. . . My brother John's wife, always delicate, has had an attack this
year, which she can never get over: and while we are all living in this
house cheerfully, she lives in separate rooms, can scarcely speak to us,
or see us: and bears upon her cheek the marks of death. She has shewn
great Christian dignity all through her sickness: was the only cheerful
person when they supposed she could not live: and is now very composed
and happy. You say sometimes how like things are to dreams: or, as I
think, to the shifting scenes of a play. So does this place seem to me.
All our family, except my mother, are collected here: all my brothers and
sisters, with their wives, husbands, and children: sitting at different
occupations, or wandering about the grounds and gardens, discoursing each
their separate concerns, but all united into one whole. The weather is
delightful: and when I see them passing to and fro, and hear their
voices, it is like scenes of a play. I came here only yesterday. I have
much to tell you of: I mean, much in my small way: I will keep all till I
see you, for I don't know with what to begin in a letter. . . .
Edgeworth introduced me to his wife and sister-in-law, who are very
handsome Spanish ladies, seemingly of excellent sense. The wife is the
gentler, and more feminine: and the sister more regularly handsome, and
vivacious. I think that he is a very remarkable man: and I like him more
the more I see of him.
What you say of Tennyson and Wordsworth is not, I think, wholly just. I
don't think that a man can turn himself so directly to the service of
morality, unless naturally inclined: I think Wordsworth's is a natural
bias that way. Besides, one must have labourers of different kinds in
the vineyard of morality, which I certainly look up to as the chief
object of our cultivation: Wordsworth is first in the craft: but Tennyson
does no little by raising and filling the brain with noble images and
thoughts, which, if they do not direct us to our duty, purify and cleanse
us from mean and vicious objects, and so prepare and fit us for the
reception of the higher philosophy. A man might forsake a drunken party
to read Byron's Corsair: and Byron's Corsair for Shelley's Alastor: and
the Alastor for the Dream of Fair Women or the Palace of Art: and then I
won't say that he would forsake these two last for anything of
Wordsworth's, but his mind would be sufficiently refined and
spiritualised to admit Wordsworth, and profit by him: and he might keep
all the former imaginations as so many pictures, or pieces of music, in
his mind. But I think that you will see Tennyson acquire all that at
present you miss: when he has _felt_ life, he will not die fruitless of
instruction to man as he is. But I dislike this kind of criticism,
especially in a letter. I don't know any one who has thought out any
thing so little as I have. I don't see to any end, and should keep
silent till I have got a little more, and that little better arranged.
I am sorry that all this page is filled with this botheration, when I
have a thousand truer and better things that I want to talk to you about.
I will write to you again soon. If you please to write (but consider it
no call upon you, for the letter I have just got from you is a stock that
will last me in comfort this long while) I shall be at Wherstead all
July--after that I know not where, but probably in Suffolk. Farewell, my
best of fellows: there is no use saying how much I wish that all your
sorrow will be turned to hope, and all your hope to joy. As far as we
men can judge, you are worthy of all earthly happiness.
* * * * *
At the end of July, 1835, FitzGerald writes from Wherstead to Thackeray,
who was then in Paris studying art:
'My Father is determined to inhabit an empty house of his about
fourteen miles off: {38} and we are very sorry to leave this really
beautiful place. The other house has no great merit. So there is
nothing now but packing up sofas, and pictures, and so on. I rather
think that I shall be hanging about this part of the world all the
winter: for my two sisters are about to inhabit this new house alone,
and I cannot but wish to add my company to them now and then. . . .
'My dear boy, God bless thee a thousand times over! When are we to
see thee? How long are you going to be at Paris? What have you been
doing? The drawing you sent me was very pretty. So you don't like
Raphael! Well, I am his inveterate admirer: and say, with as little
affectation as I can, that his worst scrap fills my head more than all
Rubens and Paul Veronese together--"the mind, the mind, Master
Shallow!" You think this cant, I dare say: but I say it truly,
indeed. Raphael's are the only pictures that cannot be described: no
one can get words to describe their perfection. Next to him, I
retreat to the Gothic imagination, and love the mysteries of old
chairs, Sir Rogers, etc. in which thou, my dear boy, art and shalt be
a Raphael. To depict the true old English gentleman, is as great a
work as to depict a Saint John, and I think in my heart I would rather
have the former than the latter. There are plenty of pictures in
London--some good Water-colours by Lewis--Spanish things. Two or
three very vulgar portraits by Wilkie, at the Exhibition: and a big
one of Columbus, half good, and half bad. There is always a spice of
vulgarity about Wilkie. There is an Eastlake, but I missed it. Etty
has boats full of naked backs as usual: but what they mean, I didn't
stop to enquire. He has one picture, however, of the Bridge of Sighs
in Venice, which is sublime: though I believe nobody saw it, or
thought about it but myself.'
About the same time that FitzGerald went to Boulge, George Crabbe, the
Poet's eldest son and biographer, was appointed to the Vicarage of the
adjoining parish of Bredfield, and a friendship sprang up between them
which was only terminated by Mr. Crabbe's death in 1857.
_To John Allen_.
BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE,
_October_ 31, 1835.