Your letter reached me this morning and gave me much pleasure. An old
acquaintance is not the worse for its wear, I think. This very time ten
years ago we were in Wales together: I at Mr. Rees' boarding-house at
Tenby: and there I made chance acquaintance with the whiskered man {123}
at whose house I am now staying:--then a boy of sixteen. He is now a man
of business, of town-politics, and more intent on the first of September
than on anything else in the world. I see very little of him. . . .
I occasionally read sentences about the Virtues out of this collection of
Stobaeus, and look into Sartor Resartus, which has fine things in it: and
a little Dante and a little Shakespeare. But the great secret of all is
the not eating meat. To that the world must come, I am sure. Only it
makes one grasshopper foolish. I also receive letters from Morton and F.
Tennyson full of fine accounts of Italy, finer than any I ever read. They
came all of a sudden on Cicero's villa--one of them at least, the
Formian--with a mosaic pavement leading thro' lemon gardens down to the
sea, and a little fountain as old as the Augustan age bubbling up as
fresh, Tennyson says, 'as when its silver sounds mixed with the deep
voice of the orator as he sate there in the stillness of the noon day,
devoting the siesta-hours to study.' When I first read of these things I
wish to see them; but, on reflection, I am sure I see them much better in
such letters as these.
I have seen one good picture about here: a portrait of O. Cromwell by
Lely--so said--unlike other Lelys, but very carefully painted: and, I
should think, an original portrait. . . I also read Hayley's Life of
Romney the other day. Romney wanted but education and reading to make
him a very fine painter: but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How
touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and, because
Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist, almost
immediately left his wife in the North, and scarce saw her till the end
of his life: when, old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to
her, and she received him, and nursed him till he died. This quiet act
of hers is worth all Romney's pictures; even as a matter of Art, I am
sure.
Whether this letter will ever reach you, I don't know. I am going in two
days to Naseby for a little while, and shall then find my way home to
Suffolk for the greater part of the Winter and Spring, I suppose.
O beate Sesti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.
I think of hiring a house in some country town like this, but nearer
Suffolk, and there have my books, etc. I want a house much: and a very
small one will content me, with a few old women close by to play cards
with at night. What a life, you will say!
His virtues walked then humble round,
Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void:
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.
That was not in playing picquet, I doubt. What fine lines of Johnson's
{125} these!
* * * * *
On the 15th of September 1842 FitzGerald first made Carlyle's personal
acquaintance. He always spoke of his having first gone to Chelsea in
company with Thackeray, and in the Notes which he left of his excavations
at Naseby he repeats what he frequently told myself and others. But his
memory was clearly at fault, for in a letter to Pollock, written on the
16th, but dated by mistake the 17th, of September, he says, 'I have come
up to London for two days on a false errand: and am therefore going back
in a pet, to Naseby. . . . I enquired at Spedding's rooms to-day: he is
expected by the 20th, which is near. Laurence is the only person I know
in town. . . . He and I went to see Carlyle at Chelsea yesterday. That
genius has been surveying the field of battle of Naseby in company with
Dr. Arnold, who died soon after, poor man! I doubt (from Carlyle's
description) if they identified the very ground of the carnage. . . . I
have heard nothing of Thackeray for these two months. He was to have
visited an Irish brother of mine: but he has not yet done so. I called
at Coram Street yesterday, and old John seemed to think he was yet in
Ireland.' With this correction I now give the Memorandum referred to,
which FitzGerald entrusted to my keeping together with several of
Carlyle's letters. An attempt to put up a monument on the real site of
the battle proved abortive, as will appear hereafter.
'About the middle of September 1842, W. M. Thackeray took me to tea
with Carlyle whom I had not previously known. He was then busy with
Cromwell; had just been, he told us, over the Field of Naseby in
company with Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and had sufficiently identified the
Ground of the Battle with the contemporaneous Accounts of it. As I
happened to know the Field well--the greater part of it then belonging
to my Family--I knew that Carlyle and Arnold had been mistaken--misled
in part by an Obelisk which my Father had set up as on the highest
Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of
the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe
that he and Arnold could have been deceived--that he could accept no
hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence of his own Eyes, etc.
However, as I was just then going down to Naseby, I might enquire
further into the matter.
'On arriving at Naseby, I had spade and mattock taken to a hill near
half a mile across from the "Blockhead Obelisk," and pitted with
several hollows, overgrown with rank Vegetation, which Tradition had
always pointed to as the Graves of the Slain. One of these I had
opened; and there, sure enough, were the remains of Skeletons closely
packed together--chiefly teeth--but some remains of Shinbone, and
marks of Skull in the Clay. Some of these, together with some
sketches of the Place, I sent to Carlyle.
'The Naseby Monument, already advised by Carlyle, was not executed at
the time: and some how or other was not again talked of till 1855 when
the Estate was to be sold from us. I was told however by the Lawyers,
etc., that it was better not to interfere while that Business was
going on. So the Scheme went to sleep again till 1872, when, Carlyle
renewing the subject in some Letter, I applied to the Agent of the
Estate who was willing to help us in getting permission to erect the
Stone, and to a neighbouring Mason to fashion it as Carlyle desired.
We had some difficulty in this latter point, but at last all was
settled, when suddenly Agent and Lawyer informed us the thing must not
be done--for one reason, that Stone and Inscription were considered
too plain.'
Before the excavations were begun, however, FitzGerald received the
following letter of instructions from Carlyle, written three days after
their interview.
CHELSEA, 18 _Sept_., 1842.