recommending some omissions when you republish. {126} That--_viz._,
about myself--I was satisfied you would cut out, as we had agreed before.
(N.B. No occasion to omit your kindly Notices about my Family--nor my
own Name among them, if you like: only not all about myself.) What I
meant in my last Letter was, some of your earlier Letters--or parts of
Letters--to H.--as some from Canterbury, I think--I fancy some part of
your early Life might be condensed. But I will tell you, if you will
allow me, when the time comes: and then you can but keep to your own
plan, which you have good reason to think better than mine--though I am
very strong in Scissors and Paste: my 'Harp and Lute.' Crabbe is under
them now--as usual, once a Year. If one lived in London, or in any busy
place, all this would not be perhaps: but it hurts nobody--unless you,
who do hear too much about it.
Last night I made my Reader begin Dickens' wonderful 'Great
Expectations': not considered one of his best, you know, but full of
wonderful things, and even with a Plot which, I think, only needed less
intricacy to be admirable. I had only just read the Book myself: but I
wanted to see what my Reader would make of it: and he was so interested
that he re-interested me too. Here is another piece of Woodbridge Life.
Now, if when London is hot you should like to run down to this
Woodbridge, here will be my house at your Service after July. It may be
so all this month: but a Nephew, Wife, and Babe did talk of a Fortnight's
Visit: but have not talked of it since I returned a fortnight ago. June
and July my Invalid Niece and her Sister occupy the House--not longer.
Donne, and all who know me, know that I do not like anyone to come out of
their way to visit me: but, if they be coming this way, I am very glad to
do my best for them. And if any of them likes to occupy my house at any
time, here it is at their Service--at yours, for as long as you will,
except the times I have mentioned. I give up the house entirely except
my one room, which serves for Parlour and Bed: and which I really prefer,
as it reminds me of the Cabin of my dear little Ship--mine no more.
Here is a long Story about very little. Woodbridge again.
A Letter from Mowbray Donne told me that you had removed to some house
in--Connaught Place? {127a}--but he did not name the number.
Valentia's wedding comes on: perhaps you will be of the Party. {127b} I
think it would be one more of Sorrow than of Gladness to me: but perhaps
that may be the case with most Bridals.
It is very cold here: ice of nights: but my Tulips and Anemones hold up
still: and Nightingales sing. Somehow, I don't care for those latter at
Night. They ought to be in Bed like the rest of us. This seems talking
for the sake of being singular: but I have always felt it, singular or
not.
And I am yours always
E. F.G.
XLVIII.
[_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 an Invalid, 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 I _won't_ read 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 own immediate 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.
XLIX.
WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 23/77.
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 Carlyle and 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.
L.
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 the Kemble
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 lacunae 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 yours
E. F.G.
No need to return, or acknowledge, the Letter.
LI.
LITTLE GRANGE: WOODBRIDGE.
_February_ 22, [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--_buy_ Keats' 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, poor
little Souls. Thrushes tuning up; and I hope my old Blackbirds have not
forsaken me, or fallen a prey to Cats.
And I am ever yours
E. F.G.
LII.
THE OLD (CURIOSITY) SHOP. WOODBRIDGE,
_April_ 16, [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, about whom 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 wants _that_: 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 Sevigne! 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 me _a propos_ of 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 a 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 yours
E. F.G.
LIII.
DUNWICH: _August_ 24, [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 I was 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 truly
E. F.G.
LIV.
WOODBRIDGE: _April_ 3/79.
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--AEt. 76; his Wife AEt. 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. I _see_ no 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 I _heard_ of 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. Spedding occasionally 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.
LV.
WOODBRIDGE: _April_ 25, [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 may feel 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 Sevigne 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 called _Urania_, 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.