of Byron, and no short time after those of Shelley, had secured it. This
was by no means wholly, though it may have been to some extent
indirectly, due to the partly stupid and partly malevolent attempts to
smother his poetical reputation in its cradle. The letters were
inaccessible till the late Lord Houghton practically resuscitated Keats;
and till other persons--rather in the "Codlin not Short" manner--rushed
in to correct and supplement Mr. Milnes as he then was. And it was even
much later still before two very different editors, Sir Sidney Colvin
and the late Mr. Buxton Forman, completed, or nearly so, the
publication. Something must be said and may be touched on later in
connection with a very important division of our subject in general, as
to the publication by the last-named, of the letters to Fanny Brawne:
but nothing in detail need be written, and it is almost needless to say
that none of these letters will appear here. No one but a brute who is
also something of a fool will think any the worse of Keats for writing
them. A thought of _sunt lacrimae rerum_ is all the price that need be
paid by any one who chooses to read them, nor is it our business to
characterise at length the taste and wits of the person who could
publish them.[28]
But putting this question aside, it is unquestionable that for some
years past there has been a tendency to value the Letters as a whole
very highly. Not only has unusual critical power been claimed for Keats
on the strength of them, but general epistolary merit; and though
nobody, so far as one knows, has yet paralleled the absurdity above
mentioned in the case of Shelley, Keats has been taken by some
credit-worthy judges as an unusually strong witness to the truth of the
proposition already adopted here, that poets are good letter-writers.
He certainly is no exception to the rule; but to what exact extent he
exemplifies it may not be a matter to be settled quite off hand. There
is no doubt that at his best Keats is excellent in this way, and that
best is perhaps to be found with greatest certainty, by anyone who
wants to dip before plunging, in the letters to his brother and
sister-in-law, George and Georgiana. Those to his little sister Fanny
are also charming in their way, though the peculiar and very happy
mixture of life and literature to be found in the others does not, of
course, occur in them. His letters of description, to whomsoever
written, are, as one might expect, first-rate; and the very late
specimen--one of his very last to anyone--to _Mrs._ not Miss Brawne is
as brave as it is touching. As for the criticism, there are undoubtedly
(as again we should expect from the author of the wonderful preface to
_Endymion_) invaluable remarks--the inspiration of poetical practice
turned into formulas of poetical theory. On the other hand, the famous
advice to Shelley to "be more of an artist and load every rift with
ore"--Shelley whose art transcends artistry and whose substance is as
the unbroken nugget gold, so that there are no rifts in it to load--is,
even when one remembers how often poets misunderstand each other,[29]
rather "cold water to the back" of admiration.
It may, however, not unfairly introduce a very few considerations on the
side of Keats's letters which is not so good. All but idolaters
acknowledge a certain boyishness in him--a boyishness which is in fact
no mean source contributary of his charm in verse. It is perhaps not
always quite so charming in prose, and especially in letters. You do not
want self-criticism of an obviously second-thought kind in them. But you
do want that less obtrusive variety which prevents them from appearing
unkempt, "down-at-heel" etc. Perhaps there is, at any rate in the
earlier letters, something of this unkemptness in Keats as an epistoler.
A hasty person may say "What! do you venture to quarrel with letters
where, side by side with agreeable miscellaneous details, you may
suddenly come upon the original and virgin text of 'La Belle Dame sans
Merci'?" Most certainly not. Such a find, or one ten times less
precious, would make one put up with accompaniments much more than ten
times worse than the worst of Keats's letters. But it may be observed
that the objection is only a fresh example of the unfortunate
tendency[30] of mankind to "ignore elenchs" as the logicians say, or, as
less pedantic phraseology has it, to talk beside the question. A man
might put a thousand pound note (and you might spend many thousand pound
notes without buying anything like the poem just mentioned) in a coarse,
vulgar, trivial or in other ways objectionable letter. The note would be
most welcome in itself, but it would not improve the quality of its
covering epistle. Not, of course, that Keats's letters are coarse or
vulgar, though they are sometimes rather trivial. But the point is that
their excellency, _as_ letters, does not depend on their enclosures (as
we may call them) or even directly on their importance as biography
which is certainly consummate. Are they good letters as such, and of how
much goodness? Have they been presented as letters should be presented
for reading? These are points on which, considering the title and range
of this Introduction, it may not be improper to offer a few
observations. We have already ventured to suggest that, if not the "be
all and end all," at any rate the quality to be first enquired into as
to its presence or its absence in letters, is "naturalness." And we have
said something as to the propriety or impropriety of different modes of
editing and publishing them. The present division of the subject seems
to afford a specially good text for adding something more on both these
matters.
As to the first point, the text is specially good because of the
position of Keats in the most remarkable group in which we have rather
found than placed him. To the present writer, as a reader, it seems, as
has been already said whether justly or unjustly, that the element of
"naturalness"--it is an ugly word, and French has no better, in fact
none at all: though German is a little luckier with _natuerlichkeit_ and
Spanish much with _naturaleza_--is rather conspicuously deficient in
Byron. In Shelley it is pre-eminent, and can only be missed by those who
have no kindred touch of the nature which it reflects. Shelley could be
vague, unpractical, mystical; he could sometimes be just a little silly;
but it was no more possible for him to be affected, or to make those
slips of taste which are a sort of _minus_ corresponding to the _plus_
of affectation, than it was (after _Queen Mab_ at least) to write
anything that was not poetry. Thus in addition to the literary
perfection of his letters, they have the _sine qua non_ of naturalness
in perfection also.
But with Keats things are different. Opinions differ as to whether he
ever quite reached maturity even in poetry to the extent into which
Shelley struck straight with _Alastor_, never losing it afterwards, and
leaving us only to wonder what conceivable accomplishment might have
even transcended _Adonais_ and its successors. That with all his
marvellous promise and hardly less marvellous achievement, Keats was
only reaching maturity when he died has been generally allowed by the
saner judgments.[31] Now _im_maturity has perhaps its own naturalness
which is sometimes, and in a way, very charming, but is not the
naturalness pure and simple of maturity. Children are sometimes, nay
often, very pretty, agreeable and amusing things: but there comes a time
when we rather wish they would go to the nursery. Perhaps the
"sometimes" occurs with Keats's earlier letters if not with his later.
[Sidenote: EDITING OF LETTERS]
He is thus also a text for the second part of our sermon--the duty of
editors and publishers of correspondence. There is much to be said for
the view that publication, as it has been put, "is an unpardonable sin,"
that is to say, that no author (or rather no author's ghost) can justly
complain if what he once deliberately published is, when all but the
control of the dead hand is off, republished. _Il l'a voulu_, as the
famous tag from Moliere has it. But letters in the stricter sense--that
is to say, pieces of private correspondence--are in very different case.
Not only were they, save in very few instances, never _meant_ for
publication: but, which is of even more importance, they were never
_prepared_ for publication.[32] Not only, again, did the writer never
see them in "proof," much less in "revise," as the technical terms go,
but he never, so far as we know, exercised on them even the revision
which all but the most careless authors give before sending their
manuscripts to the printer. Some people of course do read over their
letters before sending them: but it must be very rarely and in special,
not to say dubious, cases that they do this with a view to the thing
being seen by any other eyes than those of the intended recipient. It is
therefore to the last degree unfair to plump letters on the market
unselected and uncastigated. To what length the castigation should
proceed is of course matter for individual taste and judgment. Nothing
must be put in--that is clear; but as to what may or should be left out,
"there's the rub." Perhaps the best criterion, though it may be admitted
to be not very easy of application, is "Would the author, in publishing,
have left it out or not?" Sometimes this will pass very violent
expressions of opinion and even sentiments of doubtful morality and
wisdom. But that it should invariably exclude mere trivialities, faults
of taste, slovenlinesses of expression, etc., is at least the opinion of
the present writer. And a "safety razor" of such things might perhaps
with advantage have been used on Keats's, though he has written nothing
which is in the least discreditable to him.
V
NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. LATER
[Sidenote: A NINETEENTH CENTURY GROUP]
Part at least of these general remarks has a very special relevance to
the rest of our story. There may be differences of respectable opinion
as to the system of editing just advocated; but they will hardly concern
one point--that the susceptibilities of living persons must be
considered. To some extent indeed this is a mere counsel of selfish
prudence: for an editor who neglects it may get himself into serious
difficulties. Even where such danger does not exist, or might perhaps be
disregarded, it is impossible for any decent person to run the risk of
needlessly offending others. It will be seen at once that this
introduces a new matter for consideration in regard to most--practically
all--of the correspondences which we have still to survey. Even those
just discussed have only recently passed from under its range. Shelley's
son died not so very long ago: grandchildren of Byron much more
recently; and if Keats had lived to the ordinary age of man and had, as
he very likely would have done, married not Fanny Brawne, but somebody
else later, a son or daughter of his (daughters are particularly and
sometimes inconveniently loyal to their deceased parents) might be alive
and flourishing now. As this constraint extends not merely to the
families of the writers but to those of persons mentioned by them (not
to speak of these persons themselves in the most recent cases), it
exercises, as will at once be seen, a most wide-ranging cramp and brake
upon publication. Blunders are occasionally made of course: the most
remarkable in recent times was probably an oversight of the editor of
Edward FitzGerald's letters, than which hardly any more interesting
exist among those yet to be noticed. FitzGerald, quite innocently and
without the slightest personal malevolence but thinking only of Mrs.
Browning's work, had expressed himself (as anybody might in a private
letter) to the effect that perhaps we need not be sorry for her death.
Unfortunately the letter was published while her husband was still
alive: and many people must remember the very natural and excusable, but
somewhat excessive and undignified, explosion which followed on his
part.
Such things must of course be avoided at all costs; and the consequence
is that nineteenth century letters must frequently--in fact with rare if
any exceptions--have appeared in a condition of expurgation which cannot
but have affected their spirit and savour to a very considerable extent.
It is for instance understood that Mr. Matthew Arnold's were very
severely censored; and, while readily believing this and acquiescing in
its probable propriety, the old Adam in some readers may be unable to
refrain from regret.
Again, there is something to be said about the less good effects of that
"Life-and-Letters" system which has been quite rightly welcomed and
praised for its better ones. Drawing on the Letters--with good material
to work on and good skill in the worker--improves the Life enormously;
but it is by no means certain--indeed it has been hinted already--that
the Letters themselves do not to a certain extent lose by it. Indeed
from one point of view, the word "loss" may be used in its most literal
meaning. The compiler of one very famous biography was said, for
instance, to have--with a disregard of the value of letters as
autographs which was magnificent perhaps in one way but far from "the
game" in others--cut up the actual sheets and pasted the pieces on his
manuscript, sending the whole to the printers and chancing the survival
even of what was sent, when it came back with the proofs.
But there is another sense of "loss" which has also to be reckoned. The
framework of biography is, or at least ought to be, something more than
a mere frame: and it distracts attention from the letters themselves,
breaks up their continuous effect, and in many cases necessitates at
least occasional omission of parts which an editor of them by themselves
would not think of excluding. Of course this is no argument against the
plan as such: but it has, together with what was said recently, to be
taken into account when we compare the epistolary position of the last
century with that of its immediate predecessor.[33]
These remarks are made not in the least by way of depreciating or even
making an apology for nineteenth century letters, but only in order to
put the reader in a proper state for critical estimation of them. Nor is
it necessary to repeat--still less to discuss--the more general
lamentations with some reference to which we started as to any decay of
letter-writing. Provisos and warnings may be taken as having been made
sufficiently: and we pass to the actual survey.
It may have been noticed in reference to the principal group of
letter-writers in the eighteenth that, with the exception of Cowper,
they were all acquainted with each other. Walpole knew Lady Mary,
Chesterfield and Gray; while Gray, if he did not know the other two,
knew Walpole very well indeed. Something of the same sort might be
contended for among those whom we have selected on the bridge of the
eighteenth and nineteenth. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Lamb were
of course intimately connected: Southey knew Landor and Shelley, Keats
knew Shelley, Wordsworth and Lamb; while Byron and Shelley, however
unequally, were pretty closely yoked together. It is not meant that in
all these groups everybody wrote to each other; but that the writing
faculty was curiously prominent--diffused like a kind of atmosphere--in
all. Now if we look in the nineteenth for such a group it will be found
perhaps less readily. But one such at least certainly exists, to wit
that which includes Tennyson, Thackeray, Edward FitzGerald, Carlyle and
his wife, Fanny Kemble, Sterling and one or two more. There are of
course numerous others outside this group, and even in it Tennyson
himself is not a very remarkable letter-writer, any more than his great
rival, Browning, was. But there was the same diffusion of the
letter-writing spirit which has been noticed above, and Thackeray,
FitzGerald, the Carlyles, and perhaps Fanny Kemble are quite of the
greater clans among our peculiar people.
The most remarkable of all these--and as it seems to the present writer,
one of the most remarkable of all English letter-writers is one whose
letters have never been collected,[34] and from whom, until
comparatively lately, we had only few and as it were accidental
specimens. It is hoped that, notwithstanding the great changes of taste
recently as to reticence or indiscretion, there are still many people
who can not only understand but thoroughly sympathise with Thackeray's
disgust at the idea of having his "Life" written; and the even greater
reluctance which he would certainly have felt at that of having his
letters published. But, as has been suggested on a former occasion, when
things _are_ published there is nothing disgraceful in reading them: and
it may be frankly admitted that lovers of English literature would have
missed much pleasure and the opportunity of much admiration if the
"Brookfield" letters, those to the Baxter family and others in America,
those finally included in the "Biographical" edition, and yet others
which have turned up sporadically had remained unknown. It may be
doubted whether there is anything like them in our literature--if indeed
there is in any other--for the double, treble or even more complicated
gift of view into character, matter of interest, positive literary
satisfaction, and (perhaps most remarkable of all) resemblance to and
explanation of the author's "regular literature," as it has been called.
In some respects they resemble the letters of Keats; but there is absent
from them the immaturity which was noted in those, and which extended to
both matter and style. They are more various in subject and tone than
Shelley's. They are not deliberately quaint like Lamb's; and they
naturally lack (whether this is wholly an advantage or not, may admit,
though not here, of dispute) the restraint[35] which, in greater or less
degree and in varied kind, characterizes the great eighteenth century
epistolers.
[Sidenote: THACKERAY]
One additional charm which many of them possess may be regarded by
extreme precisians as of doubtful legitimacy as far as comment here is
concerned: but this may be ruled out as a superfluous scruple. It is the
illumination of the text "by the author's own candles" as he himself
says in a well-known Introduction: the actual "illustration" by
insertion in the script, of little pen-drawings. The shortcomings of
Thackeray's draughtsmanship have always been admitted: and by nobody
more frankly than by himself. But they hardly affect this sort of
"picturing" at all. The unfortunate inability to depict a pretty face
which he deplored need do no harm whatever: and his lack of
"composition" not much. A spice of caricature is almost invariably
admissible in such things: and the same tricksy spirit which prompted
the hundreds of initials, _culs-de-lampe_ etc. contributed by him to
_Punch_ and to be found collected in the "Oxford" edition of his works,
was most happily at hand for use in letters. Some years ago there
appeared, in a catalogue of autographs for sale, an extract of text and
cut which was irresistibly funny. The author and designer had had a
mishap by slipping on that peculiarly treacherous suddenly frozen rain
for which (though we are liable enough to it in England and though some
living have seen the entire Strand turned into one huge pantomime
scene, roars of laughter included, as people came out of theatres) we
have no special name. (The French, in whose capital it is said to be
even more frequent, call it _verglas_.) In telling it he had drawn
himself sitting (as involuntarily though one hopes not so eternally as
_infelix Theseus_) with arms, legs, hat, etcetera in disorder suitable
to the occasion and with a facial expression of the most ludicrous
dismay. It can hardly have taken a dozen strokes of the pen: but they
simply glorified the letter.
In no sense, however, can the value and delight of Thackeray's letters
be said to depend upon this _bonus_ of illustration. Without it they
would be among the most noteworthy and the most delectable of their
kind. One sees in them the "first state" of that extraordinary glancing
at all sorts of side-views, possible objections and comments on "what
the other fellow thinks," which is the main secret in his published
writings. If the view of him as a "sentimentalist" (which nobody, unless
it is taken offensively, need refuse to accept) is strengthened by them,
that absurd other view, which strangely prevailed so long, of his
"cynicism" is utterly destroyed. We see the variety of his interests;
the keenness of his sensations; the strange and kaleidoscopic rapidity
of the changes in his mood and thought. And through the whole there runs
the wonderful style which was so long unrecognised--nay, which those who
go by the trumpery machine-made rules of "composition books" used
gravely to stigmatise as "incorrect." Time lifts a great many (though
not perhaps all) the restraints upon publication which have been
discussed and advocated above: and it will probably be possible some day
for posterity to possess, not only a collected body of the now scattered
Thackeray letters, but a considerably larger one than has ever appeared
even in extracts and catalogues. It will be an addition to our
Epistolary Library which can bear comparison with any previous occupant
of those shelves: and one of the books which deserve, in a very peculiar
sense, the hackneyed praise of being "as good as a novel." For it will
be almost the equivalent of an additional novel of its author's own--a
_William Makepeace Thackeray_ in the familiar novel-form of title, and
in the old Richardsonian form of contents--but oh! how different from
anything of Richardson's save that it might possibly make you hang
yourself, not because you could not get to the story, but because you
had come to the end of it.
[Sidenote: FITZGERALD]
If, however, anyone insists on a formal and more or less complete
presentation, already existing, of nineteenth century "Letters" in a
body by a single writer, the palm must probably be given to those
(already referred to) of the translator or paraphrast of Omar Khayyam.
Besides their great intrinsic interest and peculiar idiosyncrasy, they
have, for anyone studying the subject as we are endeavouring to do, a
curious attraction of comparison. Letter-writing, though by no means
exclusively, would appear to be specially and peculiarly the _forte_ of
men who live somewhat special and peculiar lives--men without the
ordinary family ties of wife and children--sometimes though by no means
always, recluses; possibly to some extent "originals," "humourists,"
"eccentrics," as they have been called at different times and from
different points of view. Even Walpole, fond as he was of society,
belongs to the class after a fashion, as do also Chesterfield[36] and
Lady Mary, while Gray, Cowper, and at a later period Lamb, are eminently
of it. But hardly anyone so unquestionably comes under the
classification as Edward FitzGerald. He certainly was for a time
married, but that marriage as certainly was not made in Heaven, if it
was not conspicuously of the other origin: and actual cohabitation
lasted but a short time. He had no children, and though he frequently
foregathered with the family from which he sprang, he was essentially a
"solitary." Such solitaries, even if they do not ticket and advertise
themselves as such after the fashion of Rousseau and Senancour and the
author of _Jacopo Ortis_, naturally enough find in letters the outlet
for communication with their fellows[37] which others find in
conversation, and the occupation which those others have ready-made, in
society, business of all kinds etc. That some copious and excellent
letter-writers, such as for instance Southey, have been extremely busy,
and "family men" of the most unblemished character, merely shows that
the rule is not universal. But it may be observed that their letters
usually have less intense idiosyncrasy than those of the others.