[June, 1877.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
I only write now on the express condition (which I understand you to accept) that you will not reply till you are in Switzerland. I mean, of course, within any reasonable time. Your last Letter is not a happy one *: but the record of your first Memoir cannot fail to interest and touch me.
I surmise—for you do not say so—that you are alone in London now: then, you must get away as soon as you can; and I shall be very glad to hear from yourself that you are in some green Swiss Valley, with a blue Lake before you, and snowy mountain above.
I must tell you that, my Nieces being here—good, pious, and tender, they are too—(but one of them anInvalid, and the other devoted to attend her) they make but little change in my own way of Life. They live by themselves, and I only see them now and then in the Garden—sometimes not five minutes in the Day. But then I am so long used to Solitude. And there is an end of that Chapter.
I have your Gossip bound up: the binder backed it with Black, which I don’t like (it was his doing, not mine), but you say that your own only Suit is Sables now. I am going to lend it to a very admirable Lady who is going to our ugly Sea-side, with a sick Brother: only I have pasted over one column—which, I leave you to guess at.
I think I never told you—what is the fact, however—that I had wished to dedicate Agamemnon to you, but thought I could not do so without my own name appended. Whereas, I could, very simply, as I saw afterwards when too late. If ever he is reprinted I shall (unless you forbid) do as I desired to do: for, if for no other reason, he would probably never have been published but for you. Perhaps he had better [have] remained in private Life so far as England is concerned. And so much for that grand Chapter.
I think it is an ill-omened Year: beside War (which Iwon’tread about) so much Illness and Death—hereabout, at any rate. A Nephew of mine—a capital fellow—was pitched upon his head from a Gig a week ago, and we know not yet how far that head of his may recover itself. But, beside one’s ownimmediate Friends, I hear of Sickness and Death from further Quarters; and our Church Bell has been everlastingly importunate with its “Toll-toll.” But Farewell for the present: pray do as I ask you about writing: and believe me ever yours,
E. F.G.
* You were thinking of something else when you misdirected your letter, which sent it a round before reaching Woodbridge.
Woodbridge,June23/77.
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
I knew the best thing I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose Reply I herewith enclose.
Last Evening I heard read Jeanie Deans’ Audience with Argyle, and then with the Queen. There I stop with the Book. Oh, how refreshing is the leisurely, easy, movement of the Story, with its true, and well-harmonized Variety of Scene and Character! There is of course a Bore—Saddletree—as in Shakespeare. I presume to think—as in Cervantes—as in Life itself: somewhat too much of him in Scott, perhaps. But when the fuliginous and Spasmodic Carlyleand Co. talk of Scott’s delineating his Characters from without to within[131a]—why, he seems to have had a pretty good Staple of the inner Man of David, and Jeanie Deans, on beginning his Story; as of the Antiquary, Dalgetty, the Ashtons, and a lot more. I leave all but the Scotch Novels. Madge has a little—a wee bit—theatrical about her: but I think her to be paired off with Ophelia, and worth all Miss Austen’s Drawing-room Respectabilities put together. It is pretty what Barry Cornwall says on meeting Scott among other Authors at Rogers’: ‘I do not think any one envied him any more than one envies Kings.’[131b]You have done him honour in your Gossip: as one ought to do in these latter Days.
So this will be my last letter to you till you write me from Switzerland: where I wish you to be as soon as possible. And am yours always and sincerely
E. F.G.
A Letter from Donne speaks cheerfully. And Charles to be married again! It may be best for him.
31,Great George Street, S.W.Feb.20, 1878.
Dear Edward FitzGerald,
I have sent your book (‘Mrs. Kemble’s Autobiography’) as far as Bealings by a safe convoy, and my cousin, Elizabeth Phillips, who is staying there, will ultimately convey it to its destination at your house.
It afforded Charlotte [wife] and myself several evenings of very agreeable reading, and we certainly were impressed most favourably with new views as to the qualities of heart and head of the writer. Some observations were far beyond what her years would have led one to expect. I think some letters to her friend ‘S.’ on the strange fancy which hurried off her brother from taking orders, to fighting Spanish quarrels, are very remarkable for their good sense, as well as warm feeling. Her energy too in accepting her profession at the age of twenty as a means of assisting her father to overcome his difficulties is indicative of the best form of genius—steady determination to an end.
Curiously enough, whilst reading the book, we met Mrs. Gordon (a daughter of Mrs. Sartoris) and her husband at Malkin’s at dinner, and I had the pleasure of sitting next to her. The durability of type in theKemble face might be a matter for observation with physiologists, and from the little I saw of her I should think the lady worthy of the family.
If the book be issued in a reprint a few omissions might be well. I fear we lost however by some lacunæ which you had caused by covering up a page or two.
Charlotte unites with me in kindest regards to yourself
Yours very sincerely,Hatherley.
E. FitzGerald,Esq.
I send this to you, dear Mrs. Kemble, not because the writer is a Lord—Ex-Chancellor—but a very good, amiable, and judicious man. I should have sent you any other such testimony, had not all but this been oral, only this one took away the Book, and thus returns it. I had forgot to ask about the Book; oh, make Bentley do it; if any other English Publisher should meditate doing so, he surely will apprise you; and you can have some Voice in it.
Ever yoursE. F.G.
No need to return, or acknowledge, the Letter.
Little Grange:Woodbridge.February22, [1878.]
My dear Lady,
I am calling on you earlier than usual, I think. In my ‘Academy’[134a]I saw mention of some Notes on Mrs. Siddons in some article of this month’s ‘Fortnightly’[134b]—as I thought. So I bought the Number, but can find no Siddons there. You probably know about it; and will tell me?
If you have not already read—buyKeats’ Love-Letters to Fanny Brawne. One wishes she had another name; and had left some other Likeness of herself than the Silhouette (cut out by Scissors, I fancy) which dashes one’s notion of such a Poet’s worship. But one knows what misrepresentations such Scissors make. I had—perhaps have—one of Alfred Tennyson, done by an Artist on a Steamboat—some thirty years ago; which, though not inaccurate of outline, gave one the idea of a respectable Apprentice.[134c]But Keats’ Letters—It happened that,just before they reached me, I had been hammering out some admirable Notes on Catullus[135a]—another such fiery Soul who perished about thirty years of age two thousand years ago; and I scarce felt a change from one to other.[135b]From Catullus’ better parts, I mean; for there is too much of filthy and odious—both of Love and Hate. Oh, my dear Virgil never fell into that: he was fit to be Dante’s companion beyond even Purgatory.
I have just had a nice letter from Mr. Norton in America: an amiable, modest man surely he must be. His aged Mother has been ill: fallen indeed into some half-paralysis: affecting her Speech principally. He says nothing of Mr. Lowell; to whom I would write if I did not suppose he was very busy with his Diplomacy, and his Books, in Spain. I hope he will give us a Cervantes, in addition to the Studies in his ‘Among my Books,’ which seem to me, on the whole, the most conclusive Criticisms we have on their several subjects.
Do you ever see Mrs. Ritchie? Fred. Tennyson wrote me that Alfred’s son (Lionel, the younger, I suppose) was to be married in Westminster Abbey: which Fred, thinks an ambitious flight of Mrs. A. T.
I may as well stop in such Gossip. Snowdrops and Crocuses out: I have not many, for what I had have been buried under an overcoat of Clay, poorlittle Souls. Thrushes tuning up; and I hope my old Blackbirds have not forsaken me, or fallen a prey to Cats.
And I am ever yoursE. F.G.
The Old (Curiosity) Shop.Woodbridge,April16, [1878.]
[Where, by the by, I heard the Nightingale for the first time yesterday Morning. That is, I believe, almost its exact date of return, wind and weather permitting. Which being premised—]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
I think it is about the time for you to have a letter from me; for I think I am nearly as punctual as the Nightingale, though at quicker Intervals; and perhaps there may be other points of Unlikeness. After hearing that first Nightingale in my Garden, I found a long, kind, and pleasant, Letter from Mr. Lowell in Madrid: the first of him too that I have heard since he flew thither. Just before he wrote, he says, he had been assigning Damages to some American who complained of having been fed too long on Turtle’s Eggs[136]:—and all that sort of Business, says the Minister, does not inspire a man to Letter-writing. He is acclimatizing himself to Cervantes, aboutwhom he must write one of his fine, and (as I think) final Essays: I mean such as (in the case of others he has done) ought to leave no room for a reversal of Judgment. Amid the multitude of Essays, Reviews, etc., one still wantsthat: and I think Lowell does it more than any other Englishman. He says he meets Velasquez at every turn of the street; and Murillo’s Santa Anna opens his door for him. Things are different here: but when my Oracle last night was reading to me of Dandie Dinmont’s blessed visit to Bertram in Portanferry Gaol, I said—‘I know it’s Dandie, and I shouldn’t be at all surprized to see him come into this room.’ No—no more than—Madame de Sévigné! I suppose it is scarce right to live so among Shadows; but—after near seventy years so passed—‘Que voulez-vous?’
Still, if any Reality would—of its own Volition—draw near to my still quite substantial Self; I say that my House (if the Spring do not prove unkindly) will be ready to receive—and the owner also—any time before June, and after July; that is, before Mrs. Kemble goes to the Mountains, and after she returns from them. I dare say no more, after so much so often said, and all about oneself.
Yesterday the Nightingale; and To-day a small, still, Rain which we had hoped for, to make ‘poindre’ the Flower-seeds we put in Earth last Saturday. All Sunday my white Pigeons were employed in confiscating the Sweet Peas we had laid there; so that To-day we have to sow the same anew.
I think a Memoir of Alfred de Musset, by his Brother, well worth reading.[138a]I don’t say the best, but only to myself the most acceptable of modern French Poets; and, as I judge, a fine fellow—of the moral French type (I suppose some of the Shadow is left out of the Sketch), but of a Soul quite abhorrent from modern French Literature—from V. Hugo (I think) to E. Sue (I am sure). He loves to read—Clarissa! which reminded me of Tennyson, some forty years ago, saying to meà proposof that very book, ‘I love those large,still, Books.’ During a long Illness of A. de M. a Sister of the Bon Secours attended him: and, when she left, gave him a Pen worked in coloured Silks, ‘Pensez à vos promesses,’ as also a little ‘amphore’ she had knitted. Seventeen years (I think) after, when his last Illness came on him, he desired these two things to be enclosed in his Coffin.[138b]
And I am ever yoursE. F.G.
Dunwich:August24, [1878.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
I forget if I wrote to you from this solitary Seaside, last year: telling you of its old Priory walls, etc. I think you must have been in Switzerland when Iwas here; however, I’ll not tell you the little there is to tell about it now; for, beside that I may have told it all before, this little lodging furnishes only a steel pen, and very diluted ink (as you see), and so, for your own sake, I will be brief. Indeed, my chief object in writing at all, is, to ask when you go abroad, and how you have done at Malvern since last I heard from you—now a month ago, I think.
About the beginning of next week I shall be leaving this place—for good, I suppose—for the two friends—Man and Wife—who form my Company here, living a long musket shot off, go away—he in broken health—and would leave the place too solitary without them. So I suppose I shall decamp along with them; and, after some time spent at Lowestoft, find my way back to Woodbridge—in time to see the End of the Flowers, and to prepare what is to be done in that way for another Year.
And to Woodbridge your Answer may be directed, if this poor Letter of mine reaches you, and you should care to answer it—as you will—oh yes, you will—were it much less significant.
I have been rather at a loss for Books while here, Mudie having sent me a lot I did not care for—not even for Lady Chatterton. Aldis Wright gave me his Edition of Coriolanus to read; and I did not think ‘pow wow’ of it, as Volumnia says. All the people were talking about me.
And I am ever yours trulyE. F.G.
Woodbridge:April3/79.
My dear Mrs. Kemble:—
I know well how exact you are in answering Letters; and I was afraid that you must be in some trouble, for yourself, or others, when I got no reply to a second Letter I wrote you addressed to Baltimore Hotel, Leamington—oh, two months ago. When you last wrote to me, you were there, with a Cough, which you were just going to take with you to Guy’s Cliff. That I thought not very prudent, in the weather we then had. Then I was told by some one, in a letter (not from any Donne, I think—no, Annie Ritchie, I believe) that Mrs. Sartoris was very ill; and so between two probable troubles, I would not trouble you as yet again. I had to go to London for a day three weeks ago (to see a poor fellow dying, sooner or later, of Brain disease), and I ferreted out Mowbray Donne from Somerset House and he told me you were in London, still ill of a Cough; but not your Address. So I wrote to his Wife a few days ago to learn it; and I shall address this Letter accordingly. Mrs. Mowbray writes that you are better, but obliged to take care of yourself. I can only say ‘do not trouble yourself to write’—but I suppose you will—perhaps the more if it be a trouble. See what an Opinion I have of you!—If you write,pray tell me of Mrs. Sartoris—and do not forget yourself.
It has been such a mortal Winter among those I know, or know of, as I never remember. I have not suffered myself, further than, I think, feeling a few stronger hints of a constitutional sort, which are, I suppose, to assert themselves ever more till they do for me. And that, I suppose, cannot be long adoing. I entered on my 71st year last Monday, March 31.
My elder—and now only—Brother, John, has been shut up with Doctor and Nurse these two months—Æt. 76; his Wife Æt. 80 all but dead awhile ago, now sufficiently recovered to keep her room in tolerable ease: I do not know if my Brother will ever leave his house.
Oh dear! Here is enough of Mortality.
I see your capital Book is in its third Edition, as well it deserves to be. Iseeno one with whom to talk about it, except one brave Woman who comes over here at rare intervals—she had read my Atlantic Copy, but must get Bentley’s directly it appeared, and she (a woman of remarkably strong and independent Judgment) loves it all—not (as some you know) wishing some of it away. No; she says she wants all to complete her notion of the writer. Nor have Iheardof any one who thinks otherwise: so ‘some people’ may be wrong. I know you do not care about all this.
I am getting my ‘Tales of the Hall’ printed, and shall one day ask you, and three or four beside,whether it had better be published. I think you, and those three or four others, will like it; but they may also judge that indifferent readers might not. And that you will all of you have to tell me when the thing is done. I shall not be in the least disappointed if you tell me to keep it among ‘ourselves,’ so long as ‘ourselves’ are pleased; for I know well that Publication would not carry it much further abroad; and I am very well content to pay my money for the little work which I have long meditated doing. I shall have done ‘my little owl.’ Do you know what that means?—No. Well then; my Grandfather had several Parrots of different sorts and Talents: one of them (‘Billy,’ I think) could only huff up his feathers in what my Grandfather called an owl fashion; so when Company were praising the more gifted Parrots, he would say—‘You will hurt poor Billy’s feelings—Come! Do your little owl, my dear!’—You are to imagine a handsome, hair-powdered, Gentleman doing this—and his Daughter—my Mother—telling of it.
And so it is I do my little owl.
This little folly takes a long bit of my Letter paper—and I do not know that you will see any fun in it. Like my Book, it would not tell in Public.
Spedding reads my proofs—for, though I have confidence in my Selection of the Verse (owl), I have but little in my interpolated Prose, which I make obscure in trying to make short. Speddingoccasionally marks a blunder; but (confound him!) generally leaves me to correct it.
Come—here is more than enough of my little owl. At night we read Sir Walter for an Hour (Montrose just now) by way of ‘Play’—then ‘ten minutes’ refreshment allowed’—and the Curtain rises on Dickens (Copperfield now) which sends me gaily to bed—after one Pipe of solitary Meditation—in which the—‘little owl,’ etc.
By the way, in talking of Plays—after sitting with my poor friend and his brave little Wife till it was time for him to turn bedward—I looked in at the famous Lyceum Hamlet; and soon had looked, and heard enough. It was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to ‘Something too much of this,’ I called out from the Pit door where I stood, ‘A good deal too much,’ and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long—and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. You know you are not bound to repay it in length, even if you answer it at all; which I again vainly ask you not to do if a bore.
I hear from Mrs. Mowbray that our dear Donne is but ‘pretty well’; and I am still yours
E. F.G.
Woodbridge:April25, [1879.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
I think I have let sufficient time elapse before asking you for another Letter. I want to know how you are: and, if you can tell me that you are as well as you and I now expect to be—anyhow, well rid of that Whooping Cough—that will be news enough for one Letter. What else, you shall add of your own free will:—not feeling bound.
When you last wrote me from Leamington, you crossed over your Address: and I (thinking perhaps of America) deciphered it ‘Baltimore.’ I wonder the P. O. did not return me my Letter: but there was no Treason in it, I dare say.
My Brother keeps waiting—and hoping—for—Death: which will not come: perhaps Providence would have let it come sooner, were he not rich enough to keep a Doctor in the house, to keep him in Misery. I don’t know if I told you in my last that he was ill; seized on by a Disease not uncommon to old Men—an ‘internal Disorder’ it is polite to say; but I shall say to you, disease of the Bladder. I had always supposed he would be found dead one good morning, as my Mother was—as I hoped to be—quietly dead of the Heart which he had felt for several Years. But no; it is seen good that he shall be laid on the Rack—which he mayfeel the more keenly as he never suffered Pain before, and is not of a strong Nerve. I will say no more of this. The funeral Bell, which has been at work, as I never remember before, all this winter, is even now, as I write, tolling from St. Mary’s Steeple.
‘Parlons d’autres choses,’ as my dear Sévigné says.
I—We—have finished all Sir Walter’s Scotch Novels; and I thought I would try an English one: Kenilworth—a wonderful Drama, which Theatre, Opera, and Ballet (as I once saw it represented) may well reproduce. The Scene at Greenwich, where Elizabeth ‘interviews’ Sussex and Leicester, seemed to me as fine as what is called (I am told, wrongly) Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.[145]Of course, plenty of melodrama in most other parts:—but the Plot wonderful.
Then—after Sir Walter—Dickens’ Copperfield, which came to an end last night because I would not let my Reader read the last Chapter. What a touch when Peggotty—the man—at last finds the lost Girl, and—throws a handkerchief over her face when he takes her to his arms—never to leave her! I maintain it—a little Shakespeare—a Cockney Shakespeare, if you will: but as distinct, if not so great, a piece of pure Genius as was born in Stratford. Oh, I am quite sure of that, had I to choose but one of them, I would choose Dickens’ hundred delightful Caricatures rather than Thackeray’s half-dozen terrible Photographs.
In Michael Kelly’s Reminiscences[146](quite worth reading about Sheridan) I found that, on January 22, 1802, was produced at Drury Lane an Afterpiece calledUrania, by the Honourable W. Spencer, in which ‘the scene of Urania’s descent was entirely new to the stage, and produced an extraordinary effect.’ Hence then the Picture which my poor Brother sent you to America.
‘D’autres choses encore.’ You may judge, I suppose, by the N.E. wind in London what it has been hereabout. Scarce a tinge of Green on the hedgerows; scarce a Bird singing (only once the Nightingale, with broken Voice), and no flowers in the Garden but the brave old Daffydowndilly, and Hyacinth—which I scarce knew was so hardy. I am quite pleased to find how comfortably they do in my Garden, and look so Chinese gay. Two of my dear Blackbirds have I found dead—of Cold and Hunger, I suppose; but one is even now singing—across that Funeral Bell. This is so, as I write, and tell you—Well: we have Sunshine at last—for a day—‘thankful for small Blessings,’ etc.
I think I have felt a little sadder since March 31 that shut my seventieth Year behind me, while my Brother was—in some such way as I shall be if I live two or three years longer—‘Parlons d’autres’—that I am still able to be sincerely yours
E. F.G.
Woodbridge:May18, [1879.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
By this Post you ought to receive my Crabbe Book, about which I want your Opinion—not as to your own liking, which I doubt not will be more than it deserves: but about whether it is best confined to Friends, who will like it, as you do, more or less out of private prejudice—Two points in particular I want you to tell me;
(1) Whether the Stories generally seem to you to be curtailed so much that they do not leave any such impression as in the Original. That is too long and tiresome; but (as in Richardson) its very length serves to impress it on the mind:—My Abstract is, I doubt not, more readable: but, on that account partly, leaving but a wrack behind. What I have done indeed is little else than one of the old Review Articles, which gave a sketch of the work, and let the author fill in with his better work.
Well then I want to know—(2) if you find the present tense of my Prose Narrative discordant with the past tense of the text. I adopted it partly by way of further discriminating the two: but I may have misjudged: Tell me: as well as any other points that strike you. You can tell me if youwill—and I wish you would—whether I had better keep the littleOpusto ourselves or let it take its chance of getting a few readers in public. You may tell me this very plainly, I am sure; and I shall be quite as well pleased to keep it unpublished. It is only a very, very, little Job, you see: requiring only a little Taste, and Tact: and if they have failed me—Voilà! I had some pleasure in doing my little work very dexterously, I thought; and I did wish to draw a few readers to one of my favourite Books which nobody reads. And, now that I look over it, I fancy that I may have missed my aim—only that my Friends will like, etc. Then, I should have to put some Preface to the Public: and explain how many omissions, and some transpositions, have occasioned the change here and there of some initial particle where two originally separated paragraphs are united; some use made of Crabbe’s original MS. (quoted in the Son’s Edition;) and all such confession to no good, either for my Author or me. I wish you could have just picked up the Book at a Railway Stall, knowing nothing of your old Friend’s hand in it. But that cannot be; tell me then, divesting yourself of all personal Regard: and you may depend upon it you will—save me some further bother, if you bid me let publishing alone. I don’t even know of a Publisher: and won’t have a favour done me by ‘ere a one of them,’ as Paddies say. This is a terrible Much Ado about next to Nothing. ‘Parlons,’ etc.
Blanche Donne wrote me you had been calling in Weymouth Street: that you had been into Hampshire, and found Mrs. Sartoris better—Dear Donne seems to have been pleased and mended by his Children coming about him. I say but little of my Brother’s Death.[149]We were very good friends, of very different ways of thinking; I had not been within side his lawn gates (three miles off) these dozen years (no fault of his), and I did not enter them at his Funeral—which you will very likely—and properly—think wrong. He had suffered considerably for some weeks: but, as he became weaker, and (I suppose) some narcotic Medicine—O blessed Narcotic!—soothed his pains, he became dozily happy. The Day before he died, he opened his Bed-Clothes, as if it might be his Carriage Door, and said to his Servant ‘Come—Come inside—I am going to meet them.’
Voilà une petite Histoire. Et voilà bien assez de mes Egoïsmes. Adieu, Madame; dites-moi tout franchement votre opinion sur ce petit Livre; ah! vous n’en pouvez parler autrement qu’avec toute franchise—et croyez moi, tout aussi franchement aussi,
Votre ami dévouéE. F.G.
Woodbridge:May22, [1879.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
I must thank you for your letter; I was, beforehand, much of your Opinion; and, unless I hear very different advice from the two others whom I have consulted—Spedding, the All-wise—(I mean that), and Aldis Wright, experienced in the Booksellers’ world, I shall very gladly abide by your counsel—and my own. You (I do believe) and a few friends who already know Crabbe, will not be the worse for this ‘Handybook’ of one of his most diffuse, but (to me) most agreeable, Books. That name (Handybook), indeed, I had rather thought of calling the Book, rather than ‘Readings’—which suggests readings aloud, whether private or public—neither of which I intended—simply, Readings to oneself. I, who am a poor reader in any way, have found it all but impossible to read Crabbe to anybody. So much for that—except that, the Portrait I had prepared by way of frontispiece turns out to be an utter failure, and that is another satisfactory reason for not publishing. For I particularly wanted this Portrait, copied from a Picture by Pickersgill which was painted in 1817, when these Tales were a-writing, to correct the Phillips Portrait done in the same year, and showing Crabbe with his company Look—notinsincere at all—but not at all representing thewriter. When Tennyson saw Laurence’s Copy of this Pickersgill—here, at my house here—he said—‘There I recognise the Man.’
If you were not the truly sincere woman you are, I should have thought that you threw in those good words about my other little Works by way of salve for yourdictumon this Crabbe. But I know it is not so. I cannot think what ‘rebuke’ I gave you to ‘smart under’ as you say.[151a]
If you have never read Charles Tennyson (Turner’s) Sonnets, I should like to send them to you to read. They are not to be got now: and I have entreated Spedding to republish them with Macmillan, with such a preface of his own—congenial Critic and Poet—as would discover these Violets now modestly hidden under the rank Vegetation of Browning, Swinburne, and Co. Some of these Sonnets have a Shakespeare fancy in them:—some rather puerile—but the greater part of them, pure, delicate, beautiful, and quite original.[151b]I told Mr. Norton (America) to get them published over the water if no one will do so here.
Little did I think that I should ever come to relish—old Sam Rogers! But on taking him up the other day (with Stothard’s Designs, to be sure!) I founda sort of Repose from the hatchet-work School, of which I read in the Athenæum.
I like, you know, a good Murder; but in its place—
‘The charge is prepared; the Lawyers are met—The Judges all ranged, a terrible Show’[152]—
‘The charge is prepared; the Lawyers are met—The Judges all ranged, a terrible Show’[152]—
only the other night I could not help reverting to that sublime—yes!—of Thurtell, sending for his accomplice Hunt, who had saved himself by denouncing Thurtell—sending for him to pass the night before Execution with perfect Forgiveness—Handshaking—and ‘God bless you—God bless you—you couldn’t help it—I hope you’ll live to be a good man.’
You accept—and answer—my Letters very kindly: but this—pray do think—is an answer—verily by return of Post—to yours.
Here is Summer! The leaves suddenly shaken out like flags. I am preparing for Nieces, and perhaps for my Sister Andalusia—who used to visit my Brother yearly.
Your sincere AncientE. F.G.
Woodbridge:August4, [1879].
My dear Mrs. Kemble:
Two or three days, I think, after receiving your last letter, I posted an answer addrest to the PosteRestante of—Lucerne, was it?—anyhow, the town whose name you gave me, and no more. Now, I will venture through Coutts, unwilling as I am to trouble their Highnesses—with whom my Family have banked for three—if not four—Generations. Otherwise, I do not think they would be troubled with my Accounts, which they attend to as punctually as if I were ‘my Lord;’ and I am now their last Customer of my family, I believe, though I doubt not they have several Dozens of my Name in their Books—for Better or Worse.
What now spurs me to write is—an Article[153]I have seen in a Number of Macmillan for February, with very honourable mention of your Brother John in an Introductory Lecture on Anglo Saxon, by Professor Skeat. If you have not seen this ‘Hurticle’ (as Thackeray used to say) I should like to send it to you; and will so do, if you will but let me know where it may find you.
I have not been away from this place save for a Day or two since last you heard from me. In a fortnight I may be going to Lowestoft along with my friends the Cowells.
I take great Pleasure in Hawthorne’s Journals—English, French, and Italian—though I cannot read his Novels. They are too thickly detailed for me: and of unpleasant matter too. We of the Old World beat the New, I think, in a more easy manner;though Browning & Co. do not bear me out there. And I am sincerely yours
E. F.G.
Lowestoft,Septr.l8, [1879.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
Your last letter told me that you were to be back in England by the middle of this month. So I write some lines to ask if youareback, and where to be found. To be sure, I can learn that much from some Donne: to the Father of whom I must commit this letter for any further Direction. But I will also say a little—very little having to say—beyond asking you how you are, and in what Spirits after the great Loss you have endured.[154]
Of that Loss I heard from Blanche Donne—some while, it appears, before you heard of it yourself. I cannot say that it was surprising, however sad, considering the terrible Illness she had some fifteen years ago. I will say no more of it, nor of her, of whom I could say so much; but nothing that would not be more than superfluous to you.
It did so happen, that, the day before I heard of her Death, I had thought to myself that I would send her my Crabbe, as to my other friends, and wonderedthat I had not done so before. I should have sent off the Volume for Donne to transmit when—Blanche’s Note came.
After writing of this, I do not think I should add much more, had I much else to write about. I will just say that I came to this place five weeks ago to keep company with my friend Edward Cowell, the Professor; we read Don Quixote together in a morning and chatted for two or three hours of an evening; and now he is gone away to Cambridge and [has] left me to my Nephews and Nieces here. By the month’s end I shall be home at Woodbridge, whither any Letter you may please to write me may be addressed.
I try what I am told are the best Novels of some years back, but find I cannot read any but Trollope’s. So now have recourse to Forster’s Life of Dickens—a very good Book, I still think. Also, Eckermann’s Goethe—almost as repeatedly to be read as Boswell’s Johnson—a German Johnson—and (as with Boswell) more interesting to me in Eckermann’s Diary than in all his own famous works.
Adieu: Ever yours sincerelyE. F.G.
I am daily—hourly—expecting to hear of the Death of another Friend[155]—not so old a Friend, but yet a great loss to me.
11Marine Terrace,Lowestoft,Septr.24, [1879 ]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
I was to have been at Woodbridge before this: and your Letter only reached me here yesterday. I have thought upon your desire to see me as an old Friend of yourself and yours; and you shall not have the trouble of saying so in vain. I should indeed be perplext at the idea of your coming all this way for such a purpose, to be shut up at an Hotel with no one to look in on you but myself (for you would not care for my Kindred here)—and my own Woodbridge House would require a little time to set in order, as I have for the present lost the services of one of my ‘helps’ there. What do you say to my going to London to see you instead of your coming down to see me? I should anyhow have to go to London soon; and I could make my going sooner, or as soon as you please. Not but, if you want to get out of London, as well as to see me, I can surely get my house right in a little time, and will gladly do so, should you prefer it. I hope, indeed, that you will not stay in London at this time of year, when so many friends are out of it; and it has been my thought—and hope, I may say—that you have already betaken yourself to some pleasant place,with a pleasant Friend or two, which now keeps me from going at once to look for you in London, after a few Adieus here. Pray let me know your wishes by return of Post: and I will do my best to meet them immediately: being
Ever sincerely yoursE. F.G.
Woodbridge:Sept.28, [1879.]
Dear Mrs. Kemble:—
I cannot be sure of your Address: but I venture a note—to say that—If you return to London on Wednesday, I shall certainly run up (the same day, if I can) to see you before you again depart on Saturday, as your letter proposes.[157]
But I also write to beg you not to leave your Daughter for ever so short a while, simply because you had so arranged, and told me of your Arrangement.
If this Note of mine reach you somehow to morrow, there will be plenty of time for you to let me know whether you go or not: and, even if there be not time before Wednesday, why, I shall take no harm in so far as I really have a very little to do, and moreover shall see a poor Lady who has just lost her husband, after nearly three years anxious and uncertain watching, and now finds herself (brave and strong little Woman) somewhat floored now the long conflict is over. These are the people I may have told you of whom I have for some years met here and there in Suffolk—chiefly by the Sea; and we somehow suited one another.[158]He was a brave, generous, Boy (of sixty) with a fine Understanding, and great Knowledge and Relish of Books: but he had applied too late in Life to Painting which he could not master, though he made it his Profession. A remarkable mistake, I always thought, in so sensible a man.
Whether I find you next week, or afterward (for I promise to find you any time you appoint) I hope to find you alone—for twenty years’ Solitude make me very shy: but always your sincere
E. F.G.
Little Grange:Woodbridge.October7, [1879]
Dear Mrs. Kemble,
When I got home yesterday, and emptied my Pockets, I found the precious Enclosure which I had meant to show, and (if you pleased) to give you. A wretched Sketch (whether by me or another, I know not) of your Brother John in some Cambridge Room, about the year 1832-3, when he and I were staying there, long after Degree time—he, studying Anglo-Saxon, I suppose—reading something, you see, with a glass of Ale on the table—or old Piano-forte was it?—to which he would sing very well his German Songs. Among them,
Music Score
Do you remember? I afterwards associated it with some stray verses applicable to one I loved.
‘Heav’n would answer all your wishes,Were it much as Earth is here;Flowing Rivers full of Fishes,And good Hunting half the Year.’
‘Heav’n would answer all your wishes,Were it much as Earth is here;Flowing Rivers full of Fishes,And good Hunting half the Year.’
Well:—here is the cause of this Letter, so soon after our conversing together, face to face, in Queen Anne’sMansions. A strange little After-piece to twenty years’ Separation.
And now, here are the Sweet Peas, and Marigolds, sown in the Spring, still in a faded Blossom, and the Spirit that Tennyson told us of fifty years ago haunting the Flower-beds,[160]and a Robin singing—nobody else.
And I am to lose my capital Reader, he tells me, in a Fortnight, no Book-binding surviving under the pressure of Bad Times in little Woodbridge. ‘My dear Fitz, there is no Future for little Country towns,’ said Pollock to me when he came here some years ago.
But my Banker here found the Bond which he had considered unnecessary, safe in his Strong Box:—and I am your sincere Ancient
E. F.G.
Burn the poor Caricature if offensive to you. The ‘Alexander’ profile was become somewhat tarnished then.
Woodbridge:Oct.27, [1879.]
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
I am glad to think that my Regard for you and yours, which I know to be sincere, is of some pleasure to you. Till I met you last in London, Ithought you had troops of Friends at call; I had not reflected that by far the greater number of them could not be Old Friends; and those you cling to, I feel, with constancy.
I and my company (viz. Crabbe, etc.) could divert you but little until your mind is at rest about Mrs. Leigh. I shall not even now write more than to say that a Letter from Mowbray, which tells of the kind way you received him and his Brother, says also that his Father is well, and expects Valentia and Spouse in November.
This is all I will write. You will let me know by a line, I think, when that which you wait for has come to pass. A Post Card with a few words on it will suffice.
You cross over your Address (as usual) but I do my best to find you.
Ever yoursE. F.G.
Woodbridge:Octr.[?Nov.] 4/79.
My dear Lady:—
I need not tell you that I am very glad of the news your note of Sunday tells me: and I take it as a pledge of old Regard that you told it me so soon: even but an hour after that other Kemble was born.[161]
I know not if the short letter which I addressed to 4 Everton Place, Leamington (as I read it in your former Letter), reached you. Whatever the place be called, I expect you are still there; and there will be for some time longer. As there may be some anxiety for some little time, I shall not enlarge as usual on other matters; if I do not hear from you, I shall conclude that all is going on well, and shall write again. Meanwhile, I address this Letter to London, you see, to make sure of you this time: and am ever yours sincerely
E. F.G.
By the by, I think the time is come when, if you like me well enough, you may drop my long Surname, except for the external Address of your letter. It may seem, but is not, affectation to say that it is a name I dislike;[162]for one reason, it has really caused me some confusion and trouble with other more or less Irish bodies, being as common in Ireland as ‘Smith,’ etc., here—and particularly with ‘Edward’—I suppose because of the patriot Lord who bore [it]. I should not, even if I made bold to wish so to do, propose to treat you in the same fashion; inasmuch as I like your Kemble name, which has become as it were classical in England.
Woodbridge:Nov.13/79.
My dear Lady,
Now that your anxieties are, as I hope, over, and that you are returned, as I suppose, to London, I send you a budget. First: the famousBelvidere Hat; which I think you ought to stick into your Records.[163a]Were I a dozen years younger, I should illustrate all the Book in such a way; but, as my French song says, ‘Le Temps est trop court pour de si longs projets.’
Next, you behold a Photo of Carlyle’s Niece, which he bid her send me two or three years ago in one of her half-yearly replies to my Enquiries. What a shrewd, tidy, little Scotch Body! Then you have her last letter, telling of her Uncle, and her married Self, and thanking me for a little Wedding gift which I told her was bought from an Ipswich Pawnbroker[163b]—a very good, clever fellow, who reads Carlyle, and comes over here now and then for a talk with me. Mind, when you return me the Photo, that you secureit around with your Letter paper, that the Postman may not stamp into it. Perhaps this trouble is scarce worth giving you.
‘Clerke Sanders’ has been familiar to me these fifty years almost; since Tennyson used to repeat it, and ‘Helen of Kirkconnel,’ at some Cambridge gathering. At that time he looked something like the Hyperion shorn of his Beams in Keats’ Poem: with a Pipe in his mouth. Afterwards he got a touch, I used to say, of Haydon’s Lazarus. Talking of Keats, do not forget to read Lord Houghton’s Life and Letters of him: in which you will find what you may not have guessed from his Poetry (though almost unfathomably deep in that also) the strong, masculine, Sense and Humour, etc., of the man more akin to Shakespeare, I am tempted to think, in a perfect circle of Poetic Faculties, than any Poet since.
Well: the Leaves which hung on more bravely than ever I remember are at last whirling away in a Cromwell Hurricane—(not quite that, neither)—and my old Man says he thinks Winter has set in at last. We cannot complain hitherto. Many summer flowers held out in my Garden till a week ago, when we dug up the Beds in order for next year. So now little but the orange Marigold, which I love for its colour (Irish and Spanish) and Courage, in living all Winter through. Within doors, I am again at my everlasting Crabbe! doctoring his Posthumous Talesà la modeof those of ‘The Hall,’ to finish a Volume of simple‘Selections’ from his other works: all which I will leave to be used, or not, whenever old Crabbe rises up again: which will not be in the Lifetime of yours ever
E. F.G.
I dared not decypher all that Mrs. Wister wrote in my behalf—because I knew it must be sincere! Would she care for my Eternal Crabbe?
[Nov.1879.]
My dear Lady,
I must say a word upon a word in your last which really pains me—about yours and Mrs. Wister’s sincerity, etc. Why, I do most thoroughly believe in both; all I meant was that, partly from your own old personal regard for me, and hers, perhaps inherited from you, you may both very sincerely over-rate my little dealings with other great men’s thoughts. For you know full well that the best Head may be warped by as good a Heart beating under it; and one loves the Head and Heart all the more for it. Now all this is all so known to you that I am vexed you will not at once apply it to what I may have said. I do think that I have had to say something of the same sort before now; and I do declare I will not say itagain, for it is simply odious, all this talking of oneself.
Yet one thing more. I did go to London on this last occasion purposely to see you at that particular time: for I had not expected Mrs. Edwards to be in London till a Fortnight afterward, until two or three days after I had arranged to go and meet you the very day you arrived, inasmuch as you had told me you were to be but a few days in Town.
There—there! Only believe me; my sincerity, Madam; and—Voilà ce qui est fait.Parlons, etc.
Well: Mrs. Edwards has opened an Exhibition of her husband’s works in Bond Street—contrary to my advice—and, it appears, rightly contrary: for over £300 of them were sold on the first private View day,[166]and Tom Taylor, the great Art Critic (who neither by Nature nor Education can be such, ‘cleverest man in London,’ as Tennyson once said he was), has promised a laudatory notice in the omnipotent Times, and then People will flock in like Sheep. And I am very glad to be proved a Fool in the matter, though I hold my own opinion still of the merit of the Picture part of the Show. Enough! as we Tragic Writers say: it is such a morning as I would not have sacrificed indoors or in letter-writing to any one but yourself, and on the subject named.
BELIEVE ME YOURS SINCERELY.
Woodbridge:Decr.10, [1879.]
My dear Lady,
Pray let me know how you have fared thus far through Winter—which began so early, and promises to continue so long. Even in Jersey Fred. Tennyson writes me it is all Snow and N.E. wind: and he says the North of Italy is blocked up with Snow. You may imagine that we are no better off in the East of England. How is it in London, and with yourself in Queen Anne’s Mansions? I fancy that you walk up and down that ante-room of yours for a regular time, as I force myself to do on a Landing-place in this house when I cannot get out upon what I call my Quarter-deck: a walk along a hedge by the upper part of a field which ‘dominates’ (as the phrase now goes) over my House and Garden. But I have for the last Fortnight had Lumbago, which makes it much easier to sit down than to get up again. However, the time goes, and I am surprised to find Sunday come round again. (Here is my funny little Reader come—to give me ‘All the Year Round’ and Sam Slick.)
Friday.
I suppose I should have finished this Letter in the way it begins, but by this noon’s post comes a note from my Brother-in-law, De Soyres, telling me thathis wife Andalusia died yesterday.[168]She had somewhile suffered with a weak Heart, and this sudden and extreme cold paralysed what vitality it had. But yesterday I had posted her a Letter re-enclosing two Photographs of her Grand Children whom she was very fond and proud of; and that Letter is too late, you see. Now, none but Jane Wilkinson and E. F.G. remain of the many more that you remember, and always looked on with kindly regard. This news cuts my Letter shorter than it would have been; nevertheless pray let me know how you yourself are: and believe me yours
Ever and truly,E. F.G.
I have had no thought of going to London yet: but I shall never go in future without paying a Visit to you, if you like it. I know not how Mrs. Edwards’ Exhibition of her Husband’s Pictures succeeds: I begged her to leave such a scheme alone; I cannot admire his Pictures now he is gone more than I did when he was here; but I hope that others will prove me to be a bad adviser.
Woodbridge:Jan.8/80.
My dear Mrs. Kemble,
I think sufficient time has elapsed since my last letter to justify my writing you another, which, youknow, means calling on you to reply. When last you wrote, you were all in Flannel; pray let me hear you now are. Certainly, we are better off in weather than a month ago: but I fancy these Fogs must have been dismal enough in London. A Letter which I have this morning from a Niece in Florence tells me they have had ‘London Fog’ (she says) for a Fortnight there. She says, that my sister Jane (your old Friend) is fairly well in health, but very low in Spirits after that other Sister’s Death. I will [not] say of myself that I have weathered away what Rheumatism and Lumbago I had; nearly so, however; and tramp about my Garden and Hedgerow as usual. And so I clear off Family scores on my side. Pray let me know, when you tell of yourself, how Mrs. Leigh and those on the other side of the Atlantic fare.
Poor Mrs. Edwards, I doubt, is disappointed with her Husband’s Gallery: not because of its only just repaying its expenses, except in so far as that implies that but few have been to see it. She says she feels as if she had nothing to live for, now that ‘her poor Old Dear’ is gone. One fine day she went down to Woking where he lies, and—she did not wish to come back. It was all solitary, and the grass beginning to spring, and a Blackbird or two singing. She ought, I think, to have left London, as her Doctor told her, for a total change of Scene; but she may know best, being a very clever, as well as devoted little Woman.
Well—you saw ‘The Falcon’?[169]Athenæum andAcademy reported of it much as I expected. One of them said the Story had been dramatised before: I wonder why. What reads lightly and gracefully in Boccaccio’s Prose, would surely not do well when drawn out into dramatic Detail: two People reconciled to Love over a roasted Hawk; about as unsavoury a Bird to eat as an Owl, I believe. No doubt there was a Chicken substitute at St. James’, but one had to believe it to be Hawk; and, anyhow, I have always heard that it is very difficult to eat, and talk, on the Stage—though people seem to manage it easily enough in real Life.
By way of a Christmas Card I sent Carlyle’s Niece a Postage one, directed to myself, on the back of which she might [write] a few words as to how he and herself had weathered the late Cold. She replied that he was well: had not relinquished his daily Drives: and was (when she wrote) reading Shakespeare and Boswell’s Hebrides. The mention of him reminds me of your saying—or writing—that you felt shy of ‘intruding’ yourself upon him by a Visit. My dear Mrs. Kemble, this is certainly a mistake (wilful?) of yours; he may have too many ordinary Visitors; but I am quite sure that he would be gratified at your taking the trouble to go and see him. Pray try, weather and flannel permitting.
I find some good Stuff in Bagehot’s Essays, in spite of his name, which is simply ‘Bagot,’ as men call it. Also, I find Hayward’s Select Essays so agreeable that I suppose they are very superficial.
At night comes my quaint little Reader with Chambers’ Journal, and All [the] Year Round—the latter with one of Trollope’s Stories[171]—always delightful to me, and (I am told) very superficial indeed, as compared to George Eliot, whom I cannot relish at all.
Thus much has come easily to my pen this day, and run on, you see, to the end of a second Sheet. So I will ‘shut up,’ as young Ladies now say; but am always and sincerely yours
E. F.G.