Your note came to me to-day. I ought to have written to you long ago:
and indeed did half do a letter before the summer was half over: which
letter I mislaid. I shall be delighted indeed to have your photograph:
insufficient as a photograph is. You are one of the few men whose
portrait I would give a penny to have: and one day when you are in
England we must get it done by Laurence; half at your expense and half at
mine, I think. I wish you had sent over to me some of your poems which
you told me you were printing at Florence: and often I wish I was at
Florence to give you some of my self-satisfied advice on what you should
select. For though I do not pretend to write Poetry you know I have a
high notion of my judgment in it.
Well, I was at Boulge all the summer: came up thence five weeks ago:
stayed three weeks with my mother at Richmond; a week in London: and now
am come here to try and finish a money bargain with some lawyers which
you heard me beginning a year ago. They utterly failed in any part of
the transaction except bringing me in a large bill for service
unperformed. However, we are now upon another tack. . . .
In a week I go to London, where I hope to see Alfred. Oddly enough, I
had a note from him this very day on which I receive yours: he has, he
tells me, taken chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Moxon told me he was
about to publish another edition of his Princess, with interludes added
between the parts: and also that he was about to print, but (I think) not
to publish, those Elegiacs on Hallam. I saw poor old Thackeray in
London: getting very slowly better of a bilious fever that had almost
killed him. Some one told me that he was gone or going to the Water
Doctor at Malvern. People in general thought Pendennis got dull as it
got on; and I confess I thought so too: he would do well to take the
opportunity of his illness to discontinue it altogether. He told me last
June he himself was tired of it: must not his readers naturally tire too?
Do you see Dickens' David Copperfield? It is very good, I think: more
carefully written than his later works. But the melodramatic parts, as
usual, bad. Carlyle says he is a showman whom one gives a shilling to
once a month to see his raree-show, and then sends him about his
business.
I have been obliged to turn Author on the very smallest scale. My old
friend Bernard Barton chose to die in the early part of this year. . . .
We have made a Book out of his Letters and Poems, and published it by
subscription . . . and I have been obliged to contribute a little dapper
{251} Memoir, as well as to select bits of Letters, bits of Poems, etc.
All that was wanted is accomplished: many people subscribed. Some of B.
B.'s letters are pleasant, I think, and when you come to England I will
give you this little book of incredibly small value. I have heard no
music but two concerts at Jullien's a fortnight ago; very dull, I
thought: no beautiful new Waltzes and Polkas which I love. It is a
strange thing to go to the Casinos and see the coarse whores and
apprentices in bespattered morning dresses, pea-jackets, and bonnets,
twirl round clumsily and indecently to the divine airs played in the
Gallery; 'the music yearning like a God in pain' indeed. I should like
to hear some of your Florentine Concerts; and I do wish you to believe
that I do constantly wish myself with you: that, if I ever went anywhere,
I would assuredly go to visit the Villa Gondi. I wish you to believe
this, which I know to be true, though I am probably further than ever
from accomplishing my desire. Farewell: I shall hope to find out your
Consul and your portrait in London: though you do not give me very good
directions where I am to find them. And I will let you know soon whether
I have found the portrait, and how I like it.
_To John Allen_.
BEDFORD, _Dec._ 13/49.