was a fugue in itself. I don't understand your theory about trumpets, which have always been so little spiritual _in use_, that they have been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from the beginning of the world. '_Power_,' whether spiritual or physical, is the meaning of the trumpet: and so, well used, as you say, by Handel in his approaches to the Deity. The fugue in the overture to the Messiah expresses perhaps the th.o.r.n.y wandering ways of the world before the voice of the one in the wilderness, and before 'Comfort ye my people, etc.'

Mozart, I agree with you, is the most universal musical genius: Beethoven has been too a.n.a.lytical and erudite: but his inspiration is nevertheless true. I have just read his Life by Moscheles: well worth reading. He shewed no very decided preference for music when a child, though he was the son of a composer: and I think that he was, strictly speaking, more of a thinker than a musician. A great genius he was somehow. He was very fond of reading: Plutarch and Shakespeare his great favourites. He tried to think in music: almost to reason in music: whereas perhaps we should be contented with _feeling_ in it. It can never speak very definitely. There is that famous 'Holy, Holy, Lord G.o.d Almighty, etc.,'

in Handel: nothing can sound more simple and devotional: but it is only lately adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love song in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses more than their G.o.d.

Then the famous music of 'He layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, etc.,' was originally fitted to an Italian pastoral song--'Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc.' That part which seems so well to describe 'and walketh on the wings of the wind' falls happily in with 'e con l'aura di fortuna' with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so G.o.d Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata--Op.

14--is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome--Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the a.n.a.logous phenomena spiritual or material--if you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes the battle of the pa.s.sions as well as of armed men. This is long and muddy discourse: but the walls of Charlotte Street present little else, especially during this last week of Lent, to twaddle about. The Cambridge Dons have been up in town for the Easter vacation: so we have smoked and talked over Peac.o.c.k, Whewell, etc. Alfred is busy preparing a new volume for the press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Taylor, also appear in new volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks of publis.h.i.+ng a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one.

Nothing has been heard of Spedding: {114a} but we all conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped.

_To W. F. Pollock_. {114b}

BOULGE HALL, _May_ 11/42.

DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . I have just been reading the great Library of Athanasius. {114c} Certainly only you and I and Thackeray understand it. When men like Spedding quote to me such a pa.s.sage as 'Athanasius alas is innocent of many smiles, etc.,' they shew me they don't understand it. The beauty--if one may dare to define--lies more in such expressions as 'adjusting the beaks of the macaws, etc.' I have laughed outright (how seldom one does this alone!) at the Bishops' meeting. 'Mr. Talboys--that candle behind Dr. Allnut--really that I should be obliged--.' I suppose this would be the most untranslateable book in the world. I never shall forget how I laughed when I first read it.

[GELDESTONE HALL, 22 _May_ 1842.]

DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . So Alfred is come out. {115a} I agree with you quite about the skipping-rope, etc. But the bald men {115b} of the Emba.s.sy would tell you otherwise. I should not wonder if the whole theory of the Emba.s.sy, perhaps the discovery of America itself, was involved in that very Poem.

Lord Bacon's, honesty may, I am sure, be found there. Alfred, whatever he may think, cannot trifle--many are the disputes we have had about his powers of badinage, compliment, waltzing, etc. His smile is rather a grim one. I am glad the book is come out, though I grieve for the insertion of these little things, on which reviewers and dull readers will fix; so that the right appreciation of the book will be r.e.t.a.r.ded a dozen years. . . .

The rain will not come and we are burnt up, and in despair. But the country never looked more delicious than it does. I am as happy here as possible, though I don't like to boast. I am going to see my friend Donne in ten days, he is writing the dullest of histories--one of Rome.

What the devil does it signify setting us in these days right as to the Licinian Rogation, and Livy's myths? Every school-boy knew that Livy lied; but the main story was clear enough for all the purposes of experience; and, that being so, the more fabulous and entertaining the subsidiary matter is the better. Tell Thackeray not to go into Punch yet.

_To S. Laurence_.

GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES.

SUNDAY, _May_ 22/42.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . I read of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of sales and auctions, but don't envy you Londoners while I am here in the midst of _green idleness_, as Leigh Hunt might call it. What are pictures? I am all for pure spirit. You have of course read the account of Spedding's forehead landing in America. English sailors hail it in the Channel, mistaking it for Beachy Head. There is a Shakespeare cliff, and a Spedding cliff. Good old fellow! I hope he'll come back safe and sound, forehead and all.

I sit writing this at my bedroom window, while the rain (long-looked for) patters on the window. I prophesied it to-day: which is a great comfort.