I have long been thinking I would answer a long and kind letter I had
from you some weeks ago, in which you condoled with me about my finances,
and offered me your house as a Refuge for the Destitute. I can never
wonder at generosity in you: but I am sorry I should have seemed to
complain so much as to provoke so much pity from you. I am not worse off
than I have been these last three years; and so much better off than
thousands who deserve more that I should deserve to be kicked if I whined
over my decayed fortunes. If I go to Italy, it will be to see Florence
and Fred. Tennyson: I do not despair of going one day: I believe my
desire is gathering, and my indolence warming up with the exhilarating
increase of Railroads.
But for the present here I am, at 19 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square,
come up to have a fresh squabble with Lawyers, and to see to an old
College friend who is gone mad, and threatens to drive his wife mad too,
I think. Here are troubles, if you like: I mean, these poor people's.
Well, I have not had much time except to post about in Omnibi between
Lincoln's Inn and Bayswater: but I have seen Alfred once; Carlyle once;
Thackeray twice; and Spedding many times. I did not see Mrs. A.: but am
to go and dine there one day before I leave. Carlyle has been undergoing
the Water System at Malvern, and says it has done him a very little good.
He would be quite well, he says, if he threw his Books away, and walked
about the mountains: but that would be 'propter vitam, etc.' Nature made
him a Writer: so he must wear himself out writing Lives of Sterling,
etc., for the Benefit of the World. Thackeray says he is getting tired
of being witty, and of the great world: he is now gone to deliver his
Lectures {272} at Edinburgh: having already given them at Oxford and
Cambridge. Alfred, I thought looking pretty well. Spedding is immutably
wise, good, and delightful: not so immutably well in Body, I think:
though he does not complain. But I will deal in no more vaticinations of
Evil. I can't think what was the oracle in my Letters you allude to, I
mean about the three years' duration of our lives. I have long felt
about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit
comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those
who are so old that the curtain will probably fall on them before it does
on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be!
not for one's own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a
Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her
place. Had I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In
Memoriam and the Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived
the [Greek text] to guard the territory they had won. What can 'In
Memoriam' do but make us all sentimental? . . .
My dear Frederic, I hope to see you one day: I really do look forward one
day to go and see you in Italy, as well as to see you here in England. I
know no one whom it would give me more pleasure to think of as one who
might perhaps be near me as we both go down the hill together, whether in
Italy or England. You, Spedding, Thackeray, and only one or two more.
The rest have come like shadows and so departed.
_To G. Crabbe_.
[_Feb_. 27, 1852.]