Three-mile Cross, December 4, 1848.
Dear Mr. Fields: My silence has been caused by severe illness. For
more than a twelvemonth my health has been so impaired as to leave
me a very poor creature, almost incapable of any exertion at all
times, and frequently suffering severe pain besides. So that I have
to entreat the friends who are good enough to care for me never to
be displeased if a long time elapses between my letters. My
correspondents being so numerous, and I myself so utterly alone,
without any one even to fold or seal a letter, that the very
physical part of the task sometimes becomes more fatiguing than I
can bear. I am not, generally speaking, confined to my room, or even
to the house; but the loss of power is so great that after the short
drive or shorter walk which my very skilful medical adviser orders,
I am too often compelled to retire immediately to bed, and I have
not once been well enough to go out of an evening during the year
1848. Before its expiration I shall have completed my sixty-first
year; but it is not age that has so prostrated me, but the hard work
and increasing anxiety of thirty years of authorship, during which
my poor labors were all that my dear father and mother had to look
to, besides which for the greater part of that time I was constantly
called upon to attend to the sick-bed, first of one aged parent and
then of another. Few women could stand this, and I have only to be
intensely thankful that the power of exertion did not fail until the
necessity of such exertion was removed. Now my poor life is (beyond
mere friendly feeling) of value to no one. I have, too, many
alleviations,--in the general kindness of the neighborhood, the
particular goodness of many admirable friends, the affectionate
attention of a most attached and intelligent old servant, and above
all in my continued interest in books and delight in reading. I love
poetry and people as well at sixty as I did at sixteen, and can
never be sufficiently grateful to God for having permitted me to
retain the two joy-giving faculties of admiration and sympathy, by
which we are enabled to escape from the consciousness of our own
infirmities into the great works of all ages and the joys and
sorrows of our immediate friends. Among the books which I have been
reading with the greatest interest is the Life of Dr. Channing, and
I can hardly tell you the glow of gratification with which I found
my own name mentioned, as one of the writers in whose works that
great man had taken pleasure. The approbation of Dr. Channing is
something worth toiling for. I know no individual suffrage that
could have given me more delight. Besides this selfish pleasure and
the intense interest with which I followed that admirable thinker
through the whole course of his pure and blameless life, I have
derived another and a different satisfaction from that work,--I mean
from its reception in England. I know nothing that shows a greater
improvement in liberality in the least liberal part of the English
public, a greater sweeping away of prejudice whether national or
sectarian, than the manner in which even the High Church and Tory
party have spoken of Dr. Channing. They really seem to cast aside
their usual intolerance in his case, and to look upon a Unitarian
with feelings of Christian fellowship. God grant that this spirit
may continue! Is American literature rich in native biography? Just
have the goodness to mention to me any lives of Americans, whether
illustrious or not, that are graphic, minute, and outspoken. I
delight in French memoirs and English lives, especially such as are
either autobiography or made out by diaries and letters; and
America, a young country with manners as picturesque and unhackneyed
as the scenery, ought to be full of such works. We have had two
volumes lately that will interest your countrymen: Mr. Milnes's Life
of John Keats, that wonderful youth whose early death was, I think,
the greatest loss that English poetry ever experienced. Some of the
letters are very striking as developments on character, and the
richness of diction in the poetical fragments is exquisite. Mrs.
Browning is still at Florence with her husband. She sees more
Americans than English.
Books here are sadly depreciated. Mr. Dyce's admirable edition of
Beaumont and Fletcher, brought out two years ago at £6 12_s._ is now
offered at £2 17_s._
Adieu, dear Mr. Fields; forgive my seeming neglect, and believe me
always most faithfully yours,