WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 19, [1863].
MY DEAR GEORGE,
You tell me the Romney is at Gardner's: but where is Gardner's? And what
was the Price of the Portrait? Laurence said well about Romney that, as
compared to Sir Joshua and Gainsboro', his Pictures looked tinted, rather
than painted; the colour of the Cheek (for instance) rather superficially
laid on, as rouge, rather than ingrained, and mantling like Blood from
below. Laurence had seen those at last year's Exhibition: I have not
seen near so many. I remember one that seemed to me capital at Lord
Bute's in Bedfordshire.
I came home yesterday from a short Cruise to Yarmouth, etc., where some
people were interested in the Channel Fleet. But I could take no
interest in Steam Ships and Iron Rams.
WOODBRIDGE, _August_ 4, [1863].
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I have at last done my Holland: you won't be surprised to hear that I did
it in two days, and was too glad to rush home on the first pretence,
after (as usual) seeing nothing I cared the least about. The Country
itself I had seen long before in Dutch Pictures, and between Beccles and
Norwich: the Towns I had seen in Picturesque Annuals, Drop Scenes, etc.
But the Pictures--the Pictures--themselves?
Well, you know how I am sure to mismanage: but you will hardly believe,
even of me, that I never saw what was most worth seeing, the Hague
Gallery! But so it was: had I been by myself, I should have gone off
directly (after landing at Rotterdam) to that: but Mr. Manby was with me:
and he thought best to see about Rotterdam first: which was last
Thursday, at whose earliest Dawn we arrived. So we tore about in an open
Cab: saw nothing: the Gallery not worth a visit: and at night I was half
dead with weariness. Then again on Friday I, by myself, should have
started for the Hague: but as Amsterdam was also to be done, we thought
best to go there (as furthest) first. So we went: tore about the town in
a Cab as before: and I raced through the Museum seeing (I must say)
little better than what I have seen over and over again in England. I
couldn't admire the Night-watch much: Van der Helst's very good Picture
seemed to me to have been cleaned: I thought the Rembrandt Burgomasters
worth all the rest put together. But I certainly looked very flimsily at
all.
Well, all this done, away we went to the Hague: arriving there just as
the Museum closed for that day; next Day (Saturday) it was not to be open
at all (I having proposed to wait in case it should), and on Sunday only
from 12 to 2. Hearing all this, in Rage and Despair I tore back to
Rotterdam: and on Saturday Morning got the Boat out of the muddy Canal in
which she lay and tore back down the Maas, etc., so as to reach dear old
Bawdsey shortly after Sunday's Sunrise. Oh, my Delight when I heard them
call out 'Orford Lights!' as the Boat was plunging over the Swell.
All this is very stupid, really wrong: but you are not surprised at it in
me. One reason however of my Disgust was, that we (in our Boat) were
shut up (as I said) in the Canal, where I couldn't breathe. I begged Mr.
Manby to let me take him to an Inn: he would stick to his Ship, he said:
and I didn't like to leave him. Then it was Murray who misled me about
the Hague Gallery: he knew nothing about its being shut on Saturdays.
Then again we neither of us knew a word of Dutch: and I was surprised how
little was known of English in return.
But I shall say no more. I think it is the last foreign Travel I shall
ever undertake; unless I should go with you to see the Dresden Madonna:
to which there is one less impediment now Holland is not to be gone
through. . . . I am the Colour of a Lobster with Sea-faring: and my Eyes
smart: so Good-Bye. Let me hear of you. Ever yours E. F. G.
Oh dear!--Rembrandt's Dissection--where and how did I miss that?
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Aug._ 5/63.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I don't hear from you: I rather think you are deterred by those _Birds_
which I asked you to print (in my last Letter) with some Correction,
etc., of your own: and which you have not found Time or Inclination to
get done. But don't let anything of this sort prevent your writing to me
now and then: no one can be more utterly indifferent than I am whether
these Birds are printed or not: and I suppose I distinctly told you _not_
to put yourself to any Trouble. Indeed I dare say I should only be bored
with the Copies when they were printed: for I don't know a Soul here who
would care for the Thing if it were ten times as well done as I have done
it: nor do I care for Translation or Original, myself. Oh dear, when I
do look into Homer, Dante, and Virgil, AEschylus, Shakespeare, etc.,
those Orientals look--silly! Don't resent my saying so. _Don't_ they? I
am now a good [deal] about in a new Boat I have built, and thought (as
Johnson took Cocker's Arithmetic with him on travel, because he shouldn't
exhaust it) so I would take Dante and Homer with me, instead of Mudie's
Books, which I read through directly. I took Dante by way of slow
Digestion: not having looked at him for some years: but I am glad to find
I relish him as much as ever: he atones with the Sea; as you know does
the Odyssey--these are the Men!
I am just returned in my Ship from Holland--where I stayed--two days!--and
was so glad to rush away home after being imprisoned in a sluggish un-
sweet Canal in Rotterdam: and after tearing about to Amsterdam, the
Hague, etc., to see things which were neither new nor remarkable to me
though I had never seen them before--except in Pictures, which represent
to you the Places as well as if you went there, without the trouble of
going. I am sure wiser men, with keener _out_sight and _in_sight would
see what no Pictures could give: but this I know is always the case with
me: this is my last Voyage abroad, I believe: unless I go to see
Raffaelle's Madonna at Dresden, which no other Picture can represent than
itself: unless Dante's Beatrice.
I don't think you ever told me if you had got, or read, Spedding's two
first volumes of Bacon. My opinion is not the least altered of the Case:
and (as I anticipated) Spedding has brooded over his Egg so long he has
rather addled it. Thompson told me that the very Papers he adduces to
clear Bacon in Essex's Business, rather go against him: I haven't seen
any Notice of the Book in any Review but Fraser: where Donne (of course)
was convinced, etc., and I hear that even the wise old Spedding is
_mortified_ that he has awakened so little Interest for his Hero. You
know his Mortification would not be on _his own_ score. His last Letter
to me (some months ago) seemed to indicate that he could scarce lift up
his Pen to go on--he had as yet, he said, written nothing of volumes 3
and 4. But I suppose he _will_ in time. I say this Life of his wasted
on a vain work is a Tragedy pathetic as Antigone or Iphigenia. Of
Tennyson I hear but little: and I have ceased to look forward to any
future Work of his. Thackeray seems dumb as a gorged Blackbird too: all
growing old!
I have lost my sister Kerrich, the only one of my family I much cared
for, or who much cared for me.
But (not to dwell on what cannot be helped, and to which my talking of
all growing old led me) I see in last week's Athenaeum great Praise of a
new Volume of Poems by Jean Ingelow. The Reviewer talks of a 'new Poet,'
etc., quite unaware that some dozen years ago the 'new Poet' published a
Volume (as you may remember) with as distinct Indications of sweet,
fresh, and original Genius as anything he adduces from this second
Volume. I remember writing a sort of Review, when about you at Bramford,
which I sent to Mitford, to try and give the Book a little move: but
Mitford had just quitted the Gentleman's Magazine, and I tore up my
Paper. Your Elizabeth knows (I think) all about this Lady: who, I
suppose, is connected with Lincolnshire: for the Reviewer speaks of some
of the Poems as relating to that Coast--Shipwrecks, etc. I was told that
Tennyson was writing a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss
Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be
suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long
roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley
Hall. Don't believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to
be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that
(for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having
nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all
owing to London, etc. He is growing old: and I don't believe much in the
Fine Arts thriving on an old Tree: I can't think Milton's Paradise Lost
so good as his Allegro, etc.; one feels the strain of the Pump all
through: only Shakespeare--the exception to all rule--struck out Macbeth
at past fifty. {47a}
By the way, there is a new--and the best--edition {47b} of _Him_ coming
out: edited by two men (Fellows) of Cambridge. Just the Text, with the
various readings of Folio and Quartos: scarce any notes: but suggestions
of Alteration from Pope, Theobald, Coleridge, etc., and--Spedding; who
(as I told him twenty years ago) should have done the work these men are
doing. He also says they are well doing about _half_ what is wanted to
be done. He should--for he could--have done all; and one Frontispiece
Portrait would have served for Author and Editor.
Come--here is a long Letter--and (as I read it over) with more _Go_ than
usually attends my old Pen now. Let it inspire you to answer: never mind
_the Birds_:--which really suggests to me one of Dante's beautiful lines
which made me _cry_ the other Day at Sea.
Mentre che gli occhi per la fronda verde
Ficcava io cosi, come far suole
Chi dietro all' uccellin la vita perde,
Lo piu che Padre mi dicea, etc. {48a}
_To W. B. Donne_.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_October_ 4/63.
MY DEAR DONNE,
Very rude of me not to have acknowledged your Tauchnitz {48b} before: but
I have been almost living in my Ship ever since: and I supposed also that
you were abroad in Norfolk. I pitied you undergoing those dreadful
Oratorios: I never heard one that was not tiresome, and in part
ludicrous. Such subjects are scarce fitted for Catgut. Even Magnus
Handel--even Messiah. He (Handel) was a good old Pagan at heart, and
(till he had to yield to the fashionable Piety of England) stuck to
Opera, and Cantatas, such as Acis and Galatea, Milton's Penseroso,
Alexander's Feast, etc., where he could revel and plunge and frolic
without being tied down to Orthodoxy. And these are (to my mind) his
really great works: these, and his Coronation Anthems, where Human Pomp
is to be accompanied and illustrated
Now for Tauchnitz; somehow, that which you sent me is not the thing: I
don't like it half so well as my little Tauchnitz stereotype Sophocles of
1827. The Euripides you send bears date 1846: and is certainly not so
clear to my eyes as 1827. Never mind: don't trouble yourself further: I
shall light upon what I want one of these Days. It is wonderful how _The
Sea_ brought up this Appetite for Greek: it likes to be called [Greek
text] and [Greek text] better than the wretched word '_Sea_,' I am sure:
and the Greeks (especially AEschylus--after Homer) are full of Seafaring
Sounds and Allusions. I think the Murmur of the AEgean (if that is their
Sea) wrought itself into their Language. How is it the Islandic (which I
read is our Mother Tongue) was not more Poluphloisboi-ic?
Sophocles has almost shaken my Allegiance to AEschylus. Oh, those two
OEdipuses! but then that Agamemnon! Well: one shall be the Handel and
'tother the Haydn; one the Michel Angelo, and 'tother the Raffaelle, of
Tragedy. As to the famous Prometheus, I think, as I always thought, it
is somewhat over-rated for Sublimity; I can't see much in the far famed
Conception of the Hero's Character: and I doubt (_rest wanting_).
_To S. Laurence_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 7/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . I want to know about your two Portraits of Thackeray: the first one
(which I think Smith and Elder have) I know by the Print: I want to know
about one you last did (some two years ago?) whether you think it as good
and characteristic: and also who has it. Frederic Tennyson sent me a
Photograph of W. M. T. old, white, massive, and melancholy, sitting in
his Library.
I am surprized almost to find how much I am thinking of him: so little as
I had seen him for the last ten years; not once for the last five. I had
been told--by you, for one--that he was spoiled. I am glad therefore
that I have scarce seen him since he was 'old Thackeray.' I keep reading
his Newcomes of nights, and as it were hear him saying so much in it; and
it seems to me as if he might be coming up my Stairs, and about to come
(singing) into my Room, as in old Charlotte Street, etc., thirty years
ago. {50}
_To George Crabbe_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 12/64.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
. . . Have we exchanged a word about Thackeray since his Death? I am
quite surprised to see how I sit moping about him: to be sure, I keep
reading his Books. Oh, the Newcomes are fine! And now I have got hold
of Pendennis, and seem to like that much more than when I first read it.
I keep hearing him say so much of it; and really think I shall hear his
Step up the Stairs to this Lodging as in old Charlotte Street thirty
years ago. Really, a great Figure has sunk under Earth.
_To W. H. Thompson_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 23/64.
MY DEAR THOMPSON,
You see I return with your other troubles of Term time. Only when you
have ten spare minutes let me know how you are, etc. . . . I have almost
wondered at myself how much occupied I have been thinking of Thackeray;
so little as I had seen of him for the last ten years, and my Interest in
him a little gone from hearing he had become somewhat spoiled: which also
some of his later writings hinted to me of themselves. But his Letters,
and former works, bring me back the old Thackeray. . . . I had never
read Pendennis and the Newcomes since their first appearance till this
last month. They are wonderful; Fielding's seems to me coarse work in
comparison. I have indeed been thinking of little this last month but of
these Books and their Author. Of his Letters to me I have only kept some
Dozen, just to mark the different Epochs of our Acquaintance.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Jan._ 31/64.
MY DEAR COWELL,
I have only Today got your Letter: have been walking out by myself in the
Seckford Almshouse Garden till 9 p.m. in a sharp Frost--with Orion
stalking over the South before me--(do you know him in India? I forget)
have come in--drunk a glass of Porter; and am minded to answer you before
I get to Bed. Perhaps the Porter will leave me stranded, however, before
I get to the End of my Letter.
Before this reaches you--probably before I write it--you will have heard
of Thackeray's sudden Death. It was told me as I was walking alone in
those same Seckford Gardens on Christmas-day Night; by a
Corn-merchant--one George Manby--(do you remember him?) who came on
purpose to tell me--and to wish me in other respects a Happy Christmas. I
have thought little else than of W. M. T. ever since--what with reading
over his Books, and the few Letters I had kept of his; and thinking over
our five and thirty years' Acquaintance as I sit alone by my Fire these
long Nights. I had seen very little of him for these last ten years;
_nothing_ for the last five; he did not care to write; and people told me
he was become a little spoiled: by London praise, and some consequent
Egotism. But he was a very fine Fellow. His Books are wonderful:
Pendennis; Vanity Fair; and the Newcomes; to which compared Fielding's
seems to me coarse work. I don't know yet how his two daughters are left
provided for; the Papers say well. He had built and furnished a fine
House at 7 or 8000 pounds cost; which is as good a Property for them to
let or sell as any other, I suppose; and the Copyright of his Books must
also be a good Property: always supposing he had not encumbered all these
by anticipation.
I was not at all well myself for three months; but either the Doctor's
Stuff, or the sharp clear weather, or both, have set me up pretty much as
I was before. I have nothing to tell, as usual, of People or Places; for
I have scarce stirred from this Place since my little Ship was laid up in
the middle of October. Donne writes sometimes; I see an article of his
about the Antonines advertised in the present Edinburgh; but that you
know is out of my Line. His second son, Mowbray, is lately married to a
Daughter (I don't know which) of Mrs. Salmon's; widow of a former Rector
here, whom your Elizabeth will remember all about, I dare say.
This time ten years I was lodging at Oxford, reading Persian with you. I
doubt I shall never do so again; I am too lazy to turn Dictionaries over
now; and indeed had some while ceased to expect much to turn up from
them. You are quite right, as a Scholar, to work out the Mine; but you
admit that nothing is likely to come out of such Value as from the Greek,
Latin, and English, which we have ready to our hands. Did I tell you how
pleased I had been with Sophocles and AEschylus in my Boat this Summer?
I dare say you are quite right about my 'Birds': indeed I think I had
always told you that my Version was of no _public_ use; I only wanted a
few Copies for private use; and I wanted you to add a short Account, and
a few Notes; in which I am shy of trusting my own Irish Accuracy. But
you have plenty of better work, and _this_ is quite as well left.
Miss Ingelow's second volume isn't half so good as her first, to my
thinking; more ambitious, with a twang of Tennyson. I can't add to the
List you have sent of Elizabeth's Poems.
Maria C[harlesworth] was staying with my Brother at Boulge in the Autumn,
and sent a very kind message to me; I now am sorry I did not see her; but
I keep out of the way of the _Company_ at Boulge, though I am glad to see
my Brother here. So I wish I had asked her to take the Trouble to come
and see me in my Den. Alas! if ever you do come back, you will have to
come and see me; for I really go nowhere now. Frederic Tennyson came to
me for a few Days, and talked of you two: he was looking very well; and
was grand and kind as before. I hear little of Alfred. Spedding's Bacon
seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest,
and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me
they had only convinced _him_ the other way; and that _Ellis_ had long
given up Bacon's Defence before he died.
Now my sheet is filled on the strength of my own Glass of Porter--all at
a heat. So Good Bye: ever yours, E. F. G.
_To S. Laurence_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_April_ 23/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
I only got home last Night, from Wiltshire, where I had been to see Miss
Crabbe, daughter of the old Vicar whom you remember. I found your two
Letters: and then your Box. When I had unscrewed the last Screw, it was
as if a Coffin's Lid were raised; there was the Dead Man. {55} I took
him up to my Bedroom; and when morning came, he was there--reading;
alive, and yet dead. I am perfectly satisfied with it on the whole;
indeed, could only have suggested a very, very, slight alteration, if
any. . .
As I passed through London, I saw that wonderful Collection of Rubbish,
the late Bishop of Ely's Pictures; but I fell desperately in Love with a
Sir Joshua, a young Lady in white with a blue Sash, and a sweet blue Sky
over her sweet, noble, Head; far above Gainsboro' in its Air and
Expression. I see in the Papers that it went for 165 pounds; which, if I
thought well to give so much for any Picture, I could almost have given,
by some means, for such a delightful Work.
MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_April_ 27/64.
DEAR LAURENCE,
. . . I will send back the Gainsboro' copy {56a} at once; I think the
Original must be one of the happiest of the Painter's; while he had
Vandyke in his Eye, with whom he was to go to Heaven. {56b} I will not
argue how far he was superior to Reynolds in Colour; but in the Air of
Dignity and Gentility (in the better Sense) he was surely inferior; it
must be so, from the Difference of Character in the two men. Madame
D'Arblay (Miss Burney) relates how one day when she was dining with Sir
Joshua at Richmond, she chanced to see him looking at her in a peculiar
way; she said to him, 'I know what you are thinking about.' 'Ay,' he
said, 'you may come and sit to me now whenever you please.' They had
often met; but he at last caught _the_ phase of her which was best; but I
don't think it ever went to Canvas. I don't think Gainsboro' could have
painted the lovely portrait at the Bishop of Ely's, slight as it was; Sir
Joshua was by much the finer Gentleman; indeed Gainsboro' was a Scamp.
* * * * *
In the summer of 1864 FitzGerald bought a small farmhouse in the
outskirts of Woodbridge, which he afterwards converted into Little
Grange.
_To George Crabbe_.
WOODBRIDGE: _July_ 31/64.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I returned yesterday from a Ten Days' Cruise to the Sussex Coast: which
was pleasant enough. To-morrow I talk of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.
. . . Read Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, something of a very different
order [from the 'Dean's English'], deeply interesting; pathetic,
eloquent, and, I think, sincere: sincere, in not being conscious of all
the steps he took in reaching his present Place.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Aug._ 31, [1864].
MY DEAR COWELL,
. . . I hope you don't think I have forgotten you. Your visit gave me a
sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory of other Days; I now see so
few People, and those all of the common sort, with whom I never talk of
our old Subjects; so I get in some measure unfitted for such converse,
and am almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast when it
comes. And there is something besides; a Shadow of Death: but I won't
talk of such things: only believe I don't forget you, nor wish to be
forgotten by you. Indeed, your kindness touched me.
I have been reading Juvenal with Translation, etc., in my Boat. Nearly
the best things seem to me what one may call Epistles, rather than
Satires: VIII. To Ponticus: XI. To Persicus: and XII. XIII. and XIV to
several others: and, in these, leaving out the directly satirical Parts.
Satires III and X, like Horace's Poems, are prostituted by Parliamentary
and vulgar use, and should lie by for a while. One sees Lucretius, I
think, in many parts; but Juvenal can't rise to Lucretius, who is, after
all, the true sublime Satirist of poor Man, and of something deeper than
his Corruptions and Vices: and he looks on all, too, with 'a Countenance
more in Sorrow than in Anger.' By the way, I want you to tell me the
name and Title of that Essay on Lucretius {58} which you said was
enlarged and reprinted by the Author from the original Cambridge and
Oxford Essays. I want much to get it.
There is a fine Passage in Juvenal's 6th Satire on Women: beginning line
634, 'Fingimus haec, etc.' to 650: but (as I think) leaving out lines
639, 640; because one _can_ understand without them, and they jingle
sadly with their one vowel ending. I mention this because it occurs in a
Satire which, from its Subject, you may perhaps have little cared for.
Another Book I have had is Wesley's Journal, which I used to read, but
gave away my Copy--to you? or Robert Groome {59a} was it? If you don't
know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running
almost coevally with Walpole's Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying
too within a few years of one another, and with such different Lives to
record. And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying,
English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a Style, which all
the world imitated! Remember me to all. Ever yours E. F. G.
'Sed genus humanum damnat caligo Futuri'--a Lucretian line from Juvenal.
{59b}
MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE.
_Nov._ 11/64.
MY DEAR COWELL,