You tell me to write soon: and this letter is begun, at least, on the day
yours reaches me. This is partly owing to my having to wait an hour here
in the Coffee room of the Portland Hotel: whither your letter has been
forwarded to me from Boulge. I am come up for one week: once more to
haggle with Lawyers; once more to try and settle my own affairs as well
as those of others for a time. . . .
I don't think of drowning myself yet: and what I wrote to you was a sort
of safety escape for my poor flame . . . It is only idle and well-to-do
people who kill themselves; it is ennui that is hopeless: great pain of
mind and body 'still, still, on hope relies': the very old, the very
wretched, the most incurably diseased never put themselves to rest. It
really gives me pain to hear you or any one else call me a philosopher,
or any good thing of the sort. I am none, never was; and, if I pretended
to be so, was a hypocrite. Some things, as wealth, rank, respectability,
I don't care a straw about; but no one can resent the toothache more, nor
fifty other little ills beside that flesh is heir to. But let us leave
all this.
I am come to London; but I do not go to Operas or Plays: and have scarce
time (and, it must be said, scarce inclination) to hunt up many friends.
Dear old Alfred is out of town; Spedding is my sheet-anchor, the truly
wise and fine fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening: and
there I believe Thackeray, Venables, etc., are to be. I hope not a large
assembly: for I get shyer and shyer even of those I knew. Thackeray is
in such a great world that I am afraid of him; he gets tired of me: and
we are content to regard each other at a distance. You, Alfred,
Spedding, and Allen, are the only men I ever care to see again. If ever
I leave this country I will go and see you at Florence or elsewhere; but
my plans are at present unsettled. I have refused to be Godfather to all
who have ever asked me; but I declare it will give me sincere pleasure to
officiate for your Child. I got your photograph at last: it is a beastly
thing: not a bit like: why did you not send your Poems, which are like
you; and reflect your dear old face well? As you know I admire your
poems, the only poems by a living writer I do admire, except Alfred's,
you should not hesitate. I can have no doubt whatever they ought to be
published in England: I believe Moxon would publish them: and I believe
you would make some money by them. But don't send them to Alfred to
revise or select: only for this reason, that you would both of you be a
little annoyed by gossip about how much share each of you had in them.
Your poems can want no other hand than your own to meddle with them,
except in respect of the choice of them to make a volume which would
please generally: a little of the vulgar faculty of popular tact is all
that needs to be added to you, as I think. You will know I do not say
this presumptuously: since I think the power of writing one fine line
transcends all the 'Able-Editor' ability in the ably-edited Universe.
Do you see Carlyle's 'Latter Day Pamphlets'? They make the world laugh,
and his friends rather sorry for him. But that is because people will
still look for practical measures from him: one must be content with him
as a great satirist who can make us feel when we are wrong though he
cannot set us right. There is a bottom of truth in Carlyle's wildest
rhapsodies. I have no news to tell you of books or music, for I scarce
see or hear any. And moreover I must be up, and leave the mahogany
coffee-room table on which I write so badly: and be off to Lincoln's Inn.
God bless you, my dear fellow. I ask a man of business here in the room
about Grimsby: he says, 'Well, all these railways are troublesome; but
the Grimsby one is one of the best: railway property must look up a
little: and so will Grimsby.'
_To W. B. Donne_.
BOULGE: Friday [4 _Oct_. 1850].