I got your letter all right. But you did not tell me where to direct to
you again; so I must send to the Poste Restante at Florence. I have also
heard from Morton, to whom I despatched a letter yesterday: and now set
about one to you. As you live in two different cities, one may write
about the same things to both. You told me of the Arno being frozen, and
even Italian noses being cold: he tells me the Spring is coming. I tell
you that we have had the mildest winter known; but as good weather, when
it does come in England, is always unseasonable, and as an old proverb
says that a green Yule makes a fat kirk-yard, so it has been with us: the
extraordinary fine season has killed heaps of people with influenza,
debilitated others for their lives long, worried everybody with colds,
etc. I have had three influenzas: but this is no wonder: for I live in a
hut with walls as thin as a sixpence: windows that don't shut: a clay
soil safe beneath my feet: a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows
over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke, and become very wise, and am
already quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you, as Basil Montagu
once said, in perfect charity, to his friends: 'You see, my dear fellows,
I like you very much, but I continue to advance, and you remain where you
are (you see), and so I shall be obliged to leave you behind me. It is
no fault of mine.' You must begin to read Seneca, whose letters I have
been reading: else, when you come back to England, you will be no
companion to a man who despises wealth, death, etc. What are pictures
but paintings--what are auctions but sales! All is vanity. Erige animum
tuum, mi Lucili, etc. I wonder whether old Seneca was indeed such a
humbug as people now say he was: he is really a fine writer. About three
hundred years ago, or less, our divines and writers called him the divine
Seneca; and old Bacon is full of him. One sees in him the upshot of all
the Greek philosophy, how it stood in Nero's time, when the Gods had worn
out a good deal. I don't think old Seneca believed he should live again.
Death is his great resource. Think of the _rocococity_ of a gentleman
studying Seneca in the middle of February 1844 in a remarkably damp
cottage.
I have heard from Alfred also, who hates his water life--[Greek text] he
calls it--but hopes to be cured in March. Poor fellow, I trust he may.
He is not in a happy plight, I doubt. I wish I lived in a pleasant
country where he might like to come and stay with me--but this is one of
the ugliest places in England--one of the dullest--it has not the merit
of being bleak on a grand scale--pollard trees over a flat clay, with
regular hedges. I saw a stanza in an old book which seemed to describe
my condition rather--
Far from thy kyn cast thee:
Wrath not thy neighbour next thee,
In a good corn country rest thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee. {152}
Funny advice, isn't it? I am glad to hear Septimus is so much improved.
I beg you will felicitate him from me: I have a tacit regard of the true
sort for him, as I think I must have for all of the Tennyson build. I
see so many little natures about that I must draw to the large, even if
their faults be on the same scale as their virtues. You and I shall I
suppose quarrel as often as we meet: but I can quarrel and never be the
worse with you. How we pulled against each other at Gravesend! You
would stay--I wouldn't--then I would--then we did. Do you remember the
face of that girl at the Bazaar, who kept talking to us and looking all
round the room for fresh customers--a way women have--that is, a way of
doing rather gracefully? Then the gentleman who sang Ivy green; a very
extraordinary accentuation, it seemed to me: but I believe you admired it
very much. Really, if these little excursions in the company of one's
friends leave such a pleasant taste behind in the memory, one should
court them oftener. And yet then perhaps the relish would grow less: it
is the infrequency that gives them room to expand. I shall never get to
Italy, that seems clear. My great travel this year will be to Carlisle.
Quid prosit ista tua longa peregrinatio, etc. Travelling, you know, is a
vanity. The _soul_ remains the same. An amorem possis fugare, an
libidinis exsiccari, an timorem mortis depellere? What then will you say
to Pollock's being married! I hear he is to be. Ad matrimonium fugis?
Miser! Scaevola noster dicere solebat, etc. Excuse my overflowing with
philosophy. I am going this evening to eat toasted cheese with that
celebrated poet Bernard Barton. And I must soon stir, and look about for
my great coat, brush myself, etc. It blows a harrico, as Theodore Hook
used to say, and will rain before I get to Woodbridge. Those poor
mistaken lilac buds there out of the window! and an old Robin, ruffled up
to his thickest, sitting mournfully under them, quite disheartened. For
you must know the mild winter is just giving way to a remarkably severe
spring. . . . I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of
evenings some of Handel's great choruses which are the bravest music
after all. I am getting to the true John Bull style of music. I delight
in Handel's Allegro and Penseroso. Do you know the fine pompous joyous
chorus of 'These pleasures, Mirth, if thou canst give, etc.'? Handel
certainly does in music what old Bacon desires in his Essay on Masques,
'Let the songs be loud and cheerful, not puling, etc.' One might think
the Water music was written from this text.
* * * * *
About this time FitzGerald was engaged in collecting information for
Carlyle on the subject of Cromwell's Lincolnshire campaign, and it is to
this he refers in the following fragment of a letter to Mrs. Charlesworth
and the letters which follow.
But as Carlyle is like to make good use of what we can find him, and
make a good English Hero of Oliver--something of a Johnsonian figure--I
hope you will try and pester these Lincoln ladies and gentlemen. I
wrote to Livesey: who once, he says, had a butler named Oliver
Cromwell. That is the nearest approach to history I make through him.
My brother John, after being expected every day this week, wrote
positively to say he could not come to day: and accordingly was seen
to drive up to the Hall two hours ago. *
Believe me, dear Mrs. Charlesworth, yours thankfully,