overwhelmed me ever since with attentions and invitations. I have at
last found out the cause of her ill-humour, or at least of that portion
of it of which I was the object. She is in a rage at my article on
Walpole, but at what part of it I cannot tell. I know that she is very
intimate with the Waldegraves, to whom the manuscripts belong, and for
whose benefit the letters were published. But my review was surely not
calculated to injure the sale of the book. Lord Holland told me, in an
aside, that he quite agreed with me, but that we had better not discuss
the subject.
A note; and, by my life, from my Lady Holland: "Dear Mr. Macaulay, pray
wrap yourself very warm, and come to us on Wednesday." No, my good Lady.
I am engaged on Wednesday to dine at the Albion Tavern with the
Directors of the East India Company; now my servants; next week, I hope,
to be my masters.
Ever yours,
T. B. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] Indeed it exemplifies Defoe's favourite proverb about "What is
bred in the bone," etc.--as for instance when, while admitting
Chesterfield's high position in some ways, he calls the _Letters_ "for
the most part trash." It is scarcely too much to call such criticism
itself "trashy."
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES (1803-1849)
Beddoes belongs to the small but remarkable company of
authors who, making little mark in their own time and none
at all for some time afterwards, before very long come into
something like their due, though they never can be exactly
popular. He was certainly very eccentric and possibly quite
mad: the circumstances of his suicide do more than justify
the hopes of charity and the convention of coroners' juries,
as to the latter conclusion. But he was an extremely
poetical poet and a letter-writer of remarkable
individuality and zest. Little notice seems to have been
taken, by any save a very few elect, of the first collected
publication of his work just after his death: though a
single piece, _The Bride's Tragedy_, not by any means his
best, had obtained praise in 1822--a time between the great
poetical outburst of the early nineteenth century and the
revival of its middle period. But Mr. Gosse's reissue in
completer form of the _Poems_ in 1890 and the _Letters_ four
years later, lodged him at once in the affection of all
competent critics. With something of the more eccentric
spirit of the seventeenth century in him, and something of
the Romantic revival as shown in Coleridge, Shelley and
Keats, he had much of his own, though he never got it
thoroughly or sustainedly organised and expressed. His
mingled passion and humour (especially the latter)
"escape"--make fitful spurts and explosions--in his
correspondence. Latterly this reflects his mental breakdown,
increasingly in the prose; though only a few years before
the end it contains wonderful verse such as the song, "The
swallow leaves her nest," which is a link between Blake and
Canon Dixon. But earlier, as in the following, there is
nothing beyond oddity. Of this there may seem to be a good
share, but a few notes will make it intelligible. It clearly
heralds, though the thing is first definitely indicated in a
later letter, Beddoes' marvellous tragedy _Death's
Jest-book_, which he wrote and re-wrote till it became like
the picture in Balzac's story an "Unknown [and Unknowable]
Masterpiece." The letter is further remarkable as combining
intense admiration for the _old_ masterpieces with a quite
"modern" insistence on "begetting" rather than
"reviving"--on "giving the literature of the age a spirit of
its own," etc. For details: "Sulky" (compare the French
_desobligeante_, celebrated by Sterne)--an obsolete form of
chaise. "Breaking Priscian's head" is familiar enough for
"using bad grammar," which the book-keeper very likely did;
but the explanation may be more remote. "Like a ghost from
the tomb" though not "quoted" is, of course, his beloved
Shelley's ("The Cloud"). "_Biped_ knock" = merely
"double"--the peculiar rat-tat which postmen have mostly
forgotten or not learnt--perhaps regarding it as a badge of
slavery like "tips." _The Fatal Dowry_--attributed to (Field
and) Massinger, and spoilt by Rowe into his nevertheless
popular _Fair Penitent_,--is one of the finest examples of
the second stage of Elizabethan drama. _Ultracrepidarian_--a
term derived from the Latin proverb _ne sutor supra_ (or
_ultra_) _crepidam_ and specially applied to the unpopular
critic Gifford who had been a shoemaker--meaning generally
"some one who _does_ go beyond his last and meddles with
things he does not understand." "McCready's" (Macready, the
famous actor and manager) friend Walker was probably Sidney
Walker the Shakespearian critic.
42. TO THOMAS FORBES KELSALL
26 MALL, CLIFTON.
(Postmark, Jan. 11. 1825)
Dear Kelsall--
Day after day since Christmas I have intended to write or go to London,
and day after day I have deferred both projects; and now I will give you
the adventures and mishaps of this present sunday. Remorse, and
startling conscience, in the form of an old, sulky, and a shying, horse,
hurried me to the 'Regulator' coach-office on Saturday: 'Does the
Regulator and its team conform to the Mosaic decalogue, Mr.
Book-keeper?' He broke Priscian's head, and through the aperture,
assured me that it did not: I was booked for the inside:--"Call at 26
Mall for me."--"Yes, Sir, at 1/2 past five, A.M."--At five I rose like a
ghost from the tomb, and betook me to coffee. No wheels rolled through
the streets but the inaudible ones of that uncreated hour. It struck
six,--a coach was called,--we hurried to the office but _the_ coach was
gone. Here followed a long Brutus-and-Cassius discourse between a
shilling-buttoned-waistcoatteer of a porter and myself, which ended in
my extending mercy to the suppliant coach-owners, and agreeing to accept
a place for Monday. All well thus far. The biped knock of the post
alighted on the door at twelve, and two letters were placed upon my
German dictionary,--your own, which I at first intended to reply to viva
voce, had not the second informed me of my brother's arrival in England,
his short leave of absence, and his intention to visit me here next
week. This twisted my strong purpose like a thread, and disposed me to
remain here about ten days longer. On the 21st at latest I go to
London. Be there and I will join you, or, if not, pursue you to
Southampton.
The Fatal Dowry has been cobbled, I see, by some purblind
ultra-crepidarian--McCready's friend, Walker, very likely; but
nevertheless, I maintain 'tis a good play, and might have been rendered
very effective by docking it of the whole fifth act, which is an
excrescence,--re-creating Novall, and making Beaumelle a great deal more
ghost-gaping and moonlightish. The cur-tailor has taken out the most
purple piece in the whole web--the end of the fourth Act--and shouldered
himself into toleration through the prejudices of the pit, when he
should have built his admiration on their necks. Say what you will, I am
convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling
fellow, no creeper into worm-holes, no reviver even, however good. These
reanimations are vampire-cold. Such ghosts as Marloe, Webster &c. are
better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of
ours, but they are ghosts; the worm is in their pages; and we want to
see something that our great-grandsires did not know. With the greatest
reverence for all the antiquities of the drama, I still think that we
had better beget than revive; attempt to give the literature of this age
an idiosyncrasy and spirit of its own, and only raise a ghost to gaze
on, not to live with--just now the drama is a haunted ruin.
* * * * *
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)
Mrs. Browning was in the habit of using rather extravagant
language herself: and she has certainly been the victim of
language extravagant enough both in praise (the more
damaging of the two) and blame from others. FitzGerald's
unlucky exaggeration (see Introduction) in one way may be
set off by such opposite assertions as that some of her
poems are "the best of their kind in the English language."
But her letters need cause no such alarums and excursions.
If they are sometimes what is called by youth "Early
Victorian"--"Early Anything," and "Middle Anything" and
"Late Anything," are sure to be found sooner or later by all
wise persons to have their own place in life and history.
And sentimentalism has, in private prose, an infinitely less
provocative character than when it is displayed in published
verse. A distinguished Scotch philosopher of the last
generation laid it down that, in literature, for
demonstrative exhibitions of affection and sorrow "the
occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare." But
letter-writing, though it can be eminently literary, is
always literature with a certain license attached to it:
arising from the fact that it was not--or ought not to have
been--intended for publication. And that naturalness of
which so much has been said is displayed constantly and by
no means disagreeably in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
epistles. In fact, you cannot help liking her the better for
them--which in one way at least is the supreme test. The
following, written soon after her marriage--an elopement of
a kind, but certainly justifiable if ever one was--is a very
pleasant specimen in more ways than one, as regards taste,
temper, and descriptive powers. It also contains no
criticism, which in her case was apt to be extremely
uncertain.
43. TO MRS. MARTIN
(PISA) November 5, (1846)
It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading
your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine,
and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your
claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised you too
entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so much the more
reason there was that I should justify it as far as I could, and with as
much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible
from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in me
and loved me, and, for the sake of the past and of the present, your
affection and your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose,
even in these changed and happy circumstances. So I thank you once more,
my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I never shall forget your
goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the
painful disappointment in other quarters.... Am I bitter? The feeling,
however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody
will wait patiently to be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody
shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my
case is not to be classed with other cases--what happened to me could
not have happened, perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate
and loathe everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and
I; and the manner the whole business was carried on in might have
instructed the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing
perpetually on my table for the last two years were brought there by one
hand, as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of
benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London,
to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive
indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in the
house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to be. The
endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof of his
attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how grateful it
makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been
married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more and more; if
the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is what he says to
me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an 'advantage' to have
an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of all things in heaven and
earth, and shows besides as perpetual a good humour and gaiety as if he
were--a fool, shall I say? or a considerable quantity more, perhaps. As
to our domestic affairs, it is not to _my_ honour and glory that the
'bills' are made up every week and paid more regularly 'than bard
beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson laughs outright at our miraculous
prudence and economy, and declares that it is past belief and precedent
that we should not burn the candles at both ends, and the next moment
will have it that we remind her of the children in a poem of Heine's who
set up housekeeping in a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee.
Ah, but she has left Pisa at last--left it yesterday. It was a painful
parting to everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood--a
month of it under the same roof and in the same carriages--will fasten
people together, and then travelling _shakes_ them together. A more
affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson[123] and it
is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not
only _du bout des levres_. Think of her making Robert promise (as he has
told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write to her
instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So kind, so
like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate, month at
Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the spring,
perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back here, for
that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed altogether
perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she is engaged
to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to be _sought_.
As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so beautiful and
so full of repose, yet not _desolate_: it is rather the repose of sleep
than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain, which seemed to
refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove' came as perpetual a
divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that we ask whether
it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am out walking while
the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and when I am tired Robert
and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards. We have been to your
seashore, too, and seen your island, only he insists on it (Robert does)
that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and that Corsica is not in sight.
_Beautiful_ and blue the island was, however, in any case. It might have
been Romero's instead of either. Also we have driven up to the foot of
the mountains, and seen them reflected down in the little pure lake of
Ascuno, and we have seen the pine woods, and met the camels laden with
faggots all in a line. So now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you
expect. My head goes round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy
before in my life. Ah, but, of course, the painful thoughts recur! There
are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their displeasure, or
even under their injustice. Only it seems to me that with time and
patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into opening his arms to
us--will be melted into a clear understanding of motives and intentions;
I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he says he will, and go on
thinking me to be dead rather than alive and happy. So I manage to hope
for the best, and all that remains, all my life here, _is_ best already,
could not be better or happier. And willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I
would take him and you for witnesses of it, and in the meanwhile he is
not to send me tantalising messages; no, indeed, unless you really,
really, should let yourselves be wafted our way, and could you do so
much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny Hanford should come here. Will
she really? The climate is described by the inhabitants as a 'pleasant
spring throughout the winter,' and if you were to see Robert and me
threading our path along the shady side everywhere to avoid the
'excessive heat of the sun' in this November (?) it would appear a good
beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox position by the Arno because
we heard with our ears one of the best physicians of the place advise
against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have cool rooms to live in and warm
walks to go out along.' The rooms we have are rather over-cool perhaps;
we are obliged to have a little fire in the sitting-room, in the
mornings and evenings that is; but I do not fear for the winter, there
is too much difference to my feelings between this November and any
English November I ever knew. We have our dinner from the Trattoria at
two o'clock, and can dine our favourite way on thrushes and Chianti with
a miraculous cheapness, and no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet
Elijah or the lilies of the field took as little thought for their
dining, which exactly suits us. It is a continental fashion which we
never cease commending. Then at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk,
made of milk, I mean, and at nine our supper (call it supper, if you
please) of roast chestnuts and grapes. So you see how primitive we are,
and how I forget to praise the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is,
or would be to some persons, that, socially speaking, it has its
dullnesses; it is not lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do
not want society, we shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo
Santo instead. Then we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us
access to the University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and
we have plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for
Fanny Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to
do it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can
thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep
well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold--draw him into
the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and of
you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires to
have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you for
not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And let me
be throughout all changes,
Your ever faithful and most affectionate,
BA.
FOOTNOTES:
[123] Anna Jameson (1794-1860) was a woman of letters and an art-critic
at one time of immense influence through her illustrated books on
"Sacred and Legendary" (as well as some other) "Art." But, as somehow or
other happens not infrequently, the objects of her "affection and
generosity" did not include her husband.
EDWARD FITZGERALD (1809-1883)
Not much need be added to what was said in the Introduction
about this famous translator and almost equally, though less
uniquely, remarkable letter-writer. His life was entirely
uneventful and his friendships have been already
commemorated. The version of Omar Khayyam appeared in 1859;
was an utter "drug"--remainder copies going at a few
pence--for a time; but became one of the most admired books
of the English nineteenth century before very long. Some of
his _Letters_ were published at various times from 1889 to
1901 (those to Fanny Kemble in 1895). It is not perhaps
merely fanciful to suggest that the "uniqueness" above
glanced at does supply a sort of connection between the
_Letters_ and the _Works_. The faculty of at once retaining
the matter of a subject and transforming it in treatment has
perhaps never, as regards translation, been exhibited in
such transcendence as in the English _Rubaiyat_. But
something of this same faculty must belong to every good
letter-writer--and a good deal of it certainly is shown by
FitzGerald in _his_ letters. Indeed one of the processes of
letter-and memoir-study (the memoir as has been said is
practically an "open" letter) is that of comparing the
treatments of the same subject by different persons--say of
the Great Fire by Pepys and Evelyn, of the Riots of '80 by
Walpole and Johnson. He himself, as will be seen, calls the
letter given below "not very interesting." It seems to me
very interesting indeed: and likely to be increasingly so as
time goes on. Few things could be more characteristic of the
writer than his way of "visiting his sister" by living alone
in lodgings all _day_ for a month. The "_old_
age"--forty-five--is hardly less so. The allusions to
"Alfred" (Tennyson); "old" Thackeray, for whom he constantly
keeps the affectionate school and college use of the
adjective; Landor[124] (who unluckily did _not_ die at Bath
though he might have done so but for one of the last and
least creditable of his eccentricities); Beckford ("Old
Vathek"), and a fourth "old," Rogers (who was one of
FitzGerald's aversions); Oxford (as yet almost unstained by
any modernities spiritual or material); and Bath[125] (to
remain still longer a "haunt of ancient peace")--are
precious. The fifth "old," Spedding, who devoted chiefly to
Bacon talents worthy of more varied exercise, was one of the
innermost Tennyson set, as was "Harry" Lushington, who died
very soon after this letter was written. "Your Book" is F.
Tennyson's _Days and Hours_, a volume of poetry while
reading which probably many people have wondered in what
respect it came short of really great poetry, though they
felt it did so.
44. TO FREDERIC TENNYSON
BATH May 7/54.
My dear Frederic,
You see to what fashionable places I am reduced in my old Age. The truth
is however I am come here by way of Visit to a sister I have scarce seen
these six years; my visit consisting in this that I live alone in a
lodging of my own by day, and spend two or three hours with her in the
Evening. This has been my way of Life for three weeks, and will be so
for some ten days more: after which I talk of flying back to more native
counties. I was to have gone on to see Alfred in his "Island Home" from
here: but it appears he goes to London about the same time I quit this
place: so I must and shall defer my Visit to him. Perhaps I shall catch
a sight of him in London; as also of old Thackeray who, Donne writes me
word, came suddenly on him in Pall Mall the other day: while all the
while people supposed _The Newcomes_ were being indited at Rome or
Naples.
If ever you live in England you must live here at Bath. It really is a
splendid City in a lovely, even a noble, Country. Did you ever see it?
One beautiful feature in the place is the quantity of Garden and Orchard
it is all through embroidered with. Then the Streets, when you go into
them, are as handsome and gay as London, gayer and handsomer because
cleaner and in a clearer Atmosphere; and if you want the Country you get
into it (and a very fine Country) on all sides and directly. Then there
is such Choice of Houses, Cheap as well as Dear, of all sizes, with good
Markets, Railways etc. I am not sure I shall not come here for part of
the Winter. It is a place you would like, I am sure: though I do not say
but you are better in Florence. Then on the top of the hill is old
Vathek's Tower, which he used to sit and read in daily, and from which
he could see his own Fonthill, while it stood. Old Landor quoted to me
'Nullus in orbe locus, etc.,' apropos of Bath: he, you may know, has
lived here for years, and I should think would die here, though not yet.
He seems so strong that he may rival old Rogers; of whom indeed one
Newspaper gave what is called an 'Alarming Report of Mr. Rogers' Health'
the other day, but another contradicted it directly and indignantly,
and declared the Venerable Poet never was better. Landor has some
hundred and fifty Pictures; each of which he thinks the finest specimen
of the finest Master, and has a long story about, how he got it, when,
etc. I dare say some are very good: but also some very bad. He appeared
to me to judge of them as he does of Books and Men; with a most
uncompromising perversity which the Phrenologists must explain to us
after his Death.