Though I write from Boulge you are not to suppose I have been here ever
since I last wrote to you. On the contrary, I am but just returned from
London, where I spent a month, and saw all the sights and all the people
I cared to see. But what am I to tell you of them? Spedding, you know,
does not change: he is now the same that he was fourteen years old when I
first knew him at school more than twenty years ago; wise, calm, bald,
combining the best qualities of Youth and Age. And then as to things
seen; you know that one Exhibition tells another, and one Panorama
certifieth another, etc. If you want to know something of the Exhibition
however, read Fraser's Magazine for this month; there Thackeray has a
paper on the matter, full of fun. I met Stone in the street the other
day; he took me by the button, and told me in perfect sincerity, and with
increasing warmth, how, though he loved old Thackeray, yet these yearly
out-speakings of his sorely tried him; not on account of himself (Stone),
but on account of some of his friends, Charles Landseer, Maclise, etc.
Stone worked himself up to such a pitch under the pressure of forced
calmess that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horse-whipped
one day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. At this I, who had partly
agreed with Stone that ridicule, though true, needs not always to be
spoken, began to laugh: and told him two could play at that game. These
painters cling together, and bolster each other up, to such a degree,
that they really have persuaded themselves that any one who ventures to
laugh at one of their drawings, exhibited publickly for the express
purpose of criticism, insults the whole corps. In the mean while old
Thackeray laughs at all this; and goes on in his own way; writing hard
for half a dozen Reviews and Newspapers all the morning; dining,
drinking, and talking of a night; managing to preserve a fresh colour and
perpetual flow of spirits under a wear-and-tear of thinking and feeding
that would have knocked up any other man I know two years ago, at least.
. . .
Alfred was in London the first week of my stay there. He was looking
well, and in good spirits; and had got two hundred lines of a new poem in
a butcher's book. He went down to Eastbourne in Sussex; where I believe
he now is. He and I made a plan to go to the coast of Cornwall or Wales
this summer; but I suppose we shall manage never to do it. I find I must
go to Ireland; which I had not intended to do this year.
I have nothing new to tell you of Music. The Operas were the same old
affair; Linda di Chamouni, the Pirata, etc. Grisi coarse, . . . only
Lablache great. There is one singer also, Brambelli, who, with a few
husky notes, carries one back to the days of Pasta. I did not hear 'Le
Desert'; but I fancy the English came to a fair judgment about it. That
is, they did not want to hear it more than once. It was played many
times, for new batches of people; but I doubt if any one went twice. So
it is with nearly all French things; there is a clever showy surface; but
no Holy of Holies far withdrawn; conceived in the depth of a mind, and
only to be received into the depth of ours after much attention. Poussin
must spend his life in Italy before he could paint as he did; and what
other Great Man, out of the exact Sciences, have they to show? This you
will call impudence. Now Beethoven, you see by your own experience, has
a depth not to be reached all at once. I admit with you that he is too
bizarre, and, I think, morbid; but he is original, majestic, and
profound. Such music _thinks_; so it is with Gluck; and with
Mendelssohn. As to Mozart, he was, as a musical Genius, more wonderful
than all. I was astonished at the Don Giovanni lately. It is certainly
the Greatest Opera in the world. I went to no concert, and am now sorry
I did not.
Now I have told you all my London news. You will not hear of my Cottage
and Garden; so now I will shut up shop and have done. We have had a
dismal wet May; but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow may
be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full chorus. This is a
pun, which, profound in itself, you must not expect to enjoy at first
reading. I am not sure that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of
it. I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steaming blue under
the noonday sun. I suppose you are living without clothes in wells,
where you are. Remember me to your brothers; write soon; and believe me
ever yours,