building a Lugger, and reading Montaigne. The latter holds his own with
me after three hundred years: and the Lugger does not seem much the worse
for her ten years' wear, so well did she come bouncing between the Piers
here yesterday, under a strong Sou'-Wester. My Great Captain has her no
more; he has what they call a 'Scotch Keel' which is come into fashion:
her too I see: and him too steering her, broader and taller than all the
rest: fit to be a Leader of Men, Body and Soul; looking now Ulysses-like.
Two or three years ago he had a run of constant bad luck; and, being
always of a grand convivial turn, treating Everybody, he got deep in
Drink, against all his Promises to me, and altogether so lawless, that I
brought things to a pass between us. 'He should go on with me if he
would take the Tee-total Pledge for one year'--'No--he had broken his
word,' he said, 'and he would not pledge it again,' much as he wished to
go on with me. That, you see, was very fine in him; he is altogether
fine--A Great Man, I maintain it: like one of Carlyle's old Norway Kings,
with a wider morality than we use; which is very good and fine (as this
Captain said to me) 'for you who are born with a silver spoon in your
mouths.' I did not forget what Carlyle too says about Great Faults in
Great Men: even in David, the Lord's Anointed. But I thought best to
share the Property with him and let him go his way. He had always
resented being under any Control, and was very glad to be his own sole
Master again: and yet clung to me in a wild and pathetic way. He has not
been doing better since: and I fear is sinking into disorder.
This is a long story about one you know nothing about except what little
I have told you. But the Man is a very remarkable Man indeed, and you
may be interested--you must be--in him.
'Ho! parlons d'autres choses, ma Fille,' as my dear Sevigne says. She
now occupies Montaigne's place in my room: well--worthily: she herself a
Lover of Montaigne, and with a spice of his free thought and speech in
her. I am sometimes vext I never made her acquaintance till last year:
but perhaps it was as well to have such an acquaintance reserved for
one's latter years. The fine Creature! much more alive to me than most
Friends--I _should_ like to see her 'Rochers' in Brittany. {105}
'Parlons d'autres choses'--your Mother's Miniature. You seemed at first
to think it was taken from the Engraving: but the reverse was always
clear to me. The whole figure, down to the Feet, is wanted to account
for the position of the Legs; and the superior delicacy of Feature would
not be gained _from_ the Engraving, but the contrary. The Stars were
stuck in to make an 'Urania' of it perhaps. I do not assert that your
Miniature is the original: but that such a Miniature is. I did not
expect that Black next the Picture would do: had you 'tried on the
Bonnet' first, as I advised? I now wish I had sent the Picture over in
its original Frame, which I had doctored quite well with a strip of Black
Paper pasted over the Gold. It might really have gone through Quaritch's
Agency: but I got into my head that the Post was safer. (How badly I am
writing!) I had a little common Engraving of the Cottage bonnet
Portrait: so like Henry. If I did not send it to you, I know not what is
become of it.
Along with your Letter came one from Donne telling me of your Niece's
Death. {106} He said he had written to tell you. In reply, I gave him
your message; that he must 'hold on' till next year when peradventure you
may see England again, and hope to see him too.
Sooner or later you will see an Account of 'Mary Tudor' at the Lyceum.
{107} It is just what I expected: a 'succes d'estime,' and not a very
enthusiastic one. Surely, no one could have expected more. And now
comes out a new Italian Hamlet--Rossi--whose first appearance is recorded
in the enclosed scrap of _Standard_. And (to finish Theatrical or
Dramatic Business) Quaritch has begun to print Agamemnon--so leisurely
that I fancy he wishes to wait till the old Persian is exhausted, and so
join the two. I certainly am in no hurry; for I fully believe we shall
only get abused for the Greek in proportion as we were praised for the
Persian--in England. I mean: for you have made America more favourable.
'Parlons d'autres choses.' 'Eh? mais de quoi parler,' etc. Well: a
Blackbird is singing in the little Garden outside my Lodging Window,
which is frankly opened to what Sun there is. It has been a singular
half year; only yesterday Thunder in rather cold weather; and last week
the Road and Rail in Cambridge and Huntingdon was blocked up with Snow;
and Thunder then also. I suppose I shall get home in ten days: before
this Letter will reach you, I suppose: so your next may be addressed to
Woodbridge. I really don't know if these long Letters are more of
Trouble or Pleasure to you: however, there is an end to all: and that End
is that I am yours as truly as ever I was
E. F.G.
XL.
WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 4, [1876.]
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
Here I am back into the Country, as I may call my suburb here as compared
to Lowestoft; all my house, except the one room--which 'serves me for
Parlour and Bedroom and all' {108a}--occupied by Nieces. Our weather is
temperate, our Trees green, Roses about to bloom, Birds about to leave
off singing--all sufficiently pleasant. I must not forget a Box from
Mudie with some Memoirs in it--of Godwin, Haydon, etc., which help to
amuse one. And I am just beginning Don Quixote once more for my 'piece
de Resistance,' not being so familiar with the First Part as the Second.
Lamb and Coleridge (I think) thought that Second Part should not have
been written; why then did I--not for contradiction's sake, I am sure--so
much prefer it? Old Hallam, in his History of Literature, resolved me, I
believe, by saying that Cervantes, who began by making his Hero
ludicrously crazy, fell in love with him, and in the second part tamed
and tempered him down to the grand Gentleman he is: scarce ever
originating a Delusion, though acting his part in it as a true Knight
when led into it by others. {108b} A good deal however might well be
left out. If you have Jarvis' Translation by, or near, you, pray
read--oh, read all of the second part, except the stupid stuff of the old
Duenna in the Duke's Palace.
I fear I get more and more interested in your 'Gossip,' as you approach
the Theatre. I suppose indeed that it is better to look on than to be
engaged in. I love it, and reading of it, now as much as ever I cared to
see it: and that was, very much indeed. I never heard till from your
last Paper {109a} that Henry was ever thought of for Romeo: I wonder he
did not tell me this when he and I were in Paris in 1830, and used to go
and see 'La Muette!' (I can hear them calling it now:) at the Grand
Opera. I see that 'Queen Mary' has some while since been deposed from
the Lyceum; and poor Mr. Irving descended from Shakespeare to his old
Melodrama again. All this is still interesting to me down here: much
more than to you--over there!--
'Over there' you are in the thick of your Philadelphian Exhibition,
{109b} I suppose: but I dare say you do not meddle with it very much, and
will probably be glad when it is all over. I wish now I had sent you the
Miniature in its Frame, which I had instructed to become it. What you
tell us your Mother said concerning Dress, I certainly always felt: only
secure the Beautiful, and the Grand, in all the Arts, whatever Chronology
may say. Rousseau somewhere says that what you want of Decoration in the
Theatre is, what will bewilder the Imagination--'ebranler l'Imagination,'
I think: {110} only let it be Beautiful!
_June_ 5.
I kept this letter open in case I should see Arthur Malkin, who was
coming to stay at a Neighbour's house. He very kindly did call on me: he
and his second wife (who, my Neighbour says, is a very proper Wife), but
I was abroad--though no further off than my own little Estate; and he
knows I do not visit elsewhere. But I do not the less thank him, and am
always yours
E. F.G.
Pollock writes me he had just visited Carlyle--quite well for his Age:
and vehement against Darwin, and the Turk.
XLI.
WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 31/76.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
A better pen than usual tempts me to write the little I have to tell you;
so that [at] any rate your Eyes shall not be afflicted as sometimes I
doubt they are by my MS.
Which MS. puts me at once in mind of Print: and to tell you that I shall
send you Quaritch's Reprint of Agamemnon: which is just done after many
blunders. The revises were not sent me, as I desired: so several things
are left as I meant not: but 'enfin' here it is at last so fine that I am
ashamed of it. For, whatever the merit of it may be, it can't come near
all this fine Paper, Margin, etc., which Quaritch _will_ have as counting
on only a few buyers, who will buy--in America almost wholly, I think.
And, as this is wholly due to you, I send you the Reprint, however little
different to what you had before.
'Tragedy wonders at being so fine,' which leads me to that which ought
more properly to have led to _it_: your last two Papers of 'Gossip,'
which are capital, both for the Story told, and the remarks that arise
from it. To-morrow, or next day, I shall have a new Number; and I really
do count rather childishly on their arrival. Spedding also is going over
some of his old Bacon ground in the Contemporary, {111} and his writing
is always delightful to me though I cannot agree with him at last. I am
told he is in full Vigour: as indeed I might guess from his writing. I
heard from Donne some three weeks ago: proposing a Summer Holyday at
Whitby, in Yorkshire: Valentia, I think, not very well again: Blanche
then with her Brother Charles. They all speak very highly of Mrs.
Santley's kindness and care. Mowbray talks of coming down this way
toward the end of August: but had not, when he last wrote, fixed on his
Holyday place.
Beside my two yearly elder Nieces, I have now a younger who has spent the
last five Winters in Florence with your once rather intimate (I think)
Jane FitzGerald my Sister. She married, (you may know) a Clergyman
considerably older than herself. I wrote to Annie Thackeray lately, and
had an answer (from the Lakes) to say she was pretty well--as also Mr.
Stephen.
And I am ever yours
E. F.G.
P.S. On second thoughts I venture to send you A. T.'s letter, which may
interest you and cannot shame her. I do not want it again.
XLII.
WOODBRIDGE: _Septr._ 21/76.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
Have your American Woods begun to hang out their Purple and Gold yet? on
this Day of Equinox. Some of ours begin to look rusty, after the Summer
Drought; but have not turned Yellow yet. I was talking of this to a
Heroine of mine who lives near here, but visits the Highlands of
Scotland, which she loves better than Suffolk--and she said of those
Highland Trees--'O, they give themselves no dying Airs, but turn Orange
in a Day, and are swept off in a Whirlwind, and Winter is come.'
Now too one's Garden begins to be haunted by that Spirit which Tennyson
says is heard talking to himself among the flower-borders. Do you
remember him? {113a}
And now--Who should send in his card to me last week--but the old Poet
himself--he and his elder Son Hallam passing through Woodbridge from a
Tour in Norfolk. {113b} 'Dear old Fitz,' ran the Card in pencil, 'We are
passing thro'.' {113c} I had not seen him for twenty years--he looked
much the same, except for his fallen Locks; and what really surprised me
was, that we fell at once into the old Humour, as if we had only been
parted twenty Days instead of so many Years. I suppose this is a Sign of
Age--not altogether desirable. But so it was. He stayed two Days, and
we went over the same old grounds of Debate, told some of the old
Stories, and all was well. I suppose I may never see him again: and so I
suppose we both thought as the Rail carried him off: and each returned to
his ways as if scarcely diverted from them. Age again!--I liked Hallam
much; unaffected, unpretending--no Slang--none of Young England's
nonchalance--speaking of his Father as 'Papa' and tending him with great
Care, Love, and Discretion. Mrs. A. T. is much out of health, and scarce
leaves Home, I think. {114a}
I have lately finished Don Quixote again, and I think have inflamed A. T.
to read him too--I mean in his native Language. For this _must_ be, good
as Jarvis' Translation is, and the matter of the Book so good that one
would think it would lose less than any Book by Translation. But somehow
that is not so. I was astonished lately to see how Shakespeare's Henry
IV. came out in young V. Hugo's Prose Translation {114b}: Hotspur,
Falstaff and all. It really seemed to show me more than I had yet seen
in the original.
Ever yours,
E. F.G.
XLIII.
LOWESTOFT: _October_ 24/76.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
Little--Nothing--as I have to write, I am nevertheless beginning to write
to you, from this old Lodging of mine, from which I think our
Correspondence chiefly began--ten years ago. I am in the same Room: the
same dull Sea moaning before me: the same Wind screaming through the
Windows: so I take up the same old Story. My Lugger was then about
building: {115} she has passed into other hands now: I see her from time
to time bouncing into Harbour, with her '244' on her Bows. Her Captain
and I have parted: I thought he did very wrongly--Drink, among other
things: but he did not think he did wrong: a different Morality from
ours--that, indeed, of Carlyle's ancient Sea Kings. I saw him a few days
ago in his house, with Wife and Children; looking, as always, too big for
his house: but always grand, polite, and unlike anybody else. I was
noticing the many Flies in the room--'Poor things,' he said, 'it is the
warmth of our Stove makes them alive.' When Tennyson was with me, whose
Portrait hangs in my house in company with those of Thackeray and this
Man (the three greatest men I have known), I thought that both Tennyson
and Thackeray were inferior to him in respect of Thinking of Themselves.
When Tennyson was telling me of how The Quarterly abused him (humorously
too), and desirous of knowing why one did not care for his later works,
etc., I thought that if he had lived an active Life, as Scott and
Shakespeare; or even ridden, shot, drunk, and played the Devil, as Byron,
he would have done much more, and talked about it much less. 'You know,'
said Scott to Lockhart, 'that I don't care a Curse about what I write,'
{116} and one sees he did not. I don't believe it was far otherwise with
Shakespeare. Even old Wordsworth, wrapt up in his Mountain mists, and
proud as he was, was above all this vain Disquietude: proud, not vain,
was he: and that a Great Man (as Dante) has some right to be--but not to
care what the Coteries say. What a Rigmarole!
Donne scarce ever writes to me (Twalmley the Great), and if he do not
write to you, depend upon it he thinks he has nothing worth sending over
the Atlantic. I heard from Mowbray quite lately that his Father was very
well.
Yes: you told me in a previous Letter that you were coming to England
after Christmas. I shall not be up to going to London to see you, with
all your Company about you; perhaps (don't think me very impudent!) you
may come down, if we live till Summer, to my Woodbridge Chateau, and
there talk over some old things.
I make a kind of Summer in my Room here with Boccaccio. What a Mercy
that one can return with a Relish to these Books! As Don Quixote can
only be read in his Spanish, so I do fancy Boccaccio only in his Italian:
and yet one is used to fancy that Poetry is the mainly untranslateable
thing. How prettily innocent are the Ladies, who, after telling very
loose Stories, finish with 'E cosi Iddio faccia [noi] godere del nostro
Amore, etc.,' sometimes, _Domeneddio_, more affectionately. {117a}
Anyhow, these Ladies are better than the accursed Eastern Question;
{117b} of which I have determined to read, and, if possible, hear, no
more till the one question be settled of Peace or War. If war, I am told
I may lose some 5000 pounds in Russian Bankruptcy: but I can truly say I
would give that, and more, to ensure Peace and Good Will among Men at
this time. Oh, the Apes we are! I must retire to my Montaigne--whom, by
the way, I remember reading here, when the Lugger was building! Oh, the
Apes, etc. But there was A Man in all that Business still, who is so
now, somewhat tarnished.--And I am yours as then sincerely
E. F.G.
XLIV.
LOWESTOFT: _December_ 12/76.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
If you hold to your Intention of coming to Europe in January, this will
be my last Letter over the Atlantic--till further Notice! I dare say you
will send me a last Rejoinder under the same conditions.
I write, you see, from the Date of my last letter: but have been at home
in the meanwhile. And am going home to-morrow--to arrange about
Christmas Turkeys (God send we haven't all our fill of that, this Year!)
and other such little matters pertaining to the Season--which, to myself,
is always a very dull one. Why it happens that I so often write to you
from here, I scarce know; only that one comes with few Books, perhaps,
and the Sea somehow talks to one of old Things. I have ever my Edition
of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall with me. How pretty is this--
'In a small Cottage on the rising Ground
West of the Waves, and just beyond their Sound.' {118}
Which reminds me also that one of the Books I have here is Leslie
Stephen's 'Hours in a Library,' really delightful reading, and, I think,
really settling some Questions of Criticism, as one wants to be finally
done in all Cases, so as to have no more about and about it. I think I
could have suggested a little Alteration in the matter of this Crabbe,
whom I probably am better up in than L. S., though I certainly could not
write about it as he does. Also, one word about _Clarissa_. Almost all
the rest of the two Volumes I accept as a Disciple. {119a}
Another Book of the kind--Lowell's 'Among my Books,' is excellent also:
perhaps with more _Genius_ than Stephen: but on the other hand not so
temperate, judicious, or scholarly in _taste_. It was Professor Norton
who sent me Lowell's Second Series; and, if you should--(as you
inevitably will, though in danger of losing the Ship) answer this Letter,
pray tell me if you know how Professor Norton is--in health, I mean. You
told me he was very delicate: and I am tempted to think he may be less
well than usual, as he has not acknowledged the receipt of a Volume
{119b} I sent him with some of Wordsworth's Letters in it, which he had
wished to see. The Volume did not need Acknowledgment absolutely: but
probably would not have been received without by so amiable and polite a
Man, if he [were] not out of sorts. I should really be glad to hear that
he has only forgotten, or neglected, to write.
Mr. Lowell's Ode {120a} in your last Magazine seemed to me full of fine
Thought; but it wanted Wings. I mean it kept too much to one Level,
though a high Level, for Lyric Poetry, as Ode is supposed to be: both in
respect to Thought, and Metre. Even Wordsworth (least musical of men)
changed his Flight to better purpose in his Ode to Immortality. Perhaps,
however, Mr. Lowell's subject did not require, or admit, such
Alternations.
Your last Gossip brought me back to London--but what Street I cannot make
sure of--but one Room in whatever Street it were, where I remember your
Mr. Wade, who took his Defeat at the Theatre so bravely. {120b} And your
John, in Spain with the Archbishop of Dublin: and coming home full of
Torrijos: and singing to me and Thackeray one day in Russell Street:
{120c}
{Music score for Si un Elio conspiro alevo. . .: p120.jpg}
All which comes to me west of the waves and just within the sound: and is
to travel so much farther Westward over an Expanse of Rollers such as we
see not in this Herring-pond. Still, it is--The Sea.
Now then Farewell, dear Mrs. Kemble. You will let me know when you get
to Dublin? I will add that, after very many weeks, I did hear from
Donne, who told me of you, and that he himself had been out to dine: and
was none the worse.
And I still remain, you see, your long-winded Correspondent
E. F.G.
XLV.
12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT,
_February_ 19/77.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
Donne has sent me the Address on the cover of this Letter. I know you
will write directly you hear from me; that is 'de rigueur' with you; and,
at any rate, you have your Voyage home to England to tell me of: and how
you find yourself and all in the Old Country. I suppose you include my
Old Ireland in it. Donne wrote that you were to be there till this
Month's end; that is drawing near; and, if that you do not protract your
Visit, you will [be] very soon within sight of dear Donne himself, who, I
hear from Mowbray, is very well.
Your last Gossip was very interesting to me. I see in it (but not in the
most interesting part) {122a} that you write of a 'J. F.,' who tells you
of a Sister of hers having a fourth Child, etc. I fancy this must be a
Jane FitzGerald telling you of her Sister Kerrich, who would have
numbered about so many Children about that time--1831. Was it that Jane?
I think you and she were rather together just then. After which she
married herself to a Mr. Wilkinson--made him very Evangelical--and
tiresome--and so they fed their Flock in a Suffolk village. {122b} And
about fourteen or fifteen years ago he died: and she went off to live in
Florence--rather a change from the Suffolk Village--and there, I suppose,
she will die when her Time comes.
Now you have read Harold, I suppose; and you shall tell me what you think
of it. Pollock and Miladi think it has plenty of Action and Life: one of
which Qualities I rather missed in it.
Mr. Lowell sent me his Three Odes about Liberty, Washington, etc. They
seemed to me full of fine Thought, and in a lofty Strain: but wanting
Variety both of Mood and Diction for Odes--which are supposed to mean
things to be chanted. So I ventured to hint to him--Is he an angry man?
But he wouldn't care, knowing of me only through amiable Mr. Norton, who
knows me through you. I think _he_ must be a very amiable, modest, man.
And I am still yours always
E. F.G.
XLVI.
12 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT,
_March_ 15, [1877.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
By this time you are, I suppose, at the Address you gave me, and which
will now cover this Letter. You have seen Donne, and many Friends,
perhaps--and perhaps you have not yet got to London at all. But you will
in time. When you do, you will, I think, have your time more taken up
than in America--with so many old Friends about you: so that I wish more
and more you would not feel bound to answer my Letters, one by one; but I
suppose you will.
What I liked so much in your February Atlantic {123} was all about Goethe
and Portia: I think, _fine_ writing, in the plain sense of the word, and
partly so because not 'fine' in the other Sense. You can indeed spin out
a long Sentence of complicated Thought very easily, and very clearly; a
rare thing. As to Goethe, I made another Trial at Hayward's Prose
Translation this winter, but failed, as before, to get on with it. I
suppose there is a Screw loose in me on that point, seeing what all
thinking People think of it. I am sure I have honestly tried. As to
Portia, I still think she ought not to have proved her 'Superiority' by
withholding that simple Secret on which her Husband's Peace and his
Friend's Life depended. Your final phrase about her 'sinking into
perfection' is capital. Epigram--without Effort.
You wrote me that Portia was your _beau-ideal_ of Womanhood {124a}--Query,
of _Lady-hood_. For she had more than 500 pounds a year, which Becky
Sharp thinks enough to be very virtuous on, and had not been tried. Would
she have done Jeanie Deans' work? She might, I believe: but was not
tried.
I doubt all this will be rather a Bore to you: coming back to England to
find all the old topics of Shakespeare, etc., much as you left them. You
will hear wonderful things about Browning and Co.--Wagner--and H. Irving.
In a late TEMPLE BAR magazine {124b} Lady Pollock says that her Idol
Irving's Reading of Hood's Eugene Aram is such that any one among his
Audience who had a guilty secret in his Bosom 'must either tell it, or
die.' These are her words.
You see I still linger in this ugly place: having a very dear little
Niece a little way off: a complete little 'Pocket-Muse' I call her. One
of the first Things she remembers is--_you_, in white Satin, and very
handsome, she says, reading Twelfth Night at this very place. And I am
Yours ever
E. F.G.
(I am now going to make out a Dictionary-list of the People in my dear
Sevigne, for my own use.) {125a}
XLVII.
LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.
_May_ 5/77.
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,
I am disappointed at not finding any Gossip in the last Atlantic; {125b}
the Editor told us at the end of last Year that it was to be carried on
through this: perhaps you are not bound down to every month: but I hope
the links are not to discontinue for long.