[105]On July 22nd, 1880, he wrote to me:—“I am still reading her! And could make a pretty Introduction to her; but Press-work is hard to me now, and nobody would care for what I should do, when done. Mrs. Edwards has found me a good Photo of ‘nos pauvres Rochers,’ a straggling old Château, with (I suppose) the Chapel which her old ‘Bien Bon’ Uncle built in 1671—while she was talking to her Gardener Pilois and reading Montaigne, Molière, Pascal,orCleopatra, among the trees she had planted. Bless her! I should like to have made Lamb like her, in spite of his anti-gallican Obstinacy.”
[106]Mrs. Charles Donne, daughter of John Mitchell Kemble, died April 15th, 1876.
[107]First acted April 18th, 1876.
[108a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 293.
[108b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 198.
[109a]Atlantic Monthly, June 1876, p. 719.
[109b]Which opened May 10th, 1876.
[110]In one of his Common Place Books FitzGerald has entered from theMonthly Mirrorfor 1807 the following passage of Rousseau on Stage Scenery—‘Ils font, pour épouventer, un Fracas de Decorations sans Effet. Sur la scene même il ne faut pas tout dire à la Vue: mais ébranler l’Imagmation.’
[111]For April and May 1876: ‘The Latest Theory about Bacon.’
[113a]See letter of October 4th, 1875
[113b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 202-205.
[113c]This card is now in my possession, ‘Mr. Alfred Tennyson. Farringford.’ On it is written in pencil, “Dear old Fitz—I am passing thro’ and will call again. [The last three words are crossed out and ‘am here’ is written over them]. A.T.” FitzGerald enclosed it to Thompson (Master of Trinity) and wrote on the back, ‘P.S. Since writing, this card was sent in: the Writer followed with his Son: and here we all are as if twenty years had not passed since we met.’
[114a]About the same time he wrote to me:—“Tennyson came here suddenly ten days ago—with his Son Hallam, whom I liked much. It was a Relief to find a Young Gentleman not calling his Father ‘The Governor’ but even—‘Papa,’ and tending him so carefully in all ways. And nothing of ‘awfully jolly,’ etc. I put them up at the Inn—Bull—as my own House was in a sort of Interregnum of Painting, within and without: and I knew they would be well provided at ‘John Grout’s’—as they were. Tennyson said he had not found such Dinners at Grand Hotels, etc. And John (though a Friend of Princes of all Nations—Russian, French, Italian, etc.—who come to buy Horse flesh) was gratified at the Praise: though he said to me ‘Pray, Sir, what is the name of the Gentleman?’”
[114b]On September 11th, 1877, he wrote to me: ‘You ought to have Hugo’s French Shakespeare: it is not wonderful to see how well a German Translation thrives:—but French Prose—no doubt better than French Verse. When I was looking over King John the other day I knew that Napoleon would have owned it as the thing he craved for in the Theatre: as also the other Historical Plays:—not Love of which one is sick: but the Business of Men. He said this at St. Helena, or elsewhere.’
[115]It was in 1867. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 90, 94.
[116]Life, vi. 215. Letter to Lockhart, January 15th, 1826.
[117a]These expressions must not be looked for in the Decameron, as ‘emendato secondo l’ordine del Sacro Concilio di Trento.’
[117b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 203. In a letter to me dated November 4th, 1876, he says:—
“I have taken refuge from the Eastern Question in Boccaccio, just as the ‘piacevoli Donne’ who tell the Stories escaped from the Plague. I suppose one must read this in Italian as my dear Don in Spanish: the Language of each fitting the Subject ‘like a Glove.’ But there is nothing to come up to the Don and his Man.”
[118]Book XVIII., vol. vii. p. 188.
[119a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 208.
[119b]Gillies’ Memoirs of a Literary Veteran. See Letters, ii. 197, 199.
[120a]An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876.
[120b]Mr. Wade, author ofThe Jew of Aragon, which failed. Mrs. Kemble says (Atlantic Monthly, December 1876, p. 707):—
“I was perfectly miserable when the curtain fell, and the poor young author, as pale as a ghost, came forward to meet my father at the side scene, and bravely holding out his hand to him said, ‘Never mind, Mr. Kemble, I’ll do better another time.’”
“I was perfectly miserable when the curtain fell, and the poor young author, as pale as a ghost, came forward to meet my father at the side scene, and bravely holding out his hand to him said, ‘Never mind, Mr. Kemble, I’ll do better another time.’”
[120c]Francisco Javier Elio, a Spanish General, was executed in 1822 for his seventies against the liberals dining the reactionary period 1814-1820.
[122a]Atlantic Monthly, February 1877, p. 222.
[122b]Holbrook, near Ipswich. That she had also some of the family humour is evident from what she wrote to Mr. Crabbe of her brother’s early life. ‘As regards spiritual advantages out of the house he had none; for our Pastor was one of the old sort, with a jolly red nose caused by good cheer. He used to lay his Hat and Whip on the Communion Table and gabble over the service, running down the Pulpit Stairs not to lose the opportunity of being invited to a good dinner at the Hall.’ It was with reference to his sister’s husband that FitzGerald in conversation with Tennyson used the expression ‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.’
‘Why, Fitz,’ said Tennyson, ‘that’s a verse, and a very bad one too.’ And they would afterwards humorously contend for the authorship of the worst line in the English language.
[123]Atlantic Monthly, February 1877, pp. 210, 211, and pp. 220, 221.
[124a]See note to Letter of Dec. 29th1875.
[124b]For November 1875, in an article called ‘The Judgment of Paris,’ p. 400.
[125a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 217. This is in my possession.
[125b]It came to an end in April 1877. In a letter to Miss St. Leger, December 31st, 1876 (‘Further Records,’ ii. 33), Mrs. Kemble says, ‘You ask me how I mean to carry on the publication of my articles in theAtlantic Magazinewhen I leave America; but I do not intend to carry them on. The editor proposed to me to do so, but I thought it would entail so much trouble and uncertainty in the transmission of manuscript and proofs, that it would be better to break off when I came to Europe. The editor will have manuscript enough for the February, March, and April numbers when I come away, and with those I think the series must close. As there is no narrative or sequence of events involved in the publication, it can, of course, be stopped at any moment; a story without an end can end anywhere.’
[126]See letter of December 29th, 1875.
[127a]15, Connaught Square. See ‘Further Records,’ ii. 42, etc.
[127b]Valentia Donne marred the Rev. R. F. Smith, minor Canon of Southwell, May 24th, 1877.
[131a]‘We might say in a short word, which means a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from the heart outwards, your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them.’—Carlyle, ‘Miscellanies,’ vi. 69 (ed. 1869), ‘Sir Walter Scott’
[131b]Procter, ‘Autobiographical Fragments,’ p. 154.
[134a]February 9th, 1878.
[134b]It was not in theFortnightlybut in theNineteenth Century.
[134c]This portrait is in my possession. FitzGerald fastened it in a copy of the ‘Poems chiefly Lyrical’ (1830) which he gave me bound up with the ‘Poems’ of 1833. He wrote underneath, ‘Done in a Steamboat from Gravesend to London, Jan: 1842.’
[135a]Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus by H. A. J. Munro.
[135b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 233, 235, 236, 238, 239.
[136]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 247.
[138a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 243.
[138b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 248.
[145]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 265.
[146]II. 166 (ed. 1826).
[149]John Purcell FitzGerald died at Boulge, May 4th, 1879.
[151a]See letter of May 5th, 1877.
[151b]In a letter to me dated May 7th, 1879, he says:—
‘I see by Athenæum that Charles Tennyson (Turner) is dead.Nowpeople will begin to talk of his beautiful Sonnets: small, but original, things, as well as beautiful. Especially after that somewhat absurd Sale of the Brothers’ early Editions.’
‘I see by Athenæum that Charles Tennyson (Turner) is dead.Nowpeople will begin to talk of his beautiful Sonnets: small, but original, things, as well as beautiful. Especially after that somewhat absurd Sale of the Brothers’ early Editions.’
[152]Gay,The Beggar’s Opera, Act III, Air 57.
[153]Professor Skeat’s Inaugural Lecture, inMacmillan’s Magazinefor February 1879, pp. 304-313.
[154]Mrs. Sartoris, Mrs. Kemble’s sister, died August 4, 1879. See ‘Further Records,’ ii. 277.
[155]Edwin Edwards, who died September 15. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 277.
[157]In a letter to me of September 29 1879, he says, “My object in going to London is, to see poor Mrs. Edwards, who writes me that she has much collapsed in strength (no wonder!) after the Trial she endured for near three years more or less, and, you know, a very hard light for the last year . . .
“Besides her, Mrs. Kemble, who has lately lost her Sister, and returned from Switzerland to London just at a time when most of her Friends are out of it—shewants to see me, an old Friend of hers and her Family’s, whom she has not seen for more than twenty years. So I do hope to do my ‘petit possible’ to solace both these poor Ladies at the same time.”
[158]On September 11 he wrote to me, ‘Ah, pleasant Dunwich Days! I should never know a better Boy than Edwards, nor a braver little Wife than her, were I to live six times as long as I am like to do.’
[160]See letter of October 4, 1875.
[161]Mrs. Leigh’s son, Pierce Butler, was born on Sunday, November 2, 1879.
[162]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 326.
[163a]Mrs. Kemble appears to have adopted this suggestion. In her ‘Records of a Girlhood,’ ii. 41, she says of Sir Thomas Lawrence, ‘He came repeatedly to consult with my mother about the disputed point of my dress, and gave his sanction to her decision upon it. The first dress of Belvidera [inVenice Preserved], I remember, was a point of nice discussion between them. . . . I was allowed (not, however, without serious demur on the part of Lawrence) to cover my head with a black hat and white feather.’
[163b]William Mason.
[166]November 10, 1879.
[168]Mrs. De Soyres died at Exeter, December 11, 1879.
[169]Played at St. James’s Theatre, December 18, 1879.
[171]‘The Duke’s Children.’
[173]Probably the ‘Records of Later Life,’ published in 1882.
[174]On 1st February 1880, FitzGerald wrote to me:—“Do you know what ‘Stub Iron’ is? (I do), and what ‘Heel-taps’ derives from, which Mrs. Kemble asks, and I cannot tell her.” This is probably the query referred to.
[175]Beginning ‘As men may children at their sports behold!’—Tales of the Hall, book xxi., at the end of ‘Smugglers and Poachers.’
[176]In theCornhill Magazine, March 1880, ‘The Story of the Merchant of Venice.’
[179]‘An Eye-witness of John Kemble,’ by Sir Theodore Martin. The eye-witness is Tieck.
[180a]This letter was written on a Tuesday, and April 6 was a Tuesday in 1880. Moreover, in 1880, at Easter, Donne’s house was in quarantine. FitzGerald probably had the advanced sheets of theAtlantic Monthlyfor May from Professor Norton as early as the beginning of April.
[180b]TheAtlantic Monthlyfor May 1880, contained an article by Mr. G. E. Woodberry on Crabbe, ‘A Neglected Poet.’ See letter to Professor Norton, May 1, 1880, in ‘Letters,’ ii. 281.
[181a]No. 39, where FitzGerald’s father and mother lived. See ‘Records of a Girlhood,’ iii. 28.
[181b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 138.
[183a]It was Queen Catharine. When Mrs. Siddons called upon Johnson in 1783, he “particularly asked her which of Shakespeare’s characters she was most pleased with. Upon her answering that she thought the character of Queen Catharine, inHenry the Eighth, the most natural:—‘I think so too, Madam, (said he;) and when ever you perform it, I will once more hobble out to the theatre myself.’”—Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’ (ed. Birkbeck Hill), iv. 242.
[183b]See letters of February and December 1881.
[184a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 244, 249.
[184b]On June 30, 1880, he wrote to me, ‘Half her Beauty is the liquid melodiousness of her language—all unpremeditated as a Blackbird’s.’
[186]See letter of May 5, 1877.
[187]In a letter to me of the same date he wrote: ‘Last night when Miss Tox was just coming, like a good Soul, to ask about the ruined Dombey, we heard a Splash of Rain, and I had the Book shut up, and sat listening to the Shower by myself—till it blew over, I am sorry to say, and no more of the sort all night. But we are thankful for that small mercy.
‘I am reading through my Sévigné again—welcome as the flowers of May.’
[188a]On June 9, 1879, FitzGerald wrote to me: “I was from Tuesday to Saturday last in Norfolk with my old Bredfield Party—George, not very well: and, as he has not written to tell me he is better, I am rather anxious. You should know him; and his Country: which is still the old Country which we have lost here; small enclosures, with hedgeway timber: green gipsey drift-ways: and Crome Cottage and Farmhouse of that beautiful yellow ‘Claylump’ with red pantile roof’d—not the d---d Brick and Slate of these parts.”
[188b]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 290.
[190]See letter of Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, June 15, 1689.
[191]In one of FitzGerald’s Common Place Books he gives the story thus: “When Chancellor Cheverny went home in his Old Age and for the last time, ‘Messieurs’ (dit-il aux Gentilshommes du Canton accourus pour le saluer), ‘Je ressemble au bon Lièvre qui vient mourir au Gîte.’”
[192a]Tom Taylor died July 12, 1880.
[192b]On July 16 FitzGerald wrote to me: ‘Not being assured that you were back from Revision, I wrote yesterday to Cowell asking him—and you, when returned—to call on Professor Goodwin, of American Cambridge, who goes to-morrow to your Cambridge—to see—if not to stay with—Mr. Jebb. Mr. Goodwin proposed to give me a look here before he went to Cambridge: but I told him I could not bear the thought of his coming all this way for such a purpose. I think you can witness that I do not wish even old English Friends to take me except on their way elsewhere: and for an American Gentleman! It is not affectation to say that any such proposal worried me. So what must I do but ask him to be sure to see Messrs. Wright and Cowell when he got to Cambridge: and spend part of one of his days there in going to Bury, and (even if he cared not for the Abbey with its Abbot Samson and Jocelyn) to sit with a Bottle of light wine at the Angel window, face to face with that lovely Abbey gate. Perhaps Cowell, I said, might go over with him—knowing and loving Gothic—that was a liberty for me to take with Cowell, but he need not go—I did not hint at you. I suppose I muddled it all. But do show the American Gentleman some civilities, to make amends for the disrespect which you and Cowell told me of in April.’
[193]The defeat of General Burrows by Ayoub Khan, announced in the House of Commons, July 28, 1880. On July 29 further telegrams reported that General Burrows and other officers had arrived at Candahar after the defeat.
[194]The date should be September 19, which was a Sunday in 1880. Full moon was on September 18.
[197]In her ‘Further Records,’ i. 295, Mrs. Kemble says, ‘Russia leather, you know, is almost an element of the atmosphere of my rooms, as all the shades of violet and purple are of their colouring, so that my familiar friends associate the two with their notions of my habitat.’
[198]See ‘Life of Crabbe,’ p. 262.
[200]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 295.
[201a]On ‘The Story of the Merchant of Venice’ in theCornhill Magazinefor March 1880.
[201b]‘Ballads and other Poems,’ 1880.
[202]Kelter, condition, order. Forby’s ‘Vocabulary of East Anglia.’
[203a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 110
[203b]‘Medusa and other Tales’ (1868), republished in 1880 with a preface by her daughter, Mrs. Gordon.
[205]Full moon February 14th.
[206a]Acted at the Lyceum, January 3rd, 1881.
[206b]For February 1881.
[210]See letters of April 23rd, 1880, and December 1881.
[211a]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 180, 320.
[211b]Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 298-301.
[214]Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 305-7.
[216a]Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 310-312.
[216b]April 17th was Easter Day in 1881.
[217]Madame de Sévigné writes from Chaulnes, April 17th, 1689, ‘A peine le vert veut-il montrer le nez; pas un rossignol encore; enfin, l’hiver le 17 d’Avril.’
[218]InMacmillan’s Magazinefor April 1881.
[219]Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 313.
[221]Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 312.
[227a]On Madame de Sévigné.
[227b]Published in 1882 as ‘Records of Later Life.’
[227c]See letter of August 24th, 1875.
[230]Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 320-1.
[231]The correct date is 1794-1805.
[233]‘Evenings with a Reviewer.’ The Reviewer was Macaulay, and the review the Essay on Bacon.
[234a]At Boulge.
[234b]He was in London from February 17th to February 20th.
[236]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 324-6.
[237a]Full moon April 3rd, 1882.
[237b]‘Thomas Carlyle. The Man and His Books.’ By W. H. Wylie. 1881, p. 363.
[241a]On May 7 FitzGerald wrote to me from Lowestoft:
“I too am taking some medicine, which, whatever effect it has on me, leaves an indelible mark on Mahogany: for (of course) I spilled a lot on my Landlady’s Chiffonier, and found her this morning rubbing at the ‘damned Spot’ with Turpentine, and in vain.”
“I too am taking some medicine, which, whatever effect it has on me, leaves an indelible mark on Mahogany: for (of course) I spilled a lot on my Landlady’s Chiffonier, and found her this morning rubbing at the ‘damned Spot’ with Turpentine, and in vain.”
And two days later:
“I was to have gone home to-day: but Worthington wishes me to stay, at any rate, till the week’s end, by which time he thinks to remove what he calls ‘a Crepitation’ in one lung, by help of the Medicine which proved its power on the mahogany. Yesterday came a Cabinet-maker, who was for more than half an hour employed in returning that to its ‘sound and pristine health,’ or such as I hope my Landlady will be satisfied with.”
“I was to have gone home to-day: but Worthington wishes me to stay, at any rate, till the week’s end, by which time he thinks to remove what he calls ‘a Crepitation’ in one lung, by help of the Medicine which proved its power on the mahogany. Yesterday came a Cabinet-maker, who was for more than half an hour employed in returning that to its ‘sound and pristine health,’ or such as I hope my Landlady will be satisfied with.”
[241b]Serjeant Ballantine’s ‘Experiences of a Barrister’s Life’ appeared in March 1882.
[241c]Full moon was June 1st, 1882.
[243a]W. B. Donne died June 20th, 1882.
[243b]This letter is in my possession, and as it indicates what Mr. Froude’s plan originally was, though he afterwards modified it, I have thought it worth while to give it in full.
‘5Onslow Gardens, S.W.‘May19.‘Dear mr. FitzGerald,‘Certainly you are no stranger to me. I have heard so often from Carlyle, and I have read so much in his letters, about your exertions, and about your entertainment of him at various times, that I can hardly persuade myself that I never saw you.‘The letters you speak of must be very interesting, and I would ask you to let me see them if I thought that they were likely to be of use to me; but the subject with which I have to deal is so vast that I am obliged to limit myself, and so intricate that I am glad to be able to limit myself. I shall do what Carlyle desired me to do,i.e.edit the collection of his wife’s letters, which he himself prepared for publication.‘This gift or bequest of his governs the rest of my work. What I have already done is an introduction to these letters. When they are published I shall add a volume of personal recollections of his later life; and this will be all. Had I been left unencumbered by special directions I should have been tempted to leave his domestic history untouched except on the outside, and have attempted to make a complete biography out of the general materials. This I am unable to do, and all that I can give the world will be materials for some other person to use hereafter. I can explain no further the conditions of the problem. But for my own share of it I have materials in abundance, and I must avoid being tempted off into other matters however important in themselves.‘I may add for myself that I did not seek this duty, nor was it welcome to me. C. asked me to undertake it. When I looked through the papers I saw how difficult, how, in some aspects of it, painful, the task would be.‘Believe me,‘faithfully yours,‘J. A. Froude.’
‘5Onslow Gardens, S.W.‘May19.
‘Dear mr. FitzGerald,
‘Certainly you are no stranger to me. I have heard so often from Carlyle, and I have read so much in his letters, about your exertions, and about your entertainment of him at various times, that I can hardly persuade myself that I never saw you.
‘The letters you speak of must be very interesting, and I would ask you to let me see them if I thought that they were likely to be of use to me; but the subject with which I have to deal is so vast that I am obliged to limit myself, and so intricate that I am glad to be able to limit myself. I shall do what Carlyle desired me to do,i.e.edit the collection of his wife’s letters, which he himself prepared for publication.
‘This gift or bequest of his governs the rest of my work. What I have already done is an introduction to these letters. When they are published I shall add a volume of personal recollections of his later life; and this will be all. Had I been left unencumbered by special directions I should have been tempted to leave his domestic history untouched except on the outside, and have attempted to make a complete biography out of the general materials. This I am unable to do, and all that I can give the world will be materials for some other person to use hereafter. I can explain no further the conditions of the problem. But for my own share of it I have materials in abundance, and I must avoid being tempted off into other matters however important in themselves.
‘I may add for myself that I did not seek this duty, nor was it welcome to me. C. asked me to undertake it. When I looked through the papers I saw how difficult, how, in some aspects of it, painful, the task would be.
‘Believe me,‘faithfully yours,‘J. A. Froude.’
[245a]Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 332.
[245b]July 30th.
[247]Printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 333.
[248]Here begins second half-sheet, dated ‘Monday, Sept. 5.’
[249]Partly printed in ‘Letters,’ ii. 335.
[250a]See letter of June 23rd, 1880.
[250b]Reprinted in ‘A Book of Sibyls,’ 1883.
[251a]The Promise of Maywas acted at the Globe Theatre, November 11th, 1882.
[251b]See letter of November 13th, 1879.
[252a]Mrs. Wister’s son.
[252b]See letter of March 28th, 1880.
[253a]‘John Leech and other Papers,’ 1882.
[253b]November 18th, 1882.
[257]See ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,’ ii. 249.
[259]For May 1883: ‘Mrs. Carlyle.’
[260]Tennyson’s ‘Brook.’
[261]In a letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, March 16th, 1879, he says:—
“I have had Sir Walter read to me first of a Night, by way of Drama; then ten minutes for Refreshment, and then Dickens for Farce. Just finished the Pirate—as wearisome for Nornas, Minnas, Brendas, etc., as any of the Scotch Set; but when the Common People have to talk, the Pirates to quarrel and swear, then Author and Reader are at home; and at the end I ‘fare’ to like this one the best of the Series. The Sea scenery has much to do with this preference I dare say.”
“I have had Sir Walter read to me first of a Night, by way of Drama; then ten minutes for Refreshment, and then Dickens for Farce. Just finished the Pirate—as wearisome for Nornas, Minnas, Brendas, etc., as any of the Scotch Set; but when the Common People have to talk, the Pirates to quarrel and swear, then Author and Reader are at home; and at the end I ‘fare’ to like this one the best of the Series. The Sea scenery has much to do with this preference I dare say.”
[263]See ‘Letters,’ ii. 344.